As School Shootings Abound, Vermont Police Terrify Kids with Fake One

Police officers in Burlington, Vermont, opted for an unusual teaching method for an active shooting simulation: inflicting pure terror.

Roughly 20 Burlington High School students were touring the Burlington Police Station Wednesday as part of a year-end forensics program when the authorities decided to stage a surprise active shooter demonstration, with one officer bursting into the room dressed as a masked gunman, firing blanks and sending students ducking for cover, reported Vermont’s weekly paper Seven Days.

Parents of the affected students were outraged, telling the paper that they felt the officers were playing on the fears of teenagers who grew up enveloped in fears of mass gun violence.

“I’m baffled,” one unidentified mother told Seven Days. “It is a very real threat to kids these days to have a school shooting. It’s something they worry about.”

One student, speaking anonymously, told the paper that the incident left her “shaking and crying,” fearing that she was going to get shot. Another said that they scraped their knee while attempting to find shelter, while a third immediately rushed to contact their mother.

“It felt so real,” a student told Seven Days.

Burlington police confirmed to the paper that the incident occurred, noting that they had informed teachers ahead of time that there would be a “gunshot-related crime” depicted during the tour—but not that it would take place without warning.

In a separate email to parents, schoolteachers alleged that the police department had wanted the demonstration to be “as realistic as possible” and that the department had previously performed the live demonstrations for college students and adults.

“The detectives did apologize after they realized that the reenactment did not translate well to high school students,” the teachers wrote, according to an email obtained by Seven Days.

The school district has since issued an apology for the incident and has offered counseling services to the students involved.

The trial may be over for Steve Bannon, but that doesn’t mean his attorneys are done with the drama.

The January 6 conspirator’s legal representation blew up Thursday after his client was ordered to report to prison on July 1 to serve a four-month sentence, resulting in a swift dressing down by Judge Carl J. Nichols.

Bannon attorney David Schoen reportedly “sprung into action” after Nichols announced his decision, becoming much more lively than he had been throughout the rest of the hearing, per NBC News.

“One thing you have to learn as a lawyer is that when the judge has made his decision, you don’t stand up and start yelling,” Nichols responded.

But when Schoen refused to quit, the judge added that he’d “had enough.”

“I’m not yelling,” Schoen threw back, explaining that he was “passionate.”

“You’re sending a man to prison who thought he was complying with the law, we don’t do that in my system,” he continued, deriding the decision as “contrary to our system of justice.”

That appeared to be the final straw for the judge, who ordered Schoen to “sit down.”

Despite facing a near future in prison, Bannon appeared in decent spirits on Thursday, telling reporters that he had “great lawyers” with the intention of going “all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to.”

“There’s nothing that can shut me up and nothing that will shut me up,” Bannon said. “There’s not a prison built or a jail built that will ever shut me up.”

That already seems to be the case: Bannon was sentenced to prison more than a year and a half ago, but he has remained free this whole time to spew disinformation and hatred online.

Bannon isn’t the only eyebrow-raising client on Schoen’s roster. Prior to representing the far-right conspiracy theorist, he defended the Russian mafia, capital murderers, and international drug dealers. Schoen has been an adviser to House Speaker Mike Johnson, was the last person to see his client Jeffrey Epstein alive, and also represented Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.

Trump’s search for a vice president pick is heating up as the Republican National Convention draws near with contenders recently receiving vetting materials, according to multiple outlets that have shared the new nightmare short list.

Team Trump has officially requested materials from North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Senators J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, according to ABC, with inquiries sent to Senators Tim Scott and Tom Cotton, Representatives Elise Stefanik and Byron Donalds, and former Trump HUD Secretary Ben Carson. Cue the tea leaves:

“Trump likes people who are rich and have hot wives,” a source unaffiliated with Trump’s campaign but reportedly closely following the veep search told Politico’s Playbook on Thursday. If wife hotness is a major factor in Trump’s search, Stefanik may still be in the running on the technicality that she’s the wife—although lacking in the platinum-blonde, spray-tanned aesthetic common among women in Trump’s orbit.

