Politics

(Reuters) – A total of 10 bills have been introduced in the New York State Legislature intended to tighten gun control, including one that would raise the minimum age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21, Governor Kathy Hochul said on Tuesday.

State lawmakers will consider the proposals following two mass shootings in the past month: at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in which 10 people were slain and at school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed. In both cases, the alleged gunman was 18 years old.

“Within the last month, two horrific mass shootings in Buffalo and in Texas have rattled this nation to our core and shed a new light on the urgent need for action to prevent future tragedies,” Hochul said in a statement.

The first funeral services for victims of the Uvalde shooting rampage were scheduled for Tuesday, for a pair of 10-year-old girls killed in the attack.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

source

HONOLULU (AP) — A U.S. judge last week sentenced a former elected Hawaii official to 20 years in prison for leading a drug-trafficking ring.

Arthur Brun said last year he sold methamphetamine to support his drug habit even while serving as a member of the county council on the island of Kauai. He pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, assault of a law enforcement officer, witness tampering and other charges.

Prosecutors said Brun, 50, conspired with a gang leader, requested sexual favors as payment for drugs and assaulted a law enforcement officer.

He was indicted with 11 others, who have all pleaded guilty to various charges, according to prosecutors.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson sentenced Brun last Thursday. In March, Watson rejected a deal between Brun and prosecutors for a 15-year sentence.

When Brun was arrested in 2020, he was vice chair of the council’s Public Safety and Human Services Committee. His term ended later that year, while he was incarcerated without bail.

In 2019, a Kauai police officer pulled over Brun after the then-councilman received more than a pound of methamphetamine from a gang leader, prosecutors said. Brun sped off while the officer tried to remove the keys from the ignition in Brun’s car.

Brun said he threw the drugs out of the car’s window so that authorities would not find it.

source

By Jarrett Renshaw and Gabriella Borter

UVALDE, Texas (Reuters) -President Joe Biden landed in the Texas town of Uvalde on Sunday to comfort families ripped apart by the worst U.S. school shooting in a decade as the public demands answers about why local police failed to act swiftly.

There was mounting anger over the decision by local law enforcement agencies in Uvalde to allow the shooter to remain in a classroom for nearly an hour while officers waited in the hallway and children inside the room made panicked 911 calls for help.

Biden will meet with victims’ families, survivors and first responders, attend a church service and visit a memorial erected at the Robb Elementary School where the gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.

Julian Moreno, who was attending Sunday services at Primera Iglesia Bautista where he previously served as pastor, said the police had made “a huge mistake” but that he did not hold it against them.

“I feel sorry for them because they have to live with that mistake of just standing by,” Moreno, whose great-granddaughter was among those killed in Tuesday’s shooting, told Reuters.

Police say the gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle after earlier killing his grandmother at the house they shared.

Official accounts of how police responded to the shooting have flip-flopped wildly, with calls mounting for an independent probe.

Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly called for major changes to America’s gun laws but has been powerless to stop mass shootings or convince Republicans that stricter controls could stem the carnage.

The Texas visit is his third presidential trip to a mass shooting site, including earlier this month when he visited Buffalo, New York, after a gunman killed 10 Black people in a Saturday afternoon attack at a grocery store.

The Uvalde shooting has once again put gun control at the top of the nation’s agenda, months ahead of the November midterm elections, with supporters of stronger gun laws arguing that the latest bloodshed represents a tipping point.

“The president has a real opportunity. The country is desperately asking for a leader to stop the slaughter from gun violence,” said Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America.

‘WEAPON OF WAR’

Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on assault-style weapons during a trip to Buffalo on Saturday, saying that in the wake of the two back-to-back mass shootings such arms are “a weapon of war” with “no place in a civil society.”

White House aides and close allies say Biden is unlikely to wade into specific policy proposals or take executive action to crack down on firearms because that could disrupt delicate negotiations in the divided Senate.

Senate Democrats have also dialed down the rhetoric as negotiations continued during the chamber’s Memorial Day holiday recess this week.

