[guest post by Dana]

This latest mass casualty incident took place in Texas, 85 miles west of San Antonio:

Fourteen students and a teacher are dead after a shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, according to Gov. Greg Abbott.

The 18-year-old suspect, a student at Uvalde High School, is also dead, he said.

“He shot and killed horrifically and incomprehensibly 14 students and killed a teacher,” Abbott said during an unrelated press briefing.

The suspect also allegedly shot his grandmother before entering the school and again opening fire, Abbott said. He did not say anything further about her condition.

Abbott said the shooter — identified by law enforcement sources and the governor as Salvador Ramos — had a handgun and also possibly a rifle.

Additionally, law enforcement and the National Counterrorism Center don’t believe there is a “terrorism nexus” at this time.

Also, there seems to be uncertainty about the number of fatalities. While Gov. Abbott said 14 students and one teacher had been killed, a local hospital reported that two people were killed and dozens more were injured. It’s early days yet, so things are bound to change as new information becomes public.

This is just gutting. I really can’t imagine the horror these families must be going through today. Not even remotely.

UPDATE:

The death toll from a shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas rose to 18 children and 3 adults Tuesday night after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire inside an elementary school earlier in the day…Three people wounded in the attack are hospitalized in serious condition, Gutierrez told The Associated Press.

As a reminder, Robb Elementary School serves second, third, and fourth-grade students (about 7, 8, and 9 years old).

–Dana

Sorry, Mr. Donald the Trump. Not looking so good for you or your plans to install a flunky in Georgia who will steal the election for you.

Gee. That’s too bad.

CJR has a piece on the NYT Pitchbot guy from Twitter:

Though his subject matter might suggest otherwise, NYT Pitchbot does not work in media or politics. He is a fifty-two-year-old math professor and father of two who describes himself as a “committed Democrat” of the “slightly hardcore left.” He is anonymous on Twitter, and asked to remain so for this story, citing personal and professional concerns. (CJR contacted him via email and spoke with him on the phone, verifying his association with the Twitter account over direct message. He shared his real identity with CJR, which we verified with two other sources.)

I’m glad they kept him anonymous since he wanted to remain that way. Funny how he gets that courtesy but the LibsofTikTok lady does not.

[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

Republicans take the hit:

For the 2020 census, all states were not counted equally well for population numbers used to allocate political representation and federal funding over the next decade, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Thursday.

A follow-up survey the bureau conducted to measure the national tally’s accuracy found significant net undercount rates in six states: Arkansas (5.04%), Florida (3.48%), Illinois (1.97%), Mississippi (4.11%), Tennessee (4.78%) and Texas (1.92%).

It also uncovered significant net overcount rates in eight states — Delaware (5.45%), Hawaii (6.79%), Massachusetts (2.24%), Minnesota (3.84%), New York (3.44%), Ohio (1.49%), Rhode Island (5.05%) and Utah (2.59%).

…

Still, the 2020 results stand in stark contrast to the findings from the bureau’s follow-up survey for the 2010 census, which had no statistically significant over- or undercounts for any state.

Second news item

Ukraine emergency aid package passed by Senate:

The Senate passed a $40 billion emergency aid package Thursday to buttress Ukraine with weapons and other military help as the Eastern European country fends off the Russian invasion.

The chamber’s 86-11 vote clears the legislation for President Joe Biden’s signature, just in time to keep the Pentagon from exhausting its power to send weapons to Ukraine from U.S. stockpiles. Top lawmakers in both parties insist the multibillion-dollar injection is just what Ukraine needs to bolster its defenses as Russia approaches its fourth month of conflict.

Third news item

Donors and local BLM chapters hardest hit:

Following the reveal of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s IRS tax documents, it’s now safe to say that there’s something questionable going on at the social justice nonprofit.

According to the group’s Form 990, first reported by Associated Press, BLM is worth nearly $42 million in net assets—after spending more than $37 million of the $90 million it previously had on high-end real estate, familiar consultants, ambitious grants, and more.

