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    Mike Pence officially enters 2024 US presidential race, pitting himself against former boss Donald Trump – as it happened

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    From 5h agoFormer vice-president Mike Pence has officially entered the 2024 presidential race, pitting him against his former boss Donald Trump and a host of other candidates including Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican party’s nomination.The Federal Election Commission’s website shows Pence and his campaign committee, Mike Pence for President located in Carmel, Indiana, officially registering today. The former vice-president will publicly announce the bid on Wednesday in Des Moines, Iowa.Mike Pence filed the paperwork necessary to run for president, though he will wait till Wednesday to make his campaign official with a speech in Iowa. Meanwhile in Washington, attorneys for Donald Trump stopped by the justice department, where special counsel Jack Smith is reportedly nearing a decision on whether to recommend charges over the classified documents federal agents discovered last year at Mar-a-Lago.Here’s what else happened today:
    New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu declined to jump into the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination, instead saying he will work to defeat Trump.
    But the 2024 campaign did get another entrant: philosopher, author, critic, actor and civil rights activist Cornel West.
    Military jets attempted to establish contact with a plane that overflew restricted airspace in Washington, DC on Sunday and later crashed, killing all onboard, but the pilot appeared slumped over and never responded.
    Nikki Haley participated in a CNN-moderated town hall last night, but even they couldn’t get her to make her stance on abortion access clear.
    Pence’s edge over other Republicans: he actually rides motorcycles.
    CNN has inserted itself prominently in the American political conversation in recent weeks by hosting town halls with Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and, on Wednesday, Mike Pence. But the network was also heavily criticized for how it handled the event with Trump, and to make matters worse, the Atlantic last week published a damning portrait of the network’s chief executive Chris Licht and his decision making. It’s a major story in American media, and here’s the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt with the latest:The embattled CNN chief executive, Chris Licht, apologized to his employees on Monday after an Atlantic magazine profile revealed he had been aware of the “extra-Trumpy” make-up of the crowd at a widely criticized town hall with the former president last month.According to the Atlantic, Licht had also been critical of CNN’s performance under his predecessor, telling employees they had alienated potential viewers through hostility to Donald Trump.In an editorial call Monday morning, Licht – who had committed to a number of interviews for the Atlantic profile – apologized for his involvement in the piece.The Washington, DC area was yesterday rattled by a sonic boom caused by military jets sent to pursue a wayward plane that later crashed into a remote part of Virginia.The Washington Post reports that military F-16s and air traffic controllers received no response from the Cessna Citation despite repeated attempts to establish contact, but one aviator saw the pilot slumped over. That may be an indication that the cabin had lost pressure, rendering all onboard unconscious and leaving the aircraft to fly on until it lost fuel and crashed, killing all four people onboard.At today’s White House press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby gave reporters a full account of how the military responded to the plane’s overflight of the city, which saw it traverse airspace restricted since the 9/11 attacks:These sorts of rants from Donald Trump are one reason why he’s earned the ire of a segment of the Republican party.Count New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu among them. Today, the moderate Republican told CNN he would not stand for president in 2024, and in a column for the Washington Post elaborated on his reasons why.“Since 2017, the national Republican Party has lost up and down the ballot, in red states and in blue states, and in elections spanning the House, Senate and presidency. That will happen again unless we Republicans undergo a course correction,” he wrote.The governor continued:
    Current polls indicate Trump is the leading Republican candidate in 2024. He did not deliver on his promises to drain the swamp, secure the border and instill fiscal responsibility while in office — and added $8 trillion to our national debt — yet now he wants four more years.
    If he is the nominee, Republicans will lose again. Just as we did in 2018, 2020 and 2022. This is indisputable, and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight.
    By choosing not to seek the nomination, I can be more effective for the Republican Party in ways few other leaders can. The microphone afforded to the governor of New Hampshire plays a critical role in an early nominating state. I plan to endorse, campaign and support the candidate I believe has the best chance of winning in November 2024.
    We’ll see how big of a threat Sununu’s opposition poses to Trump’s campaign for another four years in the White House. But here are a few other considerations that may have kept Sununu out of the race: his comparatively loose stance on abortion rights, unwillingness to adopt an aggressive gerrymander of the state’s district maps in favor of the GOP, and other centrist policies. He may have figured he wouldn’t have had a chance of winning over the party’s powerful conservative base.Donald Trump made liberal use of the caps lock key in crafting this Truth social post from a few hours ago, on the day his attorneys paid a visit to the justice department:The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the lawyers for Donald Trump who turned up today at the justice department were meeting with senior officials, but not attorney general Merrick Garland, as they had requested:Such meetings are typical when justice department investigations near their conclusion, as special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago appears to be.Smith is also looking into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection, and the broader plot to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win. Those inquiries appear to be ongoing.Should Ron DeSantis’s new feud with California governor Gavin Newsom head to the courts, it would be just the latest instance in which the Florida governor and presidential aspirant’s policies have cost his state money, the Guardian’s Maya Yang reports:Since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called “don’t say gay” bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of DeSantis’s many extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has weighed into the row between his state and Florida over the case of a group of 16 migrants who were left outside a Sacramento church.A rights group said the group had been “lied to” and deceived after being transported from Texas to California. The circumstances are similar to a stunt orchestrated by Florida’s rightwing Republican governor last year in Martha’s Vineyard.Now Newsom has mentioned kidnapping charges in relation to the incident. Here’s his tweet, criticising Ron DeSantis after California authorities pointed the finger at the Florida governor over the incident:Cornel West, the philosopher, author, critic, actor and civil rights activist, has announced he is running for president.West launched his campaign for the People’s Party with a Twitter video on Monday.He said:
    “I care about you. I care about the quality of your life, I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, healthcare for all, the escalating destruction of the planet, the destruction of American democracy.”
    Watch his whole campaign launch video here:The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, is being sued by the SEC over allegations of mishandling customer funds and lying to regulators and investors.Binance has hit back at the claims and my colleague Lauren Aratani is reporting all the latest on the lawsuit in our dedicated blog. You can follow latest updates here:Mike Pence has filed the paperwork necessary to run for president, though he will wait till Wednesday to make the campaign official with a speech in Iowa. Meanwhile in Washington, attorneys for Donald Trump have stopped by the justice department, where special counsel Jack Smith is reportedly nearing a decision on whether to recommend charges over the classified documents federal agents discovered last year at Mar-a-Lago. It’s unclear who the lawyers met with, but when we find out, we’ll let you know.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
    New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu has declined to jump into the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination.
    Nikki Haley participated in a CNN-moderated town hall last night, but even they couldn’t get her to make her stance on abortion access clear.
    Pence’s edge over other Republicans: he actually rides motorcycles.
    Republican voters pining to send a governor to the White House needn’t worry Chris Sununu’s decision to forgo a run.North Dakota governor Doug Burgum – who is little known outside his home state – is expected to also on Wednesday declare his candidacy for president, the same day Mike Pence kicks off his campaign in Iowa. Here’s a teaser video Burgum just posted:Other governor options for Republican voters: Ron DeSantis, who is a distant second place to Donald Trump in the latest polls.In an interview with CNN, New Hampshire’s Republican governor Chris Sununu said he will not run for the party’s presidential nomination next year.“We’ve taken the last six months to really kind of look at things where everything is and I’ve made the decision not to run for president on the Republican ticket in 2024,” said Sununu, who was re-elected to a fourth two-year term as governor last year.Sununu has maintained his popularity in what’s considering a blue-leaning swing state, and also attempted to distance himself from Trump, telling CNN last year that he thinks that “clearly moving on” from the former president.You know who else was at the “Roast and Ride” in Iowa this weekend? The Guardian’s David Smith! He has the full story on what he aptly calls “a slice of pure Americana”:There were hay bales and Harley-Davidsons. There was sliced pork and campaign paraphernalia. There were earnest speeches about defeating Democrats winning back the White House. But at the centre of it all was a Donald Trump-shaped hole.The Republican presidential primary for 2024 got under way in earnest on Saturday when eight contenders – minus Trump – took part in Iowa senator Joni Ernst’s “Roast and Ride”, a combination of barbecue-rally and motorcycle ride.The annual event is a slice of pure Americana. When a young pastor offered a prayer from the back of a pickup truck outside a big yellow barn owned by Harley-Davidson, bikers removed their caps, placed them over their hearts and bowed their heads. The convoy rode in staggered formation past churches, suburban houses with clipped lawns, shopping malls and rolling farmland to the Iowa state fairgrounds.Mike Pence, set to make his entry into the primary official next week, was the only White House hopeful to actually take part in the charity parade. The former vice-president, who turns 64 next week, rode a cobalt blue bike and wore jeans, boots, a white helmet and a black leather vest with patches that said “Indiana”, “Pence”, “rolling thunder” and messages supportive of the military.Pence was among the Republican aspirants who, speaking in front of bales of hay and an outline of the Iowa map, delivered speeches of about 10 minutes each inside a wooden-roofed building where about a thousand voters ate lunch on green table cloths. But none mentioned Trump by name, giving the impression of a party in denial.Say what you will about Mike Pence, but the former president was the only candidate to actually get on a motorcycle this past weekend, when several GOP presidential contenders went to the “Roast and Ride” in Iowa.The event, organized by the state’s GOP senator Joni Ernst, was attended by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, senator Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, all official contenders. Pence hadn’t made his campaign official yet at the time of the rally, but distinguished himself by not just roasting, but also riding:The Democrats have welcomed Mike Pence to the presidential race with a big smile and open arms.Just kidding — they hate him. Pence may have broken with Donald Trump on January 6 and ended up running from a mob of his infuriated supporters, but the Democratic National Committee does not want voters to forget about the policies he supported as vice-president, Indiana’s governor, and a member of the House of Representatives.Here’s what DNC chair Jaime Harrison had to say about Pence, now that he’s officially on the campaign trail:
    In Mike Pence’s own words, he was a member of the extreme Tea Party ‘before it was cool,’ and he hasn’t slowed down since. Pence pushed an extreme agenda in Congress and the Indiana statehouse before becoming Donald Trump’s MAGA wingman for four years and then campaigning for election deniers last year. Now, he’s promising to take the Trump-Pence agenda even further, leading the charge for a national abortion ban, cutting Medicare, and ending Social Security as we know it. Pence’s entrance will no doubt drag an increasingly MAGA 2024 GOP field even further to the extremes.
    Former vice-president Mike Pence has officially entered the 2024 presidential race, pitting him against his former boss Donald Trump and a host of other candidates including Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican party’s nomination.The Federal Election Commission’s website shows Pence and his campaign committee, Mike Pence for President located in Carmel, Indiana, officially registering today. The former vice-president will publicly announce the bid on Wednesday in Des Moines, Iowa. More

