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      Joe Biden vows ‘there will be no default’ after latest round of debt ceiling talks with Republicans – as it happened

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      From 3h agoJoe Biden said he has had “several productive conversations” with Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy, and despite outstanding differences over raising the debt ceiling, “there will be no default”.“The only way to move forward is with a bipartisan agreement, and I believe we’ll come to an agreement that allows us to move forward and that protects the hardworking Americans in this country,” the president said at the White House during an event to introduce Charles Q Brown Jr, his nominee for chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.He spoke positively of his negotiations with McCarthy, and said, “our staffs continue to meet, as we speak as a matter of fact, and they’re making progress. I made clear, time and again, that defaulting on our national debt is not an option … congressional leaders understand that and they’ve all agreed there will be no default.”He then went on to criticize the GOP’s negotiating platform, saying “speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order. I don’t believe the whole burden should fall on the backs of the middle-class and working-class Americans, my House Republican friends disagree.”After weeks of uncertainty and tension, reports indicate that Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is nearing a deal with Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for cutting some government spending. But both the GOP-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate have to approve whatever compromise emerges in order to prevent a US government default that could happen as soon 1 June. At the Treasury, they’re not taking any chances – the Wall Street Journal reports that officials have dusted off a plan in case the limit is not lifted in time.Here’s what else happened today:
      Ron DeSantis is trying to make the most of yesterday’s campaign announcement on Twitter, which was marred by the site’s prevalent technical glitches.
      The supreme court’s conservatives weakened environmental protections concerning waterways in a case brought over a couple’s attempt to build a lakeside house in Idaho.
      Donald Trump had classified materials lying around at Mar-a-Lago and sometimes showed them to people, the Washington Post reported.
      Centrist Democrats are annoyed that McCarthy has allowed House lawmakers to head home for the Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt standoff first.
      Kamala Harris paid tribute to rock’n’roll star Tina Turner, who died yesterday, aged 83.
      Earlier today, most of the supreme court’s conservative justices banded together to weaken environmental protections on America’s waterways in a case stemming from a couple’s attempt to build a lakeside house in Idaho, the Guardian’s Oliver Milman reports:The scope of a landmark law to protect America’s waterways has been shrunk by the US supreme court, which has sided with an Idaho couple who have waged a long-running legal battle to build a house on wetlands near one of the state’s largest lakes.In a ruling passed down on Thursday, the conservative-dominated court decided that the federal government was wrong to use the Clean Water Act, a key 50-year-old piece of legislation to prevent pollution seeping into rivers, streams and lakes, to prevent the couple building over the wetland beside Priest Lake in Idaho.The justice’ decision in effect overhauls the definition of whether wetlands are considered “navigable waters” under the act and are therefore federally protected.Michael Regan, the administrator of the EPA, said he was disappointed by a ruling that “erodes longstanding clean water protections”, adding that the agency would consider its next steps in protecting American waterways.Donald Trump used Twitter to great effect during his 2016 campaign and for most of his presidency.And while he has not tweeted since the platform banned him shortly after the January 6 insurrection in 2021 (even though owner Elon Musk let him back on last year, after he bought the company) Twitter has this afternoon become host to the latest flare-up in the feud between Trump’s surrogates and Ron DeSantis’s allies.The opening volley from Trump’s team:And the retort from top DeSantis aide Christina Pushaw:To which the former president’s people said:And on and on. Follow the tweets if you want more.The Washington Post reports new details of how Donald Trump handled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, including that they were visibly displayed and shown off by the former president to visitors, and that staff moved boxes of papers the day before federal agents searched the property last year.Trump’s possession of government secrets from his time as president that he was not authorized to keep is one of three major issues being investigated by Jack Smith, the justice department’s special counsel. The Post reports that grand jury activity slowed down this month, and Trump’s attorneys have taken steps that indicate a decision over whether to bring charges against the former president could happen soon.Here’s more from the Post’s report:
      Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before FBI agents and a prosecutor visited the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.
      Trump and his aides also allegedly carried out a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers even before his office received the May 2022 subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive ongoing investigation.
      Prosecutors in addition have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others, these people said.
      Taken together, the new details of the classified-documents investigation suggest a greater breadth and specificity to the instances of possible obstruction found by the FBI and Justice Department than has been previously reported. It also broadens the timeline of possible obstruction episodes that investigators are examining — a period stretching from events at Mar-a-Lago before the subpoena to the period after the FBI raid there on Aug. 8.
      That timeline may prove crucial as prosecutors seek to determine Trump’s intent in keeping hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House, a key factor in deciding whether to file charges of obstruction of justice or of mishandling national security secrets. The Washington Post has previously reported that the boxes were moved out of the storage area after Trump’s office received a subpoena. But the precise timing of that activity is a significant element in the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.
      Grand jury activity in the case has slowed in recent weeks, and Trump’s attorneys have taken steps — including outlining his potential defense to members of Congress and seeking a meeting with the attorney general — that suggest they believe a charging decision is getting closer. The grand jury working on the investigation apparently has not met since May 5, after months of frenetic activity at the federal courthouse in Washington. That is the panel’s longest hiatus since December, shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead the probe and coinciding with the year-end holidays.
      Sam Levine has a fascinating report today on the plight of Robert Zeidman, a cyber forensics expert who took up a challenge from the Trump ally and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell…Robert Zeidman was not planning on making the trek to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in August 2021 for a “cyber symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who was pledging to unveil hard data that showed China interfered with the 2020 election.Zeidman, a 63-year-old consultant cyber forensics expert, voted twice for Trump because he did not like the alternative candidates. He thinks there was some fraud in the 2020 election, though not enough to overturn the result. And he believed it was possible Lindell could have discovered evidence voting machines were hacked. He was curious to see Lindell’s evidence, and a bit skeptical, so he thought he would follow along online.But Lindell – one of the most prolific spreaders of election misinformation – was pledging $5m to anyone who could prove the information was not valid data from the 2020 election, and Zeidman’s friends encouraged him to go.Zeidman hopped on a plane from his home in Las Vegas, figuring he would meet a lot of interesting people and witness a historic moment.“I still had my doubts about whether they had the data,” he said in an interview on Monday. “But I thought it would be a question of experts disagreeing or maybe agreeing about what the data meant.“I didn’t think it would be blatantly bogus data, which is what I found.”More:The top US general has issued a stark warning about how a debt default would affect the military, Reuters reports, with chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley saying it would undercut its readiness and capabilities, as well as US national security as a whole.“I think it would be very, very significant without a doubt in that absolutely clear, unambiguous implications on national security,” Milley told a press conference.“I think there’s no doubt whatsoever that there would be a very significant negative impact on the readiness, morale and capabilities of the United States military if we defaulted and didn’t reach a debt ceiling [agreement].”Over at the Capitol, Politico reports that consternation is growing among House Democrats, who want Joe Biden to take a more aggressive stance against the GOP’s demands for spending cuts to raise the debt ceiling:Joe Biden said he has had “several productive conversations” with Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy, and despite outstanding differences over raising the debt ceiling, “there will be no default”.“The only way to move forward is with a bipartisan agreement, and I believe we’ll come to an agreement that allows us to move forward and that protects the hardworking Americans in this country,” the president said at the White House during an event to introduce Charles Q Brown Jr, his nominee for chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.He spoke positively of his negotiations with McCarthy, and said, “our staffs continue to meet, as we speak as a matter of fact, and they’re making progress. I made clear, time and again, that defaulting on our national debt is not an option … congressional leaders understand that and they’ve all agreed there will be no default.”He then went on to criticize the GOP’s negotiating platform, saying “speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order. I don’t believe the whole burden should fall on the backs of the middle-class and working-class Americans, my House Republican friends disagree.”Politico reports from Sioux City, Iowa on how Republican voters in the state that will vote first in the GOP primary next year didn’t think too much about Ron DeSantis’s Twitter Spaces disaster on Wednesday night – if they thought about it at all.The site spoke to attendees at a town hall event hosted by Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who is competing with DeSantis for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked about DeSantis’s glitch-filled launch, Clinton Vos, 63, said: “I knew that it was going to happen today on Twitter but I’m not a Twitter follower.”Curtis Kull, 30, was asked if he’d heard about DeSantis and Elon Musk’s difficulties.“I did not,” he said.Scott Bowman, 65, said he could yet choose to back DeSantis, though he thought the Twitter fumble meant the Florida governor was “going to get a lot of heat, and I just don’t know if DeSantis can hold up to the questions. It’s a fumble by his campaign”.Gwen Sturrock, “a teacher in her 50s”, said she had heard about the Twitter Spaces event “stalling or whatever”.In a perhaps unconscious nod in the direction of Oscar Wilde – who in The Picture of Dorian Gray wrote “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about” – and perhaps giving comfort to any DeSantis aides still seeking plausible spin, Sturrock pointed to one possible upside of the Twitter fiasco.It “might mean that a lot of people were very interested” in the DeSantis campaign, Sturrock said.Here’s some further reading on the DeSantis-Musk mess, from Dan Milmo, our global technology editor:Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy over his role in the January 6 attack on Congress.Prosecutors had sought a 25-year sentence for the first person convicted of seditious conspiracy in relation to the Capitol attack, which was mounted by supporters of Donald Trump in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Lawyers for Rhodes said he should be sentenced to time already served since his arrest in January last year.Here’s more from court in Washington today, from the Associated Press:
      At Thursday’s hearing, in a first for a January 6 case, US district judge Amit Mehta agreed with prosecutors to apply enhanced penalties for ‘terrorism’, under the argument that the Oath Keepers sought to influence the government through ‘intimidation or coercion’.
      Judges in previous sentencings had shot down the justice department request for the so-called “terrorism enhancement” – which can lead to a longer prison term – but Mehta said it fitted Rhodes’ case.
      “Mr Rhodes directed his co-conspirators to come to the Capitol and they abided,” the judge said.
      A defense lawyer, Phillip Linder, denied that Rhodes gave any orders for Oath Keepers to enter the Capitol on January 6. Linder told the judge Rhodes could have had many more Oath Keepers come to the Capitol “if he really wanted” to disrupt Congress’ certification of the electoral college vote.
      Some lighter lunchtime reading, courtesy of House Democrats and after a demand for decorum in the chamber from the far-right Georgia Republican and noted decorum-free controversialist Marjorie Taylor Greene.Of the Wednesday demand, which met with gales of laughter, Jared Huffman, from California, said: “Irony died today on the House Floor, but comedy triumphed as the GOP chose MTG as their keeper of ‘decorum’.”Another Californian, Jimmy Gomez, tried a couple of jokes.Greene calling for decorum, Gomez said, is “like Leonardo DiCaprio telling people to date people their own age” or, in reference to another controversial Republican, “like George Santos telling people not to lie”.Here’s the moment in question:And here’s our story:After weeks of uncertainty and tension, reports indicate that Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is nearing a deal with Joe Biden on raising the debt ceiling in exchange for cutting some government spending. But nothing is done until it is passed, and both the House and Senate have to approve whatever compromise emerges in order to prevent a US government default that could happen as soon 1 June. At the Treasury, they’re not taking any chances – the Wall Street Journal reports that officials have dusted off a plan in case the limit is not lifted in time.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Ron DeSantis is trying to make the most of yesterday’s campaign announcement on Twitter, which was marred by the site’s prevalent technical glitches.
      Centrist Democrats are annoyed that McCarthy has allowed House lawmakers to head home for the Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt standoff first.
      Kamala Harris paid tribute to rock’n’roll star Tina Turner, who died yesterday, aged 83.
      The Treasury is preparing for the possibility that Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling on time, the Wall Street Journal reports.Officials have turned to a plan drawn up in 2011 during a previous debt limit standoff between Democrats and Republicans that resulted in a major credit agency downgrading America’s rating for the first time ever.Twelve years later, the Journal reports that the goal is much the same now as it was then: prevent as much damage to the country’s financial reputation as possible if Washington’s leaders can’t reach an agreement by early June, the approximate deadline when the US will exhaust its cash on hand.Here’s more from their story:
      Under the backup plan created for a debt-limit breach, federal agencies would submit payments to the Treasury no sooner than the day before they are due, the people familiar with the talks said. That would represent a change from the current system, in which agencies may submit payment files well before their due dates. The Treasury processes them on a rolling basis, often ahead of the deadlines. Some payments are already sent to the Treasury one day early, one person said.
      If the Treasury can’t make a full day’s worth of payments, it would likely delay payments until it has enough cash to pay the full day’s worth of bills, the people familiar with the matter said. The plan has been discussed across the government, but the Treasury hasn’t instructed agencies to change how they pay bills.
      The centrist New Democrat Coalition has condemned Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans for adjourning the chamber ahead of the long Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt ceiling standoff.“House Republicans are skipping town –– willing to risk the full faith and credit of the United States and plunge the country into an unprecedented crisis,” read a statement from Annie Kuster, the chair of the House caucus.“As Speaker McCarthy remains beholden to the most extreme elements of his party, New Dems are committed to working with responsible Republicans to advance a solution that will pass the House and Senate. As lawmakers, we have a responsibility to rise above partisanship and act in the best interest of our nation. There is no time to waste.”Reports indicate that Joe Biden and the House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, are nearing an agreement on a bill that would raise the debt ceiling through the 2024 election, which would allow the president to avoid another standoff until after voters go to the polls.That proposal is already receiving pushback on the far right, underscoring that McCarthy will likely need Democratic votes to get any bipartisan bill through the House.“Kevin McCarthy is on the verge of striking a terrible deal to give away the debt limit [through] Biden’s term for little in the way of cuts,” said Russ Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under Donald Trump.“Nothing to crush the bureaucracy. They are lining up Democrats to pass it. The DC cartel is reassembling. Time for higher defcon. #HoldTheLine”Over in the Senate, Republican Mike Lee of Utah has already pledged to “use every procedural tool at my disposal to impede a debt-ceiling deal that doesn’t contain substantial spending and budgetary reforms.” Such a delay in the upper chamber could increase the risk of default. More

