Republicans’ Jan. 6 Refusal Could Set Up a Showdown

WASHINGTON — Four House Republicans including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, signaled on Thursday that they would not cooperate with subpoenas from the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, posing a dilemma for the panel that could have broad implications for the inquiry and for Congress itself.

Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona each sent letters to the committee objecting to the investigation ahead of the depositions scheduled for this week, and Mr. McCarthy, of California, filed a court brief arguing the panel’s subpoenas are illegitimate.

In a statement, Mr. Perry called the Democratic-led committee a “kangaroo court” and accused the panel of “perpetuating political theater, vilifying and destroying political opponents.”

The Republicans’ resistance could hinder the committee’s investigation, leaving unanswered questions about the deadly mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that left more than 150 police officers injured. It will also likely force the panel to decide whether to pursue criminal contempt of Congress charges against the men, which could prompt a legal showdown whose outcome could set a precedent for future congressional investigations.

Mr. Perry, Mr. Biggs and Mr. Jordan were summoned to testify this week, with Mr. McCarthy and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama scheduled for next week.

CNN earlier reported that Mr. Perry and Mr. Biggs had sent letters to the committee objecting to the subpoenas. Mr. Brooks did not respond to a request for comment.

The men have employed slightly different tactics in resisting the subpoenas. While Mr. Perry refused to appear — his lawyer stated flatly that the congressman “declines to appear for deposition on May 26 and requests that you withdraw the subpoena” — Mr. Jordan issued a lengthy list of demands to which the panel was unlikely to agree.

Mr. Jordan, who is in line to become Judiciary Committee chairman should his party take control of Congress after November’s midterms, demanded “all documents, videos or other materials in the possession of the select committee” to be used in his questioning and any material the panel has in which his name appears.

“Your attempt to compel testimony about a colleague’s deliberations pertaining to a statutorily prescribed legislative matter and an important constitutional function is a dangerous escalation of House Democrats’ pursue of political vendettas,” Mr. Jordan wrote to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee.

A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.

The men’s resistance came as 22 former Republican members of the House urged them to cooperate with the panel.

“We understand you may have concerns about this exercise of the committee’s subpoena power,” the former members wrote in their letter, posted to Medium. “Indeed, under most circumstances, we would strongly counsel against compelling the testimony of sitting members of Congress. But the exceptional nature of this circumstance is clear: one in which sitting members may have firsthand knowledge regarding an assault on our government. The best way to ensure a full and fair accounting of what happened before and on Jan. 6 is for you to provide your understanding of the events and to explain it to the American people.”

The committee issued the subpoenas this month as it dug deeper into the role Republicans played in attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Perry, who coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general after he resisted Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread voting fraud, argued in a letter to the committee that there was “nothing improper” about his actions.

“The committee is without authority to issue the subpoena, and we respectfully request that it be immediately withdrawn,” his lawyer, John P. Rowley III, wrote.

The panel has been told by at least one witness that Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, burned documents in the fireplace in his office after a meeting with Mr. Perry, a person familiar with the committee’s activity said on Thursday. The information was first reported by Politico. The Times reported on Wednesday that the committee had information that Mr. Meadows had used his fireplace to dispose of documents.

Mr. McCarthy, along with Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, filed a brief in support of Stephen K. Bannon, a Trump ally who has been indicted on charges of contempt of Congress after he failed to comply with a subpoena from the committee.

In the brief, lawyers for Mr. McCarthy argued that the committee’s subpoenas were illegitimate because, they said, the panel is not following the rules of the House regarding the number of members of the committee and Republicans’ role on the panel. Several judges have already rejected that argument in other suits.

Mr. Bannon is attempting to have the contempt charges dismissed, and Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Scalise sided with him, arguing the Jan. 6 committee’s pursuit of Mr. Bannon could cause “potential damage” to the institution of the House.

The panel’s move to compel cooperation from the Republicans was widely seen as unprecedented in the modern history of congressional investigations. In the House, subpoenas are almost never issued outside of the Ethics Committee, which is charged with investigating allegations of members’ misconduct.

Before sending their letters, the Republicans under subpoena privately discussed how best to respond, according to people familiar with their thinking who described it on the condition of anonymity. Some argued there was a clear political benefit to defying the committee — because former President Donald J. Trump’s base would almost certainly look favorably on the move — but some also are worried about weakening the authority of their own subpoenas if their party takes over Congress.

Mr. Thompson has said that if the men do not comply, another option beyond a contempt charge could be a referral to the Ethics Committee.

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

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Ukraine Live Updates: In Wake of Davos, a Growing Debate on Ending the War

BILOHORIVKA, Ukraine — Out on the riverbank, the scene of mayhem unfolded under a baking spring sun: blown-up tanks, the detritus of pontoon bridges, heaps of branches shorn off by explosions and the bodies of Russian soldiers, some half buried in the mud.

In the forest, a short walk revealed bits of torn Russian military uniforms hanging from trees, an eerie reminder of the troops who died violently here.

The failed river crossing that took place at this spot over several days in early May was one of the most lethal engagements of the war for the Russian army. Its forces had sought to surround Ukrainian soldiers in the nearby town of Sievierodonetsk — but instead became surrounded themselves, boxed in by the river and a Ukrainian frontline. At least 400 Russian soldiers died, mostly from artillery attacks.

As the war grinds across the rolling plains and forests of Eastern Ukraine, the maneuvering of troops has in large part evolved into attempts at entrapment. But as the deadly encounter at the bridge illustrated, the tactic comes with grave risks.

After failing to capture major cities such as Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, or to cleave off the entire Black Sea coast, the Russian military attempted a major encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the east. That effort is looking difficult now that Ukraine has blocked one main route of advance, near the town of Izium.

So the Russian forces’ immediate goal has become a smaller encirclement of Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost city in the Donbas region still under Ukrainian control. Artillery bombardments by Russian troops approaching from three sides have ravaged the city, knocking out water and electricity and in the past day killing at least six people.

The Russian strategy has been to use the blunt instrument of its army’s vast artillery to pound away at Ukrainian forces, making incremental gains in the Luhansk region of the Donbas. Military analysts and Western intelligence officials believe that Moscow’s forces would face brutal urban combat if they tried to fully capture Sievierodonetsk, and that they would struggle to mount an offensive deeper inside Ukraine.

Encirclement is a harrowing prospect for soldiers.

“I try not to think about it,” said Pvt. Ivan Sichkar, a Ukrainian soldier surveying the destruction of the encircled Russian force. “If I think of being surrounded, there’s no time left to do anything else.”

