It's Monday, May 18, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. The culture of life and the culture of death are locked into a long-term battle. We have known that for decades now. The 20th century made that point abundantly clear. And the Supreme Court of the United States made that fight also very clear just last week, going into the end of the week. The Supreme Court handed down a very disappointing ruling that basically put back in place the Biden administration policy with the Food and Drug Administration that allowed women to gain Mipha Pristone the abortion pill without a doctor visit and by distribution through the mail. And that basically is a way of contravening the results of the Dobs decision in 2022 returning the abortion question to the states. What was not foreseen at that time is the fact that medication abortion, the use of the abortion pill would escalate in such a way that on the other side of Dobs with the Roe v. Wade decision reversed back in 2022, horrifyingly enough, there are more abortions now than before the Dobs decision. And the reason is straightforward. It is Mipha Pristone. It is the abortion pill. It is so-called medication abortion. So let's just remind yourselves what's at stake here. The state of Louisiana had filed a federal lawsuit against the policy of the Food and Drug Administration and that went to the district court. It eventually got up to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is seated in New Orleans. And that court basically found for the state of Louisiana and said that the state of Louisiana has sued rightly and the Food and Drug Administration had acted wrongly. That basically shut down the interstate commerce of Mipha Pristone, that specific drug, and it also made very clear that the Food and Drug Administration just had not really done its work and this should not be separated from, A, a doctor's visit, and it shouldn't be separated from the normal means of medical distribution, instead of making it so widely available by mail. That's the really, really dark part of all of this. But what we saw was almost immediately, Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, consistent critic of abortion, consistent enemy of Roe to the extent that he was the author of the majority opinion in the Dobs decision reversing Roe. He nonetheless had the geographic responsibility for the 5th Circuit. He put in place a temporary stay of the 5th Circuit's ruling. Now the Supreme Court has put a permanent stay on that 5th Circuit ruling. Now that isn't the end of the matter and that's because the state of Louisiana still has mechanisms, still has avenues, arguments to make through that 5th Circuit process and thus it could go back to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court could decide to take it as a case at some future time. We're just not sure exactly when that would be. But to understand what's at stake, I want us to look at two dissents. Now when you have this kind of ruling, it doesn't necessarily have to have any names on it whatsoever. But you do have an option if you're a justice of the Supreme Court to issue a dissent in your own name. And Justice Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas both did so. Justice Thomas characteristically is just incredibly clear. He says, quote, I write separately to note that as Louisiana argued below, it is a criminal offense to ship meth and pristone for use in abortions. The Comstock Act bans using the males to ship any drug. So we're talking about a very longstanding law that's just basically being ignored. That is very much on the books. The Comstock Act has never been reversed. It does state that it is illegal to use the males to ship any drug which is intended to produce abortion. Nonetheless, meth and pristone is widely available. Traced back again to the pro-abortion movement, traced back to the Biden administration, traced back to COVID, to the Food and Drug Administration. And thus, this is going to continue. Justice Thomas went on to say that those who were seeking the Supreme Court to put this stay in effect, quote, are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise. And quote, that's really sharp language. Justice Thomas is basically saying that those who are involved in the use of the males for the distribution of a drug that is intended to induce abortion are actually running a criminal enterprise. Now that's not just a slam at the abortion industry and at the male abortion industry. It is basically a slam at his colleagues. Justice Alito also dissented, quote, what is at stake is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization back in 2022, which restored the right of each state to decide how to regulate abortions within its borders. And quote, so Justice Alito got right to the heart of the issue in the Dobs decision of which he was the majority opinion author in 2022. The point was to return the abortion question to the states. And that's exactly what Justice Alito quite accurately says is subverted and undermined by the current FDA policy. As I said in the beginning, the culture of life has to continually press back against the culture of death. And so this is not a battle we can just leave on the field. This is something we have to follow through on. And the pro-life movement has to keep doing this. Those who are pushing these kinds of cases must continue to push these cases. And quite frankly, the argument for the sanctity and dignity of every single human life has to be made over and over and over again. The American people say they are tired of this debate. Well, I can understand that because it's gone on for so long, but the stakes are so high. The bigger issue is when will the nation get this right and stand up in the defense for human dignity at every stage of human life? All right, now we need to step back and understand that one of the big stories last week, of course, was President Trump's state visit to China. President Trump is now back in Washington, D.C. And the summit, according to the president, was a big, obvious success. It was not so big a success, nor so obvious a success to most observers. And a part of that