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Texas massacre tests the Senate
May 25, 2022
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Let’s start here: The mass shooting Tuesday afternoon in Uvalde, Texas, is absolutely gut-wrenching. Nineteen young children and two adults were murdered during the last week of the school year at Robb Elementary School. The 18-year old gunman – who also died in the attack – shot his grandmother and then rammed his car into a barrier at the school. Police opened fire on the gunman before he entered Robb Elementary, according to media reports, but it didn’t stop him from launching his deadly rampage.
It is our charge to help you make sense of what might happen now in Washington.
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Let’s start with President Joe Biden. Biden made a plea last night for Congress to pass some kind of gun control package. Quite notably, Biden didn’t explicitly say what he thinks lawakers should do. Biden’s speech, delivered alongside First Lady Jill Biden, was raw and emotional.
Here are some excerpts:
“I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage. …
“Most Americans support common sense … gun laws. I just got off the trip from Asia, meeting with Asian leaders. And I learned of this while I was on the aircraft. What struck me on that 17-hour flight … was these kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world. Why? They have mental health problems, they have domestic disputes in other countries. They have people who are lost.
“But these kinds of mass shootings never happened with the kind of frequency they happen in America. Why? Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”
To be frank, Biden’s role in sparking legislative action is relatively limited. In this current configuration of government – a 50-50 Senate riven with hyper partisanship and a closely divided House – a president with approval ratings in the 30s can only help so much. But let’s talk about who can actually make things happen.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Last night, Schumer took a procedural step to place two gun control bills on the Senate’s legislative calendar: H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, and H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act (the “Charleston Loophole” bill). The House approved both of these measures in March 2021.
Understand what this means: Schumer can file cloture on the motion to proceed on these two bills – a procedural hurdle needed to begin debate – once they’re on the legislative calendar. This move by Schumer doesn’t guarantee a debate or a vote. It just moves the bills toward the legislative calendar.
Schumer has a decision to make. He can easily file cloture on the two background check bills and make Republican senators cast votes on them. Democrats may consider this to be politically savvy – and maybe it is. Maybe these are difficult votes for a few Republican senators.
But the important question is what will this accomplish? There almost certainly won’t be enough support to overcome a GOP filibuster on either of these bills. This is why Schumer didn’t want to schedule a gun vote following a recent racist shooting in Buffalo that left 10 Black people dead. Instead, Schumer set a vote for Thursday to begin debate on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, designed to help federal law enforcement agencies and the Pentagon counter violent threats from white supremacists. But Republicans are expected to block debate on this bill too.
The larger question remains: Is there a deal to be had? Has this tragedy changed the political dynamic enough? Will Schumer and his leadership team put in the behind-the-scenes work to try to get a deal, as far off as it seems? Will any Republicans be moved enough, after another horrific mass shooting, to do something?
In today’s political environment, Democrats cannot even dream of enacting an assault weapons ban. In fact, it seems unlikely the Senate can or will do anything.
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What could Congress actually do? The lowest-common denominator here seems to be a “red flag” law. These laws – already enacted in 19 states – allow authorities to temporarily take guns away from individuals considered to be a threat to themselves or others. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced such a proposal following two 2019 mass shootings in San Antonio and Dayton, Ohio.
Yet at this moment, there’s no bipartisan deal to move forward on this issue or even active discussion of what such a deal could look like.
“I haven’t talked to Sen. Graham… at all about this [proposal],” Blumenthal told us last night outside the Senate chamber. “There are threads of hope we can come together.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the majority whip and chair of the Judiciary Committee, said last night he didn’t think anything would happen.
“Let’s put the cards on the table – even the most basic gun safety provisions, supported by the overwhelming majority, are opposed by virtually every Republican senator. In a 50-50 Senate, where you need 60 votes….” Durbin shrugged.
Durbin added: “If these events are not persuasive, I don’t know any speech I could give that would be persuasive.”
In situations such as this, Republicans talk about mental health and say the problem isn’t the guns, but rather mentally ill gun owners.
Here’s Senate Minority Whip John Thune – a candid person by Senate standards – struggling with the topic. Pay close attention to the last sentence in particular. It pretty much sums up the state of the gun debate:
Thune: “I think you gotta figure out what’s the common thread. And the one that seems to be the common thread, in my view at least, is that these people are mentally deranged.”
