Less than two weeks ago, Democrats and Republicans managed to bridge the yawning gap between them on the issue of gun control to pass a measure that tightened down domestic abusers’ access to weapons, and allocated money towards mental health programs and schools.

The bill’s catalysts were the mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and, 10 days later, an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. While it was the most significant piece of legislation targeting gun violence in decades, it won the support of only a minority of Republicans, and Democrats acknowledged they would have passed much stronger legislation, if they had the votes.

The law was only days old when the latest high-profile mass shooting, at an Independence Day celebration in Highland Park, Illinois, occurred. Congress is in recess this week, and many lawmakers are back in their districts, where they may face calls to do more to stop the massacres - or to ensure continued access to guns.

President Biden is today awarding the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, to four Army veterans who fought in the Vietnam War.

Staff Sergeant Edward N. Kaneshiro, Specialist Five Dwight W. Birdwell, Specialist Five Dennis M. Fujii and Major John J. Duffy are set to receive the award in a White House ceremony beginning at 11:15 am eastern time.

Kaneshiro perished in 1967 in Vietnam, but Birdwell, Fujii and Duffy are still alive and presumably will attend. The White House has a rundown of the actions they are being awarded for.

You can watch the ceremony live here.

“You know why I’m writing this.”

So begins a first-hand account of yesterday’s mass shooting by Lynn Sweet, Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, who was there when a gunman opened fire from a rooftop and killed six.

I saw, frozen in time, what people left when they fled. So many baby carriages. Folding chairs. Backpacks. Water bottles. Towels. Blankets. Police were asking people to leave the active shooting scene.

As I approached Port Clinton Square, by the reviewing stand, I saw a woman down. I don’t know if she was dead or alive. Two people were leaning over her. I saw another woman on the ground.

Then, near a bench in the square, I came upon a pool of blood, ruby red blood. There was so much blood, that the blood puddle was lumpy because so much already coagulated. The shape of the blood — was this a twisted Rorschach test? — looked like a handgun to me.

I’m going into this gruesome detail because this is what gun violence from a rapid-fire weapon with an apparent high capacity magazine looks like. My sister, Neesa, on Central near the railroad tracks, heard two sequences of rapid fire. The pause is likely when the shooter switched out magazines.

The full piece is worth a read.

When it comes to his relationship with Saudi Arabia, oil production and jailed relatives aren’t the only issues Biden has to deal with. The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner reports that his administration is facing a deadline to give its opinion in a lawsuit brought against Riyadh by the fiancee of a murdered journalist:

A US judge has asked the Biden administration to weigh in on whether Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, should be granted sovereign immunity in a civil case brought against him in the US by Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was killed by Saudi agents in 2018.

John Bates, a district court judge, gave the US government until 1 August to declare its interests in the civil case or give the court notice that it has no view on the matter.

The administration’s decision could have a profound effect on the civil case and comes as Joe Biden is facing criticism for abandoning a campaign promise to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah”.

President Biden will next week go to the Middle East, including a controversial stop in Saudi Arabia, which is seen as an attempt to reset relations with a top oil producer. Ahead of the trip, Stephanie Kirchgaessner reports that families of Americans detained in the country are worried the White House is ignoring their plight:

Family members of several US nationals who are being held in Saudi Arabia and Egypt were not invited to attend a recent call with Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, in a move that was called “infuriating and discriminatory” by one critic.

The apparent decision to exclude the families from a June 22 call between Blinken and relatives of US nationals who are hostages or otherwise wrongfully detained in Russia, Venezuela, Rwanda, and other countries, was made just weeks before Joe Biden’s controversial trip to the Middle East and an expected rapprochement between the US president and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince.

Biden is due to visit Israel and Saudi Arabia later this month as part of a summit where oil production is likely to be high on the agenda, as well as a focus on improved relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The January 6 committee won’t be holding any hearings this week because the House of Representatives is in recess, but Edward Helmore reports that one of its top lawmakers says the committee is gathering more and more evidence about what happened that day - especially since the testimony of an aide to Donald Trump’s chief of staff:

Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger has said that bombshell testimony given by Cassidy Hutchinson to the January 6 hearings last week has inspired more witnesses to come forward and the committee is getting more new evidence by the day.

The panel is investigating the events surrounding the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters. Kinzinger is one of two Republicans serving on the panel which has publicized explosive testimony about the insurrection and an apparent plot to subvert the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won.

Last week Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, gave sworn testimony that painted the former president as a violent and unstable figure desperately seeking to cling to power.

Americans are continuing to grapple with the supreme court’s ruling last month allowing states to ban abortion - including the founder of the country’s largest provider of the procedure. Jessica Glenza spoke to Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, about how the group plans to help women continue accessing abortions:

In the time after the US supreme court rescinded the constitutional right to abortion in America and thereby allowed nearly a dozen states to outlaw the procedure, the president and CEO of the US’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, has worked feverishly with three goals in mind.

Alexis McGill Johnson wants to get women where they need to be to access abortion, whether that means helping patients cross state lines or flying doctors to states where abortion remains legal.

Then, she wants to win in state courts. Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have filed 11 lawsuits seeking to delay abortion bans or, perhaps optimistically, strike them down entirely.

“What we can see, essentially, is just a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion and a lot of concern for patients on the ground being able to get the care they need,” McGill Johnson told The Guardian. “What we’ve also seen is a significant amount of rage.”

That will power her third goal – to win at the ballot box.

“Our work right now is to maximize the care that we can in the states that we can, and also take this moment as an opportunity to maximize mobilization.”

Yesterday’s shooting in a Chicago suburb has already spurred calls for more action to tackle gun violence, The Guardian’s Erum Salam and Coral Murphy Marcos report:

The shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park that left at least six dead and 24 wounded has rocked the small, well-off community in suburban Chicago, and shocked the US as a whole.

It is the latest in a slew of mass killings that have recently included a shooting at a school in Texas and the racist massacre of Black shoppers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

But this latest mass murder has struck a particularly symbolic note as the shooter targeted a flag-waving parade celebrating the country’s national day and – once again – forced Americans to wrestle with how and why their nation is so often struck by such bloody attacks.

Highland Park’s mayor, Nancy Rotering, said: “This morning at 10.14, our community was terrorized by an act of violence that has shaken us to our core. Our hearts go out to the victims at this devastating time. On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we are instead mourning the tragic loss of life and struggling with the terror that was brought upon us.”

Less than two weeks ago, Democrats and Republicans managed to bridge the yawning gap between them on the issue of gun control to pass a measure that tightened down domestic abusers’ access to weapons, and allocated money towards mental health programs and schools.

The bill’s catalysts were the mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and, 10 days later, an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. While it was the most significant piece of legislation targeting gun violence in decades, it won the support of only a minority of Republicans, and Democrats acknowledged they would have passed much stronger legislation, if they had the votes.

The law was only days old when the latest high-profile mass shooting, at an Independence Day celebration in Highland Park, Illinois, occurred. Congress is in recess this week, and many lawmakers are back in their districts, where they may face calls to do more to stop the massacres - or to ensure continued access to guns.

Good morning US politics live blog readers. The ink has only just dried on compromise legislation Congress passed last month to curb mass shootings across the country, but on Monday, violence interrupted Americans’ celebrations of the United States’ 246th birthday. A gunman killed six people in a Chicago suburb, while crowds fled an Independence Day celebration in Philadelphia after another shooting injured two police officers.

Here’s what else is happening today: