Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill is escalating her fight against abortion pills entering states that ban abortions through two lawsuits — one targeting the providers accused of distributing the drugs and another challenging the blue-state laws shielding them from prosecution.

Murrill, along with Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, sued New York, California and Massachusetts at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, alleging their shield laws block cooperation with investigations into abortion-pill providers. The attorneys general also filed a separate lawsuit in Louisiana against more than 30 people and organizations accused of advertising, prescribing, dispensing or shipping abortion pills into their states.

“This is drug dealing and it’s illegal,” Murrill told Fox News Digital. “And we’re going to continue to do everything that we can to enforce the laws in our states.”

The two lawsuits, filed Wednesday, are the latest move in a widening state-by-state fight over abortion. That conflict has grown since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down Roe v. Wade and gave elected officials the power to set abortion policy in their states.

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Murrill said the Supreme Court case targets the blue states’ legal protections that have thwarted Louisiana’s previous efforts to prosecute out-of-state doctors.

“These shield laws are very comprehensive,” Murrill said, arguing that California and New York prohibit officials from assisting other states seeking to enforce judgments stemming from abortion-related conduct.

Louisiana has already indicted New York physician Margaret Carpenter and California physician Remy Coeytaux over allegations that they prescribed abortion drugs that were sent into Louisiana. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom have refused to extradite the doctors.

The Supreme Court complaint cited Louisiana’s unsuccessful effort to extradite Carpenter, saying Hochul declared there was “no way in hell” she would comply with Louisiana’s request. The filing said New York later strengthened its shield law, including by allowing prescribers of abortion drugs to keep their names off prescription labels.

In response to the lawsuit, Hochul said she will continue fighting to ensure New York remains a “safe haven for reproductive rights.”

“No one should have to fear being punished for seeking or providing reproductive care,” Hochul said in a statement. “As anti-abortion extremists in other states try to reach across our borders and threaten patients and providers, New York will stand up for them. Our shield laws are there to protect that freedom.”

Newsom similarly rejected Louisiana’s request to extradite Coeytaux in January, saying California would not help other states punish doctors for providing abortion access that is legal in California.

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When Murrill vowed to sue, Newsom responded on X telling her to “Go f— yourself. California will never help you criminalize healthcare.”

“I think that if I sent guns into their states illegally, they would certainly try to come after me,” Murrill told Fox News Digital. “I said specifically at the time that we would be coming for them and we are.”

“We are going to take down those laws using every tool that we have at our disposal,” she continued.

The second lawsuit directly targets what Murrill calls the “pill pipeline.”

The 100-page complaint alleges providers used online questionnaires to obtain information from customers before abortion drugs were mailed into states where their distribution is prohibited. The states allege some organizations openly acknowledged that their conduct violated those states’ laws while relying on shield laws to protect themselves from legal consequences.

Murrill said investigators have conducted controlled purchases and received pills packaged in small bags, sometimes in quantities she said exceeded what would ordinarily be prescribed.

“We’ve seen it for ourselves,” Murrill said. “There’s no supervision, there’s no healthcare, there’s no communication whatsoever. It’s all done online.”

Murrill argued that the system can allow people other than pregnant women to obtain the drugs, pointing to cases Louisiana authorities said involved women being pressured or deceived into taking abortion medication.

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“We have a situation in one town in Louisiana that we’ve documented and investigated where a father did not want his teenage daughter to keep a pregnancy,” Murrill told Fox News Digital. “And so he basically put the medication in a smoothie, forced her to drink it. She did ultimately give birth to that baby at 23 weeks and is still in a NICU fighting for its life.”

The attorney general also said Louisiana wants more help from the Trump administration.

“Obviously we think the FDA could be doing more and we’ve asked them to do that,” Murrill said.

Louisiana has separately challenged federal rules that eliminated an in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser backed the litigation, accusing blue states of using their laws “to obstruct justice” and urging the Justice Department to settle Louisiana’s separate FDA litigation.

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“Democrats’ pro-abortion extremism has brought this country to a crisis point. Abortion activists flagrantly sell dangerous drugs across state lines and women and children pay the price, with more and more survivors of ‘death in a pill’ bravely coming forward,” Dannenfelser said in a statement.

Fox News Digital reached out to New York, California and Massachusetts’ governors’ offices for comment.

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The political right celebrated after a White House X account posted a graph showing that legal immigration to the U.S. from nations with Muslim majority populations has all but halted.

The account highlighted a 96 percent cut in legal immigration from majority-Muslim countries since 2024 and attached a graph from the Cato Institute, a notoriously pro-immigration think tank.

