(ANCHORAGE, Alaska) — Sarah Palin got one step closer this weekend to a return to national politics when she successfully advanced through the crowded statewide primary for the special election for Alaska’s lone House seat.
ABC News projected Sunday that Palin, who is running as a Republican, made it to the special general race in August along with Nick Begich and Al Gross. The fourth and final candidate is still to be determined.
In a statement on social media, Palin wrote that she was “looking forward to the special general election so we can highlight our ideas for fixing this country.”
Among those proposals, she said, was “responsibly developing Alaska’s God-given natural resources, getting runaway government spending under control [and] protecting human life” as well as backing the Second Amendment — amid renewed talks of federal gun legislation in response to the latest wave of mass shootings.
Palin previously served as governor of Alaska and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, before she was named as Sen. John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential race.
That election — which instantly gave Palin a national profile — spotlighted both her popularity with conservatives and the emerging “tea party” wing of the GOP and her stumbles as a candidate, particularly around foreign policy. She resigned from the governorship in 2009, months after she and McCain lost to Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
In the years since, Palin has remained involved in politics: musing about a presidential race of her own and working as a commentator and TV personality.
Her bid for the Alaska House seat was her first official foray back into electoral politics.
Palin supported Trump’s 2016 presidential run, and only two days after Palin launched her House campaign this year, Trump returned the favor. In early June, he held a statewide telerally for her.
Forty-eight candidates in total were running in the special primary, held Saturday, after Republican Rep. Don Young died in March.
The winner of the special general election in August will serve only the remainder of Young’s term; the regularly scheduled election to decide who will serve a full two-year term starting in 2023 will be held in November. (Thirty-one candidates have filed for that race.)
Begich, who is running as a Republican, comes from a prominent Democratic family. His grandfather, Rep. Nick Begich Sr., was Alaska’s sole representative before Young — from 1970 to 1972.
Before running for Congress, the younger Begich held several political roles, including co-chair for Young’s 2020 reelection campaign, the 2020 OneAlaska campaign and the Alaska Republican Party’s Finance Committee.
Gross, a surgeon running as an independent, told the Anchorage Daily News he was seeking the House seat because he wanted to do what was best for Alaskans. He said that his top priorities include creating jobs, diversifying the state’s economy and making the U.S. energy independent.
Gross ran in Alaska’s 2020 Senate race but lost to incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan.
Among the other candidates in Saturday’s special primary was a man named — yes — Santa Claus, who has a long white beard and is a city council member in North Pole, Alaska.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
(NEWTOWN, Conn.) — When Nicole, who was just a girl when she survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a decade ago, first heard about the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, she broke down in tears.
“I couldn’t handle it,” she said. “You hear about other shootings and it breaks you. But the fact that it was the exact same thing completely re-triggered me and my anxiety.”
Nicole was in the second grade when a gunman shot and killed 26 people at her school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. She and three other student survivors, as well as a school employee there that day, detailed their experience and the effects that day still has on them in an interview that aired Sunday with “This Week” co-anchor and Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz.
Out of respect for their privacy, ABC News is not using the survivors’ last names.
“I was just thinking about all the families that are in their houses right now, telling their children that their siblings and that their friends and their classmates are gone,” Maggie, another student, told Raddatz. “It just really broke me to know that after 10 years of everyone giving us their thoughts and prayers, after 10 years of everyone saying, ‘Enough is enough,’ and, ‘Never again after Sandy Hook’ — it happened again.”
Maggie was in third grade at the time of the shooting. She will graduate from Newtown High School next week. The other three survivors — Andrew, Jackie and Nicole — are now juniors at Newtown High. All of them are speaking publicly for the first time.
“I was in my second-grade classroom. I remember looking at my teacher’s face, and her shock. We knew it wasn’t a drill,” Jackie recalled. “When we ran to our cubbies to hide, I remember thinking, you know, I should hide to the back of the classroom, to the other side, so that I don’t get shot. And that should never run through a 7-, 8-year-old kid’s head. It shouldn’t run through anybody’s head.”
All lost friends, classmates, neighbors.
Maggie lost her best friend, Daniel Barden. Some of her starkest memories of the massacre are waiting to hear if he was alive and safe.
“There were neighbors telling us all the updates — that a class had been found in a closet, that other people were still in the firehouse,” she remembered of the aftermath 10 years ago. “We kept saying, ‘That was Daniel, Daniel was coming.'”
“It was very traumatic for me, because there was no comfort whatsoever,” she said. “No one could comfort anyone else because it was pure devastation and loss. We all loved this boy so much.”
Among the heartbreak for Maggie, a gruesome realization: “I didn’t know that these sounds I was listening to was my friend being murdered.”
Living through a mass shooting changed all four of the students. For Nicole, that means anxiety. For Jackie and Maggie, trouble with loud noises. And for Andrew, it meant nightmares in the immediate months after.
