标签： North America

In a high-stakes decision that will shape abortion access across the United States for the coming months, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that mail delivery of the abortion pill mifepristone can remain legal while broader litigation over the drug’s regulatory status moves through the court system. The emergency order, issued Thursday, blocks harsh restrictions imposed by a lower appellate court that would have required patients to obtain the pill in person, delivering a temporary win to reproductive rights advocates after weeks of uncertainty.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed last October by the state of Louisiana, which aimed to halt all mail distribution of mifepristone. Louisiana argued that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s policy allowing nationwide mail access interfered with the state’s strict total abortion ban, writing that “Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person.” In early May, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals responded to the suit by temporarily reinstating a long-suspended rule requiring in-person pickup of the drug.

Within days, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, the two companies that manufacture mifepristone, asked the Supreme Court to intervene to block the appeals court’s restrictions while the legal process moves forward. Thursday’s ruling, which is known as a “stay,” grants that request: the restrictions on mail access will remain off the table until the Supreme Court decides whether it will take up the full emergency appeal from the manufacturers. That decision could come as late as next year, meaning current access rules will stay in place for months.

The order came out of the court’s emergency docket and was issued without a full accompanying explanation, but it revealed a familiar split among the justices. The court’s two most conservative members, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, issued dissents opposing the decision to keep mail access open. In his written dissent, Thomas argued that because mifepristone distribution by mail is classified as illegal under Louisiana state law, the drug manufacturers have no right to challenge the lower court’s order, writing that they are not entitled to “based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise.”

The long-running legal battle over mifepristone comes against a shifting regulatory and legal landscape for abortion access in the U.S. Mifepristone, the first medication in the FDA-approved two-drug regimen for early pregnancy termination, has become the most common method of abortion across the country in recent years, and its availability via mail is particularly critical for patients living in the more than 20 states that have banned or severely restricted abortion since 2022.

The current rules allowing mail access date back to 2023, when the FDA made permanent a pandemic-era policy that lifted the requirement for in-person dispensing of the drug, first implemented in 2021. That policy change came just months after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning *Roe v. Wade*, the landmark 1973 ruling that had established a constitutional right to abortion nationwide. The 2022 ruling handed authority to regulate abortion to individual states, leading dozens of conservative-led states to implement near-total or total bans.

Last year, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected an earlier attempt to restrict mifepristone access, but that ruling explicitly left the door open to future legal challenges targeting the drug’s availability. Thursday’s order is the first major outcome from the wave of new challenges that followed, and it keeps the current access model intact for the immediate future.

Once one of South Carolina’s most powerful legal figures, Alex Murdaugh, convicted of orchestrating the 2021 murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul, will face a retrial after the state’s highest court unanimously threw out his original murder convictions. The landmark ruling hinged on a finding of unfair trial bias, caused by improper interference from the trial court clerk that undermined the integrity of the first jury proceedings.

In its unanimous decision, the South Carolina Supreme Court confirmed that court clerk Rebecca Hill improperly influenced the jury by instructing members to “watch [Murdaugh] closely” and discount his testimony. The ruling noted Hill had “placed her fingers on the scales of justice”, and months after the original conviction, she published a tell-all book about the high-profile proceedings. The case, which has gripped national public attention for years, has spawned a dedicated podcast, feature documentary, television miniseries and multiple books, cementing its status as one of the most followed true crime cases in recent U.S. history.

Following the ruling, Murdaugh’s defense team has celebrated the decision and expressed full confidence in securing an acquittal at retrial. At 56 years old, Murdaugh was already serving two consecutive life sentences for the 2021 murders, and he remains incarcerated on separate, untouched convictions for extensive financial crimes that include a 27-year state sentence and 40-year federal sentence for stealing millions of dollars from client settlement funds to feed a years-long opioid addiction. Those financial convictions have not been challenged or overturned in this ruling. Defense attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin confirmed their client maintains his total innocence in the murders, and has ruled out any possibility of a plea deal to avoid a new trial.

