What happened
Georgia’s Republican state lawmakers yesterday rejected Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) calls to immediately redraw the state’s political map to erase one or two majority-Black congressional districts before the 2028 elections. Kemp had called yesterday’s special legislative session to make Georgia the latest Southern state to redistrict after the Supreme Court gutted the last main pillar of the Voting Rights Act.

Who said what
The decision “marked a setback for both Kemp and President Donald Trump,” who started the national redistricting war to improve GOP odds of keeping control of Congress, The Associated Press said. Georgia Republican legislative leaders “cited a desire for a more methodical process that included greater input from voters and a better understanding” of the legal challenges, The New York Times said. But the redistricting retreat, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said, followed “weeks of mounting pressure from Democrats, voting rights groups and even some uneasy Republicans who warned that reopening redistricting could energize Democratic voters” in the increasingly competitive state. 

What next?
Kemp and other Georgia Republicans said they weren’t giving up on the redistricting. The Supreme Court “left no doubt that we would need to draw new maps,” Senate President Larry Walker III (R) said at a news conference. “The question was when.”

What happened
President Donald Trump yesterday scuppered plans by Senate Republicans to quickly confirm his nominee for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton, and reauthorize a lapsed critical spying tool. Posting on social media from a G7 summit in France, Trump said he was canceling Clayton’s confirmation hearing, hours before it was set to begin, until the Senate confirmed his controversial replacement as the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. And “to add a slight bit of intrigue,” Trump added, he would not sign a reauthorization of FISA’s Section 702 surveillance tool until the Senate approved voter-eligibility legislation that doesn’t have the votes to pass. 

Who said what
Trump’s set of “extraordinary” dictates “makes it more likely that his temporary pick for the intelligence job,” top housing official Bill Pulte, takes over tomorrow, The Associated Press said. Senators had been “rushing to get Clayton confirmed by the end of the week, to get ahead of Pulte’s scheduled start,” The Wall Street Journal said. Pulte is an unqualified “sycophant,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, and Trump is “undermining our ability to produce the results that he wants.”

What next?
Trump is “presumably happy for the highly partisan Pulte to have access to powerful spying tools for 210 days,” The Washington Post said in an editorial, as Senate Republicans decide “how much humiliation they are willing to tolerate.”

Relaxed protocols and standards at the Department of Health and Human Services have led to an increase in clinics offering experimental stem cell treatments for children with autism. Although the procedures are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, kids “as young as 18 months old” are getting injections at clinics in Florida, Texas and elsewhere in the “growing market,” said The Guardian. 

The procedure involves sedating the child before administering intravenous doses of millions of stem cells “commonly derived from human umbilical cords harvested at birth,” said The Guardian. Sometimes, the doctors providing the treatment have “no scientific expertise in autism or child development.” But stem cell clinics are “finding an influential ally” in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and policy changes could be coming. 

Several clinics prominently cite a preliminary Duke University study involving 25 autistic children that “suggested possible improvements following umbilical cord stem cell infusions,” said Trial Site News. But a “larger and more rigorous follow-up trial” involving 180 children failed to “demonstrate significant improvements in core autism symptoms compared with placebo controls.” Researchers concluded that the evidence “does not currently support routine use” of stem cell therapies for autism.

Parents seeking out unapproved stem cell therapies are “not irrational,” said Trial Site News. Most are “navigating difficult realities” with “limited options and enormous responsibility.” But families “don’t need untried, expensive” treatments, said clinical social worker Jennifer Cork at Psychology Today. “They need affordable therapies” and other help, and for Kennedy to “remember that autistic people are human beings, not lab rats.”