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Time is the enemy. Per week has handed since 21 individuals have been murdered in an elementary college in Uvalde, an atrocity nonetheless on the heart of private and non-private consideration and concern.
Gov. Greg Abbott and different politicians sure to gun tradition are squirming, however historical past tells us public consideration will subside, that voters will transfer on to different points and that the Texas pols can chill out into their ardent deregulation of weapons, the No. 1 reason behind dying by damage for youths within the U.S.
The elected officers who’ve performed little to guard Texans and different Individuals after any of the mass shootings that got here earlier than Uvalde have one thing in frequent with the dumbfounding inaction of the 19 first responders who idled in a hallway at Robb Elementary for greater than an hour final Tuesday whereas a gunman killed 21 youngsters and lecturers.
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These officers are frozen by their concern of what may occur in the event that they act, ruled by what probably the most zealous Second Modification voters may do in the event that they attempt to make gun security a precedence.
They don’t seem to be the noble heroes we hoped they might be. They’re simply scared. And it’s a highly effective concern, too, that may maintain them at bay whereas individuals they’ve the power to save lots of are as a substitute murdered.
They’ve actually made it simpler to purchase weapons and ammo in Texas than it’s to vote, or to get licensed to chop hair or deal with meals. Solely the primary of these issues — shopping for weapons and ammo — requires no coaching, registration, licensing or certification.
These lawmakers are doing their jobs as they see match, tailoring their responses to the desires of a few of their most outspoken voters. Ignoring the bloodbath has dangers of its personal, however their political judgment is and has been that the wrath of gun rights supporters will likely be worse than the wrath of voters who suppose gun violence is out of hand and needs to be reversed.
What occurred final week as soon as once more pits the deregulators towards the implications of their very own work. Nearly anyone in Texas should buy or carry a gun, and which means just about anyone will, educated or not, secure or not, evil or not.
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It’s so scary that the uniformed officers within the hallway didn’t problem the killer. It’s so scary that the lawmakers in Austin and Washington constantly facet with the individuals behind the weapons as a substitute of the individuals in entrance of them.
Voters can repair this, if they need. Politicians are hypersensitive to voters, and if the mandate is for anti-violence, that’s what the conversations within the capitals will likely be about. Our latest historical past predicts apathy — that in a short while, voters will transfer their consideration elsewhere whereas the curiosity teams whose livelihoods rely on gun deregulation persist.
A gun lobbyist is nothing however a persistent activist, exhibiting as much as work day by day with a selected focus, at all times speaking to lawmakers, bending coverage lengthy after others’ consideration has wandered.
The remainder of us? Not a lot. That’s not nearly gun security. It occurs with foster care, pandemic restrictions, nearly every part. We’re involved with the headline points, for a minute, after which we return to what we have been doing. These hyper-aware politicians, after a couple of days, solely hear from lobbyists and curiosity teams and different skilled seekers of presidency favors. It’s not shocking who normally wins the day.
The “good man with a gun” thought was disproved by 19 good guys with weapons final week. The guarantees of motion that adopted different mass killings have been undone by majorities of the 181 Texas lawmakers and the 535 members of Congress many times.
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The outcomes haven’t modified as a result of we haven’t modified. Our outrage light after Sandy Hook, Parkland, Santa Fe, El Paso, Sutherland Springs, Odessa and all of the others. Texas has had 21 college shootings to date in 2022, in response to the Gun Violence Archive, and based mostly on the response of our policymaking politicians, the voters of Texas and of the U.S. are unstirred by that.
Now it’s been per week. The vacation weekend had the same old run of flicks and grilling and household gatherings and parades. We get distracted. We put horrible issues in our rearview mirrors and transfer on.
It’s true that the politicians haven’t solved this, and that failing belongs to them. They’re cowards, shackled by the concern that voters will likely be tougher on them for doing one thing than we’re if, as soon as once more, they do nothing.
