US Politics

How Texas punishes companies who ‘discriminate’ against gun manufacturersRobert ReichA Texas law dictates which firms state agencies can do business with and requires written affirmations to the attorney general After a 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead, JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, publicly distanced itself from the firearms industry. Its chief financial officer reassured the media that the bank’s relationships with gunmakers “have come down significantly and are pretty limited”.That was then. This past September, a new Texas law went into effect that bans state agencies from working with any firm that “discriminates” against companies or individuals in the gun industry.Texas’s new pro-gun industry law requires banks and other professional service firms submit written affirmations to the Texas attorney general that they comply with it.What was JPMorgan to do? Sticking with its high-minded policy of “significantly” reducing business with gun manufacturers would result in exclusion from Texas’s lucrative bond market. Texas sold more than $58bn of bonds in 2020, and is currently the second largest bond market after California. (I’ll come back to California in a moment.)JPMorgan Chase had been among the top bond underwriters for Texas. Between 2015 and 2020, the bank underwrote 138 Texas bond deals, raising $19bn for the state, and generating nearly $80m in fees for JPMorgan, according to Bloomberg. Yet since the new Texas law went into effect in September, the bank has been shut out of working for the state.JPMorgan’s dilemma since Texas enacted its law has been particularly delicate because Jamie Dimon, its chairman and CEO, has been preaching the doctrine of corporate social responsibility: repeatedly telling the media that big banks like JPMorgan Chase have social duties to the communities they serve. (On Wednesday, Dimon dismissed claims that such an approach is “woke.”)So what did JPMorgan decide to do about financing gun manufacturers, in light of the new Texas law?It caved to Texas. (Never mind that last year, the bank’s board granted Dimon a special $52.6m award – which is almost three-quarters of the fees the bank received from underwriting Texas bonds between 2015 and 2020.)On May 13, one day before the Buffalo mass shooting and less than two weeks before the Texas shooting, JPMorgan sent a letter to the attorney general of Texas, declaring that the bank’s policy “does not discriminate against or prevent” it from doing business “with any firearm entity or firearm trade association based solely on its status as a firearm entity or firearm trade association,” adding that “these commercial relationships are important and valuable”.The Texas law barring the state from doing business with any firm that discriminates against the gun industry is the first of its kind in the country. But similar laws, described by gun industry lobbyists as “Find” laws, or firearm industry nondiscriminatory legislation, are now working their way through at least 10 statehouses, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. This year, Wyoming passed a law that allows gun companies to sue banks and other firms that refuse to do business with them.The lesson here is twofold.First, pay no attention to assertions by big banks or any other large corporations about their “social responsibilities” to their communities. When corporate social responsibility requires sacrificing profits, it magically disappears – even when it entails financing gunmakers.But secondly, no firm should be penalized by pro-gun states like Texas for trying to be socially responsible.How to counter Texas’s law, and other Find laws in the pipeline? Lawmakers in progressive states such as California (whose bond market is even larger than Texas’s) should immediately enact legislation that bars the state from dealing with any firm that finances the gun industry.In other words, big banks like JPMorgan should have to choose: either finance gunmakers and get access to the Texas bond market. Or don’t finance them and gain access to the even larger California bond market.Bonus that comes with the second option: you get to claim you’re being socially responsible.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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Biden entered office facing daunting crises – only to be hit with more crises A confluence of high-stakes events – mass shootings, inflation, the Ukraine war – have left Americans deeply pessimistic about the direction of the country and frustrated with WashingtonIn his third run for president, Joe Biden’s pitch to Americans was simple: after half-a-century in elected office, including eight years as vice-president, he understood the demands of what is arguably the hardest job in the world. It was a point Biden stressed on the campaign trail, in his own folksy way: “Everything landed on the president’s desk but locusts.”Nearly a year-and-a-half into his presidency, Biden now appraises his own fortunes differently. “I used to say in Barack’s administration: ‘Everything landed on his desk but locusts’,” he told Democratic donors in Oregon. “Well, they landed on my desk.”Successive mass shootings, including a racist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and a massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 elementary school students and their teachers dead, present just the latest test for a president desperate to act but constrained, once again, by the limits of his own power.“Enough. Enough,” Biden repeated in a rare primetime address to the nation, pleading with Congress to honor the communities shattered by mass shootings by finally tightening the nation’s gun laws. He called for a ban on assault-style weapons and lifting legal immunity for gun manufacturers. With razor-thin Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Biden does not have the votes to move his legislative agenda without consensus.02:47“I just told you what I’d do,” he said. “The question now is: What will the Congress do?Biden inherited a nation in tumult, plagued by disease and division and still reeling from the bloody insurrection at the US Capitol. In his inaugural address, he said the country faced a “historic moment of crisis and challenge” and identified four national trials that he vowed to confront: the pandemic, the ensuing economic downturn, racial injustice and climate change.Though his administration has made varying degrees of progress on each, those issues remain unresolved while the list of unforeseen challenges demanding the president’s attention grows ever-longer.Inflation has surged to its highest level in nearly four decades, leaving American families struggling to afford the basic necessities like groceries, gas and rent. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens the liberal world order, while pushing the cost of food and fuel even higher.A shortage of baby formula, caused by the closure of a major manufacturing plant due to contamination, has become so dire that Biden has invoked wartime powers to speed up production and restock shelves. And any moment now, the supreme court is expected overturn the constitutional right to an abortion, leaving tens of millions of American women without access to the procedure.The confluence of high-stakes events has left Americans deeply pessimistic about the direction of the country and frustrated with their leaders in Washington. The pandemic, which has now claimed more than 1 million American lives, warnings of an economic “hurricane” and a stalled legislative agenda have only deepened public dissatisfaction, including among Biden’s supporters.“Biden came into office facing arguably the most daunting challenges since FDR, between the pandemic and the economy and global warming and racial justice, only to then be hit by an almost-perfect storm of crises with inflation and Ukraine and the supply chain and baby formula,” said Chris Whipple, author of the forthcoming book, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House.“He’s been dealt an extraordinarily bad hand.”Leon Panetta, a former CIA director and defense secretary under Barack Obama and a former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton, agreed.“In my over 50 years of public life, I’ve never seen as many critical crises taking place as we’ve seen in these last few years,” he said.Republican opposition, the courts and a host of new troubles have thwarted many of the president’s most ambitious goals, leaving the administration struggling to respond to the many domestic concerns. The predicament threatens a central promise of the Biden presidency: “I got elected to solve problems,” he told reporters in March 2021.The White House has been working to rebuild public confidence in Biden’s leadership since America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August. The devastating end to America’s longest war, in which 13 US service-members and scores of Afghans died, marked a precipitous decline of the president’s approval ratings which now hover at around 40%. Satisfaction with his stewardship of the economy is even lower.As the challenges mount, Biden has become increasingly frank about the constraints on his presidency while Republicans accuse him of shirking responsibility.Speaking to reporters after a virtual roundtable with infant formula manufacturers last week, Biden said the administration couldn’t simply “click a switch” to bring down the cost of gas or food. Despite airlifts of formula from abroad, he predicted the formula shortage would persist for another two months and then revealed he wasn’t made aware of the crisis until April. The admission raised new questions about why an administration composed of Washington veterans was so slow to recognize the problem.When pressed to explain the administration’s response, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointed to the cascade of challenges Biden faced.“The President has multiple issues – crises – at the moment,” she said. “When he walked into the administration, he talked about the multiple crises that we needed to deal with as a country – so that’s number one to remember.”Panetta said the White House has a positive story to tell about American resilience in the face of extraordinary hardship but has done a “lousy” job of sharing its vision to the public. In the vacuum, he said the White House is left scrambling to respond.“When you deliver a different message every day, at a time when there are so many problems and people are feeling frustrated, it’s very difficult for them to feel like anything’s getting done,” Panetta said, adding: “If you can have that larger message… then you don’t have to spend your time bouncing off the wall, every time there’s a new crisis.”Since taking office, Biden has had a number of hard-won victories, largely eclipsed by anxiety over inflation and rising costs.Congress passed a $1.9tn Covid-19 relief package that slashed poverty and sent him a $1.2tn infrastructure package approved with bipartisan support. The administration’s mass vaccination campaign has resulted in nearly 67% of Americans being fully immunized against Covid-19, with shots for children younger than five potentially available within the coming weeks. He filled a record number of federal judicial vacancies during his first year and successfully nominated the first Black woman to supreme court justice.Meanwhile, the economy continues to grow, with unemployment at record lows and consumer spending robust. On Friday, it was reported that 390,000 more jobs were created.“Biden has done a very good job with things over which he can use the levers of the presidency and the levers of the government to do it,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said, noting the consequential exception of the Afghanistan exit. “But there are many things happening now where there simply are no levers.”The tools for combating inflation – voters’ top priority – rest largely with the Fed, not the president. Still, rising costs have become a major political liability for Biden ahead of the November elections, as the administration faces sharp criticism for wrongly predicting inflation would likely be “transitory”.Biden has sought to blame Russian president Vladimir Putin for exacerbating inflation and new lockdowns in China, as well as Republicans for blocking his domestic policy agenda, which he has said would ease the financial burden on American families.“All presidents suffer a decline in their popularity midway through their first term and it’s often due to the fact that they cannot deliver on all of the promises that they make,” said Todd Belt, the director of the political management program at the George Washington University and co-author of The Post-Heroic Presidency. “This is particularly acute for Biden because he did make a lot of promises and he hasn’t been able to follow through on them.”Even when the president is powerless to act unilaterally, Belt added, “he at least has to look like he’s trying”.Democrats, with their slim control of Congress at risk, have grown frustrated with the president.Progressives want to see him throw all his energy and political capital into issues like climate change, votings rights, immigration and abortion – and where this fails to push for rule-changes in the Senate to overcome Republican opposition. They also want to see him take more executive action, like on student-debt forgiveness. Meanwhile, many moderates in his party are upset that he promised bipartisanship and then put forward proposals that failed to win over their most conservative members, much less a single Republican.Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Biden must continue to “lead and communicate directly with the American people”.“Congress is broken,” Brazile wrote in an email, “and Biden doesn’t have a big majority in either chamber, so it’s vital that he builds out and not just clamor inside.”Biden has received widespread praise for rallying Nato allies in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps the most consequential act of his presidency was to rally Western allies in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said Whipple, the author.“Almost unquestionably, Joe Biden’s presidency is going to be defined by Ukraine and by how well he defends democracy against autocracy in its moment of danger with an invasion in the heart of Europe,” he said.But in the short-term and at home – which is where most voters’ concerns lie – Biden’s handling of Ukraine has done little to improve his approval ratings or increase the likelihood of Democrats keeping control of Congress. And last week Biden warned that Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports could raise the cost of staples like bread even more.“I understand that families who are struggling probably don’t care why the prices are up – they just want them to go down,” Biden conceded in a speech on Friday.He couldn’t promise that inflation would recede, only that he would try his best to make it happen.“As your President,” he said, “I remain committed to doing everything in my power to blunt the impact on American families.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Capitol attack panel to unveil new evidence against Trump at public hearings Committee intends to reveal previously secret White House records, photos and videos to prove how Trump broke the lawThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack will unveil new evidence at Watergate-style public hearings next week showing Donald Trump and top aides acted with corrupt intent to stop Joe Biden’s certification, according to sources close to the inquiry.The panel intends to use the hearings as its principal method of revealing potential crimes by Trump as he sought to overturn the 2020 election results, the sources said, in what could be a treacherous legal and political moment for the former president.Schiff: DoJ decision not to indict Trump ex-aides Meadows and Scavino a ‘grave disappointment’Read moreAs the justice department mounts parallel investigations into the Capitol attack, the select committee is hoping that the previously unseen evidence will leave an indelible mark on the American public about the extent to which Trump went in trying to return himself to the Oval Office.“They’re important for setting a record for posterity, but they’re also important for jolting the American public into realizing what a direct threat we had coming from the highest levels of government to illegitimately install a president who lost,” Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and emeritus scholar at the conservative thinktank the American Enterprise Institute, said of the hearings.The panel’s ambitions for the hearings are twofold, the sources said: presenting the basis for alleging Trump broke the law and placing the Capitol attack in a broader context of efforts to overturn the election, with the ex-president’s involvement as the central thread.At their heart, the hearings are about distilling thousands of communications between top Trump White House aides and operatives outside the administration and the Trump campaign into a compelling narrative of events about the events of 6 January, the sources said.In order to tell that story, the sources said, the select committee intends to have its senior investigative counsels reveal previously secret White House records, photos and videos that will be presented, in real time, to starkly illustrate the live witness testimony.On Thursday night, at the inaugural hearing at 8pm, the panel’s chairman Bennie Thompson and the vice chair Liz Cheney are likely to make opening arguments, outline a roadmap for the hearings, and give an overview of the events of 6 January, and the preceding weeks.The panel is likely to focus on broad themes for the following four hearings, such as how Trump used false claims of voter fraud to undermine the 2020 election and future races, and how he tried to use fake electors to deceive Congress into returning him to office.House investigators are also likely to focus on how Trump directly pivoted to the 6 January congressional certification – and not the December deadlines for states to certify their electors – as an inflection point, and how his actions led straight to militia and far-right groups’ covert maneuverings.The panel is then likely to reserve its most explosive revelations for the final hearing in prime time, where select committee members Adam Kinzinger and Elaine Luria are expected to run through Trump’s actions and inactions as the 6 January attack unfolded.The list of witnesses has not yet been finalised, the sources said, but it is expected to include top aides to former vice-president Mike Pence, aides to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and people with direct knowledge of militia group activities on 6 January.From a legal perspective, the panel has already alleged in court filings that Trump and his external legal advisor, John Eastman, violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election outcome, including obstruction of Congress and defrauding the United States.The select committee hopes that by revealing new evidence in hearings, the sources said, it can convince beyond a reasonable doubt the American public and potentially the justice department that the former president violated laws to reverse his 2020 election defeat.Among the highlights of the already-public evidence include the revelation that Eastman, Trump’s external legal adviser, admitted to Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob, that his scheme to obstruct Congress on 6 January was unlawful, but pressed ahead with it anyway.The internal White House schedule for 6 January that the select committee obtained through the National Archives, meanwhile, showed that Trump would have known he had no plans to march with the crowd to the Capitol when he falsely promised that at the Ellipse rally.House investigators are in many ways making their case to the American public, the sources said, since it is not certain whether the panel will make criminal referrals to federal prosecutors, given they’re not binding on the justice department, which has the sole authority to file charges.But that quest will come with its own challenges, and the panel’s greatest difficulty is perhaps not so much whether they can show wrongdoing by Trump and his top advisers, but whether it can get Republican and