Greg Abbott

Migrants Sue Florida Governor Over Martha’s Vineyard Flights

By Maura Sirianni

and Associated Press
September 21, 2022

The lawsuit alleges that the migrants were told they were going to Boston or Washington, and were induced with perks like McDonald’s gift cards.

Venezuelan migrants flown from San Antonio, Texas, to the upscale Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard are suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his transportation secretary for engaging in a “fraudulent and discriminatory scheme” to relocate them.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, alleges that the migrants were told they were going to Boston or Washington, “which was completely false,” and were induced with perks such as $10 McDonald’s gift certificates.

“No human being should be used as a political pawn,” said Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, which is seeking class-action status in the lawsuit filed on behalf of several migrants who were aboard last week’s flights and Alianza Americas, a network of advocacy groups.

“It is opportunistic that activists would use illegal immigrants for political theater,” said Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’ communication director, in a statement late Tuesday.

The lawsuit, which also names Florida Transportation Secretary Jared W. Perdue as a defendant, alleges that migrants were induced to cross state lines under false pretenses, a line that some Democratic officials are using to urge a federal investigation.

On Monday, Javier Salazar, the sheriff of Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, opened an investigation into the flights, but the elected Democrat did not say what laws may have been broken. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, whose district includes San Antonio, have asked the Justice Department to begin a probe.

Guesswork was rampant among government officials, advocates and journalists Tuesday about DeSantis’ next move, consistent with the element of surprise that he and another Republican governor, Greg Abbott of Texas, have sought to achieve by busing and flying migrants across the country to Democratic strongholds with little or no notice.

Asked Tuesday about speculation that DeSantis may send migrants to his home state of Delaware, President Joe Biden said: “He should come visit. We have a beautiful shoreline.”

DeSantis declined to confirm speculation, based on flight-tracking software, that more migrants were on the move. He again defended his decision to fly about 50 Venezuelans to Martha’s Vineyard, saying their decisions were completely voluntary and, without evidence, that they were in awful condition when Florida got involved.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Sends Migrants To Massachusetts By Plane

Republican governors sent more migrants to Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.

Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis took part in the latest tactic Republican governors have employed to push back on what they view as President Biden and Congressional democrats’ inaction on the migrant crisis. DeSantis sent two charter planes Wednesday carrying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard — a popular vacation spot off the coast of Massachusetts.

“The minute even a small fraction of what those border towns deal with every day is brought to their front door, they all of a sudden go berserk and they’re so upset this was happening,” DeSantis said.

The planes, which were carrying roughly 50 migrants including children, arrived around 3pm with no warning, according to local officials.

Earlier this summer, Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas began sending buses full of migrants apprehended at the southern border to Washington D.C., often with no warning.

“In any one sector in the state of Texas, we have more than 5,000 people coming across that sector every single day,” Abbott said.

On Thursday, two buses carrying migrants also arrived at the U.S. Naval Observatory — the vice president’s official residence in Washington D.C. Those buses came from Del Rio, Texas.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a public health emergency last week in order to redirect more resources to support the thousands of migrants who have arrived in the nation’s capital from Texas and Arizona. And just last month, Texas Gov. Abbott began sending migrants to New York and Chicago as welll.

Illinois governor JB Pritzker issued a disaster proclamation and has tapped the state’s national guard to help handle the hundreds of migrants being sent from Texas.

“Let me be clear: while other states may be treating these vulnerable families as pawns, here in Illinois, we are treating them as people and when a person comes urgently seeking help here in Illinois we offer them a helping hand,” Pritzker said.

Nearly a dozen busloads of immigrants have arrived in recent weeks in Chicago, with some migrants being relocated by the state to hotels in the suburbs — angering local mayors.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has called on the Biden administration to provide more federal assistance in light of Texas’ action.

“Governor Abbott’s racist and xenophobic practices of expulsion have only amplified the challenges many of these migrants have experienced on their journey to find a safe place,” Lightfoot said.

