The Read | Two Justices Just Pointed at a Law That Could End Mail-Order Abortion
Plus: Texas Children's pays $10 million to reverse what it did to kids, and the Washington Post wants ICE blamed for a toddler's murder.
It’s Monday!
I know I’m not super excited either.
Random question for you. Did you watch the Ronda Rousey v. Gina Carano “fight” on Saturday night? If you managed to stay away and didn’t blink an eye, it's possible you did. Because it took all of 17 seconds.
I’m not kidding. The commercial for the UFC fight on the White House lawn was longer than the fight. Also, yes. I saw a commercial for the UFC Fight for America 250.
Moving on…
In Today’s Read
The Supreme Court left mail-order mifepristone in place. Thomas and Alito wrote dissents that look more like a how-to guide than a fume.
Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in the country, agreed to pay $10 million and stand up a clinic to reverse the procedures it performed. Call it a confession.
The Washington Post wants ICE blamed for a two-year-old’s murder. Their evidence: she said so.
Thomas Throws a Lifeline to the Battle Over Mail-Order Abortion
The Story.
On May 14, the Supreme Court left mail-order mifepristone in place while Louisiana’s challenge goes back to the Fifth Circuit on remand. Access stays as-is for now. The actual news is the dissents.
Alito called the order “unreasoned” and “remarkable,” and wrote that “what is at stake is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.” Thomas went further. He pointed at the Comstock Act of 1873, which bans the mailing of any drug “designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion,” and wrote that the Court should enforce it on its face. His line: “mifepristone shipped to Louisiana, which bans abortion, causes nearly 1,000 abortions per month. All of this violates the Comstock Act.”
Quick context. Comstock was a moral crusader. Most of the 1873 law banned mailing obscene material. One clause banned mailing abortion drugs. Never repealed. Sat dead under Roe. After Dobbs, it became a live wire nobody had touched. Until Thursday.
The Left’s read. Slate’s headline was “Samuel Alito fumes over abortion access in red states.” Talking Points Memo led with the justices “seething.” Lawyers, Guns & Money called them “two misogynist septuagenarians.” On the left, the story is that the conservatives lost and are mad. The Comstock argument gets treated as a Thomas quirk, not a roadmap. The Intercept is the rare outlet on that side that flagged the Comstock revival as the next phase.
The Right’s read. The Federalist framed the order as the Court “authorizing mail-order abortion.” The Washington Stand called the stay a procedural punt and treated Thomas’s dissent as the playbook. Right-of-center coverage took the Comstock revival as the signal, not an asterisk.
What both sides are skipping. Two sitting justices, including one writing a full-throated invitation, put a 153-year-old statute back on the table as the mechanism. The next state AG who wants to file a Comstock-revival test case now has the bench’s own language to quote in the opening pages. The question stopped being whether the argument existed. It’s now which case carries it.
Where does the case stand? Currently, the Supreme Court has said, “Hold up, wait a minute,” to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that would have blocked mailing the abortion pill mifepristone or sending it after a telehealth visit. That means people can still get the pill by mail for now, while the case continues in the lower courts. It could all return to the Supreme Court for a final decision, which would determine whether mail‑order access to the pill remains legal nationwide or whether stricter limits take effect. Until then, access is unchanged.
The dissent by Alito, and especially Thomas, provides the State AGs with a pretty solid argument. But expect that line of attack to be that the Right is digging up old and antiquated laws to strip women of the right to control their bodies. “Of course, the Right would dig up laws when women were second-class citizens and weaponize them.”
It’s a played-out strategy to attack a law that is still on the books as “old,” as if the age determines enforcement. You know what else is old? The Constitution.
The Comstock argument has been kicking around law review pages for two years. Now, a sitting justice has named the statute, the conduct, and the remedy in writing. Will the State AGs get the memo?
The rebuttal to Comstock will likely be based on federalism. If Washington enforces the 1873 mail statute, it overrides the abortion policy of every blue state. “Let the states decide” was the post-Dobbs principle. However, if a state has decided on no abortions, what right does another state have to mail a drug for at-home abortions?
See how the law gets messy?
Watch the test. When Louisiana refiles, watch which state AG signs on as amicus. Watch whether the Fifth Circuit cites Thomas verbatim. Watch whether DOJ briefs a position. The point is, mail-order abortion is far from settled.
