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GOP push for SCOTUS security bill after arrest outside Kavanaugh's house

Republicans are calling on the House to pass a stalled bill aimed at expanding security protection to the families of Supreme Court justices after police arrested an armed man outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh early Wednesday morning.

The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent last month, soon after publication of a leaked draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. The leak sparked protests outside the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Justice Samuel Alito, who penned the draft opinion. 

But the legislation has stalled in the House, where top Democrats have said that protection should also be extended to judicial clerks and staff.

The 26-year-old suspect arrested outside Kavanaugh’s house, a California resident, told a detective that “he was upset about the leak of a recent Supreme Court draft decision regarding the right to abortion as well as the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas,” according to an affadavit.

“This is exactly – exactly why the Senate passed legislation very shortly after the leak to enhance the protection for justices and their families,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday. 

“The House’s Democrats have refused to take it up,” McConnell said. “That needs to change and it needs to change right now. Right now. House Democrats must pass this bill and they need to do it today.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that he will make a motion on the House floor Wednesday night to immediately pass the security bill in response to the man targeting Kavanaugh.

“I hope Democrats will not block this request,” McCarthy tweeted.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) reiterated to reporters on Wednesday that he thinks the legislation should be changed so Supreme Court employees are also protected. But said he had a “very positive discussion” about the legislation on Tuesday with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who cosponsored the legislation with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

“Supreme Court Justices are, in fact, being protected right now,” Hoyer noted.

Hoyer said that he hoped to move on the bill “relatively soon,” but declined to give a hard estimate on when that would be.

“We think the employees need to be protected. And, certainly, that ought to be in the judgment of the Supreme Court security officials, not just willy-nilly, just as it is here,” Hoyer said. “A decision has to be made by the Capitol Police as to whether or not they believe protections are justified.”

House Republicans have separately introduced a bill to criminalize Supreme Court leaks, led by House GOP Conference Vice Chair Mike Johnson (R-La.).

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Judge’s murder, Kavanaugh attempt, threatens all our safety

Even with the mass shooting epidemic in America — 13 last weekend — the June 4 murder of former Wisconsin Judge John Roemer stands out as the broadest, clear and present danger to every person’s right to stay alive in peace. As if that were not enough, today, June 8, Maryland police arrested a man with a gun and a knife near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s D.C.-area home. Per NBC News, the armed man said that “he was there to kill Kavanaugh.” He’s been charged with attempted murder.

Eleven years after declaring independence, the framers wrote a Constitution that embodied their firm conviction our rights depend upon the rule of law. Without it, there is no order, and human life becomes, in the words of 18^th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish and short.”

The breakdown of the rule of law is all around us. A witness aptly summarized America’s current state of terror after the June 1 murder of two doctors, a patient and a receptionist at Tulsa’s St. Francis Hospital: “You can’t even go to a store. You can’t even go to school. Now, you can’t go to the doctor? . . . [T]his can really happen anywhere.”

Each cascading act of terrorism feels worse than the next. But if one had to pick the most ominous for the rule of law, it is Judge Roemer’s killing. In 2005, Roemer had sentenced the suspect, Douglas K. Uhde, to prison for an armed burglary, carrying a concealed weapon and other gun charges.

The murder of those who enforce society’s rules is a pure and evil expression of their shattering. When judicial officers are killed for having done their job, the threat is to all of our safety. There is no safety in a society without a functioning legal system.

How did we get here? Here are three trends that need reversing:

Easy access to guns: According to the Small Gun Survey of 2020, in the United Kingdom, with its significant restrictions on gun ownership, there are 4.6 guns for every 100 people. In the U.S., the number is 120 for every 100. In England and Wales, 4 percent of all homicides involve guns. In the U.S., the number is 79 percent.

When a society is awash in firearms, felons like Uhde can easily get their hands on them — even if the law says that an ex-felon like him may not have them.

Social permission to take the law into one’s own hands. We have a history of vigilantism in the United States. Think about the more than 4,000 lynchings of Blacks in America from 1877 to 1950.

