Article snippet: Congressional Democrats and 2020 presidential hopefuls on Sunday sought to tie MORE's rhetoric on immigration to a massacre at a store in a Texas border city that is a shopping destination for Hispanic Americans and Mexicans. The mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart on Saturday killed 20 people and left 26 others wounded. It came about 13 hours before a second mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, left nine people dead and 27 wounded. Patrick Wood Crusius, 21, the accused gunman in the El Paso shooting, is the purported author of a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto. Officials said Sunday they were treating the massacre as a case of domestic terrorism and exploring federal hate crime charges. Authorities said the suspected shooter drove eight hours from the Dallas-Fort Worth area to El Paso, which is directly across the border from Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez and is about 80 percent Hispanic. The alleged manifesto describes fears of a Latino “invasion,” which Trump critics were quick to note echoes rhetoric the president has used about migrants, particularly ahead of the 2018 midterms. Presidential candidate and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), who left the campaign trail to return to his hometown of El Paso after the shooting, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that racist rhetoric from the president had contributed to the climate leading to the attack. "Let's be very clear about what is causing this and who the president is. He is an open, avowed racist and encour... Link to the full article to read more