Hours after yet another mass shooting killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, desperate parents were still trying to find out if their kids were dead or alive. They were asked to provide DNA samples to help with the identification of the victims as reporters at the scene described the sound of “agonized screams” from families who had just learned the worst possible news.

In a community like Uvalde, about 85 miles west of San Antonio and not far from the border with Mexico, the unfathomable grief and trauma might be further complicated by the fear of immigration enforcement. The immigration status of the victims and families continues to be rightfully undisclosed, but the school district’s population is 90 percent Hispanic, leading to concerns by immigrant rights advocates that the presence of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents might further traumatize relatives in mixed-status families seeking information from authorities and trying to reunite with their children.

Agents with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the branch of DHS that operates within a 100-mile border zone, were among the first law enforcement to respond to the shooting. That isn’t surprising considering that Uvalde is a heavily militarized area of South Texas and many agents reside in the area and some had children in the school. Roughly 80 border patrol agents, some of whom were off duty, were present at the scene. Among them were members of the SWAT-like elite team known as BORTAC, or Border Patrol Tactical Unit, who reportedly shot the 18-year-old gunmen. That’s the same unit that Donald Trump deployed to Portland as part of a violent crackdown on racial justice protests in the summer of 2020 that the city’s mayor Ted Wheeler characterized as “urban warfare.” At the time, a former CBP agent told the Guardian that, in her experience, BORTAC were among “the most violent and racist in all law enforcement.” 

Border patrol agents may have prevented the shooter from continuing to carry out a massacre on Tuesday, but there’s no denying their presence could be triggering for people in the community. “The same officer involved in deportation of your family member could now be telling you your child has died…this is what systemic trauma looks like,” Thania Galvan, an incoming assistant professor at the University of Georgia’s Department of Psychology tweeted.

Uvalde is ~80% Latinx w/ large immigrant pop. U.S CBP assisting w/ response b/c it’s the biggest law enforcement agency in area. The same officer involved in deportation of your family member could now be telling you your child has died…this is what systemic trauma looks like.

— Thania Galvan, PhD (@ThaniaGalvanphd) May 25, 2022

Juliette Kayyem, a DHS assistant secretary during the Obama administration, called on the agency and the White House to explicitly reassure the Uvalde community that they would be safe from immigration enforcement. “I don’t know motives, we don’t know motives. I am just telling you demographics. It is a predominantly Hispanic population with a large immigrant community, relatively near San Antonio,” Kayyem said on CNN. “We need the federal government to say right now, everyone is essentially safe harbor right now in terms of immigration status.” She noted that members of the community needed “not to be fearful of immigration status,” and pointed out that a strong law enforcement presence was inevitable under these circumstances. But, when someone’s immigration status may be uncertain, they may “not react to police presence as you or I may.” 

Uvalde is over 80% Hispanic, with large immigrant community. I do not know any motives, just demographics. One thing needs to be made clear by feds: no immigration enforcement, no questions asked, safe harbor, get your kids, do not hide, etc. Now.

— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) May 24, 2022

On Wednesday, DHS issued a statement saying that “to the fullest extent possible,” its agencies—Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—would not conduct enforcement activities in “protected areas,” adding that agents would not “pose as individuals providing emergency-related information.”

But the fact that DHS felt the need to issue a statement saying its agents wouldn’t disguise as helpers in the aftermath of a mass shooting at an elementary school in itself could spark concerns in the community. Especially in a state that is controlled by aggressively anti-immigrant politicians. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has spent billions of dollars and deployed thousands of National Guard and state troopers in a failed operation to “secure” tbe border, and the state has led a successful lawsuit against the Biden administration to stop the termination of Title 42, the infamous pandemic-era border policy shutting down asylum. Just a couple of weeks before the shooting, Abbott indicated he might challenge a Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the right to public education for undocumented students. 

As immigration and criminal law expert César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández noted on Twitter, ICE deported a survivor of the 2019 Walmart shooting in El Paso, Texas. The undocumented woman known as Rosa had offered law enforcement assistance in their investigations into the white supremacist attack targeting Latinos that killed 23 people and injured dozens more. But, two years later in 2021, her previous help didn’t stop the immigration agency from sending her back to Mexico after a traffic stop. She was also reportedly in the process of applying for a U visa, which offers temporary status and protection from deportation for undocumented survivors of certain crimes who cooperate with law enforcement. 

Two massacres in Texas. Two DHS responses. Today, DHS said it won't conduct immigration enforcement activities in Uvalde. In 2021, ICE deported a woman who survived the El Paso massacre & helped prosecutors put together their case against the shooting. Will DHS keep its promise? pic.twitter.com/jrjnPKpzy4

— César (@crimmigration) May 25, 2022

“It is shocking to me really that after seeing all the different communities it has happened in, we still don’t believe that it can happen in our own community and if we’re not willing to do something,” Mary Ann Jacob, a survivor of the Sandy Hook shooting that happened ten years ago, told ABC News. “Our legislatures are not going to do anything, unless we push them to do something. So vote for people who care about what you care about and make sure that they are going to drive change.” While some elected officials offer their rehearsed thoughts and prayers, Uvalde survivors and their relatives will be left to mourn and process this tragedy for months and years to come. They should be allowed to do so without wondering whether they might put themselves or their families at risk. As Dr. William D. Lopez, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health who studies the health impacts of law enforcement violence in the US told Prism, “deportation upon death is not how a community will heal.”

How do we stop this? In the aftermath of Tuesday’s horrific tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman shot and killed 19 children and 2 adults, that question has followed a frustratingly similar script as past mass shootings. Liberals pled, to mostly deaf ears, for gun control laws in the one country where this happens. Conservatives pled for more guns, pearl-clutching about the politicization of a tragedy born of political decisions. Recently, there have been mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Laguna Woods, California. In New York City, a man shot and injured 23 people at a subway station in Sunset Park.

Over the last few months, we have not even had time to finish a cycle of mourning and remembrance before another shooting happens. Each is met with reality–defying talking points from Republicans. Rinse and repeat. More death.

And so to use this as a moment for shitposting would be obviously obscene when many are genuinely desperate for a solution.

Still, it happened.

Because this most recent shooting occurred, like Sandy Hook and Parkland and so many before it, in a school, some conservatives are adding a disgraceful, yet altogether unsurprising, wrinkle to the mix: It’s the schools themselves that are the problem.

Writing in The Federalist on Wednesday, staff writer Jordan Boyd argued that Tuesday’s tragedy made a “somber case for homeschooling.” More specifically, Boyd singles out “government schools” as the culprit. “The same institutions that punish students for ‘misgendering’ people and hide curriculum from parents are simply not equipped to safeguard your children from harm,” wrote Boyd. 

Boyd continues, “You can’t protect your kids from everything. There’s no telling when a crazy gunman might open fire in a movie theater or a grocery store. You can, however, do your best to prevent them from being sitting ducks at frequently targeted locations such as schools by keeping them by your side.”

This is an unserious argument made in bad faith. The gunman at Sandy Hook was homeschooled. Initial reports of good guys with guns on the scene in Uvalde, do not fill one with confidence, either. Videos show police officers more concerned with restraining parents than with rushing in to stop the shooter. But, perhaps most importantly, Boyd is hiding the ball.

The article is using a horrific tragedy to shoehorn in another argument against public schools. These are the same people who have spent the last year leading an assault on public schools through the dueling moral panics of schoolteachers brainwashing children with critical race theory and sexually grooming them. The Federalist has often written about and boosted homeschooling as a bulwark against the idea of big government and has dutifully covered the critical race theory and grooming stories. The goal, with all of this, as the CRT-panic architect Christopher Rufo has repeatedly stated, is to rally parents behind a plan to “lay siege to the institutions,” with public education first on their proverbial hit list. Do they hate public education because it fails to protect children? Because it actually fills kid’s heads with bad ideas about race or gender or sexual identity? Or do they just hate public education because it’s public?

How to go about enacting, let alone passing, effective gun control in a country with a historically unprecedented number of firearms is, to be sure, a thorny and complex issue. Only in a monstrous society would children be so often sent to their death at the place they go to learn and socialize. Fixing the problem and its underlying issues deserves far more than a shoulder-shrug emoji in written form.  

And so to offer a solution that is little more than part of a continuing war on public education? That makes a “somber case” for the nihilism of some on the right that allows them to use anything for their war on public schools—even mass shootings.

In a brief address Tuesday night, following the senseless massacre of at least 18 children and a teacher at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, a beleaguered Joe Biden asked the nation “when in God’s name” America would stand up to the gun lobby. 

He mourned “beautiful, innocent, second, third, fourth graders” and spoke of the scores of children at the school who saw their friends “die as if they are on the battlefield.” 

Biden also spoke as an adult who has lost children himself.

“To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,” he said. “There’s a hollowness in your chest you feel like you’re being sucked into it… It’s never quite the same.” 

Biden urged Congress to pass common sense gun laws and expressed outrage over the way Americans seem to have grown inured to the “carnage” occurring around them every day. 

“These kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world,” Biden said. “Why? They have mental health problems. They have domestic disputes in other countries. They have people who are lost. But these kinds of mass shootings never happen with the kind of frequency they happen in America. Why? Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) took to the Senate floor Tuesday evening to issue a desperate plea, just several hours after 14 children and one teacher were killed in a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

"What are we doing?
What are we doing? …
What are we doing? …
What are we doing?
Why are you here?!"
– @ChrisMurphyCT to his Senate colleagues after a gunman opened fire in an elementary school, killing 14 children and a teacher. pic.twitter.com/XnMIZRzZKF

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) May 24, 2022

“What are we doing? Just days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down African American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands,” he said, referring to the 2012 school massacre in his home state. “Our kids are living in fear every single time they set foot in a classroom because they think they’re going to be next.”

“What are we doing?” he repeated again, before beseeching his fellow lawmakers to finally act. “Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job or putting yourself in a position of authority? If your answer is that, as this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing, what are we doing?”

“Why are you here?” he said.

The full Mother Jones database of mass shootings since 1982 can be found here. This is the third mass shooting in 2022. Our news team is covering the major developments here. And you can read a deep dive on Murphy’s efforts to push gun control over the past decade here. 

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, according to reports from multiple outlets. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott confirmed the news. The school teaches second through fourth grades. It was the second-to-last day of school before summer break.

At a press conference, Abbott said the suspect is an 18-year-old high school student who, police believe, worked alone. “He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher,” the governor said earlier in the afternoon. Abbott also said that the suspect reportedly shot his grandmother before opening fire on the school. The suspect is deceased, according to police.

Our full database of mass shootings since 1982 can be found here. This is the third mass shooting in 2022.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Madison Cawthorn’s new status as a lame duck, often a quiet period for defeated politicians, appears set to be just as tumultuous as the scandal-plagued track record that got him booted from Congress.

On Monday, the House Ethics Committee announced an investigation into two sets of allegations related to the embattled Republican: that Cawthorn may have dabbled in some light insider trading related to the cryptocurrency Let’s Go Brandon, and that he engaged in an improper relationship with a staffer. (Cawthorn’s office has denied the panel’s allegations, claiming that Cawthorn is being targeted for “political gain.” This comes just a week after the North Carolina Republican lost his seat in the GOP primary for the state’s 11th congressional district. 

Ethics investigations into members of Congress are relatively rare. That Cawthorn is on his way out makes Monday’s announcement even more unusual, though perhaps ultimately unsurprising considering how much both sides of the aisle appeared to loathe him. In his short career, Cawthorn, the youngest member of Congress, got caught in a series of headline-making scandals that included lies about his college acceptances, allegations of past sexual harassment, dubious claims he made about supposed drug-fueled orgies running amuck in the shadows of DC, and much, much more.

Following his defeat, a vengeful Cawthorn on Thursday appeared determined to leave Congress with some last-minute weirdness, vowing to expose “those who say and promise one thing yet legislate and work towards another.” Cawthorn’s Instagram post enlisted the help of something called “Dark MAGA,” which as my colleague Ali Breland explained, doesn’t appear to be much more than a handful of bad Photoshop jobs.

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana issued a ruling on Friday afternoon blocking the Biden administration from winding down an infamous policy that summarily expels migrants arriving at the border. Title 42 relied on a pandemic-era public health order to effectively seal off the southern border for most asylum seekers and migrants. The federal judge’s decision, which comes in a case brought by 24 states led by Republican attorney generals, effectively allows the policy to remain in place indefinitely despite the federal government’s plans to terminate it by May 23. The ruling is yet another stark example of how states are using the courts to dictate federal immigration policy.

Earlier this month, my colleague Fernanda Echavarri wrote about how border cities were already preparing for the termination of Title 42:

Their preparations are moving forward even as a federal judge is expected to rule—perhaps as soon as the end of the week—on whether Title 42 will actually end as scheduled. If the judge doesn’t intervene and the policy is lifted as planned on May 23, it would not constitute a new asylum policy; rather the shift would bring things back to pre-pandemic operations for asylum seekers at the border. 

“We anxiously await and are eagerly preparing for the full termination of Title 42,” says Kate Clark, senior director of immigration services at Jewish Family Service of San Diego, a group that has been instrumental in assisting asylum seekers for years. “For too long, thousands of vulnerable families and individuals in desperate need of protection have been left with no relief or their ability to exercise their lawful right to seek asylum in the US.”

In early April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that the “current public health conditions and an increased availability of tools to fight COVID-19” made the public health order allowing the expulsion of migrants no longer necessary. Public health experts and immigrant rights advocates had long argued that the policy had no scientific basis—but that didn’t stop the Trump and Biden administrations from using it as a tool to stop migration.

George W. Bush—whose administration, lie by lie, sold a deeply fraudulent and immoral case for invasion—apparently sees a bit of himself in Vladimir Putin. I wonder why:

Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022

“I’m 75,” Bush quickly offered, prompting laughter from the crowd.

The gaffe, which came during a speech in Dallas on Wednesday, is sure to launch a bunch of thought pieces this morning. For some, it was cute, another Bush giving Michelle Obama candy moment. Others, like me, will recall his historic bait and switch that killed upwards of 200,000 civilians. Well, wherever you land, here’s your ever-relevant reminder that George W. Bush is still bad; please don’t let his neverending supply of dumb endear you. Now watch this drive.

Today’s House hearing on abortion rights was bound to have its share of ignorant and offensive questions, not to mention disinformation, from a certain cohort of white male Republicans. But at times the questions asked of the witnesses—particularly Dr. Yashica Robinson, an OB-GYN and abortion provider in Alabama—were just too absurd, if not simply hateful.

Dripping condescension, but seemingly unaware of what an abortion is, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) repeatedly asked Robinson if she would support the abortion of a child who was “halfway out of the birth canal.”

“I can’t even fathom that,” she replied, “just like you probably can’t imagine what you would do if your daughter was raped. If it hasn’t happened, it may be difficult for you to—.” Johnson cut her off before she could continue.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) at abortion access hearing: "How about if a child is halfway out of the birth canal? Is an abortion permissible then?"

Dr. Yashica Robinson: "I can't even fathom that … just like you probably can't imagine what you would do if your daughter was raped." pic.twitter.com/LtM92m9JKS

— The Recount (@therecount) May 18, 2022

The immense disrespect that these men exhibited toward a testifying doctor, a Black woman, was palpable. “Ms. Robinson, I want to ask you a question,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said.

“Yes, my name is Dr. Robinson,” she responded, “and I provide abortion care in Alabama.”

Roy proceeded to ask Robinson how she disposed of “baby parts” removed during dilation and extraction, a procedure used for the very slim percentage of abortions that take place during the second trimester.

Robinson refused to engage with Roy’s inflammatory rhetoric. “I am a physician and a proud abortion provider,” she said. “There is nothing that you can say that makes it difficult for me to talk about the care that I provide.”

It got more preposterous from there. “The answer to the question is fairly obvious, that there are baby parts, and you don’t want to talk about how they’re being stored,” Roy said. “You don’t want to talk about putting them in freezers, you don’t want to talk about putting them in Pyrex dishes…”

And so Robinson was put in the unenviable position of having to dignify Roy with a response. “All of those things that you just mentioned, I have never seen that in a health care setting, ever,” Robinson said. “We don’t put baby parts in freezers or Pyrex dishes.”

“My name is Dr Robinson” — Dr Yashica Robinson after Chip Roy calls her “Ms Robinson”

Roy then talks over her before Robinson fires back by telling him “I am a physician and a proud abortion provider” pic.twitter.com/NTW5FM9cHa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 18, 2022

Meanwhile, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) tried to pull the same big gotcha question that Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) posed to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing: What is a woman?

“The reason that I use she and her pronouns is because I understand that there are people who become pregnant who may not identify that way, and I think it is discriminatory to speak to people or to call them in such a way as they desire not to be called,” Robinson responded. Seems reasonable enough. But did the men who are so intent on denying abortion care to those who need it really care about the answer in the first place?

Rep. Dan Bishop to Dr. Yashica Robinson: “You’re a medical doctor. What’s a woman?”

“I’m a woman,” she replies. pic.twitter.com/KEH4ngYijk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 18, 2022

To be clear, not all members of Congress were so bogus today. Here’s Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) bravely sharing the story of her miscarriages: “The same medicine used to treat my failed pregnancies is the same medicine states like Texas would make illegal,” she said. “If Alabama makes abortion murder, does it make miscarriage manslaughter?”

Rep. Lucy McBath: “After which failed pregnancy should I have been imprisoned? … would you have put me behind bars after my stillbirth, after I was forced to carry a dead fetus for weeks, after asking God if I was ever going to be able to raise a child?” pic.twitter.com/o1XaVVqsZl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 18, 2022

Wednesday wasn’t the first time this country’s (mostly white, mostly male) Republican representatives have talked over and down to women, and particularly women of color. With the Supreme Court seemingly poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, it looks like women can’t expect certain men to start treating them as humans anytime soon.

This morning, Congress held its first hearing on unidentified flying objects in more than 50 years. For many, it was a highly anticipated event: US military officials were discussing UFOs (!) in Congress. But I tuned in, and I am sorry to report, their testimony did little to address the question of extraterrestrial life—and whether or not observations of weird objects in the sky are the work of aliens.

Still, we got some footage.

Officials provided two examples of videos of “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAP, investigated by the government. In one video taken by the US Navy, the camera captures what appears to be several glowing triangles “off the coast of the United States,” according to Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray. The video was taken through night-vision goggles. For several years, the observation remained unexplained. But after a similar sighting years later, he said, the objects in question were determined to be unmanned drones. The triangular shape was a result of the light passing through in the night-vision goggles, he said.

In the second video, the object remains unidentified. The footage, which was played repeatedly during Tuesday’s hearing, was taken from an aircraft “operating in a US Navy training range,” according to Bray, who described the sighting as a “spherical object”: You can see it flash briefly toward the end of the video:

Bray shows another Navy UAP observation video captured "several years ago," taken through night vision goggles that shows "what appears to be triangles flashing:" pic.twitter.com/QAyTfk670Y

— Michael Sheetz (@thesheetztweetz) May 17, 2022

Tuesday’s hearing follows the release of a 9-page, preliminary report on UAP from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June of 2021. Between 2004 and 2021, it said, the US government had collected 144 reports of UAP, only one of which could be explained. (In that case, the object was “a large, deflating balloon.”) As for the other 143 reports? The government gave no explanations, but it did offer five possibilities as to what they might be. The categories included stuff you’d expect to see floating in the sky, like “airborne clutter” or natural phenomena like moisture or ice crystals. But it also listed some more concerning possibilities, like technology from classified US projects, foreign adversaries, or the maddeningly unspecific category of “other.” The inclusion of this “other” category, some in the media noted at the time, was certainly not evidence that UAP could be the work of aliens—but it was not an outright denial either.

Adding to the intrigue, a handful of the 144 incidents appeared to “demonstrate advanced technology,” the report noted. Here’s my former colleague AJ Vicens writing about the report at the time of its release:

Investigators noted that in 18 incidents, observers reported “unusual” UAP movement patterns. “Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.”

On Tuesday, Bray said the total number of UAP reports has risen to nearly 400 incidents, including historic, “narrative-based” observations. The rise in cases can be partly explained by the reduction of stigma around reporting UAP sightings, he said. He also said there have been 11 reported cases of “near [collision] misses” with US aircraft.

When asked about the 18 observations with unusual movement patterns, and if those objects could be a result of activity from foreign adversaries, Bray said, “We are not aware of any adversary that can move an object without ‘discernable means of propulsion.'” He added, “There are a number of events in which we do not have an explanation. There are a small handful in which there are flight characteristics or signature management that we can’t explain with the data that we have. Those are obviously the ones that are of most interest to us.”

Whether or not you believe in UFOs (I, for one, am remaining agnostic on the issue), the hearing was historic, and a clear attempt at providing transparency to the public about these sightings. As Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security put it during the hearing, “Our goal is not to potentially cover up something. It’s to understand what may be out there.”

Still, as with many government hearings, the officials were careful about just how much to reveal in a public setting. During his opening remarks, Moultrie said, “We are also mindful of our obligation to protect sensitive sources and methods. Our goal is to strike that delicate balance, one that will enable us to maintain the public’s trust while preserving those capabilities that are vital to the support of our service personnel.”

The UAP hearing was historic, and many kudos to those who made this happen. But if this was your first exposure to this space, you wouldn't have any idea that there are some major problems here (via @BryanDBender yesterday here: https://t.co/8p1WCKUw1d) pic.twitter.com/67WR3vexII

— AJ Vicens (@AJVicens) May 17, 2022

Following the public event (which you can watch in full here), the committee scheduled another hearing, which, due to national security concerns, was held behind closed doors.

Much-needed relief could be on the way for caretakers amid the nationwide baby formula shortage.

Democrats on Tuesday announced an emergency spending bill that includes $28 million in funding to address the crisis, much of which aims to specifically support the Food and Drug Administration as it struggles to respond to the shortage.

“This bill takes important steps to restore supply in a safe and secure manner,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “While we know we have more work to do to get to the bottom of serious safety concerns at an Abbott facility and the FDA’s failure to address them with any sense of urgency, this bill is the first step to help restock shelves and end this shortage.”

The shortage, which has been steadily climbing since the start of 2021, exploded in February when Abbott, the leading manufacturer of baby formula in the United States, was forced to shut down its Sturgis, Michigan, formula plant after several babies became sick with bacterial infections. The plant shutdown, the resulting recall of Abbott’s baby formula products, and wider supply chain issues quickly gave way to the current emergency. Families have reported having to drive for hours in search of food for their infants; many have resorted to rationing and making homemade formula—both of which pediatricians strongly advise against.

On Monday, the FDA announced that it had reached a deal with Abbott to reopen the formula plant in about two weeks. The latest legislation comes days after Biden announced additional measures to help ease the shortage. But as I wrote last week, those steps, while encouraging, were largely limited and did little to answer the most pressing question looming over families right now: when we can start seeing empty shelves replenished. 

A vote on Tuesday’s bill is expected later this week.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Sunday defended the lack of exceptions for cases of rape and incest in the state’s new law that outlaws abortions after six weeks, arguing that there is still a “human being” inside the womb in those cases. 

“I have daughters, I can’t even imagine what it would be like in that hardship,” the Republican governor told Fox News. “That is a human being inside the womb. We’re gonna do everything we can to protect the life and love of both the mother and the child—and we don’t think killing one to protect another is the right thing to do either.”

“Our heart is super compassionate about that,” he added.

The lack of exceptions for rape and incest is an extreme view, one that proved too much for even Donald Trump. But after Alabama passed a law in 2019 that left out exceptions in cases of rape and incest, similarly harsh provisions are gaining steam in the crop of abortion restrictions around the country.

In fact, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts was also on the Sunday morning news circuit today pushing the same line. “They’re still babies,” Ricketts told CNN when asked if his plans to ban abortion would similarly leave out cases of rape or incest. 

For years, the mainstream view among Republicans, at least publicly, has been to make exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or situations in which a mother’s life is in jeopardy. But the GOP is evidently feeling newly emboldened as the Supreme Court is all but certain to overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks, publicly supporting issues that once seemed too extreme.

That’s what makes Stitt’s reference to his daughters as apparent evidence that he has empathy even more absurd here. When you’ve won the decades-long mission to destroy reproductive rights, what purpose does feigning compassion serve at this point? 

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt to rape and incest victims who won't be able to get abortions in his state: "Our heart is super compassionate about that." pic.twitter.com/BjB6XtVvoG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2022

The mass shooting inside a crowded Buffalo, New York, supermarket on Saturday, which killed 10 people and injured three more, is renewing fierce condemnation of the racist conspiracy known as the “great replacement theory,” after a manifesto believed to have been written by the gunman was uncovered online. 

The theory is popular among white supremacists and is predicated on the racist falsehood that white people are purposely being replaced by people of color. It’s reportedly all over the 180-page document written by the alleged gunman, a white 18-year-old who drove hours from his home to perpetrate the attack, in which he outlined detailed plans to carry out Saturday’s massacre. Those plans revealed that the alleged gunman specifically targeted the supermarket because its neighborhood had a high percentage of Black residents. “Zip code 14208 in Buffalo has the highest black percentage that is close enough to where I live,” a line from the manifesto reads. 

Also reportedly referenced in the manifesto is the gunman who killed 49 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. At the time, a similarly racist document was found online, in which the gunman cited “invaders” and millions of people coming across the border “invited by the state and corporate entities to replace the White people who have failed to reproduce.”

Beyond the massacre in Christchurch, fears of a “great replacement” have fueled numerous mass shootings and other acts of violence against immigrant communities in the US in recent years, including the 2019 El Paso mass shooting inside a Walmart store. (My colleague Fernanda Echavarri traveled to El Paso shortly after the shooting; she detailed the devastation of the community and America’s new normal in a moving episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, which you can listen to below.) The theory became especially popular during the Trump administration when right-wing media, the president, and some Republican members of Congress openly promoted the same viciously racist views and warned of a violent “invasion” of immigrants.

But the most prominent espouser of the theory has arguably been Tucker Carlson. In a damning three-part series examining Carlson’s outsized role in stoking white supremacist fears, the New York Times recently found that Carlson has long pushed the false conspiracy theory that Democrats were carrying out an elaborate mission to bring “more obedient voters from the third world” in order to replace the current electorate and win elections. Carlson has even defended the theory’s role in motivating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol building.

Carlson is sure to receive fresh scrutiny in the wake of the Buffalo tragedy. Of course, none of this will prompt any meaningful punishment for the Fox News host. After all, embracing Carlson’s white supremacist views is now the bread and butter for the rest of the GOP.

Okay, deep breath in…deep breath out. I just watched the videos compiled in this Twitter thread showing how Fox News has taken the baby formula shortage as yet another opportunity to paint migrants and asylum seekers as the enemy who’s coming for you. But this time it’s migrant babies. Let me repeat: migrant babies.

A key part to their “coverage” is what Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fl.) tweeted this week—photos of what she said were “pallets and pallets” of baby formula at Border Patrol holding facilities. Cammack says the images her office has been circulating came from a Border Patrol agent, and now Fox News has been playing them in many shows over the last two days, saying “illegal immigrants are getting top priority” and receiving the baby formula that American parents are unable to find. 

There are two things I’d like to point out after watching these videos. 

Earhardt: "Border children, illegal immigrant children, are getting formula"

Doocy: "American families, there's a shortage, but if you're a migrant, don't worry, because Uncle Sam has a stash of that." pic.twitter.com/UeOXI4jNB0

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 13, 2022

First, it’s hard to stomach listening to people on national TV say infants in US government custody should go hungry because they weren’t born here. These are babies with desperate mothers who are currently detained in jail-like facilities, and the government has the responsibility to feed them because they can’t leave to purchase their own formula, something immigrant rights experts, among others, have already said on social media.

Over the last year, the right-wing attacks on immigrants have gone to some really dark places but they keep getting worse. We're at the point now where Fox News is now effectively mainstreaming calls for the Border Patrol to harm babies in their care. Babies. Innocent babies. https://t.co/jPx9rDg7NR

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) May 13, 2022

Second, from what I can see, the images don’t exactly show pallets full of just baby formula. One of the images Cammack’s office shared shows a fully stocked shelf with baby formula, sandwiched between shelves of fruit pouches.

The first photo is from this morning at the Ursula Processing Center at the U.S. border. Shelves and pallets packed with baby formula.

The second is from a shelf right here at home. Formula is scarce.

This is what America last looks like. pic.twitter.com/OO0V99njoy

— Kat Cammack (@Kat_Cammack) May 11, 2022

And there are a couple other images making their rounds around MAGA world, and appearing on Hannity—The ones with all the supposed “pallets” of baby formula.

