The Supreme Court is leaving women's access to a widely used abortion pill untouched until at least Thursday, while the justices consider whether to allow restrictions on the drug, mifepristone, to take effect.

Justice Samuel Alito's order Monday allows women seeking abortions to continue obtaining the pill at pharmacies or through the mail, without an in-person visit to a doctor. It prevents restrictions on mifepristone imposed by a federal appeals court from taking effect for the time being.

The court is dealing with its latest abortion controversy four years after its conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.

The case before the court stems from a lawsuit Louisiana filed to roll back the Food and Drug Administration's rules on how mifepristone can be prescribed. The state claims the policy undermines the ban there, and it questions the safety of the drug, which was first approved in 2000 and has repeatedly been deemed safe and effective by FDA scientists.

Lower courts concluded that Louisiana is likely to prevail, and a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mail access and telehealth visits should be suspended while the case plays out.

The drug is most often used for abortion in combination with another drug, misoprostol. Medication abortions accounted for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023, the last year for which statistics are available.

The current dispute is similar to one that reached the court three years ago.

Lower courts then also sought to restrict access to mifepristone, in a case brought by physicians who oppose abortion. They filed suit in the months after the court overturned Roe.

The Supreme Court blocked the 5th Circuit ruling from taking effect over the dissenting votes of Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas. Then, in 2024, the high court unanimously dismissed the doctors' suit, reasoning they did not have the legal right, or standing, to sue.

In the current dispute, mainstream medical groups, the pharmaceutical industry and Democratic members of Congress have weighed in cautioning the court against limiting access to the drug. Pharmaceutical companies said a ruling for abortion opponents would upend the drug approval process.

The FDA has eased a number of restrictions initially placed on the drug, including who can prescribe it, how it is dispensed and what kinds of safety complications must be reported.

Despite those determinations, abortion opponents have been challenging the safety of mifepristone for more than 25 years. They have filed a series of petitions and lawsuits against the agency, generally alleging that it violated federal law by overlooking safety issues with the pill.

President Donald Trump's administration has been unusually quiet at the Supreme Court. It declined to file a written brief recommending what the court should do, even though federal regulations are at issue.

The case puts Trump's Republican administration in a difficult place. Trump has relied on the political support of anti-abortion groups but has also seen ballot question and poll results that show Americans generally support abortion rights.

Both sides took the silence as an implicit endorsement of the appellate ruling. Alito is both the justice in charge of handling emergency appeals from Louisiana and the author of the 2022 decision that declared abortion is not a constitutional right and returned the issue to the states.

A man who sprayed vinegar at Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar at a town hall meeting in Minneapolis pleaded guilty to assault Thursday in federal court after reaching a deal with prosecutors.

Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, is awaiting sentencing.

Kazmierczak, dressed in bright orange jail clothing, gave only a fragmentary explanation Thursday of the Jan. 27 assault, which came as the city was already on edge after the fatal shootings of two people by federal agents during a White House crackdown that brought thousands of immigration officers to Minnesota.

After being asked what he remembered of the assault, he told U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen: "It's fuzzy."

Kazmierczak, who was in the audience during Omar's January town hall, leaped up when the representative called for the ouster of then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. He sprayed liquid from a syringe as court documents say he shouted that Noem would not resign and that Omar was "splitting Minnesota apart."

Security officers tackled Kazmierczak, who told them the liquid was vinegar.

"I didn't want anybody to think she was in danger," he said Thursday.

Omar, who was not injured, continued with the town hall after the arrest.

Authorities later determined he'd sprayed her with a mixture of water and apple cider vinegar. He was charged with assaulting a U.S. officer.

Court documents say Kazmierczak, a critic of Omar who has made online posts supportive of President Donald Trump, told a close associate several years ago that "somebody should kill" her.

Omar, a refugee from Somalia, has long been a target of Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric. After she was elected seven years ago, Trump said she should "go back" to her home country. He has described her as "garbage" and said she should be investigated.

Trump has also accused Omar of staging the attack, telling ABC News, "She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her."

On Thursday, Kazmierczak told Erickson that he was being treated for Parkinson's disease, and that he'd been diagnosed with ADHD or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and a form of post-traumatic stress.

After his arrest, his then-attorney said that he did not have access to the medications he needed for Parkinson's and other serious conditions.

Minnesota court records show that Kazmierczak, who was convicted of felony auto theft in 1989, has been arrested multiple times for driving under the influence and has had numerous traffic citations. There are also indications he has had significant financial problems, including two bankruptcy filings.

In social media posts, Kazmierczak had criticized former President Joe Biden and referred to Democrats as "angry and liars." Trump wants the U.S. to be "stronger and more prosperous," he wrote.

Threats against members of Congress have increased in recent years, peaking in 2021 following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters before dipping slightly, only to climb again, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Capitol Police.

When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the president's mass deportation effort.

Instead, a top Justice Department official insisted the ruling wasn't binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.

By February, the district court judge, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes, a nominee of President Joe Biden, accused Trump officials in a ruling that month of seeking "to erode any semblance of separation of powers," adding that they could "only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist."

Hardly isolated, the case illustrates a broader pattern of defiance of lower court decisions in President Donald Trump's second term.

The failure of Trump officials to follow court orders has been highlighted most notably in individual immigration cases. But a review of hundreds of pages of court records by The Associated Press also shows an extraordinary record of violations in lawsuits over policy changes and other moves.

In the second Trump administration's first 15 months in office, district court judges ruled it was violating an order in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including mass layoffs, deportations, spending cuts and immigration practices, the AP's review of court records found. That's about one out of every eight lawsuits in which courts have at least temporarily blocked the administration's actions.

The Republican administration's power struggle with federal courts — which is testing basic tenets of U.S. democracy — reflects an expansive view of executive authority that has also challenged the independence of federal agencies, a president's ethical obligations, and the U.S.'s role in the international order.

The violations in the 31 lawsuits are in addition to more than 250 instances of noncompliance judges have recently highlighted in individual immigration petitions — from failing to return property to keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.

Legal scholars and former federal judges said they could recall at most a few violations of court rulings over the full four-year terms of other recent presidential administrations, including Trump's first time in office. They also noted previous administrations were generally apologetic when confronted by judges; the Trump administration's Justice Department has been outright combative in some cases.

"What the court system is experiencing in the last year and a half is just qualitatively completely different from anything that's preceded it," said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who studies federal courts and is tracking litigation against the Trump administration.

Though Trump officials eventually backed down in about a third of the 31 lawsuits, legal experts say their treatment of court orders poses serious dangers.

"The federal government should be the institution most devoted to the rule of law in this country," said David Super, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University. "When it ceases to feel itself bound, respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country."

The White House's aggressive policy moves have prompted a barrage of lawsuits — more than 700 and counting.

In October, U.S. District Judge William Smith took little time to conclude Homeland Security officials were flouting one of his orders. Smith, a nominee of George W. Bush, had blocked them from making billions of dollars in disaster relief funding to states contingent on cooperation with the president's immigration priorities.