 Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. In northern Mexico, more than three dozen asylum seekers at an immigration detention center in the border city of Ciudad Juarez have died in a fire that broke out overnight at the facility near the Santa Fe International Bridge in El Paso, Texas. At least 39 people are dead, 29 others injured, most of them Venezuelan. Political news outlets, including La Jornada, report the fire broke out after officials with Mexico's National Migration Institute began cracking down on migrants earlier in the day. This comes just two weeks after hundreds of asylum seekers, mostly from Venezuela, were blocked by barbed wire and riot police, as they tried to cross from Juarez into El Paso, Texas to apply for relief. The deaths in Mexico come just hours after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees urged the Biden administration not to adopt a proposed anti-asylum rule that would deny claims made by refugees who lack, quote, documents sufficient for lawful admission, unquote. In a statement, the U.N. refugee agency said the regulation would restrict the fundamental human rights to seek asylum, adding, quote, UNHCR is particularly concerned that this would lead to cases of refuelment, the forced return of people to situations where their lives and safety would be at risk, which is prohibited under international law, unquote. Nashville, Tennessee is mourning after six people were killed in a shooting Monday at a private Christian elementary school. All three students shot and killed were nine years old. They were identified as Evelyn Dickhouse, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. The adults killed in the shooting were identified as Catherine Koontz, the head of the school, Cynthia Peek, a substitute teacher, and the custodian, Mike Hill. He'd worked at the school for 13 years. Police say the shooter was armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun and shot their way through a side door to enter the school before being killed by police. Officials say the shooter was a former student at the school and had written a manifesto laying out plans for the attack that included maps of the building. A Fox News report in Nashville about the shooting was interrupted live by Ashby Beasley, a gun control advocate and survivor of the July 4, 2022 mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Aren't you guys tired of covering this? Aren't you guys tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings? I'm from Highland Park, Illinois. My son and I survived a mass shooting over the summer. I am in Tennessee on a family vacation with my son, visiting my sister-in-law. I have been lobbying in D.C. since we survived a mass shooting in July. I have met with over 130 lawmakers. How is this still happening? How are our children still dying and why are we failing them? Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens. It has overtaken cars. At the White House, President Biden once again called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. Later in the broadcast, we'll go to Nashville, Tennessee, for the latest. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to delay a push to overhaul and weaken Israel's judiciary until after the Knesset's Passover recess. Netanyahu made the announcement Monday after much of Israel was shut down by a general strike in following months of mass protests. As a concession to the far right, Netanyahu agreed to establish a new national guard under the control of Itamar Ben Gavir, Israel's ultra-nationalist national security minister who is convicted of racist incitement against Palestinians and supporting a terrorist group. While the general strike was called off after Netanyahu's announcement, protests continue. On Monday night, Israeli police fired water cannons and stun grenades to disperse protesters in Tel Aviv. We'll have more on Israel and Palestine after headlines. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said he stands ready to use nuclear weapons anytime and anywhere. North Korean state television reported the comments as a broadcast pictures of Kim inspecting nuclear warheads as part of what the North calls a program to produce more nuclear material. On Monday, North Korea test-fired two tactical ballistic missiles into waters off the coast of Japan, the North Korea's seventh missile test this month. The launches came after the U.S. Navy and South Korea completed their biggest spring time war games in years, and as the nuclear-armed USS Nimitz aircraft carrier battle group arrived at the Busan Naval Base in South Korea. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports North Korea is preparing to resume foreign diplomatic activity as Kim Jong-un gradually reopens North Korea after three years of isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has arrested a prominent education advocate who publicly criticized the Taliban's restrictions on girls going to school. Matula Wesa is the founder of PENPATH, a group that traveled across Afghanistan campaigning to bring education to rural areas. In his last post on social media, Wesa shared a video showing PENPATH women volunteers protesting for the right to education. He wrote, quote, "'Men, women, elderly, young everyone from every corner of the country are asking for the Islamic rights to education for their daughters.'" In France, hundreds of thousands of people have joined strikes and protests nationwide today in the latest demonstrations calling on President Emmanuel Macron to cancel a measure raising the age of retirement from 62 to 64. Unions have shut down airports, train stations, schools, garbage collection, oil refineries, and more. The strikes came as the head of France's largest labor