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False Theory Fueled Trump Pressure Campaign on Pence

In the third day of congressional hearings on the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, U.S. lawmakers alleged former President Donald Trump waged a multiweek pressure campaign on his vice president, Mike Pence, to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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Lawmakers Ask Ginni Thomas, Wife of Supreme Court Justice, to Testify

The House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol has asked Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, for an interview, the panel’s chairman said Thursday afternoon. 

Thomas, a conservative activist, communicated with people in President Donald Trump’s orbit ahead of the attack and on the day of the insurrection, when hundreds of Trump’s supporters violently stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. 

“We have sent Ms. Thomas a letter, asking her to come and talk to the committee,” Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel, told reporters after a three-hour public hearing Thursday. He didn’t specify a time or date for an interview. 

The chairman said her name could also come up at some point in the panel’s hearings that are being held throughout June. 

Earlier in the day, Thompson and committee vice chair Liz Cheney had both said it was time for her to come in voluntarily and provide testimony to the nine-member panel after investigators discovered information that refers to Thomas — known as Ginni — in communications they have obtained relating to one of Trump’s lawyers, John Eastman. 

‘Can’t wait’

In response, Thomas told the conservative news site Daily Caller on Thursday that she “can’t wait to clear up misconceptions,” suggesting she would comply with a request to testify. 

Eastman, who was advising Trump in the weeks and days ahead of the attack, was a central figure in the committee’s third public hearing Thursday. Lawmakers laid out their case regarding the pressure campaign Trump waged, with a legal assist from Eastman, against then-Vice President Mike Pence to try to get him to object or delay Biden’s certification on January 6. 

On his blog, Eastman posted a single email from Thomas on December 4, 2020, in which she asks Eastman for a status update for a group she describes as “grassroots state leaders.” 

“OMG, Mrs. Thomas asked me to give an update about election litigation to her group. Stop the Presses!” the headline on the blog post reads. 

Eastman also said he never discussed with either of the Thomases “any matters pending or likely to come before the Court.” 

Thomas did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. 

It is not the first time that members of the panel have said they want to talk to Thomas.  

In March, lawmakers on the committee said they were considering inviting her for a witness interview about text messages with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on the day of the attack. But she still has not spoken to the panel. 

Critical of panel

She has been critical of the January 6 committee and signed a letter with other conservatives calling on House Republicans to expel Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger from the GOP conference for joining the panel. 

Thomas also urged Republican lawmakers in Arizona to choose their own slate of electors after the 2020 election, arguing that results giving Biden a victory in the state were marred by fraud. 

She has acknowledged she attended the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse but left before Trump spoke and his supporters later stormed the Capitol. 

Justice Thomas was the only member of the Supreme Court who voted against the court’s order allowing the January 6 committee to obtain Trump records that were held by the National Archives and Records Administration. The court voted in January to allow the committee to get the documents. 

The court on Thursday did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the justice. 

The emails between Eastman and Thomas were first reported by The Washington Post.  
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Biden’s Mideast Trip Includes Direct Israel-Saudi Arabia Flight

Joe Biden plans to visit the Middle East in July, with stops in Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia. It will be the first time an American president flies directly from Israel to an Arab state that doesn’t recognize the country. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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January 6 Committee Postpones Wednesday Hearing

The House of Representatives panel investigating last year’s January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol says it has postponed Wednesday’s planned hearing.

No reason was given and the panel will still hold Thursday’s planned hearing.

Monday’s hearing featured videotaped testimony by former U.S. Attorney General William Barr and numerous other White House and political aides to then-President Donald Trump who said they had repeatedly told him that his allegations of fraud in the 2020 election were baseless and that he had lost reelection.

Barr said that many of Trump’s claims of election irregularities were “completely bogus and silly.”

“I told the president the claims of fraud were bullshit,” Barr said, recalling one of his several White House meetings with Trump before resigning in late 2020.

“He was indignant about that,” Barr recalled, saying he left the meeting thinking, “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes” he was defrauded out of reelection.  

“There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were,” Barr said of Trump.

To this day, Trump claims he legitimately won the election two years ago, and that Democrat Joe Biden became president through fraudulent vote counts in several states. Recount after recount in those states, however, showed that Biden had narrowly defeated him, and that any minor irregularities uncovered would not have been enough to upend the outcome.

Polls show that many of Trump’s supporters continue to believe his false claims that he won the election.

“Obviously he lost the election,” Barr said of Trump. “There was zero base of evidence sufficient to overturn the election.”

The investigative panel showed several videos of officials in several key states debunking Trump’s claims, including that a truckload of Biden votes had been delivered to vote counters after the election, that thousands of dead people had voted, and that a ballot box of votes had suddenly been pulled from beneath a table as workers counted votes in the Southern state of Georgia.

“I told him lots of information he’s getting is bogus,” Richard Donoghue, a former acting deputy attorney general, testified in another video clip shown by the committee.

Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien had been scheduled to testify Monday but bowed out after his pregnant wife had gone into labor. The committee instead played clips from his earlier testimony in which he told investigators he and others had cautioned Trump on election night to not declare victory while millions of mail-in ballots, which went heavily for Biden, had yet to be counted.

Instead, Trump listened to his longtime lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, described by witnesses as inebriated on the night of the election, who persuaded him to declare victory.

Trump, in the early hours of November 4, 2020, told supporters at the White House, “Frankly, we did win this election,” and claimed that the ongoing vote counting was “a fraud on the American people.”

