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      Robert F Kennedy Jr says he has ‘conversations with dead people’

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, told an interviewer he had “conversations with dead people” every day.Kennedy’s uncle, John F Kennedy, the 35th US president, was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. His father, Robert F Kennedy, the US attorney general and New York senator, was killed in Los Angeles five years later.In an interview with the Free Press, Kennedy was asked how he thought his father and uncle would tackle challenges facing America today.“I do meditations every day,” Kennedy said. “That’s kind of the nature of my meditations. I have a lot of conversations with dead people.”“In a follow-up text,” the Free Press said, Kennedy clarified: “They are one-way prayers for strength and wisdom. I get no strategic advice from the dead.”The Free Press said its interviewer was greeted at Kennedy’s Los Angeles home by a guard “with an earpiece and a nondisclosure agreement”. After the interviewer refused to sign the document, Kennedy “came out, shrugged, and led me inside”.Describing Kennedy’s gilded but tragic family story, the Free Press noted that he thinks his father was probably killed by the CIA, and his uncle definitely.The site also detailed Kennedy’s transformation from environmental campaigner to vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, a process accelerated by the Covid pandemic.Kennedy’s sister, the human rights campaigner Kerry Kennedy, has said: “I love Bobby. I think he’s just completely wrong on [Covid vaccines] and very dangerous.”Last year, Kennedy went so far as to compare the US under lockdown to Germany under the Nazis, telling a rally in Washington: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”Those remarks earned a rebuke from the Auschwitz Memorial, which accused Kennedy of “exploiting the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured and murdered … including children like Anne Frank”.Kennedy apologised. His wife, Cheryl Hines, publicly disowned his remarks but now supports his White House run.Kennedy, 69, is one of two quixotic Democratic challengers to Biden, 80, who is widely expected to be nominated to seek a second White House term.The other, the self-help author Marianne Williamson, 70, has been hit by claims of bullying and reports of campaign resignations.Kennedy told the Free Press he was running in part to reclaim a party he said had become “a war party … the party of the neocons. It’s become the party of Wall Street and the party of censorship, which, I think [is] antithetical to liberal values”.Saying “I’ve always liked Joe Biden”, he said the president was “a function of a system that a growing majority of Americans don’t trust”.Of his populist positioning, Kennedy said: “There are people who are angry, and they deserve to be angry, and either Trump is going to sign them up, Donald Trump, for a ride into the darkness, or we can try to capture that energy and turn it into something positive for our country, something that is reflective of the highest ideals of the American experience.”Quoting a great Democratic president, Franklin D Roosevelt, Kennedy added: “We’re supposed to be the party that tells people that the only thing to fear is fear itself.”In a recent CNN poll of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, Kennedy received 20% support. More

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      ‘It looked like Chauvin would get away with it’: Minnesota’s top attorney on how he won justice for George Floyd’s family

