A2 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, JUNE 9 , 2022
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l In some June 8 editions, a
Metro article about two Oakton
High School students who were
killed in a car crash in Fairfax
County misspelled the last name
of a teen who witnessed the
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speakers. All time zones listed are
Eastern.Thursday, June 9 | 4 p.m.
“Capehart”
Michael R. Jackson, playwright,
lyricist and composer, “A Strange
Loop”Moderated by Jonathan Capehart
Friday, June 10 | 9 a .m.
First Look
Ruth Marcus, deputy editorial page
editor, The Washington PostGeorge F. Will, opinions columnist,
The Washington PostModerated by Jonathan Capehart
Friday, June 10 | 1 1 a.m.
Future of Work: New Ways of
Leading and InnovatingEllyn Shook, chief leadership and
human resources officer,
AccentureDrew Houston, founder and CEO,
DropboxPresenting sponsor: ADP
Moderated by Danielle Abril
Washington Post Live
eventsNEW YORK
Trump’s deposition in
civil case set for July 15Donald Tr ump and two of h is
adult c hildren are scheduled to sit
for d epositions with the N ew York
attorney g eneral’s o ffice next
month as part of the state’s long-
running civil investigation i nto
the Trump f amily’s b usiness
practices.
The testimony is s cheduled to
start on July 15, a Friday, a nd may
stretch into t he following w eek,
according to a stipulation agreed
to by attorneys for Tr ump and the
attorney g eneral’s o ffice that was
endorsed by a judge on
Wednesday.
An appeals court r uled l ate last
month that Tr ump, D onald
Tr ump Jr. and Ivanka Tr ump, w ho
served as executives at t he Tr ump
Organization, could not avoid
complying with New York
Attorney G eneral Letitia James’s
subpoenas f or their testimony.
James is investigating whether
Tr ump’s a lleged p ractice of
manipulating the v alue of his real
estate assets to try to obtain t ax
breaks or better l oan rates
amounted to i llegal conduct. If
she f inds the l aw w as broken, she
could sue h im o r the company,
which could result in monetary
penalties or potentially l ead t o
limitations on t he Tr ump
Organization’s ability t o do
business.
— Shayna JacobsNATIONAL SECURITY
Brookings sidelines
president amid probeThe Brookings Institution, an
esteemed D.C. research firm, o n
Wednesday placed i ts p resident,
retired G en. John R. A llen, on
administrative leave a mid a
federal investigation examining
his activities on behalf of the
government o f Qatar y ears a go.
Allen, once a prominent
military commander who led all
U. S. c ombat forces in
Afghanistan, is s uspected of
secretly lobbying the Tr ump
administration to soften its
criticism o f the oil-rich nation
during a tense period in 20 17
when Saudi Arabia a nd o ther Gulfnations imposed harsh e conomic
measures against the Qatari
government over allegations it
supported Islamist extremists,
according to court r ecords.
Federal prosecutors also h ave
alleged t hat Allen sought to
impede the investigation b y
attempting to withhold evidence
and lying t o authorities, those
documents s how.
Allen met with senior Qatari
leaders i n 2017, before h is
appointment as the B rookings
Institution’s president. He w as a
part-time senior fellow there at
the t ime a nd, a ccording to law
enforcement, used h is Brookings
email to communicate with
officials in the Trump
administration, including the
White House n ational security
adviser a t the time, Lt. G en. H.R.
McMaster.
— Al ex HortonCALIFORNIA
Mexican church leader
sentenced for abuseThe leader of the Mexican
megachurch La L uz del Mundo
has been sentenced to 16 years
and eight months i n a California
prison for s exually abusing three
girls.
Naasón Joaquín García, 53, w as
sentenced Wednesday i n Los
Angeles Superior C ourt after
pleading guilty Friday to two
counts of forcible oral copulation
involving minors and one count
of a lewd act upon a child who
was 1 5.
García, who is c onsidered t he
“apostle” o f Jesus Christ by h is
5 million worldwide followers,
had v igorously fought the charges
until he abruptly pleaded guilty
last week.
Judge Ronald Coen, who called
García a sexual predator, denied
requests b y the v ictims t o impose
a stiffer s entence, saying h is
hands w ere tied b y the p lea
agreement.
García’s grandfather founded
the G uadalajara-based
fundamentalist Christian church
— known b y its English name, t he
Light of the World — in 1926.
García took over as “apostle” a fter
his f ather, Samuel Joaquín Flores,
died in 2 014.
— Associated PressDIGEST
In Uvalde testimony, a child’s heartbreaking shrug
The adults who
testified at
Wednesday’s
hearing on gun
violence cried
and shuddered
and yelled. These
men and women,
who had been
affected by the
recent shootings
in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex.,
fought to speak through their
tears. They clenched their jaws
in outrage. They spoke of racism
and the deification of the
Second Amendment and the
country’s willful denial of its
true nature. Some witnesses
were indignant. Others were
rendered nearly mute as the
dam burst from the magnitude
of their grief.
Meanwhile, the little girl who
survived the Uvalde shooting
shrugged off her pain. She
punctuated that stoicism with
silence. And nothing could have
been more heartbreaking.