Speaking to media outlets, Griffin shared that Murdaugh feels “grateful” and “surprised” by the court’s decision, and is deeply relieved to have the label of convicted murderer of his wife and son formally removed. Harpootlian added that because the original jury was improperly lobbied to convict, a new, unbiased jury will give Murdaugh a fair shot at acquittal. The state supreme court’s ruling also placed critical new restrictions on the use of evidence related to Murdaugh’s financial crimes in the upcoming retrial, finding that original prosecutors overstepped by overemphasizing the financial convictions as a supposed motive for murder. The new trial must strictly limit discussion of financial wrongdoing to only what directly supports the prosecution’s case, and exclude inflammatory, non-relevant details of the fraud offenses, which Murdaugh has already admitted to committing.

Prosecutors have confirmed they will move forward with a retrial rather than appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters told *Good Morning America* that retrying the case as soon as possible is the best path forward for justice. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson echoed that commitment in an official statement, vowing to “aggressively seek to retry Alex Murdaugh for the murders of Maggie and Paul as soon as possible”.

Looking ahead to the proceedings, key procedural questions remain unresolved. A new trial will require an entirely new jury, but finding impartial jurors in Colleton County, the case’s original jurisdiction where nearly all residents followed the first trial closely, is expected to be extremely difficult. Legal experts note a change of venue to another county across South Carolina is highly likely, with some observers joking that only an off-world venue could guarantee a fully unbiased jury given the case’s massive global media coverage. It also remains unclear whether Murdaugh, who took the stand in his own defense during the first trial, will testify again in the retrial, with his attorney declining to confirm that detail.

While Murdaugh remains behind bars for his intact financial convictions, there is a path to his eventual release if his legal team secures further victories: he could still appeal his financial convictions, and if those were overturned alongside an acquittal in the murder retrial, he would be eligible for immediate release. Prosecutors have not yet set a firm timeline for the new trial, noting that complex high-profile cases move slowly, comparing the legal process to a marathon rather than a sprint. For context, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were found dead in June 2021, Alex Murdaugh was not arrested for their murders until July 2022, and his first trial began six months after that arrest.

When Air Force One touched down in Beijing on Thursday, the carefully choreographed welcome ceremony immediately set the tone for a US-China summit defined as much by deliberate symbolism as by tangible policy outcomes. What followed was more than two hours of closed-door talks between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, a meeting that framed the world’s largest bilateral economic relationship but ultimately failed to deliver the sweeping trade breakthrough many had anticipated.

The most visually striking departure from standard diplomatic protocol came in the order of deplaning: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Nvidia chief Jensen Huang stepped off the aircraft ahead of senior White House cabinet members, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Senator Marco Rubio and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Both tech leaders remained close to Trump throughout the official welcome at the Great Hall of the People, a placement that carried unavoidable symbolic weight. Musk and Huang represent the most contentious, high-stakes pressure points in the modern US-China economic relationship: electric vehicles, advanced artificial intelligence, and semiconductor manufacturing. Both companies also maintain deep, high-stakes exposure to the Chinese market. Tesla’s global production and revenue rely heavily on its Shanghai Gigafactory and domestic Chinese consumer demand, while Nvidia’s cutting-edge chips are the backbone of the global AI race, and have been the target of strict US export controls designed to block Beijing from accessing advanced computing capabilities. Notably, Huang was not included on the original US delegation list, a last-minute addition that fueled widespread speculation that AI and semiconductor access would hold a more central place in negotiations than previously publicly disclosed.

Following the talks, both sides offered measured positive framing of the discussions. Trump called the meeting potentially “the biggest summit ever” and described the US-China partnership as “the world’s most consequential economic relationship”, with the White House ultimately characterizing the talks as “highly productive”. For his part, Xi noted that prior bilateral trade negotiations held in South Korea had delivered incremental progress, but paired that acknowledgment with a stark, unprecedented public warning that reshaped the framing of the summit. “If mishandled, the two nations could collide or even come into conflict,” Xi stated of the Taiwan question, according to China’s foreign ministry. This marked a clear shift from past negotiations, where Taiwan was treated as one of several friction points. At this summit, Beijing explicitly framed the Taiwan issue as a core condition for the future of the broader US-China trade and economic relationship. In Beijing’s official readout, Xi emphasized that “the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations”, and confirmed the two sides had agreed to a “new positioning” for ties centered on “constructive strategic stability”.

