Sarah Mervosh

Hashmi, who came from India to the United States at the age of 4, pulled up to the community college where she worked, parked her minivan and felt frozen with fear. As a Muslim who had lived in the United States nearly all her life, she wondered, did she still have a place in the country she called home?

She shed those doubts on Tuesday when she became the first Muslim to be elected to the Virginia state Senate, a milestone that comes amid a wave of Muslims running for elected office across the country and increased visibility for Muslim women in politics.

Hashmi, 55, upset the Republican incumbent to represent a district based in Chesterfield County, which includes suburban Richmond. Her victory helped to flip the Senate on a night that Democrats took control of both chambers and consolidated power across state government for the first time in a generation.

A former literature professor and community college administrator, Hashmi campaigned on issues that included improving education, taking action on gun control and expanding access to health care. In addition to becoming the first Muslim in the State Senate, she will be the first Muslim woman to serve in the Virginia General Assembly, according to her campaign. At least two Muslim men serve in the House.

“Muslims in America are just like any other American,” Hashmi said in an interview on Wednesday. “I have been a troop leader for Girl Scouts. I have been active in my daughters’ school and volunteer work. All the things that another suburban mom might be doing, I’ve been doing.”

Since 2016, more than 300 Muslim candidates, including more than 100 women, have run for elected office nationwide, according to a report tracking political involvement by Muslims.

Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan became the first Muslim women elected to Congress last year. And many others have run in smaller races across the country, such as Abrar E. Omeish, who won a seat Tuesday on the school board in Fairfax County, Virginia. She was among at least three Muslim women in Virginia who clinched down-ballot contests on Tuesday, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which tracks Muslim candidates for public office.

Mohammed Missouri, the executive director of Jetpac, which advocates Muslim political engagement, said the surge in Muslim candidates running for office in recent years has been among the largest since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. In part, he said, it is a direct response to open expressions of Islamophobia in the United States, including White House policies that critics see as anti-Muslim.

He said he had heard a common refrain from first-time candidates: “I can’t sit on the sidelines anymore.”

Similarly, after panicking in her minivan in 2017, Hashmi realized that she had two options: “I could continue to be quiet and accept things,” she said. “Or I really had to become much more visible.”

At a victory party on Tuesday night, supporters cheered and chanted her name. She smiled and addressed the crowd: “You’ve proven,” she said, “that Ghazala is truly an American name.”

This article originally appeared in

First Muslim Woman Is Elected to the Virginia Legislature

Ghazala Hashmi was on her way to work one winter morning in 2017 when she heard news on the radio that left her in a panic: President Donald Trump’s order banning refugees from certain Muslim countries was making headlines, and she was concerned about the possibility of a Muslim registry being created in the United States.

In all, at least 180,000 people who live amid the vineyards and mountains of Sonoma County were ordered to evacuate because of the Kincade fire. Shelters and hotels filled up quickly. So dozens of evacuees have taken refuge in the parking lot of a Walmart in Rohnert Park, California.

They are living out of their cars and their campers on the edges of the shopping center, forming a makeshift neighborhood. They arrived with folding chairs and generators, bags of dog food and boxes of Cheerios. Whatever they couldn’t bring, they tried to buy.

That’s one advantage of setting up camp outside a Walmart in a time of crisis: Basic necessities are only steps away.

At moments, the atmosphere can feel festive, with people knitting, cooking out and playing cards. But underneath it runs a current of dread. Many people here do not know the status of their homes, and some are worried about loved ones who are still in harm’s way.

Many have been through this unwelcome routine before.

Lila Frank, 85, and her daughter camped in the same Walmart parking lot when they evacuated during the Tubbs fire in 2017.

Linda Hochstetler, who made a cheeseburger for dinner this week, was also a return visitor after the Tubbs fire in 2017. “Walmart feels like home now,” she said.

Walmart has a history of allowing some temporary parking overnight. In this case, the store brought in portable toilets and washing stations to accommodate an “urgent and highly unusual situation.”

The parking lot was also a draw for pets, which are not accepted at every hotel or evacuation center.

Inside each camper, and behind each car window, lies a story of resilience and survival.

“Walmart is safe, lots of good people, and everything we need is accessible,” said Marcella King, who has been staying in the parking lot since she evacuated early Sunday.