That failing belongs to voters. The facility to show authorities heads is simple to grasp and onerous to train. All it takes is consideration — and persistence, which is nothing greater than sustained consideration and motion. Consideration is simple; persistence is uncommon. Take a look at what number of occasions we’ve been outraged by mass killings and what number of occasions we’ve moved on and let the ardent gun rights advocates management the federal government.
Texas Republicans have managed state authorities for greater than 20 years, constantly working to decontrol weapons for years, believing that’s what their voters need, and Democrats are blaming them for the outcomes and calling for brand new legal guidelines. That’s what their voters need. Bear in mind, although, that Texas obtained its open-carry legal guidelines when Democrats had a say. That’s what voters needed.
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Politics is about phrases, but in addition actions. The Texas responses to taking pictures after taking pictures quantity to an institutional protection of gun tradition, preserving a ghastly establishment as a substitute of remaking it.
That’s on the state’s voters. If what lawmakers have been doing was out of line, we’d be punishing or correcting them, and that hasn’t occurred.
They do symbolize us, and so they’ll change issues if we insist.
This isn’t a straightforward problem. There aren’t a few bumper-sticker options we will put into regulation to repair it. However the mindset, the need to resolve the issue, doesn’t exist but. It should take a very long time and a ton of labor, like arising with vaccines within the face of an epidemic, or going to the moon or constructing a freeway system. However lawmakers have promised motion earlier than and performed little. They misled us, and voters needs to be as furious about that because the governor mentioned he was about being misled by lies about regulation enforcement heroics in Uvalde.
We’ve seen for years the ability of the small group of voters who management Republican primaries in Texas, and by doing so, management state coverage. When you make it simpler for a assassin to acquire a homicide weapon, you need to have to clarify to the victims and everybody else why you thought that was a good suggestion.
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Now’s the time.
Politicians don’t need to lose elections to get the message; they simply need to get the message voters are sending. In 2018, Republicans received all the statewide elections, however they knew voters have been incensed about property taxes and public training, and in 2019, they got here to Austin with these points on the prime of their priorities.
There’s an election between now and the subsequent common session of the Legislature subsequent January. And in the event that they maintain particular classes on gun security earlier than then, as lawmakers from each events have urged, that election will supply voters an opportunity to say whether or not they’ve performed sufficient.
They’ll reply to gun violence, however provided that a persistent public calls for it.
Editor’s be aware: Ross Ramsey, who co-founded The Texas Tribune, retired because the Tribune’s govt editor earlier this yr.
Texas Rangers rookie outfielder Wyatt Langford appeared on the GBag Nation show on 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM) to discuss his recent offensive surge, how he’s adjusting to the big leagues, and what kind of weight he can throw around in the weight room.
Here are some of the highlights, edited lightly for clarity.
What has been the biggest difference since you came off the IL? How eye-opening is it to get accustomed to major league pitching?
Wyatt Langford: I think a lot of it was just comfort, getting comfortable playing up here and getting accustomed to the pitching. Everyone throws hard nowadays, and they all know where to put it too.
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You’ve been very unlucky dealing with bad calls in the strike zone, how do you deal with that frustration?
Langford: It has been a little frustrating because of how frequently it has happened, but I mean it’s part of the game. I feel like I’ve handled it pretty well.
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What are the biggest differences between playing college baseball and playing in the major leagues?
Langford: I’d say the biggest difference is just playing every single day. College, you’re playing three to five days a week at the most. You’re just going about it every single day and getting your body ready to play every day.
Watch: Texas Rangers rookie Wyatt Langford blasts off with first career grand slam
How nice is it having veterans like Marcus Semien and Corey Seager and being able to see their example of dedication?
Langford: It’s been great. There’s so many guys on this team that have a lot of experience, a lot of success playing this game. Being able to talk to them and be around them helps a lot.
What’s the best advice you’ve gotten since getting to the big leagues?
