Politics

(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is proposing a rule that, if finalized, would open eligibility for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program.

On Thursday, the White House announced the Department of Health and Human Services is planning to put forward a rule that expands the definition of “lawful presence” to include DACA recipients, also known as “Dreamers.” The administration intends to implement the policy change by the end of the month, according to the White House.

“Health care should be a right, not a privilege, and my administration’s worked hard to expand health care. And today, more Americans have health insurance than ever,” President Joe Biden said in a pre-recorded video announcing the decision. “Today’s announcement is about giving DACA recipients the same opportunity.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra applauded the decision, noting about a third of current DACA recipients do not have health insurance.

Some recipients have had access to coverage through work, military service, and programs some states have expanded to them.

Advocates say undocumented immigrants and DACA recipients deserve to be rewarded for their help keeping the economy afloat during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These were people who were providing health care, or providing other types of care, helping keep small businesses open and ensuring that people had food to eat. At the same time, many of these same individuals who were part of our frontline workforce during the pandemic, they themselves were left behind unable to access many of the assistance programs that the rest of us were able to access,” said Sergio Gonzales, Executive Director of the Immigration Hub. “Not only was this just completely unfair and unjust, but it also makes no sense. When we have healthier people and we have people who are able to access health care that moves the entire country forward. That ensures that we have healthier communities at large.”

Paloma Bouhid, a DACA recipient, says she lost health care coverage when she was laid off from her tourism and hospitality job during the pandemic and was “terrified” of contracting COVID. She recently started her own company organizing homes, businesses and other spaces for clients and had to get private insurance for some medical tests she had to undergo.

“It’s so expensive and it’s such a big part of my financials, being a small business owner, that I’m still very paranoid about getting sick or being in an accident. It’s just absolute paranoia,” Bouhid said. “This comes as a huge relief to know that if something does happen I am covered and I can take care of myself and prioritize my health and know that’s going to be okay.

While immigrant advocates largely praised the president’s announcement, some conservatives slammed his plan to expand health care for DACA recipients.

“Rewarding illegal immigration will bring more illegal immigration. This is an insult to American citizenship,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted.

There are approximately 580,000 current recipients of the program, and nearly 800,000 young migrants have benefited from DACA, according to data collected by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services shows. The program was launched by the Obama-Biden administration in 2012, which allowed some immigrants who were brought to the country as children to legally work and stay in the country for renewable periods of up to two years if they meet several strict requirements. DACA does not provide a pathway to citizenship.

Multiple legal challenges have threatened the fate of DACA since its inception, with a current lawsuit working its way through district court in Texas. In 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen ruled that the program was unlawful. A federal appeals court later upheld his decision but allowed protections for current recipients to remain in place pending the lower court’s review of the Biden administration’s efforts to codify the program into administrative law. While recipients are still allowed to apply to renew their status every two years through DACA, new applicants have been barred for nearly two years.

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(CHICAGO) — The Democratic National Committee’s decision to have Chicago host its 2024 convention caps a lengthy decision making process, leaving many Democrats pleased but others in rival cities wishing they had gotten the nod.

The DNC announced on Tuesday that the Windy City will hold the nominating convention, the party’s first full event since 2016, after the coronavirus pandemic rendered its 2020 bash, originally slated to be held in Milwaukee, a largely online affair. Chicago beat out Atlanta and New York City to win the confab, letting Illinois lawmakers take a victory lap due to the city’s progressive politics and strategic location in the hot regional battleground of the Midwest.

“It’s a testament to Chicago and Illinois’s priorities aligning with Joe Biden and the Democratic Party the past several decades. Abortion is legal and protected, assault weapons were recently banned, and Chicago is one of the strongest union towns in the country. We’re the complete package,” said Illinois Democratic strategist Tom Bowen.

Democrats who spoke to ABC News said Chicago checked several of the party’s most important boxes in terms of logistics, politics and policy. The city — home to 2.7 million people — is a travel hub and, having already hosted nominating conventions for both parties, has the existing infrastructure to absorb the tsunami of attendees.

