Happy Sunday, and welcome to the RedState Weekly Briefing — where we take a quick look at the week’s most viewed stories in case you missed any of them. What do you suppose caught people's attention in yet another eventful week? Grab a cup of coffee (or something stronger if you're so inclined) and sit down with this 21st-century Weekend Edition of your favorite (online) publication.
#1 - New: Alleged Manifesto in San Diego Mosque Mass Shooting Throws Wrench in Early Assumptions About Motives — by Sister Toldjah
The two teenagers who San Diego police say opened fire have been identified as 17-year-old Cain Lee Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Liam Vazquez (earlier reports that had his last name listed as Velasquez were incorrect). They reportedly became friends online, where they were radicalized. Both were found dead a few blocks away in a car with what investigators believe were self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
Early on, San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl told reporters without going into too much detail that "There was definitely hate rhetoric involved" in the shootings.
On Tuesday, however, some of the pages from the alleged manifesto of the shooters were shared in an X thread by San Diego activist Amy Reichert, and it disrupted some of the narratives that have been spouted by The Usual Suspects about how the gunmen must have been extremist right-wing pro-Trump/Vance MAGAs who were motivated by a hatred of Muslims.
#2 - Another Line Crossed As Virginia Democrat Makes an Astonishing Threat Against a SCOVA Justice — by Sister Toldjah
Naturally, Helmer was miffed at both the SCOVA ruling and the SCOTUS ruling a week later that left the state's decision in place. But while there's not much he can do about the makeup of the United States Supreme Court, there is something he and his Democrat colleagues in the General Assembly can conceivably do about the SCOVA justices because they are appointed by the General Assembly.
In a recent interview, Helmer openly and brazenly threatened retaliation against one of the justices whose term will be up for renewal in January:
Helmer said the General Assembly will have to reform Virginia’s top court and the judicial appointment process, including term limits, an enforceable ethics code and possibly adding new justices.
“The reality is that we expected the Supreme Court of Virginia to respect the constitution and the will of the people,” Helmer said. “They did not.”
[...]
“We will make sure that Justice Kelsey does not serve anymore come this January,” Helmer said.
#3 - Duffy Humiliates Gillibrand: She Tries to Ambush Him, Then Melts Down When Her $7M Hypocrisy Is Exposed — by Rusty Weiss
Still, some Democrats didn't like the idea. Because if there's anything they hate, it's a show celebrating America.
“It doesn’t smell right,” Gillibrand confronted, perhaps a more appropriate description of her congressional career.
“I think it’s wrong, and I think you should explain to the American people why you should spend your time and why you should be getting a vacation that is paid for by companies that you regulate,” she added.
She fired her shot. And Duffy promptly rolled her argument up in a fire blanket and stomped it out. With what, you might ask? A heaping helping of her own hypocrisy.
“Do you have jurisdiction over law firms?” he countered. “So, you received $7 million in political contributions from the trial bar.”
#4 - Tim Kaine Tried to Flush Hung Cao - Then the Navy’s Top Admiral Clogged the Narrative — by Ben Smith
Kaine pressed Cao over reports of food shortages and broken toilets aboard Navy vessels. Cao argued that legacy media had taken real but limited problems and inflated them into a broad indictment of Navy readiness. Kaine kept pushing, which turned out to be a mistake. Caudle stepped in with a detailed operational account that Kaine had no good response to.
Caudle explained that the system works on the same vacuum principle as aircraft lavatories — effective but unforgiving when sailors put things in it that do not belong there. On a ship with 5,000 people sharing a small number of heads over a ten-month deployment, that is not a trivial behavioral challenge.
“It is more susceptible to misuse, like an airplane’s vacuum drag system. So, whether or not I can put things in it, sailor-proof that I need to talk to the design engineers, but I would say the fact that the time it’s offline, sir, from the time it clogs to offline is a less than 1 percent problem of its overall use.”
#5 - Trump Supporter Beaten to Within an Inch of His Life — As the Left Pretends Rhetoric Has No Consequences — by Bob Hoge
This is one of those stories that leaves me speechless, and I pray for Kerry Sheron and his wife. Although there may be circumstances that we don’t know about yet, I firmly blame the Left for incidents like these. They have ratcheted up their violent rhetoric to levels we’ve rarely seen before, and the results are clear: three assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the cold-blooded ("alleged") assassination of a UnitedHealthcare executive by Leftist hero Luigi Mangione, the savage killing of Charlie Kirk.
And now a man lies in the hospital, fighting for his life. This is just plain wrong, and Democrats need to pay the price at the ballot box in November — and far beyond
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