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Biden Delays Possible Trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Reports Say

U.S. President Joe Biden has pushed back a possible trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, several U.S. media reported Saturday. 

Biden confirmed Friday he was considering a trip to Saudi Arabia, which would be a stark reversal after he called for the kingdom to be made a pariah state. 

The White House declined to comment on the potential delay, but according to CNN, NBC and Axios, the visit has been postponed until July. 

The reported decision came shortly after Saudi Arabia addressed two of Biden’s priorities by agreeing to increase oil production, which could help tame U.S. inflation, and helping extend a truce in war-battered Yemen. 

CNN said Biden would meet Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, 36-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was accused by U.S. intelligence of ordering the 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

The trip would reportedly have happened around the time Biden travels to a NATO summit in Spain and Group of Seven summit in Germany later this month. 

He was also widely expected to travel to Israel where, as in Saudi Arabia, he is sure to face questions about slow-moving U.S. diplomacy with the two countries’ rival, Iran. 

Biden, who prides himself as a champion of democracy against authoritarian regimes, had decided to reassess relations with Riyadh, placing a greater emphasis on human rights in his diplomacy. 

But soaring gas prices, because of supply chain snarls exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have infuriated Americans and sent Biden’s popularity plummeting. 

Biden’s administration is seeking to convince Saudi Arabia to increase its oil production in the hope that this will help ease supply shortages and bring down prices at the pump. 
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Senator, 2 Governors on Wisconsin Gunman’s List, Sources Say

A gunman suspected of fatally shooting a retired county judge at a Wisconsin home had a list that included Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Whitmer’s office and a law enforcement source said Saturday.

Douglas K. Uhde, 56, who has not been charged, is suspected of killing retired Juneau County Judge John Roemer at Roemer’s house in New Lisbon on Friday, the Wisconsin Department of Justice said in a news release Saturday.

Uhde was found in the basement of the home with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, following attempts by police to negotiate with him. Uhde is hospitalized in critical condition, DOJ officials said.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul on Friday said the shooting appeared to be a “targeted act” and that the gunman had selected people who were “part of the judicial system.”

But investigators believe the gunman also may have planned to target other government officials and found a list in his vehicle that contained the names of several other prominent elected leaders, a law enforcement official said. The other targets on the list, which mentioned Roemer, included Evers, McConnell and Whitmer, the official said.

Roemer was found tied to a chair in his home and had been fatally shot, the official said. The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Uhde has an extensive criminal and prison record dating back at least two decades, including a case in which he was sentenced by Roemer to six years in prison on weapons charges. He was released from his last prison stint in April 2020.

Zach Pohl, Whitmer’s deputy chief of staff, said her office was notified that her name appeared “on the Wisconsin gunman’s list.”

“Governor Whitmer has demonstrated repeatedly that she is tough, and she will not be bullied or intimidated from doing her job and working across the aisle to get things done for the people of Michigan,” Pohl said.

Whitmer became the object of protests and criticism after she blamed former President Donald Trump for stoking anger over COVID-19 restrictions and refusing to condemn right-wing extremists.

A trial held earlier this year in which four men accused in an alleged kidnapping plot of the Michigan Democrat resulted in the acquittal of two of the men. The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict for the other two.

Roemer, 68, was a “very loving, very encouraging man with a wonderful sense of humor who will be dearly missed” by the community, said Chip Wilke, pastor at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mauston, where Roemer was president of the congregation and evangelism chairman. “He was in my office several mornings a week.”

Roemer retired from the bench in 2017. He was first elected in 2004 and was reelected in 2010 and 2016. He previously had served as an assistant district attorney for Juneau County and an assistant state public defender. He also worked in private practice and served as a lieutenant colonel for the U.S. Army Reserves.

Investigators said there is no immediate danger to the public.

“The information that’s been gathered indicated that it was a targeted act and that the targeting was based on some sort of court case or court cases,” Kaul said.

The Juneau County Sheriff’s Office received a call that two shots were fired at a home in New Lisbon at 6:30 a.m. Friday, according to the Division of Criminal Investigation. The caller had fled the home and made the call from another nearby house. 
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Ex-Trump Aide Navarro Indicted; Meadows Won’t Be Charged

Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro has been indicted on charges that he refused to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but the Justice Department spared two other advisers, including the ex-president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, from criminal prosecution.

The department’s decision to not prosecute Meadows and Dan Scavino, another adviser to former President Donald Trump, was revealed in a letter sent Friday by a federal prosecutor to a lawyer for the House of Representatives. The move was reported hours after the indictment of Navarro and a subsequent, fiery court appearance in which he vowed to contest the contempt of Congress charges.

The flurry of activity comes just days before the House committee leading the investigation into the riot at the Capitol holds a prime-time hearing aimed at presenting the American public with evidence it has collected about how the assault unfolded. The split decisions show how the Justice Department has opted to evaluate on a case-by-case basis contempt referrals it has received from Congress rather than automatically pursue charges against each and every Trump aide who has resisted congressional subpoenas.

The committee’s leaders called the decision to not prosecute Meadows and Scavino “puzzling.” In a statement late Friday, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said: “We hope the Department provides greater clarity on this matter. … No one is above the law.”

Though the Justice Department has referred multiple Trump aides for potential prosecution for refusal to cooperate, Navarro is only the second to face criminal charges, following the indictment last fall of former White House adviser Steve Bannon.

Navarro, 72, was charged with one contempt count for failing to appear for a deposition before the House committee and a second charge for failing to produce documents the committee requested.

During an initial court appearance, he alleged that the Justice Department had committed “prosecutorial misconduct” and said he was told he could not contact anyone after being approached by an FBI agent at the airport Friday and put in handcuffs. He said he was arrested while trying to board a flight to Nashville, Tennessee, for a television appearance.

“Who are these people? This is not America,” Navarro said. “I was a distinguished public servant for four years!”

Each charge carries a minimum sentence of a month in jail and a maximum of a year behind bars.

The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland had been facing pressure to move more quickly to decide whether to prosecute other Trump aides who have similarly defied subpoenas from the House panel.

The New York Times first reported on the decision to not charge Meadows and Scavino. A person familiar with the decision who was not authorized to discuss it publicly confirmed it to The Associated Press on Friday. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, which made the decisions regarding each of the Trump aides, declined to comment Friday.

Meadows, a close Trump adviser seen by House investigators as a vital witness to key events, initially cooperated with the committee, turning over more than 2,000 text messages sent and received in the days leading up to and of the attack. But in December, Meadows informed the committee that he would not sit for a deposition.

Scavino was held in contempt in April after declining to cooperate with Congress.

A lawyer for Meadows did not immediately return messages Friday night. Stan Brand, an attorney representing Scavino, said he had not yet received the letter from the U.S. attorney’s office, but he’d heard the news through a third party. “I’m grateful that the Justice Department exercised their discretion to decline prosecution,” Brand said.

The indictment against Navarro alleges that when summoned to appear before the committee for a deposition earlier this year, he refused to do so and instead told the panel that because Trump had invoked executive privilege, “my hands are tied.”

After committee staff told him they believed there were topics he could discuss without raising any executive privilege concerns, Navarro again refused, directing the committee to negotiate directly with lawyers for Trump, according to the indictment. The committee went ahead with its scheduled deposition on March 2, but Navarro did not attend.

The indictment, dated Thursday, came days after Navarro revealed in a court filing that he also had been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury this week as part of the Justice Department’s sprawling probe into the insurrection. The subpoena to Navarro, a trade adviser to Trump, was the first known instance of prosecutors seeking testimony from someone who worked in the Trump White House as they investigate the attack.

“This was a preemptive strike by the prosecution against that lawsuit,” Navarro told Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui during his court appearance. “It simply flies in the face of good faith and due process.”

Navarro made the case in his lawsuit Tuesday that the House select committee investigating the attack is unlawful and therefore a subpoena it issued to him in February is unenforceable under law. He sued members of the committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the U.S. attorney in Washington, Matthew M. Graves, whose office is now handling the criminal case against him.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Navarro said the goal of his lawsuit is much broader than the subpoenas themselves, part of an effort to have “the Supreme Court address a number of issues that have come with the weaponization of Congress’ investigatory powers” since Trump entered office.

Members of the select committee sought testimony from Navarro about his efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election, including a call trying to persuade state legislators to join their efforts.

The former economics professor was one of the White House staffers who promoted Trump’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud. Trump, in turn, promoted a lengthy report Navarro released in December 2020, which Navarro falsely claimed contained evidence of the alleged misconduct and election fraud “more than sufficient” to swing victory to his former boss.

Despite the opposition from several Trump allies, the Jan. 6 panel, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, has managed to interview more than 1,000 witnesses about the insurrection in the past 11 months and is now preparing for a series of public hearings to begin next week. Lawmakers on the panel hope the half-dozen hearings will be a high-profile airing of the causes and consequences of the domestic attack on the U.S. government.
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McCormick Concedes to Oz in Pennsylvania GOP Senate Primary

Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick conceded the Republican primary in Pennsylvania for U.S. Senate to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, ending his campaign Friday night as he acknowledged an ongoing statewide recount wouldn’t give him enough votes to make up the deficit. 

