President Biden is vowing to fight state efforts to ban the FDA-approved abortion pill — a big battleground in the post-Roe fight between the administration and emboldened red-state governments.

• Why it matters: Lawmakers in at least 20 states have proposed restrictions or bans on the pills, Pew Stateline reports.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement: "[T]he FDA has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone. States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment."

• There's no settled law on whether states can ban the pills, and the question is likely to be litigated, the WashPost reports.

Why it matters: The administration could argue in court that FDA approval of mifepristone for medication abortions preempts state restrictions, Reuters reports.

• States will have trouble enforcing restrictions on medication abortion: Women likely will be able to get pills online or in other states.

Zoom out: Biden said yesterday, in brief remarks about abortion before he signed the gun bill, that his administration will try to prevent states from violating "other laws" as they implement the court decision.

• An example, he said, would be "deciding to not allow people across state lines to get public health services. And we're going to take actions to protect women’s rights and reproductive health."

Zoom in: The White House listed protection of medication abortion as one of the key actions the administration is taking post-Roe.

• The statement said Biden directed HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to protect women’s access to FDA-approved medication, including contraception and abortion pills.

State of play: More abortion pills are expected to be ordered online and delivered through the mail after Friday's decision, as part of an increase in abortion care through telemedicine, Axios' Kelly Tyko reports.

How it works: The pills used to terminate pregnancy — mifepristone and misoprostol — are FDA-approved for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, Axios' Tina Reed reports.

• They're frequently prescribed online and mailed to patients,

By the numbers: In 2020, the majority of U.S. abortions (54%) were medication abortions, up from 39% in 2017, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.

• In some European countries, up to 90% of abortions are done using pills.

Axios Explains: Abortion dashboard.

Since the decision, clinics have stopped performing abortions in Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin, AP reports.

• Women considering abortions already faced a near-complete ban in Oklahoma, and a Texas prohibition after roughly six weeks.

In Ohio, a ban on most abortions from the first detectable fetal heartbeat became law Friday when a federal judge dissolved an injunction that had kept the measure on hold for nearly three years.

• A law with narrow exceptions was triggered in Utah. Planned Parenthood Association and the ACLU sued yesterday to stop the ban.

• Go deeper: Capsules for 50 states + D.C.

The top Google searches related to abortion since the decision include "is abortion illegal," "abortion ban states" and "abortion pill," Axios' Neal Rothschild and Sara Fischer report.

• Those most actively searching were in political battlegrounds (Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire) and in red states (Missouri, Kentucky, Utah) where "trigger laws" immediately threaten abortion.

Searches for "abortion clinic near me" over-indexed in the Southeast, where a number of states had trigger laws on the books.

• The top five states are Mississippi and Louisiana, which have trigger laws — and Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, which don't.

Searches for "abortion pill" were highest in red states — Wyoming, followed by Montana, Louisiana, Georgia, Missouri and Arkansas.

• Searches for "Planned Parenthood near me" were highest in blue states — Delaware, California, Oregon, Washington and New Jersey.

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This pair of photos — abortion-rights supporters and opponents arguing outside the Supreme Court yesterday — captures America's discourse.

The landmark gun bill, signed by President Biden yesterday, was backed by 15 Republican senators and 14 Republican House members.

There's no place to hide when the price of oil and grains go up, Axios chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin tells me.

• They trade on global markets, and higher energy and food prices are huge drivers of inflation everywhere.

Pew Research Center found that in nearly all of 44 advanced economies, consumer prices have risen substantially since COVID hit.

• Among the 44 countries, the U.S. ranked 19th in change in annual inflation rate from Q1 of 2020 to Q1 of 2022.

Between the lines: Policy choices matter in exactly how much inflation a given place faces — whether in the form of Europe's dependence on Russian energy exports, Americans' aggressive stimulus last year, or Turkey's currency crisis.

Marcela Valdes of the N.Y. Times Magazine spent a year reporting on the generations-long failure of book publishing to diversify its staff, its offerings and its audience:

• "For decades publishing insiders have wrung their hands over the ways in which television, video games and the internet have eaten into their profits, while ignoring the ways in which their own business practices have limited the audience for their products," she writes.

"Survey after survey," Valdes continues, "shows that the two groups of Americans most likely to read books are those who have a bachelor’s degree and those who earn more than $75,000 a year":

For publishers, this should be Champagne-popping news. After all, the percentage of Americans over 25 who have earned bachelor’s degrees has more than doubled since 1970.

But demographically these graduates look different than they did in the 1970s — they are more likely to be women and to be Black, Asian or Latino — and by neglecting to build an audience among them, publishers may have lost millions of customers.

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Sports increasingly trounces news in influence over the cable bundle, Axios Sara Fischer writes:

• Last year, news programs made up just six of the 100 most-watched broadcasts in primetime — compared to 61 sports broadcasts, 37 of which were NFL games.

Between the lines: As traditional TV subscriptions decline in favor of streaming, live sports games have become the last remaining programs that advertisers can rely on to draw massive viewership.

• So NFL games are commanding rising ad rates and rights fees.

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