: newsy.com

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Venezuelan Migrants Faced Dangerous Journey To Flee Country

Hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants continue arriving in New York City in what has become a crisis in the big apple.

Michel, a Venezuelan migrant, says leaving Venezuela with his wife and five children was not an easy decision.

“When you make the decision to leave your country, it is not easy for us. It is not easy,” said Michel.

Francelys Guedez says she didn’t want to see her 12 year-old son continue living under a dictatorship in Venezuela.

“I don’t want the dictatorship that exists in my country to live,” said Guedez.

Michel Sagues is a Venezuelan migrant.

“I regretted it after being there,” said Sagues.

For Sagues, the dangers he and his family could encounter on their journey gave them pause about leaving Venezuela. But home was too far away to turn back, and the future of his 20-month-old son was in his hands.

All of these parents are bound by the same conviction: their love for their children.

And they are some of more than 6,300 migrants seeking asylum in New York City in recent weeks.

“They already asked me for some documents, I think for registration,” said Sagues.

Michel says he started the process of enroll his five children in school.

But for all of the migrants, language is a major obstacle.

NEWSY’S AXEL TURCIOS: How was the process when you tried to enroll your child in school?

MICHEL SAGUES: To be honest, it was a bit complicated because the school district doesn’t have many people on staff who speak Spanish. I think one of the staff got kind of annoyed because he couldn’t understand me, and I wasn’t able to understand him.

The New York City Department of Education announced Project Open Arms, a support plan for asylum-seeking families.

It’s a program that allocates more bilingual staff to help these migrants enroll their children in schools.

However, Murad Awawdeh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, says the Department of Education needs to do more.

“We need them to take this on more aggressively to ensure that the students are not just getting the basic educational supports in school, but that they’re also getting the services in school that are going to help them continue to succeed in the educational environment,” said Awawdeh.

The migrants are being bused to New York City from the Texas-Mexico border by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Abbott has acknowledged it’s a protest against what he calls President Joe Biden’s out-of-control border policies overwhelming Texas communities.

And it’s targeting Democratic city mayors like Eric Adams in New York City.

“Texas Gov. Abbott is using asylum seekers as political pawns in his efforts to build his own profile across the nation and also to get his poll numbers to increase in the state of Texas,” said Awadeh.

Most of the migrants are from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Cuba and crossed the Darién Gap, a lawless stretch of dangerous, mountainous rainforest standing across Colombia and Panama.

Jaison Manrrique crossed the region with his five-year-old daughter and wife.

“As a father I never thought to put my daughter through those conditions, sleeping on the bank of a river without knowing if in the early morning the water level was going to rise and drag us,” said Manrrique.

According to UNICEF, at least 5,000 children entered the jungle between January and June 2022.

“In the group that came behind us, there were many women, and they were all raped. Even 13-, 14-year-old girls who came in the group were raped. The men in the group were beaten,” said Guedez.

After crossing the Mexico border into Texas, the migrants say they were seeking asylum, which allows them to legally stay in the U.S. before seeing a judge.

Immigration Attorney Isadora Velazquez says these migrants go through a process called “credible fear interview.”

“They determined that this person could qualify for potential asylum. This may also apply to parents that come with their children and even if they have removal orders their children may qualify for a benefit. They don’t want the child to be at burden so the parent might be allowed in,” said Velazquez.

The immigration attorney says having an asylum claim doesn’t give them automatic benefits.

“When they do file property, they still have to wait 150 days to get a chance to apply for the work permit. Once they apply for a work permit the average wait is at least three months,” said Velazquez.

Without a work permit, they can not legally work in the country.

In the meantime, five-year-old Jaisbeli Manrrique knows what she wants.

She wishes to go to school and learn English.

: newsy.com

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129 More Migrants Arrive In New York City From Texas

The New York City mayor’s office says 129 people arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal Wednesday looking for asylum in the U.S.