Today, multiple states with Republican-controlled legislatures have institutionalized vigilantism in a spate of state laws, or legislation under consideration, like the one in Texas that authorizes citizens to collect $10,000 for bringing lawsuits against women and their helpers in seeking an abortion.

Government empowering “justice-seeking” by individuals sends an unmistakable message of social approval. Put it together with state laws sanctioning easy purchases of firearms, and you have a formula for the breakdown of order.

Encouragement of violence by elected leaders. National leaders immeasurably strengthen that explosive formula by minimizing mass shootings as acts of the mentally ill. The vast majority are not. Inability to regulate one’s own anger or purposelessness is not mental illness. Falsely blaming mental illness is exactly what former President Trump did last Friday at the NRA convention in Houston.

Even more dangerous are statements by elected officials such as Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga), who in May 2021 compared to mere “tourists” the vicious Jan. 6 Capitol attackers whose actions left more than 140 police officers injured or dead.

Then there is Trump, who glorified the insurrectionists as “patriots” and floated the idea — if he is re-elected — of pardoning any who are convicted. That was reminiscent of his offering to pay the legal fees of anyone who beat up a protester at one of his 2016 campaign rallies, or saying that he’d like to “punch [an ejected demonstrator] in the face.”

Here’s a truth that should be self-evident: Americans need to act to combat gun violence and vote to elect in the coming mid-terms the kind of officials who will ensure that we rebuild a society where each of us is safe. Only a citizenry committed to the rule of law will keep its protections and our liberty.

Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

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Negotiators craft parameters of Senate gun-violence package 

Senate negotiators have sketched the outlines of a bill to address gun violence and respond to recent mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, but they haven’t yet nailed down the crucial details that will determine whether the legislation can get 60 votes to pass.  

There’s rough consensus among a group of Democratic and Republican senators that the legislation should encourage states to set up red flag laws to remove guns from dangerous people, strengthen the national criminal background check system and provide money for mental health treatment. 

There’s also bipartisan discussion about encouraging safe storage of firearms and further regulating people who sell large numbers of weapons without obtaining a Federal Firearms License, which would require them to conduct background checks for all sales. 

Members of the extended bipartisan negotiating group on Wednesday expressed optimism about agreeing to a framework of principles by week’s end.  

“It was a constructive conversation. I’m optimistic we have a path forward,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said after emerging from a midday meeting in the Capitol basement.  

“I’m hopeful,” he added. “A series of concrete proposals were discussed that will make a significant difference, and I’m hopeful that in the next day that will all be reduced to a framework that includes [a] broad range of commitment in terms of dollar amount [and] purposes.” 

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a member of the negotiating group, estimated the mental health section of the bill is 80 percent resolved.  

Negotiators say they want to “scale up” the pilot program created by the 2014 Excellence in Mental Health and Addiction Treatment Act to fund community behavioral health clinics.  

Statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services show that people who receive services at these clinics are much less likely to spend time in jail or become homeless.  

Republican and Democratic negotiators say there is strong support for giving the National Instant Criminal Background Check System access to the juvenile crime records of people between the ages of 18 and 21. 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Wednesday suggested that Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old gunman who killed 21 people in Uvalde, was able to pass a background check because his juvenile record was not flagged.  

“Because there was no look back at his juvenile record, he passed a background check. It’s as if he was born on his 18th birthday and nothing that happened before was important. That’s obviously a problem,” Cornyn said on the floor.  

The senior Texas senator highlighted mental health treatment as one of the negotiating group’s top priorities.  

“To me, the shootings are a symptom of a larger problem, which is the failure of our mental health system in America,” he said.  

Cornyn later cautioned that a proposal sponsored by Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) to scale up funding for community mental health and addiction services will cost a lot of money.  

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said negotiators are looking at $7 billion to boost mental health services and to strengthen and reform the criminal background check system, but other senators say the numbers are still fluid.  

