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Bipartisan Senate working group on gun violence will meet Tuesday

Republican and Democratic senators negotiating over a legislative proposal to respond to mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, will hold a Zoom call Tuesday in hopes of reaching a deal on a basic framework by next week.  

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who has been tasked by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to negotiate with Democrats, said the talks have been ongoing on the phone and in person.  

“We’re already having those discussions in person and on the phone. Look forward to meeting on Tuesday through a Zoom call to try to see if we can agree on a basic framework about how we go forward,” he told reporters in San Antonio Monday.  

President Biden on Monday expressed some optimism that Cornyn may strike a deal, praising him as a “rational” policymaker. 

“I think Sen. McConnell is a rational Republican. I think Cornyn is as well. I think there’s a recognition in their party that they — we can’t continue like this,” he said, referring to mass shootings at schools and other public places.  

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the lead Democratic negotiator, says he’ll know by the start of next week whether a framework agreement is likely.  

“I’ve done enough of these negotiations that I’ll know by the end of next week whether we’re serious or not,” he said shortly before lawmakers left town for Memorial Day weekend.  

A group of eight senators met in Murphy’s Capitol hideaway last week to organize the talks. The group included Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) participated in Thursday’s meeting over the phone.  

The group is focused on a proposal to incentivize states to establish red flag laws to prohibit individuals who are deemed dangerous to themselves or others from possessing fire arms.  

The senators are also looking at legislation to expand background checks for firearms sales and transfers.

Murphy and Cornyn negotiated expanded background-check requirements last year but the discussions fizzled in June after Murphy said his GOP counterpart “wouldn’t budge” on the definition of a commercial gun seller.  

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The price of rights matters

With the horrific massacre of children at school in Uvalde, debates about the nature and scope of Second Amendment rights have once again attracted national attention. One argument contends that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense extends to assault rifles and large ammunition magazines. From this perspective, a right is defined by its purpose, not by the costs that protecting it may impose on society. It is largely irrelevant that the latter has changed over time as technology develops. The original understanding of what the right protects is sacrosanct.

The counter argument responds that the weapons in common use in 1791 or 1868 were far more limited in their capacity to cause harm when misused compared to modern weaponry. The right to own a musket that could be loaded and fired three times in a minute cannot reasonably be applied to protect access to guns that fire dozens of bullets in seconds. These differences must be taken into account in interpreting the Second Amendment today.

How are we to evaluate this debate?

To answer that question, I think it is helpful to recognize that rights are political goods. They are highly valued and rightly so. But the price we as a society are willing to pay for them has limits. At some point, the price or cost of the right becomes too expensive for our society to bear. This, of course, is true for the purchase of material goods as well. No one would hold an individual to a commitment to buy a car, for example, if the price of the vehicle unexpectedly quadrupled. Price is part of the Constitutional deal as well.

In the context of rights, this cost — or the price we have to pay to protect the right — has always been part of our understanding of the nature and scope of the right. It is important to understand here that looking at the price of the right to determine the extent to which we are willing to protect its exercise is a separate — although not entirely unrelated — question from an inquiry into whether an activity satisfies the definition of a right in other respects.

To take one example, consider the free exercise of religion. Assume a person claims that their religion requires them to engage in behavior that causes unacceptable harm to others or the public good; human sacrifices, polygamy, denying children life saving medical care. We may recognize the sincerity of the religious person’s faith commitments and that from their religious perspective they are obliged to perform these actions. In a generic sense, their conduct constitutes the exercise of religion. But as a constitutional matter, we will not protect these activities as the free exercise of religion. Put simply, the price of doing so is too high.

This understanding — that the only reasonable way to determine the meaning of a right and the protection the exercise of the right receives is by taking the cost of protecting it into account — should not be controversial. It is solidly grounded in history and precedent. Again, if we consider religious liberty as an example, many early state constitutions protected religious freedom, but they also explicitly admonished that the scope of the right did not extend to disturbing the public peace and safety. The price we were willing to pay limited the scope of the right.

Similarly, in Reynolds v. U.S. in 1878, the Supreme Court held that however fervently devout Mormons might believe that their faith countenanced polygamy, the cost to society of permitting such a dangerous and “odious” practice placed polygamy beyond the scope of free exercise protection.

