President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is on a mission to “fix” the despised start/stop technology in newer cars that shuts down a vehicle’s engine when stopped in traffic or at a red light in the name of conserving fuel and saving the planet.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said on Monday that his agency would begin looking into how it can modify the start/stop feature. The EPA currently incentivizes car manufacturers to make cars with the start/stop system. The technology can give vehicles anywhere between a 3% to 10% fuel economy boost.

“Start/stop technology: where your car dies at every red light so companies get a climate participation trophy. EPA approved it, and everyone hates it, so we’re fixing it,” Zeldin wrote on X.

Start/stop technology: where your car dies at every red light so companies get a climate participation trophy. EPA approved it, and everyone hates it, so we’re fixing it. pic.twitter.com/zFhijMyHDe

— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) May 12, 2025

Zeldin did not elaborate on specific plans to change the feature.

Start/stop technology was first used by European car manufacturers on hybrids, but over the past decade, most automakers began implementing the system in many of their new vehicles, including SUVs and pickup trucks. By 2019, however, more automakers began giving drivers the option to shut off the start/stop system as people began to complain. Buick first gave drivers that option with its 2019 Envision based on “customer feedback,” according to Car and Driver. Ford, GM, Volvo, and Lincoln also began including the shut-off option in their start/stop vehicles between 2017 and 2018.

While most cars with start/stop technology allow drivers to deactivate the system, they can’t turn it off permanently, and owners of start/stop cars who don’t want to use the tech still have to turn it off every time they get back in the car. The EPA’s fuel-economy test results for vehicles with the start/stop system are affected if drivers turn the system off. According to Car and Driver, “If a vehicle’s stop/start system can be permanently turned off, then the vehicle’s fuel economy is tested both when stop/start is active and when it’s off. The EPA then averages the two tests for a resulting fuel-economy rating found on the car’s window sticker—which is certain to be lower.”

The response to Zeldin’s announcement was overwhelmingly positive on social media, with many people calling the objective “common sense.”

More than one in 20 women need a second abortion attempt after the abortion pill fails, a new analysis of insurance claim data shows.

Over 5% of women had to undergo a repeat abortion attempt within 45 days of taking mifepristone, indicating that the first mifepristone abortion attempt failed, according to an analysis from the Ethics and Public Policy Center released Monday. The Center analyzed insurance claims data from 865,727 mifepristone abortions between 2017 and 2023.

A total of 45,498 women needed a second abortion attempt to complete their abortions after mifepristone failed, the data show. Of those women, 24,563 needed a surgical abortion procedure. Nearly 7,000 women underwent both a second medication abortion attempt and a surgical abortion attempt after their first mifepristone attempt failed, the analysis found.

This is the latest evidence that advocates have misconstrued the safety and efficacy of the abortion pill. An analysis released last month found that more than one in 10 women experienced a “serious adverse event” after taking the mifepristone abortion pill in 2023. This can include hemorrhaging, needing a blood transfusion, an emergency room visit, and even deadly conditions like sepsis.

That is about 22 times higher than what the FDA listed on its label for the brand Mifeprex in 2023. The FDA cited clinical studies saying less than 0.5% of women suffered “serious adverse reactions” to mifepristone.

The two-pill chemical abortion regimen — mifepristone, usually followed by misoprostol — aims to end the life of the unborn baby and expel it from the woman’s uterus. However, the drugs sometimes fail to expel all the fetal tissue, which can cause life-threatening complications.

Nearly 14% of women experience either a serious adverse event or repeat abortion attempt after taking the abortion pill, Monday’s analysis found. The report’s authors concluded that the FDA should immediately reinstate the stronger patient safety protocols it previously had in place for mifepristone.

A few months before Roe v. Wade was overturned, the FDA scrapped the requirement that women must obtain abortion pills in person from a healthcare provider, allowing them to obtain them online through the mail.

The FDA should also mandate reporting of the abortion pill’s side effects and “reconsider its approval altogether,” concluded the analysis’ co-authors, Ryan Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Jamie Bryan Hall, the Center’s Director of Data Analysis.

“Our real-world data represents the actual experiences of women who take the abortion pill in the U.S. today,” the authors told The Daily Wire.

“These women may have preexisting health conditions and may not receive proper care before, during, or after the abortion. The women recruited into the clinical trials were relatively young and healthy, and they received a carefully controlled regimen of care. Frequent in-person visits would have enabled doctors to diagnose and treat any side effects earlier, before they could become serious. This is how it should be for every woman!” they said.

“This is why it’s so important for the FDA, at a minimum, to reinstate its original safety protocols, which more closely resemble the conditions of a clinical trial,” the authors said. “Both proponents and opponents of legalized abortion should be able to support this move to protect women’s health.”

Anderson and Hall also emphasized that pro-life laws are not to blame for complications from the abortion pill, as some abortion advocates have claimed.

“Those who blame the failures of the abortion pill on pro-life laws are deeply mistaken, if not downright dishonest. Every woman should seek medical care in an emergency, and every doctor should provide life-saving care without fear of reprisal,” they said.

Medication abortions are far more common than surgical abortions. Medication abortions made up 63% of all abortions in 2023, up from 31% in 2014, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.

The abortion pill is likely the main factor driving up the country’s total number of abortions in recent years, even in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Abortion advocates have argued that the abortion pill should be more available to order online now that some Republican-led states ban abortion.

Mifepristone was originally approved by the FDA in 2000.