From 2h ago
Biden urged that “it’s time to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines”, and for Congress to do more.
He said the new federal Office of Gun Violence will be overseen by Kamala Harris, who has been “on the frontlines” her entire career as a prosecutor and as a attorney general.
Listing the four primarily responsibilities of the newly formed office, he said none of those steps would alone “solve the entirety of the gun violence epidemic”. “Together, they will save lives,” he said.
I never thought even remotely say this in my whole career: guns are the number one killer of children in America. Guns are the number one killer of children in America.
In 2023, more than 500 mass shootings have taken place and “well over 30,000” deaths as a result of gun violence, he said, describing it as “totally unacceptable”.
Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
The Republican-led House all but disappeared for the long weekend after abruptly wrapping up its work on Thursday when the embattled speaker, Kevin McCarthy, failed to advance a stopgap government spending bill.
The White House planned to begin telling federal agencies to prepare for a shutdown. If Congress does not pass a spending bill before 1 October, the lapse in funding is expected to force hundreds of thousands of federal workers to go without pay and bring a halt to some crucial government services.
The historic US autoworkers’ strike as the United Auto Workers president, Shawn Fain, called on 38 additional plants across 20 states to join the strike. During a livestream update, Fain announced the additional strikes at automaker plants as contract negotiations with the big three automakers remain far apart on economic issues. He invited Joe Biden to the picket line.
Joe Biden pledged to fight for gun safety laws while unveiling a new White House office of gun violence prevention. Kamala Harris will oversee the office. “On this issue, we do not have a moment to spare nor a life to spare,” she said in remarks on Friday.
Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, and his wife have been charged with bribery offenses in connection with accepting gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz, among other gifts, in exchange for protecting three businessmen and influencing the government of Egypt.
The conservative justice Clarence Thomas has attended at least two donor events organized by the Koch network, the ultra-right political organization founded by the libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which has brought multiple cases before the supreme court, according to a new report.
The third Republican presidential primary debate will be held on 8 November in Miami. Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner of the party’s race, skipped the first debate and recently announced he’ll also forego the second.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced he is leaving the Democratic party and becoming a Republican.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the US politics live blog today. Have a good weekend.
The third Republican presidential primary debate will be held on 8 November in Miami.
The date, first reported by CNN, is more than a month after the second debate which is scheduled to take place on 27 September at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. The first took place on 23 August in Milwaukee.
Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner of the party’s race, skipped the first debate and recently announced he’ll also forego the second.
Maxwell Frost, the 26-year-old congressman from Florida, described Joe Biden as “one of the fiercest champions of gun violence protection” as he stood beside the president and vice president at the Rose Garden.
Frost said that as the first member of Gen Z to be voted into Congress last year, he is often asked what got him involved in politics and his answer is:
I didn’t want to get shot in school. I was 15 years old when a shooter walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 20 children and six teachers. Like millions of kids, I went to school the next day with anxiety and fear that my life would be taken, my friends’ lives would be taken, and my family’s lives would be taken by senseless gun violence.
He said that he had served as the national organizing director for March for Our Lives before being elected to Congress, and that he learned the “brutal truth” that the time people pay the most attention is usually “coupled with carnage and death”.
Not today. Today the country sees us here, at the White House, with a president who is taking action.
Biden said that for every member of Congress who refuses to act on gun violence, we will “need to elect new members of Congress”.
There comes a point where our voices are so loud, our determination is so clear, that we can longer be stopped. We’re reaching that point. We’ve reached that point today, in my view, where the safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot.
He said the “deadly and traumatic price” of inaction on gun control “can no longer be the lives of our children and the people of our country”.
Biden urged that “it’s time to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines”, and for Congress to do more.
He said the new federal Office of Gun Violence will be overseen by Kamala Harris, who has been “on the frontlines” her entire career as a prosecutor and as a attorney general.
Listing the four primarily responsibilities of the newly formed office, he said none of those steps would alone “solve the entirety of the gun violence epidemic”. “Together, they will save lives,” he said.
I never thought even remotely say this in my whole career: guns are the number one killer of children in America. Guns are the number one killer of children in America.
In 2023, more than 500 mass shootings have taken place and “well over 30,000” deaths as a result of gun violence, he said, describing it as “totally unacceptable”.
Joe Biden, who was introduced by Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, announced the creation of the first ever federal office of gun violence prevention and said he was “determined to send a clear message about how important this issue is to me and to the country”.
He said that after every mass shooting, he has heard the same message all over the country: “Please do something. Do something to prevent a tragedy.” He said his administration has been working “relentlessly to do something”.
