Quote:We are about to learn whether Republicans are more addicted to power or to ideas. This is, it’s worth noting, a live debate. In the Bush years, the GOP cut taxes, expanded Medicare, and started two wars without paying for a dime of it. Then after Barack Obama took office, Republicans became very worried about budget discipline. Fiscal conservatism, liberals complained, seemed to mean Republicans could rack up debt for any reason while Democrats couldn’t even borrow to save the economy during a financial collapse (which is, for the record, exactly the time you would want to debt finance).

Quote:A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, an unprecedented order that — if it stands through court challenges — could make it harder for patients to get abortions in states where abortion is legal, not just in those trying to restrict it...

Medication abortion is the method used in more than half of abortions in the United States. The lawsuit claims that the F.D.A. did not adequately review the scientific evidence or follow proper protocols when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and that it has since ignored safety risks of the medication. The F.D.A. and the Justice Department have strongly disputed the claims in the lawsuit and said that the federal agency’s rigorous reviews of mifepristone over the years had repeatedly reaffirmed its decision to approve mifepristone, which blocks a hormone that allows a pregnancy to develop. In a statement Friday night, the agency said: “F.D.A. stands behind its determination that mifepristone is safe and effective under its approved conditions of use for medical termination of early pregnancy, and believes patients should have access to F.D.A.-approved medications that F.D.A. has determined to be safe and effective for their intended uses.”

In the 67-page Texas ruling, Judge Kacsmaryk appeared to agree with virtually all of the claims made by the anti-abortion groups and repeatedly used the language of abortion opponents, calling medication abortion “chemical abortion” and referring to a fetus as an “unborn human” or “unborn child.” ”The court does not second-guess F.D.A.’s decision-making lightly,” the judge wrote. “But here, F.D.A. acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions. There is also evidence indicating F.D.A. faced significant political pressure to forgo its proposed safety precautions to better advance the political objective of increased ‘access’ to chemical abortion.”

• The use of bunk science to further ideological goals once more..
  
• Or the climate deniers
  
• Or the law preventing Federal funding of research of gun violence