Joe is shipping pallets of baby formula to the McAllen, Texas border for illegals. (Left pic)

Here’s what he does for Americans! pic.twitter.com/33bm9alotG

— 🇺🇸ProudArmyBrat (@leslibless) May 13, 2022

Sean Hannity: "These are not people that respected our borders, our laws, and our sovereignty. Why wouldn't all of the pallets go to American families first?" pic.twitter.com/ERI8zAMT9K

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 13, 2022

The "baby" formula they are referring to is actually an infant formula by the name of NIDO which is for children 1+.
This is different than the baby formula which is in short supply.
Leave it to the @GregAbbott_TX and the @GOP to mislead the public for political gain. pic.twitter.com/uv5exV8G52

— David Amaya (@DAmaya1012) May 13, 2022

But from what I can see, the images showing pallets and shelves with dozens and dozens of cans are not baby formula, they’re cans of NIDO, which is a milk substitute for toddlers. Assuming these photos show what storage rooms currently look like in a Border Patrol holding facility, most of what anti-immigrant pundits and politicians are freaking out about is milk substitute for kids one year or older, not baby formula. 

I’m not the only one noticing this. 

pic.twitter.com/xasAagWqwE

— JRodriguez (@Mala_Rodriguez) May 12, 2022

I did a quick search for the NIDO cans in the viral photos and it looks like you can buy them at multiple online and in-store retailers. These are not part of the infant formula shortages. 

It’s important to note that the last couple months have been stressful for parents who have been having an increasingly hard time finding formula for their babies. The panic is real, and not all infants can easily switch between brands, especially those who need specialized formula. But the shortage has gotten to this point for multiple reasons that have nothing to do with migrant children. 

That doesn’t seem to matter much to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the National Border Patrol Council (the Border Patrol union), which released a joint statement yesterday saying the Biden administration was “happy to provide baby formula to illegal immigrants coming across our southern border,” as the shortage continues in the United States. 

Politicians could do the work required to solve things like supply shortages, but deflecting responsibility and spewing racism is so much easier. American parents who can’t get formula for their kids now have someone new to erroneously blame, thanks to folks like @GregAbbott_TX. https://t.co/Vlf4aTurMC

— Jamil Smith جميل كريم (@JamilSmith) May 13, 2022

President Biden on Thursday spoke to the leading manufacturers of baby formula amid deep frustration and panic from caretakers over the nationwide shortage, announcing additional measures from the administration aimed at alleviating the current emergency. These include allowing vulnerable families who rely on WIC benefits to purchase from a wider variety of formula options and cracking down on price-gouging.

It’s an encouraging step forward. The shortage, a potentially life-threatening scenario for countless infants, had received little attention from lawmakers on either side of the aisle. (Until this week, many seemed wholly unaware that a shortage even existed.) But while it’s a relief to see the White House recognizing the urgency of the situation, the new actions appear limited and do little to answer the most pressing question looming over families right now: when we can start seeing empty shelves replenished. 

As a new mother who relies on formula to feed her seven-month-old, I couldn’t help but scratch my head at some of the announced proposals. For example, the administration indicated that it’s talking to foreign trading partners over potential imports. But 98 percent of formula is domestically produced. The popular formula brands in Europe are also not allowed to be sold in the States and are highly discouraged by pediatricians. I know because after buying the European brand Holle in the initial days of my son’s life—when the pressure to bring him back to birth weight made breastfeeding incredibly difficult for me—I was immediately instructed not to use it because it wasn’t FDA approved. I’m thankful, amid this shortage, that I never binned it and wouldn’t hesitate to use it should my current supply of FDA-approved formula vanishes.

The announcement to increase the number of formula products that can be used under WIC is crucial and is sure to be welcomed by low-income families who have been unnecessarily burdened by the program’s restrictions. But the administration, as demonstrated by Thursday’s White House press briefing, still doesn’t appear to have a sufficient response for caretakers struggling to secure formula that go beyond referring to a doctor. While calling up the pediatrician could bring answers for some—though I struggle to believe that they’re in a position to hand out tons of formula at this point—plenty of vulnerable families lack the health insurance to turn to a pediatrician.

I still have to wonder how much of the current shortage could have been prevented if the government had stepped in earlier. After all, the out-of-stock rate for baby formula started rising in early 2021, only to get significantly worse by the summer. Between November and April 2022, the rate jumped to a staggering 31 percent. 

Here’s to hoping that we see additional measures announced soon.

The Senate’s last ditch effort at codifying abortion rights has failed with a 51–49 vote.

The plan was doomed from the start, since Democrats lacked the 60 votes needed to enact the legislation. All 50 Republicans, including the purportedly pro-choice Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME), voted not to proceed with the measure. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) crossed party lines to vote against it.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) actually tried to argue today that Republicans could seize the rollback of abortion rights as an opportunity to expand social safety nets for children and mothers. There’s a glaring problem with this: Republicans have almost uniformly objected to any policy that would actually make parents’ lives easier, from paid family leave to universal pre-K.

“What resources are [states] prepared to provide to support these women and the children they’ll bear?” Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said today. “The answer, we know—and I fear—is none.”

Burnley Football Club is not one of the planet’s great soccer powers. Over the last decade-and-a-half the Lancashire-based squad has gone back and forth between the bottom half of the English Premier League—the world’s best domestic league—and the country’s second division, which is, for reasons not worth getting into, called the Championship. The team’s style of play is grass-stained, low-scoring, and deeply frustrating. Their nickname is “The Clarets.” Their field is called Turf Moor. Their manager, until he was fired quite recently for reasons I will get to, had the look of a man who would glass you at the pub if you spoke ill of the pea wet. But he was actually a nice enough guy, by most accounts, and Burnley has been more competent for a while than they really ought to be.

Now that you’re all caught up on what Burnley is, let’s talk about why it’s screwed. For a long time, English soccer teams—especially ones in small cities with names like “The Clarets”—were not especially great investments for people looking to make money. The profit margins weren’t huge and were often non-existent, and the system of demoting the worst teams every year means that it is actually possible for a club to fail. The Premier League sends the three worst teams down to the Championship at the end of the season. The Championship does the same to its bottom three teams. And so on. In English leagues, you don’t get to just kind of putter around for a while hoarding draft picks until you find the right formula. If you don’t win, you go down, and you take a massive hit in your revenues, which come from TV rights. Up until 2020, Burnley’s chairman was a guy named Mike Garlick, who grew up near Turf Moor and ran a successful job-recruitment consulting firm. He was the 19th-richest owner in a 20-team league at one point—sort of the Burnley of owners.

