Closing summary
Thank you for reading the US politics blog today. We’ll be back on Wednesday.
For all the detailed news on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, please consult our global war blog here.
Here are the main events that occurred today:
- The White House is making efforts to communicate that Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell may disagree on what the problems are at the root of America’s repeated mass shootings, but the US president can still call the Senate majority leader a “rational Republican” and try to find common ground on gun violence.
- US supreme court clerks may be required to release their phone records as the investigation into who leaked the Roe v Wade opinion draft widens.
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A lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Michael Sussmann, was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI when he pushed information meant to cast suspicions on Donald Trump and Russia in the run-up to that election.
- Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House with Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand prime minister, ahead of their mini-summit.
- The US president is meeting with Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, today to discuss the economy in the US and globally, and what steps can be taken to ease inflation and lower prices. Biden is calling the issue his “top domestic priority”.
- An emergency gun reform package, the Protecting Our Kids Act, will be presented to the House judiciary committee on Thursday as politicians grapple with the aftermath of mass shootings in New York and Texas this month that killed 31 people, including 19 elementary school children.
"Potentially a way for the Senate to come together" on gun violence - White House
The White House is making efforts to communicate that Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell may disagree on what the problems are at the root of America’s repeated mass shootings, but the US president can still call the Senate majority leader a “rational Republican” and try to find common ground on gun violence.
Kentucky Republican McConnell, and many Republican leaders, including in Texas where the small city of Uvalde is devastated by last week’s school shooting, continually hone in on mental health issues and a need for more school security.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that: “We are the only country that is dealing with gun violence at the rate we are, so what’s the problem here? The problem is with guns and not having legislation to deal with something that’s a pandemic here.”
Biden spoke at length yesterday outside the White House, as he returned from Delaware the day after he’d visited Uvalde, about how the idea of 18-year-olds legally being able to buy military-style assault rifles in the US - the weapons used in the Uvalde massacre and the racist attack on a supermarket in a majority-Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, days before - made no sense.
Jean-Pierre noted that Republicans’ insistence on mental health and “hardening schools” and away from great gun control are “two things he [Biden] does not agree on [with McConnell].”
But she added: “But I think there is a way potentially for the Senate to come together and legislation to come together, they need to.”
A group of Senate Democrats and Republicans are currently discussing on Capitol Hill the potential for a bipartisan “significant package” of measures, according to Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy.
But indications are that any such bill will include a collection of more minor measures, not sweeping change such as an assault weapons ban, freshly urged upon by US vice president Kamala Harris on Saturday when she attended the last funeral for the 10 people killed in Buffalo.
Updated
