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Emergency personnel respond to a shooting at the Natalie Medical Building on Wednesday in Tulsa, Okla.

Ian Maule/Tulsa World via AP


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Ian Maule/Tulsa World via AP

Emergency personnel respond to a shooting at the Natalie Medical Building on Wednesday in Tulsa, Okla.

Ian Maule/Tulsa World via AP

Two doctors, a receptionist and a former soldier accompanying his wife during a checkup were killed in a mass shooting inside a Tulsa medical building, authorities said Thursday.

Police, officials at Saint Francis Health System and others provided details about the victims of Wednesday’s shooting.

One of the doctors once worked for a pro basketball team, and the other was a huge college football fan. The receptionist supervisor cheered on her sons’ high school baseball team, and police said the fourth victim was an Army veteran who sacrificed his life for his wife during the shooting.

DR. PRESTON PHILLIPS

Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said Phillips performed back surgery on the gunman last month and was the primary target of the shooting. Phillips, 59, was found dead in a second-floor exam room.

Phillips was an orthopedic surgeon with an interest in spinal surgery and joint reconstruction, according to a profile on the hospital system’s website. He had served as lead physician for Tulsa’s WNBA team before the franchise moved out of state, according to the Tulsa World.

In addition to his medical degree, Phillips had advanced degrees in organic chemistry, pharmacology and theology.

Dr. Cliff Robertson, president and CEO of Saint Francis Health System, said Phillips was a dedicated caregiver who considered medicine his calling. Robertson said Phillips was a “consummate gentleman.”

This undated photo provided by the Saint Francis Health System shows Dr. Preston Phillips.

Saint Francis Health System via AP


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Saint Francis Health System via AP

This undated photo provided by the Saint Francis Health System shows Dr. Preston Phillips.

Saint Francis Health System via AP

“He was — he is — a man that we should all strive to emulate,” Robertson said. “The fact that some individual would go after Dr. Phillips is mind-blowing. He’s one of those folks that, you know, his clinic can not always be on time because he will spend every minute with patients that they need.”

Phillips graduated in 1990 from Harvard Medical School and completed his fellowship at the university-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

“Tragically, this incident is the latest in a seemingly unending series of devastating shootings that serve as painful and recurring reminders that gun violence is a medical and public health crisis in this country,” Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley said Thursday in a statement.

In a statement, the J. Robert Gladden Orthopaedic Society said Phillips was one of its members. The Towson, Maryland-based group said its mission is to increase diversity within the orthopedic profession “and promote the highest quality musculoskeletal care for all people.”

The group called the shooting a “despicable act.”

DR. STEPHANIE HUSEN

According to the hospital system’s website, Husen, 48, focused on sports medicine. She graduated medical school in 2000 from Oklahoma State University and further trained at Greenville Memorial Hospital and the Steadman Hawkins Clinic of the Carolinas in South Carolina.

Robertson said Husen was “an incredible person.”

Husen’s ex-husband, John Reckenbeil, said Husen was a physical therapist when she broke her foot in a car accident in the late 1990s. As she was rehabilitating her injury, Husen made the decision to go to medical school and study orthopedics, Reckenbeil told The Associated Press.

Husen, who had two brothers, loved her family and enjoyed being a doctor, Reckenbeil said.

“That’s what is just so unacceptable,” Reckenbeil said. “She’s there doing her job … She loved helping people and she’s ripped from this planet doing what she loved to do.”

This 2019 photo provided by the Saint Francis Health System shows Dr. Stephanie Husen.

Shane Bevel/Saint Francis Health System via AP


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Shane Bevel/Saint Francis Health System via AP

This 2019 photo provided by the Saint Francis Health System shows Dr. Stephanie Husen.

Shane Bevel/Saint Francis Health System via AP

Husen grew up in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and was a big fan of Oklahoma Sooners football, Reckenbeil said.

“She was the greatest woman ever,” he said. “She was the best doctor, she was the best person, she was the best wife.”

Husen was cleaning out her house recently and sent him photos from their wedding of his late mother “out of the blue,” Reckenbeil said.

