“A teenage gunman wearing tactical gear opened fire in a busy supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo on Saturday, killing 10 people and injuring three others in the country's latest high-profile crime apparently motivated by hate, authorities say.
Officials said the suspected gunman, a white 18-year-old man, traveled several hours across New York to carry out the attack, which he livestreamed on social media. Eleven of the 13 people who were shot were Black, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said at a news conference.
Gov. Kathy Hochul called the gunman a ‘white supremacist’ who terrorized New York's second-largest city in a ‘cold-hearted,’ ‘military-style execution’ as people were buying groceries.
‘It strikes us in our very hearts to know that there's such evil that lurks out there,’ she said. ‘This individual – this white supremacist – who just perpetrated a hate crime on an innocent community, will spend the rest of his days behind bars. And heaven help him in the next world as well.’
The suspect carried an assault weapon inscribed with a racial epithet, said Rep. Brian Higgins, citing briefings with law enforcement officials.
‘I was on site for the last three hours, and I listened carefully to what the FBI, police, the district attorney and the U.S. attorney had to say,’ Higgins said. ‘There is no doubt this was a racially motivated attack.’
The suspect, identified as Payton Gendron of Conklin, a New York community about 200 miles southeast of Buffalo, was taken into custody after the attack. He was arraigned on first-degree murder charges and appeared in court Saturday evening wearing a bandage over his shoulder.
People hug outside the a supermarket in Buffalo where the police say a gunman motivated by racism killed 10 people on Saturday.Credit...Joshua Bessex/Associated Press
John Flynn, Erie County's district attorney, said along with the murder charge, his office and federal authorities were pursuing others, from terrorism to hate crimes.
The supermarket is about three miles north of downtown Buffalo. The surrounding area is primarily residential and is surrounded by homes, along with a Family Dollar store, barber shops, a laundromat and fire station. Authorities said evidence showed the suspect showed racial animosity but declined to elaborate.
Gramaglia said the gunman was wearing tactical gear and was armed with an assault-styled rifle. He parked outside the Tops Friendly Market around 2:30 p.m. and opened fire in the parking lot, killing three people and injuring a fourth. He then went inside and continued his rampage, Gramaglia said.” Read more at USA Today
“WASHINGTON – Abortion-rights advocates gathered in the nation's capital and by state capitol buildings across the country Saturday for a challenging task: persuading the Supreme Court not to reverse the 50-year precedent set by Roe v. Wade.
After listening to speeches from abortion-rights activists, elected officials and faith leaders in the nation's capital, thousands of demonstrators embarked on an hourlong march to the Supreme Court under cloudy skies and occasional drizzle, joining several hundred other demonstrators who were already there….
More than 380 ‘Bans Off Our Bodies’ demonstrations for abortion rights were planned for Saturday. Sponsors of the daylong event included Women's March, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, UltraViolet, MoveOn, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion Rights Action League.
Planned Parenthood began organizing the nationwide ‘day of action’ months before a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision leaked, sparking celebrations from anti-abortion demonstrators and protests outside the Supreme Court, which is now surrounded by a security fence, and the justice's homes.
Prior to Saturday's protests, the Senate failed to pass a bill that would have enshrined a nationwide right to abortion.” Read more at USA Today
“Lawmakers quickly condemned on Saturday the racism that motivated a gunman to open fire in a Buffalo grocery store, and some once again renewed calls for stricter gun control measures.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said he had spoken with the Buffalo mayor and offered assistance, while Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, pledged that she would continue to fight for gun safety legislation and to ‘defeat the scourge of white supremacy.’
Gabrielle Giffords, a former congresswoman who became a gun control advocate after being critically injured in a mass shooting in 2011, said in a statement that she was devastated and furious at what happened in Buffalo. She called for stronger gun laws. ‘It’s far too easy for people fueled by racist hate to access weapons of war and commit devastation on a massive scale.’
Payton S. Gendron, an 18-year-old white man who the police say shot 13 people at a Buffalo grocery store, had posted a hate-filled manifesto online that included an account of detailed planning for the attack and an explanation of his motives and inspiration, according to a senior federal law enforcement official.
The mass shooting was the latest massacre driven by a white supremacist ideology, following similar acts of violence in recent years from El Paso, Tex., to Christchurch, New Zealand. At a news conference on Saturday, the Erie County sheriff, John C. Garcia, called the shooting a ‘straight-up racially motivated hate crime.’
It unfolded in a largely Black neighborhood in Buffalo, and 11 of the people shot were Black, officials said. Mr. Gendron wrote in his manifesto that he had selected the area because it held the largest percentage of Black residents near his home in the state’s Southern Tier.
On Saturday evening, authorities pored over the document, which outlined each step of a plan to kill as many Black people as possible.