union, Laurent Berger, called on Macron to put the deeply unpopular pension reform on hold. If the trade unions were received by the president of the Republic, something which we have been asking for almost a month now, and we were told you cannot talk about pensions, that would make no sense at all. It would be almost anachronistic. There are millions of people who are opposed to this pension reform and who are demonstrating. If we want to avoid clashes, and I want to avoid them, what the unions are proposing now is a gesture of appeasement to find a way out. It must be seized. In Florida, a dual Haitian Chilean citizen has pleaded guilty to three charges related to the July 2021 assassination of former Haitian president Jovenel Moise. Rodolf Jar signed a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office in southern Florida Friday, admitting he provided funds to purchase weapons while allowing at least five other suspects to stage their operation at a property he owned in Haiti. California residents are bracing for yet another atmospheric river with forecasters predicting high winds and heavy rain and snow this week. This follows 11 similar storms over the winter that shattered daily rainfall records and flooded tens of thousands of acres of farmland in California's Central San Joaquin Valley. Advocates for California farm workers have described the floods as catastrophic, leaving them with fewer job opportunities and fewer spaces to live. A lawyer tease of the Center for Farm Worker Families told a local ABC affiliate, quote, all the donations from the public will not be able to resolve this situation. We need federal assistance, he said. Officials in Philadelphia are continuing to monitor water quality after as much as 12,000 gallons of acrylic latex polymer leaked from a chemical processing plant into a tributary of the Delaware River. Based on current testing, authorities say tap water will be safe to drink until at least 3.30 p.m. today. Environmental advocates have criticized how local officials have responded to the chemical spill. This is Maya Van Rossum, leader of the Delaware River Keeper Network. We think it is absolutely important that there is critical focus on ensuring that drinking water supplies are safe. But at the same time, we also want to make sure that our state and federal agencies are ensuring that the critical ecosystems of the Delaware River are also being monitored. Minnesota's largest electric utility has temporarily shut down the Monticello nuclear power plant after reporting radioactive tritium was released into the surrounding groundwater near the Mississippi River. It's the second such spill reported by Excel Energy since November. Minnesota's Pollution Control Agency reports the plant's shutdown caused a massive die-off of fish due to a change in water temperature in the Mississippi. Police in Atlanta, Georgia raided the Wielani Forest Monday in an attempt to clear protesters who've camped in the area for months as part of a campaign to block the construction of a massive police training facility known as Cop City. It would be the largest in the country. According to the Atlanta Justice Alliance, one of the first things destroyed during the raid was a memorial to Tortuguita, a forest defender who was shot dead by police in January. There are reports authorities may be planning to begin clear-cutting parts of the forest in coming days. Arizona's Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs signaled Monday she will delay the planned April 6th execution of death row prisoner Aaron Gunches, who's set to receive a lethal injection after pleading guilty to murder in 2002. Hobbs is vowed she would not sign off on any executions unless she's confident Arizona isn't violating constitutional rights when enforcing the death penalty. Meanwhile, Idaho's Republican Governor Brad Little signed a bill Friday allowing execution by firing squad. Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have passed similar laws. And New York City's chapter of the Audubon Society has voted to change its name, joining several other local chapters of the Bird Conservation Group dissociating themselves from the so-called founding father of American birding. Earlier this month, the National Audubon Society voted to retain the name of John James Audubon, the 19th century French-American naturalist, who enslaved at least nine people in espoused racist views. That set off a revolt among leaders of local chapters of the society. In a statement, NYC Audubon's Board of Directors wrote, quote, we recognize that Audubon's views and actions towards people of color and indigenous people were harmful and offensive, and that the harm continues today, presenting a barrier to people who might otherwise become involved in or support our work, unquote. NYC Audubon says it has begun the process of finding a new, more inclusive name. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Amy Goodman in New York joined by Democracy Now! Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. Well, we're starting with international news. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to delay a push to overhaul and weaken Israel's judiciary until the next parliamentary session following unprecedented mass protests. Netanyahu made the announcement on Monday after much of Israel was shut down by a general strike. We insist on the need to bring forth the necessary amendments to the judicial system and will allow the opportunity to achieve them through a wide consensus. It is an utmost worthy cause. Therefore, out of national responsibility, out of the will to prevent the rift in the nation, I have decided to suspend the second and third readings of the law in this term of the Knesset, in order to allow the time to reach that wide consensus ahead of the legislation during the next Knesset. This way or the other, we will bring a reform that will reinstate the law's balance between the authorities while preserving, and I will add strengthening, civil rights. Netanyahu spoke Monday, one day after he fired Israel's defense minister, who had warned that the judicial overhaul represents a, quote, clear, immediate and tangible threat to the security of the state, unquote. While the general strike was called off after Netanyahu's announcement, protests have continued. On Monday night, Israeli police fired water cannons and stun grenades to disperse protesters in Tel Aviv. In a concession to the far right, Netanyahu agreed to establish a new national guard under the control of Itamar Ben Gavir, Israel's ultra-nationalist, national security minister, who was once convicted of racist incitement against Palestinians and supporting a terrorist group. We're joined now by two guests. Natasha Roth-Roland is editor and writer at Plus 972 magazine. She just completed her history doctoral dissertation, which focuses on the Jewish far right in Israel, Palestine, and the United States. She's joining us now in New York City. And from Alexandria, Virginia, we're joined by Yusuf Munir. He is a Palestinian-American analyst, senior nonresident fellow at Arab Center Washington, D.C. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let's begin by talking about exactly what's happening now in the streets. Yusuf Munir, these are mass protests unprecedented in the history of the state of Israel. They are protesting the overhaul and weakening of Israel's judiciary. They are not talking about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as Palestinians continue to be killed on the West Bank. If you can talk from your perspective overhaul what's happening. Yeah, thanks for having me, Amy. You're absolutely right. The protesters in the streets are focused on what they see as a threat to them, and not really a threat to Palestinians by these legislative reforms which aim to further weaken the court system in Israel. It's important to point out that this is a process that did not start with this government, and that the court system in Israel has been weakened for some time. But with this government, a religious nationalist government, there are many Israelis who see the government's agenda as a major power grab that's attempting to reshape Israeli society in a way that will disadvantage them, them being primarily non-religious nationalist Israelis and secular Israelis. They are perceiving for the first time a threat not to the court system, but a threat to the court system that will actually weaken their rights. The rights, of course, of Palestinians have not been upheld, whether Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinians living under occupation, the West Bank and Gaza, and Jerusalem. They have not been upheld by these courts for a very long time. It was not until though that these communities in Israel who are protesting today recognize the direct threat to their own rights that they decided to mobilize en masse in this way. And I think this really underscores just how deep the consensus is within Israel about the apartheid system and discrimination against Palestinians. Clearly, Israeli society has always had the capacity, we're seeing it on display now, to challenge their government's policies when they understand them to be unfair. But it seems that Israeli society does not think it's treatment of Palestinians, which of course the human rights community and many others, including Israeli human rights organizations, concluded amounts to apartheid. They don't seem to see a problem with that. What we're seeing in the streets today is unprecedented as far as Israeli society goes. But the mistreatment and discrimination against Palestinians is not unprecedented at all and is baked into the foundation of the political system in Israel. And Yusuf, speaking about the foundation of the political system, you've made a point that Israel does not have a written constitution. Why and what is the significance of that in the present moment? Yeah, I mean, this is one of the core points here because you have two different branches of government. The parliament and the government that was put together through the parliamentary elections and the courts, which are essentially locked in a battle over power. And the parliament and the government is demanding that it has the authority to essentially claim greater powers over the courts, be able to override court decisions with a simple majority. These kinds of matters are usually outlined in a foundational document, in a supreme law like a constitution that limits the powers of different branches of government and makes clear rules about where power lies and in what situations. Israel doesn't have a constitution, and it doesn't have a constitution for very important reasons. In fact, when Israel was created and declared in 1948 in their Declaration of Independence, they promised that they would adopt a constitution within a few months after declaring independence in line with the expectations of the international community and the United Nations when they put forward the 1947 partition plan. And in fact, the Declaration of Independence copied language from that partition plan about the need to guarantee rights of equality for people, regardless of religion and ethnic origin and so on and so forth. At the time, Israel was interested in gaining international legitimacy. But what they found was, if they were going to adopt a constitution, they'd have to limit state power in ways that would make it much harder for them to carry out their settler colonial project in