“You can never be prepared,” said Larry Zwart, who evacuated from Sebastopol, California, with his wife and two dogs. “You don’t know if you are going to go home to a fire-ravaged home. All you can do is do the best you can.”

“All you want is a comfy chair and a book and then you’re slapped with this,” said Philip Brown, who, like many others, slept in the driver’s seat of his car. Still, he said, “I’m thankful.”

But this is California, and there’s a sense that this scene will play out again, sooner than they’d like. During the next big fire, they will once again need a place to go, as the orange sky fades into twilight.

'Walmart Feels Like Home Now' for These Fire Evacuees

The evacuation order came in the middle of the night. Across a fire-torn region of Northern California, families packed up, got in their cars and drove into the darkness. They did not know when — or if — they would be able to return home. But they knew where to go: Walmart.

The largest, the Kincade fire in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, nearly doubled in size in 24 hours and was just 5% contained Monday, prompting volunteers downwind in the Bay Area to scramble to hand out masks and check on homeless residents.

At the same time, a brush fire broke out early Monday on the western side of Los Angeles and quickly consumed 600 acres. That blaze, known as the Getty fire, led to complaints about air quality near the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, which canceled classes for the day. And smaller fires were burning as far north as Lake Mendocino and as far south as the mountains northeast of San Diego.

Here is what you need to know about the air quality in California this week, with some tips from experts on what to do about it.

How bad is the air?

Air quality is graded on a color-coded scale, with green for good quality, and yellow, orange, red and purple representing increasingly significant risks.

After the Getty fire broke out Monday, the Los Angeles area was experiencing moderately hazardous conditions — in the yellow category — with some locations recording air that was unhealthy for sensitive groups, coded orange.

The San Francisco Bay Area was also experiencing conditions in the orange range, with some “spikes” into the red range, which is generally considered unhealthy for everyone, according to Kristine Roselius, a spokeswoman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

“It’s not great,” said Roselius, who recommended that people in the region stay indoors. Still, she said, the air quality in the Bay Area was not as bad as it was during the Camp fire, which blazed for more than two weeks in 2018, claimed dozens of lives and became the deadliest wildfire on record in California. “That was far more widespread, and it was higher levels,” she said of the air quality problems from that fire.

In general, wildfires come with a risk of breathing particulate matter, tiny pollutants too small to see individually that can cause a range of harmful effects when inhaled into the lungs.

“You’re breathing in some pretty nasty air,” said Steve LaDochy, a professor of geosciences and environment at California State University, Los Angeles. “It’s the fine particles that are the most dangerous — those are the ones that get into the lungs. You don’t see them, so you don’t know. But if you see smoke, there are definitely a lot of fine particles.”

What can I do to avoid exposure?

Young children, older adults, people with asthma and people with preexisting conditions are most at risk, but pollution from smoky air can affect even healthy adults.

When the air quality is poor, health experts recommend staying inside, closing windows to keep out smoky air, and using an air-conditioner with a recirculation option, if possible.

If you must go outside, experts recommend using a mask designed to keep out particulate matter.

What kind of mask should I use?

A surgical mask, scarf or bandanna will not do much to filter out many pollutants. Instead, experts recommend a respirator mask, such as a N95 face mask, which is designed to filter out 95% of airborne particles. Respirator masks can generally be found in hardware stores or bought online.

Mask Oakland, a grassroots group in the Bay Area that hands out masks to homeless people and other marginalized groups during hazardous air conditions, mobilized over the weekend. By Monday morning, the group had supplied about 3,000 masks to volunteers and community leaders to be distributed.

“I’m already getting emails this morning from schools and other centers,” said Quinn Redwoods, a director for the group. “People forget about us until people need a mask. I think there is a sense of collective denial that this is a worsening reality every year.”

Experts cautioned, though, that the masks should be used as a last resort.

“They need to be put on correctly, and that can take some degree of training,” said Dr. Kathryn Melamed, a pulmonologist at UCLA. She noted that the masks will not seal correctly if someone has facial hair, for example, and they can give people a false feeling of safety.

How can I track air quality near me?

The current and forecast air quality conditions anywhere in the United States can be checked on AirNow.gov, a website set up by the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies.

Melamed said people should also monitor their own symptoms when the air they are breathing is less than pristine. While dry eyes and a scratchy throat may simply be a reaction to low humidity in fire-prone areas, she said, a cough, shortness of breath or lightheadedness could also be a symptom of something more serious.

