Texas Law: A federal judge in Texas appointed by Donald Trump has invalidated the 23-year-old Food and Drug Administration approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, which is used in medical abortion.
  Only about an hour later a federal judge in Washington state ordered the FDA to continue making mifepristone available. The legal conflict could be the biggest since the lawsuit that resulted in the Supreme Court reversing the 50-year-old decision that had made abortion legal in all 50 states.
  The Texas lawsuit was filed by a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors seeking to end medical abortion, which accounts for more than half of all abortions.
  Anti-abortion activists are intent on eliminating abortion by any means, in any state, and they go to the judges they think will help.
  Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik writes that part of the right wing game is finding favorable judges in Texas. He points out that Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who issued the mifepristone decision, previously worked as a lawyer for an anti-abortion Christian conservative group. Hiltzik points out that “a major problem with America’s federal judicial system” is  “the ability of hack judges in backwater courthouses to interfere with policy by issuing nationwide injunctions based on specious or at least shallow legal arguments.”
 
The Tennessee Three: While the Tennessee legislature was expelling two members who demonstrated in favor of gun control, the legislators also passed their own weak solution to schoolhouse gun massacres in the wake of the Covenant School attack.
 The bill would require emergency drills in both public and private schools and increase security collaboration with state and local law enforcement. All newly built public schools would require classroom door locks and secure visitor entry vestibules. 
 Tennessee House Majority Leader William Lamberth said, “When that horrendous loss of life occurred, it immediately showed we could not just focus on the safety of our public school students but on the safety of all our students.” 
  The bill does not restrict anyone’s access to the efficient American killing machine, the AR-15 rifle.
 
Judgement: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a statement yesterday saying  no one ever told him it might be wrong to accept millions of dollars’ worth of luxury travel and vacations from a friend who donates fortunes for political causes and issues.
  “Early in my tenure at the court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable,” Justice Thomas said. 
  The question is whether luxury travel is “personal hospitality,” like going across the street for dinner with a neighbor. And did Thomas really need anyone to tell him that this behavior, while legal, is wrong.
  Thomas described his billionaire beneficiary Harlan Crow as one of his 
“dearest friends” for over 25 years. You have to wonder if that might be the case if Thomas were a city court judge.
  Revised rules for the court now require disclosure when judges are treated to stays at commercial properties, such as hotels, ski resorts or other private retreats owned by a company, rather than an individual. The changes say judges must report travel by private jet.
 
Murder Beat: The stabbing murder of tech executive Bob Lee on an upscale San Francisco Street still appears to be a mystery.
  Security cameras show Lee wandering and looking for help early Tuesday morning while clutching a stab wound to his lower right abdomen. Video shows him trying to get help from the occupants of a car, which drives away. He can be seen looking through the glass doors of a building, then collapsing.
  An ambulance eventually came, but Lee died.
  Lee had been the former chief technology officer of Square who helped launch Cash App.
  It’s unknown whether the murder was random or something personal. San Francisco police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement. “I want to assure everyone that our investigators are working tirelessly to make an arrest and bring justice to Mr. Lee and his loved ones, just as we try to do on every homicide that occurs in our city.”
 
Social Media: Twitter has restricted all links and tweets to Substack following that company’s announcement it would be launching Substack Notes, a short form social network and potential competitor to Twitter.
  Twitter is now blocking Substack links with a message that says, “the link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe.”
 
The Obit Page: Harry Lorayne, the memory phenomenon who could rattle off all the names in a telephone book or recall what was written on a certain page of Time Magazine, has died at age 96 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, north of Boston.
  He was also a sleight-of-hand artist and one of the foremost card magicians in the country. 
  A regular guest on television shows, he appeared with Johnny Carson two dozen times. One night on Carson he walked up the aisle and flawlessly identified more than 50 people he met before the show then turned and asked the camera operators by name whether he was too far from their lenses.
 
The Spin Rack:  Russia has formally charged Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich with espionage. Gershkovich is the American-born son of Soviet émigrés. — A batch of what appear to be classified documents detailing American national security secrets involving Ukraine, the Middle East, and China surfaced on social media sites yesterday, alarming the Pentagon. 
 
Below the Fold: Army special operators and FBI agents burst into a 15th-floor hotel room in downtown Boston Tuesday night, detaining their “target,” a role player.
  Then they started peppering their subject with questions, only he was a Delta airlines pilot. The team had busted into the wrong room. 
  The Defense Department say it’s  reviewing the incident “for further action as deemed appropriate.” Fasten seatbelts.

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