Biden to call on GOP to ‘help stop the epidemic of gun violence’
In his speech this afternoon marking one year since a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Joe Biden will call on Republicans to support measures to address gun violence, a White House official said.
“The president will remember those lost in Uvalde and reiterate his call for Republicans in Congress to act and help stop the epidemic of gun violence that has become the number one killer of kids in America,” the official said of Biden’s address, which is scheduled for 3.30pm today.
The official noted that since the shooting in Uvalde and another shortly before it in Buffalo, New York, the president has signed a modest gun control measure passed by Congress, and “continued to implement two dozen executive actions to help reduce gun violence and keep weapons of war out of dangerous hands – and he has consistently called on Republicans in Congress to take action.”
“From universal background checks, to requiring safe storage of guns, to ending immunity from liability for gun manufacturers, to banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, the President has called for Congress to enact commonsense policies that Americans support,” the official continued.
Key events
Richard Luscombe
An “anti-fascist” group in Miami has been looking into the woman reportedly behind the banning of Amanda Gorman’s presidential inauguration poem from a Florida elementary school, and doesn’t like what it found.
The Miami Herald identified the woman who complained about The Hill We Climb as Daily Salinas, the parent of two students at the Bob Graham education center Miami Lakes, and, according to a Twitter thread posted by a group calling itself Miami Against Fascism, a supporter of white supremacist and far-right groups including the Proud Boys.
It posted screenshots allegedly of social media posts made by Salinas promoting antisemitism, a photograph of her at a Proud Boys rally in Miami last year, and video of her with members of the extremist Moms for Liberty group disrupting a meeting of the Miami-Dade school board last summer.
Moms for Liberty has been aggressively campaigning in several Florida school districts for certain books and materials it considers inappropriate for children to be censored, emboldened by Republican governor and upcoming presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis’s efforts to reshape education in the state.
Salinas, it said, has also shared QAnon propaganda on her own Twitter page.
Gorman, who delivered a much-applauded recital of The Hill We Climb at Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration, has also condemned the banning of her book of the same name containing the poem on Twitter:
So they ban my book from young readers, confuse me with @oprah [Winfrey], fail to specify what parts of my poetry they object to, refuse to read any reviews, and offer no alternatives,” she wrote on Twitter.
Unnecessary #bookbans like these are on the rise, and we must fight back.
Read more:
The day so far
Democrats are calling on Congress – and specifically Republicans – to tighten firearm access one year after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Joe Biden will speak about the tragedy at 3.30pm this afternoon and also call on the GOP to support stricter gun regulations. Meanwhile, in the Capitol, negotiations continue over raising the debt ceiling, with no breakthrough yet apparent.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
-
Donald Trump’s lawyers have requested a meeting with attorney general Merrick Garland and aired a litany of grievances about special counsel Jack Smith and other prosecutors.
-
Ron DeSantis will later today announce the start of his presidential campaign, and spend big on door-knocking in early voting states.
-
Texas’s Republican-dominated legislature appears to be moving to curb political power in its most-populous county, which is run by Democrats.
Uvalde, Texas is today peppered with memorials as the town marks the one-year anniversary of the elementary school shooting that killed 21 people:
Biden to call on GOP to ‘help stop the epidemic of gun violence’
In his speech this afternoon marking one year since a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Joe Biden will call on Republicans to support measures to address gun violence, a White House official said.
“The president will remember those lost in Uvalde and reiterate his call for Republicans in Congress to act and help stop the epidemic of gun violence that has become the number one killer of kids in America,” the official said of Biden’s address, which is scheduled for 3.30pm today.
The official noted that since the shooting in Uvalde and another shortly before it in Buffalo, New York, the president has signed a modest gun control measure passed by Congress, and “continued to implement two dozen executive actions to help reduce gun violence and keep weapons of war out of dangerous hands – and he has consistently called on Republicans in Congress to take action.”
“From universal background checks, to requiring safe storage of guns, to ending immunity from liability for gun manufacturers, to banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, the President has called for Congress to enact commonsense policies that Americans support,” the official continued.
Kevin McCarthy is speaking to reporters at the Capitol about the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations, but the gist remains basically the same as it has for the past few days: no deal has been reached between the two sides.
“I think we can make progress today,” the Republican House speaker said, noting that talks were continuing. The deadline to reach a deal or face a potential US debt default remains 1 June.
With the executive and legislative branches locked in a standoff over raising the debt ceiling, let’s check on the third branch of government: the judiciary. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that supreme court chief justice John Roberts gave a speech in which he vowed that the court would maintain the highest ethical standards, despite allegations of improper ties between some justices and parties with interests in their cases:
The chief justice of the US supreme court, John Roberts, said he and the other justices were working to hold themselves to the “highest standards” of ethical conduct.
“I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct,” Roberts told an awards dinner in Washington on Tuesday.
He was speaking the same day lawyers for Harlan Crow said the Republican mega-donor would not cooperate with the Senate judiciary committee.
The panel asked for list of gifts Crow has given to the conservative justice Clarence Thomas and which Thomas mostly did not declare: the source of scandal and calls for Thomas to resign or be removed.
