House Dems plan to renew push for Hill action on gun safety
The effort comes in the wake of the school shooting in Georgia this week. Plus: News and notes on the latest jobs report, the Harris campaign’s eye-popping August fundraising numbers and more.
👋🏾 hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill.
I’m writing to you from New York City, where the temperature is my kind of crisp and the energy is understandably palpable. It’s Fashion Week, which always inspires nostalgia for my booked and busy days covering the industry before I somehow stumbled into congressional politics. Guess who was spotted last night at the Ralph Lauren in the Hamptons? First Lady Dr. Jill Biden with her granddaughter Finnegan, which isn’t a surprise given how often Dr. Biden is seen wearing RL. She was in town to speak at Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan—the location of my first Fashion Week a lifetime ago—for Fashion For Our Future, a nonpartisan march hosted by Vogue and the Council of Fashion Designers of America to uplift democracy and encourage voter registration ahead of the election.
Staying in the Big Apple: The US Open men’s semifinal will feature an all-American contest when Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe match wits in Queens tonight—and guarantee the men’s championship round will feature an American finalist for the first time in 18 years. (American Jessica Pegula advanced to Saturday’s women’s final yesterday.) And in a rematch of the 2023 WNBA finals, the Las Vegas Aces roll into Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Sunday for a rematch against the first-place New York Liberty. (ICYMI: Read my report from the Aces’ White House visit in May.)
Speaking of Sunday: The Dallas Cowboys start the 2024 season against the Cleveland Browns. (I see all the haters out there underestimating my ‘Boys, but in Dak I trust…) The season actually kicked off last night and to say I was fighting for my life last night trying to stay awake to catch the final minutes of that Ravens-Chiefs thriller is an understatement. Uncle’s getting old, I tell you.
Anyway, back to what you came for: When I join lawmakers back in Washington on Monday after their six-week break, they’ll have 21 days to pass a funding extension to keep the government open beyond the end of the month. House Republicans have signaled they plan to pick the same fight with Senate Democrats and the White House they’ve repeatedly lost throughout this Congress by attaching a partisan bill to a measure that will require bipartisan votes to pass and adding needless drama to what should be the brass tacks of governing in the process. In other news, the Congressional Black Caucus’s annual policy conference starts on Wednesday as well a few blocks from the Capitol, offering me a second chance to catch up with all the folks I missed during the Democratic National Convention last month.
Here are a few more countdowns to flag:
The general election is 60 days from today.
The first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in Philadelphia is in four. Harris arrived in Pittsburgh yesterday for debate camp at the Omni William Penn Hotel. She was in the Steel City on Labor Day campaigning with President Joe Biden as well.
The vice presidential debate between Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Sen. JD Vance is in 25 days.
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in 81 days following his conviction in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter between the two. He was set to learn his fate on Sep. 6, but the presiding judge this afternoon delayed the sentencing until after Election Day—a major legal victory for the former president.
In this edition: In the wake of another mass shooting, I’ll explain the legislative maneuvering House Dems will kick into high gear next week in a long-shot bid to force floor votes on a slew of gun safety measures.
But first things first…
— August jobs report: The economy created 142,000 jobs last month while the unemployment rate clocked in at 4.2 percent, offering the Federal Reserve one of its last major data points as it decides whether to cut interest rates next month and by how much.
“We’ve made significant progress on inflation,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee and one of the most outspoken lawmakers for rate cuts, said in a statement.“
Forecasters expected 160,000 new jobs, but this month’s numbers are an encouraging bounce-back from July when the economy only created 89,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent.
The largest job gains were in construction and health care. Manufacturing jobs ticked down; employment in other major industries, including transportation, professional services and the government remained steady. Wages increased by 0.4 percent last month and are up 4.2 percent in the past year, far outpacing inflation, which is 2.9 percent.
— Harris’s eye-popping August fundraising numbers: The Harris campaign announced it raised $361 million in August, a sum that anchors the $404 million cash it has on hand heading into general election season and is part of the $615 million raised since of the beginning of the vice president’s candidacy 47 days ago. (Put another way: She’s raised more than $13 million a day since receiving the baton from President Biden moments after he dropped his reelection bid.)
The campaign called August the best grassroots funding month in presidential history with support from nearly three million donors, 1.3 million of whom donated their first this election cycle. Three in four of those first-time donors did not contribute in the last presidential election. August featured five of the top ten grassroots days of the campaign. The day Vice President Harris announced Gov. Walz as her running mate was the campaign’s third-best grassroots day of the campaign. And over 60 percent of all donors in August were women and almost a fifth were registered Republicans or independents.
Former President Trump’s campaign raised $130 million in August and has $295 million on hand.
