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      US lawmakers call to modernize Osha as hundreds die on the job each day

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      Every day 343 workers die from hazardous working conditions in the US. In 2021, the latest year with data available, 5,190 workers in the US were killed on the job and an estimated 120,000 deaths were attributed to occupational diseases.Since 1970, more than 429,000 workers have been killed on the job, but only 128 of those cases have been criminally prosecuted under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (Osha).Now a new report and reintroduced federal legislation is pushing to modernize Osha.Democratic congressmen Joe Courtney and Bobby Scott have co-authored the Protecting America’s Workers Act, which was reintroduced to Congress on 28 April, on Workers’ Memorial Day.“The history of Osha shows that there really is a systemic problem in terms of that mission of getting the rules aligned with the evolving technology that goes into a whole host of sectors in the US economy, whether it’s home construction, healthcare settings, manufacturing, the new processes, the new chemicals, the new machinery that as part of a very dynamic economy, it’s just kind of rocketed past the Osha rules that are in place to protect people,” said Courtney.“It’s just really trying to get a system of workforce protection that is really connected to the actual workplaces that people are going to every day in the 21st century.”The bill includes expanding Osha coverage to the estimated 8 million state and local government workers in 24 states not currently covered by Osha, reinstating an employer record-keeping rule of illnesses and injuries rolled back under the Trump administration, providing authority for increased civil penalties for serious Osha violations, and authorizing felony penalties against employers who knowingly commit Osha violations that result in the death or serious harm of a worker. The bill would also establish rights for families who lose a loved one to a workplace fatality and require Osha to investigate all cases of death or serious injury that occur in a workplace.The AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job 2023 report, released on 26 April, outlines the “toll of neglect” that comes from inadequately addressing workplace safety issues amid aggressive opposition from industry groups and employers against improving and enforcing workers protections.The report cites low civil penalties for safety violations issued by Osha, understaffing and underfunding at Osha, the millions of workers who are currently not covered under Osha which include independent contractors and federal, state and local public workers, inadequate retaliation protections for workers to speak out and report safety issues, and the need to improve and expand data on worker injuries and illnesses.For Black workers, the workplace fatality rate increased from 3.5 per 100,000 workers in 2020 to 4.0 in 2021, the highest rate in a decade, while Latino workers currently have a worker fatality rate of 4.5 per every 100,000 workers, 25% higher than the national average.Younger and older workers are at higher risk for workplace fatalities. Three hundred and fifty workers under the age of 25 died on the job in 2021, while workers over 65 have a risk of 2.3 times higher than other workers of dying on the job.Courtney cited a 2010 incident in Connecticut where six workers were killed in an explosion at a Kleen Energy Systems power plant during cleanup of debris in pipes as an example of an avoidable and tragic workplace fatality incident.“As the process of an investigation went on, it was clear that what caused that was really very well known, unsafe practices, that the Chemical Safety Board, which is a sort of an arm of OshaA, had long identified as being the wrong way to clean the tubes,” he said.The legislation has been introduced numerous times in Congress over the past two decades. Senator Pat Murray of Washington called the legislation “long overdue” when she was reintroducing it in 2013. Joe Biden was a co-sponsor of previous versions of the bill while serving in the Senate.In 2009 testimony in support of the bill, Osha’s assistant secretary David Michaels said the 1970 Osha Act was “tragically outdated and inadequate”, and yet few to no changes or updates have been made in over 50 years since its passage.Courtney noted the political challenges faced in passing the Protecting America’s Workers Act given the current House is under Republican control. But a companion bill in the Senate will be introduced and Courtney said it was important to keep introducing the bill to keep the issues visible.“I think that at some point, the external pressure is going to reach the breaking point in terms of getting this place to move,” he said. More

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      Disney v DeSantis: what’s at stake for Florida as legal tug-of-war ramps up?

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      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

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      US workers deserve a break. It’s time for a 32-hour working week | Bernie Sanders

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      In 1938, as a result of a massive grassroots effort by the trade union movement, the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted by Congress to reduce the work week to 40 hours. Back then, the American people were sick and tired of working 80, 90, 100 hours a week with very little time for rest, relaxation or quality time with their families. They demanded change and they won a huge victory. That’s the good news.The bad news is that despite an explosion in technology, major increases in worker productivity, and transformational changes in the workplace and American society, the Fair Labor Standards Act has not been reformed in 80 years. The result: millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, with the average worker making nearly $50 a week less than he or she did 50 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. Further, family life is suffering, as parents don’t have adequate time for their kids, life expectancy for working people is in decline, and increased stress is a major factor in the mental health crisis we are now experiencing.Compared with other countries, our workplace record is not good. In 2021, American employees worked 184 more hours than Japanese workers, 294 more hours than British workers, and 442 more hours than German workers. Unbelievably, in 2023 there are millions of Americans who work at jobs with no vacation time.It’s time to reduce the work week to 32 hours with no loss in pay. It’s time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life. It’s time to make sure that working people benefit from rapidly increasing technology, not just large corporations that are already doing phenomenally well.Think about all of the extraordinary changes that have taken place in the workplace over the past several decades. When I was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981, there were no computers in city hall. There were no chatboxes, no printers, no emails, no calculators, no cellphones, no conference calling or Zoom.In factories and warehouses, robots and sophisticated machinery did not exist or were only used in primitive forms.In grocery stores and shops of all kinds, there were no checkout counters that utilized bar codes.As a result of the