Politics

(WASHINGTON) — With another mass shooting at a hospital complex in Tulsa on Wednesday, and as families in Uvalde are still holding funerals for loved ones massacred last week, lawmakers are under pressure to find solutions to gun violence, but it’s unclear if even the massacre of schoolchildren will yield any new results.

A House committee was called back from recess to hold an emergency meeting on Thursday to consider Democratic proposals while a bipartisan group of senators was continuing talks, with that chamber also on recess, in hopes of agreeing on a basic framework for new gun control measures when the full Senate returns next week.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, part of the group working to find a bipartisan deal, said in a statement Wednesday the group was making “rapid progress” on proposals “that could garner support from both Republicans and Democrats,” but even so, President Joe Biden told reporters he’s “not confident” lawmakers will be able to pass gun legislation, noting how he served in Congress for 36 years.

Major gun control legislation has failed for decades in the Senate due in large part to the filibuster rule, which requires 60 senators for a measure to advance toward a final vote. Though Democrats hold a razor-thin majority in Congress, they cannot push legislation through the Senate without the support of at least 10 Republicans.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., also part of the bipartisan talks, tweeted Wednesday there is “growing momentum” on a bill that can get “broad bipartisan support in the Senate” and that the group will keep working, but the group has remained tight-lipped on what the final proposal will include. Murphy has acknowledged it wouldn’t include an assault weapons ban, as it wouldn’t garner enough Republican support, despite similar legislation passing in 1994.

The House Judiciary Committee convened Thursday morning for a markup on a package of gun control measures, called “Protecting Our Kids Act,” paving the way for the full House to approve the proposals as early as next week — and then to send them to the Senate. The measures include raising the age to buy a semiautomatic centerfire rifle from 18 to 21 years old and establishing a tax credit for the safe storage of firearms.

Notably, the House has already passed gun control measures in this session of Congress, but that legislation has stalled in the Senate given GOP opposition and the 60-vote threshold — so the real fate of gun control reform in the U.S. now mostly lies with the Senate group talks.

Still, amping up the pressure, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at an event in California on Wednesday suggested Democrats would also consider holding a full House vote on an assault weapons ban following the recent mass shootings — a non-starter for Senate Republicans.

“As we get through those we will have hearings and marking up the assault weapons ban,” Pelosi said. “We are just trying to hit it in every possible way.”

While the House measures wouldn’t overcome a GOP filibuster in the Senate, the action is meant as so-called “political messaging” to pressure Senate Republicans and may put further pressure on negotiators to reach an agreement on areas of potential compromise.

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell tasked John Cornyn, R-Texas, to negotiate with the group of senators, but said at a press event in Kentucky Wednesday that “hopefully” senators will “find a way to come together” to make progress on gun violence.

“It seems to me there are two broad categories that underscore the problem: mental illness and school safety,” McConnell said. “So hopefully we can find a way to come together and make some progress on this horrendous problem consistent with our Constitution and our values.”

As lawmakers seek compromise, it appears the American public is widely supportive of universal background checks and red flag laws. An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in September 2019 found 89% support for universal background checks and 86% support for red flag laws. Mandatory background checks and red flag laws also won support from at least eight in 10 Republicans and conservatives, the poll found.

The full Senate and House are scheduled to return to Washington next week.

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(WASHINGTON) — A White House event on Wednesday meant to highlight the action President Joe Biden is taking to deal with the nation’s baby formula shortage turned into a political problem when he raised new questions about when he realized just how urgent the situation was — and why he and the administration didn’t take stronger action sooner.

Biden asked formula company executives at a virtual roundtable whether they had anticipated just how profound an effect Abbott’s closure would have on America’s formula supply — and if they realized how bad it would get and how quickly.

Spokespeople for two of the five infant formula manufacturers explicitly said they had recognized from the start how huge a problem the formula shortage would eventually become.

“We knew from the very beginning this would be a very serious event,” Reckitt’s executive, Robert Cleveland, said.

He said his company had reached out to retail partners like Target and Walmart “immediately” to warn them and to start troubleshooting available inventory to ensure they could get what they had onto shelves.

“The very first thing we did when we heard about the Abbott recall was, we could foresee that this was going to create a tremendous shortage,” Perrigo CEO Murray Kessler said.

