Why Texas Students Are Being Tackled and Tasered, and Trump’s Latest Target for Retribution

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I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Thursday, May 28th, here's what we're covering.

Let's go back to when the officers were called when the deputies came. I was trying to text my mom be like, just to tell her like, what was going on. And so that's when the sheriff was like, "Okay, I'm gonna, uh, you're under arrest for theft." A new investigation from the Times looks at what has happened as more police officers have been hired at schools to keep students safe.

“I just remember that there was like a lot of tugging and pushing, and I had somebody, like my head was against the ground.”

And I, one point, my head had hit the desk too. My colleagues in partnership with the San Antonio Express News looked at Texas specifically. Back in 2022, the state was rocked by one of the deadliest school shootings in US history when a gunman opened fire at Rob Elementary in Uvalde, killing 21 people. The next year, lawmakers passed legislation requiring one licensed police officer at every public school.

The most ambitious effort of its kind. Now, Texas has more school district police departments than all other states put together.

“The law that Texas passed was largely cast as a way to protect students from school shooters.”

But we have found that the way officers use force on students raises questions about whether something that was meant to help them is actually harming some students instead. Claire Amari is part of the team who dug through thousands of pages of police records and did hundreds of interviews with students, parents, teachers, and law enforcement officials in Texas to see how the influx of officers has played out. The team found that while many people welcomed the police presence on campus, there were also many incidents where officers grabbed, tackled,

or even used tasers on students, leading to injuries and extreme instances. Some of these were captured on camera. In these videos, we've seen police officers knee one student in the face, slam another student into a metal lunch cart, and pin other students to the ground. We have also seen videos of officers punching students, of officers using pepper spray on students, and officers handcuffing young children. In all, the Times documented more than 2,600 individual cases in which school police officers in Texas used force in the last few years.

In one, a 17-year-old honor student was accused of stealing a little classroom doorbell, worth about 13 bucks, which she says she accidentally knocked off the wall. Still, an assistant principal called in the police, and when she pulled away from them, they wrestled her to the ground. Video footage shows her gasping for air for three minutes. Her mug shop was later posted online, and she was so upset by the whole experience that she finished the school year from home, and skipped her graduation ceremony.

Overall, the investigation found that the constant presence of police has transformed how many Texas schools manage discipline. While state law says that districts should not assign officers to handle, quote, routine student discipline. There were many incidents where police were responding to conduct that appeared to be minor, the kind of thing that once would have just landed kids in the principal's office. Experts say that what's happened in Texas is that lawmakers went all in on school policing without putting in place adequate safeguards to protect students. You can find the full investigation into police and schools in the Times app or at NYTimes.com.

Middle East over the past 24 hours, both Iran and the U.S. say they've carried out a fresh flurry of attacks. Yesterday, American troops shot down four drones over the street of Hormuz in what a U.S. official described as self defense strikes.

And this morning, Iran's revolutionary guards corps said it retaliated by targeting an American military base. The scattered exchanges are threatening the fragile ceasefire between the two countries.

At the same time, president Trump is continuing to insist that a peace deal to end the war is just around the corner. Though yesterday at the White House, he said he would not be rushed. Trump rejected any suggestion that the looming midterm elections and soaring gas prices were putting political pressure on him to end the conflict.

At the Justice Department, President Trump's retribution campaign now seems to have reached E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine writer who accused him of sexual assault.

“According to two people with direct knowledge of the situation, the DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into Carroll that centers on whether she committed perjury in her civil lawsuits against Trump.”

In one suit, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a department store dressing room in the mid 1990s and said he'd defamed her by calling the case a hoax and a lie on social media.

In another related defamation case, a jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll more than $80 million in damages.

Trump has since asked the Supreme Court to step in and for the moment he hasn't been forced to pay anything. While Trump has tried to demean and discredit Carroll for years, the DOJ's move now comes as the President has tried to use the full power of the federal government to target his adversaries. So far with little pushback from inside the department. Last September, the fallout from a Charlie Kirk's killing has spread to the workplace. People are getting fired for comments that seem to celebrate or glorify this assassination.

“Many people found themselves facing heat for comments they made about Charlie Kirk after he was shot and killed on a speaking tour.”

When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out, and hell, call their employer.

Vice President JD Vance along with other supporters of Kirk encouraged people to name and shame anyone seen as criticizing the divisive conservative activist. Lucas from Wisconsin, you're fired. Shelby from North Dakota, you've been fired. Scores of people were fired or faced other repercussions, including health care workers, lawyers, restaurant workers. Now some people who lost their jobs are getting big payouts.

“Ball State University in Indiana, just agreed to pay $225,000 to a former administrator who was fired after she made a private Facebook post saying,”

"If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can't be friends. Someone took a screenshot of it and it's spread everywhere. In trying to justify her firing, the university's president said the flood of angry calls and emails they got about her post were disrupting campus operations.

It's only the latest case like this. Last week, Florida officials agreed to pay almost half a million dollars to a state biologist who'd been fired over a meme about Kirk that she posted on Instagram.

And in Tennessee, a professor got another half a million dollar settlement from his university. There could be more payouts coming. One free speech advocacy group says it's tracking more than a dozen federal lawsuits from other workers who also say they were disciplined or fired for their comments about Kirk. And finally, when you get to a horizon, it's sort of this bright, beautiful, open, clean place where there's like 25 gas pumps. My colleague Karina Null joined in on a quest recently in California for cheap gas.

With prices ticking up and up, people are looking for any break they can get, and that has turned a rural gas station 40 miles outside San Diego into a hopping destination. I got there just before 8 a.m. on a Wednesday, there's still just so much traffic coming in coming out just a constant line of customers. She visited horizon fuel center, which has been offering gas that is sometimes nearly a dollar a gallon cheaper than its competitors. The station is on tribal land, which means it's exempt from state taxes and fees hence the deal.

A lot of people Karina talk to rolling through. We're using an app that compares gas prices and that help them find horizon. A lot of people talked about driving out of their way just to come to this place. Like they would pass a few gas stations just to get here or drive several more miles just to come here to save and meant that they had more money for groceries and meant that they could maybe buy their sons from treats after practice. To talk to some people who were retired and so were on a fixed income and could not keep up with any rising gas prices.

Karina said she talked to one big rig driver who haul sand and gravel around and he was expecting to have to spend a thousand dollars that day on diesel. He told her his last delivery route had brought his tank to almost empty and all he could do was cross his fingers and just hope he had enough fuel to make it all the way to horizon.

It would shift toward her and say hi Jen, how are you this morning? Jen, do you want to hear a joke? Jen, do you want to have a conversation? A look at the push to have AI powered robots keep older Americans company as they age. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.