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Abortion-pill foes get a chilly reception at the Supreme Court

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ANTI-ABORTION ACTIVISTS were thrilled when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Mr Trump had promised to appoint justices who would “automatically” overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 case that protected reproductive rights. Three appointments later, the Supreme Court did just that in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation. But two years on, an oral argument on March 26th concerning mifepristone—a medication used in 63% of abortions in America—bodes ill for those hoping the court will help them keep limiting access to abortion care. At least for now.

Food and Drug Administration v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine concerns a challenge to mifepristone by a group of doctors who oppose abortion. They persuaded a lower-court judge to de-authorise the FDA’s approval of the drug in 2000 despite a safety record comparable to Tylenol (paracetamol) and penicillin. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals somewhat softened that slap in the agency’s face last August. But it blocked the FDA’s moves in 2016 and 2021 allowing mifepristone to be used later in pregnancy (through ten weeks) and to be sent through the mail with a remote prescription.

Erin Hawley, representing the plaintiffs, defended the pill restrictions in her first argument at the Supreme Court. With her husband, Senator Josh Hawley, watching from the public gallery, she told the justices that the FDA’s policy on mifepristone left her clients facing a “Hobson’s choice”. Forcing doctors either to stand by their beliefs or care for a woman who took abortion pills and wound up in the emergency room, Ms Hawley said, is “intolerable”. Yet she faced deeply sceptical questioning from justices across the ideological spectrum as to whether her clients had suffered a concrete injury—a prerequisite for bringing a lawsuit in the first place.

Colloquy about “standing”, or a lack thereof, consumed perhaps three-quarters of the 90-minute hearing. Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett teamed up to demonstrate that even Ms Hawley’s two exemplars—Dr Christina Francis and Dr Ingrid Skop—had not suffered a concrete injury. Dr Francis may have had a patient who needed surgical attention after a complication from taking mifepristone, but she never raised an objection to treating her, Justice Kagan pointed out. And as Justice Barrett noted, it was actually her partner who performed the procedure, not Dr Francis herself: “I don’t read either Skop or Francis” as having “ever participated” in ending the life of a fetus or embryo.

The Alliance offered an alternative account of why the Alliance may have the right to sue—a theory known as “associational standing”. This is when an organisation brings a lawsuit based on harm to the organisation itself or to its members. Justice Clarence Thomas noted that it may be too “easy to manufacture” an injury rooted in an organisation’s bare opposition to a policy if all it has to show is “diverted time and resources” associated with bringing the lawsuit. Meanwhile, Justice Samuel Alito suggested that the court has been flexible with standing in past cases and seemed exasperated by the possibility that no one could come up with a plausible plaintiff. “Is there anybody who can sue and get a judicial ruling on whether what FDA did was lawful?” he asked. “Shouldn’t somebody be able to challenge that in court?” That’s quite unlikely, replied Elizabeth Prelogar, the solicitor-general who ably defended the FDA’s moves. But in any case, the plaintiffs in court don’t “come within a hundred miles” of the Supreme Court’s long-standing standards.

Several justices explored Ms Prelogar’s claim that federal law provides “conscience protections” that “would guard against the injury the doctors face”. Justices Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh seemed satisfied with her assurance that the government would not force a doctor with an objection to ending fetal life to participate in an abortion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson added that the “obvious common-sense remedy” is to give individual doctors “an exemption” (which they already have) rather than, as she said to Ms Hawley, to “entertain your argument that no one else…in America should have this drug in order to protect your clients”.

Justice Neil Gorsuch jumped on this suggestion. Single-judge district courts, he lamented, too often refashion themselves as “a nationwide legislative assembly” when blocking actions of the federal government. The judiciary’s proper role, he said, is to “provide a remedy sufficient to address the plaintiff’s asserted injuries and go no further”.

Two justices seem ready to go significantly further. Justices Alito and Thomas invoked the Comstock Act, a law from 1873 that bans sending, among other “lewd” things, abortion medications and materials through the post. In 2022 the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel said that this 150-year-old law only prohibits posting such materials to people who will use them unlawfully. But Justice Alito was incredulous that the FDA did not at least mention the law when regulating mifepristone. And Justice Thomas told Jessica Ellsworth, the lawyer for Danco Laboratories (which markets the drug as Mifeprex) that it “specifically covers drugs such as yours”.

If three more justices who were mum on this 19th-century law have a similar view, a future administration could succeed in banning the posting of abortion medication. But for now, it seems, the nearly 650,000 American women who end their pregnancies each year with abortion pills will not see their access curtailed.

Visitors outside the Supreme Court on March 26th saw just how convenient mifepristone can be. Foot-high “Roe-bots” whizzed around the plaza ready to distribute abortion pills by prescription. Controlled by doctors in Massachusetts, New York and Washington, the bots can do a virtual consultation with a remote provider and dispense the medication on demand. A volunteer with Aid Access, the charity which organised the demonstration, noted the Roe-bots were perfectly legal. “It’s all very by the book,” she said. 

Economics

Inflation rate slipped to 2.1% in April, lower than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows

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Inflation rate slipped to 2.1% in April, lower than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows

Inflation barely budged in April as tariffs President Donald Trump implemented in the early part of the month had yet to show up in consumer prices, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s key inflation measure, increased just 0.1% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.1%. The monthly reading was in line with the Dow Jones consensus forecast while the annual level was 0.1 percentage point lower.

