Abortion pill to remain widely available for now, Earth Day 2023: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze has the latest after the court ruled against restrictions for mifepristone. Plus, President Joe Biden makes LGBTQ rights a major political focus. Then USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise has an optimistic Earth Day outlook. And where does your recycling actually go? Finally, Celebrities lose their blue check marks on Twitter.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is Five Things You Need to Know Saturday the 22nd of April 2023.

Today, the Supreme Court's latest ruling on a major abortion pill, plus Happy Earth Day, and so long blue check marks for many on Twitter.

The Supreme Court yesterday allowed full access to the abortion pill, mifepristone. The decision resolves a massive conflict over the drug, for now. I spoke with USA Today Supreme Court correspondent John Fritze for all the latest. Hello, John.

John Fritze:

Hey, how are you doing?

Taylor Wilson:

Good, thanks. Thanks for hopping on the pod.

John Fritze:

Absolutely.

Taylor Wilson:

So we now have a ruling on the abortion pill, mifepristone. What did the High Court decide?

John Fritze:

The court basically said that Americans will continue to have full access to this drug while the litigation continues. It's important to note that the Court wasn't really dealing with the underlying issues here about approval of the drug and so forth. What it was really dealing with was what to do while those questions were hashed out. And while that's kind of a technical thing, it obviously has a huge impact on people trying to access the drug for what could be months or years of litigation.

Taylor Wilson:

And what did the dissenting opinion argue here?

John Fritze:

So you had two justices who said they would've gone the other way, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito. Alito stressed that he was not sort of making a merits argument here. He had some questions about granting the stay. The judges have to look at some factors that are different than when they decide the underlying case on like who is harmed the most and balancing these various issues on a stay. He basically said that he thought that the balance didn't really work out in the administration's favor here, but that didn't change how he viewed necessarily, or he wasn't going to tip his hand, let's say, about how he would rule on the merits. Of course, it's worth noting that Alito was the Court's main author in the big decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade, and I don't think there was really any question which way Alito was going to go in this case.

Taylor Wilson:

And John, can you just put in context for us a little bit how widely used this drug is in America?

John Fritze:

So yeah, I mean, we've been calling it a common drug for people seeking an abortion and also other reasons. It's not only used for abortion. About half of abortions in this country are medication abortions. And this is a drug that everybody talks about. It's a two-drug regimen actually, but this is part of it. And so I think it's fair to say this is a fairly common drug for people seeking to have a medication abortion. And of course, that is become a real issue in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, right? Like a bunch of states, 14 states have banned abortion pretty much outright or severely limited it since that decision came out. And so I haven't seen data on this, but I think one can assume that that has dramatically increased the demand for mifepristone.

Taylor Wilson:

What's next in the courts when it comes to this abortion bill.

John Fritze:

So this case goes back down to the Fifth Circuit. Remember, this all started with a judge in Texas who had a very aggressive, controversial, divisive ruling. Not only blocking some of these restrictions we're talking about like telehealth and can you get the drug through the mail, but outright saying that the FDA messed up when it approved this and that that approval no longer is valid. The Fifth Circuit took a look at that and said, well, we're going to allow the approval to go through, but we're going to halt all of these things the FDA did after the approval to really expand access to it. Again, that includes things like it can be prescribed by certain pharmacists instead of doctors; it can be prescribed over telehealth; it can be distributed through the mail and a number of other things later in a pregnancy. So the appeals court will now go back and weigh all of these issues again and weigh the original ruling and there's a good chance that this winds up back at the Supreme Court sooner rather than later.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. USA Today Supreme Court correspondent John Fritze. Thanks as always.

John Fritze:

Hey, thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

President Joe Biden has made LGBTQ rights a major focus in recent weeks speaking out against a tsunami of anti-LGBTQ legislation coming from GOP-led states. White House aids insist that for Biden the decision to condemn attacks against LGBTQ Americans is not about politics, it's about morality and fairness. He has a record of supporting LGBTQ rights in recent years, though he voted against the federal recognition of same-sex marriage back in 1996. Still, his recent and current support on a number of LGBTQ issues is likely a prelude to the 2024 elections. And Republicans are expected to use issues like gender affirming healthcare for transgender youth in an attempt to drive voters to the polls.

You can read more on this from USA Today White House correspondent Michael Collins. We have a link in today's show notes.

Today is Earth Day. To mark the occasion, President Joe Biden signed an executive order creating the White House Office of Environmental Justice this week. The new office will coordinate environmental justice efforts across the federal government.

Shifting gears, for this year's Earth Day USA Today national correspondent Elizabeth Weiss spoke with experts about what the year 2050 might look like optimistically. I spoke with hers to learn more. Happy Earth Day, Beth,

Elizabeth Weiss:

Happy Earth Day to you too.

Taylor Wilson:

So I really love this story because it gives us all a chance to try and see the glass half full when it comes to climate. You spoke with experts who are trying to give an optimistic outlook of what life might be like in 2050, so let's start with where Americans might live.

