WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is staying mum about student protests and police crackdowns as Republicans try to turn campus unrest over the war in Gaza into a campaign cudgel against Democrats.

Tension at colleges and universities has been building for days as some demonstrators refuse to remove encampments and administrators turn to law enforcement to clear them by force, leading to clashes that have seized attention from politicians and the media.

But Biden’s last public comment came more than a week ago, when he condemned “antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

The White House, which has been peppered with questions by reporters, has gone only slightly further than the president. On Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is “monitoring the situation closely,” and she said some demonstrations had stepped over a line that separated free speech from unlawful behavior.

“Forcibly taking over a building,” such as what happened at Columbia University in New York, “is not peaceful,” she said. “It’s just not.”

Biden has never been much for protesting. His career in elected office began as a county official when he was only 28 years old, and he’s always espoused the political importance of compromise over zealousness.

As college campuses convulsed with anger over the Vietnam War in 1968, Biden was in law school at Syracuse University.

“I’m not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts,” he said years later. “You know, that’s not me.″

Despite the White House’s criticism and Biden’s refusal to heed protesters’ demands to cut off U.S. support for Israel, Republicans blame Democrats for the disorder and have used it as a backdrop for press conferences.

“We need the president of the United States to speak to the issue and say this is wrong,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said on Tuesday. “What’s happening on college campuses right now is wrong.”

Johnson visited Columbia with other members of his caucus last week. House Republicans sparred with protesters while speaking to the media at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

Former President Donald Trump, his party’s presumptive nominee, also criticized Biden in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.

“Biden has to do something,” he said. “Biden is supposed to be the voice of our country, and it’s certainly not much of a voice. It’s a voice that nobody’s heard.”

He repeated his criticisms on Wednesday during a campaign event in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

“The radical extremists and far-left agitators are terrorizing college campuses, as you possibly noticed,” Trump said. “And Biden’s nowhere to be found. He hasn’t said anything.”

Kate Berner, who served as deputy communications director for Biden’s campaign in 2020, said Republicans already tried the same tactic four years ago during protests over George Floyd’s murder by a police officer.

“People rejected that,” she said. “They saw that it was just fearmongering. They saw that it wasn’t based in reality.”

Apart from condemning antisemitism, the White House has been reluctant to directly engage on the issue.

Jean-Pierre repeatedly deflected questions during a briefing on Monday.

Asked whether protesters should be disciplined by their schools, she said “universities and colleges make their own decisions” and “we’re not going to weigh in from here.”

Pressed on whether police should be called in, she said “that’s up to the colleges and universities.”

When quizzed about administrators rescheduling graduation ceremonies, she said “that is a decision that they have to decide” and “that is on them.”

Biden will make his own visit to a college campus on May 19 when he’s scheduled to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse University in Atlanta.

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Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami contributed to this report.

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban will soon be gone from the state’s law books, but not from the campaign trail.

Even after the state Senate voted Wednesday to repeal a law banning nearly all abortions, Democrats running in the battleground state say they will make the Civil War-era law a centerpiece of their focus on reproductive rights.

President Joe Biden’s campaign team believes anger over the fall of Roe v. Wade gives them a political advantage in battleground states like Arizona. The issue has divided Republican leaders who’ve tried to respond to many in the GOP base who oppose abortion while avoiding statements that hurt them in November.

“Republicans know that they are on the wrong side of this issue,” Arizona Democratic Party Chair Yolanda Bejarano said in an interview. “They are seeing the writing on the wall and we are going to make sure that we vote out every extremist Republican in Arizona.”

Arizona Democrats, speaking at a press conference on Wednesday organized by the Biden campaign, said they would push to defeat former President Donald Trump in the state but also win legislative majorities and pass a ballot measure that would add a reproductive-rights guarantee to the state constitution.

“Make no mistake, the reason we are here today is Donald Trump and the many Arizona Republican lawmakers that follow his blind lead,” state Sen. Anna Hernandez said at the news conference.

