US debt ceiling talks hit bump as White House says ‘real differences’ remain – as it happened

Talks between negotiators appointed by Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling suddenly veered off course, with Republicans saying the discussions are “not productive” and the White House acknowledging “real differences” between the two sides. There is still time for a deal to be reached, but not a lot of it: the best estimate of when the US government will run out of cash and potentially default on its bond payments and other obligations remains 1 June.

Here’s a look back at the day’s news:

• Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.

• A top House Democrat threatened to stop the reauthorization of a foreign spying program after reports emerged that the FBI queried its database for information about the January 6 insurrection and Black Lives Matter protests.

• Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.

• Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.

• Biden’s decision to cancel his trip to Australia may prove very costly for some in the White House press corps.

After reports emerged that the FBI broke its own rules by using a repository of foreign intelligence to search for information about the January 6 insurrection and the protests following George Floyd’s death, a top Democrat is threatening not to support the reauthorization of a contentious surveillance program.

At issue is section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows US authorities to surveil the communications of foreigners outside the country and expires at the end of the year unless renewed. The information is not meant to be used for domestic purposes, but according to a court order released today the FBI did just that.

The Biden administration says it supports reauthorizing section 702, but it looks like it will have to win over skeptics in its own party. Here’s what the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee Jerry Nadler had to say about today’s revelations:

So what’s the hangup in the debt ceiling talks?

Based on comments from Republicans, it appears they’re far apart with Joe Biden’s team over total government spending. Last month, House Republicans approved a bill to increase the debt limit while also capping government spending in the next fiscal year at its levels from the 2021-2022 fiscal year. That amounts to a spending cut, since spending on government often increases from year to year.

Biden and the Democrats have opposed this outright, arguing it would harm the economy and the government’s ability to provide services. But in comments to reporters, GOP speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy indicated the party was sticking to its guns:

CNN spoke to Republican representative Dusty Johnson, who confirmed the spending issue was a top sticking point, but not the only one:

Here’s a different sort of American media story. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington spoke to disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz, who is pursuing a lawsuit against Fox News – which she fears presents a threat to US democracy:

The woman suing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for defamation in the wake of the $787m settlement with the voting machine company Dominion has accused the media giant of waging a campaign of “vitriolic lies” against her that amounts to a threat to democracy.

Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.

The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.

It became clear how serious the debt limit situation was earlier this week, when Joe Biden cut short his planned trip to Asia in order to be back in Washington DC on Sunday, saying he needed to ensure that the US government is able to avoid a default.

The president kept his travel plans to Japan, but nixed stops in Australia and the first-ever presidential visit to Papua New Guinea, a decision critics say harmed Washington’s efforts to build alliances against China.

It also proved to be a very expensive decision for the media organizations who place their reporters in the White House press corps and task them with following the president’s every move. The Washington Post reports that the White House Travel Office had booked a charter flight to Australia for the dozens of journalists that were planning to come along with Biden, while their employers were also planning to shell out thousands for their hotels, transportation and logistics.

All of that had to be canceled, but according to the Post, news outlets are now on the hook for as much as $25,000 per person in the form of sunk costs for charter flights and other travel arrangements. While the country’s biggest news outlets all have reporters at the White House, the news industry has been financially tumultuous for the better part of 15 years, and the Post says some reporters fear the debacle will make their bosses cut back on travel with the president – which could mean less scrutiny of what Biden and his successors actually do with their time.

Here’s more from the Post:

The now-canceled charter flight, organized by the White House Travel Office, cost $760,000, or about $14,000 for each of the 55 journalists who’d booked seats on it. Journalists will immediately lose their deposits, about $7,700 each, and may be on the hook for the rest, according to a memo sent to reporters on Wednesday by Tamara Keith, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

But a lengthy list of other costs — hotel reservations, ground transportation, a shared press-filing center, among them — may also be unrecoverable. And journalists will lose some or all of the cost of their return flights from Sydney to Washington, as they scramble for last-minute flights from Hiroshima to Washington.

Bottom line: The bill for not going to Australia could run upward of $25,000 per person before any refunds kick in, according to several people involved in efforts to recover the money. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations over the funds.

In an interview, Keith said her organization is seeking to recover as much of the travel money as possible, though it wasn’t clear how much was possible.

“When the president travels amid a budget crisis or a debt ceiling crisis, his [travel] plans can change,” she said, noting that presidents Obama and Trump also canceled trips during their terms. “These are the risks we undertake with our eyes open. We hope it never happens. But it just did.”

Speaking of pandemic emergency measures, Reuters reports that migrant encounters at the US southern border continue to plunge after last week’s expiration of Title 42.

The rule, imposed by Donald Trump’s administration as Covid-19 spread in March 2020, allowed the US to turn away most asylum seekers, and its expiration at midnight last Friday raised fears of a surge in new border crossers. But that hasn’t materialized, and top homeland security official Blas Nunez-Neto said border authorities are seeing 70% less encounters since it ended. That may be because Joe Biden unveiled a slew of new restrictions to replace Title 42, leading to accusations by immigration rights groups that he is imitating his predecessor’s policies.

