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Hey, good morning, playbookers.

I'm Raguamunovallin.

It's Monday.

Today, Skudis hears arguments on a pair of cases that could decide the future of affirmative

action in higher education.

It's your Politico Playbook daily briefing.

A bit later, Politico Zach Stanton stops by to give a couple updates on some key midterm

races, but first, another landmark Supreme Court decision from the 1970s is likely to fall.

This morning, Skidus will hear oral arguments in two cases challenging the use of race

and college admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

There is, however, little mystery about the outcome.

Previous attempts to overturn the use of affirmative action by colleges have failed.

In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan,

provided the decisive vote in Greta v. Bowlinger.

In 2016, Justice Anthony Kennedy, another Reagan

nominee, did the same in Fisher v. the University of Texas. Those cases narrowed the use of race

in admissions to one permissible goal. Diversity. The court has changed radically since 2016,

and the six conservative justices had the history of hostility to Regents of the University of California

v. Bakke, the 1978 opinion that first blessed college affirmative action programs. As the court

made clear in Dobbs, if five justices believe that an old case is what they call egregiously wrong,

40 plus years of precedent don't matter. Something a little different today to preview the week, I'm joined by Playbook Deputy Editor Zach Stanton for today's Playbook Daily Briefing. Zach, how's it going? I'm doing well. How are you, Raghu? I'm good. I'm good. We're only one week and a day out from Election Day. It just, it's like Christmas. It sneaks up on you before you even know it. I know this is something you track every day, Zach, a big early voting totals for midterm.

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