WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 13: Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) at the National Republican Senatorial Committee building on June 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. Trump is visiting Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Republicans and participate in additional meetings. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Republican members of the U.S. Senate striving for a takeover of their chamber in the November elections have a wish list for what they’d like to see in Donald Trump’s running mate.

A “little calmer” than Trump. Confident. Conservative. Military experience. Good relationships with senators. Ready to take over as chief executive if needed, they told States Newsroom in interviews.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has held off on revealing his pick. But he’s dropped tantalizing compliments about a few of the short-list candidates, producing non-stop headlines about the veepstakes in advance of the Republican National Convention next month.

So far, Trump hasn’t indicated a clear favorite, leading to incessant speculation about what characteristics he’s looking for in his second-in-command this time around, the person who will head up the GOP ticket with him in what’s likely to be a close election.

In 2016, Trump selected Indiana’s Mike Pence, in part to sway evangelical Christians who were skeptical about Trump’s moral character.

Trump is seeking a second term in office as a convicted felon found guilty on 34 counts in New York for falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to an adult film star ahead of the 2016 election. He’s also facing federal charges for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election and has cast aside Pence after his former vice president refused to take part in the scheme.

That, however, hasn’t diminished the number of GOP lawmakers and former presidential hopefuls jostling to join his ticket.

Trump’s list of vice presidential candidates reportedly includes North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Arkansas U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, Florida U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, former South Carolina Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, former GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, South Carolina U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, New York U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik and Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance.

Republican senators, including some thought to be in the running to be tapped as the veep candidate, met with Trump on June 13 to map campaign strategy and portray unity.

Trump told NBC News on Saturday his pick “most likely” will be at Thursday night’s debate with President Joe Biden in Atlanta.

Confidence and a coalition

Several Republican senators interviewed by States Newsroom offered suggestions for what traits might be most helpful for Trump in a vice president during a potential second term.

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said she’s hoping to see a vice presidential pick who can bring confidence and a wider GOP coalition to the table.

“I think you want somebody who has broad knowledge, not just national, but international, (you want) decisiveness, and somebody who’s got leadership that you could actually see taking the reins of the presidency, somebody who has conservative principles on the Republican side and is a proven leader,” Capito said.

“I would imagine for President Trump, it’s going to be somebody that brings a broader constituency to him,” Capito said, adding “and is probably a little calmer than he is.”

‘Good relationships across the spectrum’

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Trump would “benefit from somebody who, in the right setting, is providing a lot of good upward feedback, supporting the president’s agenda.”

The former and possibly future president would also gain from a pick who is “well studied on the issues,” and if it’s a senator, “a person with good relationships across the spectrum would help,” Tillis said.

“We’re probably going to have a tight margin, so if you think about maybe somebody who has past relationships with people in the House, good relationships with the Republican conference. I mean, we’re gonna have some tough votes,” Tillis said.

For example, Congress faces a massive tax code fight next year as several provisions in the 2017 Republican tax law are set to expire. Tillis recalled the internal GOP debate in 2017 “wasn’t a cakewalk.”

“We had to work to get Republican support,” Tillis said. “So having somebody that naturally has that chemistry, you know, whether or not you’ve worked on legislation, or you just have a good relationship going in. If I were in President Trump’s position, that’d be a key factor.”

Congress will also need to address the debt limit next year, a debate that carries significant economic consequences, both domestically and around the globe.

A stint in the military

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst — a top member of the Armed Services Committee and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard — said she “would love to see somebody that does have foreign relations or military policy experience.”

“I think that would be key, to have someone that’s young and enthusiastic and would be able to fill the role of our next president as well,” Ernst said.

Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran said that Trump might want to pick someone whom voters feel confident can follow him as the leader of the Republican Party.

“I’m not sure that vice presidential nominees have a lot of impact, influence on how people vote,” Moran said. “But I would say that this may be a year in which that matters — (given the) age of candidates. And so who might follow is probably of interest to people. And I would say that the best qualification is somebody who’d be a great president.”

Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, who is likely to become his home state’s next governor, said Trump needs someone who thinks like him politically, so the two don’t differ on policy issues, as well as someone ready to become president if required.

“I think someone’s going to have to be on the same wavelength politically, for sure,” Braun said. “I think I’ve heard him say that he wants somebody ready to step into the role if necessary. I think the loyalty factor is something he’s always stressed.”

Alabama Sen. Katie Britt said that no matter who Trump picks off his short list, Republicans will win back the Oval Office in November.

“Every senator on the list is outstanding,” Britt said. “And I’ll be excited about the good things that we’re going to be able to do with him back in office and us in control of the Senate.”

When asked his opinion of Trump’s VP short list, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said, “I haven’t seen anybody on the list that I would object to.”

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said he wouldn’t comment on specific contenders, but added “all the names I’ve heard mentioned seem to be good people.”

“But what counts is what President Trump thinks, and I don’t have the slightest idea who he’s gonna pick,” Kennedy said.

A sitting senator

Republican senators who spoke to States Newsroom appeared mostly unfazed by the possibility that a vice presidential pick could be from among their ranks — even if that lowers what could be a very narrow majority in the Senate come January.

Capito said she thinks a Republican majority will likely remain safe even if Trump chooses one of her colleagues as his running mate.

“I think the ones he’s talking about are from pretty red states, but you know, you’re always concerned about that,” Capito said. “But I think it would be great to have a colleague who was in the Senate with me be our vice president.”

Braun said that Trump might want to consider the polling of several key races for the Senate before picking his nominee.

“I think that could be a consideration,” Braun said. “You take that risk off the table.”

When asked whether a VP pick from the Senate could weaken or upset a GOP majority, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said, “I’m sure Trump will take that into consideration.”

Tillis said he is not concerned about Trump’s VP pick threatening a Republican Senate majority, and he speculated that Trump may even pull from the upper chamber when choosing his Cabinet, should he be elected.

“I think the replacement protocol doesn’t make it a significant issue,” Tillis said.

Grassley echoed Tillis. “Are we talking about Ohio, Florida, South Carolina? That’s it. I don’t think you’d worry about that,” he said.

Forty-five states require the governor to appoint someone to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat, and 37 of those states fill the vacancy with the chosen appointment until the next statewide election, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

The remaining states — Kentucky, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin — require vacant Senate seats to be filled by a special election.

All of Trump’s picks from the Senate are from states with Republican governors.

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A class of 2024 charm on a yellow tassel on black graduation cap with a rolled diploma.

