Police urged to charge into Texas school during massacre, Title IX fraud: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Onlookers urged police to charge into Texas school during massacre

National correspondent Trevor Hughes also sets the scene in Uvalde of a community in mourning. Plus, Southern Baptist Convention leaders will release a list of ministers accused of sexual misconduct, reporter Kenny Jacoby looks into Title IX fraud, Ukraine's president won't concede Russia-occupied territory and a huge asteroid gets close to Earth.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Thursday, the 26th of May, 2022. Today, the latest from Uvalde. Plus a look at Title IX fraud and more.

Here are some of the top headlines:

1. Texas Democratic governor candidate, Beto O'Rourke, confronted Republican governor, Greg Abbott yesterday, a day after the Uvalde massacre killed 19 children. O'Rourke called out Abbott's gun record and said, "This is on you."

2. FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Califf admitted yesterday that the agency was too slow in responding to the baby formula shortage. According to testimony in front of house lawmakers yesterday, the shortage is also expected to continue at least another month.

3. And China's foreign minister is visiting the Solomon Islands today. China signed a security pact with the country last month, raising global fears that China could establish a military base in the island nation.

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A prayer vigil was held yesterday for the 19 children and two teachers who were killed in this week's devastating Texas mass shooting.

Speaker at vigil:

"I've been amazed at that all,,,"

Taylor Wilson:

A gunman on Tuesday walked into Robb Elementary School and slaughtered fourth graders in the country's latest mass shooting tragedy. National Correspondent Trevor Hughes is in Uvalde, Texas, and gave producer PJ Elliott this scene report from a community in mourning.

Trevor Hughes:

We're learning more and more about the victims in this case, the devastation that their families are facing, that this entire community is facing. This is a city of about 16,000 people, and everyone here knows everybody else. They may not be best friends, but they have a nodding acquaintance with pretty much everyone. That's what I keep hearing over and over. And so the death of even one child is such a devastation. And to have this many children, to have this entire generation of students lost, is just horrifying to this community.

PJ Elliott:

Has there been any information on the shooter or a motive for the shooting?

Trevor Hughes:

There have been some reports about his motivations, but we're still trying to pin them down. I don't think anyone has a strong sense yet of exactly what drove him to do this, what caused him to do this. But obviously it was something he planned in advance. He bought these firearms and he bought a whole heck of a lot of ammunition in advance of the shooting.

PJ Elliott:

What about the shooter getting into the school? If schools are secure, how was he able to get into the building?

Trevor Hughes:

We're still learning a lot of the details of exactly how he entered the school, but it sounds like he exchanged gunfire potentially, with police officers outside of the school perhaps, and then was able to enter the school. Now I've been in lots of schools over the years, and in many cases there is only one entrance, but there's no physical barrier that stops you from entering that school most of the time. Especially an elementary school.

PJ Elliott:

So what's next for the investigation?

Trevor Hughes:

There are law enforcement officers still at the suspect's grandmother's house. We're still trying to understand exactly what that means. I think we're still waiting to hear a little bit more about what his motivation was. And I think we're still waiting to really understand the true toll that these deaths are going to take on this tiny little city. This is a place where folks know each other and it's neighbors' children, it's kids across the street. The number of folks that I have talked to today, who are just absolutely devastated and wondering why this happened, how this happened, and what could be done to have prevented it? Those are questions we still just don't have answers to.

Taylor Wilson:

As investigators work to track the massacre, there are new questions about how and why the shooter was able to continue inside the school for some 40 minutes before being killed by a border patrol team. Witnesses say parents and others who arrived at the school urged police officers to charge in. But for reasons that remain unclear, officers continued standing outside the school and may have even blocked parents from getting by to try and save their children. Javier Cazares lost his fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, in the tragedy. He raced to the school and considered charging past police with other bystanders. He said, "Let's just rush in because the cops aren't doing anything like they are supposed to. More could have been done. They were unprepared."

Officials say the shooter encountered a school district security officer outside the school, though it's not clear how he then entered the building. And there were conflicting reports on whether the men exchanged gunfire. After entering the school, the gunman entered one classroom, locked the door and began firing. Border patrol agents who ultimately did break into the classroom, also initially had trouble doing so and had to get a staff member to open the door with a key.