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who is working on a proposal to encourage states to set up red flag laws, said that section of the bill will send “hundreds of millions of dollars” to the states.  

Republicans in the group say they will insist on offsetting the cost of the gun violence package with reductions in other federal spending.  

“If we can find offsets for the spending then I think that helps us get the votes we need, and plus I think that’s fiscally responsible,” Cornyn said.  

While there is a growing consensus among the bipartisan group of Senate negotiators about what should be in a bill that comes to the floor, other Republicans are starting to push back against the talks.  

Several GOP senators on Wednesday raised concerns about the direction of the talks, signaling that a large number of Republicans will likely vote against the bill.  

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Wednesday said putting new restrictions on gun ownership would be the wrong approach. He argued that restricting access to guns would be tantamount to banning planes in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  

“Airplanes were used that day as the weapons to kill thousands of people and inflict terror on our country. There wasn’t a conversation about banning airplanes,” Scalise said at a press conference.  

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he will give negotiators at least until the end of the week to come up with a bipartisan framework to address gun violence.   

“These bipartisan talks deserve the space they need to produce meaningful results, and so I hope my colleagues continue to make progress towards an effective agreement, hopefully by the end of the week,” he said Wednesday.  

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that many members of his conference want to see the bipartisan group reach a deal, but he cautioned, as he has before, that the proposed reforms must respond directly to the mass shooting in Uvalde. 

Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the lead Democratic negotiator, told reporters: “We’re in the process of bringing everybody together around a common set of reforms.” 

“I remain confident we can get an agreement,” he said. “Red flags, improving the background check system, mental health funding remains the framework.”  

“There’s the most common ground around the mental health spending because it’s not as complicated politically,” he added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden speaks with Venezuelan opposition leader ahead of Summit of the Americas

President Biden on Wednesday had a phone call with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó ahead of the Summit of the Americas, which Guaidó was not invited to attend in person.

Biden reaffirmed his support for Guaidó as the country’s interim president and “expressed his support for Venezuelan-led negotiations as the best path toward a peaceful restoration of democratic institutions, free and fair elections, and respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Venezuelans,” the White House said in a readout of the call, which took place while Biden was aboard Air Force One en route to Los Angeles.

“They discussed the role the United States and other international partners can play to support a negotiated solution to Venezuela’s crisis,” the White House said. “President Biden reaffirmed the United States is willing to calibrate sanctions policy as informed by the outcomes of negotiations that empower the Venezuelan people to determine the future of their country.”

The Biden administration opted not to invite Guaidó as it snubbed the leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba over concerns about human rights and democratic backsliding. That decision rankled some other leaders in the region, including Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador, who opted not to attend the summit.

The U.S. has recognized Guaidó, the leader of the national assembly, as the interim president and rightful leader of Venezuela since 2019 as it sought to pressure President Nicolas Maduro to resign. But Maduro has remained in power and the lack of an invite for Guaidó could bolster his standing.

Source: TEST FEED1

Progressives see signs of hope fade after disappointing night

Primary results in California are adding to woes for progressives, who are seeing limits on the political support for their reformist vision of the country.  

In San Francisco, voters recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin (D), whose criminal justice and police reforms spooked residents who saw policies like cash bail stripped away under his tenure. At the same time, Rick Caruso, a Republican-turned-Democrat, had a surprisingly strong showing in the Los Angeles mayoral race while funneling tens of millions into a centrist, tough-on-crime platform and will face Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), who has built a progressive reputation, in a runoff election.  

The bleeding didn’t stop there. Just days prior, Texas officials announced anti-abortion rights Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), considered the most conservative Democrat in the House, had defeated activist and attorney Jessica Cisneros by fewer than 300 votes in the Democratic runoff for Texas’s 28th Congressional District, delivering perhaps the primary cycle’s biggest blow to progressives. And the week prior, Justice Democrats-backed Rana Abdelhamid suspended her House bid in New York.  

