FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, May 29, 2022 [1. We’re Hiring A Part-Time Social Producer]( FiveThirtyEight is hiring a part-time Social Media Producer to join our team. The ideal candidate is someone who is interested in connecting our wonky, data-driven approach to sports and political journalism with audiences across platforms. [Read more]( [2. Support For Gun Control Will Likely Rise After Uvalde. But History Suggests It Will Fade.]( [A City Mourns As Texas Shooter Kills 18 Elementary School Children, One Teacher]( After a racist shooting earlier this month at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and Tuesday’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, guns have — yet again — emerged as a political issue that has dominated headlines. Democrats have issued impassioned pleas for the government to more tightly regulate the sale of firearms, and if past shootings are any indication, we will soon get a fresh batch of polling data showing that solid majorities of Americans agree with them. But again, if past shootings are any indication, Congress will not pass any reforms, in large part because many Republicans oppose gun control reform. And as happened so many times before, the strong public support for gun control will fade away with our memories of the shootings. [Read more]( [3. The Twisted Logic Behind The Right’s ‘Great Replacement’ Arguments]( [A woman in American flag face paint attends a Save America rally]( Days after a white gunman shot 13 people, killing 10, at a grocery store in a majority-Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired a segment about the “great replacement theory.” “We’re still not sure exactly what it is,” Carlson claimed about the racist, white-supremacist conspiracy theory that the population of white Americans is being systematically and intentionally “replaced” by nonwhite immigrants and their children, something the suspected shooter espoused prior to the attack. Yet elements of the theory have been echoed by mainstream figures on the right, including Carlson, as well as GOP members of Congress like Reps. Matt Gaetz and Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking Republican in the House. [Read more]( [4. The NBA’s Conference Finals MVP Award Is New This Year. But What If We Had Always Had It?]( [CONFERENCE-MVPS-4×3]( When the NBA conference finals each wrap up, the league will award two new trophies: the Larry Bird Trophy for the Eastern Conference finals MVP and the Earvin “Magic” Johnson Trophy for the Western Conference finals MVP. Bird and Johnson are fitting namesakes for these awards given that their struggle for supremacy from opposite coasts is often credited with reviving the NBA in the 1980s. [Read more]( [5. The Phillies’ Defense Might Be Good Enough]( [Colorado Rockies v Philadelphia Phillies]( The Philadelphia Phillies were expected to be one of the worst defensive teams in baseball this season, with enough errors to fill a weekly blooper reel. That made it all the more surprising on Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia that a baseball team lost on a routine defensive miscue … and it wasn’t the Phillies. [Read more]( [6. Al Horford Fills The Gaps For The Celtics]( [Miami Heat v Boston Celtics – Game Three]( Last year at this time, Al Horford’s team was finishing up a dismal season, closed out by losing 23 of its final 25 games and securing a lottery spot. Through that entire ugly stretch for Oklahoma City, Horford sat on the bench. [Read more]( [7. The Datasets We’re Looking At This Week]( [DATA-IS-PLURAL-2-4×3]( You’re reading Data Is Plural, a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. Below you’ll find the May 25, 2022, edition, reprinted with permission at FiveThirtyEight. [Read more]( [8. For The First Time In Years, Democrats Are More Concerned About Abortion Than Republicans Are]( [Signs in support of abortion rights are held in front of the US Capitol]( Americans have long taken for granted the constitutional right to an abortion, established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. [Read more]( [9. The Panthers’ Offense Was Flying High. Then The Lightning Struck It Down.]( [Florida Panthers v Tampa Bay Lightning – Game Four]( Going into the playoffs, two of the NHL’s biggest questions surrounded the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers: Did the two-time defending champion Lightning have enough gas left in the tank to make a serious three-peat bid? And could the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Panthers use their all-time dominant offense to turn around the postseason fortunes of a franchise with little historical success? When the two teams met in the second round, we got our answers — in a resounding way. [Read more]( [10. So You Just Crushed A Baseball. Sorry, Your Odds Of A Home Run Are Worse This Year.]( [A cart filled with baseballs]( If home run numbers are chief among baseball’s vital signs, you can understand why onlookers are worried about the game early this season. After an unprecedented five-year power surge, MLB-wide homers per game are down by more than 20 percent from last season and by more than 30 percent from their all-time high in 2019. While we haven’t yet wrapped up the month of May — and power numbers tend to increase as the temperature rises in summer months — it’s clear even now that we are looking at a significantly downgraded season for the long ball in 2022. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: Trump’s Revenge Primary In Georgia Fails]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.