US Politics

The supreme court just overturned Roe v Wade – what happens next?Court’s move will allow more than half of states to ban abortion, with an immediate impact on tens of millions of Americans01:39The supreme court just overturned the landmark Roe v Wade case, which granted women in the US the right to terminate a pregnancy. A reversal of this magnitude is almost unprecedented, particularly on a case decided nearly 50 years ago.The extraordinarily rare move will allow more than half of states to ban abortion, with an immediate and enduring impact on tens of millions of Americans.Roe v Wade overturned as supreme court strikes down federal right to abortion – liveRead moreWhat happened?The court decided there is no constitutional right to abortion in a case called Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In reaching that decision, the conservative-majority court overturned Roe v Wade, from 1973.Historically, the court has overturned cases to grant more rights. The court has done the opposite here, and its decision will restrict a constitutional right generations of Americans have grown up taking for granted.As a result of the reversal, states will again be permitted to ban or severely restrict abortion, changes that will indelibly alter the national understanding of liberty, self-determination and personal autonomy.Where will this happen?Twenty-six states are expected to do so immediately, or as soon as practicable. This will make abortion illegal across most of the south and midwest.In these states, women and other people who can become pregnant will need to either travel hundreds of miles to reach an abortion provider or self-manage abortions at home through medication or other means.However, anti-abortion laws are not national. The US will have a patchwork of laws, including restrictions and protections, because some Democratic-led states such as California and New York expanded reproductive rights in the run-up to the decision.Even so, new abortion bans will make the US one of just four nations to roll back abortion rights since 1994, and by far the wealthiest and most influential nation to do so. The other three nations to curtail abortion rights are Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. More than half (58%) of all US women of reproductive age – or 40 million people – live in states hostile to abortion.When will this happen?Across most states, this will happen quickly. Thirteen states have abortion bans “triggered” by a reversal of Roe v Wade, though the laws vary in their enforcement dates. Louisiana, for example, has a trigger law that is supposed to take effect immediately. Idaho has a trigger ban that goes into effect in 30 days.Other states have abortion bans that pre-date the Roe decision, but have been unenforceable in the last five decades. Michigan has a pre-Roe ban that is currently the subject of a court challenge.A final group of states intends to ban abortion very early in pregnancy, often before women know they are pregnant. One such state is Georgia, where abortion will be banned at six weeks. Several states, such as Texas, have multiple bans in place.In many cases, court challenges under state constitutions are likely, and experts believe there will be chaos for days or weeks as states implement bans.Can the federal government stop this?The most effective protection against state abortion bans is a federal law, which would precede the states. Public opinion favors such statute – 85% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances.Such a law would need the majority support of the House of Representatives, a 60-vote majority in the Senate, and a signature from Joe Biden to pass. A majority of members of the House of Representatives support an abortion rights statute, as does the White House.However, Republicans are almost certain to block abortion rights laws in the Senate, which is evenly split with Democrats. One Democratic senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has repeatedly crossed party lines to vote against abortion rights. That leaves just 49 Democrats, far short of the support needed to pass such a measure.To overcome the evenly split Senate, Democrats would need to win landslide victories in the upcoming midterm elections. However, despite the fact that popular opinion favors abortion rights, it is unclear how the midterms could be swayed by the issue.And, regardless of the outcome of the next election, Dobbs will forever change life in the US. The lives of individuals will be irrevocably altered as people are denied reproductive healthcare, face long journeys or are forced to give birth.TopicsRoe v WadeUS supreme courtAbortionWomenUS politicsLaw (US)HealthexplainersReuse this content More

In the fifth round of hearings probing the ways in which US president Trump abused his powers to cajole the justice department into endorsing his false election claims, White House staffers give testimony identifying several Republican members of Congress who sought pardons. Republican Adam Kinzinger said: ‘The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime’

Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons
‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain power More

The US supreme court voted in favour of … people getting shotHamilton NolanThe supreme court think that restrictions on handguns are grotesquely exceeding their powers. But outlawing abortion? Totally fine The US supreme court on Thursday voted 6-3 in favor of more people getting shot. More formally, they voted to strike down a New York law that restricted the ability of people to carry guns outside of their homes. Experts say it is the most consequential second amendment ruling in more than a decade, and it will make it much harder for states and cities to prevent their citizens from roaming around town armed and ready for shootouts like so many cowboys in Deadwood. One thing that is safe to say is that, as a result of this decision, more Americans will die violent deaths – with freedom!To dissect this ruling as a matter of legal theory is a waste of time. It’s all pretext. All you need to know about the legal theories at work in the current supreme court is that if states want to restrict your ability to carry a handgun, they are grotesquely