The left wing saw glimmers of hope last month when longtime Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) lost to liberal challenger Jamie Mcleod-Skinner in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District. Schrader, one of only two lawmakers President Biden endorsed, was seen as an obstructionist within his own party, and voters declined to reelect him to an eighth term.  

They also celebrated wins in Pennsylvania. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) won a coveted Senate primary over moderate Rep. Conor Lamb (D), and activist Summer Lee edged out a win for a House seat that covers Pittsburgh.

But the latest defeats give a two steps forward, three steps back feeling for dispirited progressives desperate to keep their movement’s energy intact.   

“The far left was talking a big game at the start of this cycle, but reality has intruded,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a top centrist think tank.  

“Democratic voters keep saying, over and over, that they do not want what the far left is selling. Deep-blue San Francisco has sent that message twice this year in recall elections. Voters in Minneapolis said the same, as did Democrats in New York City.” 

In San Francisco, crime dominated the discussion. Considered one of the left’s biggest vulnerabilities, the issue proved to be a losing one at the ballot box, and validation for moderates who had for months warned of the electoral problems with the “defund the police” mentality.  

For the activists and few progressive officeholders who embraced Boudin’s platform, an overwhelming number of voters didn’t. They rejected a belief that a softer approach on crime was needed in their city and proved that positions messaged toward safety were paramount.

Boudin, who came into office just three years ago with much adoration from liberals, was recalled by 61 percent, according to The Associated Press.  

“Ultimately,” said Kevin Liao, a political operative with the Democratic consultancy Bryson Gillette, it’s about “making sure to address the feeling of safety that people are going through in their everyday lives.”  

Just a few hundred miles away in Los Angeles, the race to elect the city’s next mayor had become more challenging for progressives than some anticipated. They saw Bass, a former leader in Congress close to both activists and party leadership, lose support to Caruso, whose billionaire status allowed him to self-fund his campaign. 

Much like in San Francisco, crime and unmitigated homelessness drove voters’ fears and preferences in the primary, though Bass has come out strongly against the progressive “defund the police” slogan. Bass and Caruso will face off against each other in the fall elections.  

In the latter weeks of the campaign, Bass tried to tie Caruso to his past support for GOP base issues like guns and abortion.  

“That will only permeate more in the general election,” said Liao, who expects to see sharper contrast drawn between both campaigns. “Do the big national Democratic figures and groups come out in support of Bass? Do you get [Sens.] Bernie [Sanders] and Elizabeth Warren endorsements and visits?” 

“That nationalization of the race will only grow as we get closer to November,” he said. 

No race was perhaps as nationalized as the Texas runoff, where Cisneros mounted a rematch against Cuellar for control of the state’s conservative-leaning district. 

Democrats watched in anticipation as votes trickled in from pro-Cuellar and pro-Cisneros counties in what amounted to a too-close-to-call election night. Days later, state officials finally certified the results narrowly in Cuellar’s favor after the congressman had already declared victory twice.  

Cisneros is now calling for a recount. 

“Progressives have an uphill battle in this political environment,” said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist and campaign veteran. 

While Cisneros came up just short of a House seat and potential place in the “Squad,” some Democrats argue that progressives who are already in office are also coming up short, with voters searching for a common target.  

Confusion over who contributed to Biden’s social spending package tanking and fears of more losses coming in the midterm elections are adding to those concerns. 

“There are a lot of progressives in positions of influence and power at a time where the country is unhappy with its leadership,” Payne said. 

The news on Tuesday wasn’t all bad for progressives. 

Gabriel Vasquez, a progressive former councilman, won a lesser-watched race for a New Mexico House seat to face off against Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell.    

But without linear traction, liberals are struggling to make the case that their platform is viable. And moderates see an opening in the cracks.  

“If they can’t sell their vision to primary voters in the Bay Area or the Bronx, it’s pretty tough for them to argue that their approach will work in a general election in suburban Richmond,” said Bennett of Third Way. 

Still, progressives are not the only ones facing criticism. Biden is increasingly taking heat from all sides as his approval ratings continue to sink, as domestic problems rip through the country and as his search for a new strategy and message hits up against the midterm clock.  

The optics of regular infighting don’t help. 

“The county’s been in a constant state of tumult,” Payne said. “People are unhappy with everybody and everything right now. And they’re going to reach at the closest thing they can grasp at. That’s usually the incumbent.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Climate-risk disclosure, let me count the ways

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposal for climate-risk disclosure should not bring to mind love poems, but yet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee” seems strangely apt, if in reverse. While some environmental advocates, consultants, and asset managers selling “sustainable” investment products have found a myriad of things to love about the proposal, there are far more reasons to criticize the SEC’s bold move: it’s a menace that threatens harm upon financial markets, the SEC itself, and even the cause of environmentalism.

Under the proposal, about 7,000 companies would have to report their “climate-related risks and impacts.” The SEC estimates that these new rules would raise the annual cost of compliance from $3.8 billion to $10.2 billion. That’s no small change. And the SEC’s estimates of $420,000 to $530,000 in annual expenses, including the services of climate modelers and emissions accountants, places a substantial burden on companies, particularly smaller ones. 

To appreciate the folly of this proposal, one need only consider its two laughable justifications. First, the SEC says that it must “protect investors” from an ongoing “market failure” involving “difficulties locating and assessing climate-related information when making their investment or voting decisions.” Second, the agency purports that it must correct “market inefficiencies” resulting in capital flows that supposedly do not reflect the true threat of global warming.

Both claims fail the sniff test. There are no market failures here. Corporate managers should already account for “climate-related risks” (if any) while trying to maximize long-term shareholder value in highly competitive securities markets, and the SEC already requires disclosure of such risks where they are material to an investor’s decision making. The upshot is that the proposal is “missing…a credible rationale,” to borrow phrasing from Commissioner Hester Peirce, the lone dissenting voice on the SEC. 

The SEC is also duplicating another agency’s work. A major component of the proposal is a requirement that companies disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, yet the Environmental Protection Agency—actually tasked with protecting the environment—already requires emissions reporting. Even though EPA requirements capture 85-90 percent of emissions, the SEC seeks to require more detailed disclosures for public companies, perplexingly implying that investors’ needs are greater than the EPA’s. It’s hard to imagine a worse case of mission creep.

Although big companies can afford to comply without disrupting their business, the same can’t be said for small companies or those with tight margins, all of whom would face a longer road to profitability. And it’s not just public companies in the crosshairs: smaller private companies will be subject to emissions reporting in their roles as suppliers and customers of public companies.

The indirect costs are even more worrisome. All information is not created equal, and there is a limit to the amount of information that an investor can process. Indeed, a company can mislead investors by deluging them with useless information just as surely as it can through concealment. For this reason, the SEC has a responsibility to consider whether required disclosure will result in irrelevant, redundant, and trivial information. The SEC’s climate proposal undermines that responsibility. By mandating an unprecedented degree of specificity for disclosure of climate-related risks—real or imagined—the SEC threatens to flood investors with extraneous information and sow confusion.

This proposal also spells trouble for the SEC. We know this because the agency experimented with environmentalist disclosure proposals in the 1970s. The idea failed then largely because it was infeasible. That is, the SEC recognized that it could not simultaneously serve both ethical investors and economic investors because they have different goals. To be sure, proponents of the SEC’s proposal try to square this circle by claiming that “the perceived barrier between social value and market value is breaking down,” in the words of Commissioner Allison Herren Lee. But who believes that? After all, the world’s largest oil company, Exxon-Mobil, has seen its stock price increase almost 40 percent this year in a difficult market, despite its supposed gigantic climate risks. Meanwhile, the world’s largest ethical investing fund is down about 19 percent.

Finally, the proposal could very well prove counterproductive to environmentalism. The SEC’s climate-risk disclosure proposal is quirky in that the regulatory burdens ratchet up for companies that have made public commitments about their climate policy. This provides a big incentive for companies to altogether avoid such activity. These rules—particularly their high costs—also may work to deter innovation vital to the solve the environmental consequences these rules seek to prevent.