“We’ve got to be realistic about what we can achieve,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin told CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday. Durbin’s fellow Democrats narrowly control the 50-50 split Senate but need 60 votes to pass most legislation.

Leading Republicans like U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former President Donald Trump have rejected calls for new gun control measures and instead suggested investing in mental health care or tightening school security.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, denied that newly enacted Texas gun laws, including a controversial measure removing licensing requirements for carrying a concealed weapon, were relevant to Tuesday’s bloodshed and instead also pointed to mental illness.

Ramos, a high school dropout, had no criminal record and no history of mental illness but did post threatening messages on social media ahead of the shooting.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, Gabriella Borter and Brad Brooks in Uvalde, Texas; additional reporting by Heather Timmons in Washington; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Kieran Murray and Lisa Shumaker)

source

By Gabriella Borter and Jarrett Renshaw

UVALDE, Texas (Reuters) -President Joe Biden flew to the Texas town of Uvalde on Sunday to comfort families ripped apart by the worst U.S. school shooting in a decade as the public demands answers about why local police failed to act swiftly.

There was mounting anger over the decision by local law enforcement agencies in Uvalde to allow the shooter to remain in a classroom for nearly an hour while officers waited in the hallway and children inside the room made panicked 911 calls for help.

Biden will meet with victims’ families, survivors and first responders, attend a church service and visit a memorial erected at the Robb Elementary School where the gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.

“Too much violence, too much fear, too much grief,” Biden told graduates in a commencement speech on Saturday at the University of Delaware. “We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer. We can finally do what we have to do to protect the lives of the people and of our children.”

Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly called for major changes to America’s gun laws but has been powerless to stop mass shootings or convince Republicans that stricter controls could stem the carnage.

The Texas visit will be his third presidential trip to a mass shooting site, including earlier this month when he visited Buffalo, New York, after a gunman killed 10 Black people in a Saturday afternoon attack at a grocery store.

The Uvalde shooting has once again put gun control at the top of the nation’s agenda, months ahead of the November midterm elections, with supporters of stronger gun laws arguing that the latest bloodshed represents a tipping point.

“The president has a real opportunity. The country is desperately asking for a leader to stop the slaughter from gun violence,” said Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America.

Volsky urged Biden to enlist a senior official to tackle the country’s gun problem and pressure Congress to pass meaningful gun reform, saying Biden had promised to be a deal maker and to tackle gun violence.

‘WEAPON OF WAR’

Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on assault-style weapons during a trip to Buffalo on Saturday, saying that in the wake of the two back-to-back mass shootings such arms are “a weapon of war” with “no place in a civil society.”

White House aides and close allies say Biden is unlikely to wade into specific policy proposals to avoid disrupting delicate gun control negotiations in the divided Senate.

He is also unlikely to take executive action to crack down on firearms because that could send Republican lawmakers otherwise open to negotiations back to their corners.

Senate Democrats have also dialed down the rhetoric as negotiations continued during the chamber’s Memorial Day holiday recess this week.

“We’ve got to be realistic about what we can achieve,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin told CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday. Durbin’s fellow Democrats narrowly control the 50-50 split Senate but need 60 votes to pass most legislation.

Leading Republicans like U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former President Donald Trump have rejected calls for new gun control measures and instead suggested investing in mental health care or tightening security at the nation’s schools.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, denied that newly enacted Texas gun laws, including a controversial measure removing licensing requirements for carrying a concealed weapon, had “any relevancy” to Tuesday’s bloodshed.

He suggested state lawmakers focus renewed attention on addressing mental illness.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw aboard Air Force One; Gabriella and Brad Brooks in Uvalde, Texas; additional reporting by Heather Timmons in Washington; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Kieran Murray and Lisa Shumaker)

source

By Jarrett Renshaw

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Sunday headed to a Texas town to comfort families ripped apart by the largest U.S. school shooting in a decade amid lingering questions about whether law enforcement’s failure to act swiftly contributed to the death toll.

Biden’s familiar role as consoler-in-chief will be complicated by local anger over a decision by law enforcement in Uvalde, Texas, to allow the shooter to remain in a classroom for nearly an hour while officers waited in the hallway and children in the room made panicked 911 calls for help.

