Good morning! Kamala Harris breaks her silence after the election, Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum warns Trump against tariffs, and Fortune‘s Nina Ajemian reports on the state of male birth control—amid a tumultuous political environment for women’s health and drug approvals. Have a restful weekend.
– In control. For years, advocates of reproductive freedom have been waiting for the arrival of male birth control (besides condoms and vasectomies). New options are finally getting closer to market—just as the second Trump administration enters the White House.
This is an issue on which the Trump White House could be a bit of a wildcard. On the one hand, the conservative roadmap Project 2025 threatens access to birth control for women, from allowing employers to opt out of covering it to limiting the contraceptive methods that can be covered under the Affordable Care Act. But male birth control has the luxury of being “removed from the whole debate” about abortion, says Darlene Walley, CEO of Next Life Sciences’ Plan A, a male contraceptive in development. Most women know that treatments for men and women are often viewed differently, like how insurers have covered birth control compared to Viagra. Trump’s Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., meanwhile, is poised to overhaul the FDA and its drug approvals process just as new treatments seek the FDA’s signoff.
