Tennessee Shut Down a Red Flag Law That Could Have Stopped the Nashville School Shooting

Tennessee lawmakers failed two years ago to pass a red flag gun law that could have stopped the shooter who attacked a grade school in Nashville.

A shooter opened fire at the Covenant School on Monday, killing at least three children and three adults and wounding several others. Police have identified the attacker as Audrey Hale, whom they said was under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed emotional disorder.

Hale was known to be suicidal and had reached out to a former classmate, Averianna Patton, with a suicide note before the attack. Patton tried to contact the police and was told to call the nonemergency number. By the time she got through, it was too late.

Hale also owned seven guns, all purchased legally before the attack, police Chief John Drake said. Three of those guns were used in the school shooting on Monday.

“There’s not a law for” reporting cases like Hale, Drake told a press conference. Had the police known about Hale, “then we would have tried to get those weapons. But as it stands, we had absolutely no idea who this person was or if (Hale) even existed.”

But there could have been a law: A Democratic state senator introduced what’s known as a red flag law in January 2020. The bill would have let family members, household members, intimate partners, or law enforcement officers petition a court to ban an individual who “poses an imminent risk of harm to the person or others” from possessing firearms.

If a judge granted the petition and issued an emergency order, the individual would have 48 hours to hand over any guns they already owned, and they would be prohibited from purchasing more until the order is terminated. But first, they would have to prove in a hearing they are no longer a threat to themselves or others.

Republicans held a supermajority in both the state House and Senate at the time (as they do now), and the bill never made it out of committees. In the years since, they have focused more on trying to curb LGBTQ rights than gun safety.

Following Monday’s tragedy, Tennessee Republicans have decided that there’s simply nothing they could have done differently to prevent the attack.

In the spring of 2021, Congress passed a bill to support hate crime victims and better prevent and investigate hate crimes. It passed the Senate 94–1; Josh Hawley was the only senator to vote no. Now, he wants to investigate the Nashville mass shooting as a hate crime.

Hawley on Tuesday called the Nashville school shooting a “hate crime” on the basis that it “specifically targeted … the members of this Christian community.” Hawley cited federal law that “prohibits the targeting of violence against any American on the basis of religious affiliation or religious practice or religious belief.”

In other words, Hawley referred to the kind of hate crime guidance that he stood proudly alone in voting against just two years ago.

The difference, of course, is that the 2021 hate crimes bill Hawley voted against focused on the rise in anti-Asian hate since the Covid-19 pandemic. Hawley has similarly not seemed interested in hate crimes when it comes to other communities.  He did not, for instance, make similar calls for hate crime investigations after the May 2022 shooting in Buffalo, New York. That attack was carried out by a white 18-year-old who left behind a manifesto that explicitly laid out the motivations behind his decision to kill 10 Black people at a grocery store.

In the manifesto, the shooter described himself as an ethno-nationalist and white supremacist, voicing support for the vicious “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that peddles nonsense about a “white genocide.”

After the Buffalo shooting, members of Congress began pushing for a Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which sought to establish offices to focus on neo-Nazi and white supremacist terror threats. Hawley stood in full opposition to the bill, calling it the “Patriot Act for American citizens.” (The Patriot Act, a vestige of 9/11, already was policing American citizens, but perhaps Hawley didn’t reflexively think of them as such since they were largely brown men.) And while it’s fair to be hesitant about increasing American policing power, Hawley did not offer any meaningful alternatives to confront white supremacy (nor has he been a critic of law enforcement overreach when it comes to marginalized people anyhow).

No mass shooting should happen, no matter the perpetrator. But instead of aiming to address actual causes of such tragedies, Hawley is, in full view, showing how troublingly inconsistent he is on the issue of hate crimes and violence.

A federal judge has ordered former Vice President Mike Pence to testify in the special counsel investigation into Donald Trump.

Jack Smith was appointed in November as the special counsel to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 attack and his keeping hundreds of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Pence, who has previously said he will refuse to testify, can decline to answer questions about his actions during the January 6 insurrection, NBC news reported. He can also appeal the ruling.

The judge’s order, which is still sealed, is a major win for Smith, who has been slowly closing in on Trump and the former president’s inner circle. Smith subpoenaed Pence in early February, which makes sense considering Pence is a key witness to both the events of January 6, 2021, and Trump’s state leading up to them.

But Pence argued that he is protected from testifying by the Constitution’s “speech or debate clause.” That clause’s purpose is to protect members of Congress from having things they say during legislative activities be used against them in lawsuits. Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled Pence does have some limited protections but is not immune from testifying.

Pence has yet to indicate whether he will cooperate with the judge’s order, but he has repeatedly refused to testify in previous January 6 investigations—despite the fact that the rioters wanted to hang him, which Trump reportedly felt was deserved.

The former vice president is reportedly considering running for the top job in 2024, so he has been hesitant to alienate Trump’s base. Testifying against Trump would surely do so.

Trump has also claimed executive privilege in the investigation, but so far, his efforts to shield himself have not been going well.

This story has been updated.

A fire at an immigration detention center on the U.S.–Mexico border on Tuesday seems to have started after migrants at the facility lit mattresses on fire in protest as they feared imminent deportation. The fire grew out of control and left at least 38 people* dead and 29 injured.

The tragedy follows a right-wing escalation in immigration policies coming from the White House. Last month, President Biden announced a proposal to ban certain migrants from receiving U.S. asylum access and to empower the government to deport those migrants more quickly.

Tuesday’s deadly fire took place at a facility in Ciudad Juarez, which stands across the border from El Paso, Texas. According to the National Immigration Institute, 68 men from Central and South America were being held in the facility at the time of the fire. Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also said the fire was started by migrants protesting after they learned they would be deported. “They never imagined that this would cause this terrible misfortune,” he said.

Biden’s asylum proposal would bar migrants from asylum if they attempted to cross the U.S. border without first seeking refuge in other countries on their way. Migrants unable to prove that they are not in violation of the policy could be quickly deported—without even a chance to appear in front of an immigration judge. U.S. law currently grants the right to anyone physically present in the country to seek asylum regardless of one’s status.

Biden’s proposal is very similar to a Trump-era asylum ban that Democrats (including Biden) rightfully denounced before it was struck down in federal court. The Biden administration sees its new proposed asylum ban as a way to maintain deterrence after Title 42, a Trump-era program that has expelled migrants under the guise of public health, ends.

In Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, the atmosphere has only heightened paranoia and anxiety among migrants and advocates. The Associated Press reported that more than 30 migrant shelters and other advocacy organizations published an open letter earlier this month that complained of a criminalization of migrants and asylum-seekers in the city. The letter accused authorities of abuse and excessive force while rounding up migrants, even questioning people in the street about their immigration status without any cause.

The 29 injured are at the hospital, with many facing serious injuries. The Guatemalan Institute of Migration has said that at least 28 of those dead have been identified as Guatemalan nationals. At least 853 migrants died just while crossing the border in the 2022 fiscal year.

The death toll in this post was updated.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sent President Joe Biden a letter on Tuesday suggesting how to reign in government spending, but his ideas are ambiguous and unlikely to actually solve anything.

McCarthy also included several proposals from the House Freedom Caucus, the far-right wing of House Republicans, which exercises outsize influence in the chamber after establishing itself as McCarthy’s main obstacle to the speakership.

The California Republican accused Biden of “putting an already fragile economy in jeopardy by insisting upon your extreme position on the debt limit.”

“It’s time to drop partisanship, roll up our sleeves, & find common ground,” McCarthy tweeted.

His letter puts forward four key steps.

He proposes imposing work requirements for people to qualify for Medicaid, a policy that has been proven to be ineffective, as well as recouping any unspent federal Covid-19 funds.

McCarthy also suggests scaling back non-defense federal spending to “pre-inflationary levels.” He does not propose changing the massive defense budget, nor does he explain how to get federal spending down with inflation still at a record high.

The final proposal is to implement “policies to grow our economy and keep Americans safe, including measures to lower energy costs, make America energy independent, and secure our border from the flow of deadly fentanyl that is killing 300 Americans per day.” McCarthy does not explain how to lower energy costs if the government does not subsidize them, nor how he plans to wean the U.S. off of foreign fossil fuels. His plan includes no mention of how to actually secure the border, or what this has to do with lowering the debt, and is instead just another dig at Biden for the influx of immigrants.

Republicans have shot down previous legislative attempts to jumpstart the economy and create more jobs, such as Biden’s Build Back Better Plan. They refuse to consider energy-saving measures such as investing in green energy, and they have also rejected the idea of a billionaire tax.

McCarthy’s plan does not explicitly mention cutting Medicaid or Social Security, a major sticking point in the increasingly heated budget debate, though Medicaid work requirements would effectively cut down the number of people on the program. The GOP has made clear they are willing to hold the debt ceiling hostage in order to cut costs in the federal budget.

Democrats are refusing to compromise on the debt ceiling, setting up a drawn-out battle. If the debate goes on too long, the United States could be in serious trouble. The government already hit the debt ceiling in January, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has previously warned the U.S. could default on its debt by the summer if the cap isn’t raised.

“It’s simply a recipe for economic and financial catastrophe to think we can pay some of our bills and not all of them,” Yellen told the Senate Finance Committee two weeks ago.