Republican senators on Wednesday urged the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to tighten safety standards and reconsider partnerships tied to abortion pills, accusing the agency of expanding access without adequate oversight.

On the call, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo, and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., expressed frustration that the agency hadn’t already overhauled safety parameters around abortion pills — and that it had instead expanded its partnerships with producers of the drugs that make chemical abortions available.

‘My plea to the FDA is to follow the science to put back safety guardrails,’ Hawley said. ‘I’ve called on the director of the FDA to take these steps. The public deserves to have answers.’

The press conference held by the senators indicates that abortion policy is still a mainstay priority for some Republican lawmakers — even as President Donald Trump has previously signaled contentment with leaving questions about abortion policy at the state level. Hawley and Cassidy both questioned the safety of chemical abortions and their proliferation.

Notably, Republicans passed a short-term prohibition of Medicaid funding from going to nonprofit organizations that provide abortions as part of its One, Big Beautiful Bill Act that became law earlier this year.

But that change hasn’t stopped Hawley and other lawmakers from torching the FDA for announcing a partnership with Evita Solutions, looking to create a new version of the key abortion drug, mifepristone.

‘When I heard the FDA approved another generic form of misoprostol, I was upset,’ Sen. Cassidy said, referring to the drug often used in conjunction with mifepristone. ‘I call them up, ‘Why are you doing this?’’ 

Cassidy joined 17 other Republican senators in sending a letter to the FDA earlier this month, demanding to know why the agency had approved a new form of the abortion drug. They asked for an answer by Oct. 30.

Cassidy said the group has not received anything from the agency.

‘They have not responded, but the government’s been shut down, and so I’m sure they would say, ‘Well, we can’t respond,’ but we will have the FDA commissioner to come in and speak to FDA issues.’ 

Without mifepristone and misoprostol, most of the country’s abortions would be impossible. 

The pair of compounds undermine the vitality of a pregnancy and prompt the body to expel pregnancy tissue. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual health and reproductive rights organization, mifepristone was used to induce 63% of all U.S. abortions in 2023. 

‘This is shocking,’ Hawley said in a post to X earlier this month. ‘FDA just approved ANOTHER chemical abortion drug, when evidence shows chemical abortion drugs are dangerous and even deadly for the mother. And of course, 100% lethal to the child.’

Hawley claimed on Wednesday that 11% of women who use a chemical abortion experience some sort of adverse health event.

‘The science is really quite significant. We’ve just had one of the largest studies ever performed of claims relating to chemical abortions based on insurance data. It came out this summer — 865,000 insurance claims that were made and analyzed,’ Hawley said. 

The Ethics & Public Policy Center published findings in April that evaluated 865,000 medical abortions prescribed between 2017–2023. It concluded that the rate of serious side effects was 22 times higher than indicated by the FDA label.  

‘That’s a sanitized way of saying they’re in very serious danger,’ Hawley said.

Critics of the study have said it lacks context and may overlook unrelated, complicating factors. 

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion advocacy group, shares Hawley’s concern about the pill’s safety. She also believes abortion pills are an easy way for women to access abortion — even in states that have passed restrictions on them.

‘This abortion pill is an instrument of beating back [state] sovereignty. State laws are being undermined. The abortion rate overall in this nation has gone up since Dobbs because of the abortion pill,’ Dannenfelser said, referring to the landmark 2022 case Dobbs v. Jackson that overturned a federal right to an abortion.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America was one of the key groups calling on Republicans to cut Medicaid funding for abortions through Trump’s One, Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Anti-abortion advocates have zeroed in on access to mifepristone as a way to continue pushing back against abortion access — especially since the FDA approved remote prescriptions of the drug in the wake of COVID-19.

In June, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge brought by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM), arguing that the FDA had improperly approved mifepristone for use back in 2001, skirting safety requirements. 

Since then, mifepristone has remained widely available, but the Supreme Court’s ruling left the door open to future challenges to the FDA’s certification of the drug.

Like other critics of chemical abortions, Hawley has urged the FDA to undergo its own evaluation of whether abortion pills are safe, reliable products — a priority shared with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

‘We need to have a full and thorough review of the data related to mifepristone [and] the health risks related to mifepristone. We need to see the reinstatement of safety guardrails that have historically accompanied this drug,’ Hawley said.

The FDA did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

On the heels of President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has agreed to restart its purchases of U.S. soybeans, a $30 billion cornerstone of American agriculture that was once wielded as a weapon in the battle for global trade leverage.

Once a quiet export success story, America’s humble soybean became a political flashpoint after Beijing halted imports in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods. China’s shift to suppliers in Brazil and Argentina exposed how quickly global trade flows can realign and how vulnerable U.S. farmers remain to diplomatic friction.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that China will buy 12 million metric tons of American soybeans during the current season through January and has committed to buying another 25 million tons annually for the next three years as part of a larger trade deal.

