Fox News Flash top headlines for May 26
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.
Two days ago, as you know, a mentally ill teenager called Salvador Ramos murdered 19 children and teachers in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The crime was so awful, so completely unimaginable and shocking that it was about 24 hours before most people thought to ask exactly what had happened.
How was Ramos able to get inside the school? Why did no one stop him as he methodically executed so many children over about an hour? Where was law enforcement? Those aren't just fair questions, though they are, they're essential questions. If you want to prevent similar atrocities, you need details. You've got to find out what exactly happened. This is a well-known concept.
Every time a commercial airliner crashes in this country, federal investigators painstakingly recreate the final moments of the flight, not because they're ghoulish. They want to know what caused it and that's the main reason that air travel is so safe. After action reports work.
Yet somehow our leaders rarely respond as rationally to violent crime. Almost never. A mass shooting is just too tempting a moment for them to demagog. The public is often grieving and in shock, so it's the perfect moment for the usual opportunists to leap forward and cast blame on their political opponents, to seize all the power they can while the country is too traumatized to notice. You almost never hear anyone in Washington ask what happened. Instead, it's always a race to see who can benefit politically.
This week was no different. Within hours of Tuesday's massacre, Democrats in Congress announced they plan to clamp down on your ability to defend yourself with a firearm. Why is that? Well, apparently the Uvalde shooting was your fault, so you're going to pay the price. The media applauded this, so Democrats went even further.
Yesterday, they unveiled their plan to seize firearms from American citizens who have not been convicted of a crime or even accused. Now, under normal circumstances, it would be instantly obvious that that is unconstitutional. In our system, you have to be convicted before you can be punished, but in the hysteria that understandably follows a tragedy this horrible, politicians know that they can suspend civil liberties.
And it's not just Democrats, by the way. Republicans in the Senate immediately signaled they're on board with more gun control. Mitch McConnell, who at the age of 80 has adopted political views that are strikingly similar to Joe Biden's (low t liberal) announced that he stands with Chuck Schumer against you.
ACTIVE SHOOTER SURVIVAL INSTRUCTOR DESCRIBES HOW UVALDE SHOOTER GAINED ENTRANCE TO SCHOOL
"I am hopeful," Mitch McConnell said, "that we can come up with a bipartisan solution that's directly related to the facts of this awful massacre." Directly related to the facts. Well, that sounds sensible, but since we're passing new federal laws, it is worth asking: what are the facts here? Well, yesterday Texas Governor Greg Abbott appeared at a press event to relay the main fact, which is that law enforcement on the scene did all they could to save those children. That's the first thing to know. Watch.
GOV. GREG ABBOTT: The reason it was not worse, it is because law enforcement officials did what they do. They showed amazing courage by running toward gunfire for the singular purpose of trying to save lives.
"Law enforcement showed amazing courage by running toward gunfire for the singular purpose of trying to save lives." Now, we heard that and we wanted to believe it. Most of the time, we admire law enforcement. They take an awful lot of abuse to do a hard and essential job for not much pay. If you think you don't need the police, go ahead and defund them and see what happens. So that explanation sounded good to us. But was it true?
TEXAS SCHOOL SHOOTING: SALVADOR RAMOS TOLD CLASSROOM ‘IT’S TIME TO DIE,’ SURVIVOR SAYS
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott addresses the Uvalde school shooting. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, it was in fact true. A spokesman called Erick Estrada told us that a school resource officer assigned to Robb Elementary in Uvalde exchanged gunfire with the suspect before the suspect entered the school. In an interview with CNN, Estrada stated that the gunman "engaged" the school resource officer and during that shootout, the gunman dropped a black bag containing ammunition. The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, affirmed that this happened" "The bottom line is law enforcement was there," McCraw said, "They did engage immediately." So that was the story and again, we were happy to believe it, but it doesn't seem to be true.
A witness called Juan Carranza, who lives next to the school, said he saw everything that happened. Carranza said to the Associated Press he had watched Ramos crash his truck outside the elementary school, take a rifle and shoot at two people at a funeral home nearby. Ramos then began shooting at the school building before running inside the school about 10 minutes later.
According to Carranza, there were no police officers at the school to engage Ramos. Ramos went into the school and began shooting. When police finally did arrive, Carranza said, they didn't do anything at all for about an hour. In fact, parents had to beg the police to save their children. "Go in there. Go in there," one woman said. It was a shocking story. It was the opposite of what authorities had told us for more than 24 hours.