Miah Cerrillo, 11, lived
through the terror that unfolded
at Robb Elementary School last
month when a gunman killed
19 students and two teachers.
With the support of her
parents and her pediatrician,
she recorded a video describing
for the House Committee on
Oversight and Reform the
events of that day. Miah was
positioned in front of an orange
and blue backdrop wearing a
tank top adorned with three
sunflowers. Her hair was pulled
back from her face and her
eyeglasses were perched on her
nose as she looked into the
camera and responded to an
unseen interviewer.
Her video lasted only a couple
of minutes, but that was more
than enough time to
communicate the magnitude of
the gore. The gunman had fired
into her classroom. He shot her
teacher in the head. He shot
students. He shot the friend
next to her.
“And I thought he was going
to come back to the room. So I
grabbed the blood and I put it
all over me, and... ”
Miah’s voice trailed off until
she stopped speaking
altogether. She did not cry or
wince or hiccup with anger. She
shrugged. It was a gesture that
was tragically simple and yet so
complicated because it raises
the question: Why?
The country has no answers
for why it has allowed theweight of its fears, phobias,
selfishness and racism to rest on
the narrow shoulders of
children. It’s a wonder Miah
even had the strength to raise
them in this gesture of
resignation.
She was prompted to
continue, and so she explained
that after camouflaging herself
with blood, she “just stayed
quiet.” She took her teacher’s
phone, and she called 911 for
help. While law enforcement
eventually broke into the
classrooms and killed the
gunman and escorted the
children out, lasting help from
legislators has yet to arrive.
The panelists had a lot to talk
about because the breadth of
the country’s dysfunction is
vast. Some of the men and
women who testified sat at the
standard long wood table inside
one of the chambers of the
Rayburn Building on Capitol
Hill and read their remarks into
a microphone. Others told their
story by video conference.
Zeneta Everhart described her
good-natured and buoyant son
Zaire Goodman, who was
wounded by a man charged with
the racist killing of 10 Black
shoppers at a Tops Friendly
Markets store in Buffalo. She
spoke of his injuries — the hole
in his neck and his back.
Everhart, who is Black,
underscored her belief that
America is a country rooted in
violence and guns, reminding
all who were listening that “my
ancestors [were] the firstcurrency of America.” She
pleaded for a fuller accounting
of Black Americans’
contributions to this country;
she reminded them that Black
history is American history and
should not be whitewashed. She
told legislators that “I do not
feel protected” and demanded
that they do their job. She
sniffled and paused frequently
to contain emotions that
threatened to derail her
intentions.
Kimberly and Felix Rubio
testified remotely about their
daughter Lexi, who was a
student at Robb. Kimberly did
all the talking, mostly through
tears. Felix could barely look
into the camera as he silently
wept. Lexi would have gone to
law school. She would have
done great things, Kimberly
Rubio said.
Lucretia Hughes Klucken
spoke at the invitation of the
committee’s minority members,
which is to say that she was
there to argue against increased
gun regulations. She, too, had
lost a child through gun
violence. Her 19-year-old son,
Emmanuel, was killed in 2016
by a felon with an illegally
obtained gun, she said, with a
tone of disgust and anger. In her
estimation, enhanced gun
regulations would be useless
because the ones that already
exist didn’t prevent her son’s
death.
“We must prepare to be our
own first responders,” she
shouted. And while her sorrowwas palpable, one couldn’t help
but imagine a country filled
with people who already
distrust one another, who
already are denying each other’s
humanity, who can’t agree on
facts, all armed against each
other in a storm of grief and
anger.
Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician
in Uvalde, didn’t lose a child in
the shooting, but he knew the
ones caught up in the mayhem.
He grew up in the small Texas
community and even attended
Robb Elementary. He
remembered seeing Miah at the
hospital where he worked. He
remembered the blood all over
her white Lilo & Stitch T-shirt.
He described the decapitated
bodies of two children who had
been brought to his hospital. He
saw how the bullets from the
AR-15-style weapons practically
pulverized their bodies.
He told the committee that he
became a pediatrician because
children are good patients.
Children accept the facts of
their situation. They do what
they’re asked to get better. They
don’t have to be cajoled or
bullied into making lifestyle
changes. Adults, Guerrero said,
are stubborn. They deny reality.
They think they know better
than the data. He asked the
legislators to consider
themselves the doctors and the
country their patient. And he
warned them that we are
bleeding out. In body and soul.
And the children, the most
resilient among us, are going
numb.
In the last few seconds of
Miah’s recorded remarks, she
was asked whether she felt safe
at school. She shook her head
no. “I don’t want it to happen
again,” she said. But considering
where the country stands, stuck
and stymied on significant gun
regulation, it probably will
happen again.
“Somewhere out there, there
is a mom listening to our
testimony thinking, ‘I can’t even
imagine their pain,’ not knowing
that our reality will one day be
hers, unless we act now,”
Kimberly Rubio said. Another
massacre will surely happen, in
a school or a grocery store,
somewhere. And if the
legislators have grown deaf to
the wailing grief of adult
survivors, perhaps they will be
stirred by the awful uncertainty,
detachment and brutal
indifference in a child’s shrug.Robin
Givhan
THE CRITIQUEJABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
Attorney Ben Crump arrives with family members of victims from
Buffalo during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform
hearing on gun violence in Washington on Wednesday.BY COLBY ITKOWITZ
Mississippi Republican Rep.
