Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Jan. 6 committee announced Monday morning that due to a family emergency, its key witness Bill Stepien — Trump’s 2020 campaign manager — is unable to testify as planned. The committee said his counsel will appear and make a statement on the record.
It also said the hearing will convene approximately 30 to 45 minutes after the previously announced 10:00 a.m. start time.
Stepien was scheduled to testify in a hearing that will focus on Trump’s decision to declare victory against Joe Biden on election night and knowledge that he was spreading lies of widespread election fraud.
He was to appear before the committee on a panel with Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News political editor who was fired after defending the network’s early projection that Trump had lost Arizona on election night — a move that infuriated the former president.
A political consultant now advising Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed primary challenger to Jan. 6 committee leader Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, Stepien was to testify before the committee under subpoena Monday, his attorney confirmed to ABC News.
A second panel of witnesses in the roughly two-hour hearing will include Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia who repeatedly debunked claims of fraud in the state; veteran GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsburg, and Byung “BJay” Pak, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
Pak previously told Senate investigators he resigned in January 2021 after learning Trump sought to fire him over not doing more to amplify his false claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia.
In a Los Angeles Times op-ed after the Capitol riot, Stirewalt, who was fired from Fox News on Jan. 19, 2021, wrote that after the Arizona call, he “became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed.”
On a briefing call with reporters Sunday evening, select committee aides said Monday’s hearing will explore Trump and his campaign’s actions in the days and weeks after election night, and the decision to push “the Big Lie to millions of supporters” and fundraise off claims that rioters later used to justify attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The questioning of live witnesses, along with clips of interviews the committee videotaped with other key witnesses, will show how Trump was told he had lost the election and lacked evidence of widespread voter fraud as he continued to claim the election was stolen from him, aides said.
“I think we can prove to any reasonable, open-minded person that Donald Trump absolutely knew, because he was surrounded by lawyers, including the attorney general of the United States, William Barr, telling him in no uncertain terms, in terms that Donald Trump could understand, this is B.S.,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, said Sunday on CNN.
The committee hearing, which will be guided in part by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, will show “how litigation to challenge elections usually works,” and argue that Trump had an “obligation” to “abide by the rule of law” when his dozens of lawsuits failed in courts across the country.
Nearly 20 million people watched the committee’s prime-time hearing last Thursday, the first of seven planned for this month.
Using never-before-seen video of the Capitol assault and testimony from Barr and Trump’s own daughter, Ivanka, the committee laid out the broad findings of its inquiry, placing Trump at the center of an “attempted coup” last year.
Hearings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday will explore Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to investigate and spread false claims of widespread election fraud, and force Vice President Mike Pence to block the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jun 13, 6:24 am
Zelenskyy: Ukraine fighting for ‘every meter’ of Severodonetsk
Russian forces have pushed the Armed Forces of Ukraine out of the center of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian officials said.
“They are pressing in Severodonetsk, where very fierce fighting is going on — literally for every meter,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address on Sunday evening.
Russian forces now control about 70% of the city, as intense shelling makes mass evacuation and the transportation of goods impossible, Sergiy Haidai, another Ukrainian official, said.
Around 500 people, including 40 children, are sheltering in the city’s Azot chemical plant, Haidai said.
While the Ukrainians try to organize their evacuation, authorities of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic have given an ultimatum to Ukrainian troops in the city.
“They have two options: either follow the example of their colleagues and give up, or die. They have no other option,” said Eduard Basurin, deputy head of the People’s Militia Department of the DPR.
-ABC News’ Yulia Drozd and Tanya Stukalova
Jun 12, 5:33 pm
Zelenskyy sends virtual message to Sean Penn’s CORE benefit
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the annual Hollywood fundraiser for actor Sean Penn’s nonprofit Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) Saturday night with a powerful video message urging people to continue to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
“All of you have heard about the horrors that Ukraine is going through. Tens of thousands of explosions and shots, hundreds of thousands wounded and killed, millions who have lost their homes,” Zelenskyy said in his virtual speech. “All of this is not a logline for a horror film. All of this is our reality.”
Zelenskyy’s video message included footage showing missiles striking homes and apartment complexes in Ukraine, civilians dead in the streets of Ukrainian cities and children playing in parks amid the backdrop of bombed buildings.
Among those attending the CORE fundraiser, held at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angles, were Penn and CORE co-founder Ann Lee, former President Bill Clinton, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, singer John Legend, and actors Patrick Stewart and Sharon Stone.
The group said the event raised more than $2.5 million for CORE’s disaster relief and preparedness work, including its urgent humanitarian response in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy noted that Penn traveled to Ukraine at the start of the Russian invasion and witnessed the atrocities firsthand. He thanked Penn and his group for the continued support for Ukraine.
