Army Captain Gets 12 Years For Murdering His Unborn Child With Mail-Order Abortion Pills
The prevalence of mail-order mifepristone has paved the way for abuse and injury to plague women who wanted to keep their babies.The prevalence of mail-order mifepristone has paved the way for abuse and injury to plague women who wanted to keep their babies.ZYNdicated: FDA gives nicotine pouch giant a big break
Many people have turned away from cigarettes in recent years, opting for "healthier," smokeless alternatives.
And now the Food and Drug Administration has effectively backed up the claim by changing its regulations — for a crowd-favorite brand, no less.
'Using ZYN instead of cigarettes puts you at a lower risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.'
On Tuesday, the FDA updated its regulations of ZYN nicotine pouches so that the products can be marketed with language suggesting that ZYN, made by Swedish Match USA Inc., is indeed healthier — or are at least less harmful — than cigarettes, as many people might have suspected.
Specifically, the FDA says the label can say: "Using ZYN instead of cigarettes puts you at a lower risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.”
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“FDA’s decision is an important moment for the more than 45 million legal-age nicotine consumers in America,” Philip Morris U.S. CEO Stacey Kennedy said in a statement obtained by CNBC. “Today’s news ensures these adults have access to accurate, science-based information, including FDA-authorized evidence that switching from cigarettes to ZYN reduces the risk of smoking-related diseases like heart disease and lung cancer.”
The new regulation will apply to 10 flavors of the original product line at two different strengths, three milligrams and six milligrams.
The flavors are chill, cinnamon, citrus, coffee, cool mint, menthol, peppermint, smooth, spearmint, and wintergreen.
It apparently does not, however, apply to ZYN's new flavors, peach, black cherry, and dragonberry, which were teased on ZYN's Instagram page last month.
“FDA’s review of modified risk products is intended to ensure that adult users have clear, science-based information about the relative harms of tobacco products, so they can make informed choices,” Bret Koplow, acting director of the agency’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a statement obtained by The Hill.
“Today’s decision allows these products to be marketed with a modified risk claim that informs adults who smoke about the lower risks associated with these products,” Koplow added.
It is important to note that this regulatory update is a marketing authorization, not an "FDA-approval." The FDA says that "no tobacco product is safe" and instead deals in terms of "relative risk."
According to the FDA's website, the application to gain this marketing authorization "must demonstrate that the product will significantly reduce harm and the risk of tobacco-related disease to individual tobacco users and benefit the health of the population as a whole."
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Women Report Not Enough Info Given About Bleeding, Pain, Mental Anguish Before Taking Abortion Pill
Researchers noted that gaps in informed consent and post-abortion examination were more apparent in cases of mail-order mifepristone.Abortion pills in America's water supply: Republican AGs call for the EPA to investigate possible contamination
In addition to killing unborn children in the womb and exposing their mothers to potentially fatal health risks, the abortion pill mifepristone might be contaminating America's water supply.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration claimed when the drug was approved 26 years ago that mifepristone — which "may enter the environment from excretion by patients, from disposal of pharmaceutical waste, or from emissions from manufacturing sites" — would have a negligible environmental impact.
'It risks contaminating the very water supply millions of Americans drink every day.'
Whereas medical abortions accounted for only 6% of all abortions in the formal U.S. health care system in the year immediately following mifepristone's approval, that number climbed to 53% in 2020 and again to 63% in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Given the drug's massively increased use in recent years and the coinciding loosening of relevant regulations, a coalition of 14 state attorneys general is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to investigate whether mifepristone has contaminated American waters and adversely impacted public health — especially the health of expectant mothers.
The coalition's recent letter to the EPA states that while the FDA promulgated a regimen and risk evaluation and mitigation strategy when mifepristone was first approved, "The FDA has eliminated many of the protections that minimized the health risks posed by mifepristone and its approved generics, including the in-person dispensing and check-up requirements that kept medical staff involved in the process."
In addition to the FDA dropping these protections, the coalition noted that regulations have been greatly relaxed, paving the way for far more "chemical abortions occurring in the home" and resulting, in turn, "in tons of chemically tainted medical waste being flushed into American waterways."
