Month: December 2025

In 2026, the biggest battles over abortion will not be at the polls.

There will be a few contested measures on state ballots. Next year, Nevada’s government will ask residents to approve constitutional protection for abortion rights for the second time, as required by state law. The same measure passed in 2024 with just over 64% of the vote.

Virginians will likely see a similar ballot initiative. In November 2025, voters there cemented a majority for Democrats in the state legislature, and the House of Delegates is expected to put forth an abortion rights ballot measure to voters in 2026.

Anti-abortion proponents in Missouri want to undo an amendment protecting abortion rights that voters passed in 2024. They’re advancing a new measure that could strip residents of the reproductive rights that are now constitutionally enshrined.

However, the most consequential questions about abortion in 2026 could be answered at the federal level, by the Trump administration or in the courts. As a scholar of reproductive health law, I’m watching how federal judges and agencies respond to conservative efforts to restrict or end people’s access to mailed abortion medication.

Medication abortion in the courts

Over 25 years ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone – one of two drugs commonly paired together to end a pregnancy. Since that time, medication abortion has been closely regulated by the FDA and is under attack.

In 2022, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a coalition of anti-abortion physicians, sued the FDA for approving mifepristone in 2000 and for each time the agency eased a restriction on mifepristone thereafter, in 2016 and 2021. The complaint argued that the FDA failed to consider evidence establishing the harm caused by medication abortion – claims roundly rejected by decades of rigorous, peer-reviewed research.

The Supreme Court in 2024 ruled that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine lacked standing to sue because FDA regulation of medication abortion caused no actual injury to the doctors it represented, who do not prescribe mifepristone or perform abortions.

Yet the case lives on in lower federal courts. There is ongoing litigation, and politicians are taking up the fight over mailed medication abortion.

Kansas, Missouri and Idaho intervened in the Alliance lawsuit in 2023, seeking to establish standing, and Louisiana sued the FDA in a separate case challenging the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone.

The pending actions focus on the FDA’s decision in 2021 to lift the requirement that patients pick up mifepristone in person, which has permitted patients to receive medication abortion by mail. These states claim this development is dangerous and threatens their right to enforce their abortion bans.

In October 2025, a federal court in Hawaii came to a different conclusion. The court concluded that because mifepristone is very safe, the FDA must reconsider whether the drug necessitates any restrictions at all.

The politics of medication abortion

The dispute over medication abortion is playing out in Washington, D.C., too.

In 2025, 51 Republican senators and 22 Republican attorneys general asked the FDA to reinstate the 2021 in-person restriction and upend the transit of abortion pills.

In response to Republicans’ push to restrict or withdraw the availanlity of mifepristone, 47 Democratic senators and 20 attorneys general issued letters supporting mifepristone’s safety. The letters questioned a pledge by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his FDA chief to commence a “review” of the drug. The Democratic senators’ letter pressed the agency to remove all remaining restrictions on mifepristone.

In early December, Bloomberg reported that the FDA had quietly postponed its planned mifepristone “review” until after the 2026 midterm elections.

The battle over telehealth abortion care

Decades of research demonstrates that medication abortion is safe and effective. When commenced before 10 weeks’ gestation, the two-drug method is effective about 98% of the time. Complications, such as infection or hemorrhage, are rare; they occur in perhaps a fraction of a percent of all medication abortions.

Yet courts and legislators cannot agree on basic facts, in part due to widespread disinformation about abortion care, and anti-abortion forces have waged a concerted national campaign to stop mailed abortion pills.

Today, no part of the medication abortion process needs to be done in person: The patient, provider and pharmacy can all interact virtually.

Mailed medication abortion is popular nationwide, particularly in states with abortion bans. Because of mailed medication abortion, the average number of abortions nationwide has actually increased since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, reversing abortion protections under the U.S. Constitution.

Providers in so-called “shield” states are a key reason for this. Eight U.S. states have laws that shield providers from civil, criminal and professional consequences for delivering reproductive health care to out-of-state patients.

In these shield states, doctors may prescribe abortion medication no matter where the patient lives, so long as that care is delivered by a provider licensed and located in the shield state, complying with the shield state’s laws.

These laws are the subject of legal conflicts between anti-abortion states and shield states.

Late in 2024, Texas sued a doctor in New York, a shield state, for violating Texas abortion and licensure laws. In early 2025, Louisiana indicted the same New York physician.

Texas won its case in a Texas court and then asked New York to enforce the judgment of more than $100,000 in fines and fees. A New York court has refused to do so, citing its shield law. New York also rejected Louisiana’s request to extradite the doctor to stand trial for the same reason.

