Democrats and Republicans at an impasse over US gun control as Biden demands action – as it happened

Washington is ending its week on a quiet note, with few major developments in Congress or at the White House as officials continue grappling with the fallout from the shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Here’s what happened today:

• Peter Navarro, a top former White House adviser to Donald Trump, was taken into custody after being indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.
• A fourth grader who survived the Uvalde, Texas shooting will testify before a US House panel next week, as Democrats attempt to convince their GOP counterparts that something must be done to prevent the epidemic of mass shootings.
• People affected by the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 students and two teachers last month have taken initial steps to sue Daniel Defense, manufacturer of the weapon used in the massacre.
• US Capitol police say they arrested a man outside the building carrying a BB gun, high-capacity magazines, a fake badge and body armor.
• May employment data confirmed that robust job growth is continuing in the United States, with the economy adding a better-than-expected 390,000 positions and the unemployment rate remaining at 3.6% – a hair above where it was before the pandemic caused tens of millions of people to lose their employment.

John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and Democratic nominee for US Senate, said he “almost died” after suffering a stroke last month, the Washington Post is reporting.

“The stroke I suffered on May 13 didn’t come out of nowhere,” Fetterman said in a statement.

“Like so many others, and so many men in particular, I avoided going to the doctor, even though I knew I didn’t feel well. As a result, I almost died.”

He added: “I didn’t do what the doctor told me. But I won’t make that mistake again.”

Fetterman did not give a date for his return to the campaign trail. On Friday he released a letter from his doctor saying he had been diagnosed with an irregular heart rhythm in 2017 , but had not scheduled a follow up appointment, and had not visited any doctor for five years since that 2017 appointment.

Pennsylvania is a crucial contest for Democrats as they aim to avoid losing the Senate in the November midterm elections. Fetterman, 52, had previously faced criticism for not providing a timetable on his return to campaigning.

Ohio’s House of Representatives has passed a bill that would ban transgender girls from school sports and require verification from a doctor if a student’s sex is called into question, Reuters reported.

The Republican-sponsored legislation comes in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections, with transgender rights emerging as a major front in the US culture wars.

The bill next goes to a vote in the state Senate when it reconvenes in several months after a recess.

Several other states have passed anti-trans sports bills in recent months, but few are as extreme as the Ohio legislation, which would require students whose sex is “disputed” to provide a physician’s statement verifying “internal and external reproductive anatomy” and other criteria.

These provisions target “a handful of Ohio students and their families who simply want to play sports like everyone else,” LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Ohio said in a statement.

People affected by the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 students and two teachers last month have taken the initial steps to sue Daniel Defense, manufacturer of the weapon used in the massacre, Reuters reports.

An attorney representing Alfred Garza, father of Robb Elementary School student Amerie Jo Garza, sent the Georgia-based gun manufacturer a request for information about its marketing to children and teens.

“We ask you to begin providing information to us now, rather than force Mr. Garza to file a lawsuit to obtain it,” his lawyers wrote in a letter to the company.

School employee Emilia Marin has also filed a petition in Texas state court to depose Daniel Defense over its marketing, and to turn over documents.

Daniel Defense did not respond to Reuters’s request for comment.

Remington Arms, manufacturer of the weapon used in the Sandy Hook school shooting that left 20 students and six adults dead in 2012, agreed earlier this year to pay $73 million to some of the victims of that attack, though a federal law complicates many lawsuits against gun makers.

Imagine that you are wanted for a crime. Imagine that you are in the United States, perhaps in a state not far from the Mexican border. You may think, based on what you’ve seen in movies or read on the news, that if you can get to Mexico, you can go scot-free. You would be wrong, according to an excellent Washington Post article that profiles the “Gringo Hunters,” a Mexican police unit tasked with tracking down foreign criminals on the run in their country.

American politicians, most famously Donald Trump along with other conservatives, have characterized Mexico as a source of criminals who flood over the border into the United States. The piece flips that stereotype on its head, as reporter Kevin Sieff goes on the hunt with the officers who go after the many alleged murderers, rapists and child abusers that pour into their country from their northern neighbor:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It was late March. The unit had been busier than at any other time in its history. While politicians in Washington argued over whether there was a crisis at the border, it felt to the Gringo Hunters that crime was spilling over in the opposite direction.

“Honestly, I think it’s all the drugs over there,” said Moises, the liaison unit’s commander. Like other unit members, he spoke on the condition that his last name be withheld so he can continue to work undercover.

In its office, the unit keeps a whiteboard with the month’s apprehensions tallied by name, date and charge. In the first three weeks of March, there were eight accused of drug trafficking, two of murder and one of pedophilia.

US Capitol police say they have arrested a man outside the building carrying a BB gun, high-capacity magazines, a fake badge and body armor.

Officers encountered the man after he parked his Dodge Charger at Peace Circle on the US Capitol’s west side around 5am on Friday, the agency said in a statement:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The man was identified as 53-year-old Jerome Felipe out of Flint, Michigan.

