Potential VP pick Mark Kelly backs pro-labor legislation after unions voice concern
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Mark Kelly, a potential vice presidential contender, said on Wednesday that he would vote in support of the PRO Act, a major labor reform measure.
The remarks came a day after ABC News reported concern among labor unions about the Arizona senator as a potential running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris due to his unwillingness to back the pro-labor legislation.
“Why would the Democrats even consider a senator for the vice presidency if he doesn’t support the PRO Act,” John Samuelsen, President of the Transport Workers Union, told ABC News.
On Wednesday, Kelly voiced full support for the PRO Act, saying he would vote for it if it came to the Senate floor.
“I would have voted for it on Day 1,” Kelly said. “I would vote for it today.”
“I am, like a lot of legislation, working to make it better. But if it came to the floor today or any day going back to the day I was sworn in, I would vote for it.”
The Huffington Post first reported Kelly’s comments on the PRO Act. Kelly spokesperson Jacob Peters confirmed the comments to ABC News.
Kelly, who took office in 2020, has declined to sign onto the PRO Act throughout his tenure. The latest version of the bill, known as the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act, boasts the support of 48 of the 51 U.S. Senators who caucus with Democrats.
Kelly and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro are reportedly the two leading candidates for the nod as vice president on a potential Harris-led ticket, a senior administration official told ABC News on Tuesday.
Prior to Kelly’s remarks on Wednesday, a union president who backs Harris told ABC News that they opposed the nomination of Kelly due to his position on the PRO Act. The union president requested that ABC News not use their name due to the sensitivity of issues surrounding Harris’s candidacy.
“The Democrats cannot have someone on the ticket who is identified as soft on labor,” the person said. “This is a huge problem.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Kelly’s office said the Arizona senator has robustly backed labor.
“Senator Kelly is the son of two union police officers and has been a strong supporter of workers throughout his time in the Senate,” Peters told ABC News.
Peters pointed ABC News to a statement Kelly made to the Huffington Post in 2021 in which he said he supported the “overall goals” of the legislation while acknowledging that he had “some concerns.”
In 2022, Kelly’s Senate campaign was endorsed by the Arizona AFL-CIO and the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.
Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America, previously said Kelly’s position on the PRO Act raised concern but the primary consideration in assessing his selection as vice president should be whether he helps the Democratic ticket win in November.
“I would tend to go back to the issue of the swing states. Who can move the needle?” Cohen told ABC News, noting Arizona is a battleground state. “The number one goal is beating Trump.”
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz both claim to be champions of gun rights for law-abiding citizens and have touted personal stories of growing up in households where firearms were commonplace, but the vice presidential candidates have vastly different views on how to curb America’s gun violence epidemic.
As the Democratic National Convention begins Monday in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris has made gun control a top priority.
“We who believe that every person should have the freedom to live safe from the terror of gun violence, will finally pass red flag laws, universal background checks and an assault weapons ban,” Harris said at her first presidential campaign rally in Milwaukee.
Harris was appointed in September 2023 by President Joe Biden to oversee the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
Meanwhile, there was little acknowledgment of the nation’s gun violence scourge at the Republican National Convention last month, despite GOP presidential nominee former President Donald Trump being the victim of a would-be assassin wielding an AR-15-style rifle.
In the 2024 GOP convention platform, there was no mention of firearm violence or gun control, while in 2020, the party’s platform contained three paragraphs supporting reciprocity legislation allowing Americans to carry firearms in all 50 states regardless of which state they received a carry permit, and opposing an assault weapons ban, “frivolous” lawsuits against gun manufacturers and “any effort to deprive individuals of their right to keep and bear arms without due process of law.”
While Harris and Trump’s polarizing stances on gun control are well documented, the positions of their running mates are emerging for the first time on a national level.
Vance, the 40-year-old Ohio U.S. senator and Marine veteran, and Walz, the 60-year-old Minnesota governor and Army National Guard veteran, have portrayed themselves as strong Second Amendment advocates. But they have voiced starkly different views on gun control.
