Live Updates: Biden Announces Executive Action on Guns
In an emotional plea to end the “epidemic” of gun violence, President Biden on Thursday announced his administration’s first steps to curb it, noting that “much more needs to be done” while also pressing Congress to close background check loopholes and ban assault weapons.
“We’ve got a long way to go, it seems like we always have a long way to go,” Mr. Biden said, acknowledging the limitations of measures he can pass through executive actions alone. “Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it’s an international embarrassment.”
Mr. Biden said the Justice Department would issue a proposed rule to stop the proliferation of so-called ghost guns — kits that allow a gun to be assembled from pieces with no serial numbers.
“I want to see these kits treated as firearms under the gun control act,” Mr. Biden said.
Ghost guns, experts said, have become particularly appealing to criminal organizations and right wing extremists who want access to untraceable firearms that do not require any background checks. They are often tied to shootings in states like California, which have instituted strict gun laws.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimated 10,000 ghost guns were recovered by law enforcement in 2019. Cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore and San Diego, have seen significant increases in the number of ghost guns recovered every year since then.
Ghost guns have been a growing problem in the country, but are not disproportionately represented in the epidemic of mass shootings. Ghost guns were used in the 2013 mass shooting at Santa Monica College, which killed five people; a 2017 rampage in Northern California where a shooter killed his wife and four others; and the 2019 shooting at a California high school, where a 16-year-old killed two students and injured three others.
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What Do Homemade Guns Mean for Gun Laws? We Made One to Find Out
Virtually anyone can buy a kit online to build a gun from parts — without a background check. That raises questions about the future of gun regulation.
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[GUN CLICKS] This is a gun I made myself. The government doesn’t know I have it, but it’s totally legal. You can buy a kit online with all the parts you need to build a Glock 19. You don’t need a 3-D printer or fancy tools, and you don’t need a background check. I purchased the Glock 19 during Glocktober, so I got $100 off. People call these ghost guns. And they’re becoming more popular, especially for people who want a gun, but don’t want any record that it exists. I’d like to see how easy it is to build one of these guns and to find out what these kits mean for the future of gun regulation. Order is confirmed. All that’s left to do is build it. I don’t have a handgun license in New York, so I sent the kit to Virginia, where you don’t need one. Let’s make a gun. I get the appeal of making a gun. I like building stuff. And for a lot of people who buy these kits, that’s the point. They’re fun to make. “Hey, guys. Today we’re going to be going over how to build your Full Conceal Polymer80 frame. So it’s actually fairly quick to do this.” “Kind of paint by numbers in a sense.” The lower receiver or frame is the only part of the gun that’s technically considered a firearm under U.S. law. Gun kits aren’t regulated like firearms because they come with unfinished lower receivers. “So this is the lower receiver, and it’s in this jig. So what we’ll need to do is remove the extra pieces that are sticking up out of the jig.” [SNAPPING] Yeah, instead of shop, I took early childhood development. It was actually really awesome. The finished lower receiver looks almost identical to the unfinished one. You just drill a few holes and remove these extra bits of polymer. Then you assemble and add the rest of the parts. If you do it right, you’ll have a working firearm. On a factory-made gun, the serial number would go here. But the gun I’m building won’t have one, so there’s no way to trace it. Gun kits aren’t regulated at all in most states. There are no records of sales. And for a lot of people, that’s the appeal. “Hey.” “Hey.” “Andy Lander.” “Jeremy White.” Andy Lander is a firearms expert who worked for the N.R.A. for 13 years. He’s built guns before. “We’re still technically a free country. And I think that one of the greatest freedoms is having privacy. To me, if you bought 100 guns, it’s none of my business.” It’s impossible to say how many ghost guns are out there or who owns them. Last year, nearly a third of all firearms seized by law enforcement in California were homemade without serial numbers. Still, Andy says the kits aren’t the problem. “A criminal is going to steal a gun. He’s going to either rob somebody and get a gun. He’s going to get a gun anyway. I’m not worried about a guy building a Glock 19 in his garage.” “Nope. Drop it in from the top.” “Drop it in.” “Straight down.” “Oh, it has to be all the way —” “You have to clear that, yeah. Push down till it pops. Yeah, that’s it.” [GUN CLICKS] “There you go. You’re done.” “Wow. Thanks for your help.” [GUN CLICKS] It took me about six hours to build my ghost gun. [GUN CLICKS] If I had to do it again, I could do it much faster. Still, there’s no guarantee that it will work. “Scot Thomasson.” “Jeremy White.” “Nice to meet you.” “Good to meet you.” “How are you?” “Good.” “Good. It’s