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      When he recalls seeing Derek Chauvin in court for the first time, Keith Ellison references “the banality of evil”, a phrase coined by writer and philosopher Hannah Arendt when covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust.“The point of the whole book is that Nazis were not these big, scary people that your imagination conjures,” Ellison, Minnesota’s top law enforcement official, says in a phone interview. “They’re ordinary, they’re plain, they’re very regular and they’re a lot less than you assume they would be and that’s how I felt about Derek Chauvin. He looked like a relatively small man – I bet he didn’t weigh 140lb. Here’s this guy who acted so monstrously: it’s just a man, not a very big one.”Chauvin, a white former police officer, was found guilty of murdering George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man in Minneapolis, after kneeling on his neck for nine minutes. He was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison and has appealed his conviction.The prosecution was directed by Ellison, who led every meeting, assigned duties to the team and sat in court every day scribbling observations in old notebooks from his 12-year spell in the House of Representatives (he was the first Muslim elected to Congress). When those were full, a friend at a law firm gave him more.The notes were invaluable to prosecutors as the trial unfolded and served as raw material for Ellison’s recently published book, Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence, which offers a blow-by-blow account of the case and spotlights a culture in which the training manual often receives lip service and complaints about “bad cops” are too easily ignored. It asks what role prosecutors, defendants, heads of police unions, judges, activists, legislators, politicians and media figures can play in reforming a criminal justice system that fails people of color.The book begins on the day three years ago last week when Ellison, attorney general of Minnesota, was woken by his phone at 4.45am by an urgent message. He watched a mobile phone video that showed Floyd, trapped under Chauvin’s knee, shouting “Mamma! Mamma! I’m through!” and, repeatedly, “I can’t breathe!” Ellison could not believe how long the torment continued.The 59-year-old recalls: “Even though I have been working on police accountability and brutality issues for years, I was still shocked. I was still blown away by the inhumanity of what I saw.”The side of every police car in Minneapolis displays the words: “To protect with courage, to serve with compassion.” The first statement from the city police department about Floyd was entitled “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction” and made no mention of officers restraining him on the ground with a knee on his neck.The state attorney general comments: “I did not expect to see basically a whitewashing of what happened to George Floyd. It said he died of a medical emergency – sounds like a heart attack or a stroke. It does not sound like positional asphyxia with a knee on the neck and so I found that dumbfounding as well.”With America already traumatised by the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump’s divisive presidency in the summer of 2020, the killing ignited protests against police brutality and racial injustice. Ellison had expected the conscience of Minneapolis to be shocked but was not prepared for the demonstrations that took hold everywhere from Bogotá to Lisbon.“In cities all over the world you saw an outrage. When I thought about it, I understood it because nowhere in the world do people tolerate arbitrary government force. They always protest it no matter what.”America began a racial reckoning but, Ellison notes, around the world the issue transcended race. “In America everything is racialised but it’s not racialised in every country in which people were shot. There were protests in Lagos – everybody is Black in Lagos. People still recognised government abuse of power and state-sponsored violence and they protested it.”Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, tapped Ellison, who had spent 16 years as a criminal defence lawyer but served less than two as attorney general, to lead the prosecution when the Chauvin case came to trial. Ellison accepted but, even with video evidence and witnesses, did not take the outcome for granted.A murder conviction of a police officer for an on-duty death is uncommon. The officers accused of beating Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991 were acquitted, while Breonna Taylor, Mike Brown and Eric Garner’s cases never made it past the grand jury. “History was on Derek Chauvin’s side,” Ellison says. “It looked a lot more like Chauvin would get away with it than not.”The makeup of the jury was a key concern. “We grow up on TV shows like Dragnet or Hill Street Blues or Law and Order. We all are raised on a certain amount of media that reinforces this idea that you should trust the police.