Joe Biden to address nation but delays debt ceiling bill signing; White House press secretary addresses president’s fall – live

An appeals court ruling has revived an anti-discrimination lawsuit accusing an Albuquerque teacher of cutting off one Native American girl’s hair and asking another if she was dressed as a “bloody Indian” during class on Halloween.

Associated Press reports:

Outrage over the girls’ treatment propelled legislation in New Mexico and beyond that prohibits discrimination based upon hairstyle and religious head garments.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit accused Albuquerque Public Schools and a teacher of discrimination and fostering a hostile learning environment. ACLU of New Mexico Deputy Director Leon Howard said the ruling affirms that public schools are subject to antidiscrimination protections in the New Mexico Human Rights Act.

The appellate ruling validates that all “students must feel safe at school and confident that their culture, history, and personal dignity are valued and respected by the public schools they attend,” Howard said in a statement.

A lower court had determined that a public high school does not qualify as a “public accommodation” under the state’s civil rights law. The appellate ruling returns the lawsuit to state district court for a hearing on its merits.

“If a public secondary school official in their official capacity were to refuse services to an individual based on the individual’s race, religion, or sexual orientation, then the New Mexico Human Right Act would surely apply,” Appeals Court Judge J. Miles Hanissee wrote.

Lawmakers in Connecticut voted on Friday to prohibit anyone under 18-years old from being issued a marriage license.

The legislation got passed in the Senate unanimously after a 98-45 bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives in May.

Currently, in the state, a 16 or 17-year old can obtain a marriage license of their local probate court judge approves a petition that gets filed on the minor’s behalf by a parent or guardian, the Associated Press reports.

According to a spokesperson from Democratic governor Ned Lamont office, the governor is planning sign the legislation into law.

During the vote, senator Herron Gaston told his colleagues that his sister was married to a 50-year old man while she was 17-years old.

“I’ve seen the devastating impact it has had on her physically, how it deprived her of her innocence and of her childhood,” he said.

“She bore five children from this marriage and eventually had to flee from the island of Saint Lucia and down to Florida in order to get away from her abuser,” the Associated Press reports.

A US air force colonel “misspoke” when he said at a Royal Aeronautical Society conference last month that a drone killed its operator in a simulated test because the pilot was attempting to override its mission, according to the society.

Guardian staff and agencies report:

The confusion had started with the circulation of a blogpost from the society, in which it described a presentation by Col Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, the chief of AI test and operations with the US air force and an experimental fighter test pilot, at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London in May.

According to the blogpost, Hamilton had told the crowd that in a simulation to test a drone powered by artificial intelligence and trained and incentivized to kill its targets, an operator instructed the drone in some cases not to kill its targets and the drone had responded by killing the operator.

The comments sparked deep concern over the use of AI in weaponry and extensive conversations online. But the US air force on Thursday evening denied the test was conducted. The Royal Aeronautical Society responded in a statement on Friday that Hamilton had retracted his comments and had clarified that the “rogue AI drone simulation” was a hypothetical “thought experiment”.

“We’ve never run that experiment, nor would we need to in order to realise that this is a plausible outcome,” Hamilton said.

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A federal judge who was presiding over Disney’s lawsuit against Florida governor Ron DeSantis has disqualified himself, citing a third-degree relative who has stock in the company “which could be substantially affected by the outcome of this case”, according to CNN.

Walker had denied a motion from DeSantis’ lawyers to disqualify him from the case, saying that questions in previous cases raised “substantial doubts” about his impartiality.

The judge criticized DeSantis’ lawyers, who “cherry-pick language from these cases to support their position without acknowledging the wholly distinguishable context underlying each decision”.

Disney filed a lawsuit against DeSantis in April saying that the governor violated the company’s right to free speech after it spoke out against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that banned instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. DeSantis took over the special district that Disney ran at its massive theme park in Florida near Orlando.

Here’s quick summary of what’s happened today:

• Though the debt ceiling bill has passed Congress, the bill won’t be signed by the White House by Saturday at the earliest. The White House said that it is waiting for lawmakers to wrap up the bill and send it to Joe Biden’s desk for signing.

• Meanwhile, credit agency Fitch said that it could still downgrade the US government’s credit rating even though a deal has been passed. The agency said that the standoff over the limit “lowers confidence” in the ability of the government to pay its bill.

• The Republican National Committee set its requirements for qualifying for its first presidential debate in August. Candidates will need at least 40,000 individual campaign donors and poll at 1% across multiple national polls.

• The Department of Justice closed its investigation into Mike Pence for his having classified documents in his Indiana home. Pence faces no charges. The closing of the investigation comes as Pence is gearing up to announce a run in the 2024 election.