Stepien said he did not mind being characterized as “Team Normal” for urging caution in declaring victory, compared with Giuliani and other Trump lawyers, who pushed the president’s fraud claims in the weeks after the election.

In another video, committee investigator Amanda Wick alleged that the Trump campaign used his election fraud claims to raise nearly $250 million to fight the election outcome before January 6, when some 2,000 of his supporters stormed the Capitol to block lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory. But she said much of the money went to other Trump-favored political pursuits.

One member of the House panel, Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, contended, “Not only was there the ‘Big Lie'” about purported election fraud, “but the ‘Big Rip-off'” raising the money.

Trump rebuttal

In a 12-page response to the hearings released on Monday, the former president continued his false claims of election fraud and said the Democrats were using the hearings to distract from a series of economic issues facing the country.

“They are desperate to change the narrative of a failing nation, without even making mention of the havoc and death caused by the Radical Left just months earlier. Make no mistake, they control the government. They own this disaster. They are hoping that these hearings will somehow alter their failing prospects,” Trump said in a statement.

The committee is holding a series of hearings this month to uncover how the January 6 insurrection occurred and what role Trump played in fomenting it.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is deciding whether the Department of Justice should prosecute Trump, said Monday of the hearings, “I am watching.”

“And I can assure you the January 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings, as well,” he told a press briefing.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press. 

 
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Advisers Say They Warned Trump That Election Fraud Claims Were Bogus

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr and numerous other White House and political aides to then-President Donald Trump said they had repeatedly told him that his allegations of fraud in the 2020 election were baseless and that he had lost reelection, even as Trump repeatedly claimed he was cheated out of a second White House term.

Barr, in videotaped testimony shown Monday by the House of Representatives panel investigating last year’s January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, told lawmakers that many of Trump’s claims of election irregularities were “completely bogus and silly.”

“I told the president the claims of fraud were bullshit,” Barr said, recalling one of his several White House meetings with Trump before resigning in late 2020.

“He was indignant about that,” Barr recalled, saying he left the meeting thinking, “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes” he was defrauded out of reelection.

“There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were,” Barr said of Trump.

Watch Monday’s Committee Hearing:

To this day, Trump claims he legitimately won the election two years ago, and that Democrat Joe Biden became president through fraudulent vote counts in several states. Recount after recount in those states, however, showed that Biden had narrowly defeated him, and that any minor irregularities uncovered would not have been enough to upend the outcome.

Polls show that many of Trump’s supporters continue to believe his false claims that he won the election.

“Obviously he lost the election,” Barr said of Trump. “There was zero base of evidence sufficient to overturn the election.”

The investigative panel showed several videos of officials in several key states debunking Trump’s claims, including that a truckload of Biden votes had been delivered to vote counters after the election, that thousands of dead people had voted, and that a ballot box of votes had suddenly been pulled from beneath a table as workers counted votes in the Southern state of Georgia.

“I told him lots of information he’s getting is bogus,” Richard Donoghue, a former acting deputy attorney general, testified in another video clip shown by the committee.

Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien had been scheduled to testify Monday but bowed out after his pregnant wife had gone into labor. The committee instead played clips from his earlier testimony in which he told investigators he and others had cautioned Trump on election night to not declare victory while millions of mail-in ballots, which went heavily for Biden, had yet to be counted.

Instead, Trump listened to his longtime lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, described by witnesses as inebriated on the night of the election, who persuaded him to declare victory.

Trump, in the early hours of November 4, 2020, told supporters at the White House, “Frankly, we did win this election,” and claimed that the ongoing vote counting was “a fraud on the American people.”

Stepien said he did not mind being characterized as “Team Normal” for urging caution in declaring victory, compared with Giuliani and other Trump lawyers, who pushed the president’s fraud claims in the weeks after the election.

In another video, committee investigator Amanda Wick alleged that the Trump campaign used his election fraud claims to raise nearly $250 million to fight the election outcome before January 6, when some 2,000 of his supporters stormed the Capitol to block lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory. But she said much of the money went to other Trump-favored political pursuits.

One member of the House panel, Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, contended, “Not only was there the ‘Big Lie'” about purported election fraud, “but the ‘Big Rip-off'” raising the money.

Trump rebuttal

In a 12-page response to the hearings released on Monday, the former president continued his false claims of election fraud and said the Democrats were using the hearings to distract from a series of economic issues facing the country.

“They are desperate to change the narrative of a failing nation, without even making mention of the havoc and death caused by the Radical Left just months earlier. Make no mistake, they control the government. They own this disaster. They are hoping that these hearings will somehow alter their failing prospects,” Trump said in a statement.

The committee is holding a series of hearings this month to uncover how the January 6 insurrection occurred and what role Trump played in fomenting it.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is deciding whether the Department of Justice should prosecute Trump, said Monday of the hearings, “I am watching.”

“And I can assure you the January 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings, as well,” he told a press briefing.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
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Top Campaign Advisers Testify Trump Pushed Fraudulent Election Claims

The probe into the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol resumed Monday, as congressional investigators alleged former President Donald Trump falsely advanced claims of fraud in the 2020 election despite warnings from his advisers. VOA congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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Trump Election Claims in Focus as Committee Holds January 6 Riot Hearing

The panel investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year holds its second public hearing Monday, with former President Donald Trump’s campaign manager among those testifying in a session focusing on Trump’s unfounded allegations of election fraud. 

Committee members said Sunday much more evidence will emerge in upcoming hearings that Trump knew he had lost his bid for reelection and yet fomented the mayhem by telling supporters he had been cheated out of another four-year term. 