“And yet here on this video we see officers who don’t deserve to be trusted, don’t deserve to be believed, and so part of the job that we had assigned to us is to help people believe their eyes, trust their instincts, listen to their neighbors. The people who stopped on that street corner were as inclined to believe the police story as anyone but they couldn’t deny it because it was unfolding right in front of them. As we picked the jury, we wanted the jury to identify with that randomly selected group of people who assembled to object to the treatment that George Floyd was receiving.”Ellison succeeded in impaneling the most gender and racially diverse jury of his career. Fellow officers and even a police chief took the witness stand to testify against Chauvin, who did not testify on his own behalf.In April 2021, on the day of the verdict, several hundred people gathered outside the courthouse and 23 million people watched on live television. The jury found Chauvin guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Ellison felt a rush of relief but took no joy at the sight of a man whose life had changed forever.On the faces of the Floyd family he saw “validation” and “vindication”, he recalls. “More than anything else, their brother was treated like human trash and the verdict said, no, he’s a human being worthy of respect like anyone. To them, it was extremely emotional – tears – and then they were surprisingly calm. They’re a very dignified family, very dignified people. They were clearly relieved: they didn’t know what the jury was going to decide.”In November that year, however, Ellison suffered a defeat. The residents of Minneapolis voted on a ballot proposal that would in effect replace the police department with a public safety department putting an emphasis on public health. The attorney general endorsed the measure but more than 56% of people voted against it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEllison explains: “Sadly, after the death of George Floyd, we experienced what you might describe as de-policing and a lot of officers quit and a lot of officers said we’re not going to engage criminal conduct.“Some of the folks who are inclined to commit crimes felt they had a freer hand and we saw crime statistics go up. Because of that, a lot of people were more concerned about their personal safety than they were about police accountability and that is one reason why the measure failed.”A second cause of rising crime, he argues, was a breakdown in trust between police and community. “People who commit crimes know this. They’re like, ‘Look, I know in this neighborhood people don’t call the police, therefore I’m freer to sell dope, carry guns, harm others, extort people.’ It is very important for the sake of public safety to hold police accountable on a consistent ongoing basis because, if you don’t, it will allow crime to thrive and grow, which is nobody’s benefit.”Centrist Democrats took the ballot result as a sign that the phrase “defund the police” had turned politically radioactive and become a gift to Republicans eager to portray them as soft on crime. Former president Barack Obama warned young progressives that it would turn off many voters.But Ellison, a former deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, believes that “defund the police” has been unfairly weaponised by a Republican party that, given its unwillingness to address gun violence, has no credibility on public safety.He points out that police misconduct lawsuits in Minneapolis and elsewhere in recent years have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars – money that could have been spent on hospitals, parks, public transport or schools. “It’s going to compensate victims of police misconduct. What if we just stop the misconduct?”The failure of the ballot measure in Minnesota hinted at a broader loss of momentum after that seemingly revolutionary summer. The Black Lives Matter signs that adorned many front gardens gradually gave way to Ukrainian flags as new causes took hold. Congress failed to reach a bipartisan agreement on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Police shot and killed at least 1,096 people – a record – last year, according to a count by the Washington Post.But Ellison sees a mixed picture. “What I can tell you is that on the local level a lot of good things have happened. You’ve seen legislation passed in the state of Minnesota. The city of Minneapolis has taken a number of measures to try to improve things. We’ve hired some police leaders who are reform-minded. But quite honestly, it has been an uneven progress. The federal government hasn’t really done anything, which is really disappointing.”The ambivalence was highlighted earlier this year when Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died after a traffic stop escalated into a beating by a group of Memphis police officers. The horrific killing reopened old wounds but Memphis police and county officials earned praise for a swift, unequivocal response. Five officers were fired and charged with second-degree murder. They pleaded not guilty.Ellison was impressed. “Quite honestly, I think that if George Floyd had not occurred, maybe we would still be stuck in this very ham-handed, fumbling-along approach, but the way that they did it signaled to the population that this was going to be handled in a proper way and it was going to be meaningful accountability.”Indeed, despite all he has seen of the worst in human nature, Ellison remains optimistic about the future. He reflects: “Look, it’s sad but it’s true: the people who killed George Floyd were a multiracial group. There was one Black officer, one Hmong officer and two white officers. But the people who stood up for George Floyd were a multiracial group too. There was a young white woman who was a firefighter, two young white teenagers, a 61-year-old African American man, a 17-year-old Black girl.“It was a mixed group and, if you look at the protests, they were multiracial. I’m not pessimistic. We can move forward but we’ve got to try to take stock of the lessons that are available to be learned and that’s why I wrote the book, because I want folks to really think about solving this problem.”
      Break the Wheel is published in the US by Twelve More