ICYMI: The Harris campaign on Tuesday transferred nearly $25 million to help Democrats in down-ballot races across the country in what it says is the largest transfer in a presidential cycle. You can dole out that kind of dough when you have almost $110 million more in your war chest than your opponent.
Related: More than 100 law enforcement officials endorsed Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz this morning “as the only candidates we trust to keep our communities safe” ahead of a speech at the Fraternal Order of Police meeting. Another 90 CEOs and business leaders, the CEOs of Yelp, Box, and Chobani, and former CEOs of Starbucks, Ford, Pepsi, and Lyft, endorsed Harris and her vision for what she describes as an opportunity economy.
It’s been a big week for endorsements: Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) announced she would vote for Harris this fall. And Jimmy McCain, son of the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), endorsed the vice president as well. Cheney and McCain joined a group of GOP Harris supporters, including retired four-star general Larry Ellis and more than 230 McCain, Romney and Bush alums, plus prominent Republican speakers at the Democratic Convention, including former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, former Trump White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, and former Trump national security official Olivia Troye.
— UnidosUS Latino pre-election poll: The largest Latino civil rights and advocacy group on Wednesday released findings from a survey of 3,000 eligible Latino voters that showed cost-of-living issues—inflation, wages, housing and health care costs—were among the community’s top priorities followed by immigration and gun violence. Latinos oppose bans on abortion by a 71%–21% margin.
Almost a quarter of Latinos will be voting in their first presidential election. While most Latinos are confident they will vote, many are still deciding. And Vice President Harris holds a 27-point lead in support from Latino voters over former President Trump (59%–31%). Read the full survey findings.
Related I: Three House Judiciary Committee Democrats sent a letter to Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas on raids he authorized against the homes of Latino political operatives, civil rights advocates and volunteers across three counties in the San Antonio area. The committee’s ranking member Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Reps. Veronica Escobar and Mary Gay Scanlon (R-PA) say the raids appear to be designed to intimidate Latino voting rights advocates, elected leaders, and candidates for public office in Texas. Paxton said the raids were the result of a two-year investigation of alleged fraud and vote harvesting. Read the full letter.
Related II: Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will travel to Allentown, PA, for several campaign events with Latino leaders and community members. The events are part of the campaign’s work to prove Harris understands the issues most important to Latino families as it continues to invest heavily to reach and earn the support of these voters in Pennsylvania, whom the Trump team is also fiercely courting nationwide. (For more proof of how critical the state is to Harris’s path to victory: Gov. Walz was in Erie, PA, yesterday, rallying 2,500 supporters to cap a blitz across central and western parts of the state.)
Emhoff’s had a busy week: As I reported in Tuesday’s edition, he attended Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA)’s famous annual cookout on Labor Day and was in Los Angeles last night to speak at a campaign fundraiser. He also made time to chat with the hosts of Crooked Media’s “Pod Save America” about gender politics, life on the campaign trail and his priorities if he became the country’s original first gentleman. Earlier this afternoon, he spoke at another campaign event in Chicago, and he’ll be in Wayne, PA, on Sunday to meet with volunteers and kick off a neighborhood canvass at a local field office. The campaign said it has 50 field offices across the state, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and everywhere in between.
— Harris reproductive freedom tour update: The Harris campaign will organize events this weekend ahead of Trump’s visits to North Carolina and Wisconsin as part of its reproductive freedom bus tour to spotlight the anti-abortion proposals in Project 2025 Democrats say could lead to nationwide abortion ban, restrictions to birth control access, mandates for states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions and threats to IVF and other fertility treatment.
The tour launched on Tuesday in Florida with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and made four additional stops in Georgia this week, according to Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt. Latroya Beasley, whose IVF cycle was halted this spring when the Alabama Supreme Court banned access to the fertility treatment, joined the Georgia stops to share her story. And on Tuesday and Wednesday, Hadley Duvall, the Kentucky resident whose stepfather impregnated her when she was 12 after years of sexual abuse, traveled across Arizona and Nevada to discuss with voters, including Republicans and young people, the impact of abortion bans on rape and incest survivors.
ICYMI: Check out my interview in Tuesday’s edition with state Sen. Shevrin Jones (D-FL) about the significance of the tour launching in the Sunshine State, the ballot initiative that could enshrine abortion rights into the state’s constitution and why Democrats are skeptical about Republicans’ pledge to let states decide the issue.
— Frost’s work permit reform bill: Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) introduced a new bill on Thursday that would improve and streamline the process of renewing work permits for migrants so they can stay on the job and support their families while contributing to their communities and paying taxes. Specifically, it would automatically extend the validity of work permits for those already eligible to work in the US when their TPS is extended, eliminating the stress and uncertainty of permit renewals. Florida leads the country in Temporary Protected Status holders, with over a third living in the Sunshine State.