“I couldn’t get the sounds out of my head during the night,” he told ABC News. “I couldn’t close my eyes without reliving it.”
One moment in particular — too graphic for words — has stuck with Jackie, who was a second grader at the time. As the kids were exiting their school, they were told to put their hands on the shoulders of the student in front of them and to close their eyes as they walked.
Jackie opened hers.
“There was glass and obviously blood and I didn’t want to step on anything. So I did, I did open my eyes,” she said.
“That’s a thought that probably does not go away,” Raddatz told her.
“No,” Jackie said, closing her eyes.
Mary Ann Jacob, a library clerk at Sandy Hook Elementary, also detailed her experience to ABC News. Jacob was in the library at the time and locked 19 students in a closet to keep them safe.
Jacob said she came to realize the gravity of the situation — and the immensity of the loss — later, at a nearby fire station, where parents were looking to account for their children.
“They started lining kids up by class in the fire house so they could start to sign them out to parents,” Jacob said. “And it became evident very quickly that almost two whole classes were missing.”
All five survivors shared the horror they felt when they learned a gunman killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde last month.
All shared in the dismay and frustration they feel watching more school shootings occur.
“I’m struck by how sad it makes me that it keeps happening. And angry at the same time, because, you know, the world watched what happened to Sandy Hook,” Jacob said. “And there was no action after that.”
Like the other survivors, Andrew called for gun reform — an issue that remains intensely polarizing in Congress, where Republicans are reluctant to take up legislation they argue restricts the Second Amendment.
Andrew told ABC News that the government and the nation “know the solutions” to stopping more mass violence, pointing to proposed limitations on magazines for ammunition and age restrictions for purchasing assault-style weapons.
“I think what we know just needs to come to fruition.”
Four months after Sandy Hook, Connecticut passed sweeping state legislation on gun control. That bipartisan legislation included instituting mandatory background checks and banning the sale of high-capacity magazines. The law also created the nation’s first dangerous weapon registry and broadened what classifies as an assault weapon, leading to a ban of more than 150 models.
After the shooting, then-President Barack Obama called on Congress to enact federal gun control.
“If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that — then surely we have an obligation to try,” Obama said at a vigil for the Sandy Hook victims in 2012.
But those efforts failed. A vote focused on background checks, led by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., did not pass the Senate — one in a string of largely unsuccessful efforts at new gun laws in Congress in recent decades.
Since then, no major federal gun reform has come to pass.
“It makes me angry, because it doesn’t have to keep happening,” Jacob, the Sandy Hook library clerk, told ABC News. “And the fact that we saw what happened at Sandy Hook, and we saw how many children died, and how affected the survivors were, and how the ripple effects of gun violence affect so many people,” she said. “And we still act like we don’t know how to solve the problem is maddening.”
(CALIFORNIA) — The son of former MLB player Steve Sax was one of five Marines killed when their military aircraft crashed during routine flight training this week, the family confirmed Saturday.
Capt. John J. Sax, 33, and four other Marines from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing died when their MV-22B Osprey — a hybrid airplane and helicopter — crashed in a remote, desert area of Southern California near Glamis on Wednesday.
“It is with complete devastation that I announce that my precious son, Johnny, was one of the five U.S. Marines that perished,” Steve Sax said in a statement.
Steve Sax called his son a “hero and the best man I know.”
“For those of you that knew Johnny, you saw his huge smile, bright light, his love for his family, the Marines, the joy of flying airplanes and defending our country,” he continued.
John Sax served in the Marines for over five years and had been awarded the National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and a Letter of Appreciation, his family said.
Ahead of Veteran’s Day last year, Steve Sax proudly spoke about being the father of a Marine and about the intense training his son had undergone to become a captain.
“What he’s done — to sacrifice himself — is unbelievable,” Steve Sax said on his podcast, “Sax in the Morning.” “Just know this. I know my son, and I know that you people can rest assured that he would give his life so that you can have your freedom.”
Steve Sax, an All-Star second baseman, was a two-time World Series champion with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The team expressed their condolences Saturday.
“The Los Angeles Dodgers are saddened to hear about the passing of Steve Sax’s son, John, and the five Marines who lost their lives in this week’s tragic helicopter accident,” the team said in a statement.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are saddened to hear about the passing of Steve Sax’s son, John, and the five Marines who lost their lives in this week’s tragic helicopter accident. Our thoughts and condolences go out to their families and friends.
John Sax was one of two MV-22B pilots killed in the crash, along with Capt. Nicholas P. Losapio, 31, of Rockingham, New Hampshire, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing said Friday. Three tiltrotor crew chiefs also died in the crash — Cpl. Nathan E. Carlson, 21, of Winnebago, Illinois; Cpl. Seth D. Rasmuson, 21, of Johnson, Wyoming; and Lance Cpl. Evan A. Strickland, 19, of Valencia, New Mexico — the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing said.
All were based at Marine Corps Air Station Camp Pendleton in California and assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor (VMM) Squadron 364.