Trump “absolutely knew he had lost,” U.S. Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show. “Any reasonable person had to know he was spreading a big lie” by claiming, as he does to this day, that he won the November 2020 election over Democrat Joe Biden, who assumed the presidency two weeks after the attack on the Capitol. 

Raskin described Trump’s actions as encouraging “a massive attack on our democracy,” while California Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, in a separate interview on ABC’s “This Week” show, said, “While this attack was going on, he did nothing to stop it” until hours after it started. 

Schiff contended that Trump engaged in a “dereliction of duty (by his) inactions that day” in not trying to call off the riot for more than two hours as his supporters rampaged through the Capitol, ransacking congressional offices and forcing lawmakers to flee the Senate and House of Representatives chambers for their own safety. 

Raskin and Schiff said the committee’s chairman, Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson, and the panel’s vice-chairman, Republican Liz Cheney, only spelled out the broad outlines of the House investigative committee’s findings at last week’s opening hearing televised during prime-time evening hours. 

At least six more public hearings are planned over the next two weeks. 

“There’s no question the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame,” Cheney said in her opening statement last Thursday accusing Trump of illegally trying to upend the election result to stay in power and urging supporters to block lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory. 

Trump, posting on his own TRUTH Social platform, called the committee hearing Thursday night a “one sided, totally partisan, POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” He dismissed a brief videotape of his elder daughter Ivanka testifying that she agreed with former Attorney General William Barr that there was no broad evidence of political fraud in the election and that Biden had won fairly. 

Trump said his daughter, a White House adviser to him, had “checked out” by the time vote recounts were being conducted. 

Cheney outlined the case against Trump much like a prosecutor might do in an opening statement at a criminal trial although the House committee can only spell out the case to the public, not bring charges against anyone. The panel could, if it chooses to do so, refer its findings and transcripts of the thousand or so witnesses it has interviewed to the Justice Department for its consideration on whether to charge anyone, including Trump, for planning and carrying out the riot. 

“The rule of law needs to apply equally to everyone,” Schiff said of Trump. “They need to be investigated if there is credible evidence and I believe there is. The president’s big lie (that he won the election) was in fact a big lie.” 

More than 800 supporters of Trump have already been charged in the mayhem inside the Capitol and more than 300 have pleaded guilty or been convicted, with the remaining cases still unresolved. Judges have sentenced some of the rioters facing such minor charges as trespassing to a few weeks in prison, but those who attacked police to barge into the Capitol have been imprisoned for four years or more. 

Raskin and Schiff said multiple Republican members of Congress sought pardons from Trump before he left office January 20, 2021, because they had supported his efforts to stay in office. Cheney said Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania was one of them, but he denied it after she mentioned his name in her Thursday night statement. 

Raskin said the fact the lawmakers sought a Trump pardon, which he did not grant, showed “evidence of guilt or a fear they were culpable. The details will surface.” 

“Everything is based on facts,” Raskin said of the information that has yet to be made public by the investigative committee.
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Texas School Shooting Survivors Urge US Lawmakers to Pass Gun Control Measures

U.S. lawmakers are still struggling to reach a deal on gun control measures in the wake of last month’s mass shooting that left 21 dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson says Democrats are rallying to keep attention focused on the issue.
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House Passes Gun Control Bill After NY, Texas Deaths 

The House passed a wide-ranging gun control bill Wednesday in response to recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, that would raise the age limit for purchasing a semiautomatic rifle and prohibit the sale of ammunition magazines with a capacity of more than 15 rounds.

The legislation passed by a mostly party-line vote of 223-204. It has almost no chance of becoming law as the Senate pursues negotiations focused on improving mental health programs, bolstering school security and enhancing background checks. But the House bill does allow Democratic lawmakers a opportunity to frame for voters in November where they stand on policies that polls show are widely supported.

“We can’t save every life, but my God, shouldn’t we try? America, we hear you, and today in the House we are taking the action you are demanding,” said Representative Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat. “Take note of who is with you and who is not.”

The push comes after a House committee heard wrenching testimony from recent shooting victims and family members, including from Miah Cerrillo, 11, who covered herself with a dead classmate’s blood to avoid being shot at the Uvalde elementary school.

The cycle of mass shootings in the United States has rarely stirred Congress to act. But the shooting of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde has revived efforts in a way that has lawmakers from both parties talking about the need to respond.

“The answer is not to destroy the Second Amendment, but that is exactly where the Democrats want to go,” said Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican.

Senate action

The work to find common ground is mostly taking place in the Senate, where support from 10 Republicans will be needed to get a bill signed into law. Nearly a dozen Democratic and Republican senators met privately for an hour Wednesday in hopes of reaching a framework for compromise legislation by week’s end. Participants said more conversations were needed about a plan that is expected to propose modest steps.

In a measure of the political peril that efforts to curb guns pose for Republicans, five of the six lead Senate GOP negotiators do not face reelection until 2026. They are Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, John Cornyn of Texas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. The sixth, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, is retiring in January. It’s also notable that none of the six is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.

While Cornyn has said the talks are serious, he has not joined the chorus of Democrats saying the outlines of a deal could be reached by the end of this week. He told reporters Wednesday that he considers having an agreement before Congress begins a recess in late June to be “an aspirational goal.”

The House bill stitches together a variety of proposals Democrats had introduced before the recent shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. The suspects in the shootings at the Uvalde school and Buffalo supermarket were both just 18, authorities say, when they bought the semiautomatic weapons used in the attacks. The bill would increase the minimum age to buy such weapons to 21.

