House Republicans Vote to Weaken Gun Safety Regulations as Trump Is Arrested

While Donald Trump was being arraigned for the second time in months, the rest of his party was busy weakening gun regulations in a country that has suffered at least 291 mass shootings this year alone.

On Tuesday, 217 House Republicans voted to repeal a federal rule designed to curb such senseless violence. Two conservative Blue Dog Democrats, Jared Golden and Mary Peltola, joined Republicans. Two Republicans, Brian Fitzpatrick and Thomas Kean, voted alongside 208 Democrats to protect the gun safety measure.

The Republicans voted to overturn a Biden administration rule issued in January that clarified that any firearm with a stabilizing brace allowing it to be shot from the shoulder counts as a rifle and has to be registered with the government as such.

While the stabilizing brace has been used by gun owners without full use of both of their arms, the attachment has also enabled mass shooters to cause further destruction. One of the guns reportedly used in the Nashville school shooting that left six people dead, for instance, was an AR-15 pistol equipped with a stabilizing brace. Such an attachment was also used in the 2021 mass shooting at a Boulder, Colorado, grocery store that left 10 people dead.

Nevertheless, Republicans voted to weaken oversight over such weapons—just days after survivors from numerous mass shootings visited the Hill to ask members of Congress for even a smidgen of meaningful action on guns.

The vote, House Resolution 44, was part of Republicans’ efforts to restart House floor business amid internal party disputes, after some members last week voted down a rule for the first time in decades, putting House business at a standstill for days.

The vote now heads to the Senate. Even if it passes the narrowly split chamber, President Biden has said he will veto the attempt to weaken gun safety regulation.

Amid the drama and the Republican effort to weaken the government’s ability to protect its people, Democrats have filed measures to welcome floor votes on several measures seeking to reduce gun violence. Representatives Lucy McBath, James Clyburn, and Mike Thompson each filed their own petitions to force votes on things like increasing background checks and banning assault weapons. The Democrats would need just five Republicans to join them in triggering a vote on any of the bills.

A 9-year-old girl was left sobbing after she was falsely accused of being transgender just because she has short hair, in a clear sign of how transphobia harms everyone.

The girl was competing in a shot put event at her elementary school in British Columbia, Canada, last week, when the grandfather of another girl demanded to know why a boy was competing in a girls’ event.

The girl’s two mothers allege that the man, who has been identified as a 68-year-old named Josef Tesar, shouted, “Hey, this is supposed to be a girls’ event, and why are you letting boys compete?”

One of the mothers, Heidi Starr, said Tesar insisted, “If she is not a boy, then she is obviously trans,” and repeatedly shouted for people to “get that boy off the field.” Starr said her daughter is female, identifies as a girl, and wears a pixie haircut.

Starr said that Tesar demanded to see proof her daughter was born female. “I said … ‘Are you asking for a certificate proving that my daughter was born with a vagina [and] you need a proof of her genitals?’” Starr told the CBC.

She also said his wife called her a “genital mutilator, a groomer, and a pedophile.”

As for her daughter, “she was physically vibrating,” Starr said. “She was sobbing. She was in and out of tears all day till bedtime that day,” which happened to be her birthday.

Tesar and his wife have denied that they yelled at the girl specifically. He accused the mothers of trying to “satisfy an agenda” and “fabricate the lies and hate towards us.”

His wife insisted she “said something appropriate. Not those words.… Maybe something like, ‘F off.’”

The Kelowna Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now investigating the incident. The superintendent for the Central Okanagan Public Schools, which hosted the sports competition, said Tuesday that they were in the process of banning Tesar from all school properties and events.

But the entire incident shows how far the effects of transphobia reach. People who push to ban trans girls from girls’ sports say they are trying to protect children. Instead, such policies give people permission to attack people of all ages, including children, to question their identities, and accuse them of somehow lying.

“Those who push anti-trans hate want to roll us back to an idealized version of the past,” Fae Johnstone, executive director of the Canadian social justice consulting firm Wisdom 2 Action, tweeted about the attack. “One where women are forced to look and act a certain way. One where gender conformity is enforced through hate, shame, and stigma.”

“Fighting anti-trans hate is key to a feminist future.”

Donald Trump might actually be looking down the barrel of accountability, for once in his life. And he’s terrified at the prospect.

“He’s scared shitless,” John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, told The Washington Post. “This is the way he compensates for that. He gives people the appearance he doesn’t care by doing this. For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable. Up until this point in his life, it’s like, I’m not going to pay you, take me to court. He’s never been held accountable before.”