extraordinary technological transformation that we have seen in recent years, American workers are now 480% more productive than they were in the 1940s.In addition, there are far more workers today. In the 1940s, less than 65% of Americans between 25 and 54 were in the workforce. Today, with most families requiring two breadwinners to pay the bills, that number is over 83%.Yet despite all of these incredible gains in productivity, over 40% of US employees now work more than 45 hours per week; 12% work more than 60 hours a week; and the average worker now works 43 hours per week. Many are on their computers or answering emails seven days a week.Moving to a 32-hour work week with no loss of pay is not a radical idea. In fact, movement in that direction is already taking place in other developed countries. France, the seventh-largest economy in the world, has a 35-hour work week and is considering reducing it to 32. The work week in Norway and Denmark is about 37 hours.Recently, the United Kingdom conducted a four-day pilot program of 3,000 workers at over 60 companies. Not surprisingly, it showed that happy workers were more productive. The pilot was so successful that 92% of the companies that participated decided to maintain a four-day week, because of the benefits to both employers and employees.Another pilot of nearly 1,000 workers at 33 companies in seven countries found that revenue increased by more than 37% in the companies that participated and 97% of workers were happy with the four-day workweek.Studies have shown that despite working fewer hours, workers are either more, or just as, productive during a four-day work week. One study found that worker productivity increased 55% after companies implemented a four-day week. A trial of four-day work weeks for public-sector workers in Iceland found that productivity remained the same or improved across the majority of workplaces. In 2019, Microsoft tested a four-day work week in Japan and reported a 40% increase in productivity.In addition, 57% of workers in companies that have moved to a four-day work week have indicated that they are less likely to quit their jobs.Moreover, at a time when so many of our people are struggling with their mental health, 71% of workers in companies that have moved to a four-day work week report feeling less burnout, 39% reported feeling less stress and 46% reported feeling less fatigued.As much as technology and worker productivity has exploded in recent years, there is no debate that new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics will only accelerate the transformation of our economy. That transformation should benefit all, not just the few. It should create more time for friends and family, more time for rest and relaxation, more time for all of us to develop our human potential.Eighty-three years after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a 40-hour work week into law, it’s time for us to move to a 32-hour work week at no loss of pay. More

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      Federal Reserve increases interest rates by a quarter point to 16-year high – as it happened

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      From 6h agoThe Federal Reserve is set to raise interest rates this afternoon, with an announcement coming at 2pm ET from the central bank after its most recent board meeting. Analysts expect the Fed will raise rates by a quarter point, which will bring rates up to 5% to 5.25%. This would be the central bank’s 10th interest rate increase since March 2022, when rates were at zero.The interest rate increase will come at what in hindsight may seem like an inflection point for the economy. Inflation is down, consumer spending has flattened and growth in the job market is starting to slow down, but Fed officials, especially Fed chair Jerome Powell, have been stringent on getting inflation down to their target of 2%. Inflation in March was 5%, the lowest it’s been since 2021, but still quite far from 2%.Analysts and economists will be closely watching Powell’s press conference at 2.30pm, where he will discuss the direction Fed staff see the economy going, giving hints as to whether even more interest rate hikes are to come or whether the Fed will end its rate-hike campaign.Here’s a quick summary of everything that’s happened today:
      The Federal Reserve increased interest rates by a quarter point, bringing rates up to 5% to 5.25%. Fed chair Jerome Powell said that Fed officials no longer anticipate more hikes, but will monitor economic data to see if they are necessary in coming months. The stock market dipped slightly after the Fed’s announcement.
      The debate over the debt ceiling continued today, with news that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell will keep himself out of the specific of negotiating talks and hints that senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are breaking from Dems and looking to take Senate negotiations seriously.
      2024 is already gearing up: Joe Biden released his second TV ad since launching his campaign last week, while US rep. Colin Allred of Texas announced his bid to unseat Texas senator Ted Cruz. In Nevada, Jim Marchant, an election denier and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, also announced a Senate big.
      We’ll be closing this blog for today. Thanks for reading.Democratic senator Raphael Warnock from Georgia said that his two young kids were on lockdown at school because of the shooting in midtown Atlanta.“They’re there. I’m here, hoping and praying they’re safe,” he said on the Senate floor. “Thoughts and prayers are not enough.”One person has been confirmed dead and at least four injured after a gunman opened fire in a building in midtown around 12.30pm ET. Police said they are still searching for a suspect.The Washington Post just published a cheery report that the White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill technically have just six working days together before the US government potentially defaults on its debt on 1 June.With the House and Senate in session on different days, and Biden making international trips for the G7 summit in Japan and another “Quad” meeting with Australia, Japan and India in Australia, the legislative and executive branches are scheduled to have just six more days together to figure out the debt ceiling.Of course, negotiations can take place even when a chamber is not in session, but the precariousness of negotiations and the closeness of default makes the timing a tad inconvenient.Talking about the fallout of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said that it seems the worst of the crisis is over.“The severe period of stress, those have now all been resolved and all the depositors have been protected,” he said, adding that JPMorgan’s acquisition of First Republic bank marked the end of the worst of it all.Asked about lessons that he learned from the crisis, he noted that there needs to be stronger regulation and supervision, but declined to offer any specifics as he has tasked Fed vice chair Michael Barr with drafting specific policy proposals.“I am not aware of anybody thinking [the collapse] could happen so quickly,” Powell said. “Now that we know that was possible… it will be up to vice chair Barr to design ways to address that.”Today’s Federal Reserve interest rate hike is its second quarter-point hike in a row, after a series of half- and three-quarter point hikes over the last year. Fed chair Jerome Powell said at his press conference this afternoon that “slowing down was the right move”.