Read Online  |  May 2, 2026  |  E-Paper  | 🎧 Listen

“We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”

— Carl Jung

Ivan Pentchoukov
National Editor

Good morning! It’s Saturday. Here are today’s top stories:

• Americans cannot receive abortion drug mifepristone in the mail, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court said in a temporary rulingon Friday.
• U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has ordered the withdrawal of about 5,000 troops from Germany.
• The governors of Alabama and Tennessee on May 1 called to convene special sessions for lawmakers to review congressional maps after a landmark Supreme Court ruling that limits a section of the Voting Rights Act.
• President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will increase tariffs on cars and trucks imported from the European Union to 25 percent, saying the policy will take effect next week.
• 🍵 Health: Try a digital detox as a cure to the never-ending stress and overstimulation.

Mifepristone tablets seen in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Ames, Iowa, on July 18, 2024. (Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo)

Federal Court Blocks Abortion Drug Mifepristone From Being Sent via Mail

Americans won’t be able to receive abortion drug mifepristone in the mail, according to a temporary ruling by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court on May 1.

“FDA conceded it had failed to adequately study whether remotely prescribing mifepristone is safe,” the three-judge panel in New Orleans ruled on Friday.

The decision will block the drug from being shipped via mail until the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can ensure the drugs are “safe and effective” before they can be marketed in the United States.

Mifepristone, often called “the abortion pill,” is part of a two-drug regimen that allows a woman “to end a pregnancy up to 70 days into gestation,” according to Johns Hopkins University.

The FDA first approved mifepristone in 2000, but doctors were only allowed to prescribe it after three in-person visits.

The procedure changed in 2023 after the Biden administration expanded access to “medication abortion,” which provided a pathway for patients to avoid an in-person visit to the doctor and, instead, order the drug online to be shipped to their house.

The state of Louisiana challenged the rule in 2025, arguing the justification for allowing this was based on “flawed or nonexistent data.”

Louisiana alleged the medication “resulted in numerous illegal abortions” in the state and it also made women pay “thousands in Medicaid bills” for being harmed by mifepristone.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill called Friday’s decision a “victory for life!”

“The Biden abortion cartel facilitated the deaths of thousands of Louisiana babies (and millions in other states) through illegal mail-order abortion pills. Today, that nightmare is over, thanks to the hard work of my office and our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom,” Murrill wrote.

“I look forward to continuing to defend women and babies as this case continues.” (More)

POLITICS

• President Donald Trump addressed a standing-room-only crowd of approximately 3,000 supporters at The Villages Charter School on Friday, highlighting his administration’s efforts to benefit seniors.
• A Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing issued one of the strongest congressional warnings to date about China’s growing role in suspected undersea cable sabotage, with lawmakers and witnesses urging the United States and its allies to adopt a more assertive deterrence posture in both the Baltic Sea and the Indo‑Pacific.
• Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a major election reform bill on April 30, arguing it would place “significant operational burdens” on the state’s Division of Elections months before high-stakes statewide and federal contests. The bill, at least a decade in the making, sought to allow absentee voters and others to track their ballotsand see when they had been received and counted.

LATEST NEWS

• The U.S. national debt has surpassed the size of the economy, reaching its highest level since World War II, excluding a brief pandemic-era spike, according to new data that is sharpening concerns about the country’s long-term fiscal trajectory.
• The Cigna Group, one of the country’s largest health services and insurance firms, is joining others, including Aetna and UnitedHealthcare, and will no longer offer insurance through the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.”
• OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma permanently ceased operationson May 1 after a federal judge sentenced the company to $5.5 billion in fines and penalties tied to its 2020 guilty plea to charges of deceiving government regulators and paying kickbacks to doctors to boost opioid sales. The ruling cleared the way for a broader $7.4 billion bankruptcy settlement resolving thousands of opioid lawsuits.

MORNING READ: An idea to return parts of Virginia back into the District of Columbia began on social media. It is now a bill before Congress and some Republicans think President Trump could accomplish the transfer with an executive order.

