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Kane has written two books of poetry, which both deal with issues of displacement and cultural identity, and is currently working on a novel based on the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. She tells NPR's Melissa Block about the island, her Inupiat identity and the upcoming trip.

The national debate over immigration reform may be churning on in Washington, D.C., but there's one policy a growing number of states can agree on: driver's licenses for unauthorized immigrants.

Vermont, Connecticut and Colorado passed new laws this month allowing drivers without Social Security numbers to receive licenses or authorization cards. They join Nevada, Maryland, and Oregon, whose governors signed similar laws in May. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn started the trend this year when he signed Senate Bill 957 in January.

The recent wave of state laws reflect an about-face in policy after 9/11, when states tended to enact more restrictive licensing requirements.

In recent years, unauthorized immigrants have been able to receive driver's licenses in Washington state and New Mexico, and in Utah, drivers who cannot "establish legal/lawful presence" have been able to apply for driving privilege cards, according to the Utah Driver License Division's website.

The types of licenses that unauthorized immigrants can receive vary by state. Nevada's law follows Utah's model by only allowing driver's privilege cards. Such limitations prevent unauthorized immigrants from using the cards as valid government-issued identification.

These new state laws show that the public safety argument often cited by immigrant advocates is "starting to carry weight," says Ann Morse, who directs the National Conference of State Legislatures' Immigrant Policy Project.

As The Economist recently reported:

...unlicensed drivers are almost five times more likely to be in a fatal crash. They are also less likely to stay at accident scenes, according to Yale Law School's Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization. The costs of accidents involving the uninsured are passed on to other motorists in the form of higher insurance premiums.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on a case that may shake up race-conscious admissions in higher education. The justices could change the shape of affirmative action or even strike it down altogether.

California is one of eight states that have already scrapped affirmative action. That means state schools can no longer consider the race of its applicants. At the University of California, Los Angeles, the change has been messy, ambiguous — and sometimes a little ugly.

After the state passed the ban in 1996, the percentages of black and Latino students at UCLA quickly began to fall. Things came to a head in 2006. That year, in a freshman class of nearly 5,000 students, just 96 were African-American.

Corey Matthews — one of the "Infamous 96," as those students came to be known — said it shaped his experience at the huge school. Even in lecture halls filled with hundreds of students, he says, he was often the only African-American student.

UCLA realized there was a problem, so it decided to start something called "holistic review," taking into consideration a wide range of factors in its admissions decisions — from GPA, to family income, to whether an applicant was the first in the family to go to college. Race was not one of the factors, but indeed, the percentages of black and Latino students began to rebound.

Then things got complicated again.

Last year, a UCLA professor released a study claiming the school was letting some black and Latino students in at higher rates than white or Asian students who should have ranked just the same under the new holistic review.

In other words, the study said, UCLA was breaking California law and instituting affirmative action.

UCLA's newspaper, Daily Bruin, published a story on the study and ran an opinion piece suggesting the school re-evaluate its admissions policy.

In response, student groups led rallies to protest the study and the Daily Bruin. They said a reference in an op-ed to an "undue percentage" of minority students was offensive and minimized those students' hard work.

"The reaction was not pretty," James Barragan, the paper's editor in chief, tells NPR's Rachel Martin.

"I got a long email calling me an embarrassment to my race because I wasn't supporting the cause," he says.

Barragan, who has a Latino background, says he agrees that the goal should be to get more racial diversity on campus — but only if it is done fairly.

"We feared at the paper, once we saw the study, that this diversity was coming at a cost of other students who were also qualified to be there and maybe weren't getting the same opportunity," he said.

UCLA says it stands by its admissions policy and points to a review by faculty that refutes the study's findings. A school spokesperson told NPR that UCLA's holistic review is not only legal, but also a fairer and more equitable way to evaluate applicants in an increasingly diverse state.

If the Supreme Court finds affirmative action unconstitutional this week, a lot of schools could wind up facing the same dilemma UCLA has dealt with for nearly two decades.

The Food and Drug Administration Thursday evening approved over-the-counter sale, with no age restrictions, of Plan B One-Step. That's the morning-after pill whose status has been the subject of a dozen years of political wrangling and legal dispute.

The action came after a court order issued in April by a federal district court judge in New York. The Obama administration originally appealed the ruling, but when it became clear that it would lose, agreed to make the product available as ordered.

"Over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive products has the potential to further decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States," said Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a statement.

But the wrangling over the drug — which can prevent most pregnancies if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex — isn't completely over.

The FDA's approval only applies to a single product. Generic copies, as well as older two-pill versions that include the same active ingredient, will remain restricted by age, with prescriptions required for those under age 17, at least for now.

That will mean that they will also remain behind the pharmacy counter, be available only during regular pharmacy hours, and women will have to show identification to buy them.

A spokeswoman for the FDA said the agency hasn't yet decided whether and for how long Teva Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Plan B One-Step, would enjoy this so-called market exclusivity that would protect it from generic competition.

Considering all the twist and turns in the Plan B saga, we thought it would be a good time to pull together some of the key milestones in a tale that stretches back to 1999.

Take a spin through our interactive timeline. Click on an arrow to the left or right of the featured element, or select something from the slider below it.