Good morning. It’s May Day. Congress voted to fund the Homeland Security Department, ending the longest agency shutdown in history. Royal watchers said King Charles’s visit to the U.S. was a master class in subtle criticism. And more countries are buying gold. We’ll get to more news below — including a neat look at a collection of Bicentennial schlock. But first, I’m going to turn to the Supreme Court.
Strong medicineThe Voting Rights Act was supposed to end discrimination against minority voters. Did it work? A Supreme Court majority thinks so. Its ruling against a Louisiana congressional map this week didn’t knock the 1965 law down, but justices said the measure was no longer as important as it once was. The language on both sides is dense. Here’s a distillation: The court’s conservative majority believes that the medicine prescribed by the Voting Rights Act has worked and we don’t need to keep taking it, writes Adam Liptak, our chief legal affairs correspondent. Jim Crow is dead, and official discrimination is rare and illegal. So, the reasoning goes, Louisiana was wrong to use race when it drew up a new majority-Black congressional district. The liberal minority believes the law was doing what it was designed to do in places with a history of racial discrimination. Striking down a law that was working, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in 2013 about a similar case, “is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” So what happens now? Forever redistrictingNick Corasaniti, who covers voting, does not mince words: The decision “has plunged the nation into a dizzying new era of partisan conflict, most likely ushering in a forever redistricting war that could produce fewer competitive seats in Congress and further polarize American politics.” That war already has casualties: Fair representation. States are supposed to redraw congressional maps once a decade to reflect population shifts and ensure the representation of communities within a given jurisdiction. Last year, though, President Trump asked Texas officials to create a rare new mid-decade map that would benefit Republicans in this year’s midterm election cycle. California came back with a new map that favored Democrats. A host of other states, both red and blue, followed. Now Wednesday’s decision has prompted Louisiana and other states to consider new maps immediately. Election lawyers circle. Competition. The last round of nationwide redistricting in 2021, when both Republicans and Democrats sought to protect their electoral advantages, resulted in far fewer contested races. “Roughly 90 percent of races are now decided not by general-election voters in November but by the partisans who tend to vote in primaries months earlier,” Nick reports. Wednesday’s decision reinforces that trend.
A pipeline severedCritics of the decision see a potentially devastating result in the South, reports Rick Rojas, who covers the region. They told Rick that new voting maps there “will not only endanger Black incumbents, some of whom have held office for decades, but also threaten a rising generation of Black Democrats.” Rick spoke to one of them, Evan Turnage, who left a job on Capitol Hill to return home to Mississippi to build a political career. In March, he lost a primary race for a congressional seat but hoped his experience on the hustings would pay off for him in coming years. His district is vulnerable to redistricting, though. “It’s definitely going to be devastating,” Turnage said. And the decision could reach beyond Congress, into local governments — into state legislative districts, county boards and city councils. “None of us working on Capitol Hill would have gotten there without that foot in the door,” Representative Shomari Figures of Alabama told Rick. Related: Louisiana will delay its House primaries after the court rejected its map.
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In obituaries, you often say that the subject’s mother “ran the household” or “oversaw the household.” How do you determine this? (I understand that you want to avoid “was a housewife.”) | Arlene Weiner | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania William McDonald retired yesterday after 20 years as obituaries editor. In that time, he oversaw more than 24,000 obits. He writes: Yes, we use that language in place of “homemaker,” which is old-fashioned and maybe a bit demeaning. (“Homemaker” had replaced “housewife.”) We make a determination by reporting: We simply ask family members what parents did as occupations.
The Supreme Court gave ICE a green light to stop people based on their appearance or accent. This video shows the alarming results. America has a hidden justice system. We call it “forced arbitration,” and whether you realize it or not, you are almost certainly bound by it, Brendan Ballou writes. Human made. Human played. 75% off. Subscribe to New York Times Games for 75% off your first year. Our best offer is only available for a limited time. Relax and recharge with our full portfolio of games, including Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, the Crossword and more — all mindfully made by humans.
All that glitters: Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, said King Charles III should return the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Read about the jewel’s history. In hot water: UNESCO honored Iceland’s pool culture. Now locals fear tourists will take over. Your pick: The Morning’s most-clicked story yesterday was about an Indian billionaire giving a home to the drug lord Pablo Escobar’s hippos. A country music outlaw: David Allan Coe, who wrote “Take This Job and Shove It” and other chart-topping hits, was known for his outlandish exploits, prison tales and obscenity-laden performances. He died at 86.
5.3— That is the average number of guesses, out of 6, that it took NYT Wordle testers to solve yesterday’s puzzle. They characterize it as a “very challenging” puzzle. Learn more about it here.
N.B.A.: The New York Knicks led by as many as 61 points in a record-setting 140-89 victory over the Atlanta Hawks. The Knicks are headed to the second round of the playoffs. W.N.B.A.: Caitlin Clark left the Indiana Fever’s preseason game against the Dallas Wings with an injury, the Wings’ Paige Bueckers scored 20 points and No. 1 draft pick Azzi Fudd made her pro debut.
The Kentucky Derby’s tomorrow and I think you ought to make this recipe for Benedictine tonight, so the flavors really have a chance to marry overnight in the fridge. Benedictine is a classic Louisville dip made of cream cheese, cucumbers, scallions and a little hot sauce. It pairs nicely with crudités, chips or crackers. But — as they say in Kentucky — I’ll tell you what. If you trowel it wall-to-wall onto white bread for crustless sandwiches, the odds are good you’ll have a wonderful race day.
As we hurtle toward America’s 250th birthday celebrations this summer, The Times visited the Beinecke Library at Yale to take in one of its quirkier exhibits, assembled in 1976 for the nation’s 200th turn around the sun: |
