Democratic U.S. Rep. John Delaney of Maryland has declared that he is running for president. You heard that correctly: A serious elected official has declared his candidacy just six months into President Trump’s term. Trump still has another 3.5 years to serve.

I don’t know whether Delaney has any shot at winning the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency. But I think I speak for most of us when I say this whole thing is a little nuts.

In the past 45 years, there’s no record of any serious candidates announcing that they’re running for president this early. In the 2016 cycle, Ted Cruz was the first to declare among Democrats and Republicans. He did so on March 23, 2015 — that was 315 days before the Iowa caucuses. Going back to 1972, no candidates committed to running earlier than Republican Pete du Pont in the 1988 cycle. He filed with the Federal Election Commission and announced his candidacy to supporters 615 days before the Iowa caucuses.

Delaney is way ahead of those fellas. We don’t even know the date of the 2020 Iowa caucuses yet! Given prior dates, they’re likely about 900 days away. The lines between toying with a presidential run, keeping options open, genuinely exploring a bid and declaring a candidacy are blurry, but the closest comparable case to Delaney’s that comes to mind is that of former Florida Gov. Reubin Askew, who started to explore (but did not announce) a run for the 1984 election in the second half of 1981.

Of course, Delaney likely jumped the starting gun in an effort to get press attention. (Yes, we’ve played right into his hands.) Delaney, who is a former banking CEO and was elected to the House in 2012, needs the press because he’s essentially an unknown figure in national politics. [Editor’s note: I had no clue who he was.] There doesn’t seem to be a single poll conducted so far in this very young presidential cycle that has included Delaney’s name — either for the primary or general election. Pollsters have, however, asked about Oprah Winfrey and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. In other words, Delaney’s announcement feels out of left field.

The question for now is whether Delaney’s declaration is the first of many early announcements. There’s reason to believe it could be, even if others don’t come quite so soon. Trump’s shocking win in 2016 may make many people who previously thought they had no chance of winning the presidency believe that they do. Indeed, I’ve had a little fun with Delaney’s announcement because of his obscurity, but … Donald Trump is president of the United States — no one should be counted out. And with Trump’s popularity the lowest on record this early in a presidency, some Democrats may be especially eager to take on someone they view as vulnerable.

Either way, the 2020 presidential campaign is officially underway. Sorry.

President Trump announced on Friday that he had dumped his chief of staff Reince Priebus — a move that everyone saw coming after Trump’s new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, had spent much of the last week publicly blasting Priebus. In just a week, the president has executed a long-rumored shake-up of his staff, appointing Scaramucci, accepting the resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer, who had threatened to quit if Scaramucci was appointed, and now replacing Priebus with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

But remember, these are only the changes that have actually occurred. Published articles have suggested that both national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are frustrated in their roles and that Tillerson may consider resigning. Trump is mad at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and seems to be trying to get Sessions to quit. All this is coming only a few months after there was news of tension between the president and chief strategist Steve Bannon — even though both Bannon and Sessions were some of Trump’s strongest backers during his campaign and are deeply connected to the nationalist part of Trump’s base.

Whew. Washington always has drama and tension, but this amount of uncertainty and changeover in some of the most important jobs in government is highly unusual.

So what the hell is happening in the Trump administration? (Yes, beyond the volatile president.) Earlier this year, I wrote that there were at least eight power centers in Trumpworld and that they would compete with one another for influence. One of my assumptions in writing that article was that Trump, with little experience in Washington or in government and lacking a well-defined policy vision, would be fairly malleable — which might give his advisers more influence than advisers had under previous presidents.

I was wrong, to some extent. It’s still not clear that Trump has defined views on, say, U.S. policy in North Africa or how health care marketplaces should work. But six months into the administration, some of his preferences have become clear: He seems to trust family members and his associates from New York more than people with long experience in policy or politics, even on matters of policy and politics. He does not share the deep wariness about Russia and Vladimir Putin that is held by both Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington. His favorite kinds of policies appear to be ones that reverse something former President Barack Obama did. And he seems to have no intention of courting traditional Beltway constituencies like the D.C. press corps, the foreign policy establishment or even GOP congressional leaders.

Those four preferences don’t mesh well with the skills, connections and credentials that some of the key people in his administration bring to the table. As a result, those aides are at times either marginalized or pushed out.

This isn’t just a Beltway story of who is up and who is down. It matters. The people who aren’t in sync with Trump on his core preferences could lose their ability to set policy in areas where the president does not have strong views. So let’s revisit our eight power centers.

One wing that is basically defunct

The Party Wing — Priebus was running the Republican National Committee when Trump named him White House chief of staff. And several people from Priebus’s RNC team snagged top slots at the White House, including deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh, senior assistant press secretary Michael Short and Spicer.

Walsh left the White House several months ago — it’s not clear whether she was pushed out or exited voluntarily. Spicer could have stayed on, but he had been disempowered. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new press secretary, was already doing many of the briefings that Spicer had done at the start of the administration. Spicer had shifted to a role directing the White House’s broader communications strategy, but Scaramucci got that portfolio when he was hired. Short resigned this week, with Scaramucci reportedly on the verge of firing him.Scaramucci seemed to go out of his way, after his appointment, to announce that he would be reporting directly to Trump, not the chief of staff, who in past administrations was in effect the boss of the communications director.

‘>¹

Why did the Party Wing struggle so much?

Well, Trump is not trying to court the traditional constituencies of Washington. So he has no need for people, like Priebus and Spicer in particular, whose main credentials are their establishment ties. From his RNC tenure, Priebus had deep relationships with the GOP establishment in Washington, including his longtime friend and fellow Wisconsin native, House Speaker Paul Ryan. (Ryan, a day before Priebus’s removal became public, told reporters on Capitol Hill, “Reince is doing a fantastic job at the White House and I believe he has the president’s confidence.” Spicer had been a spokesman in the Bush administration, on Capitol Hill and at the RNC, with extensive contacts with Beltway reporters.

