Louisville bank shooting leaves 5 dead, TN state lawmaker reappointed: 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Louisville shooting leaves 5 dead
A bank employee reportedly opened fire in Louisville Monday. Plus, Paste BN Pentagon Correspondent Tom Vanden Brook explains the Pentagon leaks about the war in Ukraine, an expelled Tennessee lawmaker has been reappointed to the state legislature, the mother of a 6-year-old who shot his teacher has been charged, and Paste BN National Correspondent Trevor Hughes explains how carbon capture could help fight global warming.
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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 Tuesday, the 11th of April 2023. Today, another American shooting. Plus, how serious was the documents leaked from the Pentagon, and a new technology could be the latest tool to fight global warming.
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A gunman opened fire at a Louisville bank yesterday morning, killing five people and injuring at least eight others. The suspect is also dead. Officials said the attacker was an employee who live-streamed the violence on Instagram. The incident is the 15th mass shooting this year where four or more victims were killed. That's the largest total in a year's first hundred days since 2009, according to a joint database from Paste BN, The Associated Press, and Northeastern University.
Yesterday's victims ranged in age from 40 to 64 and were all bank employees. Officers, within three minutes of being dispatched, arrived on the scene and exchanged gunfire with the attacker, killing him, according to the city's interim police chief. President Joe Biden lamented the latest shooting and called out Republicans in Congress to act on gun legislation.
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The Justice Department has launched an investigation into the leaked secret documents from the Pentagon. The leaks, first reported by The New York Times, includes sensitive information about the war efforts in Ukraine. I spoke with Paste BN Pentagon Correspondent Tom Vanden Brook to learn more. Hi, Tom. Thanks for hopping on the podcast.
Tom Vanden Brook:
Good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So, Tom, let's just start with the documents themselves. What's in these leaked documents?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Taylor, it's dozens of pages of highly classified documents relating primarily to the war in Ukraine, assessments that the Pentagon and other agencies have of Ukrainian capabilities, Russian capabilities. There are other documents related to intelligence on US adversaries and allies worldwide.
Taylor Wilson:
What impact might this have on the ongoing war in Ukraine?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, we heard from the Pentagon that the information is so sensitive that it could cost people's lives. Now oftentimes they say this sort of thing is ... In the course of your reporting, you hear about this, when you have sensitive documents, not to publish them because of the potential loss of life. But apparently they think these things are so significant that it has the potential to affect the course of the war in Ukraine.
Taylor Wilson:
Tom, to a layperson civilian like me, this type of leak seems nearly impossible. I mean how did this happen from one of the most secure military organizations in the world?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, one of the craziest things about it, Taylor, was this stuff was sitting essentially in plain sight since early March, and the Pentagon was unaware of it. In fact, they were unaware of it until last week, when The New York Times first broke the story that the stuff was out there. It was on a couple of different sites, one initially used by gamers, and then it was on Twitter.
Now they haven't authenticated these documents, but there's almost no chance that they're not authentic, that they're not real. Some of them have been altered. So there's some question about that. But there's no doubt that these do contain really sensitive information.
Taylor Wilson:
What is the main or what could be the main motivation behind someone actually leaking these and what punishment might they face?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, the motivation's really unclear, Taylor, because, again, these were sitting out there for some time. It's hard to tell who would gain advantage by it because it details Russian vulnerabilities, it details Ukrainian vulnerabilities, and it shows the sorts of methods that the United States has to collect information. So there are lots of parties that would potentially be harmed by it.
Who gains by this? It's hard to say. But whoever has done it faces really serious penalties. So, for instance, when Chelsea Manning, the then Army private who released a bunch of documents back around 2008 to WikiLeaks, she ended up getting a prison term of 35 years. That was later commuted by President Obama. But 35 years is a pretty serious prison sentence.
Taylor Wilson:
Tom Vanden Brook covers the Pentagon for Paste BN. Thanks, Tom.
Tom Vanden Brook:
Thanks, Taylor. Take care.