Congress, however, is preoccupied with the standoff over increasing the debt ceiling ahead of the 1 June deadline after which the US government could default for the first time in history.
House speaker Kevin McCarthy is leading the Republicans in negotiations with the Biden administration over raising the limit, and his office just announced he will speak with reporters at 11.45am. We’ll see what he has to say.
Harris, Jeffries call for gun control on anniversary of Uvalde shooting
Top Democrats including vice-president Kamala Harris and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries have called for stricter laws to address gun violence on the one-year anniversary of the killings of 21 students and teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
“Nevaeh. Jacklyn. Makenna. Jose. Eliahna. Uziyah. Amerie Jo. Xavier. Jayce. Tess. Maranda. Alithia. Annabell. Maite. Alexandria. Layla. Jailah. Eliahna. Rojelio. And their teachers, Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles. Nineteen children and two educators who should be here with us today. They should still have birthdays to celebrate, graduations to plan, careers and lives to look forward to. Instead, one year ago today, they were killed in their elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in a mass shooting carried out with a weapon of war,” Harris said in a statement.
“Over the past year, so many Uvalde families have channeled their anguish into advocacy,” she continued. “Together, they demand that we act to save lives. With their help, President Biden signed the most significant gun safety legislation in 30 years and implemented important executive actions in the months since. But more must be done. Today, Doug and I pray for the people of Uvalde. And we urge leaders in Congress and in state legislatures to meet this heartbreaking moment not just with words, but with action.”
Jeffries was more forceful, accusing Republicans in a statement of blocking meaningful action to stop mass shootings and gun violence at large.
“House Democrats will continue to fight for commonsense gun safety legislation, like universal criminal background checks and an assault weapons ban. Extreme MAGA Republicans have shown that they are willing to flood our communities with weapons of war that have been consistently used to shred innocent children, including in Nashville, Tennessee earlier this year. The gun violence epidemic is unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American,” he said.
Today is the first anniversary of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers. For the Guardian, Charlie Scudder reports that gun control advocates in the firearm-friendly state seemed to have score a rare victory a few weeks ago, only for it to suddenly fall apart:
Days after a deadly mass shooting in a Dallas suburb, families of another horrific killing gathered in the Texas capitol, demanding a change to the state’s famously lax gun laws.
It had been nearly a year since a gunman shot 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, with police waiting more than an hour to confront and kill him. Those children’s parents and relatives hadn’t stopped lobbying Texas lawmakers for stricter gun control.
And after eight others were killed at an Allen shopping mall on 7 May, the Uvalde families quickly descended to tell lawmakers to pass their number one priority: to raise the minimum age for Texans to purchase semi-automatic firearms from 18 to 21.
They lined the hallways as lawmakers walked through to the House chamber, holding signs and loudly chanting “raise the age”, which in part is an allusion to the 18-year-old Uvalde shooter.
“Had this bill been the law in the state of Texas one year ago, the gunman would not have been able to [buy] the semi-automatic weapon he used to murder our daughter,” Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter Lexi died at the Uvalde school, testified in a Texas house committee hearing. “Our hearts may be broken but our resolve has never been stronger.”
Let’s shift the focus for a minute away from Washington DC and to Texas, where the Guardian’s Kira Lerner reports the GOP is moving to strip political power away from Democratic authorities in Houston, the state’s most-populous city:
Republican lawmakers in Texas are targeting Houston, the state’s largest city and Democratic stronghold, with a series of bills that would limit local authority to administer elections and give that power to the state.
House Republicans on Tuesday gave final approval to two bills, both already passed by the senate in April, that would impact elections in Harris county, the third most populous county in the country. One bill, SB 1750, would get rid of the election administrator position in the county, eliminating a nonpartisan role, and give their authority to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector. Another, SB 1933, could give the Texas secretary of state, currently a Republican appointed by Greg Abbott, the governor, administrative oversight of a county office administering elections.
Trump lawyers request meeting with attorney general Garland over special counsel
Attorneys for Donald Trump have asked attorney general Merrick Garland for a meeting, saying the former president is being “treated unfairly” and accusing special counsel Jack Smith and other prosecutors of perpetrating “ongoing injustice”.
Garland last year appointed Smith to investigate Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection, the efforts to overturn the 2020 election result and the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Smith is finishing up his investigation into the government materials federal agents retrieved from Trump’s south Florida resort last August, and will recommend to Garland whether charges are warranted.
In the letter to the attorney general, Trump’s attorneys John P Rowley and James M Trusty take the tone of grievance and persecution familiar to anyone who has read the ex-president’s missives.
“No President of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion,” it reads.
Part of Ron DeSantis’s pitch to Republican voters centers on being more electable than Donald Trump, who, despite his popularity, is in the center of a swirl of legal entanglements. One of those is the indictment filed by the Manhattan district attorney alleging Trump falsified business records, which the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports now has a trial date with potential significance to the presidential campaign:
Donald Trump’s trial in New York on criminal charges over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels will begin on 25 March 2024, amid the Republican presidential primary and less than than eight months before the general election the former president hopes to contest.
