Free Republic

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez self-hyped her effort to block a Senate-approved bill that would step up security protections for Supreme Court justices and their immediate family members Thursday — a day after an armed man was arrested for attempting to murder Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Bronx Democrat posted a video on her Instagram feed of her running up the steps to the Capitol so she could be present on the House floor to stop a unanimous consent request by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to move the measure. In a subsequent video, the “Squad” member claimed McCarthy was trying to...

The mother of a sniper who killed two migrants in a horror shooting at a Dallas ICE facility was a liberal supporter of anti-gun laws who targeted members of the GOP over mass shootings. Sharon Jahn, the mother of 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, kept an active Facebook page where she followed everyone from Kamala Harris and Rachel Maddow to an account representing the U.S. Democratic Socialists. After the tragic mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas in 2022, she posted a lengthy rant to Facebook challenging Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, as well as Governor Greg Abbott for their support of gun...

A congressional staffer’s mysterious death after being found on fire outside her home has triggered a high-level investigation by Texas Rangers, raising disturbing questions about what really happened to this dedicated public servant. Story Snapshot * Regina Santos-Aviles, staffer to Rep. Tony Gonzales, died after being found on fire outside her Uvalde home * Texas Rangers and Uvalde Police Department launched joint investigation into the suspicious circumstances * Victim’s final words to her mother before the tragic incident have left family heartbroken * Congressional office mourns loss of dedicated team member who served constituents faithfully ====================================================== Tragic Discovery Sparks Investigation...

Police are probing the death of a congressional staffer who was found on fire at her home in Texas. Regina Santos-Aviles, 35, was discovered by her mother, who called emergency crews to the Uvalde residence on the evening of September 13. She was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center but died from her injuries the next morning, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office. Santos-Aviles, remembered by friends and family as a 'devoted mother' to her eight-year-old son, had served as the regional district director for Republican US Representative Tony Gonzales since 2021. Uvalde Police Chief Homer Delgado said...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A lawyer for the maker of the video game Call of Duty argued Friday that a judge should dismiss a lawsuit brought by families of the victims of the Robb Elementary School attack in Uvalde, Texas, saying the contents of the war game are protected by the First Amendment. The families sued Call of Duty maker Activision and Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, saying that the companies bear responsibility for promoting products used by the teen gunman. Three sets of parents who lost children in the shooting were in the audience at the Los Angeles hearing....

A Brooklyn teen was busted for allegedly making multiple threats to schools across Texas and Florida – even personally targeting a relative of one of the victims of the 2022 Uvalde school massacre on TikTok, authorities announced this week. The 16-year-old boy was picked up May 1 at his Brooklyn home and charged with one felony count of making terroristic threats, the Uvalde Police Department said Wednesday. In addition to the threats to the Uvalde shooting victim’s family, he is accused of making multiple “swatting” – or false report – calls and sending threats to the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School...

A grand jury has indicted two former Uvalde school police officers in the botched law enforcement response to the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead, two Texas state government sources with knowledge of the indictment told CNN Thursday. Former Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo and former school police officer Adrian Gonzales were named in the indictments, which represent the first criminal charges filed in the school massacre. Arredondo surrendered himself to the custody of the Texas Rangers in Uvalde on Thursday, an official with the Texas Department...

Families of students killed in the May 24, 2022, Uvalde school shooting filed numerous wrongful death lawsuits Friday in Texas and California, targeting AR-15 maker Daniel Defense, Meta Platforms, and Activision — the maker of the “Call of Duty” video game. Meta is the parent company of Instagram. CBS News reported that the “lawsuits were filed by attorney Josh Koskoff.”

Two years after 19 fourth-graders and two teachers died, families and survivors also announce $2 million settlement with the city.. UVALDE, Texas— Families of children killed in the mass shooting at an elementary school here two years ago and survivors filed a lawsuit Wednesday against 91 state police officers and the local school district, calling their response the “single greatest failure of law enforcement to confront an active shooter in American history.” ... Uvalde attack and failures of responding law enforcement to stop the killing shocked the nation. A gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers while nearly 400 officers...