“Ultimately,” she said, “I would recommend that people stay indoors when the air quality is poor.”

Should You Wear a Face Mask for Wildfire Smoke?

With wildfires raging up and down the state of California on Monday, smoke filled the air in many places, ash fell from the sky, and residents were once again left to wonder whether the air they were breathing was safe.

The unrelenting rain took many residents by surprise. The storm that had barely earned a name — it briefly ranked as a tropical storm before being downgraded to a tropical depression — moved in and hovered over the region, rekindling memories from when Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rainfall in some areas and caused dozens of deaths in 2017.

So far, Imelda’s damage appeared less extensive, but just as devastating in certain areas: At least two people have died, including a man who drowned after being electrocuted while trying to move his horse and another whose car submerged underwater. Hundreds of homes have flooded. And residents whose homes were inundated two years ago were steeling themselves for what they might return to once the storm clouds moved out.

On Friday, public schools in Houston were closed. Officials were also scrambling to control barges that broke loose in Harris County and struck a bridge that carries traffic across the San Jacinto River. Officials, concerned about possible structural damage to the bridge, shut down Interstate 10 in both directions.

From Tuesday morning to Thursday night, much of southeast Texas absorbed more than 10 inches of rain. Areas southwest of Beaumont were hit hardest, with an extraordinary 43 inches near Fannett, Texas, enough to make Imelda the seventh wettest tropical cyclone on record in the United States, according to the National Weather Service.

Southeast Texas typically sees about 63 inches of rainfall total in a given year.

Climate change tends to increase the amount of rainfall during storms, since a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, but scientists must evaluate individual storms after the fact to determine how climate change contributed. (Researchers found that the record rainfall during Harvey was as much as 38% higher than would be expected in a world that was not warming.)

Imelda's Toll in Texas: Flooding, Deaths and Fears About a Bridge

As the remnants of the former Tropical Storm Imelda moved north on Friday, residents in southeast Texas were assessing the damage from a storm that unexpectedly brought an onslaught of rain and flooding and became one the top 10 wettest storms in U.S. history.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California reinstated a nationwide injunction preventing implementation of the new asylum policy in response to a federal appeals court ruling that had limited his original ruling’s scope to border states in the West.

Tigar made findings, as outlined by the appellate judges, that applying the injunction across the country was necessary to maintain a “uniform immigration policy” and prevent “uneven enforcement.” Under the previous ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the administration had been prohibited from applying the new asylum limitations in California and Arizona, but not in New Mexico and Texas.

“We just sent an email to people on the ground in Texas saying, ‘Make sure none of your clients are subjected to this asylum ban,’ ” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and the lead lawyer on this case. “Because up to this morning, people were being denied asylum automatically if they traveled through another country.”

The latest ruling puts the asylum policy in the hands of the Supreme Court, which was already considering whether the Trump administration could enforce the policy while the case makes its way through the court system. The justices are expected to rule within the next few days.

The Justice Department said Monday that it had “sought relief” from the Supreme Court on the issue of nationwide injunctions, a practice that Attorney General William Barr denounced last week as a partisan tool and a threat to the nation’s democratic system.

“This latest ruling only highlights the urgency to resolve this crisis,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

The dispute stems from a new administration policy, announced this summer, that sought to deny asylum to migrants who failed to apply for protections in at least one country they passed through on their way north to the United States. Under the policy, Hondurans and Salvadorans would have to apply for — and be denied — asylum in Guatemala or Mexico before they would be eligible to apply for asylum in the United States. Guatemalans would have to be denied asylum in Mexico.

The rule reversed long-standing policies that allowed people to seek haven no matter how they got to the United States. It was immediately challenged by critics who said that requiring people to wait for asylum proceedings in other countries violated the law and put migrants in jeopardy.

Gelernt argued that migrants did not have access to fully functioning asylum systems in countries like Mexico and Guatemala. Moreover, he said, migrants could be easily found in such places by the people they are fleeing.

“It’s too dangerous for people to wait around in those countries,” he said. “For many people, this would have effectively been like a death sentence.”

He called the new administration policy “just another in a series of attempts by the administration to effectively end asylums for Central Americans at the southern border.”

