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

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Plus, chatbots told scientists how to make bioweapons.  Here’s what we’re covering: In Narrowing Voting Rights Act, Conservative Justices See Progress on Racism, by Adam Liptak Takeaways From Hegseth’s Testimony on Iran War and His Tenure, by John Ismay and Megan Mineiro Oil Price Surges as Effects of War Reverberate, by Emmett Lindner A.I. Bots Told Scientists How to Make Biological Weapons, by Gabriel J.X. Dance Lester Wright, the Fastest Known Centenarian, Dies at 103, by Jeré Longman Tune in every weekday morning, and tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, April 30th. Here's what we're covering. The consequence of this decision is as clear as it is dangerous. Fewer protections for voters. More power for politicians to draw maps that silenced 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 red draw 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. That 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 conservative. 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 undo 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.

With this decision, the court has made it 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 Corrissiniti, 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 28 election. The guardrails that had kept some states in check are now gone because of this Supreme Court ruling. So it's likely that Republicans and states are cross. 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. The biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans. On Capitol Hill yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth sat for a fiery hearing, where he defended the war in Iran, and lashed out at lawmakers who've questioned the conflict. Who are you cheering for here? Who are you pulling for? Our troops are doing incredible work. It was Hegsa's first public testimony since the war began more than eight weeks ago, and he faced sharp questions about how much longer the fighting would continue

and how much it's costing American taxpayers. He 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 munitions supply at this point,

and lawmakers have raised concerns that it could take years to restore those stockpiles. Meanwhile, with no end in sight for the war, oil prices have continued to surge. This morning, the price of Brent crude oil jump 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. One 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. He says Dr. Relman was so shaken by his experience with the chatbot that he had to take a walk

to clear his head. And Relman's not the only scientist who has run into this. Several experts who've been hired by AI companies to vet their chatbots for potential safety risks have shared transcripts with the times of conversations with the chatbots about potential biological weapons, like one chatbot that described 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.

All 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.

Gabriel says that some experts are pushing for companies to censor swan of biological information to try and head off these kinds of potential threats. But 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. And 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. Then 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, right, did have competition, there's been a steady rise over the years in how many seniors run marathons and other races. The fastest-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. is 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.