OUR PICKSMinnesota Suspect: from Youthful Evangelizer to Far-Right Zealot | On Immigration, Trump Runs into Reality | Terrorists Could Turn Driverless Cars into Slaughterbots, and more

‘Psyop’: How Far-Right Conspiracy Theories About the Minnesota Shooting Evolved to Protect MAGA  (David Gilbert, Wired)
Influencers like Alex Jones and Elon Musk have spent the weekend blaming the murder of Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman on leftists and the deep state.

Minnesota Shooting Suspect Allegedly Used Data Broker Sites to Find Targets’ Addresses  (Lily Hay Newman, Wired)
The shooter allegedly researched several “people search” sites in an attempt to target his victims, highlighting the potential dangers of widely available personal data.

As ‘Lone Actor’ Attacks Rise, Trump Cuts Program Aimed at Spotting Them  (USATODAY)
Just as politically motivated attacks by so-called “lone actors” surge across the country, the administration of President Donald Trump is dismantling the very office that oversees efforts to identify and stop such violent extremists before they strike.

Minnesota Shooting Suspect Went from Youthful Evangelizer to Far-Right Zealot  (Dustin Nelson, Annie Gowen, Jonathan O’Connell and Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post)
Vance Boelter grew up in a sports-loving Lutheran family in a small Minnesota town where nobody locked their doors — a background that gave little hint of the zealotry to come or the deadly violence of which he is now accused. At 17, he had a religious conversion. As he recalled decades later during a passionate sermon overseas, what happened next shook his life. Waving a Bible and thundering from the podium, he spoke about meeting the holy spirit and running off pamphlets about Jesus to give to everyone he knew.

Trump Scales Back Biden’s Product Security Demands  (Tom Uren, Lawfare)
An executive order signed by President Trump has scaled back the U.S. government’s cybersecurity ambitions. It has dropped a range of provisions that would encourage organizations to adopt more stringent security standards.
The order largely takes aim at directives issued in January of this year by then-President Biden. One part of that January order stipulated that the government “identify a coordinated set of practical and effective security practices to require when it procures software” and that vendors follow those practices. Trump’s order keeps the standards development part but ditches the need for vendors to actually adhere to them.

On Immigration, Trump Runs into Reality  (Binyamin Appelbaum, New York Times)
President Trump presented his election as a mandate for deportation. But he is encountering the competing forces that have long prevented any significant change in the status quo.
Last week Trump suspended a key part of his deportation campaign, instructing federal agents to suspend raids on farms, hotels and restaurants, looking for people who don’t have permission to work in the U.S..
The president attributed the shift to complaints from employers who depend on the labor of workers who aren’t allowed to work here.
Trump sought to reassure supporters by declaring that the government would expand immigration raids in cities, but he is caught in a trap of his own making.
The president has built political support for deportations by demonizing immigrants, and many Americans have been receptive to his arguments in the abstract, willing to believe that the immigrants they don’t know are bad people.
The problem Trump now faces is that the people he’s trying to round up and deport are not gang members. They’re farmworkers and restaurant cooks.
It’s easy to promise to deport millions of imaginary bad people. The hard part is figuring out how to deal with the millions of actual immigrants who live here.

Trump’s Deportations Aren’t What They Seem  (Ali Breland, The Atlantic)
The White House’s callous tactics are warping perceptions of reality.

Fewer Hate Groups Formed in 2024 Even as Far-Right Ideologies Are Gaining Ground in Mainstream Culture  (Milwaukee Independent)
The number of White Nationalist, hate, and anti-government groups around the U.S. dropped slightly in 2024, not because of any shrinking influence but rather the opposite. Many feel their beliefs, which include racist narratives and so-called Christian persecution, have become more normalized in government and mainstream discourse.

Terrorists Could Turn Driverless Cars into Slaughterbots, UN Warns  (Matt Dathan, The Times)
Its report also suggests that reliance on artificial intelligence may leave the emergency services vulnerable to malicious hackers.