“A person under 21 cannot buy a Budweiser. We should not let a person under 21 buy an AR-15 weapon of war,” said Representative Ted Lieu, a California Democrat.

Republicans have noted that a U.S. appeals court ruling last month found California’s ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 was unconstitutional.

“This is unconstitutional and it’s immoral. Why is it immoral? Because we’re telling 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds to register for the draft. You can go die for your country. We expect you to defend us, but we’re not going to give you the tools to defend yourself and your family,” said Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican.

Safe storage

The House bill also includes incentives designed to increase the use of safe gun storage devices and creates penalties for violating safe storage requirements, providing for a fine and imprisonment of up to five years if a gun is not properly stored and is subsequently used by a minor to injure or kill themselves or another individual.

It also builds on the Biden administration’s executive action banning fast-action “bump stock” devices and “ghost guns” that are assembled without serial numbers.

The House is also expected to approve a bill Thursday that would allow families, police and others to ask federal courts to order the removal of firearms from people who are believed to be at extreme risk of harming themselves or others.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia currently have such “red flag laws.” Under the House bill, a judge could issue an order to temporarily remove and store the firearms until a hearing can be held no longer than two weeks later to determine whether the firearms should be returned or kept for a specific period.
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Sources say Biden to Use Executive Action to Spur Solar Projects Hit by Probe

President Joe Biden will use executive action on Monday to help bridge a solar panel supply gap and kickstart stalled U.S. projects after an investigation froze imports from key foreign suppliers, sources familiar with the matter said.

The moves come amid concern about the impact of the Commerce Department’s months-long investigation into whether imports of solar panels from four Southeast Asian nations are circumventing tariffs on goods made in China.

Biden also will invoke the Defense Production Act to drive U.S. manufacturing of solar panels and other clean technologies in the future, with the support of loans and grants, the sources added.

“There is going to be this safe harbor timeout on the … collection of duties, and that’s at the heart of what’s going to save all of these solar projects and ensure that they are going forward,” said one source familiar with the White House’s plans.

State governors, lawmakers, industry officials and environmentalists have expressed concern over the investigation, which could result in retroactive tariffs of up to 250%.

It has essentially halted imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, which account for more than half of U.S. solar panel supplies and 80% of imports.

The investigation has had a chilling effect on the industry, say clean energy groups, some of which have asked Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to dismiss it, though she has said she has no discretion to influence it.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Biden’s action would bring certainty back to the U.S. solar market and allay companies’ concerns about having to hold billions of dollars in reserves to pay potential tariffs.

The investigation, announced at the end of March, could take 150 days or more to complete.

The issue has created a unique dilemma for the White House, which is eager to show U.S. leadership on climate change, in part by encouraging use of renewable energy, while respecting and keeping its distance from the investigation proceedings.

Using executive action and invoking the DPA, which allows presidents some authority over domestic industries, allows Biden to take advantage of the tools available to him without stepping on the tariff inquiry.
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Biden Faces Pressure About Rising Costs, Inflation  

Job growth is strong, wages are up, but May inflation was 8.3%, down slightly from its decades-high of 8.5% reported in April 
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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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Shootings in US Prompt Debate on Purchase Age for AR-Style Rifles

The gunmen in two of the nation’s most recent mass shootings legally bought their semiautomatic rifles after they turned 18. That’s prompting Congress and some governors and state lawmakers to revisit the question of whether to raise the minimum age for purchasing such high-powered weapons. 

Only six states require someone to be at least 21 years old to buy rifles and shotguns. Advocates argue that such a limit might have prevented the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead and the racially motivated supermarket attack in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10. 

Lawmakers in New York and Utah have proposed legislation that would raise the minimum age to buy AR-15-style rifles to 21. A similar restriction is expected to move as soon as next week in the U.S. House, where it has some bipartisan support, but the legislation faces uncertainty in the closely divided Senate. 

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who chairs the National Governors Association, said the idea should be up for discussion. 

“I think you’ve got to be able to talk about the AR-15-style weapons, and whether that’s an 18 or 21 age,” Hutchinson told CNN this week. “You have to at least have a conversation about that.” 

But Hutchinson, who leaves office in January, isn’t pushing for the limit in his own state. Any proposed gun restrictions there are unlikely to find support among Republicans who control the Legislature. Arkansas Republicans are echoing their party’s calls at the national level to focus instead on beefing up school security or addressing mental health. 

Partisan split

A recent survey of governors by The Associated Press highlighted the partisan split over whether the minimum age should be higher. Many Democratic governors who responded supported restrictions such as increasing the age to buy semiautomatic weapons. But only one Republican — Vermont Governor Phil Scott, whose state has a minimum age of 21 to buy guns, with some exceptions — supported such a move. 

Gun control advocates say raising the age offers one of the clearest steps that could have stopped or prevented the most recent mass shootings. The Uvalde attacker, Salvador Ramos, bought the AR-15 he used shortly after he turned 18. 

If Ramos hadn’t been able to buy the weapon, “maybe he would have gotten the mental health treatment he needed and this never would have happened, or maybe someone would have called some signs out to law enforcement that this person was acting erratically,” said Sean Holihan, state legislative director with the gun control advocacy group Giffords. “But it’s clear if there had been a law in place where he would have been 21 years old, he wouldn’t have been able to purchase that gun.” 

Federal law prohibits federally licensed dealers from selling handguns to anyone under age 21, but people age 18 to 20 can still buy handguns from unlicensed dealers in their state. 

