May 28, 2022
Texas officials have drastically altered the Uvalde timeline they initially provided, and what occurred during that time: ~~~
~~~ From the New York Times live updates: "In an emotional and at times tense news conference, Steven C. McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, gave the most detailed accounting of the shooting yet, diverging in substantial points from the original timeline given by officials. Most of the time the gunman was at the school, Mr. McCraw explained, he was inside the classrooms where nearly all of the killing took place, while as many as 19 police officers waited outside in the school hallway. Multiple people in the classrooms, including at least two students, called 911 over that horrifying stretch, begging for police. But apparently believing that the suspect had barricaded himself in the classroom and that 'there were no kids at risk,' the police did not enter the classroom until 12:50 p.m., 78 minutes after the shooter walked inside.... By 12:15 p.m., agents from Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrived with tactical shields, he said, far earlier than previously known. But local police at the scene would not allow them to go after the gunman who had opened fire on students inside the school." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Jim Vertuno & Elliot Spagat of the AP: "Students trapped inside a classroom with a gunman repeatedly called 911 during this week's attack on a Texas elementary school, including one who pleaded, 'Please send the police now,' as nearly 20 officers waited in the hallway for more than 45 minutes, authorities said Friday. The commander at the scene in Uvalde -- the school district's police chief &-- believed that 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos was barricaded inside adjoining classrooms at Robb Elementary School and that children were no longer at risk, Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at a contentious news conference. 'It was the wrong decision,' he said." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ CNN has the latest timeline related by Texas law officials. The New York Times has the time breakdown here. ~~~
~~~ Washington Post updates are here: "The Uvalde, Tex., gunman emerged from a classroom closet firing at Border Patrol tactical agents entering the room, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official said Friday, offering new details about the shooting after days of shifting accounts from authorities. The Border Patrol agents, using a ballistic shield, entered the classroom and shot and killed the gunman after a phalanx of officers had waited outside for nearly 50 minutes while children repeatedly called 911, pleading for help, Texas law enforcement acknowledged for the first time Friday, four days after the massacre of 21 people." ~~~
~~~ Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "Federal agents who went to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday to confront a gunman who killed 19 children were told by local police to wait and not enter the school -- and then decided after about half an hour to ignore that initial guidance and find the shooter, say two senior federal law enforcement officials. According to the officials, agents from BORTAC, the Customs and Border Protection tactical unit, and ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) arrived on the scene between noon and 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday. Local law enforcement asked them to wait, and then instructed HSI agents to help pull children out of the windows.... After approximately 30 minutes passed, however, the federal agents opted of their own volition to lead the 'stack' of officers inside the school and take down the shooter." ~~~
~~~ Pete Williams of NBC News said that although the classroom door where the gunman who killing children was locked, the door had a broken window -- the shooter broke the window -- and the room had exterior windows, some of which the shooter also broke. MB: That is, it isn't as if the law enforcement officers who were gathered outside the room had no way to access it.
~~~ ** Update: If you look at the CNN timeline, you'll see that it wasn't until 12:50 pm [CT?] -- 77 minutes after the first gunfire inside the school -- that the police thought to get a key from the janitor, unlock the door, and kill the gunman.
Safia Ali of NBC News: Peter Arredondo, "the police chief who reportedly made the call not to immediately send officers into Robb Elementary School to confront a gunman, was elected to Uvalde's City Council just three weeks ago after running on a platform of communication and outreach to the community." MB: If Arredondo dares show up to sworn in, I hope there's a procedure to recall city councilmen.
Marie: I was once in a perilous situation with another person, whom I knew to be an intelligent problem-solver. But the situation was so frightening that this person just shut down. He not only didn't know what to do, he denied what was happening. It took me a moment to realize he had rendered himself completely useless and actually an impediment to overcoming the peril. So I said nothing, took charge and neutralized the danger, which was a multi-step process. I think what happened to the school district police chief -- supposedly in charge of the rescue operation -- is what happened to my friend. According to reports, the chief insisted the situation did not involve an active shooter but a barricaded person. He would not allow other officials, including Border Patrol officers armed with tactical gear, to storm the shooter. In other words, the chief just froze up and was unable to act responsibly and responsively.