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      So what if Biden trips up? On the political stage his footwork is the fanciest seen in decades | Will Hutton

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      He stumbles when coming down the stairs of Air Force One; he trips over a sandbag on stage to fall flat on his face when handing out diplomas at the US air force academy; he muddles his words with alarming regularity. It is easy to write off President Joe Biden as a senile, 80-year-old duffer. Yet he is already being regarded by many Democrats, and some Republicans, as significant a Democrat president as Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson. He is dramatically changing the face of the US around Democrat priorities – reindustrialisation to support blue-collar jobs and wages, wholeheartedly fighting climate change, investing massively in science and education, doing more for the poorest and, not least, rejuvenating the US’s decaying public infrastructure.But, unlike his famous predecessors, he has never had their big majorities in Congress, and after November’s midterm elections he does not even control the House of Representatives. He has had to rely on guile, sheer political craft and reading the Washington runes better than any alive. For the last few months we were being warned of financial Armageddon, as an implacable Republican party forced the US to default on its debts, only to be avoided if the administration agreed to its demands for swingeing public spending cuts to avoid going through an artificial debt ceiling limit. Tomorrow was to be the witching day when default occurred and a financial crisis engulfed the world. Instead, last week the wily Biden again outfoxed his opponents, and struck a deal massively weighted in his favour that was voted for by overwhelming majorities. It was an extraordinary victory and, when invited to claim it as such, he replied: “You think that’s going to help me get it passed?” First rule in Washington politics, from which the affable Biden has never deviated: always allow the defeated to save face because you’re soon going to have to cut another deal with them.Yet what lay behind the Republican retreat is important not just for US politics but our own. The ever more ideological US right, so influential among British Tories, has been abandoning fiscal conservatism as a dead end for some time. It goes through the motions of bloodcurdling threats to cuts in public spending, but it does not have the bottle to face the political consequences – the decimation of social programmes beloved of its own base and which any Republican presidential nominee needs preserved to have a hope in 2024. Instead, the new terrain is the fight against “the woke” – from banning drag queen reading hours to penalising investment companies that invest on “environmental, societal and governance” principles – laced with traditional social conservatism fighting against abortion along with a dose of America-first nationalism. It is, in effect, Donald Trump’s politics. The ghastly cocktail might work in the US, although I doubt not enough to win national presidential elections. It certainly won’t work in Britain.Biden’s negotiating tactics were textbook. Publicly, he took seriously the threats of Kevin McCarthy, leader of the House of Representatives, to cut $4.5tn of spending over a decade, talking up the threat and flying back early from the G7 summit to negotiate, showing the depth of his concern. Privately, he knew the Republican would back off: cuts of that scale would mean that social programmes would be decimated, given that so much federal spending is on defence, which the Republicans did not want to touch. This was not 2011, when the Republicans used the same tactic and meant it, when their libertarian tax-cutting right were in control; now they are big spenders too.Biden read the mood swing well: he knows his opponents better than they know themselves. Taking over the key negotiations himself, I am told, he forced the realities home on McCarthy, who successively scaled back his demand to a headline cuts figure of $1.5tn, which helped him save face. But even that was vastly overstated because of a series of side, off-balance-sheet deals. Federal spending will end up by being reduced by 0.2%, if that, over the next 10 years, while all the huge spending programmes on chips, infrastructure and green investment that Biden has negotiated through are intact. A stunning victory.There are problems ahead: the US, accounting for 15% of world GDP, can comfortably afford spending on this scale, but it will just have to increase its tax base. The Internal Revenue Service has been hollowed out over the years. As a first step, Biden wants to build up its capacity to go after the scarcely taxed US super-rich – one area where McCarthy did get a spending cut, if not decisive. But before 2030 the US will have to raise taxes. This will not lower its growth: as the Institute of Government recently reported, there is little or no evidence that tax cuts have any impact on growth. But it will force a huge political battle into the open.Meanwhile, Bidenomics defines the new consensus, what US treasury secretary Janet Yellen describes as “modern supply side” economics, set out in perhaps the best statement of social democratic economic analysis ever to come out of Washington, the 2022 Economic Report of the President. In her recent trip to Washington, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, met the principal architects, including Yellen, all endorsing her own version of modern supply side economics she has been developing since getting the job in 2021. At its simplest, this is a commitment to ambitious public investment, particularly over net zero, in a deliberative partnership with business as the foundation for economic growth. It is working in the US. It will work in the UK.British Tories are in a parallel position to McCarthy’s Republicans. They may deplore public spending and the big state in principle, but they shrink from the consequences of putting their ideology into action. They find themselves giving aid to new technologies and supporting the green transition as political and economic necessities without believing in either – so their approach is tepid, ad hoc, unconvinced. They are tempted to follow the US right into the poisonous thickets of being anti-woke – but Britain is a much more liberal, easygoing society than the heartlands of the US midwest. And round the corner comes the spectre of having to raise, not cut, taxes. It may be that both Britain and the US will be in the throes of national elections in autumn 2024. For the first time in 40 years, not only does the liberal left have the better argument; with a following wind, they can go all the way. More

