White House says Republicans ‘playing games with people’s lives’ as shutdown odds increase – as it happened

The chaos continued in the House, where an ongoing revolt by far-right Republicans against speaker Kevin McCarthy stopped the advancement of a defense department spending bill for the second time this week. It’s a bad sign for a separate attempt to pass a measure to keep the federal government funded past 30 September, which is also being held up the rightwing insurgents. By the afternoon, GOP leadership told lawmakers they could head home for the week, apparently concluding an agreement to resolve the legislative logjam was a long way off. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the Capitol and the White House to call for more aid to help his country fend off the Russian invasion.

Here’s what else happened today:

• The White House accused Republicans of “playing political games with people’s lives”.

• McCarthy blamed “individuals that just want to burn the whole place down” for the ongoing paralysis in the House.

• Rupert Murdoch will step down as chairman of Fox and News Corp, with his son Lachlan Murdoch taking his place, an earthquake in the world of conservative media.

• The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said the GOP is “in the midst of a civil war”.

• The Senate confirmed Randy George as army chief of staff, but Republican Tommy Tuberville’s blockade of about 300 other positions in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion access policy continues.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is now at the White House for a meeting with Joe Biden, where additional US military aid to fight off the Russian invasion is on the agenda:

For the latest updates from the meeting, follow our liveblog:

Congress isn’t the only Washington institution grappling with dysfunction. The Guardian’s David Smith reports on a new documentary that explores the increasingly intense relationship between the supreme court’s decisions and the American public:

When Dawn Porter studied law at Georgetown University in Washington, she would pass the US supreme court every day. “You walk by the marble columns, the frontage which has inspirational words, and you believe that,” she recalls. “You think because of this court Black people integrated schools, because of this court women have the right to choose, because of this court, because of this court, because of this court.”

Its profound role in American life is chronicled in Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court, Porter’s four-part documentary series that traces the people, decisions and confirmation battles that have helped the court’s relationship with politics turn from a respectful dance into a toxic marriage.

Porter, 57, an Emmy award winner who maintains her bar licence, remembers first year common law classes when she studied the court’s landmark decisions. “Like most lawyers I have a great admiration for not only what the court can do but its role in shaping American opinion as well as American society,” she says via Zoom from New York, a poster for her film John Lewis: Good Trouble behind her.

“If there’s a criticism of the court in this series, it comes from a place of longing, a place of saying we can’t afford for this court to lose the respect of the American people. There’s going to be decisions over time that people disagree with. That’s not unusual. What’s unusual is how cases are getting to the court, how they’re ignoring precedent and the procedures by which the decisions are getting made. That’s where I would love people to focus.”

House Republican leadership has officially called off votes for the rest of the week, Democratic whip Katherine Clark announced.

However, they’ve left the door open to a surprise breakthrough in negotiations over spending bills. “The Rules Committee remains on standby. Members will be given ample notice to return to Washington DC in the event a vote is called tomorrow or over the weekend,” the notice reads.

The media world continues to digest the news earlier today, when it was announced that Rupert Murdoch would step down as chair of both News Corp and Fox – the company behind the conservative Fox News network. Here’s the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe with a look at the significance of Murdoch’s decision:

Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp – ending a seven-decade run as one of the world’s most transformative and controversial media moguls.

In a note to staff first reported in the Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal, he wrote: “For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles.”

Murdoch, 92, will become chairman emeritus of the two corporations, the company said in a release.

Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s eldest son, now seems to be his successor. In the note Murdoch called Lachlan a “passionate, principled leader” who can take the companies into the future.

“On behalf of the Fox and News Corp boards of directors, leadership teams, and all the shareholders who have benefited from his hard work, I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career,” said Lachlan Murdoch, 52, in a statement.

“We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination, and the enduring legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted,” he said.

The handover comes at a time of uncertainty in a media landscape that Murdoch dominated for so long. Fox is in a competition for eyeballs with much larger and better resourced broadcasters, at a time when Americans are swapping cable television for streamed entertainment, while News Corp, owner of the Times and the Sun newspapers in the UK, is battling for revenues as print sales fall away and advertising migrates to the big social media platforms.

After this morning’s fiasco in the House that saw a handful of far-right Republicans successfully block the party’s own defense spending bill, lawmakers have been told not to expect any further votes in the chamber this week, according to media reports:

That lawmakers are being told they can go home is a sign of just how deadlocked the chamber is despite a 30 September deadline to approve new government funding or cause a shutdown.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attacked rightwing Republicans who were preventing Congress from passing government spending measures today, saying the group was “marching us toward a reckless and damaging government shutdown”.

“Extreme House Republicans can’t even get an agreement among themselves to keep the government running or to fund the military,” Jean-Pierre said. “They keep demanding more extreme policies as a condition to do their job and keep the government open from a fact-free impeachment that their own members – their own members – say isn’t supported by the evidence, to severe cuts to food safety, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, education, law enforcement and much more.”

She continued:

The solution is very, very simple: extreme House Republicans need to stop playing political games with people’s lives – there’s so much at stake here. They should abide by the bipartisan deal we made in May, which two-thirds … of House Republicans voted for. A deal is a deal. House Republicans need to do their job, keep the government open and work with us to deliver … for the American people.

Jean-Pierre declined to say if the government has figured out what services it will be able to continue providing if funding runs out after 30 September, but added: “The best plan is for there to not be a shutdown.”

