Today so far
That’s it from us today. Here’s how another eventful day in Washington unfolded:
- The former leader of the Proud Boys, far-right nationalist group Enrique Tarrio, and four of his closest associates have been charged with seditious conspiracy related to the January 6 attack, according to a Justice Department filing released Monday. The rare charge against Tarrio as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Charles Donohoe and Dominic Pezzola builds on conspiracy charges filed by the government earlier this year.
- The January 6 committee is preparing to hold its first primetime hearing on Thursday. According to Axios, the committee has enlisted James Goldston, a former ABC News president who ran the shows “Nightline” and “Good Morning America,” to advise the committee on how to televise the hearing. The panel is expected to share never-before-seen photos taken inside the White House as the Capitol attack unfolded.
- A Democratic member of the January 6 committee said the panel’s hearings would demonstrate the extensive planning conducted by those who carried out the attack. “The committee has found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity,” Jamie Raskin said in a virtual discussion with the Washington Post today. “The idea that all of this was just a rowdy demonstration that spontaneously got a little out of control is absurd. You don’t almost knock over the US government by accident.”
- The Senate is trying to find a bipartisan compromise on gun-control legislation in the wake of the Uvalde massacre. Democratic senators are trying to find 10 Republicans to join them in supporting tougher gun laws, but that will be a heavy lift in the evenly divided chamber. Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat who could play a key role in negotiations, said he would support raising the minimum age required to purchase semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21. Manchin also signaled openness to an assault weapons ban, but that proposal is unlikely to win enough Republican support to be included in the final bill.
- The supreme court released more decisions this morning, but the country is still waiting to hear whether justices will move forward with their initial ruling to overturn Roe v Wade. The abortion case is one of dozens of decisions that the court still needs to release in the coming weeks. The court has announced that its next round of rulings will be released on Wednesday.
Thanks for following along with our coverage today. The blog will be back tomorrow morning, with more updates on the January 6 committee and the Senate negotiations over gun-control.
Back in Congress, a group of 10 “frontline” Democratic House lawmakers, who are considered the most vulnerable to getting ousted in the November midterms, have written a letter to the chamber’s leaders asking for votes on bills that would fight inflation.
The letter reported by Punchbowl News comes as the country faces an ongoing wave of price increases for essentials like gasoline, as well as a shortage of baby formula that has rattled the Biden administration.
Addressed to House speaker Nancy Pelosi and majority leader Steny Hoyer, the letter doesn’t name specific bills, and acknowledges that many proposals the chamber already passed haven’t been brought up in the Senate. The lawmakers nonetheless call for votes:
With the time that remains in the 117th Congress after the important upcoming votes on gun violence prevention – and particularly in the few months that remain before the late summer district work period – we urge you to prioritize bills that would lower costs for working families, address rising inflation and resolve supply chain challenges. To be clear, we know that many such bills have already received affirmative votes in the House and now await Senate action. However, we believe that more must be done to ensure that this body remains laser focused on addressing the most urgent challenges that continue to impact our constituents.
Consumer prices have been rising over the past year at rates not seen since the 1980s, fueling public discontent with the Biden administration. The Federal Reserve is hiking interest rates to tame the price increases, but much of the inflation has been caused by factors beyond their control such as global supply chain snarls and the war in Ukraine. Some economists fear the combination of higher rates and global supply shocks will put the economy into a recession — perhaps next year, just as campaign season for the 2024 presidential election kicks off.
Meanwhile in the UK, members of parliament have spent the day voting on whether to boot Prime Minister Boris Johnson from office, and the verdict is in: Johnson survives his no-confidence vote, 211 to 148.
That means he stays as prime minister, leader of the Conservatives and Joe Biden’s counterpart in one of America’s closest allies. The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow has been keeping a meticulous live blog of the historic day.
Updated
Proud Boys leader, members charged with seditious conspiracy
Former leader of the Proud Boys far-right nationalist group Enrique Tarrio and four of his closest associates have been charged with seditious conspiracy related to the January 6 attack, according to a Justice Department filing released Monday.
The rare charge against Tarrio as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Charles Donohoe, and Dominic Pezzola builds on conspiracy charges filed by the government earlier this year.
In January, the Justice Department leveled seditious conspiracy charges against 11 members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers militia, over their involvement in the assault on the Capitol as lawmakers were meeting to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
Tarrio, 38, is also facing counts of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of an official proceeding, and two counts each of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and destruction of government property.