Palestine. If they had to accept equality before the law, they couldn't take land away from Palestinians and privilege Jews coming in from outside of the country to take their place. And so, they didn't end up adopting a constitution and allowed the state to have maximum flexibility to carry out the settler colonial project. And in fact, that project, which continues to this day, is one of the main reasons why Israeli politics has gone so far right that you see the kind of extremists in government today that in years prior were on the fringes of society. I wanted to go to Natasha Roth Rowland to ask about the history of Itamar Ben Gavir, someone you have studied for a while. Again, Netanyahu has agreed to establish a new national gourd under his control, Itamar Ben Gavir, Israel's national security minister. He's an ultra-nationalist politician who openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In 2007, he was convicted of racist incitement against Palestinians and supporting a terrorist group. His radicalism dates back decades. I want to go to a few clips. In an October 1995 interview, Ben Gavir can be seen holding an ornament taken from the slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's car by far-right Israeli activists during a protest against him when he was alive and the Oslo chords. People manage to get to the symbol from Rabin's car. The symbol is a symbol, and it symbolizes that just as we got this symbol, we can get to Rabin. Just weeks after that interview, a Jewish extremist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv. For years, Ben Gavir hung a picture in his home of Bruch Goldstein, the Israeli-American who killed 29 Palestinians at a mosque in Hebron in 1994. In 2011, Ben Gavir told a reporter why he chose to put Goldstein's photograph on the wall of his home. This is a doctor who saved Jews throughout his life. In October, Itamar Ben Gavir waved a gun and shouted during a confrontation in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, where settlers have attempted to violently evict Palestinian residents from their homes. If they Palestinians throw stones, shoot them. This is Mahmood Sawoo, a Palestinian who lives in Sheikh Jarrah, describing Itamar Ben Gavir's actions in his neighborhood. His field office is within the plan to take over Jerusalem Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and the house is there. He sets up his tent here and starts pointing at houses that he wants to take. My house is under threat. My neighbor's house is also under threat. We all receive eviction orders or courts to increase in rent, also orders not to build or renovate. He used to come here and make trouble for everyone. Imagine a Knesset member pulling out his gun towards the people in the neighborhood. We have children and women here. So what do you expect from him if they assigned him as the Minister of Public Security or any ministerial position? Of course, he will be more confident and relieved. But as my neighbor said, we don't care even if he was a prime minister. We are staying in our houses here. This is our legitimate right to defend our houses and children. And it was after this that the now once again prime minister Netanyahu named Itamar Ben Gavir the Secretary of National Security. Natasha Rothroland, talk more about his significance and being put in charge of what they're now shaping to be a national guard. Some are calling it Ben Gavir's private militia. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on the show, Amy. As we saw from all these clips, Itamar Ben Gavir is somebody who sees violence as a legitimate means to political end, whether he is engaging in that violence himself or inciting it directly or indirectly. He has a long track record of aggression, provocation, showing up to the site of political tensions and encouraging further tensions, encouraging further violence. He has pulled a gun on Palestinians himself at least twice. That's what we have documentary evidence of. We don't know if he's done it more than that. He has encouraged police to shoot protesters. That was before he became National Security Minister. As you say, he was appointed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Now that he is National Security Minister, he's in charge of all of Israel's police. That's the regular police and the border police, which controls inside the occupied West Bank. So he already has an immense amount of power over police forces that regularly inflict violence on Palestinians. Now there is talk of him having this National Guard, which he's been lobbying for for some time. He's not the first person to come up with this idea. It was bandied around by the previous government as well under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But now, as this kind of exchange for not quitting the government in response to Netanyahu deciding to temporarily put on pause these judicial overhaul plans, Netanyahu has given Ben Gavir even more potential power. Netanyahu is responsible for a lot of the power that Ben Gavir has right now. He has helped shepherd him in from the political margins into the mainstream, giving him this unprecedented level of influence. What happened yesterday is another step in that direction. It's not clear at the moment when exactly this National Guard will be established and what form it will take, but the terminology of calling it basically Ben Gavir's private militia I think is quite accurate. And if we put that in the context of some of the civil violence that we've seen enacted by settlers against Palestinians, both in the occupied territories and inside the green line, we get a kind of frightening preview of what this National Guard might look like. As we saw in May 2021, during this period