Kelly, a Marine, had spent virtually his entire career in the military before taking the Homeland Security post. His lack of experience working on Capitol Hill or in the White House fits well with an administration that doesn’t value those skills.

One wing that is struggling

The McCain Wing — Similar to the Party Wing, the McCain WingI dubbed this the “McCain Wing” because the generals have a hawkish, pro-NATO and anti-Russia outlook that more resembles Arizona Sen. John McCain’s than the president’s.

‘>² of the Trump administration — particularly general-turned-national-security-adviser H.R. McMaster and general-turned-defense-secretary Jim Mattis — has declining power because Trump is not following the edicts of the Washington Republican foreign policy establishment.

Trump’s moves on Russia — downplaying the election hacking, exploring the lifting of U.S. sanctions, trying to build closer ties with Vladimir Putin — are not the kinds of policies that the generals favored before they entered the administration. This is a problem if you are serving as a top Trump foreign policy adviser. So when Trump met with Putin at the G-20 summit earlier this month, McMaster was not included in either the formal meeting or an informal session the two leaders had later.The national security adviser would usually be included in such a major meeting, although Trump has not directly said that the reason McMaster was not in the session is that he disagrees with the president on Russia policy.

‘>³

It’s not clear that McMaster and Mattis want Trump to follow through on his campaign pledge to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal. So the president, according to Foreign Policy, has tasked a different set of staffers to present him with a path for leaving the agreement. Additionally, the Pentagon seemed to be blindsided by Trump’s tweets last week that he wanted to ban transgender people from serving in the military. It was not clear that Mattis supported such a ban.

It will be interesting to see how Kelly’s ascension affects Mattis and McMaster. On the one hand, Kelly, before he joined the Trump administration, was fairly skeptical of Russia and Putin as well. So he could be another voice pushing the president toward a more confrontational relationship with Putin, like Mattis, McMaster and congressional leaders in both parties. On the other hand, the chief of staff role is traditionally defined as executing the president’s agenda, even more than other top government posts. If Trump now has in Kelly a top aide with military experience who will endorse his more unorthodox stands on foreign policy, particularly toward Russia, the president could be even more eager to reject the advice of Mattis and McMaster. Stay tuned here, the role of Kelly on foreign policy could be very interesting.

The three wings maintaining power (but not gaining more)

The Friends and Family Wing — Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner,have convinced the president of at least one thing: the value of their being untouchable, powerful advisers, in a way no presidential daughter and son-in-law have ever been in modern times. And the swapping in of Scaramucci — a New York finance person with no previous government experience (like Ivanka Trump and Kushner) — for D.C. insider Spicer is another power grab for this wing. Ivanka Trump and Kushner reportedly favored the move.

On the other hand, it is hard to see this wing’s influence on policy. If Ivanka Trump really wanted her father to keep the U.S. in the Paris climate deal, as was reported, she did not succeed. Her proposal for a national paid family leave program has little momentum on Capitol Hill.

The Bannon Wing — Bannon and Sessions were two of the architects of the nationalist parts of Trump’s campaign platform. But in the spring, Kushner and Bannon were warring internally, and the president downplayed his relationship with Bannon. Recently, the president has publicly complained about Sessions for recusing himself from the Justice Department’s investigation of ties between Trump campaign officials and Russia and for allowing the appointment of a special counsel. So, at first glance, it would appear that the nationalist wing of Trumpworld is in decline, since the status of Bannon and Sessions has been in question.

But the ideas of the Bannon-Sessions wing are flourishing, even if the two men are not personally. Trump remained behind the travel ban on people from certain Muslim-majority nations, even after courts kept issuing rulings against it. That steadfast defense of the policy was rewarded when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated part of the executive order enacting it. Sessions is implementing hardline immigration and criminal justice policies at the Department of Justice, and Kelly, in his DHS role, was aggressive about defending the administration’s right to deport undocumented immigrants. And Bannon urged Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate deal, which Trump has said he will do.

Why are these ideas still carrying the day in the Trump administration? You could argue that even if Bannon’s and Sessions’s stocks are down, nationalist views have advocates all over the administration. But the most important reason that these views and those who champion them have lots of power is that the president appears to agree with them.

The Wall Street Wing — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and other traditional economic figures were expected to push Trump away from the more unusual positions that he took during the campaign, when he proposed withdrawing from NAFTA and labeling China a currency manipulator. He has not taken either of those steps. So from that perspective, the Wall Street Wing has accomplished what the McCain Wing had hoped to do: have Trump govern more like a traditional Republican on their issues. But they have not fully turned him around: Trump is arguably more opposed to multi-country free-trade agreements than any recent American president.

The two wings gaining power (probably because of Trump’s Russia problem)

The Bureaucrats — Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is in charge of the DOJ investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign and whether there are any connections between that interference and Trump allies, is probably not who you think of when you think of a bureaucrat. But he occupies a major post in government, and he wasn’t put there by Trump — and those are the types of people this wing encompasses. The most important conflict in Washington right now is Mueller v. Trump, since Trump seems to want the Russia investigation to stop and firing Sessions or Mueller might be a route to accomplishing that goal.

It’s not exactly clear who is leaking to major newspapers like The New York Times the connections of Kushner, Sessions and others in Trump’s orbit to Russian figures. But many of the news accounts of these connections are often attributed to unnamed “U.S. officials,” suggesting that these are people inside the government. The people who are leaking this information that fuels the Russia-Trump stories have a lot of power at the moment because it’s keeping that issue in the minds of the public and irritating Trump.