Investigators on Saturday were seeking to determine how critical mistakes were made in the response to the shooting that left 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School dead, and some are calling on the FBI to look into police actions.

Biden is scheduled to visit a memorial erected at the school, and meet with victims’ families, survivors and first responders.

“He has to stay focused on the pain and grief of the families and the community and understand that all of this has been compounded by the fact that we still don’t know exactly what happened. The more we learn, the more it seems the children were poorly served,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist and a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The Democratic president also confronts the stark reality that he has been relatively powerless to stop American mass shootings or convince Republicans that stronger gun controls could stem the carnage.

The Texas visit will be his third presidential trip to a mass shooting site, including earlier this month when he visited Buffalo, New York, after a shooting that left 10 Black people at a supermarket dead.

“Too much violence, too much fear, too much grief,” Biden told graduates in a commencement speech Saturday at the University of Delaware. “We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer. We can finally do what we have to do to protect the lives of the people and of our children.”

The Uvalde shooting has once again put gun control at the top of the nation’s agenda, months ahead of the November midterm elections, with supporters of stronger gun laws arguing that the latest bloodshed represents a tipping point.

“The president has a real opportunity. The country is desperately asking for a leader to stop the slaughter from gun violence,” said Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America.

He urged Biden to immediately enlist a senior official to tackle the country’s gun problem and crisscross the United States to pressure Congress to pass meaningful gun reform, saying Biden promised to be a deal maker and to tackle guns.

Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on assault-style weapons during a trip to Buffalo on Saturday, saying that in the wake of two back-to-back mass shootings such arms are “a weapon of war” with “no place in a civil society.”

White House aides and close allies say Biden is unlikely to wade into specific policy proposals to avoid disrupting delicate gun control negotiations in the Senate. He is also unlikely to immediately take executive action to crack down on firearms, sending Republican lawmakers otherwise open to negotiating back to their corners, aides say.

Meanwhile, leading Republicans like U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former President Donald Trump rejected calls for new gun control measures and instead suggested investing in mental health care or tightening security at the nation’s schools.

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott denied that newly enacted Texas gun laws, including a controversial measure removing licensing requirements for carrying a concealed weapon, had “any relevancy” to Tuesday’s bloodshed. He suggested state lawmakers focus renewed attention on addressing mental illness.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Heather Timmons; additional writing by Susan Heavey; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Hugh Lawson)

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to charges that he stormed the U.S. Capitol last year to disrupt Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote, court filings show.

Matthew Mark Wood pleaded guilty on Friday to all six counts in his March 2021 indictment, including a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding. The other five counts are all misdemeanors.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is scheduled to sentence Wood on Sept. 23.

A day before the riot, Wood drove from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., with his grandmother and another relative. Less than a week earlier, Wood sent a text message to another person that said, “If they want to raid Congress, sign me up,” according to a court filing accompanying his guilty plea.

After the riot erupted, Wood entered the Capitol by climbing through a window. He followed others on a path toward the Senate chamber but left the area without entering it.

After rioters breached a police line in the Capitol Crypt, Wood followed others up a staircase and into the House Speaker’s office suite. He left the Capitol through a door more than an hour after he entered the building, the filing says.

In a text message to somebody a day after the riot, Wood said he “took a stand” but called it “extremely inappropriate.”

“I can’t believe I participated in such chaos,” he added.

The riot disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.

Wood was arrested in Winston Salem, North Carolina, last year.

At a separate hearing on Friday, a Maryland man pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge stemming from the Capitol riot. Matthew Joseph Buckler is scheduled to be sentenced on July 21 after pleading guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. Buckler, of La Plata, Maryland, entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 by climbing through a broken window.

More than 800 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Jan. 6 riot. At least 300 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors, and nearly 200 of them have been sentenced. Approximately 100 others have trial dates.

source

By Arathy Somasekhar and Kanishka Singh

HOUSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump on Friday argued the United States should make it easier to confine “deranged” people and eliminate gun-free school zones after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers this week at a Texas school.

