Quote:The full reasons for the Trump administration’s request that he step down aren’t clear. But one clue may lie in Murthy’s views on gun control. These views were immediately apparent after President Obama nominated him to the post and the National Rifle Association circulated a letter opposing his confirmation. The NRA was incensed by a 2013 letter from health professionals that Murthy signed that called “for Congress to pass stronger gun legislation immediately and for us to develop a comprehensive national plan to stop gun violence.” The letter proposed a goal of cutting gun deaths in half by 2020 and laid out some policy proposals to get there. The Senate blocked his nomination for more than a year, which meant the country had no surgeon general during the Ebola crisis. More recently, in an interview with STAT during the presidential campaign, Murthy reiterated the view that gun violence is a public health issue and said “far too many people die from gun violence,” adding, “And in my book, every single death from gun violence is a tragedy because it was preventable.””

Quote:States have been running a live experiment of sorts on this over the past several years, reforming their criminal justice systems to, in short, punish people less punitively and incarcerate them for shorter periods of time for low-level offenses. Supporters of mass incarceration, such as the Trump administration and particularly Attorney General Jeff Sessions, have warned that these changes would lead to more crime.
But over the past few years, we’ve actually seen the opposite. Take this chart from Adam Gelb at Pew Charitable Trusts, which advocates for criminal justice reform, that shows crime has continued to fall even as states have reduced their prison populations:

• A very late and brief reaction
  
• When a reporter asks what the government is doing about it (after promising that in the wake of the Las Vegas mass shooting), Sarah Sanders accuses the reporter of accusing the President of being complicit in the shooting.
  
• Which, at the minimum, is incredibly hypocritical as the government ran an ad recently accusing the Democrats being complicit in every murder committed by an illegal immigrant.
  

Quote:President Trump’s proposed 2019 budget would cut millions of dollars from federal education programs designed to help school districts improve safety and provide mental health assistance in the event of a tragedy. The budget proposal, which was unveiled earlier this week by the White House, would reduce funding for national school safety activities by $25 million compared to 2017, Politico reported.

Quote:CBS News reported Thursday that it asked the White House to release a photo of Trump signing H. J. Res. 40, legislation that the Republican Congress passed just over a month after he took office.  White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reportedly responded to CBS News in April after a dozen requests for the photo, saying, “We don't plan to release the picture at this time." A White House photographer confirmed to CBS that pictures of the bill-signing exist. Critics said removing the legislation made it easier for people with mental illness to purchase guns, potentially increasing danger to themselves or others. Supporters of Trump's action said the legislation had stripped Second Amendment rights indiscriminately from people who are not necessarily dangerous, such as those with eating or sleeping disorders.

Quote:Suspected school shooter Nikolas Cruz trained as a member of a white nationalist militia, according to the group’s leader. Republic of Florida leader Jordan Jereb told the Anti Defamation League that the 19-year-old — who allegedly slaughtered 17 people at his former high school Wednesday — had participated in one or more training drills with his group, and had carpooled with other members to Tallahassee for the exercises. Jereb says the group’s goal is to make Florida a white ethno-state. He spoke with the ADL after apparent ROF members mentioned Cruz’s membership on the web forum 4chan. He claims he didn’t know Cruz personally and the massacre — in which most of the victims were white — was not done at the behest of the ROF. Two former classmates said he was fiercely right-wing and would discuss politics at school — and that he wore a “Make America Great Again” hat around campus, according to the Daily Beast.

Quote:First lady Melania Trump recently hosted a dinner for influential evangelical figures at the White House. During his remarks, President Trump briefly referenced the recent shooting at a gaming tournament in Jacksonville, Florida. A gunman with a history of mental illness killed two people and wounded 11 others. After expressing condolences to those affected, Trump said dismissively, “how it happens, nobody really knows.” We must wonder why the Commander-in-Chief of the United States, who is charged with running the most complex operations of government — not to mention its nuclear arsenal — finds an event like the one in Jacksonville so mystifying. After all, it is his responsibility to oversee federal departments that conduct mandatory background checks on purchasers of firearms — and one disqualifying criterion for would-be buyers is a history of mental illness.

The president was careful to remind evangelicals, “I have given you a lot. Just about everything I promised.” If there’s one axiom that describes Trump’s political modus operandi, it would be: You scratch my back, I scratch yours. While he’s delivered on his campaign promises to conservative evangelicals, he has yet to deliver on his much more consequential promise to the nation made in his 2016 GOP nomination acceptance speech. I was there in Cleveland and heard him say emphatically, “I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored. The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead.”