Aid Access, a group that works with registered abortion providers who provide abortion pills, states on its website, "It is best to flush everything [placenta, embryo, and blood] down the toilet or to wrap the sanitary pads in a plastic bag."
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The death of hundreds of thousands of children via medical abortions every year has "serious implications for the Safe Drinking Water Act," said the coalition's letter, not only because conventional wastewater treatment is not designed to remove the contaminants involved but because "the metabolites in mifepristone and its approved generics remain active post-excretion, meaning they 'retain [their] considerable affinity towards the human progesterone and glucocorticoid receptors' after disposal."
The coalition expressed concern that if the mifepristone entering the American water supply reaches a sufficient concentration, then pregnant women who unwittingly ingest the drug may disproportionately suffer health complications.
After all, the drug harms an existing pregnancy by inhibiting the actions of progesterone at progesterone-receptor sites and promoting both uterine contractions and a softening of the cervix, according to the National Library of Medicine's Hazardous Substances Data Bank.
The Republican state attorneys general — hailing from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas — have asked for the EPA to add mifepristone and its generics to the Contaminant Candidate List — "a list of drinking water contaminants that are known or anticipated to occur in public water systems and are not currently subject to EPA drinking water regulations."
"The health of pregnant women and Americans everywhere may depend on it," said the letter.
"As medical waste is discarded and washed away, it risks contaminating the very water supply millions of Americans drink every day, and the long-term consequences could be severe," Alabama AG Steve Marshall said in a statement on Wednesday.
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Republicans should take the easy win and stop medical testing on animals
The federal government has spent decades funneling taxpayer dollars into animal testing programs that are increasingly cruel, scientifically obsolete, and wholly unaccountable. Almost no one in Washington has had the courage to say so until now.
In April, roughly 1,000 animal welfare activists stormed Ridglan Farms, a Wisconsin research and breeding facility that has been supplying beagles for biomedical testing. Police fired rubber bullets and pepper spray into the crowd, and the group's leader was arrested.
Why were people willing to get arrested over a dog farm? Because of what was happening inside.
Washington has the images of 2,000 beagles crammed into cages in rural Wisconsin. But the checks keep getting written.
Ridglan housed an estimated 2,000 beagles bred specifically to be sold to research laboratories. The facility had been cited for hundreds of animal welfare violations and ultimately agreed to surrender its state breeding license as part of a deal to avoid prosecution on animal mistreatment charges. However, it continued supplying animals to federally funded labs.
If you're wondering why beagles are the preferred breed for animal testing, it's because of their docile nature. This means they can be tortured without fighting back as other dog breeds might. These dogs never saw a home, a yard, or a family. They lived their entire lives in cages, underwriting a research pipeline that Washington has never seriously scrutinized.
The issue finally started picking up steam last year when RFK Jr. said that reducing unnecessary animal testing would become a priority. While Kennedy has made the right noises, the lag still needs to be addressed.
The FDA announced last year that it would phase out animal testing requirements for monoclonal antibodies. The NIH shut down its last in-house beagle lab in May. In May 2025, the Navy announced it would no longer use dogs or cats in research. Those are serious wins, but the fight is far from over.
White Coat Waste launched a national ad campaign this April calling out Secretary Kennedy directly, documenting how NIH has renewed funding for deadly tests on dogs, cats, and primates. This NIH funding was first approved under Dr. Anthony Fauci and doled out millions more to those same projects. The message to Kennedy is simple: The rhetoric is there. Now show us the receipts.
A 2024 Morning Consult poll commissioned by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine found that 80% of Americans agree the federal government should commit to a plan to phase out animal experiments. Roughly 85% agreed that government funding should prioritize non-animal research methods and that animal experimentation should be phased out in favor of modern alternatives.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), backed by GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) and more than a dozen colleagues, announced his push to ban federal funding for animal experiments in the FY2027 spending bill. The push was prompted by revelations that NIH awarded $584,117 to UC San Diego in FY2026 alone to continue experiments on mice. These taxpayer dollars are being used to surgically mimic transgender humans, subjecting nearly 10,000 animals to invasive surgeries, hormone injections, and skull drilling.