the same damn gun.” “Really is.” “The difference is right there, serial number. And that’s important.” Scot Thomasson is a retired A.T.F. agent. He’s letting me try out my new gun on his property. “Looks O.K. Looks like it’s not going to blow up anybody’s hand, so that’s a good thing.” “Let’s go test it out.” [GUN CLICKS] [GUN FIRES] “Hit.” [GUN FIRES] “Hit.” [GUN FIRES] “O.K.” “That’s a working gun.” “Yeah, sure enough is. Listen, I worked violent crime my whole career for 26 years. You want those officers to have every means possible bringing to justice those who use that firearm to commit acts of violence. And without a serial number on that firearm, you can’t do it.” “So if these kits had a serial number and were sold through licensed dealers, do you see any problem with that?” “No problem whatsoever. So what?” “Right now we really don’t know what we don’t know, because these guns are completely untraceable.” Jennifer Wexton is a representative from Virginia’s 10th district and a co-sponsor on two bills that would broaden the definition of firearms to include assembly kits. so you couldn’t buy them without the government knowing. “Normally the serial number would be here.” “No. And look, there’s nothing there.” “There’s nothing there.” “Yeah. That’s part of the allure of these kinds of ghost guns, by the way. So when they’re picked up in crime scenes and things like that, we know that they are out there. And we’re seeing it happen more and more.” “What do you say to the Second Amendment advocate that says, these laws are an invasion of my privacy when it comes to gun ownership?” “I think that guns should be traceable. So I think that weighing the interest in not having a serial number on your firearm versus the overall public safety, I come down on the side of public safety.” In the end, the government does find out about my ghost gun. Without a handgun license, I can’t bring this gun back to New York, so I’m turning it in to the local police. They interview me, do a background check and file a police report. That’s a lot more screening than I went through to get the gun in the first place. For most people, this isn’t the easiest way to get a gun. It takes time and skill. Some people may like that challenge. Most people would rather just buy one from a gun shop or a licensed dealer. But if you’re a felon, or underage, or you can’t legally buy a gun for some other reason, these kits make it remarkably easy to get one anyway.
Mr. Biden also said he would make clear that when a device marketed as a stabilizing brace transforms a pistol into a short-barrel rifle, that weapon is subject to the requirements of the National Firearms Act. The gunman in the Boulder, Colo., shooting last month used a pistol with an arm brace, making it more stable and accurate, he said.
Mr. Biden said the Justice Department would also publish model “red flag” legislation for states. The measure would allow police officers and family members to petition a court to temporarily remove firearms from people who may present a danger to themselves or others. While Mr. Biden cannot pass national red flag legislation without Congress, officials said the goal of the guidance was to make it easier for states that want to adopt it to do so now. The department also plans to release a comprehensive report on firearms trafficking, which it has not done since 2000.
“Red flag laws can stop mass shooters before they can act out their violent plans,” Mr. Biden said, noting he wanted to see a national red flag law.
Currently, 19 states and Washington, D.C., have passed their own red flag laws. And while Alaska and Wisconsin are currently considering passing their own measures, it’s not clear how many other states are interested in doing so. Experts said that many states that do not have red flag laws also do not have background check laws, and politically are unlikely to pass gun safety measures.
Outside of mass shootings, gun violence remains the leading cause of death for Black men between the ages of 15 and 34, Mr. Biden said in his remarks, noting that additional funding he has proposed for community violence programs can save lives.
“Gun violence in our neighborhood is having a profound impact on our children, even if they’re never involved in pulling the trigger or being the victim on the other side,” he said.
The initiatives do not match in scope his commitment to the issue over the course of his career, particularly his time as a senator. In 1993, Mr. Biden played a key role in the passage of the landmark Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. A year later, he helped authorize a 10-year ban on assault weapons.
Mr. Biden acknowledged there is only so much he can do without a partner in Congress. “This is just a start,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do,” calling gun violence a “blemish on the character of our nation.”
The House passed two gun control bills last month, but they are languishing in the Senate in the face of the chamber’s 60-vote threshold for passing most legislation, which requires the support of at least 10 Republicans. Mr. Biden called on the Senate to take action.
“They have offered plenty of thoughts and prayers, but they have passed not a single federal law to reduce gun violence,” Mr. Biden said. Enough prayers. Time for action.”
Merrick Garland, the attorney general, also said the A.T.F. would undertake a gun trafficking study, which it has not published in more than 20 years.
Also Thursday, Mr. Biden announced his nomination of David Chipman, a gun control advocate, to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The bureau has not had a permanent director since 2015.
While Mr. Chipman’s selection came as welcome news to gun control groups, few nominees put forward by Mr. Biden have faced steeper odds of confirmation in the Senate, although his allies think he may be able to win narrow approval given the anguish over recent shootings.
In 2006, lawmakers allied with the National Rifle Association enacted a provision making the position of A.T.F. director, which had previously been a political appointment, subject to Senate confirmation. As a result, only one director, Obama nominee B. Todd Jones, has been confirmed over the last 15 years.
In recent years, parts of the National Mall in Washington have been used to temporarily memorialize fallen American soldiers and those who have died from the coronavirus. Next week, a square block will be cordoned off to recognize the roughly 40,000 Americans who die annually in gun violence.
The gun violence prevention organization led by former Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was critically injured in a 2011 mass shooting, will on Monday evening place 38,000 silk white roses in 4,000 vases across from the Capitol. (An earlier version of this briefing item, using information from the gun violence prevention group, misstated when the memorial would be installed.)
The installation, set to occupy the square block of the National Mall lawn between Third and Fourth Streets, is designed by Doug Landry, a longtime Democratic advance man who created the coronavirus memorial that was on display during President Biden’s inauguration. Ms. Giffords is expected to visit the site on Wednesday with a delegation of advocates and members of Congress. It will be open to the public next Thursday.
“Our installation is a poignant reminder of the tragedy and trauma that gun violence inflicts on our nation,” said Peter Ambler, the executive director of the Giffords organization. “Each flower confronts us with the human cost of political failure — tens of thousands of people not here to pursue their hopes and dreams, families and communities gutted by the worst kind of loss. We will gather at the Gun Violence Memorial to mourn victims of gun violence and inspire the courage to act to address this national nightmare.”
The Giffords art installation will be the largest commemoration of gun violence victims in Washington since the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut thrust the issue to the forefront of national politics.
While the House has recently passed gun control legislation including a requirement for universal background checks, there is little prospect of a divided Senate advancing the proposals. Mr. Biden is expected on Thursday to announce executive actions that include increased federal regulations on homemade firearms and name David Chipman, a Giffords adviser, to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia became an outcast in his own party after infuriating former President Donald J. Trump by resisting his demands to overturn the state’s election results. He spent weeks fending off attacks from fellow Republicans and right-wing media, and Mr. Trump vowed to retaliate by sending a hard-right loyalist to oppose him in the primary next year.
But the sweeping new voting bill Mr. Kemp signed two weeks ago has provided him a lifeline. The bill severely curtails the ability to vote in Georgia, particularly for people of color. Mr. Kemp has seized on it as a political opportunity, defending the law as one that expands voting access, condemning those who criticize it and conflating the criticism with so-called cancel culture.
It’s an argument he believes may restore him to the good graces of Georgia Republicans after being publicly derided by Mr. Trump, a predicament that has proved fatal to the career aspirations of other ambitious conservatives.
“He knows that this is a real opportunity and he can’t blow it, because I don’t think he gets another layup like this again anytime soon,” said Randy Evans, a Georgia lawyer whom Mr. Trump made ambassador to Luxembourg, and is also a close ally of Mr. Kemp.
Since signing the bill into law on March 25, Mr. Kemp has done roughly 50 interviews, 14 with Fox News, promoting the new restrictions with messaging that aligns with Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the election was rigged against him.
Mr. Kemp’s argument is designed to pump adrenaline into the conservative vein, by focusing on two of the most animating topics of the political right: election mechanics and an ominous portrayal of the Democratic left.
“They folded like a wet dishrag to the cancel culture,” he said, responding to businesses that publicly objected to the legislation, in an interview on Fox Business on Tuesday. “Americans and Georgians should be scared. I mean, what event are they going to come after next?”
If he manages a political reversal of fortune, Mr. Kemp would be the most prominent Republican to find a way to overcome Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution, and perhaps would provide an early test of the former president’s ability to impose his will on the party’s electoral future.
But whether Mr. Kemp will be able to make amends with Mr. Trump remains unclear. Late Tuesday, the former president signaled how difficult it would be to win him over, releasing a statement slamming Mr. Kemp and Georgia Republicans for not going far enough to restrict voting access in the new law.
“Kemp also caved to the radical left-wing woke mob who threatened to call him racist if he got rid of weekend voting,” Mr. Trump said. “Well, he kept it, and they still call him racist!”