Dozens of migrants continue to arrive in Washington D.C. and New York City by bus, being shipped from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbott as a protest to what he has called President Joe Biden’s “irresponsible open border policies.”

Visibly exhausted, dozens of migrants — adults, children, babies — waited for help at a bus station in midtown Manhattan after the three-day, hundreds-of-miles-long trip.

Most of them are from Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Haiti or West Africa.

Pedro Gutierrez is one of the thousands. He arrived in Manhattan last week. He says it took him almost two months to make it to the U.S.-Mexico border after he left Venezuela. He described crossing a jungle where he feared for his life, witnessing death, abuse and robberies to migrants.

Gutierrez planned for Miami, Florida to be his destination, but authorities in Texas told him he was going to get the help in New York to travel to south Florida.

A week later, however, he’s still in New York.

Manuel Castro, commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, says the mayor is concerned about the treatment migrants are receiving on these long trips.

“Gov. Abbott is weaponizing the situation, and he’s using human beings to make a political statement,” Castro said. “We were learning that there’s armed security on these buses. Apparently, the state of Texas has hired a private security firm. People need to be treated with dignity, with humanity.”

Castro says the Texas governor’s move is meant to keep migrants from hopping off the buses before they arrive in New York.

The New York City mayor accuses the Texas authorities of forcing migrants into the “Big Apple” when in some cases their final destination is another state.

“They’re asked to sign these documents under duress that say that they want to come to New York and that they waive certain rights, and people don’t know exactly what they’re signing off,” Castro said.

In Texas, the governor’s office says the migrants are traveling to New York voluntarily. However, Gov. Abbott also recently announced he was busing migrants from the Mexican border to New York City in what he calls a response to the Biden administration’s open border policies overwhelming Texas communities. The migrants are receiving food, clothing, medical care and legal assistance.

“It’s very devastating to see small kids making long journeys to the border and then from the border to be bused this way, very troubling,” said Alexander Rapaport, executive director of Masbia Relief Team. “Some people came without any shoes, just barefoot.”

The migrants released from federal custody after they crossed the border were able to avoid deportation — for now. They are given paperwork allowing them to remain in the U.S. and ordering them to appear before a judge to make their case for asylum.

Castro told Newsy they have assembled a group of immigration lawyers ready to assist the migrants.

Some of them have upcoming court appearances in other states and were brought to New York City instead, so if they decide they want to remain in the state, they have to change their court dates. But for those who will continue their journey, local organizations are offering financial support to purchase their travel tickets.

: newsy.com

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The Biden Administration To End ‘Remain In Mexico’ Border Policy

President Biden and his administration are ending the “Remain in Mexico” border policy, that the Trump administration started.

Since 2019 migrants trying to win asylum in the U.S. have waited out their cases in Mexico, under the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols.

The policy, instituted during the Trump administration, included about 70,000 migrants, who critics say were sitting ducks in dangerous drug cartel-dominated Mexican border cities.

The Biden administration sought to do away with the policy when it assumed control. But lawsuits by Republican-controlled states, namely Texas and Missouri, blocked winding down the policy until the Supreme Court sided with the White House in July.

The U.S. government is still expelling the vast majority of migrants who cross the southwest border illegally under the pandemic-related public health order called Title 42.

From October of 2021 until June, the Department of Homeland Security says it has recorded almost 1.75 million encounters with migrants along the southwest border. Many of those are repeat attempts to gain entry into the U.S.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has spent billions along the border, deploying state police and the National Guard to try to enforce immigration laws at a state level.

He’s also ordered the busing of some migrants, those who are allowed to stay after crossing into the U.S. under humanitarian exemptions.

They are coming from cities like Del Rio or Eagle Pass, Texas, which have scant infrastructure to cope with migrant relief, to places like New York and Washington D.C.

Reports show that in May and June the state spent more than a million dollars sending thousands of migrants out of Texas to, “bring the border to Biden.”

KXA in Dallas reported that the trips amounted to $1,400 per person.