“It is with heavy hearts that we mourn the loss of five Marines from the Purple Fox family,” Lt. Col. John C. Miller, commanding officer of VMM-364, said in a statement. “This is an extremely difficult time for VMM-364 and it is hard to express the impact that this loss has had on our squadron and its families.”
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
ABC News’ Izzy Alvarez contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — This year’s redistricting process reduced electoral competition, giving incumbents bolstered protection. But not every officeholder gets a break, even if members of their own party help draw the maps.
Take Rep. Tom Malinowski, the Democrat incumbent of New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, which he flipped from red to blue in 2018, maintaining his seat by fewer than two points in 2020. Now, thanks to a new map, the district inherits a large chunk of Republican voters, putting Malinowski on the ropes again, with his seat vulnerable to Republican takeover.
And with only five seats needed to give the GOP control of the House, the political stakes of the crop of newly competitive races for seats currently held by Democrats couldn’t be higher.
“This is the race that is going to determine whether Democrats control the House of Representatives for the next two years, or the people who supported the insurrection on January 6th,” said Malinowski during a campaign event with Union City Democrats in the commuter town of Rahway, a new part of his district. That’s an easy choice for the good people of New Jersey.”
Unfortunately for Malinowski, that choice will likely be anything but easy with the new lines.
When a panel of New Jersey lawmakers were tasked with redrawing the state’s congressional boundaries, Democrats faced a challenge: How do they help draw a map that ensures they maintain their majority in Congress? The decision was to draw eleven of the twelve districts as safely partisan, leaving one remaining race competitive. That seat? Malinowski’s.
If things go poorly for Malinowski come November, Rutgers Professor John Farmer says the New Jersey congressman “will be seen as having been sacrificed.”
Unsurprisingly, national Republicans have been on the offensive.
Malinowski and Rep. Cindy Axne, an Iowa Democrat, both advanced to a general election challenge after winning their state’s primaries and are some of the top targets of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The group, alongside other House-aligned Super PAC called The Congressional Leadership Fund, has poured millions of dollars in the efforts to push New Jersey’s 7th district from lightly to solidly red.
Malinowski must now fend off Tom Kean Jr., the son of former Gov. Thomas Kean, whose legacy helps him elbow out the competition from both more moderate and MAGA wings of the Jersey GOP. Kean lost to Malinowski by a hair in 2020, and new maps give him the upper hand for the rematch.
“I am both humbled and fully committed to flipping this seat in November,” Kean wrote in a statement on Twitter after his primary victory.
During hits on cable news — mostly Fox — he’s been slamming Malinowski on rising costs and inflation in D.C., kitchen table issues that tend to swing New Jersey voters.
In addition to creating some newly competitive districts, redistricting has also forced some Democrats to run against fellow Democrats in incumbent-on-incumbent primaries. Such was the case for Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath, who advanced to the general after being forced into Georgia’s 7th Congressional District, ousting Democratic Rep. Carolyn Bordeaux. And history will repeat itself in New York come August in perhaps the hottest incumbent-on-incumbent primary when Democrats Rep. Jerry Nadler squares off with Rep. Carolyn Maloney in New York’s new 12th district.
In the walk-up to the November election, the path for Democrats is anything but clear.
At a campaign event with supporters in Springfield area coffee shop, Malinowski gave a candid appraisal of the road ahead for Democrats like him.
“We’re the only ones who actually, by our votes and by our work, get to decide, get to make a difference in terms of which way the wind is blowing in America one way or another. And that is a burden. It means we have to work much harder. It’s going to cost us a lot of money. But I think it’s also a privilege,” said Malinowski. “We actually could go either way, and that makes the investment that all of us are going to make in this campaign all the more important.”
(AMESBURY, Mass.) — A 6-year-old boy remains missing days after his mother drowned while trying to rescue him and his sister from a Massachusetts river.
The child disappeared into the Merrimack River Thursday evening while with his family, who were fishing and swimming on Deer Island, a recreational area near the Amesbury and Newburyport border, police said.
The search for the boy — identified by Massachusetts State Police as Mas DeChhat of Lowell — resumed Saturday morning. Divers and boat operators with the state police continued to search the river along with divers from the Boston Fire Department using sonar devices and tow bars.
Local authorities also involved in the search said Friday that first responders had shifted into a recovery effort.
“We’ve seen several tragedies on the river, but not usually where a whole family is affected,” Newburyport Fire Chief Christopher LeClaire told reporters Friday.
Mas was supposedly reaching for a stick when he fell into the water around 7 p.m. Thursday, state police said. His 7-year-old sister tried to grab him and also fell into the water.
As both were pulled along by the swift current, their mother “entered the water to save her children,” Massachusetts State Police spokesperson Dave Procopio said in a statement Saturday. Their mother, identified as 29-year-old Boua DeChhat, “was not known to swim,” Procopio said.
While the three were swept upstream by the current, the children’s father also went into the water to try and save them.