“That’s the type of woman she was,” Reckenbeil said.

Reckenbeil said Husen was often “the smartest person in the room, but she never let you know about it.”

AMANDA GLENN

Robertson said Glenn, 40, was a receptionist and served in a supervisory role.

The three employees were “the three best people in the entire world, the most committed to doing what they do every day and taking care of others. They didn’t deserve to die like that,” Robertson said.

The Charles Page High School baseball team said in a Facebook post that Glenn was a devoted wife, mother and friend.

“She was on our Booster Club Board and served the baseball boys and coaches selflessly. She was the biggest cheerleader for both of her sons and all of our boys!” the statement said. “Our baseball family is at a loss.”

WILLIAM LOVE

Franklin, the police chief, said Love, 73, was found wounded in a second-floor exam room and taken to the hospital’s emergency room for treatment. He died there.

Although Love was a patient at the clinic where the shooting happened, he didn’t have an appointment that day but was instead accompanying another patient, said Tulsa Police Capt. Richard Meulenberg.

Love was a retired Army sergeant with 27 years of service, including one tour in the Vietnam War, the Tulsa Police Department said in a statement posted on Facebook. Love enjoyed traveling and spending time with his family, which included eight grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

Love had taken his wife, Deborah, to the clinic the day of the shooting for her six-month checkup, said their daughter, Karen Denise Love. Deborah Love had back surgery in December.

They were in an examination room with one of Phillips’ assistants when the couple heard the commotion outside. When they realized it was gunshots, Karen Love said her father grabbed the door handle from inside the room.

“As they heard this guy going up and down the hall, they knew it was gunfire,” Karen Love said. “They thought it was someone just shooting people. My dad was trying to hold the door the best he could.”

The shooter walked past their room, but they heard him come back. He then started shooting through the sheetrock walls and through the door, striking William Love, she said.

Karen Love said her father was born in Georgia, a “poor, sharecroppers’ boy.”

“He was a red, white and blue guy, my daddy,” she said. “He was a good, stable human being.”

Before he was killed, Love had planned to travel with his wife, his daughter said. They enjoyed California, Wyoming and Georgia, Karen Love said.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2022/06/02/1102813156/2-doctors-receptionist-visitor-killed-tulsa-shooting

Happy Thursday.

By all accounts, the election “audit” in Arizona is a failure – months past its initial deadline, potentially in violation of federal law and riddled with mistakes.

Therefore, it’s unsurprising that the auditors are fighting to shield their operation from public records requests and to hide their donors. Still, somehow, the review has inspired copycats around the country.

A Republican legislator in Pennsylvania recently threatened three counties with a subpoena if they don’t turn over their voting machines, computer system logs and voters’ personal information, a move that reportedly has the support of senior party officials.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Texas are attempting to pass a bill that would force an audit of the November 2020 election, beginning 1 November 2021 and continuing into 2022.

These legislators are clearly hoping to earn political capital from pushing a popular myth among Republicans – but will these sham audits ultimately backfire on them?

On one hand, this is an easy way to continue stoking hysteria about the 2020 election, especially as all but the most loyal Trump supporters eventually lose interest and move on.

And when it comes to disinformation, these reviews offer a nearly bottomless well. For example, an auditor in Arizona recently claimed to have found “74,243 mail-in ballots where there is no clear record of them being sent [out to voters]”.

In reality, the team had failed to account for in-person early voting, which one expert called a “glaring omission from the analysis” that was either “grossly negligent” or “deliberately misleading”. However, as political theatre, the move was a success, generating viral tweets and a written statement from the former president.

Still, this strategy is fraught. In Arizona, the Republican-controlled board of supervisors did nearly everything possible to resist the review, and it’s easy to see why. After weathering a pandemic and facing down hostile mobs, these officials were then being accused of incompetence at best and complicity in a vast conspiracy at worst.

Already, the two Pennsylvania counties controlled by Republicans have said they won’t comply voluntarily with the request, and though election administrators don’t have the same platform as grandstanding politicians, it isn’t great optics to bully fellow Republicans to conduct an audit that will almost certainly reveal no fraud, as was the case recently in Michigan.

