Politics

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate voted to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on Tuesday, making career prosecutor Steve Dettelbach only the second person to be confirmed as the agency’s director in 16 years.

Dettelbach, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio and currently a partner at the law firm BakerHostetler, was confirmed in a 48-46 vote, with Republicans Susan Collins and Rob Portman joining with Democrats to support his nomination.

He is Biden’s second choice to lead the agency. The prior nominee, former ATF agent and gun-control advocate David Chipman, was forced to withdraw following fierce opposition from gun groups and an online disinformation campaign.

Dettelbach has pledged to lead the bureau in a nonpartisan manner, but several Republicans have said they are still concerned over his views on gun regulations.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Makini Brice; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Paul Simao)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump tried to call a witness who has not yet appeared before the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Representative Liz Cheney said at the panel’s hearing on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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(Reuters) – Elon Musk said on Monday it was time for Donald Trump to “hang up his hat and sail into the sunset,” days after the former U.S. President mocked the billionaire at a political rally and called him a “Bull***t artist.”

Writing on Twitter, Musk said, “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”

“Dems should also call off the attack – don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the Presidency,” he added without explanation.

Musk’s remarks were in response to comments Trump made at a rally in Anchorage, Alaska on Saturday, where he was speaking in support of U.S. House of Representatives candidate Sarah Palin and U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka.

The former president said at the rally that Musk was not going to buy Twitter Inc and that the Tesla Inc chief executive had got himself a mess.

“(Musk) said the other day, I’ve never voted for a Republican. I said I didn’t know that; he told me he voted for me. He’s another bull***t artist, but he is not going to be buying it (Twitter),” Trump said.

Last month, Musk said at the Qatar Economic Forum that he had not decided whom he would support in the next presidential election, a week after saying on Twitter that he was leaning towards supporting Florida governor Ron DeSantis for president in 2024.

On Monday, Musk added that if DeSantis ran against Biden in 2024, “then DeSantis will easily win” and that “Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.”

(Reporting by Shivam Patel and Ann Maria Shibu in Bengaluru; Editing by Bradley Perrett)

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By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated five new federal judges, but did not at this time move forward with a plan opposed by a growing number of Democrats and progressives to appoint a Republican abortion opponent to a judgeship in Kentucky.

The latest nominees include Cindy Chung, a prosecutor Biden previously picked to serve as the U.S. attorney for Pittsburgh and is now seeking to make the first Asian American ever on the Philadelphia-based the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Biden also named four nominees for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, including two state court judges in Philadelphia who previously worked as public defenders representing indigent defendants.

Those two nominees are Judges Mia Perez and Kai Scott. The other two nominees are Kelley Hodge, a partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild, and John Murphy, a partner at Baker & Hostetler.

Not on Biden’s latest nominees list was Chad Meredith, a Republican former Kentucky solicitor general who the White House planned on June 24 to nominate to a judgeship despite his record defending abortion restrictions.

That day, though, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing a nationwide right to abortions. The nomination did not occur, though the White House has declined to say if it would later.

Biden on Friday said the Supreme Court decision was an exercise in “raw political power” and signed an executive order to ease access to services to terminate pregnancies.

Democratic Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky has said Meredith’s appointment was likely “a part of some larger deal on judicial nominations” with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, which McConnell has not confirmed.

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chairman, suggested on Monday Democrats might not support Meredith. “What’s in it for us?” he asked reporters.

The latest nominations came as progressives have stepped up calls for the White House and Senate Democrats to move quicker to fill 120 judicial vacancies before Republicans can potentially retake the chamber in November’s midterm elections.

“It would be a historic mistake to not take advantage of the coming weeks,” said Russ Feingold, a Democratic former senator from Wisconsin and leader of the American Constitution Society.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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By Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. lawmakers accused then-President Donald Trump on Tuesday of inciting a mob of followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a last-ditch bid to remain in power as Congress was formally certifying his election loss.

Members of a House of Representatives select committee investigating the attack said Trump had been told by advisers in his administration and his campaign that he had lost the 2020 presidential election and should concede to Joe Biden, but he chose to disregard their advice.

In video testimony, witnesses described a tense, six-hour meeting in December 2020 where Trump disregarded their advice and sided with outside advisers who urged him to keep pressing his baseless claims of election fraud.

Trump was ultimately responsible for the chaos that followed, they said.

“President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. … He is responsible for his own actions and his own choices,” said Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chairperson.

“The strategy is to blame people his advisers called ‘the crazies’ for what Donald Trump did. This, of course, is nonsense,” Cheney said.

Committee members said Trump incited the riot through his refusal to admit he lost the election and through comments like his Dec. 19, 2020, call on Twitter for supporters to flock to Washington for a “big protest,” saying, “Be there, will be wild.”

