US Politics

The conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas must resign, an ethics watchdog said on Tuesday, citing revelations about Thomas’s failure to declare lavish gifts and financial support from a Republican mega-donor, Harlan Crow.In an open letter to the scandal-hit Thomas, Noah Bookbinder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or Crew, cited a “grave crisis of institutional legitimacy currently facing the supreme court”.“For the sake of the court and for the sake of our democracy which depends on a judiciary that the public accepts as legitimate and free from corruption, we urge you to resign.”He added: “Your conduct has likely violated civil and criminal laws and has created the impression that access to and influence over supreme court justices is for sale.”Thomas has said he did not declare gifts from Crow including luxury travel and resort stays because he was advised not to do so, but will do so in future.He has not commented on reports that Crow bought from him property in which his mother still lives rent-free; that Crow paid for the private schooling for Thomas’s great-nephew, who the justice said he was raising like a son; and that the conservative activist Leonard Leo secretively arranged payment of tens of thousand dollars to Ginni Thomas, the justice’s rightwing activist wife.Leo and Crow deny wrongdoing.In the case of the school fees, Thomas did declare a gift from another donor for the same purpose. Critics say this shows he knew he should have declared gifts from Crow.Supreme court justices are notionally subject to ethics rules for federal justices but in practice govern themselves.Democrats in Congress have called for Thomas to be impeached and removed. That is a nonstarter, as Republicans hold the House, where impeachment would begin, and will protect the 6-3 conservative majority which has handed down major rulings including the removal of abortion rights. Democrats have also called for ethics reform.Senate Democrats sought to call the chief justice, John Roberts, to testify about ethics rules. Roberts refused. Democrats cannot use a subpoena to compel testimony – from Roberts, Thomas or any other justice – because without the ill and absent Dianne Feinstein of California they do not have the required majority.Last week the judiciary committee chair, Dick Durbin, urged Roberts to confront the Thomas issue, saying the chief justice “has the power in his hands to change this”.Durbin also said the “tangled web” around Thomas “just gets worse and worse by the day”.On Tuesday, Crow rebuffed a request from the Senate finance committee, citing tax concerns, for a list of gifts given to Thomas.An attorney for Crow, Michael Bopp, called the request “a component of a broader campaign against Justice Thomas and, now, Mr Crow, rather than an investigation that furthers a valid legislative purpose”.Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee sent Crow a similar letter.In his letter to Thomas, Bookbinder said: “It has become clear that over the last several decades you have engaged in a longstanding pattern of conduct to accept and conceal gifts and other benefits received from … a billionaire political activist, and have disregarded your ethical duty to recuse yourself from cases in which you have a personal or financial conflict of interest.”Crow insists he is simply good friends with Clarence and Ginni Thomas, with whom he refrains from discussing politics or business before the court.But outlets including the Guardian have shown that groups linked to Crow – a collector of historical memorabilia including paintings by Hitler – have had business before the court during the period of his friendship with Thomas.Bookbinder said reports about Thomas were “contributing to a catastrophic decline in public confidence that threatens to undermine the entire federal judiciary”.Public polling shows confidence in the court at historic lows.In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas resigned from the supreme court, in part for accepting payment for outside activity. Fortas was paid $15,000 to teach summer school and took $20,000 from a foundation run by a convicted fraudster.Bookbinder told Thomas: “We know of no other modern justice who has engaged in such extreme misconduct.“Indeed, your receipt of consistent, lavish gifts and favors from a billionaire with an interest in the direction of the court is so far outside the experience of most of the American people, and so far beyond what most would consider acceptable, that it cannot help but further diminish the court’s credibility.”He also charged Thomas with failing to recuse himself from cases involving his wife’s “personal or financial interests”, notably after the 2020 election, in a case regarding whether to release documents related to Donald Trump’s attempt to stay in power.Thomas was the sole justice to say the documents should not be released. When they were, they showed Ginni Thomas’s extensive involvement in Trump’s election subversion.Bookbinder said: “It is increasingly difficult for people to trust that you are making decisions only based on the law and a commitment to justice.“… The judiciary is built entirely upon a foundation of public trust. If that falls away, the institution will fail. While we appreciate your many years of public service, your conduct has left you with only one way to continue faithfully serving our democracy.“For the sake of our judiciary and the sake of people’s faith in its legitimacy, you must resign.” More

A vigil in Brownsville mourning eight men killed when a car crashed into migrants waiting at a bus stop drew local residents and migrant families on Monday evening expressing a mix of grief, anger, hope and love in the shaken border city.“My son is my whole life, and that man may have taken it,” a Venezuelan mother, Marilín de los Ángeles Medero Piña, lamented, sobbing desperately into the microphone.As the heat of the day began to cool, about 300 people gathered at Linear Park in downtown Brownsville at the eastern end of the US-Mexico border.The day before, a local man with an extensive criminal history – whom witnesses said was shouting anti-immigrant insults – had smashed into a group of people when he drove an SUV through a red light near a migrant shelter, killing eight and injuring 10 more.Medero Piña’s son, Héctor David Medina, 24, is missing and his family is trying to establish if he is among those injured or killed.