The Pence Wing — If you look at policy, the traditional conservative wing of the Trump administration, led by the vice president, is winning like no other. Trump, despite little record of opposing abortion before his 2016 presidential campaign, has enacted or is pushing a number of provisions aimed at either reducing the number of abortions or cutting funding for Planned Parenthood. His budget reads like it was written at the offices of the deeply conservative Heritage Foundation, full of cuts to government programs. Trump’s proposed ban on transgender people serving in the military was another policy advocated by social conservatives, including Vice President Mike Pence, according to reports.

The secret sauce of this wing is probably Russia. Trump, during his campaign, took positions on some issues that were distinct from the rest of the Republican Party, at one point suggesting that he opposed efforts to cut Medicaid funding. But the Russia scandal has in some ways heightened the president’s need for loyalty from congressional Republicans and the GOP base. They can save him from more investigations and potentially impeachment and removal from office. He appears to have traded policy for party loyalty, largely enacting the agenda of party activists and more conservative figures like Pence.

The Unknown

Other Important Figures — I noted in my earlier article that Tillerson and senior adviser Kellyanne Conway were high-profile figures who didn’t necessarily land in a particular camp, so we dubbed them part of their own power center of people who could emerge as major players. But neither of them have become central figures in the administration.

Conway appears on cable news often, but it is not clear that she has any substantial role in deciding the administration’s strategy or policy.

Tillerson, meanwhile, seems to favor policies that are out of step with Trump (like staying in the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal). And he has another big problem: Kushner is playing a big role in diplomacy, even on major issues like Israeli-Palestinian policy that would normally be the purview of the secretary of state.

But the Trump administration now has Kelly, another figure who does not obviously fit into any of these existing camps, in a central position. The chief of staff can insert himself into every policy decision Trump makes. So he has the potential to be a huge influence. But it’s not really clear what Kelly’s views are on domestic policies like health care and taxes, or national security questions like the Iran nuclear deal. We don’t know how Kelly will approach managing the White House. For example, does he have the power and standing with Trump to get the president to stop sending controversial tweets? Can he get staffers to stop blasting each other in press? Or, will Trump soon become dissatisfied with Kelly, like he became with Sessions, Priebus and others, thus allowing the internal drama at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to continue.

So we knew that Trump would have an unusual administration. But it’s evolution, at least in its early stages, has been, frankly, kind of weird. Trump is executing a small government and conservative moral values agenda on domestic issues with a skew towards more nationalist policies on race and immigration but a somewhat pro-Russia foreign policy. That is an unusual mix. His chief of staff, press secretary and a deputy chief of staff have already left, and there have been rumors that his chief of staff, attorney general, chief strategist and secretary of state will quit in frustration or be pushed out, all while his daughter and son-in-law occupy secure roles. That too is unprecedented. Trumpworld still has a lot of of competing power centers, and it’s still not clear exactly which one dominates.

The 3,000-hit club is about to get bigger, as longtime FiveThirtyEight favorite and noted on-deck circle relocater Adrian Beltre gets closer to the milestone with every multi-hit game. Beltre, who notched his 2,996th hit on Wednesday, probably wouldn’t need to cross the 3,000-hit threshold to ensure his place in Cooperstown, but the achievement helps underscore just what a special player he has been over his two decades in the major leagues.

Beltre’s milestone, whenever it comes, will mark the third consecutive season in which a player notched his 3,000th hit; Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees homered for his in June 2015, while the Miami Marlins’ Ichiro Suzuki smacked a triple for his 3,000th hit last August. New membership in the 3,000-hit club tends come in bunches, like when nine playersRickey Henderson, Cal Ripken Jr., Wade Boggs, Tony Gwynn, Paul Molitor, Eddie Murray, Dave Winfield, George Brett and Robin Yount.

“>¹ joined its ranks in the 10 seasons from 1992 to 2001, so more members could be on the way.

But who will be next after Beltre? Let’s take a look at a handful of candidates coming up behind him on the active hits leaderboard — plus some younger players who might join the chase — and gauge their chances against the historical pace of the average 3,000-hit club member at the same age.Age is as of June 30 of each season.

“>²

We start with the oldest group of candidates. Right behind Beltre is Albert Pujols of the Los Angeles Angels, who — with his 2,911 lifetime hitsCurrent-season numbers are accurate as of end of play on July 26, 2017.

“>³ — is almost assured of reaching the milestone either later this season or early next year. And Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera is another strong candidate, with over 300 more career hits than the average 3,000-hit club member had at the same age. The only thing that might hurt Cabrera’s chances is a late-career slowdown; he’s currently suffering the worst hitting season of his major-league career.

Cabrera has such a cushion that he can afford some small decline, though he’ll need to bounce back soon to stay on pace. Robinson Cano of the Seattle Mariners, meanwhile, is also in a down season — he’s on pace for his lowest hit total since his rookie year — and he doesn’t have much room to fall off before losing the pace entirely. After a rough July, Cano’s chances could be evaporating before our eyes. (Houston Astros designated hitter Carlos Beltran is also fourth on the hits list among active players — but with fewer than 2,700 hits at age 40, his chances are next to nonexistent.)

The next set of players are theoretically in their primes, though their chances might be more complicated to predict than any other group’s. Tigers outfielder Justin Upton started his career with a flourish, recording four 150-hit seasons by the age of 26, but he also turned in a few years below that level of production and is now behind the pace. Yankees second baseman Starlin Castro has a similar story — he led the NL with 207 hits in his sophomore season, when he was with the Cubs, but has since settled into a solid pattern of racking up 150 hits per season. He’s still ahead of pace, but he might not be for long.

