What Happened Today: May 25, 2022
Second-worst U.S. school shooting; schools across nation increase police presence; Western media misses the Abu Akleh story
The Big Story
A shooting in a Texas elementary school yesterday left 19 children and 2 teachers dead and more than a dozen students and faculty members injured, after an 18-year-old gunman crashed a truck through a school barrier and made his way inside. All of the deaths and injuries took place in a single classroom, law enforcement said Wednesday. Before the gunman opened fire, students in a nearby fourth-grade classroom spotted him approaching and escaped one by one out of a window. The suspect had recently purchased an AR-15-style rifle after turning 18, one of the two rifles he’d reportedly brought to the school, along with 375 rounds of ammunition. The suspect was shot and killed by an off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent who entered the school and exchanged gunfire with the shooter while he was still barricaded inside the classroom. The agent, a member of an elite Border Patrol Tactical Unit, eventually killed the 18-year-old shooter, suffering non-life-threatening injuries in the encounter. Located about 85 miles west of San Antonio, Robb Elementary School sits in a rural town called Uvalde, not far from the Mexico border. At least 40% of those living in Uvalde near the school have resided in the same house for the past three decades, according to recent census data. The school shooting yesterday puts the total number of mass shootings in the United States—defined as events in which four or more people are wounded or killed—at 213 for the year, an average of more than one per day. The incident comes 10 days after another shooting in which an 18-year-old suspected gunman killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket. The Uvalde shooting is the second deadliest elementary school shooting to take place in the United States, following the killing of 26 people, including 20 children, at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Like many past shootings, the deadly event yesterday has sparked a national conversation about gun legislation, with a focus on two bills that strengthen gun background checks but have not moved from the House of Representatives, where they passed in 2020, to the Senate, where it’s expected they would not find enough Republican supporters. On Friday, the National Rifle Association is expected to still host former president Donald Trump and other speakers at its convention in Dallas, though John Cornyn, a Republican senator from Texas, has canceled his appearance.
In the Back Pages: Western Media Misses the Abu Akleh Story
The Rest
→ In an elaborate cover-up of its nuclear program in the early 2000s, Iran gained access to secret U.N. atomic agency records and used these to falsify documents to shield its nuclear program from U.N. monitors, according to The Wall Street Journal. Iran’s possession of these documents, which were stolen from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), marks “a serious breach of IAEA internal security,” said David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former U.N. weapons inspector. The documents allowed Iran to “design answers that admit to what the IAEA already knows, give away information that it will likely discover on its own, and at the same time better hide what the IAEA does not yet know that Iran wants to keep that way,” Albright said. While the publication of this information further complicates the revival of the Iran nuclear deal—a central plank of the Biden administration’s foreign policy—it will not come as news to U.S. officials, who have known about these documents since 2018, when Israeli intelligence operatives recovered more than 100,000 Iranian files and shared them with U.S. intelligence.
→ At New York schools, uniformed and plain-clothes state police will now include daily public school check-ins as part of their rounds following the shooting in Texas. The announcement was made Wednesday by Gov. Kathy Hochul after an emergency safety meeting with state law enforcement, and it comes after officials in D.C., Atlanta, and elsewhere nationwide made similar moves to increase law enforcement presence as schools wind down their academic year.
→ It was a brutal night for Trump-backed candidates in Georgia, and a mixed bag for candidates with Trump endorsements across three other states holding primary elections. The latest election results have added more volatility to the GOP as establishment Republicans won several key races and elevated their status as a potentially viable alternative to Trump-aligned candidates for voters in November. Trump’s aggressive attacks on Gov. Brian Kemp did little in the Georgia Republican primary to sway voters, who gave a 50-point edge to Kemp over David Perdue, the senator whom Trump supported with $2 million in campaign contributions. Georgians also gave the nod to four other candidates opposing those backed by Trump, though the former president found some success in Arkansas, where his former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sailed to victory in the gubernatorial primary. Sanders is the strong favorite to take the governor’s mansion, where she once lived when her father, Mike Huckabee, was the governor.
→ British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to announce billions of pounds in new public spending programs aimed at bringing down the cost of living for poor families in the United Kingdom, primarily by increasing credits for heating costs during the winter and cutting property taxes. The programs will be funded through revenue raised from new taxes levied against energy companies’ profits. This comes as the average cost of heating a home in England has gone up 119% in the past year and as energy costs have continued to climb amid inflation and supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The move is opposed by many in Johnson’s cabinet, but Johnson is insistent on passing the programs, and quickly—perhaps in the hopes of changing headlines to something other than Partygate; the prime minister was photographed at large and rowdy social gatherings at 10 Downing Street while the rest of the country was on lockdown, stuck inside and struggling to pay their rising heating bills.
→ The possibility that by the end of the year we have an actual biblical-level global food shortage seems like something DraftKings.com or your local bookie might soon begin taking bets on:
→ The unusually wet spring in the U.S. wheat belt is driving down domestic wheat production. Meanwhile, the world’s largest wheat exporter, Russia, is expected to have a record crop and likely earn premium prices for exports this summer as nations scramble to cover the wheat imports lost from Ukraine, the world’s other great wheat supplier. The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said that he is currently engaged in intense negotiations with representatives from Russia and Ukraine, as well as their U.S. and European Union counterparts, to try to ease restrictions on sanctions against Russia in exchange for Russia unblocking the Ukrainian Black Sea ports it controls to allow Ukraine wheat out of the country. However, analysts speculate that Russia—with its own bumper wheat crop and enough customers (who aren’t participating in the Western sanctions) for its other exports—thinks the terms of the deal aren’t yet favorable and needs more incentives to release the wheat from Ukrainian ports.
→ Ruling last week in “FEC vs. Ted Cruz for Senate,” the Supreme Court rolled back anti-bribery regulations that limited a candidate’s ability to make loans to their campaigns and repay themselves later. Congress had sought to bar candidates from repaying themselves with funds raised after an election because doing so could lead to bribery: a victorious candidate could easily fundraise from special interests and then channel those funds directly into their bank accounts to repay those loans. Worse still, candidates could loan their campaign’s money at high interest rates, as Rep. Grace F. Napolitano (D-CA) did in 1998, when she loaned her campaign funds at an 18% interest rate and then profited off those loans for years to come. The Federal Election Commission had therefore limited the amount a campaign could pay its candidate to $250,000 and stipulated that those funds had to be repaid within 20 days of the election. Sen. Cruz challenged this law, and the Supreme Court has sided with him, 6-3, enabling candidates to loan their campaigns extraordinary sums of money (in the Pennsylvania senate contest between Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, for instance, the candidates have loaned themselves $12.7 million and $14.7 million respectively) and then, upon winning the election, set up meetings to get those loans—plus interest—repaid.
→ In September of 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), a federation representing American public school boards and their 90,000 members, sent a letter to the Biden administration about the “immediate threat” to teachers and school board members posed by parents and organizations protesting curricula and COVID-19-related closures and mask mandates. The letter, which called the threat from parents “domestic terrorism” and cited the PATRIOT Act before requesting that the FBI and federal security agencies step in, turns out to have been drafted in coordination with Mary Wall, a senior policy adviser from President Biden’s White House. This revelation comes from an internal review, released on Friday, that the NSBA conducted in the wake of widespread backlash over the letter’s language and recommendations. “Evidence indicates that White House officials discussed the existence of the Letter, its requests, and the contents of the Letter with Department of Justice officials more than a week before the Letter was finalized and sent to President Biden,” the NSBA investigation concluded. The letter was also shared with Wall hours before its final publication. “Thank you for sending in advance,” Wall wrote. “We will review, and we remain committed to working with you on these very important issues. As the President has stated, we stand with educators who are doing right by kids—and we know they/you all need to be protected now more than ever.” The letter calling American parents “domestic terrori[sts]” was published a short time later.
→ “What a dick move!” Elon Musk tweeted, resharing a Breitbart piece accusing Bill Gates of donating “hundreds of millions of dollars” to “organizations that signed an open letter last month urging Twitter advertisers to boycott the company if Elon Musk restores free speech on the platform.” Musk has repeatedly taken to Twitter in recent months to attack Gates, who has been more staid in his own rhetoric as he raises concerns about Musk’s potential Twitter takeover. “His track record with Tesla and Space X is pretty mind-blowing at putting together a great team of engineers and taking people who work in those fields in a less bold way and really showing them up,” Gates said. “I kind of doubt that’ll happen this time [with Twitter], but we should have an open mind and never underestimate Elon.” Musk, meanwhile, has been a good deal brasher in his criticisms of Gates, captioning a picture of the Microsoft founder with a bit of a belly bulge “in case u need to lose a boner fast.” Some of Musk’s ire stems from rumors that Gates is betting against Tesla, holding a big short position on its stocks. “That didn’t work out too well,” Musk said to Joe Rogan last year. Tesla’s stock has declined steeply since. “It’s possible the stock went down and whoever shorted the stock made money, I don’t know,” Gates said a few weeks ago.
→ Daniel Rubinstein, who served as a spokesperson in the Israel Defense Forces, spent much of his time tweeting about Israel’s wars; now he is tweeting about the experience of doing so, and it makes for an interesting thread:
→ By the numbers: $7.6 billion, the total number that venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz has raised thus far for crypto investments after collecting $4.5 billion in a new crypto fund, the firm announced today.
