Good morning. It is June 16th. It is a dark and chilly day in New York City as we close in on the maximum daylight of the year. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Vance Boelter, the suspect in this weekend's assassination of Minnesota state representative, Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the shooting of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, was arrested last night, reportedly after a trail camera caught an image of him in the woods, not far from his home in Sibley County, Minnesota. He's been charged with second degree murder and second degree attempted murder, pending a grand jury's potential indictment on first degree murder, which given that he had reportedly disguised himself as a police officer, heavily armed himself, and compiled a kill list of some 70 targets, including the legislators he shot, will probably be forthcoming. 

Flash floods killed at least five people and left four more missing Saturday night in West Virginia. CNN writes that approximately 2.5 to four inches of rain fell within about a half hour in Ohio County in the state's northern panhandle. And more rain is forecast to be on its way. 

Nippon Steel has worked out a new agreement to take over U.S. Steel, apparently salvaging the deal by symbolically agreeing to call it a partnership and substantively by agreeing to grant Donald Trump and future U.S. presidents in perpetuity what the Times reports as being a single share of preferred stock called Class G, as in gold, and the Times continues, “U.S. Steel's charter will list nearly a dozen activities the company cannot undertake without the approval of the American president or someone he designates in his stead. Activities requiring the president's permission include the company transferring production or jobs outside the United States, closing or idling plants before agreed upon timeframes, and making certain changes to how it sources its raw materials. 

In other presidential news, Donald Trump issued a truth social post last night in which he said he was ordering immigration and customs enforcement officers to expand efforts to detain and deport illegal aliens in America's largest cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, where millions upon “millions of illegal aliens reside. These and other such cities,” the President wrote, “are the core of the Democrat Power Center”, initial capital letters on Democrat Power Center, “where they use illegal aliens to expand their voter base, cheat in elections, and grow the welfare state, robbing good-paying jobs and benefits from hardworking American citizens. These radical left Democrats,” the president wrote, are sick of mind, hate our country, and actually want to destroy our inner cities and they are doing a good job of it. There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in open borders, transgender for everybody, and men playing women's sports. And that is why,” the president wrote, I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our great and patriotic law enforcement officers to focus on our crime-ridden and deadly inner cities.” It goes on, but that's the gist of it. 

And, holding that in mind,

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the left-hand column is, “Violent Action Tied to Politics Is New Reality Partisan Divide in U.S. Drives Rise in Threats.” The story takes the occasion of the Minnesota shootings and assassination allegedly carried out by a Trump supporter as the occasion to look at a list of victims and incidents assiduously spanning both political parties, including the assassination attempt that winged Donald Trump's ear and the guy caught in the bushes by Trump's golf course, which the Times calls an assassination attempt, even though it wasn't, and the killings of the two Israeli embassy workers in Washington, D.C., and the fire attack on people marching in support of Israeli hostages in Boulder, to create the impression of a country that is simply spinning into political violence in all directions for no particular reason. “Violent threats against lawmakers hit a record high last year,” the Times writes, “for the second year in a row. Since the 2020 election, state and local election officials have become targets of violent threats and harassment, as have federal judges, prosecutors, and other court officials. As of April, there have been more than 170 incidents of threats and harassment targeting local officials across nearly 40 states this year, according to data gathered for the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.” A huge escalation in threats against local officials, especially election officials after the 2020 election. I wonder if there's any underlying structure or observable cause to who's making those threats. The story doesn't really say. It does, gradually let the tide of current events carry it in a certain direction. 

“Over the past five days,” the Times writes, “in which a senator was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed for trying to ask a question of a cabinet secretary at a news conference, a governor was threatened with arrest by the president and with being tarred and feathered by the speaker of the House. And as tanks prepared to roll down Constitution Avenue in Washington in a political display of firepower, the president warned that any protesters there would be met with heavy force.” Well, now we're not so much talking about it. National public mood of menace. So much as about actions and messages coming from the current administration. But you have to get all the way to the last column after the jump before that really comes into focus.