Some of these guys are on an upward trajectory, though. Beltre’s teammate Elvis Andrus has become a hitting machine — he hasn’t dropped below 150 hits since his rookie year in 2009, and he’s on pace for more than 180 this season. Houston Astros second baseman Jose Altuve is having an MVP-type season; he’s on track for 226 hits this year, which would be his fourth straight 200-hit season. And Eric Hosmer of the Kansas City Royals has swung his way to within striking distance of a 3,000-hit pace this season, producing what works out to a 198-hit campaign over 162 games.

After Cabrera, nobody over the age of 25 is more than 200 hits above the historical 3,000-hit pace. So, in the absence of strong veteran candidates, younger players such as Mike Trout, Manny Machado and Bryce Harper show up as decent picks for the next generation of 3,000-hit club members — if only because there’s still so much ambiguity about how their careers will turn out. There’s a decent chance that at least one player in this bunch — if not a handful — will get to 3,000 hits, though it’s difficult to say which one(s) it will be.

Of course, the uncertainty involved in projecting players’ careers is still huge. Even showing up on the ahead-of-pace list for your age isn’t a guarantee of getting 3,000 hits; far more young and mid-career players fall short of making the club than make it in:

Players in their 20s have historically gone in many different directions. To illustrate this, let’s pretend we were writing this article 10 years ago and evaluating the players who were 30 or younger and on the best pace to reach the milestone.

At that time, Beltre, Pujols and Cabrera were in pretty good shape, but every other player that was ahead of the 3,000-hit pace or slightly behind it has since fallen short or dropped way off pace. Edgar Renteria played just four more seasons, collecting fewer than 500 more hits before calling it a career (two World Series rings were was apparently enough). Likewise, Andruw Jones would retire before the 2016 season while Carl Crawford, Jimmy Rollins and David Wright — none of whom have formally retired yet — have not yet appeared in a game in 2017.

And today’s younger hit leaders might have something working against them that previous generations didn’t: Hits are harder to come by in today’s more three-true-outcomes-focused game. The 2010s have seen the fewest hits per game of any decade since the 1960s and the fourth fewest of any decade since 1900.

Then again, that could be counterbalanced by the fact that this is a special crop of young talent the likes of which MLB hasn’t seen in a while. And besides, in any given season between 1961 and 2000, an average of 9.2 active players went on to eventually become members of the 3,000-hit club. So odds are good that several of the players racking up hits this season will get to 3,000 before all is said and done — they just might not be the players we’d expect.

President Trump announced on Wednesday, via Twitter, that transgender people would be banned from serving in the U.S. military. The decision appeared to surprise officials at the Pentagon, who initially referred press questions to the White House. It also seemed to catch Republican members of the Senate off guard: “I read about it when you reported it,” Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. As of Tuesday evening, a majority of GOP senators had not commented on the new ban, according to a FiveThirtyEight review of senators’ statements. Most of those who did comment, however, didn’t seem thrilled by Trump’s decision.

FiveThirtyEight found statements from 19 of the 52 Republican senators.We searched for press releases, social media posts or comments to the media from senators or their spokespeople. All counts are as of Wednesday afternoon.

“>¹ Of those, only Sen. David Perdue of Georgia and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma have come out in favor of Trump’s decision. Inhofe argued that there were already “enough problems with social experimentation in the military.” Perdue wasn’t as enthusiastic, but said the president was within his rights in making his decision. Neither senator’s comment was especially surprising: Inhofe has a long history of social conservatism, while Perdue is among the most conservative members of the Senate according to his first dimension DW-Nominate score,As opposed to the second dimension, which these days seems to measure whether a member of Congress is an insider or an outsider

“>² which measures members of Congress’s ideology on a left-right spectrum.

Nine Republicans, however, came out against Trump’s decision. Some of these senators are moderates, including Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who said that, “I was one who said that those who are openly gay should not be denied the opportunity to serve our country and I feel the same way about transgender.” But it wasn’t just moderates. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska are in the middle of the Republican caucus ideologically, and they too seem to come out against Trump’s ban.

Another eight Republicans issued statements or made comments that avoided taking a clear position on Trump’s decision. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is rated as very conservative by DW-Nominate but is generally considered a libertarian, said he refused to comment on the president’s Twitter feed. The more moderate Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee felt similarly.

Other senators didn’t explicitly oppose the president’s decision but seemed to be leaning against the ban or at least wanted to hear more information. Moderate Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and the more conservative Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska wanted to consult the Pentagon before any implementation of the transgender ban. Another conservative, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, didn’t say if he agreed with Trump, but put out this statement: “During his entire public career, [Toomey] has supported measures to protect individuals from discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Over the next couple of days, we’ll see if more senators issue statements. Right now, most of them are concentrating on the Republican health care bill. Senators may also try to figure out where the public stands on the issue. Little public polling has been released on the topic of transgender Americans serving in the military. But if the preliminary positions taken by the senators are any indication, Trump may have misjudged the political environment within the Senate GOP.

With the majority of NFL training camps opening this week, fans will get their first chance to see the 2017 editions of teams play full-speed, full-squad, full-pad football.

But half of the 2016 playoff field was made up of teams that didn’t make it to the postseason in 2015. If recent history holds, this spring’s roster churn will lead to similar turnover: In nine of the past 11 seasons, at least five of 12 NFL playoff teams have failed to return to the postseason the following year.

So which players who’ve changed teams have the potential to tip the balance of power in each division? Today we take on the four divisions of the AFC. We’ll do the NFC later this week.

AFC East: Brandin Cooks, WR, Patriots

Opportunity: The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl last season, in case you forgot. And in doing so, they did it with possibly the least star-studded Patriots squad Tom Brady’s ever led to the big game. The Jets and Bills seem intent on rebuilding this year (not like the Patriots were losing sleep over them anyway). But the Miami Dolphins, who finished 2016 on a 9-2 run under rookie head coach Adam Gase, could pose a serious threat to the Patriots for the first time since 2008 — the last time any team besides the Patriots won the AFC East. Perhaps this is why New England spent the offseason getting better on offense.