He named the Bushmaster semiautomatic assault rifle he would use. He constructed a full timeline of the day, detailing the parking spot he would drive to, where he would eat beforehand and where he would livestream the violence. And he had carefully studied the layout of the grocery store, writing that he would shoot a security guard near the entrance before walking through aisles and firing upon Black shoppers, shooting them twice in the chest when he could.
His writings were also riddled with racist, anti-immigrant views arguing that white Americans are at risk of being replaced by people of color, a common trope on the far-right known as the ‘great replacement’ theory. The same ideas have motivated gunmen in several other mass shootings.
Mr. Gendron wrote that he was inspired by the perpetrators of other white supremacist acts of violence, naming Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black parishioners in South Carolina in 2015, among other gunmen. His plan for the shooting in Buffalo resembled the 2019 massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, Tex., in which more than 20 people died and the gunman had also posted a four-page screed filled with white supremacist views.
He said that he felt a particular connection to Brenton Harrison Tarrant — calling him the person ‘who had radicalized him the most.’ Mr. Tarrant was sentenced to life without parole for killing 51 Muslims during Friday prayer at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Mr. Gendron said that he had watched Mr. Tarrant’s livestream of the attack and read his writings.
Buffalo officials said that Mr. Gendron had ‘traveled hours from outside’ the neighborhood to unleash gunfire at unsuspecting shoppers at an outlet of the regional grocery chain Tops Friendly Markets. He lived in the Southern Tier with his parents and two brothers, according to the manifesto.
A spokeswoman at SUNY Broome Community College near Binghamton added that he was a former student whose dates of attendance were not immediately known.
Mr. Gendron’s writings depicted a man who grew to hold racist views in recent years as he visited fringe online spaces. His beliefs and ideology had moved farther right over the past three years, he wrote.
Around May 2020, during a period of pandemic boredom, Mr. Gendron said that he had begun to frequent 4chan, an anonymous forum, including its Politically Incorrect message board. There, he said, he was exposed to the conspiracy theory that white people are at risk of being replaced.
He had been ‘passively preparing’ for the attack in Buffalo for several years, purchasing ammunition and gear, while infrequently practicing shooting, he wrote. Around January, he wrote, the plans ‘actually got serious.’” Read more at New York Times
“A federal judge late Friday blocked portions of an Alabama law that prevent medical professionals from providing care that helps transgender children and teenagers transition, making it a felony offense that is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The severity of the punishment — which also includes threats of criminal prosecution for parents and educators who support a child in transitioning — has stood out even amid a wave of legislation by conservative lawmakers that has focused on transgender young people, including efforts to thwart access to what doctors call gender-affirming care and barring some transgender students from participating in school sports.
The Alabama law, which was signed by Gov. Kay Ivey and went into effect on May 8, was challenged in federal court by several families with transgender children, physicians who work with transgender patients and the U.S. Justice Department.
In an order issued late Friday night, Judge Liles C. Burke of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama temporarily halted the state from enforcing parts of the law that make it a felony to prescribe hormones or puberty-blocking medication while the court challenge continued.
Judge Burke found that particular element of the law most likely unconstitutional, writing that parents have a fundamental right to direct the care of their children within medically accepted standards and that limiting care to gender-nonconforming children amounted to sex discrimination.
However, Judge Burke ruled that other parts of the law remained in place. Medical professionals are still forbidden to perform gender-affirming surgical procedures on children. (Doctors had testified that such operations were not being performed on children in Alabama before the law had been enacted.) And educators and school nurses are not allowed to withhold — or ‘encourage or coerce’ students to withhold — from their parents ‘the fact that the minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s sex.’
Supporters of the law, named the ‘Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act,’ contend that it was intended to safeguard children, arguing that the treatment was experimental and that doctors were ‘aggressively pushing’ minors to take medication to transition. ‘Alabama children face irreversible damage from unproven, sterilizing and permanently scarring medical interventions pushed by ideological interest groups,’ lawyers representing the state said in court documents.” Read more at New York Times
“MILWAUKEE — At least 17 people were wounded in a shooting in downtown Milwaukee on Friday night, blocks from the arena where an N.B.A. playoff game ended hours earlier, the police said.
The Milwaukee Police Department said that there were no fatalities in the shooting, which happened around 11:09 p.m. in a popular nightlife area. The victims were between 15 and 47 years old and were all expected to survive, the police said.
Ten people were in custody in connection with the shooting, including five who were armed and were wounded. The police also said they recovered 10 guns from the scene, which was near the arena, the Fiserv Forum. The police said the investigation was continuing and that they were still looking for others who might have been involved in the gunfire. What led up to the shooting was unknown.
