Emergency slide sparks questions on Trump’s new Air Force One before president reveals why

2026-09-09T14:45:00-04:00 / Fox News

The unusual scene unfolded at Joint Base Andrews as the president waited aboard Marine One near the Boeing 747

By Stepheny Price Fox News

Published September 9, 2026 2:45pm EDT

Trump responds to AF1 emergency slide deployment

President Donald Trump said the slide was being checked to “make sure everything works perfectly” after reporters asked if there was an emergency.

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An emergency slide deployment on the Qatari-gifted Air Force One raised questions at Joint Base Andrews Wednesday before President Donald Trump revealed it was all part of a safety check.

“They were checking it before, and they just wanted to make sure,” Trump told reporters on the tarmac after exiting Marine One. “So they’ve, I guess, already put it up. They want to make sure everything works perfectly.”

The unusual scene unfolded after Marine One rolled to a stop near the presidential aircraft, with Trump remaining aboard the helicopter, and the slide could be seen extending from the plane.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SUBPOENAS NY TIMES JOURNALISTS IN GRAND JURY LEAK PROBE TIED TO AIR FORCE ONE REPORT

The emergency slide of Air Force One is deployed Wednesday ahead of President Donald Trump’s trip to the Republican National Midterm Convention at Joint Base Andrews, Md.(Reuters/Evan Vucci)

The White House print pool reported spotting what appeared to be an inflatable emergency slide deployed from the right side front door of the Qatari-gifted Boeing 747. The door is opposite the entrance Trump typically uses to board the plane.

At the same time, the older white-and-blue Air Force One was seen moving out of its hangar and into position a few hundred yards behind the newer aircraft. The older jet then deployed its front and rear stairs.

President Donald Trump(Saul Loeb/AFP)

TRUMP EXPLAINS WHY HE’S FLYING OLD AIR FORCE ONE BACK TO DC

The door of Marine One remained closed as of 2:19 p.m., according to the pool, fueling questions about whether the unexpected slide deployment had disrupted the president’s travel plans.

Trump later emerged from the helicopter and said the equipment had been tested to ensure it was working properly, indicating there had not been an emergency aboard the aircraft.

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FORMER AIR FORCE ONE PILOT REFLECTS ON PRESIDENTIAL FLIGHTS

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It was not immediately clear whether the safety check would affect which plane Trump would use for his next flight.

Fox News’ Nick Rojas contributed to this report.

Stepheny Price is a Writer at Fox News with a focus on West Coast and Midwest news, missing persons, national and international crime stories, homicide cases, and border security.

Trump administration proposes dropping huge swath of immigrants from US census

September 9, 2026 6:11 PM UTC / Updated 1 hour ago / Reuters

By Julia Harte

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents take a photograph of a man as part of a Targeted Enforcement Operation in the Corona neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City, U.S., September 4, 2026. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

• Summary

• Proposal limits census count to US citizens and permanent residents
• Changes would also drop race and ethnicity questions included since 1790
• Proposal opens 30-day public comment period before 2030 full census

Sept 9 (Reuters) – The Trump administration proposed on ​Wednesday changing the national census to include only U.S. citizens and permanent residents, a move that ‌could significantly change how much political representation and federal funding each state receives.

The U.S. Census Bureau submitted the proposal just over a year after President Donald Trump ordered its parent agency to craft a new census that would block immigrants in the U.S. illegally ​from being counted. The bureau will conduct the next full census in 2030.

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The proposed rule changes ​would exclude even more immigrants from the census, such as those in the U.S. on ⁠a temporary lawful basis. The proposed changes would also eliminate parts of the questionnaire that seek information on ​race or ethnicity, which have been included since the first census in 1790.

The proposal is open to public comment ​for 30 days.

Demography experts and civil rights advocates warn that both changes could warp the data used for drawing congressional and state legislative districts, enforcing anti-discrimination law and allocating federal funds for public services.

FEDERAL AID, POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AT STAKE

The effort could have “earth-shattering” effects, ​leaving cities and states that have relatively high immigrant populations with insufficient federal aid and political representation, said Meeta ​Anand, senior director of the census and data equity program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

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Census data “undergirds so ‌much ⁠of our democracy and our society,” Anand said. “So you’ll start seeing a very inaccurate picture of our country, and then we’re making political decisions, business decisions, investment decisions based on data that are flawed.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has long decried the fact that immigrants living in the U.S. illegally ​are included in the census, ​which is used to ⁠determine how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislative districts.