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      House Democrats laugh off Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call for ‘decorum’

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      Democrats in the House chamber burst into raucous laughter when Marjorie Taylor Greene called for “decorum”.The far-right Georgia Republican, controversialist and conspiracy theorist was presiding over the House on Wednesday as Steve Scalise, the Republican majority leader, was speaking.Scalise was discussing the debt ceiling standoff between House Republicans and the Biden White House.He said: “We are in fact the only body in this town who has actually taken steps to address the debt ceiling and the spending problem in Washington.”An unseen lawmaker yelled something. From the dais, Greene pounded her gavel and called for order.Scalise asked: “I ask that the House be in order and there be some decorum on the other side.”After a pause, Greene pounded her gavel and said: “The members are reminded to abide by decorum of the House.”The chamber erupted in laughter and catcalls. Greene banged her gavel repeatedly. Eventually, Scalise returned to his remarks.Greene has risen to power in Republican ranks by courting controversy and confrontation. She has voiced antisemitic conspiracy theories, called mass shootings false flag attacks and spoken at events staged by white supremacists.In 2021, citing such behaviour, Democrats stripped Greene of committee assignments. Those assignments were restored after Republicans took the House last year.In Joe Biden’s last two appearances in the House chamber for the State of the Union address, Greene has made headlines by standing to catcall, jeer and boo. Last year she and Lauren Boebert of Colorado heckled the president. This year, Greene shouted that he was a “liar”.Greene has harassed political opponents, including the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and young gun control activists.Just last week, Greene made headlines with an angry confrontation with Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, then claiming being called a white supremacist was as bad as being called the N-word.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBowman accused Greene of an “utter and blatant lie” in the “long tradition … of Black men who are passionate, outspoken, or who stand their ground, being characterised as ‘threatening’ or ‘intimidating’”.Greene did not immediately comment on the laughter in the House chamber on Wednesday. Many Democrats did.Jared Huffman, from California, said: “Irony died today on the House Floor, but comedy triumphed as the GOP chose MTG as their keeper of ‘decorum’.”Another Californian, Jimmy Gomez, tried a couple of jokes, saying Greene calling for decorum was “like Leonardo DiCaprio telling people to date people their own age” or, in reference to another controversial Republican, “like George Santos telling people not to lie”.Matt Royer, chief of staff at Young Democrats of America, drew a comparison to the more unruly House of Commons in the UK.“This is some parliament-type behavior as Democrats laugh off MTG’s plea for decorum in the House,” he said. “And I am absolutely here for it.” More

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      Marianne Williamson: ‘You don’t even know what misogyny is until you’ve been a woman running for president’

