On Saturday, an 18-year-old white man drove more than 200 miles to a Tops supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, NY. Wearing tactical gear and armed with an assault weapon, he killed 10 people in the deadliest mass shooting in the US this year.

It fits a pattern. The suspect, who is now in custody, appeared motivated largely by “replacement theory,” a decades-old conspiracy theory that claims that white Americans are at risk of being replaced by people of color, thus reducing their political power.

In a 180-page document, the suspect wrote that European men were allowing themselves to be “ethnically replaced” and told people of color to “leave while you can.”

These motivations echo those of other perpetrators of recent mass shootings:

• A man who killed 23 people in El Paso in 2019 wrote that his actions were a response to “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
• Replacement theory was also cited by the gunman who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, and by the shooter who killed 51 at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019.

While this theory was once a far-right fringe concept, the notion of “replacement” has been increasingly cited on cable news and by some conservative politicians.

• Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested last year that the Democratic Party is replacing the current electorate with “more obedient voters from the Third World.” (Fox News CEO Lachlan Murdoch denied that Carlson endorsed replacement theory.)
• GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania said in a committee hearing last April that many Americans feel like “we’re replacing national-born American—native-born Americans, to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation.”

Perry’s not wrong about that: About one-third of US adults believe in the existence of a plot to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for political gain, according to an AP-NORC poll from last week.

Asserting that the suspected Buffalo shooter was radicalized online, NY Gov. Kathy Hochul used her appearances on the Sunday talk shows to demand that social media companies do more to crack down on racist hate speech on their platforms.

• “This spreads like a virus and that’s why I’m calling on the CEOs of all the social media platforms to examine their policies and to be able to look me in the eye and tell me that everything is being done that they can do to make sure this information is not spread,” she said.

A Texas law may make that harder. Last Wednesday, an appeals court reinstated a Texas law that bans social media companies from moderating content on their platforms based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person.” Nevermind that the judges displayed a shocking lack of understanding about tech basics during the hearing (one implied that Twitter was not a website), the law opens the door for theoretically any user whose posts get meddled with in some way to sue the companies.

Bringing it back to Buffalo: The suspected gunman livestreamed his attack on the Amazon-owned streaming site Twitch, which said it removed the video less than two minutes after the violence started. But that removal would have seemingly violated Texas’s new social media law if it had occurred there.

Looking ahead…given fierce opposition by tech groups, this Texas law is expected to wind up at the Supreme Court.

Bezos bashes Biden over inflation. Jeff Bezos seems to have found a new hobby in his Amazon retirement: chirping at the president of the US on Twitter. Bezos said Twitter’s “Disinformation Board” should review a tweet from Biden claiming that raising taxes on corporations would help bring down inflation. He also criticized Biden for trying to pass the Build Back Better bill that would “inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy” (according to Bezos).

Sweden’s 200 years of nonalignment are over. The Nordic country and its neighbor, Finland, said they will apply for NATO membership in the coming days, which would more than double the length of the military alliance’s border with Russia. “We cannot trust anymore that there will be a peaceful future next to Russia on our own,” Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin said.

Netflix says employees who don’t like its content should maybe quit. When the streaming company updated its culture guidelines last week, it included a new section called “artistic expression.” It states, “We let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them,” and, “if you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.” Last fall, some Netflix employees staged a walkout after the release of Dave Chappelle’s comedy special.

Spotlight on the consumer: Are y’all still shopping despite higher prices? We’ll find out this week. Retailers including Walmart, Home Depot, Target, and TJX will report Q1 earnings, while the government will release monthly retail sales data on Tuesday. Consumer sentiment hit an 11-year low this month.

Ukraine aid package: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking during an unannounced visit to Kyiv, said that Congress would pass a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine on Wednesday. “I think one of the lessons we learned in World War II is not standing up to aggression early is a huge mistake,” McConnell said.

Everything else:

• The Cannes Film Festival starts this week in southern France.
• Golf’s PGA Championship starts on Thursday (Phil Mickelson will not be playing).
• Important information for your boss: Friday is National Pizza Party Day.

Stat: Climbing 2,716.5 feet into the air, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world, and nearly twice as tall as the Empire State Building. Its elevator (one of the fastest in the world) whisks people 22 mph from the ground to the top floor in just 1 minute and 22 seconds. Why are we mentioning this? Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE leader for whom the building was named, died this weekend.

Quote: “I’ll always find my way home, even if all roads are destroyed.”

That’s a lyric in “Stefania,” a song by the Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra. The group won the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday, and president Volodymyr Zelensky said that “we will do our best” to host the competition next year.

Read: Notes on a father–daughter road trip. (The Missouri Review)

Dive back into the week.

• Shallow dive: The fastest way to empty a water bottle
• Medium dive: Trader Joe’s Customer Choice Awards
• Deep dive: The world’s population density by latitude
• Cannonball: The greatest novels of all time

For new college grads: A guide for your daily “professional” interactions.

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Whether Excel Dictionary has already helped you become a spreadsheet savant or you’re simply seeing fewer #N/As these days, Morning Brew’s very own Emma Chieppor has you covered.

Turntable: There are 43 words that can be found in today’s Turntable jumble. How many can you get? Find out here.

Guess the skyline

I’m going to be in this US city in a few weeks. Do you know what it is?