Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Bipartisan talks about passing a new federal gun law continued through Memorial Day weekend despite members of Congress being out of session in a weeklong recess that also set a deadline for a possible breakthrough, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said on Monday.

In a tweet, the lead Democrat on the negotiations wrote that he and others in his party have discussed with some Republican Senate colleagues throughout the holiday weekend details of possible bill intended to address gun violence.

The Senate left Washington on Thursday, with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., indicating a short turnaround for the compromise legislation — members would vote upon a June 6 return to the chamber.

“In between parades, I’ve been on the phone today w Republican and Democratic Senators trying to find the common denominator on a gun violence bill,” Murphy wrote on Twitter on Monday. “Senator Schumer has given us just over a week to find a compromise. This time, failure cannot be an option.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has blessed the negotiations, tasking Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn to take the lead for the GOP in the talks. Murphy has said that in the wake of two high-profile mass shootings over the past few weeks, “many more” Republicans appear willing to discuss gun reform than in the past.

While the issue remains intensely divisive in Congress — where conservatives have opposed major legislative efforts regarding guns — Cornyn echoed Murphy on Monday in saying that, at the least, the talks were ongoing.

“We’re already having those discussions in person and on the phone. Look forward to meeting on Tuesday through a Zoom call to try to see if we can agree on a basic framework about how we go forward,” he said.

Murphy told ABC News’ This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl on Sunday that the negotiations were “serious” and already circling some specifics, including so-called “red flag” laws that would allow the removal of firearms from people with a history of threatening or dangerous behavior.

“We have continued to work throughout the weekend. I was in touch with Sen. Cornyn and Sen. [Pat] Toomey, other Republicans and Democrats yesterday,” said Murphy, who represents the community that includes Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of a 2012 mass shooting.

“Inside this room we’re talking about ‘red flag’ laws, we’re talking about strengthening, expanding the background check system, if not universal background checks. We’re talking about safe storage,” Murphy said, noting that school safety measures and mental health resources were also discussed.

There has been talk about the “profile” of mass shooters, Murphy said — in particular the pattern of many of the perpetrators to be young men between 18 and 21 years old.

“Right now we’re having a discussion inside this room about the profile of the current mass shooter … That is a profile that does not allow you to buy a handgun but does allow you to buy an assault rifle. And so there are discussions happening in these rooms about how they recognize this profile and maybe make it a little bit harder for those individuals to quickly get their hands on weapons,” Murphy said.

“I don’t yet know exactly what’s possible, whether the votes are there to raise the age, but we’re having a discussion about what we do about that specific profile,” he said. “And it’s an encouraging conversation.”

Murphy, elected to the Senate in 2012, drew new attention in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting last week that left 19 students and two teachers dead. One of Congress’ most outspoken voices for gun control, Murphy again urged action including from Republicans, many of whom contend the laws are misplaced or violate the Second Amendment.

On This Week, Murphy reiterated his concern with the lack of federal legislation on the issue in the near-decade since Sandy Hook — a period that has also been stained by a slew of other high-profile mass shootings.

“And while, in the end, I may end up being heartbroken, I am at the table in a more significant way right now with Republicans and Democrats than ever before,” Murphy said. “Certainly, many more Republicans willing to talk right now than were willing to talk after Sandy Hook.”

Murphy pointed to his recent discussions with Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who now represents in Congress the site of another school shooting, in Parkland, where a gunman shot and killed 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.

Following that massacre, then-Gov. Scott signed into law a bill that tightened gun control measures, including raising the minimum age for owning guns from 18 to 21.

“I had a long conversation with Sen. Scott last week,” Murphy said, “and had him tell me the story of how they were able to pass that legislation and get Republicans to support it.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, who represent the state where an 18-year-old gunman carried out one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings last week, are among Congress’ top recipients of contributions from pro-gun donors, campaign finance records show.

Cruz, in particular, has taken in the most money from pro-gun individuals and groups of anyone in the current Congress, amassing $442,000 over the course of his career, according to an analysis of disclosure reports by the nonpartisan campaign finance research group OpenSecrets.

