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Pelosi tells Brown University graduates to unite in deeply divided country

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) invoked Abraham Lincoln and John Lewis during her commencement speech at Brown University on Sunday, calling on graduates to help unify the country.

“I urge you to bring this spirit of unity to whatever you do,” Pelosi said.

“It’s no secret that you graduate in a country deeply divided socially, politically, culturally. And there’s even more dangerous factions [that] seek to dispense with democracy altogether, but graduates, you are our hope,” she added.

Pelosi also accepted an honorary doctorate during the ceremony, joking with the graduates that she is now their classmate.

During her remarks, Pelosi referenced the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, the recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, N.Y and an array of other top issues for Democrats.

“In the months since the insurrection, we’ve seen further assaults on democracy,” Pelosi said. “Shameful campaigns of voter suppression and election nullification. A Supreme Court poised to erase a woman’s right to decide and threaten even more privacy rights, including marriage equality. We can’t let that happen.”

Despite describing the country as facing “dark and anti-democratic forces,” Pelosi struck an optimistic tone in her address, pointing to waves of youth-driven activism on issues like gun violence and climate change. 

Pelosi also complimented the school’s efforts to support Ukrainian students in the wake of Russia’s invasion of the country and Afghan students after the United States’ withdrawal from the country last year.

“Hope remains democracy’s most powerful weapon against oppression, against cynicism, against hatred,” she said.

Pelosi told graduates she had never expected to run for public office, encouraging them to be ready to “take the leap of faith.” 

“When that happens, the best advice is be yourself,” Pelosi said. “You are the authenticity America needs. Be who you are.”

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Bidens meet families of Uvalde school shooting victims

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden on Sunday met with survivors of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, as well as families of the victims of the massacre.

The Bidens traveled to Uvalde on Sunday, five days after a gunman entered Robb Elementary School and killed 21 people, including 19 children. The meeting with families was closed to the press.

Biden is slated to meet with law enforcement and first responders in Uvalde before departing Texas for Washington, D.C.

The first stop after the president and first lady arrived in Uvalde was to to the school where there is a memorial to the victims. They then attended service at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

As Biden left the church, someone in a crowd of onlookers gathered outside yelled “Do something!”

“We will,” Biden replied.

Biden has in the days since the tragedy has renewed his calls for expanded background checks and reinstitute a ban on assault weapons.

But most Republicans have brushed off the need for stronger gun laws, instead arguing for more school security including more armed police.

Meanwhile, the law enforcement response to the Uvalde shooting has come under intense scrutiny as officials have repeatedly changed the timeline and description of how officers on the scene reacted when the gunman arrived at the school. 

Officials first said police confronted the gunman outside the school, only to reverse course by admitting that was not the case. Authorities have since said they waited nearly an hour to go into the classroom where the gunman was barricaded, acknowledging it was a mistake not to actively pursue the individual.

Source: TEST FEED1

Why this inflation is different

Commentators and politicians are frightening Americans about inflation without understanding and explaining why it burst on the scene last summer as COVID-19 receded. A growing consensus among inflation hawks says that the surge in prices is the result of the Federal Reserve’s failure to raise interest rates and slow the economy soon enough. Worse, the hawks tell Americans that the Fed must squeeze harder and that its “mistake” could lead to a long period of “stagflation” like the one the U.S. endured from 1974 to 1981. It is important to respond to this foolishness.  

Today’s inflation palaver fails utterly to explain the two most important facts about the recent burst of rising prices. The first is that energy prices are inflation’s principal drivers here and in the rest of the world, and the U.S. does not control these prices. Even in Germany where fighting inflation is a civic religion, prices are rising at roughly the rate in the U.S. A second even more important fact is that there is a huge difference between the tech-driven U.S. economy in 2022 and the inflation-prone one of the 1970s. The ’70s economy was built around post-World War II industries dominated by monopolies and oligopolies that often could raise prices without regard to supply and demand. The U.S. economy today is led by tech companies that whatever their faults battle each other for markets and usually grow by innovating and cutting prices.  