Representative Lee Zeldin, a New York Republican and avid supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, declared on Thursday that he was entering the 2022 race for governor of New York, hoping to emerge as his party’s challenger to embattled Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
“The bottom line is this: To save New York, Andrew Cuomo’s gotta go,” Mr. Zeldin, a staunch conservative who represents parts of Long Island, said in a news release.
Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, is in the midst of the greatest crisis of his political life, facing investigations and accusations of sexual harassment. Many of the state’s Democratic leaders have asked Mr. Cuomo to resign, and whether he will ultimately run for re-election next year is an open question.
But any Republican, especially one closely tied to Mr. Trump, would have an uphill battle in a statewide contest in New York. Republicans haven’t won a statewide election since 2002, and Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one.
Mr. Zeldin’s comments on Thursday previewed how he would seek to position himself in a heavily Democratic state.
“With one-party Democrat rule in New York City and Albany, the light that once shone as a beacon of what America can be has gone dark,” he said.
Mr. Zeldin will be one of at least three declared or potential Republican candidates interested in running for governor who will appear in Albany, N.Y., on April 19 to meet with Republican county leaders to lobby for their support.
Others include Rob Astorino, the party’s 2014 nominee for governor, and Andrew Giuliani, the son of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.
The Biden administration on Thursday added seven Chinese supercomputing entities to a U.S. blacklist over national security concerns, a move that curbs their access to American technology.
The Commerce Department said that the seven entities were at odds with U.S. foreign policy or national security interests. The department said the entities were “involved with building supercomputers used by China’s military actors, its destabilizing military modernization efforts, and/or weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.) programs.”
“Supercomputing capabilities are vital for the development of many — perhaps almost all — modern weapons and national security systems, such as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons,” the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, said in a statement. “The Department of Commerce will use the full extent of its authorities to prevent China from leveraging U.S. technologies to support these destabilizing military modernization efforts.”
The announcement is an early step by the new administration as it calibrates its approach to China under President Biden, and it comes three weeks after top officials from the two countries gathered in Anchorage for a tense meeting.
The move by the Commerce Department builds on efforts by the Trump administration to restrict certain Chinese companies’ access to American technology.
In its move on Thursday, the department added the seven Chinese entities to what is known as the entity list, which bars them from purchasing American technology or products without special permission. The seven entities are Tianjin Phytium Information Technology, Shanghai High-Performance Integrated Circuit Design Center, Sunway Microelectronics, the National Supercomputing Center Jinan, the National Supercomputing Center Shenzhen, the National Supercomputing Center Wuxi and the National Supercomputing Center Zhengzhou.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, seldom says anything he does not mean to say, and seldom apologizes for something he says.
But Mr. McConnell is walking back his sharp rebuke of companies and sports leagues that have come out publicly against a new law that restricts access to voting in Georgia and similar bills in other states.
“My warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics,” he said on Tuesday in Louisville. People close to him insisted this was not a mistake, but a pointed warning delivered with classic, tight-lipped zip.
Nonetheless, by Wednesday, in Paducah, Ky., Mr. McConnell reversed course and conceded that he had gone too far.
“I didn’t say that very artfully yesterday,” he said at an event where he insisted that corporate executives were misinformed and acting on distorted portrayals of the Georgia law provided by no less a figure than President Biden.
“They are certainly entitled to be involved in politics,” he added. “So my complaint about the C.E.O.s: Read the damn bill.”
Mr. McConnell’s critics say the episode illustrates his declining powers as a leader of his party, and his waning status as supervillain to Democrats. “He is suddenly powerless and flailing,” said Brian Fallon, a former top Democratic aide in the Senate.
That is wishful thinking, his allies insist.
This misstep aside, it should be no surprise that Mr. McConnell, who has built his political image on fighting campaign finance restrictions, is embracing a role as the No. 1 foe of a voting rights expansion bill being pushed by Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats.
In meetings with colleagues, speeches and media appearances, he has been blistering the wide-ranging plan, which he views as an existential threat to his party’s future, one he claims is based on a “big lie” that Republicans in Georgia and other states are employing racist tactics reminiscent of the Jim Crow era to limit voting.
The phrase — the same one Democrats have used to describe former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election — suggests that Mr. McConnell is planning a full-scale effort to define the voting rights bill as corrupt and a blatant power grab.
“Our challenge, of course, is they are going to make this about race somehow, they are going to make this about turnout somehow,” Mr. McConnell said in an interview. “It is about neither. It is about a partisan effort to rewrite the rules in a way they think benefits them.”