The graph showed a drastic decline in quarterly admissions of immigrants from those countries beginning in January 2025, when President Donald Trump officially took office. It also declined in late 2024, the last year of former President Joe Biden’s tenure in office.

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At its peak, immigration from Muslim-majority nations was over 22,000 people per month between July and October of 2024, according to the graph. But by the beginning of January of this year, that number had dropped to almost zero.

Online, the political right cheered the drastic shift.

“Absolutely incredible victory for the American people, thanks to POTUS,” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, said.

“These are the wins we need to continue to deliver on,” said Brandon Herrera, the GOP nominee for Congress in Texas’ 23rd District.

“4 percent to go! Thank you, President Trump,” said Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla.

“Let’s pump up those rookie numbers for every category of immigrant,” columnist Kurt Schlichter said.

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Some turned the graph into a referendum on the results of Republican leadership, and urged conservatives to vote during the 2026 midterm elections despite concerns about cost-of-living, the Iran war, and other issues for which Trump has been knocked by members of his own party.

“I voted for this—and will again,” said user David Harrison.

“The next time you get the urge to ‘punish the GOP.’ Remember that Democrats will reverse this overnight,” said Turning Point Action’s Ben Larrabee.

“People screaming that Trump and the GOP aren’t doing anything about this problem [are] hardest hit, like squarely between the eyes,” online personality James Lindsay said of the graph.

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“Vote like Western Civilization depends on it, because it does,” said Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet.

Not everyone was thrilled with the decline in legal immigration from this demographic, though, including David J. Bier, who is the director of immigration studies at Cato and who took credit for the research behind the graph.

“Thanks for citing my work. You are violating the law and harming Americans while making the country less safe, less free, and less prosperous,” he said in reply.

Despite Bier’s claim, no court has decided that Trump’s move to reduce immigration from Muslim-majority countries is “illegal,” though there have been challenges in district courts.

During his first term in office, Trump faced a challenge to his proposed travel restrictions from Muslim-majority countries. The policy was enjoined by the federal district court for the District of Hawaii, and upheld by two federal appellate courts. However, the Supreme Court ultimately decided in Hawaii vs. Trump that Trump’s policy was legal.

Democrats blocked a push to tackle one of the key issues driving this midterm election cycle, and may have given a vulnerable Republican a political lifeline in the process.

Republicans’ effort to crack down on rising electricity costs caused by the boom in data centers across the country was stifled on Wednesday by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democrats, despite cruising through the House in a massive bipartisan vote.

Schumer’s blockade, however, wasn’t unanimous among Democrats, with four — Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. — breaking ranks to support the bill.

The Ratepayer Protection Act, would have created a standard for AI companies and the data centers they run to bear the brunt of electricity costs — an issue that has become a predominant concern for voters this midterm cycle.

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But Democrats argued it was a toothless effort that lacked any real enforcement mechanism, and merely a political ploy to give vulnerable Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, a boost.

“The Ratepayer Protection Act is a fraud. It does not require any protections at all,” Schumer said. “While Americans are demanding real guardrails on AI and data centers, Republicans are offering a toothless messaging bill.”

“We need real action on data centers. And what do Republicans decide all of a sudden to push force forward a bill that is totally optional?”

While the U.S. continues its arms race with China for AI dominance, voters want to see tech companies cool their jets and slow the rapid construction of data centers. A Fox News poll from July found that 70% of voters, both Republicans and Democrats, opposed the construction of new data centers.

SCHUMER PREACHES AFFORDABILITY IN DEM MIDTERM PITCH WHILE SABOTAGING GOP FIXES FOR SOARING COSTS

Republicans, including Husted, hoped that voter concerns could persuade Democrats to break from Schumer and vote in favor of the bill heading into Wednesday’s test.

“We all know that people would like to see us do something to lower their prices,” Husted said. We have the opportunity to do that.”

Data centers have become a political cudgel against Husted in his race against former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has labeled him the “face of data centers” in a battle that could determine who wins the majority in November.

Husted argued that the bill passed the House with only three Democrats voting against it, and that this push didn’t need to be labeled a “partisan victory.” Killing the bill, however, could give Husted a needed boost to campaign on, given that Democrats stopped one of the main issues voters have going into the election, particularly in Ohio.

“It’s like, look, this can be an opportunity for the Democrats to join us and say, ‘yeah, we agree. We’re gonna work with them to get something done,’ and I hope they will,” Husted said.

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But Democrats countered the legislation was just a stunt to give Husted political ammunition.

Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., told Fox News Digital that voters could see through the politics being played with by the GOP, and that the bill is “good for Senator Husted, but not necessarily for them.”