“Help us, please. I want to find my son,” Medero Piña appealed to the crowd. “One moment they tell me he’s alive and the next that he’s dead.”Many clustered around the stricken mother, offering prayers, hugs and donations. With her were her husband and three other children. All wept, recounting how local police couldn’t tell them whether Medina was dead or alive.George Alvarez, 34, was charged on Monday with manslaughter. Investigators are yet to determine whether the crash was intentional and are awaiting toxicology reports. Brownsville authorities have not yet been able to name those killed.Among the speakers at the vigil were two Venezuelan men who survived the attack on Sunday.“I know God exists because he gave me another chance to live,” said Luis Herrera, one of the survivors.Unable to hold back his tears, Herrera thanked the people of Brownsville for their kindness.“Not all people are bad,” Herrera said. “This is a beautiful community.”According to Herrera and other witnesses, Alvarez yelled anti-immigrant statements and asked why so many migrants were “invading” the city.“It’s because the country I longed for, and once had, doesn’t exist any more,” said Crismar García, 34, from the state of Táchira in crisis-gripped Venezuela, who has been in Brownsville for a year navigating her asylum process, during the vigil.The strong sense of grief pervading migrants in the community for the previous 24 hours was for some surpassed by fear.Ronny García, 35, and Jesús Moreno, 35, both from the state of Bolívar in Venezuela, worried they will encounter more tragedy in the near future, after witnessing Sunday’s events.“Honestly, we’re scared,” said García. “Anything could happen to us.”Moreno explained how they believe migrants have become “dirty business,” as they had been repeatedly taken advantage of and blackmailed in their months-long overland journey to the US.“Especially in this part of Texas, close to the border – migrants have become cannon fodder,” Moreno said.Police are investigating reports of a man with a gun turning up at the Ozanam Center migrant shelter near the crash site on Monday, according to a local news outlet.With Title 42, a Covid-era government restriction on immigration, set to expire at just before midnight on Thursday, residents are concerned there will be a fresh influx of migrants to the city that will be overwhelming, even though most are aiming just to pass through.Last week the city declared a state of emergency – as did El Paso, in west Texas, where an estimated 2,000 people are stuck on the streets after crossing the border seeking refuge, and shelters are full.Marisela Camarillo, 53, a retired school teacher and lifelong Brownsville resident present at the vigil, said she thought there was “absolutely no way” her city was ready for what may unfold on Thursday and Friday.“It’s not the fact that migrants are coming that’s concerning, it’s the fact that we’re not ready,” Camarillo said. “We don’t have the resources, we’re not equipped, and the federal government is not stepping up.”The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, announced on Monday the deployment of what his office calls a tactical border force, a new military unit of the Texas guard specifically assembled to “intercept, repel and to turn back” migrants at the border.“That’s not what the state guard should be used for,” Camarillo said. “We should have been preparing for this all this time.”However, Victor Maldonado, executive director of the Ozanam Center, said he was fully prepared with extra beds and resources. He also assured there would be collaboration with the local authorities, religious organizations, and non-profits to guarantee safety, he said.Sister Norma Pimentel, a well-known nun and immigrants’ advocate in the area, who is the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, offered some words of encouragement at the vigil.“They’re people, and the only thing they want is an opportunity to live,” Pimentel said. “So let’s welcome them, and let’s love them.” More

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a series of bills Monday that bans Chinese citizens from buying land in the state.In a recent news release, the Republican announced his signing of that bill and two others which are meant to “counteract” what he described as “the malign influence of the Chinese Communist party in the state of Florida”.One bill restricts Chinese nationals from buying land in Florida unless they are also American citizens or permanent residents.Chinese citizens with non-tourist visas, meanwhile, would be limited to buying fewer than two acres of land that is at least five miles away from any military institutions, the Tampa Bay television news outlet WTVT reported.The bill also restricts foreign citizens of other countries from buying land under certain circumstances. Russian, Iranian, Cuban, Syrian, North Korean and Venezuelan citizens are not allowed to purchase land within 10 miles of military bases under the measure but can still buy property elsewhere in Florida, Insider reported.Critics have warned that the bill could facilitate discrimination against Chinese homeowners in Florida while also harming other immigrants, Axios reported.Last month, ahead of the bill’s signing, more than 100 protesters testified against the legislation, adding that it would discriminate against Florida’s Chinese population, USA Today reported.“My concern is this bill will affect people like me who want to own a home,” said Florida college student Victoria Li, through tears. “We’re scared, we’re terrified. That’s what we came here for. We have the American dream. That’s why, at my age, I’m still going to school.”Other legislation signed on Monday includes a bill that prohibits colleges and universities as well as their employees from accepting gifts while “in their official capacities from a college or university based in a foreign country of concern”, the Hill reported.Colleges and universities within Florida are also required to get approval from the state’s board of governors or board of education before participating in any agreement or partnership with a university in a foreign country.An additional bill restricts those using government devices and servers from downloading applications such as TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, the Hill added.“Florida is taking action to stand against the United States’ greatest geopolitical threat – the Chinese Communist party,” DeSantis said.The bills are collectively scheduled to go into effect on 1 July. More