As Beijing has increased its military harassment of what it considers a rogue territory, many experts and administration officials say that if anything can tip the global power struggle between China and the United States into an actual military conflict, it is Taiwan.
In recent days, Beijing has menaced the nation by flying 15 Chinese warplanes near its shores. In response, Biden administration officials are trying to calibrate a policy that protects the democratic, technology-rich island without inciting an armed conflict that would be disastrous for all.
Under a longstanding — and famously convoluted — policy derived from America’s “one China” stance that supports Taiwan without recognizing it as independent, the United States provides political and military support for Taiwan, but does not explicitly promise to defend it from a Chinese attack.
American officials warn that China is growing more capable of invading Taiwan, a democracy of nearly 24 million people situated off the coast of mainland China, whose status has obsessed Beijing since Chinese nationalists retreated and formed a government there after the country’s 1949 Communist revolution.
Experts are questioning whether the United States should make a more specific commitment to the island’s defense. The debate reflects the core foreign policy challenge seizing the Biden administration as it re-evaluates tenets of American strategy for a new and more dangerous phase of competition with China.
In remarks that raised eyebrows last month, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, the military commander for the Indo-Pacific region, described what he sees as a risk that China could try to reclaim Taiwan by force within the next six years.
The United States has long avoided saying how it would respond to such an attack, instead focusing on maintaining a careful balance intended both to avoid provoking Beijing or emboldening Taiwan into a formal declaration of independence that could lead to a Chinese invasion. But some say it is time to warn explicitly that an invasion of Taiwan would mean a costly fight with the United States.
“I think there’s been a shift in peoples’ thinking,” said Richard N. Haass, a former director of policy planning at the State Department under President George W. Bush and now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Haass helped prompt a conversation on the subject last year after publishing an essay in September in Foreign Affairs magazine with his colleague David Sacks.
“The time has come,” Mr. Haass and Mr. Sacks wrote, “for the United States to introduce a policy of strategic clarity: one that makes explicit that the United States would respond to any Chinese use of force against Taiwan.”
The idea is gaining traction, including on Capitol Hill, where Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, has introduced a bill that would authorize the president to take military action to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack — making America’s intentions ambiguous no more.
The parents of 61 migrant children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration have been located since February, but lawyers still cannot find the parents of 445 children, according to a court filing on Wednesday.
In the filing, the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union indicated slow progress in the ongoing effort to reunite families that were affected by a policy to prosecute all undocumented immigrants in the United States, even if it meant separating children from their parents.
The update in the reunification efforts comes as the Biden administration struggles to address a growing number of migrants seeking entry into the United States at the border with Mexico, including many children being held in jail-like facilities for longer than the law permits because of overcrowding.
Of the 445 remaining children, a majority are believed to have parents who were deported, while more than 100 children are believed to have parents currently in the United States, according to the court filing. The government has yet to provide contact information that would help locate the families of more than a dozen children.
Though the court filing says that U.S. agencies and the A.C.L.U. continue to work together to reunite the families, the effort has proved to be more difficult as time passes. The initial searches began years ago, under the Trump administration, after the policy of family separation was rescinded in the summer of 2018.
Only a fraction of the roughly 2,700 children who were initially separated under the policy still remain, and President Biden has indicated that reuniting those remaining children with their families is a priority. During his first week in office, Mr. Biden signed an executive order creating a task force led by Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to focus on reuniting families.
Advocates for families separated at the border during the Trump administration continue to pressure the president to move faster to reunite them. Lee Gelernt, an A.C.L.U. lawyer who has waged a lengthy legal battle against Mr. Trump’s separation policy, said some progress had been made but much more needed to be done.
“We and the Biden administration have enormous work yet to do if we are going to fix the terrible abuses of the Trump administration’s family separation practice,” he said.
Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a key moderate Democrat, on Wednesday reaffirmed his vow to protect the filibuster in the evenly divided Senate and suggested reluctance to his party repeatedly using a fast-track budget process to advance legislation without Republican votes.
Mr. Manchin has long been one of the most stalwart defenders of the 60-vote threshold needed to end debate in the upper chamber, even as it threatens to derail key elements of President Biden’s agenda. Despite previously toying with possible reforms to the procedural hurdle, he has repeatedly swatted away queries about what could drive him to vote to outright abolish the filibuster, even as Democrats have gamed out various scenarios in which he might relent.
