Transcript of Massie Ousted, Trump, Vance and Iran, San Diego Mosque Shooting Investigation

President Trump unseated another Republican incumbent who didn't fall in line. Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie is out.

Democratic voters turned out in force in 6 states that held primaries last night. What does it all mean for November's midterm elections?

I'm Ian Martinez. That's Leila Fadel. And this is Up First from NPR News. President Trump said he was an hour away from launching new strikes on Iran this week before calling them off. Yeah, it was all done. The boats, the ships are all loaded. He's now Iran a few more days to reach a deal.

And police and community leaders have identified the 3 victims of the San Diego mosque shooting, including a security guard credited with saving 140 children going to school inside.

We call them our martyrs and our heroes.

Authorities are also discovering the suspects had ties to a global white supremacist network. Stay with us, we'll give you the news you need to start your day. Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie is the latest Republican lawmaker to lose his seat for crossing President Trump.

Yeah, the race was another display of the president's hold on Republican voters. Massie lost his primary to Trump-backed candidate Ed Galerine by nearly 10 percentage points last night. That was just one race among 6 states that held elections Tuesday, the busiest primary day of the midterms. Democrats in Georgia and other states continue to see large large voter turnout, which could be a good sign for them in November's midterm elections.

NPR's Stephen Fowler stayed up late last night to watch these results and joins us here early this morning. Good morning, Stephen.

Good morning.

I imagine you have not slept. Did Massey lose because he went against some of Trump's policies?

Yes and no. I mean, Thomas Massey clashed with Trump over the Epstein files. He actually led to the release of the files. He clashed with Trump over the Iran war and foreign conflicts. He opposed Trump's one big trouphul bill, so Trump did back a challenger, former Navy SEAL officer Ed Galraine, in what's the latest example of Trump taking out anyone who isn't 100% loyal in the last year or so. The last time an incumbent lost was Saturday with Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, but Massey kept it close. I will also note that yesterday Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to oust incumbent Senator John Cornyn ahead of next Tuesday's runoff. You're already hearing some Republicans there fret if Paxton wins because polls indicate his victory would make the general election race more competitive, especially in what's shaping up to be a wave year for Democrats.

So let's move to another state with competitive races, Georgia. Tell us how the high-profile contests there went down.

Several of them still won't be decided for another month because of runoffs, like the very, very expensive governor contest where billionaire healthcare executive Rick Jackson narrowly trailed Trump-backed Lieutenant Governor Bert Jones on the Republican Republican side. You also have Congressman Mike Collins going to a runoff against Derrick Dooley, the candidate backed by Governor Brian Kemp. That's for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination to face off against incumbent Democrat Jon Ossoff. There was a bit of a surprise as a late-breaking push to elect Democratic-aligned candidates to the state Supreme Court saw both incumbents appointed by Republicans win, though one of them more narrowly than the other.

And what are your big takeaways from the results in these races?

Well, mainly a sign that Georgia's court races aren't as politicized as a state like, say, Wisconsin, and that the disparity could stem from voters picking one candidate who seemed more Democratic-coded in the technically nonpartisan race. Also, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms winning the Democratic governor's nod, even with some of the baggage from her one term in office, also says a lot about the primary electorate's thoughts. Big takeaway though: Democratic enthusiasm Overall, in Georgia, Democrats accounted for 53% of the vote compared to 45% for Republicans. That gap is going to be something to watch when looking at these key races in November.

Now, several other states held primaries yesterday. What are some of the highlights there?

Well, Alabama's governor's race will be between current U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican, against former U.S. Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat. Several of those U.S. House primaries in Alabama won't count, and there will be a special election in a few months where the state is reverting some districts to old lines more favorable to Republicans. That's because of last month's Supreme Court ruling gutting part of the Voting Rights Act. In Pennsylvania, several key matchups are set as polls there suggest 3 Republican-held districts are basically toss-ups. And in many races around the country and up and down the ballot, the general election was basically yesterday since there's so many uncontested elections and safe seats.

That's NPR's Stephen Fowler in Atlanta. Thank you, Stephen.

Thank you.

President Trump says he was an hour away from making the decision to launch new strikes against Iran this week before calling them off.

Yeah, it was all done. The boats, the ships are all loaded. They're loaded to the brim. And we're all set to start. Trump said Tuesday he's now giving Iran 2 or 3 days to reach a deal, maybe a week, extending the state of limbo that has defined the conflict for the last several weeks.

NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez has been covering the various moves, and he joins us now. Good morning, Franco.

Good morning, Leila.

I feel like I'm having a little déjà vu here. I've heard Trump threaten to attack Iran during the ceasefire just to pull back from the threat in the midst of these negotiations. I mean, what happened this time? What are Trump and others in the administration saying?

Yeah, Trump was talking to reporters after giving them a tour of the construction site of his new ballroom, and that's why you could hear all the dinging and clanking in the clip. He said he delayed the strikes because of serious negotiations happening with Iran. Now, J.D. Vance, the vice president, later expanded on Trump's remarks. But he also gave a slightly different characterization of the prospects. But Vance did say there were two pathways for Iran, you know, continue to negotiate or restart the military campaign.

It takes two to tango.

We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon.

So as the president just told me, we're locked and loaded.

We don't want to go down that pathway, but the president is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to.

And echoing Trump's comments from before, Vance also insisted that this was, quote, not a forever war.

Okay, he says it's not a forever war, but it is an open-ended war. I mean, it's already gone on longer than the president said it would, right?