Certainly, the framers of the Constitution had never considered that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment would protect the religious practice of polygamy from legal prohibition.

Other rights provide additional examples. Freedom of speech is aggressively protected — but speech that incites imminent lawless conduct or violence risks too much harm to be tolerated. The presumption against prior restraints on speech is entitled to great respect, but the government can enjoin publishing the schedule of troop convoys in time of war. The controversy over the right to have an abortion reflects an analogous analysis. The contention that there is a right to reproductive autonomy which protects access to contraceptives, but not to aborting a fetus, is grounded on the greater harm caused by the exercise of the right in the latter context.

A similar analysis applies to the Second Amendment. The danger to third parties and the general public is an intrinsic aspect of determining the scope of the right to keep and bear arms just as the cost of protecting certain exercises of religion or expressions of speech or reproductive autonomy may limit the protection provided to these fundamental rights.

Given this foundation, it is difficult to argue that the costs of protecting access to assault rifles and large ammunition magazines is not a relevant and arguably controlling factor to consider in determining what the Second Amendment protects today. In taking those costs into account, the reality that the right applied to the limited firearms available 150 -230 years ago cannot reasonably support the conclusion that the Second Amendment necessarily extends to the modern weaponry at issue in current controversies.

If the price of exercising the right has gone up enough, we are no longer obligated to purchase it.

Alan Brownstein is a professor of law emeritus at the University of California, Davis School of Law. He has written numerous articles for academic journals and opinion pieces for other media on a range of constitutional law subjects. He is a member of the American Law Institute and served on the Legal Committee of the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union. He received his B.A. degree from Antioch College and earned his J.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School, where he served as a Case Editor of the Harvard Law Review.

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Five things to watch for in next year's 'climate' Farm Bill

Jostling has already started over the 2023 Farm Bill and both progressive and conservative activists told The Hill it will focus heavily on climate change and sustainability.

“We’re expecting it will be the largest climate bill of the next Congress,” Heather Reams, executive director of conservative Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions told The Hill.

With drought and extreme weather pummeling crops from California to the Upper Midwest, farmers are “feeling the impacts of climate change before the rest of us,” Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group told The Hill.

That means an increased focus on adaptation to a harsher environment — and on ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions from a sector that, unlike most other parts of the U.S. economy, is seeing those emissions rise, Faber added.

But outside a few key areas, the two groups have very different visions of sustainability. 

Here are the five questions hanging over both the Farm Bill itself, and the future of American agriculture in an age of climate change.

What will Congress do about methane?

As the scale of American meat production grows, so do emissions of the powerul greenhouse gas methane, a byproduct of the process by which mammas generate protein that is dozens of times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

And methane is only half the problem: concentrated animal farming operations, often called factory farms, require enormous supply chains of crops like corn and soy — which themselves require huge fields covered in nitrogen-based chemical fertilizers. These evaporate as nitrous oxide, which is also far more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide.

One option, often pushed by conservative lawmakers and advocates, is trapping methane and selling it under the moniker “renewable natural gas.”

They argue that any taxes aimed at methane reduction will simply displace American production onto countries with more greenhouse-gas intensive farming.

Instead, they will likely favor the use of incentives or subsidies to foster further development of methane-based energy, such as the ones hog conglomerate Smithfield is building in conjunction with Duke Energy in North Carolina, sources familiar with the matter told The Hill.

Many environmentalists say this is deeply misguided. 

“Methane primarily comes out the front end, not the back end,” Faber said. 

Creating profitable methane markets is liable to lead to more methane, Marty Rifkin of Center for Biological Diversity told The Hill. 

“Using a waste product to be put into the open air — that’s perfectly understandable,” he said. “But if you’re putting a dollar value on methane, then there’s no reason to reduce methane.”

Will conservation easements be reformed?

One key vehicle for potential greenhouse gas reduction, land protection or carbon storage is the $1.2 billion collection of USDA conservation grant initiatives like the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Environmental Quality Incentive Program

But in their current form, only 21.5 percent of these funds actually go to practices that reduce greenhouse gases — either by binding carbon into the soil or cutting the release of methane or nitrous oxide, a report by Environmental Working Group found last month.

Much of the rest goes to routine maintenance projects — new roofs and irrigation systems — but about $100 million in 2019 and 2020 went to animal waste lagoons, which increasegreenhouse gasses. 