Jake: “But mental illness is not unique to this country. There’s mental illness everywhere….”.
Thune: “If that’s the motivation behind these killings, then that’s the thing it seems to me you have to address … You don’t put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to firearms. There are a lot of them out there already. And mostly in the hands of law-abiding citizens. How you identify solutions depends on what you conclude the problem to be.”
Remember: The Senate is scheduled to leave as early as tomorrow for the two-week Memorial Day recess. There will likely be calls to remain in session in a bid to reach some kind of deal on gun-control legislation.
But there’s no sign that even Tuesday’s horror will break the stalemate over guns. Similar massacres haven’t in the past, dating all the way back to the 1999 Columbine shooting. Yet just imagine what it will say if the Senate leaves tomorrow after this massacre without doing anything.
One other thing to note: The NRA is holding its annual convention in Houston this weekend. Former President Donald Trump is the headliner, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and GOP Sen. Ted Cruz will also speak. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) was supposed to attend as well, but now he has a scheduling conflict.
The reaction from the Hill. You will see the challenges Schumer faces here.
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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), while shocked by the shooting, said he won’t support ending the legislative filibuster in order to enact new gun control laws.
“You would think there would be enough common sense people… The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity,” Manchin said.
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Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who has also opposed getting rid of the filibuster, didn’t respond to questions from reporters when approached in the Capitol last night.
“We’ll get our statement over to you,” Sinema said. You can find it here.
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Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.):
“What people immediately want to jump to are red-flag laws and virtually every one that I’ve seen here has been one that sweeps up law-abiding gun owners and [are] what I consider to be an overreach. So the question is can we actually get to a policy that can make a difference but [doesn’t take away their] Second Amendment rights and give them due process?”
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Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.):
”We need to set aside all the groups that are beating the shit out of us, that say ‘Take away all your guns!’ And the others that say, ‘Keep anti-aircraft weapons in your front yard.’ And let’s come to a decision that we can do something. To at least try to get our arms around this because this is totally unacceptable.”
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on whether Republicans will change their position:
“When things happen on your own block, life changes. And life may be changing. I don’t know. But these incidents just come too quickly. Too soon. And they’re brutal. And it’s not what America stands for. You know, we have some of the best police protection in the world here in the United States. And yet people pack weapons to secure their homes and then those weapons get used in other ways. And that’s a problem.”
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Here’s our exchange with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.):
Q: “Do you think legislative action can be taken to prevent further attacks like these?”
A: “I don’t think so.”
Q: “Why is that?”
A: “Well, I think it’d be very difficult. You’re talking about millions of people out there and there got to be some screwballs that are just totally unpredictable. And there’s no way to identify who they are. So I don’t think — none that I can think of.”
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Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa):
“I’ve been trying to get the ‘Eagles Act’ passed since I introduced it after the Parkland shooting. And this is something that’s got bipartisan support. It’s pretty simple: to be able to help people get the help from the Secret Service program to recognize people that [may cause] harm to themselves or harm to other people. So get them help and if they have mental health troubles like we know the guy in Buffalo, we know the guy in Parkland had, they wouldn’t be able to buy a gun.”
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Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska):
“I haven’t seen any of the details, but there’s often a common theme and it is young men who have been somehow … very disturbed by social media and things that lead to this and I mean, that is a common, common element. I don’t know that’s the case now. But to me, that’s the focus on mental illness and those issues.”
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Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine):
“One thing that many of us have supported is to have some sort of red flag law, along the lines of what Maine has … which requires due process and a medical professional to be involved, but I don’t know the details of the shooter here, of the killer. But that’s certainly something I think we’d look at.”
Remember: The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing today on Steven Dettelbach’s nomination to be ATF director.
FBI Director Christopher Wraywill also appear before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee this afternoon on the FBI’s FY 2023 budget request.
– Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan, Heather Caygle, Max Cohen and Christian Hall
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BIPARTISAN INNOVATION ACT
GOP senators to House Dems: Take our USICA bill
Top Republican senators negotiating the Bipartisan Innovation Act are frustrated with the pace of negotiation on the package. The schedule agreed to by House and Senate leaders – which we’ve reported – mandates that the chambers reach a deal on the outlines of a package by today. That clearly isn’t happening.
