Nicole Lafond

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Nicole Lafond is TPM’s deputy editor, based in New York. She has also worked as the special projects editor and as a senior newswriter for TPM. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and previously covered education in central Illinois.

Where Things Stand: Republicans Said A Lot Of Very Dumb Stuff About Guns Today
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We’ve been covering Republicans’ various deflection strategies (if you can even call them strategies) on addressing gun reform in the wake of the latest mass shootings in the U.S. for a few weeks. You might even be tired of it by now — we’ve heard it all, blaming everything from “doors” to abortion access to trans-rights for the mass shootings that plague our nation.

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Where Things Stand: Dems Compare Fox To Russian TV For Not Airing Jan 6 Hearings Live
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Fox News couldn’t possibly cut off its star attraction.

Tucker Carlson’s show airs from 8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ET. The Jan. 6 committee hearing’s debut on Thursday begins at 8 as well. It’s hardly a surprise that the network announced yesterday that it won’t air at least the first hearing live — Tucker has amassed a cult following, coming out on top consistently with the highest ratings of any show on cable news networks.

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Where Things Stand: In Milo’s Hiring As MTG’s Intern, Viral Cruelty Remains The Point
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Yes, on its face, it is pathetic and entertaining that the once-relevant, 37-year-old far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos has been hired as an UNPAID intern for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) several years after he was sort of but not really pushed out of his gig at Steve Bannon’s Breitbart for appearing to defend pedophilia.

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Where Things Stand: From ‘Doors’ To Abortion, GOP Blames Everything But Gun Laws For Mass Shootings
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In the wake of three recent mass shootings in America in the last two weeks, Republicans are once again showing their collective ass, deploying a litany of talking points about random stuff to clog up the national discourse on gun violence with anything and everything but guns.

It’s all very pellucid — a distraction tactic to avoid engaging seriously on the issue of our nation’s unprecedentedly lax gun laws and the need for national — or even state level! — gun control reform. And Republican Rep. Billy Long (MO) just dangerously added a befuddling new culprit to the mix: abortion is to blame for mass shootings.

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Where Things Stand: The ‘Investigate The Investigators’ Conspiracy Theorist Lines Of Attack Are Falling, One Day At A Time
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Just yesterday a federal jury essentially toppled ex-President Trump’s victimhood-laced line of attack against the Russia probe when it acquitted DNC-connected lawyer Michael Sussmann.

The acquittal was a significant swing and a miss, not just for special counsel John Durham, who was handpicked by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, but for Trumpers everywhere who have built a brand off of the long-unsubstantiated belief that the Mueller probe was nothing more than a politically motivated conspiracy of the elites to undermine Trump’s legitimacy as president.

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Where Things Stand: Anti-Abortion Activists Have Been Collecting Data That Could Be Used To Target Abortion Seekers
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A recent report from MIT Technology Review sheds light on the ways in which anti-abortion activists have collected data on-site at abortion clinics over the past several decades to go after doctors and others carrying out the procedure.

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Where Things Stand: Destroying Docs In Shady Ways Was Apparently A Fixture Of The Trump WH
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We already know a bunch of details about ex-President Trump’s proclivity for ripping papers into tiny shreds after he was finished reading them during his presidency, leaving the work of taping the documents back together to National Archives staffers.

We also learned that Trump liked to discard documents in other weird ways a few months ago, back when reports first surfaced that indicated White House staffers might’ve improperly handled some top secret documents when Trump brought boxes of records to Mar-a-Lago after he exited the White House. Those reports included befuddling details about Trump’s penchant for flushing records down the toilet when he was done reading them.

But it appears the unconventional (*cough* maybe illegal *cough*) document-destruction extended beyond the former president himself — a man who we all know had a lot of mystifying habits to begin with.

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Where Things Stand: The Dark, Familiar Parallels Found In The NRA Response To Columbine
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Just a few days after gunmen entered Columbine High School in 1999 and murdered 13 students and adults, the National Rifle Association found itself in a situation darkly similar to what we’re seeing play out this week.

At the time, the gun group had plans to hold their annual national gathering just a few days after the school shooting that rocked a generation of Americans. And it was set to take place a few miles away from the scene of the massacre, in Denver.

As is the case today, NRA leaders ultimately opted to carry on with the planned convention, concerned that canceling it would rob officials of the opportunity to own the organization’s response to the tragedy, which was the deadliest school shooting during that decade in America.

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Irate Biden Demands Reform: ‘When In God’s Name’ Will We ‘Stand Up To The Gun Lobby’
Where Things Stand: Abbott Says 14 Children And One Teacher Killed In School Shooting
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Just days after New York state was rocked by a devastating mass shooting in Buffalo where 10 people were killed by a white gunman, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) confirmed this afternoon that more than a dozen children were murdered in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

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