In an interview with Fox Business’ ‘Mornings with Maria,’ Bessent added that several Southeast Asian nations have also agreed to buy a combined 19 million tons of U.S. soybeans, though he did not specify a timeframe for those purchases.

‘So our great soybean farmers, who the Chinese used as political pawns, that’s off the table, and they should prosper in the years to come,’ Bessent said.

What began as tit-for-tat posturing between the world’s two largest economies evolved into both a symbolic and economic gut punch for Trump’s rural base, whose livelihoods depend on the very trade ties now caught in the crossfire.

According to the American Soybean Association, the U.S. has traditionally served as China’s leading soybean source. Prior to the 2018 trade conflict, roughly 28% of U.S. soybean production was exported to China. Those crop exports fell sharply to 11% in 2018 and 2019, recovered to 31% by 2021 amid pandemic-era demand and eased back to 22% in 2024.

But some policy experts argue that China’s shift away from U.S. soybeans was already underway.

‘China was always going to reduce its reliance on the United States for food security,’ Bryan Burack, a senior policy advisor for China and the Indo-Pacific at the Heritage Foundation told Fox News Digital. ‘China started signing purchase agreements with other countries for soybeans well before President Trump took office.’ 

He added that Beijing has ‘been decoupling from the U.S. for a long time.’

‘Unfortunately, the only way for us to respond is to do the same, and that process is painful and excruciating,’ Burack said.

But for farmers thousands of miles from Washington and Beijing, those policy shifts translate into shrinking markets and tighter margins.

‘We rely on trade with other countries, specifically China, to buy our soybeans,’ Brad Arnold, a multigenerational soybean farmer in southwestern Missouri, told FOX Business ahead of Trump’s bilateral meeting with Xi. He said China’s decision to boycott U.S. soybean purchases ‘has huge impacts on our business and our bottom line.’

‘There are domestic uses for soybeans, looking at renewable diesel, biodiesel specifically produced from soybeans,’ Arnold said. 

‘In the grand scheme of things, that’s such a small percentage currently, you know it’s going to take a customer like China to buy beans to make a noticeable impact. You can’t take our No. 1 customer, shut them off and just overnight find a replacement.’

Whether China’s new purchases signal a genuine thaw in U.S.–China trade relations or just a temporary reprieve, the deal underscores how closely diplomacy and agriculture remain intertwined.

Fox Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.

Another aviation-related union is demanding lawmakers reopen the government as Vice President JD Vance prepares to hold a roundtable with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and airline industry leaders Thursday as shutdown woes mount, Fox News Digital learned. 

The roundtable will be held at the White House Thursday afternoon, and will include Airlines for America CEO and former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu and other airline leaders, a White House official told Fox News Digital. 

The roundtable comes as the ‘Democrat Shutdown’ has ‘gravely’ impacted the aviation industry, according to the White House official, including air traffic controllers officially missing their first full paycheck, and unions calling on lawmakers to pass a clean continuing resolution. 

Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, an independent union representing aircraft maintenance technicians and other related employees, called on lawmakers on Wednesday to pass a ‘clean continuing resolution’ and reopen the government. 

‘On behalf of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) and our 4,400 members in the Unites States representing the aircraft maintenance technicians at Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Horizon Air, Spirit Airlines, and Sun Country Airlines, we urge Congress to end the government shutdown by passing a clean Continuing Resolution,’ AMFA National President Bret Oestreich said in a press release published Wednesday. 

‘We stand with our brothers and sisters in air traffic control and TSA who continue to ensure the safety of the flying public while working for no pay,’ he continued. ‘It’s time for Congress to reconvene in a bipartisan manner to pass a clean CR and support all the men and women in aviation who contribute to the safest National Airspace System for us all to travel.’ 

The government shutdown has persisted since Oct. 1, when Senate lawmakers failed to reach a funding agreement before a midnight deadline. The Trump administration and Republicans have since pinned blame for the shutdown on Democrats, claiming they worked to include taxpayer-funded medical benefits for illegal immigrants. Democrats have denied the claims and argue that Republicans refused to negotiate on healthcare demands. 

‘We need to end this shutdown as soon as possible,’ Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in floor remarks Oct. 9. ‘Every day that Republicans refuse to negotiate to end this shutdown the worse it gets for Americans, and the clearer it becomes who’s fighting for them.’ 

Vance has hammered the argument that Democrats are to blame for the shutdown, including during his remarks at a Turning Point USA event Wednesday at the University of Mississippi. 