One of the more concerning situations revealed by the financial disclosures is the fact that co-founder Patrisse Cullors was the foundation board’s sole voting director, and held no board meetings, before stepping down last year. Under her leadership, Cullors authorized a six-figure payout to be given to her child’s father for various services, paid $1.8 million to companies owned by her relatives, and ensured that her brother, Paul Cullors, was one of the highest-paid employees of BLM.

This is yet another wave of bad news for Cullors, who has constantly denied financial impropriety, as she has previously tried to quell any growing concerns around her decision-making. These tax documents not only proved that Cullors lied about misusing some of the funds (such as hosting a birthday party for her son and throwing a private Biden inauguration celebration in the multimillion dollar property intended for activists and creators), but that she did so repeatedly.

Fourth news item

Yet another example of why parents nationwide are vexed at their schools and people who run them:

“I am going to give you an assignment given to my 15-year-old daughter at a local high school. This will be horrifying for me to read to you but that will give your perspective on how she must have felt when her teacher required her to memorize this and to act it out in front of her entire class,” said parent Kandra Evans at the meeting during public comment.

As Evans began to read a passage from her daughter’s assignment her mic was cut off by CCSD Trustee Evelyn Garcia Morales.

“This is a public meeting. I ask for decorum,” said Garcia Morales.

“If you don’t want me to read it to you, what was it like for my 15-year-old daughter to have to memorize pornographic material?,” Evans said.

According to a report in Newsweek, the parent was allowed her allotted time to complete her comments (without the profanity). Moreover, the outlet claims that “any suggestion that the material quoted in the meeting was part of the curriculum appears to be false and was instead created by students for the class.” (Did the teacher approve of it?) Regardless, the point remains that the student was required to read the assignment out loud to students and presumably the teacher as well, while the parent was not allowed to read the very same thing out loud to the *adults* in the room at the school board meeting because decorum. And if that’s an accurate account, then parents are right to be angry about the situation.

Fifth news item

Racism rears its ugly head in a noted private school:

The Roeper School is the oldest K through 12 school for gifted children in the country. But the school is facing a wave of controversy after students were given an assignment titled ‘an introduction to primates’ and former President Barack Obama’s photo was listed.

The assignment was passed out in the high school biology class earlier this month. The Birmingham private school prides itself on diversity and an alternative education, which costs up to $30,000 each year.

But this month, the curriculum passed out to students instructed students to pick from a gallery of photos labeled apes, monkeys, and lemurs. And there, in the second row, is former President Barack Obama.

FOX 2 obtained a photo of the school assignment from someone who was appalled at the racist messaging, which came from a teacher.

Sixth news item

Via Time123: 2000 Mules of malarkey (2000 Mules being the latest movie by Dinesh D’souza):

Film 2000 Mules has city map showing dropboxes in the city and the "analysis" of people moving. Which analysis software made the map? None. It is Adobe stock sold for $80 & the dropboxes are not in actual locations. #electionsecurity #ElectionIntegrity https://t.co/4ju6AMCjFu

— Harri "scofield" Hursti (@HarriHursti) May 19, 2022

Key takeaways, even ideal environment mobile phone location is orders of magnitude less accurate than Mules claim. Factors lowering accuracy: city build-out, model of phone, how the phone is held, how unobstructed is the view to sky, proximity of buildings, speed you move, etc

— Harri "scofield" Hursti (@HarriHursti) May 19, 2022

Read the whole thread.

Seventh news item

Who they have chosen to embrace says all you need to know about CPAC. P.S. Tucker Carlson was billed as special guest speaker…:

The Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán, has told a conference of US conservatives that the path to power required having their own media outlets, calling for shows like Tucker Carlson’s to be broadcast “24/7”.

Orbán, recently elected to a fourth term, laid out a 12-point blueprint to achieving and consolidating power to a special meeting of the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), under the slogan of “God, Homeland, Family”, held in Budapest.

The Hungarian prime minister said that with his fourth electoral victory on 3 April, Hungary had been “completely healed” of “progressive dominance”. He suggested it was time for the right to join forces.

“We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find allies in one another and coordinate the movements of our troops,” Orbán said.

