Editorial: May we hear no more from Highland Park gunman Robert Crimo III
Anything unclear about that?
The statement made Thursday by Lake County Judge Victoria Rossetti about Robert Crimo III, the man convicted of killing seven people and wounding 48 others when he opened fire at the 2022 July Fourth parade in Highland Park, was as shocking as it was definitive. If ever there was a succinct and compelling justification for sending someone away for life in prison, Rossetti helpfully provided one.
And then send this scourge away for the rest of his life, she did. Without any possibility of parole.
We know neither the judge's statement nor this sentencing will in any way compensate the people of Highland Park for what happened that day, nor bring back their lost loved ones. We mourned with them in 2022 and we do so again today with full memory of how this nihilistic person turned a joyous day of traditional family celebration into one of horror and loss.
We suspect that many of those who were at that 2022 parade have stared, as have we, at courtroom photos of Crimo and wondered how on earth he could have turned out this way, how this terrifying young man could have embraced such acts and then shown no remorse, how he could have retraumatized Highland Park by his confounding actions even as his case received his due process. He pleaded guilty, which was something, but otherwise made no effort to mitigate the unspeakable pain he caused. On the contrary, he seemed to relish its application.
Crimo is, we suppose, an enigma who must remain so. Ideally, far from sight.
We sincerely hope never to have to type his name again.
But we look forward to writing plenty more about Highland Park, a prideful community that responded to this waking nightmare with resolve, compassion, strength and patience.
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San Francisco Chronicle
22-07-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
Hundreds were reported missing after deadly Texas floods. Most of them were found safe
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Hamilton Spectator
22-07-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
Hundreds were reported missing after deadly Texas floods. Most of them were found safe
DALLAS (AP) — Texas officials labored to account for more than 160 people originally reported missing along the Guadalupe River after the deadly July Fourth floods before ultimately concluding that most were safe and only three individuals still haven't been found, the top executive in the hardest-hit county said Monday. 'Most of them were tourists that came into town and left and went back home and didn't report that they were there,' Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said at a special meeting of the county commissioner court. He called the process a 'Herculean effort.' The flash floods killed at least 135 people in Texas, and most of the deaths were in Kerr County, where destructive, fast-moving water rose 26 feet (8 meters) on the Guadalupe River, washing away buildings and vehicles in the area about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of San Antonio. The sharp revision in the number of missing by Kerr County officials on Saturday followed a familiar pattern in the often chaotic aftermath of large-scale disasters. Hundreds of people were reported missing in the initial days after the floods through a phone hotline and email address, which launched investigators on an 'exhaustive effort' to verify the status of each of those individuals, Kerrville police spokesperson Jonathan Lamb said. 'We understand how critical it is to report this information accurately — not only for the families affected but for the integrity of our emergency response as a whole,' Lamb said. Sharp swings follow disasters Drastic changes in the missing count after a disaster aren't unusual. For instance, the death count from the 2023 Maui fire was eventually found to be just over 100 — far below the 1,100 initially feared missing. In 2017, a wildfire in Northern California's wine country killed more than 20 people, but most of the 100 people initially reported missing were located safe. The 2018 wildfire that largely destroyed the California town of Paradise ended up killing nearly 100 people, though Butte County investigators at one point had the names of more than 3,000 people who were not accounted for in the early days of the disaster. The names were whittled down when the list was published in the local paper, and many people realized for the first time that officials were looking for them. Tourists and campers reported missing Texas' Hill Country is a popular tourist destination, where campers seek out spots along the Guadalupe River amid the rolling landscapes. Vacation cabins, RV parks and youth campgrounds fill the riverbanks and hills of Kerr County, including Camp Mystic, a century-old Christian summer camp for girls where at least 27 campers and counselors died in the floods. The flooding was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, experts said, and it moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in Kerr County, which lacked a warning system . Tracking down the missing At a July 14 news conference, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had lowered the number of still-missing in the state to about 100 and suggested that pinning down that number was difficult. In the days after the floods, officials had put the number of missing at about 170 statewide with all but about 10 coming from Kerr County alone. Campers, residents or people who registered at RV parks or hotels are easier to account for, Abbott said. Others may have been reported missing by a friend, family member or coworker. In Travis County, which includes Austin, the floods killed at least 10 people. The sheriff's office has said one person remains on their missing list but may be removed if they can verify sightings of the person. Kristen Dark, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office, said investigators work the missing person and decedent list 'just like we would work any other cases.' For instance, if someone reports that they haven't seen their neighbor, deputies might begin by reaching out to the neighbor's employer and family. 'They use all kinds of different avenues to see if they can find out either that the person hasn't been seen or that the person is alive and here's where they are,' she said. ____ Associated Press writer Nadia Lathan in Austin contributed to this report.