“We have been resisting it for 107 days in a row,” Zelenskyy said of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. “We can stop it together. Support Ukraine, because Ukraine is fighting for the whole world, for democracy, for freedom, for life.”
Jun 12, 4:17 pm
Russia’s firepower superiority 10 times that of Ukraine’s in Luhansk: Military chief
Ukraine’s Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny said Sunday that he told his American counterpart, Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Russian firepower superiority in the Luhansk region is far greater than that of Ukrainian forces.
Zaluzhny said that during a briefing he told Milley that Russian forces are concentrating their efforts in the north of the Luhansk region, where they are using artillery “en masse” and their firepower superiority is 10 times that of Ukraine’s.
“Despite everything, we keep holding our positions,” Zaluzhny said.
Zaluzhny also said Russia has deployed up to seven battalion tactical groups in Severdonetsk, a city in the Luhansk region. He said Russian shelling of residential areas in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine has resumed.
Russian forces destroyed a second bridge leading into Severodonetsk and are now targeting a third bridge in an effort to completely cut off the city, Luhansk region Gov. Sergiy Haidai said Sunday. Ukraine’s army still controls around one third of the city, he said.
Haidai said that Ukrainian forces are still holding onto the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where around 500 civilians are taking shelter.
If Severodonetsk falls, Lysychansk will be the only city in the Luhansk region that remains under Ukraine’s control.
Zaluzhny said that as of Sunday, the front line of the war stretched 1,522 miles and that active combat was taking place on at least 686 miles of the front line.
Zaluzhny said that during his briefing with Milley, he reiterated Ukraine’s urgent request for more 155 mm caliber artillery systems.
Jun 12, 12:48 pm
Russian cruise missile attack confirmed in western Ukraine
Russia claims a cruise missile strike destroyed a large warehouse in western Ukraine storing weapons supplied to the Ukrainians by the United States and European allies.
While police in the Ternopil region of Ukraine, where at least one cruise missile hit, told ABC News that no weapons were destroyed, the region’s governor said part of a military facility was damaged.
Ternopil’s governor Volodymyr Trush posted a video showing widespread damage from what he said were four Russian missiles launched Saturday from the Black Sea. Trush said 22 people were wounded, including a 12-year-old child, in the missile strikes.
In addition to the military facility, Trush said four five-story residential apartment buildings were damaged. One of the missiles hit a gas pipeline, he said.
Russia’s defense ministry said Kalibr high presicion sea-based, long-range missiles struck near Chortkiv in the Ternopil province and destroyed a large warehouse full of anti-tank missile systems, portable anti-aircraft missile systems and artillery shells supplied by the United States and European countries.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jun 13, 9:26 am
Bodies of tortured men exhumed in Bucha
Another mass grave has been dug up in Bucha, uncovering the bodies of seven men who authorities believe were tortured and killed during the bloody occupation of the city in March.
Police told ABC News their hands were tied with ropes behind their backs and they were shot in the knees and head.
“They were killed in a cruel way,” police spokesperson Iryna Pryanyshnykova said. “These were civilian victims. The people here were killed by Russian soldiers and later they were just put into a grave to try to hide this war crime.”
It’s not clear why the men were killed, Pryanyshnykova said.
She said experts will analyze DNA to identify the victims.
-ABC News’ Britt Clennett
Jun 13, 6:24 am
Zelenskyy: Ukraine fighting for ‘every meter’ of Severodonetsk
Russian forces have pushed the Armed Forces of Ukraine out of the center of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian officials said.
“They are pressing in Severodonetsk, where very fierce fighting is going on — literally for every meter,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address on Sunday evening.
Russian forces now control about 70% of the city, as intense shelling makes mass evacuation and the transportation of goods impossible, Sergiy Haidai, another Ukrainian official, said.
Around 500 people, including 40 children, are sheltering in the city’s Azot chemical plant, Haidai said.
While the Ukrainians try to organize their evacuation, authorities of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic have given an ultimatum to Ukrainian troops in the city.
“They have two options: either follow the example of their colleagues and give up, or die. They have no other option,” said Eduard Basurin, deputy head of the People’s Militia Department of the DPR.
-ABC News’ Yulia Drozd and Tanya Stukalova
Jun 12, 5:33 pm
Zelenskyy sends virtual message to Sean Penn’s CORE benefit
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the annual Hollywood fundraiser for actor Sean Penn’s nonprofit Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) Saturday night with a powerful video message urging people to continue to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
“All of you have heard about the horrors that Ukraine is going through. Tens of thousands of explosions and shots, hundreds of thousands wounded and killed, millions who have lost their homes,” Zelenskyy said in his virtual speech. “All of this is not a logline for a horror film. All of this is our reality.”
Zelenskyy’s video message included footage showing missiles striking homes and apartment complexes in Ukraine, civilians dead in the streets of Ukrainian cities and children playing in parks amid the backdrop of bombed buildings.