To begin, it should be clear that energy prices tell the story of inflation in 2022 as they did in the 1970s. Gasoline has more than doubled from $1.94 gallon in April 2020 when COVID-19 was curtailing driving, to $4.60 the other day. Sharply rising gasoline prices mean that the OPEC oil cartel is in the driver’s seat again, pushing oil from $41.47 a barrel in 2020 to roughly $113 in May 2022. This is a painful reminder of what happened a half-century ago when the OPEC cartel cut oil supplies and drove prices from $1.82 a barrel in 1972 to $35.50 in 1980, 19 times higher. (There are 42 gallons in a barrel.) 

Rising oil prices raise the cost of gasoline of course, but also of diesel, heating oil, propane, and hydrocarbon “feedstocks” made from natural gas, oil and coal that often are substitutes for oil. Higher prices for oil and oil-substitutes, in turn, cause inflationary price increases in a whole range of products and services. They pull up the costs of electricity, home and office heating and cooling, manufacturing, plastics, textiles, transportation of all types, farm prices (fertilizer, tractor fuel, costs to ship to markets), restaurant meals, and much more. 

The U.S. economy, though, has changed since the 1970s, which will make inflation less painful to manage if we don’t let the inflation hawks panic us. The U.S. economy of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s was dominated by post-Depression post-World War II industries that were sheltered by government-sanctioned price-fixing arrangements that raised prices year after year. The U.S. economy in 2022 is different. The OPEC cartel’s ability to cut supply and raise prices is still there but the price fixing arrangements in communications, transportation, manufacturing, finance, retailing and many other areas are gone, so that prices now fall as well as rise.  

In the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, prices in large sectors of the economy were “administered” by business and labor monopolies and oligopolies so that prices rose year after year, but rarely came down. The best-known economist of the period, John Kenneth Galbraith, a wonderful writer and friend of President John F. Kennedy wrote about this in his 1967 book, “The New Industrial State.” Galbraith said that the economy was divided into two broad categories: those where prices and wages were “administered” and those where competition kept inflation down. He was certainly right about this, but he was wrong to believe that the political power of the entrenched industries and unions would prevent that situation from changing. 

The economy did change radically between 1973 and 1983-84. The administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, with bipartisan help from Congress took action to break up the inflationary price fixing arrangements that were the heart of the post-World War II economy. The specifics need to be recognized as Americans think about inflation today.  

In the 1970s, Presidents Ford and Carter backed up the courts and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that broke up AT&T’s (aka Ma Bell’s) telephone monopoly. Communications costs in the 1980s plunged – in some cases by 95 percent – and today businesses and individuals have low-cost choices that were unimaginable in the 1970s. Ford and Carter also supported the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and various federal banking regulators who opened up stock markets and banking to more competition, lowering the costs of financing. By the same token and with the guidance of Ford and Carter appointees, the ancient Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) opened up trucking, railroads, and pipelines to price competition that broke the power of incumbent interests to set prices. The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) with support from Ford and Carter also ended cozy airline price fixing and policies that locked out new air carriers since 1938. These reforms were carried out despite fierce opposition from the established companies and unions in every one of these areas.  

Manufacturing changed too. A 3-2 decision led by Carter-appointees at the International Trade Commission (ITC) had the effect of more fully opening the U.S. car market to imports from Europe and Japan and to firms from Japan, Germany and Korea that now make cars in the U.S. This undermined the pricing power of the Big 3 U.S. auto companies that had dominated U.S. manufacturing since the 1920s. In 2022 there is significant price competition, not only in new cars, but in most of the machine building, metal shaping and bending industries that cater to carmakers. (The computer chip shortage is cutting supply and raising car and appliance prices now, but this will pass as new chip making capacity comes online.) 

Natural gas was the toughest nut to crack politically. Carter fought for two years to open up both natural gas and electricity to price competition and was partly successful. As a result, natural gas prices were astonishingly low for decades, reducing the country’s dependence on coal and oil. 

