The Dictatorship
Why it matters that conservatives are claiming victory over Costco
On Thursday, Costco said it would not begin stocking the abortion medication mifepristone at its more than 500 pharmacies, and conservative groups declared victory following a yearlong pressure campaign. Whether the groups are actually responsible for the wholesale chain’s decision is unclear, but they are framing it as a success and pledging to target retailers that already dispense the drug, which would be a blow to abortion access.
In August 2024, a coalition including far-right law firm Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Inspire Investing — which bills itself as “empowering Christian investors through biblically responsible investing” — sent letters to Costco, Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons and McKesson urging them not to start dispensing mifepristone. The letter to Costco in particular claimed that 6,000 members signed a petition for it not to stock the drug, implying that they might take their business elsewhere.
A coalition including far-right law firm Alliance Defending Freedom and Inspire Investing — which bills itself as “empowering Christian investors through biblically responsible investing” — sent letters to Costco, Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons and McKesson urging them not to start dispensing mifepristone.
In a statement shared with BLN, Costco said, “Our position at this time not to sell mifepristone, which has not changed, is based on the lack of demand from our members and other patients, who we understand generally have the drug dispensed by their medical providers.”
The company did not respond to a follow-up question about how it assessed demand for a medication it doesn’t dispense. The potential interest wouldn’t be limited to the chain’s paid members, as nonmembers can fill prescriptions at its pharmacies. It also wouldn’t be cabined to abortions, since mifepristone is used off label to manage miscarriages.
The Washington Post reports that Costco had deliberated for more than a year about whether to offer mifepristone and decided this month not to do so; the paper cites anonymous sources familiar with the conversations.
Still, ADF is taking credit for Costco maintaining the status quo. As the organization’s corporate engagement legal counsel Michael Ross told Bloomberg News“It’s a very significant win and it’s one we hope to build on this coming year.” Ross added that ADF will turn its focus to CVS and Walgreens, which have been dispensing the drug in states where abortion is legal since early 2024.
It’s a relatively recent development that pharmacies could even stock this drug, which is typically used alongside misoprostol to end an early pregnancy, and conservatives are trying everything they can to shove the genie back in the bottle.
Mifepristone has long been overregulated in the U.S., and for two decades after its approval, the medication had to be dispensed in person by the health care provider who prescribed it. The Covid pandemic led to prescriptions via telemedicine that could be fulfilled by mail-order pharmacies, a change made permanent in late 2021. Then, in January 2023, the Food and Drug Administration said for the first time that brick-and-mortar pharmacies could dispense the drug. CVS and Walgreens swiftly announced plans to stock the medication in states where it was legal.
A month later, 20 Republican attorneys general wrote to CVS and Walgreens and claimed that they might be in violation of a federal law known as the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity statute passed in 1873. Conservatives have argued that the long-dormant law prohibits sending abortion-causing drugs and devices through the mail or carriers like UPS and FedEx. But the same day as the pharmacy change, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice released legal guidance saying that the Comstock Act can’t be enforced against the shipment of abortion drugs as long as the sender doesn’t know the pills will be used illegally.
ADF’s letters to Costco and others cited the AGs’ claims on Comstock, and lobbed a threat that a change in administration could result in federal prosecutions should the retailers begin stocking mifepristone. “Last year, 20 attorneys general wrote letters advising pharmacies that receiving and dispensing the drug by mail is expressly prohibited by the Comstock Act and many state laws. Violating the Comstock Act alone carries a prison sentence of up to ten years,” the letters read. “The statute of limitations is five years, so the current political leadership at the U.S. Department of Justice cannot provide you cover if the administration changes parties.”
The bigger picture here is that groups like ADF are not satisfied with only conservative-led states passing abortion bans. Their long-term goal is to ban nearly all abortions nationwide under the 14th Amendmentand they’re hoping that courts will aid them along the way to realizing that project by ruling that the Comstock Act is enforceable, or that the FDA was wrong to allow telemedicine prescriptions, or both.
ADF took a case to the Supreme Court in 2024 from physicians seeking to end telemedicine prescriptions, and while the justices said those plaintiffs didn’t have standing to sue, that litigation continues thanks to three state AGs who joined the case. Missouri AG Andrew Bailey, who organized the letter to CVS and Walgreens, is leading that case. Most of the other AGs who signed the pharmacy letter have also signed an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit.
Abortion pills were used in nearly two-thirds of all documented terminations in the U.S. in 2023, and by the end of 2024, about 1 in 4 abortions were provided via telemedicine. Pharmacies stocking abortion pills would make them more accessible than they already are, which is a threat to conservatives’ current ban-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy.
