Republicans have left what they see as the minimum acceptable length of time after a tragedy before they start blaming school shootings on anything but the one consistent factor – here’s a roundup of everything you need to know
Donald Trump is having another duvet day. No public events are on his schedule today – again. We wish the President, 79, well.
But he’s still Truthing away, presumably from his exceptionally large and comfy bed. And the people around him are being as delightful as ever…
Republicans have left what they see as the minimum acceptable length of time after a tragedy before they start blaming school shootings on anything but the one consistent factor.
Trump has put the squeeze on nearly $5bn of what was left of America’s foreign aid budget. And the way he’s done it isn’t just bad for foreign aid.
Meanwhile, in Trump World:
- JD Vance defended prayer as a way of stopping mass shootings
- RFK blamed it on the drugs
- Other people blamed it on trans people, obviously
- Vance got thwarted by protesters
- Trump revoked Kamala Harris’ security protection
- Good luck trying to get a parcel in America
- A traitor gets a 21 gun salute
- …aaand Trump finds a new way to defy Congress
Here’s all that and more, as we round up everything that happened in the last 24 hours that you need to know about.
1. Republicans are responding to the Minneapolis school shooting exactly as you’d expect them to
A coward with three legally purchased military weapons shot a hail of bullets into children through the windows of a church on Wednesday.
After former Press Secretary, now MSNBC host Jen Psaki argued “thoughts and prayers” were not enough of a response to a tragedy that is all too common, and almost entirely preventable, JD Vance took it as a sign to defend… prayer.
House Speaker Mike Johnson went on to accuse Psaki of “attacking religion”, which she obviously wasn’t – when there are “a lot of common sense solutions” to mass shootings.
You mean gun control, right Mike? Mike?
“…that do not involve taking away the constitutional rights of law abiding American citizens.”
Oh.
“At the end of the day the problem is not guns. Ok, Jen Psaki? The problem is the human heart. It’s mental health.”
Right.
2. RFK: Guns don’t kill people, drugs do…
Meanwhile, brain-wormed bear botherer RFK Jr can’t open his mouth without saying something that’s patently untrue, and easy to check.
And he used it… as far as we can tell…to try and argue vaccinations and psychiatric drugs were responsible for the shooting. Not guns, pills and jabs.
Let’s take it apart, shall we?
“People have had guns in this country forever,” he argued. “When I was a kid, we had shooting clubs at our school. People, kids, my classmates, other people, would bring a .22 rifle with their guns to school and park it in the parking lot.”
Worth noting at this point that a .22 rifle – a long-barrelled, bolt-action hunting rifle – and a military assault rifle, which can fire 150 bullets a minute, are not the same thing. And that’s before you get to the pistol and the shotgun.
And it’s true, people have had guns in the US “forever” – just not on anything like the scale that they have now. We’ll come to that in a moment.
RFK went on: “There’s never been a time in the history of humanity when people walked into a crowd, or a church, or a movie theatre or a school…and just started randomly shooting.”
Also not true. The first widely recorded mass shooting event in the US dates back to 1966, when 25-year-old Charles Whitman killed 15 people and injured 31 more, shooting them indiscriminately from the tower of the University of Texas.
Studies show there was a low, but steady stream of what would be considered mass shootings from then until the 80s and 90s, when the figures started to increase dramatically.
RFK went on: “It’s happening in our country, not around the world.”
This is true. America accounts for 31% of all mass shooting deaths, despite having 5% of the population. There are three times as many deaths as in France, and 10-20 times as many as in other European countries.
Then he said: “There are other countries that have comparable numbers of guns. Something changed.”
Which is so wildly, ridiculously untrue that it’s hard to get over.
The most recent Small Arms Survey found there were 120 guns for every 100 people in the US. Yes, that’s right. There are more guns than people.
That’s more than double the next highest per-capita gun ownership – Yemen, where it’s 53 per 100.
But yes, something has changed over time. Back when RFK was a lad, not only were the guns cumbersome and difficult to use…there were far fewer of them.
In 1945, after WWII, there were about 45 million guns in civilian hands – about one for every three people.
By 1992 that figure was 192 million. In 2007 it was 290 million – about 97 guns per 100 residents.
And you’ll remember that it was in the 80s and 90s that’s when mass shootings in the US started to rise.
Now it’s thought around 392 million guns are in circulation in the US.
But RFK isn’t interested in that data point. He said: “One of the culprits we have to examine is whether the fact that we are the most over medicated nation in the world…”
OK, Rob.