“Because it’s not, it doesn’t have anything that would actually force change,” Kim said. “And so that’s what we need. We need something that is actually gonna be substantial and meet the moment rather than things that are just designed to be able to help with political elections.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., argued that it was a massive bipartisan effort in the House, and questioned “why you would say that” the effort was just a political front to give Husted an issue to campaign on.

“I just think, if you’re looking at issues that we want to get at the heart of what everybody seems to be saying, the Democrats and others are saying, are important, we’re concerned about,” Thune said. “And it’s a chance to actually make the law, it’s not just making a point here.”

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Russia’s warning that it could resort to nuclear weapons if NATO attempts to isolate Kaliningrad is raising new concerns that the heavily militarized Russian exclave could become a flashpoint between Moscow and the alliance, as experts warn the territory is already being used to pressure Europe through hybrid warfare.

Moscow warned NATO in a diplomatic document that it was prepared to use “the entire arsenal of forces and capabilities at its disposal, including nuclear weapons” if alliance members attempted to isolate Kaliningrad from the rest of Russia, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Kaliningrad, a Russian territory geographically separated from the Russian mainland, sits on the Baltic Sea between NATO members Poland and Lithuania and hosts significant Russian military assets, including elements of Moscow’s Baltic Fleet.

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The Russian document also raised the possibility of strikes against “decision-making centers” in NATO member states from the outset of a conflict.

NATO rejected Moscow’s allegations in a response reviewed by Fox News Digital, saying the alliance is defensive and that none of its exercises or activities threaten Russian territory. The alliance also urged Russia to stop its “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric.”

Carrie Filipetti, executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition, a nonpartisan network of foreign policy leaders, told Fox News Digital that Moscow has repeatedly used nuclear threats as a means of trying to deter Western support for Ukraine.

“Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons in the past, including veiled references to tactical nuclear attacks at the beginning of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, lowering their formal threshold for launching a nuclear attack in 2024, placing Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, and restarting nuclear testing,” Filipetti said. “It is very common for Putin to use these threats, because he sees it as a way to deter Europe and the United States from continuing to support Ukraine.”

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“The threat about a nuclear attack if Kaliningrad is threatened or isolated comes on the heels of a few developments,” she added, pointing to NATO jets being scrambled over Russian aircraft, U.S. and NATO air drills near Kaliningrad last month, and heightened tensions over the war in Ukraine.

Filipetti, who also served as a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department and as a senior policy advisor for the United States Mission to the United Nations (USUN), argued that the timing also reflects mounting pressure on Moscow as the war continues.

“Putin seems to understand that the tide is turning against him, and he’s resorting to aggressive rhetoric to try to stop European support for Ukraine as he has tried to do in the past,” she said.

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim, a research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College and chief strategy officer at the New Lines Institute, told Fox News Digital that NATO should take the warning seriously, particularly because of the broader role Kaliningrad is already playing in Moscow’s confrontation with Europe.

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Ibrahim argued that while NATO has traditionally prepared for conventional military conflict involving “tanks and troops and divisions,” Russia is increasingly using methods designed to disrupt the infrastructure and systems on which civilian societies depend.

“Russia is actually adopting a very different approach,” he said, describing a strategy of hybrid warfare targeting “infrastructure” and “societies in general — what keeps societies functioning.”

Ibrahim described Kaliningrad as the “front line” of that effort.

“It’s essentially become a Russian fortress,” he said. “This is essentially a front-line operation of the Russians in terms of signals intelligence, signals interference and essentially mechanisms by which to carry out this hybrid warfare.”

Such interference, Ibrahim said, could play a role in the broader confrontation by disrupting civilian communications and infrastructure before or alongside a conventional military attack.

“All of that would be preceded by interference operations like this to ensure that societies are not functioning, are not able to respond to emergency services, the news information services, etc.,” Ibrahim said. “So governments lose control over what actually makes societies function.”

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The challenge for NATO, he said, is that such operations can be more difficult to attribute than a conventional assault.

“Many times, you cannot trace exactly where a lot of this interference is actually coming from — attacks on power stations or internet and telecommunications, et cetera,” Ibrahim said. “There’s always some sort of plausible deniability if it’s done by an actor who’s very capable.”

The ambiguity, Ibrahim argued, presents a challenge for an alliance built around collective defense against armed attack.

“NATO really does have to kind of reconfigure its posture to understand that these kinds of attacks are equivalent to essentially any sort of kinetic attack,” he said.

Asked what NATO and neighboring Poland and Lithuania should do following Russia’s warning, Ibrahim called for the alliance to establish clearer consequences for hybrid attacks.

“We now need to start going on the offensive in terms of hybrid warfare and understanding the threat and pushing back and sending a very clear signal to Moscow that such threats will not stand,” he said, arguing that a sufficiently serious hybrid attack should be considered capable of triggering NATO’s Article 5 collective-defense clause.

