Today so far
The US politics blog is ending a very busy day in the capital, which saw new developments in one of the many investigations facing former president Donald Trump, difficult-to-stomach testimony in Congress on gun violence and the arrest of a man who was allegedly plotting to kill a supreme court justice.
Here’s a recap:
- Trump along with his son Donald Trump Jr and daughter Ivanka Trump will testify under oath on 15 July in New York attorney general Letitia James’s long-running inquiry into the former president’s business practices.
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The top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, is calling on Capitol Hill for more security for supreme court justices, after an armed man was arrested near justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home on the outskirts of Washington DC. Joe Biden condemned the actions of the individual, who the court said told police he wanted to kill the judge.
- The House oversight committee held a hearing dubbed “the urgent Need to address the gun violence epidemic”. Lawmakers heard gut-wrenching testimony from a survivor of the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, as well as the relatives of people killed and injured there and in Buffalo, New York. But the partisan divide over gun control appeared as wide as ever.
- The supreme court ruled in favor of a border agent in a case from the US-Canada frontier involving an inn that allegedly is a stopover when some people cross into Canada unlawfully.
The blog returns tomorrow, when lawmakers will continue to negotiate over gun control legislation and the January 6 committee holds its first hearing. See you then.
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Trump to testify under oath on 15 July in New York
Donald Trump will testify under oath on 15 July in New York attorney general Letitia James’s investigation into his business practices, according to a court filing released on Wednesday.
JUST IN: Donald Trump will testify under oath on July 15 alongside Don Jr. and Ivanka Trump, according to new doc from @NewYorkStateAG pic.twitter.com/BkZGNRcC6D
— Frank G. Runyeon (@frankrunyeon) June 8, 2022
His daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr will also testify.
The testimony is the latest development in the three-year investigation into the former president’s dealings after he failed in an attempt last month to stop her investigation and ended up paying a $110,000 fine.
James has said investigators have found “significant evidence” of wrongdoing in the inquiry, which has homed in on whether the Trump Organization misstated the values of its real estate properties to obtain favorable loans and tax deductions.
The attorney general previously said her investigation discovered evidence suggesting that for more than a decade, the company’s financial statements “relied on misleading asset valuations and other misrepresentations to secure economic benefits”.
Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has not been accused of committing a crime. He has called the investigation a “witch-hunt”.
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The gun violence hearing in the House is continuing and the California Democrat Jackie Speier, who in 1978 was shot during a visit to the Jonestown settlement in an attack that killed the congressman she was accompanying, got a turn to question witnesses.
Speier asked Joseph Gramaglia, the Buffalo police commissioner, to describe what weapons like an AR-15 can do to a body.
“I’ve been to numerous shootings throughout my career that were the result of high-powered rifles, assault rifles, and the cavernous holes that they leave in bodies. Decapitation is a pretty good explanation for it,” Gramaglia replied. “Some people couldn’t be buried with an open casket. The damage was absolutely devastating.”
Referencing her experience in Jonestown, Speier said, “I’m a victim of gun violence. I know what it does to a body. And I cannot believe my colleagues don’t recognize that prohibiting the sale of an assault weapon until the age of 21 isn’t going to save lives.”
She rejected the idea put forth by Republicans that fortifying schools was one way to stop the shootings.
“We all know what the solution to this problem is. It’s comprehensive gun reform in this country. We know what it is. We are not supposed to be holding our students and our teachers responsible,” Speier said.
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Biden condemns man arrested near Justice Kavanaugh's house
Joe Biden has condemned a man who said he planned to kill supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, amid heightened tensions around the court as it prepares to rule on abortion and gun rights, among other controversial topics.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president “condemns the actions [of] this individual in the strongest terms,” Reuters reported. “Any threats of violence or attempts to intimidate justices have no place in our society.”
A man identified in court documents as Nicholas John Roske was arrested early Wednesday morning near the conservative justice’s Maryland home. According to the complaint charging Roske with attempting to kill a supreme court justice, he first got out of a taxicab near Kavanaugh’s house, then walked away and called 911, saying he was having suicidal thoughts and planned to killed a justice of the high court. Police arrested him and found a Glock 17 pistol, pepper spray, zip ties and other items in a backpack and suitcase.
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US continues to recognize Juan Guaido as interim president of Venezuela - White House
The US regards Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the true interim president of his country, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said moments ago aboard Air Force One, more than three years after Guaidó declared himself the true victor in a disputed election over Nicolás Maduro and tried to topple the man in control of the troubled South American nation.