independent voters to care.The repeated delays in holding the hearings have meant House investigators were able to finish most of the evidence-gathering they intended to conduct (the committee initially anticipated holding them sometime in “the spring, then in April, then in May, and now in June).Committee counsel recently told one witness who had been assisting the investigation for months that it didn’t expect to ask for any more assistance, according to two sources familiar with the inquiry. “We are pretty much done,” the counsel told that particular witness.But the consequence of the decision to delay the start of public hearings, and the constant drip of news from the investigation, is that it might have driven some “6 January fatigue” – which Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill are intent on weaponising to defend Trump.The former president’s most ardent defenders in Congress and top Republicans led by the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy are planning aggressive counter-programming to the public hearings that slam the panel as partisan, according to party aides.The Republican National Committee has also circulated a one-page memo of talking points, Vox earlier reported, requesting that Trump surrogates attack the investigation as “rigged” – even though multiple federal courts have ruled the inquiry is fully legitimate.Overcoming counter-programming to cut through to Republican and independent voters could pose a challenge, the panel’s members have privately discussed. After all, the sources said, the panel is not trying to convince Democrats of Trump’s role in the Capitol attack.The prospect of collective public exhaustion over 6 January-related news, with each new revelation seemingly more shocking than the last, appears to have also pressed the select committee to cut its June hearings schedule from eight hearings to now six.According to a draft schedule reviewed by the Guardian and first reported last week, the panel anticipates holding just the first and final hearings – on 9 June and 23 June – in prime time at 8pm. The other four – on the 13th, 15th, 16th and 21st – will be at 10am.Still, the target audience for the select committee is not Republicans but swing voters, Ornstein said. “I don’t have any expectation that Republicans who believe the election was stolen will change their minds. But it’s about the other voters and whether it will jolt the Democratic base into understanding what the stakes are.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

Biden commerce secretary shifts blame for inflation onto Russia’s war in UkraineGina Raimondo’s comments seen as part of a White House push to deflect blame for nation’s economic troubles away from Biden Joe Biden’s commerce secretary Gina Raimondo attempted on Sunday to shift blame for the US inflation crisis back onto Russia’s war in Ukraine, days after another cabinet member admitted the presidential administration had made failures in predicting its impact on the economy.Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, conceded last week she made an error in 2021 when she said inflation, which has only recently dropped from a near 40-year high, posed merely a “small risk”.“I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take,” Yellen told CNN last Tuesday.In her appearance on the same network’s State of the Union on Sunday, Raimondo pointed to “unexpected” developments that had derailed the global economy, and insisted: “We will get inflation under control.”She said: “I don’t think anyone predicted (Russian president Vladimir) Putin’s war in Ukraine, or various other things that have happened that have been unexpected. It’s worth noting that gas prices are up $1.40 a gallon since Putin moved troops into Ukraine.”Her comments will be seen as part of a concerted White House push to deflect blame for the nation’s economic troubles away from Biden, who has faced accusations of ignoring experts’ warnings over inflation and, more recently, the baby formula shortage.Calling inflation his “top domestic priority”, the president and his acolytes have embarked on a messaging campaign in recent weeks directed at voters in November’s midterm elections, and playing up his economic successes such as the bipartisan infrastructure act.It comes as gas prices reach almost record daily highs, up to $4.84 a gallon according to the AAA, the cost of groceries and services continue to soar, and new parents scramble to find baby formula.Raimondo herself appeared to torpedo the effort later in the interview by admitting she only learned of issues with formula in April, the same time as Biden. But production at the nation’s biggest manufacturing plant, owned by Abbott in Michigan, was closed down after bacteria was found during inspections as early as January, and problems were evident at the site late last year.“I’m not involved in the administration’s response here, but I think they’re doing a very good job and as soon as they learned that this could be a severe shortage they got on top of it,” she said.The Michigan facility resumed production this weekend after a lengthy shutdown, although it will likely be several weeks before formula appears on shelves.In another sign of growing disconnect in Democratic circles over the economy, California congressman Adam Schiff spoke out strongly on Sunday against Biden’s planned summer trip to Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s leading oil producing nations.“We should make every effort to lower oil prices, but going hat-in-hand to someone who’s murdered an American resident would not be on my list,” Schiff said on CBS’ Face the Nation, referring to the implication of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.“I wouldn’t go,” Schiff continued. “I wouldn’t shake his hand. I would want to see Saudi Arabia lower oil prices, or increase their production [and] I’d want to see them make changes in their human rights record. I want to see them hold people accountable that were involved in that (Khashoggi) murder … before I would extend that kind of dignity.”TopicsUS newsUS economyInflationUS politicsJoe BidenBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

