Beto O'Rourke's plan to turn voters into gun safety activists

Details: The campaign is deploying staff in Texas, South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa to turn "Beto for America" volunteers and voters into activists against gun violence. Their goals include:

• Connecting campaign organizers with local prevention organizations.
• Mobilizing voters to call on credit card companies to stop enabling the sale of assault weapons. (O'Rourke was the first 2020 Democrat to support this measure.)
• Educating these voters and volunteers on O'Rourke's gun violence prevention policy platform so they can share that with others in their community.

By the numbers: O'Rourke's campaign says there are "390 million guns in America, outnumbering the 329 million people in this country." About 9 in 10 Democrats said they favor stricter gun laws, and a clear majority of overall voters favored an assault weapons ban in a Quinnipiac University poll last month.

The bottom line: O'Rourke's leadership on gun safety may be his best prospect to regain momentum in his quest for the Democratic nomination, where he is stuck around 3% in the latest Real Clear Politics national average.

• "After nearly a month of stonewalling, it appears clear that the President has chosen the path of defiance, obstruction, and cover-up," the letter reads.

The state of play: Several White House officials have told Axios' Alayna Treene that the administration has no plans of complying with the committees' demands for interviews or documents without a full House vote formally approving an impeachment inquiry.

The big picture: The Trump administration's initial refusal to turn over the whistleblower complaint on the president's interactions with Ukraine is what led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to finally support a formal impeachment inquiry.

Go deeper: Trump letter dares Pelosi to hold vote on impeachment inquiry

• Johnson asked the Justice Department earlier this week to look into links between Ukraine and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. His letter questioned the narrative that Biden's actions in Ukraine had nothing to do with his son's connection.
• However, it was also discovered that he signed onto a 2016 letter that mirrored Biden's work to reform Ukraine's prosecutor general and judiciary.
• There is no evidence that Biden's reform work in Ukraine was to protect his son's business dealings, as the president and some of his allies allege, or that he committed any form of corruption.

The state of play: Sondland, a Trump political appointee who donated $1 million to the president's inaugural committee, denied that there was a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and Ukraine's government in a series of text messages that former Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker provided to a group of House committees investigating the Trump-Ukraine matter.

• "I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign," Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, texted Sondland.
• Sondland texted back: "Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo's of any kind."
• The New York Times reported that Sondland's response came only after he spoke to the president.

Go deeper: House committees release texts from former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker