Closing summary
President Joe Biden pitched his economic agenda to union workers in Ohio today, while there were further developments in the January 6 committee’s investigation as well as jostling within states ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Here are the highlights:
- Donald Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone has agreed to speak to the January 6 committee, which announced its next hearing for Tuesday 12 July.
- South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham said he will fight a subpoena from a Georgia grand jury looking into Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election result in the state.
- Senate Democrats have agreed on a proposal to lower prescription drug costs via a reconciliation bill. However Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is trying to stop Democrats from passing the legislation.
- Mississippi’s only abortion clinic will close after the supreme court overturned Roe v. Wade and the state banned the procedure.
- A group of Republicans in Pennsylvania have endorsed the Democrat running for governor against a 2020 election denier.
- Democrats in Kentucky are unhappy with president Joe Biden’s apparent plan to nominate an anti-abortion judge to a federal court position, in what appears to be a bid to get Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to stop blocking the president’s nominees.
The president finished up his speech in Cleveland by drawing a contrast between his administration and the Republicans who are waiting in the wings, hoping to take over the House of Representatives and Senate following the November midterm elections.
Remarking on Republicans’ previous efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act and accusing them of wanting to privatize social security, Biden told unionized workers, “Folks, this is a different world where they live.”
Biden said he was “fighting like hell” to try to lower costs for Americans, and accused Republicans of obstructing his efforts, including his proposal to lower taxes on gasoline - though several Democrats are also lukewarm towards that idea.
“I’m asking Congress to eliminate the federal gas tax for... however long this crisis goes on, lower food prices lower health care costs, hopefully soon, lower your prescription drug costs,” he said, eluding to a recent proposal from Democratic senators.
Biden is telling union workers about his efforts to get the Butch Lewis Act passed, which allowed the Treasury to assist unions’ pension plans that were financially struggling, and was included in the America Rescue Plan Biden enacted in March 2021.
He’s also attacking former president Trump, saying the economy was in shambles when he left office.
“Y’all remember what the economy was like when I was elected? A country in a pandemic, with no real plans how to get out of it. Millions of people out of their jobs. Families and cars, remember, backed up for literally miles, to wait for a box of food to be put in their trunk,” Biden said.
“The previous administration lost more jobs in his watch than any administration since Herbert Hoover. That’s a fact. All based on failed trickle-down economics that benefit the wealthiest Americans,” Biden said. “We came in with a fundamentally different economic vision, an economy that grows from the bottom up in the middle out. It’s good for everyone because when the middle class does well the poor have a ladder up in the wealthy still do very well.”
Biden has started his speech to union workers in Cleveland, and while the address is mostly about the economy, he began with brief remarks about the police shooting of Jayland Walker in nearby Akron.
“The justice department’s civil rights division, the FBI and the local US attorney’s office are closely viewing what happened,” the president said. “If the evidence reveals potential violations of federal criminal statutes, the justice department will take the appropriate action.”
Walker, who is Black, sustained more than 60 wounds after multiple officers opened fire at him following a car chase.
Biden has arrived in Cleveland and is expected to shortly begin giving remarks on the economy, focused on the American Rescue Plan spending bill he won passage of near the beginning of his term last year.
Also speaking at the event are Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, and two of the state’s Democratic House representatives, Marcy Kaptur and Shontel Brown. However, two notable Democrats won’t be in attendance: Tim Ryan, the party’s nomination for US Senate, and Nan Whaley, its nominee in the governor’s race.
Plenty of mounting questions from fellow Dems on Biden’s ability to lead after abortion ruling, mass shootings and inflation. Today he’s in Cleveland to talk “Jobs, unions, retirement security.” Notably, the two Democrats running for statewide office in the state aren’t there. pic.twitter.com/02098n1SK5
— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) July 6, 2022
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With Joe Biden so unpopular, and Donald Trump ensnarled in investigations centering on the January 6 insurrection and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the question must be asked: is it possible that neither man will be on the ballot in 2024?
There would be many contenders to fill the vacuum created if neither man stands in the next presidential election, and Politico has a look at one possible matchup: California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom against Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis:
The governors for California and Florida have hurled insults about each other’s leadership and policies during most of the Covid-19 pandemic. But now Newsom has ratcheted up the conflict by taking almost daily pot-shots at his Republican foils such as DeSantis and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Most recently, Newsom dropped more than $100,000 on a new ad airing on Fox News that tweaked DeSantis in his home state. On Tuesday, he started fundraising off the ad and conflict with DeSantis.
Fox-watching Floridians won’t likely switch their voter registration or move to California after seeing a TV spot in which Newsom warned them “freedom is under attack in your state.” But the ad is producing a frenzy of national coverage that boosts Newsom’s profile while allowing DeSantis to sharpen his attacks on Democrats ahead of a possible 2024 White House bid.
The fight highlights how two young governors have captured the attention of their respective parties: On one side is Newsom, a progressive and telegenic leader who survived an attempted recall. On the other is DeSantis, who is often heralded as a more disciplined Donald Trump but who also has a penchant for populism and a refusal to back down from a fight.
“Most politicians operate best when they have somebody or something to contrast against, and there’s no bigger contrast to Gavin Newsom and California right now than Florida and Ron DeSantis,” said Jim Ross, a Democratic consultant who ran Newsom’s first mayoral campaign.
Newsom has in fact just put out a statement to supporters explaining why he purchased ads in Florida:
New: @GavinNewsom emails supporters to explain why he spent $100,000 to run a TV spot in Florida: to reclaim the word "Freedom," declaring that "The DeSantis vision of freedom is a fraud." Here's what Newsom says freedom should really mean: pic.twitter.com/Vf7s5pLcJS
— Doug Sovern (@SovernNation) July 6, 2022
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Arizona was one of the states where Trump attempted unsuccessfully to convince officials to work with him to overturn the results of the 2020 elections. As Sam Levine reports, its elections are under scrutiny again, this time by Biden’s justice department:
The Department of Justice is challenging a new Arizona law that requires voters to provide proof of citizenship for presidential elections, among other new restrictions, saying the measure was a “textbook violation” of a federal law meant to protect voters.
The challenged Arizona measure, HB 2492, was signed into law by the Republican governor, Doug Ducey, in March, requires anyone who wants to vote in a presidential election, or vote by mail in any election, to provide proof of citizenship.
The law was among several pushed by the Arizona legislature following the 2020 election in a state where Donald Trump and his allies have spread baseless claims of fraud. Voting by mail is widely used in Arizona, a key battleground state, and Republicans in the state have made numerous attempts to make it harder to cast a ballot that way.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has more details about what to expect from Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony to the January 6 committee:
The former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone is expected to testify to the House January 6 select committee on Friday after reaching an agreement over the scope of his cooperation with a subpoena compelling his testimony, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The testimony from Cipollone is expected to be a transcribed interview and recorded on camera, the source said, and the former top White House lawyer is expected to only answer questions on a narrow subset of topics and conversations with the former president.
Among the topics Cipollone could discuss include how he told Donald Trump that pressuring Mike Pence, the vice-president, to refuse to certify Joe Biden’s election win was unlawful, and Trump’s plot to coerce the justice department into falsely saying the 2020 election was corrupt.
The dispute over USICA and the Democrats’ potential reconciliation bill has now spilled on to Twitter.
It began when John Cornyn, a Republican senator from Texas, criticized Democrats’ move to pass a spending package unilaterally via the reconciliation procedure, accusing them of giving up on the USICA technological competitiveness bill:
Looks like Schumer giving up on USICA, including shoring up the vulnerable supply chain for high end semiconductors. Major chip makers will likely abandon their plans to build manufacturing facilities in the US. Body blow to US national security, economy, and well paying jobs. https://t.co/KwV7mUR4iF
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) July 6, 2022
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not take kindly to his accusation:
Cornyn is joining McConnell to hold hostage a bipartisan bill that would make more in America, in order to protect pharmaceutical companies’ profits.
— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) July 6, 2022
We need to do BOTH: increase American manufacturing and strengthen our competitive edge against China, AND lower Rx drug costs. https://t.co/VewJih7c59
Prompting this retort from Cornyn:
You people in the Biden administration are very confused https://t.co/yXaIT7K4JY
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) July 6, 2022
Whether on Twitter or in Congress, expect the broader dispute to play out in the months to come.