Among those attending the CORE fundraiser, held at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angles, were Penn and CORE co-founder Ann Lee, former President Bill Clinton, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, singer John Legend, and actors Patrick Stewart and Sharon Stone.
The group said the event raised more than $2.5 million for CORE’s disaster relief and preparedness work, including its urgent humanitarian response in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy noted that Penn traveled to Ukraine at the start of the Russian invasion and witnessed the atrocities firsthand. He thanked Penn and his group for the continued support for Ukraine.
“We have been resisting it for 107 days in a row,” Zelenskyy said of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. “We can stop it together. Support Ukraine, because Ukraine is fighting for the whole world, for democracy, for freedom, for life.”
Jun 12, 4:17 pm
Russia’s firepower superiority 10 times that of Ukraine’s in Luhansk: Military chief
Ukraine’s Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny said Sunday that he told his American counterpart, Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Russian firepower superiority in the Luhansk region is far greater than that of Ukrainian forces.
Zaluzhny said that during a briefing he told Milley that Russian forces are concentrating their efforts in the north of the Luhansk region, where they are using artillery “en masse” and their firepower superiority is 10 times that of Ukraine’s.
“Despite everything, we keep holding our positions,” Zaluzhny said.
Zaluzhny also said Russia has deployed up to seven battalion tactical groups in Severdonetsk, a city in the Luhansk region. He said Russian shelling of residential areas in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine has resumed.
Russian forces destroyed a second bridge leading into Severodonetsk and are now targeting a third bridge in an effort to completely cut off the city, Luhansk region Gov. Sergiy Haidai said Sunday. Ukraine’s army still controls around one third of the city, he said.
Haidai said that Ukrainian forces are still holding onto the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where around 500 civilians are taking shelter.
If Severodonetsk falls, Lysychansk will be the only city in the Luhansk region that remains under Ukraine’s control.
Zaluzhny said that as of Sunday, the front line of the war stretched 1,522 miles and that active combat was taking place on at least 686 miles of the front line.
Zaluzhny said that during his briefing with Milley, he reiterated Ukraine’s urgent request for more 155 mm caliber artillery systems.
Jun 12, 12:48 pm
Russian cruise missile attack confirmed in western Ukraine
Russia claims a cruise missile strike destroyed a large warehouse in western Ukraine storing weapons supplied to the Ukrainians by the United States and European allies.
While police in the Ternopil region of Ukraine, where at least one cruise missile hit, told ABC News that no weapons were destroyed, the region’s governor said part of a military facility was damaged.
Ternopil’s governor Volodymyr Trush posted a video showing widespread damage from what he said were four Russian missiles launched Saturday from the Black Sea. Trush said 22 people were wounded, including a 12-year-old child, in the missile strikes.
In addition to the military facility, Trush said four five-story residential apartment buildings were damaged. One of the missiles hit a gas pipeline, he said.
Russia’s defense ministry said Kalibr high presicion sea-based, long-range missiles struck near Chortkiv in the Ternopil province and destroyed a large warehouse full of anti-tank missile systems, portable anti-aircraft missile systems and artillery shells supplied by the United States and European countries.
(NEW YORK) — At least six mass shootings have occurred across the country since Friday night, making this the fourth consecutive weekend in which U.S. law enforcement officers have responded to multiple incidents involving four or more victims shot.
Shootings this weekend have left at least three people dead and 23 injured in six cities, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a site that tracks shootings across the country. The website defines a mass shooting as a single incident involving four or more victims.
The string of consecutive weekend mass casualty incidents began over the Memorial Day holiday, when at least 17 shootings left a total of 13 dead and 79 injured in cities across the country, including Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Memphis and Chattanooga, Tenn. Last weekend, at least 11 mass shootings erupted, leaving a total of 17 dead and 62 injured across the nation.
Since a May 14 suspected racially motivated attack at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket left 10 Black people dead and 18-year-old white teenager charged with multiple counts of murder, there have been at least 63 mass shootings nationwide, an average of two per day, including the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Adding to the carnage, were mass-casualty shootings this weekend in New Orleans, Detroit, Louisville, Kentucky; Decatur, Georgia; Antioch, Tenn., and for the third straight weekend in Chicago.
The shootings this weekend came as a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators announced Sunday that they have reached agreement on the framework of a plan to curb what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., described as “the gun violence epidemic that has plagued our country and terrorized our children for far too long.”
4 injured in New Orleans street shooting
At least four people were injured when a shooting erupted on a street in New Orleans early Sunday, authorities said.
The shooting unfolded around 4 a.m. at an intersection in the Mid-City section of the New Orleans, leaving four men with injuries to the neck, knee, elbow and hand, the New Orleans Police Department said in a statement. The victims were all taken to hospitals in private vehicles, police said.