Here’s more from Reuters:

Speaking in a call with reporters, Nunez-Neto said the number had continued to tick down after an average 4,000 encounters a day as of May 12.“In the last 48 hours there were 3,000 encounters a day on the border, this is a more than 70% reduction,” he said.Nunez-Neto also said about 11,000 people were removed from the U.S. in the last week and sent to more than 30 countries, including more than 1,100 people from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba returned to Mexico.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch says emergency measures taken during the Covid-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans were perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

The Associated Press reports:

The 55-year-old conservative justice points to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions.

Gorsuch’s broadside is aimed at local, state and federal officials, and even his own colleagues.

He says officials issued emergency decrees “on a breathtaking scale.”

His comments came in an eight-page statement that accompanied an order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.

The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The emergency orders about which Gorsuch complained were first announced in the early days of the pandemic, when Trump was president, and months before the virus was well understood and a vaccine was developed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court got rid of a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.

Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say, leveling harsh criticism of how governments, from small towns to the nation’s capital, responded to the gravest public health threat in a century.

The justice, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, called emergency measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions. His broadside was aimed at local, state and federal officials — even his colleagues.

“Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,” Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page statement Thursday that accompanied an expected Supreme Court order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.

The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.

FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a heavily blacked-out court order released on Friday.

The Associated Press reports:

FBI officials said the violations predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. But the problems could nonetheless complicate FBI and Justice Department efforts to receive congressional reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program that law enforcement officials say is needed to counter terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime.

The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal oversight of the U.S. government’s spy powers. The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence released a redacted version on Friday in what officials said was the interest of transparency. Members of Congress received the order when it was issued last year.

At issue are thousands of improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US. That program expires at the end of the year unless it is renewed.

In repeated episodes disclosed Friday, the FBI’s own standards were not followed.

The full AP report is here.

A Washington DC police officer was arrested on Friday on charges that he lied about leaking confidential information to the Proud Boys extremist group leader Enrique Tarrio and obstructed an investigation after group members destroyed a Black Lives Matter banner in the nation’s capital.

The Associated Press reports:

An indictment alleges that Metropolitan Police Department Lt Shane Lamond, 47, of Stafford, Virginia, warned Tarrio, then national chairman of the far-right group, that law enforcement had an arrest warrant for him related to the banner’s destruction.

Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before Proud Boys members joined the mob in storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Earlier this month, Tarrio and three other leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy charges.

A federal grand jury in Washington indicted Lamond on one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements.

The indictment accuses Lamond of lying to and misleading federal investigators when they questioned him in June 2021 about his contacts with Tarrio.

Lamond is scheduled to make his initial court appearance on Friday. He was placed on administrative leave by the police force in February 2022.

Lamond, who supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau, was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington.

Lamond’s name repeatedly came up in the Capitol riot trial of Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders.

Talks between negotiators appointed by Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling suddenly veered off course, with Republicans saying the discussions are “not productive” and the White House acknowledging “real differences” between the two sides. There’s time for a deal to be reached, but not a lot of it: the best estimate of when the US government will run out of cash and potentially default on its bond payments and other obligations remains 1 June. We’ll see if the GOP and Democrats find cause to sit down again before today is through.

Here’s a look back at what else has happened today so far:

• Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.

• Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.

• Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.

CNN has more downbeat comments from Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy on the status of the debt limit talks, which indeed appear to be paused:

That’s a reversal from yesterday, when McCarthy sounded optimistic about the chances a deal is reached before the default deadline, which is estimated as 1 June.

“Real differences” exist between the two sides in the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, a White House official told the Guardian after Republican lawmakers said they were pausing their participation in the ongoing talks.

“There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult. The President’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate,” the official said.

About an hour ago, and just a few minutes before reports emerged that the debt limit talks had broken down, Donald Trump called for the GOP to demand, well, “everything” in the negotiations.

Here’s what he wrote on Truth social:

REPUBLICANS SHOULD NOT MAKE A DEAL ON THE DEBT CEILING UNLESS THEY GET EVERYTHING THEY WANT (Including the “kitchen sink”). THAT’S THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ALWAYS DEALT WITH US. DO NOT FOLD!!!

Here’s more of the grim assessment of the debt ceiling talks given by Garret Graves, the House Republican appointed by Kevin McCarthy to negotiate with the White House.

“We’re not there,” he told reporters as he departed a meeting with Joe Biden’s officials, the Wall Street Journal said. “We’ve decided to press pause because it’s just not productive.”

He said he was not sure if the two sides would be getting together over the weekend. “Until people are willing to have reasonable conversations about how you can actually move forward and do the right thing, then we’re not going to sit here and talk to ourselves,” he added.

The Journal also saw Biden’s negotiators, director of the White House office of management and budget Shalanda Young and adviser Steve Ricchetti, leaving the meeting. Asked if the two sides would meet again today, Ricchetti replied, “playing by ear.”

Amid reports that negotiations over raising the debt ceiling have broken down, the top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell is out with a tweet blaming Joe Biden for the impasse:

Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans have taken the lead on negotiating with the White House on a deal, but the Senate will eventually have to vote on whatever bill emerges from the talks – assuming that happens.