All of these structural changes in the economy led to low inflation for 40 years and make today’s inflation caused by oil, transportation, and a few bottlenecks less likely to become entrenched. None of these structural changes had anything to do with Federal Reserve monetary policy that caused a recession in the early ’80s and always gets the credit for beating back that inflation. What the country needs now to fight inflation instead of another Fed-engineered recession is policies to speedily develop new sources of energy (more wind and solar would be good), further modernize transportation infrastructure, reduce the price-fixing supplier arrangements that make American health care so costly, and increase the production of things like computer chips. Slowing the economy by raising interest rates and causing a recession impedes investment in these areas and will cause far more pain for working Americans than today’s inflation. 

Paul A. London, Ph.D., was a senior policy adviser and deputy undersecretary of Commerce for Economics and Statistics in the 1990s, a deputy assistant administrator at the Federal Energy Administration and Energy Department, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. A legislative assistant to Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.) in the 1970s, he was a foreign service officer in Paris and Vietnam and is the author of two books, including “The Competition Solution: The Bipartisan Secret Behind American Prosperity” (2005).  

Source: TEST FEED1

Former DHS counterterrorism chief: Law enforcement response to Texas school shooting a 'failure'

Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) counterterrorism chief John Cohen said on Sunday that law enforcement’s response to the active shooter situation at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas was a “failure”.

“I mean, John, it was a failure,” Cohen told ABC’s “This Week” moderator Jonathan Karl. 

“I’ve been in law enforcement almost 40 years I am proud of my profession. I respect the men and women who are out there each day trying to make our community safe. But at the end of the day, we had 21 people die, we had 19 children die. We had people potentially die while law enforcement was on scene.” 

Cohen said more information should be coming in days about whether authorities responding to the scene were trained properly, along with specifics on how they responded and communicated as the attack was ongoing.

“When you put on that badge, you make a commitment to safeguard the community and protect those who cannot protect themselves,” Cohen added. “And on that day, law enforcement failed.” 

Cohen’s remarks come after 19 schoolchildren and two teachers were killed on Tuesday in Uvalde. Officials say the suspect, Salvador Ramos, 18, opened fire inside of a fourth-grade classroom at the school, but was not killed for more than an hour after entering the building.

Local authorities have faced intense scrutiny from the media, public, and parents for their response to the shooting, with Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw saying on Friday that authorities made the wrong decision to wait to confront Ramos. 

Authorities also said that 19 police officers were waiting inside the hallway in the school outside of the classroom, but waited for the school janitor to unlock the door, more than an hour after the massacre began. 

“From the benefit of hindsight, where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. There’s no excuse for that,” McCraw said at a news conference. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said he was “livid” about inaccurate information he was given about the police response to the school shooting.

“As everyone has learned, the information I was given has turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that,” he said on Friday.

“My expectation is that the law enforcement leaders leading the investigations … they get to the bottom of every fact with absolute certainty.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Sunday that it will launch a review of law enforcement’s response to the school shooting, and publish a report about its conclusions.

“The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events,” DOJ spokesman Anthony Coley said in a statement.

Source: TEST FEED1

WHO: 650 children diagnosed with severe hepatitis since April

The World Health Organization said on Sunday said that 650 cases of severe hepatitis cases have been reported in 33 countries between April 5 and May 26, noting its latest assessment is that the disease poses a “moderate” global risk.

The organization added that 99 additional cases were pending classification.

Of the 650 cases, 58 percent were from WHO’s European region, and 34 percent from the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. 

Over 200 of the pending and probable cases were reported from the United States, WHO’s report added.

“The aetiology of this severe acute hepatitis remains unknown and under investigation,” WHO said, noting that the cases were “more clinically severe” and more likely to result in “acute liver failure” than previous reports of hepatitis in children.

Hepatitis causes inflammation of the liver and is often related to viral infections. Adenovirus, which is a common pathogen found in children, has been detected in more than half of the recent cases.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidance regarding testing for adenovirus in children as a possible reason for recent pediatric hepatitis cases around the world, though it remains unclear if the two are linked.

At the beginning of May, the CDC reported 109 hepatitis cases have been detected in children in the U.S. Those cases included six deaths, and 14 percent patients required liver transplants.

Globally, at least 38 children — 6 percent of total cases — have required transplants, and nine — 1 percent — have died, according to the WHO.