Cornyn ranks third among current U.S. senators and representatives, receiving a total of $340,000 in contributions from pro-gun donors over his career, after Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., who has amassed $396,000, according to the analysis.

Direct contributions from pro-gun individuals and political action committees are limited to a relatively small amount each election cycle, compared to the millions of dollars that super PACs and various other unlimited-spending outside groups are allowed to spend in support of candidates independent of coordination with their campaigns. The National Rifle Association’s various outside spending committees, for example, spent more than $6 million supporting North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr against unsuccessful Democratic challenger Deborah Ross during the 2016 election cycle.

Still, direct contributions — although smaller in size — are an effective illustration of a candidate’s level of support from gun-rights advocates.

“Throughout his career, Sen. Cruz has passionately fought to protect families from criminals and defend Texans’ constitutional rights,” Cruz spokesperson Steve Guest told ABC News.

At the state level, the NRA and NRA Victory Fund have spent a total of $575,000 in local Texas elections since 2015, in both direct contributions to campaigns and independent ad spending in support of candidates, according to an analysis of state campaign disclosure reports by nonpartisan nonprofit Transparency USA, which tracks state-level political disclosures.

Campaign disclosure reports also show that executives of Daniel Defense, the maker of the assault weapon that the accused gunman allegedly used in last week’s shooting, have been major Republican donors over the last few years.

Between 2016 and 2020, the company’s president and CEO, Marvin Daniel, and his wife and COO, Cindy Daniel, together gave a total of $300,000 to Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars more to numerous other Republican campaigns and committees over the years, according to disclosure filings.

The two are also regular donors to the National Shooting Sports Foundation PAC, together giving the group a total of $20,000 so far in the 2022 election cycle.

In addition, on Jan. 6, 2021, the company made a $100,000 donation to the Gun Owners Action Fund super PAC, which was launched shortly after the 2020 election to provide an 11th-hour boost to then-Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the Georgia Senate runoffs that month.

However, the super PAC’s treasurer, Nancy Watkins, told ABC News that the PAC refunded Daniel Defense’s $100,000 contribution “at the request of the donor” on May 10, 2022, and that the refund will be disclosed in July’s quarterly disclosure report to the Federal Election Commission, which covers April through June.

Watkins did not disclose why the donation was returned more than a year after it was made. Since the Georgia runoffs, the group has been largely dormant, according to its disclosure reports — not receiving significant donations or participating in political activities.

Representatives for Daniel Defense did not return ABC News’ request for comment.

In addition to Daniel Defense’s contribution, the Gun Owners Action Fund received donations from other gun manufacturers, including $100,000 from Sig Sauer in December 2020, and $10,000 from Luth-AR the following month. However the $100,000 donation from Sig Sauer was refunded in April, after the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint alleging the donation violated campaign finance law that prohibits federal contractors from making federal political contributions.

The super PAC was also heavily funded by ESAPAC, another super PAC that itself is funded by top GOP donors like the Ricketts family, Charles Schwab and Ken Griffith.

The emergence of new pro-gun PACs like the Gun Owners Action Fund comes as the National Rifle Association, the most high-profile gun rights group in the country, has been wracked by legal battles and threats of bankruptcy.

The NRA, which spent more than $56 million in super PAC and outside money during the 2016 election cycle — including spending more than $30 million to support Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton — has so far spent only $9,600 in outside spending for 2022 midterm candidates, according to OpenSecrets’ analysis of FEC data — a notably low figure even at this early stage in the cycle.

NRA representatives did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden told reporters on Monday he spent more than three and a half hours with survivors and the families of victims of last week’s mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.

Returning to Washington, Biden said the pain he witnessed in Uvalde was “palpable” and “unnecessary” and that he was — and always had been — committed to gun control efforts intended to reduce more violence.

But there was only so much he could do as a president, he said. Major changes would need to be authorized by Congress, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers are again in negotiations over a possible bill despite how divided they remain over guns.