Like Elizabeth Barret Browning’s love, the list of reasons the SEC’s climate-risk proposal is ill-consider goes on and on. But Browning’s conclusion to her sonnet is as applicable to love as it is to the SEC’s proposal: “I shall but love thee better after death.” The SEC should find a final resting place for this proposal, and soon.

Jennifer J. Schulp is the director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, where she focuses on the regulation of securities and capital markets. William Yeatman is a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, where he works on administrative law, constitutional structure, and regulatory reform.

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Uvalde fourth grader details harrowing account of shooting to House committee

Fifteen days after a gunman killed 19 of her classmates and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo told lawmakers Wednesday she thinks the shooting will happen again.

In a harrowing account of last month’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas, Miah said she called 911 to ask for the police, smearing her dead classmate’s blood on her face so she could play dead as the gunman remained in the classroom for more than an hour.

“He shot my friend that was next to me, and I thought he was going to come back to the room,” she told the House Oversight and Reform Committee. “So I grabbed the blood, and I put it all over me.”

The fourth grader, testifying through a recorded video at the recommendation of her pediatrician, told lawmakers she wanted “to have security” when she goes to school, where she no longer feels safe.

Cerrillo appeared before the committee alongside other survivors of recent mass shootings and victims’ loved ones in advance of the House voting on a swath of gun control measures.

Those measures include raising the purchasing age for semi-automatic weapons to 21 and banning civilian use of high-capacity magazines, among other proposals.

The bills face stiff opposition in the Senate, where 10 Republicans are needed to overcome a legislative filibuster. A bipartisan group of senators have been meeting to iron out a narrower package that is politically feasible, although it remains unclear whether a deal can be struck.

As Congress debates how to move forward, witnesses emotionally pleaded with the committee for action.

Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter, Lexi, was killed in the Uvalde shooting, demanded an assault weapon ban and an expansion of background checks.

“We understand that for some reason, to some people, to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns, that guns are more important than children, so at this moment we ask for progress,” she said.

Zeneta Everhart, the mother of Zaire Goodman, who was shot and injured in last month’s racist mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., detailed to the committee the multiple bullet holes now in her son’s body from an AR-15, calling on lawmakers to ban the weapon.

“If after hearing from me and the other people testifying here today does not move you to act on gun laws, I invite you to my home to help me to clean Zaire’s wounds so that you may see up close the damage that has been caused to my son and my community,” Everhart said.

Republicans were careful in the hearing room to avoid attacking the first panel, all of whom had recently witnessed gun violence in one form or another.

But at a simultaneous press conference, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) accused Democrats of exploiting the pain of witnesses to advance gun control measures. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a staunch conservative, boycotted the witnesses’ testimony.

When a second panel testified, this time with gun violence experts called by both parties, lawmakers took their ideological positions.

Democrats tied recent mass shootings to a lack of gun regulations. Republicans lambasted Democrats’ proposals as unconstitutional and ineffective, instead focusing on mental health funding and school security.

Amy Swearer, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, echoed many Republicans in her testimony, arguing Democrats’ proposals would largely target law-abiding citizens. She declared magazine limits as “effectively useless” and at times engaged in heated arguments with Democrats.

“Many of you are the same ones mocking anybody for ‘talking about doors’ when a single locked door in Uvalde would likely have saved 21 lives,” Swearer said.

The gunman in Uvalde entered the classroom as a teacher was attempting to lock the door.

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) pushed back on Republicans’ avoidance to consider gun control measures alongside her Democratic colleagues, calling gun violence a “uniquely American tragedy.”

“They have blamed everything but guns,” she said. “But we know the United States does not have a monopoly on mental illness, video games or any other excuse. What America does have is widespread access to guns.”

Democrats and some witnesses also took aim at the gun industry, calling for the repeal of a 2005 law granting firearm manufacturers broad immunity for crimes committed with their products. Some Republicans proposed arming teachers.

