Politics and policy

Alloy, Marqeta and other technology firms drafted policies to assist employees in states that restrict abortion access, even before they had all the answers.

At a minimum, the court’s ruling will create confusion and invite endless litigation.

The Federal Reserve System is facing increasing demands from the Senate to revamp the process for granting master accounts, disclose more information to the public and pick more diverse leaders. That pressure makes executive searches at the Kansas City and Chicago Fed banks more complicated.

House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters is the second top Democratic lawmaker to dress down the megabank in recent weeks. Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown wrote a similar letter to Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf in late May.

Large banks are facing an increasingly difficult challenge on environmental and social issues: balancing the demands of progressive activists and their own employees with those of Republican state officials. One analyst calls it the “goldilocks dynamic.”

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo joined Citigroup in pledging to expand benefits to cover travel for out-of-state abortions. Smaller banks in blue states were more vocal, with one female CEO saying: “I stand in disbelief.”

The New York megabank’s decision, which takes effect on July 1, emerged on the same day that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. JPMorgan Chase is following the lead of Citigroup, which announced a similar policy at the start of the year.