Top Senate Republican eyes gun deal 'this week'
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled a deal between Democrat and Republican lawmakers on a new gun control bill could be reached this week.
MCCONNELL on whether senate negotiators will strike a gun deal by the end of the week: “oh I hope so”
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 6, 2022
More MCCONNELL on guns. “We're trying to get a bipartisan outcome here that makes a difference. And hopefully, sometime this week, we'll come together.”
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 6, 2022
Republican Senator John Cornyn and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy have been leading negotiations in the evenly divided chamber to introduce some kind of legislation that could restrict gun purchases following a recent wave of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas and elsewhere.
The January 6 committee will hold its second hearing on Monday, June 13, at 10am ET, the House panel has just announced.
The first hearing is happening on Thursday at 8pm ET, and it is expected to attract worldwide news coverage, but the second hearing is not scheduled for the evening.
The select committee has reportedly enlisted the help of James Goldston, a former ABC News president, to assist in the planning of the primetime event.
Speaking to the Washington Post earlier today, a Democratic member of the committee, Jamie Raskin, said investigators had “found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity”.
“The idea that all of this was just a rowdy demonstration that spontaneously got a little out of control is absurd,” Raskin said. “You don’t almost knock over the US government by accident.”
The supreme court will now issue opinions on Wednesday, June 8, according to its website.
The justice have 30 cases to release decisions on, with the workload possible extending into next month. Several of these may be extremely consequential, including an environmental case out of West Virginia, a gun rights case stemming from New York, an immigration case via Texas involving the US-Mexico border and the pivotal Mississippi abortion case that also includes the state authorities asking Scotus to overturn Roe v Wade.
Nearly half of Republican voters think the US just has to live with mass shootings, according to a poll released in the aftermath of the Texas elementary school murders last month and as politicians in Washington negotiate for gun reform.
The CBS and YouGov poll returned familiar results, including 62% support for a nationwide ban on semi-automatic rifles, the kind of gun used in Uvalde, Texas.
Nineteen young children and two adults were killed at Robb elementary school on 24 May by an 18-year-old who bought his weapon legally.
But clear national support for a ban on such rifles or changes to purchasing ages and background checks is not mirrored in Congress. Most Republicans, supported financially by the powerful gun lobby, remain implacably opposed to most gun reform.
Read the Guardian’s full report:
An end to abortion rights would create yet another crisis for Biden, whose presidency has been increasingly defined by a list problems, annoyances and calamities that seems to only grow longer.
From high inflation to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan to nationwide mass shootings, my colleague Lauren Gambino has an excellent piece on how Biden has become a crisis president — whether he wants to or not:
In his third run for president, Joe Biden’s pitch to Americans was simple: after half a century in elected office, including eight years as vice-president, he understood the demands of what is arguably the hardest job in the world. It was a point Biden stressed on the campaign trail, in his own folksy way: “Everything landed on the president’s desk but locusts.”
Nearly a year and a half into his presidency, Biden now appraises his own fortunes differently. “I used to say in Barack’s administration: ‘Everything landed on his desk but locusts,’” he told Democratic donors in Oregon. “Well, they landed on my desk.”
Successive mass shootings, including a racist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and a massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 elementary school students and their teachers dead, present just the latest test for a president desperate to act but constrained, once again, by the limits of his own power.
White House condemns Louisiana abortion bill
The White House has released a statement condemning legislation introduced in Louisiana that would make abortion a crime of murder.
“Louisiana’s extreme bill will criminalize abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest and punish reproductive healthcare professionals with up to ten years in prison,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, in a statement.
“The president is committed to protecting the constitutional rights of Americans afforded by Roe for nearly 50 years, and ensuring that women can make their own choices about their lives, bodies, and families. An overwhelming majority of the American people agree and reject these kinds of radical measures.”
Supporters of the bill admit it’s unconstitutional, but only as long as the Roe v Wade decision that enshrines abortion rights in the United States remains law. That decision’s days appear to be numbered, according to a draft of a supreme court opinion that was leaked last month.
Updated
Located just across the street from the Capitol, the supreme court has found itself sucked into the inquiry over January 6 as investigators eye the actions of Ginni Thomas, wife of conservative justice Clarence Thomas.