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Just last week, Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) led 34 House members in sending a letter to Secretary Kennedy urging him to close the loophole that allows facilities like Ridglan to receive federal contracts after losing their state licenses for documented welfare violations, simply because they hold a USDA Class A license.
Recent studies have confirmed that the majority of drugs that work on animals ultimately fail in humans, driving up research costs while producing unnecessary animal suffering. AI-driven modeling, organoids, and human cell-based testing are not futuristic concepts. They are available, cheaper, and more accurate.
HHS has acknowledged this fact, with both the FDA and NIH releasing updated guidelines this spring advocating for phasing out live animal models in favor of alternative technologies. The bureaucracy is just moving too slowly to match its own stated goals.
Washington has the data. Washington has the images of 2,000 beagles crammed into cages in rural Wisconsin. But the checks keep getting written.
These programs do not reflect our values, they do not produce real results, and they do not deserve another dime of taxpayer money.
Now, do I think every politician rushing to take a stand on this issue is doing so out of the goodness of their heart? Absolutely not, but here's the thing: I don't care. If political self-interest is what finally gets Washington to stop funding the torture of beagles, then so be it. Use the issue. Grab the headline.
At the end of the day, if the outcome is that fewer animals suffer, fewer taxpayer dollars are wasted, and a broken system gets reformed, then the motivation behind it doesn't matter one bit to the dogs still sitting in cages waiting for someone to act.
Republicans, take an easy win and keep the animal lovers in your corner. Get it done.
Marty Makary left behind an FDA families learned not to trust
With so much bad news in the world, it is worth pausing for one encouraging development: Marty Makary finally resigned as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration last week.
Makary’s tenure at the FDA was marred by internal scandals, forced resignations, dreadful morale, and record staff turnover. More important, he actively sandbagged President Trump’s push to expand clinical trials for rare diseases through the aptly named “right-to-try” framework.
Trump’s next appointee should restore the spirit of right to try and make safe, effective treatments available to children as quickly as possible.
The idea behind right to try is straightforward. Patients with rare conditions, especially those for whom conventional medicine has failed, should have the freedom to pursue experimental treatments that have not yet received full FDA approval. Families fighting the clock have little left to lose. Government should not stand between them and a potentially lifesaving breakthrough.
Makary did.
Members of the MPS community sent more than 10 letters asking Makary for a meeting. They got a form letter in return. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) later announced an investigation into the FDA’s denials. Makary’s agency responded by claiming approvals were already “at their peak.” The Wall Street Journal took notice of the FDA’s foot-dragging last year, yet the agency kept rejecting relevant rare-disease treatments in early 2026, including RGX-121 and drugs from Biohaven and Saol Therapeutics.
That stonewalling forced families to escalate.
In March, more than 100 mothers and other advocates staged a mock funeral outside FDA offices. Dressed in black and carrying a real coffin, they sought to draw attention to a group of rare metabolic disorders known as mucopolysaccharidoses. These disorders can show up as mild symptoms such as depression or hyperactivity, or as devastating conditions such as heart disease and skeletal abnormalities.
Many MPS disorders still have no approved treatments, even though they can severely diminish children’s quality of life or kill them outright. The FDA’s regulatory process serves a legitimate purpose. But when a bureaucracy grows so rigid, self-protective, and arrogant that it blocks desperately ill children from access to promising therapies, it stops functioning as a safeguard and starts functioning as a death sentence.
Mark Dant of the Ryan Foundation told Newsweek that some of these drugs were denied because of the FDA’s institutional “dislike” of the accelerated-approval pathway. “For decades we waited for science to find our tomorrows,” he said. “Now it has, and bureaucrats within the agency we pay for are keeping those treatments from our children. We know they are there. … We just cannot reach them.”
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Makary’s resignation will not undo the damage. But it does create an opening. We may not yet know what the FDA’s next leadership will look like, but Trump’s appointee should restore the spirit of right to try and make safe, effective treatments available to children as quickly as possible.
Across the world, in the nation of Georgia, parents have staged a protest lasting more than 500 consecutive days, maintaining a round-the-clock presence outside the main government building in Tbilisi. They are willing to risk everything to give their children the best chance at life. Americans should not have to camp outside federal offices for 500 days to get their government to listen.
