Since I don’t really have anything to add to what we’re seeing tonight about the school massacre in Texas, I thought I would share a few data points that seem significant to me.

The Columbine school massacre was 23 years ago (April 20th, 1999). In a real sense every subsequent school massacre has been a copycat of that event. Fourteen people died at Columbine, including the two shooters. So twelve victims. It’s not even that high a number compared to numerous other subsequent massacres.

I’ve said this before. It’s the only thing I can think to add to the conversation after yet another mass shooting.

The inability of the U.S. to do literally anything about the scourge of mass shootings is itself one of their greatest draws, the magnetic heart of their attraction. Mass shootings are fundamentally about losers, rage and the draw of total power. For a few minutes a school shooter holds the power of life and death. That power speaks for itself. But that’s only part of it. Nothing reinforces the power of the gun like the way a whole country remains in thrall to them. The gun — and all the fetishes and cultural baggage surrounding them — is the one totally unassailable, unchallengeable thing in American society.

The practical impact of this signature forgery scandal in Michigan is that it may significantly reshape this year’s gubernatorial campaign in the state. One or both of the leading candidates to challenge incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer may not even appear on the ballot. This may open a path to the nomination for Tudor Dixon, a down-the-line Trumper who just yesterday received the endorsement of the powerful DeVos family. She’s also been praised by Trump himself, though as yet Trump hasn’t endorsed anyone in the race. For whatever reason, she was the only GOP contender who submitted a petition list with very few forged signatures.

As I’ve argued, I don’t think we should care that much about whether Elon Musk purchases Twitter. Having a mercurial scofflaw purchase the company should simply remind us that it’s a private company, not the 21st-century public square or anything like it. Social media companies have a deep interest in convincing us of these things and then luring the public into a faux corporatized speech jurisprudence in which they of course are always in charge. So while it seems increasingly unlikely that Musk’s purchase of Twitter will go through, let it burn is probably the best policy response. But as Musk has been all over the news and increasingly associating himself with the far-right, I’ve been increasingly interested in his main company, Tesla.

The racist mass shooting in Buffalo seems to have brought us to something of a turning point in the American right’s embrace of “Great Replacement” theory as an operating framework of politics. Rather than running away from Great Replacement thinking, they’ve essentially said, “But it’s true. We can’t help that this one guy took things too far.” Indeed as you can see from our headline piece, Matt Schlapp of CPAC is now suggesting ways to limit political violence within the framework of Great Replacement politics. If you’re worried about immigrants “replacing us” the best strategy is to make more of “us,” by which he means ban abortion and thus increase the birth rate of “us.” Sort of a kinder gentler Great Replacement theory, though possibly not that kind or gentle if you have an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.

Schlapp didn’t explicitly refer to white babies and brown babies. But I’m not sure he really had to.

I went back and forth over whether to share this email from TPM Reader ME. But I decided to do so because I think he focuses our attention on aspects of the Ukraine war which aren’t at the top of the headlines but are central to how this conflict turns out and how the conflict plays out beyond Ukraine’s borders. I confess that while I certainly knew how Ukraine is the “breadbasket of Russia” or the “breadbasket of Europe” I didn’t appreciate how central Ukrainian grain production remains in our globalized 21st century world when so many regions of the world have been opened to mechanized agriculture and the trade systems that move grain production worldwide.

It was only a matter of time. A candidate for Governor in Colorado has a proposal: create an in-state electoral college that will systematically over-weight rural votes and thus make it almost impossible for a Republican not to win the governorship as well as other statewide offices. Basically, counties take the place of states and Colorado has a ton of rural counties where very few people live. From what I can tell, he’s not the most likely nominee. But he won the top spot on the primary ballot at the state convention. So he’s not some random gadfly either. In any case, Gov. Jared Polis is popular and seems like a shoe-in for reelection. But this seems like the leading edge of the broader trend.

Some clarification from TPM Reader RM on nasal vaccines and their utility.

I just thought I would add to your statement that nasal vaccines “likely offer a different level or kind of immunity”.  This is totally correct, but I would comment on some of the biology that underlies that statement. 

You can see some of the headlines from last night’s primaries here on the front page of TPM. I wanted to share a couple other general observations.

To me the most striking thing about last night was how much same-day voting, as opposed to early or mail-in voting, has become a central feature of partisan identity for Trumpy Republicans. If you’re for Trump, you vote in person on Election Day. The other stuff is all suspect. The fairly unique dynamics of the 2020 election and its Big Lie aftermath have ossified into doctrines.

Some of you likely have had similar experiences or know people who have. I continue to hear from people who got COVID, got fairly sick, then took the main antiviral, Paxlovid, and basically within a day or so went from bad flu to mild cold at worst. I just heard another story like this from a reader. To be clear, these weren’t people who were hospitalized. But the people who I’m talking about were, either because of age or health conditions, people who had heightened vulnerability to COVID. They were getting sick and then they got almost totally better very quickly. Probably most or all of them would have been fine. And in many cases they were just saved a miserable week or two. But as we know, a bad case of COVID can degenerate quickly.