Lucy Mends was very nervous about vacationing at Disney World in central Florida this spring. From her home in Elkridge, Maryland, the 46-year-old romance novelist had read about a law approved by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 that banned discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in public school classrooms for children between kindergarten and the third grade.Mends became more alarmed over a series of bills introduced during the current session of the state legislature that would extend that ban to include high school students and prohibit transgender people from amending their birth certificates and receiving transition-related care such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors. “They’re demonizing trans people, and it’s very scary,” she said.Under pressure from its employees, the Walt Disney Company publicly opposed the so-called Don’t Say Gay law last year. An angry DeSantis retaliated by denouncing Disney as the “Magic Kingdom of woke corporatism” and signed a bill in February aimed at seizing control of the self-governing special district near Orlando that the corporation has been running ever since Disney World opened its doors in 1972.In any event, Mends went ahead with her Disney World holiday plans. Showing solidarity with the company was a big factor. “Spending money at Disney is like contributing to the fight against DeSantis,” said Mends. “They aren’t going to be deterred by a fascist, and I’m very supportive of that.”The ongoing dispute between DeSantis and his state’s second-largest employer has ramped up in recent days. Disney sued the Florida governor in a Tallahassee federal court in late April for allegedly punishing the company for exercising its first amendment freedom of expression rights by criticizing DeSantis over last year’s Parental Rights in Education Act. The suit seeks to void the governor’s takeover of Disney’s self-governing district after he recently filled its five-member board with allies.That board in turn countered with its own litigation in an Orlando state court that aims to reaffirm its control over design and construction decisions in Disney World’s special district, despite a series of last-minute decisions reached by the previous pro-company board that would strengthen Disney’s autonomy vis-a-vis the state government.The eventual outcome of the legal tug-of-war between DeSantis, who is widely expected to formally announce in the coming weeks whether he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, and Disney will have profound implications for the Sunshine state overall and the regional economy of central Florida in particular. The company pays more than $1bn in state taxes every year, and the lion’s share of those revenues is generated by the sprawling 25,000-acre (10,000-hectare) Disney World amusement park complex that employs an estimated 65,000 people.One potential casualty may have emerged. Owing to a $578m tax break approved during DeSantis’s first term in office, Disney had been planning to transfer about 2,000 high-paying creative jobs from California to a new regional hub of operations in south-east Orlando as early as this year. That major personnel move is reportedly now on hold in the absence of any specific timetable.The Guardian’s requests for an interview with a Disney executive or spokesperson went unanswered. The governor’s press secretary turned down a similar request on the grounds of what he called the newspaper’s “bias and agenda [which] come before news or truth”.But DeSantis has been very vocal about the company ever since Disney’s then chief executive officer Robert Chapek publicly voiced his “disappointment” over the enactment of the Don’t Say Gay bill in 2022. In his recently published book The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival, the governor blasted Disney for its supposed “support of indoctrinating young schoolchildren in woke gender identity politics” and boasted about how “things got worse for Disney” during DeSantis’s stewardship.That kind of talk worries many folks in central Florida. For starters, such rhetoric squares poorly with the Republican party’s traditionally pro-business policies and staunch opposition to excessive government intervention.“He’s clearly evolved from being a Tea party, small-government, Heritage Foundation type of guy to a more Trumpist, anti-woke leader,” said Congressman Darren Soto, a Democrat whose ninth district encompasses a chunk of the Disney World premises. “It’s a personal vendetta, he has been attacking anybody who stands in his way, and it’s terrible for the economy of central Florida.”Some prominent figures in the region’s hospitality industry feel the governor’s various crusades to further restrict abortion rights, scrap tests on African American affairs for advanced placement high school students, and establish a new law enforcement body to investigate rare instances of voter fraud are misplaced.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He needs to focus on the shortage of workers and insurance issues, but DeSantis is more busy with his presidential race,” said hotelier Jan Gautam, who has seen his commercial property insurance premiums soar by an estimated 300% in just the last two years. “He has completely neglected those problems, and his approach has to change.”Among the issues at stake in its showdown with the governor is Disney’s unique degree of autonomy as a private corporation, and the charter that its executives negotiated with local government officials in 1967 was a sweetheart deal by any yardstick. It created the Reedy Creek Improvement District that allowed Disney World to function like a quasi-county government in charge of its own roads, construction services, building permits, fire department and waste collection services.According to Richard Foglesong, a political science professor and author of the 2001 book Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando, the company has at times acted like “a state within a state”. Disney attorneys have invoked the original charter to exempt the company from paying certain fees and taxes that were adopted by state and local government bodies during the intervening years. A case in point was a tax that Orange county officials assessed in the 1990s to help cover the budget of its sheriff’s department, which in the company’s view did not apply to Disney because the charter protected it “in perpetuity” from paying taxes adopted after 1967.A similar circumstance applies to impact fees that were introduced to partly defray the cost of construction of new highways and libraries and the establishment of new police and fire departments in Orange county as it entered a period of explosive growth in the 1980s. “They got powers that were excessive and that weren’t granted to competitors that arrived later like the Universal Orlando theme park,” said Foglesong. “That strikes me as unfair.”But the scholar parts ways with DeSantis over the governor’s motives for seeking to end the company’s privileged status and bring its operations under greater state government control. “Disney’s powers need to be addressed, but he’s attacking the company for all the wrong reasons,” he said. “When you look at DeSantis’s statements, it’s pretty clear that he is punishing Disney for talking back to him and challenging him on what can be taught in public schools. Its lawsuit is right on with respect to what it is alleging about the governor’s violation of Disney’s first amendment rights.”Even some of the governor’s sympathizers feel that DeSantis may have overstepped the accepted boundaries of his authority in the case of Disney. As he was awaiting a shuttle bus outside the Walt Disney World Swan hotel on Thursday morning, a 60-year-old Oklahoma City resident expressed unease over DeSantis’s ham-fisted tactics.“I generally support him and I understand where he’s coming from, but on this one he may have gone a little too far,” said James, a frequent visitor to Florida who is active in Republican party circles back home but declined to give his surname. “It seems a little vindictive to me – and if I were a local, I’d be concerned about the 65,000 Disney World employees and all the affiliated ancillary businesses and the jobs they represent.” More