Schiff: DoJ decision not to indict Trump ex-aides Meadows and Scavino a ‘grave disappointment’Member of Capitol attack committee says decision not to charge the two with contempt of Congress could ‘impede our work’ California congressman Adam Schiff – a member of the select House committee investigating the deadly Capitol riots – said Sunday it was “a grave disappointment” that federal prosecutors opted against charging two former Trump White House officials who ignored subpoenas seeking information on the January 6 attack.Schiff said on CBS’s Face the Nation that he couldn’t see why the federal justice department would treat Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and communications coordinator Dan Scavino differently than it did ex-aides Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon.Justice department prosecutors last week charged Navarro with contempt of Congress for refusing to appear at a deposition and produce documents as demanded by the select committee, and in November they did the same to Bannon.Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro indicted for defying Capitol attack panelRead moreThe committee had recommended similar charges for both Scavino and Meadows before prosecutors issued the panel letter saying neither would be prosecuted.“It is puzzling they’re being treated differently than the two others being prosecuted,” Schiff said of Meadows and Scavino. “These witnesses have very relevant testimony to offer in terms of what went into the violence of January 6, and the idea that witnesses basically fail to show up … is deeply troubling.“We hope to get more insight from the justice department, but it’s a grave disappointment and could impede our work if other witnesses think that they can likewise refuse to show up with impunity.”Schiff bristled at the notion that Meadows and Scavino were successful in claiming to the justice department that the subpoenas targeting them sought materials that were protected by executive privilege.US justice department declines to charge former Trump officials Meadows and Scavino with contempt of CongressRead more“They were both involved in campaigning, they both have documents that they could offer, none of that is protected by privilege,” said Schiff, who is one of seven Democrats on the nine-member select committee.Show host Margaret Brennan asked Schiff whether the panel may call former Trump vice-president Mike Pence to testify when a series of public hearings about the January 6 attack begin Thursday night.Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, had warned the Secret Service that his boss could be in danger if those opposed to Joe Biden’s presidential victory enacted plans aimed at stopping Congress’ certification of the 2020 election result, according to recent reports.Schiff said he couldn’t confirm who might testify at the scheduled hearings but he promised evidence demonstrating an “understanding of the propensity for violence that day” in advance.“Our goal is to present the narrative of … how close we came to losing our democracy with this violent attack on the 6th,” Schiff said.Can televised hearings bring the truth about January 6 to the US public?Read moreA bipartisan Senate report linked seven deaths to the storming of the Capitol that white nationalist groups and other Trump supporters carried out in a last-ditch effort to prevent Biden from taking the Oval Office after winning the 2020 election.Trump had called on the mob that gathered in Washington DC on 6 January 2021 – the day of the race outcome’s congressional certification – to “fight like hell”, insisting falsely that he had lost because of electoral fraud.The two Republican House members on the select committee investigating the Capitol attack have been censured by the party’s national leadership, whose position is that January 6 was “legitimate political discourse” not deserving of criminal prosecution.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

‘Significant’ consequences if lawmakers fail to act on gun control, Democrat warnsSenator Chris Murphy says measures passed in Florida after Parkland shooting could attract Republican support The Democratic senator leading his party’s push for stronger gun laws said on Sunday he believed measures passed in Florida following the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland could attract Republican support and provide a workable template for action in Congress.Chris Murphy of Connecticut, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, said he was optimistic that recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, could finally prompt enough bipartisan support for legislation that has previously proven elusive.But he also warned of “significant” consequences if lawmakers failed to act.“I’m more confident than ever that we’re gonna get there,” Murphy said. “But I’m also more anxious about failure this time around.“In Connecticut last week I’ve never seen the look in parents’ faces that I did. It was just a deep, deep fear for our children. And also a fear that things in our country are so fundamentally broken that you can’t put politics aside to guarantee the one thing that matters most to adults: the safety of their children.”Murphy added: “The possibility of success is better than ever before. But I think the consequences of failure for our entire democracy are more significant than ever.”Florida, a Republican-controlled state, acted swiftly after the murders of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in February 2018, passing red flag laws and raising the age requirement for buying, but not owning, firearms from 18 to 21, among other steps. The Parkland gunman was 19.In his address to the nation last week, Joe Biden called for a federal ban on semi-automatic weapons, and raising the age requirement if that couldn’t be done.Murphy acknowledged the Florida actions and said “there is interest in taking a look at that age range, 18 to 21” during bipartisan discussions about possible legislation, led on the Republican side by Texas senator John Cornyn.“Right now we’re trying to discover what can get to 60 votes [in the Senate],” Murphy said.“But I think the template for Florida is the right one, which is some significant amount of investment in school safety and some modest but impactful changes in gun laws. That’s the kind of package we’re putting together right now.“As Senator Cornyn said, there is interest in looking at that age range … and doing what is necessary to make sure that we aren’t giving weapons to anybody that has, during their younger years, a mental health history, a juvenile record.“Often those juvenile records aren’t accessible when they walk into the store buying as an adult. So we’re having a conversation about that specific population, 18 to 21 and how to make sure that only the right people, law abiding citizens, are getting their hands on weapons.”With a handful of exceptions, Republican politicians have remained resolutely opposed to any kind of gun reforms, despite polls showing overwhelming public support for “common sense” measures including red flag laws and expanded background checks.In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Republican House minority whip Steve Scalise, who was shot by a gunman in a 2017 attack during practice for the congressional baseball game, attempted to paint soaring gun crime in the US as solely a mental health issue.“We are not focusing on the root cause of the problem,” Scalise said.