In a Supreme Court brief, the solicitor general, Noel J. Francisco, said the policy was needed to address “an unprecedented surge in the number of aliens who enter the country unlawfully across the southern border and, if apprehended, claim asylum and remain in the country while their claims are adjudicated.”

Under the policy, only immigrants who have been denied asylum in another country or who have been victims of “severe” human trafficking are permitted to apply in the United States. “The rule thus screens out asylum-seekers who declined to request protection at the first opportunity,” Francisco wrote.

Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said that he was frustrated with the asylum ruling by Tigar, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, and the “unprecedented judicial activism we’ve experienced.”

Judge Reinstates Nationwide Injunction on Trump Asylum Rule

A federal judge on Monday issued a nationwide order barring a Trump administration policy that denies asylum to migrants crossing the border unless they have already tried and failed to obtain asylum in another country along the way, a rule that effectively bans claims for most Central Americans fleeing persecution and poverty.

But drive just a few dozen miles north, and the festivity dissolves into fear over flooding in Miami (pronounced My-am-uh), a city of 13,000 where 1 in 4 people live in poverty. For years, the town has fought a losing battle against the wealthy community at the lake, where high water makes for better boating but leaves little room for overflow when it rains. With heavy rains this year, the city of Miami and local Native American tribes say they were again left to pay the price when floodwater clogged upstream, damaging their homes, businesses and ceremonial grounds.

Now, this backyard battle has escalated to the halls of Congress, after one of the lake’s residents, Sen. James M. Inhofe, got involved.

After decades of debate, local leaders had pinned their hopes on a rare chance to ask a federal agency to help stop the flooding. But Inhofe — a top Republican who is known to swim and fly planes around the lake, where his family owns a vacation home — quietly introduced legislation in June that would hamstring that agency.

He added the protections in an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, a military funding bill that is up for consideration before Congress. As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Inhofe has wide latitude over provisions included in the 1,700-page bill.

What might be considered typical power politics in Washington came as a shock in Miami, where the mayor said he only learned about the legislation after a reporter for a trade publication called to ask questions. Many in town saw the move as a sign of overreach by a powerful lawmaker. Now, a coalition of city leaders, tribal chiefs and lawyers is scrambling to oppose the proposal by Inhofe, a former mayor of Tulsa and U.S. representative who has held elected office in Oklahoma for decades.

Mayor Rudy Schultz, whose full-time job is running a furniture store company, said he felt like he was in a fight to save his town.

“Your amendment is a direct threat to the health and safety of thousands of your constituents,” Schultz wrote in a letter to Inhofe last month.

“The fact that you own a home on Grand Lake,” he added, “makes your involvement even more inappropriate.”

Inhofe, who has the support of many on the lake, has long argued for higher water levels to “make the lake a better place for recreation and commerce.” In a statement, he said his proposal would streamline oversight and was “just good policy.”

“Kay and I have been going to our place at Grand Lake since we built it in 1962,” Inhofe said, referring to his wife. “We know nearly everyone in the community and everywhere we go we hear about the need to maintain the lake for its primary purposes of flood control, power generation and recreation.”

Decades of flooding

Miami sits just off the interstate about 90 miles from Tulsa, in a rural corner of the state where hayfields, cattle ranches and pickup trucks dot the landscape. A billboard welcoming visitors to town features local football hero Steve Owens, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1969. It is a small symbol of hometown pride from a bygone era, when the city bustled with middle-class families and there were plenty of jobs at a B.F. Goodrich tire plant.

Today, the county — home to nine Native American tribes, whose members make up about 20% of the population — mostly gets by with factory work and tribal casinos.

But local residents say that flooding has exacerbated the area’s decline.

Since the early 1990s, Miami has flooded more than two dozen times, Schultz said. About 150 houses have been torn down, and many more abandoned.

As recently as May, when storms slammed the Midwest, the water did more than just seep into homes. It swallowed up entire roads and lay like a heavy blanket over town, leaving only rooftops visible.

Nearby, the Eastern Shawnee Tribe said its ceremonial grounds flooded in 3 feet of water. The tribe evacuated 30 families and had to navigate dangerous roads that stayed impassable for weeks, Chief Glenna Wallace said. “We have mold everywhere,” she said. “We have insects everywhere.”

No one disputes that these communities have flooded again and again. But a debate over whether operations at the lake contribute has played out in reams of federal filings and years of lawsuits involving hundreds of residents.