It’s also a progressive city in a blue state situated in the middle of a national battleground. Illinois is located near Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, three competitive states that are at the heart of Democrats’ strategy to reelecting President Joe Biden next year.

“Illinois is the anchor of the blue wall states in the Midwest and the perfect place to springboard the reelection campaign’s work in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan,” Bowen said.

Coverage of the convention is likely to spill over into neighboring states, helping reach the kind of swing voters who may not live in Illinois itself.

The friendly politics of Chicago were underscored with last week’s election of progressive Brandon Johnson as mayor-elect over a more moderate Democrat with ties to conservative-aligned groups.

And on policy, having the party powwow in Illinois helps avoid awkward disagreements with a conservative state government. Biden and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker are largely aligned, and the state has adopted Democratic orthodoxy on both economic and hot-button social issues like abortion. The city also has a strong union presence in its hotels, something lacking in Atlanta.

And to top it all off, Pritzker, himself wildly wealthy with a deep fundraising network, personally assured national Democrats that they wouldn’t go into debt if they hosted the convention in Chicago.

“It’s no secret that the Midwest is key to holding the White House and electing Democrats up and down the ticket in 2024. Now, after all, Chicago and the entire Midwest looks like America and is the capitol at the heart of the nation,” Pritzker said in a victory lap on Tuesday.

“Illinois is home to a bustling metropolis, a strong rural tradition, thriving suburbs, not to mention a long-standing history rooted in civil rights and workers’ rights and reproductive rights,” he added.

Still, while picking Chicago may not have burned bridges in either New York or Atlanta, the decision ruffled some feathers in both cities, which would have enjoyed a surge of attention and a potential economic windfall if selected.

“The city would have received a significant benefit from the convention monetarily, from a tax perspective and from an image perspective,” said New York City-based Democratic Hank Sheinkopf, referencing ongoing concerns about crime. “The best cure for crime is people walking around, people believing there is no crime, that it’s overrated, [and] it’s not as bad as people think.”

And supporters in Atlanta pushed back on Democrats’ worries about unions’ smaller footprint compared to Chicago, saying the city’s role in delivering the Senate and White House for the party should have outweighed those concerns.

“Name the state that gave you the Senate, and a margin this time: Georgia. Name the state that put 2020 out of reach for Trump: Georgia. Shouldn’t the Democrats in those states see the Democratic convention in their state? We can’t always say we can only have conventions in states that only have x-number of labor hotels,” said Jarrod Loadholt, a partner in the Ice Miller law firm’s public affairs branch who lives in Georgia.

Still, strategists in other cities said any perceived snub wouldn’t harm cooperation with the national party moving forward.

“We couldn’t compete financially. There’s no shame in that,” said one Georgia Democratic strategist, referencing Pritzker’s financial assurances.

“We made a very good presentation. They took us seriously. And the Biden administration has someone in Georgia every week, so they are certainly not ignoring us. We are grateful to them. We look forward to continue working for them and reelecting them. There is zero anger and zero bitterness,” the strategist added.

While Biden himself has not officially declared his reelection campaign, he and members of his administration are fanning out across the country to tout the record of his first two years in office, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and an effort to boost the domestic semiconductor industry.

“The period leading up to and through the convention also creates a unique opportunity to engage people throughout the region and to highlight the positive impact of Biden-Harris economic policies like the Infrastructure Act,” said Karen Finney, a former DNC official and a Democratic strategist with ties to the White House.

So far, Biden’s only challengers are self-help author Marianne Williamson and attorney and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who filed paperwork to run and is expected to announce his bid on April 19.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Florida House of Representatives on Thursday passed a six-week abortion ban that would replace the state’s 15-week ban. The bill now heads to the governor’s desk for his signature.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he would sign a six-week ban should it be sent to his desk.

