She got away with it in the end. On November 5, 2021, the House passed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Ten days later, Biden signed it into law. Meanwhile, Sinema continued to draw the ire of Democrats for opposing Build Back Better. In a rare interview with CNN, he declined to specify what it would take to change his mind, saying only: “I will not support any legislation that increases the burdens on American or Arizona businesses and reduces our ability to compete globally or nationally. The legislation lay dormant until the following year.
On May 24, 2022, a teenager armed with an AR-15-style rifle entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and massacred two teachers and 19 children. Sinema responded to the firing off with a tweet about being “appalled and heartbroken” which was widely denounced as proof that she had no intention of responding with concrete actions. A day later, Chris Murphy, who, after the shocking Sandy Hook school shooting a decade earlier in his state, emerged as the Democrats’ leading advocate of gun reform, read that Sinema had stopped in an elevator in the Capitol to inform members. she from the media that she would like to work with the republicans on the issue of guns. The news initially seemed unlikely to Murphy: Sinema had effectively stopped speaking to the Washington press.
Murphy texted him: “Are you serious?”
Sinema answered yes. Within two hours, Murphy was sitting in her office hidden from her in the Capitol basement. Later that day, Sinema walked to the Senate and located the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell. “Who should I work with on weapons?” She asked him.
She and McConnell had been friends for some time, and she met with him frequently during infrastructure deliberations. Later in 2022, she would go to her state, Kentucky, to speak at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, where she was praised by the Minority Leader as “the most effective first-term senator I have seen in my time in the Senate”. .” Now, responding to her question on the Senate floor, McConnell responded: “John Cornyn and Thom Tillis.” She sinema she texted both of them. The next day, the two Republican senators and Sinema and Murphy were in their hideout, devising a legislative framework. “There wasn’t a day that the four of us weren’t talking multiple times,” Tillis told me.
That June, Biden signed into law the bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Against the wishes of the powerful National Rifle Association, a staggering 14 Senate Republicans voted for the bill, including the minority leader; as Murphy would tell me, “We knew we couldn’t get by without McConnell’s support, and Kyrsten was in ongoing talks with him.” The bill did not address military-style rifles like the ones used by the Uvalde shooter or expand Internet background checks and gun show sales, measures that were guaranteed to be blocked by a Republican filibuster. However, it provided enhanced penalties for bogus purchases, added additional steps to background checks for buyers between the ages of 18 and 21, and closed the so-called boyfriend loophole, which allowed abusive partners to own a gun even with a order of protection against you. .
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