Light News Dump

A controversial video of Trump laughing at a proposal to 'shoot' migrants is resurfacing amid two shootings in Texas and Ohio
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-shoot-them-video-resurfacing-after-texas-ohio-mass-shooting-2019-8

March 2017: Trump quietly signed a bill into law rolling back an Obama-era regulation that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to purchase a gun. Trump signed the bill into law without a photo op or fanfare.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-signs-bill-revoking-obama-era-gun-checks-people-mental-n727221

FBI agents are reluctant to pursue white nationalist extremists because they don't want to target Trump's base, former counter-terror officer says
https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-fbi-boss-agents-dont-want-to-target-trump-base-2019-8

Trump pictured greeting guests and smiling at his golf club hours after 20 people killed in mass shooting
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-golf-wedding-el-paso-dayton-mass-shooting-death-toll-a9039401.html

Representative Kenny Marchant of Texas is planning to announce his retirement on Monday, according to two Republican officials, becoming the fourth Republican House member from Texas in recent weeks to head for the exits rather than face re-election in 2020 in a state that is rapidly becoming more competitive. | After a generation of dominance in Texas, Republicans are now facing the same challenges as their counterparts in other parts of the country: By linking themselves to President Trump and his incendiary brand of nationalist politics, they are alienating the sort of suburban voters who were once among the Republican Party’s most dependable supporters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/us/politics/house-retirement-republican.html

Cloudflare Boots 8chan as a Customer | Cloudflare's move comes after multiple mass shooters have posted so-called manifestos to the anonymous message board.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nm5d/cloudflare-boots-8chan-as-a-customer

India revoked special status for Kashmir and dissolved entire "state", Kashmir is an Islamic terrorism movement masquerading as a "state", all Kashmiris are hardcore Islamic terrorists because once again Kashmir is not a region, it's an Islamic terrorist movement
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-49231619

Beto O'Rourke was the first Democratic candidate to pledge to show up for the Giffords and March For Our Lives gun control forum - and he did so *before* the El Paso terrorist attack. He's the real deal.
https://twitter.com/MichelleHodkin/status/1158210169463037954

Clip of Beto on Morning Joe (full video still to come) (via Beto O'Rourke on Twitter)
https://twitter.com/BetoORourke/status/1158362950069116928?s=20

Trump and his people deleted racists tweets in wake of El Paso shooting
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-deleting-tweets-el-paso-shooting/

Trump Administration Has Cut Back Programs That Detect Weapons of Mass Destruction:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-administration-has-cut-back-programs-that-detect-weapons-of-mass-destruction-report

China responded to Donald Trump’s tariff threat with another escalation of the trade war on Monday, letting the yuan tumble to the weakest level in more than a decade and asking state-owned companies to suspend imports of U.S. agricultural products.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-05/china-hits-back-at-trump-with-weaker-yuan-halt-on-crop-imports

FBI warns of copycat attacks in wake of mass shootings
https://thehill.com/homenews/456168-fbi-warns-of-copycat-attacks-in-wake-of-mass-shootings

House judiciary chairman says Trump’s call for immigration reform after shootings ‘reminds me of the 1930s in Germany’
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/05/nadler-ties-trump-call-for-immigration-reform-after-shootings-to-nazi-germany.html

Beto: You may call a cockroach and infestation. You may use that word in the Third Reich to describe those who are undesirable, who must be put down because they are subhuman. You do not expect to hear that in the United States of America in this age, in our generation, with this beautiful country that decided 243 years ago that we would not define ourselves by race, or ethnicity, or our differences, but by the fact we are all created equal
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beto-o-rouke-trump-el-paso-vigil_n_5d47b258e4b0ca604e344276

Schumer, Pelosi demand McConnell cancel Senate recess to pass background check bills
https://www.axios.com/schumer-pelosi-background-check-mcconnell-mass-shootings-58613596-1ea0-43eb-b274-cc46152c228c.html

'MAGA Bomber' Cesar Sayoc sentenced to 20 years in prison for trying to kill Trump critics, including Obama, Clinton, Biden, Booker, Harris
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/05/cesar-sayoc-sentenced-to-20-years-for-sending-bombs-to-trump-critics.html