The Russians’ refashioned goal has focused the battle on a slender, 75-mile front in the Donbas. It is seeking to advance from both the north and the south to close the one remaining supply line for Ukraine into the city of Sievierodonetsk.

On Tuesday, the Russian army advanced from the south, forcing Ukrainian troops to retreat from the small town of Svitlodarsk, lest the Russians envelop the town and trap soldiers inside. And in its Wednesday evening briefing, the Ukrainian general staff described stepped-up attacks by Russian helicopters and jets to support ground troops in the east.

With Russia making only halting progress in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin moved Wednesday to shore up support at home, announcing raises in pensions and the minimum wage and making his first trip to meet with wounded soldiers. “They are all heroes,” he said at a military hospital.

Mr. Putin also signed a decree opening a fast track to Russian citizenship for Ukrainian residents of areas controlled by the Russian military, a further step toward annexing territory in southeastern Ukraine that Russia has occupied.

As Mr. Putin moved to reassure ordinary Russians, Ukraine’s Western allies were trying to maintain pressure on his government. In Ankara on Wednesday, talks took place between Turkey, Finland and Sweden over Turkish concerns about the two Nordic countries’ application to join NATO. At a news conference after five hours of negotiations, Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said more talks were needed.

“Turkey is not under time pressure,” Mr. Kalin said. “It is not possible for any process to proceed without meeting the security concerns of Turkey.”

The strategy of encirclement has yielded far-reaching political gains for Russia over the course of its longer conflict in the region, in which Russian-backed separatists battled Ukrainian forces for eight years before the full-scale invasion this year. Two cease-fires, known as the Minsk agreements and seen as struck on terms advantageous to Russia, followed successful Russian encirclements of Ukrainian troops in the east in 2014 and 2015.

But in Bilohorivka, a tiny coal mining town on the banks of the Siversky Donets River, the tables were turned earlier this month, at least temporarily slowing the Russian advance.

Ukrainian soldiers who fought in the battle took to calling the site “the ear” for a lobe-like loop in the river where the fiercest fighting took place. The Ukrainian military escorted reporters for The New York Times to the site, which is on a frontline formed in much of the Donbas region by the roiling, fast-flowing river, swollen by spring rain.

Sunlight filters through the foliage of a dense, quiet forest on the river’s floodplain, which was the Ukrainians’ kill zone. Mosquitoes buzz. In places, the smell of decaying corpses is overwhelming.

“The Russian bodies start here,” Private Sichkar said as he rounded a bend in a dirt road extending about mile through the forest to the river’s edge. Just in this one spot, 15 incinerated armored personnel carriers were scattered about.

“The Russians wanted some little victory,” Col. Dmytro Kashchenko, the Ukrainian officer who commanded the counterattack on the pontoon bridge, said in an interview. “They tried in Kyiv, they tried in Kharkiv, and they lost. They were trying to win at least something.”

The Siversky Donets River, which cuts a meandering path through eastern Ukraine, forms a natural barrier to Russia’s advances. Suitable sites for pontoon crossings are few, Colonel Kashchenko said.

He was ordered to one of the crossings on May 8, after the Russians deployed pontoons and moved soldiers into the forest on the near bank. Ukrainian infantry advanced into the area the next day, but were repulsed, suffering losses, he said.

They then set up a defensive line to box in the Russians as they crossed their pontoon bridge, and rained down artillery fire on the area. They also set about destroying the bridge by placing floating mines upstream, allowing the current to carry them to the Russians’ pontoons, which proved an effective tactic. The Ukrainian forces blew up four separate bridges at the crossing site.

The Russians hastily laid new pontoons and sent armored vehicles across, Colonel Kashchenko said, but they were unable to break through the Ukrainian defensive line. Dozens of armored vehicles and infantry soldiers became trapped and were mauled by Ukrainian artillery. The Ukrainians also hit Russian troops involved in the bridge work on the far shore.

The bombardment included some of the first barrages from a newly arrived American artillery gun, the M777, Colonel Kashchenko said.

Credit…

Colonel Kashchenko said he had offered the enemy forces a chance to surrender, shouting into a loudspeaker, “‘Russians, give up!’” But, he said, “I don’t know if they heard us.”

Some enemy soldiers escaped by swimming across the river, the Ukrainians said. The Ukrainians have yet to collect the remains of the Russians scattered around the forest.

In the mottled light sifting through the leaves, discarded food and personal items lay all about: a sleeping bag, bottles of shower gel, cans of beef, a bag of potatoes, Russian tea bags, flip-flop sandals.

Ukrainian soldiers found a certificate for a medal granted to a Russian colonel for earlier fighting in the war. It was called an “award for military excellence.”

Beside a disabled Russian tank lay a cardboard box apparently used for carrying supplies. On the box was an odd message for a unit in war: “Always believe something wonderful is about to happen.”

Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, former supreme allied commander in Europe, drew a distinction between the Ukrainian tactics of seeking to target Russian armored vehicles and troops with artillery and the Russian bombardments of towns and cities.

“In the big scheme of things, Ukraine is trying to do maneuver warfare to regain territory and cut off resupply routes,” General Breedlove said. “And Russia is doing more of a grinding, attrition-based warfare.”

Of Russia’s bungled pontoon crossing, he said, “the Russians did something poorly that is difficult even if you do it magnificently.”

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.

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Palestinian Inquiry Accuses Israel of Intentionally Killing Al Jazeera Journalist

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian Authority announced on Thursday its final findings from a two-week investigation into the killing of a veteran Palestinian-American journalist, again accusing Israeli soldiers of intentionally killing her.

The Authority’s attorney general said at a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah that an Israeli soldier shot the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, on May 11 with an armor-piercing bullet fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle. It based its findings in part on examination of the high-velocity 5.56 mm bullet that struck her in back of the head.

Palestinian officials said that they were the only ones who had examined the bullet and neither Israeli nor U.S. authorities were permitted to examine it.

“It was proven that a member of the Israeli occupation forces stationed in the middle of the street fired a live bullet that hit the martyr journalist” directly in the head, said the attorney general, Akram Al-Khateeb. She was shot “while she was trying to escape from the successive gunshots fired by the occupation soldiers,” he added.

Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz responded to the Palestinian announcement by saying Israel was still conducting its own investigation into her killing, adding that any claim that the military intentionally harms journalists is a “blatant lie.”

The Palestinian conclusions reiterated those of the Authority’s preliminary investigation, announced two days after Ms. Abu Akleh was killed during an early morning Israeli military raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. She was wearing a blue flak jacket and a helmet marked with the word “Press” when she was shot.