Updated
Meanwhile, the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell has given Democrats an ultimatum: if they proceed with their reconciliation package, his lawmakers won’t support a bill to enhance US industries’ technological competitiveness.
Let me be perfectly clear: there will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill.
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) June 30, 2022
The United States Innovation and Competition Act, known as USICA, has been bargained over in Congress for months. According to Punchbowl, the prospects for the Senate’s democratic majority pulling off both the reconciliation package and USICA are not good:
There are 1,015 outstanding items in the USICA package and GOP sources tell us that party leaders have only come to agreement or agreed to drop 127 of them. That means nearly nine-tenths of the bill is open and unresolved.
Democrats take issue with this characterization. They say the two sides have actually closed out many more issues, but Republicans have withheld final confirmation on several hundred items until bigger-picture topics have been resolved.
In negotiations like this, it’s often difficult to totally discern where talks stand because both sides have incentive to show that the other is slow walking the talks or otherwise acting in a capricious manner.
But let’s put it this way: Any way you slice it, the two sides can’t even agree on which phase of the negotiation they’re in.
Politico has details of Senate Democrats’ efforts to find agreement on a major piece of legislation that they can pass, likely without Republican support.
The negotiations come after the collapse of Biden’s Build Back Better proposal last year, which was meant to spend potentially trillions of dollars on fighting climate change, expanding social services and other Democratic priorities, but collapsed amid infighting in the party, particularly with senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Democrats have been quietly trying to come up with a new proposal that could make it through the chamber using its reconciliation procedure, and Politico reports that they’ve reached an agreement on a measure to lower prescription drug costs:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will submit text today to the Senate parliamentarian on a 50-Democrat agreement (yes, that includes Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)) to allow the federal government to negotiate prescription drug costs for Medicare, according to two sources familiar. That will kick off the so-called “Byrd Bath” where the parliamentarian reviews the proposed text to make sure it abides by the Senate’s reconciliation rules. The bath is supposed to purge extraneous provisions that don’t align with the reconciliation instructions.
But drug price negotiation is just one piece of the puzzle. The rest of the party-line package is still in flux and isn’t ready for its Byrd Bath. Schumer and Manchin have been meeting regularly about what might make it into the bill, talking about tax reform and climate provisions.
Biden holds call with the wife of Brittney Griner
Joe Biden, joined by Kamala Harris, spoke today with Cherelle Griner, the wife of Brittney Griner, the US basket ball star detained in Russia. Griner was detained by Russian Federal Customs Service in February after they said they found vape cartridges that contained hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow.
In a readout of the call, the White House said: “The President called Cherelle to reassure her that he is working to secure Brittney’s release as soon as possible.”
It added: “The President directed his national security team to remain in regular contact with Cherelle and Brittney’s family, and with other families of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad, to keep them updated on efforts to secure the release of their loved ones as quickly as possible.”
Brittney Griner recently wrote a letter to Biden appealing for his assistance in getting her released from prison.
The day so far
Congress may be in recess but there’s been plenty of political news this morning, from the ongoing work of the January 6 committee to jostling within states ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Here’s what has happened so far:
- Donald Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone has agreed to speak to the January 6 committee, which announced its next hearing for Tuesday 12 July.
- South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham said he will fight a subpoena from a Georgia grand jury looking into Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election result in the state.
- Mississippi’s only abortion clinic will close after the supreme court overturned Roe v. Wade and the state banned the procedure.
- A group of Republicans in Pennsylvania have endorsed the Democrat running for governor against a 2020 election denier.
- Democrats in Kentucky are unhappy with president Joe Biden’s apparent plan to nominate an anti-abortion judge to a federal court position, in what appears to be a bid to get Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to stop blocking the president’s nominees.
Updated
Speaking together in Britain, the heads of the FBI and MI5 have issued a joint warning about China’s behavior, saying Beijing is stealing western technology and studying from the war in Ukraine, particularly when it comes to evading sanctions.