Elizabeth Weiss:

A little further inland. I mean, there's no way just given how much CO2 is already in the atmosphere that we're not going to see continued sea level rise. But if we can keep it below two degrees Celsius then a foot maybe, which means people who live right on the coast will probably have moved to inland cities and towns and those will get built up more as people move. But when you talk to experts, they say, but this actually gives us kind of a once in a generation chance to redo these cities and towns to make them more walkable. You want them dense so that it's easier to get to transit. And the idea is that we could easily make them out to be a whole lot more energy-friendly and carbon-neutral than our cities are today, which were mostly built in the 19th century.

Taylor Wilson:

That sounds amazing. So let's turn to how we'll live, Beth.

Elizabeth Weiss:

That's where people were just like, oh, yeah, this is duh. We have all this technology. It's already in use. So our houses are going to be a lot better insulated. I mean, already when you buy a house or move into an apartment that's newly built, it's much better insulated. They're going to have heat pumps instead of the furnaces that burn natural gas that we're used to, so they will be much more energy efficient. We actually already have technology so that windows can either allow in heat or keep heat out, that'll be much more advanced. So we'll have these homes which are better able to withstand whatever temperatures are going on outside. And inside the appliances will be all electric. They'll use a whole lot less energy. Will eat less meat because meat does use a lot of energy and water. We'll be eating more vegetables and beans and legumes.

But they all said, "We do that today." I mean, think, if you had told your great-grandparents that, boy, the thing your kid is going to love the most is mashed garbanzo paste, they would've said, "Yeah, no, never." But hummus, my God, it's like more popular than ketchup these days. And that's the sort of stuff we're going to be looking at. I mean, it's going to be tasty.

And the other really hopeful thing that I talked to people about is they said, so for the last a hundred years, we've stopped forest fires and that's actually resulted in our forests being way overgrown and then we get these mega fires, which is also partly due to drying and drought, but people say we're going to do carefully prescribed burns, which native tribes did in the United States for millennia, and that's going to rejuvenate a lot of our forests and bring them back to a much healthier equilibrium where they can better withstand the change in climate that we're bringing to them.

Taylor Wilson:

Beth, we've already seen a shift begin to electric vehicles. I just talked with one of our travel reporters about sustainable aviation fuel. But what might transportation look like a few decades from now?

Elizabeth Weiss:

So we're talking 30 years in the future, and especially when I talked to the Europeans, they said it's very likely the US will have expanded our train system, really high velocity trains. The kind they have in Europe and China and Japan are much more energy efficient for trips of about 500 miles, which is a whole lot of the trips that people take. And then when you get over that, we're looking at sustainable aviation fuel. When I talked to people, they said, it's probably going to be a little more expensive than aviation fuel is today. And so your flights might be a little more expensive, but that would incline people to maybe take the train, or as we've seen, it's remarkable what you can do with video conferencing and that's going to get a whole lot better.

Taylor Wilson:

So all of this sounds amazing, Beth, but is this a complete fantasy or are we on track for this reality?

Elizabeth Weiss:

They've been saying this for a while. We have the technology and the skills. It's not like we need to magically invent some silver bullet that's going to fix everything. We actually, we have all this, and in fact, US greenhouse gas emissions peaked in 2007 and they're now down about 20% from that rate, so we are already doing this. It's just a question of can we keep it up and we need to speed it up a bit, but we can totally do this. As they used to say of the $6 million man, "We have the technology."

Taylor Wilson:

Elizabeth Weiss, always feels so hopeful talking with you about these things. Thanks so much.

Elizabeth Weiss:

You're welcome.

Taylor Wilson:

On this Earth Day, you might be considering some changes to how you recycle. But where does your recycling actually go? There's no federal recycling program in the us, so where it goes depends on where you live, what the material is, and how well you practice recycling hygiene, experts say. One of the biggest problems broadly surrounds plastics. Jan Dell, an engineer and founder of the Last Beach Cleanup, an environmental organization, said cardboard, paper, and metal are all recycled at a relatively high rate. But researchers say plastic wreaks havoc and that only 9% of all plastic waste ever created has been recycled. You can read more and learn some tips for recycling this Earth Day with a link in today's show notes.

Is it an internet troll, a bot, or a famous celebrity? After this week's major Twitter update, you can never be sure. The social media app began removing blue check marks yesterday, including on accounts owned by celebrities, journalists, and other notable figures. The move is an effort to push users to subscribe to Twitter Blue, a paid subscription service that gives users early access to features starting at $8 a month.

The subscription service was first launched in 2021, but then was relaunched last year after Elon Musk became CEO in October. It seems that most high profile accounts are for now staying away from spending that eight bucks. Halle Berry said she was joining the unverified, and the Cookie Monster tweeted, "You can take away me blue check mark, but me cookies are off limits." It's not all fun and games though. High profile users like Pope Francis and Beyonce lost their blue checks, but so too did major transit systems, national parks, and official weather trackers. Twitter is apparently offering gold checks for verified organizations and gray checks for government organizations. But as of Friday, it was still not clear why some accounts had them and others did not.

Thanks for listening to Five Things. You can find us every day of the week right here wherever you get your podcasts. The Sunday edition of Five Things is back tomorrow, and I'll see you Monday with more of Five Things from USA Today.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Abortion pill to remain widely available, Earth Day 2023: 5 Things podcast