Abortion pills were used in nearly two-thirds of all documented terminations in the U.S. in 2023.
The Costco pressure campaign underscores that GOP lawmakers and groups like ADF know an abortion ban cannot pass Congress, so they are trying to limit access in other ways, namely by targeting pills and working to shutter clinics. Their goal is to make it so people can only get abortion medication by physically traveling to a shrinking number of clinics, with more set to shutter amid fallout from the GOP budget bill that “defunds” large abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood has said that as many as 200 of its clinics could close as a result of the bill, including 75% of its abortion-providing clinics across 12 states. That’s why the organization calls the law a backdoor abortion ban. Making abortion less accessible functions as an effective ban for some women — all before a possible nationwide ban is in place.
This context is why it’s so disappointing that Costco will not dispense mifepristone, a necessary medication for people who need abortions and people experiencing miscarriages — and one that is set to become increasingly difficult to access. ADF added in a press release after the Bloomberg story that it “applaud[s] Costco for doing the right thing by its shareholders and resisting activist calls to sell abortion drugs.” This isn’t about “selling” abortion pills. It’s about pharmacies being willing to dispense medications that people’s doctors have prescribed them.
The Costco statement said it believed that people “generally” have mifepristone dispensed by their medical providers, not pharmacies. While many people do still receive the pill directly from their doctor either in person or by mailtelemedicine prescriptions are increasingly filled by mail-order pharmacies like Honeybee Healthand of course other pharmacies do dispense the drug. Just not Costco.
Later in the ADF release, the group claimed that dispensing abortion pills is a bad business decision. “Retailers like Costco keep their doors open by selling a lifetime of purchases to families, both large and small,” Ross said. “They have nothing to gain and much to lose by becoming abortion dispensaries. Retail pharmacies exist to serve the health and wellness of their customers, but abortion drugs like mifepristone undermine that mission by putting women’s health at risk.”
Data shows that abortion restrictions are not only bad for people’s healthbut also bad for the economy. The landmark Turnaway Study found that women denied abortions are four times as likely to live below the federal poverty level than women who got care. And in June, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) estimated that the Dobbs decision has led to $64 billion in economic losses each year in the 16 states that ban or heavily restrict abortion. Nationwide, IWPR estimates that bans and other restrictions keep about 550,000 women out of the labor force annually, which is enough to impact GDP, they say.
Corporations may not care about trying to prevent a nationwide abortion access crisis, but they should care about protecting their profits and shareholder value.
SUSPAN goals
Susan Rinkunas is an independent journalist and co-founder of Autonomy News. Her work has appeared in Jezebel, The New Republic, The Guardian, Slate, The Nation and more.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say their interim deal to end the war with Iran will deliver a financial windfall to American farmers.
But the Iranians deny it. And in the absence of more details, sanctions experts are flummoxed over exactly how billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets would make their way to the American heartland from the escrow accounts where they’ve been locked for years by U.S. sanctions.
A tentative agreement reached last week would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to start selling its oil freely again during a 60-day period when the two countries will continue negotiating key issues. The memorandum of understanding also promised to unfreeze Iranian assets.
Trump’s deal has come under fire for failing to address the reasons the president cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Lashing back at critics Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said U.S. farmers would get a payday: The U.S. Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.’’
Vance, who spoke about the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, and Trump say that any frozen funds and assets held outside of Iran will be used to buy U.S. crops.
But the Iranians deny that’s part of the deal. A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,’’ not terms dictated by Washington.
“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said.
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Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, rejected Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would dictate how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.
A U.S. official dismissed the contradiction, asserting that Iranian leaders were speaking to their domestic audience. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Iran was unlikely to abandon its other trade partners on food.
Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina, he said. Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”
Under previous sanctions, the U.S. has required that money foreign countries spend on imports from Iran — such as South Korean purchases of oil and Iraqi purchases of Iranian electricity — be locked in escrow accounts and typically released only if the Treasury approves and if the proceeds go toward “non-sanctionable’’ items such as food and medicine.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products through Aug. 21. It did not mention any escrow accounts.
Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X that he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying U.S. agricultural products.”
Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it’s unclear what the new U.S.-Iran agreement actually means for releasing restricted Iranian assets.
Could the U.S. require that the assets be used to buy American farm products?
“Well, we can try!’’ Nephew, who helped design Iran sanctions in the Obama and Biden administrations, said by email. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a U.S. bank to buy soybeans or whatever.”
Banks do not have to comply, he said. If they refuse, the U.S. could sanction them as well.
