05/03/23 05/03/23 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> the court should have a code of conduct with clear and enforceable means so both justices and the american people know when conduct crosses the line. amy: calls are growing for supreme court justices to have a code of ethics following recent disclosures about the secretive financial dealings of clarence thomas, neil gorsuch, and the wife of chief justice john roberts.

the senate judiciary committee held a hearing tuesday but roberts refused to testify. we will get the latest. then to the growing debate in washington over raising the debt ceiling. biden: for over 200 years, america has never failed to pay its debt to put in the local terms, america is not a deadbeat nation. amy: we will speak to the economist james k. galbraith. he says the debate over the debt ceiling is a ruse and a trap but it could have very dangerous consequences if republicans push through massive sweeping cuts. and we will go to texas where authorities have caught a man accused of using an ar-15 to shoot dead five of his neighbors including a nine-year-old child. instead of calling for gun reform, texas governor greg abbott is being accused of dehumanizing the victims by calling the dead illegal immigrants.

all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. in sudan, warring parties have agreed to a new, seven-day ceasefire set to start thursday. south sudan, which is acting as a mediator, said sudan's ruling army and the paramilitary rapid support forces would also appoint envoys for peace talks. but air raids and shooting in khartoum continued with fierce battles raging in darfur, leading to mass displacement. the death toll from the 19-day old conflict has reached at least 550 people, with another 5000 injured. meanwhile, the world food program is warning the crisis in sudan could lead to a wider disaster in the region as tens of thousands of people flee the country. >> the ripple effect for the region is significant. we just need to find peace.

we need the parties to come together and find their way to resolve the conflict because this has the possibility of destabilizing the whole region. amy: president biden has ordered the deployment of 1500 army and marine corps soldiers to the u.s.-mexico border for 90 days as the u.s. prepares to lift the trump-era title 42 pandemic policy may 11. for the last three years, the measure has been used to quickly expel over 2.7 million migrants at the southern border without due process. there's already 2500 national guard troops stationed at the u.s.-mexico border as the biden administration has routinely cracked down on asylum seekers. biden officials on tuesday also reached a deal with mexican president andrés manuel lópez obrador allowing the u.s. to continue to depart non-mexican migrants across the border into mexico. biden's latest move was widely condemned by immigrant rights advocates who've called out his government for enforcing asylum bans and anti-immigrant policies

similar to trump's. in related news, republican texas governor greg abbott has resumed sending buses of asylum seekers to new york. this according to mayor eric adams. it's been months since new york city last received buses of asylum seekers after thousands of people started arriving almost daily since the fall. in minnesota, a judge found former minneapolis police officer tou thao guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in the may 25, 2020, police murder of george floyd, which set off nationwide protests against racism. judge peter cahill said thao "made a conscious decision to actively participate in floyd's death" when he held back bystanders, encouraged his fellow officers as they violently pinned floyd down as the life drained from his body, and blocked him from receiving medical aid. all four former officers involved in floyd's murder have

been convicted on both state and federal charges. thao could receive 41 to 57 months in prison when he is sentenced in august. israeli forces and various armed factions in gaza have agreed to a ceasefire after israeli air strikes rained down on the besieged gaza strip following rocket launches from gaza in response to the death of palestinian hunger striker khader adnan while in an israeli prison. israel claimed it only targeted military sites but gazans rocked by the air raids said civilian areas were hit. >> as you can see, the situation is very bad. there are airstrikes. the whole country is closed. i usually leave at midnight but today we closed around 9:00 or 8:00 as a result of the tension in the country. amy: the ugandan parliament on tuesday passed an altered version of its bill targeting

lgbtq people after the president museveni requested several tweaks. it remains one of the most draconian anti-lgbtq bills in the world and includes the death penalty in certain cases and a 20-year sentence for the so-called promotion of homosexuality. back in the united states, house democrats have put in motion a process they hope will force an increase to the debt ceiling by allowing a majority of lawmakers to bring a bill to the floor without the approval of republican leadership. democrats hatched the plan in january in case of a stalemate in talks as house speaker kevin mccarthy and other republicans continue to demand spending cuts before agreeing to raise the debt limit, something president biden and democrats have refused to consider. the democratic strategy, known as a discharge petition, would require at least five republicans to back it. if the debt limit is not increased, the government could default on its debts as soon as june 1.

