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Today:
Micah Lasher, Child Magician
NEWS | 30 April 2026
I’m meeting with Micah Lasher at a diner on the Upper West Side. But I worked for Lasher long before he turned 15. But they don’t know the Micah Lasher I knew. I met Lasher and his father, who had been an amateur magician, at a diner on the Upper West Side. He’s contemplated writing an essay about it, but feared outing himself as a weird child magician.

Top Stories:
This ABC Showdown Is Different
NEWS | 30 April 2026
In September, FCC Chair Brendan Carr dangled a simple threat: Either ABC would “take action” against Jimmy Kimmel, or there would be consequences. The network promptly gave in—“Great News,” President Trump wrote at the time—suspending Kimmel’s late-night show only to reinstate it a few days later amid public backlash. Both involve direct threats to ABC after a Kimmel joke, and both reveal how the FCC has been reconfigured to act on Trump’s personal grievances. The groups reportedly control more than 25 percent of ABC affiliates across the country and represent 23 percent of all American households. But whether Disney comes out on top again may not matter to the White House.

World:
Voters Can Be Disenfranchised Now
NEWS | 30 April 2026
And the decision fits just as well with Kilpatrick’s later spin on that philosophy: Attempts to ban racial discrimination are themselves discriminatory—against white people. In 2022, Louisiana lawmakers passed a redistricting plan that limited Black voters to a single congressional district out of six (“packing” them into a majority district and “cracking” the remaining Black population into other districts to limit their influence). The fact that discriminating against Black voters would give Republicans an advantage today is not exculpatory; it only establishes a motive for discrimination. Drawing a different map that did not disenfranchise Black voters, as a lower court had ordered, would itself be an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” Alito concluded. Trying to disenfranchise Black voters isn’t racist; preventing Louisiana from disenfranchising Black voters is racist.

Current Events:
The Fight-Club Rule on Gerrymandering
NEWS | 30 April 2026
Their goal is straightforward and universally understood: They want to bolster the GOP’s majority in Congress and retake the lead in a yearlong, nationwide partisan gerrymandering showdown with Democrats. Republicans can’t acknowledge the intent of their gerrymandering proposal, because the state constitution expressly prohibits partisan redistricting. It could lead other GOP-led states to eliminate House seats drawn to boost minority representation in Congress in the months and years ahead. The court did not touch Florida’s state ban on partisan gerrymandering, however. What seemed clear was that if Florida’s ban on partisan gerrymandering remained intact, the informal ban on copping to it was weakening.

News Flash:
Donald Trump’s Disturbing Welcome for King Charles
NEWS | 30 April 2026
President Trump welcomed the British monarch King Charles III to the White House yesterday and gave a speech that, on its surface, expressed warmth between the two countries. Trump’s speech stamped his imprimatur on an ascendant view of American history and politics—one that is controversial even on the American right, and that walks up to the edge of white nationalism. He has charged that immigrants commit crimes at higher rates than native Americans, attributing this to “bad genes.”Read: Are you a ‘Heritage American’? Trump’s iron-fisted methods—which in just the past day have included pressuring a TV network to fire a comedian for making fun of the president, and charging someone he dislikes with manufactured crimes—violate traditional American values. They do not appear to believe that those values restrain their own side, because, as the representatives of the true American heritage, they are entitled to prevail.

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Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 30 April 2026
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Latest:
Rise of the Blood Populist
NEWS | 30 April 2026
There are three major problems when it comes to understanding political violence in America. What even is political violence? Those who study political violence have found repeatedly that the majority of Americans fully reject political violence. That’s why federal law-enforcement officials sometimes use the term salad-bar extremism to describe 21st-century political violence. Over the years, many experts have warned me that periods of entrenched political violence are difficult to escape.

Breaking:
The King’s Admirer in Chief
NEWS | 30 April 2026
But here was King Charles III, ready to toast the land that his great-grandfather five times over allowed to get away. In America, Trump plans a giant triumphal arch outside Arlington National Cemetery that’s been dubbed the Arc de Trump. Over the past year, Democrats and other Trump opponents have staged “No Kings” rallies throughout the country. On this day, Trump, however tongue in cheek, formally declared himself one. In mid-September, I arrived with President Trump for a two-day festival in the United Kingdom.