And the idea that the U.S. could still strike this weekend, you know, kind of just speaks to that uncertainty that former officials I'm speaking with say could actually extend the conflict for months. Mona, Kubian, a former State Department official and at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warns it's turning into a, quote, frozen conflict that can reignite at any time.

The bigger fear is also just that there is no resolution, or there's a resolution that leads to Iran's retaining de facto control over the Strait of Hormuz and Iran being able to continue to be disruptive.

And she called it kind of a half solution that in essence leads to a prolonged stalemate in which Trump's constant threats really impair any real movement toward economic repair or economic growth in the region.

Now, you said earlier that Vance was characterizing the prospects of the negotiations differently. What did you mean?

Right. The president says there are serious negotiations happening with prospects of a deal. But Vance, meanwhile, says Iran's negotiating position is not clear. I mean, Vance says the country is fractured, the leadership is fractured, that the supreme leader has one view and other leaders have a different view on the direction they want to go in. And Vance did not say, or he said he did not know if the divisions were due to bad communication or bad faith. But he admits that it's making the process all the more difficult. And that's kind of a problem because it's hard to reach an agreement on something when you can't even agree on the issues that you're negotiating about.

That's White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez. Thank you, Franco.

Thank you, Leila.

San Diego authorities are sharing more information about the victims and suspects in the attack at a mosque that killed 3 people.

Community leaders say the 3 men who were killed sacrificed their lives to save the 140 children inside the school at the center.

On Tuesday, Imam Taha Hassan, who leads the center, paid tribute to his friends and colleagues at a press conference.

We call them our brothers in the community. We call them our martyrs and our heroes.

There was Mansour Kazeeha, who goes by Abu El-Az. He'd been at the Islamic Center since they broke ground 40 years ago.

He was the handyman, he was the cook, he was the caretaker, he was the storekeeper. He was everything. I don't know what I'm going to do at the Islamic Center without his assistance, his daily assistance.

Nadir Awad lived across the street and ran to help when he heard the gunfire. His wife is a kindergarten teacher at the school inside. Kaziha, the elder, called 911 just before he was killed. He and Awad were trying to help.

Both of them, they tried to do something. They were hiding in the parking lot next to the kitchen. They tried to do something to protect.

And then there was the mosque security guard, Bryan Climax, who went by Amin Abdullah. In life, he was known for his welcoming smile and the security vest he wore at work.

He's the one who stopped them, who slowed them up, down. If he didn't do what he did, the two suspects would have easily access to every single classroom.

Police say he saved the lives of everyone else in that mosque. His daughter, Hawa Abdullah, spoke at a press conference and said he opposed any form of hate.

And I hope this moment we can all come together and to be kind to one another and to remember who he truly was, regardless if you were a Muslim, okay, if you were Christian, if you were Jewish, if you had no faith, he didn't care.

He would treat you human to human. He would smile at people he did not know.

Officials also started to share information about writings outlining the beliefs of the two teen suspects who killed these men. They met online. Special agent in charge of the FBI field office, Mark Remmely, said they, quote, "did not discriminate on who they hated." NPR's domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef has been looking into materials online that are believed to be tied to the incident, and she joins me now. Hi, Odette.

Hey, Leila.

So what have you found?

Well, I've watched a video that the suspects appear to have livestreamed of the shooting, and I've read a 75-page document that's attributed to two named individuals NPR has confirmed that those are the suspects' names with someone who's familiar but not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation. And the materials show that these individuals were part of a global white supremacist accelerationist movement.

Mm-hmm.

Um, they believed white people are being systematically replaced. Uh, they blame Jews for that. They believe Black people are genetically inferior. Uh, they believe women are also responsible for everything wrong in the world. And what they want, Leila, is to accelerate the disintegration of our social fabric and bring about civil war. I'll say that everything I looked at in terms of these materials was unfortunately very familiar.

Very familiar as in you've seen it before? They're following some kind of script?

Yes, very much so. This shooting recalls the 2019 attack at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, where an Australian white nationalist killed 51 people. Many elements appear to be copied here, you know, the live streaming, the type of clothing, the white handwriting on the guns. And the perpetrator of that attack is revered in the writings that I reviewed, you know, along with many others who've committed racially or religiously driven violence. Heidi Beyrich of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism says this clearly shows the global nature of violence tied to far-right ideology.

These movements, they're not confined by borders. They are truly transnational. There have been killings in multiple countries motivated by the same idea—

in Germany, in Norway, in the United States, in New Zealand, in, uh, Serbia not that long ago, in Bratislava in Slovakia.

Authorities yesterday also said that it appears the suspects in this case were radicalized online. Is that apparent from the materials you looked at?

Well, those indicators that the suspects were replicating previous attacks, um, that certainly suggests that they consumed online content that directed how they executed this attack. But something that was different here is that the writings, uh, didn't only pull from pseudoscience and conspiracy theories found in obscure online hate spaces. They also mentioned The fear of Sharia law taking over towns in Texas, a Somali daycare fraud in Minnesota. They claimed Islam is incompatible with the West, and they parroted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. You know, this is not fringe material anymore found only in obscure far-right forums. These are now mainstream talking points in right-leaning media, from Republican members of Congress, and even the White House.

That's NPR's Odette Yousef. Thank you for that reporting, Odette.

Thank you.

And that's Up First for Wednesday, May 20th. I'm Leila Faldin.

And I'm Emilio Martinez. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Megan Pratz, Rebecca Metzler, Andrew Sussman, Mohamed El Bardisi, and Jon Stollness. It was produced by Ziad Butch and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hynes. Our technical director is Carly Strange. And our supervising producer is Michael Lipkin. Join us again tomorrow.