At issue is whether the Pensacola Dam, which was built in 1940 and created the lake, causes a “backwater effect,” a phenomenon that can occur when free-flowing water hits a dam and piles up.

“If you keep the lake levels high,” Neil Grigg, a civil engineering professor at Colorado State University, said, speaking generally, “you don’t have as much storage space available when a flood comes, so that is going to make the flooding upstream worse.”

The city of Miami argues that it would not flood so severely if not for the dam. The nonprofit state agency that oversees the dam, the Grand River Dam Authority, disputes that a backwater effect exists and denies causing flooding upstream.

As heavy rainstorms become more common with climate change, residents fear that the threat is only getting worse.

“I was born and raised here,” said Ethel Cook, 68, chief of the Ottawa Tribe, which had to cancel lunches for tribal elders during the flooding this spring. “I’ve never seen it as bad as it was this year.”

But this year after the most recent flood, local officials saw an opportunity to rectify the crisis: The dam, which generates hydroelectric power, was due for a new license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the first time in nearly 30 years.

The officials planned to ask the commission to instruct the Grand River Dam Authority to buy up flooded land, or at least lower the lake before big storms.

A senator steps in

Since he was elected to the Senate in 1994, Inhofe has fought for less government regulation and is well-known for denying global warming. (He once brought a snowball to the Senate floor to try to undermine the validity of climate science.)

He has also taken a keen interest in Grand Lake, where records show that about $1 million in waterfront property belongs to a company in his wife’s name.

“For the better part of my career in the United States Senate I have been working to maintain higher lake levels on Grand,” Inhofe wrote in a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2016, adding that he was concerned about injuries from boat groundings and access to “coves, marinas, and docks.”

Inhofe’s amendment would limit the commission’s authority over lake levels and flood control. It also says that federal land “shall not be considered to be a reservation,” a move that tribes say would gut their rights.

“I will vote against him for this,” said Mike Mattingly, a 58-year-old truck driver and registered independent in Miami, who said he spent $30,000 to repair his house after a flood in 2007 and lost Christmas decorations and power tools in the recent flood. “I don’t care if it’s a Republican, Democrat, independent.”

But Joe Harwood, 69, who owns a yacht club and marinas, said he and other business owners on the lake were pleased. “I don’t know any that are not supportive of this,” he said.

Ross Baker, a distinguished professor of political science at Rutgers University, said that while the senator’s personal interests at the lake might make the legislation appear “slightly unsavory,” it was unlikely to amount to a serious ethical violation in the Senate. Rather, he said, “the downside for him is more in terms of political embarrassment.”

“In a state that would be politically more competitive than Oklahoma, this could be trouble for Sen. Inhofe,” he said. “But Sen. Inhofe is a local institution.”

In statements, Inhofe and the Grand River Dam Authority said that the legislation would clear up confusion about who was in charge of flood control and empower one federal agency — the Army Corps of Engineers — to balance water flow in the region.

The legislation is pending, and Senate and House representatives plan to negotiate a final bill in the coming weeks.

Richard Glick, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, cautioned that there was a reason the commission regulates about 1,700 hydroelectric dams across the country.

“If you take the umpire out of the baseball games and let the pitcher call the strikes and balls,” he said, “what do you think the pitcher is going to do?”

A Senator's Lake House vs. a Town Fighting Flooding

MIAMI, Okla. — On the shimmering waters of Grand Lake, a popular vacation spot in northeastern Oklahoma, families have spent the summer splashing around in boats, fishing for the lake’s famous bass and enjoying weekend getaways at upscale waterfront homes.

He was a self-starter who had opened his own business and spent months painstakingly renovating a house for his family, with three bedrooms and granite countertops in the kitchen.

Before they became the latest faces of the toll of mass shootings in America — before their names were written on crosses at a memorial in El Paso, before their orphaned infant was held up in a photo opportunity with President Donald Trump — Jordan and Andre Anchondo were just a young couple at the start of their lives together. They had recently had a baby boy, moved into their new home and celebrated their first year of marriage.

A gunman with an AK-47-style rifle and a plan to hurt Mexicans changed all that. While the couple was shopping at a Walmart store in El Paso, Andre Anchondo, 23, was killed jumping in front of the gunman; his wife, Jordan, 24, died shielding her infant son, relatives have said. They were among 22 people who were shot to death that day. The baby survived.