3. Hang on, is there a scapegoat we can blame this one? There is? Oh marvellous.
Inevitably, the worst people on the internet have seized upon Minneapolis shooter Robin Westman being trans.
Lists started going round, pushed by extremist accounts like Libs of Tiktok, of mass shootings perpetrated by trans people. The lists were all different, but they all ended with something like “DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM?”
And Tom Emmer, the Republican House Majority Whip, said it out loud, taking aim at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for, I guess, not being mean enough to trans kids.
“It starts at the top,” he said.
“If a gun wasn’t going to be available, clearly based on what this young man, what little we know of it right now, he would have found another way to commit a heinous act like this,” Emmer said.
“That wasn’t going to stop him, and that’s not what caused the problem. What caused the problems is all the transgender confusion that Tim Walz and his Democrat colleagues are causing.”
Donald Trump Jr, on Instagram posted a list of trans-involved shootings, adding: “But Rednecks with AR‑15’s are the problem.”
He then wrote: “Like what pumping kids full of hormones in an attempt to defy science and nature actually does to them? … it seems to me there is no more violent group in the world per capita than the radical trans community…”
RFK said ‘SSRIs’ – psychiatric meds often taken by trans people – might be the problem.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Walsh, Laura Loomer— all immediately seized on Westman’s trans status.
This is, obviously, insane. I did a quick dig on mass shootings in the US since 2018 and found 5 where it had been reported that the perpetrator was trans, including Wednesday’s tragedy.
But that’s 5 out of 4,215 shootings over the same period, so about 0.12%.
There are only about 1.6 million trans people in the US, so about 0.6% of the population.
About 98% of shooters are cis male, and while we’re at it, 52% are white.
So in practical terms, school shooters are about 450 times more likely to be a white man than a trans person.
Meanwhile, 100% of mass shootings are perpetrated by people with easy, legal access to guns. Shrug.
4. Trump yanks Kamala’s security protection
Donald Trump today revoked secret service protection from his opponent in the 2024 election, Kamala Harris.
Former vice presidents usually get protected for six months after leaving office.
But, understandably given the circumstances, Joe Biden extended that to 18 months for Harris.
They will be terminated on Monday.
The move to drop Harris’ Secret Service protection comes as the former vice president is about to embark on a book tour for her memoir, titled “107 Days.” The book is scheduled to be released next month.
5. Vance thwarted by wily protesters
JD Vance gave a speech in Wisconsin last night. As usual there were protesters there to give him a warm welcome.
On his way out, it seems he didn’t fancy being confronted by them, so he took his motorcade the wrong way down a one way street to avoid them.
Sadly, he was thwarted by their ability to walk without using roads.
6. Loads of countries just aren’t sending packages to the US any more
This happened a few days ago, but it’s so baffling that it’s worth reporting.
Around 30 countries have just stopped sending small parcels to the US because of confusion over Trump’s tariffs.
Goods under $800 used to be exempt from customs fees, until today – when the so-called “de minimis exemption” is scrapped.
Purchases that previously entered the US without needing to clear customs will require vetting and be subject to their origin country’s applicable tariff rate, which can range from 10% to 50%.
For the next six months, carriers handling orders sent through the global mail network also can choose a flat duty of $80 to $200 per package instead of the value-based rate.
The United Nations agency that coordinates international mail deliveries says it is working to get small parcels dispatched to the United States – but said they’d not been given enough time or guidance to comply with procedures before the change kicked in.
7. A dead January 6th rioter is going to get military funeral honours
The US government is offering military funeral honours to a January 6th rioter who was killed while trying to violently overthrow them.
Ashli Babbit was shot dead while wearing a Trump campaign flag, while attempting to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby inside the Capitol.
She was repeatedly warned to stop before a police officer opened fire.
Trump, who still denies he lost the 2020 election, has tried to repaint the January 6th insurrection as a “patriotic stand”, as opposed to what it actually was, a failed attempted coup.
8. Trump won’t spend $4.9 billion in approved foreign aid
President Donald Trump has told House Speaker Mike Johnson that he won’t be spending $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.
For the first time in 50 years, he’s using a tactic called “pocket recission”, which is when a president submits a request to Congress to not spend approved funds toward the end of the fiscal year, so that Congress cannot act on the request in the 45-day timeframe and the money goes unspent as a result. The fiscal year draws to a close at the end of September.
The last pocket recession was in 1977 by then-President Jimmy Carter, and the Trump administration argues that it’s a legally permissible tool.
But such a move, if standardised by the White House, could effectively bypass Congress on key spending choices and potentially wrest some control over spending from the House and the Senate.