Source: TEST FEED1

Officials weigh in on Senate talks to curb gun violence, but doubt lingers

Officials on Sunday weighed in on how the U.S. can best address mass shootings plaguing the country with some expressing optimism that a bipartisan group of Senate lawmakers could come to some consensus to help curb gun violence.

But others offered skepticism on whether the latest tragedy, which killed 19 elementary school children, would result in any Republicans budging on the issue.

Only one GOP lawmaker on Sunday, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who is leaving Congress after this term, said he would be open to an assault weapons ban and support raising the minimum age in which a person can own a firearm to 21.

“I have opposed a ban fairly recently, I think I’m open to a ban now,” Kinzinger told co-anchor Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.

The GOP lawmaker told ABC’s “This Week,” he was a “strong defender of the Second Amendment” but that he was “getting sick of seeing the mass shootings.”

A bipartisan group of senators met last week at the Capitol to begin laying out a path for negotiations to curb gun violence in response to the Texas shooting with a focus on background checks and red flag laws

Among them is Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) an outspoken gun reform advocate since the Sandy Hook shooting in his state killed 20 school age children a decade ago.

He pointed to a law in Florida signed by a Republican governor and passed by a GOP-led legislature that banned bump stocks and raised the age limit for gun purchases from 18 to 21 years old after the Parkland school shooting.

“The Florida law is a good law and it’s a signal of what’s possible, right?” Murphy told ABC’s “This Week” host Jonathan Karl. “We’ve got a short timeframe … but I think we can do it.”

The 18-year-old gunman in Texas purchased two semiautomatic rifles just days before he crashed his truck in front of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and opened fire with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, killing 19 children and two teachers.

The deadly attack came just 10 days after an alleged white supremacist shot and killed 10 people at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a majority-black neighborhood that he had scoped out beforehand. The recent attacks renewed calls for tighter gun control measures.

Among the most frequent calls include universal background checks and creating a national red flag law mandate. Currently, background checks do not apply to sales at gun shows or through other legal but more underground vendors. Red flag laws apply to 19 states in the U.S., but there is no such mechanism on the federal level.

Tony Montalto, the president of gun control activist group Stand With Parkland, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd that America needs to “have a look at ourselves” in the wake of the Texas tragedy.

“And what we really need is to stop the pandering to the folks on the far right and the folks on the far left,” Montalto said. “Where is Congress acting on this?”

Stand With Parkland formed after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which killed 17 students and staff. Montalto said owners of semiautomatic rifles and other high-powered rifles should “imagine what they do to the bodies of children in schools.”

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told “Fox News Sunday” that he was “hopeful” Democrats and Republicans could unite after the Texas tragedy.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave the greenlight to talks on legislation to curb gun violence that included him asking Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of his advisers, to negotiate with Democrats.

While McConnell said he is hopeful the talks would result in a bipartisan agreement, he also warned that negotiations shouldn’t veer off proposals that were not “directly related” to the incidents in New York and Texas.

Other GOP lawmakers continue to stood firm in opposition to any bill that would put any limits on people obtaining or owning firearms.

Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R) on Sunday told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he would not support a red flag bill, saying there is “a lot of problems” with the laws, which are designed to take firearms away from a person if a troubled incident or history arises and is flagged to a court.

“What you’re essentially trying to do with a red flag law is enforce the law before the law has been broken, and it’s a really difficult thing to do,” he said. “It’s difficult to assess whether somebody is a threat.”

This weekend, the National Rifle Association (NRA) hosted a conference in Houston, about 300 miles from Uvalde, just days after the shooting at Robb Elementary.

The NRA deflected calls to cancel the conference as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former President Trump joined a host of other Republicans who blamed other factors that lead to gun violence and mass shootings, such as mental health, social media and violent video games.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), meanwhile, assigned blame on Sunday to the decline of “moral values” in America, pinning rising violence and mass shootings on fewer families with two parents in the household.

“If we teach proper moral values and if we teach respect for human life,” Brooks told “Fox News Sunday” guest host Sandra Smith, “then that is the way to fix the problem.”

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, during a roundtable discussion with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, said lawmakers standing in the way of gun law reform had a warped sense of reality.

