"The justices, split along ideological lines, ruled that the voting map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."

"In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan accused the court’s conservative majority of gutting the Voting Rights Act."

From "Live Updates: Supreme Court Strikes Down Louisiana Map in Voting Rights Case" (NYT).

Although the justices struck down Louisiana’s map, the court’s conservative majority upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act itself. Voting rights groups had feared that the court might use the case to gut the remaining provisions of the landmark civil rights law.

AND: Here's the opinion: Louisiana v. Callais. It's 6-3, in the usual way, and Justice Alito writes for the majority.

"Lonardo met Skiles’s biological mother, Cheryl Brown, in the late 1970s while they were both stationed at Fort Dix. During a weekend off..."

"... they decided to travel to New York City together. They stayed at the Hotel Chelsea, Lonardo recalled, and visited the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. They had a fleeting romance, and shortly after they returned to Fort Dix, they went in different directions and never spoke again. But for nearly five decades, Lonardo has kept a bar of soap from the hotel...."

From "For years, he didn’t know he had a daughter. At 66, he adopted her. Jennifer Skiles said hearing her father’s voice for the first time 'felt like home.' Four years later, their emotional bond is now a legal one" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can read the whole story, which will make you cry, unless you never cry about strangers).

"[T]he organizations producing that data are cooking the books so they can smear the Right with the Left's crimes."

You can't fix a problem if your diagnosis hinges on blaming its victims. If the Democrats actually care to tackle political violence, the Left needs to own up to the fact that it is responsible for inculcating a culture of violence that targets the Right. https://t.co/VaOPejzOQI

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) April 29, 2026

"Jack Schossshhhhberg is that kind of leader."

A mush-mouthed Nancy Pelosi delivers a barely intelligible endorsment:

I'm watching that because of this in the NYT: "In First Campaign Ad, Schlossberg Leans on a Well-Known Name: Pelosi/Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy, is among a slate of Democrats seeking to replace Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York."

Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy, has built his campaign for a New York City House seat around turning the page on the Democrats’ old guard. Yet when he debuts his first paid advertisement on Wednesday, the 33-year-old candidate has chosen his party’s oldest living leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, to do the talking....

He's turning the page. She's the page. 

"Tapestries embroidered with Quranic verses were shipped from the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam’s holiest shrine. Tiles came from a mosque in Uzbekistan."

"A golden metal dome was made to replicate the architecture of ancient Syria. Jeffrey Epstein spent years making connections across the Middle East, in pursuit of business deals and two intertwined hobbies: acquiring rare Islamic artifacts with which to decorate an unusual building on his private island, and expanding his network of wealthy, powerful people...."

From "Epstein Obtained Objects From Islam’s Holiest Site for His Island 'Mosque'/Jeffrey Epstein’s messages cast light on an unusual building on his private island and show how his connections helped him secure tapestries from Mecca for it" (NYT)(gift link).

"His vision for an island shrine began while he was in a Palm Beach County, Fla., jail, having pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution. Before his release in 2009, Mr. Epstein hired architects to design a 'hammam,' a Turkish bathhouse surrounded by 'Islamic gardening,' according to his correspondence. Mr. Epstein’s records show that in 2013, he sent Mr. Nicola a picture of the Yalbugah Hammam, a 15th-century bathhouse in Aleppo, Syria, with a golden dome, a recessed arch over the door and striped masonry, seeking sketches that would resemble it. Among other tasks, Mr. Epstein asked for a design replacing the Arabic word for God with his initials in English. 'Remember we saw the aribic writing in black and white,' he wrote to Mr. Nicola in an email plagued with his customary typos and misspellings. 'instead of allah, i thought j’s and e ‘s.'"

Responding to "No Kings," Trump has repeatedly said, "I'm not a king."

And now we get this from The White House: 

TWO KINGS. 👑 pic.twitter.com/iPVUxc4i4H

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 28, 2026

I guess somebody decided that trolling is better than consistency.

"On this occasion, I cannot help noticing the readjustments to the East Wing, Mr. President..."

"And I'm sorry to say that we British of course made our own small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814."

It's funny now.

Who will be around in 2213 to joke about the destruction of the World Trade Center?

A dark sunrise.

