Here’s part two of my podcast interview with Bhaskar Sunkara, founder, editor and publisher of Jacobin Magazine, Episode 23 of The Josh Marshall Show. (If you missed part one, you can find it here.)
I woke up this morning, pulled my iPad off my nightstand and opened Twitter to see if there was any overnight news. There was a horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas. I spun around to get a handle on the scope of the attack, the death toll and other basic facts. Then I started thinking through what has now become a basic ritual. Read More
Allegra Kirkland walks us through the first details emerging about Stephen Paddock, the now-dead shooter in last night’s massacre that led at least 58 dead and literally hundreds injured.
TPM Reader JP writes in to note that, as he put it, the number of deaths in Las Vegas is greater than many of the most famous battles of the Revolutionary War. These are quite different eras, settings, contexts. Let’s stipulate that it is hard to compare such radically different events. Still, the bare numbers tell a story.
Lexington & Concord, 1775: 49 Americans killed. Read More
On a day like this it is hard to focus attention on anything else. But news and the everything else happening in the country continues. On that note, I wanted to make sure you know that over the weekend Congress allowed funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to lapse. CHIP is a 90s-era law which provides health insurance coverage for some 9 million children from low income families across the country. The Senate does not seem to have made a conscious or deliberate, collective decision to discontinue CHIP. They just ran out of time because they spent most of the legislative calendar trying to repeal Obamacare. Here’s a look at the chances of re-passage and which states are going to be hit hardest and first by the (for now) end of funding for the program.
The Department of Education may spend as much as $6.54 million to provide security for Secretary Betsy DeVos, who appears to face threats no greater than any previous Education Secretary.
Trump, moments ago: “Look, we have a tragedy. We’re going to — what happened in Las Vegas is in many ways a miracle. The police department has done such an incredible job, and we’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by.”
Jelani Cobb has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2015. He writes frequently about race, politics, history, and culture. His most recent book is “The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress.” He’s a professor of journalism at Columbia University. He won the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, for his columns on race, the police, and injustice.
Jelani will be in the Hive to discuss race relations in America, including the NFL and Trump’s verbal war with its protesters. Post your questions and join us this Friday! If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.
Mick Mulvaney was one of the hardest core Tea Partiers and Freedom Caucusers during his time in the House. Part of that was a demand for fiscal austerity and budget cutting during the thinnest years coming out of the Great Recession. Now he’s decided deficits aren’t just okay. They’re positively necessary. Read More
House Republicans want to hold kids’ health insurance hostage for cuts to Medicare and public health.