“I think it’s enabled us to see more data and it will continue to do so. We have to always balance the risk of not doing enough and not getting inflation under control against the risk of maybe slowing down economic activity too much,” he said. “We thought that this rate hike, along with the meaningful change in our policy statement, was the right way to balance that.Asked about the possibility of a recession, Powell seemed optimistic that the Fed could achieve a “soft landing” – keeping interest rates high without seeing huge impacts on unemployment. He noted that even as rates have hit 5% over the last 14 months, the unemployment rate stands at 3.5%.“It’s possible that we can continue to have a cooling in the labor market without having the big increases in unemployment that have gone with many prior episodes,” he said.Of course, Powell noted earlier in the press conference that the full impacts of the interest rate increases have yet to be seen, acknowledging uncertainty about the full economic impact of rate hikes.Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell emphasized the importance of raising the debt ceiling, though noted that the debt limit is “fiscal policy matters”.“It’s essential that the debt ceiling be raised in a timely way so that the US government can pay all of its bills when they’re due. Failure to do that would be unprecedented,” he said. “We’d be in uncharted territory.Powell noted that the Fed doesn’t “give advice to either side” and also noted that “no one should assume that the Fed can protect the economy from the potential short- and long-term effects” upon default.He also noted that debt limit standoff did not play a role in the Fed’s decision today to increase interest rates.Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is holding a press conference after the central bank announced a quarter-point interest rate increase. Powell’s tone in the press conference has changed since he last addressed the press in March. The Fed is no longer anticipating needing more rate increases, but will monitor the economy in determining future interest rate changes.While Powell is still reiterating the Fed’s inflation target of 2%, he acknowledged that the economy is “seeing the effects of our policy tightening on demand and the most interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy, particularly housing and investment”. In other words, the Fed sees its interest rate hikes taking effect in the slowing of the economy.“There are some signs that supply and demand in the labor market are coming back into balance,” Powell said. He added that the “economy is likely to face further headwinds from tighter credit conditions”, meaning the full effects of the interest-rate hikes have yet to be seen.Taking a question from a reporter on whether the Fed’s statement today should be taken as a hint that officials will pause rate hikes, Powell said the officials did not make a decision on a pause, but noted that they intentionally updated their stance in today’s press statement that removed a line suggesting more increases would be appropriate.“Instead, we’re saying that in determining the extent to which [more hikes are needed], the Committee will take into account certain factors,” he said. “That’s a meaningful change that we are no longer saying we anticipate [changes] and we will be driven by incoming data meeting by meeting.”The press statement that came with the Federal Reserve’s announcement of another interest rate hike is nearly identical to the one that was released at its last meeting on 22 March, with one key exception.In its 22 March release, Fed officials in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) hinted that more interest rates are to come, saying: “The Committee anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate” in order to bring inflation down to the target of 2%.In today’s statement, that line was cut.The rest of the statement was in line with FOMC’s March meeting statement. They reiterated their stance that “inflation remains elevated” and the jobs market has been strong, with the unemployment rate low. They emphasized that “the US banking system is sound and resilient” and that they are “highly attentive to inflation risks”.Analysts have been wondering whether this interest rate increase will be the Fed’s last, with pauses to come after as the interest rate is held steady at future meetings.Any more hints about what is next for interest rates after this most recent hike will likely be made at Fed chair Jerome Powell’s press conference at 2.30pm ET.The Federal Reserve just announced a quarter-point interest rate increase. This brings the interest rate to a 16-year high at 5% to 5.25%. The central bank has been on a year-long campaign to temper inflation, though it has had to delicately balance the potential of shaking the economy too much with stringent rate increases.Fed chair Jerome Powell will lead a closely watched press conference, where he will discuss the Fed’s view on the state of the economy.The United Auto Workers (UAW) union said in an internal memo that it is holding off on a Joe Biden endorsement due to the president’s electric vehicle policies.UAW president Shawn Fain said in the memo that union leaders met with Biden last week and discussed “our concerns with the electric vehicle transition”, according to the New York Times. The union is concerned that auto workers will suffer during the transition to EV as less workers are needed to assemble EVs.“The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” the memo reads, referring to electric vehicles. “We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments.”The union has 400,000 members across the country, though members are primarily in auto-industry heavyweight Michigan, a key election battleground state.The FBI arrested a man in Florida on Tuesday for his involvement in the January 6th Capitol riots, specifically for setting off an “explosive device” in the US Capitol tunnel that leads into the building. Daniel Ball, 38, was first arrested last week by the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office for assaulting seven people, including law enforcement officers, in Florida. Ball’s probation officer, upon being shown photos and videos of the Capitol riot, identified Ball as the person throwing an explosive device in the tunnel, where law enforcement was blocking rioters.Ball faces multiple charges related to the riot, including assaulting police officers and entering a restricted area with a deadly weapon.The justice department said in March that at least 1,000 people have been arrested on charges related to the riots, with 518 pleading guilty to federal crimes so far.Election denier Jim Marchant announced that he will be running for US Senate, challenging Democrat incumbent senator Jacky Rosen for the seat she won last year.During his announcement speech on Tuesday, Marchant said that he is running to “protect Nevadans from the overbearing government, from Silicon Valley, from big media, from labor unions, from the radical gender-change advocates,” the Washington Post reported.His election campaign was acknowledged by Rosen on Twitter, who replied to Marchant’s announcement:
      Nevadans deserve a Senator who will fight for them, not a MAGA election denier who opposes abortion rights even in cases of rape and incest…
      While far-right politicians like Jim Marchant spread baseless conspiracy theories, I’ve always focused on solving problems for Nevadans.
