What the Voting Rights Act Decision Means, and Hegseth’s Heated Testimony

0:00This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Here's a story that's not getting nearly enough attention. Defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused chaos and harm, and access to essential reproductive care is plummeting. Right now, the Trump administration's backers in Congress want to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, forcing even more health centers to close, and millions at risk of losing access to care. It takes less than a minute to help. Go to plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift of any size. From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford.

0:37Today's Thursday, April 30th. Here's what we're covering.

0:45The consequence of this decision is as clear as it is dangerous. Fewer protections for voters. More power for politicians to draw maps that silence them, particularly historically disenfranchised voters. In Washington and across the U.S., Democrats are blasting the Supreme Court's ruling on the Voting Rights Act, calling it a betrayal of the civil rights movement. At the same time, Republicans are calling it a major win for the Constitution and hailing the decision, which could open the door for more red states to redraw their election maps to benefit the GOP. They determined that the last map that was drawn for Louisiana was done unconstitutionally, and we've been saying that consistently from the beginning.

1:27That was the obvious result. In its ruling yesterday, the court's conservative majority threw out a Louisiana voting map, saying that lawmakers there illegally used race as a consideration when drawing a majority Black congressional district. Under the Voting Rights Act, states across the country have long done what Louisiana did. They created districts where non-white voters are the majority to protect those voters' ability to elect candidates of their choice. It was seen as a crucial way to try and undue decades of discrimination and disenfranchisement under Jim Crow. But the Supreme Court's majority now says that in the decades since the VRA was passed, back in 1965, the country's made so much progress when it comes to racial discrimination in elections that the act has essentially served its purpose.

2:15With this decision, it could be harder going forward to intentionally create majority-minority districts. In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the ruling will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in elections. In terms of what this could mean for the next big election Americans will be voting in, the midterms, that remains to be seen. My colleague Nick Corosiniti, who covers voting, says a lot of states don't have time to change their maps before November, even if lawmakers want to. What is clear, though, is that the national redistricting wars that define politics in this country for the past year will continue in earnest ahead of the 2028 election.

2:57The guardrails that had kept some states in check are now gone because of this Supreme Court ruling. So it's likely that Republicans in states across the South will redraw their maps, potentially targeting Democrats. Nick explains more about how the ruling could supercharge the nationwide gerrymandering arms race on today's episode of The Daily.

3:23Secretary Hegseth, you have been lying to the American public about this war from day one. On Capitol Hill yesterday, lawmakers grilled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth about the war in Iran as he sat for his first public testimony since the conflict began. Who are you cheering for here? Who are you pulling for? Our troops are doing incredible work. In the fiery hearing, Hegseth lashed out at lawmakers who've criticized the conflict. The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.

4:00Over the course of nearly five hours, he faced sharp questions about the justifications for U.S. involvement, how much longer the war will continue, and how much it's costing American taxpayers. Hegseth would not commit to any timeline, but for the first time, the Pentagon did provide an official estimate for how much the war has cost,$25 billion. Much of that expense has been from the tens of thousands of bombs and missiles that the U.S. has used in the conflict. The Iran war has significantly drained much of the U.S. military's munition supply at this point, and lawmakers have raised concerns that it could take years to restore those stockpiles.

4:41Meanwhile, with no end in sight for the war, oil prices have continued to surge. This morning, the price of Brent crude oil jumped to more than$120 a barrel, nearly double what it was in February. And this week, the average gas price in the U.S. reached its highest level in four years.

5:06One evening last summer, Dr. David Relman, who's a microbiology and biosecurity expert at Stanford University, was working in his home office, and he had been hired by an AI company to pressure test its chatbot. What Dr. Relman had been hired to do was to try asking the chatbot about an infamous pathogen that he was very familiar with. And not only did the chatbot describe to him ways to make it resistant to known treatments, but worse, according to him, it described how to use the superbug in an attack and how to maximize casualties while minimizing his chance of being caught. My colleague Gabriel Dance has been looking into the guardrails that AI chatbots have or don't have.

5:55He says Dr. Relman was shaken by his experience with the chatbot, which seemed to be offering a blueprint for biological warfare. And Relman's not the only specialist in that field who's concerned. Several other experts who've been hired by leading AI companies to vet their chatbots for potential safety risks have shared transcripts with the Times that include things like a chatbot explaining how to use a weather balloon to spread biological payloads over a U.S. city. So being that I'm not a biologist or virologist myself, I took these transcripts and put them in front of more than a half dozen experts in those fields.

6:35All of the scientists found them concerning to some degree, but some of them were much more concerned than others. On one hand, I had several experts telling me that these chatbots were offering basically roadmaps to very dangerous biological weapons. But other scientists said that chatbots were really nothing more than glorified Google searching machines, that much of the information is already available on the internet, and the likelihood of a major biological attack remains very unlikely. But even one biological attack could be catastrophic. thing. Gabriel says that some experts are pushing for companies to censor swaths of biological information to try and head off these kinds of potential threats.

7:24But others say that's an overreaction and that restricting that info from AI could stifle breakthrough medical research, like for developing new drugs. In response to questions from the Times about the chatbot transcripts, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all argued the bots didn't provide enough detail to allow anyone to cause harm. And they said they were constantly improving their systems to balance potential benefits and risks.

7:59And finally, if you're going to go out to run a race, you should really run a race to try to win. The man who held the record for being the fastest known runner over age 100, has died at 103. I don't know how you can run to be second or third. Lester Wright earned the title a few years ago, running the 100-meter dash in 26.34 seconds. That's more than twice as long as it took Usain Bolt to clinch his world record for that race. But, you know, Bolt was 22 when he did that. Born in New Jersey in the early 1920s, Wright ran track in high school before joining the Army and serving in World War II.

8:39Then he opened a dental lab making prosthetic teeth. His daughter said he really embraced running even in his old age because he just had a lot of energy. If you're looking for longevity secrets here, his daily diet alternated between oatmeal and cream of wheat. Notably, Wright did have competition. There's been a steady rise over the years in how many seniors run marathons and other races. The fastest This known woman centenarian didn't even start running until her 100th birthday. Part of the uptick is sheer numbers. More and more people are cracking the 100 mark. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of centenarians in the U.S.

9:20is expected to quadruple in the next few decades. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News Quiz.

9:38This podcast is supported by Helen Keller International. This is a moment of growing urgency. Families around the world are facing widening gaps in healthcare and nutrition, but solutions are within reach. Just 75 cents can provide treatment for neglected tropical diseases, and$2 can help protect a child's sight and health. For a limited time, donations are being matched, helping expand that impact. Learn more at HelenKellerINTL.org slash the headlines.