Supreme Court to hear arguments over TikTok ban on Jan. 10

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Thursday joined growing calls from Democrats and even one Republican to bring Congress back to pass certain additional disaster aid funding in the wake of the devastation in southeastern states caused by back-to-back hurricanes.

Biden told reporters that the Small Business Administration is “pretty right at the edge now,” and it would take “several billion dollars” to help businesses recover in the affected states.

“I think that Congress should be coming back and moving on emergency needs immediately,” he said, but notably did not say the same about Federal Emergency Management Agency funding before Election Day.

Former President Donald Trump has falsely claimed FEMA has run out of disaster funds because the money was “stolen” to use instead to help migrants, a claim the White House has strongly denied, saying the money comes from separate funding “spigots.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insisted Thursday that FEMA has enough disaster funding to handle the immediate needs from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton and related tornado damage.

Even as raised the dire need for more SBA funding, Biden said he has not reached out to House Speaker Mike Johnson about bringing House lawmakers back to Washington.

While Johnson has committed to passing relief after the election, he has resisted pressure from Democrats, especially, to bring the House back before Election Day, explaining it will take time for states to assess the need.

“Congress will provide,” Johnson promised during an interview this past weekend on “Fox News Sunday.” “We will help people in these disaster-prone areas. It’s an appropriate role for the federal government, and you’ll have bipartisan support for that, and it’ll all happen in due time, and we’ll get that job done. There shouldn’t be any concern about that.”

There are similar calls from lawmakers for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to reconvene the upper chamber.

Dozens of House Democrats sent a letter to Johnson making their case as he toured damage in western North Carolina on Wednesday with Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd and GOP Rep. Chuck Edwards.

“Recent legislation has provided initial relief funds, yet these provisions fall critically short of what will be necessary to address the scale of destruction and the recovery needs for Fiscal Year 2025. We, therefore, urge you to immediately reconvene the US House of Representatives so that it can pass robust disaster relief funding,” the letter, signed by 63 Democrats, said.

The speaker’s office declined to comment to ABC News directly on the letter, instead referring to Johnson’s public comments on the topic.

Democrats are not alone in their request.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who evacuated her home in Pinellas County, also wants Johnson to bring lawmakers back for a special session.

Luna, who has been spreading misinformation about FEMA funding, posted a statement on X claiming that additional funding would be approved.

“If Congress goes into a special session we can get it passed immediately,” she said.

Mayorkas also stressed the gravity of the situation following a tour of western North Carolina on Thursday.

Although he said that FEMA has the funding to handle hurricanes Helene and Milton and related tornadoes, he said the federal flood insurance program is in the red.

“We are working on a continuing resolution that is not stable footing for the work that we do in disaster response. And so that is why I underscore the need for Congress to act swiftly upon its return,” Mayorkas said.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — From the June 28 debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, at least 134 people were killed in 148 mass shootings across the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

But during those roughly three months and since, the issue of gun violence prevention, according to some advocates, has been overshadowed by a flurry of hot-button campaign topics: The state of the economy, abortion rights, wars raging in the Middle East and Ukraine, two assassination attempts on Trump and the shifting political landscape in which Vice President Kamala Harris succeeded Biden as the Democratic nominee.

“Gun violence is still one of the most important issues facing our country. We still have an ongoing epidemic,” said Nicole Hockley, the CEO of Sandy Hook Promise — a gun violence prevention group she co-founded following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 children, including her son, and six adult staff members dead.

In an interview this week with ABC News, Hockley cited a Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions report that said for three straight years gun violence has been the leading cause of death in the United States for adolescents under the age of 19.

In an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released in August, gun violence was ranked eighth in importance among voters after the economy, inflation, health care, protecting democracy, crime and safety, immigration and the Supreme Court.

According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 61% of Americans say it’s too easy to legally obtain a gun in this country and 58% believe U.S. gun-control laws should be stricter.

“I do appreciate that there are many other large issues and hot topics like the economy, like abortion, like foreign wars that are of interest to voters as well,” said Hockley, whose nonpartisan group does not endorse candidates nor donate to campaigns.

She added, “Perhaps there is an assumption, rightly or wrongly, that everyone already knows what each candidate’s opinion is and what they are likely to do in terms of gun violence prevention, whereas they might not be as clear on things like policies around the economy.”

Debates over gun violence
During the three national debates in the presidential campaign, the subject of gun violence prevention appears to have received less discussion compared to the other contentious topics, some advocates said.

In the Sept. 10 debate between Harris and Trump, hosted by ABC News, gun violence came up when Trump — who was shot in the ear during a July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, that left one campaign rallygoer dead and two others wounded — alleged, “She wants to confiscate your guns.”

The accusation prompted Harris, who oversees the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, to respond, “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”

Harris, the former California Attorney General, also said, “I’m the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs and human beings.”

Ten days after debating Trump, Harris reiterated that she is a gun owner during a televised sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey, adding, “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot.”