      Marchant has described himself as a “MAGA conservative”, the Post reports, and is an avid supporter of Donald Trump. More

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      DeSantis accused of favoring insurance-industry donors at residents’ expense

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      Ron DeSantis, the rightwing Republican governor of Florida and a likely 2024 presidential candidate, has handed favors to his big-money donors in the insurance industry at the expense of cash-strapped residents of his state, a new report claims.The report, “How Ron DeSantis sold out Florida homeowners”, draws on contributions from the American Federation of Teachers union, the non-profit Center for Popular Democracy, the voting rights group Florida Rising and the dark money watchdog Hedge Clippers.The report pinpoints the insurance industry as a crucial underwriter of DeSantis’s meteoric rise to the governor’s mansion and as a potential White House contender – and alleges that this may have influenced his decision making.DeSantis, who ran a successful re-election campaign last year, and Friends of Ron DeSantis, a political action committee that supported him, have taken a combined $3.9m in contributions from insurance industry players. If donations to the Republican party of Florida since 1 January 2019 – days before DeSantis assumed office – are added, this total swells to more than $9.9m.The authors’ analysis of campaign finance data also found that two property casualty insurance firms donated a combined total of $125,000 to DeSantis’s 2023 inaugural celebration, which marked the beginning of his final term as governor in the term-limited state.It is no coincidence, the report’s authors suggest, that DeSantis’s administration has put the insurance companies’ interests ahead of Florida’s own citizens, who are battling homeowner insurance rates nearly triple the national average.They write: “Instead of fixing problems with Florida’s property insurance industry, DeSantis has lavished the industry with favors and benefits while everyday Floridians suffer.”These benefits have included the creation of $2bn taxpayer-funded reinsurance fund. Such funds exist to insure the insurers and prevent them being wiped out during a catastrophic event. Usually, insurance companies buy such coverage on the open market but, in Florida, DeSantis chose to use tax dollars to provide access to a state-subsidised insurance fund.Second, the Florida legislature passed a bill that stripped policyholders of the ability to recover legal fees when suing insurance companies that refuse to honour legitimate claims. DeSantis trumpeted the signing of this bill on his official webpage.Home insurance is a hot-button issue in Florida, where communities vulnerable to the climate crisis face increasingly frequent and severe hurricanes and other weather events. Last year Hurricane Ian caused record levels of property damage and recent storms flooded some Fort Lauderdale neighbourhoods for more than a week.The report notes: “Communities of color and low-income neighborhoods with significant climate risks face crumbling infrastructure, soaring insurance premiums, and a lack of public investment. Florida cities like Jacksonville (where one in three residents is Black) and Orlando (where one in three is Latino) are at the highest risk nationally, based on the number of properties at substantial climate risk.”For many, it is getting worse. This year insurance price hikes are expected to average 40%, according to the Insurance Information Institute. This follows a reported 50% climb during the DeSantis administration, industry analyst John Rollins found. The increases are forcing Florida homeowners to forgo coverage at nearly twice the national rate or quit the state altogether.Tracy-Ann Brown, 53, said by phone from Miami: “The prices are horrendous. Our insurance went up to $1,800 per month and I could not afford it with my husband’s salary and my salary put together. We had a home that we had to take the insurance off and, unfortunately, our house caught fire on Easter Sunday and we didn’t have insurance on it.”Brown, a community liaison specialist for public schools, added: “The insurance everywhere here is crazy from Broward all the way to Dade. I’ve asked so many people and they’ve said the same thing. Their insurance has gone sky high.”The report argues that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation is dominated by industry insiders who approved insurance price hikes at greater rates than were seen under previous governors.“Evidence is mounting that big insurance has blocked proposals that would have lowered costs for consumers,” it continues. “A 2022 proposal by state senator Jeff Brandes claimed to reduce insurance and save Floridians ‘$750 million to $1 billion a year’ by allowing smaller insurance companies to access the catastrophic reinsurance fund. The insurance-heavy business lobby reportedly blocked the plan.”The authors draw a contrast with Louisiana, which they say has a more robust property casualty insurance market despite similar hurricane risks. Unlike DeSantis’s insurance industry handouts, they contend, Louisiana conditions its subsidies to the insurance industry on increased participation in the state property insurance market.Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said: “Floridians are suffering from the threat of floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters, and homeowners are increasingly at risk of losing it all because they simply cannot afford spiraling insurance premiums.”She added: “Where is the governor? Well, he has picked sides: when given the choice of helping Florida’s working families or doing the bidding of the insurance lobby, Ron DeSantis puts his donors first. This report joins the dots. We can’t allow DeSantis to dismantle the livelihoods of millions of Floridians in the service of corporate interests.”DeSantis has not yet formally announced a 2024 campaign but is expected to do so after Florida’s legislative session ends later this month. In the meantime he has travelled to early-voting states to promote his new book, has met with donors and just returned from an overseas trade mission.The governor has also become embroiled in a legal battle with Disney. Days after the company sued him in federal court for what it described as retaliation for opposing the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, members of Disney World’s governing board – made up DeSantis appointees – filed a lawsuit to countersue the entertainment giant.A CBS News-YouGov poll released on Monday showed former president Donald Trump leading a hypothetical Republican primary field with 58% of the vote, followed by DeSantis with 22%.The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      Bipartisan US debt ceiling talks restart as deadline moves closer – as it happened

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      That’s it for today’s live politics blog!Here’s what happened today:
      Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will be in the 9 May meeting on the debt ceiling, but emphasized that Biden has to negotiate with House speaker Kevin McCarthy. “There is no solution in the Senate,” said McCarthy to reporters on Tuesday.
      A Florida woman faces two charges of battery – one a felony – after allegedly throwing a drink at the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has said that Democrats will wait on a 9 May meeting between Biden and congressional leaders to decide if they will move forward on a clean debt ceiling push that would not include spending cuts, but added that Democrats will be pushing for a two-year full extension.
      Illinois senator Dick Durbin said that he wants to move on a bill imposing a code of ethics on supreme court justices, but wants to make sure he has the votes, as California senator Dianne Feinstein remains absent from the Senate following a bout of shingles.
      New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said late on Monday that Feinstein should resign, joining a bipartisan chorus calling for Feinstein to step down amid absences from the Senate.
      A new poll puts Donald Trump ahead of Florida governor Ron DeSantis among Republican primary voters in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election, as Trump continues to outperform DeSantis in several polls.
      Thank you for reading! Check in for more updates tomorrow!The White House’s economist warned against Republicans “playing games” with the US economy through the debt ceiling debate when interest rate increases are already having an averse impact on the economy, Reuters reports.“The economy remains, it’s been strong. You don’t want to be pushing it off of the course that it’s on,” said Heather Boushey in an interview with Reuters.Boushey added: “The Fed is raising interest rates in the hope of reducing inflation. That is having this negative effect on the banking sector. Why would we add to that?”Boushey noted that raising the debt ceiling could remove the risk of a debt default, one that could take affect on 1 June.A Florida woman was charged with allegedly throwing a drink at the Florida representative Matt Gaetz. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports.
      A Florida woman faces two charges of battery – one a felony – after allegedly throwing a drink at the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz.
      The Walton county sheriff reportedly said Gaetz insisted on pressing charges. Gaetz maintained he was justified in doing so, saying 41-year-old Selena Jo Chambers “cross[ed] the Rubicon beyond just words to throwing stuff”.