Another Al Jazeera journalist, Ali Samoudi, who was also wearing a protective vest, was shot in the back.

The bullet became the focus of separate efforts by Palestinians and Israelis to investigate the killing because etchings could match it to the gun that fired it. Israel has called for Palestinian officials to share the bullet that killed her so that Israel can see if it matches a rifle used by one of its soldiers on the day of her death.

But the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, has repeatedly rejected Israeli calls to jointly investigate Ms. Abu Akleh’s killing as well as Israel’s request to examine the bullet.

The Israeli military said in its initial investigation that it was not possible to unequivocally determine the source of the gunfire that killed Ms. Abu Akleh and she could have been killed by an Israeli soldier or a Palestinian gunman.

The results of the Palestinian investigation drew from an autopsy, forensic testing on the bullet and witness accounts as well as tree markings where other bullets struck, according to the attorney general.

Amateur video filmed at the site before and after her killing shows that there was no gunfire in the minutes preceding her killing. Bystanders were chatting and joking with each other in the seconds before she was killed, during a lull in the fighting.

Ms. Abu Akleh was shot from a distance of between 170 to 180 meters away, the Authority’s investigation found. Multiple videos from before she was shot showed a number of Israeli military vehicles stationed up the road.

An experienced reporter for Al Jazeera, Ms. Abu Akleh was an icon to many Palestinians, having reported for years on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank for one of the Middle East’s leading television channels.

Two days after her death, her funeral brought thousands of Palestinians to the streets of Jerusalem. Israeli police officers beat and kicked mourners carrying her coffin, after a disagreement about how the coffin should be carried to the funeral ceremony in a church in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Israel has mounted regular raids in the Jenin area since late March. Israel says the raids are necessary to curb a recent wave of attacks on Israelis, some of whose perpetrators came from the Jenin region. Palestinians consider the raids as a form of collective punishment.

This week, the Palestinian foreign ministry said it had submitted a letter to the International Criminal Court regarding various crimes committed by Israel in the occupied West Bank and particularly the “crime of execution” of Ms. Abu Akleh.

Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

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College Enrollment Drops, Even as the Pandemic’s Effects Ebb

The ongoing enrollment crisis at U.S. colleges and universities deepened in spring 2022, raising concerns that a fundamental shift is taking place in attitudes toward the value of a college degree — even as the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted operations for higher education.

The latest college enrollment figures released on Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center indicated that 662,000 fewer students enrolled in undergraduate programs in spring 2022 than a year earlier, a decline of 4.7 percent. Graduate and professional student enrollment, which had been a bright spot during the pandemic, also declined 1 percent from last year.

Doug Shapiro, the center’s executive director, noted small gains in first-year, first-time students. However, he suggested that the numbers and the breadth of the declines indicate an underlying change, as students question whether college is the ticket to the middle class and a good-paying job.

“That suggests it’s more than just the pandemic to me; it’s more than just low-income communities that are primarily served by community colleges,” Dr. Shapiro said during a conference call with reporters. “It suggests that there’s a broader question about the value of college and particularly concerns about student debt and paying for college and potential labor market returns.”

Prospective college students may be weighing the relative value of jobs that require or expect a college degree against equally attractive opportunities that do not, he said.

Overall, total undergraduate enrollment has dropped by nearly 1.4 million — or 9.4 percent — during the pandemic. When the pandemic emerged in spring 2020, many colleges moved to online instruction, and some students did not report to campus at all, changes that considerably altered the traditional college experience.

Even before the pandemic, though, college enrollment had been dropping nationally, with institutions of higher learning buffeted by demographic changes, as the number of college-age students leveled off, as well as questions about student debt. A highly polarizing immigration debate also drove away international students.

While elite colleges and universities have continued to attract an overflow of applicants, the pandemic has been devastating for many public universities, particularly community colleges, which serve many low- and moderate-income students.

Declines occurred generally across the country but were slightly more pronounced in the Midwest and Northeast.

In a report this week, officials in Tennessee said that the percentage of public high school graduates who enrolled in college immediately after high school had dropped from 63.8 percent in 2017 to 52.8 percent in 2021.

Overall, enrollment at public colleges and universities declined by more than 604,000 students in spring 2022, or 5 percent. Within the public sector, community colleges dropped the most, losing 351,000 students or 7.8 percent.

All told, community colleges around the country have lost 827,000 students since the pandemic began in spring 2020, according to the figures released by the research center. It collects and analyzes data from more than 3,600 postsecondary institutions for industry use.

In what Dr. Shapiro called possible signs of a “nascent recovery,” first-time, first-year enrollment increased in spring 2022 by 13,700 students, or 4.2 percent, over last spring.

“It really remains to be seen whether this will translate into a larger freshman recovery in the fall,” Dr. Shapiro said.

The increase did not extend to Black students, according to a special demographic analysis by the clearinghouse, which found that Black freshman enrollment declined by 6.5 percent, or 2,600 students. In total, there were 8,400 fewer Black freshmen than in 2020.

In releasing its figures, Tennessee’s higher education commission also cited what it called “notable disparities” between Black and Hispanic students and white students.

Overall, Dr. Shapiro said the numbers were discouraging, steeper than what the organization reported for the fall term.

“I thought we would start to see some of the declines begin to shrink a bit this term,” he said. “I am surprised that it seems to be getting worse.”

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Families in Texas Grieve Loss of 19 Children in Shooting

UVALDE, Texas — The gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers in a rural Texas elementary school on Tuesday entered the building despite being confronted by an armed school security officer, then wounded two responding police officers and engaged in a standoff inside the school for over an hour, state police officials said.

While gaps remained in the timeline of events, details emerged on Wednesday of a protracted scene of carnage at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. What began around 11:30 a.m., with the first report of an armed man approaching the school, ended as specialized officers breached a pair of adjoining classrooms and killed the gunman barricaded inside just after 1 p.m., state police officials said.

It was not known how many were killed in the first minutes of the massacre, which was the deadliest in an American school since 20 children and six educators were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. But officials said that the officers had successfully contained the gunman, identified as Salvador Ramos, until more specially trained officers could arrive.

Credit…Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York Times

Yet even as the details of the attack became more clear, the motivation behind the eruption of violence remained frustratingly opaque. In the absence of an explanation, there was only deep grief in a community unaccustomed to outside attention, and a raw renewal of the national debate over firearms legislation and the stupefying tally of gun violence in America.

By Wednesday, all of the victims had been identified by the officials, who had yet to release their names, but the toll of the tragedy was only beginning to take shape.