“Not only that, we’re turning away two-thirds of farmers who seek EQIP funds, and it’s not like there’s some process by which we’re saying — ‘If you really want to reduce greenhouse gases, you go to the front of the line,’” Faber said. “So it’s a big opportunity to flip the script and instead spend 80 percent of Equip and CSP funding on practices that reduce emissions.”

What types of crops, and farms, will get subsidies?

Most American food funding doesn’t actually go to food that ends up on people’s plates — in fact, much of it goes to commodities like corn and soy that are more like industrial precursors, used largely for processed foods, animal feed or biofuels. 

“The farm bill is now designed to overproduce a few key commodities and crowd out others,” Austin Frerick of Yale University’s Thurman Arnold Program told The Hill. “The goal is to make corn as cheap as possible because Pepsi wants to pay as little as possible to make chips and pop, and meatpackers want to pay as little as possible to make beef.”

One result of the conversion of much of the country to the production of precursor crops is that “we’re destroying rural Iowa to feed China,” Frerick said.

That means that table corn, carrots, cabbage, apples and broccoli are all examples of what is called, paradoxically, “specialty crops” — and they largely don’t get the same support as the heavily subsidized industrial crops.

This has a number of politically fraught impacts, Frerick said. It means that “healthy food is more expensive, while junk food decreases in price.”

Amid the rising prospect of a global food crisis amid supply disruptions from the war in Ukraine and climate change-fueled drought, “we’re not just failing to increase food production, but wasting the most valuable farmland in the country to burn in our cars.”

Animal feed poses a similar problem: only ten percent of the calories in a given unit of corn make it into a corn-fed cow, meaning that more farmland, fertilizer and pollution are needed for beef than vegetables, Rifkin said.

There’s an easy fix, Rifkin argued: parity in funding, at least, for crops people directly eat. 

“That wouldn’t be a huge reach, and there would be benefits to local economies and producers,” he said.

Will the bill address adaptation problems?

One area in which there appears to be strong bipartisan support is the idea of consolidating American agriculture away from marginal or drought and flood-blighted lands to those where it is safer and more profitable — and the release of those surrendered lands into wild landscapes that can help provide refuge for animals, secure carbon and raise the resilience of entire regions. 

Another key USDA tool that allows this — in addition to aspects of CRS and EQIP — is the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays for marginal or unproductive lands to be taken out of cultivation and returned to nature.

“Eighty percent of those dollars should be dedicated to permanent easements on hard to farm, marginal lands — freeing up prime farmland to produce more food, and getting long-term buildup of carbon in the soil,” Faber of EWG said.

More may be necessary. One brutal challenge of the age of climate change is that the economic geography of American food production is growing ever more divorced from its climate, water and weather patterns. 

Drought-plagued California, for example, is the heartland of America’s dairy sector — even though dairy is a staggeringly water-intensive industry.

“We have to start shifting food production in America,” Frerick said. 

But sources familiar with Republican farm politics said that while there was likely appetite for greater conservation support, sitting members were unlikely to direct funds away from existing farmland.

What pilot programs are funded?

Radical reform is unlikely in any farm bill, and this coming bill — likely presided over by a Republican Congress — least of all.

But several sources said small programs, with budgets up to the tens of millions, would likely be the most interesting and ultimately significant parts of the bill. 

“The bill has all these cool little pilot programs that are basically ways to throw little pots of money to try new ideas,” Frerick said.

For example, former Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) funded a pilot program in the early 2000s that gave American schoolchildren fresh fruits and vegetables every day as a healthy snack — which was so successful that in 2005 it was scaled up to cover the entire country.

The pilot programs are “a great opportunity to spread your bets, almost like an investment portfolio,” Frederick said. “You do in a few states — different party states — and generate a bunch of evidence to show this actually works. And hopefully it can grow into something more more meaningful.”

Amid the standard supports for standard legacy interests, he asked, “can we plant seeds to allow for structural change down the road?”

Source: TEST FEED1

New US ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink arrives in Kyiv

The new U.S. ambassador to Ukraine has arrived in Kyiv, marking the first time in about three years that America had an ambassador in the country.

Bridget Brink announced in a tweet on Monday that she is in now at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, where she said she is “honored” to join the team “as we stand with Ukraine.”