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      Biden signs debt ceiling bill after months-long standoff, avoiding default

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      Joe Biden signed a bill on Saturday to suspend the US debt ceiling, ending a months-long standoff with the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and averting a federal default that could have upended the world economy.Economists warned that a default could have caused the US unemployment rate to double while significantly damaging gross domestic product.In a televised address from the Oval Office on Friday evening, Biden said: “Passing this budget agreement was critical. The stakes could not have been higher.“If we had failed to reach an agreement on the budget, there were extreme voices threatening to take America, for the first time in our 247-year history, into default on our national debt. Nothing, nothing would have been more irresponsible.”The signing of the bill came one day after the Democratic-held Senate passed it in a bipartisan vote, 63-36, sending the proposal to Biden’s desk a few days before the 5 June deadline. A day earlier, the bill passed the Republican-controlled House by 314-117.“It was critical to reach an agreement, and it’s very good news for the American people,” Biden said on Friday. “No one got everything they wanted. But the American people got what they needed.”In a statement on Saturday, the White House thanked Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress “for their partnership”.The White House also tweeted video of Biden signing the bill in the Oval Office.Heralding the “safeguarding [of] Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and fulfilling our scared obligation to our veterans”, Biden said: “Now, we continue the work of building the strongest economy in the world.”The bill signing followed the release on Friday of strong monthly jobs figures.The new law will suspend the borrowing limit until January 2025, ensuring the issue will not resurface before the next presidential election.In negotiations with Biden, McCarthy secured concessions aimed at cutting government spending. The legislation includes a modest reduction in non-defense discretionary spending as well as changes to work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs.The concessions were a partial defeat for Biden, who spent months insisting he would not negotiate and repeatedly called on Congress to pass a bill with no strings attached. The president was forced to the negotiating table after House Republicans passed a debt ceiling bill in late April.But as he discussed the compromise bill, Biden expressed pride that he and his advisers were able to rebuff many Republican demands. The bill passed by House Republicans would have enacted much steeper cuts and broader work requirements for benefits while raising the borrowing limit until 2024.“We averted an economic crisis, an economic collapse,” Biden said on Friday. “We’re cutting spending and bringing the deficits down at the same time. We’re protecting important priorities – from Social Security to Medicare to veterans to our transformational investments in infrastructure and clean energy.”Biden’s cause for celebration was a source of outrage among hard-right Republicans. The debt ceiling bill was opposed by 71 Republicans in the House and 17 in the Senate, who argued it did too little to address the federal debt of more than $31tn. Members of the House Freedom caucus repeatedly attempted to block the compromise bill.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“President Biden is happily sending Americans over yet another fiscal cliff, with far too many swampy Republicans behind the wheel of a ‘deal’ that fails miserably to address the real reason for our debt crisis: SPENDING,” Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, chair of the House Freedom caucus, said on Wednesday.Progressives harbored their own concerns, saying the cuts and work requirements amounted to a betrayal of voters. Five progressives in the Senate, including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and 46 in the House decided to vote against the bill.“I could not in good conscience vote for a bill that cuts programs for the most vulnerable while refusing to ask billionaires to pay a penny more in taxes,” Sanders wrote in a Guardian op-ed on Friday. “Deficit reduction cannot just be about cutting programs that working families, the children, the sick, the elderly and the poor depend upon.”A particular source of anguish for progressives was the bill’s handling of defense spending. While non-defense priorities like education and healthcare will have to endure cuts, the Pentagon budget is set to grow. The inflated spending outlined in the bill did not go far enough for defense hawks already weighing options to spend more. Progressives saw the uneven distribution of cuts as an insult.“At a time when we spend more on the military than the next 10 nations combined I could not, in good conscience, vote for a bill that increases funding for the bloated Pentagon and large defense contractors that continue to make huge profits by fleecing American taxpayers with impunity,” Sanders wrote.In the end, the vast majority of Democrats voted to prevent a default.Biden’s signing of the bill prevents that outcome for now, but lawmakers will need to take up the matter again before January 2025, when the new suspension expires.Many Democrats and some economists have called for the elimination of the debt ceiling to remove any threat of default in future, progressives suggesting Biden can unilaterally do away with the borrowing limit by invoking the 14th amendment of the constitution. The amendment states that the validity of the public debt of America “shall not be questioned”.If Biden were to follow that path, the recent battle over the debt ceiling could prove to be the last.“The fact of the matter is that this bill was totally unnecessary,” Sanders wrote. “I look forward to the day when [Biden] exercises this authority and puts an end, once and for all, to the outrageous actions of the extreme right wing to hold our entire economy hostage in order to protect their corporate sponsors.” More

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      Joe Biden to address nation but delays debt ceiling bill signing; White House press secretary addresses president’s fall – live