“Clearly, we need to make it far easier to confine the violent and mentally deranged into mental institutions,” Trump said in a speech at a convention in Houston of the National Rifle Association, a gun rights advocacy group.

Tuesday’s fatal shooting of 19 pupils and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, by an 18-year-old gunman equipped with an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle again focused attention on the NRA, a major donor to Congress members, mostly Republicans.

On suggestions to improve the security of schools, Trump said every school should have a single point of entry, strong fencing and metal detectors, adding there should also be a police official or an armed guard at all times in every school.

“This is not a matter of money. This is a matter of will. If the United States has $40 billion to send to Ukraine, we can do this,” he said, referring to Washington’s financial and military support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in February.

The former U.S. president also called for eliminating gun-free school zones, adding that such zones leave victims with no means to defend themselves in case of an attack by an armed person.

“As the age-old saying goes, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Trump added.

“The existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens.”

Video images of the main auditorium in Houston, which holds about 3,600 people, showed it to be about half-full as Trump took the stage on Friday afternoon.

(Reporting by Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar in Houston; additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington; writing by Kanishka Singh; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)

source

COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) — Wayne Black was one of the few African Americans in the crowd as about 100 people gathered recently at the Republican Party headquarters near Columbus, Georgia, to hear from U.S. Senate candidate and football legend Herschel Walker.

A member of the Muscogee County Republican Executive Committee, Black said he found a certain promise in Walker’s candidacy, a GOP voice who could appeal to African Americans and others in Georgia who have traditionally voted Democratic.

“They identify with him from the standpoint of the American dream,” Black said. “You can start from nothing and if you work hard, you can achieve the American dream.”

But that optimism ran into headwinds about 100 miles to the north. As she left an Atlanta polling site, Wyvonia Carter said her choice in what might be the most competitive Senate race this year was not particularly complicated.

“You know I’m Black, right?” the 84 year-old said. “I’m a Democrat. That’s it.”

In this Deep South state where the painful history of slavery, segregation and racial injustice is ever-present, voters for the first time have selected two Black candidates to represent the major parties in a Senate race. After handily winning their respective primaries on Tuesday, Walker will take on Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in a general election campaign that could help decide control of the Senate.

The race will test whether Democratic gains in 2020 were a blip or the start of a political realignment in a rapidly changing state. In November 2020, Joe Biden was the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state in 28 years, and just two months later, Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff flipped two longtime Republican Senate seats, handing their party a narrow majority in the Senate.

Black voters were crucial in helping Democrats secure those victories and will likely be decisive again this year.

The issue is less about whether Walker will break the bond that Black voters have had with Democratic candidates. It is more about whether Black voters, frustrated by a lack of progress in Washington on issues ranging from a policing overhaul to voting rights, simply sit this election out. In a close election, even a small change in voting patterns could be decisive.

Republicans hope Walker’s candidacy can at least neutralize the issue of race in the campaign.

“In this race, Black Georgians will not have to contend with the race issue,” said Camilla Moore, chair of the Georgia Black Republican Council. “And I really do believe by culture, we’re socially conservative. I think Herschel just has to be Herschel and tell his conservative message.”

But in interviews in recent weeks, many Black voters said they would not give Walker a second look because of his race. They said they were driven by policy considerations, and Walker, who was backed by former President Donald Trump and is generally in line with GOP orthodoxy, does not address their needs.

Louis Harden, a 58-year-old Black voter in Atlanta, said he is backing Warnock because of the senator’s support for Medicaid expansion.

“It doesn’t matter about the color,” he said. “It’s just the issues, who’s going to get the job done.”

There are only a few modern instances in which two Black people have emerged as the nominees in a Senate race.

Democrat Barack Obama faced Republican radio host and former diplomat Alan Keyes in his 2004 Senate campaign in Illinois. More recently, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican, was unsuccessfully challenged in 2016 by Thomas Dixon, a North Charleston pastor.