No additional information on the shooting was released.
4 shot, 2 fatally, at Tennessee pool party
Two men were killed and two others were wounded when gunfire broke out at a pool party in suburban Nashville, Saturday night, police said.
The shooting occurred just after 10 p.m. at the Hickory Hollow Apartment complex in Antioch, Tennessee, roughly 11 miles southeast of Nashville, police said.
Police sources told ABC affiliate WKRN in Nashville that an exchange of gunfire broke out during a birthday party that was going on at the apartment complex’s swimming pool.
Officers responding to calls of shots fired found one victim, whose name was not immediately released, dead at the scene and others wounded, according to police. A victim, identified by police as 20-year-old Kalem Burford, was taken by private car to Centennial Medical Center in Nashville, where he was pronounced dead.
The two wounded victims suffered non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
Homicide investigators were working Sunday to identify a suspect or suspects and a motive for the shooting.
5 injured in Chicago drive-by shooting
Five people were injured, one critically, in a shooting Saturday afternoon on the South Side of Chicago, authorities said.
The episode unfolded in an alley in the Gresham neighborhood, where a group of people were gathered, according to an incident report from the Chicago Police Department. Around 3:20 p.m., a car drove up to the group and at least one occupant opened fire, police said.
One victim was shot multiple times and was taken to a hospital in critical condition while three men ranging in age from 24 to 42 were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, according to police.
No arrests have been announced.
5 teenagers shot near Louisville bridge
Five teenagers were injured Saturday when a barrage of gunfire was unleashed on a group of people gathered near the Big Four Bridge in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, according to the Louisville Metro Police Department.
The shooting occurred just after 9 p.m. and arriving officers found three teenagers suffering from gunshot injuries, including one critically wounded, LMPD Maj. Brian Kuriger said at a news conference Saturday. Two other teenagers with non-life threatening injuries were taken to a hospital in a private vehicle, he said.
Two teenagers later arrived at the hospital for treatment in their own car with non-life-threatening injuries.
No arrests were announced.
4 shot at Detroit bachelor party
At least four people were shot Saturday during a bachelor party at a short-term rental house in Detroit, police said.
The shooting erupted around 12:25 p.m. in the Davison-Schoolcraft neighborhood on the west side of the city. Police said they are searching for a black SUV that witnesses said drove up to the front of the home and at least one occupant opened fire.
All of the victims were treated at hospitals for non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
No one has been arrested in the incident.
1 killed, 3 injured in Georgia restaurant shooting
A 48-year-old man was killed and three other men were injured when a shooting broke out in a restaurant in Decatur, Georgia, according to police.
A preliminary investigation indicates that a fight over a woman escalated into a shooting at about 11:30 p.m. Friday at Fletcher’s Place, a restaurant in the Gallery at South DeKalb shopping mall, according to the DeKalb County Police Department.
All four shooting victims were taken to area hospitals in serious to critical condition, including the man who was pronounced dead, police said. The slain victim was identified by police as Daletavious McGuire.
Police told ABC affiliate station WSB-TV in Atlanta that they suspect the shooting started when an intoxicated customer got into an argument over a woman with either another customer or employee.
(FURNACE CREEK, Calif.) — Tens of millions of residents in the Southwestern U.S. are experiencing dangerous heat, with triple-digit temperatures blanketing much of the region.
The most brutal heat is concentrated over Texas, where recording-breaking temperatures are expected in Amarillo, Abilene and possibly Dallas, near 105 degrees.
In California, Furnace Creek is expected to hit 118 degrees, while Phoenix is predicted to be 113 degrees, and Las Vegas 109 degrees.
While the heat is expected to ease in the coming days across the Southwest, fire danger in the region will ramp up as strong, gusty winds replace the blistering temperatures.
Red flag warnings will begin on Sunday from southern Nevada to northern New Mexico. Fire watches have also been issued for portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.
More than 85% of the West is experiencing drought conditions, making the fire danger even more of a threat.
The scorching heat will then move east, with the brunt of it focused over the center of the country on Monday. Widespread hot air temperatures and humid conditions will produce triple-digit heat index values across much of the Plains and into the South Monday afternoon. It will be feeling like it’s 105 to 110 degrees in some cities from Texas and into the Plains as far north as Nebraska and Southern states like Alabama and Tennessee during the peak heat on Monday.
On Tuesday, widespread temperatures in the 90s in the Midwest and much of the Southeast. Daily record highs will likely be challenged from Michigan to North and South Carolina by midweek.
ABC News’ Daniel Amarante and Dan Peck contributed to this report.
(COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho) — Police in a small Idaho city arrested 31 people allegedly affiliated with a white nationalist group near a Pride parade, authorities announced on Saturday.
