The Pill: In response to a Biden administration application, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. issued a temporary stay allowing the  abortion pill mifepristone to remain available while the Supreme Court decides whether to grant a formal stay of a lower court decision. A district judge in Texas ruled that the pill was improperly approved by the FDA 23 years ago and ordered it taken off the market.

  The Supreme Court could take up the case itself, or send it down to an appeals court.

  More than half of all abortions are done with medication. The lawsuit brought in Texas against the use of  mifepristone was filed with the intention of hindering or stopping abortions even in states where it is still legal after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

  The Biden administration brief to the Supreme Court says, “If allowed to take effect, the lower courts’ orders would upend the regulatory regime for mifepristone, with sweeping consequences for the pharmaceutical industry, women who need access to the drug, and F.D.A.’s ability to implement its statutory authority.” 

Secrets and Lies: Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira was formally charged yesterday with unauthorized possession and transmission of national defense information and the unauthorized possession of classified documents. 

  Teixeira is accused of posting secret documents on the social media and gaming platform Discord. The 21-year-old had access because he was given a top-secret security clearance in 2021 as a computer network technician in the Massachusetts Air National Guard.

  Included in the criminal complaint was a statement from an FBI agent who said Teixeira knew that what he was doing could get him into trouble and told one of his friends in the chat group “he had become concerned that he may be discovered making the transcriptions of text in the workplace.”

  The agent, Patrick Lueckenhoff, wrote that  from then on Teixeira began “taking the documents to his residence and photographing them,” then posting the photos. The documents were posted for several weeks until journalists reported about them.

Murder Beat: Bay area tech entrepreneur Nima Momeni entered no plea yesterday in his first court appearance following his arrest in the knife murder of Cash App creator Bob Lee.

  Lee was stabbed three times and left to die on the street.

  Court documents say that Lee and Momeni had seen each other earlier on the night Lee was killed and that there had been some kind of heated disagreement, possibly about whether Lee had a relationship with Momeni’s younger sister.

  Also, surveillance video from a residential building showed Lee and Momeni getting into Momeni’s white BMW about 2 am. That was close to where Lee was found with a fatal wound. A bloody kitchen knife was found discarded nearby.

Judgement: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has still not responded to the story that his billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow bought property from the justice and his mother in 2014, and that he never reported it, as required by law.

  Thomas has not denied that he accepted possibly millions of dollars’ worth of travel and vacations from Crow over the years. He said he didn’t know he was supposed to report it.

  The last justice who fell under a financial cloud was Abe Fortas, who resigned in 1969 over a matter of $20,000 paid to him by a Wall Street financier.

In Transition: In the past three months 10 states have passed laws barring what is known as gender-affirming care for young people in a rapid politicization of a human and medical phenomenon by Republican legislators.

  The laws ban or limit the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transition surgery for people under 18. Most of the states comprise a swath from South Dakota southeast to Florida. Indiana and Idaho are the most recent states to join the growing Republican crowd.

  Treating the condition called “gender dysphoria” before or during puberty can be most effective, but Republican state legislators have called gender-affirming care experimental, even abusive, and say that children are not mature enough to make permanent decisions.

  Some of the most extreme Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene among them, claim gender care is a form of “grooming” and children are being forced to transition to the opposite sex.

The Obit Page: Edward Koren, the New Yorker cartoonist whose furry creatures with human foibles occupied the pages of The New Yorker for 60 years, has died at home in Vermont at age 87. 

  In one cartoon of two couples on the street, a woman comments to her mate about the other couple, “They’re a perfect match — she’s high maintenance, and he can fix anything.”

  In a 2018 interview for The NY Times in preparation for his obituary, Koren said, “Animals are gentle and funny. There is a long tradition in English and French literature, going back to the 19th century, of using animals in humor. For me, it was a framework, a way of getting above the political fray and the passing controversies of the day.”

The Spin Rack:  Four sons of the notorious Mexican drug lord El Chapo face federal charges that claim they’ve been running their imprisoned father’s empire and are responsible for trafficking fentanyl throughout the United States. — Former CIA director Mike Pompeo, who served under Donald Trump, announced that he’s not running for president this time around. He’s 59 and told Fox News host Bret Baier, “this isn’t our moment.” — The NBA has fined the Dallas mavericks $750,000 for resting their best players against the Chicago Bulls on April 7^thin an effort to lose the game and improve their prospects for a first-round draft pick. They lost the game 115-112, and a lot of money.

Below the Fold: While the Federal Reserve fights inflation, a ham and cheese sandwich made of ham, Gruyère, mustard, and seven-grain bread at Eli Zabar’s E.A.T. in New York costs $29 plus tax.

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