Their words prompted reporters to ask, as they have for weeks, whether the administration should have acted faster — something Biden has repeatedly dismissed.

“I don’t think anyone anticipated the impact of the shutdown of one facility, the Abbott facility,” he said, responding to their shouted questions. “Once we learned the extent of it … we kicked everything into gear.”

He said he became aware of the issue in April — though in mid-February, Abbott had issued a voluntary recall and shuttered its Sturgis, Michigan, plant, citing contamination concerns and ordering a recall.

Since U.S. manufacturers had just told him they had anticipated the impact, reporters asked Biden why he, too, didn’t see this coming.

“They did, but I didn’t,” Biden answered.

Later, at the White House briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was pummeled with more questions.

Asked repeatedly when the White House was informed and when it was decided Biden himself should get involved, Jean-Pierre said, “I don’t have the timeline on that.”

“All I can tell you, as a whole of government approach, we have been working on this since the recall in February,” she said.

ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked if Jean-Pierre was saying the administration’s response would have been exactly the same if the president had known sooner.

“I am saying that we have been working on this. We, as a whole of government approach, have been working on this since the recall, which was in February,” Jean-Pierre repeated. “That is what I’m saying. I’m talking about internally, not just the agencies, not just FDA, USDA, but also we have been working on this for months, for months. And we’ve taken this incredibly seriously.”

The Abbott Nutrition plant in Michigan is set to resume operations on Saturday, the Food and Drug Administration and the company have said, though it will take another six to eight weeks for its plant to ramp back up to full capacity and get its product out to the barren store shelves and families in need.

In the meantime, the administration says it has been working feverishly to bring formula in from abroad amid vociferous complaints from desperate parents — as well as political heat from both Democrats and Republicans.

“We’re going to continue to pull every lever that we have,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, in what was intended to highlight a positive development ahead of Biden’s event, the administration announced several additional planeloads of formula are set to get airfreighted in from overseas as part of the president’s “Operation Fly Formula.”

A third round of baby formula shipments is set to make its way to U.S. shores by way of United Airlines beginning next Thursday, administration officials announced.

It will come from U.K. formula manufacturer Kendal Nutricare and contain more than 300,000 pounds of its Kendamil infant formula — the equivalent of roughly 3.7 million 8-ounce bottles of formula.

The shipments are expected to be flown from Heathrow Airport to “multiple airports” across the U.S. over the course of “a three-week period,” beginning June 9.

They will include the equivalent of approx. 3.2 million 8-ounce bottles of Kendamil Classic Stage 1, made with full cream whole British cow’s milk for babies beginning at birth, and the equivalent of 540,000 8-ounce bottles of Kendamil Organic, made with organic whole milk.

The formula will be distributed and become available for purchase “at selected U.S. retailers nationwide, as well as online,” the administration said.

This first shipment will be available at Target stores across the country “in the coming weeks,” the administration said, a key detail for parents who have been combing grocery shelves and news bulletins for specifics on where and when they might find what they need during the ongoing shortage.

Besides being the largest shipments to date, the formula will get put on store shelves and will be available online — not just at hospitals or from doctors’ offices as with shipments from earlier flights.

A fourth round will bring in 380,000 pounds of Bubs Australia formula, the equivalent of 4.6 million 8-ounce bottles, and will arrive on two flights next week, facilitated by the Department of Health and Human Services, officials said.

The shipments on the two flights from Melbourne to Pennsylvania and California will be on June 9 and June 11, respectively.

Additional deliveries from Bubs will be announced “in the coming days,” the White House said.

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Kiara Alfonseca, ABC News

(WASHINGTON) — The White House says it will celebrate Pride Month this June by signaling support for the LGBTQ community and their families amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation.

There have been more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed in at least 28 states this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Eight states have signed such bills into law this year.

President Joe Biden has condemned the rapid spread of these bills.

“These bills are targeting kids in classrooms and families in their homes, which is why this Pride Month we will be focused on protecting, uplifting, and supporting LGBTQI+ children and families,” a White House spokesperson said about Biden’s Pride plans.

The White House says it is “laser-focused” on fighting back against the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation and supporting LGBTQ community members and their families.

Many of the bills or policies target LGBTQ youth. In some cases, like in Alabama, families and healthcare providers of transgender youth can be criminalized for providing gender-affirming care.