He told Republicans…that media influence was one of the keys to success. In Hungary, the prime minister and his allies have effective control of most media outlets in Hungary, including state TV.

“Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left,” he said. “The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.”

He portrayed the US media as being dominated by Democrats, who he claimed were being “served” by CNN, the New York Times and others.

“Of course, the GOP has its media allies but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend, Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there,” he said. “His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say 24/7.”

Eighth news item

Russia hits back at Finland, which already has plans ensuring that they will be okay despite Russia’s move:

Russia will cut natural gas supplies to Finland on Saturday, according to Finland’s state energy provider, the latest salvo in a growing confrontation between the two countries over the war in Ukraine.

Finland this week applied to join NATO, reversing a longstanding policy of military neutrality and angering Russia, which sees the eastward expansion of the alliance as a threat to its national security. Moscow had previously threatened “retaliation” if Finland joined NATO. The two countries share an 830-mile border.

The ostensible reason for the halt in Russian gas exports, though, was a dispute over payments that had been rumbling for weeks.

Gasum, the Finnish energy provider, said on Friday that Russia was suspending the supply of natural gas to Finland starting at 7 a.m. the next morning because the country had failed to comply with Moscow’s demand to make payments in rubles. The move comes just days after Moscow also suspended electricity exports to Finland, citing payment issues.

Ninth news item

Progressive prosecutor comes out in support of efforts to recall city district attorney:

Brooke Jenkins supports diversion programs for low-level crimes…as well as programs to shorten excessive sentences and free the wrongfully convicted. A Black and Latina woman, she deplores what mass incarceration has done to communities of color. She said that she appreciated how compassionate and reform-focused San Francisco was as a city. Thus, she said, she looked forward to working with Boudin when he came into office.

Yet, working on murder cases for him, she said, she came to question whether he was the right person for the job. He had decided what not to do and where to pull back, she said. But he had not figured out how to fight the crime the city was facing. “Chesa has refused to switch hats,” she told me. “He maintains the outlook or the mindset of a public defender. His view is that crime is just a part of life, something that we all have to endure and deal with. It’s never going to go away. No amount of punishment for any offender is going to change what happened, even in a murder case.”

She worried that this posture discourages people from reporting offenses against them. She also worried that it disrespects the victims of violence—a personal issue for her, after her husband’s cousin was murdered in the summer of 2020. “I don’t think he’s willing to listen to those Black voices,” she told me. “He believes, in his mind, that he knows what’s best for them.”

MISCELLANEOUS

An absolutely vibrant painting by Ernie Barnes recently made a big splash:

The unexpected star lot of last week’s Christie’s 20th century auction was The Sugar Shack, the most famous painting by Ernie Barnes. The 1976 work went for $15.3 million, or an astonishing 76 times its high estimate of $200,000.

A celebration of Black joy, the painting depicts an enthusiastic crowd of men and women with elongated limbs, seemingly carried away by the music as they dance the night away.

“The painting transmits rhythm, so the experience is re-created in the person viewing it,” Barnes, who died in 2009, said in an interview with the Soul Museum. “To show that African Americans utilize rhythm as a way of resolving physical tension.”

Have a great weekend!

–Dama

[guest post by Dana]

Three months into a humiliating war, a well-known Russian military analyst and veteran shocked his fellow guests on state-controlled television by offering an honest, no holds barred assessment of Russia’s current status in the unprovoked war with Ukraine while simultaneously giving Ukraine a much-needed gift of hope:

“The situation, frankly speaking, will get worse for us,” Mikhail Khodaryonok, a retired Russian army colonel, told the “60 Minutes” talk show on Rossiya-1 TV program hosted by Olga Skabeyeva, who’s renowned for her pro-Kremlin stance.

“You should not swallow informational tranquilizers,” Khodaryonok told the host as he warned that Ukraine was in no way near being beaten by Russia, and that Kyiv could mobilize and arm a million people if it wanted to.