When a reporter asked Biden outside the White House if he felt more motivated to act on legislation now, in the wake of recent shootings such as Uvalde, he said he has been “motivated all along.”

“I’m going to continue to push and we’ll see how this works,” he said.

“I can’t outlaw a weapon. I can’t change the background checks,” he said.

This is where the legislature should act, he said.

For example, he said, “It makes no sense to be able to purchase something that can fire up to 300 rounds.”

He told reporters how as a senator he once spoke with trauma doctors who showed him an X-Ray of the damage a high-caliber weapon can inflict on the body — how “a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in a lung and we could probably get it out, may be able to get it and save the life, [but] a 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”

“The idea of these high-caliber weapon, there’s simply no rational basis for it, in terms of whether this be about self-protection, hunting,” he said.

“The Constitution, the Second Amendment, was never absolute,” Biden said. “You couldn’t buy a canon when the Second Amendment was passed. You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons.”

The president spoke with reporters moments after stepping off Marine One one day after his visit to Uvalde, where he told a crowd of demonstrators “we will” as they chanted for him to “do something” about gun violence.

The massacre in Texas was preceded less than two weeks earlier by another mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. Ten Black people were killed in a grocery store in what authorities suspect was a racially motivated attack.

Those back-to-back killings have prompted a group of bipartisan senators — four Republicans and five Democrats — to engage in initial conversations about new gun laws. Democrats need at least some GOP support, though conservatives largely oppose legislating the issue, instead focusing on the so-called “hardening” of school security and other measures.

The group of lawmakers intended to meet via video over the recess to continue hashing out where they stand and where a possible compromise could be brokered.

“We’re getting started to try to figure out if there’s a path to getting to a consensus, and we’ll see where it takes us,” Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said last week.

The White House, which took a more direct role in previous legislative priorities, has said the president will observe the process as it proceeds. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked repeatedly what the administration saw as its role in pushing for a new law.

“We really, truly leave the mechanics up to Sen. Schumer and Speaker Pelosi,” Jean-Pierre said last week, referring to the Senate majority leader and House speaker. “We are confident that Sen. Schumer will bring this forward. And again, it is time for Congress to act. This is what the president has been calling for since the beginning of his administration.”

Biden, who based his 2020 campaign in part on his record of working across the aisle as a senator, was asked on Monday if he thought Republicans would approach the issue differently this time. He said that he hadn’t spoken to any of them, “but my guess is yes, I think they’re going to take a hard look.”

When he landed in Uvalde on Sunday, he and first lady Jill Biden were greeted by state officials including Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a staunch opponent of the president’s agenda and a proponent of pro-gun laws.

The Bidens’ visit to the Uvalde was focused on meeting with the victims, their families and the first responders to the shooting — not promoting a legislative agenda. The president said Monday at the White House that he “deliberately did not engage in a debate about that with any Republican” during his trip.

He said he would continue to take executive actions regarding firearms and sounded a note of cautious optimism about where the congressional talks may lead.

“I consider Sen. [Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell a rational Republican, and [Sen. John] Cornyn is as well,” he said. “I think there’s a recognition on their part … that we can’t continue like this.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden headed to Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day to take part in the traditional wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, along with first lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

After laying the wreath, Biden saluted and then made the sign of the cross as a bugler played taps, the lonely call floating in the late-spring air.

He was then set to speak at the Arlington’s amphitheater as the nation observes the 154th Memorial Day.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley were scheduled to speak as well.

Monday’s observance comes after the Bidens spent an emotional day Sunday mourning the victims of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

After arriving from Delaware Monday morning, Biden and the first lady held what has become another Memorial Day tradition: a White House breakfast for Gold Star families.

When they return to the White House from Arlington, the Bidens will be joined by families of the fallen in a tree-planting ceremony on the White House South Lawn.

They’ll plant a magnolia tree in honor of those who lost their lives in service to the nation.

Memorial Day was originally know as Decoration Day, designated in 1868 after the Civil War to decorate the graves of soldiers.