In the days since then, the Anchondos have been held up as symbols of tragedy, and their families have been thrust into the national spotlight — unsought attention that was made worse after Trump was photographed smiling and giving a thumbs-up alongside their baby.

The president’s visit led to an onslaught of hateful messages and a rift among grieving relatives over the past week — all while the families planned the couple’s funerals and made arrangements to care for the children: Paul, the couple’s 2-month-old son, and Jordan’s daughters from previous relationships, Skylin, 5, and Victoria, 1.

“I haven’t even had time to properly. ...” said Andre’s sister, Deborah Anchondo, 39, her sentence trailing off unfinished, after a memorial at her brother’s high school, where a local school board representative urged the community to put politics aside for the family’s sake.

“I have images in my head of what could have happened,” Anchondo said. “And that haunts me.”

Saturday morning errands

For Jordan and Andre Anchondo, the morning of the shooting was like many others for young families across the country: They dropped off Skylin, the 5-year-old, at cheerleading practice and then ran errands nearby at Walmart with the baby in tow. (Victoria was with her biological father.) The Anchondos planned to have family and friends over later in the day for a housewarming party, which was to double as an anniversary celebration and a party for Skylin’s birthday, relatives said.

Skylin and her friends were wrapping up practice when the coach, Jeanette Grijalva, learned there was a shooter in the area. She quickly piled the kids in the car and drove them to her house, where she started calling parents, Grijalva recalled.

“I was able to get in contact with everybody’s family member — except for Skylin’s,” she said.

As the day went on, Grijalva started to worry. “She kept asking me, ‘Are my parents almost coming? I have my birthday today,’” she recalled.

Around midday, Grijalva said she went to a local school and learned that Skylin’s mother was on a list of shooting victims.

Her next stop was a dollar store, where she said she bought balloons, streamers and a birthday banner. At the very least, she thought, she could throw Skylin the birthday party she had been waiting for.

‘Pray for Andre. They still haven’t found him.’

Deborah Anchondo was at home cleaning and talking on the phone with her mother, as they do most Saturday mornings, when they began hearing reports of a shooting.

She had no inkling her brother was involved until Jordan’s mother called her in a panic. When she tried calling her brother’s number, there was no answer.

She was still trying to figure out what had happened when she said she got a call from her father, who was at the hospital with Paul, the baby. Her father told her that she needed to get in touch with Jordan’s parents right away.

“She’s gone,” Anchondo told them. “She’s gone.”

She hung up and rushed to a family reunification center, where she said their family waited hours without any news about her brother.

The family feared that Skylin was also missing, but then learned that she had been taken to her cheerleading coach’s house, and was having an impromptu birthday party there. Grijalva said she and her family dressed the little girl in a yellow dress and painted her nails to match. They made spaghetti and bought a chocolate cake. “We yelled ‘surprise,’” her coach recalled. “We threw up the balloons.”

It was the last bit of normalcy, they knew, that the girl would have. Soon, her grandparents — Jordan’s parents — called and came to pick her up. Her grandmother started crying when she saw the girl, according to Grijalva.

“‘My daughter is dead,’” Grijalva recalled her saying as if in a trance. “‘Pray for Andre, they still haven’t found him.’”

Anchondo slept at the hospital that night with her nephew, baby Paul, she recalled. They still hadn’t heard from her brother. Even then, she was replaying in her mind the many things the siblings had shared over the years. How he had mispronounced the word “love” when he was little, and for years afterward told her “I ‘ya’ you” instead. How, at 7 years old, he had started his first business, buying lollipops from Sam’s Club and reselling them for $1 each. How he once had walked into a T-Mobile store to buy a cellphone, met a girl there and vowed to marry her — and did, in a courthouse wedding last year.

Anchondo and her family waited through the night, and most of the next day. It was not until Sunday afternoon, more than 24 hours after the shooting, that they got official confirmation: Andre had been killed.

A visit with the president sets off controversy

The next few days were a blur of phone calls, messages and visits from people who wanted to help. The two families — Jordan’s and Andre’s — collected donations for the three children and tried to make sure they were being cared for.

The toddler, Victoria, had been staying with her biological father in the days since the shooting, according to her aunt, Lucy Coria, who said the family had been trying to keep her distracted with trips to the pool and the park.