On Dec. 4, 2025, Texas officially enacted the first bill in the country that explicitly targets shield laws. Passed in September 2025, HB 7 allows private citizens to file lawsuits against a person or entity for attempting or intending to mail abortion pills into the state.

Watch the courts and the FDA

Having written about shield laws extensively, I believe these interstate conflicts will land, sooner or later, before the Supreme Court. Right now, state and federal courts are deciding the issues.

If judges determine that shield laws are unconstitutional or that the FDA acted illegally, courts could substantially alter people’s ability to gain access to medication abortion.

So could the FDA. If it reimposes an unnecessary restriction on mifepristone, meaning the drug would no longer be widely available through telehealth, that decision would curb how 1 in 4 women in the U.S. receive abortion care today.

But opinion polls indicate that the majority of Americans do not think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, and they vote accordingly.

In November 2025, Democrats won significant elections, for example, in New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Abortion was absent from ballots in these states this year, but these races still held significance for abortion rights.

The election of a pro-choice governor and legislature in Virginia, for example, all but guarantees that abortion will continue to be legal in the last Southern state to protect broader abortion rights. Likewise, Pennsylvanians opted to keep the state supreme court’s liberal majority, which struck down the state prohibition on Medicaid payment for abortion.

In 2024, two years after the fall of Roe v. Wade, 14 states put forth ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right. Eleven passed.

With little political support to pass a nationwide abortion ban, making it illegal to mail abortion pills is the most immediate way to obstruct reproductive health care in states with abortion bans.

The question for abortion in 2026, then, is: Will courts or federal forces do what democratic processes cannot?

This story was published in collaboration with Rewire News Group, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering reproductive and sexual health.

Rachel Rebouché does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

In federal courtrooms across America, a pattern has emerged in cases in which immigrants are being rounded up and jailed without a hearing. That’s a departure from fundamental constitutional protections in the U.S. that provide the right to a hearing before indefinite imprisonment.

In response, federal judges are systematically rejecting the Trump administration’s attempt to drastically expand who can be locked up without a hearing while awaiting deportation proceedings.

The Trump White House policy has been challenged in at least 362 cases in federal district courts, according to a recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Challengers have prevailed in 350 of those cases – decided by over 160 different judges sitting in about 50 different courts across the United States.

Behind those numbers are thousands of people whose freedom hangs in the balance while courts decide whether their imprisonment is lawful.

Trump administration officials claim they are targeting only “the worst of the worst” in immigration enforcement. Yet nearly three-quarters of people detained had no criminal history at all. Of those with criminal histories, many involved only minor offenses such as traffic violations.

The immigrants are in civil immigration proceedings to determine whether they can remain in the United States. Yet under the administration’s new policy, many are being held in jail-like facilities indefinitely, including “state-run prisons located in remote areas, soft-sided tent structures, military bases, and even in prisons in other countries,” according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute think tank.

As a law professor who studies due process in immigration proceedings, I view the overwhelming judicial consensus against this policy as the federal courts performing their essential constitutional function: checking executive overreach. The courts are enforcing fundamental due process protections.

Whether this consensus will prevail, however, depends on appeals courts and, ultimately, the Supreme Court.

A radical reinterpretation

The current controversy centers on a policy shift the Department of Homeland Security implemented in July 2025.

In an internal memo, DHS reinterpreted decades-old immigration law to classify virtually all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as “applicants for admission” who are subject to mandatory detention under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

For 30 years, this provision applied primarily to people apprehended at the border shortly after entering the country. The new interpretation extends it to anyone present in the U.S. illegally. That includes people who entered years or decades ago, have established families and businesses and are pursuing legal pathways to remain in the U.S.

The practical effect of the change is that people who were previously entitled to request release on bond while their deportation cases proceeded are now subject to automatic, indefinite detention without court review of whether their imprisonment is justified.

Courts overwhelmed by petitions

Within months of the July policy announcement, more than 700 emergency habeas petitions – legal challenges to unlawful imprisonment – reached federal courts nationwide.

In Michigan alone, U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou – a Trump appointee – received more than 100 individual cases from detainees challenging their imprisonment. Then, 97 additional detainees filed a joint lawsuit. Cases arose across the country as immigrants who were arrested at workplaces, courthouses or during routine check-ins with immigration officers asked federal courts to order their release or grant them bond hearings.

The Trump administration has fought these cases on multiple fronts. It has argued that the detention policy is lawful and that federal courts lack jurisdiction to review it at all. The government has invoked provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that it claims strip courts of jurisdiction over certain immigration decisions.

