The 24 Seven: Localism
Implications from the arrest of United Healthcare shooter suspect and the second Gilded Age
Coming up tomorrow on the next episode of The Ground Game Podcast,
and I have the great who created Political Wire years ago on to talk shop. (If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably already a regular reader of Political Wire. If you’re not yet, you need to. It is the OG of political blogs and aggregators.)If you’re not already, support independent journalism with a paid subscription — $5/month or $50/year. I stay in the trenches because I believe in and love professional reporting, but I need your help to do that. (And many thanks to the newest paying supporters and longtime paying subscribers! Reminder that as a benefit of supporting my work here, you can reach out to me at tom@24sight.news to schedule a one-on-one 30-minute Zoom call to chat about whatever you like.)
1. Baltimore Royalty
It is no small thing being the valedictorian of The Gilman School in Baltimore. It’s the top of the tiptop in Baltimore (which may not register as much on a national scale in which incoming White House advisers are more powerful than nations and companies, but is a pretty big deal to those of us who grew up around that.)
We’re still learning a lot about the alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione. His online history, his apparent descent into radicalization and a mysterious vanished year before he allegedly murdered United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of Manhattan.
Also, it’s times like this when I’m grateful for The Baltimore Banner. An incredible amount of talent migrated there over the past few years as the legacy outlet, The Sun, has withered under hedge fund management. That talent and the deep well of knowledge has been a boon to understanding this moment, make sure you check out The Banner.
2. Notoriety Achieved
Two men attempted to murder the president-elect during the election. See if you can recall their names without googling? (I got about 83 percent of the names correct, I missed a middle name.)
But the names dominating the news now are a pair of 26-year-olds involved in the deaths of two very different men in New York, one a subway performer and the other a powerful CEO.
It remains to be seen whether the United Healthcare/Mangione story will “have legs” as we say in the industry. We’re decades away from the time of O.J. Simpson and the first Menendez brothers circus. But this does feel different as a story, in terms of the raw organic outrage generated not from the right (which seems to have more of a natural inclination to furiosity by media) but from the populist left, which has been seemingly docile until the election results.
3. Permanent Collapse?
Four years ago, it was Fox News and the conservative news ecosphere which was apparently dead in the water on the heels of the January 6th insurrection and defamation suits for pushing election lies.
Now that same conservative media, spanning platforms of all types, is the dominant force. And not just dominant, but apparently on their way to supplanting traditional media in the White House press briefing room, long a status symbol in American culture and, for four years when Trump was in office, often a springboard to national celebrity for people on both sides of the lectern.
Longtime media reporter Brian Stelter noted this dynamic in his most recent edition of the Reliable Sources newsletter as pundits crow over the perceived imminent death of MSNBC.
4. The Coming Deportations
My friend Pablo Manriquez, editor of Migrant Insider and famous Capitol Hill oil painter, covered today’s Senate Judiciary hearing on the promised mass deportations from the second Trump administration. Catch his write-up here.
Meanwhile, in anticipation of the coming mass deportations, Texas officials have been in talks with the Trump team about massive swath of land which could be used to build an immigrant detention center, NBC News reports. A number of industries which rely heavily of migrant labor have been bracing for a possible slash in their workforces.
5. Quantummania
Google rocked the tech world (no small feat in this time) announcing it had successfully created a quantum computing chip, Willow. I turned to Wikipedia for some layman help, but that didn’t help much. (I’m vastly better at explaining the seemingly non-existent, yet apparently very real, universe of political micro-tactics.)
I’d recommend this BBC piece for some important grounding on the issue, like that it apparently won’t be commercial until the end of this decade.
I have no idea if there are multiple universes, or whether there’s enough computing power to revive the MVCU, but there does seem to be some astonishing discussion of the prospect of multiple universes.
6. Writing Music
Here’s a YouTube of Thelonious Monk performing in Paris in 1964. (It’s racked up 3M views, remarkable.) This has been my soundtrack today. Enjoy.
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Cheers,
Tom LoBianco
National politics reporter and co-founder, 24sight News