She had been asking for her mother, Coria said: “She doesn’t understand.”

A few days after the shooting, baby Paul was dressed up and taken back to the hospital for a meeting with the president. Andre’s brother, Tito Anchondo, told NPR that Andre had been supportive of Trump; he said he wanted to sit down with the president and have a conversation face to face.

But after the White House released an image from the visit, Tito Anchondo said, his family was hounded with hate calls and messages. “This is what you voted for as a Trump supporter,” one commenter wrote in a social media post. “Your family is literally reaping what they’ve sowed."

The Trump visit created a rift between the Anchondos and Jordan’s family, who said they wanted to remain “politically neutral” and were angry that the episode had mired them in politics on the eve of their daughter’s funeral.

“We did not want to have our precious baby Paul thrusted into a political battlefield,” Jordan’s aunt, Elizabeth Terry, wrote on Facebook. “He and his sisters have been through enough.”

But when it came time to say goodbye to Andre and Jordan, at least, there were no protests or political messages, just an outpouring of community support.

Andre’s family held a public memorial at his high school. Jordan was laid to rest in a dusty, flower-filled cemetery on the outskirts of town. Hundreds of El Pasoans stood in line to pay their respects, bearing bouquets, candles and three small stuffed bears with angel wings — one for each of the children left behind.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/us/el-paso-anchondo-jordan-andre.html" id="b145a654-6070-3094-a960-fe53f9a2c486">The New York Times</a>.

They Died Shielding Their Baby in El Paso. Their Family's Anguish Was Only Beginning.

EL PASO, Texas — She was a young mother, busy juggling family dinners, cheerleading practices and trips to the park with her three small children.

Police responded around 6:30 a.m. to reports of a gunman at a Walmart in Southaven, Mississippi, on the border with Tennessee.

Mayor Darren Musselwhite of Southaven said that a “disgruntled” employee set off chaos at the store, lighting a fire inside and taking aim at a supervisor. The gunman went out a side door chasing a store manager, who was killed in a parking lot, Musselwhite said.

Authorities responded to the Walmart within three minutes of the first 911 call and found the gunman in the parking lot, Chief Macon Moore of the Southaven Police Department said at a news conference.

A police officer was shot in the back during a confrontation with the gunman and was recovering at a hospital, according to city officials. “He was saved by his vest,” the chief said.

The gunman was shot twice by police and was in surgery late Tuesday morning, the chief said. His identity has not been released, and a Walmart representative did not respond to questions about the details of his employment.

Authorities also did not publicly identify the victims.

“These people were doing the same thing that you and I do every day, showing up for work in an attempt to provide for their families, and then became victims of a senseless violent act,” Moore said.

In a statement Tuesday, Walmart said that the company was “heartbroken by the loss of two valued members of our team.”

“We feel tragedies like this personally, and our hearts go out to the families of our two associates and the officer who was injured,” the statement said.

The shooting shut down the Walmart in Southaven, a city of about 55,000 in northern Mississippi, about 13 miles from Memphis, Tennessee. Police cars and crime scene tape blocked off access to the store, where authorities said they had also responded to reports of a fire and a suspicious package.

“It’s still very fluid,” Moore said late Tuesday morning.

The chief, who did not take questions at the news conference, said that police officers had undergone active shooter training this month. That training, he said, “saved lives today.”

After the shooting, Walmart employees, some still in their uniforms, gathered in a circle outside the store and held hands in prayer, according to a local reporter at the scene.

Musselwhite said there was “a lot of sadness in the city” after the shooting, which he called a “sign of the times.” On Sunday, three people, including two children, were killed in a shooting at a garlic festival in Gilroy, California.

“I personally knew the store manager, so I’ll admit it’s pretty tough on me,” he said. “It’s a nightmare. It is the kind of event that everyone dreads.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/walmart-shooting-mississippi.html" id="aed353be-59a7-348a-a5a6-ef6b7b61ab17">The New York Times</a>.

A disgruntled employee walked into a Walmart in Mississippi on Tuesday and opened fire on his supervisors, killing two people in an early-morning attack that ended in a shootout in the store’s parking lot, officials said. The gunman and a police officer were also injured, according to authorities.