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      US debt ceiling bill passes House with broad bipartisan support – video

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      The House debated legislation to increase the US debt limit until January 2025, before passing the bill by a vote of 314 to 117. Republican representatives passed the bill overwhelmingly. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, praised Democrats for pushing back against ‘extreme Maga Republicans’ before Kevin McCarthy took to the floor claiming the bill would deliver the ‘largest savings in American history’. The White House tactically avoided pushing back against the line to avoid inflaming the hard right. ‘Tonight, we’re gonna give America hope,’ McCarthy said More

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      Debt ceiling bill: key takeaways from the vote

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      The US House of Representatives passed the much-debated debt ceiling bill on Wednesday evening, moving the country closer to avoiding a potentially catastrophic default. Next up in line is the Senate, the Democrat majority chamber, which would push the bill to Joe Biden’s desk.But the vote on Wednesday revealed the divided lines, not only between Republicans and Democrats, but within the parties. Here are some key takeaways from this vote on the Fiscal Responsibility Act:Kevin McCarthy’s party faced significant internal resistanceMore Democrats (165) than Republicans (149) supported the measure – something the right wing may use as evidence that the bill was a bad deal for their side. Indeed, the Republican opposition to the bill is much louder than that of progressive Democrats, who are concerned about the cuts to benefits programs and the impact on climate.Key Democratic programs and priorities will feel the effectsAn estimated 750,000 could lose food stamp benefits due to the new work requirements, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive thinktank. And in another blow to progressives, the bill gives special treatment to the Mountain Valley pipeline.A quarter of the $80bn of newly allotted funding to refurbish the IRS will also be cut from Biden’s key legislation, the Inflation Reduction ActBut it preserves health plans, Social Security and other programsThe bill will not impact Medicaid benefits, the main government health program for low income Americans, or social security, even though McCarthy tried to keep the debate open on such programs just hours ahead of Wednesday’s vote. Republicans attempted to cut these plans to curb government spending. However the bill will avoid more increases to the bloated US defense budget.And the agreement will fully fund medical care for veterans at the levels included in Biden’s proposed 2024 budget blueprint.Both Biden and McCarthy are counting this as a winWhile critics say the president could have avoided making multiple concessions, the president touted his ability to bring the deal together under heated circumstances, and the bipartisanship he has famously campaigned on.“This budget agreement is a bipartisan compromise,” the president said in a statement reacting to the news. “Neither side got everything it wanted. That’s the responsibility of governing. I want to thank speaker McCarthy and his team for negotiating in good faith, as well as leader Jeffries for his leadership. This agreement is good news for the American people and the American economy.”McCarthy, meanwhile, claimed the bill would herald the “largest savings in American history” during the floor debate, though this is not quite accurate.“I have been thinking about this day before my vote for speaker because I knew the debt ceiling was coming. And I wanted to make history. I wanted to do something no other Congress has done,” McCarthy told reporters after the vote. “Tonight, we all made history.”The Senate is already making moves to move the bill forwardChuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader has already put the debt limit bill on the Senate calendar to start the process on Thursday. There is likely to be some resistance there as well, as progressives such as Bernie Sanders have already signaled their concerns, but the bill is expected to pass. More

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      US House passes bill to raise debt ceiling just days before default

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      The House passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling on Wednesday, clearing a major legislative hurdle with just days left before the US is expected to default.The final House vote was 314 to 117, with 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats supporting the measure. In a potentially worrisome sign for the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, 71 members of his conference opposed the deal that he brokered with President Joe Biden.Taking a victory lap after the bill’s passage, McCarthy downplayed concerns over divisions within the House Republican conference and celebrated the policy concessions he secured in his negotiations with Biden.“I have been thinking about this day before my vote for speaker because I knew the debt ceiling was coming. And I wanted to make history. I wanted to do something no other Congress has done,” McCarthy told reporters after the vote. “Tonight, we all made history.”Biden applauded the House passage of the legislation, calling on the Senate to quickly take up the legislation to avoid a default. The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has warned that the federal government will be unable to pay its bills starting 5 June unless the debt ceiling is raised.“This budget agreement is a bipartisan compromise. Neither side got everything it wanted,” Biden said in a statement. “I have been clear that the only path forward is a bipartisan compromise that can earn the support of both parties. This agreement meets that test.”The debt ceiling bill passed by the House would raise the government’s borrowing limit until January 2025, ensuring the issue will not resurface before the next presidential election. As part of his negotiations with Biden, McCarthy successfully pushed for government spending cuts and changes to the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.However, the concessions that McCarthy won fell far short for members of the freedom caucus, who had pushed for steeper spending cuts and much stricter work requirements for benefits programs. They belittled the debt ceiling compromise as a paltry effort to tackle the nation’s debt, which stands at more than $31tn.Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, chair of the freedom caucus, said on Twitter before the vote, “President Biden is happily sending Americans over yet another fiscal cliff, with far too many swampy Republicans behind the wheel of a ‘deal’ that fails miserably to address the real reason for our debt crisis: SPENDING.”House freedom caucus members staged one last attempt to block the debt ceiling bill from advancing on Wednesday afternoon, when they opposed a procedural motion prior to the final vote. With 29 Republicans voting against the motion, McCarthy had to rely on Democratic assistance to advance the debt ceiling proposal. In the end, 52 Democrats voted for the motion, setting up the final vote and virtually ensuring the bill’s passage.The House Democratic leader, representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, mocked McCarthy’s failure to unify his party, arguing the procedural vote proved the speaker has “lost control of the floor”.“It’s an extraordinary act that indicates just the nature of the extremism that is out of control on the other side of the aisle,” Jeffries said during the floor debate before the final vote. “Extreme Maga Republicans attempted to take control of the House floor. Democrats took it back for the American people.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite his sharp criticism of McCarthy and his Republican colleagues, Jeffries and the majority of the House Democratic caucus supported the debt ceiling bill. Although they lamented the spending cuts included in the bill, those Democrats argued the crucial importance of avoiding a default outweighed their personal concerns about the legislation.“Our constitution makes perfectly clear the validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned,” said California representative Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker. “While I find this legislation objectionable, it will avert an unprecedented default, which would bring devastation to America’s families.”But dozens of progressive lawmakers opposed the bill, attacking the spending cuts and new work requirements procured by McCarthy as an affront to the voters who elected them.“Republicans never cared about reducing the deficit, only about forcing through their anti-working family policy priorities under the threat of a catastrophic default,” said Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “The deal they passed tonight proves that point, and I could not be part of their extortion scheme.”Progressives in the Senate, including Senator Bernie Sanders, have echoed that criticism and indicated they plan to oppose the debt ceiling proposal, but the bill still appears likely to become law. The Senate Democratic majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, has pledged to act swiftly to take up the bill once it has passed the House. The Senate Republican minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has already indicated he plans to support the proposal as well.“Any needless delay, any last-minute brinksmanship at this point would be an unacceptable risk,” Schumer said in a floor speech Wednesday morning. “Moving quickly, working together to avoid default is the responsible and necessary thing to do.” More

