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by Corey G. Johnson ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. For years, America’s most iconic gun-makers turned over sensitive personal information on hundreds of thousands of customers to political operatives. Those operatives, in turn, secretly employed the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians running for Congress and the White House, a ProPublica investigation has found. The clandestine sharing of gun buyers’ identities — without their knowledge and consent — marked a significant departure for an industry that has long prided itself on thwarting efforts to track who owns firearms in America. At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington, Marlin and Mossberg, handed over names, addresses and other private data to the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Jesse Watters Primetime bookers must be desperate to fill the minutes between type-2 diabetes and CPAP alternative commercials, because they had on their own employee, usually relegated to weekends, Mark Levin. And he spouted the usual right-wing freakout buzzwords: [transcript via Media Matters] MARK LEVIN (GUEST): She's running for president of the wrong country.

“This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Donald Trump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner Jeff Bezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” — Former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron, on X, on the newspaper’s decision to not endorse in the election

Washington Post: “Trump’s recent public appearances have been strikingly erratic, coarse and often confusing, even for a politician with a history of ad-libbing in three consecutive presidential runs.” “His speeches have gotten longer and more repetitive compared with those of past campaigns. He promotes falsehoods and theories that are so far removed from reality or appear wholly made up that they are often baffling to anyone not steeped in MAGA media or internet memes.” “He jumps more abruptly between subjects and from his script to improvising, sometimes offering what sound like non-sequiturs.

Donald Trump said Jack Smith should be “thrown out of the country” in a radio interview, escalating his comments against the special counsel leading the federal government’s two criminal cases against him, Politico reports. Said Trump: “You have to let people in, but they have to come in legally. And you have to get the killers, the murderers, and mentally deranged, you have to get them out.” He added: “And we should throw Jack Smith out with them, the mentally deranged people.”

“A new Republican super PAC is invoking the name of the deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an audacious attempt to defuse the volatile issue of abortion as a liability for Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports. “The group, which is called RBG PAC and came into existence only days ago, began to spend $20 million on Friday in support of Mr.