of immense violence and unrest on both sides of the green line. And as we saw in the Huwara pogrom at the end of last month, when around 400 far-right religious settlers invaded this Palestinian town in the West Bank, smashing up homes, setting homes on fire while they still had Palestinian families inside them, setting cars on fire, assaulting Palestinians. One Palestinian man was killed in another town. You saw this collusion between settlers and between Israeli security forces. There's even video footage of Israeli security forces idling by the side of the road while settlers are in the progress of attacking a Palestinian house. So, when you look at this combination of settlers and soldiers and Israeli police either colluding to assault Palestinians or Israeli security forces simply standing by, and then you take into account the fact that there's this potential new guard being set up at the behest of a figurehead of a national camp that saw what happened in Huwara and liked what they saw and said that they wanted to see more of it, it's just a terrifying prospect. And Natasha, I wanted to ask you about what is occurring within the Israeli defense forces, clearly the firing by Netanyahu of the Defense Minister over the weekend, and then the open letter of a bunch of pilots of reservists protesting these judicial reforms. What is the potential impact on the military of these actions by this extreme right-wing government? Actually, this morning, the main reservists' protest group, that is reserve military officers, signaled that they were going to suspend their protest because of Netanyahu's announcement that he's putting the judicial overhaul plans on pause. They've said that they don't believe what Netanyahu said, they don't trust that he is going to scale back these plans. That's what a lot of other protest leaders have said as well over the last 48 hours. But this was the main reason that the Defense Minister, Yoav Galant, said that he believed the overhaul should be frozen or they should take more time to negotiate what the overhaul was going to look like before pressing ahead with the legislation. For him, this was not a moral or an ethical issue, it was a security issue. He worried that the increasing number of reservists who were signalling that they weren't going to show up to their reserve duty was going to cause real security concerns for the country. He also thought that it made the country look weak before its enemies in the Middle East. So that's really what the impact was on the Israeli military establishment. It's not yet clear what Galant's future looks like. As of last night, Netanyahu had not sent the mandatory letter to Galant, giving him 48 hours' notice of his firing. As of this morning, I hadn't heard that that has been sent. Maybe it has by now. But until that is in place, Galant is essentially still in his position. So it remains to be seen what Galant's future holds and also whether the reservists do indeed go back on strike if the judicial overhaul plans press ahead in a few weeks time. And finally, Yusuf, your response and how your sensing Palestinians feel about Ben Gavir being put in charge of this new National Guard, this new National Guard unit? Yeah, well, I think in response to everything that's going on, you know, Palestinians feel very much excluded from the conversation and also don't want to be included in a conversation that ostracizes them as the Israeli debate largely has. But Palestinians, even though Israel is going through tremendous unrest right now, are not just sitting back and enjoying the show. They are, in fact, in a position of extreme vulnerability right now, as they always have been, but in a heightened way because these religious nationalists who have really carried out scores of attacks against Palestinians and villages in the West Bank and elsewhere are increasingly being empowered right now. We talk about Ben Gavir's militia. Ben Gavir's militia has long existed in the West Bank and in these settlements that are routinely carrying out violence against Palestinians often in tandem or with at least the protection of the Israeli military. We're talking now about a militia that's going to become increasingly formalized under the direction of a minister in the government, with the protection of a government that has a majority, and with access to greater weapons and resources. Make no mistake about it. These people are looking to harm and eliminate the Palestinian people and are quite transparent about that in their rhetoric. They see this space as space that only belongs to Israeli Jews and that Palestinians have no space there. That type of eliminationist and genocidal rhetoric is now going to have the backing of a government minister in ways that it didn't have before. So there's certainly greater concern now than I think ever before about the physical safety of Palestinians who are, as always, going to pay the heaviest price for what is taking place in Israel today. Well, Yusuf Muneir, we want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian American analyst, now senior non-resident fellow at Arab Center in Washington, D.C., and Natasha Roth-Roland, editor and writer at Plus 972 magazine. Next up, we go to Nashville, where a heavily armed former student attacked a private Christian school, killing six people, three of them nine-year-old kids. Stay with us. Klezmer Project Orchestra from the album Klezmer Musicians Against the Wall. This is democracynow, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Nashville, Tennessee is mourning after six people were killed in a shooting Monday at a private Christian elementary school. All three students shot and killed were nine years old. They were identified as Evelyn