Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Las Vegas: “Authorities investigating the Las Vegas massacre turned Wednesday to the shooter’s girlfriend, hoping for more answers about the gunman and what may have sparked the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.”
* Puerto Rico: “Two weeks after Hurricane Maria ravaged this island, doctors and nurses are still in nonstop triage, working furiously to save lives and ease pain while struggling to contend with power outages, hospital evacuations, dwindling supplies and even crime outside their doors.”
* Trump-Russia: “After interviewing more than 100 witnesses and reviewing a thousand times as many pages of documents, the Senate Intelligence Committee has not ruled out that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election and has a lot more probing to do, committee leaders said Wednesday.”
* On a related note: “The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday warned political candidates to expect Russian operatives to try to sow chaos and manipulate upcoming elections in November and in 2018.”
* That’s quite a statistic: “More Americans have died from gunshots in the last 50 years than in all of the wars in American history.”
* A case I’ve been watching: “President Donald Trump’s pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s conviction for disobeying a court order in an immigration case will stand after a judge on Wednesday rejected arguments that it would encourage government officials to flout similar judicial commands in the future.” * Polling: “Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of the Puerto Rico hurricane relief effort. According to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just 32 percent approve of how Trump is handling disaster relief in the U.S. territory, while 49 percent disapprove.” * Clever: “A person dressed in a black top hat and bushy white mustache, occasionally putting on a monocle or dabbing forehead sweat with giant paper money, sat in the audience of the Senate Banking Committee hearing on the Equifax data breach on Wednesday. Former Equifax CEO Richard Smith didn’t seem to notice. The person was dressed to resemble the character Rich Uncle Pennybags from the classic board game.” Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
