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A federal judge in Texas sent signals Tuesday that he is open to the argument that the Food and Drug Administration did not properly vet mifepristone, a drug approved two decades ago for use in abortions. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk may rule soon that the widely used drug may not be prescribed nationwide, even in states where abortion is legal. Kacsmaryk could issue a preliminary injunction that could force the FDA to withdraw its approval for the drug.
Mifepristone is one of two medications used in medication abortions in the U.S. The Justice Department, which represented the FDA in the hearing, said the drug was proven to be safe and effective long ago. But a group called the Alliance Defending Freedom said the drug was approved without sufficient study. The judge seemed uncertain about whether he has the authority to sideline a drug decades after it was approved.
No matter what Kacsmaryk rules, the case is likely to be appealed and could end up in front of the Supreme Court.
If the judge’s order suspends the use of mifepristone, patients may still use another drug, misoprostol, which is currently used in addition to mifepristone. But, doctors say, the two-drug regimen works more effectively than a single drug.
Some pharmacists have been stockpiling mifepristone in case the judge issues an injunction, but nobody seems certain whether such an order would prevent drugstores from distributing the drug.
Mifepristone is safe when used as indicated and directed and consistent with the Mifepristone Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) Program. The FDA approved Mifeprex more than 20 years ago based on a thorough and comprehensive review of the scientific evidence presented and determined that it was safe and effective for its indicated use.
As of 2016, it can be used for medical termination of pregnancy up to 70 days of gestation. The FDA’s periodic reviews of the postmarketing data for Mifeprex and its approved generic have not identified any new safety concerns with the use of mifepristone for medical termination of pregnancy through 70 days gestation. As with all drugs, the FDA continues to closely monitor the postmarketing safety data on mifepristone for the medical termination of pregnancy.
The abortion opponents said in their lawsuit that the FDA has removed safeguards for mifepristone by changing the recommended dosage and by allowing it to be mailed to patients — a rule that was adopted in 2021. The suit said, “The FDA took these actions by running roughshod over the laws and, regulations that govern the agency and, more importantly, protect the public from harmful drugs.” The lawsuit said:
The only way the FDA could have approved chemical abortion drugs was to call pregnancy an “illness” and argue that these dangerous drugs provide a “meaningful therapeutic benefit” over surgical abortions. Both of those conclusions are transparently false. What’s more, in approving these drugs, the FDA chose politics over science because the FDA never studied the safety of the drugs under the labeled conditions of use, ignored the potential impacts of this hormone-blocking regimen on the developing bodies of adolescent girls, and disregarded the substantial evidence that chemical abortions cause more complications than even surgical abortions.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says medication abortions accounted for more than half of all abortions in the U.S. in 2020. The Guttmacher Institute is tracking state legislation regarding abortion access and summarizes the situation:
2 states have a near-total ban on abortion in effect (Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia). In addition, providers in Wisconsin have been forced to stop offering abortion care because of uncertainty about the state’s abortion law. All of these states have separate laws limiting the provision of medication abortion, although these are not currently applicable because providers have stopped offering all abortion care.
- 15 states restrict access to medication abortion, including North Dakota, where there are currently no abortion providers.
- 15 states require that medication abortion be provided by a physician.
- 6 states require the patient to have an in-person visit with a physician.
- 1 state has a gestational age limit on medication abortion provision.
- 1 state requires that the first of the two-drug regimen for medication abortion be taken in the presence of a physician.
- 1 state bans mailing pills for medication abortion to a patient.
(Guttmacher Institute)
Should new cars carry AM radios?
Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, is imploring car manufacturers to keep installing AM radios in cars even though some manufacturers are choosing not to include them in new models. Electric vehicles have problems getting a clean signal from some AM stations because of interference caused by the EV systems. The NAB says software upgrades would fix the reception problems.
“As carmakers increase electric vehicle offerings throughout their lineups, the availability of AM radio to consumers is declining,” said Pooja Nair, communications systems engineer with Xperi Corp., in a Radio World guest commentary. “This is because the effects of electromagnetic interference are more pronounced in EVs than in vehicles with internal-combustion engines.”
In other words, electromagnetic frequencies generated by EV motors occupy the same wavelength as AM radio signals. The competing signals clash, effectively cancelling each other out. As EV motors grow more powerful, AM static tends to increase.
LeGeyt blogged, “AM radio serves as the backbone of the Emergency Alert System, informing Americans of impending danger and directing people to safety.” He says software upgrades can clean up AM signals by reducing noise and interference. He writes:
More than 47 million Americans tune into nearly 4,500 local AM radio stations across the country. AM radio stations rank among the most-listened-to stations not just in small and rural markets but also in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Atlanta.
EV manufacturers have aggressively dropped the AM receivers. It is not just European manufacturers. The 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning ditched AM radio. The Motley Fool added some other names:
Tesla, Audi, Porsche, Volvo, and Volkswagen have already removed AM from their EVs. Ford’s popular F-150 Lightning pickup truck will also drop the signal for its 2023 model.
Though not as popular as FM radio, manufacturers might be forgetting just how many people tune into AM regularly. For at least two hours a day, about 47 million Americans listen to AM radio, representing about 20 percent of the radio-listening public, according to the Nielsen Company.
Others including Hyundai Ioniq 5, Toyota BZ4X and Chevy Bolt all still include AM.