But it brightened up later. Sunny. 60°. Perfect, really. Just a dark sunrise to kick things off.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"The two charges stem from a photo that Comey posted online showing seashells on a beach that were arranged to write out '86 47.'"

"Trump is the 47th president; '86' can mean banning or removing someone, but it can also be slang for killing a person. Comey quickly removed the post after receiving criticism that the phrase could be used to communicate the threat of violence."

From "James Comey indicted over 2025 social media post allegedly threatening Trump/The former FBI director issued a video statement maintaining his innocence and criticizing the current Justice Department" (WaPo).

Here's the post I wrote last year when Comey purported not to "realize some folks associate those numbers with violence": "James Comey purports not to have known that 86 means to get rid of (after he posted a picture of rocks in the form 8647 (47 being easily read as a reference to Trump)). Is Comey credible?"

The post title was a Grok prompt. Additional prompts: "Compare that to how Trump was treated for telling protesters on January 6th, 2021 to walk 'peacefully and patriotically' to the Capitol" and "I'm interested in the difference in seeing violence in words and consider that Comey, like Trump, has loyalists who might hear direction and take it."

"These allegations represent a profound abuse of trust at a time when the American people needed it most — during the height of a global pandemic."

Said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, quoted in "Anthony Fauci adviser indicted by DOJ on charges of concealing COVID records" (NY Post).

King Charles arrives at the White House.

I don't know why I find this so charming. I dreamed about King Charles last night. I felt sorry for that poor man somehow.

From Trump's speech: "For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride. And that’s what it is: glory, destiny, and pride. The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.

"The sense that the Dream is dying was reflected throughout the poll."

The London Times explains, in "The American Dream is dying, Times poll reveals."

Perhaps this graph will make the concept more concrete for you:

In case you're having trouble discerning the year when that peak of excellence occurred, the text pinpoints it at 1976. Perhaps you remember. It was 50 years ago. The Bicentennial. Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford. Karen Ann Quinlan was disconnected from her ventilator. A school bus full of children was buried in the ground but the kids dug themselves free, in 16 hours. Jenner won the Decathlon. Apple and Microsoft sprang into being. How could you not feel that happy days were here again?

"Filming for the third season of Smatouha Minni (You Heard It From Me), a feminist series in Arabic, the actor is in a padded muscle suit, wearing a slicked-back black wig and beard."

"'If your wife asks you to change the diapers, you should change her,' the Palestinian-Jordanian barks, mimicking an aggrieved self-help podcaster. An hour later, she is slouched in a hoodie, shisha pipe in one hand and a gaming console in the other, shouting: 'Mama, I’m hungry. Can you make me a sandwich?' The sketches are parodies of a misogynist narrative gaining traction in the region. 'Patriarchal attitudes have always existed,' says Amanda Abou Abdallah, the Lebanese founder, co-writer and director of Smatouha Minni. 'But what we’re seeing now is a re-intensification – a backlash against women’s growing participation, independence and public voice, especially online.' Chief among the ideologies circulating is the so-called 'red pill' theory, popularised by figures such as Andrew Tate, whose influence in the region intensified after his conversion to Islam in late 2022. The doctrine frames men as victims of a feminist, 'gynocentric; social order and urges them to reclaim power through dominance...."

 From "'If your wife asks you to change diapers, change your wife': the Arabic hit show that parodies the patriarchy/The female-created YouTube sketch series Smatouha Minni – You Heard It From Me – uses satire to confront misogynistic attitudes" (The Guardian).

"Do you see it? There's a group of men carrying another man out of the room. And then there's a woman... desperately reaching out...."

"This is the permission structure for violence right there: We know they lie to cover up the crimes. We don't trust anything they say...."

"We're right when we promote conspiracy theories about the people we hate. We're right to do it because it's not our obligation to speak on behalf of truth. It's our obligation to speak on behalf of the way people feel.... People feel that there's something bad going on. Therefore, it's not our obligation to tell the truth about what's actually happening.... "

A.I. is getting way out ahead of the old time-y problem of wanting cameras in the Supreme Court.

It's almost better this way (unless you want to watch the reactions on the faces of those who are not speaking):

AND: Lots more video like that at the YouTube page of On the Docket — "Using AI-generated visuals and the justices’ official recorded opinions, we present videos of the justices delivering their opinions, making these pivotal moments more engaging to a broader audience."