Meanwhile, victims' bodies are expected to be released to their families today. Uvalde Justice of the Peace, Lalo Diaz, had to identify the victims. He told the El Paso Times of the USA TODAY network that families waiting for news of their children gave DNA swabs to authorities to help identify bodies. For all the latest from the Uvalde massacre, stay with USATODAY.com.

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Southern Baptist Convention leaders will today publish a list of ministers accused of sexual misconduct. As we talked about on 5 Things earlier this week, a report out Sunday found that the organization perpetuated a cycle of abuse for two decades, by ignoring reports of sexual abuse and dismissing recommendations for reform. That came from the Guidepost Solutions investigative firm and amid the scandal, several top leaders have resigned and others met on Tuesday to discuss the report. It found that high ranking staff maintained a list with hundreds of names of ministers accused of sexual misconduct, but did nothing with it. And that leaders often spoke poorly about abuse survivors behind their backs. Guidepost urged the SBC to create an offender database, formally apologize to survivors, and clarify standards for its churches amid other recommendations.

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Universities across the US collectively created the illusion of thousands more female athletic opportunities, by abusing federal reporting rules. Reporter Kenny Jacoby tells us more about the dark illusion of equity in college sports.

Kenny Jacoby:

Title IX was supposed to close the gender gap in college athletics by requiring schools to provide men and women equitable opportunities to play sports, but many of the colleges across the country, some of the biggest and best known colleges, are manipulating their rosters to appear more balanced than they are. Those main methods that they are using include packing their women's teams with extra players who never compete, double and triple counting women while under-counting men, and even classifying male practice players as women. And altogether, this has conjured the illusion of thousands more female athletic opportunities than actually exist.

The benefit is, if your numbers appear more equitable than they really are in this federal database that the US Department of Education publishes, it allows them to evade detection. This is really the only widely available information that members of the public have to just go and look up their school. That was the purpose of this law that requires data collection, was so that people could go in and take a look and see if their school was equitable, but because of all these inflated numbers, unless you knew the specifics of these roster counting methods and things like male practice players, which the department does not make clear, you might just assume that, "Oh yeah, my school's numbers, they look good," and you might not file that complaint to the US Department of Education or file that lawsuit.

The US Department of Education can do something about this. They oversee Title IX compliance, they've done very little to reign in number padding. Courts have said that athletes must receive genuine participation opportunities in order to be counted, but the department allows schools to just report inflated numbers, without assessing whether the opportunities are legitimate. There's one method specifically that they allow, which is the counting of male practice players as female athletes. That would be really easy to fix with the stroke of a pen. They could just instruct schools not to count male practice players anymore, and that would really undo a lot of confusion in the numbers that they are putting out. But advocates have been pushing the department on this for at least a decade now, and haven't made much progress.

Taylor Wilson:

You can find a link to Kenny's story in today's episode description.

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Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, reiterated yesterday that the return of Ukrainian territory controlled by Russia is a pre-condition for any peace negotiations. Those comments came hours after former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, urged Ukraine to concede occupied territory. Ukrainians support Zelensky's position overwhelmingly. A recent poll showed 82% refused to concede any land to end the war. Meanwhile, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a decree fast tracking Russian citizenship for residents of occupied Ukrainian cities, and Russian shelling continues on cities in the eastern Donbas region.

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The largest asteroid to approach earth this year, and for the foreseeable future, is zooming by this week. It's called 1989 JA, and estimated to be 1.1 miles long, and at least 3,200 feet wide, according to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. For reference, that's twice the size of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. The space rock is also labeled as potentially hazardous, because it's an Apollo asteroid, meaning it crosses Earth's orbit. Senior planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute, Frank Marchis, told USA TODAY, that the asteroid is traveling at 30,000 miles per hour. NASA projects that this asteroid will be the closest to get to earth in the next 172 years.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every morning on whatever your favorite podcast app is. Thanks to PJ Elliott for his great work on the show, and I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Questions surround Uvalde police, asteroid to pass Earth: 5 Things podcast