In his first term, Trump tried to add a citizenship question to ​the 2020 census but was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that ​the federal government ⁠had given a “contrived” rationale.

The U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment calls for political representatives to be apportioned based on “the whole number of persons in each State.”

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The administration’s effort to omit immigrants in the U.S. illegally and temporary immigrants from the U.S. census ⁠comes amid ​its wider crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration across the ​country.

The Justice Department warned on September 2 that states could lose billions of dollars in welfare funding if they do not report all immigrants whom ​state agencies know to be in the country illegally.

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Reporting by Julia Harte; editing by Paul Thomasch and Rod Nickel

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‘Alien harboring’ accusations fly as DC-area county spends taxpayer funds to blunt ICE

2026-09-09 14:39 EDT / Fox News

Virginia county will distribute up to $2,000 per family through a local ministry to cover basic needs and utilities

By Charles Creitz Fox News

Published September 9, 2026 2:39pm EDT

FIRST ON FOX: A Virginia county is under fire for a new policy providing taxpayer funds in the form of grants to families of illegal immigrants whose breadwinner was detained or deported by ICE.

Arlington County, which sits just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., is not new to policies critics say interfere with DHS operations, as it previously caused outrage when the chair of the Arlington County board publicly suggested residents call police to report ICE sightings in January.

“If you look at the alien harboring statute – do you do anything to encourage or induce people to either come illegally or that are illegally here to stay, that could be arguably a violation of the alien harboring statute?” former acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey told Fox News Digital in a Wednesday interview.

DOJ THREATENS TO CUT BILLIONS IN WELFARE FUNDING FROM STATES FOR FAILING TO REPORT ILLEGAL MIGRANTS

Arlington County Board of Supervisors, from left, Julius D. “JD” Spain Sr., Susan Cunningham, Takis Karantonis, Board Chair Matt de Ferranti and Vice Chair Maureen Coffey.(Arlington County)

“By giving money to people… the reasonable inference is that these people are also illegal, the money enables them to stay in the country illegally, because they lost their breadwinner,” Fahey said.

He said Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz’s comments to ARLNow that many of the affected families are “unbanked” – or lack access to financial institutions which statutorily require identification to open deposit accounts – is itself a tell.

TAXPAYER-FUNDED HOUSING FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN GOP’S CROSSHAIRS: ‘IT’S GOT TO STOP’

Illegal immigrants are arrested by ICE officers in the D.C. area.(Courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security)

“That shows the county knows the money is going to be going to people that are illegally here and it will help them stay. So that’s where I think the alien harboring statute comes into play,” he said, adding the county shows “reckless disregard” for the fact their policies accommodate people in the country illegally.

Arlington will start by setting aside $50,000 to be distributed through “social safety-net” ministry ArlingtonThrive in increments of up to $2,000 per affected family to cover basic needs and utilities, according to reports.

The plan – which passed 4-0 with one board member absent – reportedly formed after a major ICE operation in Maryland and Virginia netted 1,328 illegal immigrant arrests, including the case of a man who ran from agents when confronted near the U.S. Air Force Memorial.

Five regional federal Democrats sounded off afterward, endorsing an ensuing Arlington County Police investigation into the encounter between ICE and Jose Mejia Hernandez, who was reportedly tased and suffered a brain bleed.

Fox News Digital reached out to Arlington County officials, including Chairman Matt de Ferranti, a Democrat from Rock Spring.

“We are valuing the families of those that have been displaced and removed,” he told local press.

In January, de Ferranti warned Arlingtonians that county law prohibits its “public safety professionals” from “interfering with enforcement of federal immigration law,” but that his suggestion to call 911 to report ICE sightings helps officials know agents are present and pivot to “pursu[ing] Arlington County’s law enforcement mission: preventing violence in our community.”

DOJ ACCUSES MARYLAND OF ‘ACTIVE AND DELIBERATE EFFORT’ TO PREVENT DEPORTATIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS: LAWSUIT

Federal immigration authorities make an arrest in Arlington, Va., in February.(ICE)

Reckless disregard and inducement are both subsections of the law Fahey referenced – 8 U.S.C. 1324.