“The father also was not a swimmer, could not reach his loved ones, and began to struggle himself,” Procopio said.
The father managed to make it back to shore and was later hospitalized for exposure to the cold waters, police said.
MSP Dive Team and Marine Unit back at Merrimack River this morning with @NewburyportPD and @NewburyportFD to resume search boy, 6, who went missing last night. Two other family members, who presumably entered water to try to save boy, were rescued by a boater. pic.twitter.com/iy65dPDfvZ
— Mass State Police (@MassStatePolice) June 10, 2022
Boua DeChhat and her daughter were eventually pulled from the water by a fishing boat operator. The mother was unresponsive, while her daughter was alert, authorities said. The two were transported to a nearby hospital, where the mother was pronounced dead. The daughter has since been treated and released.
Local resident Mark Bajko told Boston ABC affiliate WCVB he and a police officer administered CPR to the mother after she was pulled ashore.
“The little girl stopped crying and yells, ‘My brother’s still in the water,'” Bajko told the station.
Mas was not seen in the water when his mother and sister were pulled out, police said.
LeClaire said the strong current in the river has challenged search efforts.
The U.S. Coast Guard has also been involved in the search since the boy went into the water. Coast Guard Sector Boston said Friday evening that it had suspended its search “pending new information.”
“It is always a difficult decision to suspend a search and rescue case, and even more painful when children are involved,” Capt. Kailie Benson, Coast Guard Sector Boston commander, said in a statement. “Considering the extensive search efforts by the Coast Guard and the numerous state and local agencies, along with on-scene conditions, I have made the decision to suspend the search for the missing 6-year-old boy.”
She added, “Our prayers are with the boy and mother’s family and friends during this time.”
(WASHINGTON) — Americans advocating for gun reform are taking to the streets in communities across the U.S. Saturday to participate in protests sparked by the back-to-back mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.
The nationwide marches were organized by March For Our Lives, a group founded by student survivors of the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people.
Saturday’s marches are in response to the May 24 shooting at a Uvalde elementary school that killed 19 students and two teachers, as well as the May 14 massacre at a Buffalo grocery store where 10 people, all of whom were Black, were gunned down in an alleged hate crime.
Jun 11, 3:54 pm
‘No one should be able to inflict these types of injuries’
At the March For Our Lives rally in Los Angeles, one woman held a sign reading: “Send the guns to Ukraine.”
Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, a pediatric emergency medicine doctor in LA and a Parkland, Florida, native, explained the severity of semi-automatic rifle injuries.
He recalled his first experience treating patients shot by semi-automatic rifles, saying “the images of their injuries will be forever burned into my mind.”
“I vividly remember thinking that no one should be able to inflict these types of injuries on a fellow human being,” Birnbaum told the crowd.
A survivor of the 2014 mass shooting at the University of California Santa Barbara also shared her experience at the LA rally. She said after the shooting, her mother begged her to drop out of college, terrified for her safety.
Last month’s Uvalde, Texas, shooting came one day after the anniversary of the UCSB massacre. She said she doesn’t want any other generation to endure this grief.
“I know that we are exhausted — but we must continue showing up … because I can’t take it anymore,” she said.
Jun 11, 3:01 pm
Buffalo community marches weeks after mass shooting
Buffalo, New York, residents held a March For Our Lives rally on Saturday, weeks after a mass shooting that killed 10 shook their community.
Another rally was in Parkland, Florida, home to the 2018 school shooting that killed 17.
Americans in cities across the nation, from New York to Chicago, also joined in, taking to the streets and making their voices heard.
Jun 11, 2:37 pm
A teacher’s perspective
“We need fewer guns in schools — not more of them!” Randi Weinstein, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a passionate speech in Washington, D.C.
“Teachers want to be teaching!” she said. “As we head back to school this fall, please arm us with resources — with books, with school counselors. Not with bulletproof vests.”
Weinstein also addressed critical race theory, noting, “If we have the judgment to shoot a bad guy, why don’t we have the judgment to plan our lessons?”
Jun 11, 2:08 pm
MLK’s granddaughter returns to stage
Yolanda King, a 14-year-old granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr., returned to the Washington, D.C., March For Our Lives stage, four years after she addressed protesters at age 10.
“Like so many of you, I come from a thoughtful, prayerful family. My grandfather was taken from the world by gun violence,” the teen said.
King stressed that this movement “isn’t only about kids — it’s about all of us.”
“We’ve had enough of having more guns than people,” she said.
Our “leaders” care more about getting elected than the lives of children. It’s time to change that.
Today we will march in Washington, D.C. to demand federal action against gun violence NOW. pic.twitter.com/kOwD0zJQqN
— Martin Luther King III (@OfficialMLK3) June 11, 2022
Jun 11, 2:06 pm
Crowd briefly disperses in false alarm
The Washington, D.C., crowd briefly dispersed in a false alarm incident.