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      A penthouse-gym in north-west Washington DC served as a campaign stage for the long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson last week. Athleisure-clad political consultants came and went, as if typecast from a political TV drama. The Washington monument poked between buildings in the distance.Williamson is far from an average political candidate, even in the modern era of American politics where it often feels much of what was once unthinkable has become a scary new normal. She is not a politician, but instead an author and wellness guru, whose quixotic first tilt at the White House four years ago was far from successful but saw her grace the Democratic debates and score a viral hit with her message to Donald Trump that she would “harness love” to defeat him.This time around, Williamson is running a tougher, more grounded campaign – treading the turf as a political outsider appalled at how America’s political elites have ignored the needs of its ordinary people.The chances that Williamson will become Democratic nominee for president next year are very slim. But there’s no doubt that her message has the power to resonate, particularly among the young and with women, and with those who feel America’s current travails cut deep and are being ignored.“I’ve had a 40-year-career working with people whose lives are in trouble. When I started that was the exception, not the rule. The work I did then was an adequate response to the suffering I saw in front of me, but now there seems to be a ubiquitous wave of people’s lives falling apart.”Williamson is also increasingly clear on some of the traditional barriers she faces. Williamson, 70, is just the second woman – the first being Republican Nikki Haley – to have thrown her name into the 2024 presidential nomination contest ring. Both have received a seemingly reflexive push-back from their respective parties and some quarters of the media.Sexist? Quite possibly.“An obelisk is much more than a phallus,” Williamson said at her event, observing the monument beyond. And then more directly: “You don’t even know what misogyny is until you’ve been a woman running for president.”But Williamson was less interested in symbols of power than her political agenda. She’s never held public office, though she ran unsuccessfully for California’s 33rd congressional district in 2014, and for the Democratic party nomination in 2019, endorsing Bernie Sanders after dropping out the following year.Among her platform positions is an increase in the minimum wage, reparations for racial injustice, a more muscular response to climate change, comprehensive educational reforms and the creation of a US Department of Peace. She talks of “soulless hyper-capitalism” which she sees as the fundamental affliction of an America run by a government “of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations”.Now she’s doggedly upgrading her old messaging about personal growth and universal love, attempting to dig a channel from new age enlightenment to political power, and to turn around what she sees as an economic, environmental and social crisis engulfing America.“I’m socio-economically well-travelled,” she said. “And my experience has had to do with the endurance and transformation of chaos. I’m interested in the principles of truth, and the realization that America is out of control. America is in chaos.”The liberal, Jewish ex-lounge singer from Texas arrived in Los Angeles in the 1980s and began to gather the stars – Madonna, Michael, Liz and Warren – and Hollywood power brokers of the era around self-healing psychotherapy and applied her energy to the Aids crisis.She set up in New York, giving a talk once a month on a Course of Miracles. Her career took off via Oprah Winfrey, and she became known as the TV star’s “spiritual adviser”. A book publishing empire followed. Almost all her titles applied “love” to whatever the title subject at hand.After her first run for the party nomination in 2020 she moved to Washington, which she describes as a walled city, not a bubble. She’d recently gotten out to visit East Palestine, Ohio, after the toxic train derailment turned the sleepy burgh into a byword for chemical disaster at the hands of a big corporation.“The economically oppressed in this country are being oppressed by the same forces, whether on the left or the right. The real divide is not left and right, that’s a veil of illusion, it’s between those who are suffering and those who don’t seem to have a clue. It’s about millions of people living with chronic economic insecurity,” she said.There’s little sign that those actually arranging Democrat political power have much time for Williamson, and they have fenced her out. But she is not put off, touring the country and doing campaign stops.“Why would I capitulate? I’m a 70-year-old woman. I’m not part of that system. I’m not coming from that place of do what they tell you and you might get on that committee or get to run in 2028,” she said.“There’s such a fear of Donald Trump, they assume the best way to go is with Joe Biden. I disagree. You have to be in complete denial to think that status quo, transactional politics are going to be enough to defeat the energy that he [Trump] represents.“People are blinded by their fear of him,” Williamson continued. “They think if they attack him enough people will change their minds. But this a man who said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and supporters wouldn’t care, and I think that’s probably true.“You’ll beat him by offering the American people a better deal, and agenda for genuine economic reform, an economic U-turn.”Integral to that, she said, would be a 21st-century economic bill of rights – universal healthcare, free tuition, free childcare, paid family leave, guaranteed housing, a livable wage and sick pay.Last week, Williamson also announced plans for a Department of Children and Youth, arguing that children, because they have no economic agency and no vote, are “systematically neglected”.“Public policy in America sets children up to fail. Our children are the biggest collateral damage from hyper-capitalism. So I would place a tremendous focus on children, and create a massive transformation of resources. I want every school to be a center of learning, culture and arts.”Students go to school in fear of gun violence, a situation she says that will exacerbate mental health issues in the future. The current debate, she says, doesn’t begin to address the issue. “It’s a sophomoric question, is it cultural or is it guns? It’s both. It’s gun safety laws and the glamorization of violence that people make money off.“Our food policies are violent, our climate policies are violent, our justice policies are violent, our economic policies are violent. The violence perpetrated against women on TV blows my mind – and the emotional violence on social media. We’ve sexualized violence, and we will have a violent society until we chose to become non-violent.”But her message of love and equity could be marred by other reports of the author behind the scenes. Shortly after she announced her run, Politico ran an article claiming she had episodes of “foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage” during her 2020 White House run. Williamson later called the accusations a “hit piece”.“I raised my voice in the office. They said I threw a phone but I’ve never thrown a phone at anyone. If people feel I’ve been disrespectful to them, of course, I’m very sorry,” she says.Some also detect a political hand. Williamson has claimed the Democratic National Committee is “rigging” the party’s primaries in favor of Biden by ruling out a debate – “candidate suppression if a form of voter suppression,” she says – and the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, responded to questions about Williamson’s candidacy with jokes about auras and crystal balls.“Of course they call me an unserious candidate because they don’t want to be called to the carpet for being so unserious about the things that matter most,” she hit back.“Of course they would see me and those like me as dangerous, because from the perch they’re on I am dangerous.”Politicians love to talk, but none possibly as much as Oprah-trained spiritual gurus turned politicians. And Williamson is now on a tear. Over the past month, 38 videos have gleaned 4m views and more than 600,000 “likes” on Gen-Z popular TikTok.But this may be where Williamson likes to be – firing salvoes, getting her voice out there, offering the damned salvation, slipping on occasion into what sounds like life-coaching.And after the traumatic four-year experiment of allowing a political outsider from the far right to enter the walled city of US politics without knowledge of or care to learn how the levers of political power operate, resistance to another outsider on a political quest is unquestionably elevated.“I can see that it would be an extremely difficult job, and I can’t imagine that it would be fun every day,” Williamson says of the prospect of the presidency.“I would simply try to be as good a person as I can be. I’m not claiming to be what I’m not. I’m running for president, not sainthood. I am a decent woman who has, I feel, some insights about this country and some insights about what is happening that could be of value.” More

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      Democrats fight to expand a ‘broken and illegitimate’ supreme court