exceeding their powers, but if states want to outlaw abortion, well, it is only fair that states have that power.To portray any of this as the outcome of a coherent, good-faith legal theory would actually make us all dumber. Come on. This is the political outcome of a decades-long political effort by rightwing extremists to influence American law and culture through the courts, since a functional democracy might prevent them from doing so legislatively. (Preventing America from having a functional democracy that would accurately represent the will of the majority of the population, by the way, is part of this very same effort.) Even those pretending that there is a true legal philosophy at play here have to struggle to keep a straight face. “The test is, uh, if we had a seance, can we imagine that a powder-wig-wearing slaveholder with wooden teeth would have imagined this same exact law, word for word, in 1776?”Come on.The discussion we need to have about the US supreme court is: what are we planning to do about their power? Because if there is no coherent plan advanced, the default outcome could well be 20 more years of a tiny unaccountable cabal of religious fundamentalists dismantling the entire progressive agenda that was won in the second half of the 20th century. That is not acceptable. The court is now fully in control of people who believe they are on a mission from God to drag America back to the good old days of 1885, when corporations were free to whip who they wanted and noble American men wore six shooters everywhere and women stayed home and had babies whether they liked it or not. It is, I’m very sorry to say, the Democratic party that is going to be responsible for seeing to it that this doesn’t happen. On one side, we have hundreds of millions of Americans who would like to enjoy basic bodily autonomy and rights and not be shot or get cancer from toxic corporate waste. On the other side, we have a half-dozen white Catholic Ivy League Republicans who wear weird robes to work and fully intend to see to it that those hundreds of millions of Americans do not have any of those things. And it’s up to the Democratic party to decide which side they will disappoint.Five of the six current rightwing supreme court justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. The Republican senators who vote to confirm them represent a minority of the population. One of the justices, Neil Gorsuch, sits in a seat that was outright stolen, when Mitch McConnell prevented Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland from proceeding as usual; another justice, Amy Coney Barrett, sits in a seat that she was confirmed for when McConnell reversed that principle and rushed her through before Donald Trump lost his presidency. All in all, we are talking about a wildly unrepresentative group of elitist fringe lunatics, installed in power by the exact opposite of democratic will, accountable only to an imaginary God who instructs them to scrap basic gun control laws in the wake of horrific mass shootings of children, while calling themselves “pro-life”. This is not a foundation strong enough to support a modern nation. Anyone who is not prepared to talk about structural reform should give up their position in public life.We are well beyond the point at which the typical Democratic “Get out and vote!” messages are anything other than insulting to everyone’s intelligence. Republicans may be greed-driven bigots, but they are also savvy political realists. They have systematically nurtured a caste of preprogrammed ultra-conservative judges, and they have installed them in positions of power through the most ruthless means possible. Today’s supreme court is the highest expression of this 40-year project. Now, those who have pursued this project are coming for their payoff – the end of gun control, the end of legal abortion, the end of voting rights laws, the end of labor rights, the end of corporate regulations of all kinds. If a classroom full of murdered elementary school children is not enough to sway these high priests from their bizarre and dangerous convictions about how America should run, it is time to get more radical about reining this whole thing in.Adding justices to the supreme court should right now, today, be an urgent mainstream position of the Democratic party. So too should term limits for supreme court justices. These are just basic starting points. These should be accepted as common sense, in the same way that ending the filibuster has slowly come to be. Only bad things will happen, if we do not do these things. Further, more sweeping structural reforms that might have stopped us from finding ourselves in this position in the first place – campaign finance reform, ending gerrymandering, doing away with the electoral college – are equally necessary, but court-specific measures can be done faster. It is hard, I admit, to imagine that our current geriatric, procedure-addicted Democratic party leadership will be able to find it within themselves to propose solutions that are anywhere near adequate to the problem at hand. But conventional wisdom now has to place on all of them the burden of the situation we face: if they are not ready to do the things that would actually fix the problem, no matter how radical those things may be, they are effectively in favor of the problem itself. It is Republican zealots who will end gun control and abortion rights, but every single Democratic senator who decided that packing the court was simply too extreme will have had a hand in helping them, through their utter futility.One of the greatest underlying flaws of the American power structure is that the people who are in control are never forced to feel the consequences of their own decisions. The supreme court, and the United States Congress, are surrounded by fences and armed guards. When a single mentally ill person went to Brett Kavanaugh’s neighborhood with a gun earlier this month, Congress tripped over itself rushing to pass a bill to further protect judges from threats. Yet the same group of delicate souls is now making the country less safe for everyone else. If the members of the US supreme court want to drag America towards dystopia, fine. Let them walk the gun-filled streets with the rest of us.
Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York
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The US supreme court just made America a more dangerous, violent placeJill FilipovicThis nihilistic decision will propel the US further toward mass gun violence and a culture of death The conservative justices of the US supreme court just made America an even more dangerous, even more violent place.The decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn, Inc v Bruen took on a simple and commonsense New York state law requiring individuals to have a license in order to own a gun, and requiring people who want to carry a concealed pistol or revolver out in public to demonstrate a particular need to be toting a secret gun around. That law has been on the books in New York since the early 1900s.Sotomayor accuses supreme court conservatives of dismantling church-state separationRead moreThe supreme court just invalidated it in a decision that is an extreme expansion of the largely invented and now near-limitless individual right to own and carry deadly weapons. And it doesn’t bode well for future efforts to impose any restrictions on guns whatsoever – to make it as difficult to get a gun as to get, say, a driver’s license or an abortion. This radical, nihilistic decision potentially calls a great many state gun laws into question – and will propel the US further toward mass gun violence and a culture of death.The case was brought by two New York men who, according to the opinion, “both applied for unrestricted licenses to carry a handgun in public based on their generalized interest in self-defense”. The court, in an opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, held that “New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense”.Only in America does a “generalized interest in self-defense” give an individual the nearly unlimited right to own a deadly weapon and the right to put everyone else in a community at risk; only in America is the supposed right to carry a hidden deadly weapon in public an “ordinary self-defense need” that supersedes the rights of everyone else to be safe from gun violence.In no other wealthy democracy is any of this “ordinary”.And in no other wealthy democracy are America’s rate of gun violence ordinary.This case comes on the tail of two decades of an increasingly conservative supreme court radically expanding access to guns. And as gun access has radically expanded, so has gun violence. Last year saw a staggering number of gun deaths: more than 20,700, and that’s excluding suicides, which in 2020 accounted for more than half of gun deaths. There were hundreds of mass shootings last year and a far greater number of the handgun killings that have now simply become part of the fabric of American culture, so commonplace that they often don’t even make the nightly news.What’s particularly striking about this case, though, is that the court largely sets aside any concern for public safety. After all, there are good public safety reasons why a state may not want to grant any individual the legal right to carry a concealed gun in public for no reason other than they want one. More guns equal more gun violence – that’s a clear calculus, bolstered by decades of research, at this point undeniable (except by the people who are politically motivated to deny facts and reality).New York has long concluded, pretty reasonably, that it does not want any random person carrying a gun on the subway, or into a school, or into a grocery store. Having a bunch of armed people around increases the chances of any conflict turning deadly; it increases the chances of an accident turning deadly; it just about guarantees that people with no need for a gun who are simply macho, insecure, paranoid and prone to violence will be able to get their hands on one and enjoy the freedom of carrying it anywhere they wish.The supreme court, in an opinion signed by the institution’s self-styled “states’ rights” conservatives, has said that states do not have the right to regulate guns in this way.This decision comes roughly a month after a man armed with a weapon of war murdered 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, as the police sat impotently outside. It comes roughly a month after the murder of 10 people at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store by a white supremacist. In the wake of those two shootings – simply the latest mass slaughters of African Americans and schoolchildren – American politicians have done absolutely nothing to rein in our out-of-control gun culture and our astounding rates of gun violence.More Americans have been killed by guns since 1968 than soldiers have died in all of America’s wars combined. An astounding 1.5 million Americans died by gunfire between 1986 and 2017. In the US, nearly 80% of homicides are gun-related; in the UK, it’s 4%. And for every 100 US residents, there are more than 120 guns – the highest rate of civilian gun ownership anywhere in the world (Yemen, with about 53 guns for every 100 people, ranks a distant second).Over and over again, the US relives the now-famous headline from the Onion: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”The reality is that while mass shootings are devastating and shocking, handguns toted around by individual citizens wreak more widespread, if quieter, havoc. Part of what the New