There’s a strong chance that abortion will still be temporarily banned before the November election because the ban will remain in effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends, likely this summer. That continuing uncertainty will almost certainly keep the law in the news.

Abortion rights advocates hope a court will step in to prevent that outcome. Attorney General Kris Mayes has said the earliest the abortion ban could be enforced is June 27. Mayes, a Democrat, has pledged not to prosecute anyone for performing an abortion and to block local prosecutors from doing so, but it’s not clear she has that authority.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled last month that prosecutors can enforce one of the nation’s strictest bans on abortion, a law passed long before Arizona became a state in 1912. It provides no exceptions for rape or incest and allows abortions only if the mother’s life is in jeopardy.

Under fierce and intensifying pressure, a handful of Republicans in the state Senate, led by those facing tough reelection fights, joined all Democrats in voting to repeal the law, a week after the House did the same. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has already pledged to sign it.

Trump nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and has referred to its overturning two years ago as a victory, but also opposed the strictest abortion bans as a matter of politics. He had said the Arizona law “went too far” and pressed state lawmakers to swiftly “remedy” it.

“A lot of bad things will happen beyond the abortion issue if you don’t win elections, with your taxes and everything else,” he told a rally Wednesday in Michigan, another battleground state.

Trump says the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe allows individual states to set their own abortion laws and said in a recent interview with Time magazine that he would defer to states on whether to track women who get abortions or seek to punish them.

Striking the near-total abortion ban from the law books will leave in place a 15-week ban passed in 2022.

Abortion has also become a central issue in the race for Senate, two battleground House contests and the fight for control of the state Legislature, where Republicans control both chambers by tiny margins.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, the likely Democratic Senate nominee, quickly produced an ad highlighting Republican Kari Lake’s support for the anti-abortion law.

Lake, meanwhile, said the ruling “is out of step with Arizonans.” It’s a far cry from her stance two years earlier as a candidate for governor, when she called the near-total abortion ban “a great law,” said she was “incredibly thrilled” that it was on the books and predicted it would be “setting the course for other states to follow.”

Facing pushback from her anti-abortion supporters, Lake has tried to walk a line, noting her own opposition to abortion but, acknowledging the unpopularity of that view, opposing a nationwide abortion ban.

“Whether or not my position on this issue is popular, the cost of this job is not my soul,” said state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a Republican from a safe GOP district who opposes abortion and fought against repealing the 1864 law.

According to AP VoteCast, a broad survey of the electorate, 61% of Arizona voters in the 2022 midterm elections said abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Just 6% said it should be illegal in all cases.

Two-thirds of midterm voters in Arizona said the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade was an important factor in their vote for that election.

About 6 in 10 Arizona voters in that election said they would favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

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Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in Freeland, Michigan, and Anita Snow in Phoenix contributed to this report.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Voting rights advocates said Wednesday they will go to the Supreme Court in hopes of preserving a new majority Black congressional district in Louisiana for the fall elections, the latest step in a complicated legal fight that could determine the fate of political careers and the balance of power in the next Congress.

A divided panel of federal judges on Tuesday rejected a map approved in January by an unusual alliance of Republicans, who dominate the Legislature, and Democrats who want a second mostly Black — and mostly Democratic — congressional district.

Republican state Attorney General Liz Murrill said she would appeal Tuesday’s ruling. And a coalition of individuals and civil rights groups filed a formal notice Wednesday saying they would go to the Supreme Court.

Jared Evans, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, said that by the end of the week advocates will ask the Supreme Court to keep the new maps in place for 2024, pending further legal action. He cited the need to have district maps in place soon. State election officials have said they need to know what maps to use by May 15 for the fall elections.

The same judicial panel that rejected the new map — often referred to by its legislative bill number, SB8 — set a Monday status conference to discuss what the state must do next. Evans said there are numerous options, including the appointment of a special master to draw a map or giving the Legislature another chance. But Evans said time is growing short.