      A previous case of a drink being thrown at Gaetz resulted in a woman being sent to prison.
      In 2019, Amanda Kondrat’yev, then 35 and a former political opponent of Gaetz, received a 15-day prison sentence for throwing a slushie at her rival.
      That beverage-blitzing brouhaha happened at an “Open Gaetz” public event at restaurant in Pensacola appropriately named the Brew Ha Ha.
      Read the full story here.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has said that Democrats will wait on a 9 May meeting between Biden and congressional leaders to decide if they will move forward on a clean debt ceiling push that would not include spending cuts. Schumer added that he wants a two-year extension of the debt ceiling versus a stopgap measures, the Washington Post reported.Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will be in the 9 May meeting on the debt ceiling, but emphasized that Biden has to negotiate with House speaker Kevin McCarthy.“There is no solution in the Senate,” said McConnell to reporters on Tuesday.From CNN’s Manu Raju:Many expect McConnell to ultimately help negotiate a bipartisan debt ceiling agreement, as the Kentucky senator did in 2021.But McConnell has maintained that Biden must negotiate with McCarthy and House Republicans about the debt ceiling.Illinois senator Dick Durbin said that he wants to move on a bill imposing a code of ethics on supreme court justices, but wants to make sure he has the votes.CNN’s Manu Raju noted that with California senator Dianne Feinstein out, Durbin is unsure of when he could forward such legislation.“I’d like to make sure we have enough folks to pass it,” said Durbin.Feinstein is a member of the Senate judiciary committee, but has been out due a case of shingles. Durbin confirmed to Raju that he has “not personally” spoken with Feinstein about when she would return.The defense department and the Federal Aviation Administration have been tracking a balloon that was flying off the coast of Hawaii last week, but a defense official said today there’s no indication it is connected to China or any other adversary, and it presents no threats to aviation or national security, the Associated Press reports.The balloon was first detected by radar on Friday.
      Pacific Air Forces launched three F-22s to assess the situation and visually identified a spherical object. We monitored the transit of the object and assessed that it posed no threat,” US Indo-Pacific Command said.
      The defense official said the balloon was floating at about 36,000ft (11,000 meters), and it did not fly over any critical defense infrastructure or sensitive sites.After determining that the balloon presented no threat to people on the ground or to aviation over Hawaii, the military took no action to bring it down, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.It’s not clear who owns the balloon, which has now passed out of Hawaii’s airspace, the official said.The latest balloon sighting comes about three months after the US military shot down what officials said was a Chinese spy balloon that crossed Alaska and part of Canada before returning to the US and triggering widespread interest as it flew across the country.It was shot down over the Atlantic off the South Carolina coast on 4 February. Large portions of the balloon were recovered by the US military.US officials said it was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals as part of a huge, military-linked aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries. Beijing insisted the balloon was just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off course due to winds and had only limited “self-steering” capabilities.The US military acknowledged there have been several other balloons that have been tracked over and near the US in recent years, but none lingered over America for as long as that one did. The incident further eroded relations between the US and China.At a press conference just now, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre elaborated on what Joe Biden will discuss with House majority leader Kevin McCarthy over the debt ceiling next week:“The president is going to make it clear to them that they have to avoid a default. It is their constitutional duty to do this. It is their constitutional duty to the American people for them to do their jobs. He will also say we will have a conversation about the budget and appropriations, and that is something that he will be very clear about. We can have a conversation about that, but it is important to not default.“The president is going to continue to make that clear. He is going to make that clear and have that conversation.”The Biden administration will temporarily send an additional 1,500 troops to the US-Mexico border as pandemic-related restrictions to migration are set to expire on 11 May.An unnamed US official told Reuters on Tuesday that the additional troops will be part of a supplementary preparation for an increase in illegal immigration as Title 42 comes to an end. Title 42 allowed the US to expel migrants amid the Covid-19 pandemic.The troops will not carry out any law enforcement operations and will assist US border patrol that is currently in the area, said the US official who asked to stay anonymous.The number of Americans listing guns and crime as a top issue for them has increased, according to a new Gallup poll.Of those polled for Gallup’s Most Important Problem list, seven percent said that guns and gun control were a priority issue for them, the Hill reported. Six percent listed crime and violence.In polling done months earlier, only 3% listed crime as their top issue and 1% listed crime.Both issues were listed below problems such as government and poor leadership, immigration and the economy.House Democrats have quietly started taking steps to introduce a rare legislative procedure that could force a debt limit increase and bypass Republican legislation for cuts.The New York Times just reported that Democrats are trying to set up a discharge petition that would allow Democrats to force a bill onto the floor if they get enough signatures – 218. This would mean all 213 house Democrats would need to sign the petition, and five Republican representatives would have to join.Though the House is in recess today, House Dems held a pro forma session and introduced an emergency rule that would give them two weeks, until 16 May, to collect the 218 signatures.Though Democrats see the bill as a gamble, Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic House minority leader, sent a letter to fellow Democrats today expressing a tone of defiance and saying that House Dems “are working to make sure we have all options at our disposal to avoid default”.Oklahoma is the latest state to pass legislation banning gender-affirming care for minors, as several states pass bills targeting the rights of transgender people.The Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, signed a bill on Monday making it a felony for healthcare practitioners to provide children with gender-affirming care, including puberty-blockers and hormones, the Associated Press reported.The bill comes as parents of transgender children, healthcare workers, and transgender people say that such care is essential.“Gender-affirming care is a critical part of helping transgender adolescents succeed, establish healthy relationships with their friends and family, live authentically as themselves, and dream about their futures,” said Lambda Legal and the ACLU in a joint statement, PBS Newshour reported.At least 15 other states have taken similar measures, with over 500 bills introduced in 2023 that target aspects of life for transgender people.A Montana lawmaker is suing the state, Montana’s house speaker, and the sergeant of arms of the state’s house after she was censured, asking to be fully reinstated to her position.House GOP voted to ban representative Zooey Zephyr on Wednesday from the state’s floor, gallery and anteroom after Zephyr, who is the state’s first openly transgender representative, criticized legislators for supporting a ban on gender-affirming care for minors.Zephyr is now suing to be allowed back onto the house floor as she is only allowed to vote virtually. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, argues that limiting her ability to vote violates “free speech and expression rights,” the Washington Post reported.“House leadership explicitly and directly targeted me and my district because I dared to give voice to the values and needs of transgender people like myself,” said Zephyr in a statement.“By doing so, they’ve denied me my own rights under the constitution and, more importantly, the rights of my constituents to just representation in their own government.”We’ve reached the midpoint for today’s politics live blog.Here’s what’s happened so far:
      New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said late on Monday that the California senator Dianne Feinstein should resign, joining a bipartisan chorus calling for Feinstein to step down amid absences from the Senate.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said during a Tuesday speech on the Senate floor that Democrats will only pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase, as a 1 June debt default looms.
