bipartisan

Reporting from Washington — President Trump on Thursday pressed his case for arming teachers to fight school shooters, despite widespread criticism, and for the first time suggested bonus payments for those who carry concealed firearms.

The president also called for making 21 the minimum age for buying long guns. Gun rights groups oppose raising age limits beyond 18 years, but Trump insisted he can sell the restriction to the “patriots” at the National Rifle Assn.

”I told them, we’re going to have to toughen” gun laws, Trump said, adding, “I really think the NRA wants to do what’s right.”

Trump elaborated on his ideas and other responses to last week’s Florida school massacre, starting with a series of morning tweets and continuing later at a White House roundtable on school safety with state and local officials. The televised session was much like one on Wednesday that Trump hosted with people touched by school shootings. Both offered a rare window into the president’s seemingly off-the-cuff thinking on gun policy, one of the nation’s most contentious issues.

Trump reserved most of his enthusiasm for bringing concealed-carry permits to American schools, to allow teachers, coaches and other officials to be armed against potential killers.

He repeatedly berated the practice of declaring campuses as “gun-free zones,” calling that an invitation to armed attackers.

“We have to harden our schools, not soften them,” Trump said. “A gun-free zone to a killer or somebody who wants to be a killer, that’s like going in for the ice cream. That’s like ‘Here I am, take me.’ ”

His exuberance for the idea has seemed to build since a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 students and adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The administration had not previously floated the proposal. Since his campaign, Trump mainly has limited his talk of gun policy simply to a staunch defense of an absolute 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, but the pressure for action since the latest shooting has been intense.

Trump raised the proposal publicly when he met at the White House on Wednesday with the group that included survivors of the Parkland shooting. When he asked what students, parents and teachers thought of the idea of arming school personnel, a few raised their hands in support and a few against. Since then, however, several have spoken out in opposition.

By Thursday, nonetheless, Trump had turned into a hearty supporter of arming teachers. In four tweets, he advocated for guns in schools, and then espoused several other ideas in other posts, including raising the minimum age for certain gun purchases, bolstering the process of checking backgrounds of potential buyers and banning the so-called bump stocks that turn legal firearms into illegal rapid-fire ones.

In his midday meeting with state and local officials, Trump grew expansive on his ideas, and occasionally heated.

He said he didn’t want “everybody standing there with a rifle” in America’s schools, but rather select, trained personnel with concealed weapons. Then he pointed to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, a retired Marine general, as an example of the sort of people schools could turn to for armed protection. “If he’s a teacher … I want him to have a gun,” Trump said.

“Frankly, you have teachers that are Marines for 20 years, they retire and become a teacher,” he said. “They’re Army, Navy, Air Force, they’re Coast Guard, they’re people who have won shooting contests for whatever, this is what they do. They know guns, they understand guns.”

Trump suggested without evidence that up to 40% of teachers could be armed. He then recommended that “we give them a little bit of a bonus” for bearing arms.

Trump did not address how to pay for the bonuses, school weapons or other proposals he is considering, except to say that the debate “isn’t so much about funding, it’s about common sense.”

By his focus on such ideas, Trump in recent days has steered the national gun policy debate away from more ambitious proposals, notably one to revive a long-lapsed ban on assault rifles like the Parkland shooter used. The newly minted gun control advocates among Parkland’s teenage survivors have called for a ban. He opposes one.

Instead, the president has raised some ideas, like new regulations against bump stocks, that the NRA has expressed willingness to consider, and a few — like the age limit for buyers — that, he says, his gun rights allies at the NRA can be persuaded to support.

“They’re ready to do things,” he said. “They want to do things. They’re good people.”

Asked later if Trump had spoken to the NRA about the higher age minimum, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah did not have an answer.

On the NRA’s website, a spokeswoman is quoted in opposition: “Passing a law that makes it illegal for a 20-year-old to purchase a shotgun for hunting or an adult single mother from purchasing the most effective self-defense rifle on the market punishes law-abiding citizens for the evil acts of criminals.”