For an insight into how House Republicans are feeling after failing to take up the defense spending bill, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman shared some messages he received:

Given that the defense spending bill is usually one of the least contentious spending measures in the House, the second failed vote spelled major trouble for the spending talks.

If no agreement is reached on a series of funding bills, the federal government will shutter on 30 September. In the event of a shutdown, starting 1 October, hundreds of thousands of federal workers would likely go without pay and key healthcare and other public programs would be affected.

There are several unknowns still hanging over House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s effort, which, as the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has pointed out, could be politically damaging to the party.

The first is whether hard-right members of the House Freedom Caucus – who have capitalized on McCarthy’s narrow majority – will eventually abandon their blockade as the shutdown deadline approaches.

The second is if whatever bill Republicans do pass will include the Ukraine aid and disaster relief funding the Democratic-led Senate is demanding. Without Senate agreement, any measure cannot be enacted.

The House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was dealt his second humiliating defeat of the week on Thursday, when his conference again failed to approve a procedural motion as members continued to clash over government spending levels with just days left to avert a federal shutdown.

A proposal to take up House Republicans’ defense spending bill failed in a vote of 216 to 212, with five hard-right members joining Democrats in opposing the motion. The vote marked the second time this week that the motion had failed, after members of the House Freedom Caucus first blocked the bill on Tuesday.

The defeat was interpreted as a dismal sign for House Republicans’ prospects of approving a separate stopgap spending bill before government funding runs out at the end of the month.

McCarthy had projected optimism heading into the Thursday vote, saying he and his allies had made substantial progress in their talks with the holdout Republicans on Wednesday. But five members of the House Freedom Caucus – Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Eli Crane of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – still opposed the procedural motion on Thursday.

The Senate voted to confirm Gen Randy George to be army chief of staff, a key vote that follows a months-long hold by Republican senator Tommy Tuberville on more than 300 military promotions.

Senators confirmed George by a 96-1 vote, with only Republican senator Mike Lee voting against him.

The vote comes a day after the Senate cleared Gen Charles “CQ” Brown to become the next chair of the joint chiefs of staff. The Senate is expected to confirm Gen Eric Smith to lead the Marine Corps later today.

The confirmations come as tensions have continued to rise over Tuberville’s decision to single-handedly hold up military appointments as part of his opposition to abortion being provided in the armed forces.

As a result of Tuberville’s block on Senate-confirmed promotions, more than 300 senior roles are being filled in an acting capacity. Military officials have bemoaned the effects of Tuberville’s blocks on officers’ families and finances.

Even the position of chair of the joint chief of staff stands to be affected, when the current occupant, Gen Mark Milley, steps down at the end of this month.

The chaos continues in the House, where an ongoing revolt by far-right Republicans against speaker Kevin McCarthy stopped the advancement of a defense department spending bill for the second time this week. It’s a bad sign for a separate attempt to pass a measure to keep the federal government funded past 30 September, which is also being held up the rightwing insurgents. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the Capitol to call for more aid to help his country fend off the Russian invasion.

Here’s what else is happening today:

• McCarthy blamed “individuals that just want to burn the whole place down” for the ongoing paralysis in the House.

• Rupert Murdoch will step down as chairman of Fox and News Corp, with his son Lachlan Murdoch taking his place, an earthquake in the world of conservative media.

• The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said the GOP is “in the midst of a civil war”.

Never one to keep quiet, Donald Trump weighed in yesterday on the spending battle in the House, and what he had to say was unlikely to reassure speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The former president has many devotees among House Republicans, including McCarthy himself, who hasn’t yet endorsed him but has often been obliging to his demands. But where Trump’s influence can be seen the most is among the hard-right lawmakers who are currently paralyzing business in the chamber by blocking the advancement of a defense spending bill and holding up passage of a measure to keep the government funded beyond 30 September.

In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump called on House Republicans to “defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots”, a reference to special counsel Jack Smith’s two criminal prosecutions of the former president for trying to overturn the 2020 election and hiding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

But whatever passes the House must also be approved by the Democratic-led Senate, and there’s no chance they’d sign on to a measure specifically written to protect Trump.

And here’s video of an admittedly frustrated Kevin McCarthy explaining why he can’t get his lawmakers to even begin debate on legislation the House passes each year:

In comments to Fox News, the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, sounded frustrated about the trouble he’s had advancing an annual defense spending bill:

At a press conference, the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, blamed a revolt by “extreme Maga Republicans” for paralyzing the chamber and threatening a government shutdown.

“We need the extreme Maga Republicans to get their act together in the civil war that’s happening on the Republican side of the aisle,” Jeffries said.

He continued:

House Republicans continue to be in the midst of a civil war. It’s a civil war that is hurting the ability of the Congress to do the business of the American people and to solve problems on behalf of everyday Americans.

And what’s happening is that House Republicans continue to be held captive by the most extreme elements of their conference, and it’s hurting the American people. And this is a serious matter. We are less than eight days away from the government shutting down.

A vote in the Republican-led House to advance an annual defense department funding bill failed for the second time this week, after rightwing lawmakers joined with Democrats to oppose its passage:

It’s an ominous sign for the separate effort to fund the government beyond 30 September, since both rightwing Republicans and Democrats oppose a motion to prevent a shutdown proposed by House speaker Kevin McCarthy.