BREAKING: The heads of MI5 and the @FBI have used an unprecedented joint speech to warn that China is their biggest “game-changing challenge”, with the UK doubling efforts to combat Chinese "activity of concern". 1/
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
Christopher Wray, the FBI director, said Beijing is drawing lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
Talking about the Chinese threat against Taiwan, he said the Chinese government was looking for ways to protect its economy against any potential, future sanctions. 2/
“In our world, we call that kind of behaviour a clue,” Mr Wray said, sharing a platform with Ken McCallum on a visit to MI5’s headquarters in London. Western allies used sweeping sanctions to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine. 3/
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
The 2 chiefs focused on the Chinese Communist Party & its covert operations.
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
They accused Beijing of a vast, enduring effort to steal western advances in technology, research & other sectors as well as use the West’s democratic, media & legal systems to their own advantage. 4/
“The most game-changing challenge we face comes from the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr McCallum said.
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
“It’s covertly applying pressure across the globe. This might feel abstract. But it’s real and it’s pressing. We need to talk about it. We need to act.” 5/
Updated
Illinois parade shooter confesses, says planned second attack
The shooter at an Independence Day parade in a Chicago suburb has admitted to the attack and told police he contemplated opening fire at a second Fourth of July gathering, the Associated Press reports:
The man charged with killing seven people at an Independence Day parade confessed to police that he unleashed a hail of bullets from a rooftop in suburban Chicago and then fled to the Madison, Wisconsin, area, where he contemplated shooting up an event there, authorities said Wednesday.
Robert Crimo III turned back to Illinois, where he was later arrested after deciding he was not prepared to pull off a shooting in Wisconsin, Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli said.
An Illinois judge ordered Crimo to be held without bail. Police found the shells of 83 bullets and three ammunition magazines on the rooftop that he fired from, Lake County Assistant State’s Attorney Ben Dillon said in court.
Updated
The Georgia Senate race is another closely watched election this year, where the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock will face off against Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
Walker has had multiple complaints leveled against him of breaking rules governing electioneering, but Politico is reporting that Warnock also may have violated campaign finance laws:
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) used campaign money to cover legal expenses for a lawsuit relating to his time as a church minister — transactions that raise questions about whether the spending runs afoul of federal rules governing personal use of campaign funds.
The case, first filed in 2019 by Atlanta resident Melvin Robertson, involved baffling and seemingly baseless allegations against Warnock that date back to 2005 when he was a pastor. It was dismissed by a federal district court judge in Georgia without any of the defendants being served.
But Robertson refiled a similar lawsuit in April 2021, outlining the same allegations against Warnock while also suing Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he has long served as senior pastor, and other public figures.
This time, Warnock was serving in the Senate. And he enlisted his campaign attorneys from Elias Law Group to represent him in the case, along with an Atlanta firm, Krevolin & Horst, which assisted ELG.
The issue for Warnock is whether this was a proper use of campaign funds.
Federal Election Commission guidance states that campaign money can be used on “litigation expenses where the candidate/officeholder was the defendant and the litigation arose directly from campaign activity or the candidate’s status as a candidate.”
Warnock was one of two Democrats elected to represent Georgia in the Senate last year, giving the party control of the chamber by a one-vote margin. Walker, meanwhile, is a rare Black Republican politician, and looking to reclaim a seat held by the GOP for the past 15 years.
Updated
A feud appears to be brewing between Biden and the top Democrats in Kentucky, including its governor Andy Beshear.
It began last week when the Courier-Journal reported that Biden intended to nominate an anti-abortion judge to a federal district court, in an apparent deal with Mitch McConnell, the state’s Republican senator who leads the party in Congress’s upper chamber. Now, the Courier-Journal has managed to obtain emails between the White House and Beshear’s office that elaborate on the deal, which the Biden administration has declined to talk about.
The governor’s office also turned over a follow-up email from a White House official sent June 29 — five hours before The Courier Journal first broke the story on the pending nomination of attorney Chad Meredith — clarifying that the original email was “pre-decisional and privileged information.”
White House aide Kathleen M. Marshall, a former lieutenant governor in Nevada who joined the White House in August as senior adviser to governors in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, sent the June 23 email that stated: “To be nominated tomorrow: … Stephen Chad Meredith: candidate for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.”