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she will vote against US debt ceiling deal

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      The New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she would vote against the debt limit deal on Wednesday night, as the 5 June deadline looms.On Tuesday, the Hill said the office of one of the most high-profile progressives in the US House confirmed she would not support the controversial agreement to raise the debt ceiling, which was agreed by Republicans under the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and the Biden White House.Ocasio-Cortez, widely known as AOC, had previously signaled that she would not support the deal.“My red line has already been surpassed,” Ocasio-Cortez said last week. “I mean, where do we start? [No] clean debt ceiling. Work requirements. Cuts to programs. I would never – I would never – vote for that.”Several far-right Republicans have also opposed the deal, saying it does not go far enough to cut spending.Support from Democrats will probably be needed for the bill to pass the House on Wednesday night. But progressive support is split, as some lawmakers raise concerns about work requirements added to welfare programs.“Some number of progressives, including myself, lean no,” Greg Casar, the Progressive caucus whip and a Democrat from Texas, told Axios.The progressive caucus chair, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, said on a Tuesday press call the bill contained measures progressives were “seriously concerned about”.“There will be real harmful impacts for poor people and working people,” Jayapal said, noting that several members had “serious concerns about the environmental justice implications of this bill”.Other progressives emphasized the need to avoid a default.“You have to deal with reality in politics,” the Tennessee representative Steve Cohen, a progressive caucus member, told Axios, adding that concerns about the bill’s contents are “totally secondary to keeping the world’s economy … on track”.The compromise announced on Sunday would suspend debt-limit negotiations through 1 January 2025 and raise the US debt limit from $31.4tn.The deal includes changes to federal assistance programs, including new work requirements for food stamps access. Unspent Covid-19 aid will be returned to the government.Several Democrats have criticized Biden for negotiating with Republicans under threat of a default. More

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      US debt ceiling: Republican hard-right vows to ‘do everything in our power’ to oppose bill