The mayor of Milwaukee, Cavalier Johnson, issued a limited emergency order Saturday afternoon that imposed a curfew in the vicinity around the shooting for people under 21 from 11 p.m. Saturday until 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, and the same times on Sunday night.” Read more at New York Times
“Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra has won Eurovision in Turin, Italy, while war rages at home — a home that now earns the right to host the world’s longest-running televised music contest in 2023.
After judges from the 40 participating countries voted, Ukraine was in fourth place behind the United Kingdom, Sweden and Spain. The audience voting in those countries, though, decided that Kalush Orchestra would be victorious with a total of 631 points. The fan vote left the United Kingdom in second place and Sweden in third.
At the end of their performance, the members of Kalush Orchestra, hands to their hearts, made a passionate plea.
‘I ask for all of you,’ frontman Oleh Psiuk said, ‘please help Ukraine, Mariupol. Help Azovstal right now.’
‘Our courage impresses the world, our music conquers Europe!’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on his official Telegram channel shortly after the result was announced.” Read more at Washington Post
'“Former NFL safety Earl Thomas was arrested Friday for a violation of a court protective order after a warrant was issued last month.
Thomas was in his hometown of Orange, Texas, and was taken into custody after someone recognized him at a restaurant, according to WFAA.com.
The warrant was issued on April 27 after authorities said Thomas violated the protective order more than twice by sending messages to a woman and her children. In Texas, that is a third-degree felony.
The order issued in May 2021 mandates that Thomas only communicate with the woman through a co-parenting phone app, which the woman said Thomas has not downloaded.” Read more at USA Today
“LOS ANGELES (AP) — Britney Spears says she has lost a baby early in her pregnancy.
Spears announced the loss on Instagram Saturday in a joint post with her partner, Sam Asghari. The pop superstar, who gained her freedom from a court conservatorship that controlled her life for more than a decade, said in April that she was expecting a child with Asghari.” Read more at AP News
“Fred Ward, a versatile actor with a forceful onscreen presence who in a long career played roles that ranged from the sexually adventurous novelist Henry Miller to the meticulous, taciturn astronaut Gus Grissom, died on May 8. He was 79.
His death was announced by his publicist, Ron Hofmann, who said Mr. Ward’s family did not want to specify the cause of death or say where he died.” Read more at New York Times
Vaid was a leader in several LGBTQ+ and other social justice organizations as well as an award-winning author.
“Longtime activist Urvashi Vaid, a leader of many LGBTQ+ and other social justice organizations, has died at age 63.
Vaid died Saturday at her home in New York City, according to the National LGBTQ Task Force. Vaid was executive director of the group, then known as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, from 1989 to 1992. Before that she was its media director….
Vaid, a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and Vassar College, began her career as a staff attorney at the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she initiated the group’s work on HIV and AIDS in prisons.
She spent 10 years at the Task Force in various positions. In 1990, as its executive director, she made a statement at President George H.W. Bush’s speech on AIDS with a sign: ‘Talk Is Cheap, AIDS Funding Is Not.’ Her critique made waves, disrupting the press conference and shedding light on the failures of the Bush administration.
Her time at the Task Force ‘saw her bring all aspects of queer life and struggle into the public eye,’ the group’s press release notes. She cofounded its Creating Change conference, now in its 33rd year.
Vaid was executive director of the Arcus Foundation, a global funder of LGBTQ social justice and great ape conservation, from 2005 to 2010. She was deputy director of the Governance and Civil Society Unit of the Ford Foundation from 2001 to 2005, and served on the board of the Gill Foundation from 2004 to 2014. In 2012, she launched LPAC, the first lesbian super PAC, and it has since invested millions of dollars in candidates who are committed to social justice through legislation.
She was most recently president of the Vaid Group, a social innovation firm that works with global and domestic organizations to advance equity, justice, and inclusion. She was cofounder of the Donors of Color Network, the first cross-racial network connecting individuals of color to leverage their giving for racial equity, and of the National LGBTQ Anti-Poverty Action Network, the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group, the Equality Federation, the National Religious Leadership Roundtable. She was a leader in the development of the currently ongoing national LGBTQ women’s community survey.
She had been senior fellow and director of the Engaging Tradition Project at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, exploring how tradition-based resistance inhibits projects to advance gender, sexual, and racial equity. Before that, she was senior fellow at the Social Justice Sexuality Project at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
She also was an award-winning author and researcher. Her published work includes books, reports, articles, and columns; for several years she was a columnist for The Advocate. She authored the books Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012), and Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Lesbian and Gay Liberation (1996). She coedited an anthology with John D’Emilio and William Turner, titled Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights (2000)….
Vaid was the aunt of activist and performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon, who survives her, along with her longtime partner, political humorist Kate Clinton.” Read more at The Advocate