Her presence in Ukraine comes more than three months after Russia launched its invasion of the country on Feb. 24.

The last person to serve as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was Marie Yovanovitch, who then-President Trump ousted in 2019. She eventually became a key figure during Trump’s first impeachment proceedings.

The Senate confirmed Brink as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in a unanimous voice vote. President Biden nominated her to the post in April. She is a career foreign service officer who has spent much of her career focused on Europe and Eurasia, most recently as ambassador to Slovakia.

The U.S. suspended operations at its embassy in Kyiv in February, when Russia’s invasion was just beginning. Operations had initially been transferred from Kyiv to Lviv, located in the west of the country, before moving to Poland.

Earlier this month, however, American diplomats started arriving in Kyiv as the U.S. prepared to restart embassy operations in the capital city.

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced last week that plans to deploy U.S. forces into Ukraine to protect the U.S. embassy in Kyiv are “underway at a relatively low level.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that officials are trying to walk a fine line between safeguarding the newly opened embassy without letting the security presence be perceived as an escalation by Russia.

“We’re a ways away from anything like that. We’re still developing courses of action, and none of that has been presented yet to the secretary,” Milley said of the plans.

Source: TEST FEED1

Florida fifth grader threatened mass shooting: police

A 10-year-old boy in Florida was arrested on Saturday for allegedly threatening in a text message to conduct a mass shooting, according to local police.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office said the fifth grader at a Cape Coral elementary school had sent a “threatening text message,” and authorities arrested him later that day. He was charged with making a written threat to conduct a mass shooting.

The investigation came just days after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 students and two teachers dead. 

“This student’s behavior is sickening, especially after the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno (R) said in a statement. 

Local police have come under scrutiny for their response to the Uvalde shooting after it was revealed the gunman was in the building for more than an hour before Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents entered the classroom and killed him. Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said on Friday that authorities made the wrong decision to wait to confront the gunman.

Marceno, who brands himself as Florida’s “law and order” sheriff, said the boy who allegedly sent the threatening text message would face “real consequences.”

“Making sure our children are safe is paramount,” Marceno said. “We will have law and order in our schools! My team didn’t hesitate one second…NOT ONE SECOND, to investigate this threat.”

Marceno’s office also posted a video of a boy who appears to be the fifth grader walking out of the sheriff’s office in handcuffs.

“Right now is not the time to act like a little delinquent,” said Marceno. “It’s not funny. This child made a fake threat, and now he’s experiencing real consequences.”

Source: TEST FEED1

NRA reelects Charles Cotton as president, Wayne LaPierre as CEO

The National Rifle Association on Monday said it has reelected Charles Cotton as president and Wayne LaPierre as CEO and executive vice president, despite recent controversies surrounding their leadership, including efforts by New York officials to shut down the group over alleged “fraud and abuse.”  

The election results were announced at the end of the group’s annual meeting in Houston and comes at a critical time for the organization, as Democrats and activists are making new calls for gun control, including an assault weapons ban, expanded background checks and incentives for states to establish red flag laws.  

“The NRA stands strong, safe and secure,” Cotton said in a statement at the end of the three-day meeting, which began on May 27. “We have never been better positioned to protect the Second Amendment or lend our collective voices in support of important issues like school security.” 

LaPierre said he was “honored to continue my work for the NRA, and to join our members in their campaign to promote responsible gun ownership and defend Second Amendment freedom for all law-abiding Americans.”  

LaPierre also recognized the victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, calling for improvement in mental health services and making schools “more safe and secure.” 

LaPierre easily survived a challenge from former Texas Republican Party Chairman Allen West, who ran to replace him as executive vice president. West ended up receiving only one vote, according to an NRA press release announcing the results of the election.  

The shooting in Uvalde and another mass killing at a Buffalo supermarket have put new scrutiny on the NRA and its influence over Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill.  

“We know all too well the vice grip that the NRA and the MAGA wing hold over the GOP,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the floor Thursday, explaining the slim chances for getting a deal on gun-control legislation in the Senate.  

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) canceled their planned appearances at the NRA convention in Houston, while former President Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) attended despite the timing.  

GOP and Democratic strategists say the political influence has waned in recent years over ongoing turmoil over its finances.  