The most extensive conversation on guns during the debates came during the vice presidential debate when Walz touted his record in Minnesota on combating gun violence, saying his administration had passed an assault weapons ban and enhanced red-flag gun laws to keep weapons out of the hands of people poised to harm themselves or others.

“These are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference,” Walz said about gun violence prevention during the debate.

Vance and Trump oppose most gun-control laws, including an assault weapons ban and national red-flag laws proposed by Harris. The National Rifle Association has 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.”

During the debate, Vance said on gun violence prevention measures, “Governor Walz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better on this.”

Addressing school shootings, Vance said at the debate, “I, unfortunately, think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger. And of course, we’ve got to increase school resource officers because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience.”

‘The lockdown generation’

Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement of Americans fighting for public safety measures, said that despite the myriad issues in this campaign cycle, gun violence prevention still resonates with voters nationwide.

“First and foremost, I get to travel all across this country and meet with our volunteers and partners and candidates running up and down the ballot, and there are so many people that are not running away from this issue but running on it and actually winning,” Ferrell-Zabala told ABC News. “This is a priority for many folks.”

She said that from her experience, young people, who have grown up in the era of school lockdowns and active shooter drills, are particularly energized over the issue of gun violence prevention and plan to vote their conscience.

“This is a big issue. This is a top three for all voters and for young people, this is particularly hitting them because they are the lockdown generation. Many of them are survivors of gun violence themselves,” said Ferrell-Zabala, whose group has endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket.

According to the 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 88% of respondents also favored preventing mentally ill people from buying guns and 79% wanted the minimum age for buying guns raised to 21.

Ferrell-Zabala said most aspects of gun violence prevention should not be considered political, including requiring gun owners to secure their weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of children or people intent on harming others or themselves.

“They are being used as political issues, but they are not. The majority of people, polls show time and time again, are for common sense gun laws because they know they are going to save lives in this country,” Ferrell-Zabala said. “And what you’re seeing is a product of a gun industry and extremist politicians that are trying to back this guns-everywhere culture, where guns are everywhere for anyone anytime. That’s unacceptable, frankly.”

Hockley said that many of the children who survived the Sandy Hook massacre that claimed the life of her 6-year-old son, Dylan, have now reached the age of 18 and will be voting in their first presidential election.

“I believe that they will be very much voting to stop this epidemic,” Hockley told ABC News. “I’m sure they’ll have other concerns as well, women’s rights, human rights. Gun violence prevention is also a human right, the right to live to your full potential. These students have seen the worst of what our country can offer in terms of school violence and I very much believe and hope that they will be voting that as one of their main issues.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., a prominent ally of Donald Trump, downplayed the prospects of the military having a major role in what the president-elect has previewed as a massive deportation effort once he takes office.

Speaking with “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz, Donalds said that local and federal law enforcement like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take the lead on deportations, which he said would focus on immigrants convicted of crimes and those who have already been given legal deportation orders but remain in the country.

“When you’re talking about military assets being used, that’s only in an extreme last resort. There are more than 6,000 officers who have who have dedicated their lives to having to remove illegal aliens from our country, people who already have a legal deportation order, but it hasn’t been effectuated by Joe Biden,” Donalds said.

“I think if you’re going to use military assets, that’s in the last resorts, but that’s only for logistical purposes, Martha. And so, I think that what we have to be very careful of is not to try to throw out this idea that you’re going to have troops in the United States going door to door. That is not going to happen.”

Trump made immigration a cornerstone of his campaign, panning President Joe Biden for the record numbers of unauthorized border crossings that occurred in the earlier years of his term.

The president-elect has vowed to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally but also to scrap certain programs that offer legal status, including Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and other groups of immigrants.

Trump deported about 1.5 million immigrants during his first term, according to a Migrant Policy Institute analysis, but Donalds predicted that number will be topped during Trump’s second term.

“Just speaking with you anecdotally, it’s at a minimum going to be 2 million, but it’s going to be more, because the amount of people who already have a deportation order, people who are in our country who have committed crimes, people who have already been convicted of murder, they need to go and go immediately,” Donalds told Raddatz.

Donalds also predicted that stricter border enforcement and ramped-up deportation efforts will lead some undocumented immigrants to leave the country on their own, rather than get kicked out by law enforcement, which prohibits them from coming back to the country for 10 years.

“When you have an active deportation process, we do know that there are aliens who are going to want to go back to their home country. They’re not going to want to be caught up in the process of dealing with ICE, because if you’re deported through that process, then you will actually be barred from returning to the United States for a period of 10 years,” Donalds said.

“When you turn off the spigots of opening our borders, when you turn off the spigots of all this aid going to illegal aliens in the United States, and then you have a president of the United States and a government who is serious about repatriating people back to their home country, you will see that the enticement of coming to America is not going to be what it was under Joe Biden,” Donalds added.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.