The Madness of Hate: The shooter in the Buffalo market massacre had previously scouted the location and had two other targets as well, authorities say. 

  The avowed racist Payton Gendron, who is accused of killing 10 people, had written online in advance of plans to murder dozens of Black people. The Washington Post found 600 pages of online messages in which, among other things, Gendron had promised to kill “replacers,” non-white people replacing whites in the American population.

  He targeted the Buffalo neighborhood and its Tops market because of its concentration of black customers. Gendron used a Bushmaster assault rifle legally purchased, but police found other weapons in his car. One of them had slogans scrawled on it, among them, “White Lives Matter.”

  Gendron live-streamed his attack and it’s now been seen online by as many as a million people. His 180-page manifesto is still out there. Graeme Wood writes for The Atlantic that,  “I found on nearly every page of the Buffalo manifesto evidence of profound moral deformity, and inability to think about history, science, race, or humanity in sophisticated and adult ways. It is pathetic, stupid, and witless.”

  Having covered so many mass murders, journalists are having a hard time finding anything new to say. NBC anchor Lester Holt closed his broadcast last night saying, “We knew there would be more and so it is hard to describe what we’re feeling today as shock. What we are, is sad. We are angry. We are tired, so tired. And hardest to say – we feel helpless because we are somehow unable to diffuse the ticking time bombs among us.”

Replacement: In the wake of the Buffalo shooting, conservatives are under fire for espousing or tacitly endorsing “replacement theory”, the idea that white people in America are being replaced by nonwhites.

 Some of it is coming from within their own ranks. In a rare rebuke to her own party, Arizona Republican Rep. Liz Cheney tweeted that “The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse.  @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

  Replacement theory is fed in part by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has bemoaned the fate of “legacy Americans,” meaning white Europeans, even though legacy Americans are native Americans.

   New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, a rising star in the party, once posted a campaign ad that said of Democrats that, “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”

  It’s replacement theory without using the title.

Oh Baby: Abbott Nutrition has been given permission to re-open its baby formula factory, but it could be as long as 10 weeks before product hits the shelves, alleviating a national shortage.

  Abbott shut down when its formula was suspected of making babies sick, but the CDC concluded it had not.

The War Room: Ukrainian troops have abandoned their defense of the steel plant in Mariupol. The wounded were transported to safety within Ukraine, but the healthy fighters were taken into Russian-controlled territory.

The Diplomatic Front: With both Finland and Sweden making bids to join NATO as a response to his invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he does not consider NATO expansion a threat unless it also comes with military expansion. “Expansion at the expense of these countries does not pose a direct threat to Russia,” Putin said yesterday during a speech in in Moscow, but he added,  “the expansion of military infrastructure into this territory will certainly cause our response. We will see what it will be based on the threats that will be created for us.” 

The Cash Vote: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court challenging the federal election law that prohibits candidates from refunding personal loans they made to their campaigns with money donated after election day.

  Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said the law does not serve its stated purpose of fighting corruption and “burdens core political speech without proper justification,” violating the First Amendment.

  Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent: “ Repaying a candidate’s loan after he has won election cannot serve the usual purposes of a contribution: The money comes too late to aid in any of his campaign activities. All the money does is enrich the candidate personally at a time when he can return the favor — by a vote, a contract, an appointment. It takes no political genius to see the heightened risk of corruption.”

The Spin Rack: President Biden signed an order  sending hundreds of Special Operations forces back to Somalia, mostly reversing Donald Trump’s withdrawal at the end of his presidency of nearly all 700 troops stationed there. Biden also gave the Pentagon authority to target about a dozen suspected leaders of Al Shabab, the Somali terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda. 

No Roe: Nebraska Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts said on CNN over the weekend that if the Court overturns Roe v. Wade, he will call a special legislative session to pass a total ban on abortion in his state.

  Host Dana Bash asked, “Do you think that the state of Nebraska should require a young girl who was raped to carry that pregnancy to term?”

  Ricketts answered, “I believe life begins at conception. And those are babies too. So, if Roe vs. Wade, which was a horrible constitutional decision, gets overturned by the Supreme Court, which we’re hopeful of, here in Nebraska, we’re going to take further steps to protect those pre-born babies.”

  “Including in the case of rape or incest?” Bash pressed.

  Ricketts replied, “They’re still babies too. Yes, they’re still babies.” 

  Asked whether he would support any new gun laws in the wake of the Buffalo massacre, the pro-life Ricketts dodged the question.

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