The new FDA leadership must explain denials of right-to-try clinical trials with enough specificity that sponsors and families understand what evidence could change the decision. Patient and caregiver testimony should shape decisions early, not get folded in at the end as a token gesture. And Congress must demand transparency without turning each drug review into a partisan circus.
Children’s lives are not bargaining chips. The FDA exists to serve the public, not to protect its own bureaucracy from embarrassment. If Makary’s departure opens the door to that truth, families battling ultra-rare diseases may finally have reason to hope.
Women, Babies At Risk After SCOTUS Authorizes Mail-Order Abortion For Now
Justice Samuel Alito reprimanded his colleagues by dubbing their “unreasoned order granting stays in this case” as “remarkable.”Doctors Gave Her Mifepristone For A Miscarriage. It Almost Killed Her
FDA leadership retains an obligation to address regulatory deficiencies surrounding mifepristone to protect women.As Makary Steps Down, Pro-Lifers Await Movement From Trump FDA On Abortion Drugs
Makary’s departure will prove to be a pivotal point for pro-lifers who want to see the administration take action on abortion pills.The FDA seems to care more about celebrities than sick Americans
Last month, while many veterans celebrated Joe Rogan and President Donald Trump’s support for psychedelic drugs, those in the Huntington’s disease community like me faced another disappointment. UniQure, a company with a promising treatment, may be abandoning the U.S. market because of bureaucratic roadblocks.
I’m not the president or the world’s most popular podcaster. What I am is a daughter who has tested positive for the Huntington’s disease gene and will one day exhibit the same symptoms of this disease that ate away at my father’s personality and his mind until he took his own life.
The FDA’s answer always seems to be the same when it comes to rare disease treatments: Wait, wait, and then wait some more.
I have advocated for the Huntington’s disease community, both in my father’s memory and with the hope that my future will be different from his. The outlook is dim for those like me unless the Food & Drug Administration allows access to treatments like AMT-130, which UniQure is now advancing first in the U.K. after the FDA’s unreasonable demands pushed the United States down the priority list.
Those demands are disastrous for Huntington’s disease patients. Launching a placebo trial under the FDA’s proposed new criteria would require non-therapeutic injections into the brains of study patients — hardly aligning with medical ethics.
Even without the basic inhumanity of this type of trial, Huntington's patients simply cannot afford the years it would take to complete it. We are living on a much shorter timeline, defined by a merciless disease that is both progressive and fatal.
I’m glad that veterans are getting the attention they deserve and that they have the support of influencers like Rogan. But it raises an important question: Why should it take a celebrity and the president to push the FDA to follow basic common sense and medical best practices?
For years, the rare-disease community has done everything we were told would make a difference. We organized, advocated, and pushed for change with whatever strength we had, often while managing devastating diagnoses and worsening symptoms.
Parents of children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Sanfilippo syndrome, to name but two groups, have advocated while watching their children decline.
The FDA’s answer always seems to be the same when it comes to rare disease treatments: Wait, wait, and then wait some more. That means we’re running down hours on a clock that ticks ominously louder with every passing month. We don’t have time for years of unnecessary testing.
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Rogan’s intervention shows that the system can move quickly when it wants to — certainly the president will listen when voices with direct access amplify a cause. Now we need to see that same urgency applied to treatments for rare diseases.
Families like mine are not looking for special treatment. We are only asking for the choice to take the risk of trying new medicines when all the old options have failed. After all, we know the future that awaits us.
President Trump already made the right move with the Right to Try Act, which gives terminally ill patients a pathway to access potentially lifesaving or life-extending treatments. It is critical that he push FDA officials to commit to the same right-to-try principles he championed in his first term.
Scientists are making incredible strides in treating rare diseases. But that innovation only matters if patients are allowed to use treatments already developed. Adults like me, and kids with terminal rare diseases whose parents approve, are absolutely willing to accept any risk that comes with trying a new therapy.
Until someone steps up to bat for people like me, our only alternative is the certaintyof an illness that will slowly, relentlessly ruin our lives and then snuff them out.
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