      A new poll puts Donald Trump ahead of Florida governor Ron DeSantis among Republican primary voters in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election, as Trump continues to outperform DeSantis in several polls.
      Debt ceiling talks have gained a second wind after a warning on Monday by the US treasury secretary Janet Yellen that the US could default on its debt as soon as 1 June, as Biden confers a 9 May meeting with top congressional leaders.
      Here is reporting on the Senate judiciary committee meeting from the Guardian’s Chris Stein, who is currently in the hearing room.Partisan splits were apparent in the Senate judiciary committee today as it kicked off a hearing on the supreme court’s ethics, with Democrats accusing the nation’s highest court of believing itself to be outside the law, and Republicans defending the justices from what they said were attacks motivated by bitterness over its recent rulings.“Ethics cannot simply be left to the discretion of the nation’s highest court,” the committee’s Democratic chair Richard Durbin said. “The Court should have a code of conduct with clear and enforceable rules so both Justices and the American people know when conduct crosses the line. The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards. That reality is driving a crisis in public confidence in the supreme court.”Durbin called the hearing after a series of reports about entanglements between the court’s justices, particularly its six conservatives, and lawyers and donors with interests in the court’s outcome. Chief justice John Roberts was invited to testify, but declined, instead sending a document signed by all of the court’s nine justices that outlined their approach to ethics.Lindsey Graham, the judiciary committee’s top Republican, said the Democrats were using the hearing to retaliate against justices who authored opinions they didn’t agree with. Last year, the court’s conservatives upended nearly a half-century of precedent by overturning Roe v Wade and allowing states to ban abortion entirely, cut into the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plant emissions and weakened laws on possession of concealed weapons.“This is not about making the court better,” Graham said. “This is about destroying a conservative court. It will not work.”The Senate judiciary committee is holding a meeting to discuss whether the US supreme court should bolster its ethics rules following a series of reported conflicts between supreme court justices and personal interests.The Tuesday meeting comes after several scandals that have called into question the ethics of the court and diminishing public confidence in the institution, the Washington Post reported.Most recently, supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has come under fire after media organization ProPublica publicized that the longest-serving justice accepted luxury travel and vacations over two decades from the real estate mogul and Republican donor Harlan Crow.Such gifts and a real estate deal between Thomas and Crow were undisclosed by Thomas.Ahead of today’s meeting, Chief Justice John Roberts declined an invitation to appear and testify about judicial ethics. The justice instead forwarded a three page “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices”, which is signed by all nine justices. The non-binding memo is meant to “reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices to which they subscribe”.But Roberts himself is facing scrutiny after a whistleblower alleged that Roberts’s wife, Jane Roberts, made millions through recruiting for top law firms. More

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      ‘Toxic trail of pollution’: states step up to curb the use of ‘forever chemicals’

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      Few chemicals have attracted as intense public and regulatory scrutiny as PFAS, but even as the highly toxic and ubiquitous compounds’ dangers come into sharper focus, industry influence has crippled congressional attempts to pass meaningful consumer protections.Federal bills designed to address some of the most significant sources of exposure – food packaging, cosmetics, personal care products, clothing, textiles, cookware and firefighting foam – have all failed in recent sessions.However, a patchwork of state laws enacted over the last three years is generating fresh hope by prohibiting the use of PFAS in those and other uses. These laws – mostly passed in Democratic-controlled states – are quietly forcing many companies to phase out the chemicals as they become illegal to use in consumer goods in some of the nation’s largest economies.“We’ve seen some corporate leadership on PFAS, but the actual state policies that say ‘No, you have to do this’ – those are great incentivizers,” said Sarah Doll, director of Safer States, which advocates for and tracks restrictions on toxic chemicals at the state level.PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make thousands of consumer products across dozens of industries resist water, stains and heat. The chemicals are ubiquitous, and linked at low levels of exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, birth defects, autoimmune disease and other serious health problems.Though the Biden administration is devoting significant resources to limiting and cleaning up environmental PFAS pollution, it has no coherent strategy to address the chemicals’ use in consumer goods, and states have filled that void. Among those are laws banning their use in:
      Clothing/textiles. California, New York and Washington banned PFAS in clothing, while multiple states are prohibiting the chemicals’ use in textiles, such as carpets or furniture upholstery, or in children’s products like car seats and strollers.
      Cosmetics/personal care. California, Colorado and Maryland banned PFAS in all cosmetics and personal care products.
      Food packaging/cookware. About 10 states have prohibited PFAS in some food packaging, and several also bar it in cookware.
      Firefighting foam. At least 15 states have banned or limited the use of firefighting foam with PFAS because it is a major source of water pollution.
