WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Tonight on "PBS News Weekend," two conflicting abortion rulings create uncertainty about access to a commonly used abortion pill.

Then, after California's historic and damaging storms, a silver lining as reservoirs refill following years of drought.

And John Yang sits down with Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic to discuss her new book about the courts conservative shift.

JOAN BISKUPIC: Makes such a difference to be down just one justice.

It's because there's this cushion now on the right wing, you know they can lose one and still have a majority.

(BREAK) WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Good evening.

I'm William Brangham.

John Yang is away.

We begin tonight with dueling rulings from two federal judges that threatens access to the most commonly used method of abortion in this country.

The drug in question is mifepristone, which was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000.

Friday night a federal judge in Texas appointed by President Trump put a hold on that drugs ongoing approval while a lawsuit questioning its safety continues.

Separately, a judge in Washington State appointed by President Obama ordered U.S. authorities not to make changes that would restrict access to the drug.

President Biden condemned the Texas ruling and the Department of Justice has filed an appeal.

We'll take a closer look at these rulings and what they mean later in the program.

The Justice Department has launched an investigation into the potential leak of Pentagon documents that detail U.S. and NATO aid to Ukraine.

The documents labeled secret were posted on social media sites.

They appear to be routine updates and dispatches, though some may have been altered.

This comes as the New York Times and others report, more documents have begun to appear online, allegedly revealing the depth of U.S. intelligence on Russia's war plans and how the U.S. is spying on allies to track the war.

Tensions between Taiwan and China rose today as the Chinese military sent warships and fighter jets closer to Taiwan.

Chinese state television released footage of the drills which are supposed to last for three days.

Taiwan's defense ministry said it spotted 71 Chinese aircraft, including fighter jets and bombers crossing an unofficial barrier between the two countries.

Beijing views Taiwan as part of China.

These exercises come after Wednesday's meeting in Los Angeles, between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen.

Police in Iran today announced they've started installing cameras in public locations to identify women who don't wear their veils.

Official say once identified the women will receive a text message detailing the consequences of not covering their hair.

It is the latest effort to crack down on resistance to Iran hijab law, a dress code imposed after the 1979 revolution.

Since last fall, more Iranian women have been taking off their veils to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who died in police custody after being held for allegedly violating the hijab rule.

Still to come on "PBS News Weekend," what's ahead for California after months of heavy rains ease the state's long drought?

And Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic on the courts rightward shift.

(BREAK) WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade last summer, anti-abortion activists have tried numerous other strategies to curtail access to abortions.

As we reported a federal judge in Texas last night invalidated FDA approval of the most common abortion pill.

And earlier this week legislatures in Idaho, Kansas and Florida moved to further restrict abortion access in those states.

Earlier today, Ali Rogin spoke with our colleague Sarah Varney of Kaiser Health News, who has been tracking all these latest developments.

ALI ROGIN: Sarah, thank you for joining us.

As we mentioned last night, two federal judges reached very different conclusions about a widely used abortion medication mifepristone, walk us through where things stand now and what it means for people to access to this drug?

SARAH VARNEY, Kaiser Health News: Well, as of today, nothing will change.

We have two conflicting decisions, as you mentioned, we have one from Texas from Judge Kacsmaryk, he's a Trump appointed federal judge who essentially said that the FDA needed to revoke approval from mifepristone.

He gave the FDA seven days in order to appeal the decision or put it into effect.

This would mean that mifepristone, if it were to go into effect would come off the market across the country.

So even in states where abortion is legal, like Massachusetts, or California and New York, the other decision came from Washington State.

And this was actually a challenge brought by Democratic attorneys general essentially saying that mifepristone was in fact over regulated.

And the judge there in Washington state, a federal judge said that he didn't necessarily agree with the Attorney General's that it was over restrictive, but he did say the FDA had to continue to provide mifepristone at the status quo in those states in which the attorneys general represented.

ALI ROGIN: So you've read through Judge Kacsmaryk's decision, what stood out about it to you?

SARAH VARNEY: Well, we know a lot about Judge Kacsmaryk's background.

He was actually an anti-abortion movement lawyer before he was appointed to the bench.

And I think what's interesting about this decision is you really see that it's steeped in really what can only be called Christian extremism.

We have a couple of graphics to show you what is in that decision.

The first one talks about how mifepristone is the synthetic steroid that blocks the hormone progesterone, which is true, but he goes on to say that it ultimately starves the unborn human until death.

And because mifepristone alone will not always complete the abortion, the FDA mandates this two-step drug regimen which is true.

Mifepristone, "to kill the unborn human, followed by misoprostol to induce cramping and contractions to expel the unborn human from the mother's womb."