The trial date was announced in a hearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, Trump attending by video link from his Florida home.
The judge, Juan Merchan, advised the former president to cancel all other obligations for the duration of the trial, which could last for several weeks.
Trump was muted for most of the hearing, which lasted around 15 minutes. The video feed showed the former president sitting and conferring with his lawyer, Todd Blanche, in front of a backdrop of American flags.
Ron DeSantis’s presidential run is no surprise, but his decision to kick the campaign off with a Twitter event certainly is. Politicians announcing a bid for office typically do so with speeches surrounded by allies, family and wellwishers. The Florida governor will instead hang out with Elon Musk and whoever else tunes in to the live Twitter Spaces event. So what’s in it for Musk, the Twitter owner and Tesla CEO whose star has lately been on the rise in conservative circles? Let the Guardian’s Kari Paul, Johana Bhuiyan and Maanvi Singh tell you:
The news that Ron DeSantis will launch his presidential campaign during a live Twitter appearance with Elon Musk marks the tech billionaire’s latest attempts to shore up engagement with the social network at a moment of crisis for the company.
The event – which will take place Wednesday on Twitter Spaces, a live stream feature that is often broadcasted at the top of Twitter’s feed – was confirmed by Musk on Tuesday afternoon. Speaking at the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit, Musk called the Florida governor’s decision “ground breaking” and said it won’t be the last political event that Twitter will host.
When asked if Musk plans to interview other candidates, particularly Democrats, he said “absolutely”.
DeSantis plans door-knocking surge in early primary states – report
Backed by a Super Pac and its $200m budget, the New York Times reported today that Ron DeSantis’s campaign will deploy thousands of workers to knock on doors in early Republican primary voting states – repeatedly.
The plan is for these workers to visit the doors of every potential DeSantis voter in South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire at least four times, and five times in Iowa, whose caucuses typically kick off the Republican nomination process. The campaign is going as far as to set up a boot camp on the outskirts of Iowa’s capital, Des Moines, to train volunteers, as Ted Cruz did when he defeated Trump in the 2016 Republican contest in the state.
Here’s more from the Times’s report:
Top officials with the pro-DeSantis group, a super PAC called Never Back Down, provided their most detailed account yet of their battle plan to aid Mr. DeSantis, whom they believe they can sell as the only candidate to take on – and win – the cultural fights that are definitional for the Republican Party in 2024.
The group said it expected to have an overall budget of at least $200 million, including more than $80 million to be transferred from an old DeSantis state political account, for the daunting task of vaulting the Florida governor past former President Donald J. Trump, who has established himself as the dominant early front-runner.
Mr. DeSantis is set to enter the presidential race on Wednesday in a live audio conversation on Twitter, and the super PAC’s enormous cash reserves are expected to be among the few advantages that Mr. DeSantis has in the race.
The group is already taking on many tasks often reserved for the campaign itself: securing endorsements in early primary states, sending mailers, organizing on campuses, running television ads, raising small donations for the campaign in an escrow account and working behind the scenes to build crowds for the governor’s events. Hiring is underway in 18 states and officials said plans were in the works to assemble various pro-DeSantis coalitions, such as for voters who are veterans or those focused on issues like abortion, guns or agriculture.
“No one has ever contemplated the scale of this organization or operation, let alone done it,” said Chris Jankowski, the group’s chief executive. “This has just never even been dreamed up.”
In Iowa, the group has opened a boot camp on the outskirts of Des Moines, giving the facility the code name “Fort Benning,” after the old Army training outpost, with 189 graduates of an eight-day training program the first wave of an organizing army to follow. Door knocking begins on Wednesday in New Hampshire.
The endeavor echoes the “Camp Cruz” that Senator Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign set up near Des Moines.
DeSantis’s well-funded, coordinated presidential campaign to get underway
Good morning, US politics blog readers. The biggest presidential campaign announcement since Donald Trump’s entry to the race will happen this evening, when Florida governor Ron DeSantis officially throws his hat into the ring for the Republican nomination. He’s chosen an unusual venue to make the bid official: Twitter, where he will appear at 6pm Eastern Time in a live event alongside the social media network’s owner and budding conservative maven Elon Musk. He’ll do an interview with Fox News after that.
DeSantis has been building up to this moment for months by raising funds – a super Pac supporting his campaign plans to work with a $200m budget, the New York Times reported today – egging on GOP lawmakers in Florida to pass laws that he’s sure to campaign on and insinuating that he’s a better bet to beat Joe Biden than Trump. If polls are to be believed, voters do not believe him. The former president is far and away the leader in most surveys, with DeSantis a distant second. He still has time to turn it around, and you can bet that will be his first priority after today.
Here’s what else is going on:
-
Debt ceiling negotiations between Biden and Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy are continuing. The situation remains broadly the same as yesterday: the two sides have yet to come to a deal, and the US government could default on its debt by as soon as 1 June.
-
Biden will at 3.30pm deliver a speech marking the one-year anniversary of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
-
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 2.15pm.