Leadership at the Department of Homeland Security was similarly critical of Arlington’s move.

“You can’t make this up,” an agency spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

“Sanctuary politicians are taking Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars to reward illegal aliens who break the law. This insanity shows once again who they put first.”

Fahey said counties cannot make their own immigration laws, and with Arlington in particular, their alleged “inducement” doesn’t just affect their county, as creating safe harbor for illegal immigrants can have ripple effects in adjacent areas like the District of Columbia, cities of Falls Church and Alexandria and Fairfax County.

“A person could go on and commit another crime somewhere outside of Arlington… you can’t have localities and states carving out their own immigration laws or saying immigration laws can’t be enforced [here].”

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A welcome sign is posted near the Key Bridge in Rosslyn, Arlington County, Virginia.(Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

Arguments against mass deportation on the grounds of family separation are similarly flawed, the former director said, pointing to the fact that when an American citizen is arrested or jailed, they are also physically “separated” from their family.

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“Latest dispatch from the People’s Republic of Arlington,” read a critical posting on X.

An onslaught of midterm polling is coming. Here’s how to sort through it

2026-09-09T16:00:30.846Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/09/politics/cnn-polls-guide-to-midterm-polls

These days, it’s easier than ever to conduct some form of polling and as difficult as it’s ever been to get it right.

Completely faked numbers like a phony “poll” of the Los Angeles mayoral race that made waves last month are thankfully rare. That said, even real polls can have serious flaws in the ways they’re conducted or an agenda behind their release. And the most rigorous polling doesn’t come with any guarantees.

But if read carefully, high-quality polls can still tell you a lot about how this year’s midterms are shaping up – and keeping a few simple questions in mind can help you sort through the overwhelming and sometimes overblown deluge of data.

At CNN, we ask pollsters to answer more than a dozen questions about their work before we cover it, from revealing who paid for the poll to sharing the technical details of their sampling and weighting. Even if you’re not an expert on methodology, there are a few things you can look for to get a sense of whether a poll is worth your time – and to get the most information out of its results.

Here are some of the most important questions to ask:

As a starting point, look for pollsters who are transparent about what they’re doing. If there aren’t many details available about who conducted and sponsored the poll, how they carried it out or what questions they asked, that’s your first sign to be skeptical.

For an idea of what that methodological information might look like, you can read more about how CNN conducts its own polling here or find detailed explanations of how outlets like the Pew Research Center or The New York Times conduct their surveys. The American Association for Public Opinion Research also has a helpful guide to the information you should be looking for.

Who was surveyed and how did the pollsters find them?

Fundamentally, polls work by talking to relatively small groups of people who are selected to be demographically representative of a much larger universe (say, “adults in the US,” or “people who are likely to vote in the next election”).

How do pollsters choose which people to talk to? In past decades, many did so by calling a randomly selected set of phone numbers. These days, very few polls are conducted by interrupting Americans’ dinners with calls to their landlines. Instead, pollsters are trying to reach people however they can, whether that’s through cell phone calls, text messages, postcards in the mail, panels of people who’ve agreed to answer surveys or a combination of all these approaches.

What’s critically important across these methods, though, is that the people taking any individual survey are selected by the pollster, not the other way around. Feel free to ignore “polls” that let anyone answer, which can’t reflect the opinions of anybody beyond those who happened to answer.

When looking at the sample size of a poll, keep in mind that a relatively small but representative sample is better than a very large, unrepresentative one. But a small sample does increase the margin for error, particularly among subgroups of people – like young voters, or those from minority groups – that make up only a smaller share of the population.

Who’s behind the poll and why are they releasing it?

Polls shouldn’t come out of nowhere. Look for polls that are transparent about the people who conducted them, and the precise survey companies or tools they used to carry them out. If the pollster has a track record of previous work – or if they’ve never released polling before – that’s helpful context, too.

It’s also important for polls to disclose who, if anyone, funded their surveys, whether that’s a media outlet, a think tank, or a campaign. Anyone putting in the time and effort to conduct a survey has a reason for doing so. Sometimes, that’s simply to inform the public. But campaigns are often selective in releasing only internal data that supports the narrative they want to share, or that might drive fundraising and engagement, and advocacy groups are often trying to shape a conversation around the policies they support.