Despite the optimistic rhetoric from both sides, no major new trade deals or structural economic agreements emerged from the meeting. The primary tangible outcome was an agreement to uphold the terms of the October trade truce, which saw Washington suspend planned steep tariff increases on a wide range of Chinese goods, while Beijing rolled back restrictions on rare earth exports to the US. Both leaders also agreed to establish a new “Board of Trade”, a permanent bilateral mechanism designed to manage trade frictions without reopening full, high-stakes tariff negotiations. US officials quickly cautioned, however, that extensive technical work remains to be done before the new board becomes fully operational.

US negotiators had entered the summit hoping to see new commitments for increased Chinese purchases of American goods, with a particular focus on Boeing commercial aircraft, agricultural products, and energy exports. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had publicly predicted that “large Boeing orders” would be announced during the visit, and noted that Beijing had signaled it would expand purchases of US agricultural and energy goods. While Xi told a gathering of US business leaders that China “doors will open wider” and that American firms would have “broader prospects” operating in the Chinese market, no firm, concrete details for new purchase commitments were released. Bessent later downplayed expectations of major new agricultural breakthroughs, noting that many existing soybean purchase commitments were already covered under prior agreements, but added that there remains significant room for China to expand imports of US energy, including liquefied natural gas (LNG). US farmers have long sought greater access to the Chinese market for soybeans, beef, and poultry, a goal that remains unfulfilled with no new progress announced at the summit.

Technology and advanced semiconductors remain the deepest unresolved divide between the two powers. The Trump administration’s strict export controls on advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment, implemented to slow China’s development of frontier AI capabilities, remain fully in place. Beijing continues to push for loosening these restrictions, while criticizing the controls as an unfair effort to constrain China’s industrial and technological development. Beyond economic issues, Trump also sought Chinese cooperation to stabilize global oil markets amid the ongoing Iran conflict. Volatility in oil prices and repeated disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical energy chokepoint, have driven up import costs for China and pushed global energy prices higher. Trump had publicly stated he hoped China would use its diplomatic influence to encourage Iran to stabilize energy flows through the strait. Chinese readouts confirmed the Middle East was discussed during the summit, but no details of any new agreements or commitments were released.

For US multinational corporations, the summit left the status quo largely intact: China remains one of the world’s largest consumer markets, but continues to present a challenging operating environment shaped by strict regulation, bureaucratic red tape, and persistent geopolitical uncertainty. While the meeting laid the groundwork for a new ongoing trade dialogue, analysts note that core frictions ranging from semiconductor controls to Taiwan’s status remain unresolved, leaving the future of the bilateral relationship uncertain.

In a sudden shift that deepens a string of leadership changes at the heart of the Trump administration’s immigration policy framework, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Michael Banks has announced his immediate resignation, in an exclusive interview with Fox News Thursday.

Banks, who was appointed to lead the nation’s primary border security agency shortly after Donald Trump returned to the presidency last year, said his departure was a matter of timing. In his remarks to the outlet, he framed his tenure as a successful course correction for U.S. border security, claiming he had pulled the agency out of what he described as a period of catastrophic disarray to deliver the most secure southern border in the nation’s history.

His exit marks the latest high-profile turnover in the administration’s immigration and homeland security leadership. Earlier this year, Trump dismissed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, a key figure overseeing border policy. Before Noem’s ouster, Greg Bovino, an outspoken CBP commander, stepped down from his post unexpectedly. The string of departures has drawn attention to ongoing upheaval within the ranks of the administration’s national security and immigration team, as Trump continues to advance his hardline border policy agenda.

The CBP has not yet announced an interim or permanent successor to Banks, and the White House has not issued an official statement on the resignation as of Thursday evening.