WASHINGTON — Though the new version of the form to apply for federal financial student aid has had its fair share of highly publicized hiccups, U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal says the department has made a lot of progress in the past couple of months.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid — better known as FAFSA — got a makeover after Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in late 2020. But users faced glitches and technical errors during the Dec. 30 soft launch and past the Jan. 8 official debut for the 2024-25 form, which covers the upcoming school year.

Advocates voiced concerns over the form’s failure to adjust for inflation, its formula miscalculation and its tax data errors, prompting processing delays the department has worked to fix. The federal agency has also taken steps to address major issues that prevented parents without Social Security numbers from completing the form.

“We’re fixing things at a rapid pace, and we’ve been keeping the community updated. We have an issues guide on the website that lets people know the problems we’re aware of and what the potential solutions are. In almost every case now, there is a way for students to submit the form,” Kvaal told States Newsroom in an interview.

“It may be a customer service experience that is not what we originally designed, and so we’re gonna continue to try and make this process easier and faster for all students, including those whose parents may not have Social Security numbers, but it is possible now for everyone to submit a FAFSA,” Kvaal said.

He oversees higher education and financial aid, including the Office of Federal Student Aid, which is the largest student financial aid provider in the country.

More than 11 million FAFSA submissions

Kvaal said the department has already received more than 11 million FAFSA submissions for the 2024-25 school year.

Last week, the department said it has made “significant progress” in closing the gap in FAFSA submissions to an 8 percent decrease compared to this time last year, down from a nearly 40 percent decrease in March.

For both undergraduate and graduate students, the FAFSA form is a key indicator for financial aid eligibility, which comes in the form of grants, loans, work-study funds and scholarships.

The form is also not exclusive to first-year college students, and those already enrolled must renew their application each academic year.

“It’s still not perfect for all applicants” 

Though the department has made progress to address major known issues, “the system, certainly six months after it opened, is still not a totally functioning system,” according to MorraLee Keller, senior director of strategic programming at the National College Attainment Network, a nonprofit membership and advocacy organization.

“Right now, the form is working for a lot of applicants, but it’s still not perfect for all applicants,” she added.

The organization monitors FAFSA completion for graduating high school seniors nationally and compares those figures to the previous school year. Keller said “one thing that we’re seeing is the class of ‘24, at this point in time, is almost 13 percentage points behind in the rate at which the seniors have filed a FAFSA” this past academic year.

“We are significantly behind in the number of FAFSAs, particularly for our graduating seniors, so that is ultimately probably going to have an impact in enrollment because completing a FAFSA is a pretty good indicator about whether you plan to enroll in college this fall,” Keller said.

Tennessee, Louisiana, Illinois, Washington, D.C., and Texas have the highest percentages of high school seniors completing the FAFSA form, according to NCAN’s tracker. Nevada, Florida, Arizona, Utah and Alaska have the lowest percentages.

Meanwhile, Kvaal said he thinks “it’s important to note that just about everybody can get their FAFSA through the process now.” He added that “there are some specific instructions that people in certain situations need to follow carefully” and encouraged applicants to pay careful attention to the instructions and help hints.

“The FAFSA is broadly available, and it’s not accurate to say that there are students who can’t get through them,” he said.

New strategy

In early May, the federal agency launched the FAFSA Student Support Strategy, which has now provided more than “$30 million in funding and counting and has reached more than 180 organizations across the country” in an attempt to get more students to complete the form, according to the department.

The department also recently announced that Jeremy Singer, current president of the College Board, would serve as the new FAFSA executive advisor.

In late May, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the department has taken steps aimed at “modernizing” the Office of Federal Student Aid, including the department’s search for a new chief operating officer, per a news release. That person would replace Richard Cordray, who, in the midst of backlash and criticism toward the department over the botched rollout, said in April he would depart.

Part of the department’s efforts, according to Cardona, also include conducting a “full-scale review” of the Office of Federal Student Aid’s “current and historical organization, management, staffing, workflow structures, business processes, and operations” and hiring an independent consulting firm.

The department is also reviewing “contracts and acquisition procedures” in an effort to hold vendors accountable, Cardona said.

If I haven’t filled out the 2024-25 FAFSA form, what should I do?

Though students have until June 30, 2025, to complete the 2024-25 FAFSA form, deadlines vary based on individual colleges and states.

Kvaal encouraged anyone considering college this fall to visit Studentaid.gov and fill out the FAFSA as soon as possible.

“If you had been hearing that there were challenges with the form or people were encountering obstacles, we’ve made a lot of progress in making the form work in recent weeks, and most people, their form is getting through in one to three days, and we’re sending information to colleges that they need to make financial aid offers,” he said.

Keller also encouraged families to not give up on completing the form.

“The time is not gone — get your FAFSA filed this summer if you want to go to school this fall,” she said.

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Caso’s Gun-A-Rama has been open since 1967. Saturday 2/11/2023 Jersey City, NJ. (Aristide Economopoulos for New Jersey Monitor)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday upheld a federal law that bars people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from owning a firearm.

In an 8-1 decision on United States v. Rahimi, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion that “our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms.”

“When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment,” Roberts wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment, was the lone dissent.

Thomas argued that the question before the court was not if someone can have their firearms taken away under the Second Amendment, but instead whether the “Government can strip the Second Amendment right of anyone subject to a protective order — even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime. It cannot.”

The White House and gun safety advocates welcomed the long-awaited decision as a major victory.

“No one who has been abused should have to worry about their abuser getting a gun,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “As a result of today’s ruling, survivors of domestic violence and their families will still be able to count on critical protections, just as they have for the past three decades.”

2022 decision

This was the first major test of the 2022 Supreme Court decision – New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen – that struck down a New York law limiting carrying firearms in the open in a decision from the high court that greatly expanded gun rights. Thomas wrote that decision.

Because of the Bruen decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit vacated Zackey Rahimi’s conviction on the grounds that the federal law violated his Second Amendment rights.

In 2019, Rahimi assaulted his girlfriend in Arlington, Texas, and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone, according to the Department of Justice. That led to a restraining order that suspended his handgun license and prohibited him from possessing firearms.

But Rahimi did not adhere to that order and then threatened another woman with a gun, and two months later opened fire in public five times.

J. Matthew Wright, a federal public defender in North Texas who argued for his client, Rahimi, declined to comment on the decision.

Roberts says appeals court was wrong

Roberts argued the court’s decision in Bruen does “not help Rahimi,” and said the 5th Circuit’s decision was wrong in its methodology.