“Today, the Times writes, while most Americans do not support political violence, a growing share have said in surveys that they view rival partisans as a threat to the country or even as inhuman. Mr. Trump,” the Times continues, “has had a hand in that. Since his 2016 candidacy, he has signaled at least his tacit approval of violence against his political opponents. He encouraged attendees at his rallies to ‘knock the hell’ out of protesters, praised a lawmaker who body slammed a reporter, and defended the rioters on January 6th, 2021, who clamored to hang Mike Pence. One of his first acts in his second term as president was to pardon those rioters.” Yeah, I think the approval of violence is considerably more than tacit there. 

Before we get back to today's front page, I just want to pause and look back at yesterday's. Since this podcast tends to be critical of the ways that the Times puts together the front page, I just want to note that the Times did pretty okay in response to a Saturday full of breaking news. In the headline, “Minnesota politician dies suspect carried a hit list.” 

“Dies” seems a little bit ineffectual But the main headline on the right hand side of the page was four columns “military might protest power / two visions of us take to the streets” with the top position and a two-photo stack given over to a colorful picture of the New York, no King's March and Donald Trump saluting the troops at his military parade relegated to the spot below that. The story itself reads as a moderately successful redirecting of a story about the president's military parade into a story about the protests and the military parade. Like most of the legacy media coverage of the weekends doing events, it doesn't really get at the desolate and desultory quality of the president's military spectacle, but it doesn't make like the Washington Post did, and present the whole thing as a vivid and stirring performance. 

And the separate story and picture gallery inside the paper covering the No Kings events take up most of the two page spread and look much more impressive than the online version of the coverage, which struck a lot of people as perfunctory, did. 

Back on today's front page, the lead headline covering five columns is “ISRAEL AND IRAN TRADE BLASTS AS TOLL RISES / Path to Diplomacy Shrinks, and Civilians Seek Shelter.” There's a picture of smoke rising from Tehran, spanning the top of it. “Israel and Iran,” the Times writes, “exchanged more missile attacks on population centers on Sunday, brushing aside international calls to halt what has quickly become the fiercest clash in decades between the two sworn enemies. The path to diplomacy appeared to narrow after officials called off talks that had been set for Sunday between Tehran and Washington on the future of Iran's nuclear program. In unleashing a series of powerful strikes starting on Friday, Israel said its goal was to disable Iran's nuclear infrastructure. It appeared unlikely that this has been accomplished, experts say. And with each side vowing to pursue attacks, civilians in both countries were seeking shelter where they could.” 

And this morning's news reports say that that's all still going on. 

And below the fold, there's a rosy tinted look at one piece of the Supreme Court. “Justice Barrett is confounding court observers on both sides,” is the headline. “As President Trump was leaning toward appointing Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court five years ago,” The Times writes, “some advisors shared doubts about whether she was conservative enough, but he waved them away, according to someone familiar with the discussions. He wanted a nominee religious conservatives would applaud and with an election approaching he was up against the clock.” Then the piece talks about her taking an assignment from Chief Justice John Roberts to write a conservative majority opinion and then deciding she wanted to switch to the other side, and then choosing what the Times calls “a more restrained route” than Samuel Alito on subordinating public life to the influence of religion. But then attempting to complete the necessary set of three, the Times writes, “and in a key internal vote, she opposed even taking up the case that overturned Roe v. Wade and the federal right to abortion, though she ultimately joined the ruling.” That's a pretty hefty use of “though.” The story continues. “Now Mr. Trump is attacking the judiciary and testing the Constitution, and Justice Barrett, appointed to clinch a 50-year conservative legal revolution, is showing signs of leftward drift.” 

This isn't even the Overton window. This is Jodie Cantor of the Times sitting in a panoramic revolving restaurant and marveling at how the landscape of the city just won't stay put. “Overall, the story says,” as it collides with the jump break, “her assumption of the seat once held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has moved the court's outcomes dramatically to the right and locked in conservative victories on gun rights, affirmative action, and the power of federal agencies. And as previously mentioned, abortion. But in Trump related disputes, she is the member of the supermajority who has sided with him the least.” 

Poor Amy Coney Barrett. If only her scrupulous integrity could have picked up any sort of signal as she allowed Trump and the Republican Party to usher her through a sped-up confirmation process to seize a still warm empty seat on the court, even as voters were casting their ballots to take the appointment and confirmation powers away from Trump and the Republicans in the Senate, that her party might be turning away from a commitment to democracy and the rule of law. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Socca-Ho. You the listeners keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips, keep sending those along if you are able, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.