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      From 3h agoWhite House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden won’t be signing the debt ceiling bill that passed Congress until tomorrow at the earliest.“It won’t be today. The House and the Senate have to do their business, so we’re going to work very quickly to get this done to make sure we can sign it hopefully as soon as tomorrow,” Jean-Pierre said. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said that the debt ceiling must be raised by 5 June, which means that Biden must sign the bill by the weekend to avoid default. Jean-Pierre said the White House is confident they can get the bill signed before June 5.Jean-Pierre did not specify what Congress needs to do before getting it on Biden’s desk. Biden is planning to address the deal in a speech tonight at 7pm. Jean-Pierre said that he will focus on the bipartisan nature of the deal and how it benefits Americans.“When you think about what could have happened here, to our seniors, to our veterans, to American families,” Jean-Pierre said. “That is something the president believes he has an opportunity to talk directly to the American people [about]. This could’ve been, as we’ve said over and over again, devastating.”“He believes this is a good moment to lay that out and how we were able to come together to avert this crisis.”An appeals court ruling has revived an anti-discrimination lawsuit accusing an Albuquerque teacher of cutting off one Native American girl’s hair and asking another if she was dressed as a “bloody Indian” during class on Halloween.Associated Press reports:Outrage over the girls’ treatment propelled legislation in New Mexico and beyond that prohibits discrimination based upon hairstyle and religious head garments.The American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit accused Albuquerque Public Schools and a teacher of discrimination and fostering a hostile learning environment. ACLU of New Mexico Deputy Director Leon Howard said the ruling affirms that public schools are subject to antidiscrimination protections in the New Mexico Human Rights Act.The appellate ruling validates that all “students must feel safe at school and confident that their culture, history, and personal dignity are valued and respected by the public schools they attend,” Howard said in a statement.A lower court had determined that a public high school does not qualify as a “public accommodation” under the state’s civil rights law. The appellate ruling returns the lawsuit to state district court for a hearing on its merits.“If a public secondary school official in their official capacity were to refuse services to an individual based on the individual’s race, religion, or sexual orientation, then the New Mexico Human Right Act would surely apply,” Appeals Court Judge J. Miles Hanissee wrote.Lawmakers in Connecticut voted on Friday to prohibit anyone under 18-years old from being issued a marriage license.The legislation got passed in the Senate unanimously after a 98-45 bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives in May.Currently, in the state, a 16 or 17-year old can obtain a marriage license of their local probate court judge approves a petition that gets filed on the minor’s behalf by a parent or guardian, the Associated Press reports.According to a spokesperson from Democratic governor Ned Lamont office, the governor is planning sign the legislation into law.During the vote, senator Herron Gaston told his colleagues that his sister was married to a 50-year old man while she was 17-years old.
      “I’ve seen the devastating impact it has had on her physically, how it deprived her of her innocence and of her childhood,” he said.
      “She bore five children from this marriage and eventually had to flee from the island of Saint Lucia and down to Florida in order to get away from her abuser,” the Associated Press reports.
      A US air force colonel “misspoke” when he said at a Royal Aeronautical Society conference last month that a drone killed its operator in a simulated test because the pilot was attempting to override its mission, according to the society.Guardian staff and agencies report:The confusion had started with the circulation of a blogpost from the society, in which it described a presentation by Col Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, the chief of AI test and operations with the US air force and an experimental fighter test pilot, at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London in May.According to the blogpost, Hamilton had told the crowd that in a simulation to test a drone powered by artificial intelligence and trained and incentivized to kill its targets, an operator instructed the drone in some cases not to kill its targets and the drone had responded by killing the operator.The comments sparked deep concern over the use of AI in weaponry and extensive conversations online. But the US air force on Thursday evening denied the test was conducted. The Royal Aeronautical Society responded in a statement on Friday that Hamilton had retracted his comments and had clarified that the “rogue AI drone simulation” was a hypothetical “thought experiment”.“We’ve never run that experiment, nor would we need to in order to realise that this is a plausible outcome,” Hamilton said.For more details, click here:A federal judge who was presiding over Disney’s lawsuit against Florida governor Ron DeSantis has disqualified himself, citing a third-degree relative who has stock in the company “which could be substantially affected by the outcome of this case”, according to CNN.Walker had denied a motion from DeSantis’ lawyers to disqualify him from the case, saying that questions in previous cases raised “substantial doubts” about his impartiality.The judge criticized DeSantis’ lawyers, who “cherry-pick language from these cases to support their position without acknowledging the wholly distinguishable context underlying each decision”.Disney filed a lawsuit against DeSantis in April saying that the governor violated the company’s right to free speech after it spoke out against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that banned instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. DeSantis took over the special district that Disney ran at its massive theme park in Florida near Orlando.Here’s quick summary of what’s happened today:
      Though the debt ceiling bill has passed Congress, the bill won’t be signed by the White House by Saturday at the earliest. The White House said that it is waiting for lawmakers to wrap up the bill and send it to Joe Biden’s desk for signing.
      Meanwhile, credit agency Fitch said that it could still downgrade the US government’s credit rating even though a deal has been passed. The agency said that the standoff over the limit “lowers confidence” in the ability of the government to pay its bill.
      The Republican National Committee set its requirements for qualifying for its first presidential debate in August. Candidates will need at least 40,000 individual campaign donors and poll at 1% across multiple national polls.
      The Department of Justice closed its investigation into Mike Pence for his having classified documents in his Indiana home. Pence faces no charges. The closing of the investigation comes as Pence is gearing up to announce a run in the 2024 election.
      Joe Biden is set to sign the debt ceiling bill that passed the Senate last night. He will deliver remarks tonight on the bill at 7 pm.
      Stay tuned for more live updates.Youtube announced today that it will no longer remove videos that make false claims about the 2020 election, saying in a blog post that continuing to remove these videos could “have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm”.The video platform said that it has removed “tens of thousands” of videos since it implemented its policy against election misinformation in December 2020.“The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society – especially in the midst of election season,” the company said.The company said it will continue to remove content that discourages people from voting or contains misinformation about how to vote.Credit rating agency Fitch said on Friday that a downgrading of the US government credit rating is still possible, despite Congress passing a bipartisan bil to raise the debt ceiling . Fitch has put the US on a negative credit watch and said that while the passing of the bill is a “positive consideration”, “repeated political standoffs” over the debt limit “lowers confidence in governance on fiscal and debt matters”.The country’s credit rating has only been downgraded once in history. Credit rating agency S&P downgraded the country’s credit for the first time in 2011 after an impasse between Republicans in Congress and then-president Barack Obama. The downgrade occurred after the deal was made, as it was settled too close to the default date.A downgrading of the country’s credit rating will be costly for the country as it will make it more expensive for the country to borrow money, along with lowering confidence in the American dollar.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden won’t be signing the debt ceiling bill that passed Congress until tomorrow at the earliest.“It won’t be today. The House and the Senate have to do their business, so we’re going to work very quickly to get this done to make sure we can sign it hopefully as soon as tomorrow,” Jean-Pierre said. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said that the debt ceiling must be raised by 5 June, which means that Biden must sign the bill by the weekend to avoid default. Jean-Pierre said the White House is confident they can get the bill signed before June 5.Jean-Pierre did not specify what Congress needs to do before getting it on Biden’s desk. Biden is planning to address the deal in a speech tonight at 7pm. Jean-Pierre said that he will focus on the bipartisan nature of the deal and how it benefits Americans.“When you think about what could have happened here, to our seniors, to our veterans, to American families,” Jean-Pierre said. “That is something the president believes he has an opportunity to talk directly to the American people [about]. This could’ve been, as we’ve said over and over again, devastating.”“He believes this is a good moment to lay that out and how we were able to come together to avert this crisis.”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding the daily press briefing right now and addressed a question on Joe Biden’s fall last night. Biden was in Colorado Springs at the graduation ceremony of the US Air Force Academy. Biden tripped on a sandbag onstage, caught himself with his hands and was helped up by three people.“He tripped over a sandbag on the stage, briefly he tripped and got up, and continued what he was there to do,” Jean-Pierre said. “There was no need for the doctor to see him.”Biden addressed reporters upon returning to Washington Thursday night, joking that “I got sandbagged”.The Republican National Committee is tightening the requirements candidates will have to meet in order to get on the debate stage in August. There are nine Republican 2024 presidential candidates so far, and a handful more are expected to announce their runs in the coming weeks.Candidates will have to get at least 40,000 individual campaign donors and receive at least 1% of voters in multiple national polls, according to the Washington Post. The first debate will be held in Milwaukee and hosted by Fox News.Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are currently the clear frontrunners, according to polls, with Trump ahead of the Florida governor by at least 30 points. Other candidates, like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, have been polling well under 10%.Donald Trump’s attorneys have been unable to find a classified document the former president said he had in a recording that was ultimately given to prosecutors, according to CNN.The recording, taken in July 2021 at a Trump golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, has the former president saying that he retained a document on a potential attack on Iran.Prosecutors have subpoenaed Trump for all classified materials and have recovered classified documents throughout 2022. Trump attorneys turned over more documents in March, but it did not include the document on Iran.A Florida man who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 was sentenced on Friday to three years in prison, the latest in a string of prison sentences for those who participated in the January 6 insurrection.45-year-old David Moerschel, a neurophysiologist from Punta Gorda, Florida, was convicted in January with three other members of the Oath Keepers, reported the Associated Press.Several members of the antigovernment extremist group have been charged for their roles in a plot led by several far-right groups to stop Joe Biden from becoming president after the 2020 election results.In total, nine people associated with the Oath Keepers have been tried with seditious conspiracy, AP reported, including Moerschel.Six have been convicted on the charge.House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has invited Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to speak to Congress during his visit to Washington DC on June 22. Modi will also meet with Joe Biden for a state dinner that night.In a letter to Modi, McCarthy said that Modi in his address “will have the opportunity to share your vision for India’s future and speak to the global challenges our countries both face”. More