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      Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have attacked the proposed spending cuts in the debt ceiling bill as woefully inadequate, and vowed to oppose the legislation when it hits the floor.“We had the time to act, and this deal fails – fails completely,” Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, chair of the Freedom Caucus, said on Tuesday. “We will do everything in our power to stop it and end it now.”The House is expected to hold a final vote on the bill on Wednesday, while other members of the Freedom Caucus continue to denounce the compromise brokered by the Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and President Joe Biden over the weekend.The compromise bill, formally named the Fiscal Responsibility Act, would suspend the debt ceiling until 2025, allowing the US to avoid a default that could reap devastating consequences on the American economy. The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has warned that the federal government will be unable to pay its bills starting on 5 June unless Congress takes action.In addition to the debt ceiling suspension, the bill includes government spending cuts and expanded work requirements demanded by McCarthy.“There has been a lot of hard work and a lot of late nights that have gone into changing the spending trajectory in this town,” Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday night. “For once in a long, long time, Washington is actually going to spend less money next year than it is this year, and that’s a reform that all of us can support.”Republicans on the House rules committee voted late on Tuesday to advance the bill, clearing the way for a final vote on Wednesday.During that hearing, two Freedom Caucus members who sit on the panel, Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, attempted to block the legislation from advancing, but they were outnumbered by their colleagues. The final vote in the rules committee was 7-6 to advance the bill, with four Democrats joining Roy and Norman in opposing the measure.“The Republican conference right now has been torn asunder,” Roy said ahead of the hearing. “Not one Republican should vote for this deal. It is a bad deal.”But the Republican chair of the rules committee, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, defended the bill as the party’s best possible option with Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate.“Today’s bill is a product of compromise that reflects the realities of a divided government,” Cole said at the hearing. “In a true negotiation, you always get less than you want and give up more than you’d like.”Despite reassurances from McCarthy and his allies, it remains unclear how many House Republicans will support the proposal. In addition to the Freedom Caucus, some of the more centrist members of the House Republican conference like representatives Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Wesley Hunt of Texas said they would vote against the bill.Dan Bishop of North Carolina, a member of the Freedom Caucus, predicted that most of the House Republican conference would oppose the legislation, forcing McCarthy to rely on Democrats to pass the bill.“This is a career-defining vote for every Republican,” Bishop said Tuesday. “This bill, if it passes, must pass with less than half of the Republican conference.”The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, underscored the reality that Republicans must provide most of the 218 votes needed to get the bill approved.“This is an agreement that, at their insistence, they negotiated with the administration,” Jeffries said. “It’s our full and complete expectation that they are going to produce at least 150 votes.”Some House Democrats also appeared conflicted over the compromise measure on Tuesday, bemoaning the proposed spending cuts while emphasizing the crucial need to increase the government’s borrowing limit before 5 June.“There are some pros to the bill. The chief one is that it raises the debt limit to 2025 and ensures that we avoid a Republican-led catastrophic default,” Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Tuesday.“I don’t want to minimize the challenges with the bill. There will be real harmful impacts for poor people and working people,” she added.Jayapal said her team was in the process of conducting a whip count to assess where progressive members stand on the debt ceiling bill, but it appears certain that the legislation will win bipartisan support in the House, as the center-left New Democrat Coalition has endorsed the proposal.If the bill passes the House, it will move on to the Senate, where lawmakers will have only a few days to approve the proposal before the 5 June default deadline. Even if McCarthy’s compromise can become law, the speaker’s troubles may be just beginning.Members of the Freedom Caucus, some of whom initially resisted McCarthy’s speakership bid in January, toyed with the idea of ousting him depending on the outcome of Wednesday’s vote.Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida told Newsmax on Tuesday, “If a majority of Republicans are against a piece of legislation, and you use Democrats to pass it, that would immediately be a black-letter violation of the deal we had with McCarthy to allow his ascent to the speakership, and it would likely trigger an immediate motion to vacate.” More

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      US debt ceiling deal: House rules committee debates bill amid criticism on both sides – as it happened