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      Wearing dark suit and sunglasses reminiscent of a character in The Matrix, Brian Fallon pointed a finger at the gleaming US Capitol building to his left, then to the marble edifice of the supreme court to his right.“If you look at any point in the last 40 years, Congress’s public approval always hovers around 10%,” said Fallon, a former justice department official who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. “But the [supreme] court’s is now in the 30s and that’s a historical anomaly because there’s always at least been the benefit of the doubt conferred upon the court.”There is no better symbol of the crisis of trust in American institutions than its highest court, pummeled by partisan appointments, divisive rulings and ethical scandals. In a University of Chicago survey last year just 18% of Americans said they had a great deal of confidence in the supreme court – the lowest in half a century.Congressional Democrats and allies such as Fallon, now head of the pressure group Demand Justice, believe that they have a solution: expand the court by adding four seats to counter a rightward tilt during the Donald Trump administration that, they say, put it out of step with mainstream public opinion.This week a group including Senators Ed Markey, Tina Smith and Elizabeth Warren, and representatives Jerrold Nadler, Hank Johnson, Cori Bush and Adam Schiff announced the reintroduction of legislation that would create a 13-justice bench.At a press conference in front of the supreme court steps, surrounded by activists holding “Expand the court” signs as tourists and school groups wandered by, they pointed out that, while Democrats gained more votes in seven of the last eight presidential elections and represent 40 million more people in the Senate, Republicans have appointed 15 of the last 19 justices.These two “stolen” seats, the group argues, after Republicans blocked the confirmation of President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland in 2016 only to ram through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett 10 days before the 2020 election, even as millions of votes were being cast for Joe Biden.Now, Markey said, it is time to “fix this broken and illegitimate court” with a forceful response. He said: “When a bully steals your lunch money in the schoolyard, you have to do something about it, or else the bully will come back over and over again,” he said. “So we’re in this fight, and we’re going to reclaim these seats. We’re not going to allow the bully to win.”The Massachusetts senator also called for the resignation of Justice Clarence Thomas over his failure disclose gifts provided by the billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow and his wife Ginni’s more than $680,000 in unreported income from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank. “We’ve got to remind him that we have a system of constitutional checks and balances, not cheques or balances.”The speakers argued that, given recent decisions on abortion rights, voting rights, gun control measures and environmental regulations, the supreme court is beholden to rightwing special interests and facing a crisis of legitimacy.Schiff, a congressman from California, said: “This is not a conservative court, not in a legal sense. A conservative court would have some respect for precedent. This is instead a political and partisan court with a reactionary social agenda and the only question, Mitch McConnell having packed the court, is will we do anything about it or will we subject an entire generation of Americans to the loss of their rights?“Dirtier air and dirtier water and dirtier elections? Is that the fate we would have for the next generation? My kids are both in their early 20 and I am not satisfied that they should have to live under a reactionary supreme court for their entire adult lives and I don’t want anyone else’s kids to have to suffer that fate.”The legislative effort was first launched two years ago but this time it is backed by Planned Parenthood and Naral Pro-Choice America, spurred by the court’s decision last year to overturn the constitutional right to abortion after nearly 50 years.Jacqueline Ayers, senior vice-president of policy, campaigns and advocacy at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, noted that 19 states have since moved to ban the procedure. “The moment is calling for us to realise that it’s necessary that we have fairness, that we have balance in our supreme court,” she said. “The bottom line is the courts are being used as a weapon to take away our rights.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCongress has added and removed seats on the supreme seven times throughout its history – though the most recent example goes all the way back to the presidency of Ulysses S Grant in 1869. Supporters also contend that 13 is not an arbitrary number but based on sound logic: it would mean one justice per circuit court of appeals, consistent with how the number of justices was originally determined.But they face an uphill battle to persuade Biden and other senior Democrats to put the issue front and centre of next year’s election campaign. In 2021 a report by the president’s supreme court reform commission suggested that “court packing” would be a cure that is worse than the disease, citing autocrats using it to shore up power in Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey, Hungary and Poland.Biden, who hangs a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt in the Oval Office, may also be wary of what happened when the 32nd president, up against a supreme court that ruled parts of his New Deal unconstitutional, floated a plan in 1937 that could have expanded the bench to 15 seats. It was unpopular with the public and failed to clear the Senate.Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, said: “I don’t think the Biden White House are going to walk down that road during a presidential election. You don’t need to know a lot of American history to remember what happened the last time a president tried to do this – that was a president at the very peak of his popularity and no one can say that President Biden is at the very peak of his.”Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, added: “The general Democratic narrative is that Republicans are trying to change the rules to their advantage and a White House-led effort to expand or, as the Republicans would say, instantly pack the supreme court would blow up that narrative and create a new centre of attention with the Democrats on the defensive.”Conservatives would indeed cry foul at any such proposal and accuse Democrats of hypocrisy. Curt Levey, president of the advocacy group Committee for Justice, said: “If you could just add seats every time one party controls both Congress and the presidency then the supreme court would reflect whatever party was in power at the time and it would be a completely politicised supreme court. It would be very dangerous.”He added: “It strikes me that the Democrats are sore losers here. You had a liberal activist supreme court arguably from 1937 to as late as 2015 and during that entire 80-year period Republicans did not call for packing the court and they did not question the court’s legitimacy. They complained about the court’s decisions but they really never tried to undermine the court.“It’s only been three years since Barrett was appointed and there was a real conservative majority in the court and the Democrats just can’t stand it. They have used the court to implement their agenda for so many decades that the idea that they’ve lost that is just driving them crazy.”Democrats contend, however, that in recent years Republican dominated state legislatures have been content to expand the number of seats on their states’ respective supreme courts.The national effort has a new sense of momentum with the backing of dozens of civil liberties, education, climate and labour organisations, while last year’s midterm elections showed the political potency of abortion rights. Fallon described the presence of Planned Parenthood and Naral this week as “a gamechanger”.Acknowledging that Biden will be “one of the last dominoes to fall”, Fallon predicted that supreme court expansion could be on the agenda for Democrats in next year’s congressional elections, for example in Senate primary races in California and Maryland and in House races in New York and Los Angeles.He said in an interview: “If you want to be a Democratic candidate speaking to that outrage, if you want to mobilise those voters upset about rulings that come out of the court on reproductive rights, now you need to have this as part of your arsenal and what you’re going to promise in terms of what you’ll support when you get to Washington.“It might not be on the timeline of Joe Biden in 2024 but certainly in 2028, when there’s another open contested presidential primary, I would expect by then that every candidate has to be for it.”
      This article was amended on 21 May 2023 to replace an incorrect photograph of Ed Markey. More

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      ‘Trump’s not a good sport’: Chris Cillizza on presidents at play

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      From The Big Lebowski to Alice on The Brady Bunch, depictions of bowling abound in American pop culture. The sport’s real-life adherents included Richard Nixon, who installed bowling lanes in the White House and was known to play between seven to 12 games late at night. Characteristically, he played alone. This is one of many athletic accounts from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in a new book, Power Players: Sports, Politics, and the American Presidency, by the longtime political journalist Chris Cillizza.Bowling solo personified “Nixon the loner”, Cillizza says. “He didn’t play tennis or golf with friends. He did enjoy bowling by himself. It’s a powerful image, a telling image.”Tricky Dick’s love of bowling also helped with a crucial voting bloc: “Nixon viewed it as the sport of the Silent Majority – white, blue-collar men who sort of made up his base. He was very aware of this.”A Washington journalist for four decades, most recently for CNN, Cillizza pitched the book as about “the sports presidents play, love, spectate, and what it tells us about who they are and how they govern. That was the germ of the idea, the seed going in.”Power Players surveys 13 presidents of the modern era, from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden. Some of its narratives are well-known – think Ike’s extensive golf-playing, John F Kennedy’s touch football games or Barack Obama’s pickup basketball on the campaign trail. The book explores less-remembered sides of these stories, including a scary moment on the links for Eisenhower.While golfing in Colorado in 1955, he fielded multiple stressful phone calls from his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. After eating a hamburger with onions and getting yet another call from Dulles, Ike felt too angry to keep playing. Chest pains followed that night. The White House initially claimed indigestion but an electrocardiogram found something more serious – a heart attack. At the time, there was no 25th amendment specifying the chain of command if a president became incapacitated. Fortunately, Ike never lost consciousness during the episode.Golf was a popular sport for many presidents, as reflected in a previous book about White House athletics, First Off the Tee by Don Van Natta Jr, whom Cillizza interviewed. Yet the list of presidential pastimes is long and diverse, from Nixon’s bowling to Jimmy Carter’s fly fishing to George HW Bush’s horseshoes. Yes, horseshoes. In addition to Bush’s well-known prowess on the Yale University baseball team, he was a pretty good horseshoes player who established his own league in the White House, with a commissioner and tournaments. The White House permanent staff fielded teams; Queen Elizabeth II even gifted Bush a quartet of silver horseshoes.In the greatest-presidential-athlete discussion, Cillizza lands in Gerald Ford’s corner.“No debate, he’s the best athlete ever, I think, with [George HW] Bush a distant second, among modern presidents.”Ford sometimes lived up to the bumbling stereotypes made famous by Chevy Chase and Bob Hope – including when he accidentally hit people with golf balls. Yet he was an All-American center on the national-champion University of Michigan football team and received contract offers from two NFL squads, the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.In addition to the sports presidents play, Cillizza’s book examines how presidents use sports to connect to the public.Calling sports “a common language that lots and lots and lots of Americans speak”, Cillizza says: “I think politicians are forever trying to identify with the average person … I think sports is a way into that world for a lot of presidents.”There’s the practice of inviting championship teams to the White House, which Cillizza traces to Ronald Reagan, although instances date back decades. While not much of a sports fan, Reagan came from a sports radio background, played the legendary Gipper in the film Knute Rockne, All American and understood the importance of proximity to winners, Cillizza says.There’s also the tradition of presidential first pitches at baseball games, arguably the most iconic thrown by George W Bush at Yankee Stadium during the 2001 World Series, in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks. Cillizza notes Dubya’s baseball pedigree as president of the Texas Rangers, and that he reportedly contemplated becoming commissioner of Major League Baseball.Of the presidents surveyed, Cillizza says George HW Bush had the most sportsmanship, thanks to early lessons about fair play from his mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, a strong tennis player herself. The least sportsmanlike, according to the author? Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump. Cillizza cites an account of Trump’s time on the Fordham University squash team. After a loss to the Naval Academy, he drove to a department store and bought golf equipment. He and his teammates vented their frustration by hitting golf balls off a bluff into the Chesapeake Bay, then drove away, sans clubs.“That’s Trump, in a lot of ways,” Cillizza says. “He’s not a good sport who’s going to be genteel.”The author notes similar behavior throughout Trump’s career, including bombastic performances in World Wrestling Entertainment storylines and a whole recent book about his alleged cheating at golf, as well as a recent news item about the former president going to Ireland to visit one of his courses.“He hit a drive, and said Joe Biden could never do this,” Cillizza recalls. “It went 280ft right down the middle of the fairway. He talks about his virility, his health, through the lens of sports.”Not too long ago, two ex-presidents from rival parties teamed up as part of a golf foursome. George HW Bush joined the man who beat him in 1992 – Bill Clinton – en route to an unlikely friendship. Rounding out the foursome were the broadcasting legend Jim Nantz and NFL superstar Tom Brady.“It’s remarkable what sports can do to bring presidents together,” Cillizza says. “This day and age, it’s hard to consider … I don’t think Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be playing golf together anytime soon.”
      Power Players is published in the US by Twelve More