The ban would prohibit all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant. The ban makes exceptions for when the woman’s life or health is at risk and cases of rape or incest, under certain conditions. Even with its current ban in place, Florida has fewer restrictions compared to nearby states.

The bill passed by a vote of 70 to 40. It passed in the Senate last week.

There are four conditions in which physicians can provide abortions under the ban.

To provide abortion care under the law’s exceptions, two physicians would have to certify in writing that the termination of the pregnancy is necessary to save the woman’s life or avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman, according to the law. This does not including psychological conditions.

If two physicians are not available, one physician would have to certify in writing that there is a medical necessity for the legitimate emergency medical procedure to save the pregnant woman’s life or avert irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function and certify another physician is not available for consultation, the law states.

Abortions will also be permitted in cases where the pregnancy has not progressed to the third trimester and two physicians certify in writing that the fetus has a fatal fetal abnormality, according to the law.

The fourth condition according to the law in which physicians can provide abortions is if the pregnancy is as a result of rape or incest and the gestational age of the fetus is not more than 15 weeks, as determined by a physician. At the time the woman schedules or arrives for her abortion appointment, she must provide a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical record or other court order or documentation proving that she is a victim of rape or incest.

Physicians will be required to report incidents of rape or incest in minors to the central abuse hotline, according to the law.

Only physicians will be allowed to provide abortion services.

Anyone who performs or actively participates in an abortion outside these rules commits a felony of the third degree. If the abortion results in the death of the woman, the crime becomes a second-degree felony.

Abortion pills must also be disbursed in person by physicians, prohibiting abortions over telehealth visits and prohibiting the delivery of abortion pills by mail. Physicians must also be physically present in the same room as the woman when the termination of pregnancy is performed or when dispensing abortion pills.

New data shared with FiveThirtyEight indicates that over 66,000 people couldn’t get an abortion in their home state after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June. Florida, however, surged in abortions in the wake of the ruling with people from other Southern states visiting, according to the data.

In anticipation of the ban passing, abortion providers in the Florida told ABC News they’ve seen a flood of patients from other states.

“Literally every clinic session we are seeing patients from other states. Every time I’m in the health center, there is a patient — at least one if not multiple — from Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, all over the Southeast, who traveled hundreds of miles to get their health care,” Dr. Sujatha Prabhakaran told ABC News.

In turn, it’s created a domino effect where women in Florida are unable to get appointments in their home state.

“That means that patients in those centers are having to travel,” Prabhakaran said. “They’re not able to access care in a timely way in their own communities. So, then they’re having to travel further south to access care in Florida.”

ABC News’ Rachel Scott and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The FBI on Thursday made a probable cause arrest in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in connection with the leaked documents probe.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Jack Teixeira was taken into custody in relation to the investigation into “alleged authorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.”

Teixeira, 21, is a member of the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard.

“FBI agents took Teixeira into custody earlier this afternoon without incident,” the attorney general said. “He will have an initial appearance at the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.”

Garland continued: “I want to thank the FBI, Justice Department prosecutors and our colleagues at the Department of Defense for the diligent work on this case. This investigation is ongoing. We will share more information at the appropriate time.”

The FBI said it was continuing to conduct law enforcement activity at the residence where Teixeira was arrested.

“Since late last week the FBI has aggressively pursued investigative leads and today’s arrest exemplifies our continued commitment to identifying, pursuing, and holding accountable those who betray our country’s trust and put our national security at risk,” the FBI said in a statement.

Earlier, at the Pentagon, spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, said, “It is important to understand that we do have stringent guidelines in place for safeguarding classified and sensitive information. This was a deliberate, criminal act — a violation of those guidelines.”

Media reports have described the documents as being shared among a small group of users on Discord before getting wider notice. The Washington Post interviewed one person, who said he was part of the group, who believes the alleged leaker, who he said goes by the moniker “OG,” worked on a military base.

President Joe Biden broke his silence earlier Thursday on the leak of apparently highly classified documents after the Washington Post report.