It became a federal holiday in 1971.

According to the cemetery’s website, members of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment — known as “The Old Guard” — decorate the graves with small American flags on the Thursday before Memorial Day, known as the “Flags in” ceremony.

In the space of a few hours, Old Guard service members plant flags in front of approximately 280,000 headstones and the bottom of about 7,000 niche (for cremated remains) rows — a tradition since 1948.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was dedicated in 1921 after four unknown Americans were exhumed from cemeteries in France following World War I.

The remains of Americans killed in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam war were added in the years after.

Soldiers from the regiment — known as Sentinels — keep solemn watch at the Tomb all day and night, 365 days a year, in any weather.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden was headed to Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day to take part in the traditional wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, along with first lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

He was then set to speak at the Arlington’s amphitheater as the nation observes the 154th Memorial Day.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley were scheduled to speak as well.

Monday’s observance comes after the Bidens spent an emotional day Sunday mourning the victims of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

After arriving from Delaware Monday morning, Biden and the first lady held what has become another Memorial Day tradition: a White House breakfast for Gold Star families.

When they return to the White House from Arlington, the Bidens will be joined by families of the fallen in a tree-planting ceremony on the White House South Lawn.

They’ll plant a magnolia tree in honor of those who lost their lives in service to the nation.

Memorial Day was originally know as Decoration Day, designated in 1868 after the Civil War to decorate the graves of soldiers.

It became a federal holiday in 1971.

According to the cemetery’s website, members of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment — known as “The Old Guard” — decorate the graves with small American flags on the Thursday before Memorial Day, known as the “Flags in” ceremony.

In the space of a few hours, Old Guard service members plant flags in front of approximately 280,000 headstones and the bottom of about 7,000 niche (for cremated remains) rows — a tradition since 1948.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was dedicated in 1921 after four unknown Americans were exhumed from cemeteries in France following World War I.

The remains of Americans killed in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam war were added in the years after.

Soldiers from the regiment — known as Sentinels — keep solemn watch at the Tomb all day and night, 365 days a year, in any weather.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NAPA COUNTY, Calif.) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was arrested in Napa County, California, on Saturday night for allegedly driving under the influence.

The 82-year-old was detained around 11:44 p.m. and booked on two misdemeanor counts — driving under the influence and driving with a blood alcohol content level of 0.08 or higher — according to the Napa County Criminal Justice Network’s records.

Paul’s bail was set at $5,000 and he was released on Sunday morning, the records show. Additional details of the incident were not immediately available. (The arrest was first reported by TMZ.)

Nancy Pelosi’s office said that she was across the country at the time of her husband’s arrest and would not discuss it further.

“The Speaker will not be commenting on this private matter which occurred while she was on the East Coast,” the statement read.

The California Democrat was in Providence, Rhode Island, on Sunday to deliver the 2022 commencement address at Brown University. She was also awarded an honorary doctorate degree.

During her remarks, the House leader called on graduates to help unify a “deeply divided” country, referencing the recent “senseless” mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.

“I see dazzling brilliance, beautiful diversity,” Pelosi told the crowd of graduates. “I see the future — and it is you. So class of 2022, go forward with courage to build unity and hold on to your hope.”

The Pelosis have been married since 1963 and have five children.

ABC News’ Nicholas Kerr and MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(UVALDE, Texas) — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrived in Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday to grieve with the community after 19 children and two teachers were killed in a school shooting there last week.

The Bidens first paid their respects at the memorial site at Robb Elementary School, accompanied by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Uvalde County Independent School District Independent Superintendent Dr. Hal Harrell and Robb Elementary School Principal Mandy Gutierrez.

Jill Biden was seen touching the photos of the children at the site, filled with flowers and white crosses in honor of each of the victims.

The president and first lady then attended mass at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church alongside hundreds of parishioners.

They are expected to visit with survivors, families of the victims and first responders, according to the White House.

