Stories that would have rocked the political world in past years now met with yawns

WASHINGTON — If it’s Friday ... Russian forces take over Ukraine’s large nuclear power plant. ... President Biden meets at the White House with Finland’s president. ... Former AG Bill Barr tells NBC’s Lester Holt that Trump became enraged when told there was no evidence that 2020 election results were fraudulent. ... Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., returns to work. ... Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., appears to fire back at Mitch McConnell. ... And Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey says no to Arizona Senate bid.

But first: A Republican congressman just quit his re-election bid after admitting having an affair with a former “ISIS bride.”

A labor dispute is already interrupting Major League Baseball’s season.

And neither story has received much national attention.

Folks, we’re no longer in the 1990s, when sex scandals involving American politicians — big and small — rocked the political world, and when the president of the United States was intervening to save baseball’s season during the 1994 strike.

Part of it is that the stakes are so high nowadays — pandemic, rising inflation, war in Europe — that sex scandals and work stoppages in professional sports don’t capture the public’s interest. At least not the way they did decades ago.

Can you imagine President Biden, with everything going on right now, holding a press conference to try to save MLB’s season?

But the other part, we think, is how numb we’ve become to these kinds of stories – and how we almost expect this kind of behavior. Another politician caught in a sex scandal? Ho-hum. (Though we do have to admit the details here are eyebrow raising.)

Wealthy athletes and greedy owners unable to come to an agreement? We’ve been here before.

The times have certainly changed.

Tweet of the day

Data Download: The number of the day is … 35

That’s the number of days between New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján’s stroke and when he returned to the Senate yesterday to cheers and hugs from his colleagues.

“It’s an absolute honor to be back,” Luján told his Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee colleagues. “To everyone that sent me notes, who sent me videos, all the prayers — it worked and it’s good to be back.

Other numbers you need to know today:

$240,000: That’s how much progressive attorney Jessica Cisneros raised since it was clear Wednesday that she’d be headed for a primary runoff against Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, per a press release.

8: That’s the potential number of Latino GOP congressional nominees in Texas, including six women, following Tuesday’s primaries, per Politico.

3.8 percent: That’s the latest unemployment rate, per new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday morning, down from 4 percent last month.

79,369,949: The number of confirmed Covid cases in the U.S., per the most recent data from NBC News and health officials.

929,004: The number of deaths in the U.S. from the virus so far.

Midterm roundup

The battle for Congress continues to heat up on the airwaves. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., is planning to spend $13 million on general election TV ads, NBC’s Henry Gomez reports. And the Democratic super PAC American Bridge announced a $5 million investment in TV, digital and radio ads in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. The group is planning to spend “eight figures” in the midterms, per a press release.

Money is also continuing to flood GOP primary airwaves. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s campaign announced it plans to spend $4.2 million on an initial TV ad buy for his primary against former Sen. David Perdue. The Club for Growth reserved nearly $1.5 million in North Carolina airtime and $400,000 in Alabama to boost its preferred Senate candidates in each state: Rep. Ted Budd, whose campaign reserved $311,000 on ads as well, and Rep. Mo Brooks. An anti-Brooks group called Alabama’s Future reserved $1.5 million in airtime.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail:

Gov. Doug Ducey, R-Ariz., announced yesterday that he won’t run for Senate, becoming the third Republican governor to pass on a Senate bid. His decision comes after a pressure campaign from top Republicans to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

NBC News’ Decision Desk projected that retired Navy SEAL Morgan Luttrell won the GOP primary in Texas’ deep red 8th District. The primary pitted allies of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who backed Luttrell, against far-right lawmakers including the House Freedom Caucus, which backed conservative activist Christian Collins.

Facing criticism from Democrats and fellow Republicans for his 11-point policy plan, NRSC Chairman Rick Scott, R-Fla., penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, writing, “If we have no bigger plan than to be a speed bump on the road to socialism, we don’t deserve to govern.”

Former Arizona GOP Rep. Matt Salmon, who is now running for governor, called on Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers to resign. Rogers, who has been endorsed for her re-election by former President Donald Trump and repeatedly echoes Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, spoke at that same white nationalist conference that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., spoke at last weekend.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court voted to adopt Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ congressional and legislative redistricting maps, which will likely retain the GOP’s edge.

Ad watch: Fetterman’s new TV ad

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman this week is out with his first TV ad in his campaign to become the state’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.

“He's a different kind of character, I'll tell you,” one voter says in the video before the narrator calls Fetterman, “A Democrat with a backbone” and highlights that he “does the right thing no matter what.”

Though the Democratic race for U.S. Senate is competitive and includes Rep. Conor Lamb and State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, Fetterman doesn’t yet go after any opponents in his first ad.

This is starkly different from the GOP Senate primary, where TV personality Mehmet Oz and hedge fund manager David McCormick have been battling it out on the airwaves for months. The Pennsylvania primary is set for May 17.

ICYMI: What else is happening in the world

The Florida Senate passed a 15-week abortion ban, which GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign into law. And the Idaho Senate passed a six-week abortion ban, which will now head to the state House.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Kentucky’s Attorney General can defend the state’s restrictive abortion law that the governor doesn’t want to defend. The Court also rejected a terrorism detainee’s push to learn more about his torture.

President Joe Biden signed a bill to end the practice of forced arbitration for those who are victims of sexual misconduct in the workplace.