“At this point with the election six months away, the Supreme Court’s going to have to step in and say SB8 can move forward or it can’t,” Evans said.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, meanwhile, expressed frustration with the process.

“The constant inconsistency of the Federal Courts is remarkable and disappointing,” Landry said Wednesday in Baton Rouge. “The people of Louisiana deserve better from our Federal Courts. Either the Legislature is in control of drawing a map or Federal Courts are, but they both can’t be!”

Landry, a former attorney general, had defended a 2022 map with only one mostly Black district among six. But, ruling in a Baton Rouge-filed lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick blocked use of the 2022 map. She said it likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act with boundary lines that divided Black voters among five mostly white districts. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later gave lawmakers a deadline for coming up with a new map.

Landry, who became governor in January, urged the Legislature to draw a new map rather than leave it to the federal courts. With Landry’s backing, SB8 was approved.

But a group of 12 self-identified non-African American voters filed a lawsuit in western Louisiana against the new district, which slashes across the state to link Black populations in four disparate metropolitan areas from the northwest to the southeast. They said it was drawn with race as the predominant motivation.

Two members of a three-judge panel appointed to hear that constitutional challenge sided with the plaintiffs, setting up the pending Supreme Court challenge. A third judge dissented, saying evidence showed political considerations — including protection of the districts of House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republican Leader Steve Scalise — had been a major motivation.

The new map sacrificed the district of Republican incumbent Garret Graves, who supported a GOP opponent of Landry in last year’s governor’s race. State Sen. Cleo Fields, a Black Democratic former congressman, has said he will run for the seat.

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Associated Press reporter Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House has a new curator and Donna Hayashi Smith is the first Asian American to hold the post.

The White House announced her appointment Wednesday, the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Originally from Wahiawa, Hawaii, Hayashi Smith joined the White House curator’s office in 1995 and has now served under five presidents. She had been serving in an acting capacity since last year after the retirement of her predecessor, Lydia Tederick.

As curator, Hayashi Smith will oversee the care of thousands of artifacts in the White House collection, cataloguing and preserving everything from presidential portraits to furniture and more.

Hayashi Smith led the curator’s office through a process in 2022 to ensure that the White House continues to be recognized nationally as an accredited museum.

First lady Jill Biden cited Hayashi Smith’s service under five presidential administrations and said she looked forward to working with her to preserve the White House’s “living history.”

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bill long sought by counties seeking help to manage huge influxes of mail-in ballots during elections in the presidential battleground state and to avoid a repeat of 2020’s drawn-out vote count.

The bill comes barely six months before Pennsylvania could play a decisive role in selecting the next president in November’s election between Democratic President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, a Republican.

The bill passed on party lines, 102-99, as Democrats backed it and Republicans opposed it, warning that it would open the door to fraud. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, supports the bill, and on Wednesday issued a statement urging the Senate to pass it. But it faces long odds in the Republican-controlled chamber.

Under the bill, county election workers could begin processing ballots up to seven days before Election Day.

Counties have sought that kind of a provision for years, even before 2020’s presidential election, to give them more time to process mail-in ballots and avoid a drawn-out post-election count.

Nearly every state allows time before Election Day for workers to process mail-in ballots. Currently, Pennsylvania doesn’t let counties begin processing mail-in ballots before Election Day.

The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania backed the bill, saying that having more time to process mail-in ballots before polls close — called “precanvassing” — will help them manage the workload and ensure quicker results.

“This simple change would significantly improve election administration without compromising ballot security,” Lisa Schaefer, the association’s executive director, said in a statement.

Schaefer asked the Senate to quickly advance the bill to Shapiro so that it can be implemented for November’s general election.

But Senate GOP Majority Leader Joe Pittman insisted Wednesday that Pennsylvania must toughen voter identification requirements as a companion to any legislation on election administration — a demand Republicans have made since 2021.

