Unpacking the system that turns outrage into profit and democracy into collateral damage… The attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night shouldn’t surprise us. Not only does America have the world’s most active small-arms industry that essentially controls the GOP (the reporters got a taste of what American — and only American — schoolkids experience every few months from their “realistic” active shooter drills), but we also host the world’s largest and most profitable hate-amplification industry. Algorithms that amplify hate and division in order to “increase engagement” have made Mark Zuckerberg into one of the richest people on the planet, complete with a super-yacht and a doomsday bunker estate in Hawaii; Elon Musk’s X has turned into a sewer of Nazi-style rhetoric while Musk himself has posted, according to The Washington Post, nakedly white supremacist slogans and statements over 850 times just in the past seven months.v

The Best of the Rest of the News. — So, we’re back to firing squads. — Trump’s approval rating and Americans’ economic sentiment collapse together. — Has Trump’s mental health deteriorated so badly he’s a danger to the world? — Brown skin, speak Spanish, even US citizens get deported by Trump’s ICE. — Trump continues to help Putin by coming up with ways to “punish” NATO allies as he tries to fracture the alliance. — DeSantis wants to further rig Florida’s electoral maps for Trump.

The same bold playbook that built the middle class can restore it, and voters are ready… The “liberal” commentators are shocked. It was reported yesterday that Graham Platner, the Democrat who’ll most likely win the primary to run for the US Senate from Maine, has staked out some “truly radical” positions... One cable host mused out loud yesterday that these positions may help the 41-year-old progressive win the primary against septuagenarian moderate Governor Janet Mills, “but can that really win a general election?” This “don’t be Bernie or like AOC” is the great fear and marching anthem of the mainstream media and the Democratic consultant class.

The bill writes Joseph McCarthy's wildest fantasies into federal immigration law and dares the courts to do something about it… Republicans are at it again, and it’s hard to overstate how chilling this is and what it tells you about the direction people in this Party want to take America. Texas Congressman Chip Roy is preparing to introduce legislation he’s calling the “MAMDANI Act,” named after Zohran Mamdani, the recently elected democratic socialist mayor of New York City, that would let the federal government bar entry to, deport, and strip naturalized citizenship from any person who advocates for or is “affiliated with” what Roy calls “totalitarian” movements. The list includes, from Rep. Roy’s webpage: “[A] socialist party, a communist party, the Chinese Communist Party, or Islamic fundamentalist party, or advocates for socialism, communism, Marxism, or Islamic fundamentalism.” The bill targets people who “write, distribute, circulate, print, display, possess, or publish” material supporting socialism or any of those other ideas.