But federal judges have largely rejected these jurisdictional arguments. They have found that courts retain the power to review whether detentions comply with the Constitution and federal law.

As one district court judge explained, accepting the government’s position would mean the executive branch could detain noncitizens indefinitely without ever having to justify that detention to a court. It’s a result that would raise “serious constitutional concerns” about suspending habeas corpus, the fundamental right to challenge unlawful imprisonment.

Judge Kaplan similarly concluded that the “current administration’s unilateral decision that all noncitizens … are to be mandatorily detained affords to such individuals no process, let alone due process. It is unconstitutional.”

The policy’s ripple effects extend beyond the courts.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained a record 66,000 people in November 2025 – more than any previous administration had ever held at one time. The American Immigration Council, which advocates for immigration rights, documented 23 deaths in ICE detention during fiscal year 2025. The previous four years combined saw 24 such deaths.

A nationwide remedy

The piecemeal nature of hundreds of individual court rulings creates its own problems. Each emergency petition requires rushed briefing and a hearing. That strains the courts and detained immigrants’ ability to secure representation. Outcomes can vary based on which judge hears a case, creating geographic disparities in who remains detained and who is released.

That’s why the November decision in Maldonado Bautista v. Santacruz is potentially transformative. U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes certified a nationwide class of noncitizens subject to the policy and separately ruled that the government’s interpretation of the law was wrong – detainees are entitled to bond hearings. Combined with the nationwide class certification, this ruling could require the Trump administration to provide bond hearings to thousands of people currently in mandatory detention.

But implementation has been uneven. Immigration judges – who are Justice Department employees, not independent federal judges – have responded inconsistently to Judge Sykes’ order.

In a recent immigration court decision in Memphis, Tenn., a judge denied a bond hearing request. The judge stated that further guidance from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a Department of Justice office, was required before complying with Sykes’ order.

Attorneys representing the class say they’ve seen similar resistance from some immigration judges, while others have begun granting bond hearings. They plan to return to federal court in January 2026 to present evidence of this confusion and seek further relief.

The near-unanimous rejection by federal judges – insulated from political pressure by lifetime appointments – demonstrates why the Constitution grants judges life tenure. Federal courts remain the final check when executive action threatens fundamental due process rights.

Cassandra Burke Robertson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted Indiana Senate Republicans would “do the right thing” Thursday when they convene to render a final decision on a state House-passed map that President Donald Trump demanded to give their party two pickup opportunities in Congress.

It would be an improvement over their 7-2 seat advantage in the state’s current congressional map, and is being decided as part of a national redistricting arms race that Trump kicked off to influence next year’s midterms.

Johnson also acknowledged for the first time making individual phone calls to Indiana senators in recent days. The strategy, first reported by POLITICO, came on the heels of his larger post-Thanksgiving call with state House Republicans.

“Well, because they’re in the final stages of that process,” Johnson told POLITICO Wednesday night, explaining why he made the calls. “And I was told that there was some Indiana state senators who would like to talk to me and ask questions about the national perspective on it. And I shared that with them and told them I was encouraging them. I want everybody to make the decision that, you know, comports with their conscience, that they feel good about.”

The calls have represented a marked increase in Johnson’s involvement in the redistricting wars, which early on he sidestepped by saying states should decide whether to redraw the lines. But now he is racing to keep up with his counterpart, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has been closely involved in the process to redistrict states across the map.

It’s also a marked difference from the White House, which has threatened and intimidated reluctant Republicans ahead of Indiana’s nail-biter vote.

The vote Thursday in the Republican-controlled Senate is expected by both sides to be a close one, and it remains unclear how many of the chamber’s 40 GOP senators have shifted since they stalemated at 19-19 last month on a determination that was a proxy for the gerrymandering fight. The map needs 26 votes to pass, and assuming all 10 Democrats oppose it, Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, long a proponent of mid-decade redistricting, can break a 25-25 tie.

“I had some great conversations there,” Johnson said of the calls. “They have some, some great patriots serving the people in the state of Indiana. And I enjoyed that. I met and talked with a lot of the House members when they were in their phase of that. So I believe they’ll do the right thing.”

In November, Johnson also addressed a growing list of elected Indiana Republicans who have faced swattings — false reports of danger that bring an aggressive law enforcement response designed to intimidate the target — and pipe bomb threats.

“I don’t think you can put the blame on the president for any of that,” Johnson said of Trump, who has publicly blasted the state’s GOP holdouts and not made efforts to tamp down the threats.

State senators have described Johnson as taking a lighter touch with Hoosier Republicans.

​Politics