Tex and Balances: “The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Texas to immediately begin enforcing a controversial immigration law that allows state officials to arrest and detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally … The decision hands a significant – yet temporary – win to Texas, which has been in an ongoing legal battle with the Biden administration over immigration policy.” Supreme Court allows Texas to begin enforcing controversial immigration law. Sotomayor: “The court gives a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos.” (Pretty much.)

+ As I Live and Breathe: The world’s 100 worst polluted cities are in Asia. And 83 of them are in India and “all exceeded the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines by more than 10 times.”

+ Group Work: “A dozen detectives from the California Highway Patrol gathered in a Los Angeles-area parking lot the other morning for an operational briefing. In about twenty minutes, they would drive to a nearby Home Depot, where customers were known to regularly wheel carts of merchandise out the door without paying, and to stick power tools down their pants.” In addition to taking what I consider to be a pretty intense risk (power tools, genitals), these thieves aren’t you’re everyday shoplifters. The New Yorker: The Crime Rings Stealing Everything from Purses to Power Tools.

+ Around the Ban: “To be precise, researchers estimate there were 1,026,700 abortions in 2023. ‘That’s the highest number in over a decade, [and] the first time there have been over a million abortions provided in the U.S. formal health care system since 2012.'” Despite bans in some states, more than a million abortions were provided in 2023.

+ 23 and Xi: “Article 23 targets new offenses like external interference and insurrection, and penalties include life sentences. It was fast-tracked through its final stage by the city’s pro-Beijing parliament in less than two weeks.” Hong Kong passes tough security law fought by protesters for years. Related: If you haven’t seen the excellent Hong Kong based series Expats, do so at once.

+ Chicken Comes Home to Roost: “In one corner is the family of Pakistani chef Kundan Lal Gujral, who is said to have taken leftover tandoori chicken and mixed it in a gravy he formed with other unused ingredients. Following the partition in 1947, Gujral moved over to Delhi, India, where he set up the restaurant Moti Mahal, which became internationally famous for this very dish. On the other side are the family members of Kundan Lal Jaggi, a chef at Moti Mahal. They claim he is the true inventor of butter chicken. Whoever wins in India, within the US — where giving credit where credit is due is hard to come by and playing fast and loose with authentic cuisine is acceptable — it won’t matter much. What’s top of mind here is the dish’s popularity and how it has helped bridge cultural gaps.” Raj Tawney in Bloomberg (Gift Article): America’s Place in India’s Butter Chicken Fight.

+ Til the Sitter End: “The field is hard to track precisely, because it’s so informal by definition, but sources told me that many parents today are looking for professionalized child care, or at least older and more experienced caregivers. Teens, meanwhile, are given few opportunities for responsibility—especially with the kind of training wheels that babysitting used to entail.” Don’t Tell America the Babysitter’s Dead.