Democrats have opposed such a change, saying there is scant record of in-person voting fraud and that it will only prevent some registered voters from voting.

A surge in mail-in ballots in 2020’s presidential election shined a spotlight on Pennsylvania’s requirement after it took four days of counting for news agencies to project Biden as the winner of Pennsylvania, giving him the electoral votes necessary to win the White House.

However, Trump and his allies tried to exploit the days it took after polls closed to tabulate the millions of mail-in ballots to spread baseless conspiracy theories and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election.

Republicans revived those claims during Wednesday’s nearly hourlong floor debate.

“Under this legislation, they’ll take votes from anyone, anytime, anywhere, legal or not,” Rep. Martina White, a Republican from Philadelphia, said during floor debate.

One Republican lawmaker referred back to baseless claims that partisans in Philadelphia, a Democratic bastion, shut down vote-counting to falsify enough mail-in ballots for Biden after polls closed to overcome Trump’s advantage among those voting in-person at polling places.

“This vote will take us back in the days where cities close with one leader for president and opened again with another,” said Rep. Eric Nelson, a Republican from Westmoreland.

House Majority Leader Matt Bradford, a Democrat from Montgomery, said it is shameless to suggest that the legislation is partisan and that lawmakers should pass it to help guarantee a timely and accurate election result while avoiding a repeat of 2020.

“This is simply about giving people a timely result in an election so we don’t have what we had in 2020,” Bradford said during floor debate. “The mindless conspiracies. The election denialism. I’ve heard so much over the last 20 minutes of debate that remind me so much of the horrible months that followed the November 2020 election.”

In 2020, 2.65 million ballots were cast by mail in Pennsylvania, the nation’s fifth-most populous state, or almost 40% of the total.

Republicans have been hostile toward mail-in voting since Trump in early 2020 began baselessly smearing it as rife with fraud.

At least partly as a result, the majority of mail-in ballots — usually about 70% — are cast by registered Democrats in Pennsylvania and the majority of in-person voting on Election Day is done by registered Republicans.

In the days and weeks after 2020’s election, Trump and his allies filed lawsuits to try to throw out mail-in ballots and keep Trump in power by overturning Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania.

Republicans have repeatedly gone to court since then to try to invalidate Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law.

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Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter.

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration faced renewed pressure on Wednesday from his fellow Democrats to influence Israel not to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, the city where almost half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people have taken refuge.

Fifty-seven of the 212 Democrats in the House of Representatives signed a letter calling on the administration to take every possible measure to dissuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government from an all-out assault on the city near the Egyptian border.

“We urge you to invoke existing law and policy to immediately withhold certain offensive military aid to the Israeli government, including aid sourced from legislation already signed into law, in order to preempt a full-scale assault on Rafah,” said the letter, dated Wednesday.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter, which was led by Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Madeleine Dean.

Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas has emerged as a significant political liability for the president, particularly among young Democrats. It fueled a wave of “uncommitted” protest votes in Democratic primaries and has also driven the wave of pro-Palestinian protests at U.S. universities.

That is raising worries for Democrats as Biden is locked in a tight re-election rematch against his Republican predecessor Donald Trump.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday he had still not seen a plan for Israel’s promised offensive on Rafah that would protect civilians, repeating that Washington could not support such an assault.

Blinken and Netanyahu met in Jerusalem for 2-1/2 hours on Wednesday, after which Israel repeated that the Rafah operation would go ahead despite the U.S. position and a U.N. warning that it would lead to “tragedy.”

The United States is Israel’s main diplomatic supporter and weapons supplier. Blinken’s visit to Israel came about a month after Biden issued a stark warning that Washington’s policy could shift if Israel fails to take steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Scott Malone and Cynthia Osterman)

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump will speak at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, D.C. later this month as he tries to woo voters beyond the Republican base and avoid losing support to independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Libertarians are some of the most independent and thoughtful thinkers in our Country, and I am honored to join them in Washington, DC, later this month,” Trump said in a statement issued Wednesday. “We must all work together to help advance freedom and liberty for every American, and a second Trump Administration will achieve that goal.”