Tim Miller of the Bulwark: "In the coming days there will be a desire to obsess only over the unfathomable failures of those who were charged with keeping these kids safe. The poor teacher who left a door ajar. The MIA resource officer. The cops, excuse me -- the SWAT Team -- that posed on Facebook in tactical gear with weapons of war looking like they were prepared to head to the Donbas, but were apparently unequipped to take on a lone teenager who was slaughtering their town's children. But the main thing to take away from all of that is ... that in a nation with 130,000 schools there will always be some kind of human error when responding to an active shooter.... When a child is able to access two assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of bullets -- and are able to massacre a dozen innocents in the blink of an eye -- then there is no level of door control or resource officer training that can reliably stop them."
Don't Look Here; Look Over There! Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "One by one, the gun rights activists and politicians who showed up at the National Rifle Association convention on Friday said they were appalled, horrified and shaken by the massacre of 19 children and two adults a few days earlier in Uvalde, Texas. One by one, they then rejected any suggestion that gun control measures were needed to stop mass shootings. They blamed the atrocities on factors that had nothing to do with firearms -- the breakdown of the American family, untreated mental illness, bullying on social media, violent video games and the inexplicable existence of 'evil.' Above all, they sought to divert pressure to support popular overhauls like expanded background checks by seizing on the issue of school safety, amid reports that the gunman in Uvalde gained easy access to Robb Elementary School through an unguarded door.... Donald J. Trump, speaking at the event's keynote session late Friday, called for 'impenetrable security at every school all across our land.'" An AP report is here. ~~~
~~~ Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post: At the NRA convention, "Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), among other speakers, broadly rejected proposals for new restrictions and called instead for more school security or mental health screenings, while issuing dark warnings of alleged Democratic plots to take weapons. 'We all know they want total gun confiscation, know that this would be a first step,' Trump told the crowd.... The speakers also pivoted from condemning the evil of the Uvalde school shooter to vilifying 'elites,' the media, Democrats, and 'communist Marxists,' eliciting cheers from the undercapacity but vocal crowd. MB: Yeah, I was just about to blame communists Marxists. But not Putin!
Michael Sisak of the AP takes "a look at how suspects in mass shootings over a decade obtained guns, based on police accounts, court documents and contemporaneous reporting[.]"
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of the New York Times: There is a "wealth of evidence that ... [the Uvalde gunman] had begun to tease his plans -- sometimes in oblique and sometimes in more explicit ways -- in the days and weeks before he fatally shot 19 children and two teachers in a classroom on Tuesday." Several young people who were aware of his online "disturbing messages" were fearful that he would commit a violent crime. "The exchanges raise questions about whether teenagers who knew the 18-year-old should have reported the concerns to their parents or the authorities.... J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist..., said as many as 90 percent of young attackers might tell someone in advance about their intent to cause harm." A related CNN story is here.
Abbott: Plenty of Experience, But Still Not Ready for Prime Time. Isaac Stanley-Becker & Michael Scherer of the Washington Post: "One day after an elementary school shooter killed 21 people in a small Texas town this week, Gov. Greg Abbott appeared before a grieving nation to explain how it happened, delivering an authoritative account of law enforcement heroes facing down evil and preventing the additional loss of life with quick action. But much of that story wasn't true. Abbott was back in Uvalde, Tex., on Friday to acknowledge that key parts of what he had told the country had been disproved by the ongoing criminal investigation, and to pin the errors on law enforcement officials who had briefed him Wednesday.... 'As everybody has learned, the information that I was given turned out in part to be inaccurate. And I'm absolutely livid about that.'... Abbott ... faces increasing criticism that he moved too quickly to amplify a false law enforcement narrative that aligns with his own political beliefs. Federal authorities were 'flabbergasted at the amateurish communications coming from Texas,' said a federal law enforcement official who, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity.... [Abbott] has overseen the state's response to mass shootings that, together, have killed more than 90 people...."
Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post: "The owners of Daniel Defense, the manufacturer of the rifle apparently used in the massacre of 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., are deep-pocketed Republican donors, giving to candidates and committees at the federal and state level aligned against limits on access to assault rifles and other semiautomatic weapons.... The rifle reportedly used in the shooting, the DDM4 V7, sells for about $2,000, according to Daniel Defense's website.... An image posted on the company's Twitter account shows a child [Marie: really, a toddler!] handling a rifle with the caption, 'Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Shortly after the shooting, the company locked its Twitter account." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Stacy Cowley & Ella Koeze of the New York Times: "Daniel Defense, the company that made the rifle a gunman used to kill 21 people inside a Texas elementary school this week, was one of hundreds of gun makers and merchants that got emergency small-business aid from the federal government through the Paycheck Protection Program. The company, based in Ellabell, Ga., received a $3.1 million loan in early April 2020 -- just days after the relief fund opened, when many companie were struggling to break through a crush of applications as the pandemic began. The loan, made by Cadence Bank, was used to support some 200 employees, according to government records. Daniel Defense met the program's requirements to have its loan forgiven, and it was paid off by the government in June 2021."
** Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "It will be impossible to do anything about guns in this country, at least at a national level, as long as Democrats depend on the cooperation of a party that holds in reserve the possibility of insurrection. The slaughter of children in Texas has done little to alter this dynamic.... Victims of our increasingly frequent mass shootings are collateral damage in a cold civil war.... Guns are now the leading cause of death for American children. Many conservatives consider this a price worth paying for their version of freedom." MB: There's that child sacrifice thing again. Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the link. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Tyler Pager, et al., of the Washington Post: "White House officials are currently planning to cancel $10,000 in student debt per borrower, after months of internal deliberations over how to structure loan forgiveness for tens of millions of Americans, three people with knowledge of the matter said. President Biden had hoped to make the announcement as soon as this weekend at the University of Delaware commencement..., but that timing has changed after the massacre Tuesday in Texas. The White House's latest plans called for limiting debt forgiveness to Americans who earned less than $150,000 in the previous year, or less than $300,000 for married couples filing jointly, two of the people said."
AP: "Two fires that merged to create the largest wildfire in New Mexico history have both been traced to prescribed burns set by U.S. forest managers as preventive measures, federal investigators announced Friday. The findings could have implications for the future use of prescribed fire to limit the buildup of dry vegetation amid a U.S. Forest Service moratorium on the practice. They also could affect complex deliberations concerning emergency aid and liability for a fire that has spread across 1,260 square kilometers (486 square miles) and destroyed hundreds of structures. The two fires joined in April to form the massive blaze at the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains, in the Sangre de Cristo range." MB: Uh, this is making Trump's plan to sweep the forests sound a little smarter.
House Traitors Leader Stonewalls January 6 Committee. Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post: "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) issued a statement Friday indicating that he is unlikely to comply with a subpoena issued this month requesting that he testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. An 11-page response to the committee from McCarthy's counsel questioned the committee's authority and claimed that lawmakers on the panel are 'not exercising a valid or lawful use of Congress' subpoena power,' according to a letter from Elliot S. Berke, McCarthy's lawyer. Berke goes on to request information from the committee, including a more specific list of the subjects and topics the committee intends to discuss with McCarthy, along with the legal rationale justifying the subpoena request."
Trumpty-Dumpty Takes a New Fall. Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: In the latest legal blow to Donald J. Trump, a federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit the former president filed that sought to halt the New York attorney general's civil investigation into his business practices. On Thursday, an appellate court ordered Mr. Trump and two of his children to sit for questioning under oath from the office of the state attorney general, Letitia James. Together, the rulings clear the way for Ms. James to complete her investigation in the coming weeks or months.... Last month, one of her lawyers indicated that a suit could be coming soon, saying that the office was preparing an 'enforcement action' in the near future." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Richard Fausset & Danny Hakim of the New York Times: "As many as 50 witnesses are expected to be subpoenaed by a special grand jury that will begin hearing testimony next week in the criminal investigation into whether ... Donald J. Trump and his allies violated Georgia laws in their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.... [Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani] Willis is weighing racketeering among other potential charges.... Her investigators are also reviewing the slate of fake electors that Republicans created in a desperate attempt to circumvent the state's voters. She said the scheme to submit fake Electoral College delegates could lead to fraud charges, among others...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) A CNN story is here.
Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "Prosecutors on Friday urged a jury to convict well-connected attorney Michael Sussmann, saying that he thought he had 'a license to lie' to the FBI at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign. Sussmann's defense lawyers countered that the case against Sussmann was built on a 'political conspiracy theory.'... The case brought by Special Counsel John Durham charges that Sussmann lied by claiming he did not bring the information to the FBI on behalf of any client, when he allegedly did so on behalf of two clients: the Clinton campaign and a tech executive, Rodney Joffe.... The jury, which began deliberating about 1 p.m. Friday, is tasked with answering a fairly simple legal and factual question -- whether Sussmann lied about his client and whether that lie was relevant to the FBI investigation." MB: Sounds like two questions to me. Politico's report is here.
New Info from the Mueller Investigation! Uh, All Redacted. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The Justice Department has released portions of a previously unseen alternative version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on ties between ... Donald Trump and Russia. However, the 37-page report prepared at the direction of Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann and released this week under the Freedom of Information Act is heavily redacted. Justice Department officials withheld large swaths of the document on grounds of ongoing investigations, privacy and protecting internal deliberations.... The secrecy puts the Biden administration in the curious position of fighting to keep from public view evidence of alleged wrongdoing by top advisers to Trump. It appears that those blacking out the redacted document sought to delete any details not made public in the version of Mueller's report released in 2019 or in other public documents. The report focuses on the work of what was known within Mueller's office as 'Team M' a group of investigators and prosecutors focused on connections between Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and businessmen and politicians friendly to Russia."
Beyond the Beltway
Oregon House Race. Gillian Flaccus of the AP: "Seven-term U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, a centrist who was endorsed by President Joe Biden, has been ousted in the Democratic primary in Oregon by progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner after results were delayed more than a week by a ballot-printing issue. The vote count in the state's 5th Congressional District was slowed because tens of thousands of ballots were printed with blurry bar codes, making them unreadable by vote-counting machines. Workers in Clackamas County, the state's third-largest county, had to transfer votes by hand to fresh ballots so they could be tallied. That process continued Friday for other races yet to be called."
Texas House Race. Acacia Coronado of the AP: "The Texas primary runoff between Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar and his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, remained too early [close??] to call Friday. Cuellar led Cisneros by 175 votes, or 0.4 percentage points, out of 45,209 ballots counted as of 3 p.m. ET Friday. Election officials in Bexar County, where Cisneros has a significant lead over Cuellar among ballots counted, said they will not release results of an undisclosed number of ballots that require voters to cure an issue preventing it from being counted until Tuesday."
Way Beyond
The Guardian's live updates of developments Saturday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. ~~~
~~~ The New York Times' live updates for Saturday are here: "... Ukrainian and Russian forces [were] fighting street to street in a battle for Sievierodonetsk, one of the most important cities in the Donbas region still held by Ukraine.... For months, [President] Zelensky has called for heavier weapons to relieve pressure in the Donbas region and turn the tide in the war, and officials said on Friday that the Biden administration had approved sending long-range multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine.... The capture this week of the city of Lyman in the region was an example of the incremental progress that analysts say Moscow continues to make.... The leaders of the central branch of the Orthodox church in Ukraine have made a formal break with the hierarchy in Moscow, widening the schism in a church that was already divided before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russia is responsible for inciting genocide in Ukraine, with the apparent intent of destroying the Ukrainian people, a new report released Friday by international legal scholars and human rights experts concluded." ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Saturday are here: "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged Friday to continue fighting for the eastern region of Donbas, where Russian forces have taken more territory in recent days.... The British Defense Ministry said most of the town [of Lyman, a key transport hub,] has probably fallen into Russian hands. Russia is also trying to encircle Severodonetsk, but the regional governor said Saturday that the city has not been cut off."
Peter Beaumont & Isobel Koshiw of the Guardian: "Joe Biden has accused Vladimir Putin of trying to 'wipe out' Ukraine's culture but suggested the plan had at least partially backfired by spurring the expansion of Nato in Europe. The US president told 1,200 graduating cadets in Annapolis, Maryland, on Friday: 'Not only is he trying to take over Ukraine, he's literally trying to wipe out the culture and identity of the Ukrainian people. Attacking schools, nurseries, hospitals, museums, with no other purpose than to eliminate a culture.'"
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