US president Joe Biden plans to speak with Guaido at some point during this week’s Summit of the Americas meeting that the US is hosting in California for leaders from the hemisphere, Sullivan said.
Biden, aides, staff and media are on board Air Force One now, en route Washington, DC, to Los Angeles, and Sullivan and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre are gaggling - with Sullivan on right now, answering accompanying journalists’ questions.
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba were not invited to the summit, prompting a boycott by Mexico, in a debacle for Biden.
Brazilian autocratic president Jair Bolsonaro will attend and Biden is expected to discuss “open, transparent and democratic elections” with him, Sullivan said.
And the climate and the health of the Amazon rainforest will be on the agenda, Sullivan said.
There is much hope in journalism circles that Bolsonaro can be pressed at the summit to address the topics of illegal logging and drug trafficking in vast, supposedly-protected tracts of the Amazon region and the danger to those who strive against such destructive law-making - including freelance journalist and Guardian regular Dom Phillips and his traveling companion, indigenous culture expert Bruno Araújo Pereira, missing in the region since Sunday.
Interim summary
It’s been an extremely busy day in Washington and there is more to come. The House oversight committee hearing on the “urgent need to address gun violence” in the US, following very recent mass shootings, is now on lunch recess.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is now “gaggling” on Air Force One, as Joe Biden heads to Los Angeles to host the Summit of the Americas. It’s a bumpy ride for those aboard the presidential plane (literally but, presumably, always metaphorically).
Here’s where things stand:
- Senate minority leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell is calling on Capitol Hill for more security for supreme court justices, following the reports this morning that an armed man was arrested near supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home on the outskirts of Washington DC. The court said the man told police he wanted to kill the judge.
- The supreme court ruled in favor of a border agent in a case from the US-Canadian border involving an inn that allegedly is a stopover when some people cross into Canada unlawfully.
- The House oversight committee opened its hearing dubbed “the urgent need to address the gun violence epidemic”, which became a gut-wrenching look into the recent spate of mass shootings nationwide.
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Back at the House oversight committee, Democratic and Republican lawmakers are taking turns questioning the witnesses, creating a split-screen view of the two parties’ attitudes on gun control.
Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins recalls a childhood in which “we had guns everywhere” and wonders why there weren’t mass shootings back then.
“I asked you all what happened to that country,” Higgins said. “A country where guns were everywhere and virtually not regulated at all, where millions of Americans, 14 million Americans came back ... after world war II with incredible skills of war and weapons of war as you call them everywhere, but we didn’t have mass shootings.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, drew a line between increasing firearm sales and gunmakers’ profits, declaring, “This is about blood money.”
“There’s also this discussion about anything but, again, but that these are about violent people, but yet we aren’t doing anything about addressing the actual root causes of misogyny, where two-thirds of mass shootings are connected to domestic violence, or the emergence of white supremacy, radicalization, mass incarceration and poverty and the connections between that and mass shootings in our communities,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
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Ahead of the start of the January 6 hearings tomorrow, the committee’s chair, Bennie Thompson, told NPR in an interview that democracy came close to ending in the United States that day.
Thompson says he’s calling it as he sees it on the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack that was intended to keep Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results. And he says he’s gained a new education about the danger the country faced that day, which he aims to share through the hearings.
For Thompson, preserving democracy today means telling the full story of the attack on the Capitol and ensuring its moment in history is one that Americans never forget. “
I have learned a lot about how perilously close we came on January 6 to losing this democracy as a lot of us have come to know and love it.”
My colleague Hugo Lowell’s story published earlier today outlined how the first hearing will go, which will take place during the prime-time TV hour at 8 pm eastern.
At the start of the hearing, the panel’s chairman Bennie Thompson and vice-chair Liz Cheney will make a series of opening arguments before outlining a general roadmap of how each of the six Watergate-style hearings are expected to unfold.
For the second hour, Thompson and Cheney will hand control of the hearing to Tim Heaphy, the chief investigative counsel for the select committee, who will lead the questioning of two witnesses and walk through the key moments of the Capitol attack.
The select committee is expected to start the questioning with testimony from Nick Quested, a British documentary film-maker who was embedded with the far-right Proud Boys group in the days and weeks leading up to January 6 and caught their activities on camera.
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The justice department has named a nine-person panel to review the police response to the Uvalde shooting, the Associated Press reports.