meanwhile, "the new york times" is reporting white house officials are debating a legal theory on the constitutionality of the debt ceiling itself, though it's not known whether biden would support such a challenge. the senate judiciary committee held a contentious hearing on ethics standards for supreme court justices following a series of revelations around conservative justices' financial entanglements. this is rhode island democrat sheldon whitehouse. >> the supreme court is playing out abounds of the ethics rules for federal judges. justices read the ethics rules in unique and eccentric ways and when they are cut out of bounds, they refused to allow any investigation of the facts. amy: ranking republican senator lindsey graham accused democrats of "selective outrage" and going after the court due to its conservative supermajority. no justices were at the hearing after chief justice john roberts declined committee chair dick durbin's invitation to testify last week. we'll have more on this story after headlines. a you in -- u.n. human rights

panel is urging the united states government to immediately release long-term guantánamo prisoner abu zubaydah, warning it could constitute as crimes against humanity. findings were released right after reviewing several guantánamo cases over the past 15 years. the panel's report also condemned afghanistan, thailand, poland, morocco, and lil wayne yeah abu zubaydah was held at several black sites before being transferred for being "jointly responsible for the torture and cruel and inhumane were degrading treatment of mr. zubaydah." he was first taken into custody in 2002 in pakistan and has been help at guantanamo without charge since 2006. he was waterboarded over 80 times by the cia. texas authorities have arrested the suspect in last week's mass shooting in the town of

cleveland, which killed five people, including a nine-year-old boy. francisco oropesa is suspected of going on the shooting spree against his neighbors after they asked him to stop firing his rifle because it was keeping one-month-old baby awake. meanwhile, a 14-year-old student opened fire at his school in belgrade, serbia, killing eight children and a security guard in a rare mass shooting in the balkan nation. back in the united states and voting news, north carolina's supreme court has thrown out a ruling rejecting heavily gerrymandered voting maps. the newly republican-controlled court also overturned a previous state supreme court ruling that struck down north carolina's photo voter id law as racially-motivated. friday's rulings are likely to give republicans more seats in the u.s. house of representatives after north carolina's republican-controlled state legislature redraws congressional boundaries for the 2024 elections.

in florida, a voter suppression law passed by the republican-controlled legislature friday creates new barriers to voter registration drives, adds new restrictions to mail-in ballots, and expands the power of the newly-formed office of election crimes and security to investigate and prosecute alleged voting crimes. florida lawmakers approved the legislation a day after a federal appeals court upheld another republican-backed voter suppression law in florida, overturning a lower court ruling that found the legislation intentionally discriminated against black voters. meanwhile, an amendment to the latest voter suppression bill allows republican governor ron desantis to run for president without resigning his post. desantis has not yet announced he is running, though he is expected to. in texas, the state senate passed a bill tuesday that would give the secretary of state, appointed by republican governor greg abbott, the authority to

throw out elections in harris county -- a county largely run by democrats and the third most populous county in the u.s. the authority would kick in if 2% of polling locations run out of ballot paper for at least an hour. the bill comes as a response to republican candidates who claim they lost their races after a small number of polling stations ran out of ballots in 2022. vermont has become the first state in the nation to extend medically assisted suicide protections to terminally ill people who travel from out of state to end their lives. republican governor phil scott signed the bill into law, removing the residency requirement from vermont's decades-old assisted suicide statute. here in new york, housing advocates took over a public meeting discussing rent hikes of -- on one million rent-stabilized apartments. activists rallied ahead of the

meeting and protesters took to the stage where members of the rent guidelines board were seated to draw attention to the dire situation of many renters in new york. tenant rights groups are calling for rent freezes or decreases, saying housing and other costs of living are already squeezing new yorkers and that any new increase could result in homelessness or other critical situations. a number of councilmembers spoke on behalf of their constituents. this is chi ossé, who represents bedford-stuyvesant and north crown heights in brooklyn. >> over 50% have their income. at this moment, they are not able to. they rely on food pantries to have access to food. if there rent would go up even one dollar, they could even less food. amy: a preliminary vote at yesterday's hearing approved a rent increase of 2%-to-7% on stabilized units. and in other new from new york,