The email, with a subject line of “Close hold,” was sent to Coulter Minix, a Beshear staffer in the governor’s D.C. office, who immediately replied: “Thanks, Kate. I’ll share the info and appreciate the heads up.”
Beshear and John Yarmuth, a prominent Democratic House representative from the state, have both objected to the nomination, particularly after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last month. The Courier-Journal has reported that the White House is looking for ways to stop McConnell from blocking the Biden administration’s nominations for Senate-confirmed posts.
Updated
Pennsylvania is the site of one of the more high-profile governorship races this year, with the state’s Democratic attorney general Josh Shapiro facing off against state senator Doug Mastriano, a promoter of Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that several state Republicans have taken the unusual step in the swing state of defecting from their party and backing Shapiro for the governorship:
Mr. Shapiro, the sitting attorney general, will roll out the endorsements of 10 Republicans on Wednesday as part of a continued effort to label his candidacy a reach-across-the-aisle aficionado who will unify the parties to get things done.
The list includes two former U.S. representatives, Charlie Dent and Jim Greenwood; former state House Speaker Denny O’Brien; former Lt. Gov. and longtime state Sen. Robert Jubelirer; and former state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman.
The endorsements aren’t just vague odes to bipartisanship in a divided country; they serve as a direct hit against state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor, and it’s reminiscent of the effort before the GOP primary among Republican insiders to coalesce support around an alternative. That effort failed, but Mr. Shapiro’s camp and allies are hoping this lends credence to his argument that Mr. Mastriano is on the fringe of his own party.
Mastriano was involved in an effort to swing Pennsylvania’s vote from Biden to Trump following the 2020 election, and has been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee.
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham has vowed to fight a subpoena issued to him by a Georgia grand jury looking into efforts to subvert that state’s election result in 2020.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has lawyered up as a Georgia grand jury investigates possible interference in the 2020 presidential election. The SC Republican’s attorneys have released a statement saying Graham is neither a subject nor a target even after being subpoenaed in the probe. pic.twitter.com/3ESeXDQSZ8
— Avery G. Wilks (@AveryGWilks) July 6, 2022
Other targets of the subpoenas reported yesterday include Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and conservative attorneys John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis. Eastman has been repeatedly mentioned by witnesses before the January 6 committee as playing a major role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump White House counsel to speak to January 6 committee
Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel for Donald Trump, has agreed to testify to the January 6 committee, The New York Times reports:
NEWS: Deal for Cipollone to testify on Friday in transcribed interview, per person briefed on the matter.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 6, 2022
Cipollone is appearing under subpoena for a transcribed interview with the House select committee.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 6, 2022
The appearance is not going to be in public, according to the person briefed on the matter.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 6, 2022
The committee investigating the attack had last month subpoenaed Cipollone, who “repeatedly raised legal and other concerns about President Trump’s activities on January 6 and in the days that preceded”, the committee’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, said.
Updated
January 6 committee announces July 12 hearing
The January 6 committee has announced it will resume its hearings on Tuesday of next week, when Congress returns from recess.
NEXT HEARING: Tuesday, July 12th at 10:00am ET
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) July 5, 2022
The House lawmakers’ most recent hearing featured major revelations about the actions of Donald Trump and his inner circle before and during the insurrection.
The supreme court’s ruling curbing the US government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gasses has repercussions worldwide, as Oliver Milman reports:
Joe Biden’s election triggered a global surge in optimism that the climate crisis would, finally, be decisively confronted. But the US supreme court’s decision last week to curtail America’s ability to cut planet-heating emissions has proved the latest blow to a faltering effort by Biden on climate that is now in danger of becoming largely moribund.
The supreme court’s ruling that the US government could not use its existing powers to phase out coal-fired power generation without “clear congressional authorization” quickly ricocheted around the world among those now accustomed to looking on in dismay at America’s seemingly endless stumbles in addressing global heating.
The decision “flies in the face of established science and will set back the US’s commitment to keep global temperature below 1.5C”, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, in reference to the internationally agreed goal to limit global heating before it becomes truly catastrophic, manifesting in more severe heatwaves, floods, droughts and societal unrest.