UVALDE, TEXAS RESIDENTS REACT TO BETO O'ROURKE DISRUPTING ABBOTT PRESS CONFERENCE: 'BULL----'
So whose version is true? Well, in the last day, videos have emerged corroborating Carranza's version of events. Those videos show police officers with rifles and body armor standing outside the school. It's not clear if the gunman was still shooting at this point, but we do know the gunman was still alive.
And yet instead of going into the school, the police instead worked to keep parents out of the school for a full hour. Watch.
OFFICER: I know that! I already know!
MOTHER 1: Are your kids in there? No! No! Look at that poor little kid, that poor baby.
MOTHER 2: You're scared to get shot? I'll go in without a vest. I will, ok?
PERSON TAKING THE VIDEO: That's f------ crazy, bro. They're just standing outside, there's f------ kids in there still. I don't know what type of parent you are but half of these f------ parents want to go in without vests, without guns to get their f------ kids, bro.
GRANDFATHER OF TEXAS SCHOOL SHOOTER SALVADOR RAMOS SAYS HIS MOTHER IS 'FEELING BAD FOR EVERYBODY'
It seems apparent that when that video was shot, the gunman was still alive with the firearm in the school with children in the school. Now, a Texas official later suggested on camera that while all of this was happening, some members of law enforcement in Texas went into the school to get their own children out. Is that true? If it is true, it's a moral crime, at the very least. In the meantime, we know that police were forcibly keeping parents away from the building. At one point, an officer held a Taser at his side.
Taser, of course, aimed at the parents. Now, one parent called Angeli Rose Gomez, told The Wall Street Journal that as soon as she heard about the shooting, she drove 40 miles to the school because she had two sons enrolled, and she wanted to save them. "The police were doing nothing, "she said, "They were just standing outside the fence. They weren't going in there or running anywhere."
Now, she immediately complained about this and when she did, Federal Marshals put Gomez in handcuffs. Ultimately, they freed her, at which point Gomez, "made her distance from the crowd, jumped the school fence and ran inside to grab her two children." She then ran out of the school with her children.
In other words, this mother was cuffed, freed, ran into the school and still had time to get her kids out as the police stood outside. Now, if that's true, it's a scandal. Today, the police called a press conference to explain all of this. Victor Escalon with Texas DPS began by explaining that it might be just a rumor that parents were urging police to go inside the building. Watch.
HUSBAND OF TEACHER SLAIN IN UVALDE SHOOTING SUFFERS FATAL HEART ATTACK: REPORTS
REPORTER: Was it true that eyewitnesses and potentially parents of the students were urging the police to go in while we were waiting for a tactical SWAT team? Even then, some parents were asking to borrow police armor so they could make a counter assault on the school?
VICTOR ESCALON: I have heard that information, but we have not verified that yet.
OTHER REPORTER: So, what part haven't you verified?
ESCALON: We have not verified. Is that a true statement or not. Or is it just rumor out there?
Oh, it's a rumor. Except it's on video, so it's not at all a rumor. It's a fact. Now, that officer did admit that there was no school resource officer after all. The one we were told had "engaged" the gunman didn't exist. Watch.
FAMILY OF TEXAS SHOOTING VICTIMS CRITICIZES SCHOOL FOR NEGLECTING SECURITY
A law enforcement personnel lights a candle outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
ESCALON: It was reported that a school district police officer confronted the suspect that was making entry – not accurate. He walked in unobstructed initially. So, from the grandmother's house to the car ditch to the school, into the school, he was not confronted by anybody, to clear the record on that.
So the point is not to point fingers or blame people. Nobody wants a school shooting. Everyone's heart is broken by it, but the authorities are not allowed to lie to us in the aftermath of an event like this and our federal officials are not allowed to take an event like this, ignore the facts, and then use it to take our constitutional rights away. So, what are the facts? Well, here's the news story from Texas DPS. At 11:28 a.m., the shooter crashed his truck outside. He then pulled a gun and began shooting indiscriminately at two people at a funeral home. That confirms what the witness, Carranza, said. He also shot the school building.
During that time, as you'd expect, people were calling the police. 12 minutes later, at 11:40 a.m., the shooter went inside the building. How did that happen? Then 4 minutes after that, the police finally went inside the building. So, in all there was a 16-minute gap until the police showed up and responded. So why did that take so long? That is a fair question. In fact, it's a critical question. Even at the Parkland School shooting, when police staged outside, students were being murdered, police wound up inside the building 11 minutes after the shooter, but in this case, it was 16 minutes. Why was that? We have a right to know, but today, police wouldn't say.
WHO IS THE TEXAS SCHOOL SHOOTER? WHAT WE KNOW
REPORTER: There was a 12-minute gap, there was a 12-minute gap, between he crashes his truck to when he enters the school, 12 minutes. What happened in 12 minutes?