late night shows went dark, airing re-runs as the first picket line of the writers guild of america strike formed tuesday in front of the offices of peacock, nbc universal's streaming service. democracy now! spoke to some of the strikers. >> they are making billions of dollars off our work and we have members who can't even afford health care. they are making less than $30,000 a year. all we are asking for is a fair amount. >> everything we ask for, the 426 million dollars, could be paid with one salary and still leave them with $63 million. amy: and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we begin today's show looking at the growing corruption scandal on the supreme court. on tuesday, the senate judiciary committee held a hearing on supreme court ethics reform following recent revelations about conservative justices

clarence thomas, neil gorsuch, and chief justice john roberts. senate judiciary chair dick durbin had invited roberts to testify but the chief justice declined the invitation. democratic lawmakers have intensified their push to pass a supreme court ethics bill after propublica revealed clarence thomas had failed to report frequent luxury trips paid for by the republican billionaire harlan crow. for more than two decades, thomas frequently joined crow aboard his private yacht, jet, and at his private estates. thomas also failed to disclose that he had sold property to crow, including a home where thomas' mother now lives rent-free. meanwhile, politico has revealed justice neil gorsuch sold 40 acres of property just days after his senate confirmation to the head of one of the nation's largest law firms, which has since had 22 cases before the supreme court. and business insider reports the wife of chief justice john roberts has been paid over $10 million as a job recruiter

for placing lawyers at elite law firms, including some who have had cases before the court. there are also questions about the finances of clarence thoma'' wife, the right-wing activist ginni thomas. senate judiciary chair dick durbin opened tuesday's hearing by talking about justice thomas. >> last month we learned about a justice who for years has accepted lavish trips and real estate purchases worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from a billionaire with interest before the court. that justice failed to disclose these gifts and has faced no apparent consequences under the courts ethics principles. that justice claims the cruises aboard a luxury yacht our personal hospitality and are exempt under current ethical standards from even being reported. the fact that a texas billionaire paid more than

$100,000 for a justice's mother's home is an example because he says he lost money in the transaction. how low can the court go? amy: joining us in arlington, virginia, is ian millhiser, senior correspondent at vox. author of the book "the agenda: how a republican supreme court is reshaping america." welcome back to democracy now! why don't we go through one scandal after another and the fact chief justice, who was also being looked at for his wife's $10 million that she made headhunting for law firms, many of them that have argued before the supreme court. go through each of them and the fact chief justice roberts refused to testify. >> sure. the biggest scandal here, the one that really should crystallize the mind is what is going on with clarence thomas. this guy has accepted tens of thousands of dollars, by now

hundreds of thousands of dollars, in gifts from a politically connected republican donor from more than two decades. we have known about this for a long time. the earliest reporting i found about tom's accepting gifts from harlan crow was a 2004 report in "the l.a. times" accepting a $19,000 -- this is not acceptable. no employee of the federal government that i am aware of is allowed to accept these kind of gifts. thomas was in the house and -- if he was in the house or senate or anywhere else inovernment, this would not be allowed. if you were a lower court judge, this would not be allowed. frankly, he should resign. the other stan showed the court is being very dumb by not having an ethics code. if you look at what happened with neil gorsuch, gorsuch sold a plot of land, sold a plot of land to someone who was a lawyer

that runs a law firm that practiced in front of the supreme court. if the court had an ethics code, there is a way to do that transaction that is above board. he would want an outside regulator oromeone to look at the transaction, make sure it was fair market value, make sure the buyer did not know who the ller was -- there are ways you can set up an ethics code. but because they don't have an ethics code, you don't know whether they are doing things in an aboveboard way, you don't know -- they have no way to defend themselves when they get caught doing something like this. and suddenly, the robertson gorsuch incident i think are much less serious than what happened with clarence thomas, but every scandal starts to look agree just like what you had with justice thomas. amy: explain also chief justice himself and how he is personally

profiting because of his wif >> jane roberts works as a legal recruiter, apparently a very high level legal recruiter who helps firms that want to hire a lawyer, find good lawyers, probably very specialized lawyers that they can hire. she has made a lot of money doing this. more than $10 million overhe last several years. again, this is why the court needs an ethics code. you can imagine a situation where she had a law firm hiring our mergers and acquisitions partners. law firms dthis work all the time. one thing going on in one part of the frenetic to create a conflict of interest relating to another part of the firm and to all that off if the supreme court had an ethics code they could put in rules in place to make sure the justices had their careers but are walled off in