Activist Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in Parkland, took the mic to calm the protesters, saying everyone was OK and “there is nothing to be concerned about.”
Speakers then resumed.
Jun 11, 1:48 pm
Congresswoman shares personal story surviving gun violence
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., shared a personal story at the Washington, D.C., march, recounting when, as a young adult, she was in a relationship with an abusive partner who owned guns.
“He did not approve of the way I was cooking … we began arguing, he started to hit me. I decided to run out of the apartment,” Bush said. “As I ran, I remember thinking to myself, why isn’t he chasing me? … When I turned back for a moment … I heard shots. Shots fired. But I didn’t know if they were aimed at me. Until they started whizzing past my head.”
“That moment of horror, it stays with me,” Bush said.
“It’s so deeply traumatic and completely preventable,” Bush said, referencing the boyfriend loophole, red flag laws and universal background checks.
Bush said, “We will never give up our push to save lives.”
Jun 11, 1:26 pm
Parkland dad, survivor take the stage
Manuel Oliver, whose son, 17-year-old, Joaquin was killed in Parkland, said in Washington, D.C., “Our elected officials betrayed us and have avoided the responsibility to end gun violence.”
He said, “If lawmakers who have the power to keep us safe from gun violence are going to avoid taking action,” then he’s calling for a nationwide strike of schools, from elementary to college.
“Avoid attending school if your leaders fail … to keep us safe,” he said. “Avoid going back to school if President Biden fails to open a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention so that we can finally give this issue the attention that it deserves.”
Oliver appeared on stage with David Hogg, a Parkland survivor and March For Our Lives co-founder, who vowed, “This time is different.”
“This is not a political issue — this is a moral issue,” Hogg said.
He suggested combatting gun violence the way the U.S. addressed cigarettes.
“With cigarettes, we didn’t just change the laws — we addressed why people want to smoke in the first place,” Hogg said. “We have to address how people get guns and why they feel the need to pick them up in the first place. We must address the fact that the reason why communities like Parkland don’t have shootings on a daily basis isn’t because we necessarily have the strongest laws … we have some of the most resources.”
Jun 11, 1:20 pm
NY AG joins Brooklyn march
New York Attorney General Letitia James joined a march in Brooklyn, tweeting, “We will fight every single day until we get the common-sense gun reforms this nation needs to end gun violence and save lives.”
Today, New York joins cities across the nation to #MarchForOurLives and say:
Enough waiting.
Enough praying.
Enough offering empty thoughts.
We will fight every single day until we get the common-sense gun reforms this nation needs to end gun violence and save lives. pic.twitter.com/hD0QWItyNq
#MarchForOurLives getting started over here at Cadman Plaza Park. Activists calling for stricter national gun laws. Crowds set to march across the Brooklyn Bridge. pic.twitter.com/UtpMsJde3u
— NYC Mayor’s Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) June 11, 2022
Jun 11, 1:04 pm
DC mayor: Tell your senators ‘make change now– or get out of our way’
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser told protesters she’s frustrated because “we have been here before.”
“We’re not asking for a lot. We’re asking to drop off our children at school without having to worry that someone will bring an AR-15 into their classroom. We are asking to go to the grocery store without worrying that someone will be shot dead by a gunman who is filled with hate. We are asking to let our children go to the playground without worrying that a car will drive by, firing a high-capacity magazine,” the mayor said. “We’re done asking. We’re demanding change and we’re demanding change now.”
She urged Americans “who share our values to let their senators know that they neither need to make change now– or get out of our way.”
Jun 11, 12:44 pm
Buffalo victim’s son: ‘Until it happened to us, we were sitting on the sidelines’
Garnell Whitfield Jr., son of 86-year-old Buffalo, New York, mass shooting victim Ruth Whitfield, told the Washington, D.C., crowd, “We were being naïve to think that it couldn’t happen to us. And until it happened to us, we were sitting on the sidelines.”
“Guns by themselves are only one aspect of a much more insidious problem in America,” he said, calling out the systems he said radicalize mass gunmen, “filling them with weapons and hate-fueled rhetoric.”
“Through their inaction they’re giving their tacit approval,” he said, demanding the passage of an anti-white supremacy hate crime bill.
The Rev. Denise Walden-Glenn, whose brother died of gun violence in Buffalo, addressed the crowd ahead of Whitfield.
She said she’s “working tirelessly to figure out long-term, sustainable solutions” to address gun violence and issues that plague Black and Brown communities across the U.S.
“We need a national government that understands equity,” she said. “We are tired of them not valuing us.”
She added, “If they don’t give us what we ask for, we will vote them out.”
Jun 11, 12:03 pm
Lawmakers join Florida, Michigan rallies
Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., joined a Saturday morning march in Parkland, Florida, home to the 2018 high school mass shooting that killed 17 students and educators.
“In the great struggle to rid our communities of gun violence, the kids will win,” he wrote.
