What happened
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) yesterday called a June 17 special legislative session to redraw the state’s congressional map for 2028 elections. The redistricting push follows a rush of GOP-led Southern states moving to eliminate Black/Democratic districts this year after the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision neutered the Voting Rights Act.  

Who said what
South Carolina’s GOP-led Senate voted Tuesday not to follow Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama in changing congressional maps for 2026. But Gov. Henry McMaster (R) told lawmakers yesterday he will call a special session, “teeing up” a “Republican gerrymander that would almost certainly cost Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn his seat” in November, Politico said. Kemp (pictured above) “has ruled out changing the maps for this year’s races,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said, “but Republicans are moving to act now while they are certain a GOP governor can sign the new districts into law.” 

What next?
After their party’s “miserable two weeks in the redistricting wars,” Politico said, Maryland Democrats are pushing to eliminate the state’s sole Republican seat, “arguing there is still time to wade in for this year’s elections.” Republicans “have won the Great Redistricting War of 2026,” Reuters said, but their potential 12-seat gain “may not be enough” to keep the House.

What happened
A 59,000-year-old Neanderthal tooth discovered in a cave in Siberia shows clear signs of dental surgery with a small stone drill-shaped tool, researchers reported yesterday in the journal PLOS One. The hollowed-out molar pushes back the “known history of human dentistry by about 40,000 years,” The Washington Post said. Previously, Reuters said, “the oldest evidence of dental surgery was a Homo sapiens tooth found in Italy dating to about 14,000 years ago.” 

Who said what
The operation to scrape out the molar’s pulp would have “required diagnosing the ​source of pain, understanding that removing decayed tissue could bring relief, deliberately selecting an appropriate stone tool and executing precise drilling with controlled finger movements,” said study senior author Ksenia Kolobova, an archaeologist with Russia’s Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. 

What next?
The “painful prehistoric dentistry saga” is the “latest in a string of evidence that explodes the myth of our unique cognitive and social abilities,” the Post said, and it “deepens the mystery of why we are the only species of human left on the planet.” Neanderthals “disappeared roughly ​40,000 years ago,” Reuters said, though “most people today carry a ​small amount of their DNA due to ancient ⁠interbreeding.” 

As a bold measure to address climate change, scientists are proposing a dam across the Bering Strait, linking Alaska and Russia. Such a dam could decisively protect the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a system of currents instrumental in regulating the planet’s sea temperatures and climate, University of Utrecht oceanographers argue in a new study. 

Three separate dams would be needed because “two small islands sit smack in the middle” of the strait’s narrowest 51-mile gap, said Science. A similar structure already exists in South Korea, although “not in rough, remote waters frequently choked with sea ice and bordered on each side by fierce geopolitical rivals.”

Damming the Bering Strait is just as “out there” as “refreezing the Arctic” or “floating a giant parasol in outer space,” said The New York Times. But the concern for the continuation of the AMOC is very real.

Acting as a “vast oceanic conveyor belt,” the AMOC carries tropical, salty currents from the Atlantic toward Europe, said the Times. Once cooled, the water circles back south, influencing rainfall patterns in Africa, South America and beyond. There’s a “growing body of evidence” that human-caused global warming could make the strait “shut down or slow significantly,” with “grave effects” on weather patterns on multiple continents. 

Some scientists think damming the strait would make things worse. But even if the ambitious project were deemed beneficial and given the go-ahead, it doesn’t promise us an “escape hatch,” said Earth.com. “Once you are debating megadams to prop up ocean currents,” it’s a clear sign that progress toward reducing emissions has “not gone nearly well enough.”