The NRA’s longtime leader, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, in a speech to the Conservative Political Action on Thursday, did not suggest any inclination toward compromise. Instead, he complained that liberals are trying to exploit the Florida shooting to advance their agenda.

“It’s not a safety issue, it’s a political issue,” LaPierre said. “Their solution is to make you, all of you, less free…. They want to sweep right under the carpet the failure of school security, the failure of family, the failure of America’s mental health system and even the unbelievable failure of the FBI.”

For Trump, the group likely would be a powerful ally for any expansion of concealed-carry laws to school employees, though the idea has met with concern from Republicans and Democrats, as well as school and law enforcement groups.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican, agreed with a Parkland teacher who expressed opposition to the idea during a televised CNN forum on Wednesday night. “I don’t support that,” he told her, citing his concerns as a father of school-age children and “practical problems.”

Rubio explained: “Imagine in the middle of this crisis, and the SWAT team comes into the building, and there’s an adult with a weapon in their hands. And the SWAT team doesn’t know who’s who and we have another tragedy that was unnecessary.”

The Senate’s Democratic minority leader, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, expressed doubt that Trump would really push for the proposals that the NRA opposes.

“The president is pushing for action on things — including comprehensive background checks — that the NRA opposes,” Schumer said. When Trump has talked about gun restrictions in the past, Schumer noted, he “quickly dropped his support once the NRA opposed it. I hope this time will be different.”

As tough as Trump talked about “hardening” schools, he bristled at the idea of practicing for a gun-related crisis. He had had little reaction on Wednesday, when a Parkland student and a parent advocated for more schools holding crisis drills. But on Thursday, when Florida’s education commissioner pressed the importance of holding regular “active shooter drills” so that students know how to behave when there is a threat, Trump snapped at her.

“I think that’s a very negative thing to be talking about. I don’t like it. I’d much rather have a hardened target,” he said, adding, “I think it’s very bad for children.”

Shah later clarified that the president considers the common term for the drills — “active shooter drills” — frightening to young students, suggesting that Trump doesn’t object to the practices themselves but only to the “brand.”

Advisors say the president isn’t zeroing in on specifics just yet. “Right now we’re in a listening phase,” said Shah, “but he is going to come forward later on with something a little bit more concrete.”

christi.parsons@latimes.com

Twitter: @cparsons

Reporting from Washington — Jared Kushner may finally get a win.

President Trump’s son-in-law has been a drag on the administration for his friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since the Oct. 2 killing of a U.S.-based dissident Saudi journalist. His family business continues to raise questions of conflicts of interest, he repeatedly has amended financial disclosure reports to remedy omissions, and he endured an embarrassing yearlong delay in obtaining a security clearance. Meanwhile, his chief assignment, a Mideast peace plan, is as elusive as ever.

Lately, however, Kushner has been instrumental in helping his father-in-law secure a rare bipartisan victory: a long-sought overhaul of the criminal justice system.

Both Republicans and Democrats who’ve worked on the bill in Congress credit Kushner as a key architect. He helped convince the two most powerful Republicans in Washington — his father-in-law and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, both of whom embrace the traditionally Republican tough-on-crime stance — to make the criminal justice system less punitive.

The bill cleared a procedural hurdle in the Senate on Monday evening, 82 to 12, a vote margin that belies the arduous effort to overcome initial opposition from conservatives. Final Senate passage is expected later this week and the legislation is expected to easily get through the House and to the White House for Trump’s signature.

Called the First Step Act, the legislation would undo some of the sentencing crackdowns of the 1990s and create programs to reduce prisoner recidivism.

It would allow low- and minimum-risk prisoners to earn time credits for early release to either reentry centers or home confinement; reduce some mandatory minimum sentences, including those imposed by so-called three-strikes laws that automatically result in life imprisonment; and allow reviews of sentences that reflect significant disparities between harsh punishments for crack cocaine use, which disproportionately involve minorities, and lesser penalties for powder cocaine.