Biden told reporters in Dublin that the Justice Department was “getting close” in its criminal investigation into how the U.S. intelligence documents — which seem to contain top-secret information about the Ukraine war and other parts of the world — ended up online.

“Right now there’s a full-blown investigation going on and, you know, with the intelligence community and the Justice Department, and they’re getting close,” Biden said when asked if he could provide an update on the probe. “But I don’t have an answer.”

The disclosure has raised diplomatic issues over the apparent revelation that U.S. intelligence has been spying on its allies as well as on its adversaries. Asked whether he was concerned about the leak, Biden played down its potential impact.

“I’m concerned that it happened,” Biden said. “But there is nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”

The Washington Post characterized the alleged leaker as a “young, charismatic gun enthusiast” who began disseminating the documents in a private server group on Discord last fall.

The Washington Post cited an interview with a teenager who said he was part of the group, which he said he joined at the start of the pandemic and contained roughly two dozen members, some from foreign countries.

The teen referred to the leaker as “OG” and said he was in his early to mid-20s, though the minor denied to share his real name, where he lived or the military base where he said the person worked. The minor said “OG” had dubious views of law enforcement and the intelligence community, and would rant about “government overreach.”

Washington Post reporter Shane Harris described the leaker as someone who was “trying to impress his friends,” and the newspaper said it was unlikely he intended for the documents to spread across the internet.

ABC News has not independently confirmed the report.

A Pentagon spokesman, when asked for comment on the Washington Post report, referred ABC News to comments made by Department of Defense spokesman Chris Meagher during a press briefing on Monday.

Meagher said at the time that the department was “working around the clock to look at the scope and scale of the distribution, the assessed impact and our mitigation measures.”

A senior U.S. official told ABC News Thursday highly sensitive material has been shared too widely within the government for some time. The official had no information on the source of this leak but called it “a massive betrayal” by whoever is responsible.

After reports surfaced that authorities wanted to speak with a member of the Air National Guard, the National Guard Bureau issued a statement, saying, “We are aware of the investigation into the alleged role a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman may have played in the recent leak of highly-classified documents.

“The National Guard takes this issue very seriously and will support investigators. National security is our foremost priority and any attempt to undermine it compromises our values and degrades trust among our members, the public, allies and partners,” the statement said.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in his first public comments on the leak Tuesday, also said he was limited in what he could say about the matter amid the DOJ’s investigation.

He told reporters he was first informed of the apparent leak on April 6, after some documents were posted on popular social media sites, and that investigators were focusing on documents dated Feb. 28 and March 1.

“We take this very seriously and we will continue to investigate and turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it,” Austin said.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Thursday said it would take the fight over an abortion pill to the Supreme Court after an appeals court ruling that would restrict access to the widely-used abortion pill mifepristone.

The appeals court ruling was set to take effect early Saturday morning.

“The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA to deny in part our request for a stay pending appeal. We will be seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court to defend the FDA’s scientific judgment and protect Americans’ access to safe and effective reproductive care,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

Story developing…

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(NEW YORK) — The D.C. Court of Appeals has declined to answer whether then-President Donald Trump was acting within the scope of his employment when he allegedly defamed writer E. Jean Carroll when denying her rape claim.

Carroll sued Trump for defamation over statements he made in 2019 when he denied her claim that he raped her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s.

Trump, who also denies defaming her, has argued that the Justice Department should be substituted as the defendant in the case because, at the time of his allegedly defamatory statements, he was an employee of the federal government. Such a ruling would make the case go away, as the federal government cannot be sued for defamation.

On Thursday, the D.C. Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over federal employees, returned the question to federal court in New York, where Carroll brought the suit.

“We have never adopted a rule that has determined that a certain type of conduct is per se within (or outside of) the scope of employment, and we decline to do so now,” the court said.

The opinion leaves in limbo whether the case can go forward, but Carroll filed a second lawsuit in November alleging defamation and battery that is scheduled for trial April 25.

