The photo / The guy / The crazy / The weather

The photo. Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott says Pulitzer-winning Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci’s iconic shot of convicted felon Donald Trump immediately after Saturday’s assassination attempt could change America forever.
 It’s already a T-shirt.
 The Atlantic’s Tyler Austin Harper says it captures “a perverse and paradoxical disjunction between … a threat to American democracy, and … that same democracy in all its pathology, mythos and, yes, glory.”
 A cognitive scientist writing for The Conversation: That raised fist is a go-to gesture with a long history of different meanings.
 AP video shares Vucci’s account of that moment.
 Poynter media writer Tom Jones: “Vucci performed his job at a spectacular level.”
 Another shot—by a New York Times photographer—may have caught the path of a bullet whizzing past Trump’s head.
 And yet, in the minutes after the shooting, Trump supporters angrily directed obscenities at reporters covering the event: “This is your fault!

The victims. The attack that wounded Trump left one of his avid supporters dead—a former fire chief who used his body to shield his family from the gunfire …
 … and two others wounded.

The guy. The motives of Thomas Matthew Crooks, who apparently tried to kill Trump—but who wound up dead himself—remained a mystery.
 A former classmate tells ABC News that Crooks was rejected from his high school’s rifle club “because of how bad a shot he was.”
 Yeah, he was reportedly a “loner” who was often bullied in school …
 Law prof and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance urges patience in speculation about his mindset: “We don’t know if Crooks was a disaffected Republican, a crossover Democratic voter, a lone wolf radicalized to some political purpose, or someone with serious mental health issues and a real or imagined grudge he thought he would satisfy by killing the former president.”
 AP analysis of videos, photos and satellite imagery shows the shooter was “astonishingly close to the stage.”
 Congressional Republicans are condemning “a staggering security failure” …
 … and The Daily Beast puts it up there with Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

The crazy. PolitiFact has its hands full shooting down conspiracy theories gone wild on the web.
 Columnist Jeff Tiedrich enshrines Utah Sen. Mike Lee in “the Shameless Toady Hall of Fame.”
 Popular Information’s Judd Legum: Prominent Republicans have demonstrated “how not to respond to a political assassination attempt” …
 … and historian Heather Cox Richardson says they’re “projecting their own behavior onto Biden and the Democrats, blaming them for advocating violence when, in fact, Biden and the Democrats have tried hard to enact common-sense gun safety laws and have consistently condemned the violent language and normalizing of political violence by Republicans.”
 Columnist Charlie Madigan wistfully suggests, “Perhaps someone will ask how a young man got his hands on an assault rifle?
 American Prospect executive editor David Dayen: Don’t dismiss this shooting “as some new entry into American politics. … You don’t get assassination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, on 20 of the 45 men to hold the office of president because all of them served during ‘unique’ times. This nation contains rogues, and those rogues can get a gun pretty much at will.”

The convention. Trump’s close call brings new focus to his selection in Milwaukee this week of a vice-presidential candidate.
 An Illinois Republican who didn’t back Trump in the primary tells the Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet: “We’re all MAGA now.”
 Although presidential candidates normally make their big turn at the end of a convention, Trump was likely to take the stage tonight.
 Press watcher Mark Jacob warns that the TV networks seem poised to normalize extremists there.
 Columnist Robert Reich is bracing for four nights of “authoritarian rhetoric and Trump worship.”
 Progress Report columnist Jordan Zakarin: “Trump was a grave threat to the country before the shooting and remains one today. What happened in Butler … makes him more dangerous.”
 Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch says Milwaukee’s “eerie”: “Americans aren’t any closer after Trump’s near-death experience.” (If you hit a paywall, open that link in an incognito browser window.)
 Political pollster Nate Silver: The shooting may unlock “a permission structure to vote for Trump among a certain type of voter.”
 Reader Angela Mullins objects to Square’s characterization of Silver as a “stats wizard” last week: “Silver hasn’t really correctly slanted things since 2012. He’s really a washed-up ‘probabilities dude’ who now thinks he’s a pundit.”

The president. The attempt on Trump’s life has given Joe Biden’s profile a boost: He addressed the nation three times over the weekend …
 … last night encouraging Americans to “cool it down.”
 The shooting’s put Democrats in an awkward place.
 Chicago Public Square reader and Democratic political strategist Kitty Kurth has little tolerance for talk of replacing Biden as the party’s candidate: “We have been all over Wisconsin … talking to grassroots Democrats and they are so pissed off at the media and at D.C. elites. They feel like they made their choice and they are supporting President Biden. The time for someone other than Biden to run would have been back when they could have run a campaign to get on the ballot and run in the primary. I have spent my entire political career waiting to see two things: 1) The youth vote to show up; and 2) A brokered convention. Neither is going to happen. The Wisconsin delegation met last week and guess how many delegates asked to be released? Not one.”
 Speaking of Wisconsin: The Daily Show’s canceled plans to broadcast this week’s shows from Milwaukee.

The break. Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon gave Trump a win—dismissing federal charges over his appropriation of classified documents on grounds the appointment of a special prosecutor for the case was unconstitutional.
 The AP says the charges were seen at the time they were brought as “the most perilous of the multiple legal threats Trump faced.”

The weather. A blitz of Chicago-area storms last night felled trees and power lines …
 … canceling flights and leaving thousands without electricity …

Crime pays. Wired: AT&T paid a hacker more than a third of a million dollars to delete stolen call and text records of “nearly all” the company’s customers.

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