Senate negotiators announced on Sunday that they struck a bipartisan deal on a very narrow set of gun safety measures with sufficient support to move through the evenly divided Senate, a significant step toward ending a yearslong congressional impasse on the issue. The agreement, put forth by 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats and endorsed by President Joe Biden, includes enhanced background checks to give authorities time to check the juvenile and mental health records of any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21 and a provision that would, for the first time, extend to dating partners a prohibition on domestic abusers having guns. It would also provide funding for states to enact so-called red-flag laws that allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be dangerous, as well as money for mental health resources and to bolster safety and mental health services at schools. It is nowhere near as sweeping as a package of gun measures passed almost along party lines in the House last week, which would bar the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under the age of 21, ban the sale of large-capacity magazines and enact a federal red-flag law, among other steps. The framework still needs to be put into legislative text, which often proves challenging. During last year’s bipartisan infrastructure negotiations, for example, more than six weeks passed between negotiators’ announcement of a framework and Senate passage of the resulting bill and Sunday’s agreement was an agreement on principles, not legislative text.
For today, the Senate will reconvene at 3:00 P.M. and continue work on H.R.3967, Honoring our PACT Act which seeks to broaden health care eligibility for veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits. To achieve that, the legislation would establish a presumption of service connection for about two dozen types of cancers and respiratory illnesses, such as chronic bronchitis and asthma. The Senate filed cloture on the bill last week and the upper chamber is slated to hold two amendment votes on the legislation before final passage. The House passed the toxic burn pits legislation in March, 256-174. The vote mainly broke along party lines, with just thirty-four Republicans joining Democrats in supporting the measure.
The House will reconvene at 2:00 P.M. to consider the five bills listed for consideration under suspension of the Rules from the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th 2021 Attack on the United States Capital is scheduled to hold three more public hearings this week, as the panel looks to sell its case to the American people that former President Donald Trump and certain Republicans were at the heart of a plan to keep Trump in power. The hearings — set for today at 10:00 A.M., Wednesday and Thursday — come after the select committee held a prime-time hearing last week that featured emotional live testimony, gripping new footage of the January 6th attack and clips of people in Trump’s inner circle speaking with the panel’s investigators. Among the witnesses today is Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News political editor. Stirewalt was among the group of people at Fox News who decided to declare President Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona.