Trump has sought to delay that trial for four weeks, arguing a “cooling off” period was necessary given the publicity around Trump’s recent criminal indictment on charges of falsifying business records. Carroll has opposed a delay.

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(WASHINGTON) — Coordinated groups of inauthentic accounts have been attempting to influence online conversations around the 2024 elections for the better part of a year, according to a recent investigation conducted by Cyabra, a social analysis firm.

According to the Israel-based firm, someone created thousands of automated Twitter accounts that appear to be praising former President Donald Trump and criticizing his political rivals on both sides of the aisle.

“What I found was so interesting about this bot farm [was] that it understood the nuances of the division within the Republican Party and it was exploiting that online,” Jules Gross, a solutions engineer at Cyabra, told ABC News.

Gross said she reviewed hundreds of posts and found that these automated accounts — or bots — were going after Trump’s potential 2024 rivals for the presidency.

As soon as Nikki Haley announced a bid for the presidency in February 2023, Gross said she saw bots accusing Haley of being disloyal to her onetime boss.

Around 40% of the conversation online about Haley was being controlled by inauthentic accounts versus just 2% before her announcement, according to Cyabra.

Haley hasn’t been the only target; these bots also appeared to go after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to the firm.

Although DeSantis hasn’t announced a bid, it hasn’t stopped numerous fake accounts from insisting he not run in the 2024 election, Cyabra said in its report.

Gross said she has also found hundreds of posts accusing Republicans of not being loyal because they cooperated with Democrats.

“Whether it’s Kevin McCarthy, or even Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and also Nikki Haley, the bots say these people are not Republican enough,” Gross said.

She added that the bots allege that “(t)hey are not true Republicans, they need to be more extreme.”

Gross said Cyabra found three coordinated groups of inauthentic accounts created on one of three dates in April, October and November of 2022.

Gross said she was initially scanning conversations around prominent American politicians on Twitter when she noticed seemingly inauthentic accounts popping up among real ones.

“Once I filtered all of the fake profiles from the ones that were just created, on the same days, I could see that they were all promoting the same ideology online, possibly even posting the same exact posts online,” Gross said. “And from that, we’re able to deduce that is a coordinated activity.”

While public perception may be that social media bots are rudimentary, some experts say these coordinated groups are getting more complex and harder to spot.

“Detecting bots is a very difficult challenge that requires analysis of a number of different parameters,” said Sam Woolley, the program director at Propaganda Research Lab at the University of Texas, Austin. “You can’t just look at two or three different things.”

Cyabra said it looked at over 500 different behavioral parameters to identify whether these profiles were fake — parameters like how many hours a day an account was active, the geographic location of their followers and if the content posted was original or repurposed.

As of Thursday, the three coordinated groups identified are still active on Twitter, Gross said. Most recently, Cyabra said these accounts have been posting and re-sharing posts about the health and whereabouts of Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania following his recent hospitalization for severe depression.

According to Cyabra, Elon Musk hired the data analysis firm to analyze bot activity on Twitter before he purchased the company.

ABC News has reached out to Twitter for comment.

“It shows just how likely it is that the conversations on social media surrounding the 2024 presidential election will be controlled and will be full of not just of disinformation and misinformation, but also harassment, disenfranchisement content, and all other sorts of forms of misleading information,” warned Woolley.

Cyabra said it does not know who is behind these coordinated accounts.

Research found that bots have helped spread falsehoods and manipulate conversations in all major U.S. elections — and many others worldwide — since 2016. Bots spreading misinformation aren’t specific to Twitter; networks of inauthentic accounts have been uncovered and taken down on Facebook and Instagram in the past, experts say.

But experts like Woolley say social media companies need to “take a stand and provide more clarity with what kinds of automation is unacceptable.”

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(WASHINGTON) — U.S. and international government agencies are urging software manufacturers to “revamp” the design of certain software to take the burden of cybersecurity flaws out off of the customer.