On some level, it’s clear politicians know this. In February, the Arizona senate tried to arrest the ​​Maricopa county board of supervisors but failed after a Republican defected.

In addition, Maricopa county announced last month that it wouldn’t use many of the machines used in the review, which the Arizona secretary of tate had already threatened to decertify because of potential security risks – demonstrating again that actions have consequences.

So, will Republicans outside Arizona move past political posturing and actually conduct more sham reviews? Perhaps, and at their peril.

Today’s post was guest-written by Spenser Mestel, a poll worker and journalist with his own voting rights newsletter.

Also worth watching …

  • A federal appeals court has blocked an Indiana law that would have made it easier to remove voters from the rolls, which was a revised version of a 2017 law that was also struck down.

  • You’ve probably heard about the gubernatorial recall in California – but another one in Alaska, initiated in 2019, was just greenlit by the state’ssupreme court.

  • After originally stating that he wouldn’t allow any additional voting ID requirements, Pennsylvania’s governor now says that he’s open to the possibility, specifically for absentee voting.

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/22/arizona-sham-audit-rumbles-on-but-could-it-backfire-on-republicans

  • Murphy said the current gun reform talks don’t include an assault weapons ban or expanded background checks.
  • The talks have come as the nation continues to grapple with the aftermath of mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde.
  • “We’re not going to do everything I want,” the Connecticut lawmaker said of a potential Senate bill.

Sen. Chris Murphy — who is playing a major role in crafting a bipartisan gun reform bill following deadly mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas — said that potential legislation resulting from the current talks will not include an assault weapons ban or “comprehensive” background checks.

Murphy, during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” told host Jake Tapper that a bipartisan contingent of senators met on Saturday, with the group eyeing increased mental health funding, additional safety measures for schools, and “modest” gun control regulations as part of a package that could pass the upper chamber.

“We’re not going to do everything I want,” the Connecticut Democrat said of a potential Senate bill.

He added: “We’re not going to put a piece of legislation on the table that’s going to ban assault weapons, or we’re not going to pass comprehensive background checks. But right now, people in this country want us to make progress. They just don’t want the status quo to continue for another 30 years.”

At it currently stands, the bipartisan reform may include narrower background checks — a provision that doesn’t go as far as many gun-control advocates would prefer — but would be the sort of compromise that could help a potential bill overcome a legislative filibuster.

Murphy called the talks some of the most fruitful that he has witnessed since joining the Senate in 2013.

“I’ve never been part of negotiations as serious as these,” he said. “There are more Republicans at the table talking about changing our gun laws and investing in mental health than at any time since Sandy Hook.”

However, understanding the political reality of an evenly-divided Senate, Murphy said the discussions could potentially fall apart.

“I’ve also been part of many failed negotiations in the past, so I’m sober minded about our chances,” he said. “I’m more confident than ever that we’re going to get there, but I’m also more anxious about failure this time around.”

The senator, who as a House member in 2012 represented Newtown — the site of the deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School where 20 children and six adults were killed by a 20-year-old gunman — has become one of the highest-profile gun control advocates in the Senate.

Last year, after a mass shooting at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit, Murphy pleaded for some sort of gun reform, even expressing that he would “settle” for legislation that was much narrower in scope that what he desired.

Immediately after the Uvalde shooting last month, Murphy once again pleaded with his colleagues to work with him on gun reform measures and lamented past legislative inaction.

“What are we doing? What are we doing? Just days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down African-American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands,” he said during a speech on the Senate floor.

Source Article from https://www.businessinsider.com/murphy-bipartisan-gun-reform-no-assault-weapons-ban-background-checks-2022-6

  • The Washington Post obtained an email from Trump’s campaign to fake GOP electors.
  • The email outlined how these electors could infiltrate Georgia’s Capitol and sign certificates.
  • It also asked the scheme’s participants for “complete secrecy and discretion” to ensure Trump’s win.