ways that do not impact the justices themselves. at the court does not have an ethics code. first of all, we have no way of knowing what is going on. second of all, there are not any formal checks in place to make sure that jane roberts' work is not influencing what john roberts does. third, because roberts could not point to any kind of code he followed, there is no way for him to defend himself in something like this arises. amy: back to clarence thomas and his wife ginni thomas, how is it possible that he does not recuse himself, for example, on an insurrection ruling, which she has so been deeply implicated, everything from text messages with trump's chief of staff mark meadows pushing states to overturn their elections? >> thehing with clarence thomas come he does not think

the rules apply to him. if you look at his rulings, he does not belie in following proceeded. he is perfectly fine with sweeping aside 80 years of law if he likes the weight w done in 1918 better. he does not think the rules apply to him. the court has said fairly consistently that it is up to each justice to decide when they want to recuse. this court has said that because they say they don't with the other eight justices to remove other justices from cases and i could change the outcome, but again, the alternative is you have clarence thomas ruling on all of these cases where he or his family presents a fairly clear conflict of interest and nothing can be done about it because the only way to discipline a justice is through impeachment. and at requires 67 votes in the senate, 16 republin senators to remove claree

thomas from office. that is just not happening. amy: i want to go to ted cruz of texas defending clarence thoma'' actions. >> if that is the standard going and traveling and being paid for by others, they guess what? just about every supreme court justice has done so and done so in much greater numbers. justice thomas was appointed in 1991 and since then he has taken 100 nine reported trips, five international trips. justice ruth bader ginsburg was appointed in 1993, 2 years later in the time she was on the court, she took 157 trips, including 28 international trips. mr. payne, you think she was corrupt? >> no. >> nor do i. amy: talk about the significance

of this and then, i mean, what kind of ethics code you think should be put in place for the supreme court. art federal judges extremely angry? they have much stricter rules. >> to respond directly to ted cruz, the standard is not that you n get reimbursed when you travel somewhere, if a university was to bring justice ginsburg or justice thomas, for that matter, to give a talk at the university, they are allowed to pay for the justices flight and hotel room. that is just a reimburseme. that is fine. what happened with clarence thomas is not that he is going to university and giving a speech and getting his plane ticket paid for, what happened th clarence thomas is he went on a lavish vacation to indonesia where he was flown

on the jet of a connected billionaire and took a vacation on the billionaire's super yacht. if ted cruz cannot tell the difference between being reimbursed for a work trip and having a lavish vacation paid for by this billionaire, i mean, i don't even know how we can have a conversation with someone who does not understand the distinction between those two things. amy: finally, as i mentioned federal judges, what kind of restrictions they have to abide by? i also wanted to ask you, speaking of the appointment of judges, about the growing calls for senator dianne feinstein, the chair of the judiciary committee, to resign. alexandria ocasio-cortez recently said "her refusal to either retire or show up is causing great harm to the judiciary, precisely where reproductive rights are getting

stripped. that failure means now in this precious window dems can only pass gop-approved nominees." we are not just talkg about shingles here. >> right. dianne feinstein is probably in the final years, possibly in the final weeks or months of her life. she is ill. her illness seems to prevent her from doing her job. the concern is that, first of all because she is on the judiciary committee, her vote is needed to vote nominees out of the judiciary committee. there is a process idly to discharge a nominee who does not get a vote but it is very time-consuming. it also means on the floor, with that 51st senator there, democrats need either ksten sinema or joe manchin to vote for something if they want to

pass a bill, if they want to confirm a nominee. witht dianne feinstein, they need both sina and manchin. they have to appeasehese rather conservative members of this caucus who have idioncratic views. sinema has disagreed with the democratic caucus in different ways than manchin, so it is not always easy to wrang both of them. it is a serious problem there i this seat that is essentially vacant. the california seat is the most populous state in the union and only has half as many senators as it should right now. i think he calls for dianne feinstein to resign our well-founded at this point. she has had a term in his career but the most important thing isn't that dianne feinstein gets to die knowing she died senator. the most important thing is the people of california have representation. amy: finally, what rules should be p place for the supreme