Now, back to the House Democratic response to this week’s shooting in Georgia:
A community in Georgia is reeling after two students and two teachers were killed and another nine others were injured in a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in the north-central part of the state.
The alleged shooter—Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student at the school—reportedly used an AR-15 style rifle purchased by his father in the attack and was the subject of an investigation in May 2023 after law enforcement officials visited Gray and his family to investigate school shooting threats posted online by Gray, renewing calls for Congress to take action to pass a series of gun-safety measures advocates believe would keep communities and schools safer.
But it’s unlikely House Republican leadership will consider any meaningful gun safety legislation in the three weeks Congress is in session before lawmakers leave to campaign in October.
So House Democrats plan to persuade their colleagues to sign onto what is known as a discharge petition to bypass GOP leadership and force votes on several bills that would otherwise continue to collect dust.
Of the 15 active discharge petitions, seven are related to gun safety. 218 signatures are required for one to be successful. And while they’re historically rare, a discharge petition led by members of the far-right Freedom Caucus passed in May to uncouple a disaster relief tax bill from legislation that was stalled in the Senate.
A spokesperson for Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) told me she would encourage her colleagues to sign her petition that would ban bump stocks when the House returns next week. (It currently has 148 signatures, dozens short of the 218-vote threshold.) The deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in American history happened in Nevada in 2017 when a gunman fired more than 1,000 rounds into a music festival, killing more than 60 people and wounding at least 413 more.
“Every one of these tragedies point to the urgent need to ban bump stocks. They have no legitimate purpose and make the toll of gun violence far worse,” Dick Cooper said in a statement. “Congress needs to ban them and the discharge petition is the quickest way to do that.” (Bump stocks were banned by the Justice Department in 2018 but the ban was overturned by the Supreme Court this summer.)
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) will encourage members to sign a separate discharge petition requiring the safe storage of firearms, according to a statement provided by her spokesperson. DeLauro represents a district in the state where the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened in 2012. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in state history and the deadliest at an elementary school in US history.
Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA), who lost her son to gun violence, leads discharge petitions that would ban assault weapons (206 signatures) and enact a federal red-flag law to enable the courts to temporarily seize firearms from people who they believe to present a danger (176 signatures).
Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), chair of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, has collected 209 signatures on a discharge petition to require a background check for every firearm purchase. Jim Clyburn, the influential Democratic congressman from South Carolina, also has 209 signatures on his discharge petition that would strengthen background check procedures before a federal firearm license can be transferred to a person without a license for the weapon.
Rep. Dianna DeGette (D-CO), who represents a district near the movie theater where the 2012 Aurora shooting occurred, has a discharge petition with 193 signatures that would regulate high-capacity magazines.
Spokespeople for McBath, Clyburn, Thompson and DeGette did not respond to requests for comment by press time on whether their bosses would push for signatures next week.
A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) did not respond to a request for comment on whether he intended to call up any gun safety measures when the Senate returns on Monday.
The father of the alleged shooter was charged on Thursday with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.
Jennifer and James Crumbley were both convicted earlier of involuntary manslaughter in their son Ethan’s deadly shooting at a Michigan high school in 2021. They were the first parents to be convicted in the US for a mass school shooting. (Hulu has a solid documentary about the trial for the parents that’s worth watching.)
Vice President Harris, who leads the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, addressed the Apalachee school shooting at the top of her remarks in New Hampshire on her plan to support small businesses on Wednesday.
“It’s just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive,” she said. “It does not have to be this way. And, you know, this is one of the many issues that’s at stake in this election.”
Biden also addressed the issue on the day of the shooting and again during remarks in Wisconsin on Thursday, where he argued too many people have access to guns who shouldn’t.
“Let’s require safe storage of firearms. I know I have mine locked up. How could you have an assault rifle, a weapon in a house, not locked up and knowing your kid knows where it is?” Biden said. “You gotta hold parents accountable if they let their child have access to these guns.”
Similar to abortion, Republicans have yet to figure out how to discuss school shootings with humanity and empathy.
Sen. Vance called for Congress to increase funding for campus security at a rally in Phoenix on Thursday but rejected the notion that gun restrictions would be effective since shootings happen in red and blue states.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said Trump and Vance will always choose the NRA and gun lobby over American kids.
“Vice President Harris and Governor Walz know we can take action to keep our children safe and keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” Moussa said. “That is the choice in this election.”
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That’s all I’ve got for you for now.
Until Tuesday,
Michael
Do you have questions about the election? Drop me a line at michael@onceuponahill.com or send me a message below to get in touch and I’ll find the answers.