Max Fisher and Josh Keller of the New York Times –
When the world looks at the United States, it sees a land of exceptions: a time-tested if noisy democracy, a crusader in foreign policy, an exporter of beloved music and film.
But there is one quirk that consistently puzzles America’s fans and critics alike. Why, they ask, does it experience so many mass shootings?
Pew Research Center –
The public has negative views of the country’s racial progress; more than half say Trump has made race relations worse.
Jodi S. Cohen and Melissa Sanchez of ProPublica Illinois –
Dozens of suburban Chicago families, perhaps many more, have been exploiting a legal loophole to win their children need-based college financial aid and scholarships they would not otherwise receive, court records and interviews show.
Coming months after the national “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal, this tactic also appears to involve families attempting to gain an advantage in an increasingly competitive and expensive college admissions system.
Ben Casselman of FiveThirtyEight –
Cities have made great strides in reducing murders of young men. The next step will be much harder.
Nationally, the murder rate among young men has fallen much more slowly than violent crime overall. The figures in New Orleans are even starker: Race makes a difference. Nearly 80 percent of murder victims in New Orleans in 2015 were black men, most of them younger than 35.
Nikki Graff of the Pew Research Center –
In the aftermath of the deadly shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, a majority of American teens say they are very or somewhat worried about the possibility of a shooting happening at their school – and most parents of teens share that concern, according to new Pew Research Center surveys of teens ages 13 to 17 and parents with children in the same age range.