What needed to be addressed: No team had a bigger difference in effectiveness between their shotgun and under-center offense last season than the Patriots, according to Football Outsiders’ Defense-adjusted Value Over Average. With All-Pro tight end Rob Gronkowski missing eight games (and the only proven downfield threat when he was on the field), the Patriots offense was ineffective under center as opposing defenses were able to key in on the short passes that traditionally butter Brady’s bread. As a result, New England became reliant on Brady’s ability to read the field from shotgun and produce something from nothing.

The last time Gronkowski missed more than half of a season, 2013, Brady threw to wideouts an average of 25.2 times per game, second-most in his career — but his passer efficiency rating while doing it, 91.0, was his second-worst ever. Over the next three seasons, Brady targeted wideouts just under 19 times a game. But in 2016, the heavy use of shotgun helped Brady’s rating shoot up to a whopping 109.9. So 2016 was a bit of anomaly for the Brady Patriots, one he’d be unlikely to reproduce while still relying on the likes of Malcolm Mitchell and Chris Hogan at wideout.

Potential impact: The Patriots traded their first-round pick to the New Orleans Saints for Cooks, addressing their need for a vertical threat with one of the most explosive receivers in the NFL. Last season, Cooks finished 14th in the league in yards per reception, with an average of 15.0 yards; only T.Y. Hilton and Julio Jones averaged more yards per catch and had at least as many catches as Cooks (78). Cooks’s ability to get open whether a quarterback is dropping back or under center should be a boon to the offense. Patriots owner Robert Kraft compared Cooks’s potential impact to the 2007 addition of Randy Moss.

Question mark: Brady is famously dedicated to keeping his body in great shape and avoiding the effects of aging; in June, ESPN’s Mike Reiss reported that Brady doesn’t seem to have lost any arm strength. But if Brady’s arm turns into a wet noodle on his 40th birthday, Cooks’s vertical threat will be minimized.

AFC North: Jeremy Maclin, WR, Ravens

Opportunity: Baltimore finished 8-8 in 2016, ahead of the 6-9-1 Cincinnati Bengals but well behind the 11-5 Pittsburgh Steelers. With significant questions surrounding the veteran cores of all three rosters, the Ravens could claw back to the top of the pack — or fall into the basement.

What needed to be addressed: The decline of Joe Flacco’s deep-ball game has affected both his output and the Ravens’ offensive results. Although Flacco’s passer rating has been at his career norm in each of the past two seasons, his average yards per completion in 2016 (9.9) and 2015 (10.5) were the lowest of his career. According to TruMedia, Flacco had the third-most passing attempts that went at least 10 yards beyond the sticks from 2008 to 2014, but he ranked just 18th from 2015 to 2016. Now, two of Flacco’s top three targets of 2016 — Steve Smith (retired) and Dennis Pitta (career-threatening injury) — are unavailable.

Potential impact: Before a lingering groin tear depressed his 2016 average yards-per-catch to a career-low 12.2, Maclin averaged 13.6 yards per reception over his career. That includes a high of 15.5 in 2014, the year before he came to Kansas City after five seasons in Philadelphia. If Maclin returns to his pre-injury form, he’ll be an excellent fit for what Flacco and the Ravens have always done best: attacking downfield. Getting to play with Flacco, rather than Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith, could do wonders for Maclin, too:

Question mark: What if Maclin is fine but Flacco isn’t? Should Flacco, who’ll take up $24.5 million of the Ravens’ salary cap this season, turn in yet another subpar season despite the addition of Maclin, the clock could start ticking on the quarterback’s time in Baltimore.

AFC South: Eric Decker, WR, Titans

Opportunity: The Titans tied the Houston Texans at 9-7 last season, losing the division on a tiebreaker. Houston will add J.J. Watt to a defense that finished seventh in DVOA last season, despite missing the perennial All-Pro for 13 games. But the Texans are going back to the drawing board at quarterback, as they have every year under head coach Bill O’Brien (not that Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brian Hoyer and Brock Osweiler haven’t left room for improvement). The Titans, meanwhile, went 8-4 in the last 12 games of 2016, and third-year quarterback Marcus Mariota seems primed to take another big step forward, as he did from his rookie season (51.6 Total Quarterback Rating) to his second (64.9).

What needed to be addressed: In the spring of 2016, Titans rookie general manager Jon Robinson went on a mission to build a power run game, drafting first-round tackle Jack Conklin and second-round tailback Derrick Henry and signing free-agent tailback DeMarco Murray. In 2017, Robinson added weapons for Mariota, drafting wideout Corey Davis No. 5 overall and catch-and-run threat Taywan Taylor in the third round. That being said, Davis’s learning curve is likely to be even steeper than for most rookie receiverss; the MAC product wasn’t medically cleared for full-speed practice until June.

Potential impact: Decker has solidified himself as one of the league’s most dangerous slot receivers. Neither No. 1 wideout Rishard Matthews nor tight end Delanie Walker, who accounted for more than 50 percent of the Titans’ non-RB targets last season, boasts Decker’s combination of size and speed. If Matthews, Walker and Mariota can build on what they did last season, Decker will make it difficult for opponents to defend the middle of the field.

Question mark: Mariota, like Davis, is recovering from surgery; he was a limited participant at June minicamp. Even if he has fully recovered in time for training camp, missing any offseason work isn’t ideal for a young quarterback. There’s also the question of how often he’ll be asked to throw to all of these weapons, considering that the run-first Titans finished 28th in team pass attempts last season.