In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post, Mr. Manchin vowed that there was “no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster,” and he urged party leaders to compromise on legislation instead of trying to work around Republican opposition. Ten Republicans are currently needed to join all Democrats in a 50-50 Senate to pass major pieces of legislation through the regular process.
The comments took on added significance after a key Senate official on Monday issued guidance that could allow Democrats to pursue the fast-track budget reconciliation process at least one more time before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, after they used it to pass Mr. Biden’s nearly $1.9 trillion pandemic relief law without any Republican votes.
“We will not solve our nation’s problems in one Congress if we seek only partisan solutions,” Mr. Manchin wrote. “Instead of fixating on eliminating the filibuster or shortcutting the legislative process through budget reconciliation, it is time we do our jobs.”
Pressure has mounted for Democrats to further push the boundaries of what a majority party can do unilaterally when in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, in order to deliver on a series of campaign promises. While Democrats do not yet have the votes to abolish the filibuster, they have explored other avenues to ensure Mr. Biden’s agenda becomes law.
In recent days, that has included expanding the frequency of reconciliation, which allows certain budgetary legislation to clear both chambers on a simple majority vote. While Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, appears to have agreed with the Democratic argument that they can use the process multiple times in one fiscal year, it remains unclear how and when they might employ those possible opportunities, and for what.
While Mr. Manchin did not outright refuse to support another use of the fast-track reconciliation process, he challenged both parties to work together and compromise on critical pieces of legislation, including infrastructure and tax changes. Any use of reconciliation would require Mr. Manchin — and virtually every congressional Democrat — to remain united behind the legislation.
“Senate Democrats must avoid the temptation to abandon our Republican colleagues on important national issues,” Mr. Manchin wrote. “Republicans, however, have a responsibility to stop saying no, and participate in finding real compromise with Democrats.”
While many questions remain about how Democrats could potentially use another chance at reconciliation, both Mr. Biden and congressional leaders insist they want to work with Republicans to reach compromises, particularly on the sweeping $2 trillion infrastructure proposal the White House just unveiled.
“There are things we’re working on together — some of which we’ve passed and some we will pass,” Mr. Biden said on Wednesday. He suggested a group of 10 Republican senators who sought to compromise on his pandemic relief plan did not do enough to jump start negotiations with their initial $618 billion plan. “If they come forward with a plan that did the bulk of it and it was a billion — three or four, two or three — that allowed me to have pieces of all that was in there, I would have been prepared to compromise, but they didn’t,” he added.
The group of 10 Republican senators later issued a joint statement Wednesday evening arguing that the proposal had been “a first offer to the White House designed to open bipartisan negotiations” that instead had been dismissed “as wholly inadequate in order to justify its go-it-alone strategy.”
In the immediate aftermath of the assault on the Capitol that left five dead, irate Democrats vowed to punish Republicans for their roles in perpetuating or indulging former President Donald J. Trump’s fiction of a stolen election, which motivated the mob that attacked the building.
There was talk of cutting off certain Republicans entirely from the legislative process, denying them the basic courtesies and customs that allow the House to function even in polarized times.
Democrats introduced a series of measures to censure, investigate and potentially expel members who, in the words of one resolution, “attempted to overturn the results of the election and incited a white supremacist attempted coup.” But the legislation went nowhere and to date no punishment has been levied against any members of Congress for their actions related to Jan. 6.
What has unfolded instead has been something of an uneasy détente on Capitol Hill, as Democrats reckon with what they experienced that day and struggle to determine whether they can salvage their relationships with Republicans — some of whom continue to cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Biden’s victory.
Republicans have felt the breach as well. Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, who did not vote to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory but joined a lawsuit challenging the election results, said feelings ran raw after the mob violence at the Capitol.
“I had some candid conversations with members that I have a good relationship with. There was a lot of heated emotion,” Mr. Waltz said. Still, he said, “I didn’t experience a freeze.”
He recently teamed up with Representative Anthony G. Brown, Democrat of Maryland, to round up 70 Republicans and 70 Democrats for a letter to the Biden administration laying out parameters for an Iran nuclear deal.
The dilemma of whether to join such bipartisan efforts is particularly charged for centrist Democrats from conservative-leaning districts, who won office on the promise of working with Republicans but say they find it difficult to accept that some of those same colleagues spread lies that fueled the first invasion of the Capitol since the War of 1812.
Adding to the tensions, most Republicans insist that they did nothing wrong, arguing that their push to invalidate the election results was merely an effort to raise concerns about the integrity of the vote. Some have reacted angrily to Democrats’ moves to punish them.