The Alabama bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Shay Shelnutt, has called gender-affirming health care, “child abuse.”

A growing number of states have introduced legislation that LGBTQ advocates say targets transgender youth and their access to school sports and gender-affirming health care.

To combat such legislation, the Biden administration is calling on Congress to pass the Equality Act. The legislation would expand federal civil rights law to prohibit LGBTQ and gender identity discrimination in public accommodations.

The Biden administration has been behind several progressive steps for the LGBTQ community, including the first use of the gender-neutral gender marker on passports by the State Department and the reversal of the Trump era rule that Title IX does not protect LGBTQ students.

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(NEW YORK) — When an 18-year-old shooter arrived last week at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas — where he ultimately killed 21 people, including 19 children and two teachers — he carried 1,657 rounds of ammunition, authorities said.

The large number of rounds should not come as a surprise, experts told ABC News. The tragedy drew renewed scrutiny to a collection of state and national laws that regulate ammunition less tightly than firearms, despite the vital role played by ammunition in mass shootings, experts said.

A shooter at a Las Vegas music festival, in 2017, who killed 59, had at least 1,600 rounds. A shooter at an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in 2012, who killed 27, had more than 1,700 rounds of ammunition at his home. And a shooter at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, also in 2012, who killed 12, had bought more than 6,000 rounds, officials said.

Current regulations often allow for the purchase of massive amounts of ammunition and high-capacity magazines without a background check or even a face-to-face interaction, experts added.

While gun control proponents say ammunition deserves stronger restrictions that would limit the frequency and severity of mass shootings, gun rights advocates argue that ammunition restrictions violate Second Amendment protections and unnecessarily duplicate the regulations in place for guns, experts said.

“There are fewer restrictions on ammunition sales than there are on firearm sales both at the federal level and in the vast majority of states,” Jacob Charles, executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University School of Law, told ABC News.

“Someone intent on a mass casualty event is going to have enough ammunition to be able to keep shooting until they’re stopped,” he said.

Federal law prohibits the sale of ammunition in a narrow set of circumstances, experts said.

People cannot purchase or possess ammunition if they’ve been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor domestic violence, committed to a mental institution, or if they belong to a handful of other categories deemed at-risk, experts said.

Also, under federal law individuals must be at least 18 to buy rifle or shotgun ammunition, and at least 21 to buy ammunition for any other guns. On top of that, in 1986, the U.S. enacted a law that bans armor-piercing bullets, which became notorious for the threat they posed to police officers.

Absent from national regulations are measures that require background checks for the buyers of ammunition or licenses for the sellers, which undermines enforcement of the few federal laws that are on the books, Tom Donohue, a law professor at Stanford University who specializes in gun legislation, told ABC News.

“Any restrictions on ammunition at the federal level are virtually feckless because you don’t have to go through a background check to purchase ammunition,” he said.

Federal law also lacks a measure that addresses high-capacity magazines, which enable shooters to fire a large number of bullets without stopping to reload. Such a law did exist once at the national level: The assault rifle ban enacted by Congress in 1994, which lapsed 10 years later, included a ban on high-capacity magazines.

A study published in 2019 by three researchers, including David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, examined mass shootings over a nearly three-decade period and found that attacks involving high-capacity magazines had a 62% higher average death rate than those without them. The study also showed that high-fatality mass shootings occurred more than twice as often in states without bans on high-capacity magazines than in states with them.

In all, nine states have enacted bans on high-capacity magazines, including predominantly Democrat-controlled states like New York and Connecticut, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The landscape of high-capacity magazine bans reflects a general trend of state-level measures that strengthen ammunition laws in a small group of mostly blue states, while the remainder of states go no further than federal law, Charles said.

For instance, New York and California have instituted mandatory background checks for ammunition purchases at the time a sale takes place, Charles added.

Gun rights advocates staunchly oppose ammunition regulation, experts said. Gun proponents argue that there’s no need for additional regulation of ammunition once an individual has been deemed fit to own a gun.

“In theory, if I have given you a license and found you to be a law-abiding citizen, there’s no reason for me to care what kind of gun you buy or how much ammunition you buy or what else you do, as long as it’s legal,” Alexandra Filindra, a political science professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago who studies gun laws, told ABC News.

Similarly, gun rights advocates have argued that regulation of ammunition infringes on their Second Amendment protections in the same manner that gun regulations do, since ammunition is a necessary part for operating a gun, Filindra said.