Roberts said instead of reviewing the circumstances in which the federal law “was most likely to be constitutional, the panel instead focused on hypothetical scenarios where the provision might raise constitutional concerns.”

He said that lower courts have misunderstood the methodology the high court used in the Bruen decision and that those “precedents were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.”

Roberts said that lower courts should discern “[w]hy and how the regulation burdens” on the Second Amendment right “are central to this inquiry.”

“For example, if laws at the founding regulated firearm use to address particular problems, that will be a strong indicator that contemporary laws imposing similar restrictions of similar reasons fall within a permissible category of regulations,” he said. “As Bruen explained, a challenged regulation that does not precisely match its historical precursors ‘still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.’”

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a concurring opinion in which she said while she agreed with the Rahimi decision, she still believed Bruen was wrongly decided. However, she added the decision “clarifies Bruen’s historical inquiry.”

“Rather than asking whether a present-day gun regulation has a precise historical analogue, courts applying Bruen should ‘conside(r) whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,’” she said.

Sotomayor said in the Rahimi case, the government did not identify a “founding-era or Reconstruction-era law that specifically disarmed domestic abusers,” but that it didn’t need to because there is “shared principle” in restricting gun use by those who pose a threat.

“History has a role to play in Second Amendment analysis, but a rigid adherence to history, (particularly history predating the inclusion of women and people of color as full members of the polity), impoverishes constitutional interpretation and hamstrings our democracy,” she said.

Historical precedent

During oral arguments in November before the court, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, argued that the 5th Circuit misinterpreted the Bruen decision.

She said there is historical precedent in the ability of Congress to “disarm those who are not law-abiding, responsible citizens.”

Under a 1994 federal law, anyone who has been convicted in any court of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence,” and, or, is subject to domestic violence protective orders, is prohibited from purchasing and having possession of firearms and ammunition.

During those oral arguments, the justices – both liberal and conservative – seemed to side with Prelogar’s argument that the federal law is in line with the longstanding practice of disarming dangerous people and does not violate an individual’s Second Amendment rights.

More than half of female homicide victims are killed by current or former male intimate partners. Firearms are used in more than 50% of those homicides.

More than two dozen states have laws that prevent someone subject to an order in a domestic violence case from buying or possessing a gun and ammunition.

Some of those states include Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Protecting victims

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement the decision upheld a law that “protects victims by keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals who pose a threat to their intimate partners and children.”

“As the Justice Department argued, and as the Court reaffirmed today, that commonsense prohibition is entirely consistent with the Court’s precedent and the text and history of the Second Amendment,” Garland said.

Angela Ferrell-Zabala, the executive director of the gun safety advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said in a statement that the court’s decision will ensure that “millions across the country will be protected over the desires of gun rights extremists.”

“This is a win for the gun safety movement and another loss for the gun lobby hellbent on putting lives in danger,” Ferrell-Zabala said.

Douglas Letter, the chief legal officer of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement that he hopes lower courts will follow the advice from Friday’s ruling.

“Guns are the number one weapon of choice for domestic abusers, and there is no reason why anyone who is a known danger should be permitted access to firearms,” Letter said.

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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew takes questions from Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 23, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

TikTok and its parent company argued Thursday in a federal court in the District of Columbia that the recently enacted law forcing a nationwide ban or sale of the popular platform violates the First Amendment.

TikTok Inc., which operates the video-sharing service in the United States, and its parent company, ByteDance Ltd., which was founded by a Chinese national, filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit calling the law President Joe Biden signed in April an unprecedented restriction on the constitutional right to free speech.

“Never before has Congress expressly singled out and shut down a specific speech forum,” the brief reads. “Never before has Congress silenced so much speech in a single act. “

Upholding such an “extraordinary speech restriction” would require the court to undertake “exacting scrutiny” of Congress’ action, but Congress provided only a hypothetical national security argument to advance the bill, the companies said.

“Congress gave this Court almost nothing to review,” the brief continues. “Congress enacted no findings, so there is no way to know why majorities of the House and Senate decided to ban TikTok.”

Many individual lawmakers who supported the law raised national security concerns, saying ByteDance’s relationship with the Chinese government meant the country’s Communist Party leaders could demand access to TikTok users’ private data.

They also said the platform, which the company says has 170 million users in the U.S., could be used to spread propaganda.

But under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, labeling speech as foreign propaganda does not allow the government to overlook First Amendment protections, TikTok said in its brief.

Speculation about how the app “might” or “could” be used, rather than any concrete examples of misconduct, do not clear the high bar required to restrict speech, the companies added.

“A claim of national security does not override the Constitution,” the companies wrote Thursday.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department, which is defending the law, highlighted the intelligence community’s national security concerns with TikTok and said the law was consistent with the First Amendment.

“This legislation addresses critical national security concerns in a manner that is consistent with the First Amendment and other constitutional limitations,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement to States Newsroom. “We look forward to defending the legislation in court.

“Alongside others in our intelligence community and in Congress, the Justice Department has consistently warned about the threat of autocratic nations that can weaponize technology – such as the apps and software that run on our phones – to use against us. This threat is compounded when those autocratic nations require companies under their control to turn over sensitive data to the government in secret.”

Response to lawmakers

The brief said Congress had not included any official findings of harm from TikTok, but several individual members raised specific concerns about the kind of speech found on the platform.

The companies said Thursday those specific complaints bolstered the argument that TikTok is being denied free speech protections.

The brief cited several lawmaker statements:

• U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat who is ranking member on the House Select Committee on China, and former Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who chaired the panel, said the platform’s algorithm fed an overwhelming share of pro-Palestinian content over videos that favor Israel.

• Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, said the platform “exposes children to harmful content.”

• Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said the law would “make TikTok safer for our children and national security.”

• Nebraska Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts noted the popularity of the hashtag #StandwithKashmir, which protests a policy of India, a geopolitical rival of China.

“Legislators’ perception of the content reflected on TikTok was misinformed,” the companies said. “But well-founded or not, governmental policing of content differences is antithetical to the First Amendment.”

Oral arguments in September

Both chambers of Congress passed the law with bipartisan votes as part of a package that included aid to Israel and Ukraine. Biden signed the measure April 24.

TikTok pledged to sue and filed its legal challenge last month.

Tuesday’s brief expands on the company’s arguments. The government’s response is due July 26 and oral arguments are scheduled for Sept. 16.

Divestment unworkable, TikTok says

TikTok and ByteDance said Thursday the provision in the bill to avoid a ban by divesting the service to a company without ties to China is unworkable, especially within the nine-month timeline required by the law.

