BBC: Abortion in US: What surprise Supreme Court ruling means

A majority of the justices sided with Indiana, holding that the burial provision didn't place an "undue burden" on a woman's right to an abortion and it advanced a legitimate interest of the state, even if the law wasn't "perfectly tailored" to address foetal remains in all circumstances. [...]

With nearly a dozen states enacting new abortion regulations and outright prohibitions in 2019, this won't be the only opportunity for the Supreme Court to reconsider whether there is a constitutional right to abortion.

Anti-abortion activists, and state legislatures with anti-abortion majorities, may believe that with the addition of Mr Trump's appointments, there is a majority on the court willing to finally put a stake through the heart of Roe.

Tuesday's decisions, however - made with little fanfare and no advanced notice - could be an indication that a majority of the justices on the court are in no hurry to reverse 46 years of precedent.[...]

Also on Tuesday an abortion clinic in St Louis announced that it may be forced to stop performing the procedure on Friday because the state had yet to renew its licence. If that happens, Missouri would become the first state since Roe was decided to have no abortion clinics within its borders. Five other states have only one.

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CityLab: Great Cities Enable You to Live Longer

The most interesting result of this paper is the strong, consistent positive contribution of several community level variables to life expectancy. Poor people tend to live longer in places with more immigrants, more expensive housing, higher local government spending, more density, and a better educated population. Consider each of the five characteristics in the category “Other factors” at the bottom of Chetty’s table above. [...]

The strongest pattern in the data was that low-income individuals tend to live longest (and have more healthful behaviors) in cities with highly educated populations, high incomes, and high levels of government expenditures, such as New York, New York, and San Francisco, California. In these cities, life expectancy for individuals in the bottom 5% of the income distribution was approximately 80 years. In contrast, in cities such as Gary, Indiana, and Detroit, Michigan, the expected age at death for individuals in the bottom 5% of the income distribution was approximately 75 years. Low-income individuals living in cities with highly educated populations and high incomes also experienced the largest gains in life expectancy during the 2000s. 

As noted, these correlations don’t show causation; some of the effect may have something to do with those—like immigrants—who self-select to move to cities. But the strength of these correlations (and their absence for other variables like access to medical care) signals a need for further scrutiny. As always, this kind of broad statistical work comes with caveats: the paper takes only a first-pass, high-level look at correlations between geographic variables and life expectancy. This analysis shows the simple and direct relationship between each tested variable and life expectancy—but doesn’t measure any interactions among variables. And the standard caveat applies: correlation doesn’t prove causation. Still, by examining the correlation between selected local characteristics and life expectancy, we can begin to answer some of our questions about what aspects of place affect this aspect of quality of life.

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CityLab: City vs. State: The Story So Far

The “Fight For 15” movement is really about cities. By November 2016, Riverstone-Newell writes that nearly forty cities and counties had agreed to local increases in the minimum wage ranging from $8.50 to $15.75 an hour in states such as Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, Maryland, Washington, and Maine (plus Washington, D.C.). Right now, 29 states set a higher minimum wage than the federal government and Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington passed statewide raises in 2016. [...]

The fight over sanctuary cities has pitted federal, state, and city officials against each other and is about to come to a head this year as federal funding is in jeopardy. The most prominent example of preemption might be Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has already blocked $1.8 million in grant funding to Travis County over its sanctuary policy and signed a “super preemption” law last month aimed at punishing local officials who do not cooperate with immigration authorities. It is set to go into effect in September. A Florida bill would impose a $5,000 per day fine on sanctuary cities (and Miami-Dade County has already voted to end its status as a sanctuary city) and North Carolina has a bill pending to strip cities of a variety of revenue sources if they operate as a sanctuary city. Other states that enacted restrictions this year include Mississippi, Georgia, and Indiana. [...]

Cities are up against more than Trump. The GOP controls 33 governorships and both chambers in 32 state legislatures. State preemption laws seek to strip cities of their abilities not just to oppose the White House agenda but to forge policies that reflect the desires, beliefs and concerns of their own residents. State legislatures in the U.S. have long had an anti-urban bias—in 2013, a study I wrote about in CityLab found that bills sponsored by legislators from small or medium-sized cities were overall twice as likely to pass as those that originated in big cities like Chicago or New York.

Another hurdle for cities is the constitutional challenge that they are legally considered “creatures of the state.” Republicans narrowly advocate for states’ rights in the face of federal power, arguing that cities don’t have the right to challenge the state. But this misremembers the origin of rights—they belong to people. Here’s how an Ohio Republican state senator summed up his opposition to Cleveland’s minimum wage hike: “[W]hen we talk about local control, we mean state control.”

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Quartz: The simple reason so many US businesses openly support LGBT rights

The “competitive edge” pertains both to commodities and labor. Reflecting upon the hundreds of businesses that supported the marriage equality movement, Todd Sears, the founder of Out Leadership, explains how company cohesion and sustainability is linked to employee equality. “Businesses that had already adopted policies that treated every employee equally [prior to marriage equality in 2015] saw the negative effects of a state-based patchwork policy on marriage equality,” he said. “It complicated their strategies and made it more difficult to locate talent in states that lacked protections for married LGBT couples.” [...]

“We’re already seeing that businesses are standing up for equality when it comes to the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts and other discriminatory legislation that are rapidly proliferating in states around the country,” Todd observes. “In Indiana, opposition from the business community forced the government to back down from the RFRA they passed last year; in Georgia, Governor Deal listened to the voice of business and vetoed the bill that came before him.” [...]

Importantly, allies are also incredibly attentive to corporate treatment of the LGBT community. The Center for Talent Innovation’s 2016 report, Out in the World: Securing LGBT Rights in the Global Marketplace, found that “71% of LGBT individuals and 82% of allies say they are more likely to purchase a good or service from a company that supports LGBT equality.”

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The New York Times: Indiana Primary Takeaways: For Donald Trump, Now Comes the Hard Part

This was wishful thinking, and in Indiana, Mr. Trump put an end to the mirage. He defeated Mr. Cruz by more than 15 points and won more than half the vote in a seventh consecutive state — this time, in the Midwest.

There was no anti-Trump majority left to rally, if it ever existed in the first place. [...]

Mr. Trump’s emergence as the all-but-anointed Republican nominee may change this dynamic. Giving him a monthlong head start to rally skeptical Republicans behind his campaign, while Mrs. Clinton continues to grapple with Mr. Sanders’s challenge on the left, could become an intolerable prospect for Democrats eager for a free hand to engage Mr. Trump.

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