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      Don’t be fooled – Trump’s presidential run is gaining more and more momentum | Lloyd Green

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      The Republican field swells but the 45th president’s commanding lead holds. Like Jeb Bush – another Florida governor and defeated Trump rival – Ron DeSantis has demonstrated himself inadequate to the task. By the numbers, DeSantis trails Trump nationally and in the Sunshine state. DeSantis was born there. Trump only recently moved there. To be the man you gotta beat the man, and right now DeSantis is going nowhere fast.Ill-at-ease and plagued by a pronounced charisma deficit, DeSantis can’t even decide how to pronounce his own surname. He is 44 years old. That’s plenty of time to nail down this personal detail.Following his botched campaign rollout on Twitter, a perpetual scowl creases DeSantis’s face. He does not relish the task at hand. Presidential races are marathons, and he does not appear built for endurance.Trump administration alums fare no better. Both Mike Pence, the hapless former vice-president, and Nikki Haley, the forgettable UN ambassador, have generated little enthusiasm. They are stalled in the doldrums of single digits despite years in the public eye. Both come with the word “sell” stamped atop their foreheads.Pence’s near martyrdom on January 6 has earned few plaudits from the Republican base – a passel of enmity is more like it. His religious devotion elicits yawns and his unalloyed social conservatism in the face of modernity hurts more than it helps.On that note, Trump packed the supreme court with three justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade. He proved his point, takes credit, but is cagey about what may follow. Pence, by contrast, announces that “ending abortion is more important than politics”.That’s a losing strategy. In reliably conservative Kansas and Kentucky, voters scotched attempts to strip abortion of constitutional protections. In poker and politics, you have to know when to say “enough”.As for Haley, a former South Carolina governor, she trails Trump and DeSantis in her home state – never a good sign. Back when he was running for president, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s second secretary of state, derided her tenure at the UN as inconsequential. Plenty of Republicans seemingly concur.If any South Carolina Republican has a chance of making it on to a national ticket, it is Tim Scott, the state’s junior senator and one of three African Americans in the upper chamber. Unlike Haley, he does not evoke mockery. He projects unstudied calm; his eyes don’t glow from ambition overload.Like most Republican wannabes, however, he opposed the deal over the debt ceiling. On Thursday night, he cast his lot with the likes of socialist Bernie Sanders and progressive Elizabeth Warren and voted against raising the ceiling.Regardless, for Scott’s poise to matter, Trump would need to badly stumble. The former guy is already under felony indictment in Manhattan and stands adjudicated of sexually abusing E Jean Carroll, none of which has dented his intra-party standing.Indeed, the pending criminal charges look like a gift. Trump’s rivals fell into line. DeSantis and Pence reflexively attacked Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s district attorney. The base wouldn’t have it any other way.Whether Jack Smith, the special counsel, indicts Trump is the looming unanswered question. Still if past is prelude, the ever-growing Republican field stands to effectively boost Trump if and when he comes under increased legal fire.Going back to 2016, no allegation or bombshell proved powerful enough to sink him. In the end, all rallied around the flag. Beyond that, a bloated field stands to dilute opposition to Trump.Chris Christie is set to announce his candidacy next week. The former New Jersey governor brings backing from Wall Street in the person of Steve Cohen, owner of the New York Mets. By itself, that won’t be enough to win hearts and minds. According to a recent Monmouth poll, Christie is underwater among Republicans, 21% favorable to 47% unfavorable. He is the only challenger with unfavorable ratings.But that is not the end of the story. An ex-prosecutor, Christie is also a skilled debater. In his last run, he eviscerated Senator Marco Rubio even as he demolished his own campaign in the process.Whether Trump agrees to appear on the same debate stage later this summer is unclear. Between his huge lead and a shifting legal landscape, he could well balk on the advice of counsel.The Democrats should not mistake Trump’s legal woes as a glide path to their re-election. Joe Biden is singularly unpopular, questions about his physical and mental acuity abound, and inflation’s scars remain ever-present. His on-stage fall on Thursday at the Air Force Academy will raise further doubts.At the same time, Hunter Biden, his surviving son, is getting plenty of unwanted attention. Like Trump, he too could be indicted.Against this backdrop, the president possesses little room to maneuver. His margin for error is close to nil.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Joe Biden hails ‘big win’ as bipartisan debt ceiling bill reaches his desk

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      The bipartisan bill to solve the US debt ceiling crisis just days before a catastrophic and unprecedented default was on its way to Joe Biden’s desk on Friday as the US president prepared to address the nation and hailed “a big win for our economy and the American people”.The compromise package negotiated between Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, passed the US Senate late on Thursday.Biden acknowledged that it leaves neither Republicans nor Democrats fully pleased with the outcome. But the result, after weeks of torturous negotiations, shelves the volatile debt ceiling issue until 2025, after the next presidential election.“No one gets everything they want in a negotiation, but make no mistake: this bipartisan agreement is a big win for our economy and the American people,” Biden tweeted after the Senate voted 63 to 36 to pass the deal agreed between Biden and McCarthy last weekend, which passed the House on Wednesday.The final Senate vote capped off a long day that ground into night, as lawmakers spent hours considering amendments to the legislation. All 11 of the proposed amendments failed to gain enough support to be added to the underlying bill.Several of the amendments were introduced by Senate Republicans who expressed concern that the debt ceiling bill passed by the House did too little to rein in government spending.“Tonight’s vote is a good outcome because Democrats did a very good job taking the worst parts of the Republican plan off the table,” the Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said after the vote.As part of the negotiations over the bill, McCarthy successfully pushed for modest government spending cuts and changes to the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs. Those changes were deemed insufficient by 31 Republican senators, who echoed the criticism voiced by the 71 House Republicans who opposed the bill a day earlier.The Senate minority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, supported the bill, even as he acknowledged that lawmakers must take further action to tackle the federal government’s debt of more than $31tn.Senate Democrats lobbied against certain provisions in the bill, namely the expedited approval of the controversial Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, introduced an amendment to remove the pipeline provision from the underlying debt ceiling bill, but that measure failed alongside the 10 other proposed amendments.Refusing a once-routine vote to allow a the nation’s debt limit to be lifted without concessions, McCarthy brought Biden’s White House to the negotiating table to strike an agreement that forces spending cuts aimed at curbing the nation’s deficits.“The fact remains that the House majority never should have put us at risk of a disastrous, self-inflicted default in the first place,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat. “We should prevent the debt ceiling from being used as a political hostage and stop allowing our country to be taken up to the edge of default.” More