People associated with the group “Patriot Front” allegedly had shields, shin guards, and other riot gear with them, including at least one smoke grenade, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Police Chief Lee White said. They were charged with conspiracy to commit a riot.
The individuals were arrested after a citizen called police to alert them that at least 20 men were seen getting out of a U-Haul van wearing masks and carrying shields, White said.
“It is clear to us based on the gear that the individuals had with them, the stuff they had in the possession and in the U-Haul with them along with paperwork that was seized from them, that they came to riot downtown,” Chief White told reporters on Saturday.
The group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, has white nationalist ideologies that was founded shortly after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“So preventing a riot by arresting and 31 people with a misdemeanor, I will gladly do that every day of the week,” he said.
Paperwork, the Chief said “appeared to be very similar to an operations plan that a police or military group would put together for a day’s for an event,” was also found on the persons arrested, but did not elaborate any further on what it said.
Individuals who were arrested came from at least 11 states and as far away as Virginia, according to police.
The arrests come as the Department of Homeland Security warned last week the summer could be a “dynamic” threat landscape, and extremists could target public gatherings, faith-based institutions, schools, racial and religious minorities, government facilities and personnel, U.S. critical infrastructure, the media and perceived ideological opponents.
“In the coming months, we expect the threat environment to become more dynamic as several high-profile events could be exploited to justify acts of violence against a range of possible targets,” the National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin issued by DHS last week said. “Threat actors have recently mobilized to violence due to factors such as personal grievances, reactions to current events, and adherence to violent extremist ideologies, including racially or ethnically motivated or anti-government/anti-authority violent extremism.”
John Cohen, the former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at DHS, told ABC News this incident is an example of the real-world warning DHS issued last week.
“DHS and law enforcement officials have repeatedly warned that violent extremists will target for violence public officials and others whom they perceive as holding views that conflict with their extremist ideological beliefs,” Cohen, also an ABC News contributor, said. “While in this case, law enforcement officials appear to have prevented violence, we are in the midst of a highly volatile threat environment and we can expect more acts of violence by lone offenders and extremist groups in the weeks ahead.”
Those charged on Saturday will make their first court appearance on Monday.
ABC News’ Michelle Mendez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A bipartisan group of senators on Sunday announced an agreement had been reached — though in principle only — on new legislation meant to address the country’s ongoing gun violence, including the recent Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting.
The deal, in the works for weeks, has the support of at least 10 Republicans in the Senate, which is the number needed to avoid a filibuster.
If passed, the proposal would be the first major gun law to make it through Congress in years.
Among other things, the agreement would provide funding for mental health (including behavioral health centers) and incentives for the creation of so-called “red flag” laws to remove firearms from people who are a danger to themselves or others; increase money for school safety; and strengthen the federal background check system as it relates to convicted domestic violence abusers or those with restraining orders.
Potential gun owners under 21 would also be subject to “an investigative period to review juvenile and mental health records, including checks with state databases and local law enforcement,” the bipartisan group said Sunday.
Twenty senators released a statement confirming the deal, saying in part: “Today, we are announcing a commonsense, bipartisan proposal to protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country. Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities.”
The 20 lawmakers — double the initial bipartisan group who restarted negotiations late last month — are Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Chris Coons of Delaware, John Cornyn of Texas, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Angus King of Maine, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
The carefully calibrated changes in the deal — mixing some modest gun restrictions with a focus on schools and social services — reflect the evenly divided Senate, requiring any law to attract at least 10 Republican votes.
Notably, the new proposal does not address major Democratic priorities such as restricting access to assault-style weapons to people under 21 — a ban that President Joe Biden had backed in a recent primetime address to the nation but which was taken off the table among the Senate negotiators. This comes despite Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell privately expressing a willingness to support such a move, sources told ABC News.
Conservatives have long resisted gun reform, arguing in part that the laws are ineffective and that they trespass the guarantees of the Second Amendment.
But the rising tide of gun violence — like the mass shootings in Uvalde and in Buffalo, New York, before that and in Boulder, Colorado, before that; and many more — had increased the urgency of some kind of proposal, lawmakers involved have said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said Sunday he supported the new agreement, calling it “a good first step,” and would be scheduling a vote on it as soon as the legislative text was complete.
“We must move swiftly to advance this legislation because if a single life can be saved it is worth the effort,” he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week she would take up a Senate bill “if it’s life-saving and can make a difference and they have bipartisan support for it, then we would welcome it even though it won’t be everything that we want.”
A more specific timeline remained unclear and previous such deals show it could be weeks before a draft law is ready, as was the case with the infrastructure package passed last year.
A GOP aide involved in the negotiations stressed that the agreement was not on all of the details, which will be critical for Republicans, particularly the firearms-related provisions. One or more of these provisions could be dropped, the aide said.
Sen. McConnell on Sunday signaled his tentative support for the talks as well.
