US Business

Republican voters delivered a stark repudiation Tuesday of Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 US election was stolen, backing Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for re-election by a huge margin over a candidate recruited by the former president.

Trump had banked much of his own political capital hand-picking David Perdue to oust Kemp in the nominating contest to compete for the governor’s mansion in November’s midterm elections.

Perdue made Trump’s claims about 2020 a centerpiece of his campaign, in a direct appeal to his endorser’s supporters who continue wrongly to question the validity of the outcome.

But the former senator was forced to concede, in an embarrassing blow for Trump, as the early count showed him trailing by almost 50 points less than 90 minutes after polls closed.

“Four years of the Kemp administration will mean that you keep all of your hard-earned money,” Kemp said in his victory address.

“Your communities will be safe. Your kids will be in school without fear of partisan agendas in the classroom. Parents will have a voice and we’ll keep working to bring good paying jobs to every corner of our state.”

Kemp, frequently the target of Trump’s wrath for refusing to help overturn the election, was always expected to win, but the margin of defeat represents a stinging rebuke of Trump from a state he lost by the narrowest of margins in 2020.

In a grueling night for Trump, another of the election deniers he endorsed, John Gordon, also lost his challenge to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr.

Five states were holding nominating contests for congressional elections that will decide in November which party controls the US Senate and House of Representatives for the remainder of President Joe Biden’s first term.

But all eyes are on Georgia, where wounds from the 2020 presidential election are still festering two years after Biden won the state by under 12,000 votes.

Up and down the ballot, the Republican side of the Georgia primary pitted candidates peddling the former president’s election fraud claims against hopefuls who pushed back in defense of the Constitution.

– ‘Inelegant delivery’ – 

The race to be Georgia’s secretary of state is seen as equally consequential as the contest for governor, as these are the officials who oversee elections in the United States.

Democrats fear that, across the country, Trump will be able to install loyalists who can weaponize specious fraud accusations from 2020 to make it harder for his opponents to vote in 2024.    

As the man responsible for certifying Georgia’s 2020 election results, Brad Raffensperger was in lockstep with Kemp in pushing back against Trump.

He faced Jody Hice, one of more than a dozen Trump-backed candidates across America bidding to become secretary of state and professing to believe the 2020 election was stolen.

With two-thirds of votes counted, Raffensperger was a comfortable 17 points ahead with 51 percent, just above the threshold for avoiding a run-off against Hice.

Biden was the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 to win Georgia, while Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff triumphed in runoff elections in January 2021 that wrested control of the US Senate from Republicans.

Warnock cruised through his primary and will face Trump-backed football star Herschel Walker, who had an easy night too, sailing to the Republican nomination for Senate.

Georgia’s Democrats are doing all they can to cement their 2021 gains, headlined by Democratic star campaigner Stacey Abrams, who is unopposed in her bid for governor.

Abrams courted controversy over the weekend with remarks that Georgia is the “worst state in the country to live,” citing its healthcare and crime statistics, rising incarceration rates and falling wages.

At a news conference Tuesday, she attempted to clean up a comment that Republicans have seized on as a sign of her lack of local pride, faulting herself for an “inelegant delivery” of her message.

In a brief concession speech, Perdue backed Kemp in his bid to see off Abrams’s challenge.

“We’re going to make sure Stacey Abrams is not governor of the state,” he said.

Nominating contests are also being held in Minnesota, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, where a school shooting that left at least 18 children dead had cast a grim pall over the state’s primary.

Before he opened fire in a Texas elementary school — killing 19 small children — teenager Salvador Ramos first shot his grandmother, officials said.

The 18-year-old, who died when police tried to arrest him, was a US citizen and a student in Uvalde, a small community near the Mexican border where the tragedy took place.

A mugshot of Ramos that circulated in local media showed a young man with brown hair, looking in front of him with an expressionless gaze.

“The first incident was at their grandmother’s residence where he shot the grandmother,” said Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety, adding she was later airlifted to a medical facility.