Vance’s stand on gun control
“I’m a big pro-Second Amendment guy and I know a lot of people who will strongly, stridently defend the Second Amendment. None of them think convicted felons, who have been afforded their due process rights should be able to buy firearms and then kill people,” Vance said during a June 2022 U.S. Senate election debate against his Democratic opponent, former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan.
In a 2022 federal candidate survey for the Ohio Gun Owners and the American Firearms Association, Vance said he opposes “red flag” gun laws, legislation to ban certain semiautomatic rifles, including AR-15s; supports abolishing the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and establishing a national stand-your-ground law giving individuals the right to use reasonable force, including deadly force, to protect themselves.
Vance also checked yes on voting to repeal the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act and supported a national Second Amendment Preservation Act that prohibits the use of federal funds to enforce gun control laws, regulations and executive orders.
“We need to fix the system we have that has problems as opposed to layering on a bunch of new regulations and laws on top of it,” Vance said during the debate against Ryan. “The thing that I don’t like is when you create a new background check system with new sets of regulations that go after law-abiding citizens.”
The National Rifle Association — which according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit research and government transparency group that tracks money in politics and its effect on elections and policy — contributed nearly $500,000 to Vance’s senate campaign. The NRA has also endorsed the Trump-Vance ticket.
“Now, more than ever, freedom and liberty need courageous and virtuous defenders,” Doug Hamlin, executive vice president and CEO of the NRA, said in a statement in July. “President Trump and Senator Vance have the guts and the grit to stand steadfast for the Second Amendment.”
In June 2024, Vance called efforts by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to ban bump stocks, a device that enables semiautomatic rifles to fire almost like machine guns, a “huge distraction.”
The gunman who committed the 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival concert in Las Vegas that killed 58 people and left more than 800 injured, used guns fitted with bump stocks, according to investigators.
“I think that we have to ask ourselves: ‘What is the real gun violence problem in this country?’ and are we legislating in a way that solves fake problems? Or solves real problems?” Vance told reporters in June as his name was then being floated as Trump’s running mate. “And my very strong suspicion is that the Schumer legislation is aimed at a PR problem, not something that’s going to meaningfully reduce gun violence in this country.”
While he wasn’t a member of the U.S. Senate at the time, Vance said he would have voted against the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major gun safety law enacted in 30 years that Biden signed in June 2022, about a month after a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
The law enhances background checks for gun buyers under 21, closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole” to prevent people convicted of domestic abuse from purchasing guns, and allocates $750 million to help states implement “red flag laws” to remove firearms from people deemed to be dangerous to themselves and others.
“First of all, from what I’ve seen of this bill, I would not support it. I think red flag laws, in particular, they certainly are a slippery slope. They also don’t solve the problem of gun violence,” Vance said in a 2022 interview with the Breitbart News Daily podcast.
During his RNC acceptance speech, Vance — author of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” — told the story of how after the death of his beloved grandmother, whom he called Mamaw, his family found 19 loaded guns in her house.
“The thing is, they were stashed all over her house — under her bed, in her closet, in the silverware drawer, and we wondered what was going on,” Vance said. “It occurred to us that toward the end of her life, Mamaw couldn’t get around so well, so she was sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to protect her family. That’s who we fight for. That’s the American spirit.”
Walz’s stand on gun control
Walz, a former high school geography teacher and football coach, has proudly proclaimed being an avid hunter who once received an A-rating and an endorsement from the National Rifle Association while a five-term Congressman from rural Minnesota. As a member of Congress, Walz sponsored the Sportsman’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act, which expanded access to public lands for hunting and supported legislation to reform the ATF.
“I’m proud to stand with the NRA to protect our Second Amendment rights, and I’m truly grateful for their endorsement,” Walz said in a 2010 statement.