Florida is a rare example of a Republican-led state that took swift action on gun restrictions after a mass shooting. In 2018, weeks after the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, then-Governor Rick Scott signed legislation raising the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21, along with a host of other school safety and gun control measures. 

The law narrowly passed in both chambers of the GOP-controlled Legislature following intense lobbying from student survivors and grieving families, marking a moment of compromise in a state that previously shunned restrictions on firearms. Scott, a Republican, said at the time that the law balanced “our individual rights with the need for public safety.” 

Now a U.S. senator, Scott did not immediately return an emailed request for comment on whether such legislation should be implemented in other states. 

New York bills

The Buffalo and Uvalde attacks are similarly prompting New York lawmakers this week to consider an age limit increase for buying semiautomatic rifles as part of a package of gun safety bills. Under the proposal, those age 21 and older who want to buy or possess a new semiautomatic rifle would have to obtain a license. 

“New York already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, but clearly we need to make them even stronger,” Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said. “New Yorkers deserve to feel safe in schools, in grocery stores, in movie theaters, in shopping malls and on our streets — and we must do everything in our power to protect them.” 

A proposal in Utah that would raise the minimum age to buy any firearm to 21 is more of a long shot in that state’s Republican-controlled Legislature. 

“If you are not able to consume alcohol, why should you be able to buy a gun?” Democratic Senator Derek Kitchen said of his proposal. 

The age provision in the bill before the U.S. House has some bipartisan support, but it remains unclear which aspects of the legislation will pass and be taken up in the Senate. Any measure there needs support from at least 10 Republicans to pass. 

The House bill also would make it a federal offense to import, manufacture or possess large-capacity magazines and creates a grant program to buy back such magazines. It encourages safe firearms storage and builds on the executive branch’s ban on bump stock devices and so-called ghost guns made from 3-D printers. 

Several Republicans have pointed to a ruling by a federal appeals court panel that found California’s ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional. Republican governors who decline to pursue the age increase also cite the political reality in their GOP-controlled legislatures. 

Why try?

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice this week said he supports raising the minimum age for buying an AR-15-style rifle to 21 but isn’t proposing such a change in his state. 

“First of all, do I really feel like an 18-year-old ought to be able to walk in and buy an assault weapon? I don’t,” the Republican governor told reporters this week. 

He appeared pessimistic about that or any other gun control measure gaining traction in his state. 

“I can call 1,000 special sessions,” he said. “And if all I’m doing is calling 1,000 special sessions for people just to come and talk and get up on a soap box and get nothing done, why?”
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New Zealand Urges US Engagement With Pacific Island States 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern urged President Joe Biden to engage more with Pacific Island states amid China’s concerted push to increase its clout in the region when she met with the U.S. leader at the White House on Tuesday.

“We’ll be encouraging the United States to really continue and strengthen engagement in our region, including economic engagement, which is really critical to our region,” Ardern said.

Biden reiterated that his administration was seeking to partner with countries in the region. “We have more work to do in those Pacific Islands,” he said.

The Biden-Ardern meeting followed a series of engagements the administration has had with Indo-Pacific countries in May, beginning with a Washington summit with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN; Biden’s visit last week to allies South Korea and Japan; and the summit in Tokyo among leaders of the Quad, an informal grouping of the U.S., Japan, India and Australia.

The Pacific Islands include Papua New Guinea, the U.S. commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Palau, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Wallis and Futuna.

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, Beijing has significantly bolstered involvement in the Pacific Islands region, focusing on expanding economic ties and increasing its footprint in the diplomacy and security realms. According to a 2018 U.S. government report, China is a major player in the region, well ahead of the United States in most areas including trade, investment, development assistance and tourism.

The Biden administration is “playing catch-up,” said Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at Hudson Institute.

“We’ve relied very heavily over the years on Australia, for instance, for their development, engagement with the Pacific Islands,” Cronin told VOA. “Clearly, that’s not sufficient.”

In February, Antony Blinken went to Fiji — the first U.S. secretary of state to make the trip in 36 years — and promised a new era of regional focus and engagement from the U.S.

Chinese presence

New Zealand has raised concerns about the Chinese presence in the Indo-Pacific region following Beijing’s security deal with the Solomon Islands. The pact, signed in April, would allow China to “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replacement in, and have stopover and transition in the Solomon Islands.”

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Beijing signed a bilateral agreement with Samoa promising “greater collaboration.” The deal includes an economic and technical cooperation agreement, a handover certificate for an arts and culture center and the Samoa-China Friendship Park, and an exchange of letters for a fingerprint laboratory for the police, a Samoan government news release said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been on a 10-country diplomatic blitz, pushing for a sweeping regional security pact that would allow Beijing to expand political ties, increase maritime cooperation and gain greater access to natural resources in return for millions of dollars in financial assistance and the prospect of a free trade agreement opening access to China’s market of 1.4 billion people.

So far, China’s effort has been rebuffed. Earlier this week, the Pacific Island leaders said they could not agree to the “Common Development Vision” proposed by Beijing.

The 10 Pacific Island nations are concerned about the “substance of the communique and the lack of consensus building around the process by which China pursued it,” said Anna Powles, senior lecturer at the Centre for Defense and Security Studies at Massey University in New Zealand.

While China is likely to double down on its bilateral relationships in the Pacific, it is also set to continue to pursue this new multilateral approach, Powles told VOA.

In their meeting, Biden and Ardern “did not get into specific details about efforts by other countries,” a senior administration official told VOA when asked whether the U.S. was concerned about the Chinese initiative.