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      From 3h agoThe House rules committee has started debating the debt ceiling bill, a compromise between Biden and McCarthy that has garnered growing opposition from Republican lawmakers.The stream of the debate is available at the top of the liveblog.Democrats and Republicans contended with the debt ceiling deal reached over the long weekend. Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy insisted the deal would be “easy” for his party to support, while right-wing members blasted it.House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said his party is “committed to making sure we do our part in avoiding default”.Points of contention included expanded work requirements for long-term recipients of food stamp benefits. Republicans said that the new work requirements would save money, and help get poor Americans back on their feet – despite studies indicating otherwise (work requirements don’t increase work or earnings). Still, the White House said provisions in the deal that access to Snap for veterans and unhoused Americans would offset work requirement expansions.Here’s more information about the deal and next steps:Shalanda Young, Biden’s top negotiator on this debt deal, told reporters that the expanded access to food stamps for the unhoused and veterans could “offset” the number who might lose coverage due to new qualifications that the Republicans pushed for.Food stamps have been a big point of division between Democrats and Republicans, and the new work requirements to receive Snap benefits is a point of contention for many on the left. Ultimately, if it would save the federal government any money – as Republicans claim it would.Under the deal, so-called able-bodied adults who are 54 and younger and do not have children must work or participate in work training programs to get access to food stamps for an extended period. The current work requirements apply to those age 49 and under, and anti-poverty advocates said the changes could disproportionately impact poor, older Americans.The White House, however, estimates that since many food stamp recipients are unhoused, veterans, or both – expanded access for those groups could ultimately mean that the number of people who are exempt from work requirements will be relatively unchanged.California representative Joe Neguse got into into a disagreement with Missouri representative Jason Smith about whether the Biden administration submitted the budget late, despite Republicans not submitting a budget at all.“Only in the rules committee could the witness lay blame at the president for being a few weeks late in submitting his budget, when his party hasn’t submitted a budget, period,” said Neguse.Neguse added that Republicans submitted a bill, but not a budget.Before the disagreement, Neguse doubled down on previous comments that the current debt ceiling crisis is Republican’s fault.“This is a manufactured crisis. No question about it. House Republicans are in control. You have the gavels. You’re in the majority. And the fact that we’re a mere few days from potential default because the majority decided to engage in this hostage taking … I think is a dangerous harbinger for how this body may function into the future.”Schumer has said that he will bring the debt ceiling agreement to the floor “as quickly as possible” to get votes before the default deadline of 5 June.From CBS News’ Natalie Brand:More Democrats are saying the bipartisan debt agreement is a win as several assistance programs were not cut in the compromise.“There are, however, things to celebrate in this bill because of what is not in it. The sort of damage that we saw from the Republican partisan bill that passed here just a month ago,” said Pennsylvania representative Brendan Francis Boyle, who noted that programs such as veterans healthcare were not affected by the latest agreement.Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell signaled his support for the debt ceiling agreement, in comments made Tuesday.“The speaker’s deal secures reductions in discretionary spending,” said McConnell. “Speaker McCarthy & House Republicans deserve our thanks,” McConnell added.From Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio:Representative Jason Smith of Missouri criticized the Biden administration for taking too long to negotiate the debt ceiling bill.“The American people didn’t have to wait those 100 days [Biden] chose to sit on the sidelines. But we have an agreement now and an opportunity to deliver some big wins for the American people,” said Smith, referring to the stalemate over the bill that took place across several months.Meanwhile the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said he supports the bipartisan debt ceiling agreement, despite opposition on both sides.From Politico’s Burgess Everett:McGovern also called out Republicans attacking benefits, such as food assistance, as a part of the debt ceiling agreement.“These adjustments will make poorer, older Americans hungrier. Full stop.”Republicans included work requirements for adults receiving food-assistance benefits, requiring adults under the age of 54 to work at least 20 hours a week to qualify.Ranking member Jim McGovern is currently speaking on the debt limit agreement, calling out Republicans for not negotiating on the agreement months ago.“Frankly we should not be here. We should’ve taken care of this months ago,” said McGovern.“This represents an all-time high in recklessness and stupidity.”The House rules committee has started debating the debt ceiling bill, a compromise between Biden and McCarthy that has garnered growing opposition from Republican lawmakers.The stream of the debate is available at the top of the liveblog.Utah representative Chris Stewart will resign from the House due to his wife’s health issues, according to sources familiar with the matter.The Salt Lake Tribune first reported that Stewart will probably step down from office as early as this week, shrinking the Republican majority in the House.The Tribune did not confirm what health issues Stewart’s wife is dealing with.Stewart was first elected in 2012 and is serving his sixth term in the House. Many believed Stewart would leave his House seat to unseat Mitt Romney as US senator for Utah, the Tribune reported.Stewart’s departure will kick off a special election in the House, organized by the Utah governor’s office.Here’s an exclusive from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, as Trump’s lawyer says that he was steered away from searching Trump’s office for secret records, where the FBI later found the most sensitive materials.