Vox
16-07-2025
- Vox
Why Trump betrayed his base on Jeffrey Epstein
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy,, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here. President Donald Trump speaks at a rally to kick off the July Fourth holiday weekend at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on July 3, 2025, in Des Moines, last Monday, when the Justice Department announced it would not be releasing documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein and his 2019 death in a New York prison, the MAGA movement has been up in arms. 'No issue has exposed the underlying fault lines in the MAGA tent quite like the so-called Epstein files,' wrote Ian Ward, Politico's reporter covering the right. So why the rage? On the Right The ideas and trends driving the conservative movement, from senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Part of it is anger at hypocrisy. The MAGA base is deeply invested in the idea that Epstein ran a sex trafficking ring — that he did not merely abuse young girls on his own, but rather pimped them out to other rich and powerful people. Pretty much everyone in the administration, from Trump down, promised to get to the bottom of this story — and now, they're doing nothing. 'The conspiracy theorists go into the government, and they come back out and they say, 'Nothing to see here.' There could not be a bigger betrayal, and that is why the heads are exploding all over the right right now,' Nicole Hemmer, a historian who studies right-wing media, told the New Republic's Greg Sargent. But there's something even deeper at work here. In telling his supporters to move on from Epstein, Trump is betraying a fundamental structure of his political movement: its populism. He is showing, in short, that MAGA is not truly a movement of the people against the elites, but rather, a politics that revolves around Trump himself. The personal nature of Trump's political appeal is why he has managed to weather so many previous political storms, from the Access Hollywood tape to his several criminal indictments. While there's a lot of heat right now surrounding Epstein, I expect the outcome to be similar. But the current controversy is important nonetheless. It is powerful evidence that the notion of Trump as an authentic populist, rather than an opportunistic one, should be buried in Jeffrey Epstein's grave. Jeffrey Epstein as MAGA's defining populist issue Populism is one of those terms that people throw around very loosely. The most precise definition, to my mind, comes from a prescient 2004 article by the political scientist Cas Mudde called 'The Populist Zeitgeist.' Mudde saw, long before Trump, that the future of Western politics would be shaped by populist politics. By 'populism,' he did not just mean generic anti-establishment politics, but something more specific: 'an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, 'the pure people' versus 'the corrupt elite', and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.' The key word here is 'ideology.' Populism is not merely a rhetorical style pitting elites against the people, but a genuine belief that this is the true axis of political conflict. In the populist worldview, the people have a unified set of common-sense beliefs ('the general will') that would fix politics if implemented. The only reason it is not happening, for the populist, is that malign elites are preventing the people and their champions from holding power. In a populist movement like MAGA, the 'people' are defined narrowly as only those 'good' or 'true' Americans — meaning typically, though not exclusively, white rural Christian Republicans. Trump presents himself as their champion against the malign forces of globalist liberalism, personified by the Washington political establishment and coastal cultural elite (a construction that easily and regularly shades into antisemitism). This kind of populism is, as Mudde notes, morally binary; they are telling a story not of normal political contestation in a democracy but of epic conflict between the forces of good and evil. And on the right, Jeffrey Epstein became a stand-in for evil. His sexual viciousness and habit of hobnobbing with the rich and powerful — everyone from Bill Clinton to Bill Gates — cultivated a deep belief that everyone in the American elite class was secretly abusing children. These were not reasonable people that you might lose to in a fair election, but crooks who had corrupted the whole system in order to serve their own dark desires. For many MAGA believers, then, Epstein was not just one story among many. It was the master story of American politics: the skeleton key unlocking everything that they believed Trump was supposed to be fighting against. 