In a statement, the Justice Department said it was committed to “moving as expeditiously as possible in the development of the report.” Officials said the team would conduct a complete reconstruction of the shooting; review all relevant documents, including policies, photos and videos; conduct a visit to the school; and interview an array of witnesses and families of the victims, along with police, school and government officials.
A FBI unit chief will take part in the inquiry, as will the former police chief of Sacramento, the sheriff of Orange county, Florida, and a deputy chief whose tenure included Virginia Tech. Similar investigations followed the 2015 extremist attack in San Bernardino, California and the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando.
The police response to the Uvalde shooting has been criticized after officers waited before confronting the gunman. State officials have acknowledged that hesitating was “the wrong decision,” and scrutiny has focused on Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the police chief who was recently sworn onto the city council.
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McConnell decries 'assassination attempt or something close to it' on Kavanaugh
Senate minority leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell is calling on Capitol Hill for more security for supreme court justices, following the reports this morning that an armed man was arrested near supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home on the outskirts of Washington DC.
This morning’s disturbing reports are exactly why the Senate unanimously passed a Supreme Court security bill weeks ago. But House Democrats have inexplicably blocked it. House Democrats need to stop their blockade and pass this uncontroversial bill today. pic.twitter.com/wd8UB5RDvm
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) June 8, 2022
McConnell said on the floor of the Senate: “This is where we are, Mr President, if these reports are correct, an assassination attempt against a sitting justice, or something close to it. This is exactly the kind of event that many feared the terrible breach of the court’s rules and norms would fuel [with the leak last month of the draft opinion that the conservative majority wants to overturn constitutional abortion rights afforded by the 1973 Roe V Wade ruling].
“This is exactly that kind of event that many worried the unhinged, reckless, apocalyptic rhetoric from prominent figures towards the court going back many months and especially in recent weeks could make more likely.”
He said that was why the Senate passed legislation shortly after the early May leak, to enhance police protection for sitting justices and their families.
“This is common sense, non-controversial legislation that passed unanimously in this chamber, but House Democrats have spent weeks blocking. That needs to change right now.”
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Lawmakers on the House oversight committee are now questioning the witnesses, in a conversation that is overall a little more strident than the Senate’s similar hearing yesterday.
Before questioning began, lawmakers heard from Amy Swearer of The Heritage Foundation, who was invited by the Republican minority and provided the conservative rebuttal to the officials and advocates who spoke before her.
“An unspeakably horrific event, like Uvalde or Buffalo happens. Reflexively, almost compulsively, come calls for Congress to pass a whole host of gun control measures largely targeting peaceable, law abiding citizens,” Swearer said. “Should anyone dare question the constitutionality, practicality or even the effectiveness of any of these policies, their opposition is immediately framed as callous obstructionism. And their legitimate concerns are brushed aside as and I quote, bullshit.”
She downplayed the effectiveness of legislation against expanded capacity magazines, and called for more armed guards at school, improvements to building security, mental health care and to “promote responsible gun ownership without simultaneously imposing financial burdens on gun owners or hindering their ability to immediately respond to violent threats.”
Buffalo’s police commissioner, Joseph Gramaglia, took aim at the concept promoted by gun rights advocates that expanding firearms access could stop mass shootings.
“It is often said that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun,” Gramaglia told the House. However, retired Buffalo police officer Aaron Salter Jr., who was working as a security guard at the Tops Market and was killed in the shooting, “Was no match for what he went up against a legal AR-15 with multiple high capacity magazines.”
Noting that such mass shootings make up a minority of overall gun crime, the commissioner warned of new gun technologies that could make the problem worse.
“The grim reality is that shootings have become a daily occurrence in American cities. Emerging trends like ghost guns and guns modified with switches continue to pose a challenge for law enforcement,” Gramaglia said.
“Congress must update our laws to account for these new threats and carnage that has accompanied them. It will be nearly impossible to address the gun violence epidemic without first addressing the underlying violent crime problem.”
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Warning that it is “high noon in America,” New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, told lawmakers in the House: “The clock is ticking, every day, every minute towards another hour of death.”
The New York City Police Department is overwhelmed by illegal guns, he said, despite confiscating 3,000 this year alone. Adams called for more federal aid for states and cities, the confirmation of Biden’s nominee to lead the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and for Congress to expand background check and pass other gun control legislation.
“I stand with President Joe Biden in calling on Congress to act now to regulate or ban assault weapons in this country. Even if we only raise the age required to buy one of these weapons, lives will be saved,” the mayor said. “We must build a society where our youth are on a path to fulfillment, not a road to ruin.”