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Langford: I wouldn’t say there’s really any best advice I’ve gotten. I’d say just in general, just make sure you be yourself and do what you need to do to get ready. You don’t don’t need to copy what other guys do to get ready. [Corey Seager] does his thing, [Marcus Semien] does his thing. You just got to figure out what works for you.
You’re very impressive physically, what’s the most impressive thing you could do in a weight room? Back squat?
Langford: I haven’t back squatted since my freshman year of college, so probably deadlift. The most I’ve ever done is 715 pounds over winter break at Florida. I was back home during my sophomore year.
Texas Rangers’ late-inning offensive woes persist, bats go quietly again vs. Brewers
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Bridget Townsend was just getting her start in life as a young woman in the small Texas town of Bandera when Ramiro Gonzales raped and killed her. Her mom says she was ‘a beautiful person.’
Bridget Townsend was planning for the future. The Texas 18-year-old was working full-time at a resort and eagerly waiting to hear back about an application to get into nursing school.
But on Jan. 14, 2001, a man named Ramiro Gonzales stole all that away and all the other moments and milestones that make up a life when he kidnapped, raped and murdered Bridget.
“She was a beautiful person who loved life and loved people,” her mother, Patricia Townsend, told USA TODAY on Saturday. “Every time she was with somebody she hadn’t seen in a while, she had to hug ’em … She didn’t deserve what she got.”
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Now more than 23 years later, Gonzales is set to be executed for the crime in Texas on Wednesday, which would have been Bridget’s 41st birthday. Patricia Townsend said the execution will be a “joyful occasion” for her and her family, who have been waiting so long for justice.
As Gonzales’ execution approaches, USA TODAY is looking back at the tragic crime, who Bridget was what her family lost.
A terrible night
Bridget was at her boyfriend Joe Leal’s house that terrible night.
Leal dealt drugs and Gonzales went to his house to steal cocaine, finding Bridget there alone.
After Gonzales came in and stole some cash, Bridget started to call Leal. That’s when Gonzales overpowered her, tied her up and drove her to his grandfather’s ranch, where he raped and shot her before dumping her body in a field, according to court records.
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When Leal arrived home later that night, Bridget’s truck, purse and keys were their usual spots but he couldn’t find her anywhere and called police.
For nearly two years, no one but Gonzales knew what happened to Bridget. One day while he was serving a life sentence for the rape and kidnapping of another woman, Gonzales decided to confess to killing Bridget, leading authorities to her remains in a field in Bandera, a small town 40 miles northwest of San Antonio.
Gonzales was convicted of Bridget’s murder in September 2006.
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‘Thank God I got to see her’
Patricia Townsend last saw her daughter the same day she was killed. Townsend was working at a video store and had asked Bridget to drop by and return a video.
“Thank God I got to see her. And I told her I loved her. And I hugged her,” Townsend said.
Bridget left soon after, saying she was going to bed because she had to drive to work in the morning. Townsend told her daughter goodbye, reminding her that she loved her.
After Townsend closed the video store and went home for the night, she said she couldn’t shake the feeling that she heard Bridget call out to her: “Mom.” She tried to call Bridget but there was no answer.
“And I said, ‘Well don’t fret, Pat.’ She said she had to get up early and go to work so she’s probably sleeping,” Townsend said. “But I should have known better because always slept with her phone right next to her in case somebody called her.”
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She thought about going to check on Bridget but talked herself out of it.
“And to this day I regret not going out there,” she said. “Maybe I would have been there in time to stop him.”
Patricia Townsend gets worst news of her life
For nearly two years, Townsend spent most of her time putting up flyers about her daughter and chasing leads.
Until one night a Bandera County sheriff asked her to come to the station. Although she had been holding out hope that her daughter was alive despite the odds, she instead got the worst news of her life.
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The sheriff told Townsend that Gonzales had confessed to Bridget’s murder, had led police to her body and that he had some things he was hoping she might be able to identify.
“And I walked on down the street. I couldn’t hear it anymore,” she said.