Iowa native JD Scholten announces second bid to unseat GOP Rep. Steve King
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/05/politics/jd-scholten-challenges-steve-king/index.html

Mitch McConnell's campaign shared a photo of his political opponents' names on tombstones (that are shaped like bullets) after the El Paso shooting | The tweet from McConnell's official Senate campaign Twitter account @Team_Mitch started gaining traction after McConnell's Democratic Senate challenger Amy McGrath tweeted it out on Monday afternoon. Merrick Garland, whose Supreme Court nomination was stalled by and ultimately upended thanks to McConnell, is on another tombstone, as is Kentucky's Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergarn Grimes. The original tweet was posted at 6:35 p.m. on Saturday — hours after news of the shooting started coming out, and just 24 minutes before McConnell tweeted his prayers to the victims and first responders in the El Paso shooting. The tweet was still up as of 2:30 p.m. Monday.
https://theweek.com/speedreads/857086/mitch-mcconnells-campaign-shared-photo-political-opponents-names-tombstones-after-el-paso-shooting

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday pressed Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers on why the public shouldn’t be allowed to see redacted portions of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, suggesting that he may be willing to consider releasing at least some of the restricted document.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/456236-judge-questions-barrs-handling-of-mueller-findings

Jared Kushner Saw Trump Presidency As Chance To 'Dig Himself Out Of' Debt, Pushed Ivanka To Move To D.C.: Report
https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-trump-debt-ivanka-dc-1452672

People suffer from mental illness in every other country on earth; people play video games in virtually every other country on earth. The difference is the guns.
https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1158429087133839360

He incited people to murder Hillary Clinton her with a gun and won the Presidency
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html

A woman in the crowd suddenly yelled, “Shoot them!” Trump chuckled. “That’s only in the panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” he said. The crowd clapped and cheered.
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-what-trump-hath-wrought-20190805-rrgamb5cozcrne45gtscane6su-story.html

NRA spent $1.6 million lobbying against background check expansion laws in months leading up to latest mass shootings
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/05/nra-spent-1point6-million-lobbying-against-expanded-background-check-laws.html

TulsiGabbard does not respond to requests for comment about Neo-Nazi donations to her campaign -- or whether they will be returned
https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status/1158442591060447232?s=09

Barbra Streisand: "This is no time to mince words -Beto is right! And this president has the nerve to blame the news media for these tragedies ? HE is the one inciting violence!"
https://twitter.com/BarbraStreisand/status/1158456643060936711

Trump often blames mass shootings on mental health. When the perpetrator is Muslim, he blames Islam.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/05/trump-often-blames-mass-shootings-mental-health-when-perpetrator-is-muslim-he-blames-islam/

'An Act of Terrorism': Mexico Plans Legal Action Against US After 6 Citizens Killed in El Paso Shooting: "Mexico would like to express its utmost, profound condemnation and rejection of this barbaric act," said Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico's Foreign Minister
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/05/act-terrorism-mexico-plans-legal-action-against-us-after-6-citizens-killed-el-paso

Trump STILL owes city of El Paso $470,000 for MAGA rally from February
https://www.ksat.com/news/donald-trump-still-owes-city-of-el-paso-470000-for-maga-rally-from-february

Second car rams into crowd as chief executive Carrie Lam warns city is being pushed to ‘the verge of a very dangerous situation’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2019/aug/05/hong-kong-protest-brings-city-to-standstill-ahead-of-carrie-lam-statement-live

Any illusion we had that progress is inevitable—or that the change we need is going to come of its own accord—is shattered in moments like this. It is on every single one of us to meet this moment with everything we've got as a country. We will make this right.
https://twitter.com/betoorourke/status/1157823191600914432

Greenland's ice wasn't supposed to melt like last week until 2070: 'Across lower elevations around the margins of the ice sheet, bare glacial ice melted at an unprecedented rate, losing 12.5 billion tons of water on Thursday alone'
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/456112-greenlands-ice-sheet-wasnt-expected-to-melt-like-this-until-2070