FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, March 26, 2023 [1. Unions Have Been Under Attack For Decades, But Michigan Just Gave Them A Big Win]( [Union members from around the country rally at the Michigan State Capitol to protest a vote on Right-to-Work legislation December 11, 2012]( On Friday, Michigan repealed an 11-year-old law that weakened unions’ power in the workplace. Known as a “right-to-work” law, this type of legislation has been around since at least 1943, and Michigan is now one of only a handful of states to ever repeal it. [Read more]( [2. The Tennessee Women Haven’t Been Tested Yet This March. That Might Not Be A Bad Thing.]( [MM-Tenneesee-2023-4×3]( If March Madness is defined by upsets and buzzer-beaters, one team on the women’s side has been flying under the radar by soaring high over the rest of the field. [Read more]( [3. Which Taylor Swift Album Is The Most Popular?]( [0322_POLLA-4×3]( Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. [Read more]( [4. Who Are The Brightest Stars Left In March Madness?]( [MM-PlayersToWatch-2023-4×3]( As the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments roll into their second week, starting with tonight’s slate of Sweet 16 men’s games, it’s time to take stock of just who the best and most exciting performers have been in March Madness so far. To that end, let’s look at a ranking of every active player, according to a per-game average of Game Score — a simple metric that adds up the weighted sum of a player’s good (and bad) box score stats — in each tournament to date. [Read more]( [5. Recess Is Good For Kids. Why Don’t More States Require It?]( [Children play during recess]( Several years ago, a team of sociologists flew from California to an East Coast school to observe the kindergarteners’ recess for their research. The team waited on the playground, but the children never showed up. When they later asked the principal why, he told them that the lunch staff had held the students back as punishment for misbehavior. [Read more]( [6. Could These MLB Dinosaurs Recreate Albert Pujols’s 2022 Renaissance?]( [PUJOLS-2023-4×3]( 2022 brought baseball fans a handful of gifts, headlined by Aaron Judge’s all-around excellence and Shohei Ohtani continuing to be Shohei Ohtani. But a few months of Albert Pujols’s farewell season were just as historic. Serving as designated hitter for his old team, the St. Louis Cardinals, Pujols put up one of the great old-guy campaigns ever in an unprecedented comeback from a yearslong slump. There have been few hitters of Pujols’s caliber in MLB history, period; the list of them who have languished around replacement level for years before reclaiming something like their elite form is, well, just Pujols. [Read more]( [7. What We Know About Trump’s Legal Troubles]( [TRUMP-INVESTIGATIONS_4x3]( Despite a near-constant swirl of legal problems, former President Donald Trump has managed to avoid indictment so far. But one prosecutor seems poised to take the plunge and become the first to criminally indict a former president. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, is reportedly close to filing charges for Trump’s role in paying hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. [Read more]( [8. The Best Way To Derail An NBA Offense? Make It Waste Time.]( [De'Aaron Fox of the Sacramento Kings dribbles the ball while defended by Aaron Holiday and Frank Kaminsky of the Atlanta Hawks]( In the modern NBA, there is no resource more valuable than time on the shot clock. In fact, it’s the only thing that teams can’t score without. While it’s tough to put the ball in the basket if you don’t have a high-level ball handler or marksmen to knock down shots and space the floor, it’s not impossible. But once that timer above the backboard hits zero, your opportunity to produce points is over. And in what is once again the most efficient scoring season in league history, every single second has value — perhaps more now than ever before. [Read more]( [9. ‘Tis The Season … For Gonorrhea?]( [DISEASE-SEASONS4x3]( We thought we were safe. The flu season was tapering off. Spring was in the air (sort of, some places). As flu cases flatlined through January and February, Americans breathed a sigh of relief, kicked up our collective feet … and immediately realized we’d accidentally ingested norovirus and made a break for the restroom. [Read more]( [10. Yes, A 16 Seed Beat A 1. But March Madness Hasn’t Been That Mad.]( [MM-MensUpsets-2023-4×3]( The 2023 men’s NCAA Tournament started with a bang. Within six hours of the round of 64 tipping off, we’d seen an experienced No. 4 seed Virginia collapse in dramatic fashion to No. 13 Furman and the much taller No. 2 Arizona get schooled by No. 15 Princeton down the stretch. By Friday night, we’d lost a No. 1 seed, as Fairleigh Dickinson vanquished Purdue in just the second-ever 16-over-1 result, and by the time the dust settled on Sunday, the teams that began with the fourth-, fifth- and seventh-best odds in our model to start the tournament had all fallen — while the school more famous for producing Nobel Laureates than Naismith Award winners had advanced to the Sweet 16. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: The Manhattan DA Might Be The Least Of Trump’s Legal Worries]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.