All 21 fatalities occurred in a single area of the school, the authorities said. They included Eva Mireles, a teacher who ran marathons in her free time, and Jailah Silguero, 10, the youngest of four children. “I can’t believe this happened to my daughter,” said her father, Jacob Silguero, crying during an interview. “It’s always been a fear of mine to lose a kid.”

President Biden said he would travel to Uvalde in the coming days to try to comfort the residents. He did not call on Congress to take up gun safety legislation but in remarks on Wednesday said that the “Second Amendment is not absolute” and that previous gun safety laws did not violate its constitutional protections. “These actions we’ve taken before, they save lives,” he said. “They can do it again.”

Still, with little apparent opening at the federal level, states controlled by Democrats moved to introduce their own changes. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she would work to raise to 21 — “at a minimum” — the age for buying AR-15-style weapons like the one the Texas gunman used. In California, the State Senate advanced a bill along party lines, proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and modeled on Texas’ restrictive abortion law, that would let private citizens sue those who make or sell outlawed ghost guns, ghost gun kits and assault-style weapons.

“This state is leaning in,” Mr. Newsom said. “We’re leaning forward.”

Credit…Callaghan O’Hare for The New York Times

In Uvalde, top Texas officials gathered for an emotional news conference that began with calls for unity in the aftermath of the killing. “It is intolerable and unacceptable to have in this state anybody who would kill little kids in our schools,” said Gov. Greg Abbott, who has celebrated the loosening of gun regulations in Texas and pushed for a new law last year that allows most Texans to carry a gun without a permit.

But the somber tone that Mr. Abbott sought to strike was upended by Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat challenging Mr. Abbott’s re-election, who blamed the governor for the repeated carnage in the state. “The time to stop the next shooting is right now and you are doing nothing,” Mr. O’Rourke said.

“Sit down, you’re out of line and an embarrassment,” the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, responded.

The interruption and resulting vitriol from the stage, filled almost entirely with Republican officials, revealed in an instant the entrenched battle lines over gun ownership and mass killing in the United States.

“I hate to say this but there are more people who are shot every weekend in Chicago than there are in schools in Texas,” Mr. Abbott said later. He criticized “people who think that, well, ‘Maybe we just implement tougher gun laws — it’s going to solve it,’” saying that “Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois responded later by pointing to evidence that “the majority of guns used in Chicago shootings come from states with lax gun laws.”

Mr. Patrick said limiting entrances to just one at smaller schools could be a solution to keeping students safe. He also suggested arming teachers. Mr. Abbott stressed the need for better mental health care, though he did not propose how to improve access to it in the state.

Credit…Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

Yet in the case of Mr. Ramos, there was little to raise official alarm ahead of the shooting, officials said. No history of mental illness. No apparent criminal record. “We don’t see a motive or catalyst right now,” said Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

But those who knew the gunman said he had been slipping away: He appeared to have dropped out of high school and often frightened co-workers at a fast-food restaurant where he worked. When picked on, he would lash out in response. Acquaintances said he frequently missed class and had few friends.

“He would curse at the customers, at the managers, even at me,” said Jocelyn Rodriguez, 19, an employee at the Wendy’s restaurant. She recalled that he once told her, “I’m going to shoot up the Wendy’s,” but she never took his threats seriously. “I thought he was joking.”

Two weeks ago, she said, he stopped showing up to work.

He purchased an AR-style rifle at a local retailer on May 17, a day after his 18th birthday. Then he bought another one on May 20, officials said. In between, he bought 375 rounds of ammunition.

He had been messaging obliquely about his plans with a 15-year-old girl in Germany who he had recently met online. The girl, who asked to be identified only by her nickname, Cece, said he had video-called her in the days around his birthday from a gun store, where he told her he was buying a rifle. Mr. Ramos also showed her, on the video call, a black bag that appeared to hold many magazines of ammunition and at least one gun.

On Tuesday morning, parents dropped their children off at Robb Elementary, a cheerful brick schoolhouse near the edge of Uvalde where everyone was preparing for summer break.

Credit…Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York Times

Narcedalia Luna and her 8-year-old grandson, a third grader, attended an end-of-the-year awards program in the school’s cafeteria. But her grandson told her that he wanted to go home early. So they did. “I gave in and I’m glad I did,” she said.

They returned to their home on Diaz Street.

Along that same short street, less than half a mile from the school, Mr. Ramos lived in a modest home with his grandmother. On Tuesday morning, Mr. Ramos texted the girl in Germany just after 11 a.m., apparently annoyed that his grandmother was calling AT&T about his cellphone. “Ima do something to her rn,” he wrote. The screenshots do not show Cece replying, but at 11:21 a.m., Mr. Ramos sent another text: “I just shot my grandma in her head,” followed immediately by another: “Ima go shoot up a elementary school rn.”

Mr. Ramos, officials said, had picked up one of the weapons he had bought, and shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face.

The injured woman rushed to a neighbor’s house for help while Mr. Ramos sped off in her pickup truck, bringing with him a bag of ammunition and the two weapons. Ms. Luna said another neighbor spotted the grandmother with “blood on her face running across the street.”

The truck Mr. Ramos was driving, officials said, crashed at high speed next to the school at roughly 11:30 a.m.

As he approached the school, officials said, he encountered an Uvalde school district officer. There were conflicting reports, state police officials said, as to whether there was an exchange of gunfire at that point.

As the gunman approached, Juan Paulo Ybarra Jr. said, his little sister, a 10-year-old student at Robb Elementary, had been inside her fourth-grade class, watching a movie. He said she looked out of the classroom window and saw a man outside with a gun, then alerted her teacher. Soon the classroom could hear gunfire aimed toward nearby windows, she told him.

Credit…Callaghan O’Hare for The New York Times

Mr. Ybarra said his sister described how she and her fellow classmates jumped out of the window, one by one, and ran to a funeral home across the street, seeking refuge.

The gunman entered the school. After he was inside, two officers from the Uvalde Police Department arrived, engaged the gunman and were immediately met with gunfire, officials said. Both were shot.

Soon, scores of police officers responded to the scene, but the gunman had barricaded himself inside what Mr. Abbott described as internally connected classrooms. It would take a tactical team, including specialized Border Patrol agents, to finally breach the room.

As they entered, one of the agents held up a shield so the other agents could file in behind, an official briefed on the investigation said. Three of the agents fired their weapons once they were in the room, striking the gunman several times and killing him shortly after 1 p.m.

In Uvalde, which lies in a rural area near the Mexican border dotted with desert willows and bigtooth maples, there are so few places to host large events that the governor’s news conference took place in the same high school the gunman had attended.