"Being human-shaped allows their introduction without significant modifications to existing airport facilities or aircraft structures."

"By combining cutting-edge AI technology with the unique flexibility of humanoid forms, the project aims to realise a sustainable operational structure through labour savings and workload reduction."

Said Japan Airlines, quoted in "This could really take off: robots join staff at Tokyo airport/Japan Airlines, the national carrier, is testing humanoid workers to ease staffing pressures at Haneda, keeping luggage moving as passenger numbers rise" (London Times).

Would you prefer the infusion of robots to come in humanoid form? The human-shaped robots fit into the places that have been designed for human beings, so perhaps that makes the robotic takeover easier and don't you want futuristic things to subtly mix friendliness and creepiness?

Do you like those self-driving Waymos with an empty drivers seat or would you rather have a robot cab driver sitting there and talking to you, the way it was in those old movies about the future:

"You know, the hot one, with polio."

My son Chris took a photo of a sign in an ice cream shop in Austin, Texas:

Chris happens to reading a book about FDR at the moment — "FDR." On Sunday, he sent me this passage that describes FDR’s first public appearance after being paralyzed from polio:

On the above-the-fold front page of The New York Times, one story stands out.

Do you see it? When you see it, you will know. It may take a little while, and you will not need to say "Is it 'Republicans Brace for Brutal Midterms'? Or whatever. You will, I think, laugh. Because of course....

A somber sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow," Jimmy Kimmel joked.

He was doing a routine on his show last Thursday, anticipating Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner and playing the part of an emcee at that dinner. Of course, he didn't know that there would be an assassination attempt that night.

See "Melania Trump blasts ‘coward’ Jimmy Kimmel over ‘hateful’ monologue delivered days before WHCD shooting" (NY Post).

Kimmel has apologized — remember when he apologized for joking about the assassination of Charlie Kirk — and even taken some responsibility:

"I’d never questioned my gender before I came to America; growing up in India, I’d always identified as a girl."

"Of course, India has a gender hegemony of its own — one I arguably benefitted from in many ways and suffered from in others. I am upper-caste, upper-class, Hindu, and also a Tamil woman who didn’t look like the models in the Fair & Lovely commercials. I was the only Tamilian in most rooms I was in, a fact my North Indian classmates consistently reminded me of. Still, the popular conception of what a woman or a man was felt more fluid. I grew up among Sikh women who didn’t tame their body hair, men who would hold hands platonically with their male friends, and children who cross-dressed for play (almost every boy had a photo of himself dressed up as a girl by his mother for fun).... [And there] is our third-gender community, or hijras, as they are commonly known...."

Writes Supriya Ganesh,  "My Strange Dysphoria/Growing up in India, I never questioned my gender. When I moved to the U.S. at 18, I began to feel disconnected from my body" (New York Magazine).

"Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days."

That's the new message above the compose-a-comment window.

I just widened the instant posting window from 2 days to 4 days. Enjoy! And thanks for keeping the conversation going.

AND: This post originally had 2 tags: "Althouse comments community" and "the Althouse comments community." This happens from time to time. I discover there are 2 tags for the same thing. It may be hard to believe, but even in this my 23rd year of blogging, I'm devoted to the good order of the archive. I clicked both tags, determined that the one with the "the" had more posts and added a "the" to all the the-less ones. So click on "the Althouse comments community" if you want to see all the old posts on the topic. There are a lot! 

"The WHCD Viral ‘Salad Eater’ Is Wolf Blitzer’s Agent."

Wow, that's one of my favorite headlines ever.

In New York Magazine, here.

Context: "The man filmed casually eating a salad as everyone else ducked for cover after shots rang out at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is speaking out. CAA Agent Michael Glantz told TMZ that he never felt unsafe at the event, and remained seated and eating because he wanted to see how law enforcement responded. 'Not every day you see something like that go down,' he said. Glantz was at the dinner because he is CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer’s agent."

I love that his name sounds like it means a quick look — glance — but he's the one who wanted to maintain a steady gaze. 

Was Donald Trump too mean to Norah O'Donnell on "60 Minutes" last night? I'll argue both sides.

Maybe you've noticed there's a big uproar over this part of the show:

Watch the video to get the full emotional effect. Here's the transcript:

The Iran war drops from the top screen of the NYT home page.