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Armed man arrested near supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh's home
The US Supreme Court says an armed man has been arrested near associate justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home after making threats against him, the Associated Press writes.
The Washington Post was first with the story, reporting that a California man in his mid-twenties, with at least one weapon in his possession and tools used in burglaries, was apprehended near the judge’s home in Maryland and had told law enforcement that he wanted to kill Kavanaugh, and citing people familiar with the investigation. It happened at about 1.50am ET today.
The Post further reports that:
Two people familiar with the investigation said the initial evidence indicates the man was angry about the leaked draft of an opinion by the Supreme Court signaling the court is preparing to overturn Roe. v. Wade, the 49-year-old decision that guaranteed a person’s constitutional right to have an abortion. He was also angry over a recent spate of mass shootings, those people said.
Following the leak last month of that draft opinion - with the final opinion awaited with enormous tension across the US this month - protesters appeared near the homes of conservative members of the supreme court bench.
These included Samuel Alito, who wrote the draft opinion that was leaked and slammed the Roe decision, and two of the justices nominated by Donald Trump that represented a strong swing to the right on the nine-member bench - Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Those previous protests were entirely peaceful, though technically probably illegal, and there had apparently been no arrests.
Here’s what Lauren Burke reported for the Guardian at the time:
After a brief recess, the House hearing has now moved on to testimony from elected officials, representatives from advocacy groups and other, but it wrapped up its first half with more gut-wrenching testimony from parents affected by gun violence.
Kimberly Rubio described how she found out that her daughter Lexi was among those killed in Uvalde, and outlined specific policies she thinks could prevent such attacks. “We understand that for some reason, to some people, to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns, the guns are more important than children,” Rubio said.
“So at this moment, we ask for progress. We seek to raise the age to purchase these weapons from 18 to 21 years of age, we seek red flag laws, stronger background checks. We also want to repeal gun manufacturers liability, immunity.”
Lucretia Hughes of Women for Gun Rights’s DC Project told lawmakers how her 19-year-old son was shot and killed while playing dominoes, but unlike the witnesses before her, she did not call for more restrictions on firearms. Rather, she saw weapons as an important tool for self-defense and linked gun control laws to racism.
“Something has to change. Thoughts and prayers and calls for more gun control isn’t enough. How about letting me defend myself from evil? You don’t think that I’m capable and trustworthy to handle a firearm? You don’t think that the second amendment doesn’t apply to people that look like me?” said Hughes, who is Black.
“Who and you who would call for more gun controls are the same ones that are calling to defund the police? Who is supposed to protect us? We must prepare to be our own first responders to protect ourselves and our loved ones.”
In recorded testimony, fourth-grader Miah Cerrillo described how the Uvalde killer shot her teacher in the head then opened fire on her classmates, including a friend right next to her.
“I thought he was gonna come back into the room, so I grabbed the blood and I put it all over me,” Cerillo said in a recorded video. Speaking with little emotion, Cerillo, described how she grabbed her teacher’s phone and called 911. An unidentified voice on the video then asked Cerillo if she felt safe at school, to which she responded by shaking her head. When asked if she thinks such a shooting could happen again, she nodded.
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Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician in Uvalde, is providing a graphic depiction of what he saw on May 24, the day of the mass killing.
It began, he said, with a text message from a colleague in nearby San Antonio, asking why pediatric surgeons and anesthesiologists were put on call for a mass shooting in Uvalde. Guerrero raced to the town’s hospital, describing a scene of “parents outside yelling children’s names in desperation and sobbing as they beg for any news related to their child. Those mother’s cries I will never get out of my head,” he told lawmakers.
The details of his testimony are harrowing. He describes encountering Mia, a child he’d known since birth, alive but with her white Lilo and Stitch shirt covered in blood from a shrapnel wound on her shoulder. He described finding the bodies of two children “whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitate, whose flesh had been ripped apart.” He talked about realizing that many other children were killed in the same manner.
“The thing I can’t figure out is whether our politicians are failing us out of stubbornness, passivity, or both,” Guerrero said.
“Once the blood is rinsed away from the bodies of our loved ones, and scrubbed off the floors of the schools and supermarkets and churches, the carnage from each scene is erased from our collective conscience. And we return again to nostalgia to the rose tinted view of our second amendment as a perfect instrument of American life. No matter how many lives are lost.”