But the Warnock-Walker matchup is unique because it is playing out in a far more competitive state than Illinois, a Democratic stronghold, or South Carolina, where Republicans are dominant. Also, the candidates in Georgia are already well known, representing two institutions that are revered in the South: church and football.

Walker, among Georgia’s most well-known sports figures, won a championship and the Heisman Trophy while at the University of Georgia in the 1980s. Warnock is the senior pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached.

“This is going to be a historic matchup,” said Stan Deaton, a scholar at the Georgia Historical Society.

But to make a dent in Warnock’s support among Black voters, Walker will need to do more to appeal to the Black community, said Leah Wright Rigueur, a political historian at Johns Hopkins University who has written about efforts by Black Republicans to broaden the party’s largely white base.

Republican candidates who do well among African American voters have the ability to craft a political identity that is independent from the party, something she said Walker has not done so far. Black voters also consider how a candidate treats his or her community and may view African American candidates who stick to Republican talking points more harshly than their white counterparts, Wright Rigueur said.

“And the reason why is because it’s viewed as a betrayal,” she said. “It’s viewed as community betrayal.”

Walker has largely hewed to Republican messaging about race. He has defended Trump against criticism that Trump was racist, he has accused Black Lives Matter of wanting to destroy the country and he has said “Black-on-Black crime” is far worse than violence by police. Walker has come under scrutiny over allegations that he threatened his ex-wife’s life and dramatically inflated his record as a businessman.

Warnock, the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, has embraced King’s legacy of racial justice and equal rights. After the killing of George Floyd by police in May 2020, Warnock expounded on the country’s struggle with a “virus” he called “COVID-1619” for the year when some of the first slaves arrived in what is now the United States. On Capitol Hill, he has attacked Republicans’ push for tighter voting rules as “Jim Crow in new clothes.”

Warnock “has a record of fighting to improve the lives of all Georgians,” Warnock campaign manager Quentin Fulks said in a statement, citing as examples Warnock’s efforts to forgive student loan debt and address the high rates of maternal mortality.

“The people of Georgia, no matter their race, will make the decision about who is up for the job and best able to represent the people of Georgia,” he said.

A spokesperson for Walker’s campaign, Mallory Blount, said all Georgians, regardless of race, are facing problems created by Democrats and that Walker is “sick and tired of politicians constantly dividing people based on the color of their skin.”

Walker told a House subcommittee last year while testifying against reparations for slavery that “Black power” is used to “create white guilt.”

In his memoir, “Breaking Free,” Walker said his mother taught him that “color was invisible” and doing right or wrong was what mattered.

“I never really liked the idea that I was to represent my people,” he wrote. “My parents raised me to believe that I represented humanity — people — and not black people, white people, yellow people, or any other color or type of person.”

Still, Black Republicans in Georgia expect Walker to try hard to woo the African American community during the general election. They also believe his personal story about overcoming obstacles to reach the top ranks of college football and then the NFL will find an audience among Black voters.

“Self-determination has always been a big thing in the Black community since we got out of slavery,” said Leonard Massey, who is Black and is chairman of the Chatham County Republican Party in eastern Georgia. “He actually shows how to get to the next level.”

___

Associated Press writer Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics

source

By Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Gun safety advocates are pushing U.S. President Joe Biden to take stronger measures on his own to curb gun violence after the Texas elementary school shooting, but the White House is putting responsibility on Congress to pass laws that would have more impact.

The White House has spoken with gun safety groups since Tuesday’s rampage in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed – the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade – activists said.

The groups are urging Biden to make an emergency declaration on gun violence, name a gun violence czar, advocate lifting the Senate filibuster if necessary and issue an executive order on background checks for firearms purchases if lawmakers do not pass legislation tightening loopholes in current law.

For the moment, the Biden administration is pressing Congress to pass tighter gun laws that can have more lasting impact than executive action. The White House has been in touch with top Democrats in Congress regarding next steps on firearms laws.

Bills backed by Democrats requiring background checks, banning semi-automatic rifles and strengthening gun safety measures have failed for a decade in Congress in the face of stalwart Republican opposition and objections from some moderate Democrats and independents. Gun-rights advocates believe in a broad interpretation of U.S. constitutional protections for keeping and bearing arms.