“To those who say that teachers or staff will not take up arms to protect their students, I say they will,” said Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.).

Democrats and most of its witnesses in the second panel decried those proposals, arguing they would turn schools into prisons and raising concerns about their impact on minorities.

“All of our educators are focused on making sure that they create a safe, welcoming environment for every single student,” said National Education Association President Rebecca Pringle. “We know that our Black and brown and Indigenous students are disproportionately impacted by the inequities and every single social system in this country.”

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Here are some of the states with the strictest and weakest gun laws

Gun laws have taken center stage amid a series of mass shootings across the country and a revived interest in reform efforts.

While some states have stronger policies like strict background check requirements, others have weaker regulations like younger age restrictions on who can possess a firearm. 

Here’s a closer look at some of the states with the strongest and weakest gun laws in the U.S. 

STRONGEST LAWS

California

California leads the country with stronger gun laws than any other state with an “A” score in the most recent 2021 scorecard from Giffords, an organization dedicated to ending gun violence.

The state also topped Everytown for Gun Safety’s gun law strength rankings in 2022, which noted that California has the seventh-lowest rate of gun deaths and the seventh-lowest gun ownership rate.

In the wake of the shooting last month in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 children and two adults dead at an elementary school, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said the Golden State would “expedite commonsense gun safety laws that will protect people from gun violence.”

The package Newsom committed to signing included restrictions on the sale of firearms to minors and so-called ghost guns, or unlicensed kits to build untraceable firearms.

It would also create “private right of action to limit spread of illegal assault weapons and ghost guns” and enable gun violence victims and governments to sue manufacturers and sellers of firearms.

New Jersey

New Jersey was the only other state to receive an “A” rating from Giffords. 

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also showed that New Jersey ranked third in the country for lowest firearm mortality rates in the country, behind only Hawaii and Massachusetts.

Everytown ranked New Jersey slightly lower, as it came in eighth for its gun law strength in 2022. The organization noted, however, that the Garden State has the lowest rate of firearm ownership in the country. 

One day after the Uvalde shooting, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) pressed for action on gun reform in the state.

“I introduced the comprehensive Gun Safety 3.0 package over a year ago and this moment demands that the Legislature finally take action,” he said, adding that the “proposed laws are hardly revolutionary.” 

“They would mandate safe storage of guns. They would ensure that those seeking to buy a gun are actually trained in the safe handling of that gun,“ the governor added. “They would give police tools to better track the paths of firearms used to commit crimes. They would prohibit the sale of weapons that can bring down helicopters.”

Connecticut

After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School devastated Connecticut, the state moved forward with several new gun reform efforts ranging from universal background checks and an expansion of the state’s assault weapons ban to restricting sales of high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Now, Connecticut ranked third for the highest gun law strength in the country with an “A-” from Giffords.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) who has been outspoken about his support for gun laws since Sandy Hook, is leading Democrats in talks on a new federal gun bill in response to the most recent shootings.

Hawaii

Data from the CDC shows Hawaii has the lowest firearm mortality rate of any state in the country.

Hawaii was also fourth for Gifford’s rankings of gun laws. It was second in Everytown’s rankings for overall gun law strength, and it tied with New Jersey for the lowest rate of gun ownership as only 9 percent of Hawaiians have guns in their homes. 

In 2020, Guns & Ammo magazine ranked Hawaii the second-worst for gun-friendly states, behind New York and followed by Massachusetts, New Jersey and California.

WEAKEST GUN LAWS

Arkansas

Arkansas ranked worst, according to Giffords, in terms of its gun law strength as it has passed laws preventing gun-free zones in cities and repealed a permit to carry law.

While Arkansas was near the bottom of Everytown’s list as well, it remained ahead of Idaho and Mississippi and was tied with Montana in that group’s rankings. 

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, last month said that he would be willing to engage in a conversation on raising the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21 and “AR-15-style weapons.”

“You have to at least have a conversation about that,” Hutchinson said on CNN last month.

Wyoming

Wyoming was second to last in the Giffords list.