McCormick said he had called Oz to concede. 

“It’s now clear to me with the recount now largely complete that we have a nominee,” McCormick said at a campaign party at a Pittsburgh hotel. “Tonight is really about all us coming together.” 

Before the recount, Oz led McCormick by 972 votes out of 1.34 million votes counted in the May 17 primary. The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the race because an automatic recount is under way and the margin between the two candidates is just 0.07 percentage points. 

Friday’s development sets up a general election between Oz, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, and Democrat John Fetterman in what is expected to be one of the nation’s premier Senate contests. The race could help determine control of the closely divided chamber. 

Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, acknowledged earlier Friday in a statement that he nearly died when he suffered a stroke just days before his primary. He said he had ignored warning signs for years and a doctor’s advice to take blood thinners. 

Oz, who is best known as the host of daytime TV’s “The Dr. Oz Show,” had to overcome millions of dollars in attack ads and misgivings among hardline Trump backers about his conservative credentials on guns, abortion, transgender rights and other core Republican issues. 

The 61-year-old Oz leaned on Trump’s endorsement as proof of his conservative bona fides, while Trump attacked Oz’s rivals and maintained that Oz has the best chance of winning in November in the presidential battleground state. 

Rivals made Oz’s dual citizenship in Turkey an issue in the race. If elected, Oz would be the nation’s first Muslim senator. 

Born in the United States, Oz served in Turkey’s military and voted in its 2018 election. Oz said he would renounce his Turkish citizenship if he won the November election, and he accused McCormick of making “bigoted” attacks. 

Oz and McCormick blanketed state airwaves with political ads for months, spending millions of their own money. Virtually unknown four months ago, McCormick had to introduce himself to voters, and he mined Oz’s long record as a public figure for material in attack ads. He got help from a super PAC supporting him that spent $20 million. 

Like McCormick, Oz moved from out of state to run in Pennsylvania. 

Oz, a Harvard graduate, New York Times bestselling author and self-styled wellness advocate, lived for the past couple of decades in a mansion in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, above the Hudson River overlooking Manhattan — drawing accusations of being a carpetbagger and political tourist. 

The celebrity heart surgeon stressed his connections to Pennsylvania, saying he grew up just over the state border in Delaware, went to medical school in Philadelphia and married a Pennsylvania native. 
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Lawmaker Pulls Out His Guns at US Gun-Control Hearing

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday objected to a Democratic attempt to advance new limits on gun purchases as one Republican legislator pulled out his handguns at a hearing to complain that they could be banned.

The House Judiciary Committee met in an emergency session in the midst of a week-long Memorial Day recess as funerals were under way in Uvalde, Texas, for some of the 19 children and two teachers gunned down by an 18-year-old with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle last week. There were other mass shootings the week before and on Wednesday.

Republican Representative Greg Steube, who attended the committee meeting virtually from his Florida home, contended the legislation would ban various handguns. He held up four guns one by one for the committee to see.

“Here’s a gun I carry every single day to protect myself, my family, my wife, my home,” the second-term congressman said.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler interjected, “I hope to God that is not loaded.”

Steube retorted: “I’m at my house. I can do whatever I want with my guns.”

Democrats who narrowly control the House intend to put their 41-page Protecting Our Kids Act to a vote by the full chamber next week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

President Joe Biden’s party holds enough votes to pass the bill in the House, but it faces slim chances in the 50-50 Senate, where 60 votes are required to advance most legislation. Republicans in Congress strongly advocate for gun rights.

“It’s regretful that Democrats have rushed to a markup today in what seems like political theater,” the top Republican on the panel, Representative Jim Jordan, said. He added, “Our hearts go out to the Uvalde community.”

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators is trying to craft a narrow bill. It might focus on boosting school security and possibly enacting a “red flag” law allowing authorities to seize guns bought by people suffering from mental illness. Previous such efforts have fallen flat.

The broader House bill couples a handful of already pending measures. It would raise the minimum age for buying certain guns to 21 from 18 and clamp down on weapons trafficking. It also would restrict large-capacity ammunition feeding devices.

Nadler, a Democrat, opened debate noting the 400 million firearms in the country and the 45,000 Americans killed by gun violence in 2020.