The committee’s seven Democrats and two Republicans have used the hearings to build a case that Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat in the November 2020 election constitute illegal conduct, far beyond normal politics.

Trump, a Republican who has hinted he may seek the White House again in 2024, denies wrongdoing and has falsely asserted that he lost only because of widespread fraud that benefited Biden, a Democrat.

‘NOT TOUGH ENOUGH’

The hearing also was to look at links between right-wing militant groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the QAnon internet conspiracy movement, Trump and his allies.

The hearing featured video testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former White House counsel, who spoke to committee investigators for eight hours behind closed doors on Friday.

Cipollone said he had urged Trump to concede.

The committee played recorded testimony from Cipollone and other Trump administration figures describing an angry meeting on Dec. 18 where a handful of Trump’s outside advisers, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, attorney Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne, chief executive of Overstock.com, encouraged him to fight the election result.

“I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice. I didn’t understand how they had gotten in,” Cipollone said.

The meeting lasted more than six hours, ending after midnight. Giuliani, who was escorted out of the White House grounds, said in video testimony his argument had been, “You guys are not tough enough. Or maybe I put it another way: You’re a bunch of pussies, excuse the expression. I’m almost certain the word was used.”

The attack on the Capitol, following a speech Trump gave at a rally outside the White House, delayed certification of Joe Biden’s election for hours, injured more than 140 police officers and led to several deaths.

The committee also played testimony from a former employee of Twitter describing his fear after Trump’s December tweet.

“It felt as if a mob was being organized and they were gathering together their weaponry and their logic and their reasoning behind why they were prepared to fight,” the employee said.

About 800 people, including members of both right-leaning groups, have been charged with taking part in the Capitol riot, with about 250 guilty pleas so far.

Trump and his supporters – including many Republicans in Congress – dismiss the Jan. 6 panel as a political witch hunt, but the panel’s backers say it is a necessary probe into a violent threat against democracy.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan, additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Doina Chiacu and Rose Horowitch; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Howard Goller)

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By Ted Hesson and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States will renew but not expand Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans in the country, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Monday, a move that leaves tens of thousands of recently arrived Venezuelans without access to the humanitarian program.

The Biden administration will offer an 18-month extension of TPS for Venezuelans who were in the United States by March 8, 2021, but not allow more recent arrivals to enroll, DHS said.

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has greatly expanded use of the TPS program, which provides deportation relief and work permits to immigrants in the United States if their home countries experience a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event. At the same time, Biden has struggled both politically and operationally with high numbers of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, including Venezuelans.

Since January 2021, U.S. Border Patrol agents have detained more than 144,000 Venezuelans at the southwest border.

The Biden administration granted TPS to Venezuela in March 2021, citing economic and political turmoil and human rights abuses under Socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

Democratic lawmakers and advocates had urged the administration to offer the protections to more recently arrived Venezuelans, but a source familiar with the matter said some U.S. officials were concerned that would encourage more irregular migration.

The Biden administration estimates that 343,000 Venezuelans are eligible under the existing TPS designation although application backlogs have left many waiting for approval.

About 76,000 had been approved as of early May, according to the office of U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat who called for Biden to offer protections to more Venezuelans.

The Biden administration remains at odds with Maduro and has kept in place much of the strict sanctions program against his government established under former U.S. President Donald Trump, but has taken some steps to slightly soften its policy in recent months.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Bill Berkrot)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A man whose son was killed in the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, interrupted President Joe Biden’s remarks at the White House on Monday during an event to herald the passage of the first major federal gun safety law in three decades.

Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin was murdered in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, shouted “we’ve already gone through this for years and years” at the event, during which Biden lauded the new law but said more needed to be done.

“Sit down and you’ll hear what I have to say,” Biden said from the lectern on the White House South Lawn before urging Oliver be allowed to speak. Oliver was escorted away from his seat and Biden continued with his address.

The incident underscored the difficulty Biden, a Democrat, has had in addressing the problem of gun violence. Advocates for stronger gun safety laws see him as an ally but want him to do more to stop the stream of gun-related deaths that have become a part of daily life in the United States.

Heralding a rare bipartisan agreement on the issue, Biden used the event on a clear, sunny day in Washington to call again for a ban on assault weapons. He said the country was “awash in weapons of war.”

Congress has shown little inclination to outlaw assault weapons after a ban on such weapons expired in 2004, but Biden is hoping to use growing American outrage about mass shootings to lead to greater pressure on lawmakers to change their mind.

“Assault weapons need to be banned,” he said. “I’m determined to ban these weapons again.” The Democratic president also said lawmakers should add safe storage laws requiring personal liability “for not locking up your gun.”