“The immediate visceral reaction of Democrats in Washington is to go after the rights of gun owners in America. We need to be focused more on stopping things before they happen.”Murphy said he hoped the negotiations, which have been ongoing during the Senate’s Memorial Day recess, will lead to a vote that could finally pass the chamber.“This time we have far more Republicans,” he said. “We don’t need to have competing proposals on the Senate floor. We need one proposal that can get 60 to 70 votes from both parties.”Democratic senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said on CBS’ Face the Nation he hoped any proposal would include an expansion of background checks, at least for commercial sales of guns.“We all agree violent criminals and deranged, dangerously mentally ill people shouldn’t have firearms,” he said, noting that lawmakers “not engaged on this in the past” have been involved now in negotiations.TopicsUS gun controlUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

Biden gives far fewer interviews than his predecessors – could his caution backfire? With op-eds and speeches but no one-on-ones, observers say the president risks losing the public’s trust and reporters’ good will He delivered a primetime address to the nation. He wrote two columns in leading newspapers. And he took some off-the-cuff questions from reporters. But once again Joe Biden did not this week sit down for an interview with a broadcaster or newspaper. Nor did he hold a press conference.The US president, who promised to rebuild trust and transparency after Donald Trump’s adversarial tenure, is facing criticism as Sunday marks 116 days since his last press interview.“Biden’s refusal to address the American people about the many crises they are facing under his failed administration is inexcusable,” said Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.As he approaches 18 months in office, a president eager to get his message out has settled into certain rhythms and comfort zones while sidestepping, to the frustration of the White House press corps, some traditional forums.This week he wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal about his plan for fighting inflation and another for the New York Times about US strategy for supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia.Biden delivered a speech about gun violence from the White House on Thursday evening in the hope of reaching a wide TV audience. He made further remarks from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Friday about the latest jobs figures and fielded a few questions from journalists.Like Trump, Biden frequently pauses to talk to reporters who shout questions over Marine One’s whirring propellers as he comes and goes from the White House – but such exchanges lack the depth or opportunities for follow-ups afforded by substantial one-on-ones.Biden’s last such interview – and his only one so far in 2022 – was with Lester Holt of NBC News back on 10 February. To put that in context, his interview rate is trailing far behind his recent predecessors at the same stage of their presidency.From taking office on 20 January 2021 up to 29 April 2022, Biden gave 23 interviews. Between 20 January 2017 and 29 April 2018, by contrast, Trump gave 95 interviews, according to the White House Transition Project, a non-partisan group that chronicles presidential communications.Over their equivalent periods, Barack Obama gave 187 interviews, George W Bush gave 60, Bill Clinton gave 64, George HW Bush gave 70 and Ronald Reagan gave 78, the Project found. Biden has also held fewer solo press conferences than other recent presidents.Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for politicians including former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “We’ve gone from a flood with Donald Trump, who could not go a day without talking to the press – which would create a different set of problems for the Trump White House – to now a drought where this president has, for the better part of four months, not sat down one-on-one with a reporter.”Biden has earned a reputation for gaffes during half a century as a senator, vice-president and president. He recently caught his own staff by surprise with a blunt commitment to defend Taiwan militarily and a candid admission that he was not aware of the severity of the baby formula shortage until April.Such incidents, observers say, help explain why White House officials want to keep Biden away from grillings by the nation’s toughest interviewers.Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, added: “The strategy is pretty obvious. The White House does not trust the president to go out unscripted and doesn’t want to leave the president to his own devices. They just don’t trust him to get out the story clean without a problem.”But the cautious approach could backfire on 79-year-old Biden, he warned. “It could potentially in the back of voters’ minds question his competency, his energy, his ability to handle the job. It raises questions as to why are you secluding the president, why are you hiding the president, why won’t you let him talk to reporters?“Are you afraid he’s going to say something bad or is going to come across poorly? Secondly, slowly you build up resentment in the press corps so that with all this added pressure, by the time he finally sits down one-on-one, it might not be as friendly as they would like.”Biden’s media interviews so far have included the main TV networks, three CNN town halls, an appearance on MSNBC and three regional television interviews via Zoom, as well as conversations with the late-night host Jimmy Fallon and ESPN’S Sage Steele. He has given only three print interviews.Last month he hosted Thomas Friedman, a columnist at the New York Times, for a lunch of tuna salad sandwich with tomato, a bowl of mixed fruit and a chocolate milkshake. “But it was all off the record – so I can’t tell you anything he said,” Friedman wrote.Meanwhile media reports suggest that White House staff are divided over Biden’s communication strategy as his approval rating sinks, midterm elections loom and his set-piece speeches often fail to break through.CNN wrote this week: “Aides regularly talk about how little traction they’re getting from one-off Biden appearances or events and then – whether on inflation, the baby formula shortage or mass shootings or the other crises landing on Biden’s desk – he’s often left looking like he’s in a reactive crouch on the issues that matter most to voters rather than setting the agenda.”Biden has earned praise for restoring the daily White House briefing with the press secretary, Jen Psaki, and her successor, Karine Jean-Pierre. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, has emerged as an indefatigable champion of the administration on Twitter. And the president has maintained the tradition of holding joint press conferences with foreign leaders, most recently in Japan.Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster, said: “The average voter can’t tell whether Biden is doing a press conference or an interview or a speech. It all blurs together to them. But when the midterm election comes closer, that will be problematic. Biden is still a drag on the Democrats. The more that he shifts focus on to anything else, the better off Democrats will be.”The White House did not respond to a request for comment.TopicsJoe BidenNewspapers & magazinesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