Twenty-one people, including 19 third- and fourth-graders, were killed Tuesday after an 18-year-old gunman, Salvador Ramos, used an assault-style rifle to open fire on two connected classrooms at Robb Elementary, according to authorities.

“I’d hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this again,” President Biden said on Tuesday as he addressed the nation following the shooting. “Another massacre. Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school. Beautiful, second-, third-, fourth-graders,” he said.

Sunday’s visit to Uvalde is the second trip the president has taken in two weeks to comfort a grief-stricken community following a mass shooting.

On May 17, Biden traveled to Buffalo, New York, to meet with the families of the victims of the Tops supermarket shooting, which is being investigated as a hate crime. Ten people, all of whom were Black, were killed on May 14.

Biden addressed both the the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings on Saturday during his commencement speech at the University of Delaware, his alma mater.

“Too much violence. Too much fear. Too much grief,” he said, calling on Americans to work together to make the country safer. “Let’s be clear: Evil came to that elementary school classroom in Texas, to that grocery store in New York, to far too many places where innocents have died.”

ABC News’ Armando Garcia contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — In the aftermath of the Texas elementary school shooting, there are “serious” bipartisan negotiations underway on a new gun law intended to reduce future killings, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Sunday.

“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. “The pace of everyday gun violence has dramatically escalated over the past two years.”

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed after a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, not even two weeks after 10 Black people were killed in a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, that authorities described as a “racially motivated hate crime.”

After the Texas school shooting, Murphy gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor calling for legislative action on gun violence. “What are we doing?” he asked his colleagues, adding, “There have been more mass shootings than days in the year.”

The shooting at Robb Elementary School is now the second deadliest K-12 school shooting after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, in which 20 children and six staff members were killed in Newtown, Connecticut.

Murphy was finishing the end of his term as the congressman of that community when that shooting occurred in December 2012 and joined the Senate just weeks later. He’s since been a passionate advocate for gun law reform — an issue that faces GOP resistance in Congress, with conservatives arguing more laws are misplaced.

Ten years after the Sandy Hook shooting, Karl asked Murphy on Sunday, “What has been accomplished?”

“My hope is that this time is different,” Murphy said. “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.”

Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger is one Republican who says his views on gun control changed after a series of mass shootings. He told Karl that “raising the age of gun purchase to 21 is a no brainer.”

“If you look at the Parkland shooting, you look at Buffalo, you look at this shooting, these are people under the age of 21,” Kinzinger said. “We know that the human brain develops and matures a lot between the age of 18 and 21. We just raised — without really so much as a blink — the age of purchasing cigarettes federally to 21.”

Murphy said negotiations with Republican senators have included discussion of so-called “red flag” laws, expansion of the federal background check system, safe storage, mental health resources and increased security funding for schools. “A package,” he said, “that really in the end could have a significant downward pressure on gun violence in this country and break the logjam.”

Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran and current member of the Air National Guard, held an A-rating from the National Rifle Association until he began advocating for gun control measures including the banning of bump stocks. He still owns an AR-15, which many gun control advocates have been calling to ban.

“Help me understand, how did you go from being somebody that was right in line with the gun lobby on this to somebody who thinks it’s time to change these laws?” Karl asked.

“It’s a journey of getting sick of seeing the mass shootings,” Kinzinger said. “I’m a strong defender of the Second Amendment. And one of the things I believe — for some reason, it is a very rare thing — is that as a person that appreciates and who believes in the Second Amendment, we have to be the ones putting forward reasonable solutions to gun violence.”

Some states have passed gun control legislation in the wake of mass shootings. After 17 people were killed in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that state’s Republican-led legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who now serves in the Senate alongside Murphy, raised the minimum age to purchase a long gun to 21, improved background checks and banned bump stocks.

“Couldn’t that be a model?” Karl asked Murphy. “I mean, if [then-Gov.] Rick Scott could sign that into law in Florida, and support that in Florida, why couldn’t that pass in the United States Senate?”

“The Florida law is a good law and it’s a signal of what’s possible, right?” Murphy replied. “It’s also proof that Republicans could take on the gun lobby — because the NRA opposed that measure — and still get reelected.”