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      US debt ceiling talks hit bump as White House says ‘real differences’ remain – as it happened

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      From 5h ago“Real differences” exist between the two sides in the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, a White House official told the Guardian after Republican lawmakers said they were pausing their participation in the ongoing talks.“There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult. The President’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate,” the official said.Talks between negotiators appointed by Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling suddenly veered off course, with Republicans saying the discussions are “not productive” and the White House acknowledging “real differences” between the two sides. There is still time for a deal to be reached, but not a lot of it: the best estimate of when the US government will run out of cash and potentially default on its bond payments and other obligations remains 1 June.Here’s a look back at the day’s news:
      Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.
      A top House Democrat threatened to stop the reauthorization of a foreign spying program after reports emerged that the FBI queried its database for information about the January 6 insurrection and Black Lives Matter protests.
      Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.
      Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.
      Biden’s decision to cancel his trip to Australia may prove very costly for some in the White House press corps.
      After reports emerged that the FBI broke its own rules by using a repository of foreign intelligence to search for information about the January 6 insurrection and the protests following George Floyd’s death, a top Democrat is threatening not to support the reauthorization of a contentious surveillance program.At issue is section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows US authorities to surveil the communications of foreigners outside the country and expires at the end of the year unless renewed. The information is not meant to be used for domestic purposes, but according to a court order released today the FBI did just that.The Biden administration says it supports reauthorizing section 702, but it looks like it will have to win over skeptics in its own party. Here’s what the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee Jerry Nadler had to say about today’s revelations:So what’s the hangup in the debt ceiling talks?Based on comments from Republicans, it appears they’re far apart with Joe Biden’s team over total government spending. Last month, House Republicans approved a bill to increase the debt limit while also capping government spending in the next fiscal year at its levels from the 2021-2022 fiscal year. That amounts to a spending cut, since spending on government often increases from year to year.Biden and the Democrats have opposed this outright, arguing it would harm the economy and the government’s ability to provide services. But in comments to reporters, GOP speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy indicated the party was sticking to its guns:CNN spoke to Republican representative Dusty Johnson, who confirmed the spending issue was a top sticking point, but not the only one:Here’s a different sort of American media story. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington spoke to disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz, who is pursuing a lawsuit against Fox News – which she fears presents a threat to US democracy:The woman suing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for defamation in the wake of the $787m settlement with the voting machine company Dominion has accused the media giant of waging a campaign of “vitriolic lies” against her that amounts to a threat to democracy.Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.It became clear how serious the debt limit situation was earlier this week, when Joe Biden cut short his planned trip to Asia in order to be back in Washington DC on Sunday, saying he needed to ensure that the US government is able to avoid a default.The president kept his travel plans to Japan, but nixed stops in Australia and the first-ever presidential visit to Papua New Guinea, a decision critics say harmed Washington’s efforts to build alliances against China.It also proved to be a very expensive decision for the media organizations who place their reporters in the White House press corps and task them with following the president’s every move. The Washington Post reports that the White House Travel Office had booked a charter flight to Australia for the dozens of journalists that were planning to come along with Biden, while their employers were also planning to shell out thousands for their hotels, transportation and logistics.All of that had to be canceled, but according to the Post, news outlets are now on the hook for as much as $25,000 per person in the form of sunk costs for charter flights and other travel arrangements. While the country’s biggest news outlets all have reporters at the White House, the news industry has been financially tumultuous for the better part of 15 years, and the Post says some reporters fear the debacle will make their bosses cut back on travel with the president – which could mean less scrutiny of what Biden and his successors actually do with their time.Here’s more from the Post:
      The now-canceled charter flight, organized by the White House Travel Office, cost $760,000, or about $14,000 for each of the 55 journalists who’d booked seats on it. Journalists will immediately lose their deposits, about $7,700 each, and may be on the hook for the rest, according to a memo sent to reporters on Wednesday by Tamara Keith, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
      But a lengthy list of other costs — hotel reservations, ground transportation, a shared press-filing center, among them — may also be unrecoverable. And journalists will lose some or all of the cost of their return flights from Sydney to Washington, as they scramble for last-minute flights from Hiroshima to Washington.
      Bottom line: The bill for not going to Australia could run upward of $25,000 per person before any refunds kick in, according to several people involved in efforts to recover the money. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations over the funds.
      In an interview, Keith said her organization is seeking to recover as much of the travel money as possible, though it wasn’t clear how much was possible.
      “When the president travels amid a budget crisis or a debt ceiling crisis, his [travel] plans can change,” she said, noting that presidents Obama and Trump also canceled trips during their terms. “These are the risks we undertake with our eyes open. We hope it never happens. But it just did.”
      Speaking of pandemic emergency measures, Reuters reports that migrant encounters at the US southern border continue to plunge after last week’s expiration of Title 42.The rule, imposed by Donald Trump’s administration as Covid-19 spread in March 2020, allowed the US to turn away most asylum seekers, and its expiration at midnight last Friday raised fears of a surge in new border crossers. But that hasn’t materialized, and top homeland security official Blas Nunez-Neto said border authorities are seeing 70% less encounters since it ended. That may be because Joe Biden unveiled a slew of new restrictions to replace Title 42, leading to accusations by immigration rights groups that he is imitating his predecessor’s policies.Here’s more from Reuters:
      Speaking in a call with reporters, Nunez-Neto said the number had continued to tick down after an average 4,000 encounters a day as of May 12.“In the last 48 hours there were 3,000 encounters a day on the border, this is a more than 70% reduction,” he said.Nunez-Neto also said about 11,000 people were removed from the U.S. in the last week and sent to more than 30 countries, including more than 1,100 people from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba returned to Mexico.
      Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch says emergency measures taken during the Covid-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans were perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”The Associated Press reports:
      The 55-year-old conservative justice points to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions.
      Gorsuch’s broadside is aimed at local, state and federal officials, and even his own colleagues.
      He says officials issued emergency decrees “on a breathtaking scale.”
      His comments came in an eight-page statement that accompanied an order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.
      The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
      The emergency orders about which Gorsuch complained were first announced in the early days of the pandemic, when Trump was president, and months before the virus was well understood and a vaccine was developed.
      WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court got rid of a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.
      Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say, leveling harsh criticism of how governments, from small towns to the nation’s capital, responded to the gravest public health threat in a century.
      The justice, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, called emergency measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”
      He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions. His broadside was aimed at local, state and federal officials — even his colleagues.
      “Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,” Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page statement Thursday that accompanied an expected Supreme Court order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.
      The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
      FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a heavily blacked-out court order released on Friday.The Associated Press reports:
      FBI officials said the violations predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. But the problems could nonetheless complicate FBI and Justice Department efforts to receive congressional reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program that law enforcement officials say is needed to counter terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime.
      The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal oversight of the U.S. government’s spy powers. The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence released a redacted version on Friday in what officials said was the interest of transparency. Members of Congress received the order when it was issued last year.
      At issue are thousands of improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US. That program expires at the end of the year unless it is renewed.
      In repeated episodes disclosed Friday, the FBI’s own standards were not followed.
      The full AP report is here.A Washington DC police officer was arrested on Friday on charges that he lied about leaking confidential information to the Proud Boys extremist group leader Enrique Tarrio and obstructed an investigation after group members destroyed a Black Lives Matter banner in the nation’s capital.The Associated Press reports:
      An indictment alleges that Metropolitan Police Department Lt Shane Lamond, 47, of Stafford, Virginia, warned Tarrio, then national chairman of the far-right group, that law enforcement had an arrest warrant for him related to the banner’s destruction.
      Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before Proud Boys members joined the mob in storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Earlier this month, Tarrio and three other leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy charges.
      A federal grand jury in Washington indicted Lamond on one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements.
      The indictment accuses Lamond of lying to and misleading federal investigators when they questioned him in June 2021 about his contacts with Tarrio.
      Lamond is scheduled to make his initial court appearance on Friday. He was placed on administrative leave by the police force in February 2022.
      Lamond, who supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau, was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington.
      Lamond’s name repeatedly came up in the Capitol riot trial of Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders.
      Talks between negotiators appointed by Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling suddenly veered off course, with Republicans saying the discussions are “not productive” and the White House acknowledging “real differences” between the two sides. There’s time for a deal to be reached, but not a lot of it: the best estimate of when the US government will run out of cash and potentially default on its bond payments and other obligations remains 1 June. We’ll see if the GOP and Democrats find cause to sit down again before today is through.Here’s a look back at what else has happened today so far:
      Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.
      Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.
      Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.
      CNN has more downbeat comments from Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy on the status of the debt limit talks, which indeed appear to be paused:That’s a reversal from yesterday, when McCarthy sounded optimistic about the chances a deal is reached before the default deadline, which is estimated as 1 June.“Real differences” exist between the two sides in the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, a White House official told the Guardian after Republican lawmakers said they were pausing their participation in the ongoing talks.“There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult. The President’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate,” the official said.About an hour ago, and just a few minutes before reports emerged that the debt limit talks had broken down, Donald Trump called for the GOP to demand, well, “everything” in the negotiations.Here’s what he wrote on Truth social:
      REPUBLICANS SHOULD NOT MAKE A DEAL ON THE DEBT CEILING UNLESS THEY GET EVERYTHING THEY WANT (Including the “kitchen sink”). THAT’S THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ALWAYS DEALT WITH US. DO NOT FOLD!!!
      Here’s more of the grim assessment of the debt ceiling talks given by Garret Graves, the House Republican appointed by Kevin McCarthy to negotiate with the White House.“We’re not there,” he told reporters as he departed a meeting with Joe Biden’s officials, the Wall Street Journal said. “We’ve decided to press pause because it’s just not productive.”He said he was not sure if the two sides would be getting together over the weekend. “Until people are willing to have reasonable conversations about how you can actually move forward and do the right thing, then we’re not going to sit here and talk to ourselves,” he added.The Journal also saw Biden’s negotiators, director of the White House office of management and budget Shalanda Young and adviser Steve Ricchetti, leaving the meeting. Asked if the two sides would meet again today, Ricchetti replied, “playing by ear.”Amid reports that negotiations over raising the debt ceiling have broken down, the top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell is out with a tweet blaming Joe Biden for the impasse:Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans have taken the lead on negotiating with the White House on a deal, but the Senate will eventually have to vote on whatever bill emerges from the talks – assuming that happens. More

