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      ‘Rupert Murdoch is a symptom’: Fox’s future politics look the same as past

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      The abrupt uncoupling of the Republican kingmaker Rupert Murdoch from his Fox News empire may have represented a ground shift in the media landscape in the US, but politically at least, very little is likely to change, analysts say.That could be good news for those on the right of the Republican party, who can expect the network to head into the 2024 presidential election – even without its long-time figurehead – continuing to amplify the worst of the political bias and disinformation upon which it made its name.“They’re going to continue the same business formula, which is whipping up hysteria around manufactured crises. They’ll continue to foster outrage and division, and gin up support for conservative causes. I don’t see any of that changing dramatically anytime soon,” said Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg school for communication.“Looking at the big picture, with Rupert Murdoch stepping down, don’t expect change. I agree that he was a politico, a very influential political figure in his own right, and certainly he had personal relationships that might not continue with Lachlan [Murdoch’s son, the Fox Corp chief executive].“But the actions of Fox News are going to be primarily dictated by economic concerns and maximizing shareholder value, and they’re doing quite well at the moment. They’re still the most watched cable news network, they’re incredibly profitable. So I don’t think they’re going to mess with their formula.”Pickard’s view is shared by other analysts, who see a “business as usual” approach as the network continues to deal with the fallout from the $787.5m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for peddling Donald Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen.That episode cost Fox its most-watched rightwing host, Tucker Carlson, who left in April after pushing the worst of the falsehoods, and complaining he was fired as part of the settlement. Fox and Dominion both say he wasn’t.Fox still faces another, potentially more costly defamation lawsuit from a second voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7bn in damages for multiple fabrications broadcast about the company. The legal turbulence has profound implications for Fox’s future, experts say.“The huge Dominion settlement, and the underlying misconduct that the defamation litigation revealed, is inextricably intertwined with the network’s fortunes going forward,” said Carl Tobias, Williams chair in law at the University of Richmond school of law.“Because the Smartmatic litigation, which involves strikingly similar allegations of misconduct revealed in Dominion’s lawsuit, could impose similarly damaging reputational and economic harm on Fox, with concomitant loss of viewers, Lachlan Murdoch must seriously consider settling with Smartmatic.“The departure of Tucker Carlson may suggest that Fox has learned from the Dominion debacle and perhaps attempted to restrict peddling of misinformation that the Dominion litigation uncovered, but that remains unclear.”Others believe Rupert Murdoch will continue to wield significant power at News Corp, the parent company of his global media operations, and Fox itself, despite the Australian-born billionaire announcing in a six-paragraph farewell statement on Thursday that he was transitioning to “chairman emeritus” of the companies.Preston Padden, a veteran media industry executive who served Murdoch in several roles, including as the president for telecommunications at News Corp and as a senior vice-president at Fox Broadcasting Company, made such a claim on X, formerly Twitter, in a post referring to efforts by US ethics groups to have Fox’s US broadcast licenses revoked by the federal communications commission (FCC).“Given [Murdoch’s] statement that ‘I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change,’ the fact that the trust he controls has a controlling stock interest in Fox, the fact that his son remains chair and CEO, and the fact that the same cadre of executives who knowingly and repeatedly presented false news remains, this announcement has zero impact on the FCC filings,” he wrote.Padden, who gave testimony in the Dominion case, is one of three former senior Fox executives who have become vocal critics of Murdoch and the network, writing in a blog post earlier this year that they regretted their defense of the channel. “We never envisioned, and would not knowingly have enabled, the disinformation machine that, in our opinion, Fox has become,” they wrote.Pickard, meanwhile, said the tried and tested political playbook that Fox has followed for so long will continue to encourage Republican politicians, and help the network fend off the rise of fledgling channels seeking a greater slice of conservative and rightwing viewership.“Fox News will continue to fear they’re being outmaneuvered by these upstarts, One American News Network, or Newsmax, but there’s just no comparison, no real competition,” he said.“They’ll continue to play this central role in rightwing political discourse whether we’re talking about Fox News and its audience, Fox News and the Republican party, Fox News and Trump. These relationships are all mutually beneficial, mutually reinforcing.“They’re going to make crass business decisions in terms of how they’re serving their audience. You’re still going to see this endless parade of Republican politicians on Fox News, and Fox News will continue to amplify their talking points, along with plenty of white grievance and disinformation and conspiracies, but very little journalism.”Ultimately, Pickard believes, it makes little difference which Murdoch name is on the chairperson’s office door.“We need to ask questions about the effect this has on democracy, and the corrosive, toxic effects that Fox is having on political discourse in civil society writ large,” he said.“It’s a very dramatic, personality-driven narrative of Rupert Murdoch stepping down. But at the end of the day, Rupert Murdoch is a symptom of these larger political-economic relationships, and I feel that’s what we really need to draw attention to.” More