AFC West: Marshawn Lynch, RB, Raiders

Opportunity: The Oakland Raiders were in the process of winning their 12th game when young quarterback Derek Carr was lost for the season with an injury. The Kansas City Chiefs capitalized on the opportunity, winning both of their final regular-season games and claiming the division crown on a tiebreaker. With Carr back and hometown hero Lynch coming out of retirement, the Raiders will be looking for the division crown … and maybe more. At the very least, the lame-duck Raiders should give the city of Oakland one real playoff run before they run to Las Vegas.

What needed to be addressed: Latavius Murray, who was the Raiders’ main running back last season and now is a Minnesota Viking, has a reputation as a boom-or-bust runner. In 2016, though, he was almost the opposite. He finished 16th in Success Rate, a way of measuring how consistently backs keep the offense on schedule in terms of down and distance, but 23rd in DVOA (-3.7 percent).

Potential impact: Before retiring at the end of the 2015 season, Lynch was one of the hardest backs to tackle in the NFL; in 2014, Lynch topped the league in Pro Football Focus’s Elusive Rating. To evaluate Lynch’s potential impact on the Raiders’ offense, we can compare the 2016 Raiders’ offensive line to that of the 2015 Seahawks, the last team Lynch played for, using Football Outsiders’ two advanced metrics to measure running success: Adjusted Line YardsAdjusted Line Yards takes all running back carries and assigns responsibility to the offensive line based on a regression analysis.

“>¹ and Power Success rate.Power Success measures the percentage of first-down conversions on third or fourth down from two yards or less and touchdowns converted on all downs from inside the 2-yard-line.

“>²

Compared with the 2015 Seahawks, the 2016 Raiders didn’t average quite as many Adjusted Line Yards as (4.09 vs. 4.18) or perform as well in Power Success (59 percent vs. 71 percent). However, the Raiders blocked much better in the second level (8th vs. 15th) and the open field (7th vs. 12th). Over the last three seasons, according to TruMedia, Murray has had to fight through more resistance than most starting tailbacks, but Lynch took his first average hit far earlier than most of the rest of the league. Meanwhile, Lynch is far better after first contact. Bottom line? The Bay Area may feel a lot of Beast Quakes.

Question mark: Lynch is a 31-year-old running back who just took a year off. He might not have any more Beast Quakes left in him.

This week on the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the team considers the GOP’s options as the party makes a final push (maybe? for a while?) to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Plus, the podcast visits Earth 2, a world where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election by a small margin. How different would the political environment really be?

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Aliens could be hiding on almost any of the Milky Way’s roughly 100 billion planets, but so far, we haven’t been able to find them (dubious claims to the contrary notwithstanding). Part of the problem is that astronomers don’t know exactly where to look or what to look for. To have a chance of locating alien life-forms — which is like searching for a needle that may not exist in an infinitely large haystack — they’ll have to narrow the search.

Astronomers hoping to find extraterrestrial life are looking largely for exoplanets (planets outside Earth’s solar system) in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” around each star: a distance range in which a planet is not too hot and not too cold, making it possible for liquid water to exist on the surface. But after studying our own world and many other planetary systems, scientists have come to believe that many factors other than distance are key to the development of life. These include the mix of gases in the atmosphere, the age of the planet and host star, whether the host star often puts out harmful radiation, and how fast the planet rotates — some planets rotate at a rate that leaves the same side always facing their star, so one hemisphere is stuck in perpetual night while the other is locked into scorching day. This makes it a complex problem that scientists can start to tackle with powerful computers, data and statistics. These tools — and new telescope technology — could make the discovery of life beyond Earth more likely.

Two teams of astronomers are proposing different methods of tackling these questions. One argues that we should try to identify trends in the data generated by surveys of thousands of planets, while the other favors focusing on a handful of individual planets to assess where they’d lie on a scale from uninhabitable to probably populated.

Jacob Bean, an astronomer at the University of Chicago, advocates for the broader approach in a paper he and two other researchers published this spring. It’s not possible to know for sure if a distant planet is friendly to life, Bean says, so he and his colleagues aim to compare lots of planets to figure out which are most likely to host the conditions thought to be important to produce and sustain life. Determining how the amount of water or carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is correlated with distance from the star, for example, could help inform future, more targeted searches that use new space telescopes to look for worlds with hospitable climates. “How many planets do we need to look at to find the number of ‘Earth-like’ ones? That’s the multibillion-dollar question,” he said.

Data that’s already available from NASA’s Kepler space telescope could help astronomers figure out what percentage of planets might be habitable. The Kepler mission revolutionized the study of exoplanets: It has allowed astronomers to analyze thousands of planets and their host stars, rather than the mere dozens or hundreds of extraterrestrial bodies — most of which are uninhabitable gas giants — on which we had data in the pre-Kepler period. In all, Kepler scientists have found 2,335 confirmed exoplanets, plus many more candidates waiting to be verified. With this information, researchers can get a better handle on how many solar systems have rocky planets circling at the right distance from the star or stars at the center, how often those stars zap the planets with radiation, how many planets are likely to have water, and how many feature other indications of a habitable climate. From there, scientists could deduce which of these factors are most important to the formation of planets that could develop life as we know it and determine which kinds of planets and stars are most worth focusing on.

That’s the big-picture strategy for the search for life. The other research, which was led by University of Washington astrobiologist David Catling and which will soon be undergoing peer review, claims that we’re ready to zoom in, going from questions about whether the conditions are right for life to whether life has actually developed on planets we’re interested in. His team proposes a statistical framework to evaluate these worlds.

In addition to a planet’s location and size, it matters whether its star gives off tons of radiation that could scorch off the atmosphere, leaving the planet with nothing to protect it from space weather. For example, the planets circling TRAPPIST-1 and Proxima Centauri, two red dwarf stars, exist in just such a threatening environment, and a new study by Harvard astrophysicists gives them a very low chance of supporting life. If a planet does have an atmosphere, then it matters what’s in it, as oxygen could be a sign of alien beings on the surface — even if they’re only tiny — and water vapor means it’s more likely that the climate is friendly to life. Methane, ozone and carbon dioxide could be positive signs too, but they can be produced by processes that don’t necessarily signify life, such as volcanoes.