A 66-year-old woman was admitted to a hospital in San Antonio in critical condition following the shooting, according to healthcare officials, who did not provide any further details.

After firing at his grandmother, Ramos fled the scene in a car wearing a bulletproof vest and armed with a rifle, Estrada said.

He then crashed near a ditch outside Robb Elementary School, got out, and headed for the school, where law enforcement officers tried, but failed, to stop him.

At around 11:30 am local time (1630 GMT) Ramos burst into the school and opened fire.

“And then from there, that’s when he went on and entered several classrooms and started shooting his firearm,” Estrada said on CNN. 

– End of school year –

Thursday was meant to be the last day of the school year for the 500 students at Robb Elementary, who are aged five to 11 and mostly Hispanic.

Estrada said no car chases had been reported in the area, suggesting that the traffic accident was unprovoked.

Two police officers suffered minor injuries in the shootout, Abbott said. 

Investigators were working to obtain “detailed background information on the subject, his motive, the types of weapons used, the legal authority to possess them, and conduct a comprehensive crime-scene investigation and reconstruction,” Abbot said.

It is unclear whether Ramos had previous run-ins with law enforcement, according to Estrada.

Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde School District Police Chief in charge of the investigation, said Ramos acted alone.

An Instagram account associated with the suspect, which has since been taken down, showed several photos of the young man.

In two black and white selfies he is wearing what looks like a hoodie, with his hair down to his shoulders.

Other photos showed a magazine and semi-automatic rifles.

A teenage gunman killed at least 19 young children and two adults at an elementary school in Texas on Tuesday, prompting a furious President Joe Biden to denounce the US gun lobby and vow to end the nation’s cycle of mass shootings.

The attack in Uvalde — a small community about an hour from the Mexican border — was the deadliest US school shooting in years, and the latest in a spree of bloody gun violence across America.

“It’s time to turn this pain into action for every parent, for every citizen of this country,” Biden said, his voice heavy with emotion.

“It’s time for those who obstruct or delay or block commonsense gun laws — we need to let you know that we will not forget,” he said.

“As a nation, we have to ask when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, addressing an earlier news conference, named the suspect as Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old local resident and a US citizen.

“He shot and killed, horrifically and incomprehensibly,” Abbott said.

Texas Department of Public Safety officials told CNN the gunman is believed to have shot his grandmother before heading to Robb Elementary School around noon where he abandoned his vehicle and entered with a handgun and a rifle, wearing body armor.

The gunman was killed by responding officers, the officials said, adding later two adults also died in the attack.

Footage showed small groups of children weaving through parked cars and yellow buses, some holding hands as they fled under police escort from the school, which teaches students aged around seven to 10 years old.

It was the deadliest such incident since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, in which 20 children and six staff were killed.

The White House ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in mourning for the victims — whose deaths sent a wave of shock through a country still scarred by the horror of Sandy Hook.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Robb Elementary — which teaches more than 500, mostly Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students — called on parents not to rush in to get their children.

“You will be notified to pick up students once all are accounted for,” the school said on its website soon after the attack.

– ‘Happens nowhere else’ –

Ted Cruz, a pro-gun rights Republican senator from Texas, tweeted that he and his wife were “lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde.”

But Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook shooting took place, made an impassioned appeal for concrete action to prevent further violence.

“This isn’t inevitable, these kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day,” Murphy said on the Senate floor in Washington.

“I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.”

The deadly assault in Texas follows a series of mass shootings in the United States this month.

On May 14, an 18-year-old man shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York grocery store.

Wearing heavy body armor and wielding an AR-15 rifle, the self-declared white supremacist livestreamed his attack, having reportedly targeted the store because of the large surrounding African American population.

The following day, a man blocked the door of a church in Laguna Woods, California and opened fire on its Taiwanese-American congregation, killing one person and injuring five.

Despite recurring mass-casualty shootings, multiple initiatives to reform gun regulations have failed in the US Congress, leaving states and local councils to strengthen — or weaken — their own restrictions.

