Mike Johnson: Guns Don’t Kill People, Hearts Kill People

While other GOP leadership stuck to their usual “thoughts and prayers” mantra for the victims of the Lewiston, Maine, shooting, the newly minted speaker of the House tried out a new gun control dismissal tactic.

In a one-on-one interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday, Speaker Mike Johnson made an old Republican line new again, claiming that it’s not guns that kill people—it’s their hearts.

“At the end of the day, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons,” Johnson said. “At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment. That’s why our party stands so strongly for that.”

“This is not the time to be talking about legislation. We’re in the middle of that crisis right now,” Johnson added.

It’s no surprise the Republicans’ House speaker is dismissing gun control and gun violence so quickly after a mass shooting.

And for what it’s worth, his push to allow citizens to protect themselves in mass casualty events isn’t backed by the data. Between 2000 and 2021, fewer than 3 percent of 433 active attacks in the U.S. ended with a civilian firing back, according to data collected by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, which described active attacks as shootings of one or more people in which law enforcement are called to the scene while violence is still ongoing.

Wednesday’s assault in Lewiston left 18 people dead, the largest death toll so far out of 565 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Law enforcement agencies are still scouring the woods of southern Maine in a desperate search for the suspect, believed to be Robert Card, a certified firearms instructor who received extensive combat training from the Army Reserve Unit, reported CNN.

Dead or alive, the Koch brothers continue to have an iron grip on American politics.

The Koch network, an arm of right-wing organizations cultivated by David and Charles Koch, have been working overtime to gut federal agencies that impact Koch Industries’ bottom line, driving a coordinated campaign to bring lawsuits targeted at deregulation to the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, according to an investigation by The Guardian.

In a 37-minute panel discussion obtained by Documented, senior employees at Koch-affiliated entities described the court’s new makeup as a “landscape opportunity” that they’re “doubling down on.”

“That’s why we are partnering with organizations that can get the right cases to the Supreme Court,” said Casey Mattox, a legal strategist at the Koch advocacy group Americans for Prosperity.

Some of the issues at stake are pollution, consumer protections from predatory lenders, and workers’ rights. Koch Industries, which makes most of its money in the energy, trade, and chemicals industries, is the second-largest privately owned firm in the United States, with annual revenues exceeding $125 billion.

The initiative appears to have already done the trick, with two cases attempting to curtail the government’s ability to regulate corporations already before the court in its 2023–24 term, thanks to the backing of Koch-linked groups, reported the outlet.

Read more at The Guardian.

Georgia’s legislature will literally have to return to the drawing board after a federal court ruled that the state’s discriminatory congressional maps broke the law.

The new maps, which must be redrawn before the 2024 election, will be required to include one Black-majority federal congressional district, as well as two new Black-majority districts in Georgia’s state Senate and five new Black-majority districts in its House.

Thursday’s ruling consolidates three cases brought against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, which argued that Georgia’s political leaders were not adequately representing the Black communities that fueled the state’s population growth over the last decade.

In a 516-page order, U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones ruled against Raffensperger, deciding that the GOP-drawn maps violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Jones noted that although Georgia has made “great strides” in increasing the political opportunities of Black voters since the law was enacted, “the Court determines that in certain areas of the State, the political process is not equally open to Black voters.”

“For example, in the past decade, all of Georgia’s population growth was attributable to the minority population, however, the number of majority-Black congressional and legislative districts remained the same,” Jones wrote.

The state is expected to appeal the decision, though that effort may fall flat for Republicans. Similar attempts to save GOP-gerrymandered maps have failed in Florida and Alabama.

Other legal challenges to congressional maps are underway across the country, including in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah, reported the Associated Press.

Many of America’s autoworkers are about to see a massive bump in pay.

Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative agreement on Wednesday, smashing records with a historic contract that other autoworkers hope will start a radical shift in the industry. The labor victory is a huge win for the UAW—and shows what workers everywhere can achieve with the power of unions.

After a six-week strike, the two organizations have agreed to a staggering 25 percent base wage increase through April 2028, raising union members’ top wages to more than $40 an hour.

Starting salaries will also see a massive bump, growing by 68 percent over the term of the contract to more than $28 an hour. Meanwhile, the lowest-paid workers at Ford will receive an immediate 85 percent pay increase, with a raise of more than 150 percent over the lifetime of the agreement.

The union also finally recouped benefits that workers lost during the Great Recession, including a cost of living allowance that effectively bumps that 25 percent hike to a 33 percent raise, as well as a three-year wage progression (meaning workers can get pay bumps much more quickly). Retirement benefits were also improved, and in a first, the contract also permits union workers the right to strike over future plant closures.

Altogether, the deal will increase union members’ wages more in the next four years than they have in the previous two decades, according to data from the union.

“We won things nobody thought possible,” said UAW President Shawn Fain. “Since the strike began, Ford put 50 percent more on the table than when we walked out. This agreement sets us on a new path to make things right at Ford, at the Big Three, and across the auto industry.”

The eyebrow-raising agreement adds pressure on General Motors and Stellantis, where UAW workers are continuing to strike. So far, Stellantis has temporarily laid off more than 2,000 workers since some 7,000 union members began their strike at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant on Monday.

“It’s usually a domino effect, you know, for the most part. We want to stay optimistic that if they can do it, then we could reach something tentative,” striking employee Sheu Shea Anderson told ABC Channel 7 Detroit.

Both companies have released statements saying that they are working to secure agreements “as soon as possible.”

Here we go again. At least 18 people were killed and upward of 60 people injured in Lewiston, Maine, late Wednesday evening. This is the 565th mass shooting that has been reported in 2023 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The senseless violence has also tapped into another fruitless round of Republican leaders issuing “thoughts and prayers” to the families of victims while continuing to pocket large donations from gun lobbyists.

In the last decade, the National Rifle Association has spent more than $37 million on its political lobbying, with GOP legislators reaping the bulk of it, including Senators Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell, according to data from OpenSecrets. Meanwhile, the money behind “gun rights” lobbying groups has dwarfed that for gun control efforts every year dating back to 1998.

Their unbroken influence over the political right has swept votes on issues ranging from bans on assault weapons to high-capacity magazines, both of which Maine’s own Senator Susan Collins voted against.

Like Collins, other Republicans are once again offering us nothing but their thoughts and prayers.

Recent changes to the House’s leadership are unlikely to change circumstances, either. Just last week, now-Speaker Mike Johnson entertained a meeting with a group against gun control legislation, Women for Gun Rights.

Roughly 63 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with U.S. gun laws, according to a 2023 Gallup poll, which noted that just 54 percent of Republicans were satisfied with their own party-driven policies—a five-point decrease from 2022.

“Praying for everyone’s safety in Maine, and for the victims and their families,” tweeted Florida Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost. “But unlike some in Congress, I don’t believe the only thing we can do about gun violence is pray. Every minute our leaders fail to act = more people dead to senseless gun violence.”