But as the Premier League’s revenues and stature have grown, it’s become a destination for genuine global wealth. Middle-Eastern petro-states, Russian oligarchs, and NFL owners all bought clubs. And as with every other asset class these days, from dentist offices to prisons to single-family homes, you can also find a private equity firm sniffing around. In 2020, Garlick and another minority owner, John Banaszkiewicz, agreed to sell their stake in Burnley to a firm called ALK Capital, which was helmed by a Citi alum named Alan Pace. Many fans were optimistic about the deal, hoping that a new injection of cash would give the team more money to spend on on-field talent.

That’s not what’s happened, though. The takeover was a classic leveraged buyout. When ALK took over the club, it did so in a way that depleted the team’s cash reserves to pay off the old owners, and then saddled the club with massive loan debt. Burnley effectively paid for its own takeover on the predication of its future value. As The Guardian’s David Conn reported last year:

Sources with knowledge of the deal did, however, confirm some essential elements: the initial payments to Garlick, Banaszkiewicz and the other sellers have been financed with a loan from MSD UK Holdings, the investment firm of the US tech magnate Michael Dell, said to be approximately £60m. The loan is charged like a mortgage on Turf Moor and the club itself, which will have to repay it from its own revenues, with interest at a rate ALK has not yet publicly stated.

This is not really how you or I might envision “buying things,” but it’s a perfectly normal kind of private-equity deal. In the best-case version of the industry, this new management would unlock new sources of revenue and efficiencies. But Burnley now faces the worst-case scenario: relegation and demotion to a lower league. This is, in effect, what happens with many PE takeovers: The promise of loading a company up with debt against the idea that financial gurus will create greater returns and results (or, in this case, continue pulling off the heroic feat of staying in the Premier League) is running up against the fact that that is actually pretty hard to do.

Now, though, the stakes for Burnley going down are much higher. Since the club is already loaded up with debt it could put them in a real danger zone—that way lies more relegations, bankruptcy, and receivership; you look up one day and you’re at the bottom tier, kicking off in a cow pasture against Cockermouth FC. And Burnley’s arrangement, as it happens, is actually written in ways that raise the stakes of relegation. According to The Athletic, if the team is relegated, the loan repayment timeline accelerates, “with a significant proportion of the capital loan value required shortly after the end of the football season.”

As Conn noted, other American owners have taken similar approaches to Premier League teams. The Glazer family, which owns the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, saddled Manchester United with huge debts in order to finance its own takeover, and the club has since had to make £1 billion in various payments related to that debt. Fans have literally taken to the streets to protest the Glazers. But while United hasn’t been as successful under the Glazers as it was before the Glazers, it is still one of the biggest brands in global sports; you can see why investors considered it as an asset worth mining. Burnley, as we’ve discussed, is Burnley. Short of a takeover by, like, the sovereign wealth fund of Hell, that’s never going to change.

Competing against some of the world’s richest and most successful clubs, Burnley’s margin for error has always been small, and this edition of the team has been putrid, hovering around the relegation zone all year. Last month, the chairman from ALK finally fired the club’s longtime manager, leading to a brief flurry of strong performances. It still might not be enough to stay up.

Burnley’s private-equity ownership did come up with one new source of cash though—last year they announced that they were teaming up with a blockchain company to produce a new “publicly traded digital security token” fans could own. “We’re excited to get our supporters involved on a whole new level,” Pace said in a statement at the time. 

But maybe don’t put your retirement savings into Burnley-coin just yet. The tokens’ value, the team announced, would be linked to “club revenues.”

Today, Elon Musk, who is set to take over Twitter, said that it had been a “mistake” to ban Donald Trump’s account. The 45th president, you’ll recall, was permanently banned from the platform following the January 6 insurrection, which he couldn’t stop egging on with his usual array of Oddly Capitalized Posts.

“I think it was a morally bad decision to be clear and foolish in the extreme,” Musk said of the ban during an event hosted by the Financial Times, the Washington Post reported.

“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” the Tesla founder added. “I think that was a mistake. … It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

Since his expulsion, Trump has tried to create buzz around his new social media empire, the poorly named TruthSocial. It’s not going great. Still, Trump has sworn that he’s dedicated to it and won’t be returning to Twitter, regardless of an invite from Musk. We’ll see how long that lasts. Meanwhile, former advisers have actually described it as a good thing that Trump is no longer on Twitter because, in theory, it took some spotlight off his characteristic unhinged behavior.

Anyway, I’m curious about what Musk thinks of Trump’s persistent efforts to claim that the presidential election had been stolen from him, especially after the violence of January 6, and what that could mean for a free speech platform. (I once attempted to ask Henry Kissinger, who the FT also interviewed this week, with no response.)

In any case, it sounds like it’s time to welcome back Trump tweets. As always, sorry to the haters and losers.

pic.twitter.com/4G46WBY0P8

— Old Donald Trump posts (not affiliated w/Trump) (@oldTrumpTweetz) May 9, 2022

Since I published my thoughts on the nationwide baby formula shortage, dozens of women have replied to share their struggles, many expressing deep frustration over the lack of attention the crisis has received. I’ve been moved by these anecdotes, and also genuinely appreciative of those who admitted to not having known about the shortage until this week. It turns out most of Congress, the people who should know better, hadn’t heard of it either.