‘The reality here is that there’s a very simple bill that just reopens the government,’ he said. ‘It does it through pretty much the end of the year. That got every single Republican in the House of Representatives to support it, and then it got 52 Republicans in the Senate and three Democrats in the Senate to support it. But because of weird Senate procedural rules, it requires a 60 vote threshold.’ 

‘When you have every single Republican with like two exceptions in both houses of Congress, I feel pretty confident. I know that I’m partisan,’ he added. ‘I know I have an R next to my name, but I feel pretty damn good saying the shutdown is the Democrats’ fault because we voted again and again to open.’ 

The shutdown comes as Americans prepare to travel for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, with the White House previously telling Fox News Digital that as the shutdown continues it ‘threatens to ruin the holidays.’

The Air Line Pilots Association, the world’s largest airline pilot union, called on lawmakers to reopen the government earlier in October. The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association issued a similar statement later in October, urging lawmakers to pass a ‘clean Continuing Resolution’ and reopen the federal government while pointing to the state of air traffic controllers during a shutdown. 

The shutdown has rocked families as they prepare to temporarily lose federal food assistance, while small business owners are losing out on billions in Small Business Administration-backed funding, and an estimated 750,000 federal employees have been furloughed. 

As for air travel, massive hubs such as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Newark, New Jersey, have seen delays in recent weeks, as air traffic controllers, who are employed by the Federal Aviation Administration, cope with staffing shortages. 

Air traffic controllers lost their first full paychecks beginning Tuesday. 

‘I’ve made clear to our air traffic controllers: they need to show up for work. They do really important work for our country, and they need to show up. But I’m not going to lie to anybody to not say that they’re not feeling the stress,’ Transportation chief Duffy said during a press conference at LaGuardia Airport in New York City Tuesday. ‘The fact that they are working, and oftentimes, they are head of households, they’re the only income earners in their homes, and they have families, and they’re having a hard time paying their bills.’

A virtual confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump’s surgeon general pick Dr. Casey Means has been postponed because she went into labor.

Means, 38, was appearing remotely because she was nine months pregnant with her first child.

Her opening remarks for the hearing expected on Thursday had been prewritten.

‘Our nation is angry, exhausted, and hurting from preventable disease. Rates of high blood pressure, many cancers, autoimmune conditions, type 2 diabetes, mental health disorders, dementia, neurodevelopmental challenges, and youth suicide have all increased in the past two decades,’ the prepared remarks, obtained by Fox News, said.

‘This public-health crisis is touching every American family. It is robbing our children of possibility, our workforce of productivity, and our nation of security. It strains our federal budget and dims hope for millions,’ she planned to say.

As the nation’s doctor, the surgeon general is a leader for Americans and health officials on public health issues. If confirmed, Means will represent an administration that has already transformed the public health landscape by calling for increased scrutiny of vaccines, the nation’s food supply, pesticides and prescription drugs.

Means, a Stanford-educated physician who rose to popularity as a wellness influencer after becoming disillusioned with traditional medicine, was expected to share a vision for ending chronic disease by targeting its root causes, an idea that aligns with the Make America Healthy Again message of her close ally Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

She has no government experience, and her license to practice as a physician is inactive, The Associated Press reported, adding that it was not immediately clear when the hearing would be rescheduled.

‘Everyone’s happy for Dr. Means and her family,’ said Emily Hilliard, deputy press secretary for the Health and Human Services Department. ‘This is one of the few times in life it’s easy to ask to move a Senate hearing.’

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Israel said Thursday that the Red Cross provided information indicating ‘two coffins of deceased hostages have been transferred into their custody and are on their way to IDF troops in the Gaza Strip.’

In its announcement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) repeated its demand that Hamas hand over the remains of all the deceased hostages.

Israel said earlier Thursday that it had received information indicating that the Red Cross is on its way to a meeting point in the central Gaza Strip to retrieve coffins containing the remains of deceased hostages from Hamas. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed that the coffins were on their way to Israel saying that ‘All of the hostages’ families have been updated accordingly, and our hearts are with them in this difficult hour. The effort to return our hostages is ongoing and will not cease until the last hostage is returned.’

Netanyahu’s office said it would continue to provide updates ‘as necessary.’

On Tuesday, Fox News learned that a coffin handed over to Israel was assessed to contain the remains of a hostage whose body was already brought back to Israel for burial. The remains were later determined to be those of Ofir Tzarfati, whose body was first recovered in 2023.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that some of Tzarfati’s remains were returned in March 2024 and that in August 2024, Hamas published a photo of his body.

‘This is the third time we have been forced to open Ofir’s grave and rebury our son,’ Tzarfati’s family said in a statement. ‘The circle supposedly ‘closed’ back in December 2023, but it never truly closes. Since then, we have lived with a wound that constantly reopens, between memory and longing, between bereavement and mission.’

