It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Heather Digby Parton, contributing writer at Salon.com and proprietor of the blog Hullabaloo, to round up the week in news. Then, Sam and Emma are joined by Matthew Film Guy! Emma and Sam first dive into the Uvalde Police’s ever-changing story, the White House’s upcoming, likely-to-fail gun control package, and the GOP striking down a domestic terror bill, before watching Texas Lt. Chris Olivarez excuse Uvalde police’s inaction as believing they had “contained” the shooter… inside of a childrens’ classroom. Digby then joins as she and Sam reflect on two decades of covering these senselessly devastating instances of gun violence against children, from Wayne LaPierre asking the government to pry his gun from his “cold dead hands” in the wake of Columbine, to the tentative moments after Sandy Hook, where it seemed as though politicians would come around to reform, only for the NRA to disseminate all of the necessary talking points in a complete rejection of progress. This brings Emma, Sam, and Heather to a discussion on the collapse of the NRA in recent years, held up in court over embezzlement charges, yet with the Republican base more than picking up their torch and centering fundamentalist takes on gun ownership in electoral pushes. After briefly touching on the failure of Democrats in the wake of these mass shootings, reaching all the way back to their blame of Al Gore’s gun control stance in 2000, Sam, Emma, and Digby return to the devastation in Uvalde as they tackle how a fully-militarized police department, as we have throughout the US, finds it reasonable to leave a mass shooter in a school filled with children due to fears for THEIR OWN (the cops’) safety, as the Uvalde Police now claim they believed there to be no more living children in the classroom, despite the multiple incoming 911 calls FROM LIVING CHILDREN, clamoring from one lie to another as federal inaction from the democrats is the only repercussion that looms. Then, Matthew Film Guy joins as they discuss the central importance of art in creating the worlds we imagine for our futures, and in challenging and disrupting the status quo of our present, as Sam, Emma, and he give their takes on the importance of John Cassavetes and Mad Men, and Matthew rounds out the interview with his recommendations of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Loveless” and John Gianvito’s “Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind.”

And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma look to the GOP’s stale response to mass shootings, as Kevin McCarthy pushes the “mental health” talking point, while refusing to address or help mental health, and Lauren Boebert cites 9/11 to ask “why ban guns when we didn’t ban planes,” despite the countless massive (and problematic) regulations that DID arise in the wake of the terror attack. They also get into Biden sending out previews for a $10k student debt cancellation (for certain people only, of course), and Dave Rubin, the last liberal, now identifies as a Republican, plus, your IMs!

Check out Digby’s blog here: http://digbysblog.net/

Check out Matthew’s Letterboxd account here: https://letterboxd.com/langdonboom/

Check out Matthew’s film discussion group at CommonPoint Queens: https://www.commonpointqueens.org/program/cultural-arts-and-jewish-heritage-classes/

Call the White House and demand student loan cancellation: 202-456-1111/202-456-1414