Some Senate Republicans emerged disappointed from a closed-door briefing Tuesday with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, saying the agency is not taking a safety review of the abortion pill mifepristone seriously and calling for congressional action to curb access to the drug.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said in an interview Makary failed to give a timeline for completion of the review, explain what the audit will involve and disclose whether it was even underway.

“I think that this safety study is a dead end,” Hawley said. “I just think that FDA is not serious about it. I don’t think that they’re proceeding with any sense of urgency whatsoever. If they’re really proceeding at all. I frankly, can’t tell.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee who organized the briefing for select GOP senators, in a statement also blasted “the lack of progress on HHS and FDA’s promised safety study on these dangerous drugs” as “disappointing,” and complained the review was “moving too slowly.”

It’s not clear what comes next. Republicans have previously tried and failed to impose restrictions on mifepristone, which is used in more than two-thirds of abortions, through government funding legislation. Hawley said he has not yet decided whether to attempt to place guardrails on the drug as part of the next appropriations process or introduce standalone a standalone bill but that he will roll out his plans in the coming weeks.

“I don’t have confidence [the FDA review] is going to amount to anything,” he said. “My view is Congress now needs to get involved.”

Reached for comment, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon referred Blue Light News to a previous agency statement asserting the FDA “is taking care to do this study properly and in the right way.”

“We are planning to complete the study as soon as possible while ensuring we are not cutting any corners from a scientific research standpoint,” the statement reads, adding that such reviews “often take approximately a year or more to conduct.”

Conservative anger with the Trump administration has boiled over in recent months over its decision to leave in place Biden-era rules that expanded access to abortion pills via mail and telemedicine, and for approving a new generic version of the drug. Administration officials took narrower steps in January to roll back access to mifepristone at retail pharmacies, but the anti-abortion movement and their allies in Congress are pressuring the FDA to abolish telemedicine prescription of the pills or ban them altogether.

At the same time, several GOP states are suing the agency, including Cassidy’s Louisiana and Hawley’s Missouri. The Trump administration has tried to rebuff these lawsuits, asking judges to wait until FDA’s ongoing study is completed before issuing a ruling. Anti-abortion activists, tired of waiting, have threatened to withhold resources from the GOP in the upcoming midterm elections if they don’t see action on the drugs.

Democrats are challenging Attorney General Pam Bondi to address the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, who are seated behind her during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing of the Justice Department.

The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, used his opening remarks to introduce Bondi to Epstein’s victims, setting the tone for the tough questions she’s expected to face for her handling of the case against the convicted sex offender.

“To promote justice for the people, you’ve got to listen to the victims, like the women seated behind you today,” said Raskin. “Those are just some of the hundreds of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s global sex trafficking ring who are demanding that the truth be told and are demanding accountability for the abusers who trafficked and raped them.”

Raskin added that Bondi had not yet met with those victims.

In her own opening remarks, Bondi defended her handling of the Epstein files and maintained that if victims’ names were inadvertently released, her Department has moved swiftly to correct those mistakes.

She opted to directly address the victims seated behind her.

“I’m a career prosecutor and despite what the ranking member said, I have spent my entire career fighting for victims, and I will continue to do so,” Bondi said. “I am deeply sorry for what any victim, any victim, has been through, especially as a result of that monster.”

She added that the FBI was waiting to hear from those with information.

But when asked by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) to turn around and directly address the victims and apologize for what the Justice Department has put them through, Bondi refused.

“I am not to get in the gutter for her theatrics,” Bondi said of Jayapal.

Jayapal also asked the Epstein victims seated in the hearing room to stand and raise their hands if they have not been able to meet with the Justice Department to share their stories. Everyone did.

Bondi has faced criticism for months for reneging on her commitment to bring transparency in the Epstein case, starting with when she told Fox Newslast year that Epstein-related materials were “on [her] desk right now to review” but then in July announced no such files would be released.

Since Congress passed legislation compelling the Justice Department to release the Epstein files in their near-entirety, the administration has blown past statuary deadlines to do so. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has complained in recent days that some redactions were overly broad, while other materials appeared to jeopardize the privacy of Epstein’s victims.

The U.S. national debt is on track to reach $64 trillion within a decade as the federal government continues its trend of red-ink balances under President Donald Trump and Republican control of Congress.

The Congressional Budget Office released its marquee report Wednesday on the U.S. fiscal outlook, estimating that the tax and spending package Republicans enacted last summer — along with Trump’s immigration policies — will increase deficits by trillions of dollars over the next decade. That budget gap would essentially cancel out the roughly $3 trillion in deficit reduction Trump’s tariffs are expected to produce.

Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper predicts that the U.S. will run a $1.9 trillion deficit during the current fiscal year as the national debt currently exceeds $38 trillion. The annual deficit is then forecast to grow to $3.1 trillion by 2036.

Growing interest costs and spending on safety-net programs drives the expanding gap between how much money flows into federal coffers each year and how much is doled out.

Debt compared to economic output is also on track to soar in the coming years. CBO predicts that federal debt held by the public will rise from 101 percent of gross domestic product this year to 120 percent in a decade, exceeding the previous high of 106 percent of GDP in 1946.

As the CBO predicted last summer, the Republican megabill Trump signed into law in July will help boost economic growth this year. But that will be partially offset by the economic effects of Trump’s tariffs and increased immigration enforcement.