-Elise Stefanik spokesman, lying about calling her opponents pedophiles

A neo-Nazi indoctrinated with Republican conspiracy theories about immigration murdered 10 people with an assault rifle Saturday at a grocery store in a black neighborhood in Buffalo, NY.

• The mass killer, Payton Gendron, live streamed his massacre on the platform Twitch, which quickly and indefinitely suspended his account and has, along with other major social outlets, removed copies of the video from its platform. Gendron is 18 years old, and an avowed antisemite. He wrote a 180 page manifesto before his killing spree, which endorses the same so-called “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that has gained mainstream acceptance within the GOP. 
   
• “Great Replacement” describes the right-wing lie that a cabal of elites (usually Jewish elites, in their telling) has orchestrated a plot to increase the non-white immigrant population and use it to “replace” white Americans. Though once a fringe idea associated with neo-Nazis, extremely prominent Republicans, including party leaders and Tucker Carlson, the most widely watched Fox News host, have adopted it in recent months—a time period that coincides with a number of mass shootings by right-wing killers who believe the conspiracy theory is true. 
   
• The 13 victims, including three survivors, ranged in age from 20 to 86; 11 of them, including one of the survivors, were black; two white victims survived the shooting. Buffalo police say they have evidence suggesting Gendron planned to continue his massacre, targeting more black people, had he managed to escape the grocery store before being captured. His mass killing is also under investigation as a federal hate crime.

Now about the Republican connection, and making sure people know about it.

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (who represents New York and will travel to Buffalo with President Biden this week) condemned Carlson, Fox News, and “MAGA Republicans” on the Senate floor for giving the Great Replacement libel “legitimacy.” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) alluded to the fact that one of the promoters of Great Replacement theory, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), is a member of GOP leadership: “The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism,” she asserted, correctly.
   
• But there’s much more work to be done. The fascist movement that endorses replacement theory, and believes it can benefit politically from spreading it, now controls the GOP. And so far they don’t seem too cowed by their obvious connection to the Buffalo massacre. Stefanik issued a joint statement with her senior adviser, in which he defended her replacement theory propaganda. State-Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-AZ), an influential fascist who’s a good barometer for beyond-the-pale ideas that quickly go mainstream within the GOP has already suggested that the mass shooting was a false-flag operation run by the federal government. 

Omnibus Russia-invasion-of-Ukraine update:

• Sweden’s governing Social Democrats party have dropped their historic opposition to joining NATO, which should pave the way for the country to enter the alliance alongside Finland, notwithstanding reluctance to the idea from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
   
• The growth and consolidation of NATO falls against a backdrop of Russia’s failure to achieve its scaled-back aims in Ukraine; its forces now seem to be withdrawing from Kharkiv, and their efforts to make advances in the Donbas have stalled. 
   
• Senate Republicans, who helped Donald Trump try to cover up and get away with his scheme to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, traveled to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky in Kyiv. Those same Republicans, who enabled a criminal Russian attack on the 2016 election, also said the U.S. government should add Russia to its list of state sponsors of terrorism. 

• The House January 6 Committee has reportedly prepared staff for more bombshells ahead of its public-hearing phase, which begins June 9.  
   
• Yet more evidence that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is an own-the-libs style troll, just like his wife Ginni. 
   
• Elon Musk has begun talking about his contractual obligation to purchase Twitter for $44 billion as something that won’t happen. 
   
• Relatedly, billionaire Larry Ellison funded a dark money group that smeared Twitter as anti-conservative before pledging $1 billion to help Musk buyout Twitter. 
   
• New York City has reimposed its indoor masking recommendation as rising hospitalizations trigger the CDC’s new “high alert” level.  
   
• Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has appointed a new secretary of state, Cory Byrd, whose wife supported the insurrection, and is a mouthpiece for QAnon, whose flag the Byrds fly on their boat.
   
• The court-appointed special master tasked with drawing New York’s legislative maps has drafted districts that would be much more favorable to Republicans than the ones Democratic officials drew, and will likely pit Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in a primary against each other.
   
• Check out front-running Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate Kathy Barnette—who claims she didn’t participate in the Capitol riot, and has no affiliation with the Proud Boys—marching to the Capitol with the Proud Boys.  
   
• Pennsylvania Democratic Senate frontrunner John Fetterman suffered a mild stroke last week and will be off the campaign trail through Tuesday’s primary. 
   
• In other minor strokes, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) also suffered a minor stroke. 
   
• Georgia voters have appealed a judge’s decision to allow Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to appear on a ballot for federal office despite being an insurrectionist. 
   
• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot will impose a 10 p.m. curfew for teenagers. 
   
• Churchgoers in Orange County, CA, tackled and hogtied a would-be mass shooter, after he shot six people, killing one of them. 
   
• Tomorrow’s House intelligence committee UFO hearing might just be a banger.

The Supreme Court’s Republican justices are still up to no good, even when the issues aren’t as salient as reproductive rights. On Monday, all six of those justices did a favor for their friend Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and invalidated (on dubious first amendment grounds) a federal anti-corruption law limiting the amount of campaign debt winning candidates can pay off with money they raise after they win election. Cruz filed the suit (instead of using his power as a senator to try to change the law), but it will also benefit people like Donald Trump, who loaned his own campaign $50 million, and can now reimburse himself with what are effectively bribes. At the same, five of them ruled against a Georgia man who’s lived in the U.S. for decades, but now faces deportation because he checked the wrong box on his driver’s license application. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the dissent for himself and the court’s three remaining liberals, but the controlling opinion will effectively shut federal courts out of factual disputes in immigration cases, leaving immigrants with no recourse even when the bureaucracy makes a mistake.   

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The Biden administration has unveiled a major new plan to reduce housing costs and close the housing-supply gap.  

Omicron breakthrough infections may provide a huge immune boost against all COVID-19 variants in vaccinated people.

A federal judge—a Trump judge, in fact!—has blocked enforcement of most of Alabama’s new Republican law banning gender-affirming health care for minors. 

Abbott Nutrition has reached an agreement with the government to reopen the infant formula plant that led to a nationwide formula shortage when it had to be closed due to contamination