In 2016, Guns & Ammo magazine praised Walz’s record on protecting gun rights and put him on a list of top 20 politicians for gun owners.
“While most congressional Democrats have jumped on the gun control train with both feet, Tim Walz and a few others have stuck to their guns,” Guns & Ammo wrote.
But Walz said his NRA rating fell to an F-rating when his stance on gun control dramatically changed following the Feb. 14, 2018, mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 15 students and two adults, including a football coach, dead.
“My job today is to be dad to a 17-year-old daughter,” Walz said during a 2018 community meeting in Minnesota while running for governor in the aftermath of the Parkland massacre. “Hope woke up as many of you did five weeks ago and said, ‘Dad, you’re the only person I know who’s in elected office. You need to stop what’s happening with this.'”
In an editorial he wrote that was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in February 2018 — which was titled “Tim Walz: Please understand my full record on guns” — Walz explained how the Parkland shooting forced him to reevaluate his positions on gun control.
“We all put ourselves in the place of a loved one or someone who faced that terror. It hits me as the dad of a fifth-grader and a high-school student. It hits me as a former high school geography teacher and football coach, when I think about the geography teacher and the coach at that school who gave their lives so that their students could keep theirs.”
Walz said he donated the $18,000 campaign contribution he received in his 2018 gubernatorial run from the NRA, to a charity that helps families of military personnel killed or injured while serving and came out in favor of an assault weapons ban.
In a Star Tribune editorial, he also said that during his time in Congress, he supported “common-sense” gun-control reform laws, repeatedly voted in favor of universal background checks and preventing people on no-fly lists from purchasing firearms. He also said he supported legislation to fund gun violence research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was a co-sponsor of a bill to ban bump stocks and voted against concealed-carry reciprocity.
Walz also confronted the NRA, writing in the editorial that the organization is “the biggest single obstacle to passing the most basic measures to prevent gun violence in America — including common-sense solutions that the majority of NRA members support.”
As governor, Walz signed in May 2023 a historic suite of gun-safety measures that created red flag laws, extended the waiting period for gun transfers between parties from 7 to 10 days and expanded background checks to include private purchases between individuals, including those made at gun shows. The laws also require anyone buying a pistol or “semiautomatic military-style assault weapons” to apply for a permit to purchase or carry such guns from their local police agency or sheriff’s department.
“As a veteran, gun-owner, hunter, and dad, I know basic gun safety isn’t a threat to the Second Amendment — it’s about keeping our kids safe,” Walz said during a ceremony to sign the gun legislation. “There’s no place for weapons of war in our schools, churches, banks, or anywhere else people are just trying to live their lives. Today is about taking meaningful action to create a safer future for our kids, and I am proud to sign this commonsense, life-saving legislation into law.”
‘The number one killer of our generation’
Timberlyn Mazeikis, who endured a Feb. 13, 2023, mass shooting at Michigan State University that left three of her classmates dead and five others injured, told ABC News that for her and many other Gen Z members the choice in this election “is simple.”
“Gun violence is the leading cause of death in our generation, and for a lot of us, we can no longer sit by and continue to watch this happen and just wait for the next massacre to occur. Because of that, we are showing up to vote,” said 21-year-old Mazeikis, now a senior at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
Mazeikis, who will be voting in her first presidential election in November, said the MSU mass shooting “took a toll on me” as she recounted being barricaded in the school gym for hours, terrified that the shooter would burst through the doors at any minute.
After the shooting, she became a volunteer leader for Students Demand Action, an organization that fights for gun control legislation.
“I felt that I could no longer sit back and watch as further communities were destroyed by gun violence,” Mazeikis said. “And that experience of being on campus and the fear that I felt that day and losing my classmates and my sense of security has really worked as a catalyst to push me in this movement and to realize that we can no longer live this way.”
She said that while she views Trump and Vance as a “gun extremist dream ticket,” she said Harris and Walz have given her “hope.”
