Affirmative action curtailed

Last year at this time, the US Supreme Court struck down the 50-year-old federal right of American women to end a pregnancy. On Thursday, its Republican-appointed supermajority mandated another major reversal in US jurisprudence, ending affirmative action in higher education. The 6-3 decision will force schools—and potentially other institutions and businesses—to consider new ways to achieve diversity. The court surprised some observers in recent weeks with a few unexpectedly moderate rulings. But as the term nears an end, one of the biggest expected opinions came down on what critics contend were purely ideological grounds. The majority said Thursday that programs at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause. Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts rejected arguments that the programs—supported by four decades of precedent—were warranted. The three Democratic-appointed justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. Jackson—in an opinion that sparred with Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s only other Black member and one of its most conservative—argued the majority ignored “the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in America.” The country, she said, “has never been colorblind.”

Republicans including Donald Trump hailed the ruling, whose signatories included three justices he appointed (two under controversial circumstances). President Joe Biden attacked the opinion as “not normal.” In the immediate term, the decision leaves schools scrambling to find ways to achieve a diverse campus and revamp admission policies, and it means there will likely be fewer Black and Hispanic students at the country’s top universities. Studies show that, without race-based admissions, the number of Black and Hispanic students drops. Meanwhile, at chronically underfunded historically Black colleges, officials are watching for an influx of students. —Margaret Sutherlin and David E. Rovella

California’s reparations task force recommended the state issue a formal apology for human rights violations, establish a curriculum on its findings for all grade levels and make greater investments in Black communities. But it stopped short of recommending a dollar figure for compensation, instead offering calculation models the legislature can use, should they approve payments. The task force delivered its report after spending two years documenting discriminatory laws and practices linked to slavery, which was never legal in California. They calculated $800 billion in economic and other harms to Black residents since the state’s founding in 1850.

Investigators have questioned one of Russia’s top generals—Sergei Surovikin—about his relationship with exiled Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a military mutiny over the weekend. The crisis was the greatest challenge to Vladimir Putin’s quarter-century rule and shattered his image as a strongman. Surovikin, known as “General Armageddon,” was a senior military commander in the country’s invasion of Ukraine, and hasn’t been seen in public since the mutiny. According to the New York Times, he knew the mutiny was coming.

Two or more rate hikes are likely this year to bring inflation back to the 2% target, US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said at a summit in Madrid. He added the hikes could be at back-to-back policy meetings.

Ten of the 15 fastest growing cities are in the Southern US. The region accounted for two-thirds of the country’s job growth. For the first time in about 30 years, the six fast-growing states in the South are contributing more to the national GDP than the Washington-New York-Boston corridor. Even as the pandemic boom time wanes, there are no signs of a slowdown, either.

Over 100 million Americans are under air-quality alerts as heavy smoke from ongoing Canadian wildfires billows south for another day. Five hundred fires are burning across Canada and, already this season, fires have charred the equivalent of South Carolina. Meanwhile, extreme heat continues to bear down on Texas, the Great Plains, southern Oregon, California and Arizona.

US banks turned to brokered deposits and FHLB loans as a quick—and expensive—solution to the hundreds of billions of dollars in cheap deposits they lost earlier this year. Those rising costs of “hot money” now threaten to turn the most strained banks upside down, leaving them paying more to amass the cash they need than they earn by lending it out. Next month, investors will finally see just how big a toll it’s all taking.

Xi Jinping has struggled for years to find a response to US sanctions, tariffs and export controls that makes China look tough without scaring off foreign companies. A new law passed by Beijing aims to address that dilemma.

Michael Malekzadeh’s Zadeh Kicks made millions of dollars taking big presale orders for coveted sneakers at low prices, and then scrambling to fill them. Then came the Air Jordan 11 Cool Grey—and the whole thing came crashing down.

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