“They did discuss the importance of working together to present an affirmative vision for the region as well as solidifying the traditional areas of cooperation and building new ones,” the official said.

Indo-Pacific Economic Framework

Ardern expressed support for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, calling it “a significant opportunity to build the economic resilience of our region,” but signaled that New Zealand would continue to advocate for the U.S. to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP.

IPEF is the leading U.S. effort to reengage Indo-Pacific nations in trade more than five years after the Trump administration withdrew from a regional comprehensive trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. Following Washington’s departure, TPP eventually became CPTPP — an 11-country bloc that now constitutes one of the largest free trade areas in the world.

Thirteen countries, including the Pacific Island nations of New Zealand and Fiji, have signed on as “founding members” of IPEF, an outline of standards and norms to facilitate trade that Biden launched while he was in Tokyo.

IPEF is not a free trade agreement that needs to be passed by Congress, where there is now little political appetite to open U.S. markets due to protectionist concerns for American workers.

Without a trade promotion authority granted by Congress, the administration lacks credibility in the region, said Susan Aaronson, professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

However, China’s “lack of respect for the rule of law to its own citizens” and toward existing supply chain contracts during the pandemic has been “so dramatic” that it is causing countries to rethink their relationships, she said.

“It is a huge opportunity for the United States,” she told VOA, adding that IPEF is “a creative way to try to get at these issues.”

Gun reform

During their meeting, Biden, who had just returned from the town of Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old man killed 19 children and two teachers, praised Ardern’s leadership in curbing extremism and gun violence in New Zealand.

“We need your guidance,” he said.

In 2019, less than a month after a white supremacist gunman killed 51 Muslim worshippers at two Christchurch mosques, New Zealand lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to ban military-style semiautomatic weapons and enacted a buyback program.

“Our experience, of course, in this regard, is our own, but if there’s anything that we can share that would be of any value, we are here to share it,” Ardern said.

According to the nonprofit group Gun Violence Archive, the Uvalde school shooting is the 213th mass shooting in which four or more people were shot or killed in the U.S. in 2022.

“There’s an expression by an Irish poet that says, ‘Too long a suffering makes a stone of the heart.’ Well, there’s an awful lot of suffering,” Biden told Ardern. “I’ve been to more mass shooting aftermaths than, I think, any president in American history, unfortunately.”

Even as Americans from both sides of the political aisle demand action in the wake of the latest violence, gun control legislation has remained deadlocked for decades, with Senate Republicans blocking even measures that receive broad public support, such as universal background checks for gun buyers.
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US Senate Republicans Block Debate on Domestic Terrorism Measure 

U.S. Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked attempts by Democratic lawmakers to start debate on a measure to combat domestic terrorism as the two parties spar over how best to control gun violence.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved the measure last week following a mass shooting earlier this month at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, in which a white teenage gunman is accused of specifically targeting and killing 10 Black people.

Democrats’ attempt to start debate on the domestic terrorism measure, coming two days after a teenage gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas, failed on a 47-47 vote, far short of the 60 needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

Democrats, who have failed for years to overcome Republican opposition to tighter controls on gun sales and background checks on gun buyers, are making another effort to compromise with Republicans on gun control legislation in the aftermath of the Texas rampage carried out by an 18-year-old high school dropout.

There was no indication that Republican senators were willing to abandon their opposition, with many of them saying that the gun-buying rights of law-abiding citizens would be impinged upon if background checks were initiated.  

Republicans say the domestic terrorism bill doesn’t place enough emphasis on combating offenses committed by groups on the far left.

New federal offices

The legislation would have set up offices at the FBI and at the Homeland Security and Justice departments to focus on domestic terrorism.  

Democratic supporters of the legislation said the offices would better prepare the federal government to take preventive measures against domestic terrorism. Some Republicans said the government already has the authority to track such activity, making the new legislation unnecessary. 

“The problem we have is that we have a bunch of people who define anyone they disagree with as terrorists, as extremists,” said Republican Senator Marco Rubio, according to Politico. “We’ve reached a point in America now where the term ‘extremist’ is applied too liberally to people, that there’s deep concern about how these entities will be used. … That’s the concern that people have.” 

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said that for some Republicans, “no amount of gun violence — whether it’s domestic terrorism, a school shooting, a neighborhood shooting or something else— will ever, ever convince them to take any action.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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Texas Governor: Teenager Warned He Was About to Attack Elementary School

The U.S. teenage gunman who killed at least 19 children and two adults warned in a private message on a social network shortly ahead of time that he was about to shoot up an elementary school, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Wednesday.  

Abbott described Salvador Ramos as an 18-year-old high school dropout. The governor blamed mental health issues for Ramos’ assault Tuesday on the Robb Elementary School in the small city of Uvalde, Texas, which ended when a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot Ramos dead.  

But Abbott said officials had not discovered any mental health care concerns officially registered about Ramos, although news outlets reported that on occasion Ramos had randomly fired a BB gun at people on the streets of Uvalde and thrown eggs at cars. Acquaintances said he was angry because he had not completed enough classes to graduate this week with his classmates.  

Abbott said that 30 minutes before Ramos stormed into the school, he posted a message on Facebook saying, “I’m going to shoot my grandmother,” with whom he lived, and went on to fire a shot at her face. The woman, Celia Martinez, 66, survived the attack, was hospitalized, and is reported in serious condition.  

Moments later, he said in another message, “I shot my grandmother.” 

Then, in a third message, Ramos warned, “I’m going to shoot an elementary school,” Abbott recounted. 