The Uvalde, Texas, Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez, reportedly submitted his resignation to the city during a meeting Tuesday, which will be effective on April 6, according to reports. The Uvalde Leader-News reported that Rodriguez nor city administrators specified why the chief was resigning, though the decision comes just days after the city released a report clearing officers of any wrongdoing in the tragic shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead. …

An off-duty border patrol agent has told how he evacuated children including his own eight-year-old daughter from Robb Elementary School, armed with a shotgun he had grabbed from his barber's as he left to dash to the site. Jacob Albarado, a father of three, received a text message from his wife Trisha - a fourth grade math and science teacher at the school - when he was in the barber's chair. 'There's an active shooter,' she said. 'Help. I love you.' Albarado leapt up and grabbed a shotgun the barber lent him, and rushed to the school. Inside, 18-year-old Salvador...

Uvalde police are facing new criticism over first-hand accounts and videos showing them handcuffing and restraining frantic parents, who were urging them to storm the Robb Elementary school building amid the massacre. 'The police were doing nothing,' Angeli Rose Gomez told the Wall Street Journal. 'They were just standing outside the fence. They weren't going in there or running anywhere.' Gomez has two children in second and third grade and she reportedly drove 40 miles to the school after hearing of the attack. She was one of the desperate parents who encouraged police with increasing urgency to enter the school....

There's only so much outrage left in the tank on a sunny Friday afternoon, but wow this is just insane in the membrane. An independent investigation into the school shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas was commissioned by the city of Uvalde in 2022. Yesterday, the results of the investigation were released to the public during a city council meeting. The gist of the new report is that police on the scene did nothing wrong. Former Austin Police Department detective Jesse Prado examined the actions of each Uvalde police officer as they responded to the deadliest school shooting...

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – It’s been a year since the Republican Party of Texas voted to censure him for supporting tougher gun checks after the Uvalde school massacre, and not backing an anti-same-sex marriage bill. And though U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, has put that episode behind, his critics have not. Those issues are frequently cited on the campaign trail by the four fellow Republicans running against the incumbent in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District in the March 5 primary. Gonzales is being challenged by Medina County Republican Party Chair Julie Clark; Second Amendment advocate Brandon Herrera; retired Border...

New San Francisco Giants manager Bob Melvin has instituted a new rule for his club in his first year with the the franchise, and it’s difficult to miss during spring training. Melvin is requiring every person in the team’s dugout to stand for the national anthem, and he explained why. “It’s all about the perception that we’re out there ready to play,” Melvin said, per The Athletic. “That’s it. You want your team ready to play, and I want the other team to notice it, too. It’s really as simple as that.” Melvin also made it clear his reasoning has...

Almost two years after a shooter murdered 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the Department of Justice released a 575-page report on Thursday. The document confirmed what we already knew from Texas’ report last July. The police made serious mistakes and shouldn’t have waited outside the classroom. There is one big difference between the two reports. The Justice Department report starts its executive summary by emphasizing that the attack used “an AR-15 style assault rifle.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland sits down with CNN's Evan Perez to discuss the DOJ report detailing police failures in response to 2022 Uvalde, Texas, school shooting.

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Police officials who responded to the deadly Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting waited far too long to confront the gunman, acted with “no urgency” in establishing a command post and repeatedly communicated inaccurate information to grieving families, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday that identifies “cascading failures” in law enforcement’s handling of the massacre. The Justice Department report, the most comprehensive federal accounting of the maligned police response to the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School, catalogs a sweeping array of training, communication, leadership and technology problems that federal officials say contributed...

A teenager claiming to be the girlfriend of the Uvalde mass shooter was arrested Wednesday for threatening victims of the massacre and the grieving community for half a year. Victoria Gabriela Rodríguez-Morales, 19, of Puerto Rico was slapped with 13 counts of making interstate threats through social media sites and emails with names like “SchoolShooter” and “Killer22,” the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico said. “Me and Salvador wanted to do this together but he don’t wait for me to come,” she allegedly wrote in Instagram messages in June.

Comedian Larry David, the Seinfeld co-creator and Curb Your Enthusiasm star, reportedly screamed at billionaire Elon Musk over his ties to the Republican Party. The incident reportedly occurred at Hollywood mogul Ari Emanuel’s high-profile wedding in Saint-Tropez, France last year. David even officiated Emanuel’s marriage to fashion designer Sarah Staudinger. Author Walter Isaacson writes in his new biography, Elon Musk, that David “seemed to be fuming” during the encounter. “Do you just want to murder kids in schools?” David reportedly asked Musk, a reference to the horrific shooting in Uvalde, Texas, wherein 19 children and two teachers were murdered.