One of the highest-profile criminal cases in recent United States history has taken a dramatic legal turn: the South Carolina Supreme Court has overturned Alex Murdaugh’s convictions for the murder of his wife and son, and has mandated that he stand trial again. This unexpected development has drawn widespread attention to systemic questions about judicial conduct and the integrity of high-stakes criminal proceedings, with legal analysts and the public alike dissecting the ruling’s far-reaching implications.

Murdaugh, a former prominent personal injury lawyer from a powerful South Carolina legal dynasty, was found guilty in 2023 of murdering his wife Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and their 22-year-old son Paul Murdaugh at the family’s hunting estate in 2021. The trial captivated national media, shining a light on the decades-long influence of the Murdaugh family in South Carolina’s legal and political circles, as well as a web of financial fraud and alleged misconduct that had already entangled Alex Murdaugh. Following the guilty verdict, he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.

In his explanation of the court’s ruling, BBC correspondent Bernd Debusmann points to a key controversy that undermined the original trial: the misconduct of the lead law enforcement officer who led the investigation into the Murdaugh killings. The court found that the officer, who had been accused of multiple instances of corrupt and unethical conduct in other cases, failed to disclose critical information about his own history of problematic behavior to the defense during the original trial’s jury selection process. This failure, the supreme court ruled, violated Murdaugh’s constitutional right to a fair and impartial trial, a core protection in the U.S. criminal justice system.

The ruling has reignited debates across the country about the standards of conduct for law enforcement in high-profile cases, as well as the safeguards in place to prevent wrongful convictions. Legal experts note that the supreme court’s decision does not acquit Murdaugh of the murder charges; it simply orders that the case be retried with a new jury, free from the procedural irregularities that marred the first proceeding. As the legal process moves forward, the case continues to hold national attention, with observers waiting to see how the new trial will unfold and whether it will bring a definitive conclusion to a case that has already shaken South Carolina’s legal establishment to its core.

On a landmark diplomatic visit to China’s capital Beijing, former U.S. President Donald Trump held a series of formal talks and scheduled engagements with Chinese President Xi Jinping across Thursday and Friday, marking a high-profile gathering that drew global attention to the trajectory of U.S.-China relations.

Trump touched down in Beijing Wednesday evening aboard Air Force One, where he was received on the red carpet by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, alongside local youth waving both U.S. and Chinese national flags in a display of ceremonial welcome. The following day, a formal arrival ceremony was co-hosted by Xi and Trump at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, where the two leaders exchanged an opening handshake before walking the red carpet together and conducting a formal inspection of impeccably drilled Chinese honor guard troops. Rows of cheering children lined the route, waving small national flags and carrying floral bouquets to greet the visiting delegation. Following the ceremony, the U.S. leader was treated to a guided tour of the 15th-century Temple of Heaven, one of China’s most iconic historic landmarks, alongside Xi.

A standout detail of Trump’s delegation is the roster of top American technology and finance leaders joining the trip, signaling a focus on commercial and technological ties between the two global powers. Attendees include Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, and Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang, who was confirmed as a last-minute addition to the delegation. Huang’s presence carries particular weight, as Nvidia has been at the center of ongoing U.S.-China technology trade tensions in recent years. Trump’s son Eric Trump also accompanied the delegation.

In his opening remarks to kick off the highly anticipated bilateral talks, Xi emphasized that the entire world was closely monitoring the outcomes of their meeting, noting that “currently transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe and the international situation is fluid and turbulent.” Responding in his own opening comments, Trump called the opportunity to meet with Xi “an honor,” reflecting on the productive working relationship the two leaders built in the past. “We’ve gotten along, when there were difficulties we worked it out. I would call you and you would call me,” Trump said. “People don’t know, whenever we had a problem we worked it out very quickly.”

After two hours of closed-door discussions, the two leaders traveled together to the Temple of Heaven, a 600-year-old imperial religious complex that once served as the site where Ming and Qing dynasty emperors held annual rituals to offer sacrifices and pray for abundant harvests. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and top international tourist destination, the ancient landmark provided a symbolic backdrop for the diplomatic meeting. Posing for photos in front of the complex’s iconic main prayer hall, Trump praised the site and the country, telling Xi “Great place, incredible. China’s beautiful.”