Excluding food and energy, the core reading that tends to get even greater focus from Fed policymakers showed readings of 0.1% and 2.5%, against respective estimates of 0.1% and 2.6%.

Consumer spending, though, slowed sharply for the month, posting just a 0.2% increase, in line with the consensus but slower than the 0.7% rate in March. A more cautious consumer mood also was reflected in the personal savings rate, which jumped to 4.9%, up from 0.6 percentage point in March to the highest level in nearly a year.

Personal income surged 0.8%, a slight increase from the prior month but well ahead of the forecast for 0.3%.

Markets showed little reaction to the news, with stock futures continuing to point lower and Treasury yields mixed.

People shop at a grocery store in Brooklyn on May 13, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Trump has been pushing the Fed to lower its key interest rate as inflation has continued to gravitate back to the central bank’s 2% target. However, policymakers have been hesitant to move as they await the longer-term impacts of the president’s trade policy.

On Thursday, Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell held their first face-to-face meeting since the president started his second term. However, a Fed statement indicated the future path of monetary policy was not discussed and stressed that decisions would be made free of political considerations.

Trump slapped across-the-board 10% duties on all U.S. imports, part of an effort to even out a trading landscape in which the U.S. ran a record $140.5 billion deficit in March. In addition to the general tariffs, Trump launched selective reciprocal tariffs much higher than the 10% general charge.

Since then, though, Trump has backed off the more severe tariffs in favor of a 90-day negotiating period with the affected countries. Earlier this week, an international court struck down the tariffs, saying Trump exceeded his authority and didn’t prove that national security was threatened by the trade issues.

Then in the latest installment of the drama, an appeals court allowed a White House effort for a temporary stay of the order from the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Economists worry that tariffs could spark another round of inflation, though the historical record shows that their impact is often minimal.

At their policy meeting earlier this month, Fed officials also expressed worry about potential tariff inflation, particularly at a time when concerns are rising about the labor market. Higher prices and slower economic growth can yield stagflation, a phenomenon the U.S. hasn’t seen since the early 1980s.

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Economics

German inflation May 2025

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19 May 2025, Berlin: Apricots are sold at a greengrocer for 7.98 euros per kilogram. Grapes and papaya are also on offer.

Photo by Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images

Germany’s annual inflation hit 2.1% in May approaching the European Central Bank’s 2% target but coming in slightly hotter than analyst estimates, preliminary data from statistics office Destatis showed Friday.

The print compares with a 2.2% reading in April and with a Reuters projection of 2%.

The print is harmonized across the euro zone for comparability.

So-called core inflation, which strips out more volatile food and energy prices, dipped slightly from April’s 2.8% to 2.9% in May. The closely watched services print meanwhile eased sharply, coming in at 3.4% compared to 3.9% in the previous month.

Energy prices fell markedly for the second month in a row, tumbling by 4.6% in May.

Germany’s consumer price index has been closing in on the European Central Bank’s 2% target over recent months, in a positive signal amid ongoing uncertainty about the economic outlook for Europe’s largest economy.

Domestic and global issues have mired expectations for Germany’s financial future.

One the one hand, U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs could damage economic growth, given Germany’s status as an export-reliant country, though the potential impact of such duties on inflation remains unclear. But frequent policy shifts and developments have been muddying the picture.

On the other hand, Germany’s newly minted government is starting to get to work and has made the economy a top priority. Questions linger about when and to what extent the new Berlin administration’s policy plans might be realized.

The ECB is set to make its next interest rate decision on June 5, with traders last pricing in an over 96% chance of a quarter point interest rate reduction, according to LSEG data. Back in April, the central bank had cut its deposit facility rate by 25 basis points to 2.25%.

This is a breaking news story, please check back for updates.

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Economics

Trump advisor Hassett confident tariffs will stay despite judges’ ruling

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National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 14, 2025. 

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

A top economic advisor to President Donald Trump expressed confidence Thursday that court rulings throwing out aggressive tariffs will be overturned on appeal.

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said in an interview that he fully believes the administration’s efforts to use tariffs to ensure fair trade are perfectly legal and will resume soon.

“We’re right that America has been mishandled by other governments,” Hassett said during a Fox Business interview. “This trade negotiation season has been really, really effective for the American people.”

The comments follow a ruling from judges on the Court of International Trade who said Trump exceeded his authority on tariffs, which are aimed both at combating barriers against American goods abroad and stemming the flow of fentanyl across the U.S. border.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that fentanyl is the primary driver in domestic overdose deaths, the judges ruled that related tariffs “fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders.”

Hassett bristled at the ruling and said the administration will continue its anti-fentanyl efforts.

“These activist judges are trying to slow down something right in the middle of really important negotiations,” he said. “The idea that the fentanyl crisis in America is not an emergency is so appalling to me that I am sure that when we appeal, this decision will be overturned.”

The administration has multiple options to get around the judges’ ruling, including other sections of trade laws it can utilize. However, Hassett said that’s not the plan at the moment.

“The fact is that there are measures that we can take with different numbers that we can start right now. There are different approaches that would take a couple of months to put these in place,” he said. “We’re not planning to pursue those right now, because we’re very very confident that this ruling is incorrect.”

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