The U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, and the issue is a divisive one in American politics. Gun rights advocates argue that any move to restrict such protections can become a slippery slope, and the gun lobby has a powerful influence on many Republican lawmakers.

Biden said he supports the constitutional protections but said “the right to bear arms is not an absolute right to dominate all others.”

Vice President Kamala Harris was also present at the event, as were many members of Congress who approved the legislation and family members of some of the people killed in mass shootings, including the recent attacks in Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York; and Highland Park, Illinois.

The bipartisan bill came together just weeks after mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo that killed more than 30 people, including 19 children at an elementary school.

The law includes provisions to help states keep guns out of the hands of those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. It also blocks gun sales to those convicted of abusing unmarried intimate partners and cracks down on gun sales to purchasers convicted of domestic violence.

Biden, who is looking to improve sagging public approval ratings ahead of Nov. 8 midterm elections for control of Congress, made securing victories on gun control a part of his campaign pitch to voters.

(The story refiles to give full name of Parkland high school in 2nd paragraph.)

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Steve Holland and Nandita Bose; Editing by Bradley Perrett and Jonathan Oatis)

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By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden, marking the first major federal gun safety bill passed in three decades, said the United States is “awash in weapons of war” on Monday and renewed his call for assault weapons to be banned.

Congress has shown little inclination to outlaw assault weapons after a ban on such weapons expired in 2004, but Biden is hoping to use growing American outrage about mass shootings to lead to greater pressure on lawmakers to change their mind.

“Assault weapons need to be banned. They were banned. … I’m determined to ban these weapons again, and high-capacity magazines,” he said.

The Democratic president also said lawmakers should add safe storage laws requiring personal liability “for not locking up your gun.”

Biden also said he supports the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment that gives Americans the right to possess firearms, but said “the right to bear arms is not an absolute right to dominate all others.”

Biden, joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, spoke at an event on the White House South Lawn to commemorate recent passage of the gun safety bill, the first such new law on guns in 30 years.

In the audience were many members of Congress who approved the legislation and family members of some of the people killed in mass shootings, including the recent attacks in Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York; and Highland Park, Illinois.

The bipartisan bill came together just weeks after mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo that killed more than 30 people, including 19 children at an elementary school.

The law includes provisions to help states keep guns out of the hands of those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. It also blocks gun sales to those convicted of abusing unmarried intimate partners and cracks down on gun sales to purchasers convicted of domestic violence.

The gun bill came the same week as the Supreme Court expanded gun owners’ rights.

Gun control has long been a divisive issue in the nation, with several attempts to put new controls on gun sales failing time after time.

Biden, who is looking to improve sagging public approval ratings ahead of Nov. 8 midterm elections for control of Congress, made securing victories on gun control a part of his campaign pitch to voters.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland, Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Bradley Perrett and Jonathan Oatis)

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MEXICO CITY/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden will meet his Mexican counterpart on Tuesday to discuss ways to stem Mexican migrant crossings as arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border reached their highest levels in over a decade, with both sides hoping to address jobs and investment.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced the meeting in Washington last month just ahead of the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, which he shunned because it excluded some left-leaning Latin American countries.

Most governments at the summit, including Mexico, signed a declaration intended to help the region regulate migrant flows, and a senior Biden administration official said the White House talks are intended to build upon those shared commitments.

The declaration did not include any U.S. pledges for additional work visas for Mexicans, and that will form part of Lopez Obrador’s discussions with Biden, said two Mexican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to share the information ahead of the official announcement.

Lopez Obrador said on July 6 there was a grave shortage of workers in the United States and that he would seek to find a fix with Biden in the interests of both countries during the visit, his second to Washington since Biden took office.

“My vision is we’re going to agree on the labor issue and we’re going to put migrant flows in order, and we’re going to legalize hiring of workers,” he told a news conference.

Republican lawmakers have blamed Biden for the rising migrant numbers in the run-up to U.S. mid-term elections in November, and Texas in particular has sought to take the initiative in cracking down on illegal border crossings.

Lopez Obrador on Friday slammed Texas for one of its recent crackdown measures, saying he would urge people of Mexican origin in the United States not to vote for “anti-immigrant” candidates or parties in upcoming elections.

JOBS AND INVESTMENT

The two leaders will also make business announcements that will spur investment and jobs in Mexico, one of the Mexican officials said.

The senior U.S. official told Reuters the talks are expected to show “some progress” on resolving problems U.S. firms have faced in Mexico’s energy sector. Ken Salazar, U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said last month the two sides were working through such disputes involving over $30 billion in investment. High-level bilateral dialogue in September will focus heavily on investment, the official said.