“The theory goes that essentially you are implicitly regulating gun ownership by taking away people’s ammo,” she said.

A network of gun rights groups, most notably the National Rifle Association, has fought ammunition regulation by framing it as an attack on gun ownership, the experts said.

“The same group standing in the way of gun safety reform is standing in the way of ammunition reform,” said Ari Freilich, the state policy director at Giffords Law Center.

Some ammunition-related bills have been introduced in Congress. The Age 21 Act, put forward by Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would raise the minimum age for buying assault rifles and high-capacity magazines from 18 to 21. Meanwhile, a bill in the House would require a license for all ammunition sellers and mandate that all ammunition sales take place in person.

Experts said that meaningful reform of ammunition laws is unlikely in the short term, but some said that incidents like the mass shooting in Uvalde make action more likely in the long term.

“A lot of people have woken up to how senselessly, dangerously reckless our lack of protections currently are,” Freilich said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Adm. Linda Fagan became the first woman to lead a branch of the U.S. military when she was sworn in as commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard at a sunny ceremony in Washington on Wednesday.

President Joe Biden, who nominated Fagan to the post in April, spoke at the change of command event at U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, calling it “a new milestone in our history” and “a big deal.”

“There’s no one more qualified to lead the proud men and women of the Coast Guard, and she will also be the first woman to serve as Commandant of the Coast Guard, the first woman to lead any branch of the United States Armed Forces — and it’s about time,” Biden said at the ceremony, where Fagan relieved Adm. Karl Schultz, who is retiring.

Biden added, “Secretary of Defense, when he sent me the name, I said, ‘What in the hell took you so long?'”

Fagan is coming off serving as the Coast Guard’s vice commandant — the first female four-star admiral to serve as a branch’s second-in-command — and previously served as the commander of the Coast Guard Pacific Area from June 2018 to June 2021.

Now, Fagan will soon be the first woman to take a seat at the table of the U.S. Joint Chiefs — representing all branches of the military — and she comes equipped with nearly 40 years in the service, on par with the officers she will be joining.

“I’m immensely grateful to the many players that paved the way,” Fagan said following Biden. “Pioneers like Admiral Siler, Dorothy Stratten, Ida Lewis, Dorothy McShane, Elizabeth Friedman. I’m proud to be a part of this long history of service, dedication, and groundbreaking, and I’m committed to carrying these principles forward.”

Biden noted that Fagan had been a pioneer earlier in her career, too, serving as one of few women — or the only woman — in various stations throughout her time in the service, and calling Wednesday’s ceremony “a historic first, in that effort.”

“I want to thank you Admiral Fagan for taking the helm during this critical moment,” he added. “And for all that you’ve done throughout your career, it opened the doors of opportunities just a little bit wider to allowing those following behind you, a way through.”

Biden also emphasized that the U.S. needs to ensure that more women are in leadership positions at Fagan’s level.

“We need to ensure women have an opportunity to succeed and thrive throughout their professional careers and that means providing support and resources so women can compete fairly and fully for promotions and make sure women are not penalized in their career for having children,” Biden added. “It also means creating an environment where every member of the Armed Forces feels safe in the ranks, including from sexual assault and harassment, and where their contributions are respected.”

In 1985, Fagan was in just the sixth graduating class from the Coast Guard Academy that included women. She has since risen the ranks to serve on all seven continents — “from the snows of Ross Island, Antarctica to the heart of Africa, from Tokyo to Geneva,” according to the Coast Guard — and aboard the USCGC POLAR STAR, a 399ft heavy polar icebreaker. She is also the longest service in the marine safety field, which earned her the Coast Guard’s first-ever Gold Ancient Trident distinction.

During Fagan’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee, which has oversight of the Coast Guard, lawmakers on the panel including Chair Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., praised her qualifications and place as a trailblazer.

“We’re sending a strong message to women cadets and to people training at Cape May. And we are sending a strong message to young girls who dream of someday serving in the Coast Guard,” she said. “We are saying now that the leader of this organization that your service matters, your contribution to the Coast Guard and to the country matters. And yes, you too can be commandant someday.”

Notably, Fagan’s daughter, Aileen, is also a Coast Guard lieutenant and was present at Wednesday’s ceremony.