There is many things that are scientifically incorrect in this statement.

As I mentioned, mifepristone is used up until about 10 weeks of pregnancy.

So this is when the pregnancy is very, very small, it is just medically impossible for a person to see what even could resemble a fetus during a mifepristone type of abortion.

And then this assertion that women experience shame and regret or suicidal thoughts, you know, these are things that have not been proven to be true.

I think there's really no other way to sort of interpret this decision other than Judge Kacsmaryk's assertion for what has long been a goal of the pro-life movement, which is fetal personhood.

So this is the idea that a fetus is a person from the very moment of conception, and that there should be no intervention that God decides when a when a fetus comes into existence.

And at the other end of life when a human - - when a human dies, so there should be no intervention on that end as well.

ALI ROGIN: So yesterday's ruling on mifepristone is about FDA approval, but we should note that this is not a new drug that was recently approved by the FDA?

SARAH VARNEY: That's correct.

This drug was approved in 2000 by the FDA.

And we actually have a -- also a quote from Judge Rice's decision where he specifically talks about the scientific evidence on safety and efficacy of mifepristone.

He says, the plaintiffs assert that the FDA acknowledges that serious events are exceedingly rare that mifepristone associated fatality rate is very low, with not a single death casually attributed to mifepristone and that all the data shows the mifepristone is among the safest drugs in the world.

There is no reason scientific basis for subjecting it to additional burdens that are not applied to other riskier medications.

It's a drug that's safer than Viagra.

It's safer than Tylenol.

It's safer than penicillin.

This is a drug that's been very, very well studied.

ALI ROGIN: And there are several steps that are going to happen between now and any final decisions on this issue but if we play this out, what would happen to a person's access to abortions, if indeed mifepristone is restricted?

SARAH VARNEY: So as we mentioned, medication abortion is a two-step regimen.

The first pill is mifepristone, which halts the pregnancy and then misoprostol which causes cramping, and expulsion of the pregnancy tissue similar to a miscarriage.

So what clinics are doing is they are developing protocols for misoprostol only abortions.

There's more nausea, more bleeding, but it is still a quite safe way to terminate an early pregnancy.

ALI ROGIN: And Sarah, we saw a number of measures related to restricting abortion access around the country this week.

But let's talk about more broadly, what is the overarching strategy going on here that anti-abortion rights activists are pursuing?

SARAH VARNEY: As you mentioned, we saw in Idaho we -- there's now a travel ban that's going into effect in 30 days, that will make it a crime to help an unemancipated girl that's the language of the governor in Idaho from leaving the state for an abortion.

We're seeing other types of, you know, restrictions on certain types of medical procedures in places like Kansas, where abortion actually remains legal, because the voters resoundingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would restrict abortion.

We're seeing in Florida, a move to bring the ban from 15 weeks to six weeks.

So these legislatures have been very, very busy.

So we see activity both in the state but then obviously, with these two court rulings this week, you see that there's also a lot of activity in the federal justice system as well.

ALI ROGIN: Sarah Varney with Kaiser Health News, thank you so much.

SARAH VARNEY: Oh, it's my pleasure.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: After a barrage of punishing and sometimes deadly winter storms lashed California with rain and snow, the clouds now appear to be parting in perhaps revealing a silver lining.

California, like much of the American West has been suffering through a brutal drought.

But now 12 of California's 17 major reservoirs have been replenished, and are currently above their historical averages for the start of spring.

But officials are also warning that when the enormous snowpack that's accumulated atop the Sierra Nevada Mountains starts to melt, that runoff could cause a new threat to those living below.

Hayley Smith covers all of this for the Los Angeles Times.

And she joins us now.

Hayley Smith, thank you so much for being here.

Could you just tell us, give us a sense of the damage that this string of storms caused California?

I mean, our recovery efforts and rebuilding efforts still underway?

HAYLEY SMITH, Reporter, Los Angeles Times: Yes, recovery efforts are still underway.

This has really been a remarkable winter.

Going into this season, we were on the tail end of the state's driest three years on record.

And then as you said, the skies opened up.

We saw widespread flooding.

We saw levee breaches, we saw landslides and sinkholes, property damage, nearly three dozen people have died.

So it's been a pretty challenging winter for us in that regard so far.

And so as of right now, there are still people that don't have access to their homes, there are still evacuated communities, places that are underwater, people that have lost their livelihoods due to flooded farm fields or infrastructure challenges.

So we have a lot of work to do just to dig out from this winter, even though thankfully, it seems like the storm systems have stopped.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I want to touch on this issue of the drought.