York law is trying to prevent is the violent escalation of the kinds of altercations that have already become much more pitched during Covid: People screaming at customer service workers; aggressive drivers fueling road-rage incidents; patients and family members threatening and attacking healthcare workers; adults losing their minds at school board meetings. These kinds of rage incidents are typically not pre-planned, but they can turn deadly fast if one party (or more) is armed. A law may not keep a gun out of the hands of a careful and premeditated killer. But a law like New York’s has kept guns out of the hands of average if violence-inclined citizens while they are in public. That reality is no longer.The devastating truth is that the current court is made of up of a majority of nihilistic rightwing radicals seeking to impose their vision of a heavily armed male-dominated Christian theocracy on the rest of us. This gun case is only a taste of where we’re headed: toward more violence, more death and fewer individual rights – aside, of course, from the ability to own, conceal, and carry just about anywhere as many weapons of death and destruction as one pleases.
Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
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Trump feeling fallout of Capitol attack hearings as allies abandon shipThe smooth and efficient proceedings with testimonies from Republicans has reportedly infuriated Trump Somewhere in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Thursday afternoon, it seems quite possible that an elderly man was sitting in front of a television howling with rage.Donald Trump, who spends summers at his Bedminster golf club, is a TV guy, a ratings guy. So the widely televised hearings of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol hit him where it hurts.‘A dangerous cancer’: fourth hearing reveals how Trump’s big lie destroyed people’s livesRead moreThe former US president has reportedly been glued to them – and has not liked what he’s seen. As the panel has presented a carefully crafted case against Trump as the leader of a failed coup, he is said to be livid that there is no one in the room to speak up for him.Trump “has tuned into every hearing” and has grown increasingly irate – to “the point of about to scream at the TV”, according to a close adviser – with what he views as the “lack of defense by his Capitol Hill allies”, the Washington Post reported.He is possibly aware that, while the hearings come too late to force his resignation and may or may not cause the justice department to press criminal charges, they seem to be inflicting greater political damage than anyone imagined.Thursday’s fifth hearing served up more of the same in the Cannon Caucus Room which, somewhat reminiscent of a grand ornate ballroom with curtains closed and lights on, is bringing a gravitas to the nailing of Trump that no trickle of media revelations or tell-all memoirs can.Photographers crowded around the witnesses just as the panel’s chairman, congressman Bennie Thompson, brought down the gavel, a now ominous sound for Trump, and spoke of “a brazen attempt to use the justice department to advance the president’s personal political agenda”.Trump’s consternation is likely to have only intensified when Republican Liz Cheney summed up his central role in the conspiracy to overturn the election, then another Republican, Adam Kinzinger, questioned former justice department officials. “Today President Trump’s total disregard for the constitution and his oath will be fully exposed,” Kinzinger said.Once again, all went smoothly and efficiently. There were no interruptions, objections, points of order or spoiling tactics. And that is said to have made Trump furious. He is especially critical of Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House, for boycotting the committee instead of giving pro-Trump Republicans a voice on it.Trump told Punchbowl News, “In retrospect, I think it would have been very smart” to put more Republicans on the committee. “The Republicans don’t have a voice. They don’t even have anything to say.”McCarthy apparently gambled that this would allow Republicans to write off the hearings as illegitimate, partisan and an attempt to distract from more pressing issues such as inflation. But the presence of Cheney, Kinzinger and more than a dozen Republican witnesses have undermined that argument.Moreover, McCarthy, who wants to be speaker of the House of Representatives, may have forgotten that Trump pays attention to TV, where the hearings are inescapable and will run into next month, prolonging the agony. Even if they are not penetrating the Trump base, they are penetrating Trump himself.And his formidable political instincts – which served him well against Hillary Clinton and warned him early that Joe Biden posed the biggest threat to his reelection – will now be warning Trump that the January 6 committee’s contribution to the history books poses a threat to his hopes of a 2024 presidential run.The hearings have painted a portrait of a man detached from reality, peddling paranoid conspiracy theories and putting himself before his country. Kinzinger noted: “He was willing to sacrifice our republic to prolong his presidency. I can imagine no more dishonorable act by a president.” They have also highlighted a callous, cruel streak that saw him make baseless allegations with no regard for how they would ruin individual lives.A source close to Trump told NBC News: “I look at this and say there is nobody in America who is watching this – even with all that’s going on in the world with Joe Biden – and saying, ‘Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States’. Nobody.’”Trump’s chequered record of endorsements in this year’s Republican primary elections have also raised questions over whether he still has a tight grip on the “Make America great again” movement. The hearings could turn him into damaged goods and give even Maga diehards some reasons to look for more electable alternatives.Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster, said: “I see people no longer drinking the Kool-Aid. I see people moving away from Trump for the first time. His endorsement matters more than anybody else in the Republican party by far, but he does not control the Republican party anymore. He’s the loudest voice, he has the most influence, but he’s losing control every day.”The leading challenger to Trump’s throne is Ron DeSantis, the rightwing governor of Florida, who is gaining on him in opinion polls. A poll of 300 likely Republican voters in New Hampshire, the first presidential primary state, found 39% wanted DeSantis to be the next nominee, while 37% favored Trump, within the 5.5% margin of error, according to the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.Pam Roehl, attending last week’s Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville, Tennessee, told the Associated Press that she still supports Trump but increasingly finds herself in the minority among friends who have moved on. “They’re like kind of: ‘Get with the program. Why aren’t you backing DeSantis?’” she was quoted as saying.If the two men go head-to-head, DeSantis could point to his legislative record in Florida and would be free of the baggage of the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. More than three decades younger than Trump, the governor would be seen as the candidate of the future while the former president keeps harping on the past. Trump’s big lie, it transpires, could prove his big liability.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain powerIn five hearings, the committee has shown the various paths the ex-president and his team explored to overturn the election02:02The January 6 select committee held its final hearing for this month on Thursday, sharing new details about Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure top justice department officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Across the committee’s five hearings this month, investigators have presented a meticulous account of Trump’s exhaustive efforts to cling to power after losing the election to Joe Biden. The panel has shown how Trump and his allies explored every possible avenue – from pressuring the vice-president, Mike Pence, to leaning on state election officials and justice department leaders – to promote lies about widespread election fraud.Capitol attack panel details Trump’s pressure on DoJ to support fraud claimsRead moreAnd Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, said the committee is only just getting started.“At this point, our committee has just begun to show America the evidence that we have gathered,” Cheney said Thursday. “There is much more to come both in our hearings and in our report.”The committee had originally planned to hold only six hearings this month, as investigators prepare to release their final report on the deadly Capitol attack this fall. But Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said Thursday that the hearings had sparked a flood of new tips about the insurrection, necessitating additional hearings next month.“Those hearings have spurred an influx of new information that the committee and our investigators are working to assess,” Thompson said. “We are committed to presenting the American people with the most complete information possible. That will be our aim when we reconvene in the coming weeks.”The committee is also now analyzing footage from British documentarian Alex Holder, who repeatedly interviewed Trump and his family members in the days leading up to and immediately after 6 January. The committee issued a subpoena for Holder for his footage, and he met with investigators on Thursday morning.The common element of all of this was the president expressing his dissatisfaction that the justice department, in his view, had not done enough to investigate election fraud“I have provided the committee with all requested materials and am fully cooperating with the investigation,” Holder said in a statement shared on Twitter. “I have no further comment at this time other than to say that our conversation today was thorough and I appreciated the opportunity to share more context about my project.”Holder’s conversations with Trump could offer new insight into the former president’s knowledge about the possibility of violence during the congressional certification of Biden’s victory. At Thursday’s hearing, Cheney indicated the committee would soon share more evidence about how Trump reacted as the insurrection unfolded.