“The principles they announced today show the value of dialogue and cooperation,” he said in a statement. “I continue to hope their discussions yield a bipartisan product that makes significant headway on key issues like mental health and school safety, respects the Second Amendment, earns broad support in the Senate, and makes a difference for our country.”
In a pair of statements, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged that the deal did not align with their own goals but that they believed it would still be a meaningful deterrent to future violence.
“It does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction,” Biden said, lauding the “tireless work” of the Senate group. “Each day that passes, more children are killed in this country: the sooner it comes to my desk, the sooner I can sign it, and the sooner we can use these measures to save lives,” he said.
Gun control advocates and anti-gun violence groups likewise backed the announced framework while arguing there was more still to do.
“In a less broken society, we would be able to require background checks every single time someone wants to buy a gun, and we would ban assault rifles outright. But if even one life is saved or one attempted mass shooting is prevented because of these regulations, we believe that it is worth fighting for,” March for Our Lives co-founder David Hogg, who was a student at the Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in 2018, said in a statement.
Former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt 11 years ago that killed six others, on Sunday wrote on social media that she believed the deal was necessary if incomplete.
“If carefully drafted and passed into law, this framework would be a lifesaving step forward,” she wrote.
Pelosi echoed that last week, telling reporters that in her view “it’s about guns. And it’s about other things, too, but we cannot avoid the fact that it’s about guns: their availability, at what age [people can possess them].”
The Senate has repeatedly tried and failed to agree on major gun legislation, with talks periodically restarted in the wake of various shootings. The Democratic House separately took up its own gun control measures in the wake of the Uvalde killings, though the Senate has shown little interest in those proposals.
With the shadow of polarization looming over the latest negotiations, Republican Sen. Cornyn and Democratic Sen. Murphy — the latter perhaps the chamber’s most outspoken supporter of gun control — reconvened a group seeking some kind of deal.
The lawmakers met remotely and in person, talking via phone and text, including during a brief recess. Biden, having taken a more direct role in previous negotiations important to his administration, this time said he would remain on the sidelines.
“It’s inconceivable to me that we have not passed significant federal legislation trying to address the tragedy of gun violence in this nation,” Murphy told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in late May. “The pace of everyday gun violence has dramatically escalated over the past two years.”
“My hope is that this time is different,” Murphy said then. “I get it. Every single time, after one of these mass shootings, there’s talks in Washington and they never succeed. But there are more Republicans interested in talking about finding a path forward this time than I have ever seen since Sandy Hook.”
Specifics still taking shape
With those involved in the deal saying specifics are still being hashed out, some of the senators involved have previously addressed how they would like to see certain provisions implemented — and they have been open about where disagreements remain, including with funding.
Regarding the possible expanded use of juvenile records in background checks, Sen. Tillis said last week: “The biggest problem you have right now with people 18 — really under 21 — is you don’t have a lot of information that goes back to their juvenile records. So, I think the talk is less about raising the age and more about making sure you have all the information you need to make a decision.”
Tillis was one of four in a core group of negotiators — along with Cornyn, Murphy and Sinema — aiming to strike the right balance on a new law.
Negotiators have been assessing how to allow background check access to juvenile records that contain felony or other dangerous offenses. But this has proved one of the most difficult areas in the talks, according to two senators familiar with the matter.
Tillis said last week the group was looking at different “engagement models” in states; some already upload juvenile records into a system that would be accessed by a background check. But Tillis said his group was “trying to inventory and figure out” which records to sweep into the federal system. “It’s not like we’re going to take a huge swath of all juvenile records,” he said. “What we’re trying to do -– the only part of the juvenile record we’re interested in are offenses that map to disqualifying convictions as an adult.”
Tillis said that in some instances, though, there might be “underlying circumstances, like two kids fighting at a football game” that would have to be separated out as not meriting a flag in a background check.
Someone 18 to 21 who might want to purchase an assault rifle would have a the right to adjudicate any disagreement with any background check failure as anyone would in the current system, according to Tillis.
Overall funding in the bill could also prove problematic, as members have appeared at odds over whether the billions required to implement the proposed policies would come from new federal funding or taken back from already-allocated funds, such as any leftover from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan.
Cassidy has said he would insist that any new funding be paid for with spending cuts.
But Blumenthal, who has been leading negotiations on the program to incentivize states to develop “red flag” laws, previously said that “there is, in my view, very little justification for requiring an offset dollar for dollar. What we’re dealing with here is a national crisis that has to be addressed right away with new money, not taking it away from other law enforcement.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice should investigate “any allegation of criminal activity” against former President Donald Trump and his allies raised by the House’s Jan. 6 select committee in its public hearings this month, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday on “This Week.”
“There are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the [2020] election, that I don’t see evidence the Justice Department is investigating,” Schiff, a member of the committee and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview with “This Week” co-anchor and ABC Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz.