‘I’m living in the bubble’: the man who helped bring Nixon down, 50 years on John Dean speaks on the 1972 Watergate break-in and why he has never been more concerned about US democracy than now“I’ve never escaped Watergate,” says John Dean, as once again he allows the years to melt away, the old faces to crowd in and the secret tapes to whirr in his mind. “There’s just no choice. I’m living in the bubble. It’s become a fact of life.”America has never escaped Watergate either. The biggest political scandal of the 20th century, and the only one to cause a presidential resignation, has become a byword for lost innocence and lost faith in institutions. Along with the Vietnam war, it marked the end of an era in which a president’s words were met with automatic trust rather than default scepticism.Republican primaries offer look into future of Trumpism without TrumpRead moreSuch is the notoriety that the “-gate” suffix has been applied to dozens of controversies, from Sharpiegate (Donald Trump showing a map altered using a black marker pen) to Deflategate (allegations that Tom Brady’s New England Patriots used deflated footballs) to Partygate (British prime minister Boris Johnson’s social gatherings that flouted Covid-19 restrictions).Today the luxury Watergate hotel’s phone number ends in 1972 – the year of the burglary – and callers are greeted by a message that begins: “There’s no need to break in,” as well as recordings of President Richard Nixon. This month’s 50th anniversary of the break-in is being marked by books, exhibitions, TV dramas and a four-part CNN documentary series, Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal, narrated by Dean himself.In it the man who helped bring Nixon down draws a direct line from the Watergate break-in on 17 June 1972 to the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, taking stock of a half century that has seen the media fragment, the Republican party embrace authoritarian tendencies and presidents become less accountable. Dean has never been more concerned about American democracy than he is now.“I was never worried about the country and the government during Watergate but from the day Trump was nominated, I had a knot in my stomach and, until he left, I never got rid of it,” Dean, 83, tells the Guardian via Zoom from a Washington hotel. “He just discovered late in his presidency the enormous powers he does have as president. He wants them now. He knows he can hurt his enemies and help his friends.”He adds: “Nixon, who was very bright and understood how the government operated and what the levers of power really are was somebody who also could experience shame and accepted the rule of law. When the supreme court ruled against him, that was it. I can’t imagine, in a similar situation, Trump complying with a court order from the supreme court saying turn over your tapes.”Dean was working for the justice department when he was recruited to the Nixon White House. But he soon discovered that John Ehrlichman would remain the president’s top legal adviser. “As White House counsel, I got the title – I didn’t get the job,” Dean says wryly. “It was frankly too good a title at 31 years of age to pass up, although I knew I would be doing the grunt work.”It also did not take Dean long to discover that the Nixon administration was doing things differently. It kept an enemies list. It had approved a September 1971 burglary of the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the defence analyst who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam war known as the Pentagon Papers.Dean himself had to intervene to squash an outlandish plan to firebomb the Brookings Institution, a thinktank in Washington where classified documents leaked by Ellsberg were being stored. “I did not know that the president had authorised the Brookings operation but I thought it was insane, whoever had authorised it,” he says.Dean was out of the country on the day of the Watergate break-in but instantly guessed who was behind it. Five men had been arrested in the bungled operation to bug and steal documents from the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex – a dirty tricks operation aimed at sinking would-be challengers to Nixon in that year’s presidential election.At first the incident seemed comically inept and inconsequential but, when it emerged in court that the lead burglar, James McCord, had worked for the CIA, journalists such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post sprang into action. Gradually they and others would trace a complex web that connected operatives known as “the plumbers” to the Committee to Re-elect the President (Creep) to senior White House officials and, finally, to Nixon himself.But it was not until after the president won re-election in November 1972 that Dean felt himself sucked into the cover-up, arranging hush money for the Watergate burglars. He recalls: “[White House aide Chuck] Colson brings a recording he’s made of Howard Hunt, who was one of the managers of the burglars, and Hunt wants to be paid and if he doesn’t get paid, people are going to start talking.“I knew enough of the criminal law to know this is either extortion or bribery. Now, my reaction is kind of interesting. I had just gotten married and I said, ‘Holy cow, we’re in trouble!’ So I decided then I’ve got to make the cover-up work and that’s when I dove in with both feet. It was foolish.”He adds: “It’s only later [in March 1973] when Hunt starts extorting me personally for money that I said the same thing’s going to happen to everybody – it’s going to follow us the rest of our lives. There’ll be no end to it and Nixon has got to get out in front of it and we all have got to stand up and account for the mistakes we’ve made.”Dean went to see Nixon in an effort to convince him that the cover-up would destroy his presidency. In later testimony to Congress, Dean explained: “I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that if the cancer was not removed that the president himself would be killed by it.”Dean has since been able to listen back to the conversation thanks to Nixon’s secret recording system at the White House. “The quality of the tapes in general is just awful but I’m sitting right over one of the little microphones that had been bored into the desk, so my voice is crystal clear. I can actually hear myself sigh at times, exasperated with the reaction I’m getting.