particular medication would be impacted. now there are some practical alternatives. there s a second drug, which doesn t seem to be the focus of the preliminary injunction, but this is one of the dangers of these sorts of nationwide rulings that a single judge can do on the substantive part of it. you know, i have to say that seems like there s a lot of grounds for appeal. it s a very weak type of argument. the plaintiffs are really cleaning standing on behalf of doctors. this isn t like patients being harmed is the doctor saying that resources would be diverted, so i think the justice department will have some very good grounds for appeal, and i m sure they will. but one thing we have to be mindful of, of course, is at its heart. this is a question of deference to agency expertise. i mean this unprecedented they judged with overall the fda is expertise on this, but one of the dangers as it goes up the chain potentially to the supreme
democrats, it s going to be independent. voters suburban women and we saw that in the 2022 election, but i think you re going to see more and more of this, particularly, we have to look at what happens with this ruling, and phil mattingly. obviously this is something that we could expect the white house to weigh in on momentarily. i would imagine if they haven t already as we were saying the doj was expecting this to come down. so surely the white house has also been bracing for this. alex i ve been watching this very closely. i think they ve known that it could be coming at any moment and they have been waiting for and i think based on where this was coming from the judge that was overseeing this. i think there was some expectations that this was a distinct possibility, and there was also a very clear expectation that they will appeal and appeal very swiftly. don t have the timeline or what that appeal would look like, but they have made that abundantly clear on the front end of thing
access for women all over the united states. if this if this ruling uh, holds up and i think politically if you want to take it one step further. what you re looking at is a judge in a conservative, very, very red state has ruled that perhaps the ruling from the court can be taken even further with this drug and what we just saw, for example, earlier this week is that a liberal candidate and a pivotal race for the wisconsin supreme court. um it was a race that centered on abortion rights and this liberal candidate won because people in the state of wisconsin were upset about what the supreme court had done. this was a male judge matthew kaczmarek in texas. i wanted to bring up wisconsin because david chalian all week we ve been talking about that remarkable dramatic race for the wisconsin
because of the last two decades that it s been on the market, but they are very aware that this could come and now has come and we expect the swift appeal. all right. i want to bring in cnn legal analyst steve vladeck . steve what is your reaction to this ruling from the judge in texas? yeah i mean, it s pretty stunning. i think it says quite a lot that it came down at six pm on good friday. um and i think what everyone s been saying is just right. this isn t an enormous deal. um it s a remarkable ruling when it consider that method. kristen has been approved by the fda for 23 years for a judge to sort of turn around all of a sudden and say, i have concerns that the fda didn t take seriously enough potential harmful side effects when we have 23 years of data that those harms don t really material. the old house and all but the most, you know, marginal cases. um but i think there are two procedural points that s really worth underscoring here. and the first is what you know we were just
because what this judge has done is said that the kind of approval that the fda fda allowed for medication abortions , which are still legal in many states across the country, despite how the supreme court ruled in june, people would not have access to this drug if this ruling becomes permanent nationwide, seven days, the department of justice has to appeal the ruling on behalf of the food and drug administration to go to the fifth circuit. which is a pretty conservative court, but probably not as conservative as this judge who was specifically chosen by the challengers, the challengers opponents to abortion rights had sought out this judge knowing his background, hoping to get a ruling just like this critical of the fda approval process, which is, i said, dates back decades now. and but the judge said that the fda had not adequately considered the public health benefits safety of the