The way a poll question is framed can have major impacts on the results of the poll, particularly around unfamiliar candidates or complicated topics.

So can the order that questions were asked in – for instance, a neutrally worded question about a choice between two candidates can still be thrown out of balance if voters were first asked a series of questions about controversies facing one candidate.

Look for polls that share the exact wording of their questions, so that you can evaluate whether those questions seem balanced and get the clearest sense possible of what the people taking the survey actually meant by their answers.

Pretty much any data point is more useful in context. When looking at new data, it’s helpful to know whether it’s broadly in agreement with other polling, or whether it’s saying something new – or if there isn’t much else out there to compare it to. Just because a poll is an outlier, of course, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily wrong. But sometimes, the variation between polls can tell you something. For instance, if minor changes in wording produce very different reads on an issue, that’s probably a topic where public opinion isn’t very settled.

While surveys can capture how voters are feeling at a given point in time, they can’t predict the future. This can pose a particular challenge in races like primary elections that often see multiple candidates, varied turnout and a lot of movement – see the Democratic primary in Michigan, where polls may have misread the composition of the electorate, and in Wisconsin, where polls also overstated the eventual support for the progressive candidate but accurately reflected that the race remained highly in flux.

Polls also aren’t meant to be precision instruments, which means that in a tight race, they may not be able to reliably measure which candidate is ahead – merely that the race is close. But even in an election year, most surveys also ask questions beyond whom voters are planning to support.

These questions can provide a sense of the dynamics behind the race: For instance, measuring anti-incumbent sentiments, highlighting voters’ ongoing concerns with cost of living, or tracking big partisan shifts. That’s often more illuminating than the horserace itself.

Feds to buy up to $6 billion in Treasury bonds in move to ease borrowing costs

September 9, 2026 / 3:20 PM EDT / CBS News MoneyWatch

By Megan Cerullo Reporter, MoneyWatch

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that the agency will buy up to $6 billion in long-term government bonds as part of an effort to curb rising yields and ease borrowing costs.

The Treasury Department vowed last month to “at least” double its bond buybacks to $4 billion to prop up prices. Higher Treasury yields raise borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, and can also weigh on stock prices.

“They are repurchasing bonds that have been around for a while and are a smaller part of the market, but the Treasury thinks this will constrain 20- to 30-year yields from rising and put downward pressure on 10-year yields too,” Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, told CBS News.

Rising U.S. government debt is the main catalyst driving up bond yields, O’Rourke added. The national debt surpassed $40 trillion in August after doubling in less than a decade.

“If you want to get Treasury yields under control, you would tackle that issue. Instead, we are tinkering on the periphery of the market, and that’s not a real solution,” he said.

The 10-year Treasury rate, which typically affects mortgage rates, rose to 4.85% from 4.80% late Tuesday, hitting its highest point since October 2023. The yield on the 2-year Treasury, which tends to track expectations for the Fed’s interest rate decisions, rose to 4.42% from 4.39% late Tuesday.

Bond yields are inversely related to prices, meaning that as yields rise, bond prices fall. Rising yields signal that investors are demanding higher returns on Treasurys.

Other Wall Street analysts also expressed doubt that the government’s bond buybacks would help contain yields and lower borrowing costs.

“The simplest version here is that market interventions have a long history of not working very well,” Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery, told the Associated Press.

Wrightson ICAP chief economist Lou Crandall said Wednesday’s bond-buyback operation keeps the “guessing game going a little while longer,” as the sizes of the remaining six bond-sector operations scheduled through Nov. 4 will be “$4 billion or more.”

“The market will likely assume that $6 billion will be the minimum probable size for the next 30-year buyback on September 24, but we may not actually know until the details of that operation are announced on the morning of September 23,” he said in a statement to CBS News.

Edited by Alain Sherter

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Midterms, Trump’s inflation nation and Netanyahu skepticism

2026-09-09 3:51 PM EDT / CNN

By Toby Mananzan, CNN

Midterms, Trump’s inflation nation and Netanyahu skepticism

CNN Chief Data Analyst Harry Enten runs the numbers, from confidence in Trump and Netanyahu’s leadership to the current state of US midterms.