Want to know what today reminds us? In the great struggle to rid our communities of gun violence, the kids will win. The kids will win. And we will have a safer world because of them. #MarchForOurLives#Parklandpic.twitter.com/qNX9wlw1iU
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., attended a local rally in Michigan, where a student held a sign reading, “I should be writing my college essay not my will.”
What an honor to stand side by side with all the young adults at the #MarchForOurLives rally today. Thank you Riley for the introduction!
Firearms are now the leading cause of death for American children. Enough is enough!! pic.twitter.com/DukW5hUY0H
President Joe Biden tweeted support for the marches Saturday morning.
“Today, young people around the country once again march with [March For Our Lives] to call on Congress to pass commonsense gun safety legislation supported by the majority of Americans and gun owners,” Biden tweeted. “I join them by repeating my call to Congress: do something.”
Today, young people around the country once again march with @AMarch4OurLives to call on Congress to pass commonsense gun safety legislation supported by the majority of Americans and gun owners.
I join them by repeating my call to Congress: do something.
Jun 11, 9:56 am
Son of Buffalo mass shooting victim among Saturday’s speakers
Speakers at Saturday’s Washington, D.C., rally will include Garnell Whitfield, son of 86-year-old Buffalo mass shooting victim Ruth Whitfield; David Hogg, a Parkland survivor and March For Our Lives co-founder; and Yolanda King, a 14-year-old granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr.
Garnell Whitfield said to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, “I ask every one of you to imagine the faces of your mothers as you look at mine, and ask yourself, ‘Is there nothing that we can do?'”
“Because if there is nothing, then respectfully senators, you should yield your positions of authority and influence the others that are willing to lead on this issue. The urgency of the moment demands no less,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — Washington, D.C., is increasing police presence and urging visitors not to bring guns as the city prepares for rallies and Supreme Court rulings on hot-button topics including abortion and gun rights.
Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee said Friday his department is in a “posture of preparedness” for upcoming events.
“We are increasing our presence to have coverage in neighborhoods and our downtown areas, which includes the activation of civil disturbance unit platoons,” he said at a press conference alongside Mayor Muriel Bowser. “In addition, we are working closely with our law enforcement, government and community partners to ensure that all of these events are peaceful and our neighborhoods are safe.”
This weekend in D.C., a March for Our Lives demonstration is expected to draw thousands calling for action on gun control after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 young children and two teachers dead. That followed a shooting in Buffalo, New York, where a gunman opened fire and killed 10 Black people.
The Supreme Court is also expected to deliver several opinions this month, with one or more decisions being handed down Monday and Wednesday.
Contee said if more officers are needed at any point, the Metropolitan Police Department will call upon departments in neighboring jurisdictions.
The police chief also specifically warned against bringing guns to any upcoming events amid a disturbing trend of high-profile mass shootings.
“If you’re coming to enjoy our beautiful city, individuals should not think to bring firearms into our beautiful city,” he said. “We need to help keep the peace in our city — leave the law enforcement and the firearms, leave that to the Metropolitan Police Department. That’s our responsibility.”
The FBI Washington field office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia released a statement Friday reiterating its commitment to keep the peace this summer.
“We will not tolerate violence, destruction, interference with government functions, or trespassing on government property,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves and FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. D’Antuono.
Tensions have been running high in recent weeks as the nation awaits decisions in two high-profile Supreme Court cases — one on gun rights and another on abortion rights.
Earlier this week, an armed man was arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Bowser said Friday that the city won’t “live in fear.”
“We’re going to rely on each other but also on our government who knows how to support large-scale events and are going to take every precaution that we can, but we’re also asking each other to look out for our neighbors,” she said.
– ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.
(SMITHSBURG, Md.) — A 23-year-old man faces over two dozen charges after allegedly opening fire at his workplace, killing three people and later wounding an officer in an ensuing shootout, authorities announced.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office said Friday it has charged Joe Louis Esquivel, of Hedgesville, West Virginia, in connection with Thursday’s shooting at Columbia Machine in Smithsburg, Maryland.
Esquivel faces 25 charges, including three counts each of first-degree murder and second-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder.
The suspect was working his normal shift at the factory before allegedly retrieving a semi-automatic handgun from his car and firing upon his coworkers in the breakroom at around 2:30 p.m., according to the sheriff’s office.
He then allegedly fled the scene in his bronze Mitsubishi Eclipse and was apprehended by Maryland State Police in nearby Hagerstown based on a description of the suspect, the sheriff’s office said.
The suspect and state troopers exchanged gunfire and the suspect and a trooper were wounded, the sheriff’s office said. Both were transported for medical treatment with non-life-threatening injuries.
Esquivel was arrested Friday and is being held by the Washington County Detention Center without bond. A bail hearing has been scheduled for Monday. Online court records do not include any attorney information for him.
Authorities have not commented on a possible motive in the attack.
When police arrived at Columbia Machine they found a victim critically injured outside the business. Responding sheriff’s deputies then found three additional victims dead inside.
