Daily English Article — April 29, 2026

Late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel responded on Monday to backlash over a joke he made about First Lady Melania Trump, in which he described her as having 'a glow like an expectant widow.' Kimmel opened his monologue by joking about waking up to find the first lady had issued a public statement calling for him to be fired from his job, and he characterized the online response from her supporters as a 'Twitter vomit storm,' signaling his intent to address the controversy head-on rather than back down.

Kimmel firmly rejected the accusation that his joke constituted a call for assassination, insisting it was 'obviously about their age difference' — a reference to the significant gap in age between Melania and President Donald Trump. He said the remark was not, 'by any stretch of the definition,' a call for violence. He also addressed the recent shooting near the White House Correspondents' Dinner, expressing relief that no one was hurt and acknowledging that many attendees were left shaken by the incident.

In a pointed rejoinder to Melania Trump's statement condemning 'hateful and violent rhetoric,' Kimmel said he agreed with the sentiment but suggested she direct that message at her own husband first. He then played a clip of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying 'there'll be some shots fired tonight' in reference to Trump's planned remarks at the dinner, using it as ironic commentary on who was actually employing inflammatory language in the political arena.

Kimmel also mocked President Trump's response to the shooting near the Correspondents' Dinner, specifically Trump's suggestion that the incident would not have occurred had his planned White House ballroom been built. Kimmel quipped that Trump had an uncanny ability to turn any event into a real estate pitch, and he noted with amusement that Trump's reference to a 'top-secret' ballroom under construction at the White House had inadvertently made it decidedly less secret by announcing it publicly.

The controversy originated from a segment Kimmel aired the previous week in which he parodied the White House Correspondents' Dinner. In the sketch, he made jokes about Trump's health and his past associations with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before delivering the 'expectant widow' line about Melania. Days later, Melania issued a statement on X calling Kimmel's words 'corrosive' and urging ABC to take action against him. President Trump echoed her call, demanding Kimmel's termination in a Truth Social post, repeating a demand he has made multiple times over the past year.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman informed lawmakers on Monday that both of the agency's commercial lunar lander contractors — SpaceX and Blue Origin — have indicated their spacecraft could be ready for the next major Artemis mission no earlier than late 2027. This represents a modest delay compared to NASA's previous target of mid-2027. Isaacman made the announcement while testifying before Congress, outlining the current state of the Artemis program and the ongoing review of mission parameters that will define the shape of the upcoming flight.

Contrary to public expectation, the Artemis III mission as currently redesigned will not actually land on the Moon. Instead, it will send an Orion capsule carrying a crew of astronauts into Earth orbit to rendezvous and potentially dock with one or both of the commercial landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon. The precise details of the mission remain under active review, including unresolved questions about the target orbital altitude and the configuration of the Space Launch System rocket that will carry the Orion spacecraft into space.

The revised Artemis III mission is being deliberately modeled after Apollo 9, the 1969 flight that tested the Apollo lunar module in Earth orbit just four months before Apollo 11's historic Moon landing. NASA's rationale is clear: by conducting the first human docking and boarding of a lunar lander in Earth orbit rather than near the Moon, any problems that arise can be resolved within minutes or hours rather than the days it would take to return from a quarter-million miles away. Safety and risk reduction are the primary drivers of this redesigned approach.

One key variable still to be resolved is whether Artemis III will rendezvous with SpaceX's Starship, Blue Origin's Blue Moon, or both landers in orbit. NASA is also weighing the choice between a low-Earth orbit insertion, which would conserve an existing SLS upper stage for a later mission, and a higher orbit that would provide a lunar environment simulation but would consume the stored upper stage. To address long-term rocket needs, NASA is procuring a new commercial upper stage, the Centaur V from United Launch Alliance, to replace the existing stages after they are expended.

The restructuring of Artemis III stems from NASA's acknowledgment that its original mission profile was excessively ambitious. The original plan would have had astronauts docking with a lunar lander for the very first time in the vicinity of the Moon — a high-stakes scenario far from Earth. Two months ago, Isaacman also announced the mission would no longer target the Moon's south pole. With a late 2027 date now penciled in for Artemis III, NASA hopes to maintain its goal of flying Artemis missions at least annually, with lunar surface landings potentially following in 2028 ahead of a planned Chinese crewed Moon mission.