Classes were supposed to let out on Thursday for the summer. Instead the year ended early as parents were faced with the unthinkable, waiting for hours on Tuesday for the dreaded confirmation about the fate of their children, some having provided DNA swabs to prove their relationship.

“They were beautiful, innocent children,” said George Rodriguez, who had ties to two children killed in a shooting: a niece and a 10-year-old boy, Jose Flores, who he said had been like a grandson. Mr. Rodriguez said a counseling session at the local civic center had offered little relief from the pain of losing the boy whose photo he kept in his wallet, “my little Josécito.”

Reporting was contributed by James Dobbins, Jesus Jiménez, Michael Levenson, David Montgomery, Josh Peck, Frances Robles, Edgar Sandoval, Michael D. Shear, Eileen Sullivan and Glenn Thrush. Susan C. Beachy, Jack Begg and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

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Shooting at Elementary School Devastates Community in South Texas

Irma Garcia, a teacher of more than two decades, was known as a steadfast optimist in her family. She would crack jokes at gatherings in Uvalde, Texas, sing her favorite classic rock tunes during parties and help her nephew, John Martinez, with homework.

“She’s always been optimistic about everything, and just so loving with the people in her life,” said Mr. Martinez, 21, a student at Texas State University.

On Tuesday, he and his family had gathered to process the news from the authorities: Ms. Garcia had been among the 21 people killed — 19 students and two teachers — at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

When the authorities went inside the classroom moments after the shooting, Mr. Martinez said, they had “found her body there, embracing children in her arms pretty much until her last breath.”

She had treated her students as if they were her own children, he said, so it had been easy for loved ones to possibly “picture her putting her life on the line.”

Ms. Garcia — or Tia Garcia, as Mr. Martinez referred to his aunt in Spanish — was “like a second mom” to her nephews and students, he said.

“She brings a joy and a light to the room.”

‘They just want their sister back’

Jailah Silguero, 10, was the youngest of four children, the “baby” of her family, her father said. She loved going to school and seeing her friends. Jailah had told her father, Jacob Silguero, 35, on Monday night that she wanted to stay home on Tuesday. It was uncharacteristic of her, and by morning, Mr. Silguero said, she seemed to have forgotten about it. She got dressed and went to school as usual.

“I can’t believe this happened to my daughter, my baby,” he said.

He added, “It’s always been a fear of mine to lose a kid.”

Credit…

Mr. Silguero and the family were getting ready to go to a funeral home on Wednesday after having spent hours at the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center the day before waiting for information about Jailah. Officials asked the family to give a DNA sample using a swab.

“I figured after the DNA swab test, it was something bad,” he said. “About an hour later, they called to confirm that she had passed.”

Jailah’s siblings are taking it hard, Mr. Silguero said: “They just want their sister back.”

Jailah Silguero was among 21 people — 19 children and two adults — killed in the massacre on Tuesday.

Two cousins in one class

Jackie Cazares and Annabelle Rodriguez were cousins in the same classroom at Robb Elementary School. Jackie, who had her First Communion two weeks ago, was the social one, said Polly Flores, who was Jackie’s aunt and Annabelle’s great-aunt. “She was outgoing; she always had to be the center of attention,” Ms. Flores said. “She was my little diva.”

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Annabelle, an honor roll student, was quieter. But she and her cousin were close, so close that Annabelle’s twin sister, who was home-schooled, “was always jealous,” Ms. Flores said. “We are a very tight family,” she said. “It’s just devastating.”

A little girl who loved her friends

Amerie Jo Garza was a friendly 10-year-old who loved Play-Doh.

Amerie Jo was “full of life, a jokester, always smiling,” her father, Alfred Garza III, said in a brief phone interview. She did not talk a lot about school but liked spending time with her friends at lunch, in the playground and during recess. “She was very social,” he said. “She talked to everybody.”

Amerie Jo’s extended family had gathered in the room when the Texas Rangers broke the horrible news late Tuesday.

The family’s loss came after losing several loved ones to Covid-19 over the past two years.

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“We were finally getting a break, nobody was passing away,” Mr. Garza said. “Then this happened.”

Mr. Garza, who works at a used car dealership in Uvalde, said he was on a lunch break when Amerie Jo’s mother told him she could not get their daughter out of the school because it was on lockdown.

“I just went straight over there and found the chaos,” he said. He recalled seeing cars backing up on the streets, with parents trying to enter the school to find their children. Police cars were everywhere.

At first, he said, he did not think that anyone had been hurt. Then he heard that children had died. For hours, he awaited word about his daughter.

“I was kind of in shock,” he said, after hearing from the Texas Rangers. When he got home, he started to go through her pictures. “That’s when I kind of had the release,” he said. “I started crying and started mourning.”

‘She brought the neighborhood together’

Eva Mireles, who was in her 40s, loved teaching the children at Robb Elementary School, most recently fourth grade. Neighbors described her as a good-natured person who was usually smiling.

“She brought the neighborhood together,” said Javier Garcia, 18, who lived next door. “She loved those children.”

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A cousin by marriage, Joe Costilla, 40, who lives down the block, said that outside of work Ms. Mireles liked to run marathons and was very athletic. “We were always hanging together — barbecues — she was a wonderful person,” he said, holding back tears. They had planned to get together over Memorial Day weekend.

Mr. Costilla’s mother, Esperanza, rushed to his home to console her grandchildren, ages 14 and 10, who knew her well.

“They are taking it really hard,” she said. “She was the kind of teacher everybody loved.”

Audrey Garcia, 48, the mother of a daughter with Down syndrome named Gabby, recalled Ms. Mireles as a transformational teacher in her child’s life.

Gabby is 23 now, with a high school diploma under her belt. Ms. Mireles had been her third-grade teacher. It was only a couple of years earlier, Ms. Garcia said, that schools in the Uvalde area had begun integrating children with mental disabilities into regular classrooms.

“It was new for teachers in that area,” Ms. Garcia said. Ms. Mireles, she said, threw herself into the work. “She used every teaching method she knew to help Gabby reach her highest potential,” she said. “She never saw that potential as lower than anyone else’s in her classroom.”

‘Tough guy’

Jose Flores, 10, had a pink T-shirt that said: “Tough guys wear pink.” His grandfather George Rodriguez called him “my little Josesito” and kept a photograph of the boy in his wallet.

Mr. Rodriguez, who also lost a niece in Tuesday’s shooting, attended counseling at the civic center in Uvalde but said it had offered him little reprieve from the pain. “They were beautiful, innocent children,” he said.