He said that last year, he signed into law the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which he descried as “the most significant gun safety law” and an “important first step”.
For the first time in three decades, we came together to overcome the relentless opposition from a gun lobby, gun manufacturers and so many politicians opposing common sense gun legislation.
“We’re not stopping here,” Biden added.
Harris said she “owed” it to the parents and children she has comforted who has been traumatized by losing a family member to gun violence.
On this issue, we do not have a moment to spare nor a life to spare.
The vice president said the administration will “use the full power of the federal government” to “strengthen the coalition of survivors, and advocates, and students, and teachers, and elected leaders, to save lives and fight for the rights of all people to be safe from fear”.
Kamala Harris, speaking at the Rose Garden, said Americans “should be able to shop in a grocery store, walk down the street, or sit peacefully in a classroom” and be safe from gun violence.
The US has been “torn apart by the fear and trauma that results from gun violence”, the vice president said, standing besides Joe Biden and Florida congressman Maxwell Frost.
In our country today, one in five people has lost a family member to gun violence. Across our nation every day, about 120 Americans are killed by a gun.
The impact of gun violence is not equal across all communities, she said.
Black Americans are 10 times more likely to be victims of gun violence and homicide. Latino Americans twice as likely.
Harris said that, as a former courtroom prosecutor, she had seen “with my own eyes what a bullet does to the human body”.
We cannot normalise any of this. These are not simply statistics. These are our children.
My colleague David Smith is at the Rose Garden event and has tweeted this picture of Biden and Harris emerging from the White House:
Tennessee state representative Justin Jones has been spotted heading to the Rose Garden ahead of Joe Biden’s speech announcing the formation of the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, according to a White House pool report.
Jones is one of the “Tennessee Three”, along with Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson, who was expelled earlier this year for his role in a pro-gun control protest inside the Tennessee Capitol.
Throughout his presidency, Joe Biden has used executive actions to regulate homemade firearms – known as ghost guns – in the same way as traditional firearms, and to clarify who counts as a gun seller and thus is required by law to conduct background checks.
Last year he also signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that, among other things, tightens background checks and bolsters mental health programs.
Biden has advocated for re-instating the national assault weapons ban and expanding background checks since he was vice-president. A historic increase in gun homicides in 2020 pushed community-based violence prevention further up the administration’s agenda.
Joe Biden is expected to announce the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention during a Rose Garden event at 2.45pm Eastern time.
The office will be overseen by the office of the vice president, Kamala Harris, who will also be speaking at the event.
In a statement released on Thursday, Biden said:
In the absence of that sorely-needed action, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention along with the rest of my Administration will continue to do everything it can to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities, and our country apart.
The White House just skirted around a question from the press about whether Joe Biden believes the New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez should resign.
The senator, who has an influential position as chair of the US Senate committee on foreign relations, was indicted earlier today on bribery charges.
“I’m going to be really careful here and not comment because it is an active matter,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Jean-Pierre said the matter was the US Senate’s to deal with and that “discussions are happening” there about the “next steps.”
Congresswoman Lucy McBath is addressing the press in the west wing at the daily briefing, which today is headlining on the new national gun violence prevention office. The new project will be officially launched just under an hour from now.
Georgia representative McBath told how her young son was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2012 and she was “robbed of every dream that a mother holds,” she said, and noted that she would never see her son graduate high school, go to college or get married.
“Every single day, over 100 people are shot and killed in the United States. Gun violence has no boundaries,” she said, whether people become victims in suburbs, cities or rural areas.
McBath will join Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the rose garden shortly for the formal launch of the new office to prevent gun violence.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris plan to speak in the rose garden at the White House in about an hour on the creation of the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, to be led by the US vice president.
In a few moments, the White House press briefing will begin, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accompanied at the podium by Georgia representative Lucy McBath, who campaigns on gun safety. She lost her son to gun violence.
This is what she posted yesterday:
Joe Biden has told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the US will provide a small number of long-range missiles to help in Ukraine’s fight against Russia, three US officials and a congressional official told NBC News on Friday.
The officials did not confirm when the missiles would be delivered and remain anonymous as they have not been authorised to speak on the subject publicly.
A congressional official told NBC News that there was still a debate about the type of missile that would be sent and how many would be delivered to Ukraine.
The news comes after the White House rejected Zelenskiy’s request for Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to be sent to Ukraine as part of a new military aid package to bolster the country’s counteroffensive.
For all the developments in the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion and related geopolitics, follow our Ukraine live blog here.
Zelenskiy was given the red carpet treatment at the White House yesterday, after two days in New York at the United Nations General Assembly. Before visiting Biden he was on Capitol Hill meeting with US Senators.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
