STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT-Texas. At least 14 students and one teacher are dead following a shooting at a school in Texas on Tuesday, according to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). The governor identified the suspected shooter as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, who was believed to have entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, with a handgun, as well as possibly a rifle. “He shot and killed — horrifically, incomprehensibly — 14 students, and killed a teacher,” Abbott said, adding that the shooter himself “is deceased and is believed that responding officers killed him.” The reported death toll makes it the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed.
The gunman who massacred 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school legally bought two AR-style rifles just days before attack, soon after his 18th birthday, and seemed to hint online that something was about to happen. As details of the latest mass killing to rock the U.S. emerged Wednesday, grief engulfed the small town of Uvalde, population 16,000.
The dead included an outgoing 10-year-old, Eliahna Garcia, who loved to sing, dance and play basketball; a fellow fourth grader, Xavier Javier Lopez, who had been eagerly awaiting a summer of swimming; and a teacher, Eva Mireles, with 17 years’ experience whose husband is an officer with the school district’s police department. “I just don’t know how people can sell that type of a gun to a kid 18 years old,” Eliahna’s aunt, Siria Arizmendi, said angrily through tears. “What is he going to use it for but for that purpose?”
A new set of U.S. House district lines finalized Friday has set off a mad scramble among some of the most powerful politicians in New York, where decades of simmering feuds and rivalries are emerging ahead of a high-stakes August primary.
The new maps will force several unprecedented high-stakes match-ups between prominent Democratic power players after a state Supreme Court judge in a Republican stronghold struck down maps passed by New York’s Democratic-controlled legislature in Albany and appointed a special master to draw new ones.
Chief among those contests is the battle between Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D) and Carolyn Maloney (D), two members first elected in 1992 who chair full committees in Washington. The special master’s maps merged the cores of their districts along the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, for decades divided by Central Park. Both said they would run in the newly drawn 12th Congressional District.
The Supreme Court marshal’s probe into the disclosure of a draft opinion on Roe v. Wade is fully in progress, multiple people familiar with the proceedings told POLITICO, carrying out Chief Justice John Roberts’ order to investigate the leak. But questions about the investigation’s scope and process — some emanating from inside the court, these people said — reveal internal frustrations that in recent days have burst out into the open.
President Joe Biden has called on Americans to turn their “pain into action” after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, left at least 19 students and two teachers dead. In an emotional speech from the White House Tuesday, Biden said it was time for “every parent, every citizen of this country” to push for “commonsense gun laws.” The shooter in the deadly attack was fatally shot by law enforcement officers responding to the shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, about 80 miles west of San Antonio.
President Joe Biden took office facing an historic convergence of crises. Since then, his list of challenges has only grown. The mass killing of 19 children at a Texas school on Tuesday has become the latest test for a president facing a crucible like few of his predecessors have. Biden helms the nation that feels, at times, like it is tearing at the seams. It was personified this week as his first trip to Asia — designed to address competition with China, the foreign policy challenge deemed most pressing by the administration — was bookended by a pair of mass shootings that claimed the lives of people going about the most routine of American rituals, shopping for groceries and attending school.
In the hours after at least 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., in the deadliest mass shooting at an American school in nearly a decade, Republicans in Congress joined the world in mourning the latest gun massacre.
But as some offered their thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims, critics have been quick to point out the millions of dollars that GOP lawmakers have taken from the National Rifle Association in contributions over the years.
Facebook is denying Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) allegation that the gunman who killed 21 people, including 19 children, at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday posted publicly about the attack on its platform. Abbott said during a press conference Wednesday that the gunman, Salvador Ramos, posted three times before the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. There was no meaningful forewarning of this crime other than what I’m about to tell you,” Abbott said.
“As of this time, the only information that was known in advance was posted by the gunman on Facebook approximately 30 minutes before reaching the school,” he continued. “The first post was to the point of he said ‘I’m going to shoot my grandmother.’ The second post was ‘I shot my grandmother.’ The third post, maybe less than 15 minutes before arriving at the school, was ‘I’m going to shoot an elementary school.’
Tuesday’s devastating mass shooting is thrusting the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual meeting in Houston, Texas this weekend into the spotlight. The pro-gun lobbying group’s convention, located roughly 300 miles from the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school where at least 19 children were shot and killed, is set to feature remarks from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former President Trump on Friday.
The NRA has successfully pushed GOP members of Congress to reject any bills that restrict access to guns, including a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines and a bill to apply background checks to all gun sales. The influential group also took credit for a Texas law signed last year that allows individuals to carry handguns without a permit or training.
The third face-off between Rep. Henry Cuellar and Jessica Cisneros remains undecided. The veteran Texas Democratic incumbent declared victory over his progressive challenger, but his lead is less than 200 votes, and there are still outstanding votes to be counted. But no matter which of the two emerge as the winner in the South Texas-based district, one thing seems certain — the race is far from over.