An immigrant rights advocate in Washington says the idea behind the busing is mean-spirited and in reality has the opposite effect the governor intended.

Abel Nuñez is the executive director at Central American Research Center in D.C.

“It’s a political stunt. It’s a cruel political stunt because he’s basically weaponizing, you know, immigrants and aiming them at,” said Nuñuz. “The immigrants in the buses, when they realize, you know, that they’re kind of political pawns, on sort of a larger argument. They may not be happy about that, but they’re happy that they’re closer to their final destination.”

: newsy.com

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Why Are Border Encounters At An All-Time High?

CBP estimates show one in four people agents encountered in May were caught crossing the border more than once.

2022 has been a record year along the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. Customs Border and Protection data shows monthly encounters have nearly doubled month to month from last year.

In 2021, there were a total of 1.7 million migrants. CBP has already seen more than 1.5 million encounters this fiscal year.

For over two years, border agents have sent millions of people back from the border under Title 42.

The health policy allows officials to turn away asylum seekers under the justification that there is “serious danger of the introduction of disease into the United States.”

Officials say this has led to repeat crossers.

CBP estimates show one in four people agents encountered in May were caught crossing the border more than once.

Title 42 is tied up in the courts as the Biden administration seeks to end the order.

A second Trump administration immigration policy may soon come to an end.

The Supreme Court in late June sided with the Biden White House in its effort to end the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

The rule required migrants from a third country to wait in Mexico while their asylum application moves through the courts.

Politicians, like Republican governor Greg Abbott of Texas, point the blame of the ongoing surge at the Biden administration.

Most migrants illegally crossing the border have landed in Texas. Agents say the influx has left them overburdened.

The Biden administration says it has maintained its message that the border is not open.

Vice president Kamala Harris, who is tapped to lead the white house’s response to border challenges, says more needs to be done to address the root causes as to why so many migrants are arriving at the border.

Pew Research Center findings show most migrants are coming from countries other than Mexico, predominantly from the northern triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, high rates of domestic violence, poverty and gang activity have contributed to more families fleeing north.

The passage is risky. More than 50 migrants died inside an overheated semi truck in San Antonio.

And the Missing Migrants Project recorded more than 1,200 migrants who went missing or died along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021.

The White House says it is focusing efforts on its new anti-smuggling campaign.

The president says officials have made over 2,400 arrests in the three months since its creation.

In Washington, Democrats and Republicans agree action is needed. But there is no agreement on what needs to change.

Democrats are split on Title 42, with some wanting the policy to stay in place until there is a full plan to deal with increased activity at the border. Republicans want the policy intact, and construction on president Trump’s border wall to resume to stem the flow of people heading north.

But as both sides look for answers, the surge in migration shows no signs of ending soon.

: newsy.com

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The Effect Of Transgender Athlete Bans On Youth Sports

The criticism of transgender women participating in and winning sports competition can have an effect on the mental health of all ages of athletes.

As much of the nation prepares to go back to school, new laws banning transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports teams are moving from debates at the statehouse to taking effect on the field in states like Tennessee, Indiana, South Dakota and Utah.

This is a sensitive subject, and this story includes discussions about mental illness and suicide, as well as transphobic concepts and misgendering of transgender people.

These new state-level bans fit into a broader trend that has been at just about all levels of athletics — from state legislatures to international sports governing bodies, where new laws and rules have been written to exclude transgender people from sports that line up with their gender.

So now that these laws are actually taking effect, what will the impact be for the athletes and the sports they play?

Starting with international sports, although the International Olympic Committee has allowed transgender athletes to compete in the Olympics since 2004, it took until last year’s Tokyo Olympics for there to even be any openly transgender athletes competing in any sport at the Olympics.

Although one transgender athlete assigned female at birth won a gold medal with Canada’s women’s soccer team, no transgender athlete has medaled in an individual competition.

If you’re an athlete, transitioning can take a toll on your body — something that transgender athlete performance researcher and distance runner Joanna Harper saw both in her research and firsthand.