→ Jacques Bouthier, a 75-year-old French insurance tycoon, was arrested for human trafficking and raping a minor after a 22-year-old woman filed a report with police alleging that, since she was 14, Bouthier had forced her to have sex with him in exchange for food and lodging. When Bouthier felt that the 22-year-old had grown too old, he tasked her with finding a 14-year-old replacement; she found a substitute, filmed the substitute with Bouthier in bed, and provided the police with the video. Bouthier’s wife and four other accomplices have also been charged, as they allegedly helped Bouthier try to recover the video and kidnap the informant and force her to flee the country. Bouthier’s sex slave scheme, which included as many as seven teenagers over the course of several years, preyed upon young people who had run away from home. Bouthier, who founded one of France’s largest insurance firms and is worth €160 million, now sits in prison with his accomplices as they await trial.
Additional reporting and writing provided by The Scroll’s associate editor, David Sugarman
Western Media Misses the Abu Akleh Story
CNN published an investigation Tuesday asserting an explosive claim—that Israeli security forces “fired deliberately” at Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killing her in a “targeted” attack—which, upon closer read, it doesn’t prove.
Abu Akleh, a veteran journalist at Al Jazeera, was part of a crew of reporters covering Israeli counterterrorism operations around the West Bank city of Jenin when she was killed on May 11. The raids were a response to a series of Palestinian attacks that have killed 19 Israelis in the deadliest wave of terrorism in Israel since 2016.
The CNN article, co-written by six authors, does, however, present credible evidence that Israeli forces fired the bullet that killed Abu Akleh. But rather than presenting its evidence about who caused the journalist’s death, the article uses a series of elisions to promote an unfounded theory of why she was killed—erasing any distinctions between a tragic but inadvertent death during combat operations, an act of negligence, and a targeted assasination.
“The investigation is full with inaccuracies and question marks regarding the reliability of some of the evidence presented in it. It is not possible to reach a firm conclusion before completing the investigation,” an Israeli official told the journalist Amichai Stein responding to the CNN report.
Israel maintains that it can’t make any final determinations about the incident without being granted access to the bullet that killed Abu Akleh. The bullet is currently in the possession of Palestinian officials who refuse to share it with Israel but say they are conducting their own analysis that will eventually be made public.
To back up the claim that Israeli forces targeted Abu Akleh, the CNN article relies on a forensic analysis of audio from videos taken of the shooting, additional forensic evidence of bullet markings, and eyewitness testimony. The physical evidence suggests that the lethal shot could have been fired by an Israeli military convoy that was roughly 200 meters from the group of journalists who came under fire. That scenario is backed up by a separate and more careful investigation published Tuesday by the Associated Press, which draws on another investigation by the open-source intelligence outfit Bellingcat.
One crucial question that none of the three investigations answers definitively is whether there were Palestinian militants present at the time of the shooting as Israeli officials claim and, if so, where they were located in relation to the Israeli military convoy and the group of journalists Abu Akleh was with when she was shot.
While it’s clear that there were gunfights on the morning of May 11, the day Abu Akleh was killed, and there was gunfire the same day after her killing, the CNN article claims there was no active gunfire when she was shot. That appears to be corroborated by video taken at the time Abu Alekh was shot, but even if there was no gunfight at the time, there might still have been active combatants in the area, which is known as a hub of Palestinian terrorist groups.
Covering the gulf between what its evidence suggests and the damning conclusions it draws, the CNN article relies on statements from witnesses like Jamal Huwail. “They were shooting directly at the journalists,” CNN quotes Huwail, who was present at the time of the shooting and helped pull Abu Akleh’s body out of the field of fire. The article does not mention that Huwail is a former member of the Palestinian Fatah Party in Jenin who praised a terrorist who killed four Israeli civilians in an attack in March as a “Lone Lion.”
We’re left to speculate as to why Israeli soldiers, who are subject to strict codes of military justice, would have deliberately killed a journalist who posed no threat. The article provides no motive, but the implication is that Abu Akleh was killed for the crime of being a journalist, or for being a Palestinian, or for no reason other than the wanton cruelty and bloodlust of the Israelis.
The kind of overwrought coverage from the Western press in turn makes it easy for Israelis and their defenders to focus on demonization from the outside while ignoring their own responsibilities. But no one comes off well here, and CNN’s irresponsible coverage doesn’t change that.
Whatever is ultimately determined about the circumstances of Abu Akleh’s death, there’s no doubt that Israeli officials were excessive in their handling of her funeral, which almost turned into a riot. According to a report published Tuesday by Israel’s public broadcaster Kan 11, Israeli police ignored recommendations from the Shin Bet security service, which advised allowing the funeral procession to go on without interference.
“Despite the reported advice, Israeli police violently dispersed an attempt by Palestinians to carry the casket of the veteran journalist on foot to the Old City while thousands gathered to grieve her,” The Times of Israel reported on Wednesday.
Jacob Siegel is editor of the Scroll and a Senior Writer at Tablet