Dickhouse, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. The adults killed in the mass shooting were identified as Catherine Coons, the head of the school, Cynthia Peek, a substitute teacher, and Mike Hill, a custodian who'd worked at the school for 13 years. Police say the shooter was armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun and shot their way through a side door to enter the school before being killed by police. Officials say the shooter was a former student at the school and had written a manifesto laying out plans for the attack that included maps of the building. A live Fox News report in Nashville about the shooting was interrupted by Ashby Beasley, a gun control advocate and survivor of the July 4th, 2022 mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Aren't you guys tired of covering this? Aren't you guys tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings? My son and I survived a mass shooting over the summer. I am in Tennessee on a family vacation with my son, visiting my sister-in-law. I have been lobbying in DC since we survived a mass shooting in July. I have met with over 130 lawmakers. How is this still happening? How are our children still dying and why are we failing them? Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens. It has overtaken cars. Monday's attack marked the 129th mass shooting in the United States this year alone, including 13 school shootings. At the White House, President Biden once again called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. For more, we go to Nashville, Tennessee, where we're joined by Holly McCall, editor-in-chief of the Tennessee Lookout. Holly, welcome to Democracy Now! Describe what's happening and what you understand at this point, the horror of the mass shooting at this private Christian school. Well, America sees a lot of mass shootings, but I think to residents in the city where they occur, it doesn't matter what's happened in other cities. And Nashville is still in many ways a small enough city that people know each other. They have some connection to the school. And so there was just shock yesterday morning when the news started to come in very quickly that there was a large police presence in the Green Hills area of Nashville. It's in a fluent area of town with several private schools. And details are still emerging. You did a very good job encapsulating what we know right now, but yes, this was a former student. Why exactly they targeted this school? We know that they went there. We haven't seen the manifesto yet. And honestly, I think people here are still just in shock. And it's not even our first mass shooting. We had one less than five years ago at a waffle house that was responsible for killing five people. And Holly, what do we know so far on how the mass shooter obtained the two assault rifles and handguns? And could you talk a little bit about the legislation that's been passed in Tennessee recently on guns? Yes. So according to the Metro National Police Department, the shooter had three weapons with them at the time of the shooting, two semi-automatic rifles. They do appear to be obtained legally. They also had a handgun. And then at their home, police later found two sort of shotguns and another weapon. But it's just not difficult at all in Tennessee to get any type of weapon over the last six or seven years. We've seen the legislature increasingly passing laws that even law enforcement officials and law enforcement organizations oppose. The Department of Safety and Homeland Security in Tennessee opposed a bill that is in the legislature right now to drop open carry to 18. It's been 21. In the House, the bill says that you can carry long guns at the age of 18. Technically, you can walk down the hall of the legislative building with a long gun. The Senate dropped that provision, but I don't know what's going to happen in the House. So that's one thing. We have lawmakers who said the Department of Homeland Security have no constitutional right to protest the bill, even though these law enforcement officers are the ones on the street dealing with this. Last year, the legislature with the governor's full support passed a permitless carry bill. You don't even need so much as a permit to get a weapon in Tennessee. You know, we've got a handgun. We've got weapons companies that are moving to Tennessee. The governor went out of his way last year to sign the law, the permitless carry law, in a Beretta factory, in a Beretta office that's moved to Tennessee. And it's just it's bizarre to me that there are so many lawmakers here who can only talk about the Second Amendment. I bet they couldn't even name what goes on in many of the other amendments, but this is the one they are focused on. Police have said the Nashville school shooter is named Audrey Hale and identified as transgender using male pronouns. Police said the motive for the attack remains unclear. Just before the attack, Hale messaged a friend saying they would die by suicide, writing, quote, one day this will make more sense. I've left behind more than enough evidence that something bad is about to happen. The person that they messaged called police immediately. Hale once attended the school, which was run by the Covenant Presbyterian Church. The New York Times reports the church is affiliated with the Theologically Conservative Presbyterian Church in America, whose 2020 report on gender and sexuality notes, quote, the sinfulness of homosexual and transgender desire, as well as conduct, unquote. So this is police chief John Drake being questioned by NBC's Lester Holt Monday night. You've also said that Hale identified as trans. Do you believe there is a connection to that? We feel that she identifies as trans, but we're still in the initial investigation into all of that and if it actually played a role into this incident. This has set social media ablaze, the far-right conservative congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene drew outrage. When she tweeted in response to the shooting, quote, how much hormones like testosterone and medications for mental illness was the transgender Nashville school shooter taking? Everyone can stop blaming guns now, Marjorie Taylor Greene said. To this, New York congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded, quote, it's absolutely disgusting and she should be looking into a mirror as to why she's defending and posing with the same weapons that are being used to kill children, teachers, and educators. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent. We just have a minute left, Holly McCall. If you can respond to what is developing right now and the mourning of the overall community. You know, we're trying to figure out what our next steps are. I will comment on your last remark. It is absurd to imply that this person committed these shootings because they were potentially transgender. That was first reported, by the way, on social media by a right wing poster. It does seem to be that this person was, did identify as male, but law enforcement sources who have read the manifesto says that does not appear to play a role in the motive. Well, Holly McCall, we want to thank you very much for being with us, editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Lookout, speaking to us from Nashville. Next up, we continue our remembrance of the human rights advocate and attorney Randall Robinson, who died this weekend at the age of 81. Stay with us. And this is Democracy Now, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzales. We end today's show continuing our look at the life and legacy of the human rights leader, Randall Robinson. He died Friday at the age of 81 in St. Kitts, where he's lived since 2001. Randall Robinson was the founder of TransAfrica, played a key role in the launching of the Free South Africa Movement, arrested many times at the South African Embassy, and pushed successfully for the imposition of U.S. sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Randall Robinson also spoke out for years against U.S. policy in Haiti. In 2004, he helped expose the U.S. role in the coup that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bretron Aristide, who has flown against his will to the Central African Republic. Two weeks after the coup, Aristide defied the United States and flew back to the Caribbean, flying into Jamaica. Randall Robinson, accompanied Aristide, flew to the Central African Republic, along with Congressmember Maxine Waters and others, picked up President Aristide and his wife, Mildred Aristide, and flew back to the Western Hemisphere. I reported on that flight, joining them on that flight, and interviewed Randall Robinson about the U.S. role in the coup. Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld should be ashamed of themselves. President Aristide is the democratically elected president, the last time by a 92 percent majority of Haiti, and he has come home to the Caribbean where he belongs. He is the president, democratically elected, of the democracy that they overthrew. America ought to be ashamed of itself, and we are proud of the role we've played in bringing him home to his region where he belongs and where we hope he will stay. Randall Robinson later wrote about the U.S. Baku in his book, an unbroken agony, Haiti from revolution to the kidnapping of a president. In 2007, I interviewed Randall Robinson again. He described the day Aristide was ousted. Later that morning, about 30 American Special Forces troops in full combat gear, and 12 or 13 white Chevy Suburbans of the American Embassy surrounded the Aristide home, took positions on the wall around the home, and you could see the red Tracer pattern crisscrossing, crosshatching in the yard of the home. And into the yard came one Chevy Suburban with one of the special forces of people fully armed who was attending Luis Moreno of the American Embassy, who walked into the house and told the president, I was here when you came back in 94, and I'm here tonight to tell you it's time for you to leave. They removed the president Moreno and the American Special Forces from his home, took them to the airport. The president, Mrs. Aristide and Franz Gabriel, took them from their home, boarded them on this large, wide-bited aircraft with no markings, no tail number, only the sort of large flag, American flag on the vertical tail assembly, and flew off, making their first refueling stop in the Eastern Caribbean and Antigua. Our guest for the hour, Randall Robinson, just up from St. Kitts, where he has been living for the last six years. He's just published a new book called An Unbroken Agony, Haiti from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. Let's talk history for a minute, something the U.S. press doesn't give us very much of. To understand the U.S. role today in Haiti, can you go back in time to how Haiti was founded in 1804? Well, Haiti was the largest piece of France's global empire. It was its great profit center. That slave colony with 465,000 enslaved Africans working there, many of whom had been soldiers in African armies before they were brought to Haiti. And in August of 1789, or 1791, rather, 40,000 of those slaves revolted and started a war that lasted 12 and a half years under the leadership of an ex-slave named, a military genius named Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Desolines. And this army of ex-slaves defeated armies to French armies. First, the French army before the completion of their revolution, and then another army dispatched by Napoleon under the leadership of his brother-in-law, and then the armies of England and Spain. 