The report notes that Khodaryonok had warned against invading Ukraine. Russia has faced several humiliations in the face of Ukrainian determination to push back the invaders. As a result, Russia is now focused on Eastern Ukraine. Khodaryonok also noted the difference between the invading force and the everyday Ukrainians willing to take up arms to defend their homeland:

Khodaryonok emphasized that even if Ukraine had to rely on hundreds of thousands of conscripts that only had rudimentary military training, what mattered is that their hearts would be in the fight, and that would not bode well for Russia.

“The desire to defend one’s motherland in the sense that it exists in Ukraine — it really does exist there and they intend to fight to the last,” Khodaryonok said before he was interrupted by Skabeyeva who was trying to downplay the effectiveness of Ukraine’s forces.

“We need to treat this million Ukrainian soldiers as a reality in the nearest future,” he said.

I’ll leave you with Khodaryonok’s inarguable observation that left his fellow guests stunned:

“The main deficiency of our military-political position is that we are in full geopolitical solitude and — however we don’t want to admit it — practically the whole world is against us … and we need to get out of this situation”…

**It’s so shocking to hear such blunt unvarnished truth coming from a Russian veteran (and on state television), that I’m left wondering if Khodaryonok will soon disappear, or at the very least be compelled to publicly recant his observations? I suspect it’s only a matter of time…

Here’s Gary Kasparov confirming Khodaryonok’s concerns about the willingness of Ukrainians to fight for their homeland:

So many Ukrainians went back to fight that there is a shortage in Poland of taxi drivers, construction workers, and other such jobs. Let that sink in. And yet some still talk like we're giving charity to Ukraine as they sacrifice their lives for us.

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) May 18, 2022

Moreover, in a recent report about the Mozart Group, which is currently in Ukraine to help train troops, the organization, which is made up of special-operations vets and whose two goals are: “to increase the Ukrainian military’s capability and sustainable capacity in a manner consistent with US foreign policy and to protect vulnerable civilians,” group leader Andy Milburn offered his observations on Russian and Ukrainian troops. Unsurprisingly, his views were similar to Khodaryonok’s when it came to troop resolve and morale, or the lack therein:

In areas where Ukrainians have fended off the Russian offensive, what do you think has allowed them to be successful?

Morale and resolve have been key components of success — but the terrain has been an important factor in enabling Ukrainian forces to hold their ground.

In the north and urban regions, the Russian proclivity to remain on the roads has played against them. Outside the cities in the north, the ground is either thickly wooded or swampy, and this has allowed the defenders to infiltrate easily through Russian lines to strike armored columns from the flank.

What’s your assessment of the Russian military’s performance so far? Is there anything it did well, and to what would you attribute its struggles?

Russian units here have proven to be singularly unimpressive. Almost without exception, they are poorly trained, ill-disciplined, and lack cohesion. Their tactics belong to a bygone era — little understanding of combined arms and no infantry integration with their armored attacks.

**I wrote this post yesterday afternoon, and this morning checked for any updated information on Khodaryonok. Sure enough, he is backpedaling on his assessment:

Today retired colonel Mikhail Khodaryonok made another appearance on Russian state TV, just two days after he gave a damning assessment of Russia's war in Ukraine and its growing international isolation

It appears that someone's given him a bit of a talking to

(with subtitles) pic.twitter.com/M1u2q8L2Tn

— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) May 18, 2022

Regardless of his corrections, the damage is done and we all know it. Especially Ukraine. Also, Khodaryonok gets to live another day.

–Dana

[guest post by JVW]

Here is thus far the best political news of the week:

After a wave of backlash, the Department of Homeland Security is considering shutting down its just-created Disinformation Governance Board, which was officially tasked with combatting false narratives around domestic terrorism and human trafficking along the border, but which was widely interpreted as having a much broader brief to monitor and possibly curtail disfavored political speech.

Just three weeks after its inception, the disinformation board’s operations have been “paused,” multiple anonymous DHS officials told the Washington Post. DHS reportedly decided to shut down the board entirely on Monday and its director, Nina Jankowicz, tendered a voluntary resignation letter on Tuesday. But DHS officials quickly called Jankowicz to give her the option to stay on while the Homeland Security Advisory Committee determines whether to shut down the board entirely.