He went on to make the case that, “If Libertarians join me and the Republican Party, where we have many Libertarian views, the election won’t even be close. We cannot have another four years of death, destruction, and incompetence. WE WILL WORK TOGETHER AND WIN!”

The event comes as Trump’s campaign has ramped up its attacks against Kennedy, who is running as an independent against Trump and President Joe Biden after dropping his Democratic primary bid. Kennedy has appealed to disaffected Democrats and Republicans looking for an alternative to the pending rematch of the 2020 election.

Kennedy has talked up his support for the Libertarian Party, telling CNN in January that he had a “really good relationship” with the party. A Kennedy alliance with the Libertarian Party could expedite his effort to gain ballot access in all 50 states, including battlegrounds that tiny margins could decide in November, though Kennedy told ABC last month that he didn’t plan to run on the Libertarian ticket.

On Wednesday, the primary super PAC supporting Trump blasted out an old video clip of Kennedy that appeared to show him criticizing red states. “RFK hates you!” they wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Kennedy’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While Trump has insisted publicly that he believes Kennedy’s candidacy hurts him less than it does Biden, he has been lacing into him in interviews and on his social media platform.

“RFK Jr. is the most Radical Left Candidate in the race, by far,” he wrote last month on Truth Social, calling Kennedy “a big fan of the Green New Scam, and other economy killing disasters.”

Trump campaign aides also went after him on social media Wednesday, calling him “a radical leftist lunatic,” and charging that, “Any ‘conservative’ or ‘Republican’ letting this left-wing lunatic come on their platform to whitewash his decades of far-left liberal positions & activism are aiding and abetting Joe Biden.”

The Libertarian Party said in a release announcing the speech that they will share a list of their top ten issues with Trump ahead of the convention, “hoping to make an impact on the policy positions of a past, and possibly future, President.”

“For 50 years, we’ve been trying to get our candidates on the main stage with major party POTUS candidates and we’ve finally succeeded in bringing one to our stage,” said Angela McArdle, the party’s chair, in a statement. “We will do everything in our power to use this incredible opportunity to advance the message of liberty.”

By Joseph Ax and Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – More than two dozen Republican state attorneys general sued the Biden administration on Wednesday to stop a new rule that would require gun dealers to obtain licenses and conduct background checks when selling firearms at gun shows and online.

The lawsuits challenge a rule finalized last month that U.S. Justice Department officials said is aimed at closing the “gun show loophole.” Under the rule, those selling weapons at gun shows, other venues and over the internet are subject to the same requirements as gun stores to check the backgrounds of potential buyers.

The rule, which has not yet taken effect, will affect tens of thousands of gun sales a year, according to the Biden administration.

President Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass legislation requiring universal background checks and banning assault-style rifles, but Republican lawmakers oppose such laws as infringing on the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment gun rights protections.

In announcing his state’s lawsuit, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had exceeded its authority in promulgating the new rule.

“With today’s lawsuit, it is my great honor to defend our Constitutionally protected freedoms from the out-of-control federal government,” he said.

Louisiana, Missouri and Utah, along with Gun Owners of America and other gun rights advocacy groups, joined the Texas lawsuit. The case was filed in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, whose only active judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, was appointed by Republican former President Donald Trump. The court has become a preferred venue for conservatives challenging Biden administration policies.

A second lawsuit, led by Arkansas and Kansas and joined by 19 other states, was filed in Arkansas. In addition, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a separate complaint in federal court in Tampa.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Leslie Adler)

By Timothy Gardner and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A Democratic U.S. senator on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to include strict nonproliferation safeguards in any nuclear power deal with Saudi Arabia that might come as part of a potential normalization of relations agreement brokered by Washington between the kingdom and Israel.

