Live updates: Biden outlines steps on gun-crime prevention as he warns of spike in summer - The Washington Post

President Biden delivered remarks Wednesday afternoon on his administration’s plan to prevent gun crime, amid a recent rise in homicides and other violent crime across the country.

As we emerge from this pandemic, with the country opening back up again, the traditional summer spike may be more pronounced than it usually would be, Biden said.

The president announced that he is directing his administration to revoke the licenses of gun sellers who neglect to run required background checks or are caught willfully selling a weapon to a person who is not permitted to have one.

A bipartisan group of senators has tentatively reached an agreement with White House officials on hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on the nation’s infrastructure, giving a significant boost to one of Biden’s biggest domestic policy ambitions.

Senators leaving a negotiating session at the Capitol on Wednesday evening said that the group — which included five Democrats, five Republicans and top White House officials — had reached the framework of a deal, and that senators would go to the White House to brief Biden personally on the details Thursday.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki in a statement called talks between White House senior staffers and the senators “productive” and said they had made progress toward an outline of a potential agreement.

More than half of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing overall and even more approve of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, though many are concerned about economic issues, according to a Fox News poll.

The poll found a slight uptick in Biden’s approval from May, when 54 percent of Americans gave him a positive review, to this month with 56 percent.

Biden received 64 percent approval for his response to the pandemic and 51 percent for the economy.

Despite his positive approval rating, most Americans are worried about economic issues, including 82 percent who are concerned about inflation and rising prices, 77 percent who are worried about taxes and 69 percent who are worried about the federal deficit.

Former president Donald Trump never broke 50 percent in the Fox News poll.

The White House is seeking to curb the sale of illegal guns, which crime experts say plays a role in the majority of gun violence incidents.

“My message was this: we’ll find you and we will seek your license to sell guns,” he said from the White House.

President Biden announced Wednesday he will nominate Cindy McCain, the widow of former Sen.

Almost 900 Secret Service members have tested positive for the coronavirus since March 2020, according to a watchdog report, and many of those infected had protection assignments that included the safety of the president and vice president.

Described by the Department of Homeland Security as “the elite agents you see protecting the President and Vice President,” Special Agents are also responsible for a number of safety assignments overseas and in the United States, such as protecting the president and vice president’s families, visiting foreign leaders and presidential candidates.

While the data does not give a breakdown of coronavirus infections between the two administrations during this period, the watchdog placed much of the blame on former president Donald Trump and former vice president Mike Pence for holding “large-scale rallies against public health guidelines.” The group also slammed the Trump family’s regular travel during the pandemic and Trump’s photo op last year outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center “in a car with Secret Service agents while being treated for covid, further putting agents in danger.”.

Vice President Harris will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border Friday, amid mounting criticism from Republicans that neither she nor Biden has been to the border.

“Earlier this year, the President asked the Vice President to oversee our diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras,” Sanders said in a statement.

“As a part of this ongoing work, the Vice President traveled to Guatemala and Mexico earlier this month and will travel to El Paso on Friday.”.

At Wednesday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Jennifer Psaki defended Harris’s upcoming trip and dismissed the notion that the timing of the trip was influenced by former president Donald Trump’s visit to the border on June 30.

“We can only guess." She added that the White House does not believe that Harris’s trip "is going to prevent or change what the former president of the United States does when he goes to the border in a couple of days.”.

Caught between progressive calls to “defund the police” and his career-long inclination to support law enforcement, Biden on Wednesday will unveil a strategy to combat violent crime while stymieing his political critics on the right..

In March, the Gallup polling organization found 78 percent of Americans said they worried a “great deal” or a “fair amount” about crime and violence, while just 17 percent said “only a little” and 6 percent said “not at all.”.

In his remarks Wednesday, Biden said Warner embodied “the willingness to see each other as opponents, but not as enemies,” and “above all, to see each other as fellow Americans, even when we disagree — from John’s perspective, especially when we disagree.”.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled for a Pennsylvania cheerleader whose profane off-campus rant cost her a spot on the squad, saying the punishment violated her First Amendment rights

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