15:00 • Source: CNN

Humans are “close to being outsmarted” by superintelligence, AI expert says

2026-09-09T15:32:39-0400 / CBS News

By

September 9, 2026 / 3:32 PM EDT / CBS News

A troubling warning from a former researcher at AI company Anthropic is drawing attention to “superintelligence” — technology that could outperform humans at every cognitive task.

In a Sept. 8 social media thread announcing his resignation, the researcher Jacob Coxon accused Anthropic and rival OpenAI of “gambling with our lives” by pursuing superintelligence. In a related post on X, Anthropic lead researcher Evan Hubinger said there was more than a 10% chance that AI “could kill all humans” within the next decade.

The warnings raise questions about what superintelligence is, how close companies are to developing such technological capabilities, and why some experts believe it could threaten jobs, national security and even humanity itself.

Superintelligence refers to artificial intelligence that “can significantly outperform all humans on essentially all cognitive tasks,” according to a petition to halt superintelligence development from the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, which has garnered signatures from the likes of noted computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, who is known as the “Godfather of AI.”

“Imagine, for example, some AI or massive cluster of AIs that together are smarter than all of humanity together, than all 8 billion of us,” Max Tegmark, a professor at MIT who specializes in AI research, told CBS News. “That would certainly count.”

Researchers also express concern that superintelligent AIs would be controlled by only a few companies, giving them enormous power and amplifying the risks of misuse.

“We’re getting so close to being outsmarted”

To be sure, the idea that AI could eventually match or exceed human intelligence isn’t new — and it remains hypothetical. For example, British mathematician I.J. Good wrote about the creation of an “ultraintelligent machine” in the 1960s, defining it as something that can “surpass all the intellectual activities of any man, however clever.”

AI company executives have also openly acknowledged the risks surrounding the technology, including the danger AI could pose to humanity as a whole, as Coxon and Hubinger warned.

“What’s new is the fact that we’re getting so close to being outsmarted,” Tegmark said.

Although superintelligence hasn’t been achieved, AI agents today are already proving capable of operating autonomously and collaboratively. That includes acting in ways that appear designed to evade detection, as shown by the recent incident in which an OpenAI-tested AI model went rogue and hacked the AI company Hugging Face.

Fear of losing control

The fundamental threat posed by superintelligent AI is that the tools become increasingly difficult for people to control, experts told CBS News.

“They can’t even align or control their AIs today, and the AIs of the future will be much smarter and harder to understand,” wrote Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI researcher who now leads the AI Futures Project, in a Sept. 8 social media post. “Even if they succeed, they will then have created the most intense concentration of power in human history — a new artificial species of superintelligences obedient to the commands and values of a tiny handful of people.”

He added, “This situation is insane and must not be allowed to continue.”

With AI development moving at warp speed, Tegmark agreed that humans could lose their grip on the technology.

“If we just allow a completely unfettered race to build billions of superintelligent robots, then I think the probability is way above 50% that we’re going to lose control of this in the next few decades,” he told CBS News.

When could superintelligence emerge?

It’s a moving target and depends on who you ask. But the AI Futures Project estimates that superintelligent tech could emerge within the next 1 to 10 years, the group wrote in a scenario examining the development of AI.

“The industry has convinced itself that controlling superintelligent AI can be figured out on the fly, and thus has no remotely adequate plan,” the group wrote.

Others think the development of superintelligence remains many years in the future.

“AI systems of today are nowhere near matching or exceeding the general capabilities of humans,” said Melanie Mitchell, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who focuses on technology and AI, said it will take years, if not decades, before AI can comprehensively match human-level skills. AI is improving, but people still have the upper hand in skills like multitasking, he said.

While experts disagree on the timeline for developing superintelligence, they generally agree that a key breakthrough will come when AI can improve on its own without human intervention — a concept AI researchers call “recursive self-improvement.”

“AI that can learn independently and then act on that new knowledge — that’s what people should be paying attention to,” West said.

Upsides to superintelligence?

The future of AI isn’t necessarily bleak, AI experts emphasize. Mitchell noted that there are clear upsides to developing highly capable AI.

“You know we’ve already seen that with scientific breakthroughs… new approaches to weather forecasting using AI, new approaches to drug design,” she told CBS News.

However, the way AI companies train their models isn’t necessarily aligned with goals that could benefit humanity, Mitchell said.

The focus has been on creating multi-agent systems that communicate together, she said, adding, “It’s not clear that that’s the kind of thing that we’re going to really need for the kinds of applications that we want.”

Some lawmakers are expressing concern about the risks posed by AI, with Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, and Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, saying earlier this month they plan to introduce the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act.

“The leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that they do not fully understand the technology and that it is escaping their control,” Sanders said in a Sept. 3 statement. “It is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced.”

Edited by Alain Sherter

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/ex-anthropic-researcher-says-he-believes-out-of-control-ai-development-could-kill-us-all/

US appeals court skeptical of bid to curtail abortion pill access

2026-09-09T18:30:06.974Z / Reuters

Boxes of Mifepristone, the first pill in a medical abortion, are seen at Alamo Women’s Clinic in Carbondale, Illinois, U.S., April 9, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

• Summary

• Judges question whether Louisiana has legal standing to challenge FDA rule
• Lawyer for FDA says review of mifepristone safety remains ongoing
• Louisiana claims about 1,000 abortions a month stem from mailed mifepristone

Sept 9 (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday appeared skeptical of a bid by the Republican-led state of Louisiana to curtail access to the abortion drug ​mifepristone by blocking a 2023 rule that has allowed the medication to be prescribed via telemedicine and dispensed by mail nationwide.

Louisiana Solicitor General Ben ‌Aguinaga urged a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down the rule, arguing it undermines abortion bans implemented by his state and others after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022

overturned the constitutional right, opens new tab
to the procedure.

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“There’s no dispute that Louisiana is experiencing 1,000 abortions a month due to mifepristone mailed into the state,” Aguinaga said.

Louisiana sued the U.S. Food and ​Drug Administration last year, arguing the agency ignored the risks of serious adverse events associated with mifepristone, including sepsis and hemorrhaging, when it adopted the 2023 ​rule during former Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration and removed a requirement that the drug be dispensed in person at a medical ⁠facility.

BACK BEFORE THE 5TH CIRCUIT

That argument previously swayed another 5th Circuit panel earlier this year to temporarily block the rule. But the Supreme Court in May lifted that order, allowing ​the drug to continue to be prescribed through telemedicine and dispensed by mail, a fact that U.S. Circuit Judge Stephen Higginson noted repeatedly.

The judge noted that his court, one of ​the most conservative in the nation, had previously also been reversed by the Supreme Court in 2024 when it unanimously rejected a different bid by anti-abortion groups and doctors to roll back FDA regulations that had eased access to the drug.

Both he and U.S. Circuit Judge Dana Douglas, a fellow appointee of a Democratic president, questioned whether Louisiana even had legal standing to sue over the FDA’s action, ​saying it could not establish that the abortions occurring in the state were because of the 2023 rule as opposed to other factors.

“There are too many independent actors to ​say that actually the government’s assessment of safety is what’s causing your 1,000 abortions a month,” Higginson said.

Should the panel rule against Louisiana, the state could either appeal to the Supreme Court ‌or ask ⁠the full 5th Circuit, which has a supermajority of Republican appointees, to reconsider the case, one of several pending challenging the regulation.

Restricting access to mifepristone, including its availability through telehealth appointments with out-of-state providers, has been a top priority for Republican-led states that implemented abortion bans.

Nearly half of U.S. states have banned or severely restricted abortion since the Supreme Court’s ruling, leading to a surge in medication abortion, a two-drug regimen consisting of mifepristone followed by misoprostol.

Medication abortion accounts for more than 60% of U.S. abortions, according to data from ​the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy group.

U.S. ​District Judge David Joseph in April ⁠paused the case pending a review by President Donald Trump’s administration of the safety of mifepristone.

Abortion rights advocates have said the Trump administration’s review is politically motivated and unnecessary. The FDA, which approved mifepristone in 2000, calls the drug that has been used by millions of ​American women safe and effective, saying its periodic reviews have not identified any new safety concerns.

FDA REVIEW ONGOING

U.S. Department of Justice ​attorney Daniel Winik said ⁠that review remains ongoing. He said he had “no idea” what action the FDA may ultimately take but that the matter should be left to the agency to decide.