“I took him through every problem he had and, to my amazement, he had an answer for everything I thought was a problem. I can hear my frustration with this man and I’m waiting for his fist to come down on the desk.“Finally, at the end, when it’s clear he is going to do nothing, I say, ‘Well, Mr President, people are going to go to jail for this.’ He says, ‘Like who?’ To bring it home, I say, ‘Like me!’ So he knows his White House counsel thinks he’s on his way to jail. I hope that will turn him but all it does is turn him against me because now I’m radioactive.”What were Dean’s impressions of Nixon the man? “He wasn’t who I thought he was. He clearly wanted to engage in criminal behaviour and he would blame everybody but himself. What surprised me most is he spent a lot of time conspicuously trying to impress me.”On one occasion, Dean recounts, Nixon told him that he was reading a book about President John’s F Kennedy’s ruthless streak. “I’ve often thought he did that to impress upon me that all presidents are ruthless to a degree because I’m the one who had blown up the the plan to firebomb the Brookings Institution. He knew that and he was worried, maybe, I thought presidents shouldn’t do things like that. He was trying to do a little tutorial on me.”Wary that he would be turned into a scapegoat, Dean began cooperating with Senate investigators. At the end of April 1973, with the walls closing in, Nixon aides HR Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned and Dean himself was forced out.He then publicly turned against Nixon by testifying to the Senate Watergate committee – becoming the first White House official to accuse the president of being directly involved in the cover-up. The blockbuster hearing in June was watched by millions on television. But first Dean got a haircut.“It was a barber I had never been to and it was last-minute. I had done an interview with Walter Cronkite and my hair was curling over my shoulders. I said that is just not a good look; I’d better get that neck cleaned up or my mother will be all over me. In the barbershop, he just put a bowl on my head and cut it so it was much shorter than people were used to: ‘Oh, he’s changing his image!’“The same thing with the glasses. I had actually scratched my cornea. I had worn contacts during the Cronkite interview and noticed I was just blinking madly. I have never really worn contacts since I had that experience.”Dean read from a mammoth prepared statement that took almost the entire first day. “If I had been told in advance I was going to have to read it all, it would not have been 60,000 words. It may have been 6,000 at max. But it’s much easier to write a long statement than it is a short one so I just let it flow. It took eight hours to read it.”Later that year Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, was disbarred and served four months; he was in the witness protection programme so never went to prison. Meanwhile Alexander Butterfield, Nixon’s deputy chief of staff, had testified that there was a recording system in the White House.The supreme court ordered the release of a “smoking gun tape” confirming Dean’s claim that Nixon told aides to order the CIA to shut down the FBI investigation into the burglary. Nixon lost the confidence of fellow Republicans and, facing impeachment, resigned in August 1974. The president gave a final victory sign on the South Lawn before a helicopter spirited him away.Dean, who happened to have his molars removed that day, cannot recall any particular emotion. “I didn’t feel vindication or anything of that nature. We’d been at battle. It’s very lucky that the system worked as it was designed.”He continues: “It’s very hard to look at Watergate without looking through the lens of Trump where it didn’t work, or hasn’t yet. It’s not over. If Trump gets through with zero accountability, then the system is deeply flawed and a lot of that is probably traceable to the Ford pardon.”When President Gerald Ford granted Nixon a full pardon in September 1974, Bernstein exclaimed to Woodward: “You’re not gonna believe it. The son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch!” (Woodward has more recently praised Ford’s act as one of courage.) Dean’s initial reaction was different.“At the time I thought it was right and it was understandable because I knew he couldn’t govern with Watergate hanging over him. Every day would be a new decision as to what he does and doesn’t turn over from the Nixon archive.“It would have consumed his presidency but so I understood it, but in the long run it codified the memo that was prepared then re-prepared during the Clinton presidency, that a sitting president can’t be indicted. Well, a post-president can’t be indicted when he’s pardoned.”Dean went into business for a while and tried to leave Watergate behind but a 1991 book that alleged he and his wife, Maureen, masterminded the cover-up prompted him to take legal action. This led to years of research, immersing himself in the tapes and making peace with the subject. He has written several books, including two about Watergate, and teaches a Watergate-related course for lawyers.He has also been called upon by the media and Congress to provide expert analysis during scandals in the Clinton and Trump administrations. Now a grandfather living in Beverly Hills, California, he quips: “My speciality, I guess, is presidents in deep trouble.”But if something like Watergate happened in the 2020s, he does not believe it would necessarily bring down a president again. “It would be very different today, primarily because of Fox News, which would be mounting a fulsome defence of him. We are far more polarised today than we were. We were polarised during Watergate but not to the degree we are today.”Dean will be watching this week’s January 6 hearings on Capitol Hill intently but reckons that Republicans, at least, face less accountability than they once did. “Trump is a poster boy for authoritarianism and the authoritarian followers just fell in line. They just absolutely did what authoritarian followers do: click their heels, salute, ‘Yes sir!’”That leaves him fearing for the future of American democracy. “Not so much Trump but now the whole Republican party has shifted into this authoritarian stance. Not all the Republicans I know are that way but too many of them now think authoritarianism is just dandy because it works, it’s efficient. Well, Mussolini ran the trains on time, didn’t he – but at some expense.”TopicsWatergateRichard NixonUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More