It looks like this now:

Not only has the assassination attempt taken over as the top story, priority is given to a revival of immigration enforcement stories, a military strike on a "narco-terrorist" boat, the chair of the federal reserve, and — hard news is such a drag — music, theater, and women's handbags. 

If we scroll down to the bottom half of the home page, we do get to an Iran story, but the tone of the headline is dramatically different: "Iran and U.S. Sink Into Awkward Limbo of 'No War, No Peace.'"

It's not a dire emergency anymore. The war is over. We won. Iran just won't admit it, and we're not going to give them anything for holding out on admitting what is true. No, it doesn't say that. The article, analysis by Erika Solomon, goes with a "both sides" trope:

Sunrise.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial."

"I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes."

From the tweets of Cole Tomas Allen, quoted in "WHCD shooting suspect Cole Allen flooded social media with anti-Trump fury: 'you are f–king damned'" (NY Post).

"Like many journalists, I have a bunch of unpublished fiction lying about, so I tried Claude on the first chapter of a romance novel that I started almost 20 years ago..."

"... during the hysterical, mawkish phase of a particularly bad breakup. 'Megan McArdle,' said Opus 4.7, after a few seconds of thought. Fascinated, I kept feeding it smaller and smaller passages to see how little prose it needed for identification. The answer, apparently, was 1,441 words."

Writes Megan McArdle, in "Will AI end anonymity? I tested it. Artificial intelligence can echolocate authors through their prose. Your digital fingerprint is at risk" (WaPo).

"Le Droop" — "the natural-looking — not floppy but not pneumatic — breasts that you can bet are about to be the look everyone in Hollywood wants."

"Le Droop, c’est chic, or it’s about to be.... Let’s be in no doubt that there are people whose job it is to work out where to take the boob brag next. We’ve seen it with Lily Allen, who has embraced all the breast exposure tricks in the past six months while staying one step ahead of the game. The Thirties lingerie look — an unstructured flat bra with a hint of underboob — was one that stood out recently, not least because it was in the droopy, natural-looks-best zone. Underboob is still top of the breast brag charts but, unlike a few years ago, the look now is soft and accidental, not travel-pillow taut under a tight cropped T-shirt.... Florence Pugh is keen on a nipple reveal under a gauzy red carpet dress, and thanks to her and one or two others nipples are no longer the marmalade dropper of nudity. But they’re not the breast flex of the moment. That’s Le Droop."

From "Charlize Theron and why ‘Le Droop’ is the red carpet breast flex of 2026/Is this the ultimate boob brag?" (London Times).

Did you, like me, stumble over "nipples are no longer the marmalade dropper of nudity"? Apparently, "marmalade dropper" is a British expression. Something is a "marmalade dropper" if it would shock you to the point where you'd drop your marmalade-covered toast.

Crabapple time in the UW Arb.

Today, around 2 p.m.

"Instead of painting live models or photographs, Ms. González uses an A.I. system on that laptop to generate composite digital images."

"These amalgamations are drawn from a combination of baroque portraits, her own sketches and, in her most recent series, catwalk photographs from a fashion show that Hermès invited her to in Paris. Those digital collages, which she calls 'Frankensteins,' serve as the inspiration for her painted portraits. While the models are imaginary, she said, she sometimes sees a trace of her own face in the finished portraits. Not too long ago, she said, the idea of living off these portraits seemed impossible. 'But here we are,' she said. 'It’s like a dream I always had, but times 50.'"

From "How a Pop Star’s Portrait Launched the Career of an Unknown Spanish Artist/Nieves González, a 29-year-old painter, once worked in relative obscurity in Andalusia. Her picture of the British singer Lily Allen changed that" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the paintings and other things).

"Today, at 85, [my wife] is lovelier than ever. Her lustrous white hair is so stunning..."

"... that people stop her on the street to remark on it. She has a beauty born of episodes of sorrow intermingled with joy. I have watched her transformation for decades. Her brown eyes are the picture of profound thought, an important idea given form. Her skin, still smooth. Only the lines on the neck betray her age, like delicate narrow paths cut into a desert. I have seen women who have feared these changes and had lots of work done to their faces, whose expressions are frozen in a strange perpetual surprise. I always wondered where their wrinkles went. To a firmament of parts, where old beauty might have reigned but is now a house of discards?"