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      Who won the debt ceiling negotiations? – podcast

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      On Wednesday night the House debated legislation to increase the US debt limit until January 2025, before passing the bill by a vote of 314 to 117, in a rare showing of bipartisan action.
      It then narrowly passed the Senate late on Thursday night, heading straight to Biden’s desk to sign just days before the 5 June deadline. This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the congressional reporter for the Washington Post, Marianna Sotomayor. They discuss whether Biden and McCarthy are right to see this as a win, or have they failed by simply giving into the demands of the other side

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      US debt ceiling deal narrowly passes senate averting catastrophic federal default

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      The Senate narrowly passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling on Thursday night, sending the legislation to Joe Biden’s desk and averting a federal default that could have wreaked havoc on the US economy and global markets.The final vote was 63 to 36, with 46 Democrats and 17 Republicans supporting the bill while five Democrats and 31 Republicans opposed the legislation. Sixty votes were needed to pass the bill.“Tonight’s vote is a good outcome because Democrats did a very good job taking the worst parts of the Republican plan off the table,” the Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said after the vote. “And that’s why Dems voted overwhelmingly for this bill, while Republicans certainly in the Senate did not.”Biden applauded the Senate’s accomplishment and promised to sign the bill as soon as it reaches his desk, with just days to go before the 5 June default deadline.“Tonight, senators from both parties voted to protect the hard-earned economic progress we have made and prevent a first-ever default by the United States,” Biden said in a statement. “Our work is far from finished, but this agreement is a critical step forward, and a reminder of what’s possible when we act in the best interests of our country.”The Senate vote came one day after the House passed the debt ceiling bill in a resounding, bipartisan vote of 314 to 117. The bill – which was negotiated between Biden and the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California – will suspend the government’s borrowing limit until January 2025, ensuring the issue will not resurface before the next presidential election.The final Senate vote on the bill capped off a long day in the upper chamber, where lawmakers spent hours considering amendments to the legislation. All 11 of the proposed amendments failed to gain enough support to be added to the underlying bill.Several of the amendments were introduced by Senate Republicans who expressed concern that the debt ceiling bill passed by the House did too little to rein in government spending.As part of the negotiations over the bill, McCarthy successfully pushed for modest government spending cuts and changes to the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs. Those changes were deemed insufficient by 31 Republican senators, who echoed the criticism voiced by the 71 House Republicans who opposed the bill a day earlier.“It doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t do the basic things that it purports to do,” Senator Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah, told Fox News on Thursday morning. “In case after case, the cuts that it proposes won’t materialize.”The Senate minority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, supported the bill, even as he acknowledged that lawmakers must take further action to tackle the federal government’s debt of more than $31tn.“The Fiscal Responsibility Act avoids the catastrophic consequences of a default on our nation’s debt,” McConnell said on the floor on Thursday morning. “The deal the House passed last night is a promising step toward fiscal sanity. But make no mistake: there is much more work to be done. The fight to reel in wasteful government spending is far from over.”As some of their colleagues lamented the state of America’s debt, defense hawks in the Senate Republican conference warned that the legislation does not sufficiently fund the Pentagon, leaving the US military vulnerable in the face of foreign threats.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchumer and McConnell attempted to allay those concerns by entering a statement into the record reaffirming that America stands ready to “respond to ongoing and growing national security threats”.“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries,” the joint statement read. “The Senate is not about to ignore our national needs, nor abandon our friends and allies who face urgent threats from America’s most dangerous adversaries.”The Senate leaders released a second statement aimed at reassuring colleagues who expressed alarm over a provision stipulating that an across-the-board spending cut will be enacted if Congress does not pass all 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024. The measure was designed to incentivize Congress members to pass a full budget, which has proven to be a difficult task in recent years, but lawmakers fear the policy will lead to more spending cuts.“We share the concern of many of our colleagues about the potential impact of sequestration and we will work in a bipartisan, collaborative way to avoid this outcome,” Schumer and McConnell said. “The leaders look forward to bills being reported out of committee with strong bipartisan support.”Senate Democrats also lobbied against certain provisions in the bill, namely the expedited approval of the controversial Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, introduced an amendment to remove the pipeline provision from the underlying debt ceiling bill, but that measure failed alongside the 10 other proposed amendments.Despite their personal concerns about the details of the bill, most Senate Democrats, including Kaine, supported the legislation to get it to Biden’s desk and avoid a devastating default that economists warned could result in millions of lost jobs. With the immediate crisis averted, Democrats reiterated their demands to eliminate the debt ceiling and remove any future threat of default.“The fact remains that the House majority never should have put us at risk of a disastrous, self-inflicted default in the first place,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat. “We should prevent the debt ceiling from being used as a political hostage and stop allowing our country to be taken up to the edge of default.” More

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      Biden falls on stage at Air Force Academy ceremony; Senate blocks student relief program – live

