Losing My Perspicacity, June 16th, 2025

In partnership with

Good morning and Happy Monday! Thanks, as always, for starting your day with me.

I woke up Saturday morning to the horrific news of the assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, (and the attempted assassination of State Senator Mark Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who are reportedly recovering well). I’ve probably mentioned before that my husband is from Minnesota, attended the University of Minnesota, and much of my family still resides there, both in and outside of Minneapolis, a jewel of a city that I never tire of visiting.

It wasn’t great news on any day, but it seemed especially forboding on a day when millions of Americans were set to take to the streets for No Kings rallies across the nation. We learned from my brother-in-law that the Minneapolis rally was canceled and residents across the state were told to stay home while police hunted for Hortman’s killer.

Minneapolis showed up anyway.

Sadly, Minnesota wasn’t the only state that saw violence on Saturday. Two protestors were shot at a rally in Salt Lake City (one of whom has since died) by “peacekeepers” who shot at a man running towards the crowd with an AR-15. In Northern Virginia, a man deliberately drove his SUV into a crowd, injuring a protester.

And then there were all the close calls. In Chicago, a man was arrested for impersonating a police officer and carrying a semi-automatic weapon. In Nashville, another man showed up armed and attempting to intimidate protestors with a gun. In Pueblo, CO, a woman was taken to the ground by rally security after she reached for a gun on her hip. In Atlanta, the Proud Boys showed up.

Only in America could three people be killed on a day of nationwide rallies and have it not be the only thing we’re talking about. The elephant in the room on Saturday was that many of us were on guard for extremist violence from people like the one who killed Melissa Hortman. The rally I attended took place in a bedroom community outside Chicago, and each time someone in the crowd began yelling for a medic, my heart skipped a few beats. I’m not afraid of immigrants, but I am afraid of right-wing nuts who carry guns or drive into crowds.

Like school shootings, this is something America has learned to live with. After Oklahoma City, the federal government should have been on a mission to root out white nationalist extremism. Instead, we had a debate about whether or not Timothy McVeigh had a point. And it’s only gotten worse. According to a 2023 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), domestic terrorism related investigations have risen by 357 percent in the last 10 years. Here are some of the more infamous right-wing terrorist attacks:

• In 2015, white supremacist Dylan Roof massacred nine Black churchgoers in South Carolina.

• In 2017, Heather Heyer was killed when neo-Nazi James Fields drove over her in Charlottesville.

• In 2018, white nationalist and antisemite Robert Bowers killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

• In 2019, Patrick Crusius killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso and admitted that he specifically targeted Latinos.

• In 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse killed two Black Lives Matter protestors in Kenosha, WI.

• In January of 2022, right-wing supporters of Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol, threatened to hang the Vice President, and forced Congress into hiding. Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick died after suffering a stroke following being sprayed by a chemical irritant. Four other Capitol officers would go on to kill themselves in the months after the insurrection.

• In 2022, 11 people were killed in a Buffalo supermarket by self-described white supremacist and ethno-nationalist Payton Gendron;

• In 2023, a white man wearing a mask and carrying a gun emblazoned with a swastika shot and killed three Black people.

That’s a total of 66 deaths (I think- math is hard) just off the top of my head. So let’s dispense with the fiction that the far left and far right are equally lawless. A 2022 study by the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland found that “right-wing actors are significantly more violent than left-wing actors.”

And per a 2020 piece in The Guardian:

We could even toss Luigi Mangione’s murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson into the mix, though I’m not sure we have a good handle on whether Mangione considered himself part of the left or right (he hated both Biden and Trump. He followed both AOC and RFK Jr. on social media). But for the sake of argument, let’s say he considered himself a Democrat. The score is still 66-2.

So why isn’t right-wing violence a huge conversation in our country right now? Probably because no one comes to the conversation from the right with any integrity or sincere intent to have a conversation. Instead, we’ve got GOP politicians and influencers saying shit like this

That’s the suspect in Hortman’s murder, Vance Boelter, a conservative Evangelical preacher who was critical of both reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights. He left behind a manifesto that included a “kill list” 70 names long that included “dozens of Minnesota Democrats and leaders of liberal organizations. By the way, Boelter is now in police custody.

We have a situation in this country where one side of the political spectrum is violently attacking the other on a fairly regular basis, and zero acknowledgement of it from most of our media and political leaders.