Trending:
Who Is the Real Base of the Democratic Party?
NEWS | 30 April 2026
I don’t know whether we’re ever going to get back to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as it was. Frum: Let me give you another hypothesis: that the way the Republican Party and the Democratic Party function is a little bit like comparing Philadelphia to Los Angeles. Frum: And being the film critic for The New Yorker, that conjures up everything you need to know right there. Simmons: Oh, I think that’s right. Simmons: Yeah, I think that’s right.

This Just In:
Miranda Priestly Hangs Up Her Own Coat Now
NEWS | 30 April 2026
But in The Devil Wears Prada 2, Hollywood’s latest nostalgia-baiting follow-up film, the crisis is no longer personal—it’s existential. At first, the story is a bit of a retread: 20 years later, Runway still exists, and Miranda still rules it with a relatively iron fist. She eventually gains some respect for Miranda without submitting to the tractor beam of life at the magazine. (I was thrilled that the sequel contains very little scolding over Andy’s workaholic tendencies, which really weighs down the previous film.) She remains junior to Miranda, but she’s now confident enough to go toe-to-toe with her former boss more regularly.

Today:
Today’s Atlantic Trivia: Quiz Deliberately
NEWS | 30 April 2026
I went to Atlantic Trivia because I wished to quiz deliberately. Atlantic Trivia Writers Sculpture Politics From a story (opens in new tab) by Gal Beckerman In 1846, what American writer was arrested near Massachusetts’s Walden Pond and jailed for failure to pay a poll tax? Show Hint The night in jail was immortalized in “Civil Disobedience.” Answer Submit Previous Question Next QuestionAnd by the way, did you know that Saint Peter’s Basilica is not a cathedral? The largest venue for worship in all of Roman Catholicism is merely a church. Basilica, meanwhile, can signify pretty much whatever the pope wants it to.

Top Stories:
The Pope Goes on an ICE Ride-Along
NEWS | 30 April 2026
“Is this you inviting the pope on a ride-along?” Benny Johnson asked at a recent Turning Point USA event. Just food, nothing else.”The border czar scowled. If we’re here to arrest someone so cruel and brazen that they’re targeting school kids and their families—”The border czar frowned and made some hand gestures at the ICE agents behind him. “You have to understand,” the border czar said, “open borders are not a victimless crime. You’re bringing back crusades, yet you don’t want to hear from the pope?”“I was hoping for more understanding, I guess,” the border czar said.

World:
The YOLO Presidency
NEWS | 30 April 2026
Had President Trump, we wondered, possibly been reading or at least thumbing through—just maybe—the works of … Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel? “I’m so busy that I don’t have time to do this—I’m fighting wars and other things,” Trump told the assembled press. “The GREATEST and MOST BEAUTIFUL Triumphal Arch, anywhere in the World,” Trump declared three days after announcing the cease-fire with Iran. It’s the only thing that can stop me,” Trump told The New York Times after a successful operation in Venezuela to capture its leader, Nicolás Maduro. “So every time he’s focused on the ballroom, every time he’s focused on the Kennedy Center, voters are like, ‘But you’re not focused on Americans.

Current Events:
Sam Altman and Elon Musk Sure Dislike Each Other
NEWS | 30 April 2026
Elon Musk and Sam Altman are two of the most influential people in Silicon Valley, if not the world. Between the two of them, Musk and Altman run technology companies worth many trillions of dollars that promise to reshape civilization. OpenAI shared texts suggesting that Musk had used a former member of OpenAI’s board to keep tabs on the company. Altman has also said, of Musk and his lawsuit, “Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. The very sort of AI schism that started with Musk and Altman keeps recurring.

News Flash:
The Evolution of Trump’s Corruption
NEWS | 30 April 2026
Seven years ago, during a marginally more innocent time, the Trump administration announced plans to hold the 2020 G7 summit at Donald Trump’s resort in Doral, Florida. Things are different in Trump’s second term. The way the two summits have been received feels like a case study in the differences between the first and second Trump presidencies. The phrase shameless corruption gets used a lot, but Trump’s second term embodies it. Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, has signed lucrative deals in cities around the world where his administration is also conducting foreign policy.