Trump chastised the group in 2019 and demanded that it “get its act together quickly” in the face of allegations of financial misconduct.  

The group tried to declare bankruptcy last year to avoid an effort by New York Attorney General Letitia James to shutter it over allegations of financial mismanagement and abuse of power. A federal bankruptcy judge, however, ruled the bankruptcy had not been filed in good faith.  

Even so, the advocacy group retains considerable clout with a budget of $300 million, according to The Washington Post.  

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Local official says Biden wants to tear down Robb Elementary School in Uvalde

President Biden reportedly told a local Texas official that he wants to tear down Robb Elementary School, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest shooting since 20 children and 6 adults died at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012. 

Democratic state senator Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, told local television station KSAT 12 in an interview that Biden told him “we’re going to raze that school and build a new one.”  

Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visited a memorial for the slain students and teachers at Robb Elementary School on Sunday and then attended a mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church before meeting with the survivors and families of the victims.  

Gutierrez welcomed the president and first lady when they arrived in San Antonio Sunday morning aboard Air Force One.  

The state senator said Biden pledged to support the community, telling him “I’m not going away” and “I’m going to bring your resources.” 

Gutierrez told KSAT 12 that he plans to move a field office to Uvalde to better service his constituents.  

The Department of Justice announced Sunday that it would investigate the police response to the shooting after it was reported that local police officers waited to confront the shooter for more than an hour while children were trapped in a classroom with the killer.  

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin requested the investigation.  

Gutierrez told CNN’s Dana Bash that one girl who was shot in the back likely bled to death while police waited outside, and may have lived if medical first responders had reached her sooner.  

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Remember our heroes this Memorial Day

Like most Americans, I am looking forward to a long weekend. But I hope that this Memorial Day, we each spend time thinking about the holiday’s true meaning. 

Memorial Day, properly observed, is a solemn affair. While the weekend has come to represent the unofficial start of summer, its real purpose is to nationally mourn the brave women and men who died in service of the U.S. Armed Forces. Nearly 1.2 million American troops have lost their lives during war time in our country’s history. While we pause as a nation every final Monday in May, do we fully reflect on the sacrifices so many have made on our behalf?

Even before the conclusion of the Civil War, Americans in the North and South set aside days to mourn the fallen from their communities. Following the deadliest war in American history, various veterans’ organizations, communities and states set aside one day in May each year to pause and reflect on those who were lost starting in 1868. That tradition grew for nearly a century; in 1967, Memorial Day was officially proclaimed as a national holiday by the U.S. Congress. In 1968, a three-day weekend was set aside for Memorial Day, which has now grown into a weekend of backyard barbecues, afternoon baseball games and blowout retail sales. But the true meaning of the holiday must not be overlooked.

I had the great honor of wearing our nation’s uniform. Memorial Day takes on a different meaning entirely after you have seen war up close and have friends who made the ultimate sacrifice. But while only about 7 percent of adult Americans are military veterans, every American has benefitted from the sacrifice of just a few. It is on each of us to recognize – with gratitude – those who gave their lives in order to afford us the freedoms we enjoy every day. This profound truth is driven home to me every day by the examples set by our nation’s Medal of Honor recipients.

Today I have the distinct privilege of leading the project to build the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas. I have to pinch myself sometimes knowing that I work alongside some of the bravest Americans to ever put on the uniform. There have been movies made about their personal exploits and heroism in battle, but ask any of the 64 recipients still living today and they will tell you the same thing: they proudly wear the military’s highest award for valor in recognition and remembrance of the real heroes, their brothers and sisters in arms who never made it home.

As the last living Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, Cpl. Hershel “Woody” Williams put it: “We owe a debt to those who sacrificed their lives to keep us a free people. They did it for a cause greater than themselves and they are never going to be forgotten.” My hope is that we follow the recipients’ lead this Memorial Day in remembering and honoring those who died defending America.

As a nation, we set aside many holidays for celebration, but Memorial Day should also be an opportunity to think about and pay tribute to those who gave everything for our country. For those who perished behind the flag, there was no risk calculation or weighing of options. There was only action borne from love. And how we mark Memorial Day should reflect the seriousness of that kind of sacrifice.

By all means, gather with family and friends and enthusiastically beckon the coming of summer this weekend. But in the midst of all the revelry, take time to reflect on the courageous individuals who gave their lives so that their fellow countrymen and women might be free.