As with just about everything else Congressional Republicans claim (The Big Lie, masks don’t stop the spread of COVID, All Lives Matter, Ashli Babbitt was a victim, Donald Trump is a masculine icon), the media lets them off the hook. They say the most unhinged things, double down, and keep doubling down until everyone throws up their hands and goes home. Rinse and repeat.

There’s something to be said for not feeding the trolls, but there’s more to be said for pushing back against false claims to correct the record. Ignore a lie for long enough, and it becomes an accepted truth. For example, the right still insists that “antifa” is a single organization, rather than a vague description of a loose coalition of organizations on the left. And yet a good portion of America thinks “Antifa” is the leftist version of the Klan.

If we were a functioning society, every journalist who covers the White House or anyone in Congress would ask them about the boom in violence from right-wing extremists, and keep asking until they get a straight answer. Force politicians to talk about it. Keep the issue in the news.

They won’t. And Americans won’t insist they do, either. This has become our way of life.

Today: American media has lost the plot; Trump’s Big Birthday Parade was a total dud; Trump’s FAA pick lied about having a pilot’s license; The US Military has stopped caring about civilian deaths, and The High Note.

Let’s go.

Culture Clarity Without the Clickbait

Lifelong learners deserve more than clickbait lists. 1440’s Society & Culture brief takes you beneath the buzzwords to reveal the forces shaping our shared experience—technological shifts, artistic movements, demographic trends. In about five minutes, gain a clear, evidence-based perspective that sparks conversation and fuels deeper exploration. No lofty jargon, no spin—just intellectually honest storytelling that turns curiosity into genuine understanding.

Join Now

What is the American Media even doing?

Yesterday, millions of Americans (I’ve seen the number 11 million, but that is extremely unofficial) took to the streets for the #NoKings rally. That’s a much bigger number than anything that happened on a single day during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests or the Tea Party protests during President Obama’s presidency. You would never know it looking at the New York Times’ headlines on Sunday morning, which didn’t get to the rallies until 11 headlines down, past the warring between Iran and Israel, the murder of Minnesota Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband, a long-form piece on Amy Coney-Barrett that could have run any other day this week, and Trump’s military parade (more on that in a bit).

Next time I start whining about never getting job interviews at the NYT, remind me that I post stuff like this:

It’s true, though, and it infuriates me. Millions of people gave up a significant part of their weekend to protest Trump. Organizers invested hundreds of hours in preparation. There were more than 2,000 rallies across the country. Over 100,000 turned out in Philly. Seventy-five thousand rallied in Chicago. Organizers believe a million Bostonians came out. I’ve never seen mass protesting like this in the US in my lifetime. That matters.

Meanwhile, we’ve got Margaret Brennan over on Face The Nation, spouting off complete falsities:

Just last week, Brennan’s own network, CBS News, reported on a poll that found that 57 percent of Americans found that Trump’s deportation program is making America less safe or keeping safety the same. Sixty-three percent of Americans believe undocumented immigrants should get a court hearing (ie, due process) before being deported. Sixty-eight percent of Americans polled think Trump’s deportation policies are making America weaker or having no effect, with only 32 percent believing it’s making our economy stronger.

For Brennan just to throw out there that deportations are “so popular” is shoddy journalism.

And then we have FOX News, which apparently needs to start giving a breathalyzer to its guests:

I would, however, like to give a shout-out to MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff, who was in LA and running for his life from LAPD every time I flipped over. And ABC’s Matt Gutman, who saw what it’s like to deal with cranky cops up close and personal.

And speaking of the LA rallies, this whole situation was an all-timer.

LASD is the acronym of the LA Sheriff’s Department.

One big, beautiful parade

I have to say, this was really an unexpected bright spot, if you can get past the $45 million price tag, the glorification of the military-industrial complex, and the damage the tanks are doing to the DC streets.

Even the minions were bored:

Glorious.

Another one bites the dust

Do we have a count on all the Trump nominees who have been withdrawn or had to drop out? We have to be in the 20s by now.

Get ready to lose another one. Per Politico, Trump’s nominee to head up the FAA has been lying about having a pilot’s license.

WANTED: Pathological liar/sociopath for administrative role with FAA. Experience/knowledge of planes not important. Willingness to lie for boss a plus.

This seems bad

Uh…

But hey, happy 250th birthday!

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

Everything JD touches dies.

Survive and advance out there today. Don’t let the bastards get you down.