US President Donald Trump waves after his arrival at Ocala International Airport, in Ocala, Florida on May 1, 2026. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

IRAN WAR

• President Donald Trump said he’s still not satisfied with Iran’s peace offerings, hours after Iranian negotiators relayed a new proposal.
• The Treasury Department on Friday warned it will impose sanctions on ships that pay a toll to Iran to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, saying that even charitable donations would be impacted.
• President Donald Trump broadened U.S. sanctions on Cuba’s communist government.
• ExxonMobil and Chevron have said they won’t boost oil production despite the Trump administration’s calls for them to do so to help address the energy shortage caused by the war with Iran.
• President Trump said that gas prices will “fall like a rock” when the war with Iran ends.

WORLD

• President Trump congratulated Ali Faleh al-Zaidi on his nomination as the next prime minister of Iraq. Trump invited al-Zaidi to come to Washingtonfor an official visit once the new Iraqi government is formed.
• April 26 marked the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Several experts, as well as the French Association for Scientific Information, an organization backed by Nobel-laureate scientists, caution that public memory of the disaster has been shaped less by epidemiological evidence than by a long-running narrative effort sustained by ideological and economic interests.
• U.S. and Chinese officials have discussed creating a new Board of Trade to help manage trade ties between the world’s two largest economies.
• Brazil’s Congress voted to override President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s veto and adopt a bill that would allow former President Jair Bolsonaro’s 27-year prison sentence to be reduced.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he is seeking details on a short-term ceasefire proposed by Moscow, which Russian President Vladimir Putin mentioned to U.S. President Donald Trump.

 

OPINION

• America Deserves Bigger Debates, Not Better Slogans—by Joel Salatin (Read)
• The Surgeon General Nominee on Lockdowns and Mandates—by Jeffrey A. Tucker (Read)

The May full moon, known as the “Flower Moon”, next to a tree in Kuwait City on May 1, 2026. (Yasser Al-Zayyat/AFP via Getty Images)

📸 Day in Photos: Astronauts at NYSE, Strikes in Lebanon, and Nepal Demolitions (Look)

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💛 Inspiration: They Grew Up on 15-Second Videos. Now They Sit Through 3-Hour Operas (Read)

🎵 Music: Mozart – Sonata In F (Listen)

FILM

Mackenzie (Ella Purnell) and Rene Bartlett (Bruce Greenwood), in “Wildlike.” (GJW+)

‘Wildlike’: A Girl’s Dangerous Trek Into Alaska’s Hinterlands 

Today, streaming platforms can fling obscure wilderness dramas right onto our flat screens all day and night, sandwiched between baking competitions and terrible sitcoms. There’s so much digital junk out there that it’s genuinely thrilling to finally click on something brilliant.

A couch-scrolling marathon led to director Frank Hall Green’s 2014 feature “Wildlike.” It’s mostly flown under the radar since its original film festival run but is now available on streaming services, just waiting for people to hit play.

The story captures the immense scale of the Alaskan frontier, as a teenage girl flees an incredibly ugly situation and throws herself into an unforgiving landscape.

The camera drinks in colossal mountains while nature functions as a huge, indifferent beast out there. The trees and rocky trails stretch out forever. The Alaskan landscape threatens to swallow a runaway kid whole while simultaneously offering her the only real sanctuary she has left. She’s just trying to piece her fractured self back together by simply putting one foot in front of the other.

Mackenzie (Ella Purnell) gets sent to Alaska after her deadbeat, drug-addled mother can’t hold things together. She lands in Juneau with her uncle (Brian Geraghty), who pretends to be the world’s best relative.

That living situation turns bad fast. When she realizes that nobody’s coming to save her, she grabs her backpack and bolts. She formulates a rough idea that she needs to get back to Seattle, where her mom is. (More)

“Wildlike” is now available on Gan Jing World. As an exclusive to our subscribers, the film will be available to watch for free until Sun, May 3.

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Thanks for reading 🙏

Have a wonderful day!

—Ivan Pentchoukov, Madalina Hubert, and Kenzi Li.

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