Andy Stone, the spokesman for Facebook’s parent company Meta, clarified the text messages were sent to one person but did not disclose which of Meta’s platforms the gunman used.  

After Ramos crashed his car in a ditch near the school, police officers employed by the school district “engaged with the gunman.” There are conflicting reports about whether gunfire was exchanged. Ramos then carried an assault weapon into the school and killed all his victims in the same fourth-grade classroom, a law enforcement official told CNN.  

Abbott said 17 others were injured in the attack, but none had life-threatening injuries. A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety said the injured include “multiple children” who survived gunfire in their classroom. 

The issue of gun control and the sale of guns are among the most contentious in U.S. politics, and Abbott’s news conference was no exception. As the governor, a gun-rights advocate, finished speaking, Beto O’Rourke, his Democratic gubernatorial opponent in the November election, shouted at him, “You are doing nothing!” to prevent gun violence.  

“Abbott made it easier to carry guns in public,” O’Rourke said on Twitter. “The moment to stop the next slaughter is right now.” 

U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he and first lady Jill Biden would visit Texas “in coming days,” adding that “the idea that an 18-year-old can walk into a store and buy weapons of war designed and marketed to kill is, I think, just wrong, just violates common sense.” 

“The Second Amendment is not absolute,” Biden said as he called for new limits on guns. When the constitutional amendment was written, he said, “you couldn’t own a cannon. You couldn’t own certain kinds of weapons. There’s always been limitations. But guess what — these actions we’ve taken before, they save lives. They can do it again.” 

It was not immediately clear that the latest mass killing changed the minds of any opposition Republican lawmakers in the Senate, who in the past have blocked more restrictive gun measures favored by Biden and Democratic senators.  

 At least 10 Republican lawmakers would need to join all 50 Democrats in the chamber to pass gun control legislation.  

Some lawmakers talked of trying to reach legislative compromises that would require further background checks of gun buyers, extend the time frame for such checks, or ban the sale of guns over the internet.  

From 1994 to 2004, the U.S. banned the sale of assault weapons, often used in mass killings and, according to police, in Tuesday’s attack. Congress did not renew the law.     

Legislative attempts to tighten gun laws have been adamantly opposed by lobbyists for gun manufacturers and pro-gun lawmakers who cite Americans’ rights to gun ownership enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.         

Tuesday’s attack was the deadliest school shooting in Texas and the deadliest elementary school shooting since the 2012 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 26 people dead, 20 of them schoolchildren.   

Law enforcement officials say that Ramos legally purchased two assault weapons days after his 18th birthday a couple of weeks ago, along with 375 rounds of ammunition. He posted pictures of the weapons on a social media account attributed to him.  

Abbott and Texas Senator Ted Cruz were among a group of Republican figures, including former President Donald Trump, scheduled to appear Friday in Houston at the annual convention of the National Rifle Association, the gun rights group that has opposed gun control measures.  

Cruz has also received $176,274 in campaign contributions from the NRA, according to Brady United, a nonprofit organization advocating for gun control.     

The Texas elementary school has an enrollment of about 600 students in the second, third and fourth grades and sits in a mostly residential neighborhood of modest homes. The town has a population of about 16,000 people and is the seat of government for Uvalde County. It is about 135 kilometers west of San Antonio and about 120 kilometers north of the border with Mexico.  

Texas has been the scene of several mass shootings over the past five years. A year before the Santa Fe, Texas, school shooting in 2018, a gunman at a Texas church killed more than two dozen people during a Sunday service in the small town of Sutherland Springs. In 2019, another gunman at a Walmart in El Paso killed 23 people in a racist attack.  

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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US Congress Weighs Ways to Prevent Mass Shootings

U.S. lawmakers will vote Thursday on whether to impose stricter background checks on gun sales after the second-worst mass school shooting in the nation’s history earlier this week. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports.
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Trump’s Election Fraud Claims Face a Test in Georgia  

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s relentless campaign to convince voters of his debunked claim that he was cheated out of victory in his 2020 run for reelection is on the ballot again Tuesday, with two high-stakes Republican primary elections in the Southern state of Georgia. 

Trump is trying to defeat two Georgia officials: Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The latter, the state’s chief election official, angered Trump by rejecting his claims that Democrat Joe Biden had won the state in a fraudulent vote count. Both Kemp and Raffensperger are facing Trump-endorsed opponents in Republican Party contests. 

Polls show Kemp far ahead of former Republican Senator David Perdue, whom Trump recruited to run for governor after Perdue lost his reelection bid to the Senate in early 2021. Polls alternately show Raffensperger ahead or trailing in his renomination bid against Representative Jody Hice, with large numbers of undecided voters.  

Trump lost Georgia two years ago to Biden by 11,779 votes out of more than 5 million ballots, the first Republican to lose the state in a presidential election since 1992. The outcome was upheld in three separate vote counts. 

But now Trump, nearly 19 months after the 2020 vote, is embroiled in the state’s political fortunes once more, and his personal fate is at stake, as well. 

A grand jury in the state capital, Atlanta, has been empaneled to investigate the possible criminality of Trump’s request in early 2021 to Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 votes to defeat Biden in the state, one more than he lost by. 

“Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break,” Trump said in the taped call to Raffensperger. But the elections official rebuffed his request, and the former president is now trying to oust Raffensperger from office. 

Similarly, Kemp, a staunch conservative, drew Trump’s ire by refusing to try to overturn the Biden victory in the state. While many rank-and-file Republican voters in the state support Trump’s fraud claims about the 2020 vote, polls have shown that Kemp remains a popular official in Georgia. 