Beyond the potential for Orwellian behavior from a government board tasked with determining what is legitimate political opinion and what comprises “disinformation,” the selection of Ms. Jankowicz as director was a completely avoidable error that the White House nevertheless blundered straight into. A fellow (but not a fella) at the Wilson Center, an ostensibly nonpartisan research center but one which receives almost a third of its funding from the taxpayer, and an alleged expert on Russia and Ukraine, Ms. Jankowicz has also distinguished herself for her insider dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop story, her weird feminist musings which require her to concoct largely implausible scenarios of male boorishness to make her points, and her curious penchant for making up really weird songs and sharing them with the public.

The collapse of this ill-considered initiative has naturally disappointed the Biden Administration’s amen corner in the media, with the increasingly-shrill Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post taking to her keyboard to huff about the unfairness of it all:

[W]ithin hours of news of her appointment, Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating. The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said it “could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn’t”), but Jankowicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing Internet. She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.

[. . .]

Jankowicz’s experience is a prime example of how the right-wing Internet apparatus operates, where far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them. It also shows what happens when institutions, when confronted with these attacks, don’t respond effectively.

Odd that Ms. Lorenz never bothers to cogitate on why Ms. Jankowicz, with her background in what Ms. Lorenz characterizes as “multiple nonpartisan think tanks and nonprofits,” would have drawn particular ire from “far-right influencers.” Could it be because Ms. Jankowicz’s online presence indicated nothing so much as a committed Democrat who viewed her mission as promoting the conventional center-left Washington wisdom, no matter how staid and fetid it has become? It’s not as if Bidenism, a less confident and thus more malleable version of the smug assuredness of Obamaism, has distinguished itself at all over the past sixteen months.

Ms. Lorenz argues that the board which Ms. Jankowicz was appointed to lead would have had no authority to declare any news stories as “true” or “false” and would have no regulatory power to threaten ISPs or media outlets, yet it’s a certainty that the board would exert an influence similar to that of a Politifact or any of the other gate-keepers who get to determine why a mostly true claim from a conservative source is wrong about some picayune item while a mostly incorrect claim from a progressive source has yet to be disproven. Since when has a Washington DC board hewed strictly to its mandate and not instead attempted to increase its reach well beyond its charter?

In any case, we are left to hope that this “pause” is actually the death-knell for the Biden Administration’s “disinformation governance board.” Like so much of what this Administration has proposed, it’s an idea that might sound vaguely practical in theory — at least to the media/academic/bureaucratic axis that runs the Democrat Party these days — but is so clearly open to manipulation and abuse that any thinking American who prizes personal liberties and a humble role for government would immediate recognize as a colossally bad idea.

ADDENDUM: I see that over at Powerline Steve Hayward points out a few more peculiarities in the WaPo’s coverage that I overlooked, like the standard reliance upon unnamed “experts” and the typical headline which announces what the paper really thinks about all of this. Indeed, as with most Taylor Lorenz pieces there is no shortage of elements to criticize.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Mona Charen has a good piece over at The Bulwark today, suggesting that there will be a next coup attempt and noting that there is no time to waste in preventing it from happening:

Across the country, candidates who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election are seeking office in order to prepare the ground for the next election contest. Pardoned Trump ally Steve Bannon is encouraging MAGAites to run for local posts with authority to count votes. Bannon uses his popular podcast to tout “taking over the Republican party through the precinct committee strategy.. . . It’s about winning elections with the right people—MAGA people. We will have our people in at every level.”

At least 23 candidates who deny the outcome of the 2020 election are running for secretary of state in 19 states. Among those are battleground states that Biden won narrowly: Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona. Trump has endorsed candidates in Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan, the only time in history that a former president has bestirred himself over races so far down the ballot. “We’re seeing a dangerous trend of election deniers lining up to fill election administration positions across the country,” Joanna Lydgate, chief executive of States United Action, told the Guardian. Lydgate’s group also tallies 53 election deniers seeking governorships in 25 states, and 13 election deniers running for attorney general in 13 states.