The deceased victims were identified by the sheriff’s office as Mark Alan Frey, 50; Charles Edward Minnick Jr., 31; and Joshua Robert Wallace, 30. The fourth victim who was injured was identified as 42-year-old Brandon Chase Michael.
Maryland State Police said the injured trooper is a 25-year veteran of the department assigned to the Criminal Enforcement Division Western Region, and that he’s not being identified at this time.
Local authorities and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives executed a search warrant at the suspect’s home and found additional firearms, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said.
Columbia Machine manufactures equipment for concrete products. Smithsburg is about 70 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.
The company said it is working closely with local authorities amid the ongoing investigation.
“Our highest priority during this tragic event is the safety and well-being of our employees and their families,” Columbia Machine CEO Rick Goode said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — Editor’s note: This story was originally published in January 2022. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Hamse Warfa was the first Somali-American presidential appointee. Other Somali Americans have been appointed to presidential administrations prior to Warfa, including Hani Garabyare, during Barack Obama’s tenure. We regret the error.
The White House announced this week that Hamse Warfa will join the Biden administration — a Somali native who was inspired to enter public service because of the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment during the 2016 election cycle.
While not the first Somali-American to join a presidential administration, Warfa is one of the highest-ranking — a senior adviser to the State Department on civilian security, democracy and human rights. In that role, he will help develop strategies for protecting and promoting democracy at home and abroad.
“My acceptance of this role is in direct response to President Biden’s call to action to protect and promote democracy,” he told ABC News.
Warfa’s family fled Somalia after the country’s civil war started in 1991 and lived in various refugee camps across Kenya, he said. After arriving in the United States as a teenager in 1994 alongside his family, he received a bachelor’s degree in political science from San Diego State University and his master’s in organizational management and leadership from Springfield College in the same city. He moved to Minnesota in 2012 after he was recruited by the state’s largest philanthropic foundation, Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, he explained.
The 2016 election season inspired Warfa to become more active in civic engagement.
“The strong anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim policy and actions, motivated me to organize and get more involved at the state level,” Warfa said. “Some of the Minnesota gubernatorial candidates talked about shutting down the refugee program, and in some cases, created fear about refugees in Minnesota, especially about Minnesota’s Muslim, Somali community.”
In 2019, the Minnesota governor’s office appointed Warfa as deputy commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, making him the highest-ranking Somali American official in the state’s executive branch, according to the department.
Warfa’s list of accomplishments also includes being the co-founder of BanQu, Inc., a blockchain service created to broaden economic opportunities for low-income people across the globe, as well as the recipient of a 2016 Bush Fellowship, which is granted to help develop leadership skills, and an Ashoka Fellowship for social entrepreneurs.
During his time in Minnesota government, he “successfully advocated for the largest job bill in state history, supplying workforce training to youth and adults,” according to his department.
He served as an economic adviser to the Biden campaign, helping develop the administration’s plans to reverse the Muslim ban and increase refugee admission numbers.
“When we talk about democracy, I want to make sure we talk about inclusive democracy,” he told ABC News. “I want to bring my both lived and professional experiences to help the administration expand access to those affected by government policies and actions.”
“I want to see America live through its ideals in building multiethnic and multiracial democracy that protects everyone,” he added. “I hope people see in my example — from the refugee camp to representing America — hope for democracy and value of everyone’s voice and vote.”
(NEW YORK) — As details have emerged from the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last month — which left 19 children and two teachers dead — questions have been raised about the effectiveness of security technology used at the school, experts told ABC News.
In Uvalde, a school employee used a security app on his phone to trigger an internal alert system before the shooter entered the school, a spokesperson for the company behind the alert system, Raptor Technologies, said last Friday.
The employee pressed a “lockdown” button that set off a cascade of emergency texts and emails to coworkers, the company said. But at least one teacher, third– and-fourth-grade teacher Arnulfo Reyes, who was wounded in the attack, said he did not receive a message through the Raptor security system.
In addition, a teacher who saw the shooter approach the school armed with a gun, closed a door to the school but the door failed to lock, allowing the shooter to enter, authorities said. Law enforcement is looking into why the door did not lock, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.
The tragedy has cast the spotlight once again on the role of security technology — such as alarms, surveillance cameras and metal detectors — and its potential to help prevent and mitigate mass shootings. It also comes as many Republicans and some Democrats have called for enhanced protective measures at schools, such as bulletproof doors, while others have rejected school security measures and technologies as a key solution for mass shootings.
School security technology and the push for it has become increasingly commonplace despite a lack of conclusive research that it makes schools safer, some experts told ABC News. While technology provides schools with additional means for identifying and combating threats, its success depends largely on the competence of the people who operate it and can detract from a school’s academic offerings, the experts said.
Concerns have also arisen over the possibility of disproportionate negative effects of school security technology for Black and brown students, who are more likely to face suspension or expulsion than their white counterparts, according to a study released in 2018 by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
What is school security technology?
School security technology encompasses a host of products that protect a campus from unwanted or dangerous visitors, as well as weapons and other prohibited goods.
Schools often protect their main entryways with dead-bolted or otherwise heavily locked doors, which can be equipped with an automatic lock triggered remotely in the event of an emergency, according to a report from the non-profit National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities.
Further monitoring traffic in and out of school often takes place through the use of visitor ID badges and surveillance cameras. To discover weapons or other illicit materials, some schools deploy metal detectors. Communication devices, such as walkie talkies or public announcement systems, allow staff to alert each other or students to potential threats.
Advanced school security technology incorporates artificial intelligence, such as surveillance cameras programmed to detect guns or identify possible shooters.
Some experts emphasized the value of school security technology, noting that extra lines of defense can make a difference in preventing or slowing a potential attack. But they stressed that technological solutions cannot stand alone. Instead, schools face a challenge of training staff and students to deploy the technology effectively and respond to it in an emergency.
“When properly used to address specific needs, school security technology can be an extra tool,” Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, told ABC News. “But any security technology is only as strong as the weakest human link behind it.”
Another expert went even further, describing technology as a crucial part of school safety.
“School security plays a significant and key role,” said Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, a nonprofit that consults with school districts and other stakeholders on safety precautions.
Stephens highlighted the value of surveillance cameras, metal detectors, and forward-thinking school design that permits easy supervision of students. Technology offers schools an additional set of safety precautions as they face the difficult threat of a shooter committed to harming students or staff, sometimes at the risk of his or her own life, he added. But school safety depends on the people overseeing it, he acknowledged.
“There is still nothing like having that responsible adult or team of adults who are watching,” Stephens said. “It’s something that requires entire community support.”
A study commissioned by the Department of Justice in 2016 found that safety technology may be useful but that effective deployment requires specific measures that fit a given school. Districts may need a layered approach that implements equipment both inside and outside of a school, the report added. But high-profile events often spark measures that don’t make sense in the long run, it noted.
A growing industry
Security technology, at least in some form, is nearly ubiquitous in U.S. schools.
As of the 2017-18 school year, 95% of public schools said that they controlled access to school buildings by locking or monitoring doors, the National Center for Education Statistics found. Eighty-three percent of public schools said they use security cameras, a significant uptick from the 1999-2000 school year, when just 19% of schools were equipped with security cameras, the organization’s survey found.
The prevalence of security technology has helped the sector become a multibillion-dollar industry. In 2017, the security equipment and services sector generated $2.7 billion in revenue, according to an analysis by market-research firm IHS Markit.
Despite recent growth in the industry, research on the effectiveness of school security technology has proven inconclusive, and an uptick in school shootings over recent years suggests that the equipment has little or no effect in protecting schools from attacks, Odis Johnson Jr., the executive director at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, told ABC News.
The report commissioned by the Department of Justice in 2016 found an absence of proof that school security measures — such as access control, alarms, and video surveillance — make schools safer. “There is limited and conflicting evidence in the literature on the short- and long-term effectiveness of school safety technology,” the report said.
Similarly, a study that year from research firm RAND on school security technology — such as door locks, video surveillance, and emergency alerts — found “rigorous research about the effectiveness of these technologies is virtually nonexistent.”
Johnson said there remains a lack of clear data that demonstrates the effectiveness of school security technology. “I don’t think the literature is where it needs to be, especially as it relates to strong evidence that there is a benefit to fortifying schools,” he said.
Reaction to school shootings
The heightened use of school security technology has coincided with an increase in shootings and shooting deaths at schools, raising further questions about the effectiveness of the equipment, Johnson said.
During the 2020-21 school year, 145 school shootings took place at U.S. public and private elementary and secondary schools, including 93 shootings with casualties, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. That marked the highest number of school shootings in a given school year on record, following record-setting marks each of the three years prior, the organization found.
“The nation has fortified schools by adding law enforcement and more security measures,” Johnson said. “As we still see an increase in injuries and deaths, to me that suggests that these technologies are not an appropriate response to the problem.”
Stephens, the executive director of the National School Safety Center, a non-profit that consults with school districts, disagreed, saying that bolstered security could only help schools protect themselves against shooters.
“My take is it’s always better to be prepared,” he said. “Do everything you can, knowing that you can’t do everything.”
But Johnson and Stephens agreed that school security technology forces schools to make tradeoffs that can detract from academics. Stephens cited the example of a metal detector at a single entryway point, which he said can delay students from reaching their classrooms at the start of the day for up to two and a half hours.
“What about the educational process?” Stephens said. “You have to look at the cost.”
Kenneth Trump, the president of National School Safety and Security Services, said he’s noticed a pattern of a rise in calls for additional technology that follows mass shootings.
“After every high-profile incident, we’ve seen over the years an explosion of overnight experts, gadgets, and gurus that pop up,” Trump said. “People want a tangible thing.”