Towsend says she didn’t even have a body to bury on Oct. 16, 2002 because Gonzales “wanted to see her body decay.”
Townsend rejected arguments from Gonzales that a childhood filled with trauma and neglect helped lead him down a path that ended in her daughter’s murder.
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“He doesn’t deserve mercy,” she said. “And his childhood should not have anything to do with it. I know a lot of people that had a hard childhood … He made his choice.”
It’s Gonzales’ own fault that he no longer has a life.
“He could be going to school or have a wife and kids,” she said. “I don’t feel sorry for him at all and I don’t want other people to feel sorry for him. Some people I feel sorry for are his grandma and grandpa that raised him.”
What has also brought comfort to Townsend amid the grief is that Gonzales is set to leave the world the same day Bridget came into it.
“When they told me June 26, I started crying, crying and crying,” she said. “That’s her birthday.”
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Instead of celebrating her daughter’s 41st birthday, she’ll drive four hours from her home in San Antonio to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville and watch Gonzales die.
Silvia Hernandez, with her hair pulled back into a long ponytail, is visible from the kitchen only when she comes to the metal-framed pass, where the server grabs plated dishes to run to customers. Her glasses are precariously balanced on the lower bridge of her nose, but she snaps them back into place as she turns to attend to the cooking at her restaurant, Taqueria Gael, in Andrews.
Crossing north five years ago was the easy part of her life’s journey, Hernandez says. Growing up in El Salto, a small, quiet town in the northern Mexican state of Durango, she worked long hours hawking street food and cooking in her parents’ restaurant. She opened her own business, a hot dog cart, as a teenager, and got married at sixteen to a husband who eventually became abusive, she says. Moving to Texas was, Hernandez believed, her way out. Once she arrived in the Permian Basin town of Andrews, she began to work at local food trucks and would feed fellow food truck employees home-cooked meals of sopa de fideo, chicken, and caldo.
One Christmas, she brought the workers a holiday meal of lengua, fries, and soup. It wasn’t much, but the six young men who had no family to spend Christmas with were delighted and thankful. “It’s one of my favorite memories,” Hernandez says. So it’s no surprise that when Hernandez visited Mexico for fifteen days, the workers in Andrews messaged and called her, pleading with her to return. To their relief, she did. Then, a year ago, she opened Taqueria Gael.
Until my recent trip, my experience with tacos in West Texas had been disappointing at best. Tex-Mex in general, and the burrito in particular, was where restaurants in the area shone—that is, until my visit to Taqueria Gael, a bastion of Mexican home cooking that stands alongside the best of Texas’s Mexican restaurants.
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The same goes for the previous business that was located inside the yellow building that houses now Taqueria Gael, near the Andrews Highway. It was called La Morena and was owned by famed curmudgeon Greg Revelez. Back in 2020, the Tex-Mex joint was more of a community hub than a good restaurant. Not that it was bad—the Kitchen Sink Burrito, a smothered package of carnitas, refried beans, fries, and pearls of yellow rice topped with melted cheese and smothered in spicy brown gravy,was one of my favorite dishes of that year. Otherwise, the food was, with all due respect, forgettable. In other words, I didn’t expect such exciting and soothing comida casera (home cooking) in the oil patch town about 45 minutes north of Odessa, much less the matron behind the taqueria.
Taqueria Gael is a symbol of Hernandez’s resilience. Through her food, Hernandez shares with customers the traditions and craft passed down through the generations of women before her as well as through a life of extreme hardships.
Hernandez’s grandmother, Teresa, was a single mother of twelve children. To support her family, the matriarch, who could neither read nor write, sold menudo and other dishes she learned from her elders and passed on to her children and grandchildren. At twelve years old, Hernandez’s mother, Modesta, moved from Durango to Mexico City to work in a hospital. About a decade later, she returned to El Salto to work in Restaurante Anita. It was at the restaurant that she met her future husband. The two were immediately inseparable and married in eight days. To help provide for the growing household, Modesta opened a small restaurant, Comedor Valeria, in the family’s living room. She sold carnitas, chicharrones, gorditas, and, of course, the clan’s specialty, menudo.