Historically, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI, the NSA and a host of international law enforcement agencies say that “technology manufacturers have relied on fixing vulnerabilities found after the customers have deployed the products, requiring the customers to apply those patches at their own expense,” according to an alert from the agencies released on Thursday.

The alert is aimed at tech providers, and customers according to CISA Executive Director Eric Goldstein.

Goldstein said he hopes tech providers will use the product to “actually change their internal cultures,” and invest in the changes they are hoping to outline. He is also hoping that customers use the guidance as well so that they know what to ask for when dealing with software companies, but he acknowledged the document is just the beginning.

“We see this document as an opening to an international conversation,” he explained.

The agencies are urging software manufacturers to “revamp their design and development programs to permit only Secure-by-Design and -Default products to be shipped to customers,” and the agencies are calling it “Secure by Design” and “Secure by Default.”

“Products that are Secure-by-Design are those where the security of the customers is a core business goal, not just a technical feature,” the alert says. “Secure-by-Design products start with that goal before development starts. Secure-by-Default products are those that are secure to use “out of the box” with little to no configuration changes necessary and security features available without additional cost.”

The government agencies say there are three software principals manufacturers should abide by when designing products.

“Now more than ever, it is crucial for technology manufacturers to make Secure-by-Design and Secure-by-Default the focal points of product design and development processes,” the alert says. “Some vendors have made great strides driving the industry forward in software assurance, while others lag behind.”

The burden should not fall solely on the customer to protect their systems when they purchase software, share information with other companies when relevant to help secure customers systems, and build a structure of leadership to employ the “Secure by Design” and “Secure by Default” principals.

Goldstein said the hope is that the solutions outlined are not just done by the technical advisors but by senior leaders at the top of software companies, and he said they are looking “forward to opening the apiture of collaboration,” so that way all the voices in the software industry are heard.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is pausing a key effort to reform and increase asylum processing at the border, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Wednesday.

First introduced last year, the new asylum processing policy had allowed asylum officers with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to grant or deny claims. Those powers were previously limited to immigration judges at the Department of Justice.

A Homeland Security spokesperson said the asylum officer adjudication process would start up again “in the near future” and migrants who already had interviews scheduled would be allowed to continue. The pause is intended “to ensure operational readiness,” the spokesperson said, before the end of an emergency pandemic expulsion policy next month that has limited asylum requests under Title 42 of the U.S. Code.

The Los Angeles Times was first to report the pause.

Authorities at the border have been preparing for the aftermath of the emergency Title 42 policy since the Biden administration first tried to end it in 2021 before hitting legal roadblocks lodged by GOP-led states. Without the ability to conduct rapid expulsions, authorities may be left to handle an even greater number of asylum claims, which can take months or years to resolve.

The now-paused process for more quickly adjudicating asylum cases was intended to ease a massive case backlog. The number of asylum seekers waiting for hearings in the U.S. has exceeded 1.5 million, according to researchers at Syracuse University.

ABC News was among the first to report last week that the Biden administration would attempt to accelerate the asylum process by holding screening interviews at Border Patrol stations. Immigrant advocates fear that moving up the initial screening interview closer to a migrant’s initial encounter with authorities would limit their ability to adequately prepare a case.

The effectiveness of that move would ultimately depend on the ability of asylum officers to adjudicate cases, said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

“If after all this efficiency we send them to the immigration courts, it just won’t work because that’ll be the bottleneck,” Chishti told ABC News.

“I think the combination of the new [screening interview] proposal at the border with the asylum officer rule is probably the best way forward,” he said, noting the training necessary for asylum officers may take time.

The government funding deal produced by Congressional negotiators last December resulted in USCIS getting roughly one-third of the $765 million in funding Biden initially requested, according to the publication Government Executive. The White House has said additional funding for the agency is necessary in order to reduce the growing backlog of asylum cases.

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(WASHINGTON) — An unprecedented ruling by a single federal judge in Texas on mifepristone is raising concerns of “judge shopping” in a legal clash that could reshape abortion access in the U.S.