2 Killed After 'Disgruntled' Employee Opens Fire at Walmart in Mississippi, Officials Say

Mayor Darren Musselwhite of Southaven said that a “disgruntled” employee set off chaos at the store, lighting a fire inside and taking aim at a supervisor. The gunman went out a side door, chasing a store manager, who was killed in a parking lot, Musselwhite said.

The gunman, identified by prosecutors as Martez Tarrell Abram, 39, of Southaven, was shot twice by police and hospitalized Tuesday. He is facing two charges of murder, John Champion, the district attorney for Mississippi’s 17th Circuit Court District, said at a news conference. More charges may be added, he said.

A Walmart representative declined to share details of Abram’s employment, but Champion said he had been fired shortly before the shooting.

In the days before Abrams was terminated, another Walmart employee had reported him to police, Champion said.

“He was in the store and had a knife in his belt and showed it to an employee, and the employee was concerned and called the Police Department and wished to make a report,” Champion said. “To our knowledge he did not threaten anybody with it.”

WMC Action News 5, a local news outlet, reported that the DeSoto County Coroner’s office had identified the two people who were killed as Anthony Brown, 40, of Olive Branch; and Brandon Gales, 38, of Hernando.

“These people were doing the same thing that you and I do every day, showing up for work in an attempt to provide for their families, and then became victims of a senseless violent act,” Moore said of the victims.

A disgruntled former employee walked into a Walmart in Mississippi on Tuesday and opened fire on supervisors, killing two people in an early-morning attack that ended in a shootout in the store’s parking lot, officials said. The gunman and a police officer were also injured, according to authorities.

Shooting at Walmart in Mississippi Kills 2

The girl was treated for her injuries and released, officials said. But as footage of the dramatic encounter spread across social media, the episode served as the latest warning of what can go wrong when tourists get too close to wildlife.

The girl, who was not identified, was visiting from Odessa, Florida, when she encountered the bison near the Old Faithful Geyser area on Monday afternoon, according to the National Park Service.

A group of about 50 people had been within 5 to 10 feet of the bison for at least 20 minutes before the bison charged, officials said. Visitors are supposed to stay at least 25 yards from large wild animals in the park.

In a video clip, the bison can be seen ambling in a field while tourists walk in the background. Suddenly, the animal charges toward a cluster of people. Two people who appear to be adults escape. But as dust flies and people scream, the bison catches up to the young girl and thrusts her in the air with its head.

July is the height of tourism season at Yellowstone. Each summer, more than 2 million tourists swarm the park, putting them in proximity to the hundreds of animal species that live there, including bald eagles, bears and wolves. About 4,500 bison roam Yellowstone, the only place in the United States where the animals have lived continuously since prehistoric times, according to the park.

Bison weigh 1,000 to 2,000 pounds, can run 30 mph and are considered aggressive and unpredictable. They have injured more people in Yellowstone than any other animal.

But humans can’t seem to stay away. Interactions between humans and bison in recent years have left both species worse for the wear.

Last summer, authorities arrested a man who was captured on video goading and lunging at a bison on a paved road in Yellowstone. In a separate encounter that year, a woman was gored by a bison after a crowd got too close. In 2015, a woman was injured while trying to take a selfie with a bison.

In 2016, it was the bison that suffered. A calf had to be euthanized after visitors picked the animal up and put it in an SUV because they thought it was cold. The calf could be seen standing in the back seat of the vehicle, an odd contrast captured in a widely shared photo.

The calf was then rejected by its herd, officials said, and had to be put down because it was “causing a dangerous situation by continually approaching people and cars along the roadway,” the National Park Service said.

The tourists were later cited for transporting the calf, officials said.

Park officials said they were investigating the encounter between the bison and the 9-year-old girl and had not issued any citations. The National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions about the encounter or the video.

Yellowstone encourages visitors to take the Yellowstone Pledge, a promise to respect the park and the animals that live there.

“Wildlife in Yellowstone National Park are wild,” the National Park Service warned again this week. “When an animal is near a trail, boardwalk, parking lot, or in a developed area, give it space.”

Officials urged visitors to stay 25 yards away from large animals like bison, and at least 100 yards from bears and wolves. “If need be, turn around and go the other way to avoid interacting with a wild animal,” the National Park Service said.

A bull bison roaming Yellowstone National Park injured a 9-year-old girl this week, charging at her as she tried to run away and head-butting her into the air, according to park officials and a video posted on social media.

Sarah Mervosh

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