Kushner, driven by the experience of his father’s 14-month prison sentence for tax evasion and other crimes, has made prison and sentencing changes a priority since the beginning of the Trump administration. But unlike loftier goals Kushner has embraced, such as peace between Israel and Palestinians, criminal justice reform is likely to be signed by the president.

Kushner helped work on policy details and knew where the political fault lines would be, according to lawmakers. He was on the phone repeatedly with other advocates to discuss strategy and next steps. He personally lobbied senators, including McConnell, who openly was not eager to make time for a Senate vote. And he served as a bridge to conservative media, which could have blown up the effort with even a whiff of opposition.

“There would be some very outspoken right-wing [opponent] and [Kushner] would tell me, ‘I called him this morning. I straightened him out and now he’s going to be OK,’” said Democratic supporter Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, declining to name the commentator. “I’m thinking, ‘Who would have dreamed that a bill I’m cosponsoring would be OK with this person?’”

Advocates of the criminal justice overhaul tried to pass a similar bill at the end of the Obama administration, only to be stymied by congressional Republicans. They had little hope of getting it through during the Trump administration given the president’s campaign rhetoric on crime, including a call to execute drug dealers, and because of the fierce opposition of his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

“This is a president that ran on American ‘carnage,’” said Jessica Jackson, a Mill Valley, Calif., City Council member who started the advocacy group #cut50 with liberal CNN host and commentator Van Jones. “I thought everything was over.”

“I’m a Democrat,” Jackson said, but “Jared is politically brilliant and he’s relentless and he’s also extremely loyal. If he tells you he’s going to do something, he does it.”

Kushner started early. He made his support for criminal justice changes known to the leaders of the bipartisan congressional effort — including Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, and Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee — within weeks of Trump’s inauguration.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), another architect of the plan, knew Kushner was taking the issue seriously when Kushner started dropping “the very precise nomenclature thrown around by criminal justice reform geeks” — for example, citing the relevant U.S. criminal code lines by their numbers.

While Kushner’s initial goal was prison reform, which is an easier sell with conservatives, it quickly became clear that had to be paired with sentencing reform to get the backing of Grassley and Durbin.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle was McConnell’s reluctance to bring up a bill that would unify Democrats and divide Republicans, handing the opposition a potential political cudgel in the 2020 campaign. He told a group of Republican advocates in September that he would bring the bill to the Senate floor only if it was endorsed by Trump and they secured 65 votes — five more than the minimum number needed to overcome procedural roadblocks.

Given the goal, Kushner relentlessly lobbied reluctant Republican senators to get on board, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

He called “everybody — and often,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, whose late endorsement was part of a groundswell that made clear that enough Republicans would support the legislation. “He was dogged.”

On numerous occasions he lobbied McConnell directly, even trying to figure out the Republican leader’s dinner companions so that he could lobby them before their meal.

Advocates of the First Step Act also rallied high-profile celebrity supporters, such as Kim Kardashian West, which demonstrated to the media-obsessed Trump the positive publicity he could get. Kushner worked with Jones, and eventually got support from celebrities including Alyssa Milano and former Fox News host Eric Bolling.

“Jared Kushner absolutely was one of the main conduits,” Bolling said.

The dam broke this month when Trump tweeted “go for it, Mitch” and several noteworthy conservatives backed the bill, including Sens. Cornyn, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas.

Lee, the Republican senator allied with Kushner, said: “One of the things I’ve appreciated about him is he doesn’t cut corners with this. I haven’t seen him abuse the position of trust as the president’s son-in-law. He doesn’t throw that around.”

Everyone in Washington knows Kushner’s trusted place in the Trump orbit; members of Congress return his phone calls and know he speaks for the president, at least as much as anyone can. Yet when Vice President Mike Pence came to a meeting of Senate Republicans to lobby on the bill last month, Kushner was deferential; attendees said he sat in the room but barely said a word.

The bill does have significant critics. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) argue that it could allow dangerous criminals to get early release, and have proposed a series of amendments that could get votes this week. Still, passage is considered all but certain.

The latest from Washington »

jennifer.haberkorn@latimes.com

@jenhab