Democrats in Congress said Wednesday they would try again on legislation.

“The plan is to work hard at a compromise for the next 10 days,” said Senator Chris Murphy. “Hopefully, we succeed and the Senate can vote on a bipartisan bill that saves lives.”

After the Texas gunman, identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to kill students and teachers before being killed, many gun safety activists demanded more urgency from the White House.

“President Biden is not doing enough,” David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, Florida, high school massacre, said on Wednesday.

The White House has said it was looking at every tool at its disposal to stop gun violence, including executive action, but stressed that Biden needed help from the legislature.

“It is time for Congress to act,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who was grilled by reporters about what the administration was doing on the issue. “The president cannot do this alone.”

PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY

Since taking office in January 2021, the Biden administration has taken several steps without Congress. They include requiring that “ghost guns,” which are often assembled from kits, be regulated the same way as traditional firearms, and launching a strike force aimed at cracking down on illegal firearms trafficking in major cities, including New York and Los Angeles.

Gun safety advocates say there is more the president can do alone.

“He should declare gun violence a public health emergency,” said Kris Brown, president of Brady, a gun violence protection group. “We need to tackle this in a way that prevents the violence from happening in the first place and not walk away from it because it’s a public health emergency that happens to involve guns.”

A national emergency declaration gives the president additional statutory powers to address a crisis. The White House says Biden has already called it an emergency and a legal invocation would not lead to the authorities needed to address gun violence.

Brown said if the Senate did not pass gun safety measures under consideration, Democrats should lift the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes in the 100-member body to approve legislation. Biden, a former U.S. senator, has been largely reluctant to advocate such a change to pass his policy agenda.

Po Murray, who chairs the grassroots group Newtown Action Alliance, said the White House needs an office of gun violence prevention. “We appreciate that (domestic policy council director) Susan Rice is tasked with addressing this issue, but we believe we need somebody that could spend 100% of his or her time doing this work,” Murray said.

“Since we elected a gun safety president, he could certainly do more,” she said.

Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords, a gun violence protection group founded by former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, said the White House should write an executive order on background checks if a bill does not pass.

It could be used to mandate that anyone who sells as few as two guns per year would need to become a federal firearms licensee and conduct background checks, he said.

“The administration needs to make gun violence protection a governing – not just a political – priority,” Ambler said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal; additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Joey Roulette; editing by Heather Timmons, Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)

source

OREGON CITY, Ore. (AP) — Voters in an Oregon county where a ballot-printing error has delayed primary results for nearly two weeks have elected the same county clerk five times in the past 20 years despite missteps that impacted two previous elections and cost taxpayers at least $100,000.

Opponents have repeatedly tried to unseat Clackamas County Clerk Sherry Hall, who was first elected in 2002, following elections errors in 2004, 2010 and 2011 and a state vote-tampering investigation in 2012. Hall makes $112,600 a year in the nonpartisan position overseeing elections, recording property transactions, keeping public records and issuing marriage licenses. She is running for a sixth four-year term in November in the suburban county south of Portland.

The latest scandal in Oregon comes against the backdrop of a polarized political landscape in which vote counts are increasingly scrutinized. Races for local elections clerks — who until recently toiled in obscurity and relative anonymity — are getting new attention, particularly from right-wing voters who deny that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

Local elections chiefs are the first line of defense for elections integrity, but most voters don’t know who their county clerk is, or even what they do, and are likely to skip over the nonpartisan race on Election Day, or simply pick the incumbent. Some county clerks are appointed, but in many counties in Oregon and elsewhere they are beholden to the whims of voters who may not be paying attention, said Christopher McKnight Nichols, an associate professor of history at Oregon State University.

There’s a “myopia and invisibility about this sort of office in American public life,” he said.

The situation in Oregon’s third-largest county underscores the importance of such contests.

