NPR News: 05-01-2026 11PM EDT
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Willman.
What recent legal decision affected telemedicine abortion access in the U.S.?
A panel of judges in Louisiana has ended access to telemedicine abortion nationally. As NPR's Selina Simmons-Duffin reports, doctors and attorneys are now scrambling to understand the implications of the decision.
The case was brought by the state of Louisiana against the Food and Drug Administration. Their argument centered around the FDA's decision to remove an in-person requirement for patients receiving mifepristone, one of the medications used for abortion and miscarriage management. A district court judge put the case on hold in April, but a panel on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Louisiana. The Fifth Circuit ruling ends telemedicine mifepristone access for the whole country, effective immediately. The drug makers are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Doctors say mifepristone is safe, that the in-person requirement is medically unnecessary, and that it makes it harder for women to access abortion.
Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News, Washington.
Major tech companies, including Amazon and Nvidia, are set to expand their classified military work. As NPR's Bobby Allen tells us, the Trump administration has announced new deals to tap leading Silicon Valley firms for battlefield operations.
Pentagon officials say Microsoft, Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and other companies will soon make the U.S. military an AI-first fighting force. The Pentagon's new deals mean cutting-edge AI tools will be used to generate target lists for military strikes and to analyze data before deploying lethal weapons. The deals come as Anthropic refuses to let the Defense Department use its technology for things like mass surveillance and autonomous drones. Anthropic's pushback has led to litigation and President Trump ordering the federal government to cut ties with the company. Trump officials are hoping the new deals with Silicon Valley's biggest players will lead to a compromise from Anthropic, which did not return a request for comment.
Bobby Allen, NPR News.
President Trump has again called for ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel over a joke. And former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted again for posting a photo Trump says is a threat. NPR's Frank Langford has more on what some voters think about all this.
Democrats and Republicans, I spoke to agree. Jimmy Kimmel's jokes are constitutionally protected. Richard Conkey is a Republican, an electrical contractor in North Beach in Maryland. He's not a fan of Kimmel's humor. I don't like it personally. I don't think he should be doing it. But, I mean, it is freedom of speech. Conkey thinks Comey should be prosecuted for what Trump has characterized as a call for violence. But other Republicans and Democrats I spoke with disagreed. Donald Long is a Democrat who owns a restaurant in Upper Marlboro. He says Trump criticizes and threatens others. I think if he's able to dish it, he has to be able to take it. Long says the president is the biggest threat to free speech in the country.
Frank Lankford, NPR News, North Beach, Maryland.
And you're listening to NPR News. President Trump today issued an executive order that broadens U.S. sanctions against the Cuban government. They expand penalties on the government along with businesses that do business with Havana. Cuba is calling the measures coercive and says it will not be intimidated by Trump's actions. More than 2,600 people from 150 countries were supposed to travel to Zambia this week for RightsCon to talk about human rights and technology. But now that's been canceled. And as NPR's Emily Fang reports, conference organizers say it's because of pressure from Chinese officials.
Last week, China and Zambia signed a new economic development agreement. And two days later, even though conference organizers say that they'd received a public endorsement from the Zambian government, things changed. A Zambian government official told organizers that Chinese diplomats were objecting to the attendance of people from Taiwan, the island China one day wants to control.
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