But it’s rare for the U.S. to conduct itself that way, he added, “in part because we don’t usually like to give the impression that we treat national security issues as a cash grab.”
___
Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
Wednesday marks four years since the Supreme Court issued its landmark Dobbs decisionwhich effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and repealed the constitutional right to an abortion. On “Morning Joe,” co-host Mika Brzezinski explained how the ruling set off a domino effect across the United States, affecting not just abortion-related care, but also altering “the state of women’s healthcare as a whole.”
As Brzezinski noted, states across the country have enacted harsher abortion restrictions since the 2022 ruling, with 13 outright banning the procedure with very limited exceptions. This has created a climate of fear among those who treat pregnant patients, with many healthcare providers worrying that any care involving an abortion could violate the law, even when the mother’s health is at risk.
“We are talking about people dying when they’re miscarrying because doctors are too afraid to intervene and save their lives,” Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent for The Nation, told MS NOW.
Brzezinski said the laws have effectively limited women’s “access to lifesaving healthcare.”
The MS NOW host reflected on some high-profile stories of pregnant women who faced delayed care in states with near-total abortion bans, noting “the numbers of cases that we’ve covered here on the show of women who have had their lives threatened, have been forced to give birth to dying or dead babies, and then, by the way, denied the access to ever create life again, because they became sterilized in the process.”
“There’s an image I can’t get out of my head,” Brzezinski added, before sharing reporting from ProPublica about Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother who died in Texas in 2023 after not receiving timely care for a miscarriage.
“For months afterward, Porsha’s 3-year-old son would chase after women who looked like her on the street, shouting, ‘That’s Mommy!’” Brzezinski said. “That’s the detail I can’t forget. I can’t stop imagining that little boy chasing after strangers on the street. And that story repeats itself.”
You can watch Brzezinski’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
One of the biggest upsets in Tuesday night’s primaries came in New York’s 13th Congressional District, where Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old democratic socialist, managed to beat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, 71, who was backed by establishment Democrats.
Chevalier, a doctoral student in sociology at the City University of New York, secured 49.4% of votes in the district — which encompasses upper Manhattan, Harlem and parts of the Bronx — defeating Espaillat, who received about 46% of the votes after representing the district for nearly a decade, according to The Associated Press. She now advances to the November general election, which she is presumed to win in the solidly Democratic district.
Chevalier’s primary win marks a major win for the Democrats’ left-wing flank that backed her, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdaniwho endorsed Chevalier last month during a joint interview on MS NOW’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
Here is what to know about Chevalier and the platform she campaigned on.
She has never held elected office
Prior to her congressional campaign, Chevalier had never run or held elected office. But she has been involved with advocating for issues that became political flashpoints, including helping organize the pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia University, according to her biography on the website of the Justice Democratsthe progressive group that recruited her to run.
The daughter of Dominican immigrants, Chevalier also worked as an organizer for Families for Freedom, a New York City group that assists immigrants facing deportation.
Chevalier earned a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from Columbia University in 2016 and later worked as a paralegal, according to her LinkedIn.
Chevalier faced scrutiny during her campaign over previously articulated stances and incendiary comments, including her appearance at a Times Square rally the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, where attendees reportedly suggested the attack was justified.
At a March candidates’ forum, Chevalier declined to condemn Hamas, saying that a request to do so “ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that that folks were living under before this genocide began,” the local outlet City & State reported. Later, on local radio station WNYC, Chevalier said she did condemn Hamas when asked, adding, “As far as I know, the U.S. does not send a single dime to Hamas. What we fund is the Israeli military.”
In a series of since-deleted social media posts between 2018 and 2022Chevalier also used expletives to refer to former Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Committee, calling for abolishing borders and stopping all deportations, according to BLN. Other reports noted that she called former President Joe Biden a “rapist” and disparaged white people in some of her posts.
Chevalier has said she has “grown considerably” since writing those posts and that she regrets them. Mamdani defended her after the social media posts surfaced but said he was unaware of them before endorsing Chevalier.
She’s the left’s preferred candidate
Chevalier’s focus on affordability, expanding housing access and opposing war and deportations made her the preferred candidate of many progressive groups. In addition to the endorsements from Mamdani and the Justice Democrats, she was also backed by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and several progressive members of the New York City Council.
After her primary win, the Democratic establishment also seems to have rallied behind her, despite her previous expletive-laden critiques of them.
In a statement Tuesday, DNC Chair Ken Martin called Chevalier “a tireless advocate for the hard-working people of New York City” who “will fight for healthcare, affordable housing, public education, civil rights, and an economy that works for everyone.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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