Trump plans to announce his choice for vice president at the RNC in July. And while Trump is reportedly still working from a “fluid” list of prospective candidates that changes day to day and the Trump campaign hasn’t offered any insights, a request for vetting materials is as strong an indicator as it gets—stronger, at least, than guessing whose wife Trump thinks is hotter. Regardless of who he picks, Trump’s short list is a mishmash of far-right figures hiring white supremacists, pushing bigoted policies, and floating racist conspiracy theories that are a threat to democracy.

It looks like Steve Bannon is going to prison.

U.S. District Judge Judge Carl J. Nichols on Thursday ordered the former Trump adviser and threat to democracy to report to prison by July 1 to serve his sentence for defying a congressional subpoena.

Bannon was held in contempt of Congress in October 2021 after he refused to respond to a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots. In July 2023, he was convicted on two contempt charges, and three months later was sentenced to four months in prison and a $6,500 fine.

Bannon appealed the sentence, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld his conviction last month, putting to end Bannon’s many attempts to flout and stall a ruling against him, including an attempt to turn the trial into a circus and stir up the MAGA faithful.

Speaking to reporters outside of the court on Thursday, Bannon said “all this is about one thing.”

“This is about shutting down the MAGA movement, shutting down grassroots conservatives, shutting down President Trump,” Bannon said. “Not only are we winning, we are going to prevail, and every number, every poll shows that. There’s nothing that can shut me up and nothing that will shut me up.”

Bannon was then interrupted by a heckler who yelled, “Fail! You’re going to jail.” The heckler also called Bannon a “coup plotter.”

Thursday’s news means that another one of MAGA’s most prominent voices will soon be behind bars.

Since Trump’s term ended, Bannon has attempted to interfere in Brazil’s politics as well as the upcoming election in the United States, and his radio show is a haven for far-right Republicans to rant about whatever they want. Now, after escaping prison once thanks to a Trump pardon over a border wall fraud scheme, he will soon be behind bars.

This story has been updated.

Representative Byron Donalds isn’t backing down from his claim that Black Americans were better off under Jim Crow segregation.

Speaking to CNN’s Abby Phillip Wednesday night, Donalds repeated his claim, made Tuesday at a Republican outreach event in Philadelphia, that welfare and President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs had hurt Black families to the point that they were worse off than in the days of Jim Crow.

“Before the Great Society, before Lyndon Johnson’s policies, there was more Black families united,” Donalds said Wednesday. “The marriage rate in Black America was significantly higher before the Great Society. The period of time that coincides with that obviously is Jim Crow era.”

Phillip asked what the point was in tying together the Black family and Jim Crow specifically.

Donalds said he was only referring to the specific time period, repeating his contention that Black families were hurt by Johnson’s policies, stating that the Black family is being rejuvenated now, but he didn’t mention that those policies were later rolled back by other Democrats, like Bill Clinton.

As Phillip stressed that the Jim Crow era was a “period [of] racial segregation [and] racial terror,” Donalds responded by trying to claim that his words were being twisted.

“What you are dealing with right now is a political environment where now anything I might say or any major surrogate might say is going to be twisted into the lens of race,” Donalds said. “That was never the point.”

Phillip went on to ask Donalds three times if he regretted using Jim Crow as a historical comparison, as the Florida representative refused to answer.

Donalds’s comments Tuesday drew pushback from Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who called them an “ignorant observation.” The Congressional Black Caucus called on Donalds to apologize for his remarks in a statement.

“This is a pattern of embracing racist ideologies that we see time and again within the MAGA Republican Party,” the CBC said. “Rep. Donalds is playing his role as the mouthpiece who will say the quiet parts out loud that many will not say themselves.”

Donalds is said to be in contention to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, but the convicted felon has not responded to the congressman’s comments. It’s anyone’s guess whether Trump’s own documented racism would lead him to appreciate or disapprove of Donalds’s contention.