Additionally, death threats and intimidation from MAGA extremists have caused one in five election administrators to say they will leave their posts before 2024. The most common explanation is that too many politicians were attacking “a system that they know is fair and honest” and that the job was too stressful. A February survey of 596 local election officials found that they spanned the political spectrum pretty evenly—26 percent identified as Democrats, 30 percent as Republicans, and 44 percent as independents. A majority said they were worried about attempts to interfere with their work in future elections.

While MAGA types are beavering away, attempting to stack election boards and other posts with election-denying zealots, what are other Americans doing? The clock is ticking.

Charen points out some of the foolish efforts made by both parties to oust politicians who are obviously not going to be ousted:

If past is prologue, Democrats will probably pour money into unwinnable races over the next few months. Remember Amy McGrath? She was supposed to dethrone Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. Democratic donors gave her $88 million. Remember Jamie Harrison? He was going to defeat Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Donors shoveled $130 million his way. Harrison lost by a 10-point margin. McGrath lost by nearly 20 points. The list goes on. Beto O’Rourke anyone? (Republicans do this too. Just look at the money wasted in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district.)

This year, donors are spending millions in an attempt to unseat the execrable Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sigh. Trump won Greene’s district with 75 percent of the vote. This. Won’t. Work.

Her point? Be smarter: think local elections. And I think she’s right:

Democrats, independents, and sane Republicans should focus instead on the critical local contests that will determine who counts the votes in 2024. Those unsexy races for local positions and administrative posts like secretaries of state could make the difference in 2024 between an election and a coup.

Tangentially, we know that Trump backed 26 primary candidates, and out of that list, 23 won, with one race still undetermined. And while a number of them were safe Republican incumbents, it’s eye-opening to see that of those 23 primary winners, 14 voted to overturn 2020 electoral votes and one voted to acquit in Trump’s second impeachment trial. Charen is right: The time to prevent the next coup attempt is now. Foolish is the individual who doesn’t believe it could happen again.

–Dana

This 5000-word piece began with a question from Time123 asking why I was so upset over the Supreme Court leak. It turned into a rambling discussion about the leak, the protests, the legality of the latter and the dangers posed by the former — but mostly, a discussion about the way we criticize our institutions. Specifically, too often we do so carelessly, with too much cynicism and hyperbole.

Overly harsh criticism of our own country carries several dangers. One is that it gets thrown back in our face. If influential people in the U.S. compare the racial tensions in our country to genocide, China will use those statements to minimize or justify its own actual genocide. If people here call the president a dictator, actual dictators will point to those statements. If Tucker Carlson criticizes Joe Biden as a military aggressor, an actual aggressor like Russia will put Carlson’s comments on its own state TV.

Another danger of rhetorical hyperbole in criticism of our government is that it encourages a fatalistic cynicism within our country, that tears down our own respect for our institutions. And as Jonah Goldberg has argued throughout his career, these institutions are fragile. They are precious. They are what separate us from the reign of thuggishness that history teaches us is the default governmental system of humanity.

That’s not going to be a very popular opinion for a people whose habitual stance is to toss off a quick snarky comment that assumes the worst about everyone in government. Perhaps those who actually read the piece will come away with a different view.

Read it here. Subscribe here.

[guest post by JVW]

Hey, we’ve all probably had a rough first day on the job at some point, but this is not a promising start for Karine Jean-Pierre:

Doocy: "How does raising taxes on corporations lower the cost of gas, the cost of a used car, the cost of food, for everyday Americans?"

Jean-Pierre: "We encourage those who have done very well, especially those who care about climate change, to support a fairer tax code." pic.twitter.com/rcvptEkgPN

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) May 16, 2022

She’s going to either have to work harder to commit these canned answers to memory, or else she is going to have to read her prepared responses more slowly and carefully to avoid stumbling over so many words. And of course we won’t even bother to say much about how empty and fatuous her answer is: more economic ignorance from Team Biden.

