Post Politics Now House poised to send gun legislation to Biden in response to mass shootings

The Justice Department and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have asked Danish filmmakers for video footage recorded as they followed Roger Stone, a confidant of former president Donald Trump, in the weeks after the 2020 election, according to emails and interviews.

The Post’s Jon Swaine and Dalton Bennett report that during the past three months, the investigators have repeatedly sought access to a 170-hour cache of footage shot for director Christoffer Guldbrandsen’s forthcoming documentary on Stone, a founder of the “Stop the Steal” movement that culminated in the rallies preceding the Jan. 6 attack.

Our colleagues write:

That footage was cited in a Washington Post report in March that described Stone’s activities that day, including inside the Willard hotel where he and many other Trump allies were staying. The footage showed that Stone communicated on an encrypted messaging app with leaders of far-right groups, and that he claimed at the time to be in contact with Trump.

You can read the full story here.

In tweets Friday morning, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) relayed plans for swift House passage of the Senate-passed gun bill, calling it “life-saving legislation.”

“On behalf of the House, we applaud the Senate for passing its gun violence prevention package on a strong bipartisan vote,” Pelosi said. “Every day, gun violence steals lives and scars communities — and this crisis demands urgent action. While we must do more, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is a step forward that will help protect our children and save lives.”

Pelosi said the full House would take up the bill on Friday once the House Rules Committee finishes its consideration of the legislation.

“And we will send the bill to @POTUS for his signature, with gratitude for his leadership,” Pelosi said.

The bill, which passed the Senate on Thursday on a 65-to-33 vote, combines modest new firearms restrictions with $15 billion in mental health and school security funding.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to release more decisions Friday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern. Among the cases still outstanding — that could be ruled upon Friday — is a Mississippi abortion case that’s widely expected to overturn Roe v. Wade’s decades-old protections.

Writing in The Health 202, The Post’s Rachel Roubein says that congressional Democrats are preparing for a post-Roe world, but a sinking reality is setting in: Outside of messaging, there’s not much they can do. And it’s unclear how motivating the issue will be in the midterms.

Per Rachel:

Over the past few days, Senate and House Democrats have held private, caucus-wide meetings to plot the path forward. The emerging plans center on drawing a contrast between Democrats and Republicans on abortion and discussing in stark terms what overturning the right to an abortion could mean for women.

Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the Senate, and they know they don’t have the votes to reverse a Supreme Court decision nixing Roe. And they almost certainly don’t have the votes to kill the filibuster, either.

That means Democrats are instead homing in on efforts intended to mobilize voters around the issue of reproductive rights, even though it won’t lead to policy changes in the short term. But a messaging blitz may not necessarily save Democrats in the midterms. Even among the Americans who oppose striking down Roe, the majority say the economy is more important to their vote in November, according to a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll.

You can read the full analysis here.

Nobody has come in for more criticism from the right over the Senate’s bipartisan gun bill than Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.).

The Post’s Aaron Blake writes that Cornyn spearheaded the negotiations and isn’t backing down despite the attacks — from former president Donald Trump, from Fox News and from his own state GOP. Per Aaron:

Cornyn offered some pretty unvarnished comments Wednesday about the National Rifle Association — comments that amount to a significant and unusual rebuke of the nation’s leading gun group from a leading GOP senator.

While speaking to reporters about the bill, Cornyn emphasized that the NRA was consulted extensively. But he indicated that the group would never be onboard with pretty much anything because of its “business model.”

“We worked with the NRA, listened to their concerns, but in the end I think they simply — they have a membership and a business model that will not allow them to support any legislation,” Cornyn said.

You can read more from Aaron here.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) is scheduled to provide testimony and documents next month to Atlanta-area prosecutors conducting a criminal investigation into whether President Donald Trump tried to improperly pressure Georgia officials to reverse election results in the state.

Kemp, who drew Trump’s ire for refusing to intervene to overturn the election, easily turned back a GOP primary challenge last month from former senator David Perdue (R-Ga.), who was recruited by Trump to run against Kemp.

Kemp will provide a “sworn recorded statement,” according to a letter from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office that was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“The attached subpoena has as its primary purpose the examination of the conduct of former President Donald Trump, and those working on his behalf,” Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor hired by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) to help with the investigation, said in the letter.

“Also, the District Attorney’s primary interest is to discover what witnesses and documents are available that will explain what was being said and done regarding the 2020 presidential election and the efforts to replace the constitutionally elected electors,” Wade said.

Wade said the district attorney’s office agreed to a recorded statement “in a spirit of cooperation with the Governor and his schedule.” It is scheduled for July 25.

Nearly one month after the massacre in Uvalde, Tex., the Senate passed the most significant changes to gun laws in nearly three decades in a vote called just after 10 p.m. as families of victims of gun violence sat in the gallery watching.

Writing in The Early 202, The Post’s Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell assess the fallout, writing:

Regardless of the political pressure and indicative of the changing political dynamics on the issue, 15 Republicans supported the measure despite strong opposition from the NRA. The National Shooting Sports Foundation — a firearm industry trade association which is arguably more influential among Capitol Hill Republicans than the NRA and close with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the lead Republican negotiator — offered measured opposition, noting there are many components of the bill they do support.

Gun control groups applauded the move. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the lead Democratic negotiator, who has been working with the groups for a decade, said it was not difficult to bring them on board. They were “pleasantly surprised” by the scope of issues being addressed.

You can read more here.

The House on Friday is scrambling to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, legislation that cleared the Senate on Thursday night. The bill aims to staunch mass gun violence through modest new firearms restrictions and $15 billion in mental health and school security funding.

“While more is needed, this package must quickly become law to help protect our children,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said earlier this week.

President Biden, who called for far more sweeping gun-control measures, signaled Thursday night that he intends to sign the bill, saying in a statement that “kids in schools and communities will be safer because of it.”

The Post’s Mike DeBonis has details of Thursday’s passage of the bill in the Senate:

The 65-to-33 vote represented an unlikely breakthrough on the emotional and polarizing question of U.S. gun laws, which have gone largely unchanged for more than 25 years, even as the nation has been repeatedly scarred by mass shootings whose names have become etched in history — from Columbine and Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook and Parkland.

But the May 24 killing of 19 students and two teachers inside a Uvalde, Tex., elementary school prompted renewed action, compelling a small group of senators to negotiate a narrow, bipartisan package focused on keeping guns away from dangerous potential killers while also bulking up the nation’s mental-health-care capacity with billions of dollars in new funding.

The vote in the House is expected to be less bipartisan. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) have told colleagues they plan to vote against it.

You can read more from Mike here.