      Maine has gone several steps further with a ban on all non-essential uses of PFAS, and the momentum continues this session in 33 states where legislation has been introduced. Vermont’s senate unanimously approved a ban on the chemicals in cosmetics, textiles and artificial turf.The state policies may make it financially and logistically impractical for many companies to continue using PFAS, and their effects could reverberate across the economy.“It would not make sense to not use the cancer-causing chemical in California and New York, but go ahead and use it in Texas,” said Liz Hitchcock, federal policy director at Toxic-Free Future, which advocates for stronger restrictions on chemicals.Among a cascade of companies moving away from the compounds in some or all products are Patagonia, Victoria’s Secret, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ralph Lauren, Zara, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Calvin Klein, Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger, McDonald’s, Burger King, Rite Aid, Amazon, Starbucks, Whole Foods, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.Sephora, Revolution Beauty and Target are among those in the cosmetic and personal care sector that have announced phase-outs of PFAS.In December, 3M, perhaps the world’s largest PFAS producer, announced it would discontinue making the chemicals, in part citing “accelerating regulatory trends focused on reducing or eliminating the presence of PFAS”.Companies widely use PFAS despite their myriad risks because they are so effective. The story of outdoor giant REI Co-op is emblematic of industry resistance to phase-outs.In March 2021, a public health campaign began calling out a glaring inconsistency between REI’s virtuous marketing and use of PFAS in waterproof textiles: the company boasted of “responsible production” and advised its customers to “leave no trace” in the wilderness, but sold clothing waterproofed with dangerous PFAS chemicals that the campaign noted left a “toxic trail of pollution”.But that changed in September 2022. California banned PFAS in apparel and textiles, and New York followed soon after. A February REI announcement that it would phase out the chemicals “in part to ensure wide industry alignment with new state laws regarding the use of PFAS” marked a major victory for public health advocates, and a similar story is playing out across the broader marketplace. REI did not respond to a request for comment.Public pressure is also fueling the development. REI faced “immense pressure” from a coalition of more than 100 NGOs and 150,000 co-op members who signed a petition demanding the company eliminate PFAS in the 18 months ahead of the California apparel ban, said Mike Schade, who spearheaded the effort with Toxic-Free Future’s Mind the Store program. Even as REI held out, other companies that Mind the Store approached, like Wendy’s and McDonald’s, committed to eliminating PFAS.The interplay among the campaigns, companies committing to eliminating the chemicals and state laws creates a potent “synergy” and sends pressure in both directions, Schade said.“If we get more companies to act, that builds more political support for action at the state level to regulate and restrict harmful chemicals like PFAS,” Schade added. “At the same time, more states acting will create more pressure on businesses to take action ahead of state policies.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCalifornia state assembly member Phil Ting’s bills to ban the chemicals’ use in food packaging and apparel drew surprisingly little resistance from industry, he said, which he ascribed to market momentum. Though most companies, like REI, were still using the chemicals, some major names like Levi’s, Whole Foods and McDonald’s had already announced phase-outs, the latter two amid pressure from Toxic-Free Future.“It didn’t seem like government was leading, it seemed like government was supporting what had already started happening in the private sector, and that made it much more palatable for my colleagues,” Ting said.Removing the chemicals and identifying, testing and developing safe alternatives for market production is a slow and difficult process that can take years. Before its March announcement, REI had said the “performance that customers expected” could not be matched by alternatives. Still, other companies managed to phase out the chemicals. Levi’s eliminated PFAS by 2018, but a spokesperson said the “challenge is significant considering that there are currently no equally effective alternatives to” PFAS.Moreover, the supply chain is riddled with PFAS entry points as the chemicals are sometimes intentionally or accidentally added to materials upstream. PFAS are also used as lubricants that prevent machines from sticking to materials during the manufacturing process, and previous testing by the Guardian of consumer products highlighted how that can leave low levels of the chemicals on consumer goods.That can mean that even manufacturers with good intentions may not know their products are contaminated with PFAS, said Christina Ross, a senior scientist with Credo Beauty, a “clean beauty” company. Credo has never intentionally added PFAS to its products and works with suppliers throughout the supply chain to try to avoid adding the chemicals unintentionally. It has found that while some suppliers care about the issue, others do not.“We try to honor those suppliers who do by giving them our money,” Ross said.But that is ultimately an inefficient and unreliable way for entire sectors to eliminate the chemicals, and Ross said it underscores the need for legislative bans. “In order to remove PFAS from any consumer products we have to stop the chemicals from being made in the first place,” she said.That’s unlikely anytime soon at the federal level, where only two out of 50 stand-alone PFAS bills were approved last session, and sources say hyper-partisanship makes passing laws unlikely. States and the US House are passing the measures with bipartisan support, though the laws are largely enacted in Democratic-controlled states.Observers offer two theories on why. The PFAS issue knows no socioeconomic or political boundaries – PFAS contamination is a problem for everyone, Doll noted, and it has hit constituents whom Republicans traditionally support, like farmers and firefighters.Others say Republicans in most Democratic-controlled states don’t have a shot at stopping the bills, so they vote for the measure instead of angering constituents for no political gain.Toxic-Free Future’s Hitchcock said she sells legislators on both sides of the aisle on PFAS legislation by pointing out that banning the chemicals makes sense financially. “We’re paying so much to clean up the mess, why not invest in not making the mess in the first place?” she said.That thinking is partly behind the momentum in the states, but she added: “We can’t depend on just that – we need the federal government and Congress to act.”
