Lucian K. Truscott IV, Salon

There have been 607 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the most authoritative source. It defines a mass shooting as an event when at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter. That we even have such a thing as a "Gun Violence Archive" is a black mark against this country which can never be erased. We are the only country in the world with more guns than people, the only country in the world with an excess of 30,000 gun deaths each year, the only country in the world with mass killings like the one that happened earlier this year in Uvalde, Texas, when a teenage gunman fatally shot 19 students and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School, wounding 17 others.

So far this year, 639 people have been killed in mass shootings. More than 2,500 were wounded, according to records kept by CNN. During the month of November alone, there have been 35 mass shootings, with a total of 185 people shot with a firearm, and 49 of them killed.

As we count our blessings that we were not among the dead during this Thanksgiving week, let's have a look at the mass shootings that killed 45 people during this month alone, sending 140 to the hospital....

Think back. We've been here before. In 2016, there was the famous "Access Hollywood" tape, when Trump bragged about his tendency to "grab'em by the pussy." Then WikiLeaks moved in to save him with the first of its dumps of hacked Democratic Party emails, these from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Two days later, during a debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump was asked whether what he had talked about on the tape amounted to sexual assault. He shrugged off the question, calling his statements nothing more than "locker-room talk" and, amazingly, admitting, "I'm not proud of it." It was over. He was elected president a month later.

This article first appeared at Salon.

Then came the revelation by FBI Director James Comey in March of 2017 before the House Intelligence Committee that Trump and his campaign had been the subject of an FBI investigation since the previous July. Half the oxygen immediately got sucked out of the hearing room, and there were reports that nearly a tenth of the air in Washington proper had left, too. A special prosecutor was appointed to investigate the links between Trump, his campaign and the Russians. Then came leak after leak after leak, all of which Trump seemed to surf like perfect waves. The report by special counsel Robert Mueller was filled with evidence of obstruction of justice by Trump, but found no "collusion" – legally speaking, a meaningless term – between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and the story died right there....

All thanks to Elon Musk, who has revived the perfect word to describe what the Republican Party has in mind for us if they take over either or both houses of Congress in January: Hellscape. That's what they're planning to turn this country into — a nation that is already struggling with issues of race, economic inequality, gender, immigration and, yes, crime. They've got plans for the hellscape they dream of: More guns on the street will solve the crime problem; going colorblind will wipe out issues of race; keeping the minimum wage right where it is will take care of economic inequality, which is exactly where they want it; passing laws against gender-affirming medical care will handle those scary trans kids; and accusing Democrats of "opening the border" should keep all those brown people on the other side of the wall they (sort of) built but have already forgotten is there, probably because it's a total failure.

This article first appeared in Salon.

The poster child for the Republican legislative future is Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. With Donald Trump already squawking about putting her on his ticket when he announces he's going to run for president — maybe as soon as next month — the Republican Party is planning on giving MTG some seat-time by electing her to the House Republican leadership in some as yet unnamed capacity....

The House Jan. 6 committee, bless its heart, went through it all again on Thursday:

• All the lawsuits Trump filed, and lost, attempting to overturn election results in the battleground states, including excerpts of judges' decisions slapping down 61 of the 62 suits. (No. 62 was a minor technical issue that didn't change anything.)
• The pressure campaign by Trump on elected officials and legislators in battleground states trying to coerce them into helping him overturn the election, including the infamous hour-long phone call four days before the Jan. 6 insurrection to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger when Trump asked him to "find" enough votes so he could carry the state. "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have," Trump pleaded.
• Pressure on the Department of Justice to investigate allegations of election fraud, which resulted in Attorney General William Barr telling Trump that all his charges of fraud were "bullshit" just before he went public in an AP interview and resigned.
• A continuing campaign of pressure on the acting attorney general who replaced Barr, Jeffrey Rosen, and his underlings, aimed at persuading the Justice Department to intervene with state legislatures to help Trump overturn the election.
• The two-month tsunami of lies told by Trump after Election Day, claiming that the election was "stolen" when he knew perfectly well he had lost. The committee included video of Trump repeating stories about "suitcases of votes" and Dominion voting machines, claims that he had been told were false by aides and other officials, including Barr. The committee presented new information that Trump's team had plans, months before Election Day, that Trump would declare victory on election night whether he won or not, a lie he has repeated relentlessly ever since.

• Trump's conspiracy with an outside lawyer, John Eastman, and the chairs of state Republican parties around the country to submit slates of fake electors they hoped would confuse or delay the count of electoral votes, or even throw the election into the House of Representatives, where Trump knew he had the votes and would be declared winner of the 2020 election by constitutional fiat.
• A powerful reminder of the "Sunday night massacre," when Trump's attempted appointment of DOJ underling Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general ended only after other officials at Justice and Trump's White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, threatened to resign in protest.
• More details about Trump's plan, which began weeks before Jan. 6, to send an angry mob to the Capitol after his speech on the Ellipse. He and his aides knew the mob would be armed and equipped with military equipment such as Kevlar vests, tactical helmets, riot shields, handguns and rifles.
• New information was presented from recordings, texts and emails finally given up by the Secret Service and Homeland Security after months of stonewalling. All the information backed up testimony the committee had already received from White House aides about the predictions of violence and the firearms the Secret Service knew were in the crowd at the Ellipse. Some of the new texts and emails contradicted sworn testimony by Trump aides like Jason Miller, who had previously told the committee that he knew nothing about the potential for violence on Jan. 6. The committee uncovered texts that showed he knew exactly what right-wing groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were planning. The committee announced that it is "reviewing" previous testimony, with an eye toward charging anyone found to have lied.

And finally, the headline: The committee voted unanimously to issue a subpoena to Trump, calling on him to provide documents and testify before the committee.

This article first appeared in Salon....

I don't know what it's like in your neck of the woods, but here in our small town on the edge of the Poconos, fall is finally here. It's nippy in the mornings and doesn't get above 60 on some days, and only rarely brushes against 70. The sun is a little lower in the sky every day; people are wearing their quilted Carhartts and fleece Patagonias, and lined boots can't be far away.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Everyone is still going maskless inside and out. It's been this way all summer. You go into the Turkey Hill quick-stop, or the Key Food, or even to one of the small shops on Main Street, and nobody is wearing a mask. I did see one at an art opening last week for "Andy in Nature," an exhibit of photographs of Andy Warhol by Christopher Makos and ethereal flowers by Paul Solberg. There were probably 200 people packed into the soaring space atop Forest Hall, built in 1904 to house the Yale University Forestry School summer program. (The American conservation movement was born in this town, incidentally.) The mask at the opening wasn't worn by yours truly; I've been as accepting as everyone else of the fiction that the COVID pandemic is over. ...