Kinzinger said the NRA has “gone from defending rights of gun owners… [to becoming] a grifting scam.” (The group is being sued by New York’s Attorney General Letitia James, who alleges financial misconduct. The NRA claims she is politically motivated.)

“The right to keep and bear arms is important to Republicans. It is to me, too,” Kinzinger said on Sunday. “But for some reason we’ve got locked in this position of ‘what are things where we can make a difference?'”

In Florida, Kinzinger said, “There was no blowback. Let’s do that kind of stuff now.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(MEXICO CITY) — The week-long Summit of the Americas, slated to start June 8 in Los Angeles, is a big deal for the Western Hemisphere — bringing together leaders from North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean.

But President Joe Biden’s opportunity to host the high-profile gathering is running into some major problems that threaten to undermine the meetings — and Biden’s push to reassert U.S. leadership in the region.

Several leaders are threatening to boycott the summit because the U.S. has decided to not invite the governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua. And without these leaders’ participation, agenda items like a region-wide agreement on migration and efforts to combat climate change and the economic and social impacts of COVID-19 are in doubt.

“If all of the countries are not invited, I am not going to attend,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reiterated Friday. He’s repeatedly said all of the region’s countries must be invited, including those that Washington considers authoritarian and are under U.S. sanctions — Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

Criticism like that has had the Biden administration scrambling to shore up attendance, including by dispatching Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Dr. Jill Biden, and a special adviser for the summit, former Democratic senator Chris Dodd.

“Is it going to be the Summit of the Americas or the Summit of the Friends of America? Because if those countries are excluded, what continent are they from? Are they not from the Americas?” López Obrador, known by his initials as AMLO, added during a press conference Friday.

Losing the leader of Mexico, the 15th largest economy in the world and one of the region’s most important players, would be a big blow. U.S. officials, including Dodd, Biden’s friend and former Senate colleague, have been talking to AMLO’s government to secure his attendance.

But AMLO is not alone. The leaders of Bolivia, Antigua and Barbuda, and Guatemala have announced they will not attend. And others, including in Chile and Argentina, have criticized the snubs.

Even Honduras, whose left-leaning female president — the first in the nation’s history — has been showered with attention by the Biden administration, has threatened to not attend.

“I will attend the summit only if all of the countries in the Americas are invited without exception,” President Xiomara Castro tweeted Saturday.

That line in the sand was drawn just hours after Castro spoke with Vice President Harris. Harris, who Biden tapped to oversee the administration’s efforts to address migration from Central America, has sought to secure an ally in Castro — attending her inauguration in January and becoming the first foreign leader Castro met with after taking office.

While the U.S. readout of their Friday call made no mention of the summit, that Castro voiced clear opposition so shortly after is another troubling sign for the administration.

“Whether or not a widespread boycott of the summit ultimately materializes, the stresses in U.S-regional relations will have been exposed in an unflattering light,” Michael McKinley, who served as U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, wrote in an opinion piece for the U.S. Institute of Peace.

“The uncertainties surrounding the summit,” he added, “are a wake-up call for the United States.”

Salvaging attendance could be one reason for those recent reversals in U.S. policy toward Cuba and Venezuela. Biden administration officials have denied that was the case, but a senior Caribbean-nation official said they made a difference in getting 13 of the 14 island nations to RSVP yes, according to Reuters. On Friday, the U.S. Treasury extended the oil company Chevron’s license to keep operating in Venezuela, stopping short of allowing the resumption of oil exports, but another good will gesture to Nicolás Maduro’s government.

But the U.S. made clear Thursday — it is not inviting the governments of Venezuela or Nicaragua, per Kevin O’Reilly, the top U.S. diplomat coordinating the summit. O’Reilly said the U.S. still doesn’t recognize Maduro’s legitimacy, but deferred to the White House on whether the U.S. would invite opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who the U.S. recognizes as Venezuela’s “interim president.”

While those exclusions were confirmed, whether Dodd and others can convince AMLO to come anyway is still an open question. The Mexican populist president, who’s said he may send his Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard in his place, left the door open — praising Biden as a “good person, he doesn’t have a hardened heart.”

But Dodd’s efforts appear to have paid off elsewhere — after meeting Dodd on Tuesday, the far-right president of Brazil, another of the region’s major powers, is attending, per Brazilian newspaper O Globo. It will be the first time Biden even speaks to Jair Bolsonaro, whose attacks on the environment and Brazil’s democratic institutions — and his close ties to Donald Trump — have cooled relations with the White House.

In addition to Dodd, the administration deployed first lady Jill Biden on a six-day goodwill tour through the region this month. Biden, who will attend the summit with the president, visited Ecuador, Costa Rica and Panama — and batted away concerns about a boycott in between stops promoting U.S. investment and assistance in each country.

“I’m not worried. I think that they’ll come,” she told reporters as she departed San Jose, Costa Rica, on May 23.

O’Reilly told the Senate Thursday that the White House has not made a decision yet about inviting Cuba — a week and a half after the administration reversed Trump’s hardline policies. The White House announced flights to cities beyond Havana will resume, people-to-people exchanges will be permitted, and remittances will no longer be capped, among other steps that moved toward, but fell short of the rapprochement under Biden’s old boss, Barack Obama.

But regardless of a U.S. invite, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced Wednesday that “under no circumstances” will he attend, accusing the U.S. of “intensive efforts and … brutal pressures to demobilize the just and firm claims of the majority of the countries of the region demanding that the Summit should be inclusive.”

The invitation list is also drawing criticism from Biden’s own party. Fifteen House Democrats, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Gregory Meeks, wrote to Biden Thursday expressing “concern” about the decision.

“We feel strongly that excluding countries could jeopardize future relations throughout the region and put some of the ambitious policy proposals your administration launched under Build Back Better World at risk,” they wrote in their letter.

Others on Capitol Hill have argued in the opposite direction– with Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate’s subcommittee for the Western Hemisphere, saying Thursday that the U.S. should not be “bullied” by AMLO or others and should not invite dictators.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — After the latest massacre in America — this time in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two adults were killed — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed his chamber would again take up legislation to address gun violence despite Republican opponents arguing the regulations are misguided.

Congress’ current divide on the issue is deeply rooted, tracing back to the mid-1990s, and has been shaped by electoral politics including the Democratic rout in the 1994 midterms that saw them lose the House for the first time in 40 years.

While Democratic lawmakers have at various times urged more federal gun reforms — mostly focused on assault-style or military-grade weapons and munitions and expanding the screening process for who can and cannot have a gun — Republicans say the focus should be elsewhere, on increasing public security and awareness of mental health and social issues.

Still the shootings continue, with new rounds of legislation often proposed in the wake of the worst killings: in Uvalde and in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school a decade earlier; and at Columbine High School 13 years before that, among other examples.

The prospect of a new federal law appears at the least very uncertain, given the partisan split. But legislators on both sides of the aisle are again talking, led by Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy. Areas of focus and possible agreement include expanding background checks on gun sales — which has been voted down in Congress multiple times — and so-called “red” and “yellow flag” laws that would prevent someone from possessing a firearm if they have certain histories of concerning behavior.

Here is a look back at notable pieces of federal gun legislation that either passed or were defeated in Congress. The timeline reflects in part how the politics around guns, and the coalitions of politicians focusing on it, have shifted over time — from anxieties about crime in the ’90s that drew bipartisan backing to major support for gun manufacturers in the early 2000s to outcry about reducing school killings, and beyond.

2021: The House Democratic majority passes two lightly bipartisan measures expanding background checks, despite Republicans reiterating objections on Second Amendment grounds. One bill increases the window for review on a sale from three to 10 business days; the other bill essentially requires background checks on all transactions by barring the sale or transfer of firearms by non-federally licensed entities (closing so-called private loopholes). House Democrats vote to approve the first bill along with two Republicans (and two Democrats voting no). All Democrats except for one along with eight Republicans vote yes on the second bill, which previously passed the House in 2019, also under Democratic control.

