Meanwhile. . .

Ramaswamy, 38, is listed as an "unaffiliated" voter in Franklin County, Ohio, where he's been registered to vote since November 2021, after he moved to Columbus. The biotech multimillionaire has described himself as being a “libertarian freestyler” in college. He's said he voted for a Libertarian in the 2004 presidential election, but did not vote in 2008, 2012 or 2016, according to Reuters, and has contributed to both Republican and Democratic candidates. He brushed past a question about his sparse voting history during Wednesday's GOP presidential debate.

South Carolina’s newly all-male Supreme Court reversed course on abortion, upholding a law banning most such procedures except in the earliest weeks of pregnancy. The continued erosion of legal abortion access across the U.S. South comes after Republican state lawmakers replaced the lone woman on the court, Justice Kaye Hearn, who reached the state’s mandatory retirement age. The 4-1 ruling departs from the court’s own decision months earlier striking down a similar ban that the Republican-led Legislature passed in 2021. The latest ban takes effect immediately.

As of this week, about 70% of the country’s 46.7 million public school students are back in class. In our analysis of over 1,500 U.S. public school districts, we found that school tends to start earlier in southern regions than farther north, broadly speaking. Students in New England and Middle Atlantic states go back the latest of all. How does your region compare? Why do school start dates vary so much?