What happened
The Trump administration plans to drop fraud and bribery charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, Bloomberg reported yesterday. Adani, indicted in 2024 for an alleged $250 million solar energy scam, also faces a related civil case from the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as a Treasury Department investigation. Both agencies are now also reportedly preparing to settle.

Who said what
The “reversal” stems from Adani hiring a “new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr.,” one of the president’s “personal lawyers,” said The New York Times. During an April meeting with federal prosecutors, Adani “offered to invest $10 billion” and “create 15,000 jobs if the charges were dropped,” said Forbes. The pitch “received favorable response from one senior justice department official,” said The Guardian, although department figures claimed it would “not sway the outcome of the case.”

What next?
Should the Department of Justice drop Adani’s case, the billionaire is “still expected to incur financial penalties,” the Times said. “Although the deal could still fall apart,” the DOJ may dismiss the charges “in the coming days.”

What happened
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday preserved access to mifepristone, a common mail-order abortion drug. The decision, which extends a pause on a lower court’s ruling while a Louisiana lawsuit on the issue plays out, means women can continue to order the pills without seeing a doctor in person. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

Who said what
This decision is “remarkable” because easy access to abortion pills is “a scheme to undermine” the Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Alito wrote in his dissent. Mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories said the ruling meant “a safe and effective drug Americans depend on will continue to be available.” SCOTUS “has thrown abortion providers and patients a lifeline — albeit a temporary one,” said Politico. 

What next?
The Court of Appeals is not expected to rule on the Louisiana suit until after the November midterms, and the issue “could ultimately return to the justices on their normal docket,” said The Hill. In the meantime, the Federal Drug Administration is conducting a safety review of mifepristone.

There has been a fierce debate over the past two decades about the standing of the distant icy world of Pluto after it was contentiously stripped of its planethood and reclassified as a dwarf planet. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has indicated that he might revisit the matter, but the decision won’t be easy, said The Observer, because scientists are still “worlds apart” on the issue.

Pluto was discovered on Feb. 18, 1930, by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. For 76 years, the “tiny ball of rock and ice” was recognized as the ninth, smallest and most distant planet of the solar system. But in 2006, nine years after Tombaugh died, members of the International Astronomical Union voted on the criteria for a planet. 

To qualify, the group decided, an object must orbit the sun, be nearly round and be the largest object in its path. Pluto meets the first two conditions but not the third, because it shares its orbit with other icy objects in a region called the Kuiper Belt. So its status was downgraded to a dwarf planet. Now, Isaacman has signaled that the space agency might reexamine the case for Pluto to regain its planetary status. 

With an “echo of MAGA,” “make Pluto a planet again” is a phrase that suggests a “nostalgic journey back to a past of certainties,” when “everything was in its right place in the heavens,” said The Observer. But “actually, it’s the Plutonists who represent the argument for radical change,” and vocal supporter and planetary scientist Alan Stern has calculated that there might be as many as 1,000 planets in the solar system. But first, the best thing that NASA and other Pluto advocates can do is “escalate the discussion,” said Space.com (a sister site of The Week).