Felipe, who is a retired police officer out of New York, presented the USCP officers with a fake badge that had “Department of the INTERPOL” printed on it. Felipe also made a false statement that he was a criminal investigator with the agency.

Felipe gave officers permission to search his vehicle. The officers discovered a BB gun, two ballistic vests, several high capacity magazines, and other ammunition in the car. No real guns were found.

Investigators are still working to determine the reason Felipe was parked near the US Capitol.

Felipe is facing charges for Unlawful Possession of High Capacity Magazines and Unregistered Ammo.

A top deputy to Mike Pence warned the Secret Service about a security risk to the then vice-president the day before the January 6 attack, the New York Times is reporting.

The warning was conveyed by Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, to his main Secret Service agent, Tim Giebels, on 5 January, before a crowd of more than 2,000 people stormed the US capitol following a speech by Donald Trump. In their conversation before that happened, Short warned Giebels that Trump was going to publicly repudiate Pence, whom he had chosen as his running mate during his successful 2016 run for the White House.

According to the Times:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Mr Short did not know what form such a security risk might take, according to people familiar with the events. But after days of intensifying pressure from Mr Trump on Mr Pence to take the extraordinary step of intervening in the certification of the Electoral College count to forestall Mr Trump’s defeat, Mr Short seemed to have good reason for concern. The vice president’s refusal to go along was exploding into an open and bitter breach between the two men at a time when the president was stoking the fury of his supporters who were streaming into Washington.

• The need for meaningful gun control reforms, following the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, continues to dominate political conversation, but Republicans and Democrats appear no closer to a consensus.
• On Thursday Joe Biden asked: “How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” and called for a series of gun control measures. But Republicans snubbed serious discussion of stricter gun laws at a hearing on Thursday.
• A fourth grader who survived the Uvalde, Texas shooting will testify before a US House panel next week, as Democrats attempt to convince their GOP counterparts that something must be done to prevent the epidemic of mass shootings.
• Peter Navarro, a top former White House adviser to Donald Trump, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress, after he defied a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.
• Democrats are increasingly blaming Joe Biden’s climate office for holding up progress on measures that could cut US emissions, according to Politico. “Micromanaging” by the office of other government bodies has stalled a series of environmental efforts, Politico reported.

With Biden having failed to get his major proposals to fight rising global temperatures through Congress, Politico reports that Democrats are increasingly blaming his climate office for holding up progress on other measures that could cut US emissions.

The Climate Policy Office headed by Gina McCarthy has gotten in the way of actions that Biden could take without Congress’s approval, according to the article, which cited nine Democratic sources both inside and outside the Biden administration:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The office’s micromanaging of other government bodies has weakened the Interior Department’s efforts to rein in oil and gas leases on federal lands, stalled a redo of federal ethanol policies and slowed White House efforts to address pollution in low-income and minority communities, said the Democrats, who include congressional staff and current or former Biden administration officials.

Much of Biden’s emissions-cutting strategy was contained in Build Back Better, his failed attempt to spend potentially trillions of dollars revamping American social services and also fighting climate change. Despite passing the House, it failed to win enough votes among Senate Democrats, and the fate of its proposals remains up in the air.

A fourth-grader who survived last week’s mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas will testify before a US House panel next week, alongside the parents of victims killed in both the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings.

Miah Cerrillo, a student at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, will appear before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday, as Congress faces calls to take meaningful action on gun control.

Cerrillo will be joined by Felix Rubio and Kimberly Mata-Rubio, the parents of Lexi Rubio, who was ten-years-old when she was killed at Robb elementary.

Zeneta Everhart, the mother of Zaire Goodman, who survived after being shot at the mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store, will also speak before the House committee.

Carolyn Maloney, the New York Democrat who chairs the committee, said the hearing “will examine the terrible impact of gun violence and the urgent need to rein in the weapons of war used to perpetrate these crimes”.

“It is my hope that all my colleagues will listen with an open heart as gun violence survivors and loved ones recount one of the darkest days of their lives,” Maloney said.

“This hearing is ultimately about saving lives, and I hope it will galvanize my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass legislation to do just that.”

Peter Navarro may not be the only former Trump official facing Washington’s wrath.

My colleague Peter Stone has reported that there is evidence the Justice Department is looking into lawyers who advised the former president on how to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Legal experts believe the US Justice Department has made headway with a key criminal inquiry and could be homing in on top Trump lawyers who plotted to overturn Joe Biden’s election, after the department wrote to the House panel probing the January 6 Capitol attack seeking transcripts of witness depositions and interviews.

While it’s unclear exactly what information the DoJ asked for, former prosecutors note that the 20 April request occurred at about the same time a Washington DC grand jury issued subpoenas seeking information about several Trump lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, plus other Trump advisers, who reportedly played roles in a fake electors scheme.

Giuliani, Trump’s former personal lawyer, worked with other lawyers and some campaign officials to spearhead a scheme to replace Biden electors with alternative Trump ones in seven states that Biden won, with an eye to blocking Congress’ certification of Biden on January 6 when a mob of Trump loyalists attacked the Capitol.