And I'm going to put up these images.

This is from the U.S. Drought Monitor, which shows how bad it was.

This is back in December.

You see California has nearly all red, but just a few months later, that red is all gone.

Does all of this moisture that has fallen on California mean that California's water woes are largely over?

HAYLEY SMITH: Yes and no.

There is no denying that this has made a huge difference and significantly ease drought conditions across the state.

As you mentioned, just three months ago, we saw most of the state in severe and extreme exceptional drought.

People were under water conservation orders, officials were saying they barely had enough supplies for health and safety of millions of people.

So now our reservoirs are fuller, our snowpack is much healthier.

But there are still parts of the state that are experiencing drought and water scarcity issues.

And then on top of that, the long-term climate trend in California is toward hotter and drier even though we did get this sort of burst of water this winter.

And so because of that I don't think officials will ever officially declare the drought over.

We need to continue to plan for future dry times.

We need to continue to invest in infrastructure and ways to capture and store and convey water in the state.

So -- and we need to keep our ethos of conservation.

So, I don't think they're going to ever fully declare the drought over for those reasons.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I know that you recently visited and spoke to officials that the biggest reservoir in Southern California Diamond Valley Lake, what are the officials they're telling you about this future?

HAYLEY SMITH: The head of the Metropolitan Water District actually put it so well, he said, nature gave us a lifeline.

So Diamond Valley Lake is, as you mentioned, the largest reservoir in Southern California.

And you can kind of think of it like a savings account, where during this really harsh period of drought, we were drawing down and really using almost half of it just to get by.

And so now with these storms, they've been able to turn the taps back on and start refilling Diamond Valley Lake.

So that just gives everyone a little bit of breathing room and lets us breathe a sigh of relief so that the next time it does get dry again, we will have replenish that savings account and we can lean on it when we need to.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Speaking of California's bank accounts, I mean, that snowpack that I mentioned that's in the Sierra Nevada has, that too, is another one of these bank accounts that Californians and Californian farmers rely on.

But there is this concern that all of that snow might melt too quickly and at the wrong times.

What is the principal worry there?

HAYLEY SMITH: Some of my colleagues at the Times actually calculated the amount of water contained in the state snowpack right now is about 30-million-acre feet, which is more than the capacity of Lake Mead, the lake -- the nation's largest reservoir.

And so eventually what's going to happen is as this weather starts to heat up, as we start to maybe see some heat waves or strings of 80-, 90- and 100-degree weather, all of that snowpack is going to come down at some point.

And that's going to potentially create significant flooding.

It's going to put pressures on our rivers and streams and dams and tributaries.

So unfortunately, we now have to prepare for more flooding in the spring as all of that snowpack melts.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Hayley Smith of the Los Angeles Times.

Thank you so much for being here.

HAYLEY SMITH: Sure.

Thanks for having me.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Today's Supreme Court is no stranger to controversy.

Earlier this week reporting by ProPublica revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas took undisclosed lavish trips funded by a Republican megadonor.

This comes as the country waits to see just how the justices will rule in a number of contentious cases dealing with affirmative action, voting rights and LGBTQ rights.

Last week, John Yang sat down with Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic to discuss her new book, that details the courts recent conservative shift, and how that could shape the country's future.

JOHN YANG: The most prominent results so far of the Supreme Court's rightward shift may be last year's overturning of Roe vs. Wade racing the nearly half century old right to seek an abortion.

But there are many other consequences whose effects will be felt for generations to come.

It's all detailed in a new book, Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court's Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences.

The author is Joan Biskupic, the Senior Supreme Court Analyst for CNN.

Joan, thanks for joining us.

How crucial were the four years where the Republicans controlled both the White House and the Senate in this shift to the right?

JOAN BISKUPIC, Author, " Nine Black Robes": Completely crucial.

You know, Donald Trump got three appointees and four years.

That's really remarkable.

It's not, you know, a record but it's remarkable for modern history.

And the reason he was able to get those three appointments through so speedily was because he had a Republican Senate and he had a real partner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

JOHN YANG: You write about the whole apparatus that there is to try to get the judiciary to be more conservative Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society.

How Central was Donald Trump to that?

Could this have happened without Donald Trump?

JOAN BISKUPIC: A version of it could have happened without Donald Trump, but it was crucial to have Donald Trump, his White House Counsel, Don McGahn, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Leonard Leo, as you mentioned, all working together to pick people and to speed them through the process.

Let's just use as an example, the third appointee Amy Coney Barrett, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies on September 18.

She's buried at the very end of the month.

And at the very end of September is when Donald Trump announces the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.