The GOP senators’ message to their House Democratic colleagues is this – start wrapping your head around the reality that the final product will resemble the Senate-passed USICA far more than the House-passed America COMPETES Act.
Our reporting has shown this has been clear for a while, mainly because USICA cleared the Senate with 68 votes. The House passed the COMPETES Act, on the other hand, with just one Republican vote.
It’s been a little less than two weeks since the conference committee tasked with reconciling the differences between the two China competitiveness bills formally kicked off. Staff discussions at the committee level are continuing on outstanding issues including the trade titles and revamping the National Science Foundation.
Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), a top GOP player in negotiations, unloaded to us yesterday that compromise is “going to require liberal House Democrats to understand this bill needs to resemble what we passed out of the Senate.” Here’s more from a worked-up Young:
“Democrats are gonna have to internalize the reality that this is not a negotiation to meet halfway between a partisan, liberal work product in the House and a bipartisan, 70-vote product in the Senate. That’s not how compromise works.
“My House colleagues have not yet understood that they need to make sure the bill looks like our Senate bill. Period. End of story. Full stop. Not moving towards their model, period. Or we won’t have a bill.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), another key Republican negotiator, flatly said the final product is “not gonna look like the House bill.”
“The quicker they go through the five stages of grief, the better,” Cornyn told us. “So I just think that’s the bottom line. I mean, I’m not making a threat. I’m just saying I think that’s the reality.”
Democrats we spoke to were less pessimistic. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) acknowledged “they’re two very different bills,” but added his conversations on the trade titles have been “constructive.” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said his discussions over the $52 billion in funding to beef up the U.S. semiconductor industry — an area where there is large bipartisan agreement — were going well.
Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)sought to shift blame on the lack of progress to Republicans.
“This is a victory far beyond any one senator or any one House member or any one president, so we’ve got to do it. But there’s always that drag from a number of Senate Republicans and House Republicans. …
“There’s clearly an attempt to slow-walk it or kill it from a number of members of both houses.”
Behind the scenes: Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) told us there are two classified briefings scheduled this week for conferees. One briefing will focus on research and development issues while the other will cover national security issues tied to the bill.
Remember: We reported last week that leadership wants the finished conference report filed by June 21. It’s an aggressive timeline. As always, we’ll be tracking the latest developments in the negotiations as they happen.
— Max Cohen, John Bresnahanand Heather Caygle
WASHINGTON X SILICON VALLEY
Klobuchar is ready to drop revised Big Tech bill
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) plans to release a new version of her Big Tech antitrust bill this week, and she’s hoping for a floor vote within the next month.
Here’s Klobuchar in an interview Tuesday:
“We’ve been revising it all along. We continue to make changes. But we’re pretty excited about the momentum we’re gaining. The polls look good, including the one Google accidentally leaked out. So we’re feeling positive. And [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer has just said we’ll have a vote. Sen. [Chuck] Grassley is all in with four cylinders to get this thing done.”
The Klobuchar-Grassley bill would have huge implications for the U.S. tech giants, particularly Amazon, Apple, and Google. They would be barred from using their dominant market positions and platforms to “preference” their own products or services.
The bipartisan legislation was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in late January, but it hasn’t been scheduled for a floor vote yet. The Big Tech companies have launched a major lobbying effort to stop the measure, as well as a similar version in the House. Schumer said he would put a bill on the floor if it has 60 votes to clear a filibuster.
Klobuchar added this on the timingfor a floor vote:
“I would hope it’s in the next month. But it’s gotta be this summer. Otherwise we won’t be able to get it done.
“We have been waiting since the advent of the Internet for a competition bill. If anyone says we’re moving too quickly, I’d suggest they look at that timeline.”
– John Bresnahan
PRIMARY SEASON
What we learned in Tuesday’s primaries
Big House news: Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) appears on track to barely survive a challenge from Jessica Cisneros. With more than 95% of the ballots counted, Cuellar had 50.2% of the vote and Cisneros had 49.8%.
If Cisneros couldn’t knock off Cuellar in the current environment — post-Roe leak and after Cuellar faced an FBI raid in his office and home — then it’s hard to see her ever beating the long-time Texas Democratic incumbent.
