Vox Sentences: The shooting in Garland, Texas

1. The Garland shooting

A member of the FBI Evidence Response Team investigates the crime scene outside of the Curtis Culwell Center after the shooting the day before, on May 04, 2015 in Garland, Texas. (Ben Torres/Getty Images)

• Two gunmen opened fire at a community center in Garland, Texas, where an anti-Muslim hate group was holding a contest judging drawings of the Prophet Mohammed.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• The two wounded a security officer, and then were both killed by police.

  [NYT / Liam Stack]

• One of the suspects, Elton Simpson, had previously been convicted of lying to the FBI about plans to travel to Somalia to fight with a radical Islamist group.

  [NYT / Manny Fernandez and Richard Pérez-Peña]

• However, the FBI does not believe an international terrorist group ordered the shooting.

  [Washington Post / Adam Goldman and Mark Berman]

• The drawing contest was organized by Pamela Geller, an ultra-right-wing anti-Muslim activist whose group, Stop Islamization of America, has been described as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• The event was designed to be deeply offensive to Muslims, with some scholars comparing it to the offense many Americans take at flag burnings.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

• Max Fisher: "There is of course zero — zero — justification for the two attackers … But before we elevate Geller and the event's attendees to free speech heroes akin to the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, we should understand what the event was really intended to support: hatred and marginalization of Muslims."

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

2. "We must look directly at this open wound"

Ethiopian Jews demonstrate on May 4, 2015 in Kiryat Gat, Israel. (Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images)

• Protests of the treatment of Ethiopian-Israelis broke out in Israel on Sunday after an Ethiopian soldier in the Israel Defense Forces was beaten by police.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• The protests turned violent, with police using stun grenades and tear gas and some demonstrators hurling glass bottles and starting fires.

  [LA Times / Batsheva Sobelman]

• Ethiopian Jews are less than 2 percent of Israel's population, and face widespread police harassment, discrimination in housing and employment, and higher rates of poverty and suicide.

  [NYT / Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner]

• Many of them came to the country in a series of airlifts, the two biggest of which were Operation Moses (1984-85) and Operation Solomon (1991), meant to help them escape famine and dictatorship in East Africa.

  [Haaretz / Judy Maltz]

• In the wake of the beating of soldier Damas Pakada, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Pakada and declared that the Israeli people must "eliminate" racism; President Reuven Rivlin argued that the beating revealed an "open and raw wound" in Israeli society: "We must look directly at this open wound. We have erred. We did not look, and we did not listen enough."

  [BBC]

3. Carson for president. Fiorina for president. Huckabee for president. Everyone for president.

Carly Fiorina speaks to guests at the Point of Grace Church for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition 2015 Spring Kickoff on April 25, 2015 in Waukee, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

• It's a big week for GOP presidential campaign announcements, with Dr. Ben Carson and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina announcing last night and today, respectively, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee set to announce tomorrow.

  [NYT / Alan Rappeport]

• Carson and Fiorina have no previous experience as military leaders or elected officials; neither party has nominated a candidate like that since Wendell Wilkie in 1940.

  [The Atlantic / David Graham]

• Many political scientists believe that presidential primaries are basically determined by party insiders, which makes victory by outsiders like Carson or Fiorina very improbable.

  [Bloomberg View / Jonathan Bernstein]

• Another problem for Fiorina: because of her tenure at HP, she's widely regarded as "one of the worst CEOs in American corporate history."

  [The Guardian / Rory Carroll and Rupert Neate]

• In fact, CarlyFiorina.org was scooped up by an anti-Fiorina activist who's using it to attack her record of layoffs.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Carson, while a hugely acclaimed neurosurgeon, is still a political neophyte, one whose transformation into a conservative ideologue has alarmed many African-Americans for whom he was once a hero.

  [Vox / Jenée Desmond-Harris]

• Huckabee at least has a long tenure as governor, and won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, but while he locked up the evangelical vote that year, he'll have to compete with Carson, Ted Cruz, and Rick Santorum this year.

  [WSJ / Reid Epstein and Elizabeth Williamson]

4. Misc.

• In South Korea, Roy Kim is a famous, beloved K-pop star. In DC, he gets to be a regular Georgetown sophomore no one recognizes.

  [Washington Post / Jessica Contrera]

• This 1703 British advice column is pretty amazing. Example: "Q: What is the cause of the winds, and whence do they come, and whither do they go?"

  [The Atlantic / Adrienne LaFrance]

• Just as blind humans sometimes have support dogs, a blind dog named Baks has a support goose named Buttons who guides it around.

  [Now I Know / Dan Lewis]

• Come for a story about women fighting harassment on dating apps like Tinder, stay for the New York Times' very New York Times-y explanation of the "Bye, Felicia" meme.

  [NYT / Alyson Krueger]

• I don't know about you, but genetically engineered super-babies seem pretty sweet.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• 108-year-old World War II veteran Richard Overton still smokes 12 cigars a day and spikes his morning coffee with whiskey. He is an example to us all.

  [WSJ / Nathan Koppel]

5. Verbatim

• "'Our demand is simple,' Elzie said. 'Stop killing us.'"

  [NYT / Jay Caspian Kang]

• "A typical Chaser begins by assuring me that’s he’s 'a normal guy,' explaining that he wandered into my gay bar by accident and mistook me for 'real woman'—though I’m often dressed more like an extraterrestrial than a lady."

  [Slate / Miz Cracker]

• "New carbon emissions standards that were proposed last year for coal-fired power plants in the United States would substantially improve human health, according to a new study, and prevent more than 3,000 premature deaths per year."

  [NYT / Sabrina Tavernise and Coral Davenport]

• "Can it seriously be suggested that we are worse governed now than when Anthony Eden conspired with the French and the Israelis to attack Egypt? … When a former Labor minister faked his own suicide? When the leader of the Liberal Party was implicated in a shooting?"

  [New Republic / Robert Tombs]

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