“The whole point of our position in this case is that it’s the FDA’s job in the ongoing consideration of mifepristone to address all of these issues,” he said.

The 5th Circuit panel’s only Republican appointee, ⁠U.S. Circuit Judge ​Priscilla Richman, asked repeatedly about the extent to which women were being admitted to emergency rooms more ​frequently and “how many of those complications would not have occurred had the woman seen a physician in person.”

But lawyers for the drugmakers GenBioPro and Danco Laboratories, which manufacture mifepristone, called the drug safe and argued the ​FDA in 2023 adequately assessed the drug’s risks.

“The FDA’s decision was richly supported,” GenBioPro lawyer John Elwood said.

Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot

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Nate Raymond reports on the federal judiciary and litigation. He can be reached at nate.raymond@thomsonreuters.com.

Bipartisan duo launches congressional caucus to confront antisemitism at colleges

September 9, 2026 1:29pm EDT / Fox News

Rep Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat, is joining forces with Rep Elise Stefanik, a Catholic Republican

By Alex Nitzberg Fox News

NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles!

Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., are launching a congressional coalition to target antisemitism at institutions of higher education.

The Combating Antisemitism on College Campuses Caucus will provide a bipartisan avenue for lawmakers to “coordinate oversight of how” schools of higher learning react to antisemitism, according to press releases issued by the lawmakers’ offices.

The caucus will “press institutions to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff, and to enforce their own anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies,” “advance and track federal legislation targeting campus antisemitism and BDS-driven discrimination,” and “spotlight schools that are getting it right and share best practices across campuses nationwide,” the releases note.

CAMPUS ANTISEMITISM EXTENDS BEYOND STUDENT PROTESTS AND INTO CLASSROOMS, ADL WARNS

Rep. Elise Stefanik and Rep. Josh Gottheimer.(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

While Gottheimer is a Jewish Democrat and Stefanik is a Catholic Republican, both lawmakers are concerned about the problem of antisemitism.

“Since October 7th, Jewish students on too many campuses have been harassed, intimidated, and made to feel like strangers in their own school,” Gottheimer said, referring to the 2023 attack by Hamas terrorists in Israel.

TRUMP INDICATES SUPPORT FOR CHRISTIAN-BACKED PLAN TO HELP CANADIAN JEWS ESCAPE ANTISEMITISM

Rep. Elise Stefanik speaks at Faith and Freedom Coalitionâs Road to Majority Conference in Washington, D.C., on June 26, 2026.(Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“That’s why Elise and I are teaming up to launch this caucus to hold universities accountable, back up the schools getting it right, like Vanderbilt, and make sure every Jewish kid can have a college experience without fear of discrimination or violence,” he noted.

Stefanik, the author of the book “Poisoned Ivies,” noted that she has “been proud to be the leader in Congress on combatting antisemitism and anti-Americanism at our colleges and universities.”

PIERS MORGAN EVISCERATES IVY LEAGUE STUDENT WHO REFUSED TO WORK ‘FOR A JEW’ AS ‘BRAZENLY’ ANTISEMITIC

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6402433141112

Gottheimer “has been a leading partner and legislator with whom I have worked on this critical issue,” Stefanik noted. “We are committed to saving American higher education for the next generation.”

Fox News’ Kelly Phares contributed to this report.

Alex Nitzberg is a writer for Fox News Digital.

‘I’m still advocating for cooler heads to prevail’: Vulnerable Michigan GOP congressman hopes for thaw in Canada trade war

2026-09-09 1:29 PM EDT / CNN Politics

Kasie Hunt

By Kasie Hunt, CNN

Published 1:29 PM EDT, Wed September 10, 2026

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‘I’m still advocating for cooler heads to prevail’: Vulnerable Michigan GOP congressman hopes for thaw in Canada trade war

Inside Politics

GOP Rep. Tom Barrett is running for reelection in a purple district in one of the states whose economy is most intertwined with Canada. Still, he thinks there are some positives to President Trump’s escalating trade war with Canada even if he hopes a little give on either side could thaw the freeze between the two sides. “I want to see us get to a point where we can have mutually beneficial trade arrangements with Canada. I’m still hopeful that we can get there, but that has been my advocacy both publicly and behind the scenes,” Barrett said.