Middleboro Review 2: POLITICO NIGHTLY: The court ruling that could create an abortion crisis

Friday, February 10, 2023

POLITICO NIGHTLY: The court ruling that could create an abortion crisis

With additional reporting from Tanya Snyder and Ari Hawkins

Demonstrators rally against anti-abortion laws at the Texas State Capitol in 2021. | Montinique Monroe/Getty Images

RED PILL, BLUE PILL — Advocacy groups panicking over an impending court ruling that could ban abortion pills nationwide tuned into President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address eager to hear how the administration would deal with the potential loss of the country’s most-used method of abortion.

But when Biden brought up abortion more than an hour into his first SOTU since Roe fell, he gave it a brief mention and didn’t mention the pill lawsuit at all, prompting complaints from some advocacy groups and motivating others to double down on their own preparations.

“We don’t hold our breath for government action,” said Elisa Wells, the founder of the organization Plan C that helps patients order the pills online. “We know that in the absence of political support and leadership, this is what we have to do. We have to provide for ourselves and our community.”

The uncertainty around what one Trump-appointed judge in Texas could do to further decimate access to abortion — a decision could come down as early as Friday — has raised a slew of questions about the limits of the federal government’s powers and what strategies could work going forward. Here is what you need to know about what could be the biggest abortion ruling since Dobbs :

What could the court do? Anti-abortion medical groups are challenging the FDA’s decades-old decision to allow the sale of abortion pills as well as more recent agency decisions making the pills available via telemedicine, mail delivery and pharmacy pickup. If the judge sides with them and against the Biden administration, it could either cut off access to the drugs in the mostly Democratic-led states where they remain legal or reinstate rules mandating that patients only be able to receive them in-person from a physician.

Who would be most impacted? Eighteen GOP-controlled states already restrict access to the pills or ban their use entirely, so this would mainly impact blue state residents. If people who otherwise would have taken a pill to end an early pregnancy have to switch to an in-clinic procedure, that’s set to increase already long wait-times in some areas that don’t have enough clinics and providers.

What do advocates want the Biden administration to do? Ever since Roe fell, abortion rights groups and progressive lawmakers have asked the Biden administration to declare a public health emergency for abortion, which they argue could allow the government to send medical workers to red states to help people obtain abortions and funnel money to blue states dealing with a patient influx.

They also want the FDA to drop its opposition to people ordering the pills before they are pregnant and keeping them on hand just in case — a practice known as advance provision.

Neither action, however, is likely. The White House has explicitly said they think a public health emergency declaration would backfire. Mainly, they’re planning to swiftly appeal any ruling that limits access to the pills.

What are advocates doing on their own? In defiance of the FDA, groups are encouraging patients to stockpile pills while they still can.

And because the lawsuit targets just the first of the two pills used together to terminate a pregnancy — mifepristone — they’re also rushing to train clinics and online dispensaries on how to offer abortions using just the second pill in the regime: misoprostol.

While misoprostol alone has long been used for abortions in other countries, it carries a higher rate of patients needing a follow-up procedure than the two pills used together.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at aollstein@politico.com or on Twitter at @AliceOllstein .

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WHAT'D I MISS?

— Santos was charged with theft in 2017 case tied to Amish dog breeders: Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) was charged with theft in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country in 2017 after a series of bad checks were written in his name to dog breeders, according to the court and a lawyer friend who helped him address the charge. Just days after $15,125 in checks were made out for “puppies,” according to the memo lines, Santos held an adoption event at a Staten Island pet store with his animal rescue charity Friends of Pets United, according to the store’s Instagram account and a person who attended the event.

— Fetterman hospitalized after feeling ‘lightheaded’: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) went to the hospital Wednesday evening after feeling “lightheaded,” his office said in a statement. Fetterman, who suffered a stroke last May, left the Senate Democratic retreat on Wednesday and called his staff, who drove him to The George Washington University Hospital in Washington. While initial tests did not show signs of a new stroke, doctors are continuing to run tests, and Fetterman was being kept overnight “for observation,” his office said.

— U.S. to ‘explore’ punishing China over spy balloon, official says: The Biden administration will “explore” punitive actions against Chinese entities involved in sending a balloon to spy on the United States, a senior State Department official said today. In a lengthy statement containing newly declassified intelligence, the official said the U.S. “will also look at broader efforts to expose and address [China’s] larger surveillance activities that pose a threat to our national security, and to our allies and partners.”

AROUND THE WORLD

Former Nicaragua presidential candidate Felix Maradiaga is greeted by supporters after arriving from Nicaraguan prison at Washington Dulles International Airport today. | Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

FREE AT LAST — The Biden administration helped coordinate the release of more than 200 political prisoners in Nicaragua including at least one American citizen earlier today, according to U.S. officials and the families of those incarcerated.

The development comes as Nicaraguans continue to flee the country en masse, seeking refuge from the totalitarian regime of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The release of political prisoners underscores a new approach by the regime to curry favor with Western powers and stifle domestic dissent, Ari Hawkins reports for Nightly.

Nicaraguan Judge Octavio Rothschuh Andino announced the release of 222 inmates — including journalists, civil society representatives and students — at a press conference this morning, confirming the prisoners were found guilty of treason and are “forever banned” from public office and competing elections.