“Thank you, Mr. President, for calling her out,” Fagan said in her remarks, after Biden had thanked her family for being there. “She’s my personal aide. I lean on her pretty heavily.”

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Fagan also earned degrees from the University of Washington and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

Other prior assignments include Deputy Commandant for Operations, Policy, and Capability, Commander of the First Coast Guard District, and a joint assignment as Deputy Director of Operations for Headquarters and United States Northern Command.

The Senate approved Fagan’s nomination, along with five other senior Coast Guard officers, by unanimous consent last month.

ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Making the most of the attention-getting White House visit by BTS, the South Korean supergroup, President Joe Biden has tweeted out a video of their time together in the Oval Office.

The international K-pop sensation met with Biden Tuesday to address efforts to stop Anti-Asian hate crimes.

“We want to say thank you sincerely for your decision … such as signing the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act into law,” said RM, the Grammy-nominated group’s leader, in the video posted late Tuesday.

“So we just want to be a little help, and we truly appreciate the White House and the government’s trying to find solutions,” he continued.

In the nearly minute-long White House video, the superstar group is seen walking through the Rose Garden to the Oval Office door, where Biden greets them.

It was great to meet with you, @bts_bighit. Thanks for all you’re doing to raise awareness around the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination.

I look forward to sharing more of our conversation soon. pic.twitter.com/LnczTpT2aL

— President Biden (@POTUS) June 1, 2022

“This is an important month here in America,” Biden told BTS, in recognition of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which ended Tuesday.

“A lot of our Asian-American friends have been subject to real discrimination,” he said. “Hate only hides. When good people talk about it and say how bad it is, it goes down. So, thank you.”

Before meeting with Biden, they spoke at the top of a jam-packed White House press briefing.

Each member took a turn coming to the podium to speak about what they hoped to accomplish. The members spoke in a mix of English and Korean, and were translated after the fact.

Speaking in Korean, BTS expressed their grief about the surge of hate crimes, including ones targeting Asian Americans, and said the group would like to use this opportunity to speak out again.

Last year, BTS tweeted a statement condemning Asian hate after attacks in Atlanta-area spas left eight women dead, six of whom were of Asian descent. In the statement, they also reflected on their own experiences facing discrimination.

“We have endured expletives without reason and were mocked for the way we look,” BTS said. “We were even asked why Asians spoke in English.”

The group added that “what is happening right now cannot be dissociated from our identity as Asians.”

In their press briefing remarks, BTS also recognized their fans, known as “ARMY,” crediting them for their White House visit.

They also highlighted the importance of embracing others’ differences and respecting each other.

Since BTS’ 2013 debut, they skyrocketed to international fame for their smash hit songs like “Fake Love,” “ON” and “Butter.”

“It was great to meet with you, @bts_bighit,” Biden tweeted when sharing the video. “Thanks for all you’re doing to raise awareness around the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination.”

“I look forward to sharing more of our conversation soon,” he added.

ABC News’ Molly Nagle and Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a Texas law that would ban social media companies from removing users and the content they post because of a particular viewpoint expressed.

The court did not elaborate on the decision, which is temporary while legal challenges proceed through lower courts.

“We are relieved that the First Amendment, open internet, and the users who rely on it remain protected from Texas’s unconstitutional overreach,” said Chris Marchese, an attorney for NetChoice, the industry trade group representing Meta, TikTok, YouTube and others, in a statement.

NetChoice says the law, which took effect earlier this month, would effectively force social media platforms to disseminate dangerous content, including propaganda, hate speech and threats of violence, in violation of their First Amendment rights.

Republican sponsors of the law — the first of its kind in the country — say the measure is meant to end alleged censorship of conservative users on the social networks, which they argue are modern-day “public squares.”

Four justices — Elena Kagan, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — indicated they would have let the Texas law remain in force while the legal battle plays out.

Justice Alito, in a dissent joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, explained that he would not have interfered with a lower court decision to let the law take effect, suggesting that the justices would likely hear the dispute on appeal in due time.

“The law before us is novel, as are applicants’ business models,” wrote Alito “It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies.”

At the heart of the dispute is the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech and thorny questions around private companies’ censorship across networks of more than 50 million users.

Texas Republicans enacted the law in response to longstanding frustration from conservatives who feel silenced or sidelined by the media companies’ moderation policies.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading defense of the law, has argued the companies’ size rivals public utilities in influence and importance to Americans’ daily lives and therefore should be regulated accordingly.

“The platforms are the 21st-century descendants of telegraph and telephone companies: that is, traditional common carriers,” he wrote. The government can require common carriers to generally accept all users.

The NAACP and Anti-Defamation League are siding with the companies, warning of enhanced risk to public safety if the law is allowed to stand and more like it take hold across the country. They say the private companies have a right and obligation to police content on their sites to ensure the welfare of members.

Florida’s GOP-controlled state legislature enacted a similar law this spring, but it was temporarily blocked by a federal appeals court last week.

“Social media platforms exercise editorial judgment that is inherently expressive,” wrote Judge Kevin Newsom in the panel’s decision. “When platforms choose to remove users or posts, deprioritize content in viewers’ feeds or search results, or sanction breaches of their community standards, they engage in First Amendment-protected activity.”

If and when the Supreme Court takes up the Florida or Texas law on the merits, the decision could have sweeping impact on the future of speech on the Internet and private companies’ ability to moderate content on their sites, online legal experts say.

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(WASHINGTON) — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff called attention to the “epidemic” of antisemitism and reflected on the history he has made while speaking Tuesday at a virtual event on U.S. Jewish military history.

“This role has enabled me to use this microphone to speak out and to speak up on issues that are important to not only us Jews but all of us — all around the world,” Emhoff, an entertainment attorney and the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, said on the final day of Jewish American Heritage Month honoring the accomplishments and history of Jews in the United States.

“And as the vice president said so eloquently in Buffalo the other day: It’s an epidemic of hate,” Emhoff said, referencing wife Kamala Harris’ trip to New York in the wake of the fatal shooting of 10 people at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood earlier in May. The suspected shooter’s writings included both anti-Black and anti-Jewish screeds; separately, advocacy groups say antisemitic incidents hit a high in 2021.

“It’s an epidemic of hate that not only includes antisemitism but includes all forms of hate,” Emhoff said Tuesday. “And we as Jews, and we as Americans, we all need to stand up and speak up.”

Emhoff also talked more personally, saying that the reaction to his identity as a Jewish second gentleman surprised him. While his faith was always a big deal to him, “I did not expect my Jewish faith to be such a big deal in this role,” he said.

“I’ve been at schools making matzah [flatbread eaten on the Jewish holiday of Passover], I’ve talked to my dad’s 85-year-old friends who, you know, gossip with him and they’ll tell him how much I mean to them,” he continued.

Though his importance to others surprised him, he took it seriously, he said: “It has nothing to do with political party or anything like that. It’s just seeing me in this role, it has engendered some feelings in people they didn’t even know they had … it really pushes me to do as well as I can.”

“To be able to live openly and joyfully as an American Jew, as I always have, but to do it so publicly, has really impacted people,” he said.

Emhoff has participated in both public and private Jewish events in his capacity as second gentlemen, which like the role of first lady includes a number of ceremonial duties and the championing of select causes. He helped light the national menorah for Hanukkah last December near the White House. In his Tuesday remarks, he looked back at other appearances.

“Whether it’s hanging the first mezuzah [a box containing a scroll with some scripture] at the vice president’s residence, having the first in-person [Passover] Seder there … lighting a menorah at the residence … and to just show up, just show everyone what we’re doing, like we’ve always done, but just to have the American people and the world see it is just really, really incredible,” Emhoff said.

President Joe Biden marked Jewish American Heritage Month with a proclamation at the end of April where he emphasized the contributions of Jewish Americans in building the U.S. and contributing to public life.

“The story of America was written, in part, by Jewish Americans who, through their words and actions, embraced the opportunity and responsibility of citizenship knowing full well that democracy is not born, nor sustained, by accident,” Biden said.

He also denounced the increase in antisemitism: “As the scourge of white supremacy and antisemitic violence rises, my Administration remains committed to ensuring that hate has no safe harbor.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Following a holiday weekend with at least 12 mass shootings across the country, President Joe Biden met with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the White House on Tuesday morning, as families in Uvalde, Texas, prepared tiny caskets for the first funerals this week.

Biden told reporters he would meet with lawmakers on the issue of guns, but he didn’t say when that would happen or provide more details, according to the print pool reporter covering Biden’s Oval Office meeting with New Zealand’s prime minister.

Responding to a question about whether he’d meet with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell about guns, Biden replied, “I will meet with the Congress on guns, I promise you,” according to the print reporter.

Shortly before, inside the Oval Office, Biden praised Ardern’s leadership on a range of issues and said, “We need your guidance.”

“There’s an expression by an Irish poet, it’s ‘too long a suffering that makes us stone to the heart.’ Well, there’s an awful lot of suffering,” Biden told Ardern. “I’ve gotten to more mass shooting aftermaths than I think any president in American history, unfortunately…And so much of it, much of it, is preventable, and the devastation is amazing.”

The two leaders were set to discuss combatting terrorism and radicalization to violence, the climate crisis, and the Indo-Pacific economy, according to the White House, but Ardern’s appearance in the wake of the elementary school massacre offered a side-by-side picture of two Western nations with starkly different responses to gun violence.

After a gunman murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, and streamed it on Facebook as it happened, Ardern led a dramatic push to restrict firearms in New Zealand within weeks of the attack. Less than a month after the attack, all but one of 120 Kiwi lawmakers voted to permanently ban military-style semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles.

“Can I bring the sincere condolences from the people of Aldi and New Zealand for what you have experienced and Texas and New York, and it’s been devastating to see the impact on those communities,” Ardern said, also raising a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, this month where ten Black people were killed in a grocery store.

“Our experience, of course, in this regard, is our own but if there’s anything that we can share that would be of any value, we are here to share it,” she added.

In the U.S., meanwhile, gun control legislation has remained stalled for decades as Senate Republicans have used, or threatened to use, the filibuster to block such legislation. A small group of bipartisan senators — including Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., John Cornyn, R-Texas, Tom Tillis, R-N.C., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., are meeting by Zoom Tuesday afternoon on gun reform talks, multiple sources told ABC News, as advocates and everyday Americans alike demand action in the wake of the latest violence.

Asked last week about New Zealand’s decision to ban most semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles in 2019, Ardern explained to CBS host Stephen Colbert how the country introduced a system to buy back guns from civilians and destroy them.

“I can only speak to our experience in New Zealand, but you know when I watch from afar and see events such as those today I think of them not as a politician, I see them just as a mother and I’m so sorry for what has happened here,” Ardern said.

“Then I think about what happened to us and all I can reflect is — we are a very pragmatic people. When we saw something like that happen everyone said ‘never again,’ so then it was incumbent on us as politicians to respond to that,” she continued. “Now, we have legitimate needs for guns in our country for things like pest control and to protect our biodiversity, but you don’t need a military-style, semi-automatic weapon to do that. So we got rid of them.”

After Biden told protesters in Uvalde on Sunday “we will” when they demanded the U.S. “do something,” it’s unclear if the president will get more involved on the issue since largely punting action to Congress. Biden has suggested assault weapons be banned and that lawmakers revisit the 1994 law but said in Texas, “I can’t outlaw a weapon. I can’t change the background checks.”

Tuesday also marks the first White House visit of a leader from New Zealand since 2014.

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(WASHINGTON) — A Democrat-linked lawyer charged by Special Counsel John Durham with lying to the FBI in 2016 was found not guilty a federal jury in Washington on Tuesday following a nearly two-week trial that served as the first in-court test of Durham’s more than three-year investigation into the Russia probe.

Michael Sussmann was charged by Durham last year for allegedly bringing forward a tip to a senior FBI official in September 2016 about a potential connection between computer servers for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s company and Russia’s Alfa bank — and lying about who he was representing at the time.

“While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service. I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case,” Durham said in a statement.

Through multiple days of witness testimony and evidence exhibits displayed in the D.C. district court, Durham’s prosecutors sought to convince the jury that Sussmann brought the info to then-FBI general counsel James Baker as part of Sussmann’s work for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and a technology company executive who had worked on assembling the data.

“He knew that if he told Mr. Baker that he was there on behalf of the Clinton campaign, the chances of the FBI investigating would be diminished,” assistant special counsel Jon Algor said Friday in closing arguments.

They alleged that Sussmann set up the meeting with the hope of generating an “October surprise,” to leak that the FBI was investigating a potentially suspicious tie between Trump’s campaign and Russia at a time when Russia was carrying out its hack-and-dump campaign against the Democrats.

While Sussmann’s attorneys acknowledged that he was at the time representing Clinton’s campaign and a tech executive named Rodney Joffe in handling the allegations, they claimed Sussmann’s intention in setting up the meeting with Baker was to alert the FBI to what he believed was concerning information and notify them that major news outlets were also pursuing it as a story.

In their closing argument Friday, Sussmann’s attorney Sean Berkowitz accused Durham’s team of pushing baseless “political conspiracy theories” through their prosecution of Sussmann, who he said brought forth the information to Baker in genuine good faith.

As a result of Sussmann’s meeting with Baker, according to his attorneys, the FBI was able to convince the New York Times to hold off on reporting the Alfa Bank allegations while investigators evaluated the data — which they quickly determined showed nothing nefarious. When the Times did eventually report on the Alfa Bank matter, it was part of a pre-election piece with the headline, ‘Investigating Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link To Russia.’

“The meeting … is the exact opposite of what the Clinton campaign would have wanted,” Sussmann’s attorney Michael Bosworth said last week.

The two-week trial featured testimony from a host of current and former law enforcement officials as well as former key figures in Clinton’s campaign.

While the charge leveled against Sussmann was narrow, in the months since his indictment Durham used the case to bring forward other evidence that prosecutors suggested showed a broader conspiracy, alleging Clinton’s campaign and other political operatives sought to gin up and spread false accusations to smear Trump and use the nation’s law enforcement agencies as political tools.

But Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign’s former general counsel, and Robby Mook, the campaign’s manager, testified there was no discussion in the highest levels of the campaign about ordering or authorizing anyone to bring the Alfa Bank allegations directly to the FBI.

While Mook acknowledged that Clinton herself at one point signed off on disseminating the unverified allegations to the press so journalists could “vet” and report them out, he sought to throw cold water on the that the campaign believed it would have benefited from getting the FBI involved.

“Going to the FBI does not seem like an effective way to get information out to the public,” Mook said.

Mook said that after Clinton authorized sending the Alfa Bank data out to journalists, a press official — not Sussmann — was tasked with pushing it out to reporters. A report on the allegations was later published by Slate days before the election, though it made no mention of the FBI’s investigation into the data.

Sussmann’s attorneys also focused their strategy around undercutting testimony from the government’s star witness, Baker, who said under questioning from the special counsel’s office last week that he was “100% confident” that Sussmann told him in their Sep. 19 meeting he was not there on behalf of a particular client.

That testimony, Sussmann’s attorneys noted, directly conflicted with past statements Baker had made in interviews under oath with congressional investigators and the DOJ’s inspector general — where he either said that he believed Sussmann was there on behalf of unnamed cybersecurity experts or didn’t remember if Sussmann had mentioned representing clients one way or another.

But prosecutors also entered evidence this week showing that Sussmann had billed several flash drives he purchased days before the meeting to the Clinton campaign — two of which Durham says Sussmann provided to Baker in their meeting that included the unverified data purporting to show a connection between Trump and Alfa bank.

Additionally, they flagged multiple hours of time entries Sussmann had billed to the Clinton Campaign and the tech executive Rodney Joffe leading up to and after the meeting with Baker, where he wrote he was working on ‘confidential’ issues that Durham says was in reference to the Trump-Alfa bank allegations.

“If an opponent had brought this information, [the FBI] would want to know more about it,” Algor said. “They would question the credibility of the source and whether the FBI was being used — being played by politics.”

In the three years since Durham was initially assigned to look into the origins of the Russia investigation, he has secured one guilty plea of a former lawyer with the FBI who admitted to doctoring an email that was used to support a surveillance application that targeted a former Trump campaign aide.

The only other indictment brought by Durham outside of Sussmann was against Igor Danchenko, a lead analyst who contributed to the now-infamous Steele Dossier, who was charged last year with five counts of lying to the FBI about who his sources were for claims in the dossier. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty to all counts and his case is set for trial in Virginia in the fall.

The FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was not launched as a result of the Alfa Bank allegations or the Steele Dossier, and neither eventually factored into findings released by special counsel Robert Mueller following his two-year investigation. While Mueller’s probe found numerous instances of contacts between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to Russia’s government, he determined evidence didn’t support charging any individuals of engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Russia.

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