'What about the Epstein story is so uniquely infuriating?...It's the frustration of normal people watching a certain class of people get away with everything every single time,' Tucker Carlson said in a Friday speech at the Turning Point USA conference. Trump's anti-populism 'I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,' Trump said in a 2002 interview with New York magazine. 'It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.' Given these facts, Trump's decision to turn on Epstein theorists during his second term is unsurprising — maybe even suspicious. Does Trump's name appear in some of the files, as his former ally Elon Musk has alleged? But Trump's dismissal is also ideologically revealing. In his Saturday post on Truth Social trying to defuse the controversy, he completely abandoned populist anti-elite rhetoric. Instead of pandering to the base's conspiracy theorists in some fashion, he ordered his followers to stop asking questions and trust the people in power. 'What's going on with my 'boys' and, in some cases, 'gals?' They're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We're on one Team, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and 'selfish people' are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein,' Trump wrote. For Trump, the Epstein story is not about a corrupt elite that he has vowed to fight but rather yet another chapter in the story of the liberal establishment persecuting Donald J. Trump in particular. 'They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called 'friends' are playing right into their hands,' he wrote. Instead of telling a populist story about the people versus the elite, he's now telling a story of conflict between two groups of elites: the evil liberals forced out of power and the good Trumpists who now control it. Now that his movement controls Washington, he wants his followers to abandon their skepticism of power and simply trust that the government has their best interests at heart. 'LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE'S GREAT!' Trump wrote in characteristic all-caps. This is not the logic of populism, but rather of personalism: a version of authoritarian politics that invests all power and authority in a single individual. This has always been central to Trump's appeal but has reached new heights after the failed assassination attempt last year. 'God miraculously spared the president's life — I think it's undeniable — and he did it for an obvious purpose. And his presidency and his life are the fruits of divine providence. And he points that out, obviously, now all the time — and he's right to do so,' House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a Tuesday morning press conference. Ideologically, personalist movements revolve around the celebration of the great leader's singular abilities and talents. Their unique brilliance gives them the ability to know what's right for the people and give it to them, even if the people themselves do not yet understand the workings of the leader's mind. They are essentially infallible; if they make mistakes, it's because they were misled by incompetent advisers (what Russians call the 'good tsar, bad boyars' maneuver). The Trump movement has deftly blended populism and personalism. When Trump was under four separate criminal indictments during his time out of office, he portrayed it as an attack on the MAGA movement in general by corrupt elites. 'They're not coming after me. They're coming after you — and I'm just standing in their way,' Trump said in a 2023 speech, a line that would become a popular slogan among the MAGA faithful. But in the Epstein case, populist and personalist logics are coming apart at the seams. The populists are furious that Trump is abandoning the people's crusade against the pedophile elites. Meanwhile, Trump supports Bondi's decision to withhold the Epstein documents and is furious that his personal judgment is being questioned by his supporters. Now, I don't think this means we're on the verge of a true grassroots MAGA uprising against Trump. Trump supporters are clearly angry now, but I doubt this rage will lead to a durable approval ratings collapse among Republicans. Every time someone has predicted such a rebellion in the past, they've been proven wrong — a testament to just how successfully Trump has convinced his base that faith in Trump the person is the ultimate expression of populist politics. He will either ride this out or give a concession, like Bondi's head, that fits the 'good tsar/bad boyar' personalist script. Trump's own leadership position will remain unchallenged.
