From 3h ago
The US secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, warned that a government shutdown could disrupt the nation’s air travel system as he spoke to reporters just days before the deadline.
Even a short shutdown would jeopardize the work and the hiring and training of potentially thousands of air traffic controllers and other key department employees, he said in a news conference earlier today.
House Republicans who are “comfortable” with a government shutdown should “explain themselves directly to all of the nonpartisan civil servants who make sure that planes land safely, who inspect trucks and railroads and pipelines to prevent disasters, who will have to go without pay”, he said.
There is no good time for a government shutdown, but this is a particularly bad time for a government shutdown, especially when it comes to transportation.
The consequences of a shutdown would be “disruptive and dangerous”, he added.
Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge presiding over Donald Trump trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election, has rejected an effort by the former president to remove her from the case, Politico reports:
Trump’s legal team earlier this month had filed the motion asking Chutkan to recuse herself from the case, arguing previous statements she had made about his involvement in the January 6 insurrection were disqualifying.
We’re about three hours away from the start of the second Republican primary debate at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California.
The Guardian’s David Smith is on the scene, and reports that the seven candidates who have qualified will have quite the view:
The Republican-led House Ways and Means committee today held a press conference to discuss evidence related to Joe Biden’s impeachment, but that was overshadowed by a testy exchange between its chair Jason Smith and a reporter for NBC News.
As this video shows, the reporter asked Smith, who chairs one of three committees involved in the impeachment effort, to explain some of the gaps in his evidence. Smith struggles to do so. You can watch more below:
Video clips like these play right into the hands of White House officials who argue the Republicans have no case. Here’s Ian Sams, Biden’s spokesman for oversight and investigations:
While the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell is not the type to engage in social media spats, he used his speaking time on the chamber’s floor today to wag his finger at the House Republicans whose intransigence in approving spending may soon cause the government to shut down:
And here’s another great example of the intraRepublican fingerpointing that’s probably only going to get worse over the coming hours and days.
It’s Montana congressman Ryan Zinke, who aligns with speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republican leadership, squaring off against insurgent leader congressman Matt Gaetz. The point of contention is which wing of the House GOP was responsible for returning to “regular order” in the chamber, which the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service defines as “a traditional, committee-centered process of lawmaking, very much in evidence during most of the 20th century.”
While it’s somewhat in the weeds, the open social media bickering (yes, they really did this in front of everybody on Twitter/X) tells you a lot about how things are going in the House today:
They went on from there. Click on the tweets if you want to read more.
As Washington shambles towards its 11th government shutdown since 1980, finger pointing is intensifying between lawmakers in Congress.
CNN heard from West Virginia’s Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito, who pondered Kevin McCarthy could have averted the crisis that now looms if he had stuck to an agreement reached earlier this year that increased the government’s borrowing limit and also provided a rough outline of future spending plans. Here’s what she had to say:
While Joe Biden may not believe that anything is inevitable in politics, he struck a realistic note when reporters traveling with him in California pressed him on his ability to stop the federal government from shutting down.
“If I knew that, I would’ve already done it,” the president replied, when asked what he could have done to stop the shutdown.
Elon Musk’s X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has axed around half of its global team dedicated to tracking election disinformation, according to a report by the Information.
The cuts, which reportedly include the head of the Dublin-based team, come less than a month after the company said it would expand its safety and election teams.
X executives told the team last week that “having elections integrity employees based in Europe wasn’t necessary,” according to the report. The team had about two dozen employees before Musk bought the platform, and is now down to less than half of that.
Joe Biden said a government shutdown is not inevitable, but that if there is one, a lot of vital work could be impacted in science and health, Reuters reported.
The president, speaking to reporters after remarks to a group of science and technology advisers in San Francisco, was asked if he believed a government shutdown was inevitable. He replied:
I don’t think anything is inevitable … in politics.
Moderate New York Republican Mike Lawler said members of the GOP blocking efforts to keep the federal government from going into shutdown before a Saturday deadline are “stuck on stupid” in an interview with CNN.
Criticising members of his party, Lawler said:
Some of my colleagues have, frankly, been stuck on stupid and refused to do what we were elected to do, against the vast majority of the conference, who have been working to avoid a shutdown.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