And while Trump faces 37 counts of mishandling secret government documents, the overcompensation is certainly evident. Inside the courtroom Tuesday, Trump reportedly remained silent, with special counsel Jack Smith’s eyes trained on him throughout the entire arraignment.

After his arrest, Trump fled to his Bedminster, New Jersey, private golf club, to deliver remarks to a mix of Republican donors, party members, and a slew of other allies (all people whose eyes wouldn’t make him feel uncomfortable, unlike earlier in the day).

The Post reports that the crowd included the likes of Senator Tommy Tuberville (whose attendance allowed Democrats to confirm Biden’s pick for the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, 50–49), conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, and Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno (who wants reparations for white people and whose family gave maximum donations to serial liar George Santos). All that to say, Trump enjoyed a friendly crowd to cleanse his palate from being in the courtroom earlier.

“It’s part public relations and part babysitting,” Stephanie Grisham, one of Trump’s former White House press secretaries, told the Post. “He wants people to see the cheering crowds so they don’t think anything is going wrong. It’s also because the staff around him want to keep him busy and wants to have people cheering for him and giving him the ego stroke that he’ll need so they don’t have to deal with him being completely pissed.”

After the arraignment but before the lovefest, Trump also visited Versailles, a Miami Cuban restaurant. There, a reporter asked Trump if he was ready to go to jail, and hordes of loyal supporters immediately activated, targeting her like sharks smelling blood:

Most members of the press were kicked out from the event, perhaps to make sure Trump had the safest space possible, so he wouldn’t feel triggered or uncomfortable. Trump has weathered being impeached twice, indicted, and found liable for sexual abuse. But as he faced perhaps the strongest legal challenge yet—with more and more Republicans beginning to actually come out against him—all he could look to as a crutch was his final, most relentless fans singing “Happy Birthday” to him one day before his seventy-seventh birthday.

Donald Trump has been indicted, but all Fox News wants to talk about is Joe Biden.

Trump was arraigned Tuesday for allegedly mishandling classified documents. The investigation revealed that Trump hid hundreds of documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, despite multiple federal subpoenas requesting he return them. Biden has mostly avoided commenting on his predecessor’s indictment and has kept his distance from the months-long investigation.

But on Tuesday night, just hours after Trump was arraigned, Fox News brazenly labeled Biden a “wannabe dictator” who had his political rival arrested.

Meanwhile, the network was one of the few to air live coverage of Trump whining about being charged for hoarding national security documents.

Trump was charged with a total of 37 counts for keeping national defense information without authorization, making false statements, and conspiring to obstruct justice. He also reportedly showed the documents off to people who did not have security clearance, such as a representative of his PAC and members of staff, potentially putting U.S. national security at risk.

Trump is also under investigation in both Washington, D.C., and Georgia for his alleged role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He has repeatedly falsely insisted that the election was rigged against him, and he should have stayed in power.

Someone’s actions definitely smack of political overreach and even authoritarianism. But it’s not Biden.

Seven years ago, Marco Rubio was sounding the alarm to warn America that Donald Trump couldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes. But today, in the wake of Trump being indicted for taking and mishandling secret CIA, NSA, and Defense Department documents, Rubio is screaming at us all for even imagining Trump should be held responsible.

Rubio also appeared on Fox on Tuesday to argue that we don’t actually know if Trump has caused damage by hoarding national security secrets.

It’s notable that Rubio has such strong words about Trump being held responsible, given that just a few years ago, he warned about this very misdeed.

“We’re about to turn over … the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual, and the conservative movement to someone who has spent a career sticking it to working people.… I would much more prefer not to turn the party over to a con artist like Donald Trump,” Rubio said in February 2016.

Rubio even doubled down on his mistrust weeks before Election Day in 2016. “I have deep reservations about the nominee of my party,” Rubio said at a Florida Senate debate.

Meanwhile, in July 2016, Rubio tweeted that Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified emails “DQ’d [her] from being Commander in Chief.” As a reminder, Clinton’s mishandling involved using a private email server for official communications. But under the Espionage Act, which Trump is charged under, the mishandling of national security documents must be willful. There has been scant evidence of her actively using the server for nefarious purposes, and James Comey, then the Republican head of the FBI, admitted as much. Meanwhile, Trump’s indictment exhibits the former president being actively involved in taking the secret documents out of the White House and flaunting them to numerous individuals without security clearance.

In September 2020, at an Intelligence Committee hearing, Rubio condemned the irresponsible declassification of classified information, saying it “endangers lives and our national security.”

Nevertheless, Rubio’s sanctimoniousness continues when it comes to Trump. His new argument? The indictment—not the crime, nor the relentless and hollow defenses of the crime—is “putting our country … in a really dangerous place.”