By ADRIAN SAINZ, Associated Press

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A fire that severely damaged a historic Black church that served as the headquarters for a 1968 sanitation workers’ strike, which brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, was intentionally set, investigators said Wednesday.

The fire at the Clayborn Temple, which was undergoing a yearslong renovation, was set in the interior of the church, the Memphis Fire Department said in a statement. Investigators are searching for a person suspected of being involved with the blaze.

Flames engulfed the downtown church in the early hours of April 28. Later that day Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat said the inside of the building was a total loss but there was still hope that some of the facade could be salvaged.

The fire department said May 14 that the building had been stabilized and investigators would use specialized equipment to study the fire’s cause.

FILE – The historic Clayborn Temple, a landmark from the civil rights movement with ties to Martin Luther King Jr., caught fire, April 28, 2025, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Karen Pulfer Focht, File)

Located just south of the iconic Beale Street, the Clayborn Temple was built in 1892 as the Second Presbyterian Church and originally served an all-white congregation. In 1949 the building was sold to an African Methodist Episcopal congregation and given its current name.

Before the fire it was in the midst of a $25 million restoration project that aims to preserve the architectural and historical integrity of the Romanesque revival church, including the revival of a 3,000-pipe grand organ. The project also seeks to help revitalize the neighborhood with a museum, cultural programing and community outreach.

King was drawn to Memphis in 1968 to support some 1,300 predominantly Black sanitation workers who went on strike to protest inhumane treatment. Two workers had been crushed in a garbage compactor in 1964, but the faulty equipment had not been replaced.

On Feb. 1 of that year, two more men, Echol Cole, 36, and Robert Walker, 30, were crushed in a garbage truck compactor. The two were contract workers, so they did not qualify for worker’s compensation, and had no life insurance.

FILE – Firefighters gather outside the historic Clayborn Temple, a landmark from the civil rights movement with ties to Martin Luther King Jr., after it caught fire, April 28, 2025, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Karen Pulfer Focht, File)

Workers then went on strike seeking to unionize and fighting for higher pay and safer working conditions. City officials declared the stoppage illegal and arrested scores of strikers and protesters.

The Clayborn Temple hosted nightly meetings during the strike, and the movement’s iconic “I AM A MAN” posters were made in its basement. The temple was also a staging point for marches to City Hall, including one on March 28, 1968, that was led by King and turned violent when police and protesters clashed on Beale Street. One person was killed.

When marchers retreated to the temple, police fired tear gas inside and people broke some of the stained-glass windows to escape. King promised to lead a second, peaceful march in Memphis, but he was shot by a sniper while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4.

After King was assassinated and the strike ended with the workers securing a pay raise, the church’s influence waned. It fell into disrepair and was vacant for years before the renovation effort, which took off in 2017 thanks to a $400,000 grant from the National Park Service.

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The Clayborn Temple was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. A memorial to the sanitation workers, named “I AM A MAN Plaza,” opened on church grounds in 2018.

Anasa Troutman has been leading the restoration as executive director of Historic Clayborn Temple and founder of a nonprofit associated with the church, called The Big We. About $8 million had been spent on the renovations before the fire, and the exterior had been fully restored, Troutman said.

She said in a recent interview that two chimneys had to be demolished before investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could safely work on the property, but the church organ had been removed before the fire.

As the fire was burning, she said, people went to the “I AM A MAN” memorial and stood at a wall where the names of the striking sanitation workers are listed.

“I watched that wall turn into the Wailing Wall, because people were literally getting out of their cars, walking up to that wall and wailing, staring at the building on fire,” she said.

The oral argument before the Supreme Court related to President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship focused on whether a single district court has the authority to issue a nationwide injunction telling the administration what it can or can’t do. The best reading of the justices’ questions is that although they are concerned about giving too much power to a single district judge, they are more worried about Trump’s contempt for the rule of law.

It appears the justices will find a way to allow such orders in at least some circumstances — like Trump’s egregious executive action purporting to end birthright citizenship. And ultimately, it’s extremely likely they will strike it down as violating the Fourteenth Amendment, probably sometime next year.

What made the current case so strange — and the argument so dramatic — is that any rational Department of Justice would have tried to avoid bringing it to court at all. Yet Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, pressed it on the justices, who held a special oral argument to consider it. Justice Elena Kagan, a solicitor general under former President Barack Obama, bluntly pointed this out, commenting that if she were in Sauer’s shoes, she would have tried to keep the case out of the court.

The reason not to bring this particular case is that many of the justices have long been concerned about what are called “universal injunctions,” defined roughly as orders given by a court that cover the whole country. The directives allow someone challenging the legality of an executive action to get a single district court judge to block the action unilaterally.

So, if you were the solicitor general and wanted to convince the Supreme Court to abolish the practice, you would bring a case in which the judicial order in question was doubtful and the stakes were low. That would allow the justices to dig deep on the technical questions of whether lower court judges really have that much power and how best to rein them in.

The birthright citizenship case is at the opposite extreme. It’s obvious as a matter of law that the Fourteenth Amendment grants birthright citizenship. It says so right in the text and precedent going back to 1898 agrees. No justice at the oral argument made any attempt to suggest a different constitutional interpretation.

And the stakes are enormous. They matter, of course, to everyone born in the US to non-citizen parents. But they matter even more to the larger question of whether Trump can get away with flouting the law and then dance around court injunctions that tell him to stop. That’s what he’s been doing on issues from deportation to government funding to the firing of federal employees and beyond.