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      New Jersey senator Menendez rejects calls from fellow Democrats to resign

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      Several Democrats including his own state governor are calling on their fellow party member Robert Menendez to resign after federal authorities charged the New Jersey US senator and his wife with accepting bribes. However, the defiant senator has rejected those claims and is refusing to step down.Authorities on Friday revealed charges alleging that Robert and Nadine Menendez illegally accepted gold bars, cash, a luxurious Mercedes-Benz car and other gifts in exchange for favors benefiting three businessmen as well as influencing the Egyptian government.In response, the Democratic congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota told CNN he was deeply disappointed in Menendez and that the senator needed to resign. Phillips said that was his position despite his belief that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.“Yes, I am a Democrat and so is Senator Menendez, but based on what I have seen, I am disappointed and yes, I think he should resign,” Phillips said.He continued: “I’m appalled. Anybody who pays attention – I don’t care [about] your politics, Democrat or Republican, you should be appalled.“A member of Congress who appears to have broken the law is someone who I should believe should resign.”Phillips went on to invoke the case of George Santos, the Republican congressman who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.“I think George Santos should have resigned already,” he said. “Sadly, our House ethics process, and I would argue the Senate as well, is not as proficient as it needs to be so we have to rely on the judicial system, but I’m really disappointed.”Menendez rejected calls to resign and plans to refute the claims of bribery and corruption, according to NBC News. “Those who believe in justice believe in innocence until proven guilty. I intend to continue to fight for the people of New Jersey with the same success I’ve had for the past five decades,” Menendez said in the statement.“This is the same record of success these very same leaders have lauded all along. It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere,” he added.In response to a question on whether Democratic leaders in Congress should lean on Menendez to resign and push him out, Phillips replied: “Look, I am trying to restore faith in government.“That’s one of my missions. It’s a lot of my colleagues’ missions, and sometimes we have to walk that talk, even if it’s uncomfortable. And I would argue that this time, yes, the answer is absolutely.”The New Jersey representative Andy Kim, a Democrat, also called on Menendez to resign. The New Jersey Globe quoted Kim as saying: “These allegations are serious and alarming. It doesn’t matter what your job title is or your politics – no one in America is above the law.“The people of New Jersey absolutely need to know the truth of what happened, and I hope the judicial system works thoroughly and quickly to bring this truth to light.”He added: “In the meantime, I don’t have confidence that the senator has the ability to properly focus on our state and its people while addressing such a significant legal matter. He should step down.”Unsurprisingly, New Jersey’s Republican state committee joined Phillips and Kim in calling for Menendez to step down. The statement said Menendez’s “legal woes [were] an embarrassing distraction”.“For the good of the people of this state, who deserve full and devoted representation, we call on … Robert Menendez to resign,” the statement added.In New Jersey, if there is a vacancy in the US Senate, that seat gets filled by a gubernatorial appointment before a special election is held to replace the appointee. Should Menendez leave office, his vacancy would be filled by the state’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, a reality that perhaps makes it less uncomfortable for Phillips and Kim to insist on their fellow party member’s resignation.Murphy himself also called for Menendez to resign in a statement issued on Friday.“The allegations in the indictment … are deeply disturbing,” the statement said. “These are serious charges that implicate national security and the integrity of our criminal justice system.”In recent months, Democrats have not only called on Santos to be removed from Congress – they have also demanded that Donald Trump not run for a second term as president as he grapples with more than 90 criminal charges across four separate indictments.House Democrats introduced a resolution to expel the indicted Santos from Congress in May, but Republicans successfully sidestepped the maneuver.Meanwhile, Virginia’s Democratic US senator Tim Kaine said earlier this month that he believed there was a “powerful argument” to be made that Trump could be disqualified from running in the 2024 presidential election under the 14th amendment of the constitution. That amendment bars anyone who has taken an oath to support the constitution and has “engaged in insurrection” against the US from holding any civil, military or elected office without approval from two-thirds of both the House and Senate.Trump’s charges include ones in connection with the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress staged by his supporters after he lost the previous year’s presidential election to Joe Biden.Other liberals as well as prominent legal scholars across the country have echoed that argument. More