Such a move would be technically complex, requiring years of engineering work, the companies said. It would also isolate the U.S. user base from the rest of the world, limiting revenue from advertisements.

And even if it were feasible from a technical or business standpoint, selling the platform would likely be rejected by the Chinese government, which has the authority to block exportation of technology developed in the country, the companies said.

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Supporters of reproductive rights protested outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, as justices heard oral arguments over access to mifepristone, one of two pharmaceuticals used in medication abortion. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Top Democratic campaign officials Thursday pressed their case for control of Congress and the White House by pointing toward the upcoming two-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to an abortion.

More than a dozen Democrats also introduced legislation in Congress to prevent a future Republican administration from using an 1873 law, known as the Comstock Act, to bar mailing abortion medication.

On a call with reporters, the three campaign leaders said voters must flip the House from red to blue, keep Democrats in control of the Senate against the long odds and ensure President Joe Biden stays in the Oval Office to prevent the GOP from potentially implementing nationwide restrictions on reproductive rights.

Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Vice Chair Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington repeatedly said that Democrats would restore nationwide protections for abortion access if given unified control of government.

They, however, didn’t provide a clear road map for what Democrats would do on reproductive rights, including access to contraception and in vitro fertilization, if divided control of government continues.

Instead, they pointed to what Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, might do in the event voters elect him president during November’s elections.

“We need to be clear that Trump and MAGA Republicans want to ban abortion and they have a plan to do it through executive action without any bill ever passing Congress; because they believe that politicians should have the power to make these decisions for women, whose lives and stories they will never know,” Smith said on the call.

Comstock Act fears

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has released “Project 2025,” a lengthy document that outlines what it believes Trump should do during a second term.

The Trump campaign hasn’t endorsed the document or said it would seek to implement it in full or in part, though a former Trump administration official led its development.

The proposal includes using the Comstock Act —  a law enacted more than 150 years ago to prevent the mailing of obscene materials, contraceptives and anything that could produce an abortion — to bar the shipment of medication abortion throughout the United States.

Smith on Thursday introduced a three-page bill that would eliminate that as a possibility, though the legislation may not advance in the Senate and is very unlikely to make it through the GOP-controlled House before November.

Medication abortion, which includes mifepristone and misoprostol, accounts for about 63% of abortions nationwide, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The two pharmaceuticals are also used for miscarriage care. Misoprostol has other medical uses, as well.

The Comstock Act, enacted in 1873, originally barred the mailing of materials considered lewd or obscene at the time, but is written so broadly that it has been used to bar boxing photographs, art and information about contraception.

The law explicitly prohibits mailing “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use.” Smith’s bill would seek to eliminate those provisions.

Smith, when asked about the Comstock Act on the call Thursday, said the “zombie law” could be used to make medication abortion illegal without a vote in the Congress.

“It’s very clear what their plan is,” Smith said of Republicans. “And so this is another example of the very clear choice that American voters have.”

DelBene, who is leading Democrats’ campaign arm in the House, said on the call that Republicans are already trying to change when and how Americans have access to various reproductive rights by attaching amendments to the must-pass government funding bills.

“This election is fundamentally about our rights, our freedoms, our democracy and our future,” DelBene said. “House Republicans have made it clear they’re willing to do anything to take those away.”

A divided Congress predicted

The most likely outcome of November’s elections isn’t currently unified Democratic control in the eyes of some analysts however.

Three experts at Moody’s Analytics released an analysis this week, showing the most probable result is that Biden will remain president with a divided Congress.

That scenario had a 40% probability, while a Republican sweep had a probability of 35%. Trump winning the presidential election and gaining a divided Congress had a 15% probability. A Democratic sweep had a 10% probability, according to the report.

The most likely scenario of Biden remaining president with a split Congress suggests that the GOP would flip the Senate and the Democrats would regain the House of Representatives.

“With the retirement of West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, the deep-red state will almost surely elect a Republican senator, leaving the Senate evenly divided,” the report states. “But while recent polling shows that Senate races in Arizona, Maryland, Montana, Nevada and Ohio are close, Republicans need to take only one of these seats to regain the majority.”

“Each race has its own story, but helping the Republicans’ cause is angst over inflation and heightened concern over the immigrant crisis at the southern border,” the report adds.

The analysis goes on to say that “federal judicial decisions on redistricting efforts have also leaned in Democrats’ favor, boosting their chances” of regaining control of the House.

“Also, given that incumbents win reelection more than 90% of the time, the relatively high number of congressional retirements relative to previous cycles creates the potential for more change in the body,” the analysis states.

The report details the four outcomes of November’s election as well as the various economic scenarios that would play out under either a Biden or a Trump presidency for the next four years.

The report was written by Chief Economist Mark M. Zandi, Director/Senior Economist Brendan La Cerda and Economist Justin Begley.

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A coronavirus drive-through testing site at the Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center on March 17, 2020 at Jones Beach State Park, New York. It was the first drive-through coronavirus testing site on Long Island. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Scientists debated the origins of COVID-19 on Tuesday, trading barbs over whether the bulk of evidence available points to a natural spillover event from a wild animal or a virus designed in a lab and then let loose through an inadvertent leak.

The hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was part of ongoing efforts in Congress to apply the lessons learned during the pandemic to prevent or blunt the next outbreak.

Gregory Koblentz, associate professor and director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University in Virginia, said during the two-hour hearing that debate continues in the scientific community about the origins.

“The possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately developed as a biological weapon has been unanimously rejected by all U.S. intelligence agencies,” Koblentz testified. “While the intelligence community is divided on the origin of the pandemic, most of the agencies have determined that the virus was not genetically engineered.”

Residents in Wuhan, China, were first diagnosed with “an atypical pneumonia-like illness” in December 2019, according to a COVID-19 timeline from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Initial cases all appeared linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market at the time, though there has since been much speculation about the types of research taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Koblentz said he believes the available evidence points to a spillover event from an animal, though he added a “research-related accident can’t be ruled out at this time.”

The lack of transparency and data from the Chinese government has significantly hindered scientists’ efforts to unify around the origin of COVID-19, he said.

Scientists battle over lab vs. spillover

Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, testified he believes a “large preponderance of evidence indicates SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, entered humans through a research incident.”

Ebright also leveled criticism at fellow panelist Robert Garry, who, along with a handful of co-authors, published an opinion article in the journal nature medicine in March 2020, titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.”