The Biden administration has been talking with Saudi Arabia and Israel on a potential peace agreement since before the Oct. 7 deadly attacks by Hamas on Israel and talks have continued during the Israeli war on the militant group in Gaza.

An agreement to help develop nuclear power in Saudi Arabia could benefit the U.S. nuclear industry which would supply technology.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the negotiations with Riyadh still are underway.

Senator Edward Markey, a longtime advocate for nonproliferation safeguards, said in a letter to fellow Democrat Biden that Saudi Arabia, “a nation with a terrible human rights record”, cannot be trusted to use its nuclear program purely for peaceful purposes and will seek to develop nuclear weapons.

Markey and other Democrats are critics of the country and its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, over human rights, his intervention in Yemen’s civil war and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi that U.S. spy agencies assessed was ordered by the prince.

The prince has said for years the kingdom will develop nuclear weapons if regional rival Iran does.

“I urge your Administration to ensure that the path towards Middle East peace holds Saudi Arabia accountable for its appalling human rights practices and constrains its ability

to become a nuclear power,” Markey said in a letter to Biden and other officials.

The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The letter, first reported by Reuters, urges the administration to adopt so-called “gold standard” nonproliferation safeguards, based on the 123 agreement in U.S. nuclear energy law that prohibit uranium enrichment and nuclear reprocessing, two pathways to nuclear weapons. The UAE agreed to these safeguards when it built a nuclear plant in 2021.

Markey also urged the administration to insist that Saudi Arabia also be held to the “additional protocol” standards of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which requires monitoring and inspections.

The National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.

Some experts question whether the timing and political circumstances will allow a U.S.-Saudi deal that leads to Riyadh normalizing relations with Israel.

Perhaps most critically, Saudi Arabia has called for an immediate truce leading to a permanent and sustainable ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, both of which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected.

Time is growing short for the Biden administration to shepherd a U.S.-Saudi civil nuclear agreement and defense pact through the congressional approval process as lawmakers focus on campaigning ahead of the Nov. 5 elections.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Michael Erman)

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) -A federal judge has struck down parts of a North Carolina law restricting patients’ access to the abortion pill mifepristone, which has become the subject of legal battles nationwide.

Chief U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles on Tuesday struck down the state’s requirements that mifepristone be prescribed only by doctors and only in person, as well as a requirement that patients have an in-person follow-up appointment. She said the requirements conflicted with federal law because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) previously considered and rejected them.

The ruling comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case brought by anti-abortion groups that, if successful, would reimpose those same restrictions nationwide.

At the same time, Eagles upheld other North Carolina restrictions, including a requirement that patients have an in-person consultation before taking the pill and undergo an ultrasound and blood test, saying those requirements had never been explicitly rejected by the FDA.

The Republican leaders of North Carolina’s legislature intervened in the case to defend the restrictions after Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat who supports abortion rights, said he would not do so. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Republican legislators enacted the law to control, not protect, women,” Stein said in a statement. “I’ll keep fighting to protect women’s freedoms.”

Plaintiff Amy Bryant, the doctor who brought the lawsuit challenging the North Carolina law, said in a statement that she was “pleased” that the court found the state cannot “second-guess or interfere with the FDA’s expert judgment.”

Mifepristone is the first part of a two-drug medicine used for medication abortion, which is approved by the FDA to terminate pregnancy in the first 10 weeks. Medication abortion accounted for more than 60% of U.S. abortions last year.

The case now before the Supreme Court began with a lawsuit challenging the FDA’s approval of the drug by anti-abortion groups, who last year won an order from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, banning mifepristone altogether.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later narrowed the order to reinstate the in-person and doctor prescribing requirements, which the FDA originally imposed but later lifted. That order is on hold while the Supreme Court considers an appeal from the Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)