“Part of it starts with us owning who we are as Americans,” Rawlings-Blake said. “I think sometimes we need to find mirrors that work in our country, because too many people look in the mirror and think they see someone who values life. But if you say you value life and you let these babies die and do nothing and you can — your mirror’s broken.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) was less positive about the potential for Senate lawmakers to come to an agreement on a bill related to curbing gun violence because the U.S. was often “out of step” on instituting such reforms.

“Everything we’re talking about today does not happen in other countries. Just here, because we tolerate it,” Booker told NBC’s “Meet The Press” moderator Chuck Todd. “And that’s the question: How much endurance do we have for horror and wretchedness and pain and death when we have the ability to change it?”

Source: TEST FEED1

Another nuclear plant closes: Get ready for electricity shortages

America’s electric grid is being mismanaged and consumers will pay a heavy price for that mismanagement.

More evidence of that came with the recent closure of the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan. The 811-megawatt nuclear plant was shut down on the same day that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued a report saying the U.S. electric grid doesn’t have enough generation capacity and that blackouts are almost certain to occur across the country this summer.

In particular, NERC noted that the Midwest is facing a capacity shortfall that could lead to a “high risk of energy emergencies during peak summer conditions.” Palisades was located in the heart of the Midwest, immediately adjacent to the area served by the Mid-continent Independent System Operator (MISO), the region that NERC identified as being particularly short on juice. NERC said the MISO region has 3,200 megawatts less generation capacity this summer than it did in 2021. Despite this loss of generation capacity, NERC expects demand in the region to increase by about 1.7 percent this summer and warned that “extreme temperatures, higher generation outages, or low wind conditions” will mean that MISO will have a “higher risk” of “load-shedding to maintain system reliability” — the industry’s preferred term for rolling blackouts.

In a phone interview, Meredith Angwin, author of the 2020 book, “Shorting The Grid,” told me, “It is shocking to me how people can pretend this isn’t a problem. NERC just said the Midwest is headed for trouble this summer because the region doesn’t have enough reliable generation — and yet, they are closing Palisades. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Palisades was a zero-carbon workhorse. As Tim Cavanaugh of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy explained recently, Palisades was producing about 7 terawatt-hours of juice per year. That’s more energy than is generated by all the wind turbines in Michigan. It’s a key comparison because the backlash against the wind industry has been fierce in Michigan. Among the latest examples, last month the town board in Fulton Township voted unanimously to reject a project proposed by Chicago-based Invenergy that would put several dozen wind turbines in and around the township.

As I reported last month, the planned closure of Palisades was known for years and several politicians, including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, have said they wanted to prevent the closure. On April 20, Whitmer said, “Keeping Palisades open is a top priority.” She hoped to tap some of the $6 billion available in the Department of Energy’s Civil Nuclear Credit Program, created through the bipartisan infrastructure bill that President Biden signed into law in November. In a letter to the Department of Energy, Whitmer said stopping the closure of Palisades would “allow us to shore up Michigan’s energy supply to prevent price spikes on working families and small businesses.”

But, since the plant was closed on May 20 — 11 days earlier than expected because of a mechanical problem — Whitmer’s office has not issued any statements. Nor has there been any public statement from the Biden administration about trying to rescue the plant, whose decommissioning could take two decades. Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, repeatedly has called climate change “an existential threat.” If he believes that’s true, why hasn’t Kerry raised a stink about the Palisades closure?

There’s no doubt that the plant’s closure will result in more greenhouse gas emissions. When nuclear plants close in the United States, they are replaced by gas-fired generation. That happened in New York after the closure of the Indian Point Energy Center, and in Vermont after the premature shuttering of Vermont Yankee. The closure of such plans increases electricity costs because generators must burn more natural gas to produce power and gas prices are soaring.

Just like last year’s premature closure of the Indian Point, the loss of Palisades, which has been operating safely since 1971, is an inexcusable government failure. By any relevant metric — climate action, energy security, or resilience — the loss of Palisades is a blunder that could have and should have been avoided because it will further weaken our electric grid. The grid is the Mother Network for all of our critical systems: health care, GPS, communications, traffic lights, water, and wastewater treatment. Essayist and podcaster Emmet Penney had it right when he declared last year that “there is no such thing as a wealthy society with a weak electrical grid.” 