court? >> the rules would have to be -- some of the rules would have to be -- some would be simple. i think a simple rule, if y do something like what the house of representativedoes which says if you accept a gi of more than $250 -- first of all, it needs to come from a personal friend or something. second, some sort of body needs to review it to make sure th gift is not in some way corrupting. then you are going to have to have, where it gets complex, have to have sears conversations about, ok, what if the justice has a spouse with her own career, how do we make sure the stice's work is walled off from the spouse? you ask questions, if there is something like this land transaction with neil gorsuch, how do you make sure an outside body reviews it to make sure the transaction is at arms length, that it is at fair market value, and the justice was not in some

way enriched by whatever the transaction was? it is going to have multiple pieces to i again, the biggest crisis right nowhave a justice excepting these vish gifts from a billionaire and whatever the rules say, that can't poibly be allowed. amy: i wanted thank you, ian millhiser, for joining us senior , correspondent at vox. author of the new book "the agenda: how a republican supreme court is reshaping america." correction, it is not dianne feinstein who is chair of committee, it is dick durbin. coming up, the growing debate in washington over raising the debt ceiling. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "words words words" by john wesley harding and the minus 5. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we turn now to look at the fight

over raising the debt ceiling. on monday, treasury secretary janet yellen warned the united ace could default on its debts as early as june 1 unless the biden administration and congress reach a deal. lastly, house republicans approved raising the debt limit but only in exchange for sweeping spending cuts to numerous programs, including student debt relief, food assistance, medicaid, and renewable energy. house democrats now attempting to force a full house vote on raising the debt ceiling without imposing the cuts, but the move will only succeed with the support of five republicans. meanwhile, the very constitutionality of the debt ceiling is coming into question as some legal scholars point out, the 14th amendment mandate all the government's financial obligations be met regardless of whether congress authorized lifting the debt ceiling. to talk about the debt ceiling and other economic issues, we're joined by james galbraith, professor at the lyndon b. johnson school of public affairs, the university of texas at austin. he is a former executive director of the joint economic

committee in the u.s. congress. his piece for the nation about this is headlined "the debt ceiling explained. once more, with feeling" professor, welcome back to democracy now! why don't you lay out what this whole debate is about and the dangers involved. >> the debate is about the future of the economy and the chief danger is that a program in exchange for extending the debt ceiling, which has always happened in the past, that the congress will enact in the president will approve, sign off on a program of spending cuts that will be very bad for people who are dependent on the programs that will be affected, mainly poor people but also people who depend on federal functions in all kinds of areas for subsequently, for the economy as a whole because the spending flows from the federal government are fundamental to

the functioning of the economy. that is where the fundamental danger is. the debt ceiling, to take a phrase from the creek television situation, it is a rerun. it is a show we have been through many times. could considerably not be resolved but hard to believe it would take long to resolve it if they went over it. amy: talk about the linking of the lifting of the debt ceiling with the cuts to social spending and safety net programs. >> that is the direction we are moving in is to have -- i don't think the president's has laid out a clear redline that he would support or sign an extension of the debt ceiling that was explicitly linked to those cuts, but that does not mean the administration won't agree to those cuts as a

separate political bargain as the debt ceiling is extended. that is where the danger to the economy lies, the main danger. amy: i want to turn to president donald trump speaking in 2019. pres. trump: i can't imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt settlement as a negotiating wedge. when i first came into office, i asked about the debt ceiling. i understand that ceiling and i certainly understand the highest rated credit ever in history and the debt ceiling. i said to senator schumer and nancy pelosi, would anyone ever use that to negotiate? they said absolutely not. that is a sacred element of our country. they can't use the debt sling to negotiate. amy: professor, can you respond to what trump said then and also the through line from trump to the house speaker kevin mccarthy? >> you put me in a comfortable

position of associating myself with president trump when i didn't hear anything of what he said. amy: but what is the position that they are all taking now? >> clearly, they put -- could amend what president trump said to say it applies only when it is a president of their own party and went to president is from a different party, they adopt a different strategy. amy: talk about the social programs that we're talking about here and why this is such a danger to americans. >> it is a danger to people who depend upon food assistance and on anything that is being affected. the second thing is the economy itself is in very fragile condition. if you go into an election year on a program of austerity and

you are already hovering on the brink of a recession, perhaps moving into one, you're going to compound that problem. now, i think it is easy to see if you are a strategist for the republican party that this is a winning strategy. the president is in democratic hands, and so far as the voters are concerned, they react when the economy turns to recession. yet a lot of forces moving in that direction. amy: can you talk about the failure of the banks from svb and now chase morgan buying up most of first republic? >> we are saying two things happening. one is -- both are the consequence of the policy of raising interest rates.