Updated
Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic that was at the center of the supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade, will close, the Associated Press reported.
The clinic had sued to stop the enforcement of state law banning abortion, but lost in court yesterday. According to the AP:
As attorneys argued about abortion laws across the south on Tuesday, a Mississippi judge rejected a request by the state’s only abortion clinic to temporarily block a law that would ban most abortions.
Without other developments in the Mississippi lawsuit, the clinic will close at the end of business on Wednesday and the state law will take effect on Thursday.
One of the clinic’s attorneys, Hillary Schneller of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the judge should have blocked the law.
“People in Mississippi who need abortions right now are in a state of panic, trying to get into the clinic before it’s too late,” Schneller said. “No one should be forced to live in fear like that.”
Updated
If it seems like mass shootings in America are getting worse, it’s because they are, The Marshall Project has concluded, based on data from the tragedies:
On the morning of 4 July, President Joe Biden hailed the day as one to “celebrate the goodness of our nation”.
Less than an hour after his 9.25am EST tweet, a gunman on a rooftop opened fire into a crowd of spectators who gathered to enjoy a Fourth of July parade in a Chicago suburb. He killed seven people and injured dozens.
Monday’s mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, brought fresh anguish to a nation already shaken this year by the murders of schoolchildren in Uvalde, Texas, and Black shoppers in Buffalo, New York.
If it feels like mass shootings have become more frequent, that intuition is correct, according to data analysis by the Marshall Project.
Under one of the most conservative definitions of “mass shootings”, in which a gunman slaughters four or more strangers in a public place, the number of these crimes has indeed been climbing in the last few years – and they have higher death tolls, as well.
Mass shootings account for just a fraction of the daily toll of firearm deaths in the US, where about 124 people die every day in other acts of gun violence.
Our analysis is based on data from the Violence Project, a nonprofit research group that uses a narrow definition of mass shootings adopted from the congressional research service, which advises federal lawmakers.
Thirty-one of these massacres occurred from 2017 through 2021, compared with 24 from 2012 through 2016, according to the Violence Project data. We compared five-year periods so we could measure trends over time, rather than focus on the dip to two incidents in 2020, which researchers attributed to the Covid-19 lockdown, or the spike caused by the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 dead. The last five years have seen more mass shootings than any other comparable time span dating back to 1966.
A reminder of the setbacks and tragedies that Biden has had to contend with in the past few weeks.
First the supreme court overturned abortion rights, expanded gun access and curbed the government’s ability to regulate greenhouses gasses. Then the Independence Day weekend was rocked by gun violence, including a mass shooting at a July 4 parade in Illinois that killed seven people and wounded more than 40.
A string of recent news reports suggest that even some of Biden’s allies are questioning his approach to these challenges. Meanwhile, a poll released yesterday showed that his approval rating is suffering badly, and voters are still most worried about inflation and the economy, rather than gun rights and abortion, two issues that Democrats hoped to could rally their base ahead of the midterms.
In Ohio today, Biden will highlight the continued benefits of the American Rescue Plan, a massive spending bill passed last year at the cost of $1.9 trillion that was intended to revitalize the economy after the downturn caused by Covid-19. The audience will be union workers at a high school in Cleveland, but whether his message reaches voters remains to be seen.
Biden searches for reset after supreme court, shootings hamper agenda
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Repeatedly in the past few weeks, Joe Biden has had to reassure voters that everything is going to be OK after upheavals at the supreme court, or gun violence in the streets. But from brutal polls to skeptical news articles, evidence has mounted that voters aren’t convinced he’s the man to tackle these challenges. Biden will get a chance today to dispel these doubts during a trip to Ohio, where he’s set to make a speech on the economy.
Here’s what else is happening today:
- The House and Senate are in recess but senators are working on a reconciliation bill full of Democratic priorities.
- Political analysis doyen Larry Sabato will hold forth about the state of play on C-Span this morning.
- Wrangling over abortion access continues as conservative state governments attempt to outlaw the procedure following last month’s supreme court ruling, with courts yesterday weighing in on bans in Kentucky and Florida.
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