Chris Cassidy is the president and CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum, a retired U.S. Navy SEAL and former NASA chief astronaut.

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Biden lays wreath, delivers remarks at Arlington National Cemetery to mark Memorial Day

President Biden laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and delivered remarks at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to mark Memorial Day, emphasizing the “sacred ritual” of remembering the people who died in combat while defending the U.S.

“Today, as a nation, we undertake a sacred ritual to reflect and remember, because if we forget the lives of each of those silent markers represent — mothers, fathers, siblings, spouses, children — if we forget what they sacrifice, what they made, so that our nation might endure, strong, free and united, then we forget who we are,” Biden said.

“Today, we renew our sacred vow. It’s a simple vow. To remember. To remember. Memorial Day is always a day where pain and pride are mixed together,” he later added. 

Vice President Harris, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley were alongside Biden at Arlington National Cemetery during the laying of the wreath. Milley and Austin both spoke before Biden.

During his remarks, Biden underscored the importance of democracy, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — which has been ongoing for more than three months.

“In this moment, when a war of aggression is once more being waged by Russia to snuff out the freedom, the democracy, the very culture and identity of neighboring Ukraine, we see so clearly, all that’s at stake” Biden said.

“Freedom has never been free. Democracy has always required champions. Today, in the perennial struggle for democracy and freedom, Ukraine and its people are on the frontlines fighting to save their nation. But their fight is part of a larger fight that unites all people, is a fight that so many of the patriots whose eternal rest is here in these hallowed grounds, were part of. A battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between appetites and ambition of a few will forever seek to dominate the lives and liberties of many. A battle for essential democratic principles,” he added.

Monday marked Biden’s second time commemorating Memorial Day as president. The day also coincided with the seven-year anniversary of the death of his son, Beau Biden. The younger Biden, who was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard, died in 2015 from brain cancer. He served in Iraq.

The president, first lady Jill Biden and members of their family visited Beau Biden’s grave in Delaware earlier on Monday.

President Biden mentioned the death of his son during his remarks at Arlington National Cemetery.

“If your loved one is missing or unaccounted for, I know this ceremony is reopened that black hole in the center of your chest that just pulls you in, suffocates you. I said seven years ago today our son major Beau Biden took his last breath at Walter Reed,” the president said.

“He didn’t die in the line of duty, he came home from Iraq with cancer. It was horrific cancer stole us from him, stole him from us. But still, it always feels to me on Memorial Day, I see him. Not as he was the last time I held his hand, but the day I pinned bars on him as a second lieutenant. I see him with me down at the Delaware Memorial Bridge hugging all the gold-star families” he later added.

Biden emphasized the mission servicemembers believe in when they enter combat, and he noted the important role military families play.

“They chose a life of purpose. They had a mission. And above all they believed in duty, they believed in honor, they believed in their country. And still today we are free because they were brave. We live by the light and the flame of liberty that they kept burning. And so a part of them is still with us no matter how long ago we lost them,” Biden said.

“To every Gold Star family, to every survivor and family member and character, this grateful nation owes you as well as that person you lost,” Biden later added. “We can never repay the sacrifice. But we will never stop trying. We’ll never fail on our duty to remember. With their lives, they bought our freedom. And so with our lives, we must always live up to their example.”

In remarks before Biden, Austin recognized the more than 2,400 service members who died in the U.S.’s battle with Afghanistan, which officially ended in August when all American troops were pulled from the country.

The U.S.’s nearly 20-year military involvement in Afghanistan concluded with the death of 13 troops in a suicide bombing outside a fate at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

“In the year since we last gathered on this solemn day, America’s longest war has come to a close. And today, we remember the 2,461 American service members and personnel who fell in Afghanistan,” Austin said.

“And we remember all those who still carry the wounds of that war, to body and to soul. We hold them in our hearts, alongside the patriots across generations who gave their lives to defend us all,” he added.

Biden concluded his speech with an impassioned endorsement of democracy, arguing that while it is not perfect, it is worth fighting for.

“Today remember and we reaffirm, freedom is worth the sacrifice. Democracy is not perfect. It’s never been perfect. But it’s worth fighting for. If necessary, worth dying for,” he said.

Source: TEST FEED1