“One of the most important things in my development was the change in speed that I experienced after I started hormone therapy in August of 2004,” Harper said. “Within nine months of starting hormone therapy, I was running 12% slower, and that’s the difference between serious male distance runners and serious female distance runners.”

But as transgender women participate and win sports competitions, it’s gotten some people upset and claiming they have an unfair advantage.

There isn’t much evidence out there yet that quantifies how much of an advantage transgender women athletes may have, but she told us that regardless of gender at the highest levels of competition, there’s nuance and a middle ground here that can vary depending on the sport.

“The fact that we don’t know the magnitude of that advantage, which is also extremely important because we allow advantages in sport, what we don’t allow is overwhelming advantage,” Harper said. “For instance, we let left-handed baseball players play against right handed baseball players, even though they have numerous advantages, but we don’t let heavyweight boxers get into the ring with with flyweight boxers.”

Policies have often varied sport to sport to ensure transgender athletes can compete but without the potentially overwhelming advantage of naturally higher testosterone, which can allow some transgender athletes to compete but exclude others, including intersex women who actually aren’t transgender.

Many sports governing bodies or leagues have required testosterone levels to be below certain levels or requiring a certain amount of time to pass after transitioning, and transgender athletes themselves have proposed middle ground options. After Brazilian volleyball player Tifanny Abreu started to play on a women’s team after her transition, she suggested quotas limiting the number of transgender women per team.

But even though the IOC put out a call earlier this year for sports governing bodies to make transgender athlete policies with inclusion in mind, most of the recent sporting rule changes have headed more toward exclusion.

Lia Thomas, the transgender female swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania set records at the Ivy League women’s swimming competitions and won the NCAA Division I championship in the 500-yard freestyle. Swimming’s international governing body FINA issued new, stricter rules in June banning transgender women who transitioned after the age of 12 from competing, just a few months after Thomas’ success led to outcry from some swimmers and media voices. Other sports are expected to follow FINA’s lead and exclude most Transgender women.

Thomas has still faced hate and vitriol online, even as she’s now banned from swimming at NCAA or international women’s swimming competitions. But while Thomas won one major competition, she wasn’t dominating and was still trailed behind the best cisgender swimmers.

The NCAA record in the women’s 500-yard freestyle was set by multi-time Olympic gold medal winner Katie Ledecky, who swam it in 4 minutes and 24.06 seconds in 2017.

Meanwhile, Thomas’ championship winning time in 2022 was more than nine seconds slower, at 4 minutes and 33.24 seconds.

It’s not just swimming where transgender athletes, especially those who win in women’s sports, face attacks.

Veronica Ivy is a competitive track cyclist and a transgender woman. She earned a PhD in philosophy and has done years of research on the ethics around transgender inclusion in sports.

She also received hateful messages after winning an age group championship in 2019, but she sees sports as her outlet.

“Facetiously, one of my favorite mugs says, ‘I ride to burn off the crazy,'” Ivy said. “It is a way that I manage things like depression and anxiety and the PTSD I get from people harassing me and sending me death threats.”

That contention over trans inclusion can seep down to lower levels of sports, and that can have an effect on younger athletes.

“Sports are absolutely vital for kids to feel included, to feel a sense of community, to develop critical life skills like leadership, like ability to communicate with folks who are different from you,” said Anne Lieberman, director of policy and programs at Athlete Ally. “There are so many very clear benefits of sports participation for youth that are in hundreds of studies.”

Lieberman is a three-time national champion muay thai fighter. They had personal childhood experience with inclusion in sports making a difference.

“Sports was one of the only places where I felt like myself, where the bullying stopped, where everything just fell away for a moment and I could be in my body,” Lieberman said. “I could be connected with my peers and feel like I was just like any other kid.”

That inclusion can make all the difference for transgender youth, who report higher rates of anxiety, depression and mental health issues. A 2022 study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence found that 86% of transgender youth surveyed reported being suicidal, and more than half, 56%, reported they previously tried committing suicide.