In the commentary, Garry and the other scientists wrote, “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

Ebright said during Tuesday’s hearing that the opinion article represented “scientific misconduct up to and including fraud,” a characterization that Garry rejected during the hearing.

“The authors were stating their opinion, but that opinion was not well-founded,” Ebright said. “In March of 2020, there was no basis to state that as a conclusion, as opposed to simply being a hypothesis.”

Garry, professor and associate dean of the School of Medicine at Tulane University in Louisiana, argued on behalf of the spillover event during the hearing, testifying that the virus likely didn’t move directly from a bat to humans, but went to an unidentified intermediary animal.

“The bat coronaviruses are viruses that are spread by the gastrointestinal route,” Garry said. “For a virus like this to become a respiratory virus — it’s just going to require too many mutations, too many changes for a bat virus to spill directly over to a human being. That could only really happen in nature with replication through an intermediate animal.”

Garry also defended gain-of-function research during the hearing, arguing that it has had some beneficial impact, though he noted that it does need “appropriate safeguards and restrictions.”

Lawmakers and pundits have used several, often evolving, definitions for gain-of-function research in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Society for Microbiology defines it as techniques “used in research to alter the function of an organism in such a way that it is able to do more than it used to do.”

When research is “responsibly performed” on highly transmissible and pathogenic viruses, it can lead to advances in public health and national security, Garry testified.

“Without gain-of-function research, we’d have no Tamiflu. Without gain-of-function research, we wouldn’t have a vaccine to prevent cancer caused by infection by the human papilloma virus,” Garry said. “And without gain-of-function research, we won’t be able to identify how novel viruses infect us. And if we don’t know how they infect us, we cannot develop appropriate treatments and cures for the next potential pandemic creating virus.”

Oversight of funding, research 

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan raised several questions about whether there’s enough oversight of how the United States spends research dollars as well as what mechanisms are in place to monitor how private entities conduct certain types of research.

“While their research has the potential to cure diseases and boost our economy, unless they accept federal funding, there is very little federal oversight to ensure that private labs are engaged in safe and ethical research,” she said.

Koblentz from George Mason University said there is much less oversight of biosafety and biosecurity for private research facilities that don’t receive federal funding.

“In order to expand the scope of oversight to all privately funded research, (it) would require legislative action,” Koblentz said.

Congress, he said, should establish a national bio-risk management agency that would have authority over biosafety and biosecurity “regardless of the source of funding.”

“At the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter where the funding comes from in terms of making sure this research is being done safely, securely and responsibly,” Koblentz said.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, ranking member on the committee, said the panel will hold an upcoming hearing specifically on gain-of-function research, including what steps Congress should take to ensure it doesn’t put the public at risk.

The next pandemic

Committee Chairman Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said during the hearing that lawmakers “must learn from the challenges faced during this pandemic to ensure we can better protect Americans from future potential biological incidents.”

“Our government needs the flexibility to determine the origins of naturally occurring outbreaks, as well as potential outbreaks that could arise from mistakes or malicious intent,” Peters said.

Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, after listening to some of the debate, expressed exasperation that so much attention is going toward what caused the last pandemic and not on how to prepare for the next one.

“Given the fact that it could have been either, we know what action we ought to take to protect from either,” Romney said. “And so why there’s so much passion around that makes me think it’s more political than scientific, but maybe I’m wrong.”

The United States, he said, shouldn’t be funding gain-of-function research and should “insist” that anyone who receives federal funding follow the standards of the International Organization for Standardization.

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WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 24: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks about Russia's "unprovoked and unjustified" military invasion of neighboring Ukraine in the East Room of the White House on February 24, 2022 in Washington, DC. Biden announced a new round of sanctions against Russia after President Vladimir Putin launched an attack on Ukraine from the land, sea and air on Thursday. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration Tuesday will announce deportation protections for long-term undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens, along with quicker approval of work permits for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

President Joe Biden will formally make the announcement during an afternoon White House event to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the DACA program. The initiative was launched during the Obama administration and was meant to temporarily protect undocumented children brought into the United States without authorization.

The new policies were previewed by senior administration officials to reporters late Monday.

The new DACA policy will allow those recipients who have graduated from an accredited university and have an offer by a U.S. employer for a highly skilled job to quickly qualify for one of the existing temporary work visas, such as an H-1B visa.

The new policies came two weeks after Biden enacted his harshest crackdown on immigration with a partial ban on asylum proceedings at the southern border. Immigration remains a top issue for voters and for Biden’s GOP rival, former President Donald Trump.

Democrats and immigration advocates have long pressed the Biden administration to instill permanent protections for the nearly 579,000 DACA recipients as they await a decision from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that could deem the program unlawful. The legal dispute is likely to head to the Supreme Court.

Many immigration policy experts have called DACA outdated, because there are now thousands of undocumented people who are not eligible for the program because they were not even born yet. To qualify, an undocumented person needs to have continuously resided in the U.S. since 2007.

Murphy administration urges Biden to offer protections to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens

Biden pushed to take action

Americans with undocumented spouses have expressed their frustration and pushed for the Biden administration to use executive action to grant relief for the more than 1.1 million Americans who fear their undocumented spouses could face deportation.

The deportation protections to those married to a U.S. citizens are a one-time action expected to allow roughly 500,000 noncitizen spouses and their children to apply for a lawful permanent residence — a green card — under certain requirements.

To qualify, a noncitizen must have resided in the U.S. for 10 years as of Monday, June 17, 2024, and be married to a U.S. citizen since that date as well. That spouse who is a noncitizen also cannot be deemed a security threat.

The Department of Homeland Security will consider those applications, which are expected to be open by the end of summer, on a case-by-case basis, a senior administration official said.

This move is also expected to affect roughly 50,000 children who are noncitizens and have an immigrant parent married to a U.S. citizen.

For those children to qualify, they have to be 21 or younger, unmarried “and the marriage between the parents has to have taken place before the child turned 18,” a senior administration official said.

Under current U.S. immigration law, if a noncitizen enters the country without authorization, they are ineligible for permanent legal status and would be required to leave the U.S. and reenter legally through a green card application by their U.S. spouse, which is a lengthy process that can take years.

“The challenges and uncertainty of this process result in many eligible spouses not applying for permanent residence,” a senior administration official said.

Application info coming

More information on the application and eligibility process will be published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks, a senior administration official said.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the legal immigration system, has a similar program that allows noncitizens who are immediate family members of U.S. military service members to obtain green cards without leaving the country.

“This announcement utilizes existing authorities to keep families together,” a senior administration official said. “But… only Congress can fix our broken immigration system.”