To put together as complete a picture as possible about a planet, astronomers need both high-resolution images of the solar system and a light spectrum of the planet, which reveals what gases are present in the planet’s atmosphere based on what wavelengths of light from the star appear or fail to appear after passing the planet. If they had access to more powerful telescopes than those in use today, astronomers would want to collect even more information, including details about the age and activity of the star; the planet’s size and distance from its star; the composition and pressure of the atmosphere; whether there were signs of water, such as glints of light reflecting off oceans; and what signs there were of geological processes such as tectonic or volcanic activity. Catling eventually hopes to be able to use this information to categorize planets so that you could say Planet Y has a 20 to 40 percent chance of having life, while Planet Z has an 80 percent chance.

But at the moment, his plan is largely theoretical.

“We’re not at the point where we can really calculate the frequency or probability of life, but it’s a useful exercise,” said Eric Ford, an astrophysicist and astrostatistician at Penn State University who was not involved in either study. “As in, ‘Here’s what we’d like to do, and, given our limitations, what’s the least-bad assumptions we can make about our prior knowledge?’ It turns an impossible problem into one we can gain a foothold in answering.”

Catling and his team proposed an approach that characterizes the chance that there’s life on a planet based on what’s known about the planet and its star, updating the chances as more data comes in. Distinguishing between the knowns and unknowns helps reduce the biases affecting the system and allows it to produce fewer false positives — but only if the humans doing the characterization have a good understanding of how likely it is that a set of planetary features indicates an inhabited planet versus a lifeless one. Since we haven’t yet found life beyond Earth, even in our own solar system, it’s hard to estimate these things with any confidence.

Catling’s approach evokes the famous “Drake equation,” put forth by astronomer Frank Drake in the 1960s as a way to figure out a ballpark number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the galaxy. The idea is to estimate how many stars there are, how many of those have planets, how many of those planets could support life, how many actually develop life, how many of those life-forms evolve into intelligent life, and so on. Starting with the simpler pieces and then building up to more complex ones helps us better understand the puzzle as a whole, even if some big pieces are still missing.

“This is a wish list,” Catling said of his group’s method, noting that we don’t have the technology to make it happen. “It’s like trying to find microbes before microscopes in the 16th century. We’re at that point now.”

Catling’s team is anticipating data from new telescopes, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, both set to launch next year. But they’re also looking beyond these to more sophisticated telescopes that may be built in the 2030s and 2040s. Those will likely have the capability to detect more potential signs of life from many more exoplanets.

Both approaches use a lot of data and tell scientists quite a bit about how planets form and whether they harbor the conditions that we think allow life to develop. But at least until those next-generation telescopes are finished, we will probably have to wait to find out if we’re alone in the universe.

“Even if we had an ‘Earth twin’ and detected oxygen and methane and glinting from oceans, we’ll never be 100 percent sure,” Catling said. “The only thing truly 100 percent would be [an alien] signal. … That would be a slam dunk.”

It has been a very confusing week in federal health care policy. Early in the week, the Senate abruptly abandoned an effort to pass a bill to repeal and replace parts of the Affordable Care Act after four senators said they wouldn’t support it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell then said he would push to pass a bill that would repeal parts of the law in two years, buying the Senate more time to come up with a replacement. Three senators quickly said they wouldn’t support that approach, and the Senate all but gave up. That lasted until President Trump called various senators to the White House, pressuring them to keep working until they agreed on a bill, just a day after he suggested letting Obamacare fail.

Like I said, it’s been a confusing week.

There are some obvious reasons that the GOP is having a hard time coalescing around a plan. Part of the problem is that Republicans don’t agree on the priorities for repeal. The conservative wing of the party wants to peel back regulations and reduce federal spending. Moderates are concerned about changes to Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for the poor, and reduced support for low-income people who are buying private insurance. Two have also said they don’t support defunding Planned Parenthood for a year, as would happen under each of the bills.

Then there’s the challenge of the GOP bills’ lack of support from the public.

You’d be forgiven for not knowing where things stand on the seven-year Republican promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. There are at least three bills floating around, each with opponents within the Republican Party and varying levels of detail about what the effect of each plan would be on the health insurance landscape.

So here’s a roundup of current proposals, what we know about their impact and who supports them:

The Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act

What’s in the bill: This legislation — a new version of the measure that has been debated since the first draft was released on June 22 — would reduce subsidies for people who buy insurance on the marketplaces set up by Obamacare. Some of the Obamacare taxes would be repealed (though two taxes on the wealthy would remain in place). It would allow states to opt out of many of the insurance market regulations, including mandatory coverage of “essential health benefits,” which include maternity care and mental health treatment.

The legislation would also freeze the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid. The expansion opened up the program to all people earning under 138 percent of the federal poverty limit in states that opted in.To date, 19 states have chosen not to expand the program.

‘>¹ Starting in 2020, the expanded part of the program would take no new enrollees, and states would be reimbursed significantly less for those who continue to be covered (under current law, the federal government would pick up 90 percent of the cost of those enrollees). The bill would also put most of the rest of the Medicaid program on a budget. States would receive a maximum fixed amount per enrollee, or a lump sum for the whole state program, rather than the open-ended reimbursements they get today.

Altogether, the bill would decrease costs for higher-income, healthier people without employer-sponsored insurance and would increases costs for lower-income, sicker people.

What we know about its effects: The bill was posted Thursday, and a Congressional Budget Office analysis of it released the same day found that 15 million fewer people would have insurance coverage next year and 22 million fewer would be covered in 2026, compared with how many would be covered under current law. Premiums would increase over the next two years even as the plans those premiums pay for cover less, according to the CBO, but would decrease starting in 2020. This plan would reduce the federal deficit by $420 billion over a decade, according to CBO estimates.

