Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Senators close in on bipartisan legislation to tackle gun violence
WASHINGTON — Senators have moved to the brink of an agreement on a bipartisan gun violence bill, Democrats’ lead negotiator said Tuesday, potentially voting this week on an incremental but notable package that would stand as Congress’s response to May’s mass shootings in Texas and New York that left 31 dead, including 19 school children.
Nine days after Senate bargainers agreed to a framework proposal — and 29 years after Congress last enacted a major measure curbing firearms — Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told reporters that a final agreement on the proposal’s details was at hand.
The legislation lawmakers have been working toward would toughen background checks for the youngest firearms buyers, require more sellers to conduct background checks and beef up penalties on gun traffickers. It also would disburse money to states and communities aimed at improving school safety and mental health initiatives.
“I think we’ve reached agreement,” Murphy said, adding “I think we’re in good shape.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the chief Republican bargainer, spoke on the Senate floor moments later and said he, Murphy and the other two top Senate bargainers had “reached agreement.”
The senators did not initially say how they’d resolved the two major stumbling blocks that had delayed agreement on the plan’s legislative language.
One was how to make abusive romantic partners subject to the existing ban that violent spouses face to obtaining guns. The other was providing federal aid to states that have “red flag” laws that make it easier to temporarily take firearms away from people deemed dangerous or to states that have violence intervention programs.
Republicans refused to include proposals in Tuesday’s compromise that were sought by President Joe Biden and Democrats to ban assault weapons or raise the minimum age for buying them, prohibit high-capacity magazines or require background checks for virtually all gun sales.
High court on schools:
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Tuesday that Maine can’t exclude religious schools from a program that offers tuition aid for private education.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a conservative majority that the Maine program violates the Constitution’s protections for religious freedoms.
“Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise,” Roberts wrote.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented. “This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote.
Weedkiller case:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Bayer’s appeal to shut down thousands of lawsuits claiming its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.
The justices left in place a $25 million judgment in favor of Edwin Hardeman, a California man who says he developed cancer from using Roundup for decades on his property.
On Friday, a panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an Environmental Protection Agency finding from 2020 that glyphosate does not pose a serious health risk and is “not likely” to cause cancer in humans. But Bayer has won four consecutive trials in state court against people who claimed they got cancer from using Roundup.
Bayer had argued that federal regulators have repeatedly determined its products are safe and that lawsuits based on claims under state laws should be dismissed.
Federal firefighter raises:
President Joe Biden signed off on giving federal wildland firefighters a hefty raise for the next two fiscal years, a move that affects more than 16,000 firefighters.
Such pay raises had been included in last year’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill, but they had been held up as federal agencies studied recruitment and retention data to decide where to deliver them.
The legislation stipulated that the $600 million in the bill to increase pay for wildland firefighters should go to all those firefighters provided that they are “located within a specified geographic area in which it is difficult to recruit or retain a federal wildland firefighter.”
The infrastructure law also authorized agencies to increase the base salary of federal wildland firefighters by $20,000 per year or 50% of their current base salary, whichever is lower, through 2023. The firefighters will get back pay for the raises, dating to last October.
Hot car death: A 5-year-old boy died after being left in a Houston-area vehicle as temperatures soared past 100 degrees, authorities said.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the boy died Monday as his family was getting ready to celebrate his 8-year-old sister’s birthday.
The boy, his sister and his mother went to buy items for the party, and when they returned home, the mother assumed both children exited the car on their own.
The sheriff said about two to three hours after the mother went into the house, she began looking for her son and went to the car. She called 911 after finding him unresponsive and buckled in.
The sheriff ’s office said the child was pronounced dead at the scene.
UK rail strike: Railway workers walked off the job in Britain on Tuesday, bringing the train network to a crawl in the country’s biggest transit strike in three decades.
About 40,000 cleaners, signalers, maintenance workers and station staff held a 24-hour strike, with more planned for Thursday and Saturday. London Underground subway services were also hit by a walkout Tuesday.
The dispute centers on pay, working conditions and job security as Britain’s railways struggle to adapt to travel and commuting habits changed by the pandemic.
Monkeypox vaccine: British health officials will start offering vaccines to some men who are gay or bisexual or have sex with men, who are at highest risk of catching monkeypox, in an effort to curb the biggest outbreak of the disease beyond Africa.
Britain’s Health Security Agency said Tuesday that doctors could consider vaccinations for some men who are gay or bisexual and men who have sex with men at the highest risk of exposure.
The vaccine was originally developed for smallpox, but is thought to be about 85% effective against monkeypox.
There are 793 monkeypox cases in the U.K. out of more than 2,100 cases in 42 countries.