Anticipating Republican arguments that Democrats were moving too fast following the Uvalde killings on May 24, Nadler said, “Too soon? My friends, what the hell are you waiting for?” He recounted the long string of school shootings over the last few decades.

Republicans accused Democrats of trampling on the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms.

Democrats argued that right is not without limits, as they recounted tales of young children questioning whether they would live through the next day’s classes.
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January 6 Committee Sets Prime-Time Hearing Date for Findings

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol will go public with its findings in a prime-time hearing next week, the start of what lawmakers hope will be a high-profile airing of the causes and consequences of the domestic attack on the U.S. government.

Lawmakers plan to hold a series of hearings in June that they promise will lay out, step-by-step, how former President Donald Trump and his allies worked feverishly to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, spreading lies about widespread voter fraud — widely debunked by judges and his own administration — that fueled a violent assault on the seat of democracy.

The six hearings, set to begin June 9 and expected to last until late June, will be the first time the committee discloses “previously unseen material” about what it has discovered in the course of a sprawling 10-month investigation that has touched nearly every aspect of the insurrection.

The committee, which has called Jan. 6 “one of the darkest days of our democracy,” was formed in the aftermath to “investigate the facts, circumstances, and causes relating to the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol.”

Unlike any other congressional committee in recent times, the panel’s work has been both highly anticipated by Democrats and routinely criticized by Trump and the former president’s allies, including some Republicans in Congress, who complain it is partisan.

More than 1,000 people have been interviewed by the panel, and only brief snippets of that testimony have been revealed to the public, mostly through court filings. The hearings are expected to showcase a series of witnesses, but the committee has not yet publicly released the names.

The investigation has focused on every aspect of the insurrection, including the efforts by Trump and his allies to cast doubt on the election and halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory; the financing and organizing of rallies in Washington that took place before the attack; security failures by Capitol Police and federal agencies; and the actions of the rioters themselves.

The hearings are expected to be exhaustive, but not the final word from the committee, which plans to release subsequent reports on its findings, including recommendations on legislative reforms, ahead of the midterm elections. 
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Biden Implores Congress to Approve New ‘Common-Sense’ Gun Restrictions  

U.S. President Joe Biden, in a White House address Thursday night, will implore Congress to approve “common-sense laws” to attempt to curb the recent spate of mass shooting deaths that have shocked many Americans.

The White House said Biden would call for the new restrictions “to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day.”

It was not clear whether Biden would advocate for specific restrictions he favors, such as universal background checks for gun buyers or a ban on the sale of the rapid-fire, high-powered weapons that have been used in recent mass shootings.

Neither element is likely to win approval in the politically divided Congress, where lawmakers for years have been at odds over gun legislation.

But some lawmakers are attempting to craft more limited restrictions in the aftermath of the three mass shootings within the past month: 10 Black people gunned down in a racist attack at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store; 21 students and teachers shot to death in their classroom at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school; and four more killed at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical facility.

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday debated a bill it said was an emergency response to the mass shootings. It would raise the purchase age for an assault weapon from 18 to 21 and attempt to curb the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines and “ghost guns” without identification numbers. The measure could pass the Democratic-controlled House as early as next week but is not expected to advance in the Senate, which is divided equally, with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats.

Mass shootings every week

In the United States this year, there have been 232 mass shootings, defined as incidents in which four or more people, not including the shooter, have been injured or killed. Not a single week has passed without at least four mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group.

Some lawmakers have called for a significant boost in school security measures. Others want rules allowing law enforcement authorities to confiscate guns for a year or so after people threaten to harm others or exhibit mental instability — so-called “red flag” laws.

Congress has long been divided on the passage of new laws to control the sale of guns. Biden and Democrats mostly support a ban on the sale of assault weapons, such as the 10-year U.S. prohibition that ended in 2004, and they have called for more background checks of gun buyers before sales are completed.

Republicans, on the other hand, have condemned mass shooting violence but have regularly blocked gun control legislation. For the most part, Republicans say the proposed restrictions that Democrats favor would impinge on the freedom of law-abiding citizens and are at odds with the right of Americans to own guns that is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Hours after the Texas elementary school rampage, Biden spoke to the nation about gun violence.

“As a nation, we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden said. “When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”

Vice President Kamala Harris last weekend told reporters that Congress should pass a ban on assault weapons.

“We know what works on this,” she said. “It includes, ‘Let’s have an assault weapons ban.’ You know what an assault weapon is? You know how an assault weapon was designed? It was designed for a specific purpose: to kill a lot of human beings quickly. An assault weapon is a weapon of war with no place, no place in a civil society.”
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