• Joe Biden is set to sign the debt ceiling bill that passed the Senate last night. He will deliver remarks tonight on the bill at 7 pm.

Stay tuned for more live updates.

Youtube announced today that it will no longer remove videos that make false claims about the 2020 election, saying in a blog post that continuing to remove these videos could “have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm”.

The video platform said that it has removed “tens of thousands” of videos since it implemented its policy against election misinformation in December 2020.

“The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society – especially in the midst of election season,” the company said.

The company said it will continue to remove content that discourages people from voting or contains misinformation about how to vote.

Credit rating agency Fitch said on Friday that a downgrading of the US government credit rating is still possible, despite Congress passing a bipartisan bil to raise the debt ceiling . Fitch has put the US on a negative credit watch and said that while the passing of the bill is a “positive consideration”, “repeated political standoffs” over the debt limit “lowers confidence in governance on fiscal and debt matters”.

The country’s credit rating has only been downgraded once in history. Credit rating agency S&P downgraded the country’s credit for the first time in 2011 after an impasse between Republicans in Congress and then-president Barack Obama. The downgrade occurred after the deal was made, as it was settled too close to the default date.

A downgrading of the country’s credit rating will be costly for the country as it will make it more expensive for the country to borrow money, along with lowering confidence in the American dollar.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden won’t be signing the debt ceiling bill that passed Congress until tomorrow at the earliest.

“It won’t be today. The House and the Senate have to do their business, so we’re going to work very quickly to get this done to make sure we can sign it hopefully as soon as tomorrow,” Jean-Pierre said. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said that the debt ceiling must be raised by 5 June, which means that Biden must sign the bill by the weekend to avoid default. Jean-Pierre said the White House is confident they can get the bill signed before June 5.

Jean-Pierre did not specify what Congress needs to do before getting it on Biden’s desk. Biden is planning to address the deal in a speech tonight at 7pm. Jean-Pierre said that he will focus on the bipartisan nature of the deal and how it benefits Americans.

“When you think about what could have happened here, to our seniors, to our veterans, to American families,” Jean-Pierre said. “That is something the president believes he has an opportunity to talk directly to the American people [about]. This could’ve been, as we’ve said over and over again, devastating.”

“He believes this is a good moment to lay that out and how we were able to come together to avert this crisis.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding the daily press briefing right now and addressed a question on Joe Biden’s fall last night. Biden was in Colorado Springs at the graduation ceremony of the US Air Force Academy. Biden tripped on a sandbag onstage, caught himself with his hands and was helped up by three people.

“He tripped over a sandbag on the stage, briefly he tripped and got up, and continued what he was there to do,” Jean-Pierre said. “There was no need for the doctor to see him.”

Biden addressed reporters upon returning to Washington Thursday night, joking that “I got sandbagged”.

The Republican National Committee is tightening the requirements candidates will have to meet in order to get on the debate stage in August. There are nine Republican 2024 presidential candidates so far, and a handful more are expected to announce their runs in the coming weeks.

Candidates will have to get at least 40,000 individual campaign donors and receive at least 1% of voters in multiple national polls, according to the Washington Post. The first debate will be held in Milwaukee and hosted by Fox News.

Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are currently the clear frontrunners, according to polls, with Trump ahead of the Florida governor by at least 30 points. Other candidates, like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, have been polling well under 10%.

Donald Trump’s attorneys have been unable to find a classified document the former president said he had in a recording that was ultimately given to prosecutors, according to CNN.

The recording, taken in July 2021 at a Trump golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, has the former president saying that he retained a document on a potential attack on Iran.

Prosecutors have subpoenaed Trump for all classified materials and have recovered classified documents throughout 2022. Trump attorneys turned over more documents in March, but it did not include the document on Iran.

A Florida man who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 was sentenced on Friday to three years in prison, the latest in a string of prison sentences for those who participated in the January 6 insurrection.

45-year-old David Moerschel, a neurophysiologist from Punta Gorda, Florida, was convicted in January with three other members of the Oath Keepers, reported the Associated Press.

Several members of the antigovernment extremist group have been charged for their roles in a plot led by several far-right groups to stop Joe Biden from becoming president after the 2020 election results.

In total, nine people associated with the Oath Keepers have been tried with seditious conspiracy, AP reported, including Moerschel.

Six have been convicted on the charge.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has invited Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to speak to Congress during his visit to Washington DC on June 22. Modi will also meet with Joe Biden for a state dinner that night.

In a letter to Modi, McCarthy said that Modi in his address “will have the opportunity to share your vision for India’s future and speak to the global challenges our countries both face”.