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Georgia: Former President Donald Trump got trounced in two races in Georgia and won one.
Gov. Brian Kemp topped Trump-endorsed David Perdue, 73.7% to 21.8%. This was not a surprise; public polling of the race showed Kemp well ahead in the days and weeks leading up to election day. The result represents the GOP’s biggest rebuke yet of Trump. The former president went in hard to unseat Kemp.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger narrowly avoided a runoff and beat Trump-endorsed Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), 52.3% to 33.4%. Unfortunately for Hice, he gave up a safe House seat to get beat by Raffensperger.
Former football star Herschel Walker advanced to officially face Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) in Georgia’s blockbuster Senate election. This race will be wildly expensive and could determine which party controls the Senate next year.
CNN’s Manu Raju asked Walker about whether he supports new gun laws in the wake of the Texas shooting. Walker said, “What I like to do is see it and everything and stuff.”
Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) defeated Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.) in a member-on-member primary. McBath received the backing of a wide range of groups, including House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Democratic Majority for Israel PAC and the Sam Bankman-Fried-supported Protect Our Future PAC.
There was no backlash among Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) primary electorate. The controversial, hard-right first-term representative won the GOP nomination in the 14th district by a wide margin.
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Alabama:Katie Britt and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) advanced to a runoff in the Alabama Senate GOP primary. Brooks edged out Mike Durant to claim the second spot. Remember: Trump endorsed and then unendorsed Brooks in this contest. Britt, retiring Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-Ala.) former chief of staff, will enter the runoff as the clear favorite.
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State Rep. Jasmine Crockett won the Democratic primary runoff in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas). EBJ had endorsed Crockett. Protect Our Future also ran ads in favor of Crockett.
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Arkansas: Jake Bequette’s long-shot bid to knock off Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) fell short. Bequette and PACs supporting the challenger spent big on the Arkansas airwaves portraying Boozman as a RINO. The message failed to break through with the state’s GOP voters, however. Elsewhere in the state, Sarah Huckabee Sanders advanced through the GOP gubernatorial primary. Sanders will likely be the first female governor in deep red Arkansas.
— Max Cohen and Jake Sherman
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JOB MOVES
New jobs at OPM
We have a number of new appointments at the White House Office of Personnel Management. OPM is one of the power centers in any administration. It helps fill scores of administration jobs from the top level to mid- and low-level roles.
Kemba Hendrix, a cohort member of Punchbowl News’ The Punch Up, will be senior adviser to the director of OPM.
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Tiffany Avila will be confidential assistant in the office of the director.
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Eric Bursch will be deputy director in the office of congressional, legislative and intergovernmental affairs.
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Khalilah Harris will be the deputy chief of staff in the office of the director.
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Yahaira Lopez will be chief of staff, human resources solutions.
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María Pastrana Luján will be the director of public engagement in the office of the director.
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Webb Lyons will be deputy general counsel in the office of the general counsel
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Benjamin C. Mizer will be general counsel
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David Padrino will be chief transformation officer.
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Ricardo Rauseo Landa will be special assistant in the office of communications.
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Janice Underwood will be the director in the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.
– Jake Sherman
THE CAMPAIGN
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This is an internal DCCC memo, so take it for just that:The race to fill Rep. Conor Lamb’s (D-Pa.) seat is deadlocked in a statistical tie. Lamb vacated his western Pennsylvania seat to mount an unsuccessful bid for Senate. Now, the Democratic nominee in the 17th district — Chris DeLuzio — is leading Republican Jeremy Shaffer 44% to 41% in a poll of 494 likely general election voters.
Remember: This is an internal Democratic poll, so take the results with a grain of salt. The margin of error is 4.4 percentage points. Check out the memo here.
PA-17 is rated as a Democratic toss-up by the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. The district has an even PVI. If Democrats hope to stand any chance of preserving their House majority, the party cannot afford to lose seats like this.
— Max Cohen
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FRONTS
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MOMENTS
Noon: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other senators will meet with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in the Capitol.
1:30 p.m.: President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.
4:30 p.m.: Biden will sign an executive order on police policy. Vice President Kamala Harris will also attend.
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