Meanwhile, families of those targeted, many of whom were incarcerated in 2021 ahead of a national election, expressed thanks at the release.

“We have been praying and working for this release for over 16 months,” said Georgiana Aguirre-Sacasa, the daughter of Francisco Aguirre-Sacasa, who served as the Nicaraguan foreign minister, wrote to Nightly. “I cannot wait to give him a bear hug.”

Ahead of Ortega’s presidential run in 2021, the country’s top electoral court banned three political parties from participating in elections. Members of opposing political parties were arrested, imprisoned, or intimidated as Ortega cleared the way for his fourth consecutive term.

While protests remain rare in the country, the release of the prisoners has coincided with the rise of another metric of civilian discontent: emigration. The number of Nicaraguans arriving in Mexico doubled in 2022, and about half of all Nicaraguans that fled to Costa Rica since 2018 did so in 2021, after Ortega clinched his latest term.

In the U.S., more than 180,000 undocumented Nicaraguans crossed into the country through the end of November in 2022, representing a 60-fold increase compared to those who entered during the same period two years earlier, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“The release of the political prisoners in some ways can be framed as a positive development but it underscores how the regime is trying to relieve the pressure emanating from the regime’s orchestrating fraudulent elections, human rights abuses, and extrajudicial killings,” Eddy Acevedo, the chief of staff and senior advisor at the Wilson Center told Nightly in an interview.

“So on the one hand, this development is terrific news for the political prisoners who had to endure inhumane conditions, torture and cruelty in Ortega’s gulags. But it’s important to correctly interpret what the expulsion of Ortega’s political opposition to the U.S. really means for restoring democracy in the region.”

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NIGHTLY NUMBER

27.3 million

The amount of people who watched Biden’s State of the Union on Tuesday evening, the second smallest audience for the event in the last 30 years , according to the Nielsen company, and down 28 percent from the 38.2 million people who watched his address in 2022. Nearly three-quarters — 73 percent — of the people who watched the State of the Union were 55 or older, while only 5 percent were under 35.

RADAR SWEEP

ZOOM BOMBING — As layoffs roil the tech industry, Zoom this week cut 15 percent of its workforce , amounting to 1,300 jobs. In the two years prior, Zoom had tripled its staff. The layoffs represent a new normal for a tech industry that’s being reined in by lots of forces, including a notable rise in interest rates. But in the case of Zoom, it’s also a broader turning point. After many jobs moved exclusively online during the pandemic, people are now coming back to the office. Meanwhile, Zoom’s competitors, including Slack and Microsoft, have caught up on video calling software. For now, despite layoffs Zoom continues to make money and grow. But as people turn to other tools to communicate, including old face-to-face interactions, Zoom will have to continue to innovate. Amanda Hoover reports for Wired.

PARTING WORDS

A parking space to charge electric vehicles in Pasadena, California. | Mario Tama/Getty Images

ELECTRIC SHOCK — If you're thinking about buying an electric car — and if you’re not now, you might be after all the EV ads you’ll be seeing Sunday during the Super Bowl — act fast. Once the Treasury Department puts out new guidance in March about how it interprets the new eligibility rules for the tax credit, it’s unclear how many — if any — cars will qualify for the full $7,500, Tanya Snyder reports for Nightly.

Right now, 37 models appear on the IRS listing of eligible vehicles , though many of those are just different trims of the same model, and some are too expensive to qualify for the credit, which isn’t available for cars over $55,000 or SUVs and pickup trucks over $80,000. But that list is about to get much smaller.

“Come next month, once the guidance comes out, some of them may be eligible for half of the credit, maybe $3,750, or maybe none of the credit,” Jennifer Safavian, president and CEO of the trade association Autos Drive America, said Wednesday at an event on electric and autonomous vehicles . Automakers won’t know whether their vehicles qualify until the anticipated Treasury guidance makes clear “what countries those critical minerals can come from and what constitutes a battery component,” not to mention “what is considered a free trade agreement, because that’s not defined anywhere,” Safavian went on.

Even worse, the new rules will come into effect as soon as that guidance comes out. Automakers are still trying to trace their own supply chains to discover the provenance of each sub-component and raw material in their batteries.

“It’s going to take a long time to really suss out which cars are going to make it and which cars aren’t,” said Stephanie Brinley, associate director of research and analysis for S&P Global, also speaking at the same event.

The 2022 climate law revamped the electric vehicle tax credit, removing the cap on how many vehicles from any one manufacturer can get the credit — Tesla, Chevrolet and Toyota had all maxed out. The law also added a new, $4,000 tax credit for used EVs.

But at Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) insistence, new rules were added: A minimum (and steadily increasing) percentage of battery minerals and components need to be sourced in North America (or, in the case of minerals, in a free trade partner nation.) Final assembly needs to happen in North America. And in addition to the cap on the vehicle price, there’s also a cap on income (Manchin didn’t want to pay rich people to buy luxury cars) set at $150,000 or $300,000 for a married couple filing jointly.

It seems like it’s “designed so you don’t have to give out as many tax credits for as long as possible,” said Brinley.