The state eliminated a residency requirement to carry a gun in public without a permit or background check.

The state has the third-highest rate of gun deaths in the country, according to the CDC. 

The state has taken no steps to address gun violence and has looked to weaken gun laws, Everytown reported.

With 25.9 gun deaths per 100,000 people, the state’s gun deaths are up 90 percent from the national average, Giffords noted. 

Idaho

Idaho scored an “F” from Giffords for its weak gun laws. 

It ranked fourth-highest in terms of gun deaths, and is one of five states to have the highest gun homicide rate, according to Everytown. 

The state has made it more difficult for local police to enforce federal gun laws, and lacks requirements for universal background checks, assault weapon restrictions and open carry regulations among other policies recommended by Giffords. 

In 2020, Guns & Ammo magazine ranked Idaho the second best state for gun owners behind only Arizona. 

Missouri 

Missouri ranked 47th in the country for the strength of its gun laws and received an “F” score from GIffords. But Everytown ranked it 41st of all states in the country. 

Notably, St. Louis had one of the highest rates of gun murders of all cities across the country, Everytown noted.

The state has even imposed a policy that makes police officers personally liable for a $50,000 fine if they enforce federal gun laws, Giffords reported.

Some local leaders such as Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas (D) have pushed for tougher gun laws in the state.

“We need stronger and tougher laws to protect our children,” Lucas said earlier this week. “Protect our grocery stores, protect our police officers. If you back the blue, you back common-sense gun reform.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden trip to Middle East expected in July

President Biden is looking to visit the Middle East in July, a spokesperson for the National Security Council told The Hill on Wednesday. 

The White House has yet to publicly announce the trip. The spokesperson said that the administration had considered adding the Middle East visit onto the president’s trip to Europe in June, but “ultimately, we concluded it’s best to do a standalone trip” to the region. 

“It wasn’t moved or postponed,” the spokesperson said. “We concluded it’s best to do a standalone trip to the Middle East. We’re looking at dates in July.”

The president is traveling in June to Germany and Spain to attend the Group of 7 (G7) meeting and the NATO summit in Madrid.

A source familiar with the planning of Biden’s travel earlier confirmed to The Hill that the administration was in the planning stages of organizing a meeting between the president and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. 

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not confirm a meeting between Biden and Mohammed, in response to a reporter’s question on Tuesday, but called Saudi Arabia a strategic and important partner. 

“…the President will meet with any leader if it serves the interests of the American people.  That’s what he puts first,” Jean-Pierre said. “He believes engagement with Saudi leaders clearly meets that test, as has every president before him.”

While 86-year-old Saudi King Salman is the official leader of Saudi Arabia, the crown prince is considered the heir apparent and serves as the day-to-day leader with immense authority in the Kingdom. 

The expected meeting between Biden and Mohammed is drawing muted criticism from lawmakers, who call the Kingdom an important U.S. partner but that its leadership is acting “in ways at odds with U.S. policy and values.”

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Hill on Wednesday that the president’s likely meeting with Mohammed sends an “unfortunate message”. She called for the crown prince to face accountability his role in the death of U.S.-based opinion journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi consulate in October 2018. 

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the crown prince approved a plot “to capture or kill” Khashoggi. 

Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said Biden’s likely meeting with the crown prince allows the administration to “turn the page on the Saudi affair” and push for relief on high gas prices in the U.S. by asking the Saudis to release more oil on the market. 

Biden’s likely trip to Israel will also give the administration an opportunity to eke out a concrete policy win between Israel and its neighbors, Sachs said.

Axios reported last month that the president is looking to ink an agreement to transfer two islands in the Red Sea between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and with the discussions involving Israel.

“This trip is a vehicle for the Biden administration to put its own stamp on the Israeli-Arab rapprochement,” Sachs said.

“So making the Abraham Accords not only a [Jared] Kushner affair, but also a Biden one, to a limited degree,” he said, referring to the normalization agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain under the former Trump administration. 

Source: TEST FEED1