Michael Guest is fighting to keep
his seat partly because he voted
to establish a congressional c om-
mittee to investigate the Jan. 6
attack on the U. S. Capitol, an-
other sign that incumbents who
don’t take the hard-line position
that the 2020 election was inval-
id could find themselves strug-
gling to survive primary elec-
tions.
Guest, who is running for his
third term, faced a primary chal-
lenge from Michael Cassidy, a
former Navy pilot, who centered
his campaign on the notion that
Guest was not conservative
enough for deep-red Mississippi.
Cassidy narrowly beat Guest in
Tuesday’s primary, but neither
received more than 50 percent of
the vote, forcing them into a
head-to-head runoff on June 28.
Cassidy is among several Re-
publicans prevailing in primary
elections this year who have
continued to spread false claims
that the 2020 election results
were stolen from former presi-
dent Donald Tr ump. In O hio, J.R.
Majewski, who attended the
Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally and
who has ties to the QAnon con-
spiracy theory, beat out three
Republicans in a congressional
primary. In Pennsylvania, Doug
Mastriano, who also attended
the rally on the National Mall,
won the state’s gubernatorial
primary.
Guest was among the 147 Re-
publicans who, after the Jan. 6
attack, voted against certifying
President Biden’s victory. A
month later he signed an amicus
brief in support of a lawsuit
challenging the 2 020 results.Most recently, he co-sponsored
the “Women’s Bill of Rights”
resolution to define “sex” as a
person’s biological sex — an at-
tempt t o weaken r ights for t rans-
gender women — which he said
is needed as “the radical left
continues to push a woke ideol-
ogy on women.”
But to Cassidy, Guest’s deci-
sion to join 3 4 other House
Republicans to set up a special
commission to review the activi-
ties surrounding the Jan. 6 Capi-
tol attack was an unforgivable
act of disloyalty.
Neither Cassidy nor Guest im-
mediately responded to requests
for comment on their race.
In a local news interview a
week ago, Cassidy a ttacked G uest
over his support for the Jan. 6
committee, which begins i ts pub-
lic hearings on Thursday. “It is
the capstone of the Democratic
witch hunt of Tr ump and the
Republican Party. T he media and
the Democrats worked in ca-
hoots with each other, so blinded
by hatred of Tr ump,” he told the
Columbian-Progress.
Former Trump adviser Ste-
phen K. Bannon interviewed
Cassidy on Wednesday on his
War Room show, a popular plat-
form for the Make A merica Great
Again movement. Candidates
who appear on Bannon’s show
are Trump devotees and believe
the 2 020 election was stolenfrom him. In exchange for that
fealty, Bannon introduces them
to his millions of radio listeners,
which also can translate to new
donors.
“That Mr. Guest voted for the
Jan. 6 commission, when people
found out about that, they were
furious if they didn’t know about
it already. And so it was actually
somewhat easy pickings once
you tell people about your con-
gressman,” Cassidy told Bannon.
“He continues to defend that
vote to this day. ... He hasn’t said
anything about the political pris-
oners being held for being up on
the Capitol that day.”
Tr ump has endorsed d ozens of
candidates at every level of gov-
ernment this year, but Cassidy
did not receive the former presi-
dent’s coveted support ahead of
the primary.
Congressional hopefuls aren’t
the only candidates who are
winning Republican primaries
around the country.
GOP voters in two states so far
have chosen secretary of state
candidates who embrace the
falsehoods about the election
being stolen. If elected, they
would have direct oversight of
their state’s elections.
Audrey Tr ujillo, who ran un-
opposed in the New Mexico pri-
mary Tuesday, has been vocal in
her baseless criticisms of the
2020 results.
Last month, the Michigan Re-
publican Party voted to advance
Kristina Karamo as their nomi-
nee — the state doesn’t have
primary elections for down-bal-
lot races — to be secretary of
state. Karamo has also spread
unfounded claims of widespread
voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Not all Republicans who have
bucked Tr ump have lost their
elections. On Tuesday in South
Dakota, Rep. Dusty Johnson,
who voted both to certify Biden’s
election win and for the creation
of the Jan. 6 committee, beat
back a primary challenge.
Most Republican candidates
have tried to prove their loyalty
to Tr ump regardless of whether
they had his support. Guest
pinned a 20 20 tweet at the top of
his Twitter feed thanking Trump
for his endorsement, which at a
quick glance could be mistaken
as current support.Incumbent faces runo≠ over Trump in Mississippi
Rep. Michael Guest got a
GOP challenger by voting
to create the Jan. 6 panel
HANNAH MATTIX/CLARION-LEDGER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
R ep. Michael Guest votes in the Mississippi 3rd District GOP
primary at Brandon Baptist Church in Brandon, Miss., on Tuesday.Freder ick GAITHERSBURG Hagerstown
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