Any immigration reform from Congress is unlikely, with Republicans in control of the House and Democrats controlling the Senate. A bipartisan border security deal fell apart earlier this year. There was no pathway to citizenship in that deal for DACA recipients or longtime immigrants.

The closest Congress came to bipartisan immigration reform was in 2013, when the “Gang of Eight,” made up of four Republican and four Democratic senators, crafted a bill that would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented people.

It passed the Senate, but Republican House Speaker John Boehner never brought the bill to the floor for a vote.

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TALLAHASSEE, FL - NOVEMBER 03: Hired security personnel wait for voters outside the Leon County Supervisor of Elections office on November 3, 2020 in Tallahassee, Florida. After a record-breaking early voting turnout, Americans head to the polls on the last day to cast their vote for incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. (Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The federal government has sought to bolster election security for years through a popular grant program, but the wildly fluctuating funding levels have made it difficult for state officials to plan their budgets and their projects.

Rising misinformation and disinformation about elections, often fueled by conspiracy theories, as well as threats against election workers, make the grants especially important, according to elections officials.

But U.S. House Republicans are seeking to eliminate funding for election security grants — known as Help America Vote Act, or HAVA grants — in this year’s appropriations process, a move they unsuccessfully attempted last year as well.

“We continue to unnecessarily risk the very integrity of our elections and American democracy,” Georgia Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop said Thursday during committee debate on the funding bill.

Bishop, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was “concerned about the outdated and the insecure voting systems around the country that pose a very, very serious threat to our national security and to our democratic system.”

“It is irresponsible to ignore the wake-up call,” Bishop added. “Our nation’s election systems are currently and constantly under attack by foreign actors that are threatening our democratic values.”

The bill was approved by the GOP-led House Appropriations Committee with no money in it for the grants.

Gideon Cohn-Postar, legislative director at Issue One & Issue One Action, said during an interview with States Newsroom that while the grants have traditionally been bipartisan, several factors have affected backing for the program in recent years.

“It remains something that many Republicans in both the House and the Senate support,” Cohn-Postar said. “But it’s also been caught up, I think, in some of the false information about elections that began to spread in 2020.”

Former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has continued to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

Issue One writes on its website that the organization strives to “unite Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the movement to fix our broken political system and build an inclusive democracy that works for everyone”.

Grant funding decreases

Congress approved $55 million in election security grants during the last appropriations process, which wrapped up this spring. That action came after the Republican-controlled House, which proposed zero dollars, conferenced with the Democratic-controlled Senate, which had proposed $75 million in funding.

That final funding level was a decrease from the $75 million that Congress approved in both fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2022.

Congress didn’t approve any election grant funding in the annual appropriations bill during fiscal year 2021. However, that followed lawmakers’ allocation of $425 million in the prior year’s bill as well as an additional $400 million in one of the COVID-19 emergency spending bills.

Cohn-Postar said that several states have sought to make their HAVA grants last more than one year by spending less than they receive, or saving the money up for bigger projects.

Louisiana, for example, hasn’t spent any of its election security grant funding since 2018, in preparation for overhauling its election system. New Hampshire passed a state law that collects the grant funding in an endowment and then only spends a portion of that each year.

But that “careful” budgeting and uncertainty about how much grant funding Congress might provide in the next year has led federal lawmakers to look at states’ use of the grants skeptically, Cohn-Postar said.

“The key thing we’ve come across … is about half of the states have only spent about half of their HAVA grants,” Cohn-Postar said. “And that gets brought up in every conversation that Congress has about these grants. They say, ‘Hey, why should we appropriate more if you haven’t spent?’”

Congress, he said, sometimes uses states’ “careful, thoughtful budgeting as an excuse to not give them money.”

Republicans in Congress are also looking to reduce federal spending overall and have made cuts throughout many of the dozen annual spending bills, including the Financial Services bill, which includes the HAVA grants.

‘Incredibly important’ in Maine

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said during an interview the grants “have been incredibly important, especially in the absence of sustainable elections funding from the federal government.”

“We have seen the rapid evolution of cybersecurity threats and threats against election infrastructure over the last several years,” Bellows said. “As the threats evolve, so must our preparedness. The election security grants are fundamental to our ability to make investments in improvements in our central voter registration system and cybersecurity protections for that system.”

Congress’ inability or unwillingness to create a predictable, stable funding program for states to administer federal elections is “unfortunate,” she said.

“We are very proud that Maine has always enjoyed safe, free and secure elections,” Bellows said. “But make no mistake, the lack of sustainable ongoing federal funding is a potential vulnerability in the future.”

Washington state Elections Director Stuart Holmes said in an interview he plans his annual budget around not getting HAVA election security grants and is pleasantly surprised when Congress does provide the funding.

“Through my entire career, there’s only been two rounds of HAVA that were significant investments into elections,” Holmes said. “So it’s a great surprise to get an extra million dollars at the beginning of the year. But it does make it pretty much impossible to prepare and plan for anything if you have to spend it.”

The grants don’t expire at the end of the fiscal year and the federal government doesn’t claw back unspent funding, allowing the states to take different approaches to how they use the money.

Holmes said during his interview with States Newsroom that the funding approved in fiscal 2020 allowed the state to “create an entire team of cybersecurity professionals to be dedicated to protecting our infrastructure.”

“In the state of Washington, we have a centralized voter registration and election management system, and never before had we had dedicated election professionals that are watching the logs, preparing our system, testing our system and collaborating with other professionals to do testing,” Holmes said. “So we’re in a better position than we’ve ever been.”

Even so, he said, “local election officials would certainly look forward to a stable funding source from the federal government as it relates to federal elections.”

New Hampshire election fund

New Hampshire Secretary of State David M. Scanlan said when Congress passed the HAVA program in 2002, it told states the funding was primarily to set up a statewide voter registration database, ensure every polling place had accessible voting equipment, provide poll workers with training and set up voter education programs.

The New Hampshire Legislature at the time told the secretary of state to use the initial allocation from Congress to meet the requirements, but then to establish an election fund with the remaining money.

Originally, the secretary of state could use one-twentieth of the total funding in the account for annual costs of maintaining the federal mandates, but that is currently one-twelfth of the total amount in the fund.

“New Hampshire has been doing a good job with the money that we have, but there’s no question that the funds have helped us put in place security measures for our electronic systems,” Scanlan said.

The state, he said, has used its federal election security grants to hire vendors that specialize in keeping the electronic systems safe.

