Closing summary
More signs have emerged of how Donald Trump will make good on his pledge to transform the US government, once he is inaugurated president. The New York Times has reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has challenged the approval of vaccines for polio, hepatitis B and other preventable diseases, is sitting in on interviews for job candidates conducted by Robert F Kennedy Jr. Separately, the Wall Street Journal says that Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to downsize or get rid of banking regulators that were created in the wake of the Great Depression, and which have repeatedly stepping in to stabilize the US economy in the decades since.
Here’s what else happened today:
Phil Murphy, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, has asked Joe Biden for federal help to learn more about the unexplained drones flying over his state.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, has been hospitalized after fracturing her hip in Luxembourg, during a trip to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.
Daniel Penny, who was acquitted earlier this week on charges related to the chokehold death of an unhoused man on a New York City subway, will attend the US army-navy football game with JD Vance.
Anita Dunn, a former Biden White House adviser, criticized the pardon of Hunter Biden.
Trump said Republicans should repeal daylight savings time.
Texas has launched a legal challenge to laws enacted by Democratic states to shield doctors who prescribe abortion pills, the Associated Press reports.
The lawsuit by the Republican-led state against a New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills to a Texas woman could spark a fight over how abortion pills, which are the most common way the procedure is accessed, are prescribed. Here’s more, from the AP:
Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the U.S. to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.
Such prescriptions, made online and over the phone, are a key reason that the number of abortions has increased across the U.S. even since state bans started taking effect. Most abortions in the U.S. involve pills rather than procedures.
Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said a challenge to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, has been anticipated.
And it could have a chilling effect on prescriptions.
“Will doctors be more afraid to mail pills into Texas, even if they might be protected by shield laws because they don’t know if they’re protected by shield laws?” she said in an interview Friday.
The lawsuit accuses New York Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of violating Texas law by providing the drugs to a Texas patient and seeks up to $250,000. No criminal charges are involved.