After a series of shootings and other attacks, 2023 is on track to be the worst in recent history for mass killings in the US.Mass killings are defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed, not including the shooter or other type of perpetrator. According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, the US is on pace for 60 mass killings this year. There were 31 in 2019, 21 in 2020, 28 in 2021 and 36 in 2022.The US is seeing on average more than one mass killing weekly.As of 7 May 2023, there had been 202 mass shootings – defined by the archive as involving at least four people killed or injured by firearms, excluding the shooter – since the beginning of the year.The incidents have spanned the country, from Chicago to Mississippi and Tennessee to Texas. They have occurred at shopping malls, schools and parties and in countless neighborhoods.They have also sparked a bout of soul-searching in a country where scores of millions of guns are in public hands and there is little political prospect of meaningful gun control of the type common in many other countries.Yet another mass shooting took place in Allen, Texas, on Saturday, leaving eight dead. The gunman was also killed. The shooter opened fire at a shopping mall, spraying bullets before being killed by a police officer.On Sunday, Texas saw a mass killing: a driver plowed his truck into a crowd at a bus stop near a shelter serving migrants in the southern city of Brownsville, killing eight.Mass shootings have attracted the most attention in the US and overseas. No other industrialised country outside war and conflict zones experiences such habitual gun violence in civic life.In Texas, gun laws were repeatedly loosened after mass shootings. It has had 41 mass shootings so far in 2023. It has not even been one year since 19 children and two teachers were killed in a shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, the deadliest shooting in the state and the third-deadliest school shooting in the US.At more than 1m, Texas is also the state with the most registered guns.State lawmakers voiced their outrage at the latest tragedy.A Democratic state senator senator, Roland Gutierrez, said: “Texas lawmakers need to have the political courage to get something done about gun violence. It is sad that this has become our everyday reality. Thanks to the Republican regime that has led Texas for the last 30 years, gun laws are looser than ever.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSheila Jackson Lee represents Texas’s 18th district, which largely covers Houston, in Congress. She said: “I’m just so tired and hurt and devastated by the continuing mass shootings in this state and in this nation … Eight innocent people are dead – dead by gunfire. Guns again.“Of course, I offer my prayers and concerns for those families who are struggling with the loss of their loved ones. But I also ask the question: ‘When are we going to confront the real cause?’ And that is a proliferation of guns, guns, guns.”Joe Biden has said Republicans should back his calls for more gun control measures.After the shooting last year in Uvalde, Biden oversaw a bipartisan gun control bill that enacted some modest proposals. But as the waves of shootings have intensified, he has pleaded with Congress to enact tougher measures such as banning assault weapons. There has been little sign of that plea being taken up.That pattern repeated itself after the Allen shooting.“Such an attack is too shocking to be so familiar,” Biden said on Sunday.“Once again I ask Congress to send me a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Enacting universal background checks. Requiring safe storage. Ending immunity for gun manufacturers. I will sign it immediately. We need nothing less to keep our streets safe.” More

From 8h agoThe deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over raising the debt ceiling has gone on for months, and the stakes could not be higher. If an agreement is not reached by as soon as 1 June, the United States could default on its bond payments and other obligations, with potentially catastrophic implications for the economy.There are plenty of issues in Washington over which the two parties cannot agree, but the high consequences of a failure to raise the debt limit has some scholars arguing that Biden should invoke the 14th amendment to order the Treasury department to continue paying its bills, even if the ceiling isn’t increased.This weekend, prominent liberal constitutional scholar Laurence H Tribe wrote of his support for the solution in the New York Times:
The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.
The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.
The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.
There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.
And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.
In a Sunday interview with ABC, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen was pressed on whether Biden would consider following the advice of Tribe and others. The answer was pretty much no.Here’s a clip of the exchange:The debt ceiling deadlock continued to loom over Washington, with little sign of progress made between Democrats and Republicans ahead of a potential government default on 1 June. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen appeared to rule out Joe Biden invoking the 14th amendment to order the government to keep paying its bills, but the president will meet with congressional leaders tomorrow in hopes of breaking the logjam.Here’s what else happened today:
Biden will veto a Republican border security proposal, in the unlikely chance it makes it to his desk.
Despite the carnage in Texas, there’s little sign of a change in heart among House GOP leaders towards gun control.
A former official in Barack Obama’s administration backed Biden’s strategy of not negotiating over the debt ceiling.