      Donald Trump’s lawyer tasked with searching for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after the justice department issued a subpoena told associates that he was waved off from searching the former president’s office, where the FBI later found the most sensitive materials anywhere on the property.
      The lawyer, Evan Corcoran, recounted that several Trump aides had told him to search the storage room because that was where all the materials that had been brought from the White House at the end of Trump’s presidency ended up being deposited.
      Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room. He then asked whether he should search anywhere else, like Trump’s office, but was steered away, he told associates. Corcoran never searched the office and told prosecutors the 38 papers were the extent of the material at Mar-a-Lago.
      The assertion that there were no classified documents elsewhere at the property proved to be wrong when the FBI seized 101 classified documents months afterwards, including from the office, which was found to be where the most highly classified documents had been located.
      Read the full article here.Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has been diagnosed with dementia, the the Carter Center announced Tuesday.The non-profit founded by the Carters released a statement on Carter’s condition.The center said that the 95-year old continues to live at home with her husband, former president Jimmy Carter, and receive visits from loved ones.The statement also noted Carter’s role as a mental health advocate and work to decrease mental health stigma, adding that releasing the statement was to help increase conversations around dementia.“We recognize, as she did more than half a century ago, that stigma is often a barrier that keeps individuals and their families from seeking and getting much-needed support. We hope sharing our family’s news will increase important conversations at kitchen tables and in doctor’s offices around the country,” read the statement.A majority of Republican voters think Donald Trump would be their strongest nominee for president next year, according to a new poll.According to the survey, from Monmouth University in New Jersey, 45% of Republicans (including Republican-leaning voters) think Trump is definitely the strongest candidate the party can hope to field against Joe Biden. Another 18% of such voters think Trump is probably the strongest possible GOP nominee.This, remember, is a former president who has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts over a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels; who was found liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, and fined $5m; who faces further problems in a related case after continuing to criticise Carroll; who faces a New York state civil suit over his business affairs; who faces indictment in state and federal investigations of his election subversion, including inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress; and also faces indictment over his retention of classified materials.He’s also the former president who, according to the Washington Post, made 30,573 false or misleading statements in his four years in office. That too.In the Monmouth poll, 13% of Republicans thought another candidate would definitely be the strongest nominee and 19% said another would probably be strongest.More bad news, you’d think, for Ron DeSantis: the hard-right Florida governor who remains Trump’s closest challenger … if around 30 points behind in most polling averages and after a campaign rollout featuring its fair share of hiccups.DeSantis, however, is feeling bullish. Here’s what he told Fox News he plans to do after winning the nomination and a general election against Biden. Clue – he doesn’t plan to start small:And in more news from Texas – though unrelated – Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder who was found guilty of defrauding investors, has begun her 11-year prison sentence.It marks the end of the blood-testing firm’s fraud saga after the 39-year-old had tried and failed to delay her prison sentence.Here’s a video of Holmes arriving at the prison in Bryan, Texas:And you can read the full report here:Away from the debt ceiling for a moment, it has emerged that the wife of the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, has a vote in the impeachment proceedings against him.The AP reports that state senator Angela Paxton could be voting on whether to restore her suspended spouse to office or banish him permanently.It is a conflict of interest that would not be allowed in a criminal trial and one that raises an ethical cloud over the senate proceeding.One legal expert says it will be up to Angela Paxton’s “moral compass” to decide if she will recuse herself. The impeachment charges against Ken Paxton include bribery related to his extramarital affair with an aide to a state senator.Here’s an explainer from Mary Yang on how the debt ceiling compromise could get passed.
      What are its chances of getting through?
      While lawmakers have expressed confidence that the bill would successfully get past Congress, some hardline Republicans have signaled they will not sign the deal.
      Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the Rules committee, has urged fellow lawmakers to vote no on the deal.
      “This is not a deal that we should be taking,” Roy told Fox News’ Glenn Beck on Tuesday.
      What’s in the deal?
      If passed, the deal would suspend the US debt limit through 1 January 2025, well past the next US presidential election, which is in November 2024. But suspending the debt limit is a temporary measure, and the US would need to bring down the national debt or raise the ceiling by the new deadline.
      The deal would keep non-defense spending roughly the same for fiscal year 2024 and raise it by 1% in fiscal year 2025.
      The bill would also place new restrictions on SNAP benefits, limiting the number of individuals eligible for food stamps. Unspent emergency aid related to the Covid-19 pandemic, totaling about $30bn, will also be returned to the government.
      Read the full explainer here.An increasing number of Freedom Caucus members speaking during Tuesday’s press conference are telling their Republican colleagues to reject the debt ceiling compromise. More