which has moved rapidly from very low interest rates to now about 5% over short-term. one of them is the banks, which were exposed in one way or another because they had deposits that were largely -- in large quantities not insured -- not fully insured by the federal deposit insurance corporation have -- they have seen a fall in the value of portfolios that were heavily invested long-term government funds. this is a consequence of the federal reserve's monetary policy and it is affecting large swaths of the banking system in the united states. that is one thing, something which could develop into a fairly widespread set of banking problems. and the second is the consequence of this is seeing

increasing concentration of the banking sector. you see first republic was taken over by jpmorgan chase. we are saying effectively consolidation of the banking sector. amy: what is the danger of that? >> the danger is the concentration of corporate power, particularly in the hands of a handful of bankers. after all, it was a little more than a century ago jpmorgan so had a high degree of control of the financial system of the country. we are now moving back toward a system in which the bank that bears his name is practically similar situation. amy: you recently wrote a working paper titled "the gift of sanctions." can you talk about the impact of u.s. sanctions against russia following his invasion of ukraine? >> iis a very interesting set

of issues because there is a very general agreement amongst the analysts in the west and also a certain number of them writing from inside russia itself. these tensions did have a very substantial impact. -- the sanctions did have a very substantial impact. what is the nature, is the question. it is argued the effect was to destroy the russian economy, to render it irrelevant, to have the russian economy imploding. it is true there were substantial -- there were very many impacts on all kinds of things in russia. the question is whether the russian economy have the capacity to adapt. the evidence is at this stage that it is adapting quite well to the sanctions and the impact

of what the sanctions did was to open up for russian companies, essentially, to take the place of the western ones that previously held dominant positions inside the russian economy. it would appear in some respects the sanctions have imposed policies on russia, which are increasing the independence of the russian economy from the west, opening up as i said for russian businesses. generally speaking, doing things which russia could never have done on its own. they also fostered the creation of an alternative payment system , working on the financing of russia's international trade independently of the western banking system of the dollar reserve. in some sense, a reserve of its own is being created which would not have happened without the sanctions facilitated by the

sanctions. amy: what you think should happen now? >> i lost the audio. amy: what do you think should happen now? >> the problem here is a way in which western economic analysts approach these questions, the kinds of pools they bring to bear. they have the fax. they apply and analytical framework that leads to the wrong conclusion. first and foremost i'm a change the way we think about these questions, to re-examine our own assumptions, our own the reticle frameworks. that is first and foremost what we should do. amy: james galbraith, thank you for being with us, professor at the lyndon b. johnson school of public affairs, the university of texas at austin. former executive director of the joint economic committee in the u.s. congress. we will link to your piece in

the nation, "the debt ceiling explained. once more, with feeling" this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. when we come back, the mass shooting in texas. authorities have caught the man accused of using the ar-15 to shoot dead five people. the texas governor greg abbott tweeted that the victims were illegal immigrants. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "never let you go." this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we end today's show in texas where a tip to the fbi led police to the man suspected of shooting to death five people. francisco oropesa was arrested tuesday outside of houston in a town called cut and shoot.

he was inside a closet under some laundry, hiding. oropesa shot his neighbors after being asked to stop firing his rifle while a one-month-old baby was trying to sleep inside. police say he shot the victims with his ar-15 semiautomatic rifle execution style after one of the survivors, wilson garcia, asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard as the loud noise was keeping garcia's baby awake. police say the victims were all from honduras. the gunman was born in mexico. texas republican governor greg abbott is facing backlash after he described the victims of the mass shooting as "five illegal immigrants." on monday, a spokesperson for abbott walked back part of his comments saying the governor regrets if his remarks detracted from finding the shooter. this is san jacinto county sheriff greg capers speaking earlier. >> my heart is with this

