LEGAL

Three Strikes and the ACA's Still In

Yesterday, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) nabbed its third "You may pass Go" card from the Supreme Court. In a 7–2 vote, justices ruled that Texas and 17 other Republican-led states don't have the legal standing to challenge the law in federal court. 

• The ACA, aka "Obamacare," is a controversial healthcare bill enacted in 2010. It's known for adding protections for individuals with preexisting conditions, allowing young adults to remain on their parents' plan until age 26, and making preventative services (including birth control on private plans) free. 

With their 6–3 majority on the court, some conservatives hoped this case might finally find the fatal chink in the ACA's legal armor. Although they fell short again, each major legal challenge threatens serious disruption to the healthcare industry and the 31+ million Americans who get their insurance through the ACA. 

What they were fighting about

The ACA's most controversial measure, the individual mandate, required Americans to pay a tax penalty if they didn't have health insurance. It was made irrelevant in 2017 when a Republican-led Congress reduced that penalty to $0. 

For their case, Republican state officials argued that a zeroed-out mandate is unconstitutional and the entire ACA should go. The court said the plaintiffs couldn't prove the law had hurt them, but it did not rule on whether the mandate is unconstitutional. 

Even if they haven’t succeeded in overturning the entire law, Republicans aren't giving up on challenging parts of it. Another lawsuit is winding its way through federal courts over the ACA’s preventative care coverage. 

Zoom out

Although the ACA's popularity is at a record high, only 54% of Americans view the healthcare law favorably, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Premiums have fallen the last three years, per the Urban Institute, but the ACA continues to face criticism for high out-of-pocket costs. 

President Biden plans to build off his old boss's signature legislative achievement. In March's Covid relief package, Biden approved higher federal subsidies for private health plans offered through the ACA and larger federal Medicaid payments for states that expand insurance coverage to more lower-income adults.  

DIVERSITY

The First New Federal Holiday In Nearly Four Decades

President Biden signed a bill yesterday establishing Juneteenth as the 12th federal holiday. The June 19 celebration marks the day in 1865 when news of emancipation finally reached Galveston, TX—two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, officially ending slavery in the US.

• Over 2 million federal employees in the US will now have the day off, but some big companies like Nike, JCPenny, and Target already recognized Juneteenth as a paid holiday. 
• The NYSE said it won’t close markets today for this year’s Juneteenth, but might next year.

Big picture: Texas was the first state to establish Juneteenth as an official holiday in 1980, and throughout the years, some groups have pushed to recognize it on a national scale. Last year, after the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans, Juneteenth entered the national conversation again. It's the first federal holiday created since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983. 

EDUCATION

ITT's Time to Get Your Money Back

While everyone waited for the Biden-Putin chat and the Fed meeting to wrap up Wednesday, the US Department of Education was busy erasing $500+ million of debt for 18,000 former ITT Technical Institute students. 

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has been slowly chipping away at claims made through the borrower defense program, which was created to forgive federal loans if your school Punk'd you—schools like ITT Tech.

• ITT was found to have misled students about their job prospects, and it shut down in 2016 after getting hit with sanctions from the Obama admin. 
• Many students actually found that it was harder to get jobs if they listed ITT Tech on their resumes.

Zoom out: This is the second round of loan discharges for students who were defrauded by for-profit schools since Biden moved into the White House. It’s a major U-turn in strategy from the Trump administration, which viewed student loan forgiveness under the borrower defense program as “free money.”

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GRAB BAG

Key Performance Indicators

Stat: The cost of mapping a genome has fallen by about 100,000% over the last 15 years, according to an estimate by Jefferies. One of the companies that’s taken advantage of that technological breakthrough, 23andMe, started trading publicly for the first time yesterday.

Quote: "There was no intention of being duplicitous."

Rob Wiesenthal, the CEO of Blade, the "Uber for helicopters," admitted that he and colleagues made up the persona of Simon McLaren as the company's director of communications. The ruse, which involved Wiesenthal imitating McLaren during TV interviews, lasted for years until Insider started asking questions about McLaren's identity.

Read: Inside Victoria Secret's most extreme pivot in recent memory. (New York Times)

TECH

Zuckerberg Teaches VR Spear Throwing

Yesterday at the French tech conference VivaTech, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about virtual reality technology the way your mom talks about the duck you drew in 1st grade.

He predicted VR would expand beyond gaming into areas like business meetings and fitness. "Think about it like Peloton, where you have a subscription, but instead the device is VR and you put on your headset, and you're in this amazing environment and you're doing a boxing class with an instructor, or a dance class," he said. 

Facebook is all-in on VR. In the last four years, it's scooped up a number of VR gaming companies as well as a Roblox-style build-and-share platform. And on Wednesday, the company announced it would start testing ads inside its Oculus headset. 

Bottom line: After Facebook acquired another VR gaming company, BigBox VR, last week, tech reporter Alex Heath predicted, "Facebook is going to probably have a near monopoly in VR software before it even matters." In that sense, it could be dusting off its playbook from 2012, when it bought Instagram in what many consider one of the savviest business acquisitions in history. 

QUIZ

Summertime and the Quizzing Is Easy

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew's Weekly News Quiz has been compared to getting your first post-pandemic festival wristband in the mail. 

It's that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• JPMorgan announced the acquisition of Nutmeg, one of the UK's largest online wealth management platforms. 
• UK Covid infections hit a four-month high due to the Delta variant.
• Japan eased its state of emergency as the country prepares for the Olympics in July. 
• The US will spend $3.2 billion to develop antiviral pills used for treating Covid-19 and other highly contagious viruses.
• David Guetta is reportedly selling his recorded catalogue to Warner Music for more than $100 million, reflecting soaring demand for music rights.

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Dot dot dot: Here at the Brew we like to make you think, but we're also not above a mindless internet game. Play it here.

Follow Friday: Shameless plug for the Brew’s TikTok account, where you’re guaranteed a three-chuckle minimum per video or your money back.

FROM THE CREW

Inside Shopify’s Retail Renaissance

Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify, recently joined us on Business Casual to discuss how the ecommerce platform behind many of your favorite stores has democratized entrepreneurship and sparked a digital shift in retail. 

(We had to talk about Rihanna moving Fenty Beauty to Shopify, too.)

Listen here.

GAMES

Friday Puzzle

This one might take some time, but...it's Friday and you're probably going to check out of work around noon anyways.

Here it goes: The words “work” and “jerk” rhyme, even though their vowels are different. Can you name 4 common, uncapitalized four-letter words, each of which has exactly one vowel, and all of which rhyme, even though all four vowels are different?

ANSWER

Bird, curd, nerd, and word is one possible solution