The National Rifle Association has been instrumental in fighting against stricter US gun laws. Abbott and Cruz are listed as speakers at a forum that is being held by the powerful lobby in Houston, Texas later this week.

The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent compared to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest data.

A mass shooting that left 18 schoolchildren dead in the deeply pro-gun state of Texas on Tuesday increased pressure on US politicians to take action over the ubiquity of firearms — but also brought the grim expectation of little or no change.

It was the eighth mass shooting this year, according to the Everytown gun control group, and came 10 days after another 18-year-old murdered 10 African Americans at a supermarket in New York.

But nearly 10 years after a man slaughtered 20 children and six others in an attack on the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and four years after 17 were killed at a Florida high school, restrictions on gun purchases and ownership have not significantly changed.

“I had hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this, again,” a distraught President Joe Biden said as he led national mourning, vowing to overcome the US gun lobby and find a way to tighten gun ownership laws.

“Another massacre… an elementary school. Beautiful, innocent, second, third, fourth graders,” he said. “I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.”

But guns of all kinds, especially high-powered assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols are cheaper and more widely available than ever across the United States.

And the all-too-familiar arguments over guns, public safety and rights re-opened immediately on the news of Tuesday’s mass shooting.

– Gun massacres ‘politicized’? –

The debate is set to intensify going into the weekend when Houston, Texas hosts the annual convention of the country’s leading pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association.

Scheduled to speak at the convention is former president Donald Trump, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and other prominent Republicans.

Senator Chris Murphy, who represents Connecticut, made an emotional call on the Senate floor on Tuesday for lawmakers to take action.

“Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America and it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue,” he said.

But Cruz quickly pushed back, saying people will use the shooting to attack the right of people under the US Constitution’s 2nd Amendment to own guns.

“When there’s a crime of this kind, it almost immediately gets politicized,” Cruz said.

Attacking constitutional gun rights “is not effective in stopping these sort of crimes,” he added.

– More guns, more shootings –

Yet data shows the grim national cost of gun crime.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of gun deaths in the United States underwent a “historic” increase in 2020.

And the US racked up 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent over 2019, and 24,245 gun suicides, up 1.5 percent.

At 6.1 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020, the firearm homicide rate was the highest in a quarter century. 

Mass shootings have also risen, according to Everytown.

“Since 2009, there have been 274 mass shootings in the United States, resulting in 1,536 people shot and killed and 983 people shot and wounded,” the group says.

The country is swamped with guns. US firearms makers produced over 139 million guns for the commercial market over the two decades from 2000, and the country imported another 71 million.

That includes high-powered assault rifles, which can be found for $500, and 9 millimeter pistols that combine ease of use, high accuracy and semi-automatic triggers with prices as low as $200.

– Gun laws eased in Texas –

But at every incident, proposals by state and federal lawmakers to tighten laws are rebuffed by conservative colleagues, who count on voter support from a sizeable portion of the public opposed to gun control.

Last year, a Pew poll said just 53 percent of Americans want stricter gun laws, and only 49 percent think tougher laws would decrease mass shootings.

Politicians like Abbott have instead moved to ease controls. Last year, the Texas governor signed a law allowing anyone in the state over 18 to openly carry a handgun without a license or training.

Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand, an activist arm of Everytown, pointed out that Texas is one of the country’s largest gun markets and has a high firearms death rate.

“If more guns and fewer laws made Texas safer, it would be the safest state with declining rates of gun violence,” Watts wrote on Twitter. 

“But it has high rates of gun suicide and homicide, and is home to four of the 10 deadliest mass shootings.”

A group of US Democratic lawmakers urged Google on Tuesday to stop collecting smartphone location data that could be used to identify women who have had abortions.

The move came amid fears that the US Supreme Court was considering overturning Roe v. Wade, a landmark 1973 ruling that guaranteed nationwide access to abortion.

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders along with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were among more than 40 lawmakers who signed a letter to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai.