“Once the evidence is accumulated by the Justice Department, it needs to make a decision about whether it can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the president’s guilt or anyone else’s,” he said.
“But they need to be investigated if there’s credible evidence, which I think there is.”
On Thursday the Jan. 6 committee held the first of seven new public hearings to lay out its nearly year-long investigation into what members described as Trump’s “attempted coup” — a multifaceted effort to challenge and overturn the 2020 presidential election results that culminated in the deadly Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, as members of Congress had gathered to certify Trump’s defeat.
Trump has long denied wrongdoing and contends the Jan. 6 committee is politically motivated.
“The evidence is very powerful that Donald Trump began telling this ‘big lie’ before the election … that lie continued after the election and ultimately led to this mob assembling and attacking the Capitol,” Schiff told Raddatz on Sunday. “There’s a lot more testimony where that came from.”
Schiff said that exploring the connections between Trump’s orbit and extremist groups like the Proud Boys has been a “clear focus” of the committee’s investigation, but he declined to be more specific about their work.
Raddatz pressed him in the interview: “Let me ask you again: Is there an actual conversation between people in Trump’s orbit and Proud Boys, Oath Keepers?”
“I don’t want to predetermine or prejudge the strength of what we’ll show you. … I don’t want to get into the specifics of the evidence. You’ll just have to wait until we get to that point in our hearings,” Schiff said.
The committee will also reveal details about alleged efforts from some Republican lawmakers to seek pardons from Trump for their involvement in the push to challenge the election, he said.
Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., called Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney’s claim that he sought a pardon from Trump a “soulless lie.”
“We will show evidence that we have that members of Congress were seeking pardons. To me I think that is the most compelling evidence of a consciousness of guilt,” Schiff said. “Why would members to that if they felt that their involvement in this plot to overturn the election was somehow appropriate?”
On Monday, the committee will hold the second in its latest hearings, which they say will focus on evidence that Trump and his aides knew he had lost the election but still continued to push unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud.
(ANCHORAGE, Alaska) — Sarah Palin got one step closer this weekend to a return to national politics when she successfully advanced through the crowded statewide primary for the special election for Alaska’s lone House seat.
ABC News projected Sunday that Palin, who is running as a Republican, made it to the special general race in August along with Nick Begich and Al Gross. The fourth and final candidate is still to be determined.
In a statement on social media, Palin wrote that she was “looking forward to the special general election so we can highlight our ideas for fixing this country.”
Among those proposals, she said, was “responsibly developing Alaska’s God-given natural resources, getting runaway government spending under control [and] protecting human life” as well as backing the Second Amendment — amid renewed talks of federal gun legislation in response to the latest wave of mass shootings.
Palin previously served as governor of Alaska and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, before she was named as Sen. John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential race.
That election — which instantly gave Palin a national profile — spotlighted both her popularity with conservatives and the emerging “tea party” wing of the GOP and her stumbles as a candidate, particularly around foreign policy. She resigned from the governorship in 2009, months after she and McCain lost to Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
In the years since, Palin has remained involved in politics: musing about a presidential race of her own and working as a commentator and TV personality.
Her bid for the Alaska House seat was her first official foray back into electoral politics.
Palin supported Trump’s 2016 presidential run, and only two days after Palin launched her House campaign this year, Trump returned the favor. In early June, he held a statewide telerally for her.
Forty-eight candidates in total were running in the special primary, held Saturday, after Republican Rep. Don Young died in March.
The winner of the special general election in August will serve only the remainder of Young’s term; the regularly scheduled election to decide who will serve a full two-year term starting in 2023 will be held in November. (Thirty-one candidates have filed for that race.)
Begich, who is running as a Republican, comes from a prominent Democratic family. His grandfather, Rep. Nick Begich Sr., was Alaska’s sole representative before Young — from 1970 to 1972.
Before running for Congress, the younger Begich held several political roles, including co-chair for Young’s 2020 reelection campaign, the 2020 OneAlaska campaign and the Alaska Republican Party’s Finance Committee.
Gross, a surgeon running as an independent, told the Anchorage Daily News he was seeking the House seat because he wanted to do what was best for Alaskans. He said that his top priorities include creating jobs, diversifying the state’s economy and making the U.S. energy independent.
Gross ran in Alaska’s 2020 Senate race but lost to incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan.
Among the other candidates in Saturday’s special primary was a man named — yes — Santa Claus, who has a long white beard and is a city council member in North Pole, Alaska.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
(NEWTOWN, Conn.) — When Nicole, who was just a girl when she survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a decade ago, first heard about the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, she broke down in tears.
“I couldn’t handle it,” she said. “You hear about other shootings and it breaks you. But the fact that it was the exact same thing completely re-triggered me and my anxiety.”
