--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, June 23rd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the Supreme Court could end affirmative action. We'll look at one state that did that years ago. America's changing views on abortion one year after the end of Roe v. Wade. And the massive danger and opportunity when businesses try to jump on a TikTok trend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories in the news.
--:-- Shamita Basu: All five people aboard the underwater tourist vessel are dead. Searchers located fragments of the submersible near the Titanic, evidence that a catastrophic implosion destroyed it.
--:-- Rear Admiral John Mauger: On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire Unified Command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal reports that top-secret underwater U.S. military technology detected what might have been the sounds of the implosion soon after the sub launched.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Officials involved in the search tell the journal that the Navy couldn't definitively say the sound came from the sub imploding, but it shared the data, which helped narrow down the search.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now the focus turns to why the sub failed under the pressure of the deep ocean, and there are also questions about the cost of the search, which required a lot of people and military hardware.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Washington, President Biden says American ties with India are important and getting stronger.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for meetings and a state dinner. Military deals were a key part of the visit, including selling drones to India and joint production of fighter jet engines.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Modi referenced this in a speech to Congress.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now the United States has become one of our most important defense partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A handful of Democratic members of Congress skipped the speech as a protest against human rights abuses in India, especially against Muslims and other religious minorities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've also got an update related to a topic we talked about recently on the show, Forever Chemicals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They get their name because they don't disappear from our bodies or the environment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, chemical and manufacturing giant 3M will pay up to $12.5 billion to settle lawsuits claiming that these chemicals polluted drinking water over decades.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The money is meant to pay for environmental testing and cleanup.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Any day now the Supreme Court will make a decision on the future of affirmative action nationwide.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Which brings us to this week's State of the State, our ongoing series about how state and local policies impact the people who live there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today, let's talk about the state of California, now that it's been more than 25 years since it banned affirmative action.
--:-- Shamita Basu: California's story could give us clues on what the future might look like if the Supreme Court ends or restricts the practice more widely.
--:-- Shamita Basu: California voters ended government-sponsored affirmative action in a 1996 ballot initiative.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So we have years worth of data on the impact on public universities.
--:-- Zach Blemer: First, enrollment for underrepresented minority students at highly selective schools dropped immediately.
--:-- Zach Blemer: Black, Hispanic, and Native American students on average go to slightly less selective schools.
--:-- Zach Blemer: White and Asian students, meanwhile, on average get to go to slightly more selective schools, taking the slots of these Black and Hispanic students who had lost access to those places.
--:-- Zamira: He also followed these people from underrepresented groups as they entered the workforce.
--:-- Zamira: The typical student who, because of the end of affirmative action, had a little bit less access to more selective universities, ended up earning about 5% less than they would have earned if they'd had access to more selective universities through race-based affirmative action.
--:-- Zach Blemer: Remember, I'm an economist, and that's how I think about how to gauge the impact of affirmative action.
--:-- Zach Blemer: If your goal is just to maximize economic efficiency, just to identify an admissions policy that will spur economic growth, identify students who will be able to best take advantage of university resources, earn the highest wages, pay back the most in tax dollars, and otherwise succeed using a university's resources.
--:-- Zach Blemer: That's what affirmative action did.
--:-- Zach Blemer: He told NPR, if the Supreme Court ends affirmative action nationwide, we'll probably see a version of what happened in California play out across the country.
--:-- Zach Blemer: That means fewer Black, Hispanic, and Native American students at top schools, and down the road, a wider income gap.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're going to stay with legal news, focusing on one of the most divisive issues ending up in courts today, abortion access.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tomorrow marks one year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade
--:-- Shamita Basu: That ended one giant generational fight over abortion but it launched dozens more big fights across America as states moved to restrict or protect the procedure
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just yesterday, a judge halted a Wyoming law that would have made it the first state in the nation to ban abortion pills.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've covered a lot of these developments in the last 12 months.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As we hit the one-year mark, we wanted to take a broader look at how the landscape is changing as far as how Americans think about abortion and what's ahead.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So we called up NPR correspondent Sarah McCammon, who's been covering the transformation of abortion policy in America and the reactions.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So much has changed so fast.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So much has changed, particularly if you look at the map in the Midwest and South.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I mean, there are just huge swaths of the country now that have little to no abortion access.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: There are more than a dozen states where abortion is virtually non-existent where it's banned even in the early weeks of pregnancy.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: If you add to that states that have banned abortion up to 12 or 15 weeks, the number goes up a bit.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: There are other states that are in the process, whether they have bans that are tied up in litigation or that are scheduled to take effect later on.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: You know, the number is growing.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: One of my specialties is political divides, and abortion has only become more divisive in the past year.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Recent Gallup polling shows 61% of people who responded said overturning Roe was a bad thing, while 38 percent said it was good.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: The range of people's views on abortion is complex, and the full impact on politics is yet to be seen.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: That said, as this pollster I spoke to pointed out, most Americans also support some restrictions on abortion.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And so what I'm seeing now is Republicans, you know, aware of some of the political backlash to the Dobbs decision, starting to sort of lean into this idea that public opinion supports some restrictions.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Now, that's a case that I think we're going to start seeing the GOP primary candidates trying to make to voters that their position is in line with public opinion.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And based on how voters have acted in the last year, especially during the midterms, the Republican message may not be resonating.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: We saw voters, by and large, voting to support abortion rights and voting against measures that would be likely to restrict abortion access.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Looking to the future, courts will still play a big role in deciding abortion access, but voters hold a lot of power.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: How they vote on state ballot questions and who they choose to make future laws on abortion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For decades, the two sides fought over Supreme Court nominations
--:-- Shamita Basu: But now we know that the Supreme Court never had the power to definitively end the fight only to change it splintered into state battles across the country
--:-- Shamita Basu: Finally, a story we liked about the impact of TikTok influencers on business.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, in some ways, this might feel like an old story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Of course, companies look to social media trends to see how they can get in on the memes and get young customers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the Wall Street Journal got some rare inside access into how companies are using TikTok.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At its best, TikTok can be what one marketing exec calls a billion-person focus group.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But at its worst, it can be a huge headache.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One case study is Chipotle.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It partnered with TikTok food influencers Keith Lee and Alexis Frost on what's called a quesadilla, the twist on the chain's quesadilla.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Chipotle splashed videos of them all over social media.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is the fajita quesadilla, and in my opinion, it's worth the hype.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it just dropped only in the Chipotle app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And guess what? You can even get the vinegar red.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vinegar red. Vinegar red. Vinegar red. Vinegar red.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But that special sauce he's talking about proved to be a nightmare.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sometimes it ran out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Plus, the quesadilla took way longer to make.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Employees hated doing it, and people posted nasty comments when they couldn't get it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Still, Chipotle couldn't deny it was a breakout hit with fans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So they put the Keith Adia on its menu permanently.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The TikTokers won.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For big companies, product research and development can take more than a year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: TikTok hype moves a billion times faster, forcing companies to be more nimble.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And at least in some cases, it leads to rushed, flawed products.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the end, though, many companies see following TikTok trends as a must to stay ahead.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Our weekly interview show In Conversation is queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Our team has spent hours watching 2023 commencement addresses in the past few weeks to pull together the best, most memorable speeches given to this year's graduating class.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The really good ones resonate even if you crossed that stage years ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Don't hold back. We need you to dream big.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We need audacious thinkers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kindness and empathy is a superpower.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Do what you have to do that allows the most space for what you want to do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tomorrow is not promised. Make plans anyway.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That episode is queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy the weekend, and we'll be back with the news on Monday.