“These efforts were not some minor or ad hoc enterprise concocted overnight. Each required planning and coordination. Some required significant funding,” Cheney said. “All of them were overseen by President Trump, and much more information will be presented soon regarding the president’s statements and actions on January 6.”So far, the committee has detailed Trump’s multi-pronged strategy to stay in power. First, Trump and his team launched dozens of legal efforts to challenge the election results. When those lawsuits failed, Trump and his willing advisers reached out to state election officials to pressure them to send fake slates of electors to Congress. When those officials refused to do so, Trump demanded that senior justice department officials investigate election conspiracy theories.Testifying before the committee on Thursday, former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen said Trump spoke to him about baseless fraud theories almost every day between 23 December and 3 January. At one point, Trump told Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”Rosen told the committee, “The common element of all of this was the president expressing his dissatisfaction that the justice department, in his view, had not done enough to investigate election fraud.”When Rosen made it clear he would not go along with Trump’s fraud claims, the former president attempted to install a loyalist, Jeffrey Clark, as acting attorney general. Trump only backed off the idea after Donoghue and other senior officials warned him that such a drastic step would lead to mass resignations at the justice department. Donoghue issued that warning during a nearly three-hour long meeting in the Oval Office on 3 January. Three days later, the Capitol was under siege.Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardonsRead moreIn the days after 6 January, several Republican members of Congress who promoted Trump’s election lies allegedly reached out to the White House to request pardons for their role in the insurrection. According to video testimony from senior White House officials that the committee shared on Thursday, at least six House members – Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry and Marjorie Taylor Greene – inquired about pardons. Perry has previously denied requesting a pardon.Those pardon requests could play a central role in future hearings, as the committee attempts to build upon its case that Trump and his allies are directly responsible for the January 6 attack. In his closing statement Thursday, Thompson said the next round of hearings would demonstrate how Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to stay in office culminated in the deadly insurrection.“We’re going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the threat of violence,” Thompson said. “How he summoned the mob to Washington and how after corruption and political pressure failed to keep Donald Trump in office, violence became the last option.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsJoe BidenanalysisReuse this content More

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We learned this week that the public hearings held by the January 6 select committee would be extended into July. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell tells Jonathan Freedland what we’ve learned so far, why they need more time and what happens next

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Senate breakthrough clears way for toughening US gun lawsBill’s passing hailed as ‘long overdue step’ while package falls far short of more robust restrictions Democrats sought The US Senate has easily approved a bipartisan gun violence bill that seemed unthinkable just a month ago, clearing the way for final congressional approval of what will be lawmakers’ most far-reaching response in decades to mass shootings.After years of GOP procedural delays that derailed Democratic efforts to curb firearms, Democrats and some Republicans decided that congressional inaction was untenable after last month’s rampages in New York and Texas. It took weeks of closed-door talks but a group of senators from both parties emerged on Thursday with a compromise embodying incremental but impactful movement to curb bloodshed that has come to regularly shock – yet no longer surprise – the nation.The $13bn measure would toughen background checks for the youngest gun buyers, keep firearms from more domestic violence offenders, and help states put in place red-flag laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people judged to be dangerous. It would also fund local programs for school safety, mental health and violence prevention.Cruel timing for Biden as court’s gun ruling clouds breakthrough in CongressRead moreThe election-year package fell far short of more robust gun restrictions Democrats have sought for years, including bans on the assault-type weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines used in the slayings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas. Yet the accord let leaders of both parties declare victory and demonstrate to voters that they know how to compromise and make government work, while also leaving room for each side to appeal to its core supporters.