eight-year-old little boy. i don't care if he was here legally. i don't care if he was here illegally. he was in my county. five people died in my county and that is where my heart is. amy: when the governor abbott tried to walk back his comments, he tried to respond to the criticism of saying it was five dead illegal immigrants by sink he then thought that maybe one of them might have been legal. this comes as president biden is sending 1500 troops to the u.s.-mexico border ahead of next week's end of title 42, which he and truck used to block most access to asylum-seekers. the troops will join 2500 national guardsmen who are already there to work with border patrol. for more, we are joined in san antonio by texas state senator roland gutierrez, whose district

includes uvalde, the site of the school massacre less than a year ago when 19 children and two teachers were killed, also with an ar-15 semiautomatic rifle. he was at the state capitol in austin yesterday to demand some of the uvalde families who came to demand a vote on gun safety legislation. senator, welcome back to democracy now! it is great to have you with this. why don't you start off by responding to governor abbott's response to the murder of the five people, including a nine-year-old boy, talking about the dead "illegal immigrants." >> thank you, first off. it is clear greg abbott has just reached an all new low. they were just people. they were human beings and he refuses at every step along the

way in his policy, his goal is to dehumanize people, dehumanize latin americans, dehumanize hispanics. that is what he has done for the last several years. certainly, the last you days was a culmination of all that hatred that he spews. it is part of why we are broken as a nation. we certainly need to come back together and understand we are all in this together. i think the sheriff said it best. he did not see color. he saw five people who lost their lives, including the little boy. in a previous interview, he mentioned how tragically and what damage the bullets from the ar-15 did to their bodies. those are the same images i've seen from uvalde. people need to understand what is really going on in this nation and we need to fix it. amy: yesterday in the state legislature, can you talk about what the legislature was doing

with setting up memorials for the people dead in uvalde as the parents were asking for what they considered a much more important memorial which would be to regulate guns? >> amy, as you know, they had resolutions yesterday. the anniversaries coming up may 24. we are in a situation now where unfortunately nothing has been undone in the texas senate. we will have our own resolution on the 24th but that is not what the families want. the families white to be able to have legislation heard that will affect change. that is raising an age limit, closing the gun show loophole, universal background checks. those are the basic issues we need to address in this space and we are not. we are not as a nation instantly not as a stake in texas. that is truly what the families want. they are tired of thoughts and prayers.

they want their children's lives to not have been lost in vain. amy: can you talk about the state of gun safety laws in texas? where you have one after another after another mass shooting. you've had twitter wars with fellow legislators and sending -- shutting down the border and it looks like biden will be sending the military to the border. but your responses saying this is not about immigration, it is about guns? >> i will tell you i hate the fact i'm having to have these discussions on twitter with folks on the others. i would rather have the discussions on the senate floor. but the fact is, that is part and parcel of the problem. here we had the republican party leader in austin, as well as the governor and others, saying this

is an immigration issue. this is -- we have lax policies at the border he claims and this is why this happened. no, this happened because an undocumented person was able to get a hold of an ar-15. how did that happen? the facts are that republican policies across this country have led to a very loose gun policy that allows just about anybody, certainly in texas, to go find a weapon like an ar-15 with impunity. you could go to a gun show and you don't need to so much as show an identification if you are buying from an unlicensed dealer. that happens every saturday and sunday in texas at gun shows across this state. how is it we are allowing people to access this type of weaponry with zero regulation? that has happened in texas under a 30 regime that has done

nothing more than to amplify and expand access to militarized weaponry. how is that humane? how is that even -- how does that make any sense at all? these people, all they have done is create chaos and now they have to live with it and they are deflecting in other areas. amy: you have republicans in texas led by abbott talking about arming more people, which certainly satisfies the nra. but look what happened in uvalde. what was it, 376 law enforcement officers descended on the school? talk about heavily armed and militarized. and they would not move in on this shooter. what is the latest on the investigation into that and the role of greg abbott in defending what took place for more than an

hour these children, terrified children called the police? >> the fact is, greg abbott has called for zero accountability from his top cop steve mcgraw. there has been zero transparency. the public knows very little about what went on. i have seen all of the bodycam footage. i had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. the images are horrible. the statements from the police are just as horrible. statements they have made on camera philosophizing about how this happens every day in america rather than be in the moment doing their jobs. there post-incident statements which show they were afraid of the ar-15. there has been zero accountability, zero willingness to recognize that failure that happen. 376 opposed good guys, cops,

stood around while kids died. the kids were braver than the police that day. this will forever be the collective shame of taxes. and yet we have people in power that have done absolutely nothing to fix any element of what went on. nothing on gun safety solutions, nothing on victims compensation funds come nothing on training accountability. nothing on accepting the truth would occur on may 24, which was the worst law enforcement failure to a police shooting in our nation's history. amy: then you have what just happened with the killing of five people, including the nine-year-old boy, unbelievable bravery of the women inside the home who used their bodies to protect children underneath them and they both died. the women.