Airlines could be forced to compensate passengers for cancelled or delayed flights under new rules the transportation department is considering.
Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, gave a preview of his strategy to regain the chamber’s majority next year.
A story to watch this week is the situation at America’s southern border, where asylum restrictions first imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic will be ending on Thursday.Last week, Joe Biden ordered 1,500 national guard troops to the border to prepare for what some fear will be an influx of new asylum seekers. Immigration is one of the most contentious issues in Washington, and the GOP has in recent years been especially adroit at using it to rally their base, and as a cudgel against Democrats.On the campaign trail, Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador under Donald Trump who is now facing off against him for the GOP’s presidential nomination, bashed both the Biden administration and Congress for failing to overhaul the US immigration system.Here are her comments on Fox News:In a speech at the White House, Joe Biden characterized the new rules on airlines as part of his campaign to rest power from large corporations, the Guardian’s David Smith reports:After a winter where air travel was marred by bad weather and the total meltdown of one of the country’s major carriers Southwest, the Biden administration today announced it would consider imposing new rules to require airlines to compensate passengers for delays and cancellations.The transportation department will consider rules governing when airlines must give passengers compensation, hotels or meal vouchers in instances where flights are cancelled or delayed.“When an airline causes a flight cancellation or delay, passengers should not foot the bill. This rule would, for the first time in U.S. history, propose to require airlines to compensate passengers and cover expenses such as meals, hotels, and rebooking in cases where the airline has caused a cancellation or significant delay,” transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said.You can read more about the transportation department’s plans here.Even if Joe Biden wins re-election next year, the balance of power in Washington could shift dramatically by the time he begins his second term.While it’s too soon to say what the race for the White House will look like by the time polls open in November 2024, the GOP is seen as having a good shot of retaking the Senate next year, since several Democrats representing states that supported Donald Trump in 2020 are up for re-election. Republicans need to win only two of those seats to gain a majority in the Senate, which, assuming the party maintains control of the House, would put them in control of Congress just as Biden begins his second term.In an interview with CNN, the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell confirmed that the party would look to oust Democratic senators from red states West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, as well as Pennsylvania, a swing state. But the Kentucky lawmaker said retaking the Senate majority was no sure thing.“I just spent 10 minutes explaining to you how we could screw this up, and we’re working very hard to not let that happen. Let’s put it that way,” McConnell said.You can read the rest of the interview here.In Texas, authorities have named the driver suspected of killing eight people with a car yesterday.The Guardian’s Joanna Walters is anchoring a live blog focused on the latest news from the tragic weekend in the state. Follow it below:Ahead of the 2024 election, the Guardian’s Peter Stone reports that a rightwing lawyer tied to Donald Trump is urging the GOP to try to restrict college students’ access to the ballot box:Rightwing election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a key ally of Donald Trump as he pushed bogus claims of fraud to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win, is facing intense fire from voting watchdogs and bipartisan criticism for urging curbs on college student voting, same day voter registration and absentee voting.The scrutiny of Mitchell, who runs the Election Integrity Network at the pro-Trump Conservative Partnership Institute to which a Trump Pac donated $1m dollars, was sparked by recent comments Mitchell made to Republican donors, and a watchdog report criticizing her advisory role with a federal election panel.Long known for advocating stricter voting rules that are often premised on unsupported allegations of sizable voting fraud, Mitchell last month promoted new voting curbs on students in a talk to a group of wealthy donors to the Republican National Committee, efforts that critics call partisan and undemocratic.The debt ceiling deadlock continues to loom over Washington, with little sign of progress made between Democrats and Republicans ahead of a potential government default on 1 June. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen appeared to rule out Joe Biden invoking the 14th amendment to order the government to keep paying its bills, while also being sued by a union that wants her to ignore the debt ceiling.Here’s what else has happened today:
Biden will veto a Republican border security proposal, in the unlikely chance it makes it to his desk.
Despite the carnage in Texas, there’s little sign of a change in heart among House GOP leaders towards gun control.
A former official in Barack Obama’s administration backed Biden’s strategy of not negotiating over the debt ceiling.
The Associated Press reports that a union of government workers has sued Janet Yellen to force the Treasury secretary to continue paying the government’s bills, even if Congress does not increase the debt limit.Here’s more about the suit:
The lawsuit, filed by the National Association of Government Employees, says that if Yellen abides by the debt limit once it becomes binding, possibly next month, she would have to choose which federal obligations to actually pay once the debt limit bars the government from further borrowing. Doing so, the lawsuit contends, would violate the Constitution’s separation of powers.
Some analysts have argued that in that case, the government could prioritize interest payments on Treasury securities. That would ensure that the United States wouldn’t default on its securities, which have long been regarded as the safest investments in the world and are vital to global financial transactions.
But under the Constitution, the lawsuit argues, the president and Treasury secretary have no authority to decide which payments to make because the Constitution grants spending power to Congress.
“Nothing in the Constitution or any judicial decision interpreting the Constitution,” the lawsuit states, “allows Congress to leave unchecked discretion to the President to exercise the spending power vested in the legislative branch by canceling, suspending, or refusing to carry out spending already approved by Congress.”
The NAGE represents 75,000 government employees that it says are at risk of being laid off or losing pay and benefits should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling. The debt limit, currently $31.4 trillion, was reached in January. But Yellen has since used various accounting measures to avoid breaching it.