The committee is now hearing from its first witness, Zeneta Everhart, whose son Zaire Goodman was shot in the racist attack at the Tops Market in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo.
She starts by drawing a link between the shooting and the country’s history of slavery and racism: “My ancestors, the first currency of America, were stripped of their heritage and culture, separated from their families bargained for on auction blocks, sold, beaten, lynched. Yet I continuously hear after every mass shooting that this is not who we are as Americans and as a nation. Hear me clearly. This is exactly who we are.”
She went on to describe how the bullets from the AR-15 style rifle used in the shooting exploded in her sons body, leaving shrapnel wounds that she has to clean. “My son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck, on his back, and another on his left leg.caused by an exploding bullet from an AR-15. As I clean his wounds I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back. Shrapnel will be left inside of his body for the rest of his life. Now I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children. This should not be your story or mine.”
Watch video of Everhart’s testimony:
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Supreme court issues ruling in case of bed and breakfast on US-Canada border
The US supreme court has just issued its latest, just one opinion today, and it’s none of the biggest cases awaited this month.
Americans are on the edge of their seats over cases that fundamentally affect abortion rights, gun control, government regulation of emissions and the policy of making undocumented migrants who cross the southern border wait in Mexico during their US court cases.
However, today’s single opinion, written by associate justice Clarence Thomas, in the case Egbert v Boule, involved the owner of a bed and breakfast – called the Smugglers Inn and owned by Robert Boule – on the US-Canadian border and the conduct of immigration agents.
The inn has come under suspicion over allegedly unlawful crossings by guests from the US into Canada.
Case was brought by Robert Boule, who was allegedly shoved to the ground by a border patrol agent who came onto his property without a warrant to check the immigration status of a guest at the inn Boule owns in Washington.
— Lydia Wheeler (@WheelerLydia) June 8, 2022
The court ruled against Boule.
Vox wrote earlier this year:
In March of 2014 Boule welcomed a guest who had recently arrived in the United States from Turkey. Although the guest was lawfully present in the United States, federal border patrol agent Erik Egbert decided to confront this guest when he arrived at Boule’s inn.
When the guest arrived, Egbert drove onto Boule’s property and approached the car containing the guest. After Boule asked Egbert to leave, and Egbert refused, Boule stepped between the border patrol agent and his guest. Egbert then allegedly shoved Boule against the car, grabbed him, and pushed him to the ground.
Then, after Boule complained to Egbert’s supervisor about this treatment, Egbert allegedly retaliated against him by contacting the Internal Revenue Service and asking that agency to investigate Boule’s tax statute.
Boule, in other words, alleges that Agent Egbert violated his constitutional rights. The Fourth Amendment forbids “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and if Egbert did, indeed, assault Boule, that could form the basis for a valid Fourth Amendment lawsuit. Boule also claims he had a First Amendment right to complain to Egbert’s supervisor without facing retaliation.
The primary issue in Boule is the continued viability of Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), which permits federal lawsuits against federal officials who allegedly violated the Constitution. Although the Court has not yet overruled Bivens, it has already stripped that case of much of its force.
Supreme Court opinion is Egbert v. Boule. Court rules for border patrol agent. Holds Bivens does not extend to create causes of action for a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim and a First Amendment retaliation claim against a Border Patrol agent.
— Lydia Wheeler (@WheelerLydia) June 8, 2022
The supreme court is expected to rule again tomorrow, it won’t be known on what case(s) until it happens.
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In his opening statement the committee’s top Republican, James Comer, offered a concise summary of many of the conservative counterarguments to the push for gun control that has followed these latest mass shootings.
Focusing on the recent rise in crime nationwide, Comer said the country must be ready to defend against “evil people” and cast private gun ownership as a way of doing that. Here’s more from the Kentucky representative:
“We must work together to deliver sensible solutions to secure our schools, protect our most vulnerable among us and bring to justice those responsible for these heinous crimes,” Comer said.
He continued: “I believe that we must carefully consider the security posture of vulnerable targets sought out by evil people. We must ensure that every American has a safe environment in which to live their lives in peace. And that requires thinking creatively about solutions to harden our infrastructure, enforce our existing laws and work to foster a culture that values conflict resolution and dialogue over violence. I strongly believe that there’s an important place for law abiding gun owners to serve in protecting themselves, their families and their communities from violence.”
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Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn B Maloney has opened the hearing by acknowledging a hard truth about gun violence in the United States: while mass shootings generate headlines, gun violence is a “steady drumbeat” across the country.