In March, my colleague Ed Pilkington reported on the calls for conflict-of-interest rules that erupted after revelations that Ginni Thomas pressed then-president Donald Trump’s chief of staff to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election:
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported later that month that committee members have weighed asking Thomas to cooperate either voluntarily or with a subpoena, but no decision has yet been made.
More revelations about Thomas’s actions around the time of the insurrection have trickled out since then, including that she pressed Republicans in Arizona to overturn Biden’s victory there, as first reported in The Washington Post last month.
January 6 committee member Jamie Raskin hinted to The Washington Post that lawmakers have discovered Donald Trump more than just incited the attack on the Capitol.
Raskin did not elaborate on what the House committee found, but the actions of the former president have been at the center of the inquiry from the start.
“The select committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here, and we’re gonna be laying out the evidence about all of the actors who were pivotal to what took place on Jan 6,” Raskin said.
“Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events. That’s the only way really of making sense of them all,” the Democratic House representative added.
Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled House immediately following the insurrection, but the Republican-led Senate decided not to convict and remove him from office, allowing Trump to remain in the White House for the final weeks of his term.
.@RepRaskin on Jan. 6: “Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events. That’s the only way really of making sense of them all.” #PostLive pic.twitter.com/gIJJxqPWsx
— Washington Post Live (@PostLive) June 6, 2022
Updated
January 6 committee 'has found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity,' Raskin says
A Democratic member of the January 6 committee, Jamie Raskin, said the panel’s hearings would demonstrate the extensive planning conducted by those who carried out the attack on the Capitol.
“The committee has found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity,” Raskin said in a virtual discussion with the Washington Post today.
“The idea that all of this was just a rowdy demonstration that spontaneously got a little out of control is absurd. You don’t almost knock over the US government by accident.”
Rep. Liz Cheney talks about the GOP's "cult of personality" around Trump, and what the hearings will reveal about the threat to democracy. https://t.co/kFhs30uzzC pic.twitter.com/TrqMfQ0Qjs
— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) June 6, 2022
Raskin said the committee would use the hearings to outline all the evidence it has collected and provide recommendations on how to avoid future coups that could threaten the security of the US government.
Raskin’s comments echo those of Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, who said yesterday that she considers the January 6 attack to be a conspiracy.
“It is extremely broad,” Cheney told CBS News. “It’s extremely well-organized. It’s really chilling.”
Warning of the danger of Trump’s hold on the Republican party, Cheney added, “I mean, it is fundamentally antithetical, it is contrary to everything conservatives believe, to embrace a personality cult. And yet, that is what so many in my party are doing today.”
Updated
Former news executive advises January 6 committee on hearings
The January 6 committee has enlisted James Goldston, a former ABC News president who ran the shows “Nightline” and “Good Morning America,” to advise the committee on how to televise its hearings beginning Thursday, according to Axios.
Axios reports:
I’m told Goldston is busily producing Thursday’s 8 p.m. ET hearing as if it were a blockbuster investigative special.
He plans to make it raw enough so that skeptical journalists will find the material fresh, and chew over the disclosures in future coverage.
And he wants it to draw the eyeballs of Americans who haven’t followed the ins and outs of the Capitol riot probe.
Goldston will apparently have a lot of material to work with. The committee reportedly plans to show never-before-seen photos from inside the White House on January 6, and new security-camera footage from the Capitol, taken as the insurrection occurred, will also be shared.
The committee has already conducted more than 1,000 depositions and interviews as part of its investigation, and clips from those conversations are expected to be played during the hearing.
Meanwhile, Republicans are busy planning a counter-messaging program to challenge the committee’s findings. According to Axios, House Republican leaders and outside conservative groups will paint the panel as hyperpartisan to try to discredit their conclusions.
Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat who could play a key role in reaching a Senate compromise on a gun-control bill, outlined what he would like to see in the legislation.
The West Virginia senator told CNN that he would support raising the minimum age required to purchase semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21. The gunman who carried out the Uvalde shooting was 18.
Manchin also indicated he would support some version of a red-flag provision, as long as the policy allowed for due process for those blocked from purchasing guns.
Manchin told me that a final deal should include two things: Raising the age to 21 for purchasing semi-automatic weapons and standards for state red flag laws. He's also open to an assault weapons ban. On people needing AR-15s? "I never felt I needed something of that magnitude." pic.twitter.com/GYUlx1Nhkp
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 6, 2022
“We know we can do something that would have prevented this -- raising the age,” Manchin said of Uvalde. “And the second thing is that we know that the red-flag laws do work, as long as there’s due process.”