In the current election, tens of thousands of ballots sent out with blurry barcodes were rejected by a vote-counting machine. The issue affected Democratic and nonpartisan ballots more than Republican ones, state officials have said. The fiasco forced the county to shift nearly 200 county employees to vote tabulation duties; county officials don’t yet know the full cost of the cleanup job.

For days, workers have been transferring each voter’s intent from spoiled ballots to fresh ones, by hand using purple markers, in a painstaking process that might not be complete for more than two more weeks. More than 81,000 ballots out of more than 116,000 had been counted by early Friday, and nearly 35,000 spoiled ballots remained to be duplicated, according to county tallies.

“This affects all of us. This is voter integrity,” said Janet Bailey, a Republican voter who protested outside the Clackamas County election offices Thursday with about a dozen others. “We, in Oregon, a week ago we had our primary, and we still don’t know the results.”

Hall knew of the problem with the ballots on May 3, but did not take significant action until after the election on May 17, when it became clear the vote tally was substantially delayed. The Oregon Secretary of State has said Hall refused offers of help from the state; at least one Democratic state lawmaker has demanded a legislative inquiry into the ballot blunder.

Meanwhile, the results of several contests, including the much-watched Democratic primary for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, remain undecided. And some voters are seizing on the county’s problems to demand an end to Oregon’s trailblazing vote-by-mail system and the use of electronic machinery to count votes.

“Our votes have to count,” said Cindy Hise, a Clackamas County voter who wants the entire primary redone. “This has been going on for days. We’re past all hope of it being a true vote.”

Hall declined a phone or in-person interview with The Associated Press for this story but said in response to emailed questions Thursday that she would cooperate with any investigation. She said she has no comment on calls from some for her resignation.

She also addressed numerous 2020 contributions she made to national Republican causes, saying in a brief email that she “maintains neutrality.” The donations to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and to WINRED, a Republican Party fundraising platform, were all $100 or less.

“I have the right as a private citizen to exercise free speech and association. I do give small contributions to a large number of organizations,” she wrote. “I do not accept endorsements of any kind.”

Controversy isn’t new to Hall, who has overseen the county’s elections since she took office in 2003.

— In 2004, the county excluded three annexation questions on ballots mailed to 300 voters and didn’t alert the public for 10 days.

— In 2010, a county commission race was listed on the primary ballot when it should not have been. The ballots were reprinted at a cost of more than $100,000. Hall later filed a complaint with state elections officials saying the episode, including press “leaks” and public criticisms of her by county officials, cost her primary votes and forced her into a November runoff.

— In 2012, an elections worker was caught tampering with two ballots and was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

— In 2018, Hall placed her name and the county clerk title on the ballot return envelopes and on voter information pamphlets while also seeking reelection to the post, a decision critics called egregious self-promotion in a tight race.

Hall said in her email that all the elections incidents “did happen under my watch” and that she or those in her office “took appropriate steps as needed.”

Pamela White, who challenged Hall in 2018 and lost by fewer than 6,000 votes, said even with such missteps it seemed impossible to defeat Hall. In that election, more than 52,000 voters skipped the county clerk race altogether despite persistent criticisms of Hall’s elections oversight and White’s endorsement by Hall’s recently retired elections manager.

White spent $100,000 on the race, including $25,000 of her own money, and campaigned for two years, she said.

“I worked very hard,” she said. “I knew what I was doing, but that down-ballot thing is an issue even in your own party. It just takes all the air out of the room.”

Steve Kindred, the former elections manager who endorsed White, said his relationship with Hall soured after a 2014 incident in which she asked him to do work on her reelection campaign during office hours without telling him what it was for. She was later fined $100 by state elections officials for the lapse. Kindred retired early.

Kindred said seeing the ballot fiasco now after experiencing the ballot-tampering probe in 2012 was like a “punch to the gut.”

“We had a couple of hell elections, not nearly as bad as this one,” he said. “It’s almost like she’s frozen, like a deer in the headlights.”

For now, the county is focused on getting the votes counted by June 13, the state’s election certification deadline.

___

Cline reported from Portland. Associated Press writer Andrew Selsky in Salem and AP investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

source