TheDrive.com says that emergency management officials are asking the federal government to get involved:
On Sunday, seven former Federal Emergency Management Agency administrators sent a letter to Buttigieg expressing concern over the AM radios being excluded from EVs, according to The Wall Street Journal. Because of AM’s low cost and long range, more than 90% of people in the U.S. are reportedly reachable by just 75 AM stations equipped with backup communications and generators. They can broadcast through just about anything, but the former officials are now worried that citizens may one day be unable to receive the broadcasts.
“Should this continue, it will represent a grave threat to future local, state, and federal disaster response and relief efforts,” the letter warns.
“When all else fails, radio stations are often the last line of communications that communities have,” added Craig Fugate, head of FEMA under President Obama and one of the letter’s signatories.
“AM radio has been tested over and over during the most devastating natural disasters—and has withstood them all,” added Antwane Johnson, a current FEMA official.
InsideRadio.com points to research that says, “The National Association of Farm Broadcasting found 71% of farmers listen to agricultural radio and noted that local AM stations broadcast high school sports games and provide coverage of local news and community events.”
I started my broadcasting career in a 250-watt AM station. It was 1580 on the AM dial, so far up the dial that we used to joke “you will find us just to the left of your glove compartment.” Some of you who have only known digital radios won’t get it.
I don’t listen to AM radio much but I would if I lived in a town that had real news radio stations — like Chicago, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Denver and Philadelphia — or a small, plugged-in, beautifully run and locally owned station like my dear WPKY in Princeton, Kentucky, which is a lifeline to the people there.
Read more: Letters from U.S. Sen. Ed Markey to various car manufacturers asking them to keep AM radios in their vehicles
15 states are considering laws that would change public notice rules and cost newspapers big bucks
Local newspapers around the country are trying to safeguard one of their last reliable sources of income, legal notices, which many desperately need to keep afloat.
Iowa is just the latest state to consider no longer requiring governments to publish legal notices in the local newspaper but instead move them online. In January, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis abolished his state’s rule requiring legal notices to run in local papers.
It would cost local governments next to nothing to publish their own legal notices on city or county websites. The Public Notice Resource Center, a nonprofit that partners with state press associations, says there is a national movement underway to gut the public notice rules:
Bills have been introduced in at least 15 states allowing or requiring official notice to be published on various platforms other than local newspapers. That’s significantly more legislative activity focused on replacing newspaper notice than last year and approaches the level of the previous election off-year of 2021.
Twelve of those states are considering bills that substitute government websites for newspaper notice. A few of those bills would also allow local news websites or other types of alternative media to replace print newspapers in the notice process, and separate measures in three other states would do the same. Not surprisingly, all of these bills were introduced in states that have seen similar legislation stall in the past and only one has even passed through a committee yet. Moreover, two of the bills — Mississippi SB-2515 (government websites or “official social media webpage”) and Virginia SB-1237 (local news websites) — are already dead.
The most draconian legislation was introduced in Hawaii and Iowa. Hawaii HB-1411 and Iowa SF-31 would both eliminate newspaper notice and make government websites the exclusive venue for notice. HB-1411 exempts some notices so it’s not clear whether or how much newspaper notice would remain in Hawaii if it passed, and Iowa has seen similar bills in previous sessions that never made it out of committee.
This interactive map by the Public Notice Resource Center shows where legislation is pending. The darker the color, the more bills have been filed that would affect public notice laws.
(Public Notice Resource Center)
The Local News Initiative says:
From a business point of view, the notices, which cover everything from rezoning requests to sidewalk café permits, are a vital stream of revenue for U.S. newspapers at a time when other traditional advertising revenue continues to decline. Since 2005, the U.S. has lost more than 2,500 newspapers, a quarter of its total.
In some cases, the push to drop statutorily required legal notices is being described as a budget-cutting move in a digital age. In others, it is openly being portrayed as punishment for negative media coverage.
“I don’t think the concept of legal notices is controversial. There needs to be a nonpartisan way to officially announce what the government is doing. What’s controversial is how it happens,” said Richard Karpel, Executive Director of the Public Notice Resource Center, an organization that tracks the status of legal notices in all 50 states. “We’ve seen it become more of a partisan issue in the last five or 10 years. In some states, there are Republicans who are in battle with the media as part of their political strategy. To that extent, it has become partisan.”
Over the past decade, more than a dozen states have introduced legislation that would move public notices from newspapers to government websites.
Newspapers make the case that governments should not “oversee” themselves and that publishing legal notices is oversight. Newspapers also make the case that not everybody everywhere has internet access.
The Public Notice Resource Center says:
PNRC considers public notices to be one of three legs supporting a proverbial stool of government transparency. The other two legs are open meetings and the Freedom of Information Act. PNRC believes notices should remain in the realm of newspapers because newspapers are more accessible, independent, verifiable and archivable than government websites.
“This is not an argument about print versus the internet,” Karpel said. “This is an argument about newspapers and newspaper websites versus government websites. Most newspaper websites have a lot more traffic than government websites and they are more user friendly, so the idea that you’re going to move public notices to government websites and not lose lots of transparency is ludicrous.”
Make no mistake, legal notices are a significant revenue source for smaller papers. The Local News Initiative gives this example:
Les High, a longtime publisher in a small town in North Carolina, estimates that small community papers could lose 20-25 percent of their revenue if legal notices went away, compared with only a 5 percent loss for larger dailies. “It’s the little guys who are under threat,” said High, who now runs the Border Belt Independent, a nonprofit public-interest news site that covers four North Carolina counties. “They’re struggling already and they’re in counties without large revenue streams from retailers. If we lost public notices here, I bet you would see 15-20 percent of small newspapers disappear.”