Her hearings happen almost immediately.

She's confirmed at the end of October, and we're right at the election.

Contrast that to what happened in 2016 when Mitch McConnell said upon Antonin Scalia's death in February of 2016, there is not enough time to have a new Justice confirmed until the November election all those months versus just those few weeks and days, that shows how Donald Trump working with this team made such a difference.

JOHN YANG: You write of Donald Trump that his effect on the justices relationships with each other, was even at times pernicious as he sowed distrust.

JOAN BISKUPIC: I noticed something happening as they were all maneuvering differently inside to sort of counteract his effort to undermine the integrity of the judiciary, you know, think of the disdain that Donald Trump had shown toward the judiciary, even as a candidate, you know, mocking a judge who ruled against him as a Mexican judge.

And then he had that one pretty unprecedented clash with the Chief Justice, when he disparaged a judge who ruled against his administration as just an Obama judge.

And that was when Chief Justice John Roberts said there are no Obama judges, there are no Trump judges, Clinton judges, Bush judges, but that showed how much the chief and some of the other justices were trying to counteract the idea that the justices were not going to be neutral based on their politics.

But the bottom line is that we have a cord that has signaled to the American public, as polls reflect that it is politically energized.

JOHN YANG: You cite the Chief Justice who famously said in his confirmation hearings, that he was going to be an umpire just calling the balls and strikes.

But you also write that the conservatives on this court seem intent on rewriting the law?

JOAN BISKUPIC: A lot of our viewers will remember that the Chief Justice John Roberts broke away from the five conservatives to his right in the Dobbs ruling that reverse Roe v. Wade, he did not want to go so far so fast.

But John Roberts has been with the others on the conservative side to rollback racial remedies, to restrict regulations.

And much of that involves reversing precedent.

You're lowering the wall of separation between church and state, diminishing the ability of the federal government to regulate the environment, public health and safety.

And then also on social policy issues, we have many ongoing clashes between religious interests, and LGBTQ rights.

And those that's another area where I think we're going to increasingly see the core siding with religious interests.

JOHN YANG: Have you seen a change in the three remaining liberal justices and how they respond to this?

JOAN BISKUPIC: Let's just take Justice Elena Kagan, for example, she of the three remaining could more align herself with a center to broker a deal.

So she would often work with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer, who has since retired to try to bring about a compromise.

But she essentially doesn't have a partner in that effort toward five votes anymore.

So I have found that she is a little louder in her dissents, and, you know, moving almost more to the left to complain about the majorities rulings to call attention to things and it makes such a difference to be down just one justice.

It's because there's this cushion now on the right wing, you know, they can lose one and still have a majority.

We will have to see how it all shakes out.

JOHN YANG: You talk about finding compromises on the court, and you expose a lot of it.

You write that justice has declined cases, delayed cases, or made compromises to avoid a 5-4 conservative liberal split.

This is obviously when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still alive.

Talk about how this deal making and trading goes on?

JOAN BISKUPIC: I'll bring you back to 2020 when the Supreme Court was handling two cases that involve clashes over Trump documents that the Manhattan DA wanted and House committees wanted.

And when the justices first considered these two cases, they were bitterly split along five to four lines, the Chief Justice did not want to produce 5-4 rulings just because of how polarizing Donald Trump had been.

And he worked with other justices he compromised.

And in the end, the chief was able to produce two, seven to two rulings that went against Donald Trump in these cases, but yet, you know, preserved the offices of the presidency and also I think, tried to preserve the stature of the judiciary.

JOHN YANG: In your final chapter, which looks at the Dobbs decision which overturn Roe v. Wade, you're right.

The court had no middle, no center to hold, what's the effect of that?

JOAN BISKUPIC: It's so significant for the nation.

You know, obviously we saw most enrolling back all these decades of reproductive rights and women's privacy.

But you -- there's no incentive for compromise the way there had been when things were more narrowly divided.

The Supreme Court is considering the future of campus affirmative action at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

Those are cases that you are so unlikely to see a middle ground compromise as we saw back in 2003 when in the University of Michigan cases and way back when to the Bakke case in 1978.

That's the difference, John.

JOHN YANG: The book is, Nine Black Robes.

The author is Joan Biskupic, the Senior Supreme Court Analyst at CNN.

Joan, thanks so much.

JOAN BISKUPIC: Thanks, John.

Appreciate it.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Now online, a new report from the World Health Organization estimates one in six adults worldwide have experienced infertility.

All that and more is on our website pbs.org/news hour.

And that's our program for tonight.

I'm William Brangham.

For all of my colleagues, thanks so much for joining us.

We'll see you tomorrow.