Monday Miscellany, 4/27/26

And, of course, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.  This was the first time in his presidency that Trump attended, since the custom is for presidents to get roasted by the comedians who usually perform at the dinner, and he knew the journalists would be a hostile crowd anyway. This time, in light of his sensibilities, a magician was scheduled to be the entertainment.  This time, reportedly, the president was planning to roast the journalists.  In fact, White House Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a reporter from Fox News, “It’ll be funny. It’ll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight, in the room. ”

Indeed there were.  A 31-year-old California teacher named Cole Tomas Allen charged through the metal detectors, entered the ball room, and started shooting.  He got off as many as six rounds, reportedly from a shotgun, before he was tackled by Secret Service agents.

A law-enforcement officer was hit, but he was wearing a bullet-proof vest, which reportedly prevented serious injury.  No one else was hurt.  President Trump, the First Lady, and government officials were quickly ushered out of the room, as the other guests dove under the tables in their panic.

After order was restored, the president said the dinner should be continued, since “the show must go on,” but the dinner was cancelled.

The Washington Hilton was also where John Hinckley in 1981 shot President Reagan–along with Press Secretary James Brady, police officer Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy–all of whom were seriously injured.

This was the third time that an assassin has tried to kill President Trump. What should we learn from this attempt?  Here are a few things that come to mind. . . .

Though the president rightly praised the quick action of the Secret Service agents in stopping Allen before more harm was done, this was a serious breech of security.  How could a heavily armed individual just charge through the metal detector without being stopped?  He couldn’t have done that at a TSA checkpoint in an airport!

Nearly our whole executive branch was there!  In fact, seven of the top eight officials in the line of presidential succession were at the dinner (Vice President JD Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum). If Allen had an automatic rifle instead of a shotgun, he could have decapitated our entire government!  Or, at best, Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley would be our president.

I thought the Vice President and the President were not supposed to attend the same events, so that if the president were to die, the Vice President would be able to assume his office.  But, no, here they were together.  It’s also foolish for so many members of the Cabinet to gather together in one public place.

We must get serious about security.  This is the second time the president was subjected to gunfire–the other time, at the golf course, the would-be assassin was apprehended before shots were fired–and that in itself is a failure of the Secret Service, which needs to conduct an intensive review of its personnel and procedures.

Also, the journalists in attendance, who now know something of what it is like to be under fire, should tone down their rhetoric.  Most of them oppose Donald Trump, which is their right, but to demonize him as many of them have been doing, presenting him as a threat to democracy, a dictator, a Hitler, creates the atmosphere that precipitates violence like this.

Preventing Fellow-Citizens from Being Represented

Gerrymandering is defined as “the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries to advantage a party, group, or socioeconomic class.”  I prefer the definition of Morgan State journalism professor Wayne Dawkins:  “politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.”

Our representative democracy breaks up states into districts so that local voters can elect congressional and state lawmakers who represent their views and interests.  The best practice, mandated by law in a number of states, is to have non-partisan, independent commissions determine these districts, usually based on geography and various population centers.  The word “gerrymandering” derives from Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry–who would later become Vice President under James Madison–who signed a redistricting scheme that included a district shaped like salamander to ensure that it would be dominated by his Democratic-Republican party.

The Wikipedia article on the subject linked above includes this:  “Gerrymandering is almost always considered a corruption of the democratic process.” You think?  The party with the redistricting power is disenfranchising members of the rival party, turning them into a minority that cannot get their candidates elected.

Today, though, politicians from both parties are eagerly and openly engaging in this “corruption of the democratic process.”

The Republicans started it, at the urging of President Trump, in deep-red Texas, which eliminated 5 predominantly Democratic districts and turned them into Republican districts.  To counter that, deep-blue California voters passed a proposition that would allow the suspension of the independent commissions to allow for gerrymandering that turned 5 Republican districts into 5 Democratic districts.  Thus cancelling out what Texas did.

Then other states–the red states of North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri–continued the tit-for-tat.  Now Virginia voters have chosen to “temporarily” suspend their non-partisan redistricting process to gerrymander away all Republican districts but one.