Nicole was in the second grade when a gunman shot and killed 26 people at her school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. She and three other student survivors, as well as a school employee there that day, detailed their experience and the effects that day still has on them in an interview that aired Sunday with “This Week” co-anchor and Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz.
Out of respect for their privacy, ABC News is not using the survivors’ last names.
“I was just thinking about all the families that are in their houses right now, telling their children that their siblings and that their friends and their classmates are gone,” Maggie, another student, told Raddatz. “It just really broke me to know that after 10 years of everyone giving us their thoughts and prayers, after 10 years of everyone saying, ‘Enough is enough,’ and, ‘Never again after Sandy Hook’ — it happened again.”
Maggie was in third grade at the time of the shooting. She will graduate from Newtown High School next week. The other three survivors — Andrew, Jackie and Nicole — are now juniors at Newtown High. All of them are speaking publicly for the first time.
“I was in my second-grade classroom. I remember looking at my teacher’s face, and her shock. We knew it wasn’t a drill,” Jackie recalled. “When we ran to our cubbies to hide, I remember thinking, you know, I should hide to the back of the classroom, to the other side, so that I don’t get shot. And that should never run through a 7-, 8-year-old kid’s head. It shouldn’t run through anybody’s head.”
All lost friends, classmates, neighbors.
Maggie lost her best friend, Daniel Barden. Some of her starkest memories of the massacre are waiting to hear if he was alive and safe.
“There were neighbors telling us all the updates — that a class had been found in a closet, that other people were still in the firehouse,” she remembered of the aftermath 10 years ago. “We kept saying, ‘That was Daniel, Daniel was coming.'”
“It was very traumatic for me, because there was no comfort whatsoever,” she said. “No one could comfort anyone else because it was pure devastation and loss. We all loved this boy so much.”
Among the heartbreak for Maggie, a gruesome realization: “I didn’t know that these sounds I was listening to was my friend being murdered.”
Living through a mass shooting changed all four of the students. For Nicole, that means anxiety. For Jackie and Maggie, trouble with loud noises. And for Andrew, it meant nightmares in the immediate months after.
“I couldn’t get the sounds out of my head during the night,” he told ABC News. “I couldn’t close my eyes without reliving it.”
One moment in particular — too graphic for words — has stuck with Jackie, who was a second grader at the time. As the kids were exiting their school, they were told to put their hands on the shoulders of the student in front of them and to close their eyes as they walked.
Jackie opened hers.
“There was glass and obviously blood and I didn’t want to step on anything. So I did, I did open my eyes,” she said.
“That’s a thought that probably does not go away,” Raddatz told her.
“No,” Jackie said, closing her eyes.
Mary Ann Jacob, a library clerk at Sandy Hook Elementary, also detailed her experience to ABC News. Jacob was in the library at the time and locked 19 students in a closet to keep them safe.
Jacob said she came to realize the gravity of the situation — and the immensity of the loss — later, at a nearby fire station, where parents were looking to account for their children.
“They started lining kids up by class in the fire house so they could start to sign them out to parents,” Jacob said. “And it became evident very quickly that almost two whole classes were missing.”
All five survivors shared the horror they felt when they learned a gunman killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde last month.
All shared in the dismay and frustration they feel watching more school shootings occur.
“I’m struck by how sad it makes me that it keeps happening. And angry at the same time, because, you know, the world watched what happened to Sandy Hook,” Jacob said. “And there was no action after that.”
Like the other survivors, Andrew called for gun reform — an issue that remains intensely polarizing in Congress, where Republicans are reluctant to take up legislation they argue restricts the Second Amendment.
Andrew told ABC News that the government and the nation “know the solutions” to stopping more mass violence, pointing to proposed limitations on magazines for ammunition and age restrictions for purchasing assault-style weapons.
“I think what we know just needs to come to fruition.”
Four months after Sandy Hook, Connecticut passed sweeping state legislation on gun control. That bipartisan legislation included instituting mandatory background checks and banning the sale of high-capacity magazines. The law also created the nation’s first dangerous weapon registry and broadened what classifies as an assault weapon, leading to a ban of more than 150 models.
After the shooting, then-President Barack Obama called on Congress to enact federal gun control.
“If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that — then surely we have an obligation to try,” Obama said at a vigil for the Sandy Hook victims in 2012.
But those efforts failed. A vote focused on background checks, led by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., did not pass the Senate — one in a string of largely unsuccessful efforts at new gun laws in Congress in recent decades.
Since then, no major federal gun reform has come to pass.
“It makes me angry, because it doesn’t have to keep happening,” Jacob, the Sandy Hook library clerk, told ABC News. “And the fact that we saw what happened at Sandy Hook, and we saw how many children died, and how affected the survivors were, and how the ripple effects of gun violence affect so many people,” she said. “And we still act like we don’t know how to solve the problem is maddening.”