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On the honor roll

Xavier Lopez, 10, made the honor roll on the day he was killed. He was eager to come home and share the news with his three brothers, but his grandparents said Xavier decided to stay at school to watch a movie and eat popcorn with his classmates.

They remembered Xavier as an exuberant baseball and soccer player who had a girlfriend at school with whom he chatted away on the phone.

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Leonard Sandoval, 54, Xavier’s grandfather, stood outside the family’s home on Wednesday trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. “Why?” he asked. “Why him? Why the kids?”

‘A special, special boy’

Manny Renfro said his 9-year-old grandson, Uziyah Garcia, was a “special, special boy” who loved video games, football and brought joy to their family.

“I stand in grief,” he said in a brief phone interview. “I don’t sleep. I don’t eat.”

Credit…Manny Renfro, via Associated Press

When their family was notified by the authorities on Tuesday that Uziyah was among the victims, his mother “cried and cried,” and the family was “hysterical,” Mr. Renfro said.

“I wept,” he said. “He was just a typical kid.”

Reporting was contributed by Richard Fausset, Jack Healy, Eduardo Medina, Christina Morales, Campbell Robertson, Edgar Sandoval, Alex Traub and John Yoon.

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A Doomed River Crossing Shows the Perils of Entrapment in the War’s East

BELOKHOROVKE, Ukraine — Out on the riverbank, the scene of mayhem unfolded under a baking spring sun: blown-up tanks, the detritus of pontoon bridges, heaps of branches shorn off by explosions and the bodies of Russian soldiers, some half buried in the mud.

In the forest, a short walk revealed bits of torn Russian military uniforms hanging from trees, an eerie reminder of the troops who died violently here.

The failed river crossing that took place at this spot over several days in early May was one of the most lethal engagements of the war for the Russian army. Its forces had sought to surround Ukrainian soldiers in the nearby town of Sievierodonetsk — but instead became surrounded themselves, boxed in by the river and a Ukrainian frontline. At least 400 Russian soldiers died, mostly from artillery attacks.

As the war grinds across the rolling plains and forests of Eastern Ukraine, the maneuvering of troops has in large part evolved into attempts at entrapment. But as the deadly encounter at the bridge illustrated, the tactic comes with grave risks.

After failing to capture major cities such as Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, or to cleave off the entire Black Sea coast, the Russian military attempted a major encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the east. That effort is looking difficult now that Ukraine has blocked one main route of advance, near the town of Izyum.

So the Russian forces’ immediate goal has become a smaller encirclement of Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost city in the Donbas region still under Ukrainian control. Artillery bombardments by Russian troops approaching from three sides have ravaged the city, knocking out water and electricity and in the past day killing at least six people.

The Russian strategy has been to use the blunt instrument of its army’s vast artillery to pound away at Ukrainian forces, making incremental gains in the Luhansk region of the Donbas. Military analysts and Western intelligence officials believe that Moscow’s forces would face brutal urban combat if they tried to fully capture Sievierodonetsk, and that they would struggle to mount an offensive deeper inside Ukraine.

Encirclement is a harrowing prospect for soldiers.

“I try not to think about it,” said Pvt. Ivan Sichkar, a Ukrainian soldier surveying the destruction of the encircled Russian force. “If I think of being surrounded, there’s no time left to do anything else.”

The Russians’ refashioned goal has focused the battle on a slender, 75-mile front in the Donbas. It is seeking to advance from both the north and the south to close the one remaining supply line for Ukraine into the city of Sievierodonetsk.

On Tuesday, the Russian army advanced from the south, forcing Ukrainian troops to retreat from the small town of Svitlodarsk, lest the Russians envelop the town and trap soldiers inside. And in its Wednesday evening briefing, the Ukrainian general staff described stepped-up attacks by Russian helicopters and jets to support ground troops in the east.

With Russia making only halting progress in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin moved Wednesday to shore up support at home, announcing raises in pensions and the minimum wage and making his first trip to meet with wounded soldiers. “They are all heroes,” he said at a military hospital.

Mr. Putin also signed a decree opening a fast track to Russian citizenship for Ukrainian residents of areas controlled by the Russian military, a further step toward annexing territory in southeastern Ukraine that Russia has occupied.

As Mr. Putin moved to reassure ordinary Russians, Ukraine’s Western allies were trying to maintain pressure on his government. In Ankara on Wednesday, talks took place between Turkey, Finland and Sweden over Turkish concerns about the two Nordic countries’ application to join NATO. At a news conference after five hours of negotiations, Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said more talks were needed.

“Turkey is not under time pressure,” Mr. Kalin said. “It is not possible for any process to proceed without meeting the security concerns of Turkey.”

The strategy of encirclement has yielded far-reaching political gains for Russia over the course of its longer conflict in the region, in which Russian-backed separatists battled Ukrainian forces for eight years before the full-scale invasion this year. Two cease-fires, known as the Minsk agreements and seen as struck on terms advantageous to Russia, followed successful Russian encirclements of Ukrainian troops in the east in 2014 and 2015.

But in Belokhorovke, a tiny coal mining town on the banks of the Seversky Donets River, the tables were turned earlier this month, at least temporarily slowing the Russian advance.

Ukrainian soldiers who fought in the battle took to calling the site “the ear” for a lobe-like loop in the river where the fiercest fighting took place. The Ukrainian military escorted reporters for The New York Times to the site, which is on a frontline formed in much of the Donbas region by the roiling, fast-flowing river, swollen by spring rain.

Sunlight filters through the foliage of a dense, quiet forest on the river’s floodplain, which was the Ukrainians’ kill zone. Mosquitoes buzz. In places, the smell of decaying corpses is overwhelming.

“The Russian bodies start here,” Private Sichkar said as he rounded a bend in a dirt road extending about mile through the forest to the river’s edge. Just in this one spot, 15 incinerated armored personnel carriers were scattered about.

“The Russians wanted some little victory,” Col. Dmytro Kashenko, the Ukrainian officer who commanded the counterattack on the pontoon bridge, said in an interview. “They tried in Kyiv, they tried in Kharkiv, and they lost. They were trying to win at least something.”

The Seversky Donets River, which cuts a meandering path through eastern Ukraine, forms a natural barrier to Russia’s advances. Suitable sites for pontoon crossings are few, Colonel Kashenko said.

He was ordered to one of the crossings on May 8, after the Russians deployed pontoons and moved soldiers into the forest on the near bank. Ukrainian infantry advanced into the area the next day, but were repulsed, suffering losses, he said.

