Kerby Anderson
Law professor Glenn Reynolds wonders why so many woke institutions continue to do things that hurt their bottom line. We have all heard the catchphrase “go woke, go broke.” Yet, he laments that “people at the top of major corporations and government agencies keep, well, getting woke and going broke.” Here’s his short list.
First, there is Harvard University, “roiled by antisemitism scandals in which woke politics kept administrators from protecting Jewish students.” The school has lost so much in donations that it shut down a library and is looking to borrow money to meet expenses. Reynolds reminds us that it does have a gigantic endowment but needs daily cash to meet expenses.
Second is Disney that is losing money, especially because of failures at the box office. The Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy has been known for the “South Park” joke about her films: “put a chick in it and make her gay.”
Sports Illustrated managed to alienate readers with its venerable swimsuit issue “by featuring trans, obese, and old models on the cover.” Meanwhile, Planet Fitness decided to embrace men who identify as women. The stock plummeted while terminating memberships of women who complained.
This list would not be complete unless we mentioned beer and the military. The Budweiser debacle over Dylan Mulvaney as a Bud Light spokesperson will probably be studied for years in marketing classes. And the US military’s focus on woke politics and “white nationalism” have led to dramatic enlistment declines.
The leaders of these organizations might like the fact that some applaud their ESG scores and DEI scores. But the American people have been voting with their feet and pocketbooks and are punishing these woke institutions.

Penna Dexter
Last month, more than two decades after the Clinton FDA approved the abortion pill, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that challenges the agency’s progressive easing of restrictions on chemical abortion.
The case is Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine vs. Food and Drug Administration. 
Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit in federal court on behalf of four medical organizations and four doctors seeking to have the drug, mifepristone, removed from the marketplace. Mifepristone is the first in a 2-drug regimen that constitutes a medical, or chemical abortion. Chemical abortion accounts for over 60 percent of abortions done in the U.S.  
A federal judge in Amarillo, Texas ruled that the drug’s initial approval was unlawful.
But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. Its ruling would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
In 2000, the FDA approved the 2-drug regimen to be used during the first seven weeks of pregnancy and then, in 2016, extended it to be used up to 10 weeks’ gestation.
Over time, the FDA has also removed the requirement that a woman be examined in person when receiving a prescription for chemical abortion drugs.
According to Mary Szoch, Director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, “the use of the abortion drug is especially egregious, because we know that the abortion drug is four times as dangerous as surgical abortion for the mother.”
Increasingly, medication abortions are prescribed via telemedicine — that means there’s no physical exam, no ultrasound study. Prompt ultrasound evaluation is key in diagnosing ectopic pregnancy, which can prove deadly to the mother if not caught early enough.
The justices seemed to doubt the doctors’ standing. Nonetheless a competent FDA would do its job and reinstate the requirement that existed as recently as 2021, that to get a medication abortion, a woman must first see a medical provider.