150,000 blacks died in that 12 and a half year war, and in January of 19 of 1804, rather, they declared Haiti the first free republic in the Americas because the United States was in a country that hails slaves. During the revolution, Thomas Jefferson said he would like to reduce Toussaint to starvation. George Washington lamented and vilified that revolution. The U.S. imposed an embargo, recognized the new French government, but did not recognize the new Haitian free government and imposed a comprehensive economic embargo on Haiti until the emancipation proclamation. In fact, France imposed reparations on Haiti in 1825, and the interest that Haiti had to pay in loans that were American and French loans to service this debt to France absorbed virtually 80% of Haiti's available budget 111 years after the completion of their revolution until 1915. It was only in 1947 that France, that Haiti was able to pay off its debt. The debt that was incurred as a result of France not having access to the enslaved people of Haiti. The Haitians had to pay France for no longer having the privilege of owning Haitian slaves. That revolution provoked the end of slavery in the Americas, and so that's why it is so important that all African people, people generally in the Americas, because Haiti funded and fought in South American revolutions, that's why Haiti is so honored in places like Venezuela, by people like Simone Bolivar. Haiti was central to all of this, and we're in Haiti's debt, but it is for that. And Bolivar came to Haiti. Haiti and was given arms and was given men, was given a printing press because the Haitians believe that anybody who was enslaved anywhere had a home and a refuge in Haiti. Anybody seeking freedom had a sympathetic ear in Haiti. But because of that, the United States and France and the other Western governments, even the Vatican, made them pay for so terribly long. It's as if the anger of it never abated. I mean, you can hear Frederick Douglass talking about it in the late 1800s, about this thing in the American crawl. The U.S. government didn't recognize Haiti for decades. The Congress, going back to Thomas Jefferson, afraid that the slave uprising would inspire U.S. slaves. Would inspire U.S. slaves to revolt against him in Virginia and George Washington and on and on and on. And so they opposed everything that was being done in Haiti to win their freedom. The U.S. government invaded Haiti in 1915 under Wilson. Woodrow Wilson invaded Haiti in 1915. And when Haitian Peralta, Chalamagne Peralta, organized the Caicos soldiers, these farmers, to fight against this American occupation, the Americans killed him, and nailed him to a cross crucifixion style and stood him up, his courts, in a public place in Haiti to demonstrate to Haitians what would be the price of any defense against the American invasion. The U.S. has played a terrible role in Haiti. So even as the U.S. and France were at loggerheads after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, because France opposed the invasion, that was 2003. In 2004, they were working together and pushing out, forcing out Aristide and bringing him to the Central African Republic. As a matter of fact, in 2003, late 2003, Aristide organized a reparations conference, and the result of which was a request to France that it repair Haiti by repaying Haiti the $21 billion in current money that Haiti had paid in reparations unjustly to France. Dominique de Vilpa responded by sending his sister. The foreign minister of France. The foreign minister of France sending his sister to Haiti to tell Aristide that it was time for him to leave. And that's how we have the Western world, France, and particularly the United States, have meddled in Haitian affairs. After the abduction of the president, Bush spoke with Shirok on the phone, congratulating each other about how smoothly the abduction of the president had been carried off by both countries. Randall, you talked about how when President Aristide was president before he was forced out, he was supposed to be getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank, I think it was, for health issues. The loan had been fully approved. It was for $146 million. It was for health issues, for literacy, for things associated with social programs, roads, and some infrastructure projects. The United States blocked that loan. And so, on the one hand, it starved the economy of Haiti. On the other hand, it trained the opposition. On another hand, it armed the paramilitarists. And then the last analysis, American forces invaded and abducted the president. The U.S. role, how well known is it in Haiti by Haitians? I think it's very well known in Haiti by Haitians. If it were so well known by Americans, our democracy would work better. The problem is with our democracy. It wasn't ever with theirs. The problem is what our undemocratic or the behavior of undemocratic behavior of our government means for struggling democracies across the world, that we feel that we, by divine right, can go in and overthrow governments willy-nilly when they are living under leadership of their own clear choice. It's a shameful chapter for Americans, and particularly for this administration. Human Rights Advocate and Attorney Randall Robinson speaking in 2007, he died Friday at the age of 81 in St. Kitts. To see Democracy Now's exclusive coverage of Randall Robinson and Congressmember Maxine Waters and others tripped to the Central Offering Republic to pick up the Aristides after they were ousted in a coup, go to democracynow.org, as well as all of our interviews. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.