Lithuania, which directly borders Kaliningrad, rejected Moscow’s warning and accused Russia of trying to undermine NATO unity and Western support for Ukraine. 

“Russia’s insinuations and threats have no basis. NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to Russia or any other country,” Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry told Fox News Digital. “Russia’s threatening is intended to fracture transatlantic unity and impede our support to Ukraine. Russia will not achieve its goals.”

The ministry added: “We strongly condemn any threats to use force and irresponsible nuclear rhetoric. Russia must stop its aggression against Ukraine… Lithuania is strengthening its national defense system and capabilities, including air defense,” the ministry said. “We train with our allies and work alongside NATO forces deployed in Lithuania. We are prepared to defend every inch of NATO territory and respond to any threats.”

The ministry said Lithuania would also continue providing “comprehensive support to Ukraine and its fight against the aggressor Russia.”

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Richard Newton told Fox News Digital, “In the weeks leading up to February 2022, many officials and commentators (myself included) weren’t sure Putin would actually invade Ukraine, even though there were a number of warnings and indicators he would do so.  And then on that Feb. 24, Putin launched the largest land invasion against Ukraine since World War II.”

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“NATO should take Russia’s warning seriously that it could resort to employing nuclear weapons against the alliance should Kaliningrad be cut off from Russia. We are in the midst of Russia employing ‘gray zone’ coercive actions against NATO nations, so this pronouncement should not surprise the West,” he added.

Filipetti cautioned that regardless of whether Moscow intends to follow through, nuclear threats themselves carry risks.

“NATO is a defensive organization that is in no way threatening Russia’s position on Kaliningrad,” she said. “That said, any time there is a public threat of nuclear attack it must be taken seriously, especially with someone like Putin.”

“Nuclear bombs are a potentially world-altering technology,” Filipetti added. “It is not only their use, but the threat of their use, that could cause significant miscalculations and escalations.”

Russia has denied Western accusations that it is conducting hybrid warfare against European states and has said it has no intention of attacking NATO countries. Moscow says NATO military activity around Kaliningrad is instead contributing to an increasingly dangerous confrontation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov characterized recent Russian warnings as diplomatic reminders to “hotheads in Europe,” Reuters reported Wednesday.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Polish and Russian embassies for comment but did not receive responses in time for publication.

Reuters contributed to this story.

After spending years railing against fraud, Utah Republican state Rep. Trevor Lee has resigned after being charged with fraud himself.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office filed criminal charges against Lee on Monday, accusing him of forging documents and engaging in fraud in order to obtain a home loan. Prior to the charges, Lee had pushed legislation aimed at combating unemployment fraud and publicly praised efforts to expose the sweeping fraud scandals that have rocked Minnesota in recent years.

In one video obtained by prosecutors, the CEO of a Utah water company “stated that Lee had requested cash advances totaling $93,000 to show increased income to assist in purchasing his home, and that Lee said he would make (the CEO) ‘whole’ by securing (his) company a government contract with Hill Air Force Base,” according to the charging document.

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Another company claimed that Lee improperly used an offer letter from them to make it seem as if his income was higher than it was.

“Lee devised a scheme to obtain a $1 million home loan by false pretenses. To execute it, he communicated fraudulent documents to Kind Lending through the mortgage process — a forged Enevive employment contract, a loan application overstating his Enevive income, and a Blue Logic offer letter he knew misrepresented his employment,” prosecutors wrote.

Investigators say Lee admitted during an interview that he personally forged the Enevive CEO’s signature on the employment contract to obtain the loan and knew the offer letter did not reflect income the company could actually pay him.

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Lee’s social media feed is full of positive references to Nick Shirley, a content creator who attracted national attention after releasing videos alleging fraud involving Somali-run childcare centers and other publicly funded programs in Minnesota.

“Nick is going to stop a Gavin Newsom presidency single handily (sic.),” Lee said in one post. In another post, Lee offered Shirley assistance after he was charged a fee for filming at the Utah state capital building.

“Keep up the good work Nick,” Lee said in his most recent post directed at the YouTuber, dated July 11.

In addition to the praise of Shirley, Lee also introduced pieces of legislation designed to crack down on unemployment assistance fraud in 2023 and 2024.

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Lee resigned from the legislature shortly after the charges were filed.

“Due to personal circumstances that require my attention, I no longer feel I can give my constituents the time, attention and service they deserve,” he said. “I will always be grateful for the people I have met, the relationships I have built and the opportunity I have had to serve the people of Utah.”

Even if the fraud charges hadn’t come, Lee’s time in the legislature was approaching an end as he had lost his GOP primary election in June.

Lee did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Wednesday.