Men have also offered solutions. A few appeared kind and sympathetic in their curiosity over whether I had tried this or that. But far more comments featured snark that smacked of ignorance on how to keep a baby alive for more than a handful of hours at a time. That’s on top of the angry tweets I received over daring to ask what more the Biden administration could do to alleviate the crisis. While I’m not sure what to tell people who apparently have more concern for the feelings of the man in the White House than the countless families struggling amid a crisis, I can outline three of the biggest misconceptions that have come my way:

Switch brands

A popular suggestion in the wake of the formula shortage has been to simply readjust one’s preferred brand. But any caretaker of a newborn will know, with searing intimacy, that switching formula risks introducing a host of side effects ranging from increased fussiness to serious digestive issues like bloody stools and severe constipation—particularly if your young one has underlying health issues that require specialized formulas. I experienced this firsthand when my son was first learning to fart, maybe a month or two into an already exhausting breastfeeding journey. The piercing screams as Owen tried to pass gas—which came suddenly and always at 2 in the morning—will never leave me. At first, I attempted to eliminate dairy from my diet out of fear that the breastmilk, already so precious to me, was now a potential culprit. After one harried appointment at the pediatrician’s office, where we were told that this was, unfortunately, par for the course and that we should probably just stick to our routine, my husband and I swiftly ignored that advice. We drove to Target and blindly snatched up any can labeling itself as a tummy salve. But the process of formula experimenting made things infinitely worse, and we soon turned to something called a “gas passer”—a plastic tube we’d stick into the butthole of a furious, wailing baby until, by god’s good grace, a sludge of green to yellow poop barreled into our hands. The screaming would stop—until the next night. Eventually, we returned to our first formula brand.

Use regular milk

Why can’t babies just man up and drink normal milk? Any pediatrician will tell you that that’s just wrong; cow’s milk, when introduced before the recommended 12-month mark, can lead to serious issues like intestinal bleeding, and contains far too many proteins and minerals for an infant’s kidneys to manage. Plus, the milk you and I drink doesn’t contain anywhere close to the number of nutrients needed for an infant to thrive. So I was startled at how many, again almost always men, have pointed to cow’s milk as a viable solution for the current shortage. One even proudly shared that his grandmother had fed her seven children goat’s milk, so what’s the problem? It’s pretty damning for men to be pushing cow’s milk as a substitute for formula, only to reveal just how removed from the process of caretaking they are. 

Shop on Amazon

So far, I’ve been relatively successful at purchasing our preferred brand of formula on the internet. But that’s far from a guarantee as the shortage gets worse. Nor is it a common, widely shared experience. In fact, since writing on the formula shortage, many have shared their frustrations around getting shipments suddenly canceled, repeatedly pushed back, and left scrambling jumping from chain to chain in order to secure food for their infants. Still, some men seem woefully unaware of these hardships, as well as the fact that the online marketplaces are rife with price-gouging. (Dudes, did you even try buying sanitizer on Amazon in March 2020?) Offering the internet as a kind of obvious solution, as if people with the means hadn’t already thought of that, also willfully ignores whole swaths of the population that simply don’t have the access. Now, imagine with me a world where we saw beyond our individual circumstances. For some of the men hiding in my mentions right now, that seems to be an awfully tall order. 

It surprises me too, but damn it, I’ve got to agree with Tom Cotton here.

The formula shortage is a national crisis, hitting poor moms and kids the hardest.

The FDA needs to immediately step up, be transparent, explain how it will get production restarted, and give parents a timeline.

And the Biden Administration needs to take this seriously.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) May 9, 2022

The Republican senator from Arkansas is normally poor at defining crises. Some of his favorites: immigration, Black Lives Matter protests, defense of the filibuster. But, on the current crisis surrounding the lack of baby formula across the country, Cotton is right. The government needs to take action.

Haven’t heard of the shortage? It’s nothing short of a disaster. 40 percent of formula stock has vanished. Fueled by persistent supply-chain issues and a recent recall from Abbott (one of the four biggest manufacturers of baby formula), retailers are starting to limit how much you can buy if you do happen to stumble upon a rare stash. I can say anecdotally that friends are panicking. At the risk of exposing myself as a pandemic hoarder, I’ll admit to recently buying five more cans than necessary out of fear that I’ll soon have to start regularly bidding on eBay in order to feed my 7-month-old son. That’s on top of relentless Covid dodging for the sake of my unvaccinated roommate (my baby) and flailing as a new parent in general.

For many women, breastfeeding is simply not an option. Some experience medical issues, which are common and wide ranging. For countless others, breastfeeding is an acute struggle that can make an already difficult post-partum journey infinitely more arduous. So, it shouldn’t be a tough thing to understand that most babies in the United States are not exclusively breastfed. Yet the ignorance is laid bare when people, particularly men, still reflexively point to the method as a kind of obvious solution to our current nationwide formula shortage.

It’s against this backdrop that the crisis doesn’t feel as though it’s receiving the kind of urgency with which parents are having to drive from Target to CVS to Walmart on any given day in search of a basic need (food) for their babies. Sure, it’s making a few headlines. But you’d think that babies on the brink of going hungry would give way to a giant federal response. Lawmakers demanding action. Everyday updates. 

I can’t help but think that isn’t the case simply because the shortage reads like a Woman’s Problem. As Jia Tolentino wrote in a terrific Mother’s Day essay, “the further you are from essential labor, the easier it is to forget, or never grasp, the worth and honor in that work.” The misguided notion that a woman could simply turn on her left breast like a kind of free-flowing spigot, coupled with a blanket ignorance of the basic understandings of how babies literally stay alive, is frankly embarrassing. But that’s the logical dead end to a society where, “the social and political potential of parenting is largely erased by this privatized vision of motherhood,” as Tolentino describes.

Still, ignorance is no excuse for inaction, particularly from those who know better. A failure to address an everyday struggle affecting countless parents, caregivers, and of course, literal humans who by definition rely on others for their basic needs is bound to give credence to the notion, fair or not, that life under the Biden administration just isn’t working out. That it sucks, that we’re living the ramifications of inflation, and the government seems a bit too chill about it. These emotions, whether rooted in fact or fiction, are the kinds of things people will remember this November when they ask themselves whether they’re satisfied with the current occupier of the White House.