2018: Congress passes and President Donald Trump signs into law an incremental boost to the federal background check system for potential gun owners. (The legislation is included as part of a necessary government spending package approved by wide bipartisan margins.)

2017: Trump signs into law a congressional reversal of an Obama-era rule which would have added an estimated 75,000 people to the federal background check system who were receiving Social Security mental disability benefits through a representative. Republican majorities in the House and Senate are joined by a few Democrats — four in the Senate and and six in the House — in blocking the impending regulation, which is opposed by both civil liberties and gun rights advocates.

2017: The House Republican majority is joined by six Democrats — with 14 Republicans opposing, arguing federal overreach — in backing a measure expanding concealed carry permits across the country via a reciprocity law requiring states to honor permits issued elsewhere. The bill dies in the Senate.

2013-2016: Partially prompted by the Sandy Hook Elementary School and Pulse nightclub killings, Congress takes up and then votes down various measures to expand background checks for sales online and at gun shows and to block people on no-fly and terrorism watch lists from being able to buy firearms. In one representative set of votes, in 2016, Democratic and Republican senators (with Republicans in the majority) each advance two proposals that are blocked along party lines. While some of those measures garner a majority, none get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster as a potential winning compromise is frayed by differences over tactics and approach. Still, Susan Collins, R-Maine, reiterates hope — somewhere down the line — citing “tremendous interest from both sides of the aisle.”

2013: A bipartisan group in the Senate fails to approve their own expansion of concealed carry permits across the country, similar to what the House later takes up in 2017 and earlier tries to pass in 2011. Republicans, then in the minority, are joined by 12 Democrats — many of whom later say they oppose the expansion as the party and its base recommits to messaging around reducing guns and shootings.

2005: Congress’ Republican majority is joined by dozens of Democrats in passing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms, signed into law by President George W. Bush. The legislation shields gun manufacturers from legal liability in almost all instances where their firearms are criminally used — with exceptions for defects in gun design, breach of contract and negligence. (PLCAA has since become a major target of Democratic ire, singled out by President Joe Biden, though such protections are not unheard of for other industries.)

1999: Previewing failed efforts to come, Congress votes down legislation to institute background checks and waiting periods for purchases at gun shows.

1994: In what would become the last major piece of federal gun legislation enacted by Congress, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban bars the manufacture and possession of a broad swath of semiautomatic weapons. The provision is included as part of the sweeping 1994 crime bill, shepherded by then-Sen. Biden and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Gun legislation in this era is politically intertwined with federal efforts to curb crime. While the House narrowly passes the assault ban on its own and then later, successfully, via the overall crime legislation — in the first case, with most of the Democratic majority being joined by 38 Republicans; later, along with 46 Republicans — the crime bill is approved overwhelmingly in the Senate, with only two Democrats and two Republicans voting against and one Democrat, North Dakota’s Byron L. Dorgan, abstaining. The Senate approves with slimmer margins a reconciled version with the House in late 1994, with seven Republicans joining the Democratic majority. Clinton signs it shortly after. The assault ban includes some exemptions on the outlawed weapons along with a sunset date after 10 years, in what were seen as necessary concessions. Subsequent efforts to reauthorize the ban have failed.

1993: A year before the assault weapon ban, and amid sharp public concern about street-level crime, the House and Senate back the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (named for President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, who was gravely wounded in Reagan’s attempted assassination in 1981). Commonly known as the Brady bill, it institutes background checks for federally licensed sellers and initially imposes a five-day waiting period on sales — a provision that is later sunset with the launch of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Two-thirds of House Democrats are joined by a third of House Republicans in voting yes on the legislation. Although eight Democratic senators vote no (and one abstains), 16 Senate Republicans approve its passage along with the Democratic majority. President Clinton signs it into law.

ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler and Trish Turner contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.