“The choice is simple. Our lives are on the line,” Mazeikis said. “We either go back with Trump and Vance or we go forward with Harris and Walz.”
Mazeikis also said Walz’s transformation from a strong pro-gun politician into one who now favors sensible gun regulations doesn’t concern her, saying, “his stance on gun violence prevention is one of strength and one of courage to change.”
“He is living proof that the gun lobby and the gun industry are lying to us, that you can be a responsible gun owner and still want to keep your community safe and believe in gun safety,” Mazeikis said.
However, Rob Doar, vice president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus — the largest gun rights group in Minnesota with more than 10,000 dues-paying members — told ABC News that he’s been following Walz’s policies and actions on guns for about a decade and was surprised he was picked to be Harris’ running mate.
“Initially, my thought was that it was not a good pick if the goal of the campaign was to try to appeal to maybe disaffected Republicans and moderates, just because he has had some flip-flopping on contentious issues like firearms,” Doar said. “But then as I saw more of the campaign strategy roll out, it seems like the goal has been to more highlight him as an example of what progressive leaders can do. In that vein, I think that he’s probably serving the campaign very well, given the high number of progressive policies that Minnesota’s passed recently.”
Doar said his organization does not endorse presidential candidates and noted that his members don’t necessarily like Trump.
“I think both tickets have problematic histories as far as a Second Amendment standpoint goes. Donald Trump was a huge advocate for the bump stock ban. Donald Trump made quotes like, ‘to take the guns first and then get due process second,’ and he’s made some other statements that have been fairly anti-Second Amendment,” Doar said. “On the other hand, you’ve got Kamala Harris, who is talking about, initially, mandatory gun buybacks for certain types of firearms. She has walked that back a little bit, but I think both tickets, as far as somebody who looks at the Second Amendment as their primary issue at the polls, have some problems.”
He said Vance’s “posturing” on gun rights is something a lot of Second Amendment supporters like.
“But these are the same kind of things that we heard out of Tim Walz when he was a representative in the first district [of Minnesota],” Doar said. “Unfortunately, JD Vance just doesn’t have the longevity of a political career to be able to back up the words that he’s saying, but I do think the way that he’s positioning himself is a way that might appeal to those who value the Second Amendment when they go to the polls.”
He said many of his group’s members have expressed concern about keeping the current conservative majority of the Supreme Court intact.
“I do hear a lot from our members that they don’t like Trump, but the sole reason they’re voting for him is because of the Supreme Court and for federal judicial nominations. So that’s not an unpopular sentiment among gun rights advocates,” Doar said. “I do think that the general consensus is that Trump would be much more favorable from a Second Amendment jurisprudence standpoint in his judicial appointments.”
(LA CROSSE, Wis.) — Former President Donald Trump introduced a new campaign platform on Thursday aimed at helping Americans with the cost of IVF.
At a town hall moderated by his supporter, one-time Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, Trump said he and his team have been exploring ways to help those wanting in vitro fertilization.
“I’ve been looking at it, and what we’re going to do is for people that are using IVF, which is fertilization … the government is going to pay for it, or we’re going to get — we’ll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that,” he told Gabbard.
“We want to produce babies in this country, right?” he added.
Trump first spoke about the idea of government-funded or insurance-covered fertility treatments earlier in the day during a campaign stop in the battleground state of Michigan.
When asked by NBC News if it would be the government or insurance companies paying for IVF, the network reported that Trump said it would be the latter, “under a mandate.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s camp on Thursday night walked back comments the former president made earlier in the day suggesting he did not support Florida’s now-implemented six-week ban on abortions.
“I think the six week is too short, there has to be more time and I told them I want more weeks,” Trump told NBC.
“I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” he added, noting that he believes abortion should be a states’ issue, something he’s said before.
Later, though, Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to clarify the candidate’s remarks.
