FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, June 19, 2022 [1. The Jan. 6 Hearings Are Really An Inquest Into The ‘Big Lie’]( [A screen displays video from the January 6 insurrection during a hearing]( Former President Donald Trump thinks the House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol shouldn’t be investigating the attack, but instead investigating the claims of voter fraud that spurred the attack. But Trump must not be watching the hearings, because they are about those claims. [Read more]( [2. The Warriors’ Latest Title Might Be Their Most Surprising]( [2022 NBA Finals – Game Six]( For the fourth time in eight seasons, the Golden State Warriors are NBA champions. This latest title comes after a two-year interregnum during which the Warriors scarcely resembled the juggernaut that ran through the league from 2015 through 2019. Golden State went just 15-50 during the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season and was not even invited to the NBA bubble. Just shy of two years later, Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, Steve Kerr and company are back on top of the NBA world. [Read more]( [3. José Ramírez Is Baseball’s Least-Appreciated Superstar]( [Cleveland Guardians v Baltimore Orioles]( The title of baseball’s best player is open to a lot of interpretation, and there’s never one right answer. Sure, Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout has been the usual choice for the better part of a decade now, thanks to his historically dominant early career stats. But we laid out the case last week for Mookie Betts of the L.A. Dodgers, whose numbers are as good or better than Trout’s over the past handful of seasons. You might also advocate for Aaron Judge, who is having an unbelievable season for the New York Yankees, or for the Angels’ two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani — whose 2021 season was unlike anything we’d seen in a century — or even for defending National League MVP Bryce Harper of the Philadelphia Phillies, the only player other than Trout and future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera to win multiple MVP awards over the past decade. [Read more]( [4. What Happens When American Children Learn About Racism?]( [A boy holds a "stop the hate" sign]( Americans have spent over 150 years arguing about what kind of history we should teach to our children. In “Schoolbook Nation,” a book that examines the history of conflicts over American curricula, historian Joseph Moreau noted that a variety of Americans have worried about the sky falling if the “wrong” versions of history were taught in our schools. Americans, as Moreau documented, were concerned about this in the 1870s, again in the 1920s and, as we’ve seen recently, they are still concerned today. [Read more]( [5. Will The Celtics Turn Over Their Chance To Win The Finals?]( [Gary Payton II,Marcus Smart]( Throughout these NBA Finals, the Golden State Warriors offense has been fairly consistent. The Dubs have scored between 100 and 108 points in all five games, and their offensive rating has held steady between 108.1 and 115 in each contest. By contrast, the Boston Celtics have fluctuated wildly between blistering efficiency and devastating ineptitude. Boston has recorded an offensive rating as high as 125.4 (Game 3) and as low as 89.7 (Game 2). [Read more]( [6. What It’s Like To Open An Abortion Clinic Right Now]( [ABORTION-CLINIC-0619-4×3]( This is the first entry in a series tracking what it’s like to open an all-trimester abortion clinic in the U.S. as abortion rights are being curtailed. [Read more]( [7. Steph Curry Is Cutting Through The Noise]( [2022 NBA Finals – Game Five]( At 12th on the list of NBA Finals scoring, Stephen Curry is one of the greatest Finals performers of all time — and this series has been a masterpiece. He started Game 1 by hitting six triples in the first quarter, tied for the most in playoff history since 1996-97, and he finished with 34 points. Three games later, he added a 43-point, 10-rebound effort, becoming the second guard ever to accomplish that in the Finals. [Read more]( [8. The Ceiling For Jayson Tatum And Jaylen Brown Is High Enough. But Their Floor Might Be Too Low.]( [2022 NBA Finals – Game Four]( The play could have been a turning point. To start the third quarter of Monday’s Game 5 against the Golden State Warriors, the Boston Celtics’ Jaylen Brown had made two trips to the free-throw line and, miracle of miracles, knocked down all four shots. Jayson Tatum had sidestepped behind a screen to sink a 3-pointer. The next trip down, Brown drove hard and almost lost his footing — it’s not a Brown sequence unless the word careening applies — but nevertheless collapsed the Golden State defense and flung a pass out to Tatum, who had snuck into an unmarked zone behind the arc. Another triple, a 12-point halftime lead cut to 2, and a couple of prodigiously gifted and highly exasperating players on the same page. [Read more]( [9. The Datasets We’re Looking At This Week]( [DATA-IS-PLURAL-4×3]( You’re reading Data Is Plural, a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. Below you’ll find the June 15, 2022, edition, reprinted with permission at FiveThirtyEight. [Read more]( [10. The New National Congressional Map Is Biased Toward Republicans]( [REDISTRICTING-0615-4×3]( Back in March, I started off an article with the sentence, “Congressional redistricting — the process of redrawing the nation’s 435 congressional districts to reflect the results of the 2020 census — is not quite finished, but it’s getting darn close.” Clearly, I jinxed it: Since then, the national redistricting landscape has changed substantially, thanks to a new Republican-drawn plan in Florida and a court-ordered remap of New York. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: More Trouble For Democrats In The Rio Grande Valley]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.