The Daily 202: Trump gets a seminar on federalism as governors push back on arming teachers
| Trump gets a seminar on federalism as governors push back on arming teachers | ||||||
President Trump listens to Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) speak against his plan to arm teachers during a meeting with the nation's governors at the White House. (Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency)
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THE BIG IDEA: President Trump crossed his arms and looked annoyed as Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington State, spoke out against arming teachers.
“I have listened to the biology teachers, and they don't want to do that,” Inslee said during an event at the White House on Monday. “I've listened to the first-grade teachers that don't want to be pistol-packing first-grade teachers. I've listened to law enforcement, who have said they don't want to have to train teachers as law enforcement agents.”
As the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association and a likely 2020 presidential candidate, Inslee was most certainly grandstanding. But he has the credibility to do so: He lost his House seat in 1994 because he voted for an assault weapons ban despite knowing that it was toxically unpopular in his rural district.
“I just suggest we need a little less tweeting here and a little more listening,” Inslee told Trump, “and let's just take that off the table and move forward.”
What followed in the State Dining Room was a fascinating back-and-forth between Trump and other governors of both parties over what has become the president’s hobbyhorse since the massacre at a high school in Parkland, Fla., two weeks ago. The session quickly became a seminar on federalism – and a reminder that states really remain the laboratories of democracy.
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| Washington governor confronts Trump: 'A little less tweeting here and a little more listening'
As soon as Inslee finished making his point, the president asked the Republican governor of Texas to talk about how arming teachers has worked in his state. “Sure,” replied Greg Abbott. “We now have well over a hundred school districts in the state of Texas where teachers or other people who work in the school do carry a weapon … It could be a coach, it could be an administrator, it could be anybody who works in that school. But it's a well-thought-out program with a lot of training in advance.”
“Well, I think that's great,” Trump responded. “And so, essentially, what you're saying is that when a sick individual comes into that school, they can expect major trouble. Right? Major trouble?!”
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) chimed in to say that some poorer schools in his state arm rank-and-file employees because they cannot afford to keep law enforcement officers to be on site. “I have the belief that no teacher should be compelled, and most of them want to teach and focus on that,” he said. “I think what the governors want to say is that there can't be, necessarily, a national security plan, but the states can develop this.”
Then Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) noted that his 11-year-old son bagged his first buck last year, but he added that a nephew was also 11 when he got shot and killed while on a playground. “I want to make sure, if somebody is armed in a school, that they have that training,” he said.
-- Showing a little sensitivity to the bad optics of filling schools with guns, Trump replied that his plan is narrower in scope than the media coverage suggests. He repeatedly emphasized that only “very adept” people will be allowed to carry weapons. “It could be 10 percent [of all teachers], it could be 5 percent, could be 20 percent,” the president said. “They start with training and then they have additional training every year, and I think they should get a bonus. … I want highly trained people that have a natural talent, like hitting a baseball, or hitting a golf ball, or putting. How come some people always make the four-footer, and some people, under pressure, can't even take their club back? Right? Some people can't take their club back.”
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) jumped in to help the president from digging a deeper hole. He noted that a 16-year-old killed two students at a high school in his state in 1997. “A vice principal, who was an Army Reserve officer, went to his vehicle, retrieved his 1911 .45, and stopped that shooter before he could kill other children in Pearl, Mississippi,” said Bryant. “When I heard you speak of your idea, that was the concept I believed in. Find that Army Reserve vice principal, give him the training he necessarily needs, arm him, and stop this madness.”
The president appreciated all the back up. “Thank you, Phil,” he said.
-- Several Republican governors who were in the room didn’t want to say it to Trump’s face, but they think arming teachers is a bad idea and don’t want to pursue it.
“I disagree with him,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who plans to run for Senate, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I want our teachers to teach, and I want our law enforcement to be able to protect the students. I want each group to focus on what they’re good at.”
But over the governor’s objections, conservative state legislators are heeding the president’s call and introducing legislation to make it happen. In Tallahassee, Republicans are forging ahead with a plan to allow local sheriffs and police departments to deputize teachers as armed “school marshals” if they complete 132 hours of training and pass background checks. “It’s just a question of working out the details,” said state Sen. Bill Galvano (R), the next president of the Florida Senate.
In Alabama, a state representative quickly got about three dozen cosponsors for a proposal to let teachers carry concealed pistols in schools. Gov. Kay Ivey (R), a former teacher, expressed her displeasure. “In my personal opinion, teachers have got their hands full being teachers and instructors and I just think there's some other way to provide protection,” she said.
-- Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) offered a conciliatory message after some of his colleagues expressed opposition. “Each state is going to have to find their own way, based on their own culture, based on their own politics, based on their own unique demographics,” he told the president. “And we'll learn from each other.”
-- As the hourlong discussion wore on, Trump seemed more and more inclined to leave all the specifics and complexities of arming teachers to others. He said the federal government “will help monetarily,” possibly with grants to cover $1,000-a-year bonuses for teachers who pack heat, but that the governors and local districts can tackle everything else. “Just go and do it yourself,” the president said at the end of the meeting. “We will be there to help you no matter what your solution is. But this is largely a state issue.”
-- All politics is local. Here’s a look of how this issue is playing across the states:
-- Are we taking our eye off the ball? “The deliberately outrageous idea of arming classroom teachers is nothing more than a distraction, a ploy by the gun lobby to buy time for passions to cool,” columnist Eugene Robinson argues in today’s paper. “The National Rifle Association and its vassals in the Republican Party would like you to exhaust your outrage on a possibility that is, from the start, impossible. … ‘Up to States’ means abdicating the federal government’s responsibility and urging state legislatures to waste time and effort debating whether to mandate that instruments of death be introduced to classrooms.”
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
Syrian President Bashar Assad speaks to the Associated Press at the presidential palace in Damascus, Syria. (Syrian Presidency via AP, File)
-- U.N. officials claim North Korea has been providing the Syrian government with supplies to make chemical weapons. The New York Times’s Michael Schwirtz reports: “The supplies include acid-resistant tiles, valves and thermometers, according to a report by United Nations investigators. North Korean missile technicians have also been spotted working at known chemical weapons and missile facilities inside Syria, according to the report[.] … The report highlights the potential danger posed by any such trade between Syria and North Korea, which could allow Syria to maintain its chemical weapons while also providing North Korea with cash for its nuclear and missile programs.”
First lady Melania Trump arrives for a Governors' Spouses' Luncheon in the East Room of the White House. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
-- The first lady cut ties with an adviser after the New York Times reported the adviser was paid $26 million by Trump’s inaugural committee. The Times’s Kenneth P. Vogel and Maggie Haberman report: “Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who has been friends with Mrs. Trump for years, had been working on a contract basis as an unpaid senior adviser to the office of the first lady. Stephanie Grisham, Mrs. Trump’s spokeswoman, said the office had ‘severed the gratuitous services contract with Ms. Wolkoff,’ who Ms. Grisham said had been employed as ‘a special government employee’ to work on specific projects. … Ms. Grisham said that the first lady ‘had no involvement’ with the inaugural committee and that she ‘had no knowledge of how funds were spent.’”
GET SMART FAST:
MORE FLORIDA FALLOUT:
-- Trump stopped short of endorsing any specific gun legislation during the meeting with governors. “While Senate leaders explored the possibility of passing a modest improvement to the national background-check system for firearm buyers, House action was uncertain, and Trump again turned attention away from guns and toward the various security breakdowns that preceded the [Parkland shooting]," Mike DeBonis and Anne Gearan report. “Trump trumpeted his close ties to the leaders of the National Rifle Association [he said he had lunch with leaders of the group over the weekend], and he predicted that the [NRA] would ‘do something’ to respond to the escalating concern nationwide about guns. ... Trump suggested he would act to regulate bump stocks even if Congress does not.”
-- Trump is planning to meet Wednesday with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to discuss combating gun violence. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said there’s support for “the concept” of raising the minimum age for the purchase of assault-style weapons but “how it would be implemented and what it might look like" are still under discussion. She added that Trump backs looking at strengthening background checks but has not yet decided on the shape of specific legislation. (Associated Press)
-- Not going to happen: 156 House Democrats signed on to a bill that would ban assault weapons. From Dave Weigel: “The legislation, introduced by Reps. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), gained support over the weekend as most Democrats were at home in their districts. There’s no evidence that the Republican-controlled House would bring the bill to a vote, but the list of sponsors offers hints about whether the party’s politics are moving.”
-- The most memorable moment of the day: Trump claimed that he would have rushed into the Florida high school to protect students from the shooter during the massacre, even if he didn’t have a weapon. “I really believe I'd run in, even if I didn't have a weapon,” Trump said, calling the armed Broward sheriff's deputy who stayed outside a coward. “You never know until you’re tested.”
-- The president's declaration that he would have run, unarmed, into the school to protect students prompted Eli Rosenberg to look at how Trump has fared before in the face of danger: He avoided service in Vietnam. He got spooked at a rally when a man jumped a barrier. He bristled during a photo op with a bald eagle. A notorious germaphobe, Trump has spoken about his fear of shaking people’s hands for years and has said that he is terrified of blood. “I’m not good for medical,” he told Howard Stern during a 2008 interview. “In other words, if you cut your finger and there’s blood pouring out, I’m gone.”
Trump recounted a story about recoiling when a man fell off the stage during a benefit at his Mar-a-Lago club. “I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away,” Trump told Stern. “I didn’t want to touch him … he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. … I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’” The next day, he admitted, he forgot to call to check on whether the man was okay.
-- Former Broward County sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson, who failed to go inside the school during the shooting, says he believes he “acted appropriately” because he thought the gunfire was coming from outside. Mark Berman reports: “Peterson’s lawyer, Joseph A. DiRuzzo III, pushed back at ‘unfounded criticism of his actions … and uncalled for attacks upon his character’ in a lengthy statement Monday. Peterson said in the statement that when he got to the school building … he ‘heard gunshots but believed that those gunshots were originating from outside of any of the buildings on the school campus.’ … The lawyer did not say when the officer realized the gunfire was coming from inside the building.” The lawyer added, “The allegations that Mr. Peterson was a coward and that his performance … failed to meet the standards of police officers are patently untrue.”
-- Peterson’s account further increased the pressure on Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, who is facing calls for his resignation. From Michael Scherer, Aaron C. Davis and Mark Berman: “[Israel] has become an unlikely political lightning rod two weeks after [the shooting], with his department coming under intense scrutiny for its handling of the attack. … Some believe political considerations could be a factor in the criticism of Israel, [a Democrat] who is publicly elected to serve as sheriff in Broward County, which has nearly 2 million residents and is Florida’s second-most-populous county.”
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