Joe Biden will veto a border security proposal introduced by Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, the White House has announced.The GOP last week introduced the Secure the Border Act of 2023, their attempt to break the long-running deadlock in Washington over reforming America’s immigration system. House speaker Kevin McCarthy says it would improve technology deployed to monitor the United State’s southern and northern borders and increase the number of Border Patrol officers, while also satisfying rightwing priorities such as restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall.In a statement, the White House office of management and budget said the legislation would not improve border security:
The Administration strongly supports productive efforts to reform the Nation’s immigration system but opposes H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act of 2023, which makes elements of our immigration system worse. A successful border management strategy must include robust enforcement at the border of illegal crossings, deterrence to discourage illegal immigration, and legal pathways to ensure that those in need of protection are not turned away to face death or serious harm. The Biden-Harris Administration’s approach to border management is grounded in this strategy – expanding legal pathways while increasing consequences for illegal pathways, which helps maintain safe, orderly, and humane border processing. However, the Administration is limited in what it can achieve by an outdated statutory framework and inadequate resources, particularly in this time of unprecedented global movement. H.R. 2 does nothing to address the root causes of migration, reduces humanitarian protections, and restricts lawful pathways, which are critical alternatives to unlawful entry.
While Republicans have the votes to pass the bill through the House, the Democratic majority in the Senate is unlikely to approve it. And even if they did, the White House says, “If the President were presented with H.R. 2, he would veto it.”Texas is also reeling from the deaths of eight people killed when a car plowed into them outside a shelter for migrants, the Guardian’s Christian von Preysing-Barry reports:Neighbors held a small vigil Sunday night on a dirt path along a busy road in Brownsville, at the eastern end of the US-Mexico border, where eight people were killed and 10 were injured at a bus stop that morning.A small display of flowers and a row of candles grew as shaken people visited the dimly lit curb where the appalling crash occurred.A car had plowed into a group waiting at a bus stop across from the Ozanam Center, an overnight shelter housing a growing migrant population, most fleeing crises in their home countries in Central and South America, Haiti and parts of Africa.The victims have not yet been named but many are believed to be Venezuelan.The hostility of many House Republicans to tighter gun control has remained a constant, even as America has been rocked by successive mass shootings.The thoughts of House majority leader Steve Scalise, who was himself a victim of gun violence, are telling. Here’s what he had to say, in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt:Gun violence is again on the political agenda, after a gunman killed eight people in a mass shooting in Texas this weekend. Here’s the latest on the tragedy, from the Guardian’s Charlie Scudder:Ashok Kolla walked past the news cameras at the Allen Premium Outlets on Sunday, phone to his ear, trying to find the woman from Hyderabad who was unaccounted for after the deadly mass shooting at the mall a day earlier.“Can you tell me which hospital she is at?” Kolla said into the phone.Kolla is a volunteer with the Telugu Association of North America, or Tana, an Indian American nonprofit. When Indian immigrants are hurt or killed, Kolla springs into action, tackling bureaucratic and logistical challenges to connect victims in the US with their families back in India.He lives in Frisco, Texas, just a few miles from Allen. After a gunman killed eight people, injured seven others and was shot dead by police on Saturday, Kolla got word: at least two victims were members of his community.The debt ceiling standoff may be consuming much of top lawmakers’ time, but Democrats aren’t relenting in their demands for more accountability for supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s ties to conservative political figures is an American embarrassment, and the question is whether that is shameful enough to the country’s highest-ranking judge to do something about it, the Senate judiciary committee’s chairperson said on Sunday.“This tangled web around justice … Thomas just gets worse and worse by the day,” Illinois’s senior Democratic senator, Dick Durbin, said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I don’t know what is going to come up next. I thought I heard it all, but disclosures about his activities just embarrass me.”Durbin, who is also the majority whip in the upper congressional chamber, added: “The question is whether it embarrasses the supreme court and … chief justice [John] Roberts, [who] has the power in his hands to change this first thing tomorrow morning.”The Guardian’s David Smith reports that Joe Biden is bracing for his own bout of legal trouble, in the form of potential charges against his son, Hunter:The White House is bracing for political fallout from a looming decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Joe Biden’s son Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.In a signal that the investigation is nearing completion, Hunter’s lawyers last month held a meeting with David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware, at the justice department in Washington, the Washington Post said. A separate report by CNN noted that Hunter’s longtime lawyer Chris Clark was among those entering the department headquarters.Republicans would be sure to seize on a high-profile criminal case against Hunter, 53, in an effort to inflict political damage on the US president, who last week announced his bid for re-election in 2024.The big news in the debt ceiling negotiations will come tomorrow, when congressional leaders meet with Joe Biden at the White House. Today, there’s news of political import in New York City, where the civil trial of a rape allegation against Donald Trump is nearing its conclusion. The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has the latest:The jury in E Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit accusing Donald Trump of rape and defamation is to hear closing arguments in New York on Monday.The three women and six men who have listened to seven days of testimony, including three by Carroll herself, will then retire to consider whether they believe the advice columnist’s account of the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store dressing room in 1996.Trump missed a Sunday afternoon deadline to notify the court if he wished to testify. During a visit to Ireland last week, the former president had threatened to turn up in court to confront Carroll after calling her a “disgrace” and a liar.If a standoff over the debt ceiling sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Republicans used the issue as a bargaining chip twice during Barack Obama’s presidency, including in 2011, when the deadlock resulted in one of the major ratings agency’s downgrading the United States’s debt for the first time.Daniel Pfeiffer was a senior advisor in Obama’s White House, and in a column for the New York Times today, he argued that Joe Biden’s strategy of refusing to negotiate with Republicans is wise. Here’s why:
The only politics that matter is avoiding default — and Mr. Biden’s approach is the best way to do that. It also offers Mr. Biden a chance to highlight two qualities that he will likely run on in 2024: He’s a man of principle, but he’s also a sensible man who can get things done.
