Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-TX) is throwing his weight behind gun control, he told Cheddar in an interview Tuesday.
“I respect Second Amendment rights and people’s rights to own a gun, to protect themselves,” he said. “At the same time, I also believe that when we talk about things like semi-automatic weapons [and] bump stocks that make guns automatic, we ought to make sure that those aren’t just out there on the streets.”
His comments came after former Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens penned a [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens-repeal-second-amendment.html) op-ed in favor of a full-blown repeal of the Second Amendment, which he called a “relic of the 18th Century.”
While that view might be extreme, there does appear to be growing demand for gun reform in the country. The sentiment was highlighted at last weekend’s March For Our Lives rallies, which drew in hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Castro said that placed palpable pressure on legislators to act.
“It’s clear that the young people are not going away...They’re going to be very persistent on this issue,” said Castro.
And plenty of activists were out in force to make sure Saturday’s marchers will stay involved through the November elections.
“There’s a group called Move San Antonio that does wonderful work all over town registering people, and they were very active at the rally,” Castro said.
Whether those efforts will turn the historically red Texas blue remains to be seen. Castro says Democrats have a chance, but it will be “an uphill battle.”
“We always rank near the bottom in terms of voter participation,” explained Castro. “Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat [Senator] since the mid-1990s, and it’s an expensive state to run in.
“But we are getting stronger. We’ve got good candidates, and I think we have a chance of breaking through.”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/rep-joaquin-castro-d-tx-wants-to-see-eye-to-eye-with-all-constituents).
With less than two weeks until election day, a California Democrat, Harley Rouda, has gotten a $4.3 million boost from Michael Bloomberg in his bid to take down 30-year incumbent Republican Congressman Rohrabacher. Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC disclosed the spending last week, which went to advertising targeting the Republican. Rouda said Bloomberg's ad campaign will help bring the issue of climate change to the forefront of voters' minds in the coastal Orange County district.
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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti mulled a 2020 presidential run in an interview on Cheddar Monday, saying the cure to America's "odious" political sickness may be found in city hall. "I hope that even if I don't run, that mayors will think about jumping in," Garcetti said, "because I think we could cut through a lot of that partisanship right now."
Attending a Trump rally can be daunting for any self-proclaimed liberal ー even more so if your last name is Pelosi. But an experience with her political opposites left Alexandra Pelosi, the documentarian and youngest daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, feeling hopeful. "We all need to burst out of our own bubbles and see what the other people are thinking," Pelosi said Monday in an interview on Cheddar.
Gab, an online haven for white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the alt-right, is facing an increasingly uncertain future. Over the weekend, Gab was linked to Robert Bowers, who is accused of open-firing in a Pittsburgh, Pa., synagogue, killing 11 people and wounding six others. Bowers had a verified account on Gab and used the social network to post hateful, anti-Semitic messages up until the morning of the shooting.
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After a week of political finger-pointing and frayed national nerves ahead of a major election, a Florida man is in custody on federal charges that he sent at least 13 live explosive devices to prominent former and current Democratic officials, a news organization, a Hollywood actor, and liberal donors.
Megyn Kelly's exit negotiations with NBC were underway on Friday, as the network announced that the third hour of valuable morning show real estate she anchored is canceled. "Essentially and effectively she is out," Tony Maglio, TV editor at TheWrap, said Friday in an interview with Cheddar. "It's just a matter of all the legalese and what she'll walk away with."
The multi-year Women in the Workplace report, produced by Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In organization with McKinsey & Company, reveals a stubborn problem of gender diversity in corporate America. As Rachel Thomas, the president of Lean In, explained to ChedHER on Friday, that companies are clearly interested in closing the gender gap ー but they haven't done enough to make it happen yet.
Federal authorities have arrested Cesar Sayoc, Jr. in connection with a dozen packages containing likely explosives. Sayoc has a Florida address and has a criminal record, according to the Broward County Sheriff.
Two additional suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats were intercepted earlier Friday, only hours before the manhunt appeared to close in on a suspect for the attempted mail bombings now being described as a domestic terrorism.