The upshot is that the whole oral argument took place against the backdrop of the justices’ worries that Trump might ignore legitimate court orders. Justice Samuel Alito tried to get the court to leave aside the underlying “merits” question about the Fourteenth Amendment and think only about universal injunctions in general. That was an uphill battle under the circumstances. Trump’s lawlessness loomed over the proceedings, and its presence weakened Sauer to the point where it seemed fairly certain that the court would find some way to leave the lower court order in place.

Even conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who clearly doesn’t care for universal injunctions, asked Sauer, “How would you get the merits of this case to us promptly?” The implication was that he wants to make sure Trump’s order is struck down by the justices quickly, before it does real-world harm.

The most likely explanation for Sauer bringing the case despite it being disastrous was that Trump wanted him to. He also probably figured, correctly, that he would be hammered less hard by the justices for attacking universal injunctions than he would be for insisting that the Constitution doesn’t guarantee birthright citizenship.

The justices have expressed skepticism about universal injunctions in the past. In a perfect world, many, maybe most of them would have preferred to rule that district courts can’t ever grant them. But Trump’s conduct this term seems to have forced a majority to recognize that courts need tools to stop him from breaking the law and creating situations that can’t easily be reversed. That’s what has happened in the case of the Venezuelans unlawfully deported to El Salvador.

This argument marked the first time we’ve heard the justices speaking directly about one of president’s lawless executive actions. It won’t be the last. The Supreme Court seems to understand the assignment: protect the rule of law from Trump’s threat. All else is secondary.

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People.”

One of the more remarkable aspects of the MAGA ideology is how often it fulfills the left-wing policy wish list. The latest example is a proposal for so-called MAGA accounts, which House Republicans are currently considering as part of their $4 trillion tax bill.

Under the plan, every baby born between 2025 and 2029 will get $1,000 from the government in a MAGA account (it stands for Money Account for Growth and Advancement). The general idea was popularized by Democratic Sen. Cory Booker in 2018, when they were called “baby bonds.” With the crushing cost of education and housing, not to mention wealth inequality, it is easy to see the appeal — which explains the bipartisan support.

There are some promising features of the plan. But it risks becoming another expensive way to paper over existing policy failures.

Under the current proposal, parents can deposit an additional $5,000 a year (indexed to inflation). The money will be invested in a low-cost stock index fund and can’t be accessed until the account holder is 18. After age 18, the funds may be used for education, buying a home, or starting a business, and are subject to the capital gains tax. If the funds are used for a non-qualified expense before age 30, there will be an additional 10% tax. At age 31, the account will be terminated and the funds disbursed.

First, I should note that I find all of this sort of strange. To me, the main purpose of government is to create an environment in which citizens can thrive on their own. Giving everyone a check on day one seems to cut against that. That said, many young people are in fact burdened by the high cost of education or can’t afford a home. The amount of student debt has been growing steadily, and the cost of education has lately outpaced the rate of inflation. House prices have been on the rise, and the average age of buying a first home is rising.

So it’s undeniable that many young people today would’ve benefited from a MAGA account. At the same time, the rising cost of both housing and education is the result of government policies that subsidize demand and restrict supply, bidding up prices. From a policy and fiscal standpoint, it would be better to undertake regulatory reforms in the housing market and higher education, including how they are financed, to make both these things more accessible. In some ways, MAGA accounts are just subsidizing further demand.

The other supposed benefit is that MAGA accounts grow wealth for children from poor families. But they are not necessarily the best way to address inequality, which largely depends on factors such as whether your parents can give you a head start — an inheritance, financial support for education, help with rent, a down payment for a house, and so on. If the goal is more equality, the accounts should be more targeted to families who need them. The option to deposit more money has the potential to worsen inequality. It is also duplicative of existing 529 college savings plans.

All this aside, however — there are worse policies. In some ways this is an improvement on the Booker plan, which invested the accounts in low-risk bonds that paid 3% a year, and had loftier goals like eliminating racial inequality. The 3% guaranteed returns would’ve meant less risk, but also probably less growth.

One of the great benefits of the expansion of 401(k) participation over the last several decades is that it got more Americans invested in the stock market. MAGA accounts would expand stock ownership even further — and from birth, which means more Americans would be invested in America’s prosperity. I would just note that this program is addressing problems that the government created in the first place.

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”

Global medical device company Medtronic announced Wednesday that it intends to separate its diabetes business into a standalone company.

The new diabetes company will focus on accelerating innovation and addressing intensive insulin management, according to a news release from Fridley-based Medtronic.

“This marks a significant milestone in driving both Medtronic and the Diabetes business to achieve lasting value for Medtronic, our shareholders, customers and patients,” said Geoff Martha, chairman and CEO of Medtronic, in the release.

Que Dallara, current president of Medtronic Diabetes, will become the CEO of the new company, which will have a global team of more than 8,000 employees.

“As we embark on this exciting new chapter, we celebrate the tireless efforts and dedication of our teams. Their passion and perseverance have brought us to this pivotal moment. Together, we’re poised to transform lives, giving people the freedom to forget diabetes and live their best lives,” Dallara said in the release.

The separation is expected to be completed in 18 months.

Medtronic reported a fourth quarter global revenue of nearly $9 billion on Wednesday, totaling more than $33.5 billion globally for fiscal year 2025.

Diabetes business accounted for more than $2.75 billion in fiscal year 2025, representing 8% of Medtronic’s revenue. In the fourth quarter alone, diabetes business brought in $728 million, up 10% compared to last year’s fourth quarter, which brought in $660 million.

A spokesperson for Medtronic declined to comment on how Minnesota jobs would be impacted.

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