The New York representative continued, “And so many of our towns and cities, especially in marginalized communities, Black men make up more than half of all gun victims in the United States. Despite making up less than 6% of the population. Latinos are twice as likely to be killed by gun and four times as likely to be wounded by a gun as white Americans. We need transparency into how guns are reaching the hands of criminals.”
Ahead of the testimony, Maloney asked “every member of this committee to listen with an open heart to the brave witnesses who have come forward to tell their stories about how gun violence has impacted their lives. Our witnesses today have endured pain and loss. They displayed incredible courage by coming here to ask us to do our jobs. That let’s hear their voices. Let us honor their courage. Let us find the same courage to pass common sense laws to protect our children.”
The Democratic-led chamber will today vote for “common sense gun safety legislation,” Maloney said, though what the Senate will do with it remains unknown.
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House begins hearing on 'urgent need to address gun violence epidemic'
The House oversight committee has opened its hearing dubbed “the urgent need to address the gun violence epidemic,” which is likely to be a gut-wrenching look into the recent spate of mass shootings nationwide.
Among those testifying is Miah Cerrillo, a fourth-grade student who survived the shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the parents of Lexi Rubio, who was killed in the massacre, local pediatrician Roy Guerrero and Zeneta Everhart, whose son was shot in the massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Republican lawmakers, who make up a minority in the chamber, have invited Lucretia Hughes of Women for Gun Rights’s DC Project.
You can watch along here.
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Today’s gun violence hearing will undoubtedly be harrowing but the tension in Congress won’t end there. The first session of the January 6 committee is set for Thursday evening during the prime-time TV hour, and my colleague Hugo Lowell looks here at what viewers can expect:
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is scheduled to hold its inaugural hearing on Thursday and according to the running order obtained by the Guardian, the panel will track the activities of the far-right Proud Boys group before and during the insurrection.
At the start of the hearing, the panel’s chairman Bennie Thompson and vice-chair Liz Cheney will make a series of opening arguments before outlining a general roadmap of how each of the six Watergate-style hearings are expected to unfold.
For the second hour, Thompson and Cheney will hand control of the hearing to Tim Heaphy, the chief investigative counsel for the select committee, who will lead the questioning of two witnesses and walk through the key moments of the Capitol attack.
It’s worth taking a closer look at what happened in San Francisco last night, where voters in a city that’s normally a haven for progressive policies decisively ousted District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who pledged to reform the criminal justice system. The Guardian’s Sam Levin has unpacked how it happened:
San Francisco residents have voted to recall the district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who was elected on an agenda of criminal justice reform but faced intensifying backlash from law enforcement, conservatives and residents concerned about crime.
Boudin’s removal as the city’s top prosecutor in the middle of his first term is a major blow to a growing movement across the US to elect progressive DAs dedicated to tackling mass incarceration, police brutality and racism in the legal system.
The race was called by the Associated Press just over an hour after polls closed, with partial returns showing the recall received about 60% of the vote.
Child massacre survivor to testify before House amid talks on gun compromise
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Americans will today hear congressional testimony from one of the young survivors of last month’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas, as well as the relatives of some of the victims, while the House is also expected to introduce a gun control measure. On top of all that, the supreme court will this morning release rulings on some of the 30 cases still awaiting decisions – which could lead to major changes in abortion rights, gun access and other hot-button issues.
Let’s look a little closer at the day’s packed agenda:
- The supreme court will release the decisions from 10am ET. There’s no telling which rulings will come, but the most closely watched of the pending decisions are an environmental case out of West Virginia, a gun rights case stemming from New York, an immigration case via Texas involving the US-Mexico border and the pivotal Mississippi abortion case that also includes the state authorities asking justices to overturn Roe v Wade.
- At the same time as the court’s decisions, the House oversight committee will hold a hearing on gun violence featuring testimony from Miah Cerrillo, a fourth grade student at Robb elementary school in Uvalde and others impacted by recent shootings there and in Buffalo, New York.
- The House is also expected to release its own gun control bill but if any legislation makes it through Congress, it will likely originate in the Senate, where Democratic and Republican lawmakers are holding negotiations on finding a compromise measure.
- Joe Biden is going to Los Angeles, where he will speak at the ninth Summit of the Americas and film an interview for Jimmy Kimmel Live that airs at 8pm eastern time.
- Voters are digesting the aftermath of yesterday’s primary elections in seven states that saw San Francisco’s progressive district attorney recalled and the Los Angeles mayor’s race head to a runoff.
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