But, hey: she was able to promote her intersectionality bona fides — this sort of thing being just about the only Biden Administration “accomplishment” to speak of thus far — so I guess she’ll have (most) of the White House Press Corps eating out of her hand.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

After the horrific attack in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo where a lone gunman opened fire in a grocery store and eleven of the 13 shot were Black, a manifesto alleged to be from the shooter revealed the mindset of hate behind the attack:

A 180-page manifesto allegedly made by Gendron and circulated widely online seemingly outlines the gunman’s racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic beliefs. Among them was a desire to drive all people not of European descent from the U.S., as well as a theory that minorities are replacing the U.S.’s white population. The document seemed to draw inspiration from the gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.

Another document circulating online that appeared to have been written by Gendron sketched out a to-do list for the attack, including cleaning the gun and testing the livestream.

CNN also notes that in their review of the document, the author “attributes the internet for most of his beliefs and describes himself as a fascist, a White supremacist and an anti-Semite”.

Attorney General Merrick Garland later announced that the attack was being investigated by the Justice Dept. “as a hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism”.

The New York Times links “replacement theory” to recent mass shootings involving victim minority groups:

Inside a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, a white man with a history of antisemitic internet posts gunned down 11 worshipers, blaming Jews for allowing immigrant “invaders” into the United States.

The next year, another white man, angry over what he called “the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” opened fire on shoppers at an El Paso Walmart, leaving 23 people dead, and later telling the police he had sought to kill Mexicans.

[I]n Buffalo on Saturday, a heavily armed white man is accused of killing 10 people after targeting a supermarket on the city’s predominantly Black east side, writing in a lengthy screed posted online that the shoppers there came from a culture that sought to “ethnically replace my own people.”

Three shootings, three different targets — but all linked by one sprawling, ever-mutating belief now commonly known as replacement theory. At the extremes of American life, replacement theory — the notion that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” and disempower white Americans — has become an engine of racist terror, helping inspire a wave of mass shootings in recent years and fueling the 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va., that erupted in violence.

The report further points out how the replacement theory has gone mainstream:

But replacement theory, once confined to the digital fever swamps of Reddit message boards and semi-obscure white nationalist sites, has gone mainstream. In sometimes more muted forms, the fear it crystallizes — of a future America in which white people are no longer the numerical majority — has become a potent force in conservative media and politics, where the theory has been borrowed and remixed to attract audiences, retweets and small-dollar donations.

I don’t know the exact number of Republicans who embrace the replacement theory or some form of it, but there is a record of those who have espoused the same or very similar views. Anyway, in what has become standard practice, it takes a former GOP House leader to take her party to task and demand the House clean house:

The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) May 16, 2022

Rep. Adam Kinzinger also pointed out the ongoing problem within the Republican Party:

Did you know: @EliseStefanik pushes white replacement theory? The #3 in the house GOP. @Liz_Cheney got removed for demanding truth. @GOPLeader should be asked about this.

Stefanik Blasted for 'Despicable' Facebook Ads Pushing 'Replacement Theory' https://t.co/RcuzJ37BiE

— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) May 14, 2022

The replacement theory in the MAGA faction of the Republican Party is not just confined to elected officials, but it is also being pushed by popular pundits with enormous audiences, such as Tucker Carlson. The New York Times documented 400 times that Carlson “has amplified the notion that Democratic politicians and other assorted elites want to force demographic change through immigration”. Here is a short compilation of his comments:

Tucker Carlson pushing Great Replacement Theory, all in one place, courtesy of the @MehdiHasanShow on @MSNBC.

Watch/share/be disgusted:pic.twitter.com/uwOeYkWHSW

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 16, 2022

Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term replacement – if you suggest the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the third world. But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually. Let’s just say it. That’s true.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with Mitt Romney’s spot-on observation following the attack in Buffalo:

Good and evil in stark relief: the demonic Buffalo shooter and the heroic officer Aaron Salter, Jr. who returned fire, making himself a vulnerable target. Voices of hate inspire acts of horror; honor streams from the better angels of our nature.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) May 16, 2022

The GOP needs to clean out the rot and needs to do better. However, given that it remains (at least for the time being) Trump’s party, I’m not holding my breath.

–Dana