They then set up a defensive line to box in the Russians as they crossed their pontoon bridge, and rained down artillery fire on the area. They also set about destroying the bridge by placing floating mines upstream, allowing the current to carry them to the Russians’ pontoons, which proved an effective tactic. The Ukrainian forces blew up four separate bridges at the crossing site.

The Russians hastily laid new pontoons and sent armored vehicles across, Colonel Kashenko said, but they were unable to break through the Ukrainian defensive line. Dozens of armored vehicles and infantry soldiers became trapped and were mauled by Ukrainian artillery. The Ukrainians also hit Russian troops involved in the bridge work on the far shore.

The bombardment included some of the first barrages from a newly arrived American artillery gun, the M777, Colonel Kashenko said.

Colonel Kashenko said he had offered the enemy forces a chance to surrender, shouting into a loudspeaker, “‘Russians, give up!’” But, he said, “I don’t know if they heard us.”

Some enemy soldiers escaped by swimming across the river, the Ukrainians said. The Ukrainians have yet to collect the remains of the Russians scattered around the forest.

In the mottled light sifting through the leaves, discarded food and personal items lay all about: a sleeping bag, bottles of shower gel, cans of beef, a bag of potatoes, Russian tea bags, flip-flop sandals.

Ukrainian soldiers found a certificate for a medal granted to a Russian colonel for earlier fighting in the war. It was called an “award for military excellence.”

Beside a disabled Russian tank lay a cardboard box apparently used for carrying supplies. On the box was an odd message for a unit in war: “Always believe something wonderful is about to happen.”

Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, former supreme allied commander in Europe, drew a distinction between the Ukrainian tactics of seeking to target Russian armored vehicles and troops with artillery and the Russian bombardments of towns and cities.

“In the big scheme of things, Ukraine is trying to do maneuver warfare to regain territory and cut off resupply routes,” General Breedlove said. “And Russia is doing more of a grinding, attrition-based warfare.”

Of Russia’s bungled pontoon crossing, he said, “the Russians did something poorly that is difficult even if you do it magnificently.”

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.

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Opinion | Roxane Gay: The Uvalde Shooting Shows America’s Deep Incivility

There is a cultural obsession nowadays with civility, with the idea that if everyone is mannered enough, any impasse or difference of opinion can be bridged. But these are desperately uncivil times. And there is nothing more uncivilized than the political establishment’s inurement to the constancy of mass shootings in the United States: 60 deaths in Las Vegas, 49 deaths in Orlando, 26 deaths at Sandy Hook, 13 deaths in Columbine, 10 deaths in Buffalo. Adults, schoolchildren, concertgoers, nightclub revelers, grocery shoppers, teachers.

The scale of death in Uvalde, Texas, is unfathomable. At least 19 children and two teachers are dead. These staggering numbers will not change one single thing.

Time and again we are told, both implicitly and explicitly, that all we can do is endure this constancy of violence. All we can do is hope these bullets don’t hit our children or us. Or our families. Or our friends and neighbors. And if we dare to protest, if we dare to express our rage, if we dare to say enough, we are lectured about the importance of civility. We are told to stay calm and vote as an outlet for our anger.

Incivility runs through the history of this country, founded on stolen land, built with the labor of stolen lives. The document that governs our lives effectively denied more than half of the population the right to vote. It counted only three-fifths of the enslaved population when determining representation. If you want to talk about incivility, let us be clear about how deep those roots reach.

The United States has become ungovernable not because of political differences or protest or a lack of civility but because this is a country unwilling to protect and care for its citizens — its women, its racial minorities and especially its children.

When politicians talk about civility and public discourse, what they’re really saying is that they would prefer for people to remain silent in the face of injustice. They want marginalized people to accept that the conditions of oppression are unalterable facts of life. They want to luxuriate in the power they hold, where they never have to compromise, never have to confront their consciences or lack thereof, never have to face the consequences of their inaction.

Gun violence is one of the problems with which they need not concern themselves because they believe these calamities will never affect them or their families. Instead, these politicians talk about protecting our Second Amendment rights — and they have reimagined the Second Amendment as something that will accommodate whatever the gun lobby wants, rather than what the Constitution actually says. With a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the continued reinvention of the Second Amendment will likely flourish, unchecked.

When asked for solutions, Republicans talk about arming teachers and training them to defend their classrooms. We hear about how good guys with guns will valiantly stop mass shootings, even though there have been good guys with guns at several mass shootings and they have not prevented these tragedies.

These politicians offer platitudes and prayers and Bible verses. But they do not care to do what must be done to stop the next gun massacre or the average of 321 people shot a day in the United States — including 42 murders and 65 suicides. It is critical that we state this truth clearly and repeatedly and loudly. That we don’t let them hide behind empty rhetoric. That they know we see through their lies. They must know that we know who they truly are.

They called for civility again and again, as they did during protests after Black people were shot or killed by the police in Ferguson and Kenosha and Minneapolis and Louisville. They called for civility when a draft of a Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade leaked this month. The draft decision tells people of childbearing age that they have no bodily autonomy. It is barbaric.

In the wake of the leak, there were lawful, peaceful protests outside some of the justices’ homes. Journalists and politicians proceeded to fall all over themselves to condemn these protests as incivility — as if the protests were the problem. The Washington Post editorial board wrote that justices have a right to private lives, that public protests should never breach certain boundaries.

They call for civility, but the definition of civility is malleable and ever-changing. Civility is whatever enables them to wield power without question or challenge.

In March of last year, Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut reintroduced the Background Check Expansion Act. The bill is common-sense legislation mandating federal background checks for all firearm purchases, including private sales and transfers. Nothing has happened with this bill. The vast majority of voters support background checks, but Republicans in Congress are preventing the bare minimum of gun legislation.

Their obstruction is vile malfeasance. These are not people who value life, no matter what they say. They value power and control. This too we must state clearly and loudly and repeatedly.

There have been at least 213 mass shootings in the first 145 days of 2022. The politicians on both sides of the aisle who have enabled this convey no real sense of understanding or caring about the incivility of children practicing active-shooter drills and wearing bulletproof backpacks to school. They care nothing, it seems, about children being instructed to throw things at a gunman who might enter their classroom. They care about nothing but their own political interests.

On Tuesday morning, at least 19 children’s parents woke them up and helped them brush their teeth, fed them breakfast, made sure they had their little backpacks packed. They held their children’s small hands as they walked or drove them to school. Those children were alive when their parents waved to them and handed them their lunches and kissed their cheeks. Their lives were precious, and they mattered.

