TODAY’S HEalth care story

FDA OKs generic abortion pill, riling the right

What happened
The Food and Drug Administration has approved a second generic version of mifepristone, the drug used in combination with misoprostol to carry out roughly two-thirds of U.S. abortions, drugmaker Evita Solutions announced yesterday. The FDA approved mifepristone in 2000 and the first generic version in 2019.

Who said what
“Approval of a second generic is unlikely to affect access” to mifepristone, The Associated Press said, but the FDA’s quiet approval of Evita’s application “triggered pushback from anti-abortion groups and politicians aligned with the Trump administration.” Students for Life Action called the move “a stain on the Trump presidency and another sign that the deep state at the FDA must go.”

This was the “first significant pushback” President Donald Trump has gotten from his “otherwise loyal base of social conservatives,” The Washington Post said. Less than two weeks ago, anti-abortion activists celebrated a promise from FDA Commissioner Marty Makary (pictured above) and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to review mifepristone’s safety. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said yesterday that “the FDA has very limited discretion in deciding whether to approve a generic drug.”

What next?
“I think the intelligent people in the pro-life movement don’t want to go to war with the administration,” a consultant for anti-abortion groups told the Post. “If you do something that embarrasses Trump and the HSS secretary and the high-profile people, then you wind up with Trump digging in his heels — and you don’t want that.” Evita said it expects its version of mifepristone to become available in January.

TODAY’S POLITICS Story

Museum head ousted after Trump sword gift denial

What happened
The director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library was forced out this week after declining to hand over a sword for President Donald Trump to give King Charles III during the president’s recent state visit to Britain, The New York Times reported yesterday. Todd Arrington — a longtime federal historian who had been at the Eisenhower library in Abilene, Kansas, for a year — told the State Department he was legally obligated to preserve Eisenhower’s sword for the American people.

Who said what
“They asked for a sword and we said, ‘Well, we do have swords, but we can’t give them away because they’re museum artifacts,’” Arrington told Kansas City NPR affiliate KCUR yesterday. A State Department liaison, using the personal email account “giftgirl2025,” originally contacted Arrington to ask for “like a sword or something,” the Times said. Instead, Arrington said, he worked with officials for two months to find the West Point replica sword Trump gifted to the king.

Arrington told CBS News that officials in the National Archives, which manages 13 presidential libraries, told him to “resign — or be fired” on Monday, because “apparently, they believed I could no longer be trusted with confidential information” about “the sword” and a plan to let the private Eisenhower Foundation build an education center on the federal campus. “I never imagined that I would be fired from almost 30 years of government service for this,” he told the Times.

What next?
Trump has fired tens of thousands of government workers since taking office and is threatening more mass layoffs during the government shutdown, though “senior federal officials have quietly counseled several agencies” against that, “warning that the strategy may violate appropriations law,” The Washington Post said.

It’s not all bad

Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital city and Europe’s Green Capital of 2025, has launched its first electric ferryboat. The zero-emission ferry service transports passengers along the Neris River, carrying up to 32 passengers between business and residential districts, with stops at several historical landmarks. It is covered in solar panels and cuts through the water, which the city says is more energy-efficient than aquaplaning. “We are looking in Europe, and nobody else has done this project,” said Vilnius public transport chief Loreta Levulytė-Staškevičienė.

Under the radar

Back to the future: Kids embrace ‘old school’ tech

Many students are turning to technology that predates the rise of smartphones. It is a direct — and sometimes creative — reaction to the cellphone bans instituted by schools and institutions across the country.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s “appreciation for flip phones, digital cameras and other gadgets of the recent past is well-documented,” said The New York Times. That fondness “seems to have taken on new urgency in response to a wave of smartphone restrictions in schools that has reached more than a dozen states.” As a result, you can find old iPods, Walkmans and Polaroid cameras in the hands of many an affected student.

Schools that have instituted cellphone bans have seen a marked change in student behavior. “The most common things they say are that discipline problems are down,” Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Anxious Generation,” said to the BBC. There is also “just a lot less fighting, a lot less drama” and “truancy is down.”

Many schools with the bans found that not having smartphones was generally well-received by both students and teachers. “You just saw a lot more people being outgoing and finding people to talk to when they might not have in the past,” Madeline Ward, a former student at Bethlehem High School in upstate New York, said to The Washington Post. “Students deserve more,” Joel Snyder, a government and economics teacher in Los Angeles, said at Chalkbeat. “More space to be present in the classroom, more opportunity to engage with each other and more time away from screens.”

On this day

October 3, 2023

The U.S. House voted to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), marking the first time a House speaker was ousted from the position. McCarthy was voted out amid controversy over the passage of a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown; he resigned from the House at the end of 2023.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Low ratings, big power’

“Trump threatens cuts as political weapon” as “Democrats rejoin the fight,” The Wall Street Journal says on Friday’s front page. “Trump says shutdown is an opportunity — for him,” says The Boston Globe. “Trump paradox: Low ratings, big power,” says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Transnational crime unit secretly targeted protesters,” The Washington Post says. “Attacker kills 2 at British shul on Yom Kippur,” The New York Times says. “Megachurch founder” Robert Morris “pleads guilty to child sex abuse charges” and “will spend 6 months in jail,” says The Dallas Morning News.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Light weaponry

Turkey farmers in Minnesota are using infrared lasers to keep away ducks, geese and other migratory birds who might spread avian influenza and take out their flocks. The state is providing grant money for farmers who want to outfit their barns with projectors that cast a green light “birds don’t like,” said MPR News. “Turkey lasers” may sound like a “wacky idea,” said Minnesota state Sen. Aric Putnam. but they are an “incredibly important way of combating bird flu.”

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.