Hernandez joined the family business as a teenager when she opened a hot dog cart, which she later expanded to sell carnitas. Soon after, her troubles with her husband started. Hernandez hadn’t known the kind of man he would become: a womanizing and abusive drug addict and alcoholic, as she describes him. She dealt with it as best she could, through work. “I promised myself that my children would never know cold or poverty,” Hernandez says.
Their first child, daughter Valeria, was diagnosed with epilepsy at three months old. To pay for Valeria’s treatment, Hernandez added tamales and buñelos to her street cart’s menu. Her daughter’s epilepsy disappeared at the age of four. Four years after that, Hernandez says her husband raped and impregnated her. She gave birth to a boy, Adrian. “My son is the product of abuse, but he is a blessing. He’s my baby,” Hernandez says with joy and pride in her voice. The young man is now studying information engineering, a field that blends computer science with math. “He is a man in every sense of the word. He is responsible. He is a man of his word. He isn’t lazy, nor does he drink or smoke,” Hernandez says.
In April 1998, Hernandez’s father passed away. At this time, violence was at a disastrously high level in Mexico. Her brother was kidnapped and eventually released. On another day, her husband said he was going to work and never returned. “I was left alone to raise my kids and work harder,” she says. Hernandez continued to add dishes to her cart’s menu. She did whatever she needed to do to provide for her family. She was also once more pregnant. To her anguish, the baby was stillborn.
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As soon as she could, Hernandez began the paperwork for a visa to come to the United States. She knew however hard she worked in Mexico, it wouldn’t be enough to give her children the educations and futures she dreamed they deserved. The only option was to find work north of the Rio Grande. Finally, five years ago, she was able to settle in Andrews, where she eventually opened Taqueria Gael, named after her supportive, caring partner, whom she met while working at various food trucks in Andrews. Love and the gratitude for a better life are evident in every dish.
The tacos she serves are all tacos de guisado wrapped in soft, nixtamalized-corn tortillas that are made in-house. The green picadillo, stewed with tiny potato cubes, translucent chopped onion, and invisible but fiery chiles, was a delight. The asado verde—rough-chopped chicken blanketed in a dark green salsa—was even better and hotter. The asado rojo, plump with pork obscured by an inky red sauce, left me silent. My eyes closed, and I smiled. The barbacoa was a dark bramble peeking out from below freshly grated queso blanco. For the quesadilla, queso blanco is enveloped in a corn tortilla and cooked on the flattop until the cheese melts into a milky, stretchy consistency. It only took one bite for me to feel at home.
The pozole—deep red, almost clay-colored—was a bowl of guajillo chile–punctuated stew bobbing with tender, juicy bits of pork chop. It was a hot day when I visited Taqueria Gael, but as I recalled the voices of many women in my life, I remembered hot days are made for hot food. The small, round, Nutella-filled doughnuts, glazed and shiny in the midday sun coming through one of the restaurant’s windows, were so good. I wanted to eat them all lest I offend Hernandez, who brought them to the table herself. Alas, the stop at Taqueria Gael was one of several I had planned en route to the Panhandle. Otherwise, I would’ve lingered, asked for coffee to wash down the dessert, and likely consumed the whole plate of doughnuts.
The worst of Hernandez’s life is behind her. She has made peace with the past and how it has formed her, thanks to her children and her partner. She welcomes every customer like she’s welcoming her own children to eat. As trite as that sounds, the proof is in the amazing pozole. Eating it, I felt like I belonged in Taqueria Gael, like Hernandez was happy to see me enjoy her food. Hernandez expresses it better: “I have been able to overcome obstacles with food. Everything I cook, everything I do, I do with all my heart and with love.”