Trump and his former vice president, Mike Pence, have parted ways in the Georgia gubernatorial contest, with Pence to appear with Kemp in person at an election eve rally Monday night and Trump making a last-ditch appeal for Perdue via video. 

Trump has endorsed numerous candidates in Republican primaries this month to pick nominees for the general elections in November against Democratic candidates. 

While Trump-endorsed candidates have won dozens of contests for lesser offices, his record in key party primaries has been mixed. 

Trump pushed author J.D. Vance over the finish line in the race for the Republican Senate nomination in the midwestern state of Ohio, but his choice for governor in Nebraska, Charles Herbster, lost.  

Last week, Trump-endorsed Doug Mastriano, who supports Trump’s claims of election fraud, won the Pennsylvania gubernatorial nomination. But the former president’s Senate choice in the state, celebrity television doctor Mehmet Oz, remains locked with former hedge fund executive David McCormick in a too-close-to-call vote count. 

In the mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina, the Trump-endorsed Senate candidate, Representative Ted Budd, easily won the party nomination, but a controversial first-term lawmaker endorsed by Trump, Representative Madison Cawthorn, lost his renomination bid.    

 
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Biden, Yoon Signal Stronger Military Posture Against North Korean Threat

From Seoul, US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol signaled a stronger military posture amid a series of recent North Korean missile test launches. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara is traveling with the president and brings this report.
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North Korea, China Loom Large in Biden’s Visit in Seoul

U.S. President Joe Biden is in Seoul, South Korea, the first leg of his six-day trip to South Korea and Japan, meeting the newly inaugurated President Yoon Suk Yeol to highlight the U.S.-South Korea alliance and efforts to engage the region economically.

Upon landing at the U.S. Air Force’s Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, around 55 kilometers south of Seoul, Friday, Biden began immediately with a tour of the nearby Samsung Pyeongtaek Campus, the largest semiconductor plant in the world. The factory is a model for a $17 billion computer chip facility Samsung is building outside Austin, Texas.

In remarks following a tour of the plant showcasing the electronics company’s new 3-nanometer chips, Biden called the U.S-South Korea alliance “a lynchpin of peace, stability, and prosperity.” He and Yoon vowed to work together to strengthen supply chains of semiconductors and other critical components. There is currently a global shortage of chips – used in various electronic consumer goods and automobiles – aggravated by the pandemic.

Washington and Seoul are among each other’s largest trading and investment partners, with more than $62 billion of foreign direct investment by South Korean firms in the United States as of 2020.

The two leaders are meeting again Saturday, on a wider range of issues, including North Korea and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The IPEF is the centerpiece of U.S. economic policy in the region since the Trump administration’s 2017 withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free trade agreement the Obama administration launched in 2016.

While Seoul is unlikely to downgrade economic ties with Beijing, its support for the IPEF, the administration’s economic counteroffensive against China, is crucial.

“No one in Korea is talking about the economic isolation of China, that’s really not going to happen,” Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea specialist at King’s College London told VOA. Yoon, though, will be “much more vocal in making clear that Korea is joining these frameworks that we all know are anti-China,” he said.

The IPEF, scheduled to be launched Monday in Tokyo, has been criticized for its lack of market access provisions, making it less attractive than existing regional free trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan pushed back against the criticism, saying IPEF will provide a “huge thrust and momentum” to U.S. economic initiatives in the Indo-Pacific.

“This is going to be the new model of economic arrangement that will set the terms and rules of the road for trade and technology and supply chains for the 21st century,” he told VOA.

North Korea weapons test

U.S. officials have warned that South Korea’s belligerent northern neighbor may conduct another nuclear or missile test while Biden is in the region.

Bong Young-shik, a lecturer at Seoul’s Yonsei University said North Korea may use a test to grab the “full attention” of Biden and Yoon, however it won’t be the only focus. Yoon, who took office a little more than a week ago has signaled a tougher stance on Pyongyang than his predecessor.

“With or without another provocation by North Korea, the North Korean issue will be really high on the list of priority agendas for both leaders,” he told VOA.

After confirming its first case of COVID-19 last week, North Korean state media Saturday reported about 220,000 new cases of an unidentified “fever” said 66 people had died.

Experts fear the number of cases is much higher and could be disastrous for a country suffering from food shortages and having poor medical infrastructure. Pyongyang has not inoculated its population and has turned down vaccine donation offers from the U.N. COVAX program. It is unlikely to change its stance, Bong said.

“By accepting external assistance, especially from South Korea and the United States, the principle of the infallibility of the supreme leadership will be greatly damaged,” he said.

A senior administration official told reporters in a phone briefing that the U.S. is in discussions with China to look for ways to help North Korea as they deal with the outbreak.

China military flex

In Asia, Biden will reaffirm U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific and use the Ukraine crisis to signal that unilateral change to the status quo by force – whether in Taiwan or the disputed islands in the South China Sea – is unacceptable.

However, there is little likelihood that Beijing might opportunistically move against Taiwan while the U.S. is focused on the Russian invasion, said Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United State. The enormous economic pressures brought on by the zero-COVID policy has led to growing public skepticism about the Chinese leadership.

“Xi Jinping faces strong domestic headwinds, he can’t face another failure,” Daly told VOA.

Still Xi is flexing his military prowess. Ahead of Biden’s arrival in Seoul Thursday, China announced it is holding military exercises in the disputed South China Sea. Beijing has militarized at least three of several islands it artificially built in the strategic waters, an aggressive move that concerns the U.S. and its allies.
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