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      From 2h agoJoe Biden took a heavy fall on stage on Thursday afternoon at the conclusion of a lengthy ceremony honoring graduating air force recruits in Colorado.The president gave the commencement address at the event, which lasted around five hours. Biden, 80, tripped and fell to the ground as he turned to his left to shake an officer’s hand following his speech.He remained down for several seconds before an air force officer and two Secret Service agents helped him back to his feet. He walked back to his seat unaided after pointing to an item on the stage.White House communications director Ben LaBolt said on Twitter that Biden was unhurt. “He’s fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” he said.Republicans in particular have made an issue of Biden’s age as he seeks re-election next year. He would be 86 at the conclusion of a second term.In April, the White House was reportedly working on a plan to boost support for Vice-President Kamala Harris in the face of the mounting criticism.Biden is no stranger to mishaps. Last year he fell off his bike during a ride in Delaware after catching his foot on a pedal.An Oklahoma Republican senator said “I don’t want reality” in a recent hearing on race and education.Martin Pengelly reports:Questioning a witness about childcare and the teaching of race, the Oklahoma Republican senator Markwayne Mullin said: “I don’t want reality.”The remark prompted laughter in the hearing room.Mullin said he “misspoke” and returned to hectoring his witness about whether a book meant to teach children about racism was appropriate for early learning classes.Mullin is an election denier, former cage fighter and plumbing company owner who sat in the US House before being elected to the Senate last year.His confrontational style has caused comment before. In March, for example, he told a Teamsters leader to “shut your mouth” during a fiery exchange.Mullin’s remark about reality and its uses came on Wednesday in a hearing held by the Senate health, education, labour and pensions committee.For more, click here:Donald Trump has responded to President Joe Biden’s fall at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, saying, “I hope he wasn’t hurt,” before adding, “That’s too bad.”Speaking to reporters, Trump said, “Well, I hope he wasn’t hurt. The whole thing is … crazy. You gotta be careful about that … because you don’t want that even if you have to tiptoe down a ramp,” as the crowd responded with applause.Trump went on to recall an incident during his presidency in which he was captured tiptoeing down a ramp next to a general after he gave an address at West Point, New York, in June 2020.Trump’s slow walk at the time prompted widespread concern online over his fitness as president.Recalling the incident, Trump said:
      “That was the best speech I think I ever made and it was pouring rain … and horrible and cold and windy. And they had a ramp that was pure as an ice skating rink and it was like 25 feet long …
      I have nice leather [shoes] … and I said, ‘You know what, general? Get ready, if I grab you, you just get ready ’cause I got this stupid ramp that somebody put up and there’s no stairs, right?’ … So I tiptoe down and I suffered for that. They never covered my speech but the smart people understood that … ”
      He went on to add: “That’s a bad place to fall … That’s not inspiring.”
      Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that he has “conversations with dead people” every day.Speaking to the Free Press in response to a question about how he thought his late father and former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy, as well as his uncle and the 35th US president, John F Kennedy, would address the country’s issues today, Kennedy replied:“I do meditations every day,” Kennedy said. “That’s kind of the nature of my meditations. I have a lot of conversations with dead people.”He went on to add in a text message, “They are one-way prayers for strength and wisdom. I get no strategic advice from the dead,” the outlet reported.Kennedy is currently in the presidential race against President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination and is a prominent conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic.For more details, click here:A Pride flag was put up over the Wisconsin capitol building on Thursday as part of the state’s show of effort to support LGBTQ+ rights across the country.During a noon ceremony in front of dozens of spectators, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, instructed the flag to be raised and will fly above the state capitol throughout the entirety of June to mark Pride month. The flag flies below the US flag and the Wisconsin state flag.Speaking to spectators, Evers said that he was “jazzed as hell” to be at the ceremony, adding, “You belong here. You are welcome here … It’s a signal that I will always stand with LGBTQ Wisconsinites, including our trans and gender non-conforming kids, and will fight to protect them with every tool and every power that I have,” the Associated Press reports.The flag-raising ceremony comes as LGBTQ+ rights have come under increasing attack from rightwing lawmakers across the country.Joe Biden is on his way back to Washington DC after taking a tumble at the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado, this afternoon.The Associated Press released a photograph of the 80-year-old president climbing the steps to board Air Force One on Thursday afternoon, Biden holding the handrail as he ascends.Aides said Biden was unhurt in the fall.Read more:Another supporter of Donald Trump who took part in the deadly January 6 riot in Washington DC has been sentenced to a lengthy prison term.Roberto Minuta, described by prosecutors as one of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes’ “most trusted men”, received a four-year term for seditious conspiracy from US district court judge Amit Mehta.Minuta, of Prosper, Texas, was not initially at the Capitol because he was part of a “security detail” for Trump ally Roger Stone, who was attending Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally nearby. But prosecutors said he sped to the scene of the riot in a golf cart once he learned of the breach of the Capitol building.Once inside, he joined a crowd pushing against police and screamed, “This was bound to happen,” CNN reported.Exactly one week ago, Mehta sentenced Rhodes to 18 years in prison, also for seditious conspiracy. It was the longest sentence handed down to date to a January 6 riot participant.“The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government,” Mehta told the far-right group’s leader.Joe Biden took a heavy fall on stage on Thursday afternoon at the conclusion of a lengthy ceremony honoring graduating air force recruits in Colorado.The president gave the commencement address at the event, which lasted around five hours. Biden, 80, tripped and fell to the ground as he turned to his left to shake an officer’s hand following his speech.He remained down for several seconds before an air force officer and two Secret Service agents helped him back to his feet. He walked back to his seat unaided after pointing to an item on the stage.White House communications director Ben LaBolt said on Twitter that Biden was unhurt. “He’s fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” he said.Republicans in particular have made an issue of Biden’s age as he seeks re-election next year. He would be 86 at the conclusion of a second term.In April, the White House was reportedly working on a plan to boost support for Vice-President Kamala Harris in the face of the mounting criticism.Biden is no stranger to mishaps. Last year he fell off his bike during a ride in Delaware after catching his foot on a pedal.Punchbowl has details of a Senate deal it says “came together relatively quickly Thursday” to try to get the debt ceiling bill passed in the chamber tonight.A group of Republican “defense hawks”, it says, demanded a public commitment from Senate leadership to take up a spending bill later this year focused on Ukraine and other priorities, including Israel and China.They also reportedly secured a deal with Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer to bring up about a dozen appropriations bills they wanted heard before the end of the year.It remains to be seen if a final vote will happen tonight. Schumer is hopeful it will, saying the chamber will “stay in session until we send the bill avoiding default to President Biden’s desk. We will keep working until the job is done.”Senators have voted to block one of Joe Biden’s flagship policy promises, progressing a bill that would repeal his student debt relief program and end the administration’s pause on federal student loan payments.The vote was 52-46 to advance the legislation, NBC reported, with Democrats Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Jon Tester (Montana), plus Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema, breaking ranks and joining Republicans.The bill, however, will not become law because Biden said in a statement last month that he would veto it.“This resolution is an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief,” Biden said.“[The bill] would weaken America’s middle class. Americans should be able to have a little more breathing room as they recover from the economic strains associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.”Seeking to repeal Biden’s program to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for certain borrowers, the bill passed the House last week 218-203.Its overall fate rests with the supreme court, which is currently weighing the legality of the program Republicans say is an unfair and unnecessary welfare handout.Documents were uncovered last month showing that Republican states fighting the loan forgiveness plan made false claims they would “suffer injuries” or be financially affected, a debt forgiveness campaign group claimed.Read more:Mark Kelly, Democratic senator for Arizona, says he’s a yes on the debt ceiling bill.“It’s ridiculous that, once again, DC has come to the brink of wrecking our economy,” Kelly, a former Nasa astronaut, said in a tweet.Two Republican senators have told CNN that the chamber is looking to wrap up a final vote on raising the debt ceiling tonight, clearing the way for the bill to hit Joe Biden’s desk over the weekend and in plenty of time to avoid a national default.The network reports that Florida’s Rick Scott and Utah’s Mitt Romney both say that’s the goal. Voting on any amendments and a vote on final passage need to be accomplished by the end of the day for that to happen.Additionally, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and Senate majority leader, has said the chamber will remain in session until there’s an outcome.CNN says, however, there’s lingering dissent from certain members.Montana Democrat Jon Tester told the network:
      The debt needs to be addressed, [but] this is the wrong way to address the debt. Just the wrong way. It empowers the folks on the far right and, quite frankly, I don’t think they have the best interest of the country in mind. And I haven’t talked to anybody that’s enamored with this deal.
      A minimum of 60 senators are needed to avoid a filibuster on the bill, which would delay its passage beyond the deadline for the US to avoid defaulting on its payment obligations.Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri have said they will oppose, or are thinking about opposing, the bill, but Schumer and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell are hopeful they have the numbers between them to get the bill past the finishing post tonight or tomorrow.The White House has slammed congressional Republicans for demanding that the FBI hand over a document related to Joe Biden, a spokesperson deriding what he called “a silly stunt”.Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, and the Kentucky congressman James Comer demanded the document last month, saying it concerned an unspecified “alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden when he was vice-president to Barack Obama.The FBI did not comply. After threats of congressional action, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, reportedly offered to let the Republicans see the document.According to CNN, the document is connected to work done by Rudy Giuliani for then president Donald Trump in 2020.Trump’s first impeachment arose from the former New York mayor’s attempts to find dirt on Biden in Ukraine.As CNN pointed out, in 2020 Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, told reporters: “We can’t take anything we received from Ukraine at face value.”In comments to Fox News earlier today, Grassley said: “It’s a non-classified document, [Wray] admits it exists.“We aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice-President Biden are accurate or not. We’re responsible for making sure the FBI does its job and that’s what we want to know.”Asked if he’d read the document, Grassley, 89, said he had but would not “characterise it” on air.A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, tweeted video of Grassley’s remarks and said: “Wow. Chuck Grassley admits the truth of his and James Comer’s silly FBI form stunt.”Comer is chair of the House oversight committee, one of the Republican-led panels seeking to dig up dirt on the president, his son Hunter Biden and other Democratic targets.In a statement, Sams added: “By congressional Republicans’ own admission, this clearly is not an exercise to get to the truth or uncover facts.“Instead, they are simply staging sad political stunts to push thin innuendo and spread insinuations to attack the president and get themselves booked on Fox News.”Joe Biden has just wrapped up a lengthy commencement address to graduating cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He made no mention of the debt ceiling bill currently working its way through Congress, but touched on other political flashpoints including the war in Ukraine, cooperation with China and the threat posed by artificial intelligence.The president’s remarks included a renewed promise to Ukraine that the US would always stand beside the country, and continue to send military and humanitarian aid as it continues to fight against Russia’s invasion:
      Support for Ukraine will not waver. We always stand up for democracies. Always. I ask you to contemplate what happens if it wavers and Ukraine goes down. What about Belarus? What about the rest of eastern Europe?
      It was an upbeat, inspirational speech from the commander in chief, welcoming graduates to their future careers in the air and space forces:
      The world you graduate into, it is not only changing rapidly, the pace of change is accelerating as well. We’re seeing proliferating global challenges from Russia’s aggression and brutality in Europe, to competition with China, and a whole hell of a lot in between, growing instability, to food insecurity and natural disasters, all of which are being made worse by the existential threat of climate change.
      The threat from the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), Biden said, could not be underestimated:
      We’re seeing emerging technologies, from AI and 3D printing, that can change the character of conflict itself. I met in the Oval Office with with leading scientists in the area of AI. Some are very worried that AI can actually overtake human thinking and planning. So we’ve got a lot to deal with, a lot to do.
      From Colorado, Biden is heading back to the White House, hopeful of white smoke later from the Senate after it debates the debt ceiling bill that would stave off a national default.The former Republican congresswoman turned avowed Trump foe Liz Cheney declined to rule out a presidential run of her own earlier, telling a policy conference in Michigan: “I am really focused on making sure that Donald Trump isn’t anywhere close to the Oval Office again.”Cheney also said she would not support Trump’s closest challenger in the Republican primary, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.The daughter of the former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney is an arch-conservative who nonetheless turned against Trump over his attempted election subversion and incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Defeated by a Trump-endorsed opponent in her Wyoming primary last year, Cheney emerged as a leader of anti-Trump Republicans, playing a prominent role as the House January 6 committee made criminal referrals regarding Trump to the US Department of Justice.Despite his unparalleled legal jeopardy, Trump leads Republican primary polling by around 30 points, with DeSantis a distant second. Cheney has not declared a run but generally scores in the low single figures, with most other candidates, declared or not.Speaking at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Thursday, Cheney added: “People who are willing to deny elections and people who are embracing this cult of personality around Donald Trump … have to be resisted at every stage.”Ron DeSantis “lashed out” at a reporter who asked why he did not take questions from the audience at a campaign event in New Hampshire.The awkward exchange seems bound to add to reports and observations that the Florida governor, a clear but distant second to Donald Trump in Republican primary polling, lacks the warmth and interpersonal skills necessary for retail politicking, the staple of primary season.DeSantis was appearing at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Laconia. Video tweeted by Jonathan Allen of NBC News showed the governor posing for selfies with audience members, a broad smile fixed in place.The reporter – identified by NBC as Steve Peoples of the Associated Press – asked: “Why not take any questions from voters, governor? Governor, how come you’re not taking questions from voters?”DeSantis said: “People are coming up to me, talking to me. What are you talking about? I’m not here talking to people? Are you blind? Are you blind? People are coming up to me and talking whatever they want to talk about.”Here it is:NBC quoted Vikram Mansharamani, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Senate in New Hampshire last year, as calling the decision not to take audience questions “very disappointing”.“We like to hear from candidates and we have questions of our own [as] citizens here in the state,” Mansharamani said.It’s been a mixed bag so far today in US politics.The senate will later on Thursday take up the debt ceiling bill passed on a bipartisan vote in the House last night. Joe Biden is hopeful the measure averting a national default will be on his desk for signing before Monday.Meanwhile, the supreme court has handed down only a smattering of more minor opinions on the opening day of its June “decisions season”. A ruling weakening labor unions’ rights of where and when to call strikes; and another bolstering individuals’ rights to sue pharmacies who overcharge government programs for prescription drugs, came today.Here’s what else is happening:
      Twitter boss Elon Musk is facing a class action lawsuit for insider trading, investors accusing the billionaire of manipulating the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, costing them billions of dollars.
      Biden has marked the beginning of Pride Month with a tweet denouncing “cruel attacks” on LGBTQ+ rights by Republican legislatures and politicians around the country.
      “Months of distrust” inside Donald Trump’s legal team led to the departure of one of the former president’s top lawyers, and weakens his defense against claims he illegally retained classified documents after leaving office.
      Former vice-president Mike Pence will join the crowded race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination next week. Trump, his former boss, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis are among those already declared. Chris Christie, the ex-governor of New Jersey, will also announce his run next week, reports say.
      There’s plenty more to come. Please stick with us.Twitter boss Elon Musk is facing a class action lawsuit for insider trading, investors accusing the billionaire of manipulating the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, costing them billions of dollars.According to Reuters, the Manhattan federal court lawsuit filed on Wednesday night says Musk, also chief of SpaceX and Tesla, used Twitter posts, paid online influencers, his 2021 appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live and other “publicity stunts” to trade profitably at their expense through several Dogecoin wallets that he or Tesla controls.Investors say this included when Musk sold about $124m of Dogecoin in April after he replaced Twitter’s blue bird logo with Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog logo, leading to a 30% jump in Dogecoin’s price. Musk bought Twitter in October.A “deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation and insider trading” enabled Musk to defraud investors, promote himself and his companies, the filing said.Reuters said that Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, declined to comment on the action. A lawyer for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The investors’ lawyer did not immediately respond to a separate request.Musk was the host of Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s glitchy campaign launch for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination on Twitter Spaces last week.It’s not been a good week for Musk, the world’s second richest man. On Wednesday, it was reported the value of Twitter had plummeted two thirds since he bought the social media platform.Read more: More