ESCALON: So you got to understand, 11:30 is the information we have at this point that we could confirm. 11:30 a.m. the PD can say we got a crash and a man with a gun and we have responding officers. That's what it is. If it’s 12 minutes from 11:30 to 11:40, that's the information we have right now. Look at the end of the day, our job is to report the facts and have those answers. We're not there yet.
So the second the shooting starts anywhere, at any time, things get very confusing. They used to call it the fog of war. It's entirely real. It's hard to figure out exactly what happened when people start getting killed. But on the big questions, it's very obvious immediately. Was there a school resource officer who exchanged fire with the gunman?
That's not something you would imagine. That either happened or it didn't and you would know right away if it happened or it didn't. It didn't happen, but they said it did happen. That's a lie. Why did they lie? Police did say that officers went inside the school for 4 minutes after the suspect, but then they were treated outside the school and then police did not reenter the school for another hour. During that time, they say they were waiting for backup, including for some reason for multiple crisis negotiators. Watch.
ESCALON: Officers were there—the initial officers, they received gunfire. They don't make entry initially because of the gunfire they're receiving, but we have officers calling for additional resources. Everybody that's in the area, tactical teams. We need equipment. We need specialty equipment. We need body armor. We need precision rifleman, negotiators.
Now, no matter how pro law enforcement you are – and we are – there's only so much B.S. you can take in the face of a tragedy like this. "We're waiting for specialized equipment?" You have an 18-year-old with a firearm and little kids being killed. What kind of specialty equipment do you need? Negotiators, really? As children are being murdered? One 11-year-old child says she smeared herself with a friend's blood to convince the gunman she had already been shot to death.
Another fourth-grader who survived the shooting said that police told kids inside to call out for help while the shooter was still shooting. Then the gunman killed a student who followed police instructions and called out for help. So, if you're wondering why police waited an hour for negotiators to talk to a gunman who's indiscriminately murdering children, you're not the only one. They were asked about this at the briefing today. Was the door really barricaded or was it just locked? Police wouldn't respond to a simple question like that. Watch.
SHIMON PROKUPECZ: What were officers doing between 11:44 and 12:45?
ESCALON: I got you, sir.
PROKUPECZ: You guys have said that he was barricaded. Can you explain to us how he was barricaded and why you guys cannot breach that door?
ESCALON: So, I am taking all your questions into consideration. We will be doing updates. We will be answering those questions.
So, two days after this massacre, authorities are slowly admitting that everything they told us was, in fact, untrue. There was no school resource officer. They're not even sure how the door was barricaded. These matter, these questions. If you wanted to stop mass shootings in the future, figuring out how this happened would be the place to start, but of course, there's nothing in Joe Biden's latest executive order on policing in the memory of Saint George Floyd that addresses anything related to the shooting. And nothing under consideration for Mitch McConnell who tells you he cares about the facts above all will do anything to punish police officers who hide children die because the point of this is not to protect children.
Obviously, you may figured it out, it's to blame you for what happened in Uvalde because you dare to exercise your constitutional rights and if you do dare to exercise your constitutional rights, according to MSNBC, you're complicit in mass murder.
TEXAS POLICE ARREST 4 MALES, INCLUDING 2 JUVENILES, IN CONNECTION TO THREATS AGAINST SCHOOL: REPORT
Crime scene tape surrounds Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday, May 25. (AP/Jae C. Hong)
REP. ERIC SWALWELL: The truth is not by a policy defect, but by design, by design of the Republican Party in this country, every kid in every classroom is exposed and vulnerable to a shooting.
KATY TUR, MSNBC ANCHOR: It absolutely is partisan, because there's one party that's refusing to pass gun laws.
JOHN HEILEMANN, MSNBC ANALYST: The fact that we leave kids to go through the rituals you're talking about, vulnerable to this, to this kind of slaughter is a political decision.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Please stop thinking that there is some body count, some level of brutality and carnage that will move them, these Republicans and their two pet Democrats, that the rivers of blood will one day run deep enough.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
These ghouls drawing politically convenient conclusions, accusing people who have no connection whatsoever to this massacre, of murder, all on the basis of no evidence, and then when the evidence emerges and it doesn't comport with the politically convenient story they want to tell, they simply ignore it.
But the rest of us should not ignore it. We should not avert our gaze. We should demand the truth. We should demand to know what happened. The children who are murdered deserve at least that.
Best of Opinion
Get the recap of top opinion commentary and original content throughout the week.
By entering your email and clicking the Subscribe button, you agree to the Fox News Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, and agree to receive content and promotional communications from Fox News. You understand that you can opt-out at any time.