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August 11, 2022

Beto O’Rourke Calls Out “Motherfucker” Who Laughed Over Uvalde Mass Shooting

Beto O’ Rourke isn’t just calling out Texas’s loose gun restrictions. He’s calling out hecklers too. During a Wednesday campaign event at a town hall in Mineral Falls, Texas, the Democratic candidate for governor erupted when someone in the audience laughed during remarks about the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

O’Rourke, a longtime advocate for gun reform, had been critiquing Texas’s gun laws that allowed the gunman in the Uvalde massacre to purchase his weapon legally. “(He) did not wait until he was sixteen or seventeen, but followed the law that’s on the books ladies and gentlemen,” O’ Rourke told the crowd, before getting down on one knee to emphasize that the gun had been designed for military use.

Then someone laughed. Loudly.

“It may be funny to you, motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me,” said O’Rourke, prompting a raucous cheer from the audience. Several videos of the encounter went viral on Twitter, with one reaching over 3.4 million views. 

This isn’t the first time that O’Rourke has confronted someone for presumably failing to take gun control seriously. Days after the Uvalde shooting in May, O’Rourke crashed a news conference attended by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and was heard telling Abbott that he was “doing nothing” to protect people from gun violence.  

“This is on you. Until you choose to do something, this will continue to happen,” O’Rourke said. “Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state, or they will continue to be killed.”

The identity of the heckler at Wednesday’s town hall is unclear. But a video from the event showed that several Abbott supporters were in attendance. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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