A bombshell email obtained by The Washington Post and CNN has unveiled new information on a scheme concocted by former President Donald Trump’s campaign in Georgia that involved getting fake electors to cast electoral votes for him.

The email, dated December 13, 2020, contained instructions on how the electors could position themselves to cast electoral college votes in favor of Trump, despite President Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Despite the plan, all 16 electoral votes for the state were cast in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket the following day.

In the email sent by a Trump campaign staffer, fake electors were instructed on how to infiltrate the Georgia State Capitol, sign certificates declaring they were there to cast the votes for the state, and ultimately defy the will of the state’s voters by voting for Trump instead.

“I must ask for your complete discretion in this process,” wrote Robert Sinners, the Trump campaign’s elections operations director in Georgia, per the outlets. “Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion.”

According to The Post, the electors were told to inform the building’s security guards that they had an appointment with one of the state senators to gain entry. 

“Please, at no point should you mention anything to do with Presidential Electors or speak to the media,” Sinners wrote in bold text, per the outlet.

Georgia was one of seven states where Trump’s allies sent fake documents to the National Archives falsely declaring that he had won in them. The papers bore the signatures of the Trump supporters claiming to be valid electors but were actually rogue individuals who had no legitimate role in certifying election results.

The issue of fake electors in Georgia is currently being investigated by Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. 

In a statement to The Post, Sinners said he was merely following instructions from senior campaign staffers and David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. 

“Following the Former President’s refusal to accept the results of the election and allow a peaceful transition of power, my views on this matter have changed significantly from where they were on December 13th,” said Sinners, who now works for Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — a known Trump enemy.

A lawyer for Shafer told The Post that Shafer had handed over all his communications about the electoral vote to the January 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot. 

“None of these communications, nor his testimony, suggest that Mr. Shafer requested or wished for confidentiality surrounding the provisional electors,” Shafer’s lawyer said, per the outlet.

Trump’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider. 

Source Article from https://www.businessinsider.com/new-email-shows-trump-campaign-fake-elector-scheme-georgia-2022-6

Artillery shells sit on the ground ground next to destroyed Russian military vehicles on a field not far of southern city Mykolaiv on Sunday.

Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images


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Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

Artillery shells sit on the ground ground next to destroyed Russian military vehicles on a field not far of southern city Mykolaiv on Sunday.

Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

As the weekend draws to a close in Kyiv and in Moscow, here are the key developments:

Ukrainian officials said 23 people were injured after a Russian rocket struck Chortkiv in the Ternopil region of western Ukraine. “There was no tactical or strategic sense in this strike, as in the vast majority of other Russian strikes,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday. “This is terror, just terror.”

The family of a 48-year-old British man detained by Russian-backed rebels called for his release on Saturday after he was sentenced to death in a trial in the separatist-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic of Ukraine. Shaun Pinner, who has lived in Ukraine for four years, served in the division defending Mariupol before it fell to Russian forces. Another Briton and a man from Morocco were also sentenced to death in what Pinner’s family described as a “show trial.”

Russian forces are using more deadly, inaccurate ordinance as munitions run low, Ukrainian and U.K. officials said Saturday. With modern munitions in short supply, Russia has resorted to using old anti-ship missiles designed to take out aircraft carriers. However, the munitions are highly inaccurate and can cause extreme collateral damage.

A former British soldier was killed fighting in eastern Ukraine. Jordan Gatley, a former rifleman in the British army, was fighting on the front lines in Severodonetsk in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have suffered heavy casualties during intense fighting around Severodonetsk, a key city that Russia wants to capture.

In-depth

Russia has achieved at least one of its war goals: returning Ukrainian water to Crimea.

Evgenia Kara-Murza, wife of jailed Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, told NPR on Saturday that she has not had direct contact with him in two months.

Open source intelligence methods are being used to investigate war crimes in Ukraine.

Earlier developments

You can read more recaps here. For context and more in-depth stories, you can find NPR’s full coverage here. Also, listen and subscribe to NPR’s State of Ukraine podcast for updates throughout the day.

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Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2022/06/12/1104471195/russia-ukraine-war-what-happened-this-weekend-june-11-12