On the question of enacting a ban on assault weapons, Manchin said he would be open to the idea, but that proposal faces stiff opposition from Senate Republicans.
“I never thought I had a need for that type of high-capacity automatic weapon,” Manchin said. “I like to shoot. I like to go out and hunt. I like to go out sports shooting. I do all that. But I’ve never felt I needed something of that magnitude.”
While there were no major decisions made by the supreme court today, the justices did opt not to review legal sanctions against Republican Senate candidate Mark McCloskey and his wife Patricia, who pointed guns at protesters during racial justice protesters in Missouri two years ago.
CNN reports that the McCloskeys, both attorneys, pled guilty to misdemeanors over the incident, which were later pardoned by Missouri’s governor. However the state’s supreme court later sanctioned them, calling their actions “moral turpitude.”
The McCloskeys contested the penalties, citing the constitution’s second amendment, but CNN reported the argument didn’t have much chance of success.
Mark McCloskey is a candidate in the Republican senate primary in Missouri to succeed Roy Blunt, who is retiring, but a SurveyUSA poll released last month did not find him among the race’s frontrunners.
Updated
As the Senate tries to find compromise on gun control, Joe Biden is using the presidential bully pulpit to urge Congress to take action to prevent more tragedies like Uvalde.
“After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done,” Biden said on Twitter. “This time, that can’t be true. This time, we must actually do something.”
Biden offered the same message to the nation last week, when he delivered a primetime address on the need to enact stricter gun laws.
He proposed expanding background checks and banning assault weapons. If Congress cannot approve an assault weapons ban, which seems unlikely given Republicans’ opposition to the idea, then the minimum age required to purchase those guns should be raised from 18 to 21, Biden said.
After Columbine,
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 6, 2022
after Sandy Hook,
after Charleston,
after Orlando,
after Las Vegas,
after Parkland,
nothing has been done.
This time, that can’t be true. This time, we must actually do something.
The House has already passed several gun-control bills, and Biden called on the Senate to act as well in the wake of the Uvalde massacre.
However, that will be difficult when the upper chamber is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and the filibuster rules requires 60 votes to advance most legislation.
“I support the bipartisan efforts that include a small group of Democrats and Republican senators trying to find a way,” Biden said last Thursday.
“But my God, the fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans don’t want any of these proposals even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable. We can’t fail the American people again.”
This week will provide some key clues as to whether any gun-control bill can pass the Senate.
The Wall Street Journal has published a deep dive into the relationship between Chris Murphy and John Cornyn, the two senators tasked with finding a compromise on gun control in Congress, which focuses on their experiences with mass shootings in their states.
The experience of Murphy, a Democrat, stems from the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting which, like last month’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas, left dead scores of children in class. Republican Cornyn’s experience came in 2017 during a shooting at a Sutherland Springs, Texas church that killed 26 people, and again with the killings in Uvalde.
As the Journal reports:
“Both of us have gone through things and seen things that are pretty, pretty horrific,” said Mr. Murphy in an interview, pointing to the shootings in their states. “I don’t think there’s any way that that doesn’t propel you in some way, shape or form to go out, do something, to make sure that all of this stops.”
The two men, coming from parties with sharply different positions on the gun debate, are working to overcome decades of distrust and inaction on guns in a deeply polarized Congress, aiming to pull together an agreement as soon as this week. Many Democrats, worn down after repeated failures to advance new laws, have said they are willing to settle for even a small bipartisan deal. Some Republicans also are open to talks, emphasizing school security and mental illness but wary of any steps that could be cast as hurting gun rights.
Murphy and Cornyn worked together on legislation enacted in 2017 that improved background checks, though a compromise on tougher gun control measures has eluded Congress for years despite successive mass shootings.
A reminder of how perilous the issue can be came on Friday, when Republican New York congressman Chris Jacobs called off his reelection bid after he drew a fierce backlash for voicing support for gun control legislation.
The secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, has tested positive for Covid, making him the latest senior official in the Biden administration to contract the virus.
“I have tested positive for COVID-19 and am experiencing mild symptoms,” Buttigieg said on Twitter. “I plan to work remotely while isolating according to CDC guidelines, and look forward to when I can safely return to the office and the road.”
