The Supreme Court ruling that on Wednesday undermined the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — and with it the electoral representation of minorities in the United States — had its first consequence the following day, with the announcement that Louisiana is preparing to postpone its primary elections. Originally scheduled for mid-May, these primaries were the first step in the process that will lead to the midterm elections in November. In those elections, the country will elect all members of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark achievement of the civil rights era. In a 6-3 decision, in which the conservative bloc used its supermajority, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs who challenged the State of Louisiana for creating a second majority‑Black district to comply with Section 2 of the law.

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U.S. presidents typically leave their mark on the White House. And then there’s Donald Trump. A builder at heart, he has filled the Oval Office with gilded moldings, just like the Mar-a-Lago-style lettering he’s placed throughout his Palm Beach, Florida, mansion. He has paved the Rose Garden, installed a dark granite walkway that contrasts sharply with the pristine white building, and created a presidential gallery filled with insults and lies about his predecessors. However, his greatest interest and political capital have gone into the ballroom he wants to build on the site of the former East Wing, which he himself decided to demolish a year ago without permission.

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had said goodbye to the press corps last Friday as she began maternity leave for her second child. But Saturday’s attack by Cole Thomas Allen — the man subdued as he tried to enter the ballroom of Washington’s Hilton hotel armed, while U.S. President Donald Trump was attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — brought her back to the podium on Monday.

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When Susan Wilkerson returned from running errands on February 27, she couldn’t find her husband, the astronautical engineer and retired Army General William McCasland, at their home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His prescription glasses and phone were still there. His wallet, his .38 caliber revolver and his hiking boots were missing. Fifty-eight days have passed, and there is still no trace of him.

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It was meant to be one of the great nights on the Washington calendar, the one in which, like every spring, political power and the press cross the threshold that separates them to celebrate the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in the grand ballroom of the Hilton Hotel. And it ended up being a night to remember, but for unimaginable reasons. At 8:36 p.m. on Saturday, as Donald Trump was about to speak for the first time at a traditional event he had declined to attend four times, the sound of gunfire at a security checkpoint one floor above changed the course of the evening. At that moment, Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old from California, entered the annals of political violence in a country with more guns than citizens and which has seen four presidents killed in office.

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Gunfire shattered the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at 8:36 p.m. on Saturday. The Secret Service immediately evacuated U.S. President Donald Trump. Alongside images of the chaos that briefly overtook the ballroom of the Washington Hilton — the hotel that each year hosts this gathering of power, press, and celebrities — came the resurfacing of the darkest ghosts of America’s political violence, a country where four presidents have been assassinated while in office. It was also the third attack Trump has survived, another sign of the increasingly tense atmosphere in the United States.

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President Donald Trump was evacuated Saturday night from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner following an assassination attempt. Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and the other Cabinet members present were escorted out amid chaos at Washington’s Hilton Hotel, where the event was being held. A man had entered the lobby and opened fire at the security checkpoint, according to the Secret Service, which later reported that the suspect was in custody.

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Today is the first day Valeria Luiselli has spoken about Beginning Middle End, so the Mexican writer, sitting a couple of Fridays ago in the bright living room of her Bronx home with its suburban feel, apologizes for not yet knowing “what her new novel is about.” “I’ll come to understand it as I talk to other people,” she says. “But I already know it’s a novel about a mother, a daughter, and a grandmother, whose relationships are explored in depth. I know that in it I question imagination and memory — the memory that is lost and the memory that is forming.”

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Principio, medio, fin

During the first year of his return to power, Donald Trump managed to change the image of the White House that people remembered from his first term, often portrayed as a turbulent time when the president, true to his past as a reality TV star who became famous for the cry of “You’re fired!”, could dismiss his staff at any time and in any way, often with a single tweet. He got rid of an attorney general, a secretary of state, a national security advisor, a communications director, and the head of the FBI—a list completed by numerous resignations: 14 members of his administration left between 2017 and 2021, as well as four chiefs of staff and several White House spokespeople.

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Among the most recurring themes in Donald Trump’s prolific output on his social network, Truth, his attacks on the press stand out. Rare is the day when the president of the United States doesn’t go after one outlet or another journalist. Not all of those barbs are as harsh, however, as the one he fired on Tuesday at Elliot Kaufman — a “MORON,” he wrote to attack the member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Trump also accused the newspaper — which is owned by his friend Rupert Murdoch — of “losing his way.”

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When Innocence premiered in 2021 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, EL PAÍS critic Luis Gago wrote: “If there are still those who think that opera is an outdated or anachronistic genre, with no possible place in the current world, as soon as they see and hear Innocence they will immediately change their minds.”

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