“We are concerned that, in a world in which abortion could be made illegal, Google’s current practice of collecting and retaining extensive records of cell phone location data will allow it to become a tool for far-right extremists looking to crack down on people seeking reproductive health care,” said the letter, which was published online.

“That’s because Google stores historical location information about hundreds of millions of smartphone users, which it routinely shares with government agencies.”

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

Polls show that a majority of Americans support some form of access to abortion.

But in recent months, Republican-controlled states have taken steps to restrict abortion rights — with some seeking an outright ban of the procedure without any exceptions — and overturning Roe would grant them greater freedom to enact their policies.

“If this decision becomes final, the consequences will be dire,” the lawmakers said.

“Republicans in Congress are already discussing passing a law criminalizing abortion in all 50 states, putting the government in control of women’s bodies.”

In their letter, the lawmakers urged Google to stop gathering location data from smartphones that could be used by prosecutors keen to identify women who have visited health care facilities that provide abortions.

Google routinely receives court orders compelling it turn over user location information, including “geofence” orders, that demand data about everyone who was near a particular place at a certain time, the letter said.

“If abortion is made illegal by the far-right Supreme Court and Republican lawmakers, it is inevitable that right-wing prosecutors will obtain legal warrants to hunt down, prosecute and jail women for obtaining critical reproductive health care,” the letter said.

“The only way to protect your customers’ location data from such outrageous government surveillance is to not keep it in the first place.”

Nonprofit digital rights group Fight For The Future echoed the legislators’ plea in an online petition demanding that Google get rid of its location data stockpile the could be “weaponized against abortion patients and doctors.”

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr made an impassioned plea for gun control in the wake of the Texas school shooting that left 18 children dead on Tuesday as the US sporting world reacted with horror over the tragedy.

Kerr refused to talk about his team’s NBA playoff match with the Dallas Mavericks in a pre-game press conference, held hours after a teenage gunman opened fire at a school in the Texas town of Uvalde.

An emotional Kerr, one of the most outspoken and articulate voices on social issues in American sport, slammed his hand on a table as he accused US lawmakers who refuse to vote on tougher gun laws of “holding the American people hostage.”

“I’m not going to talk about basketball,” Kerr told reporters shortly before Tuesday’s Eastern Conference finals game four in Dallas. “Any basketball questions don’t matter.

“Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed 400 miles from here, and a teacher. In the last 10 days, we’ve had elderly black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we’ve had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California, now we have children murdered at school.

“When are we going to do something? I’m tired. I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. 

“I’ve had enough. We’re going to play the game tonight. But I want every person here, every person listening to this, to think about your own child or grandchild, mother or father, sister, brother. 

“How would you feel if this happened to you today” asked Kerr, whose father was murdered by Islamic militants in Beirut in 1984.

Kerr reserved toughest criticism for members of the US Senate who have refused to vote on legislation that would introduce stricter background checks for gun owners. 

“Fifty Senators in Washington are going to hold us hostage,” Kerr said. “Do you realize that 90 percent of Americans, regardless of political party, want background checks, universal background checks? Ninety percent of us. 

“We are being held hostage by 50 Senators in Washington who refuse to even put it to a vote, despite what we the American people want.”

– LeBron fury –

Kerr’s sense of outrage was shared by Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, who also called for change.

“Like when is enough enough man!!!,” James wrote on Twitter. “These are kids and we keep putting them in harms way at school. Like seriously, “AT SCHOOL” where it’s suppose to be the safest!

“There simply has to be change. HAS TO BE!!”

NFL athletes also demanded change. The Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl-winning quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who grew up in Texas, wrote on Twitter: “Has to stop man…prayers to all the families in Texas.”

Dallas Cowboys defensive star DeMarcus Lawrence meanwhile tweeted directly at Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

“Who is going to stand up and DEMAND we have better security at all these schools that can’t afford it????” Lawrence wrote. “How are our tax dollars not going to those who need the most protection??!! OUR CHILDREN! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”

Former Houston Texans icon J.J. Watt added: “Devastated doesn’t even begin to describe it. Horrifying horrifying news out of Texas.”