But even as youth sports come with lower stakes, Republican legislators see transgender athletes as a threat.

“This is fundamentally about fairness,” State Rep. Ryan Dotson, (R) Kentucky, said. “It ensures that both biological females and biological males have a level playing field. We don’t want to deprive any of the females of these opportunities.”

Kentucky passed legislation banning transgender girls from competing in youth sports over the Democratic governor’s veto. Since the ban took effect, at least one female athlete hasn’t been able to compete.

As of July, 18 states, including Kentucky, have passed similar bills. Republican governors in Indiana and Utah also saw legislators override them.

But in Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox issued a statement along with his veto pointing out that out of 75,000 kids playing high school sports in Utah, four are transgender, and only one transgender student played in girls’ sports.

In Kansas, Republican legislators were blocked from implementing a ban on transgender athletes. Stephanie Byers, a Democratic state representative in Kansas who is the first Native American transgender state legislator, voted and testified against the bill. She told Newsy that in Kansas, where the same commission governs both athletic and non-athletic school competitions, the only person seeking recognition as a transgender girl, wasn’t even looking to compete in a sport.

“So in the state of Kansas, it’s estimated there are 37,000 girls in athletics and the high school level here in the state,” Byers said. “The number of people that had applied to the Kansas State High School Activities Association for a variance on gender — this year we’re seven, six for trans guys. One was a trans girl, and that one trans girl that applied for the variance. I know it wasn’t because of athletics, it was because of other activities that are sponsored by the Kent State as collective association.”

This all fits into a broader context. Transgender people aren’t just being targeted by laws about sports. 27 states considered laws limiting transgender people’s access to healthcare in 2020 and 2021, including Arkansas and Alabama, which enacted their bans into law.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state to investigate parents who help their transgender children get health care as potential child abusers.

In Florida, the Parents Rights in Education bill often labeled the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by critics, took effect this July and leads to school districts facing the risk of lawsuits if transgender identities are discussed in the classroom before fourth grade.

Transgender athletes and advocates say laws like this or athlete bans can dehumanize transgender people and that so many of these laws or efforts to debate transgender inclusion can be addressed by remembering the human effects.

“To take that away from fragile children is so unbelievably cruel, in my view,” Ivy said. “I do believe that these people passing these laws, the cruelty is the point. They don’t care about protecting women’s sport; they just want to be cruel to trans kids.”

These laws can affect transgender people off the field too.

“Even that kid has no want whatsoever to ever be in athletics,” Byers said. “They still feel these things because it’s still attacking somebody like them, so that trans girl that nobody knows about, who’s not even had the courage to sit down and talk with their parents or they live in a household, that that there’s no support going to be there no matter what. They’re the ones that feel this to.”

: newsy.com

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New Bodycam Footage Shows Police Responding To Uvalde Shooting

New bodycam footage is released showing Uvalde police officers responding to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary.

New body camera video of Uvalde police officers responding to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School has been released.

A Uvalde police officer can be heard saying, “Yeah. He’s in the class.”

The video and an in-depth House investigation were delivered just hours apart. It marks the latest blow in one of the deadliest mass shootings, revealing numerous failures many community members already knew, but now have visual evidence to confirm.”

If there’s only one thing that I can tell you, is there were multiple systemic failures,” Dustin Burrows, a Texas representative, said.

It’s caused a renewed flurry of frustration in a community left fuming from unanswered questions.

“I’m pissed because we needed to have more fluid answers,” Quintanilla-Taylor, the mother of a shooting survivor, said.

The town is reeling from emerging details in the last 48 hours.

“Everybody. Dude, we’ve got to get in there. We’ve got to get in there. He just keeps shooting,” a Uvalde officer said.

More than 70 minutes ticked away with nearly 400 officers in or around the school.

“Full of victims. Child called 911. The room is full of victims. Child 911 call,” a Uvalde officer said.

