“There have been over 322 school shootings in the United States in 2024, according to a report by data scientist David Riedman in his independent K-12 School Shooting Database. Riedman found that there have been at least 210 victims, both deceased and wounded.
The number is slightly lower than the report for 2023 of 349 school shootings — the highest number between 1966 and 2023. In 2023, there were least 249 victims reported as a result of school shootings.
These numbers do not include shootings on college campuses, but they do include gang and domestic violence, shootings at sports games and other after-school events, escalated fights, accidents and suicides.”
“there are two main reasons Americans tend to overestimate the extent to which crime happens: Media coverage of crime can often overstate trends and sometimes sensationalizes incidents that grab people’s attention. And law-and-order campaigns — the kind of campaigns that Trump ran, for example — are a mainstay of American politics and appear in virtually every election cycle in local, state, and national races.”
…
“The United States is, after all, a relatively violent country and has a higher homicide rate than its peers. But while crime is a problem, lawmakers tend to react too quickly to crime trends, often by passing shortsighted tough-on-crime laws that bolster the perception of public safety by, say, putting more cops on the streets, but end up exacerbating the existing flaws of the criminal justice system, including sending poorer and more marginalized people to prison.”
“Mangione never mentioned being covered by or angry with United Healthcare specifically in any social media, according to multiple reports. But Samadani, who treats patients with spondylolisthesis, notes that many insurers require patients to undergo six to 12 weeks of physical therapy before the companies will agree to cover surgery or even imaging to diagnose the condition. And for someone with severe spondylolisthesis, physical therapy can be “excruciating” and won’t necessarily help, she adds. “It’s sort of like a torture, a mandatory torture imposed by the insurance company,” Samadani says.
And that’s if they are treated at all. Samadani says she’s seen multiple young patients who were initially turned away by doctors who didn’t believe they could have chronic back pain. “In the case of this particular kid, my guess is that he was in massive pain,” she says.”
“Luigi Mangione appeared carefree while enjoying a trip across Asia just months before he allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, suggesting he suffered a rapid unraveling in the lead-up to the brazen slaying.
One of a pair of friends who were vacationing across Asia told TMZ that they met 26-year-old Mangione by chance at a Muay Thai fight in Krabi, Thailand in April of this year. The trio quickly hit it off and decided to travel together.
After exploring Krabi together, the group parted ways when Mangione went to Phuket, while the pair of friends visited Malaysia. But they later reconnected for a road trip across Thailand, stopping off in Khao Sok and Bangkok, according to TMZ.
All the while, the source told TMZ, the software engineer did not show any signs of being a cold-blooded killer—in fact, he seemed like the typical young man enjoying the chance to explore a different country.
The source’s characterization of Mangione as a “super friendly, communicative, and open” person aligns with other accounts from people who had encountered the Ivy League graduate before he entered the public eye this week.”
…
“There have been some signs, though, that in the months leading up to the shooting Mangione took a dark turn. His social media presence has revealed a suite of health struggles—as well as a penchant for radical political and social texts, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto.
Loved ones had expressed concern about Mangione on social media days before the murder, and The New York Post reported that his mother filed a missing-persons report for him last month.”
““I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy?””
“Luigi Mangione, the man charged with murder in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, seemed to support Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appeared to harbor frustrations with the medical field, and expressed skepticism toward both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, deleted X posts show.
Mangione, a 26-year-old software developer who reportedly fell out of touch with friends and family after back surgery last year, reposted Edward Snowden’s suggestion that Democrats should nominate Kennedy for president following Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June.”
“police identified the person of interest as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who was spotted at a McDonald’s in Altoona and taken into custody by local police on gun charges. Mangione was found in possession of a ghost gun and suppressor consistent with the weapon seen in video footage of the crime, a fake New Jersey ID matching the one the suspect is believed to have used at a Manhattan hostel and clothing, including a mask, that match those worn by the suspect.”
“the Texas Supreme Court handed down an extraordinary order saving Robert Roberson from execution — but potentially not for very long.
Roberson was convicted in 2003 of murdering his daughter on the theory that she died of “shaken baby syndrome.” However, in an extraordinary turn of events, it now appears likely that Roberson is innocent. Not only that, but it is far from clear that his daughter was even a victim of murder in the first place.
One reason to doubt the conviction is that modern science looks at shaken baby syndrome with increasing skepticism. More importantly, however, the evidence in Roberson’s case suggests that his poor girl actually died from a combination of pneumonia and medications that should never have been prescribed to such a young patient, and that the injuries that a 2003 jury attributed to child abuse may have resulted from a surgery.
Another reason why the order in In re Texas House of Representatives is so extraordinary is that it involves what may be an unprecedented conflict between the state’s legislature and its governor. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has the power to issue a 30-day pause on Roberson’s execution (although not to grant him permanent clemency) but has thus far refused to do so”
…
“a bipartisan group of state lawmakers issued a subpoena seeking Roberson’s testimony before a committee of the state’s House of Representatives. This hearing isn’t scheduled until Monday, and Roberson obviously could not comply with this subpoena if he had been killed Thursday night.
So Roberson’s case raises what may be a unique separation of powers issue under the Texas Constitution: Can Texas’s executive branch of government carry out an otherwise lawful execution if doing so would prevent its legislative branch from hearing testimony from a witness it has already subpoenaed?”
…
“The striking thing about this case, however, is that virtually everyone who has touched it wants Roberson to live except for the few people in Texas’s government (the Court of Criminal Appeals, the pardon board, and Abbott) who actually have the power to save him.”
“There is a “small number of non-detained migrants” who have been convicted of homicide but can’t be sent back to their home countries after serving their time, mostly because the U.S. doesn’t have repatriation agreements with those countries, Nowrasteh says. A 2001 Supreme Court decision bars ICE from indefinitely keeping someone in immigration detention, but “non-detained” people are often still subject to ICE check-ins or electronic monitoring.
Trump is also wrong to claim that these individuals all came to the U.S. under the Biden administration. The list “includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more,” explained the Department of Homeland Security in a Saturday statement, “the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration.””
…
“The number of convicted criminals on ICE’s nondetained docket hasn’t grown significantly under President Joe Biden, reported The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. In August 2016, five months before Trump took office, there were 368,574 on the docket; in June 2021, five months into Biden’s presidency, there were 405,786; and in December 2022, nearly two years into Biden’s presidency, there were 407,983.
As he campaigns ahead of the presidential election next month, Trump has routinely said outrageous, misleading, and false things about immigrants and crime. He often talks about a “migrant crime” wave and claims that it “is taking over America.” Much like his migrant murderers claim, the true picture looks very different. Crime decreased in the cities that received the most migrants through Texas’ Operation Lone Star busing activities, per NBC News. “The most recent significant crime spike in recent years occurred in 2020,” Cato Institute Associate Director of Immigration Studies David J. Bier told Reason in March, “when illegal immigration was historically low until the end of the year.”
Trump paints a terrifying picture of migrants and migration, but the reality is far more nuanced and far less dangerous than he would suggest.”