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, in his April 7 order, ruled to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill. In his order, Kacsmaryk the drug — which has been on the market for 23 years — is unsafe and its approval process was rushed.

The order is set to take effect at the end of the day Friday unless the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court intervene.

President Joe Biden, in his first on-camera reaction to the ruling, said Tuesday he thought it was “completely out of bounds what the judge did.”

Legal experts, too, have both scrutinized Kacsmaryk’s ruling and how the case ended up in his court in the first place.

“I think his order shows why the lawsuit was brought in Amarillo,” Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, told ABC News. “It gives the appearance of being a sort of a judicial decision that was written to reach a foreordained result.”

Texas is home to four federal district courts, and several of them have created so-called “single judge divisions” where just one judge is responsible for hearing 100% of the cases filed there.

Kacsmaryk is the sole judge seated in the Amarillo division of the U.S. District of Northern Texas. He was appointed to the federal bench in 2019 under former President Donald Trump, and has since been at the center of several contentious legal fights over policies on immigration, LGBTQ protections and more — often ruling against the Biden administration.

Before his appointment, Kacsmaryk worked with the conservative First Liberty Institute, where he participated in a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s “contraception mandate” requiring health insurers to pay for birth control. Kacsmaryk said at the time the requirement aimed to “punish” those who follow “their religious beliefs and moral convictions.”

Kacsmaryk’s sister told the Washington Post, which reported in depth his stance on abortion, she felt he “was made” for this case.

But during his confirmation process, Kacsmaryk said as a district judge he would “not advocate for clients or a particular policy but instead is bound by oath to faithfully apply all Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit precedent.”

Critics have accused the plaintiffs in this case of exploiting the single-judge division and purposely seeking out Kacsmaryk because they thought he’d be friendly to their point of view. The group Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, filed the lawsuit last year.

Some legal observers have pointed to the specific language from Kacsmaryk’s order as evidence of his ideological inclinations. Instead of referring to a fetus or embryo, he used the term “unborn human” or substituted the phrase “chemical abortion” for medication abortion.

“It is very clearly anti-abortion movement language,” said Nicole Huberfeld, a health law professor at Boston University.

The issue of judge shopping, Vladeck said, undermines fairness in the judicial process and raises ethical concerns.

“The legal system is not supposed to work this way,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be able to handpick your judge.”

Huberfeld said this “playbook already existed” but has intensified in recent years.

In response to accusations that plaintiffs specifically sought out Kacsmaryk, Erik Baptist, a senior attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, told ABC News his organization “goes wherever our clients take us.”

“And in this instance, we have eight different plaintiffs: four national Medical Association’s and four individual doctors,” Baptist said. “Two of our clients are based in the Amarillo, Texas, area and we went where they took us this time.”

Asked about the broader issue of judge shopping, and whether it undermines the legal process, Baptist said the group didn’t have a position on the matter.

“ADF doesn’t have a position,” he said. “But those are the rules that the courts have established for themselves, and we honor what those rules are as the court deems appropriate.”

Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, told ABC News “all lawyers file a case in the place where they can have the best shot of winning.”

The bigger issue, Blackman argued, is the nature of nationwide injunctions — where a single district court judge can prevent the government from enforcing a statute or regulation coast to coast.

“The problem, to the extent that exists, is where single judges can sort of change policy overnight,” he said.

The nation now waits for word from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on the Justice Department’s emergency stay motion to block Kacsmaryk’s order. The DOJ has asked the court to enter an administrative stay or grant a stay pending appeal by noon on Thursday.

And at the same time, there is a competing order out of Washington in a separate case regarding the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. That order prevents the FDA from “altering the status quo” as it relates to the availability of the drug.

“I think it’s important to recognize that these legal battles matter,” Huberfeld said, “that they have real implications for people, that people won’t get the care that they need, that it increases the risk of injury and death. And this isn’t going to stop anytime soon. It is a health problem whether or not people want to recognize it as such.”

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