What Virginia did is the most shameful of all of these other cases.  Unlike the other gerrymanderers, Virginia is neither a predominantly-Republican red state nor a predominantly-Democratic blue state.  It’s a “purple” state, with a nearly equal mix of both parties, with the Democrats concentrated in close proximity to Washington, D.C., home to thousands upon thousands of federal workers, and the Republicans concentrated in the rural and small town regions of the rest of the state.

Sometimes Virginia, where I used to live, elects Democrats and sometimes it elects Republicans.  Recently, by a very narrow margin, the state elected a Democratic governor to replace the term-limited Republican governor they elected by a narrow margin.  This redistricting vote was decided by a very narrow margin.

Currently, the state has 6 Democratic congressional representatives and 5 Republican representatives.  With this vote, Virginians will be represented in the House of Representatives by 10 Democrats and only 1 Republican.

“Northern Virginia’s population of federal bureaucrats and Beltway bandits will dominate the majority of the state’s House delegation,” observes John Fund,. “One district will stretch in a narrow corridor from Reagan National Airport near D.C. all the way to Williamsburg,” a distance of 152 miles. “D.C.-area Democrats, with little more than a slight majority, have voted to federally disenfranchise the rest of the state’s Republicans,” observes National Review‘s Jeffrey Blehar.  “The state will be represented in Congress almost entirely by Fairfax County, and most of its ‘downstate’ representatives will hail from within a 50-mile radius of Washington, D.C.”

What Virginia did is particularly shameful because this time citizens voted to disenfranchise their fellow citizens.  The message is that you rural Republican voters don’t get to have a representative in Congress.  This is not just a matter of dirty tricks by politicians, which sadly we have become accustomed to.  Americans are doing this to each other.  This is the extreme point of our political polarization and the vibe-shift against democracy.

So far, in the gerrymandering war, the Democrats are up one over the Republicans, a margin that can be crucial in the midterm elections.  But mostly-red Florida is about to get revenge.

These gerrymanders are being challenged in court.  A Virginia circuit court has already ruled that the measure passed is unconstitutional for lots of reasons, but that ruling is being appealed.  The Supreme Court will probably have the last word on this and the other attempts of political parties to manipulate our democracy to their ends.

Gerrymandering is wrong, whether Democrats or Republicans do it.  We should salute the great state of Indiana, a solidly red Republican stronghold that refused to employ this tactic, defying the wrath of President Trump.

UK Outlaws Tobacco Forever for Anyone Born after 2008

You will recall that 250 years ago, the United States broke off from Great Britain to attain freedom.  Today, though, Great Britain has the reputation of being, as we say, a “free country.”  It isn’t.

If you are 17 or under today, you will never be able to buy tobacco no matter how old you get.

The UK has passed the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which will outlaw anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, from ever buying tobacco.

So if you are 17 or younger, 50 years from now, when you are 67, you will still have to find someone older than you to buy you your smokes.

The UK’s Christopher Snowden, has written an article for Spiked entitled Tobacco and Vapes Bill:  The Stupidest Law Ever Passed in Britain.  Noting that supporters are congratulating themselves for creating “the first smoke-free generation,” he says that this will be as successful as drug laws were in creating “the first cannabis-free generation.”  Banning smoking for the rising cohort of adults, though not existing adults, will only create a black market.  He points out that Australia, which passed similar draconian anti-smoking laws, is now plagued by gang violence, with rival bands of cigarette-smugglers battle murdering each other in turf wars.  In addition, he says, this law will encourage young adults to smoke by making cigarettes “forbidden fruit.” And by also restricting vaping–which Snowden describes as the most effective means of quitting smoking–tobacco addiction will be worse than ever.

My question:  If the UK parliament really thinks banning cigarettes for adults will be effective and will save so many lives, why not ban them for all adults rather than just some of them?

My prediction:  Smoking marijuana will become legal in the UK, but smoking tobacco will not be.  Unless you were born after 2008.