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      Negotiating with post-Trump Republicans is like dealing with a toddler’s tantrum

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      They say that negotiating with a toddler is like a hostage situation: only one side of the discussion wants to defuse the crisis.Welcome to Washington in the post-Trump era, as the United States stares down the barrel of debt default.The fate of the global economy now rests in the hands of the grown-ups inside the Biden administration and the tantrum-prone children who populate the House Republican caucus.This is not a fair fight. One side is happy to defecate on the floor. The other side has no choice but to clean up the mess.The spiritual leader of this crappy caucus is of course the man-child who has built an entire post-presidency from the grievances he blathers about every day.Freewheeling in front of a televised audience of his fans on CNN last week, Donald Trump displayed the kind of mastery of finance that has led to his multiple bankruptcies over the course of his dismal career of business failures.“I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default,” said the unindicted co-conspirator of an insurrection to overthrow the United States government.When pushed whether he really meant what he said about having to “do a default”, Trump just shrugged it all off.“Well, you might as well do it now because you’ll do it later,” he explained. “Because we have to save this country. Our country is dying. Our country is being destroyed by stupid people, by very stupid people.”Now if there’s one thing Trump and his Trumpy Republicans understand, it’s the thinking of very stupid people.Who else would know that very stupid people are going to do something very stupid like a totally unnecessary default on sovereign debt? So you may as well get ahead of them by doing something very stupid like that yourself, sooner rather than later.To be clear, Trump and his Trumpy Republicans think this whole default thing is just some kind of brain fog. “It’s really psychological more than anything else,” he told CNN. “And it could be very bad. It could be maybe nothing. Maybe it’s – you have a bad week or a bad day.”A bad week, a bad day – or even, and just hear me out here, a bad couple of generations.Here’s what happened last time the House Republicans drove the global economy to the edge of debt default, back in 2011 when President Obama was grappling with the Tea Party Republicans.The credit ratings agencies downgraded United States debt for the first time in 70 years, which ended up costing the government more money to sustain its debt. A brilliant outcome.To be clear, the debt ceiling debate is not about the grotesque size of federal spending. That is the budget debate, and both parties have enjoyed spending massive amounts of debt over many decades.The debt ceiling is a technical measure to decide whether the Congress – which approved of those budgets – is going to pay its own bills.This is not a new crisis or even a fast-moving one. It is as predictably slow as it is gob-smackingly dumb.The United States actually reached its debt limit in January, around the time the Democrats handed over the House to the Republicans after last year’s congressional elections. Yes, they could have lifted the debt ceiling themselves, but decided to lob the grenade to the next Congress.So for the last four months, treasury officials have been shuffling around large pots of cash to stay within their limit of what is now a $31.4tn debt. Apparently we have not yet reached the gazillion phase of American borrowing.These financial shenanigans will exhaust themselves in all of two weeks, give or take a few days or weeks. Some Republicans have suggested that treasury could just pick and choose a few bills to leave unpaid. Those Republicans can’t spell insolvent.Trump for one knows how this is going to play out. Not because he’s a genius, although clearly he thinks he is. But because he knows that only one side is going to behave like grown-ups and that side isn’t his own.“I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen,” he told CNN.That of course is what Obama did. And that is what Joe Biden has already indicated he will do. Earlier this week, Biden said he was “confident” that there would be an agreement to avoid default.“We’re going to come together because there’s no alternative way to do the right thing for the country,” he said. “We have to move on.”By “we,” he meant his own Democrats. The man on the other side of the Oval Office sofa was Kevin McCarthy, the catastrophically weak House speaker, whose majority – and job – rests on the internal monologues of just a handful of Trumpy Republicans.The side that needs to be house-trained is sadly, barely, in control of the House. If McCarthy loses just four or more of his own 222 members, he is doomed. Which means we are all doomed.Until recently, Democrats inside the White House and Congress have insisted on a “clean” bill to raise the debt ceiling. They abandoned that position this week, as Biden toyed with the idea of a bunch of budget cuts. Republicans want to see $4.8tn of cuts, mostly to stuff that only Democrats seem to care about, like feeding poor working families or dealing with the climate crisis.Democrats are witnessing the slow centrification of their own White House. Team Biden is preparing to junk the last two years of progressive policies in favor of some classic pandering to the right ahead of a tight presidential election. After trying to look tough on migrants on the southern border, they now want to look tough on spending – especially spending on social welfare.This is the kind of politics that inspires and satisfies nobody. McCarthy cannot win the debt ceiling battle because his Trumpy caucus thinks the cuts are not enough and it’s fine to default. Biden cannot win because he is ready to dump his party’s principles and priorities to avoid default and defeat next year.Somewhere in the middle of this, working families that need support will find there is less food each month and higher medical bills. But the debt default crisis will dissipate, until the next one, and most swing voters don’t need to worry about the people whose safety net is about to get shredded.It’s really psychological more than anything else.
      Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist More

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      House speaker McCarthy says ‘I see the path’ to debt ceiling deal with Democrats – as it happened