When New Hampshire set up a new voter registration database, the state used the funding to ensure none of the software included anything nefarious.

“We’ve really been making sure that the systems that we’re building are clean and that there’s not something malicious lurking in the shadows,” Scanlan said. “We’ve taken some really good steps that give me real confidence that our systems are in good shape.”

Advocating for ‘consistent, reliable federal funding’

JP Martin, deputy communications director for the Arizona secretary of state, declined States Newsroom’s request for an interview with the secretary of state, offering only to provide written responses to questions on HAVA election security grants.

Martin wrote in an email that “fluctuating levels of federal funding have significantly impacted our strategic planning and budgeting.”

“The uncertainty of future allocations compels us to be cautious with expenditures, focusing on priorities such as enhancing physical security measures for voting equipment,” Martin wrote. “For instance, securing equipment in cages—now requires a liftgate-equipped truck due to their increased weight—demonstrates the challenges of managing technological and budgetary constraints under limited HAVA funding.”

Congress declining to provide election security grants in the future “could significantly strain Arizona’s election infrastructure,” he wrote.

“Currently, the state is under a hiring freeze, and our focus remains on supporting counties, especially with the recent changes such as the date of the primary and legislation extending ballot curing to weekends,” Martin wrote. “We are prioritizing increased cybersecurity training and advocating for consistent, reliable federal funding to ensure the smooth administration of elections, emphasizing the necessity of sustained financial support from Congress.”

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A 7.62X39mm round sits next a a 30-round magazine and an AK-47 with a bump stock installed at Good Guys Gun and Range in Orem, Utah, on Feb. 21, 2018. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down a 2018 rule to ban bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire at a rapid rate similar to fully automatic guns. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down a rule enacted following a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that defined a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock attachment as a machine gun, which is generally prohibited under federal law.

The opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, reduces the executive branch’s already-limited ability to address gun violence. Thomas, a strong defender of Second Amendment gun rights, wrote that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its statutory authority in prohibiting the sale and possession of bump stocks, which he said differed importantly from machine guns.

“Nothing changes when a semiautomatic rifle is equipped with a bump stock,” Thomas wrote. “Between every shot, the shooter must release pressure from the trigger and allow it to reset before reengaging the trigger for another shot.”

The case, Garland v. Cargill, was a 6-3 decision that broke along the court’s established ideological lines.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the senior member of the court’s liberal wing, wrote the dissent, and argued that the decision puts “bump stocks back in civilian hands.”

“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she wrote. “A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.’ Because I, like Congress, call that a machinegun, I respectfully dissent.”

Gun safety setback

The White House slammed the decision.

“Today’s decision strikes down an important gun safety regulation,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “Americans should not have to live in fear of this mass devastation.”

Biden called on Congress to ban bump stocks and assault weapons, but any gun-related legislation is likely to be stalled with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats holding only a slim majority in the Senate.

“Bump stocks have played a devastating role in many of the horrific mass shootings in our country, but sadly it’s no surprise to see the Supreme Court roll back this necessary public safety rule as they push their out of touch extreme agenda,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

Trump-era rule

This case stems from a regulation set during the Trump administration, following the mass shooting in Las Vegas. A gunman used rifles outfitted with bump stocks to fire into a crowd at a music festival, killing 58 people that night and two more who died of their injuries later, and injuring more than 500.

The next year, the ATF issued the rule that concluded bump stocks are illegal machine guns. Anyone who owned or possessed a bump stock was required to either destroy the material or turn it in to the agency to avoid criminal penalties.

Michael Cargill, a gun shop owner in Austin, Texas, surrendered two bump stocks to ATF and then challenged the rule in federal court.

A U.S. district court dismissed his case, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed with Cargill that a 1986 law’s definition of a machine gun does not apply to bump stocks because the rifles equipped with the attachments don’t shoot multiple bullets “automatically,” or “by a single function of the trigger.”

That law defined a machine gun as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

The Biden administration appealed the 5th Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court.

High court arguments

In oral arguments, the Biden administration defended the Trump-era rule and said that bump stocks allow semiautomatic rifles to fire automatically with a single pull of the trigger.

Attorneys for Cargill argued that bump stocks are used by repeatedly pulling the trigger, rather than firing automatically with a single pull.

In her dissent, Sotomayor said the decision will limit the federal government’s “efforts to keep machineguns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.”

Thomas also wrote a major gun decision in 2022 that invalidated a New York law against carrying a firearm in public without showing a special need for protection. The court decided the case on 14th Amendment grounds, but it also expanded Second Amendment rights.

Because of that 2022 decision, another gun related case is before the court this session that tests a federal law that prevents the possession of firearms by a person who is subject to a domestic violence protective order. A decision is expected this month.

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WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 13: Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump (C-R) is applauded by Senate Republicans before giving remarks to the press at the National Republican Senatorial Committee building on June 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. Trump is visiting Capitol Hill to meet with House and Senate Republicans. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — In his first visit to Capitol Hill since leaving office in January 2021, former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, mapped campaign strategy with GOP lawmakers and projected party unity ahead of the November elections.

Trump said the meetings brought “great unity.”

Surrounded by Republican senators who were smiling and applauding him after a meeting at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters near the Capitol, Trump said “we have one thing in mind and that’s making our country great.”

The positive reception from GOP leaders showed Trump’s standing in the party improved since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that saw a mob of Trump supporters attack the U.S. Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying the electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election.

The U.S. House impeached Trump – for the second time – for his role in the attack, though the Senate vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict him.

Trump’s visit Thursday came two weeks after he was convicted on 34 felony counts in New York for falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election. Republicans have denounced the verdict as a weaponization of the justice system.

Trump met with House and Senate Republicans separately. Lawmakers exiting their respective meetings said they were unified behind the former president and they discussed a legislative strategy for a potential second term, such as reinstating Trump-era immigration policies.

“He understands he needs a majority in both bodies to have a successful presidency and he is determined to do that,” Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma said.

Trump has made immigration a core campaign issue – as he did in 2016 – and has promised to not only reinstate his policies at the southern border, but to carry out mass deportations. 

Democrats have remained on the offense on immigration policy, with the White House enacting an executive order that limits asylum claims at the southern border and the Senate failing on a second attempt to pass a border security bill. Vulnerable U.S. Senate Democrats in Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania are aiming for reelection.

Trump urges ‘careful’ abortion talk

The meetings occurred on the day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on another hot-button issue for the GOP. In a much-anticipated decision, the court unanimously upheld access to mifepristone, one of two pharmaceuticals used in medication abortion, under current prescribing guidelines.

House GOP lawmakers leaving the early meeting said that Trump did not comment on the court’s ruling.

But New York Rep. Marc Molinaro said that the former president advised Republicans that they “have to be very careful about” how they talk about abortion and that “is to show respect for women and the choices that they have to make.”

Just days ago, Trump promised to work “side by side” with a religious organization that wants abortion “eradicated.” Trump has yet to release his policy stances on contraception and access to medication abortion, a two-drug regimen approved for up to 10 weeks gestation.

Access to reproductive health care, including contraception and IVF, has become a central campaign theme for Democrats.

The Senate tried to pass legislation last week that would have provided protections for access to contraception, but most Republicans voted against it. The Senate also took a procedural vote Thursday on legislation from Democrats that would bolster protections for IVF, but it failed in the face of Republican opposition.

Birthday, baseball and an ‘aggressive agenda’

GOP House members leaving their meeting reported singing “Happy Birthday” to Trump, whose 78th birthday is Friday.

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said the conference presented Trump with a baseball and bat from the previous night’s Congressional Baseball Game, a charity event which Republicans won 31-11.

Burchett said they wanted to give him the memorabilia because “he’s the leader of our party, and the Republicans destroyed the Democrats, as we should do on Election Day.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana told reporters after the meeting that Trump “brought an extraordinary amount of energy and excitement and enthusiasm this morning.”

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, of New York, said Trump was “warmly welcomed” and that GOP lawmakers had a “very successful” meeting with him.

“We are 100% unified behind his candidacy,” said Stefanik, a contender on Trump’s short list for vice presidential picks.

Johnson told reporters that Republicans have “an extraordinary stable of candidates” and that the party is “headed for a great November.”

Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida made similar remarks, and said that she believes “momentum is on our side.”

“We’re very, very motivated, our base is motivated and everyday Americans are motivated,” Cammack said.

She added that the former president is working to grow the Republican party.

“It’s pretty clear that November for us is gonna be incredible,” she said.

Stakes in November

Johnson said that he’s confident Trump will win the White House and that Republicans will flip the Senate and grow their majority in the House.

Control of each chamber of Congress is expected to be closely fought in the November elections, and it’s possible that the House and Senate will continue to be split between the parties, but political observers see the prospect of a big switch.

If current trends continue through the year, it’s possible that the Senate could swing from Democratic to Republican control, and the House could flip from the GOP to Democrats.

House Democrats only need a gain of five seats to regain power and Senate Republicans only need two, or one if Trump wins the presidential race. Republicans have an easy opportunity to pick up a Senate seat in West Virginia after Joe Manchin III, a centrist Democrat, decided not seek reelection.

“We will be working on a very aggressive agenda to fix all the great problems facing this country right now,” Johnson said.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that Trump is focused on increasing the GOP majority in the House. Because of the razor-thin majority that Republicans hold in the chamber, Johnson has often had to rely on Democrats to pass government funding bills along with foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel.

Insult to convention city

Republicans are gearing up for the party’s national convention in Milwaukee in mid-July, where they will officially nominate Trump as their 2024 presidential nominee and a yet-to-be-named vice presidential pick as well.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in New York four days before the convention begins.

The former president did not mention a running mate during his meeting with GOP senators, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said.

Trump told lawmakers Thursday that Milwaukee is a “horrible” city, according to Punchbowl News. 

Wisconsin Republicans had varying interpretations of the remark, with Rep. Derrick Van Orden saying Trump was talking about crime in the city and Rep. Bryan Steil denying that Trump even made the comment.

Trump is scheduled to visit southeastern Wisconsin next week, for a campaign rally in Racine on Tuesday.

Key to Senate majority

Following the meeting Trump had with senators, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville offered a handful of words to characterize the meeting: “Unification. Leadership.”

But not all Senate Republicans were in attendance. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins did not attend due to scheduling conflicts, according to the Washington Examiner.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said that despite those absences, Republicans are still unified in their support of Trump.

Even those senators who have been at odds with the former president, such as Utah’s Mitt Romney and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, attended, which South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham felt was beneficial.

“We realize that his success is our success,” Graham said of Trump. “The road to the Senate majority is also the road to the White House.”

Dismissing guilty verdict

Johnson of Louisiana said Trump’s guilty verdict in New York has “backfired fantastically,” as the party boasted of a fundraising bump after “the terrible, bogus trial in Manhattan.”

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall made a similar argument that the verdict benefited Trump.

“It’s helping him,” he said, noting that after the May 30 verdict, the Trump campaign raised $141 million in May.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming said “there was an absolute meeting of minds” that the verdict was a “sham.”

“We are so sorry that he has to endure that,” Lummis told States Newsroom on her walk from the meeting back to the Capitol.

Trump is also charged in three other criminal cases, including federal charges that allege he knowingly spread false information after the 2020 presidential election, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to join the scheme to overturn the results and whipping his base into a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Supreme Court is set to decide in the coming weeks whether Trump enjoys presidential immunity, as he claims, from those charges.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, who was the ranking member of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, criticized Republican lawmakers for meeting with Trump.

She reposted a New York Times photograph of McConnell shaking Trump’s hand Thursday on X and wrote “Mitch McConnell knows Trump provoked the violent attack on our Capitol and then ‘watched television happily’ as his mob brutally beat police officers and hunted the Vice President.”

“Trump and his collaborators will be defeated, and history will remember the shame of people like @LeaderMcConnell who enabled them,” Cheney, a Wyoming Republican who lost her reelection bid in a 2022 Republican primary, wrote.

Dems blast return

The Biden campaign has also latched onto Trump’s return to Capitol Hill, releasing statements from various Democrats who led investigations into the insurrection and criticized the former president’s return.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement on behalf of the Biden campaign that “the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime.”

“With his pledges to be a dictator on day one and seek revenge against his political opponents, Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy,” she said.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, former chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, criticized Republicans for allowing Trump “to waltz in here when it’s known he has no regard for democracy.”

“He still presents the same dire threat to our democracy that he did three years ago — and he’d be wise to head back to Mar-a-Lago and await his sentencing,” Thompson, of Mississippi, said in a statement on behalf of the Biden campaign.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who served as an impeachment manager for Trump’s role in the insurrection, said in a statement on behalf of the Biden campaign that “Donald Trump is a one-man crime wave and a clear and present danger to the U.S. Constitution and the American people.”

Lia Chien contributed to this report. 

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