In short, the closure of the Palisades Power Plant will increase emissions, reduce energy affordability, and hurt the resilience and reliability of America’s electric grid. That’s a lousy quadfecta.

Robert Bryce is the host of the Power Hungry Podcast, executive producer of the documentary, “Juice: How Electricity Explains the World,” and the author of six books, including most recently, “A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations.” Follow him on Twitter: @pwrhungry.

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Mo Brooks: Testimony before Jan. 6 panel should be public, occur after Senate primary runoff

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said on Sunday that he would refuse to testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol if it was in private or before his Senate primary runoff election next month.

Earlier this month, the Jan. 6 committee announced that it had subpoenaed Brooks along with four other lawmakers, but Brooks told “Fox News Sunday” guest host Sandra Smith that he has yet to be served with “any kind of documentation.”

“It’s got to be in public, it’s got to be congressman to congressman, it’s got to be limited to issues associated with January the 6th and it has to be after this Senate primary is over with,” Brooks said.

“I don’t want this witch-hunt committee and [Speaker] Nancy Pelosi [(D-Calif.)] trying to interfere with a Republican primary election for the United States Senate in Alabama,” he added.

Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) has said that the committee was interested in hearing from Brooks after he made several comments in which he asserted that former President Trump has asked him to dispute the results of the 2020 election. 

After the Alabama Republican declined to voluntarily cooperate with the panel, Thompson said in a letter to Brooks dated May 12 that the committee had issued a subpoena.

The committee is preparing for a series of eight public hearings beginning June 9, including ones scheduled for prime-time as well as daytime hours.

Brooks is headed to a runoff on June 21 in Alabama’s GOP Senate primary against Katie Britt, a former top aide to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby (R), after no candidate clinched 50 percent support in the race last Tuesday. 

Brooks – who also spoke at the rally on the Ellipse on January 6 – started out as the frontrunner in the race and won Trump’s endorsement. But Trump rescinded his endorsement in March over Brooks’s past argument that the GOP grassroots should move on from the 2020 election, which Trump and his allies have said without evidence was fraudulent. 

When asked on Sunday if Americans should expect his testimony if he is served, Brooks said he would discuss the decision with the four other House members to whom the committee has said it issued subpoenas – House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) along with Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).

“I have to get with my colleagues who have been purportedly subpoenaed — at least they say they have been served,” Brooks said. “I don’t know why I haven’t and some of them have.”

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Murphy says he sees more 'Republican interest' in talking about gun legislation

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on Sunday that he has seen more of his Republican colleagues take an interest in crafting some semblance of gun legislation in the wake of the massacre at a Texas elementary school. 

During an appearance on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” moderator Margaret Brennan asked Murphy whether there are 10 Republican senators who would be willing to vote in favor of some type of gun-related legislation.

“I think we can. I think there’s something dying inside the soul of this country when we refuse to act at a national level shooting after shooting,” Murphy told Brennan. 

“And I do think there’s an opportunity right now to be able to pass something significant. I’ve seen more Republican interest in coming to the table and talking this time than any other moment since Sandy Hook.”

Murphy also said that he does not believe Republicans supporting some type of tightening of gun laws means the sky would “fall for you politically.” 

“In fact, you probably will get a lot of new additional supporters so red flag laws are on the table background checks, expansion and on the table as well as things like safe storage of guns,” Murphy said. “I think we can get something done but we don’t have a lot of time.”

Murphy’s remarks come after come after 19 schoolchildren and two teachers were killed and 17 other people were injured on Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas when a gunman opened fire inside of a fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School. 

The Connecticut Democrat, an outspoken advocate for gun laws since the Sandy Hook school shooting a decade ago, said communities rarely, if ever, recover from such tragedies.

“We need to understand we are putting on top of kids today who already are living in an era of social media and pandemics, a level of trauma and fear that makes it very difficult for them to learn when they are in school,” Murphy said. 

“It only happens in America. And when a shooting like this happens in a neighborhood or in a school, those communities never, ever recover. That’s just the reality.”

Source: TEST FEED1