      This article was amended on 3 May 2023 to clarify that Credo has already removed unintentionally added chemicals from its products. More

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      Danger and deja vu: what 2011 can tell us about the US debt ceiling crisis

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      Angry at the size of the government debt, House Republicans have passed a bill that ties spending cuts to any lifting of the US’s debt limit. A tense fight is escalating, with Democrats refusing to budge and hard-line Republicans digging in. Without a solution, economists and others warn, the US could be plunged into an “economic catastrophe”.You can be forgiven a sense of déja vu. This has all happened before. Only this time, it could be worse.The federal government has a legal maximum on how much debt it can accumulate –often called the debt ceiling or the debt limit. Congress has to vote to raise that limit and has done 78 times since 1960 – often without fuss. But in recent years, the debt negotiations have become Washington’s most heated – and potentially dangerous – debate.This year’s fight looks like the most high-risk one since 2011, when Republicans used the debt limit debate as a bargaining chip for spending cuts. It was a fight to the bitter end. One former congressman told the New York Times that the battle drew “parallels and distinctions with other tumultuous times such as the civil war”.With stock markets reeling and 72 hours left before the US would have defaulted on its debts, a disaster that threatened to wreak havoc on the economy, Republicans and Democrats finally agreed on a bill that raised the debt ceiling by $900bn and cut spending by nearly the same amount.For Republicans, particularly the new rightwing Tea Party members who refused to budge even as default loomed, it was a political win.Politics are once again deeply embedded in this year’s debt ceiling debate and many see a mirroring of the debt ceiling crisis of 2011.The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is caught between his party’s moderate and far-right factions. Though McCarthy rallied his party behind a House bill, Democrats are so far refusing to negotiate.The US treasury is already running on fumes. In January, the treasury started using “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting on US debts while the debate over raising the limit started. Some estimate that the US government’s default date – the so-called “X date” when the government officially runs out of funds to pay its bills — will arrive in late July, giving the GOP and Democrats less than three months to find a solution.The US has never defaulted on its debt. Failure to find a solution would send stock markets reeling, recipients of federal benefits might not get their monthly checks, parts of government would grind to a halt and “long-term damage” would be inflicted on the US economy, according to the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell.Fights over the US debt ceiling are common and usually resolved after a session of bloviating. Wall Street has so far ignored this scrap, betting on a repeat. But, as in 2011, all that could change as the X date approaches. This time the Tea Party Republicans have been replaced by even more hardline politicians – the Freedom Caucus – who begrudgingly signed on to McCarthy’s plan but have sworn to hold out for cost cuts no matter the price.“What will damage the economy is what we’ve seen the last two years: record spending, record inflation, record debt. We already know that’s damaging the economy,” Representative Jim Jordan, a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, told Reuters.David Kamin, a New York University law professor who served as an economic adviser to the Obama and Biden administrations, including during the 2011 crisis, said: “Congress has negotiated [the debt ceiling] over the many decades that it’s been in its current form. But what is different about this episode, and the episode in 2011, is the very credible threat from the Republican side to not raise the debt limit, to demand a large set of policy in exchange for a vote.” He added: “That then sets up a dangerous negotiation where what’s at stake is severe repercussions for the economy.”A default would be catastrophic for the US and global economy, creating instability in financial markets and interrupting government services. But, as the 2011 crisis showed, even getting close to default comes with a price. Markets plummeted and the ratings agency S&P downgraded the US’s credit rating for the first time in history, making it more expensive for the country to borrow money. The cost to borrow went up $1.3bn the next year and continued to be more expensive years later, essentially offsetting some of the negotiation’s cost-cutting measures.To some economists, that was just the short-term impact. The spending cuts ushered in years of budget tightening whose impacts were felt for years.“We were still in a pretty depressed economy and in recovery from the great recession when those cuts were instituted. They just made the recovery last far longer than it should have,” said Josh Bivens, chief economist for the Economic Policy Institute, a leftwing thinktank. “Over the next six or seven years, really valuable public goods and services were not delivered because they were cut so sharply.”Government spending tends to rise after recessions but per-capita federal spending fell after the debt crisis. Bivens argues that if government spending had continued at its normal levels, the unemployment rate would have returned to its pre-recession level five or six years before 2017, when the job market finally recovered its losses.This time around the Republican bill, called the “Limit, Save and Grow Act”, would increase the debt ceiling by $1.5tn in exchange for $1.47tn in cuts during the next fiscal year and a 1% spending increase cap thereafter. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would cut federal spending by $4.8tn over the next 10 years.The bill would mean cuts to things like defense, education and social services over time, though Republicans have outlined few specific cuts in the bill. House Republicans are proposing scrapping Joe Biden’s student relief program, making more stringent work requirements for government benefits, namely Medicaid, and rolling back several Inflation Reduction Act investments, particularly clean energy tax credits.The IRS would lose $71bn in funding under the new bill, a move that would lead to more lenient tax collection and ultimately cost the federal government $120bn over the next decade. Republicans have been targeting the IRS for budget cuts for over a decade, weakening the agency’s tax enforcement over corporations and the wealthy and allowing $18bn in lost government revenue, ProPublica estimated in 2018.While Republicans are using old tricks from 2011, Democrats appear to have learned some lessons from the Obama-era spat. After 2011, the Obama administration refused to negotiate over the debt ceiling. Biden and other Democratic leaders have continued the practice: the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, called the Republican bill “dead on arrival” when it got to the Senate.“President Biden will never force middle class and working families to bear the burden of tax cuts for the wealthiest, as this bill does,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement Wednesday. “Congressional Republicans must act immediately and without conditions to avoid default and ensure that the full faith and credit of the United States is not put at risk.”The question now is: what are the political costs for the Democrats and Republicans? As the crisis deepens, how long will they hold and who will fold?Despite Republicans preaching fiscal discipline, US debt actually rose by $7.8tn under the Trump administration. Spending cuts would also likely target GOP-friendly expenditures. The party has already had to make a tough compromise over ethanol tax credits, which were ultimately left untouched at the behest of “Corn Belt” Republican lawmakers. And McCarthy still lost four Republican votes, the most he can afford to lose with the Republicans’ slim House majority. He has little room to compromise even if he can get Biden to negotiate.Matt Gaetz, a Republican representative from Florida and another Freedom Caucus member, voted against McCarthy’s bill and said in a statement that it would “increase America’s debt by $16tn over the next ten years”.“Gaslighting nearly $50tn in debt to America is something my conscious [sic] cannot abide at this time,” Gaetz said.Kamin pointed out that Republicans only focus on the debt ceiling as a leverage point when there is a Democratic president – the debt ceiling was raised three times during Trump’s presidency – showing that their objective is less about actually reducing the deficit than it is about playing politics.“The Republican party – at least elements of the Republican party – have organized themselves using this as a litmus test for adherence to their beliefs and are really focused on it as a central element of their agenda,” Kamin said. But the fight is “not fundamentally about deficits and debt”, he said. It is a fight about politics.As in 2011, the two sides are locked in a game of chicken and waiting for the opposition to cave. If neither side blinks, the impact on the economy will be felt for years to come. More