Who supports it: It’s not yet clear how senators feel about it, although there are clues from previous, similar iterations of the bill. It’s unlikely to please conservative Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who have said that previous iterations of the Senate bill, similar in many ways to this version,This new version of the bill includes additional funding for opioid treatment, would allow people to use pretax health savings accounts to pay for premiums and keeps some taxes that had been cut in previous iterations, among other changes.

“>² didn’t do enough to cut regulations. Several moderate Republicans have also expressed concern about the proposed changes to Medicaid funding.

The Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act, with an amendment from Ted Cruz

What’s in the bill: This version of the bill is largely similar to the one above, but it includes a complicated amendment adopted from a proposal by Cruz. The change would allow insurers who sell regulated, Obamacare-compliant plans to also sell largely unregulated plans. Insurers would be required to offer coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and cover essential health benefits for the Obamacare-compliant plans, and they wouldn’t be allowed to charge based on how sick a person is. Insurers selling these plans, however, could likely also sell plans that cover far fewer services and could deny people coverage based on their health status or charge them more for these plans.

What we know about its effects: The amendment is so complicated that HuffPost reported that it could be a month before it can be fully analyzed by the CBO. The Senate needs a score of the bill before it can proceed with a vote, so it asked the Department of Health and Human Services for an analysis; HHS hired the consulting firm McKinsey to produce a report, which the Washington Examiner obtained Wednesday. The report purportedly shows that premiums would drop under the Cruz plan, but experts say it offers little in the way of useful information, as Sarah Kliff explained at Vox. For starters, it looks at how the amendment would work if added to existing law, not the Republican bill.

Experts believe it would gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions by pricing them out of the market. The insurance industry has come out hard against the Cruz plan. In a memo circulated publicly, America’s Health Insurance Plans, one of the insurance industry’s largest trade associations, condemned the amendment, while Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, a lobbying group representing the insurer, told Senate leaders the proposal was “unworkable.” Health policy experts warn that if the Cruz amendment becomes law, healthy people will buy on the unregulated, cheaper market, leaving people with more health care needs on the Obamacare markets.

Who supports it: Four senators have previously said they would not vote to move forward with debating this bill: Lee, Paul, Susan Collins of Maine and Jerry Moran of Kansas. Only 14 senators have expressed clear support, according to The New York Times.

Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act, aka repeal and delay

What’s in the bill: This bill would repeal much of the ACA starting in 2020, though some changes would take effect immediately.

The bill would repeal the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid, as well as the subsidies that help people buy insurance on the private marketplace. It would repeal all of the taxes created by the ACA and eliminate a fund created for public health work after 2018. It includes numerous other changes as well, such as eliminating requirements on what services state Medicaid programs must cover. The repeal bill would, however, add $1.5 billion over two years to respond to the opioid crisis and funding for community mental health centers.

It would also retroactively (to 2016) get rid of the requirement that employers offer coverage to employees and the requirement that most people have insurance — by eliminating the financial penalties for both.

What we know about its effects: The CBO (which has had a busy week) released an analysis of this bill on Wednesday. The agency thinks 32 million additional people would be uninsured in 2026 (compared with current law) and that the federal deficit would be reduced by $473 billion during that time. The estimated increase in the number of uninsured people includes 19 million who would fall from the Medicaid rolls. But millions would also be uninsured as a result of an upended insurance market, according to the analysis — the agency found that premiums would roughly double by 2026 and that about three-quarters of the population would live in places where no insurer would be willing to sell coverage in the private market.

Of course, this strategy is built around developing a replacement plan over the next two years. But it’s impossible to say what that would look like. Meanwhile, with the immediate repeal of the individual insurance mandate, some 17 million would be expected to lose coverage next year.

Who supports it: Notably, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said after a meeting on Wednesday that he didn’t think there were even 40 senators who supported the strategy of repeal and then replace later. Several senators, including Collins, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, have already come out against the approach.

The margarita is one of those rare iconic cocktails that have a half-dozen recipes that can each lay claim to being the best, which poses some problems for your everyday margarita drinker. If you turn to the internet for help, you’ll find hundreds of recipes, and it can be tough to tell which ones are worth your while. The overabundance of choice means a person can find essentially any permutation of tequila, orange liqueur and lime billing itself as a marg.

We wanted to find the best margarita recipe, so we pulled 78 of the internet’s suggestions — we ignored all those lamentable sour-mix concoctions and coconut-pomegranate-passionfruit abominations, focusing just on the beverages anchored by tequila, lime juice and orange liqueur. Then we applied something called a k-means clustering algorithm to determine the four main types of margaritas. Taking a mere average would have resulted in a monstrosity of a drink that was trying to be several things at once, but the clustering algorithm gives us several distinct platonic ideals of a margarita, letting our human taster determine which one is best.

In the video above, you can see us head to Dutch Kills bar in lovely Queens, New York, to test those recipes and figure out which is the best of the bunch. Here are your contenders.

The Classic
1 1/2 oz. tequila
3/4 oz. orange liqueur
3/4 oz. lime juice

The Tequila-Forward
1 1/2 oz. tequila
1/4 oz. orange liqueur
3/4 oz. lime juice
1/4 oz. agave nectar

The Sweet & Easy
1 1/2 oz. tequila
3/4 oz. orange liqueur
3/4 oz. lime juice
1/2 oz. agave nectar
1/2 oz. water
1/4 oz. lemon juice

The Limey & Tart
1 1/2 oz. tequila
1/4 oz. orange liqueur
1 1/4 oz. lime juice
1/2 oz. simple syrup

Watch the video to see which recipe won!