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      From 5h agoThe Republican House speake,r Kevin McCarthy, told reporters at the Capitol that he sees “the path” towards a deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.Here’s video of the exchange, from CNN:Congress has till about 1 June to raise the US government’s legal limit on how much debt it can take on or face the prospect of a default. Republicans want Joe Biden and his allies to agree to cut spending, and also to scrap administration priorities such as the president’s plan to cancel some federal student debt.After months of refusing to negotiate, Biden agreed to appoint deputies to reach a deal with McCarthy’s team, and if the speaker’s comments are any indication, those talks are paying off.Debt ceiling negotiations seem to be on track, at least if you ask Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy. Some Democrats aren’t so sure. In the Senate, 11 lawmakers say Joe Biden should consider invoking the constitution’s 14th amendment to prevent a default, rather than agreeing to GOP-devised spending cuts. And in the House, just about every Democrat has signed on to a discharge petition that would force a vote on raising the ceiling without preconditions. But it needs the defections of at least a few Republicans to succeed, and thus far, that support has not emerged.Here’s what else happened today:
      Ron DeSantis is finally getting it over with: the Florida governor will announce his presidential bid next week, according to multiple reports.
      Progressive Democrats remain displeased with the prospect of implementing new work requirements for government aid programs as part of a debt limit deal.
      CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was not happy with how her network handled the town hall with Donald Trump last week.
      California Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein’s health may be worse than publicly known, the New York Times reports.
      The House Freedom Caucus says no negotiations with Democrats until the Senate passes the GOP’s bill to raise the debt ceiling while cutting spending and implementing a number of conservative policies – a nonstarter for Democrats.
      As Florida governor Ron DeSantis prepares to announce a presidential campaign where he will sell voters on his controversial governance of the southern state, Disney today announced they were cancelling a billion-dollar office project in Orlando amid a fight with his administration.According to the New York Times, a top Disney executive cited “changing business conditions” for axing the project, which would have seen about 1,000 employees relocated from Southern California. The company has been feuding with DeSantis since last year, when it spoke out against his so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, and last month sued his administration over actions they said illegally targeted their business in the state.That matter is ongoing, but as the Times reports, Disney executives have made clear that they are willing to reconsider their longstanding relationship with the state over DeSantis’s policies. Here’s more from the Times:
      In March, Disney called Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida “anti-business” for his scorched-earth attempt to tighten oversight of the company’s theme park resort near Orlando. Last month, when Disney sued the governor and his allies for what it called “a targeted campaign of government retaliation,” the company made clear that $17 billion in planned investment in Walt Disney World was on the line.
      “Does the state want us to invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes, or not?” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said on an earnings-related conference call with analysts last week.
      On Thursday, Mr. Iger and Josh D’Amaro, Disney’s theme park and consumer products chairman, showed that they were not bluffing, pulling the plug on a nearly $1 billion office complex that was scheduled for construction in Orlando. It would have brought more than 2,000 jobs to the region, with $120,000 as the average salary, according to an estimate from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.
      The project, known as the Lake Nona Town Center, was supposed to involve the relocation of more than 1,000 employees from Southern California, including most of a department known as Imagineering, which works with Disney’s movie studios to develop theme park attractions. Most of the affected employees complained bitterly about having to move — some quit — but Disney largely held firm, partly because of a Florida tax credit that would have allowed the company to recoup as much as $570 million over 20 years for building and occupying the complex.
      Another group of conservative lawmakers has issued demands in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations, specifically that congressional leaders include new measures to crack on migrants in whatever legislative compromise emerges.The letter to Joe Biden and the top Democrats and Republicans in Congress including Kevin McCarthy was signed by 57 Republican House lawmakers, and asks that they consider including provisions of the Secure the Border Act in their negotiations.“American taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for the rapidly growing illegal immigration crisis. Thus, we support the inclusion of common-sense border security and immigration reforms in negotiations to raise the debt ceiling,” the congress members write.The bill, which passed with Republican votes in the House last month, would restart construction of Donald Trump’s border wall and increase Border Patrol funding, among other provisions. As is the case with much of what passes the House these days, Senate Democrats say they’ll oppose it.The far-right House Freedom Caucus wants Kevin McCarthy to stop negotiating with Democrats over raising the debt ceiling until the Senate passes the GOP’s Limit, Save, Grow Act.The legislation, which would cut spending, scrap Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and implement other conservative priorities while raising the debt limit only through next March, passed the House on a party line vote last month, but Senate Democrats have rejected it and the president has threatened a veto.The impasse led to this week’s decision by McCarthy and Biden to appoint negotiators to find an agreement both parties could support, but the Freedom Caucus – which includes several members that objected to McCarthy’s election as speaker of the House earlier this year – insists the Limit, Save, Grow Act should take priority.Here’s their letter:Amid continued focus on the health of the California senator Dianne Feinstein, who recently returned to Washington after a long absence with shingles, the New York Times reports that the 89-year-old, who has appeared frail and sometimes confused, continues to be the cause of much concern for her party:
      The grim tableau of her re-emergence on Capitol Hill laid bare a bleak reality known to virtually everyone who has come into contact with her in recent days: She was far from ready to return to work when she did, and she is now struggling to function in a job that demands long days, near-constant engagement on an array of crucial policy issues and high-stakes decision-making.
      Ms Feinstein’s office declined to comment for this article beyond providing a statement from the senator: “I’m back in Washington, voting and attending committee meetings while I recover from complications related to a shingles diagnosis. I continue to work and get results for California.”
      The Times also notes the resurfacing of “questions about whether Ms Feinstein, who has announced she will retire when her term ends next year, is fit to continue serving even for that long”.Feinstein’s absence hamstrung Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee, on which she sits. On Wednesday its chair, Dick Durbin, told CNN: “We’re happy to have her back. We’re monitoring her medical condition almost on a daily basis. Our staff is in touch with her staff.”Senior Democrats including the former House intelligence chair and impeachment lead Adam Schiff are running to succeed Feinstein but, the Times report says somewhat mordantly: “People close to her joke privately that perhaps when Ms Feinstein is dead, she will start to consider resigning.”Here’s more, from Arwa Mahdawi…At his press conference on Capitol Hill, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was asked by a reporter about concerns that his proposal to invoke the 14th amendment to address the debt ceiling would face legal challenges.“I think it’s the best solution we have,” Sanders replied. “It’s not perfect.”Sanders said he did not have any details about a potential debt ceiling deal between Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy, but Democrats emphasized that any proposal with welfare cuts would not be tolerated.“If the bottom line is that the only deal to be had that McCarthy will sign on to is one in which ordinary families are savaged and in which the economy is flooded with fossil fuels, that is unacceptable,” said Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.Asked if he had spoken to the White House about his proposal to use the 14th amendment, Sanders said he had but declined to elaborate.Eleven Democratic senators have signed a letter calling on Joe Biden to invoke the 14th amendment of the constitution to address the debt ceiling and avoid a disastrous default.Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and his co-signers held a press conference on Capitol Hill to make their case.Sanders noted the 14th amendment states that the public debt of the United States “shall not be questioned,” arguing the policy empowers Biden to unilaterally act on the debt ceiling.“[Republicans] have made it clear that they are prepared to hold our entire economy hostage unless the president gives in to all of their demands,” Sanders said.“Using the 14th amendment would allow the United States to continue to pay its bills on time and without delay, prevent an economic catastrophe and prevent devastating cuts to some of the most vulnerable people in this country. It should be exercised.”Debt ceiling negotiations seem to be on track, at least if you ask Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy. Some Democrats aren’t so sure. In the Senate, 11 lawmakers say Joe Biden should consider invoking the constitution’s 14th amendment to prevent a default, rather than agreeing to GOP-devised spending cuts. And in the House, just about every Democrat has signed on to a discharge petition that would force a vote on raising the ceiling without preconditions. But it needs the defections of at least a few Republicans to succeed, and thus far, that support has not emerged.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Ron DeSantis is finally getting it over with: the Florida governor will announce his presidential bid next week, according to multiple reports.
      Progressive Democrats remain unhappy with the prospect of implementing new work requirements for government aid programs as part of a debt limit deal.
      CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was not happy with how her network handled the town hall with Donald Trump last week.