is because when you're looking at the situation with President Trump, the president of the United States going to China, where China is the host nation, the host nation always has an advantage. That's just the way the game is played. And so President Xi Jinping was the host and thus he got to set the agenda. And so all the photographs, all the video, all the settings were theatrically set in order to increase Chinese prestige. That's just the bottom line. Now when you are looking at a state visit, there is the prestige of the other side shown as well. You had, of course, Air Force One at the airport. And this time the president was actually able to go down the main stair. You also had, of course, all of the formality. But remember, this was a state visit that involved less than about 36 hours of actual summit time. And so it was really pretty quick. And by the way, that's kind of important for both of these nations. Because when you are looking at a state visit of this kind of complicity, let's just say it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of money. And so the state craft is mixed with stage craft. That's just a part of it. And when you talk about two heads of state, the head of state of the United States of America, the head of state of China meeting together, two presidents in that situation, well it is meant to be stage craft. It is meant to be state craft. But if anything, probably more stage craft than state craft. Because most of the time, the big issue was what's going to be said to the press. What is the watching world going to be told? What will the Chinese people be told by their government, which by the way, remember, has basically a monopoly on that kind of information? What will the American people be told? What will the world think of all of this? Well the bottom line is that the world was not very impressed with the entire summit. President Trump announced that it was a big success and he lauded the Chinese leader. Well for one thing, right now Xi Jinping is holding a lot of cards. And one of the most important of those has to do with the Chinese disposition towards the American military action. Remember that China is Iran's biggest customer traditionally. And thus China does have a very deep motivation to try to help the United States bring about the end of this conflict. On the other hand, China really does not want the United States to be strengthened in any way. That's the big lesson here I want us all to think about. In the state craft and in the stage craft, from the Chinese side, it was all about sending a signal. And that signal is that China is the rising power and the United States is the declining power. And you have to understand that when it comes to this particular equation, it does get really interesting. If you go back to the early 1970s when President Richard Nixon broke all precedent by going to China, he basically created a situation, a diplomatic breakthrough, when Nixon visited China. Now we've talked before about what was really going on there. The American president in the early 1970s and the context of the Cold War wanted to triangulate such that it wasn't just the United States versus the Soviet Union. You would also have the interest of China. That triangulation is a very formidable policy, but we're not in the Cold War now. And in the intervening decades, China has increasingly seen itself as the ascendant power. And it also understands things in terms of a more Asian worldview, and it sees things more in terms of its own national interest. In a way, this different, for instance, even when you're looking at the United States, precisely, which by the way, does look after its own national interest. That's what the president was there to represent. But what you do see is that in China, where you're looking at the autocratic rule of totalitarian state, the Chinese Communist Party, absolutely in control, it's a very different equation. That's not to say that President Xi doesn't have to worry about what any internal constituencies think about there in China. It does mean it's nowhere near the kind of concern that has to be 24-7, a part of the mentality of a president of the United States. Now just in case you wonder what China was thinking, at a very crucial moment in the discussions with the president, President Xi mentioned the Thucydides trap. All right, who's Thucydides? Thucydides made the argument that Sparta was threatened by Athens, and at a crucial point, the threatening nature of that relationship with the upstart Athens over against Sparta led to the fact that there was open warfare between the two. Thucydides put it this way, the ancient historian, quote, it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable, end quote. It appeared that President Xi was making a point, and I don't think there's any way for the president or the rest of us to miss it. By the way, when you think about this pattern, you do have to understand that President Xi is speaking honestly when he speaks of China wanting basically to be the dominant power in the entire world, and every other power, including the United States of America, at least subservient or lesser than Chinese power at the very top of the world global system. This Chinese vision, we call for China basically to rule the world economy, and for that matter, even international waterways and all the rest, and for all the other nations of the world, basically to be vassal states of China. And you don't have to just come to that by an inference. This isn't just a guess. The Chinese are basically signaling this every single day. And it was very clear that President Xi Jinping was thinking that way when he welcomed President Donald Trump, the president of the United States to China. Something else to notice is how much President Trump had to say positively about President Xi, and basically none of that was returned. And that is a stunning, remarkable thing. President Trump still said he didn't take offense, but the reality is, a part of at least the Chinese approach seemed almost to be calculated to offend. At the same time, it is important to recognize not only the cost and the risk of having such a summit meeting, you also need to understand the cost of not having one. That opportunity cost can be very expensive as well. President Trump wants to continue the conversation. He came back saying that agreements had been made that would sell American grain, soybeans in particular, and other American products. It's not exactly clear how that's going to work out. China is now notorious for making those kinds of generalized pledges and just not following through. Similarly, by the way, you're not just talking about beans, you're talking about Boeing as in commercial jet aircraft. We'll see what actually happens. Okay, one additional small footnote to all of this that I think in its own ways very revealing. China has an absolute ban on Marco Rubio, former US Senator Marco Rubio, from entering China. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio was right there with the President of the United States. He serves. How did that happen? Well, it's because China did not recognize it was the same man. There are different ways of transliterating between English and Chinese, and so one side or the other came up with a different spelling of Marco Rubio, and thus he was allowed in under, I guess you'd have to say, an alias. Something more bizarre happened just in recent days. For example, the New York Times headline, CIA director visits Cuba as tensions rise and Ireland runs out of oil. You have other similar headlines and newspapers around the world. Here's the astounding thing. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency has gone on an official visit to Communist Cuba, that is to say, to visit with the Cuban government. Now, the CIA in Cuba have been locked in a conflict going back about 60 years, going all the way back to the Communist Revolution. And the CIA was behind at least one, maybe two, maybe more, absolutely concerted efforts to try to assassinate Fidel Castro, the Communist insurgent leader there who became the dictator of Cuba, and if not to kill him, then to depose him and to bring about an end to the Communist regime there in Cuba. None of those things worked, of course, but nonetheless, the CIA director going to Cuba is, let's just say, an astounding political development. This is not the kind of thing you would expect. So why did the CIA director, rather than someone else, go to Cuba? Why was it the director of the CIA who showed up there? Well, we're not absolutely sure. We certainly don't know everything, but it's clear that John Ratcliffe, who is the CIA director, went there in order to send a very clear message from the president of the United States about how the United States was going to continue to use its economic leverage to basically shut down Cuba. And we are told that even in Havana, there is no electricity for about 20 of 24 hours in the day. Now, remember that Cuba, like other communists or Marxist regimes, had basically lived off of yet other notorious regimes. So for example, we now know that Nicolas Maduro's corrupt regime in Venezuela was propping up the regime there in Cuba. But time has run out and the United States replaced Maduro with another government that sources cut off. Cuba's in big trouble. So just go back to the Cuban Revolution. Let's just go back to Fidel Castro. Who was his supporter? Well, eventually it became, and I have to put it that way, because in the beginning, that wasn't so clear. But very quickly, it became clear that Fidel Castro was casting his lot with the Soviet Union, and thus Cuba became a very important client nation for the Soviet Union. And you can understand why there was such a gain for the USSR. I mean, the Soviets had just about 90 miles off of Florida, an entire island, which was basically a giant espionage base. And frankly, a base for a whole lot of nonsense and a lot worse than nonsense. So the CIA was a major part of the American government in trying to limit what was happening there in Cuba to try to subvert the communist regime there in Cuba. And at the end of the day, it was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America who got off a military airplane and walked onto the tarmac there in Havana. That makes history. By the way, there is more coming, and that includes what is expected to be a major criminal indictment against Raul Castro. He's over 90 years old now. He is the brother of Fidel Castro, who was, of course, the revolutionary leader and longtime strongman of Cuba. Once Fidel Castro retired from that role and eventually died, his brother Raul Castro took that role. He had been a part of the junta. He had been a part of the inner circle in terms of the Cuban revolution from the beginning. He is about, it is believed, to be charged with major crimes and a criminal conspiracy in an indictment handed down from the United States. It's going to be very interesting to see where this goes, but just consider, we've been talking about China and Cuba. We've been talking about a long history, but most importantly, a history after the communist revolutions that brought the Chinese Communist into power in 1949 and brought the Cuban Marxist into power in the late 1950s into the 1960s and beyond. It's really important that Christians understand there is just a lot of history at stake here, but the important thing here is that it's not just history. It is about morality. It is about the clash of worldviews. That clash of worldviews, most importantly, the 20th century was the clash between the worldview represented by the West and that represented by the Soviet Union. It was a totalitarian vision of a Marxist state over against the idea of freedom in a constitutional form of government. That was the great dividing line in the second half of the 20th century. But you understand that even as the USSR came to an end and by the early 1990s, it was no longer a factor. The Cold War was declared to be over. The reality is it wasn't over everywhere. It certainly wasn't over when it comes to China, which of course now looms as the most significant global competitor to the United States. And it's not over even in the tiny island nation of Cuba. But we can hope that this sustained American effort will bring the tyranny of Marxism and communism to an end there in Cuba so that for the sake of the Cuban people, the food can be put back on the shelves and the lights can be turned back on. I guess one final thought on this I just have to indulge for a moment. Just imagine the reach out from the United States government with the announcement that someone from the United States of America would be coming on an official visit to Cuba. Well, who might it be? It would be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. That tells you how the world changes. Speaking of change, we are of course always concerned about what happens when you see the crumbling of the most basic institution of civilization, which is marriage and the confusion of marriage. And thus we have to be concerned with headlines coming out of Europe and in this case coming out of Poland and Warsaw. Here is the headline coming from one of the major French newspapers, Le Monde. The headline is Warsaw recognizes same sex marriage from other EU countries for the first time. Okay, so this has made big news all throughout the European Union because of the context of European law to which Poland is obligated by treaty. And the European law says that a nation like Poland, which does not have legal same sex marriage, cannot fail to recognize and to register marriages that are declared to be valid same sex marriages from other European nations where same sex marriage is legal. Okay, so you see how that subverts the entire moral order. And Poland had been standing out for a very long time. Poland is far more conservative than many other of the EU nations. But in this case, it just shows you, I think in a big sense, the cost of being a part of something like the European Union, which means you can basically be forced into the recognition and the registration of same sex unions, even against the will of your own people. So there are polls saying that the Polish people are moving more in that direction. It's hard to say. It is interesting to know that the Hungarian conservative put out a statement saying that as of this announcement last week, 16 of the European Union's 27 member states recognize same sex marriage. Okay, okay, 16 of 27. I think we should be surprised at how low that number is. 16 of 27, that means that 11 of 27 do not recognize same sex marriage. I think there'd be a lot of people in the United States and a lot of people, for instance, in the LGBTQ activist community who would not want you to know that even in the very liberal European Union on so many of these issues, 11 out of the 27 nations do not themselves recognize same sex marriage. It's also important to recognize that there isn't Poland even now no same sex marriage legally performed there, period. By the way, this also shows you the dynamic of secularization. One of the reasons why Poland had been so powerful in its pushback against communism and why you had the Polish example that was so courageous for the entire world, leading in large part to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the breakup of the Eastern bloc. You'll recall that much of that had to do with the fact that even though many of the nations in the former Soviet bloc had become so highly secularized, even atheistic, that wasn't really true of Poland where the historic influence of the Roman Catholic Church was still very powerful. What you see now, however, with the numbers approving same sex marriage going up is that the relative authority of the Catholic Church has been going down. That's just a warning to us about what can happen. When you look at the United States, there's been a vast Christian consensus on this issue, but as you know, that's been under concerted attack now for a matter of many decades. Sometimes this kind of change can come very quickly, but it does remind me how glad I am that the United States of America is not accountable to anything called the European Union. Finally, for today, I'm going to mention the European Union in a moment of sanity, and that is that the EU is now looking to member states and the issue of social media and digital exposure for children and teenagers and web access in general. And I think it is to the credit of the EU that is raising some basic questions about the responsibility of entire societies when it comes to children and teenagers. One of the facets, and I'll just mention this from this report, one of the facets of this most recent report is the fact that some of these nations are admitting that their teenagers are basically committed to the Internet one way or another, connected to social media, connected to the entire digital world, basically 24 hours a day. And even if they're sleeping, the whole social media world is, well, it's right there, and they know it. And that becomes a major issue of preoccupation. You have a major figure speaking this way, quote, we all know the consequences, sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, self-harm, addictive behavior, cyberbullying, grooming, exploitation, and suicide. That was European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen. Well, on that score, we simply have to say, she is sounding an appropriate alarm. It is simply insane that you would have children and teenagers connected 24 seven. The connectivity itself, it is a debatable issue. It should be a great concern for Christian parents. But when you consider the cost of how teenagers overwhelmingly are now engaging these technologies, it's a very worrisome thing. And if anything, that's a severe understatement. To me to state, I don't know what the European Union can do about this, but I want to speak to Christian parents. There is something you can do about it. Put it even more generally, Christians need to be far more concerned about this kind of threat than even the European Union. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information go to my website at albertmolar.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.com forward slash albertmolar for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Go to sbts.edu. For information on Voice College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.