Writes Roger Rosenblatt, in "My Wife Is 85. She Takes My Breath Away" (NYT)(gift link, so you can read the whole essay).

I'm blogging this as a companion to yesterday's post about Megan McArdle's bemoaning faces ruined by plastic surgery.

Is Rosenblatt's writing bad? Can you understand "a firmament of parts, where old beauty might have reigned but is now a house of discards"? I don't know, but I'm just hoping it's helpful to hear from an old man who sincerely believes his old wife is beautiful.

"He elucidates the famous double-page spread accompanying the text 'Goodnight nobody/Goodnight mush.'"

"Anyone who has ever held a child on a lap at bedtime while reading ['Goodnight, Moon'] aloud has encountered the Dadaist conundrum of a blank page to connote 'Goodnight nobody' — certainly one of the most potentially frightening concepts for a young rabbit, um, kid, who in falling asleep will be more alone than it is possible to be while awake. That 'Goodnight mush' is on the opposite page is a eucatastrophe: 'We exist! We are alive! We eat food! What a relief!' It’s 'Always look on the bright side of death' for the youngest minds."

From a NYT book review, "A New Manifesto for Children’s Literature/In his chatty, compulsively readable first book for adults, Mac Barnett champions his career choice and urges our culture to hold kids in higher esteem."

The reviewer is Gregory Maguire, who wrote "Wicked" (as well as many children's books).

The famous double-page spread:

ADDED: The word "eucatastrophe" was coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1944. He wrote, in a letter: "For it I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears.

He used his own word again in 1947 to say: "The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation."

"This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press. And in a certain way it did..."

"I saw a room that was totally unified. It was in one way very beautiful — a very beautiful thing to see."

Said President Trump, in an impromptu press conference at the White House, 2 hours after the incident at the Correspondents' Dinner. 

I hope that shared experience brings people together. Perhaps there will be a reset and love will steer the stars: "In light of this evening's events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully. We have to resolve our differences. You had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals, and progressives in that room — a big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together." Come together, right now, over me.

Trump saw the opportunity to promote his ballroom: "We looked at all of the conditions that took place tonight. It's not a particularly secure building. I didn't want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we're planning at the White House. It's actually a larger room and it's much more secure. It's got drone-proof and bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom."

Trump framed the incident as an assassination attempt: "This is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin. In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago — you all know that story. And in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that, we came close again. We had some great work done by law enforcement."

Trump expressed pride in himself as the target of multiple assassination attempts. Asked "Why do you think this keeps happening to you?," he said "I've studied assassinations. The most impactful people, the people that do the most, are the ones they go after. Abraham Lincoln, the big names. I hate to say I'm honored by that, but we've done a lot. We've changed this country. There are a lot of people that are not happy about that."

"We see them every day and we just say hi and they’re very nice. They’re peaceful people, they don’t make any noise and when they see you they say hi."

Said a neighbor of Cole Tomas Allen, quoted in "Who is Cole Tomas Allen? White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect in custody/The suspect in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting was identified as California man Cole Tomas Allen" (Independent).

What's with the awkward "they" pronouns? "They’re peaceful people," etc. Maybe that's just the way they talk in California.

Allen has an elite degree — Caltech. "While a student at Caltech, Allen was a member of the school’s Christian fellowship and the Nerf club. He was featured in a 2017 photo that was posted by the school on Facebook following his graduation. In that photo, he’s holding a picture of himself as a child with a stuffed rabbit.... On his LinkedIn page, Allen described himself as a 'mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, ​independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth.' He lists his 'Causes' on that profile as 'Science and Technology.'"

Political affiliation? "Allen donated $25 to the political action committee ActBlue in October 2024, a month before Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris.... According to FEC filings, it was his only political donation in the past ten years."

Caltech NERF Club describes itself at Facebook: "a group of people who raid random buildings on campus and shoot NERF guns at each other. Various other activities include: the modification of blasters for cool effects, mechanical improvements, and cosmetic bad-assery; shoot the Albert Yang game; long-term NERF games such as Red Vs Blue and Humans vs. Zombies."

ADDED: "In a brief interview with The New York Post, neighbor Jeff Smith said that he felt as though Allen was 'on the spectrum.'"