I have tested positive for COVID-19 and am experiencing mild symptoms. I plan to work remotely while isolating according to CDC guidelines, and look forward to when I can safely return to the office and the road.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) June 6, 2022
Several of Joe Biden’s cabinet members have tested positive for Covid in recent weeks, as the US confronts another surge in cases.
The secretary of the interior, Deb Haaland, tested positive last week, and Vice-President Kamala Harris contracted the virus last month, as did secretary of state Antony Blinken.
Buttigieg, who ran for president in 2020 before endorsing Biden and later joining his cabinet, has been traveling across the country to tout the benefits of the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Among the cases the supreme court is expected to release its decision on this month is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, which challenges a New York law limiting concealed handgun carrying in public.
Had the justice made their verdict public today, it would have come after a violent weekend across the country, in which CNN counted 10 mass shootings since Friday.
These include:
- Three people killed and 11 wounded in Philadelphia Saturday night when multiple individuals opened fire on South Street, a busy entertainment area.
- Two people killed and 14 injured in Chattanooga, Tennessee, while another was killed after being hit by a car.
- Two people killed and two wounded by a shooting at a bar in Mesa, Arizona, while in Phoenix, a 14-year-old girl was killed in a shooting downtown.
- In Summerton, South Carolina, one person was killed and eight wounded during a shooting that police said targeted a high school graduation party.
The New York case could be the supreme court’s first major ruling on gun rights in more than a decade. As my colleague Oliver Laughland reported last month, the expectation is for the court’s conservative majority to strike down a New York law limiting who can get a license to carry a concealed weapon, though how much effect it will have on gun rights nationwide will depend on how the decision is phrased:
Legal claims shed light on founder of faith group tied to Barrett
The founder of the People of Praise, a secretive charismatic Christian group that counts supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a member, was described in a sworn affidavit filed in the 1990s as exerting almost total control over one of the group’s female members, including making all decisions about her finances and dating relationships.
The court documents also described alleged instances of a sexualized atmosphere in the home of the founder, Kevin Ranaghan, and his wife, Dorothy Ranaghan.
The description of the Ranaghans and accusations involving their intimate behavior were contained in a 1993 proceeding in which a woman, Cynthia Carnick, said that she did not want her five minor children to have visitations with their father, John Roger Carnick, who was then a member of the People of Praise, in the Ranaghan household or in their presence, because she believed it was not in her children’s “best interest”.
Cynthia Carnick also described inappropriate incidents involving the couple and the Ranaghan children. The matter was eventually settled between the parties.
Read the Guardian’s full report:
Updated
No more opinions are due today from the US Supreme Court, with all the biggest decisions still awaited.
We’ll be keeping an eye on the court’s calendar and on the indispensable Scotusblog for upcoming dates and the rulings issued on those dates.
For anyone curious to know a bit more about how this works, the Scotusblog FAQ page is handy, here. The court doesn’t give lots of notice about which will be opinion days in June and, likely, edging into July with such a big caseload.
And the public isn’t told what opinions are coming down until they land. However, of course there was the early May bombshell leak of the draft opinion in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case out of Mississippi, which explicitly includes a request from the state authorities to the court to overturn the pivotal 1973 Roe v Wade decision that afforded the constitutional right to an abortion in the US.
The final opinion is awaited...
This blog is now handing over to the Guardian’s new US politics blogger Chris Stein, based in Washington, and our colleague there Joanie Greve, who was at the helm of the blog but in recent months took on her new role as one of our senior politics reporters.
They’ll take you through the rest of today’s politics news. For all the breaking news on UK politics today involving a no-confidence vote in prime minister Boris Johnson, please follow our London team here as they bring you the events as they happen there, in the UK politics live blog.
Here’s Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas again, this time putting his name to a decision in the case of Southwest Airlines v Saxon.
In an eight to zero opinion (Amy Coney Barrett was recused from this case), Thomas issued the decision that the court essentially said an airline worker is not required to go to arbitration over her pay dispute with Southwest and can fight her case in the courts.