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Taylor Wilson:
Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones will reclaim his seat today in the state's legislature. That's with the backing of Nashville's council, which voted to reappoint him four days after he was expelled for leading gun reform chance with a bullhorn on the chamber floor.
After a House Republican super majority ejected Jones, Nashville's left-leaning council responsible for filling the vacancy voted him back into the seat yesterday. Additionally, House members voted to expel Representative Justin Pearson, who also used a bullhorn during the floor protest. County commissioners will meet tomorrow to consider that matter.
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The mother of a six-year-old who shot a teacher at a Virginia elementary school has been charged in connection with the shooting. Deja Taylor faces charges of felony child neglect and recklessly leaving a loaded firearm so as to endanger a child. Authorities alleged that the firearm the boy used in the shooting belonged to his mother.
The teacher, Abby Zwerner, was shot in the hand and chest in January inside her classroom. She received four surgeries and spent nearly two weeks in the hospital. She filed a lawsuit last week seeking $40 million in damages from school officials, accusing administrators of negligence and ignoring warnings the day of the shooting. Her attorney previously told reporters that school staff informed administrators multiple times that the student had a gun and was threatening his fellow students before she was shot.
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Carbon capture. The technology might be the next big tool we have to fight global warming, and companies are racing in the next few months to qualify for new federal tax credits and funding. Paste BN National Correspondent Trevor Hughes explains. Trevor, welcome back to 5 Things.
Trevor Hughes:
Hey there.
Taylor Wilson:
So let's just start here. What is carbon capture and how does it work?
Trevor Hughes:
To set the stage, when we burn fossil fuels, we release carbon dioxide, carbon. That is a heat-trapping gas that leads to climate change. It's essentially like a blanket that covers the earth and traps heat inside.
So carbon capture essentially aims to vacuum out that carbon dioxide from the air, returning us to an earlier time when that blanket wasn't so thick. It's a complicated and expensive process most of the time, but its backers believe it really has a lot of promise if they can do it on a big enough scale.
Taylor Wilson:
Trevor, can you talk a little about some of the government incentive surrounding carbon capture?
Trevor Hughes:
The Biden administration and Congress have gone really all in on this, billions and billions of dollars for this technology, and billions more for these four centers of excellence that are going to be built around the country to demonstrate how this process works.
Now, again, this is something that's still relatively in its infancy. We know how to capture carbon from the air. It's just a question of doing it affordably and on a truly massive scale, because you've got to think we are attempting to reverse generations of burning coal, generations of burning oil, generations of burning natural gas, generations of burning wood.
Taylor Wilson:
Trevor, does this technology have any critics?
Trevor Hughes:
There are folks who say that this is just a pie in the sky kind of solution, that it works, sure, but it doesn't actually do enough to resolve the problem. The criticism is that it allows us as a society to delay a transition away from fossil fuels by vacuuming up this carbon. The theory is that you could just keep burning fossil fuels instead of pivoting much more dramatically toward renewables like solar or wind or hydro.
There is another criticism as well, which is that in some oil fields, in some natural gas fields, you can actually inject the carbon dioxide back into the ground of old oil fields and essentially pump out the last bits of oil remaining. So not only does it potentially delay our transition, but it could even prolong it.
Taylor Wilson:
Generally speaking, what happens to the carbon dioxide that's extracted?
Trevor Hughes:
That's a big part of the problem. We're talking about massive quantities here. Again, if you've ever seen a strip mine of coal, you have a sense of the scale of what one coal mine looks like. But we've got massive reservoirs of oil from under the ground that have been emptied out. And so, you're talking just absolutely massive volumes of carbon.
So the major theory on how to use it or get rid of it is to essentially inject it back underground, to put it into stone or rock formations that can absorb this gas and keep it there trapped forever.
Taylor Wilson:
Trevor Hughes, thanks so much.
Trevor Hughes:
You bet.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find new episodes every day of the week right here wherever you get your audio. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from Paste BN.