If the two coffins are confirmed to remain deceased hostages, there will still be another 11 whose remains are still in Gaza, possibly including two U.S. citizens, Itay Chen and Omer Neutra. So far, Israel has received the remains of 15 of the 28 deceased hostages.

The hostages whose remains have been returned include Aryeh Zalmanovich, Master Sergeant (Res.) Tamir Adar, Staff Sgt. Tal Haimi, Suntaya Akrasi, Ronen Tommy Engel, Eliyahu Margalit, Uriel Baruch, Staff Sgt. Tamir Nimrodi, Eitan Levi, Daniel Peretz, Yossi Sharabi, Guy Illuz, Bipin Joshi, Inbar Hayman and Sergeant Major Muhammad Al-Atresh.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst introduced legislation Thursday that would clear the way for Trump administration officials to sell underutilized federal buildings, Fox News Digital learned. 

‘Despite President Trump calling federal employees back to work, vacant government buildings could easily be mistaken as future locations for Spirit Halloween stores,’ Ernst said in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

‘For too long, the entrenched bureaucracy has used red tape to prevent these ghost towns from being sold off,’ she continued. Her Disposal Act ‘immediately lists six prime pieces of D.C. real estate on the auction block and slashes through pointless regulations to fast-track the sale of the government’s graveyard of lifeless real estate to generate hundreds of millions of dollars and save taxpayers billions.’ 

Ernst is the founder and chair of the Senate Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus, and first exposed the federal government’s lack of use of its federal buildings back in 2023 when she released a ‘naughty list of no-show federal agencies’ following the pandemic, when federal employees worked from home amid government-mandated shutdowns. 

Dubbed the ‘Disposing of Inactive Structures and Properties by Offering for Sale And Lease (DISPOSAL) Act,’ the legislation works to renew efforts to sell six pieces of underutilized federal properties in Washington, D.C., that headquarter various federal agencies. 

The legislation specifically calls on the General Services Administration to sell the Frances Perkins Federal Building, home to the United States Department of Labor; the Department of Energy’s James V. Forrestal Building; the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building, which is home to the Office of Personnel Management; Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, where the Department of Housing and Urban Development was headquartered before announcing in June it planned to move; United States Department of Agriculture’s headquarters at the Department of Agriculture South Building; and the Hubert H. Humphrey Federal Building, which headquarters the Department of Health and Human Services. 

There are an estimated 7,700 vacant federal buildings nationwide and another 2,265 that are largely sitting empty, according to Ernst’s office. 

The Office of Management and Budget reported in 2023 that the annual cost of operating federal buildings deemed ‘underutilized’ sits at $81.346 million, while the General Services Administration reported in 2025 that deferred maintenance and repair backlogs at federal buildings exceeds $6 billion and will balloon to more than $20 billion in five years. The General Services Administration identified hundreds of ‘non-core‘ federal properties across the nation in March that could be put up for sale. 

Mold, cockroaches and undrinkable water also have plagued the federal buildings, according to various recent media reports. 

The legislation would clear the path for the Trump administration to make additional sales down the line, should it pass. Sales of federal buildings are wrapped in red tape and procedures, with the bill working to streamline the process by mandating the sale of up to 20 additional federal buildings per calendar year, and charging the GSA chief with determining whether a sale or ground lease would be in the ‘best interests of the United States.’

President Donald Trump’s DOGE efforts to slim down the size of the federal government and remove overspending have been a hallmark of his second administration. Trump repeatedly has railed against federal employees who stopped reporting to the office since the pandemic, vowing during his joint address to Congress in March that ‘unaccountable bureaucracy’ will end. 

‘We have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work,’ he said. ‘My administration will reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy, and we will restore true democracy to America again. Any federal bureaucrat who resists this change will be removed from office immediately.’ 

Ernst and DOGE previously successfully mandated the sale of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in June, which headquartered Voice of America in a 1.2 million-square-foot building. Only 72 people worked in the building as of 2024, Fox News Digital previously reported. 

Fox News Digital reported back in February that the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) headquarters in D.C., which can accommodate roughly 6,000 people, had become so desolate of employees during the Biden administration that it looked like an off-season Spirit Halloween store. Administration officials confirmed to Fox News Digital at the time that one HUD office even still had a business card left over from the first Trump administration still tacked on a white board when officials with the second administration reported to work following Trump’s inauguration. 

Ernst’s October legislation follows a bill she introduced in June that called for the sale of six federal properties that would yield at least $400 million in revenue while canceling roughly $2.9 billion in overdue maintenance at the buildings.