Texas Children’s Pays $10 Million for Detransition Clinic
The Story.
On May 15, Texas AG Ken Paxton announced a settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in the country. Texas Children’s pays $10 million. Five physicians are fired permanently, and their privileges are revoked. The hospital stops performing gender-transition services on minors. It stands up the country’s first “detransition clinic” to provide five years of free care to kids whose transitions need to be reversed. The state alleged Medicaid fraud through false diagnosis codes. The DOJ signed on.
Paxton called it a “monumental day.” Texas Children’s said it agreed to settle “to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation” after “navigating an unconscionable campaign of mistruths and mischaracterizations.”
Translation of the second half: we paid $10 million and rebuilt our practice on the way out.
The Left’s read. NBC News led with Texas Children’s framing. The hospital settled to avoid prolonged litigation; the detransition clinic is “politically driven,” and the campaign against gender-affirming care is “mistruths.” The Texas Tribune and Houston Public Media ran the same beat. Hospital as victim, state as aggressor, medical evidence suppressed.
The Right’s read. The Daily Caller called it the “infamous sex-change hospital” opening the country’s first reversal clinic. Newsweek and Fox 26 Houston led with the financial concession, the doctor firings, and the policy reversal. The settlement reads as substantive admission, not procedural surrender.
What both sides are missing. The hospital’s own settlement language is the buried lead. “To protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.” It’s about the money. If they thought the standard of care was sound, they had every reason to litigate. Instead, the country's largest pediatric hospital fired the doctors, paid the state, and contracted to open a clinic for patients they say didn’t need fixing. Read that again.
After years of gaslighting parents into transitioning their child or risking a dead child, Texas Children’s Hospital admits it’s all about the money, honey.
The AMA, AAP, AACAP, and APA all signed on to “gender-affirming care” as the standard of care for minors. The whole pediatric establishment closed ranks for a decade. Parents who asked questions were told the medicine was settled and they were the problem.
Did Texas Children’s Hospital put up a fight? Defend their doctors? Point to peer-reviewed studies? No. Instead, they opted to pay $10 million to stop performing those procedures, fired the physicians who performed them, and agreed to build the clinic that will undo them.
There has been significant damage caused to a generation of children, and the media know it. That’s why left-side coverage is focused on the “unconscionable campaign of mistruths” line and not on the key paragraph. The one that says Texas Children’s will “cease providing gender-transition interventions” and will “amend its bylaws to trigger automatic relinquishment of privileges for any physician” who violates Texas’s prohibition. They didn’t agree to that because they were tired. They agreed because the lawsuits would expose the truth.
Here’s why the clinic matters more than the $10 million or the firings. The doctors who transitioned these kids never ran detransition services. Almost nobody did, anywhere. The activist class used that absence as a defense: detransition is rare; look at the literature. Of course, it looked rare. The same protocol that pushed kids into transition never tracked the ones coming back. Now, Texas Children’s is contractually obligated to track them, treat them, and document it.
Watch what happens next. The detransition clinic will develop the country’s first published clinical pathway for puberty-blocker and cross-sex-hormone reversals. Those doctors will see patient outcomes on the record. Every plaintiff’s attorney in the country gets to read them. The institutional class that spent ten years calling concerned parents transphobes has nowhere to stand once those papers hit PubMed.
Texas just made the first hospital pay for the cleanup.
ICYMI
A Two-Year-Old Is Dead. The Washington Post Wants ICE Blamed
The Story.
On May 16, the Washington Post published a long-form piece on Wendy Hernandez Reyes, a Honduran woman in the U.S. illegally. She was pulled over in Baldwin County, Alabama in January, handed to ICE by 287(g) deputies, and deported January 26. Her two-year-old son Orlín, a U.S. citizen, was beaten to death in Florida in March by the uncle the family had arranged to care for him.
The spine of the piece is a contested claim. Hernandez says she repeatedly asked ICE to take Orlín with her and was ignored. ICE says she agreed to leave him with family. WaPo does not produce the tablet logs, the officer notes, or the witness statements from her sister.
The undisputed facts. She had a 2023 final order of removal from a missed asylum hearing. ICE officers at the scene asked her sister what should be done with the children. The sister called the uncle, Maldonado, who agreed to take Orlín and three cousins. Hernandez told the Post she “reasoned it would be best for Orlín to stay with his cousins.” She also told the Post that Maldonado had been violent toward her sister “but never the children.” The uncle then killed Orlín.