The Supreme Court adopts a broad interpretation of an important exception in the Federal Arbitration Act. The upshot of the 8-0 ruling is that an airport worker (and others similarly situated) can bring a claim for overtime pay in court, rather than being forced into arbitration.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 6, 2022
The Bloomberg Law site notes that the case could have a wide impact on worker arbitration rights. It explained that Latrice Saxon:
Sued the airline in 2019, alleging it failed to pay her and hundreds of current and former ramp supervisors time-and-a-half earned for their overtime work. The Dallas-based carrier countered that its employee was contractually bound to bring the claim in arbitration, rather than in court. While a federal district judge agreed with the airline, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit did not. The supreme court took up the case.
The US supreme court has issued three opinions today, moments ago, although they are not the cases the nation is on the edge of its proverbial seat about – abortion and gun rights.
The court just ruled that the Florida authorities can recoup $300,000 in medical expenses out of a settlement paid in the case of Gianinna Gallardo, who suffered appalling injuries at 13, in 2008, when she was hit by a truck after getting off a school bus. A 7-2 majority, with the opinion written by Clarence Thomas and joined by liberal-leaning Elena Kagan, opined for the state over the Gallardo family.
A few minutes prior, the court ruled in a case, Siegel v Fitzgerald, about the constitutionality of increased US Trustee’s fees charged to companies in chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Details on the third ruling in a tick.
The Supreme Court strikes down Congress' decision to increase bankruptcy fees in most states while leaving a different system in place in two states. SCOTUS unanimously holds that the two different fee systems violates the Constitution's requirement of "uniform" bankruptcy laws.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 6, 2022
Updated
The US supreme court is about to issue ruling(s) on cases decided in the current term.
We’ll keep you up to date on what happens, when the opinion(s) are handed down at 10am ET.
As Scotusblog notes, there’s a lot for the bench to get to:
We're live now:https://t.co/S5A4KeL5nQ https://t.co/ddml8iKgtC
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 6, 2022
The four big cases we at the Guardian are watching most closely are an environmental case out of West Virginia, a gun rights case stemming from New York, an immigration case via Texas involving the US-Mexico border and the pivotal Mississippi abortion case that also includes the state authorities asking Scotus to overturn Roe v Wade.
Updated
The US Senate is back in session today after its latest recess and there will be close attention on a bipartisan group of senators that is exuding increased confidence that a package of gun control measures can advance and make it into law.
Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy is fond of the word significant. Just days ago, less than a week after the mass shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 young children and two teachers, he talked of “an opportunity right now to pass something significant”.
Murphy yesterday added: “The possibility of success is better than ever before. But I think the consequences of failure for our entire democracy are more significant than ever.”
Murphy believes measures passed in Florida following the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland could attract Republican support and provide a workable template for action in Congress.
Chris Murphy of Connecticut, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, said he was optimistic that recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, could finally prompt enough bipartisan support for legislation that has previously proven elusive.
Florida, a Republican-controlled state, acted swiftly after the murders of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in February 2018, passing red flag laws and raising the age requirement for buying, but not owning, firearms from 18 to 21, among other steps. The Parkland gunman was 19.
In his address to the nation last week, Joe Biden called for a federal ban on semi-automatic weapons, and raising the age requirement if that couldn’t be done.
Murphy acknowledged the Florida actions and said “there is interest in taking a look at that age range, 18 to 21” during bipartisan discussions about possible legislation, led on the Republican side by Texas senator John Cornyn.
Read more here.
Updated
Washington ramps up bipartisan gun safety talks amid crisis of violence
Good morning, US politics blog readers, it’s going to be an exceptionally busy, high-stakes week in Washington with Americans’ constitutional rights and democracy itself under the spotlight.
Here’s what’s on the agenda.
- The US Senate is back in session on the Hill today after its latest recess and a bipartisan group of senators is exuding confidence that a package of gun control measures can make progress, while the leading lawmaker in talks warns of “significant” consequences of failure.
- Talks continue amid another series of deadly shootings at the weekend, following grotesquely on the heels of the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas and the racist killing of Black Americans in a supermarket in Buffalo.
- New measures under discussion do not include the demands of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for a ban on assault weapons, following the recent carnage, but there is more progress being made right now on legislative talks than there has been for years.
- The US Supreme Court is due to issue opinions today and Thursday, June being the crunch month for decisions arising in cases from the current term and with more than 30 decision to be declared. The public (and press) are not party to which cases will be announced until the bench speaks up.
- Last but not least for this briefing note: the special House committee investigating events on and around the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of then-president Donald Trump is in final preparations for its first public hearing, this Thursday in prime time – and the right is already revving up its riposte.