The biggest impediment to negotiations is that, with Mr. McCarthy, the president faces a weak negotiating partner. That said, Mr. Biden should have two objectives. The first is to make sure the debt limit is extended through the election so that we are not right back in this precarious position next year.
To get that, he will need to work with Mr. McCarthy to find a framework for fiscal negotiations. Perhaps that means drawing Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, into the process. Mr. McConnell has repeatedly said he has no plans to get involved and that it was up to Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Biden to work out a deal. But in the past, deals with Mr. McConnell’s imprimatur were able to garner enough Republicans to succeed in the House and save face for a Republican speaker.
This will not be easy. The House Republicans might be too far right to be part of a deal. After all, any deal between the president and the speaker will still require a majority of the House and at least 60 Senate votes. It’s frankly very hard to see a deal or deals that could have Mr. Biden’s support as well as the support of a majority of House Republicans — especially since Mr. McCarthy has made it clear that, to continue his speakership, his strategy is to stay in the good graces of the Freedom Caucus and other MAGA Republicans.
Still, the most important reason to avoid entering into negotiations over the debt limit itself goes beyond politics. It is why, in 2011, Mr. Obama pledged never again after trying to negotiate with the Republicans. Allowing the Republicans to use the threat of default as extortion could cripple the remainder of Mr. Biden’s presidency.
This time it’s spending cuts and work requirements for Medicaid recipients. What happens when the debt limit comes up again next year? Will the Republicans demand a federal abortion ban? A pardon for the Jan. 6 perpetrators?
Pfeiffer closes with these words:
The 2023 debt ceiling crisis seems much more dangerous the ones President Obama dealt with when I worked in the West Wing. A lot is going to happen in the next few weeks, but if Democrats want to avoid default and once again save the nation from radical Republicans, their best bet is sticking with President Biden and calling the Republicans’ bluff.
The deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over raising the debt ceiling has gone on for months, and the stakes could not be higher. If an agreement is not reached by as soon as 1 June, the United States could default on its bond payments and other obligations, with potentially catastrophic implications for the economy.There are plenty of issues in Washington over which the two parties cannot agree, but the high consequences of a failure to raise the debt limit has some scholars arguing that Biden should invoke the 14th amendment to order the Treasury department to continue paying its bills, even if the ceiling isn’t increased.This weekend, prominent liberal constitutional scholar Laurence H Tribe wrote of his support for the solution in the New York Times:
The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.
The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.
The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.
There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.
And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.
In a Sunday interview with ABC, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen was pressed on whether Biden would consider following the advice of Tribe and others. The answer was pretty much no.Here’s a clip of the exchange:Good morning, US politics blog readers. This week looks to be a crucial one for the long-running negotiations between Republicans and Democrats over increasing the debt ceiling, as a potential default on 1 June grows ever nearer. But things aren’t exactly looking good at the moment. Joe Biden and his Democratic allies continue to refuse to negotiate over an increase, saying the legal limit on how much debt the US government can accrue should be raised without preconditions. The GOP, meanwhile, wants the White House to agree to cut spending and implement conservative reforms to areas like permitting. The top leaders in Congress are meeting with Biden tomorrow in hopes of making some progress on the deadlock.Here’s what else is going on today:
Biden will at 1.45pm eastern time announce new rules to compensate passengers when flights are delayed or canceled.
