Good morning. The conservative advocate who engineered the lawsuit behind the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to end race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions on Tuesday sued two law firms that offer fellowships for diverse candidates.

• Who's filing the suits? The lawsuits, filed by Edward Blum’s two-year-old anti-affirmative-action organization, American Alliance for Equal Rights, accuse the law firms of unlawful racial discrimination against white candidates. They ask the courts to remove race from consideration when selecting fellows. The law firms have offices in Texas and Florida. The suits are filed in federal courts in both states.
   
• Who is being targeted? The lawsuits target the international law firms Perkins Coie and Morrison & Foerster, but fellowships for diverse candidates are common across the legal industry.
   
• What are they alleging? The suit filed in Texas is against Perkins Coie and alleges the firm has been “racially discriminating against future lawyers for decades” by limiting some fellowship positions to applicants who are “‘students of color,’ ‘students who identify as LGBTQ+,’ or ‘students with disabilities.’” The fellowships pay tens of thousands of dollars to first- and second-year law students and provide a pool of prospective employees to the firm where associate salaries can start around $190,000 a year, the suit says.
   
• What's the background? The lawsuits follow the Supreme Court decision this summer involving Harvard College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that overturned nearly 50 years of race-conscious affirmative action at colleges and universities.

Facebook Marketplace lets users sell recalled baby products, lawmakers say.

A group of bipartisan lawmakers told Meta Platforms in a letter that it is not doing enough to prevent users from selling recalled products, including deadly baby items, on its Facebook Marketplace.

Four Congress members wrote a letter last week to Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg saying his company’s actions have risked public safety. Meta doesn’t appear to have taken action in response to several letters and thousands of federal requests to take down recalled-product listings, the letter said.

• The New York Knicks have made the NBA playoffs just twice in the last 11 seasons, and have never advanced past the Eastern Conference semifinals during that time. Yet now the Knicks are alleging that one of the league’s model organizations saw something in their franchise worth stealing.
   
• The U.S. State Department on Tuesday said it was taking action to punish Chinese officials in response to what it called the forcible assimilation of young Tibetans, broadening its assault on Beijing’s treatment of ethnic minorities.
   
• Hawaiian Electric said that it has begun working with investment bank Guggenheim Securities as it seeks to address difficulties arising from the Maui wildfires.

Binance, the biggest player in crypto, is facing legal risks over Russia.

Binance is helping Russians move money abroad, potentially adding to its sprawling legal problems in the U.S.

The cryptocurrency giant, led by founder Changpeng Zhao, joined many other major international companies early last year in scaling back its business in Russia, one of its largest markets by trading volume at the time. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Binance said it had stopped working there and was implementing Western sanctions requirements. It restricted trading on its platform in Russia.

But Binance’s exchange continues to handle substantial ruble trading volumes, externally compiled data show.

Dick’s Sporting Goods, Macy’s flash warning signs on U.S. consumer spending.

Dick’s Sporting Goods and Macy’s traded sharply lower Tuesday after the retailers posted weaker quarterly earnings and provided tepid forecasts for the remainder of the year, signals that the recent strength in consumer spending has its limits.

The sporting-goods chain slashed its profit targets for the year after missing Wall Street forecasts for the second quarter. Sales slowed after a pandemic-fueled surge for outdoor gear, leaving it with excess inventory. Executives said thefts of merchandise were also higher than they expected. Macy’s reported declining sales in the June quarter and warned that more shoppers are late on their credit-card payments.

• A new 1% tax on stock buybacks is starting to increase companies’ anticipated tax burdens, to the tune of over $3.5 billion in the first half of the year among the largest U.S. public companies.
   
• Home sales fell in July for the fourth time in five months, extending one of the deepest housing slumps in recent memory.
   
• Deal flow for many American investment banks in China has slowed to a trickle with local companies increasingly turning to their Chinese peers.

• No evidence has emerged to show President Biden benefited from his son Hunter's international commercial endeavors, nor that he wielded government authority to favor them.Yet the political peril has grown.
   
• Ukrainian forces said they had seized the village of Robotyne, taking another small step in Kyiv’s efforts to cut through Russian defenses in southern Ukraine.
   
• Thousands of New York City Airbnb listings are vanishing from the market.
   
• The U.S.’s decision to double the number of direct flights it allows from China casts a rare glimmer of light on an otherwise gloomy relationship. It also underscores how far the two sides must go before their bilateral links return to prepandemic levels.
   
• Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is heading to China this weekend bearing a portfolio of difficult economic issues while pushing forward an effort by both governments to stabilize rocky U.S.-China relations.
   
• The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said its members have ratified a new five-year labor contract with United Parcel Service.

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