      Meanwhile in the House, Democrats are pushing forward with a parliamentary maneuver intended to force a vote on raising the debt ceiling without preconditions.The party had yesterday encouraged its lawmakers to sign a discharge petition filed in the chamber, and in an interview with MSNBC yesterday, House Democrat Brendan Boyle, who is leading the effort, said the document has so far received 210 signatures.It needs a majority of 218 signers to pass, and what Democrats are banking on here is that some Republicans will eventually come on board, perhaps moderates who are nervous about the prospect of the US economy defaulting, or rattled by the demands of the House GOP’s far-right members. But there hasn’t been any sign of those defections – yet.Here’s more from Boyle’s interview with MSNBC:Eleven Democratic senators have signed a letter to Joe Biden urging him to consider invoking the 14th amendment to prevent the United States from defaulting if the debt ceiling is not raised.The letter, which first became public yesterday, was signed by Democrats Tina Smith, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Ed Markey, Mazie Hirono, Peter Welch, Richard Blumenthal, Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse, John Fetterman and Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.“The choice we face is clear. We cannot reach a budget agreement that increases the suffering of millions of Americans who are already living in desperation,” the lawmakers write in the letter, which accuses Republicans of “not acting in good faith”.“We write to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which clearly states: ‘the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned,’” the signatories conclude.“Using this authority would allow the United States to continue to pay its bills on-time, without delay, preventing a global economic catastrophe.”Speaking of CNN, one of its best known anchors is apparently not a fan of how it handled last week’s town hall with Donald Trump, the Guardian’s Gloria Oladipo reports: The CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour has strongly criticized her own network for hosting a town-hall event with Donald Trump last week, saying she had “a very robust exchange of views” with Chris Licht, the chief executive under fire for approving and then defending the decision to stage it.Amanpour, giving the commencement address at Columbia Journalism School in New York on Wednesday, said in comments reported by Variety: “We know Trump and his tendencies – everyone does. He just seizes the stage and dominates.“No matter how much flak the moderator tries to aim at the incoming, it doesn’t often work. I would have dropped the mic at ‘nasty person’, but then that’s me.”If Democrats and Republicans are indeed on the path to reaching an agreement to increase the debt ceiling, they’ll have to overcome the thorny issue of work requirements for anti-poverty programs.The GOP wants to tighten rules for recipients of aid such as SNAP or TANF to have to work, arguing that’s the best way out of poverty. A major government study released last year disputed this, while many Democrats, particularly progressives, say such requirements would be unacceptable to them.Here’s House Democrat Katie Porter saying so, in an interview with CNN:The Republican House speake,r Kevin McCarthy, told reporters at the Capitol that he sees “the path” towards a deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.Here’s video of the exchange, from CNN:Congress has till about 1 June to raise the US government’s legal limit on how much debt it can take on or face the prospect of a default. Republicans want Joe Biden and his allies to agree to cut spending, and also to scrap administration priorities such as the president’s plan to cancel some federal student debt.After months of refusing to negotiate, Biden agreed to appoint deputies to reach a deal with McCarthy’s team, and if the speaker’s comments are any indication, those talks are paying off.Ron DeSantis’s latest attempts to swing elections may have floundered, but he’s been more successful at getting lawmakers in Florida to react to his demands.As the Guardian’s Sam Levine reported earlier this week, his Republican allies, who control both the state Senate and House of Representatives, have approved laws that will allow DeSantis to remain governor while running for president, and also reduce scrutiny of his campaign financing.Here’s more from Sam’s story:
      DeSantis is poised to sign a bill that would exempt him from Florida’s “resign-to-run” law, so that he won’t have to give up his office in order to run for president. Under existing state law, if he were to run, DeSantis would have had to submit a resignation letter before Florida’s qualifying deadline this year and step down by inauguration day in 2025. Last month, Republicans in the state legislature passed a measure that says the restriction does not apply to those running for president or vice-president.
      The bill also imposes sweeping new voting restrictions in the state and will make it much harder for non-profits to do voter registration drives.
      “I can’t think of a better training ground than the state of Florida for a future potential commander-in-chief,” Tyler Sirois, a Republican state lawmaker, said when the bill was being debated.
      Some Democrats questioned why lawmakers would allow DeSantis to take his attention away from being governor. “Why are we signing off on allowing Ron DeSantis the ability to not do his job?” Angie Nixon, a legislator from Jacksonville, said last month.
      DeSantis also signed a bill last week that will shield records related to his travel from public view. The new law exempts all of DeSantis’s past and future travel from disclosure under Florida’s public records law, one of the most transparent in the US. It also exempts the state from having to disclose the names of people who meet with the governor at his office or mansion or travel with him, said Barbara Petersen, the executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, who has worked on transparency laws for more than three decades in the state.
      Republican lawmakers and DeSantis have cited security concerns to justify the law. But Democrats and transparency advocates have said it is a brazen effort to keep DeSantis’s travel secret.
      As Ron DeSantis gears up for a likely presidential bid, the rightwing Florida governor has suffered a few political blows in recent days in his state and beyond.On Tuesday, voters in Jacksonville, Florida elected their first female mayor, Donna Deegan, a Democrat who beat Republican Daniel Davis despite the endorsements of DeSantis and a handful of business leaders.“Love won tonight, and we made history,” Deegan said as she won the election.“We have a new day in Jacksonville because people chose unity over division – creating a broad coalition of people across the political spectrum that want a unified city,” she added.Meanwhile, in Kentucky, the Florida governor suffered another blow when Donald Trump-backed Daniel Cameron won against DeSantis-backed Kelly Craft in the state’s Republican primary.Cameron, the first major-party Black nominee for governor in Kentucky, will face off against Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear in November.Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that being called a “white supremacist” by New York representative Jamaal Bowman is equivalent to a person of color being called the “N-word.”On Wednesday, Greene and Bowman got into a shouting match on the Capitol steps with Bowman and New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both Democrats who called for Republican New York representative George Santos’s resignation following his recent indictment on federal charges of wire fraud and money laundering, among other charges.“Save the party!” Bowman yelled as Greene shouted, “Save the country!” At one point, Bowman told Greene, who has spread various conspiracy theories, “No more QAnon, no more MAGA, no more debt ceiling nonsense.”Minutes after, Greene pointed to her temple and said, “Hey let me tell you something Jamaal. Not very smart.”Addressing the interaction afterwards, Greene said:
      “I was swarmed. It’s all on video. Everyone can see this, but I will tell you what’s on video is Jamaal Bowman shouting at the top of his lungs, cursing calling me … horrible … calling me a white supremacist, which I take great offense to. That is like calling a person of color the n-word, which should never happen. Calling me a white supremacist is equal to that. And that is wrong.”
      Banking regulators testifying before the Senate banking committee on Thursday morning proposed a slew of recommendations that would strengthen regulation and supervision in light of Signature Bank and Silicone Valley Bank’s financial collapse.
      “The underlying issue was concern about insolvency … Stronger capital will guard against the risk that we may not fully appreciate today. And we’ll also reduce the costs of bank failures,” said Michael Barr, the second vice chair of the Federal Reserve for supervision.
      “In addition, we need to reconsider our prudential requirements. These include evaluating how we treat available for sale securities and our capital regulations, how we supervise and regulate a bank’s management of interest rate risk, how we supervise and regulate liquidity risk and how we oversee incentive compensation practices,” he added.
      “Supervision should intensify at the right pace as a bank grows in size or complexity. Once identified issues should be addressed more quickly both by the bank and by supervisors. Moreover, we need to ensure that we have a culture that empowers supervisors to act in the face of uncertainty,” he continued.
      Florida governor Ron DeSantis is set to officially launch his 2024 presidential bid, according to multiple reports citing sources familiar with the matter.One Republican source told CNN that the Republican governor will file candidacy paperwork next week with the Federal Election Commission and is set to make an official announcement in his home town of Dunedin, Florida, the following week.The reports follow DeSantis’s visit to Iowa last week where he participated in a public gathering hosted US House representative Randy Feenstra in the crucial early-voting stage. Prior to his visit, DeSantis rolled out a hefty list of endorsements from 37 Republican Iowa lawmakers, including senate president Amy Sinclair and house majority leader Matt Windschitl.“I think we need to restore sanity in this country,” DeSantis told a crowd of Iowa supporters last week, adding, “We must reject the culture of losing that has impacted our party in recent years. The time for excuses is over.”DeSantis’s comments appeared to be a subtle jab at Donald Trump, currently the Republican frontrunner who has repeatedly attacked his ex-ally and is currently leading in the polls. Should DeSantis enter the presidential race, he will become Trump’s chief challenger.In the past year, DeSantis has ramped up his “culture war” in Florida, from signing the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill into law to approving abortion bans after six weeks. Most recently, the rightwing governor signed a bill on Monday that defunds diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the state’s public colleges.Florida governor Ron DeSantis is set to officially launch his 2024 presidential bid, according to multiple reports citing sources familiar with the matter.One Republican source told CNN that the Republican governor will file candidacy paperwork next week with the Federal Election Commission and is set to make an official announcement in his home town of Dunedin, Florida, the following week.Earlier this week, reports emerged that DeSantis is poised to sign a bill that would modify a Florida law and allow him to run for president while serving as governor. The bill is also expected to impose new voting restrictions across Florida and will make it increasingly difficult for non-profits to conduct voter registration drives.Last Saturday, DeSantis rolled out a hefty list of endorsements from Iowa lawmakers and visited the crucial early-voting state in an attempt to garner support for his likely bid.Here are other developments in US politics:
      Dianne Feinstein, the oldest serving senator, has prompted renewed scrutiny over her fitness to serve following her return to Capitol Hill after a months-long absence due to shingles.
      California representative Adam Schiff said he is “not backing down” in the face of a Republican-led effort to expel him from Congress.
      The Pentagon leaks suspect was warned repeatedly about his mishandling of classified material, according to prosecutors. More