but they did successfully protect the children. the dad, wilson garcia, said they called the police at least five times as this man next door, someone they knew, continued to shoot off this ar-15 in the yard? maybe that is where response to the latinx community should be raised? >> certainly, the police did not think this was a significant event. take it back to uvalde, they did not think a young man going into the same gun shop for three days buying two ar-15s, buying hundreds of rounds of a munition, no one thought that was a significant event to call the police. there is an absolute what i call in your reference when it comes to hispanic communities in texas and uvalde was certainly one of those. at the end of the day, what we saw in uvalde and all of that

failure even leading up to the event which was a community asking to fix the radios, which the radios did not work on that day. certainly that neglect, there is some racism in neglect. there people in power deciding who gets what. the situation in san jacinto county, you had people call the police and the police not respond to something that i think they felt was just an everyday event in rural texas. which is people shooting their guns off. amy: i want to go to wilson garcia describing what happened. >> yes, i was the one that went there. it was my child. when they shot, my child began to cry. my wife came out and asked me, do you think you can tell the neighbor if he can shoot a little bit further from where we are? that is the back of his house. i went there and there were

three of us who went to talk to him. we were not disrespectful. we asked him if he could do as a favor and shoot a bit further away because my child was crying. he answered me that he was on his property and you could do whatever he wanted. i told him, ok, fine, do it. i am not going to fight. i'm going to call the police and you can deal with them. i went back inside and my wife was talking to the police. she talked to them five times because the man was threatening more intensely. one of the people who was killed saw my wife. she was agonizing on the ground. she told me to jump out the window because my children were already without their mother. one of us would have to be left alike to take care of them. she is the one who helped me throw myself out the window but she failed to do so for herself. she died. amy: wilson garcia. his wife sonia gina guzman and his son

jenny enrique laso were among those killed. amy: you introduced something like 50 than safety bills into the state legislature. the sense of the people of texas, i mean, even the membership of the nra is against the leadership. what about the population of taxes? >> 76% of republicans what commonsense gun safety solutions. i introduced 22 bills. all told, 50 amongst all democrats and a few smattering of republican bills that were really not very meaningful in their regard, in their context. that said, people in texas are asking for comments -- commonsense gun safety solutions. they want to close the gun show loophole. they want to raise the age limit and yet greg abbott and the

speaker and the lieutenant governor have no interest in doing what is right for texas, doing what is humane, doing what every other state, including governors like bill lee in tennessee have done, including what rick scott did after parkland. we are in crisis and the leaders in texas are doing absolutely nothing to prevent the leading cause of death amongst children in america. amy: i want to end by asking about president biden's announcement yesterday that he is sending 1500 more troops to the u.s.-mexico border ahead of next week's end and of title 42 pandemic policy which he and trump used the block most access to asylum-seekers. your response? he has gotten pushback not only from republicans criticizing him, but democrats as well. >> i support the president.

title eight works. title 42 does not. the fact is what title 42 is, it created a situation where immigrants were finding a side door, crossing the river rather than going and asking for asylum in a proper way. at the end of the day, we certainly have an immigration problem that needs to be fixed in washington. we have 13 million undocumented that have been here for years. that needs to be addressed. there are a million dreamers. we had to fix that situation. amy: are you concerned -- >> across united states in a labor shortage. we need to fix that with some of these arriving. amy: are you concerned about increased militarization of the border and what that could mean? >> certainly, it is always a concern but i also represent a great expanse of the border. i also understand my community's what to have a little more policing. i would rather have the federal

government then dps troopers that are doing in an effective job on national guardsmen, nine of which have committed suicide, one of them that drowned in a river because greg abbott did not give them the resources necessary to save himself. amy: i have to interrupt you but i thank you for b

hello. welcome back to nhk "newsline" from new york. many americans have wondered for months whether their deposits are safe. some have seen their banks falter under the weight of high interest rates and collapse. still, the people who lead the u.s. fed pushed