Mifepristone will remain generally accessible for at least a little while longer

Gilead

Abortion


Fig. 1. Sign at demonstration in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, May 3, 2022. Janni Rye, via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

The betting now would seem to be that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone will stand, even if it’s the Supreme Court that has to rule on it.[1]

Friday’s [April 21, 2023] order suggests that the [Food and Drug Administration] would probably win. Under the [Supreme Court’s] rules, the justices usually intervene to block a preliminary ruling if they believe it is mistaken and likely to be reversed on appeal.[2]

David G. Savage, “Supreme Court sides with FDA on abortion pills, blocks Texas rulings for now,” Los Angeles Times, April 21, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-21/supreme-court-fda-on-abortion-pills

Donald Trump

Coup attempt


Fig. 1. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

I fear Miguel Jiménez’ mistake[3] is one widely made prior to the era of Donald Trump, that there is a single objective truth that is widely accepted. This is a delusion that should have been put to rest certainly no later than with the COVID-19 pandemic. Jiménez himself shows us how the right wing will respond to Fox News’ settlement with Dominion Voting systems, writing,

Fox’s lawyers left through a side door of the court building and squeezed past reporters as best they could. . . . Fox reported on the settlement only briefly on Tuesday, and avoided discussing the matter on Wednesday. Its star presenters — the same ones who helped spread the election lies — completely ignored the issue on their shows.[4]

Jiménez argues that the still-pending Smartmatic suit and the Georgia district attorney’s investigation into Trump’s election interference will make it impossible to ignore that the lies are lies,[5] which it indeed would if we were dealing with a positivist notion of truth, grounded in evidence. But for conservatives, real truth is what should be rather than what is.[6]

Further evidence, no matter how extensive, no matter how exhaustive, will not help here because conservatives devalue “temporal,” “relative” truth in favor of “absolute” truth.[7]

White Christian nationalists believe that Trump should have won the election. Therefore, they believe that he did win the election and therefore that any other result is false and fraudulent, that any court findings affirming what they believe to be false and fraudulent results merely demonstrate the reach of the “deep state” (or of Satan).

When there is no agreement on premises, and when those premises lead inexorably to contradictory conclusions, it is impossible to reach agreement on those conclusions. And this is where I think the U.S. is.

Erin Mulvaney, Isabella Simonetti, and Joe Flint, “Fox News Defamation Trial Delayed Amid Network’s Push to Settle Dispute,” Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/fox-news-dominion-prepare-for-battle-in-1-6-billion-defamation-trial-fad2e9a6

Jeremy W. Peters and Katie Robertson, “Fox Disputes Possible Damages as Judge Delays Defamation Trial,” New York Times, April 17, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/business/fox-dominion-trial-delay.html

David Bauder, Randall Chase, and Geoff Mulvihill, “Lawsuit against Fox for false election claims heads to trial,” Associated Press, April 18, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe

Aaron Blake, “4 takeaways from the Dominion v. Fox settlement,” Washington Post, April 18, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/18/fox-news-dominion-takeaways/

Meg James, “Fox News-Dominion settlement doesn’t end crisis for Rupert Murdoch’s empire,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-04-18/fox-news-dominion-settlement-fallout-rupert-murdochs-empire

Erin Mulvaney, Joe Flint, and Isabella Simonetti, “Fox to Pay $787.5 Million to Settle Dominion’s Defamation Lawsuit,” Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/fox-news-dominion-defamation-trial-set-to-begin-d5c7293a

Jose Pagliery, “Trump’s Fake Georgia Electors Are Now Ratting on Each Other,” Daily Beast, April 18, 2023, https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-fake-georgia-electors-are-now-ratting-on-each-other

Jonathan Lai, “Pa. Supreme Court angrily sanctions county for violating order on Dominion voting machines,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 19, 2023, https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/fulton-county-dominion-voting-machines-sanctions-pa-supreme0court-20230419.html

Patrick Marley and Jeremy Barr, “After Fox settlement, experts warn election falsehoods will persist,” Washington Post, April 19, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/04/19/fox-news-settlement-election-falsehoods/

Jane Martinson, “Fox News and Rupert Murdoch have been humiliated, but they won’t change their ways,” Guardian, April 19, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/19/fox-news-rupert-murdoch-defamation-settlement-electoral-fraud

Brian Stelter, “Fox News, Unapologetic and Unwavering, Steams Ahead After Staggering Dominion Settlement,” Vanity Fair, April 19, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-settlement

Amy B. Wang, Elahe Izadi, and Patrick Marley, “Fox News still faces $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic,” Washington Post, April 19, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/04/18/fox-news-smartmatic-defamation-lawsuit/

Chris Dehghanpoor, Emma Brown, and Jon Swaine, “Mike Lindell’s firm told to pay $5 million in ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ election-fraud challenge,” Washington Post, April 20, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/04/20/mike-lindell-prove-wrong-contest/

Miguel Jiménez, “Fox News settlement with Dominion pulls the rug on Trump’s election lies,” El País, April 20, 2023, https://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-04-20/fox-news-settlement-with-dominion-pulls-the-rug-on-trumps-election-lies.html

Bess Levin, “In Comically Evil Twist, Fox Will Receive a Huge Tax Break From Its Dominion Settlement,” Vanity Fair, April 20, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/fox-news-dominion-settlement-tax-break

Philip Bump, “Trump’s message to young men: American democracy is all but gone,” Washington Post, April 21, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/21/trump-democracy-young-white-men/


Jeffrey Epstein


Fig. 1. “Donald Trump with his future wife Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in February 2000.” Photograph credited to Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images, February 2000,[8] fair use.

Khadeeja Safdar and David Benoit, “JPMorgan’s Ties to Jeffrey Epstein Were Deeper Than the Bank Has Acknowledged,” Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/jpmorgan-jeffrey-epstein-525febe3


  1. [1]David G. Savage, “Supreme Court sides with FDA on abortion pills, blocks Texas rulings for now,” Los Angeles Times, April 21, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-21/supreme-court-fda-on-abortion-pills
  2. [2]David G. Savage, “Supreme Court sides with FDA on abortion pills, blocks Texas rulings for now,” Los Angeles Times, April 21, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-21/supreme-court-fda-on-abortion-pills
  3. [3]Miguel Jiménez, “Fox News settlement with Dominion pulls the rug on Trump’s election lies,” El País, April 20, 2023, https://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-04-20/fox-news-settlement-with-dominion-pulls-the-rug-on-trumps-election-lies.html
  4. [4]Miguel Jiménez, “Fox News settlement with Dominion pulls the rug on Trump’s election lies,” El País, April 20, 2023, https://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-04-20/fox-news-settlement-with-dominion-pulls-the-rug-on-trumps-election-lies.html
  5. [5]Miguel Jiménez, “Fox News settlement with Dominion pulls the rug on Trump’s election lies,” El País, April 20, 2023, https://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-04-20/fox-news-settlement-with-dominion-pulls-the-rug-on-trumps-election-lies.html
  6. [6]David Benfell, “A theory of conservative epistemology,” Not Housebroken, February 7, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/08/06/a-theory-of-conservative-epistemology/
  7. [7]David Benfell, “A theory of conservative epistemology,” Not Housebroken, February 7, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/08/06/a-theory-of-conservative-epistemology/
  8. [8]Martin Pengelly, “‘She say anything about me?’ Trump raised Ghislaine Maxwell link with aides,” Guardian, October 4, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/04/trump-ghislaine-maxwell-epstein-maggie-haberman-book-confidence-man

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.