The video confirms children in the class were calling 911, begging for help. Still, the video shows officers not moving in.

The investigation by a Special Texas House of Representatives Committee found “egregiously poor decision making,” finding “law enforcement failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety.”

It also pointed out the devastating decision of Uvalde schools’ chief of police to treat the situation like a barricaded subject, potentially costing lives.

“The training and standards we set for officers is, if you know there is active shooting, active killing going on, or somebody is dying, the standard is you have to continue to do something to stop that killing or stop that dying,” Burrows said.

The report details failure of others agencies on site that were better equipped and trained to step up and take control, resulting in a lack of leadership and chaos.

“There were there already. I’m sure they were scared. But if they could have done something? They could have done something,” said Grace Valencia, the aunt of a victim.

“It’s a joke. That’s what you wanna hear? It’s a joke. Texas failed the students. Law enforcement failed the students. Our government failed the students. What else do you want me to say? The truth is out there. Everybody saw the truth,” said Vincent Salazar, the grandfather of a victim.

The investigation highlighted other failures long before the gunman walked into Robb Elementary, exposing that social media platforms failed to report violent posts. Among the missed signs: The 18-year-old gunman had an online nickname, “school shooter.”

Calls for accountability continue. The Uvalde mayor is responding with his own investigation.

“We have further questions as to who was responsible for taking command he announced he placed the Uvalde police department’s acting chief on administrative leave as they look into his response,” Mayor Don McLaughlin said.

Governor Greg Abbott calls the new findings disturbing.

For some in this community, it’s about transparency and accountability for mistakes made.

“You need to say, hey, I’m wrong. You’re right. I was there. I did nothing to serve and protect y’all. And I’m stepping down and I’m even going to turn in my badge because I’m a coward,” Quintanilla-Taylor, the mother of a shooting survivor, said.

The report concluded that while some officers waited relying on bad information, others knew enough to act.

: newsy.com

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The Fight Over Truth Also Has a Red State, Blue State Divide

To fight disinformation, California lawmakers are advancing a bill that would force social media companies to divulge their process for removing false, hateful or extremist material from their platforms. Texas lawmakers, by contrast, want to ban the largest of the companies — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — from removing posts because of political points of view.

In Washington, the state attorney general persuaded a court to fine a nonprofit and its lawyer $28,000 for filing a baseless legal challenge to the 2020 governor’s race. In Alabama, lawmakers want to allow people to seek financial damages from social media platforms that shut down their accounts for having posted false content.

In the absence of significant action on disinformation at the federal level, officials in state after state are taking aim at the sources of disinformation and the platforms that propagate them — only they are doing so from starkly divergent ideological positions. In this deeply polarized era, even the fight for truth breaks along partisan lines.

a nation increasingly divided over a variety of issues — including abortion, guns, the environment — and along geographic lines.

a similar law in Florida that would have fined social media companies as much as $250,000 a day if they blocked political candidates from their platforms, which have become essential tools of modern campaigning. Other states with Republican-controlled legislatures have proposed similar measures, including Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and Alaska.

Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, has created an online portal through which residents can complain that their access to social media has been restricted: alabamaag.gov/Censored. In a written response to questions, he said that social media platforms stepped up efforts to restrict content during the pandemic and the presidential election of 2020.

“During this period (and continuing to present day), social media platforms abandoned all pretense of promoting free speech — a principle on which they sold themselves to users — and openly and arrogantly proclaimed themselves the Ministry of Truth,” he wrote. “Suddenly, any viewpoint that deviated in the slightest from the prevailing orthodoxy was censored.”

Much of the activity on the state level today has been animated by the fraudulent assertion that Mr. Trump, and not President Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. Although disproved repeatedly, the claim has been cited by Republicans to introduce dozens of bills that would clamp down on absentee or mail-in voting in the states they control.

memoirist and Republican nominee for Senate, railed against social media giants, saying they stifled news about the foreign business dealings of Hunter Biden, the president’s son.