“This is not a cure-all for all the ways gun violence affects our nation,” said the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, whose Democratic party has made gun reform a goal for decades. “But it is a long overdue step in the right direction. Passing this gun safety bill is truly significant, and it’s going to save lives.”The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, in a nod to the second amendment right to bear arms that drives many conservative voters, said: “The American people want their constitutional rights protected and their kids to be safe in school. They want both of those things at once, and that is just what the bill before the Senate will have accomplished.”The day proved bittersweet for advocates of curtailing gun violence. Underscoring the enduring potency of conservative clout, the right-leaning supreme court issued a decision expanding the right of Americans to carry arms in public. The justices struck down a New York law that has required people to prove a need for carrying a weapon before they get a license to do so.The vote on final passage was 65-33.Hours earlier, senators voted 65-34 to end a filibuster by conservative GOP senators. That was five more than the 60-vote threshold needed. The House planned to vote on the measure on Friday and approval seemed certain.On that vote, 15 Senate Republicans joined all 50 Democrats, including their two allied independents, in voting to move ahead on the legislation.Yet that vote highlighted the risks Republicans face by defying the party’s pro-gun voters and firearms groups like the National Rifle Association. Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Todd Young of Indiana were the only two of the 15 up for reelection this fall. Of the rest, four are retiring and eight don’t face voters until 2026.US supreme court overturns New York handgun law in bitter blow to gun-control pushRead moreTellingly, GOP senators voting “no” included potential 2024 presidential contenders like Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Tim Scott of South Carolina. Some of the party’s most conservative members voted “no” as well, including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah.While the Senate measure was a clear breakthrough, the outlook for continued congressional movement on gun curbs is dim.Less than a third of the 50 GOP senators backed the measure and solid Republican opposition is certain in the House. Top House Republicans urged a “no” vote in an email from the No 2 GOP leader, representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, that called the bill “an effort to slowly chip away at law-abiding citizens’ second amendment rights”.Both chambers – now narrowly controlled by Democrats – could be run by the GOP after November’s midterm elections.The president, Joe Biden, said in a statement that Uvalde residents told him when he visited that Washington had to act.“Our kids in schools and our communities will be safer because of this legislation. I call on Congress to finish the job and get this bill to my desk,” Biden said.Senate action came one month after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde. Just days before that, a white man was accused of being motivated by racism as he killed 10 Black grocery shoppers in Buffalo. Both shooters were 18 years old, a youthful profile shared by many mass shooters, and the close timing of the two slaughters and victims with whom many could identify stirred a demand by voters for action, lawmakers of both parties said.Republican senator faces backlash for work on gun bill after school shootingRead moreThe talks were led by Democratic senators Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema and Republicans John Cornyn and Thom Tillis. Murphy represented Newtown, Connecticut, when an assailant killed 20 students and six staffers at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012, while Cornyn has been involved in past gun talks after mass shootings in his state and is close to McConnell.Murphy said the measure would save thousands of lives and was a chance to “prove to a weary American public that democracy is not so broken that it is unable to rise to the moment”.“I don’t believe in doing nothing in the face of what we saw in Uvalde” and elsewhere, Cornyn said.The bill would make the local juvenile records of people aged 18 to 20 available during required federal background checks when they attempt to buy guns. Those examinations, currently limited to three days, would last up to a maximum of 10 days to give federal and local officials time to search records.People convicted of domestic abuse who are current or former romantic partners of the victim would be prohibited from acquiring firearms, closing the so-called “boyfriend loophole”.That ban currently only applies to people married to, living with or who have had children with the victim. The compromise bill would extend that to those considered to have had “a continuing serious relationship”.There would be money to help states enforce red-flag laws and for other states without them for violence prevention programs. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have such laws.The measure expands the use of background checks by rewriting the definition of the federally licensed gun dealers required to conduct them. Penalties for gun trafficking are strengthened, billions of dollars are provided for behavioral health clinics and school mental health programs, and there is money for school safety initiatives, though not for personnel to use a “dangerous weapon”.TopicsUS gun controlUS SenateUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More