The greatest of American disgraces is knowing that no amount of rage or protest or devastation or loss will change anything about this country’s relationship to guns or life. Nothing will change about a craven political system where policy is sold to the highest bidder. Language is inadequate for expressing this lack of civility.

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Opinion | Trump Didn’t Get What He Wanted This Week

Compared with the elementary school shooting in Texas, everything else about this week will be a political footnote. But some of the footnotes are certainly interesting. If we want to pick a theme for Tuesday’s elections, it might be that Donald Trump’s influence isn’t nearly as strong as he thinks it is, and that he may be the only American voter whose chief preoccupation is revisiting the 2020 election on an hourly basis.

Getting over it is something Trump can’t abide. Consider the primary in Alabama for a Republican Senate candidate. Perhaps you remember — if you’re very, very, very into elections — that Trump began by backing Representative Mo Brooks, then changed his mind and unendorsed him? Cynics believed Trump had just decided Brooks was a loser, but it’s also possible the congressman had offended our former president by urging voters to “look forward.”

That’s the wrong direction to mention when you’re hanging out with the Trump camp.

“Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 presidential election scam, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you,’” Trump said as he retracted his endorsement.

The outcome of all this drama was that Brooks got less than a third of the vote, behind Katie Britt, the former chief of staff of retiring Senator Richard Shelby. Since Britt failed to get 50 percent, there will be a runoff. Winner will face Democratic nominee Will Boyd this fall.

One addendum — which you should really skip over if you’re feeling even modestly depressed: Both Britt and Brooks are in the gun camp as deep as humanly possible. Britt has ads in which she’s aiming a rifle and promising to “shoot straight.” The N.R.A., which endorsed Brooks, praised his efforts to protect “interstate transportation of firearms.” Those of us in states that are desperately trying to keep gun proliferation under control would appreciate it if he focused his energies on something else.

Trump’s biggest election night triumph may have been Herschel Walker, the former football player he backed for a Georgia Senate nomination. But Walker’s competition wasn’t exactly top-notch, and now he’ll be running against Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who will probably take note of a few items on Walker’s résumé that Trump overlooked. Including allegations of domestic violence, refusal to take part in debates, and the day on the campaign trail when Walker expressed doubt about the theory of evolution. (If it were true, Walker mused, “Why are there still apes? Think about it.”)

On the plus side, there was Walker’s eagerness to spend $200,000 entertaining people at Mar-a-Lago. Nothing, it appears, raises the former president’s enthusiasm for a candidate like a willingness to make Donald Trump wealthier.

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Anguished Father Says 10-Year-Old Was ‘Always Smiling’

Jailah Silguero, 10, was the youngest of four children, the “baby” of her family, her father said. She loved going to school and seeing her friends. On Tuesday, she was among those killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Jailah had told her father, Jacob Silguero, 35, on Monday night that she wanted to stay home on Tuesday. It was uncharacteristic of her, and by morning, Mr. Silguero said, she seemed to have forgotten about it. She got dressed and went to school as usual.

“I can’t believe this happened to my daughter, my baby,” he said.

He added, “It’s always been a fear of mine to lose a kid.”

Mr. Silguero and the family were getting ready to go to the funeral home on Wednesday after having spent hours at the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center the day before waiting for information about Jailah. Officials asked the family to give a DNA sample using a swab.

“I figured after the DNA swab test, it was something bad,” he said. “About an hour later, they called to confirm that she had passed.”

Jailah’s siblings are taking it hard, Mr. Silguero said: “They just want their sister back.”

Jailah Silguero was among 21 people — 19 children and two adults — killed in the massacre on Tuesday.

Jackie Cazares and Annabelle Rodriguez were cousins in the same classroom at Robb Elementary School. Jackie, who had her first communion two weeks ago, was the social one, said Polly Flores, who was Jackie’s aunt and Annabelle’s great-aunt. “She was outgoing; she always had to be the center of attention,” Ms. Flores said. “She was my little diva.”

Annabelle, an honor roll student, was quieter. But she and her cousin were close, so close that Annabelle’s twin sister, who was home-schooled, “was always jealous,” Ms. Flores said. “We are a very tight family,” she said. “It’s just devastating.”

Amerie Jo Garza was a friendly 10-year-old who loved Play-Doh.

Amerie Jo was “full of life, a jokester, always smiling,” her father, Alfred Garza III, said in a brief phone interview. She didn’t talk a lot about school but liked spending time with her friends at lunch, in the playground and during recess. “She was very social,” he said. “She talked to everybody.”

Amerie Jo’s extended family had gathered in the room when the Texas Rangers broke the horrible news late Tuesday.

The family’s loss came after losing several loved ones to Covid-19 over the last two years.

“We were finally getting a break, nobody was passing away,” Mr. Garza said. “Then this happened.”

Mr. Garza, who works at a used car dealership in Uvalde, said that he was on a lunch break when Amerie Jo’s mother told him that she couldn’t get their daughter out of the school because it was on lockdown.

“I just went straight over there and found the chaos,” he said. He recalled seeing cars backing up on the streets, with parents trying to enter the school to find their children. Police cars were everywhere.

At first, he said, he didn’t think that anyone had been hurt. Then he heard that children had died. For hours, he awaited word about his daughter.

“I was in kind of in shock,” he said, after hearing from the Texas Rangers. When he got home, he started to go through her pictures. “That’s when I kind of had the release,” he said. “I started crying and started mourning.”

Eva Mireles, who was in her 40s, loved teaching the children at Robb Elementary School, most recently fourth grade. Neighbors described her as a good-natured person who was usually smiling.

“She brought the neighborhood together,” said Javier Garcia, 18, who lived next door. “She loved those children.”

A cousin by marriage, Joe Costilla, 40, who lives down the block, said that outside of work Ms. Mireles liked to run marathons and was very athletic. “We were always hanging together — barbecues — she was a wonderful person,” he said, holding back tears. They had planned to get together over Memorial Day weekend.

Mr. Costilla’s mother, Esperanza, rushed to his home to console her grandchildren, ages 14 and 10, who knew her well.

“They are taking it really hard,” she said. “She was the kind of teacher everybody loved.”

Jose Flores, 10, had a pink T-shirt that said: “Tough guys wear pink.” His grandfather, George Rodriguez, called him “my little Josesito” and kept a photograph of the boy in his wallet.

Mr. Rodriguez, who also lost a niece in Tuesday’s shooting, attended counseling at the civic center in Uvalde but said it had offered him little reprieve from the pain. “They were beautiful, innocent children,” he said.

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