Hi there, I’m Cameron Oakes, Rewire News Group’s new staff editor—I also wrote today’s lead story. It’s about a new threat to medication abortion that could make the progesterone-blocker mifepristone much harder to get.

Six anti-abortion medical groups wrote last week to both Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary to request more stringent restrictions on mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions, which make up roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. The letter calls for the government to require the drug to be dispensed in person by a medical provider. It also sought to limit when mifepristone may be used to terminate a pregnancy, from ten weeks’ gestation to seven.

As one OB-GYN I interviewed said, “Many people don’t even realize they’re pregnant until 4-6 weeks from their last period.”

One group that signed the letter may sound familiar to Rewire News Group regulars—the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. That’s the organization that has sued (so far unsuccessfully) the FDA over mifepristone, alleging that it erred in approving the drug for use in the first place.

When asked for comment on the letter, HHS sent me a boilerplate statement about using “gold standard science.” But under Kennedy’s leadership, the agency is dramatically changing how it makes decisions about federal health guidance. Here’s what could happen to abortion medications if federal regulators agree to limit access to mifepristone.

Pro-democracy wins

• A federal judge in California ruled that immigration officials cannot use race or the fact that a person speaks Spanish to detain them, NBC News reported. The January 20 order, which was prompted by a civil rights lawsuit by the ACLU, is temporary and only applies to certain Southern California counties.
• Planned Parenthood sued the Trump administration on July 7 over the cuts to the nonprofit in the “big, beautiful bill.” On the same day, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order, meaning the government can’t withhold funds from the organization for at least 14 days.
• On July 10, a federal judge in New Hampshire issued a preliminary injunction in a class-action lawsuit blocking Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship for children who do not have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. The ruling protects all children who would be affected by Trump’s January 20 executive order. Though a recent Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship limited lower-court judges’ ability to issue nationwide blocks, they retain the power to issue universal injunctions in class-action lawsuits.
• A federal judge on July 9 denied the Trump administration’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit by Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador and recently returned to the U.S., News From the States reported. Abrego Garcia first sued U.S. officials in April, challenging the legality of his deportation.
• The Department of Labor has reposted its congressionally-mandated Women In Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations grants, which help women enter fields like construction and manufacturing, Mother Jones first reported. DOGE controversially eliminated dozens of the grants in May.

Anti-democratic actions

Reproductive rights

• Texas health officials are increasing oversight of the “Thriving Texas Families” program, a network of “crisis pregnancy centers”—which often pose as health-care clinics but do not actually provide real medical care and instead dissuade pregnant people from abortion—following an investigation by ProPublica and CBS News showing that the millions of taxpayer dollars going toward the program had little state supervision.

LGBTQ+ rights

• California on July 7 rejected the Trump administration’s demands for the state to bar transgender athletes from participating on girls’ sports teams, according to ABC News’ local San Francisco station. The Department of Justice sued California on July 9, accusing it of violating federal law through its transgender athlete policies, NBC News reported.
• Also on July 9, the Justice Department announced it had sent 20 subpoenas to doctors and health-care clinics it says provide gender-affirming care to transgender minors over what it characterized as an investigation into “health-care fraud and false statements.”
• Journalist Erin Reed reported on July 10 that the Stonewall National Monument website, which is run by the National Parks Service, seems to have deleted all mentions of bisexuality. Following Reed’s newsletter, some references to bisexual people were added back to the website’s front page, though they are still omitted from its history and culture section, according to Reed. In 1969, a violent police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a longstanding New York City gay bar, led to an uprising that shaped the fight for LGBTQ+ rights for decades.

Immigration

• Immigrants held at the Trump administration’s new detention center in the Florida Everglades face “horrible” conditions in the camp, NBC News reported on July 9. Among the complaints detailed by immigrants and their families: a lack of water, food with worms in it, and mosquito infestations. State officials in charge of the camp, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” called the allegations “completely false.”
• Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than 100 days over his pro-Palestinian activism, has filed a $20 million lawsuit against the Trump administration on July 10 but says he would be willing to settle for an official apology from the administration. “What I want is actual accountability,” he told NBC News.
• A California farmworker is dead after falling a reported 30 feet from a roof during an ICE raid on a cannabis farm, according to ABC 7.

Health and science

• Six medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, are suing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the agency’s decision to limit COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children, the New York Times reported.
• The Food and Drug Administration granted Moderna full approval for its COVID-19 vaccine in children with at least one underlying condition that would put them at risk of severe illness from the virus, STAT News reported. Kennedy announced in May that COVID-19 vaccines wouldn’t be recommended for healthy pregnant people and children.
• HHS is refusing to release conflict-of-interest forms for multiple newly-appointed members of the CDC’s vaccine committee, according to STAT. This comes after Kennedy promised to bring “radical transparency” to his agency.

DEI and civil rights

Recommended reading

• Severe complications and deaths from pregnancy are getting worse in states with abortion bans, reports show. But in some of those same states, lawmakers are making it harder to collect, analyze, and share the data that could help providers—and voters—take steps to better protect pregnant people. Read Thalia Charles’ latest for Rewire News Group on how maternal mortality data became political, and what it means for pregnant people.

Unwind

• The internet’s favorite chaos agent, Thailand’s pygmy hippo Moo Deng, turned 1 on July 10! The Khao Kheow Open Zoo’s four-day celebration for the little lady included a 44-pound “cake” made of fruits and vegetables, thousands of visitors from across the globe, and naps. According to the TODAY show, she spent her birthday “lumbering around, happy, moist, and unbothered.” Happy birthday, queen!