Closing arguments are expected to start today in advice columnist E Jean Carroll’s civil suit alleging rape by Donald Trump.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 2pm. More

In just a few weeks, the US may be unable to pay its bills.A divided Congress has still not reached an agreement on raising the debt ceiling, and time is running out to avoid a default. The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has warned that the government may be unable to cover its financial obligations as early as 1 June. And economists predict that a federal default would cause unemployment and interest rates to rise as the country’s GDP shrinks, wreaking havoc on Americans’ finances.As Congress clashes, some lawmakers and economists have suggested a novel way to avoid future disputes over the debt ceiling: get rid of it entirely.Critics argue that the debt ceiling, created by Congress in 1917, has long since outlived its usefulness and has instead become a political weapon that could ultimately sink the US economy.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic chair of the Senate budget committee, recently reintroduced a bill that would eliminate what he derides as “the bear trap in the bedroom that is the debt ceiling”.“Extremist Republicans threatening the American people with default – again – puts a very fine point on the need to get rid of this arbitrary mechanism that offers no benefits yet carries with it the power to deliver serious damage,” Whitehouse told the Guardian. “The immediate priority is for Congress to cleanly raise the debt limit to avoid driving our economy off a cliff, and then we can get to work making sure we avoid future destructive rinse-and-repeat scenarios.”Economists echoed Whitehouse’s point at a Senate budget committee hearing on Thursday, suggesting that Congress should find a new way to handle the government’s borrowing limit.Speaking to the Guardian after the hearing, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, described the debt limit as “totally anachronistic”. Although the debt ceiling might have previously spurred bipartisan negotiations over government spending levels and priorities, the threat of default was much too high in the US’s current era of hyper-polarized politics, he argued.“It’s doing more harm than good,” Zandi said. “Twenty-five years ago, the debt limit may have resulted in some policy changes. I don’t think that’s the case any longer. It’s doing real damage, and we just need to get rid of it.”But for those looking to curtail the nation’s ballooning debt, which now stands at more than $31tn, the debt ceiling has served as a useful tool to spur budgetary reform. House Republicans’ debt ceiling bill, which narrowly passed the lower chamber last week, would raise the government’s borrowing limit until May 2024 while cutting federal discretionary spending to 2022 levels and capping annual increases at 1%.“Right now, the debt limit, as flawed as it is, is the only real, true lawmaker vote available that truly covers and trades off the whole federal budget,” Brian Riedl, senior fellow at the conservative thinktank Manhattan Institute, said at the Senate committee hearing on Thursday.“If we don’t want lawmakers to use this risky and flawed process to address growing deficits, then let’s debate and come up with a federal budget process tool to have these debates and trade-offs.”The drawbacks of playing politics over the debt limit are severe. In 2011, when congressional Republicans clashed with Barack Obama over the debt ceiling, they ultimately succeeded in passing the Budget Control Act. The law included government spending caps, but Congress ended up raising them to avoid painful funding cuts, leading even the architects of the legislation to deem it a failure. However, as a result of the prolonged standoff over the debt ceiling, the US experienced its first ever credit downgrade.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats emerged from the 2011 crisis with a determination to never again negotiate over the debt ceiling. Biden has stuck to that strategy, rejecting House Republicans’ proposal and insisting that Congress must pass a “clean” bill raising the debt ceiling without any strings attached.“America is not a deadbeat nation,” Biden said last week. “We pay our bills, and we should do so without reckless hostage-taking from some of the Maga [Make America great again] Republicans in Congress.”Biden is scheduled to meet with the top four congressional leaders, including the House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, on Tuesday to discuss the debt ceiling. Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate budget committee, urged Biden to negotiate in “good faith” with McCarthy to reach an agreement.“I hope when the president sits down with the speaker, he will bring an open mind and a serious counteroffer,” Grassley, a Republican, said at the Thursday hearing. “The longer the president spends dragging his feet and putting off negotiations, the closer President Biden brings us to the first ever federal default in US history.”Compared with other recent clashes over the debt ceiling, the current conflict appears to be “more serious”, Zandi said. Even if lawmakers can successfully raise the debt ceiling in the coming weeks, Zandi fears the country is on a crash course.“We’re getting inured to it, and so we’re just taking it closer and closer to the brink,” Zandi said. “And at some point, you’re going to make a mistake.” More

Authorities have publicly identified the driver accused of killing several people after plowing his truck into a crowd that was waiting at a bus stop near a shelter serving migrants in a south Texas city.During a Monday morning news conference, police accused George Alvarez of killing eight people and injuring 10 others about 8.30am on Sunday in Brownsville.Police added that Alvarez was a Brownsville resident and had an “extensive” prior criminal record, including allegations of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and driving while intoxicated.Police also said that Alvarez attempted to leave the scene, but he was held down by several people until police arrived and arrested him.A local judge set bond for Alvarez at $3.6m. He was initially booked with reckless driving but faces additional charges, including manslaughter.Police have maintained that they have not determined whether Alvarez acted intentionally and have been unable to verify reports from witnesses that the driver was shouting anti-immigrant obscenities at the time of the crash.A Venezuelan migrant who escaped the crash said the driver, who killed eight people and injured 10, was shouting that immigrants were invading the US, along with other offensive remarks, Monitor News reported. The Guardian reported a similar witness statement.The majority of those injured and killed were Venezuelan, and police have confirmed that they were all men.The crash occurred outside an overnight shelter in Brownsville, Texas, which is near the state’s border with Mexico. The city’s only overnight shelter hosts unhoused people and migrants and has been at capacity for two months.Several people died at the scene, said authorities, with the eighth victim dying on Sunday night.According to surveillance video of the crash, the driver of the SUV ran a light and plowed into the waiting crowd at the bus stop.“What we see in the video is that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a hundred feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” the shelter’s director, Victor Maldonado, told the media.As of Monday morning, the driver’s identity has not been released by authorities. Officials obtained a blood sample of the driver to check for possible intoxicants, but the results of those tests have also not been released, police said on Monday.Alvarez was reportedly being uncooperative and provided different names to authorities, delaying the public release of his identity, police said.The truck killings came four days before Title 42 was set to expire. Title 42 was a Covid-era policy that allowed for the expulsion of migrants.Days before the crash, the US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said that immigration authorities faced “extremely challenging” circumstances along the border with Mexico days as Title 42 is set to end. More