The Left’s read. WaPo, Yahoo News, The Mirror, and IBTimes all ran the same headline frame: “ICE blamed her.” The mother’s account anchors the piece. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons becomes the villain for issuing a post-death press release calling her abandonment her choice. The killing is the lead, deportation is the cause.
The Right’s read. The Washington Times and similar outlets framed it as the predictable outcome of a final removal order against someone whose family arranged the caregiver. She had a 2023 order on the books. The family chose the uncle. The uncle is the murderer. The agency enforced a ruling.
What both sides are skipping. The press has no version of this enforcement that it can report fairly. ICE keeps mothers and children together in the same facility; you get “children in cages.” A mother brings her U.S.-citizen child on removal; you get “ICE deported a U.S. citizen.” A parent goes alone after the family arranges the caregiver; you get “ICE blamed her.” Three framings, all bad, applied to the same statutory framework.
It is devastating and horrifying what happened to this baby. The uncle killed him. A two-year-old is dead. Everything else in the WaPo piece is contested.
WaPo built a 4,000-word piece on a “he said, she said” about a tablet conversation between Hernandez and an ICE officer. They didn’t produce the tablet logs. They didn’t produce the officer’s contemporaneous notes. They didn’t interview the sister who called the uncle on her own phone. The reader's acceptance of the mother's story as true determines the piece's emotional impact. WaPo’s own reporting quotes her saying Maldonado had been violent toward her sister, “but never the children.” So the mother knew the caregiver had a violent history, yet opted to leave her child with Maldonado, even though taking the child with her was an option. That detail is in paragraph 27.
“A two-year-old is dead. The uncle killed him. Everything else in the WaPo piece is contested.”
I’m not running cover for ICE. Blanche’s press release a week after a child’s murder was a self-inflicted wound. I understand that ICE and the administration would face attacks regardless, but it is possible to show compassion while enforcing immigration laws.
This story is likely to gain traction, and they will bury or omit important details altogether, just like WaPo did. Policy critique is justified. But ICE’s duty is not to track children outside its custody. They were doing what the parent requested. The Biden administration lost track of thousands of children in its custody, and WaPo had little to say about it.
Watch to see if other outlets pick up this story. What is the framing and the lead? Also, what happens at trial? Maldonado will be charged. Discovery will produce the tablet logs. WaPo didn’t obtain. Was the mother prevented from reuniting with her child? When the documents come in, will the Post run the correction at the same length and with the same headline weight? Watch and see.
Cassidy is out. Sen. Bill Cassidy lost his Louisiana Republican primary Saturday, the first GOP senator to lose renomination in nearly a decade. Rep. Julia Letlow (Trump-endorsed) and state Treasurer John Fleming advance to a June 27 runoff. Cassidy finished third at 25%. Trump celebrated on Truth Social: “his political career is OVER!” The 2021 impeachment vote ages well. NBC News
U.S. and Nigerian forces killed the No. 2 of ISIS on Saturday. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, the global director of operations for ISIS, was killed alongside several of his lieutenants in a joint precision strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin. AFRICOM called it a “highly complex precision air-land operation.” No U.S. casualties. Fox News
Israel killed the architect of October 7. Izz al-Din al-Haddad, head of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, was killed in an Israeli airstrike Friday night in Gaza City’s Remal neighborhood. The IDF confirmed Saturday. Al-Haddad personally planned the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and oversaw the breach of the eastern fence. Hamas called it “treacherous and cowardly.” Al Jazeera
Iran is on the clock. Trump sent Tehran a nuclear proposal Saturday and warned of “very bad” consequences if the regime stalls. Sunday he said “there won’t be anything left of them” if Iran doesn’t move. He’s meeting with national security advisers on May 19 to discuss potential military action. The ceasefire he called “life support” last week now has a deadline. NBC News
Voting rights rallies hit Montgomery. Thousands rallied Saturday in Alabama against the Supreme Court’s late-April Callais ruling, which struck down Louisiana’s majority-minority district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Florida’s House approved a new map within an hour of the ruling. The 2026 midterm map is being redrawn live. The Hill
That’s The Read! Thanks for all the positive feedback on this new format. Share it with a friend.
See you on Wednesday!
If The Read is doing the cross-check work for you, send it to a friend who’s still chasing the framing instead of the facts.