Lopez Obrador’s interior minister last month said the United States had agreed to offer 300,000 work visas, with about half for Mexicans and the rest for Central Americans.

The U.S. government has not confirmed the numbers. If accurate, they would still be far short of migrant flows currently crossing the border.

The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said “promoting labor pathways” would be a key part of the White House discussions but declined to provide specifics.

The perils of the migration journey to the United States were shockingly exposed on June 27 when over 50 migrants died in a suffocating trailer truck found on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas.

Francisco Diaz, whose taxi driver brother was among the Mexicans to die in the truck, said the lure of better wages was still a powerful draw for his compatriots.

“All the young people want to pursue the American dream,” Diaz told Reuters at his home in the indigenous mountain town of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec in southern Mexico.

The higher number of arrests at the U.S. border partly reflect repeat attempts by migrants to enter the United States under a U.S. COVID-era policy that turns migrants back at the border.

It also reflects the fact that Mexico’s economy, which has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels, is struggling to create jobs while murders are running close to record totals.

“The demand in Mexico for going north has increased quickly,” said Andrew Selee, President of the Migration Policy Institute, pointing to economic woes and gang violence.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon, Dave Graham and Matt Spetalnick; Additional reporting by Jose Cortes in Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

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By Jarrett Renshaw

(Reuters) – Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia this week is a diplomatic challenge that comes with a thorny logistics question: Should the U.S. president be photographed meeting, or even shaking hands with, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman?

U.S. presidential visits, even with the closest of allies, are often highly choreographed affairs involving weeks of planning around seating arrangements, camera positions and how officials plan to walk into rooms to set up or avoid a handshake.

Biden, who called the Saudi government a “pariah” for its role in the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist and political opponent Jamal Khashoggi, is reluctantly meeting the crown prince, who U.S. intelligence believe was behind the killing.

But political experts say the White House understands that a photo, and perhaps one of the two men shaking hands, may be both inevitable and necessary, as Washington seeks to reset its relationship with the oil-rich nation and with a young crown prince destined to rule the kingdom for many years to come.

“I think the White House’s expectation is they’re going to be in the same room. They’re not going to be far apart. At some point, the crown prince is likely to come over and extend his hand and some sort of image will emerge,” said Jon B. Alterman, a former State Department official and senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

When it does, Biden is sure to face criticism from Republican opposition who argue the president is courting a questionable ally to boost oil production over domestic producers and from his own Democrats, who have urged Biden to delay any meeting due to human rights concerns.

Saudi officials have not disclosed whether MbS, as he is also known, or the ailing King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud will greet Biden when he arrives in Jeddah. Other details, such as whether there will be a formal dinner, have not been released.

BIDEN: HUMAN RIGHTS ON THE AGENDA

The White House did not respond to questions about the optics of the trip.

But in a Washington Post opinion piece published on Saturday, Biden wrote: “I know that there are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia. My views on human rights are clear and long-standing, and fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel abroad.”

He wrote that as president his job was to keep America strong and secure, put the country in the best possible position to outcompete China, counter Russian aggression and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world.

“To do these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes. Saudi Arabia is one of them, and when I meet with Saudi leaders on Friday, my aim will be to strengthen a strategic partnership going forward that’s based on mutual interests and responsibilities, while also holding true to fundamental American values,” Biden wrote.

The White House National Security Council has said that Biden would participate in a bilateral meeting with the king and the crown prince, but Biden has sought to emphasize the meeting with a broader set of Gulf leaders. Typically, leaders will emerge from bilateral talks and jointly take questions from reporters, but it is unclear whether that is the plan.

BUSH, OBAMA, TRUMP SAUDI PHOTO OPS

Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner of the United States, thanks to oil and regional politics, and since the end of World War Two, U.S. presidents and Saudi kings have met on several occasions. The meetings have included many notable achievements but also produced a few awkward moments.

A photo of President George W. Bush holding hands with an aged Saudi King Abdullah during a stroll on the president’s Texas ranch in 2005 raised eyebrows among Americans uncomfortable with the Arab custom of men holding hands.

In 2009, Barack Obama greeted the Saudi King with what appeared to be a bow, and conservatives and Republicans were critical. The White House said that the president was “stooping” to look the feeble king in the eye while shaking hands.

In 2017, Donald Trump, who lambasted Obama for his alleged bow, greeted MbS with a firm, vertical handshake, then drew criticism from Democrats for bowing to MbS when accepting a civilian medal from the crown prince.

Biden on Friday will become the first president to fly from Israel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, he wrote. He called it a small symbol of “the budding relations and steps toward normalization” between Israel and the Arab world.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose; Editing by Heather Timmons, Chris Reese and Howard Goller)

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