“President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Susan B. Anthony, Pro-Life America, President Marjorie Dannenfelser also released a statement Thursday night saying she had spoken to the president, and he told her he hasn’t “committed” to how he’ll vote on Florida’s Amendment 4. The amendment, if passed, would insert language into the state’s constitution that abortions determined medically necessary by a patient’s healthcare provider would be permitted.
“He has not committed to how he will vote on Amendment 4. President Trump has consistently opposed abortions after five months of pregnancy. Amendment 4 would allow abortion past this point. Voting for Amendment 4 completely undermines his position,” her statement read.
(MILWAUKEE, W.I.) — As Donald Trump made his way into the Republican National Convention on Monday, his first public appearance since the attempted assassination attempt on him, the delegates greeted him with thunderous applause.
Then came booming chants of what’s become a steady rallying cry — complete with raised fists — for the thousands gathered in battleground Wisconsin this week: “Fight, fight, fight!”
They’re inspired, of course, by the iconic moment when Trump returned to his feet after the shooting and, with blood streaming down his face, pumped his own fist in the air to those at his Pennsylvania rally and mouthed those three now-famous words.
“He put himself aside and he told us, not knowing how badly he was hurt, to keep fighting. And I thought, could I love this man any more?” said Laurie Schaefer, an Illinois delegate who said she was a Democrat until Trump ran in 2016, as she sat outside waiting to enter the second day of the convention.
Trump called for unity in the wake of the shooting, a marked shift in tone from his usual blazing rhetoric against President Joe Biden and Democrats. The former president said he is rewriting his acceptance speech for Thursday to emphasize bringing the country together.
But there’s still plenty of criticism of Democrats this week from key speakers. Sen. Ron Johnson, who later said the wrong speech was loaded into the teleprompter, called Democrats’ policies “a clear and present danger to America.” House Speaker Mike Johnson, too, said conservative principles were being “trampled under foot by the radical left,” and Gov. Ron DeSantis took shots at President Joe Biden’s administration being a “Weekend at Bernies” presidency.
So, what then do the words “fight, fight, fight” mean to some of Trump’s most loyal supporters? Do they clash with Trump’s new call for unity?
“Take back our country the way we feel it should be run,” said Randy Garber, a state representative from Kansas who is an alternate delegate. Garber then added, “Without violence, though.”
Tom O’Connor, a delegate from California who is a union carpenter running for city council, said being a Republican in the blue state means “everything is a fight.”
“So, for the president to literally say now’s the time to fight, it’s more of a war cry and we need to push, we need to get more and more conservatives in office to fix the wrongs that have been done to the American people,” he said.
O’Connor, when asked about Trump’s unity appeal and how it would change his campaign rhetoric, argued it’s Democrats who are still stoking division and that he didn’t believe Trump’s messaging would ultimately change much as a result.
“Then how do we become more unified?” ABC News asked.
“That’s a good question. I don’t have the answers, but I’m looking for them,” he said.
Most attendees who spoke with ABC News insisted they didn’t view Trump’s words of “fight, fight, fight” as calling for violence.
“We can’t give up. That’s what it means,” said Anna Villa, a guest at the RNC who drove 13 hours from New York to be in Milwaukee. “So, you know that we can’t be discouraged, that we have to really keep going. You know, it’s an encouragement.”
“It doesn’t mean to me like I have to go and shoot someone,” she said. “It means that we have to like, probably try to encourage some people that want to stay in and not go vote to get them out and vote for it.”
“I think what that means to me is that go get out the vote, stay diligent to your precinct committee role to help your neighbors, make sure they vote the whole ballot, make sure they vote for good moral values, because with good morality, we have more liberty,” said Clayton Taylor, an alternate delegate from Florida. “I don’t think it should be taken out of context.”
Matt Heilman, a state representative and delegate from North Dakota, said: “What I think of when he says that it’s just to continue on and push forward no matter no matter what. The state of the environment that you’re in, just keep pushing forward and you fight on and hope for a better tomorrow.”