Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🗳️ Political drawing board
• 🛳️ Cruise ship outbreak
• 🤔 Are personalities determined at birth?

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~3.41-minute read (907 words).

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"You are now, and you do become, what you think about."

–Earl Nightingale (1921-1989)

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling that outlawed drawing political maps based on race has poured gasoline on an already heated redistricting fight.

Several GOP-led states are now scrambling to redraw their political maps in an attempt to improve their party’s chances in the November’s midterm elections, with Democrats also threatening to do the same.

How we got here

US states typically redraw their political maps once every decade following new Census Bureau data. But that precedent has been upended this election cycle, beginning last year in Texas where Republicans, backed by President Trump, pushed through a rare mid-decade redistricting effort that could net the GOP up to five additional House seats.

• Democrats have responded in kind, while Republicans in other states have continued the trend.
• California and Virginia followed with their own mid-decade maps aiming to deliver more Democratic House seats, while Republicans in Florida and Ohio also approved new GOP-favored political maps.

Under current federal law, states are allowed to draw political maps to give one party an unfair advantage (aka gerrymandering).

SCOTUS’ latest ruling re-opened the floodgates

Last week’s decision gives states new legal ground to revisit maps with majority-Black, Asian, and Hispanic districts. And some have already begun moving:

• Lawmakers in Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee are planning special sessions to redraw congressional maps ahead of the November midterms, aiming to create new GOP-favored House districts.
• Democrats have threatened to retaliate by splitting up conservative-leaning districts in states like New York and Illinois, boosting the voting power of more liberal, urban districts.

The stakes are high: President Trump says the latest wave of redistricting could deliver as many as 20 additional GOP House seats, while other estimates place the maximum number at nine. Any such swing has the potential to reshape the fight for control of Congress heading into November’s midterms.

📊 Flash poll: Do you support or oppose the recent trend of states redrawing their political maps mid-decade in an effort to gain House seats for their party?

• Support
• Oppose
• Unsure/other

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Lifeguard works behind the scenes to remove your number from data broker lists and block spam before it reaches you. That means fewer chances for scams to reach you and less risk of costly mistakes before they even start.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📝 SEC formally proposes rule change that would allow public companies to move away from quarterly earnings reports in favor of twice-a-year disclosures. | 🤖 Microsoft, Google, and xAI agree to give the US gov’t early access to new AI models for national security testing.
• 💼 US job openings, a measure of labor demand, fell slightly in March but came in above analysts’ expectations, per new Labor Department data.
• 🪙 Coinbase is cutting ~14% of its employees (700 jobs); America’s largest crypto exchange cited rapid advances in AI allowing for smaller, more productive teams.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎾 World’s top tennis players, including women’s #1 Aryna Sabalenka, suggest boycotting a future Grand Slam tournament due to ongoing dispute over prize money sharing.
• 🧑‍⚖️ Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni settle two-year legal dispute that began after they co-starred in 2024 film It Ends With Us.
• 🎭 2026 Tony Awards nominations were unveiled yesterday, ahead of the June 7th awards ceremony hosted by P!NK. | 🎵 Rolling Stones announce new album called Foreign Tongues.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🪐 Astronomers detect a thin atmosphere around a tiny celestial body in the outer solar system for the first time; these frozen, rocky bodies—called trans-Neptunian objects—were previously thought too small to support an atmosphere.
• 🦠🚢 Outbreak of hantavirus—a rare, rodent-borne illness—onboard a cruise ship off the coast of West Africa has left three people dead and sickened several others; WHO officials say the risk to the global population is low
• 🍄 Single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, can induce anatomical changes in the brain, new small study suggests.

US, WORLD & POLITICS

• 💥 President Trump temporarily pauses the US military’s effort to guide commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz (called “Project Freedom”); Trump says his decision is based in part on “the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement.”
• 🗳️ Indiana and Ohio held primary elections yesterday ahead of the November midterms, while Michigan held a special election for a key state Senate seat; see the results.
• 🚨 FAA employee arrested for allegedly threatening to kill President Trump, after Secret Service was alerted to suspicious internet searches on the 35-year-old male’s gov’t work computer.

👆 Meet “Familiar,” a new robot companion from Roomba creator Colin Angle. Familiar is an “artificial pet” specifically built for companionship, with an expressive face—featuring movable eyebrows, ears, and eyes—and the ability to adapt to users’ daily habits.

🤔 Did you know? Dragonflies are considered the most successful hunters on Earth, catching between 90%-95% of their prey. For comparison, African lions only catch ~20% of the prey they chase.

📰 Worth a read: Nature vs nurture: How much of our personalities are determined at birth?

🖱️ What we’re clicking:

• Inside Europe’s seagull screeching championship
• Homeownership is now a video game genre
• How 90-y.o. Taiwanese “superagers” train at the gym (~2 min video)

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Can you name these poorly-explained movie plots?

1. Man talks to volleyball instead of addressing problems
2. A man lies to a woman every day, and she falls in love with him anyway
3. Billionaire beats up criminals instead of going to therapy

🎈 A 12-year-old black belt from Pakistan recently set a Guinness World Record by popping 35 balloons in one minute above her head. Fatima Naseem said years of training built the flexibility, balance, strength, and focus needed for the stunt, which beat the previous record by 13 balloons. 

1. Castaway (2000)
2. 50 First Dates (2004)
3. The Batman franchise

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