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      Biden and Harris unveil first federal gun violence prevention office, citing 100 people shot and killed daily – live

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      From 2h agoBiden urged that “it’s time to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines”, and for Congress to do more.He said the new federal Office of Gun Violence will be overseen by Kamala Harris, who has been “on the frontlines” her entire career as a prosecutor and as a attorney general.Listing the four primarily responsibilities of the newly formed office, he said none of those steps would alone “solve the entirety of the gun violence epidemic”. “Together, they will save lives,” he said.
      I never thought even remotely say this in my whole career: guns are the number one killer of children in America. Guns are the number one killer of children in America.
      In 2023, more than 500 mass shootings have taken place and “well over 30,000” deaths as a result of gun violence, he said, describing it as “totally unacceptable”.Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      The Republican-led House all but disappeared for the long weekend after abruptly wrapping up its work on Thursday when the embattled speaker, Kevin McCarthy, failed to advance a stopgap government spending bill.
      The White House planned to begin telling federal agencies to prepare for a shutdown. If Congress does not pass a spending bill before 1 October, the lapse in funding is expected to force hundreds of thousands of federal workers to go without pay and bring a halt to some crucial government services.
      The historic US autoworkers’ strike as the United Auto Workers president, Shawn Fain, called on 38 additional plants across 20 states to join the strike. During a livestream update, Fain announced the additional strikes at automaker plants as contract negotiations with the big three automakers remain far apart on economic issues. He invited Joe Biden to the picket line.
      Joe Biden pledged to fight for gun safety laws while unveiling a new White House office of gun violence prevention. Kamala Harris will oversee the office. “On this issue, we do not have a moment to spare nor a life to spare,” she said in remarks on Friday.
      Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, and his wife have been charged with bribery offenses in connection with accepting gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz, among other gifts, in exchange for protecting three businessmen and influencing the government of Egypt.
      The conservative justice Clarence Thomas has attended at least two donor events organized by the Koch network, the ultra-right political organization founded by the libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which has brought multiple cases before the supreme court, according to a new report.
      The third Republican presidential primary debate will be held on 8 November in Miami. Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner of the party’s race, skipped the first debate and recently announced he’ll also forego the second.
      Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced he is leaving the Democratic party and becoming a Republican.
      That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the US politics live blog today. Have a good weekend.The third Republican presidential primary debate will be held on 8 November in Miami.The date, first reported by CNN, is more than a month after the second debate which is scheduled to take place on 27 September at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. The first took place on 23 August in Milwaukee.Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner of the party’s race, skipped the first debate and recently announced he’ll also forego the second.Maxwell Frost, the 26-year-old congressman from Florida, described Joe Biden as “one of the fiercest champions of gun violence protection” as he stood beside the president and vice president at the Rose Garden.Frost said that as the first member of Gen Z to be voted into Congress last year, he is often asked what got him involved in politics and his answer is:
      I didn’t want to get shot in school. I was 15 years old when a shooter walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 20 children and six teachers. Like millions of kids, I went to school the next day with anxiety and fear that my life would be taken, my friends’ lives would be taken, and my family’s lives would be taken by senseless gun violence.
      He said that he had served as the national organizing director for March for Our Lives before being elected to Congress, and that he learned the “brutal truth” that the time people pay the most attention is usually “coupled with carnage and death”.
      Not today. Today the country sees us here, at the White House, with a president who is taking action.
      Biden said that for every member of Congress who refuses to act on gun violence, we will “need to elect new members of Congress”.
      There comes a point where our voices are so loud, our determination is so clear, that we can longer be stopped. We’re reaching that point. We’ve reached that point today, in my view, where the safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot.
      He said the “deadly and traumatic price” of inaction on gun control “can no longer be the lives of our children and the people of our country”.Biden urged that “it’s time to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines”, and for Congress to do more.He said the new federal Office of Gun Violence will be overseen by Kamala Harris, who has been “on the frontlines” her entire career as a prosecutor and as a attorney general.Listing the four primarily responsibilities of the newly formed office, he said none of those steps would alone “solve the entirety of the gun violence epidemic”. “Together, they will save lives,” he said.
      I never thought even remotely say this in my whole career: guns are the number one killer of children in America. Guns are the number one killer of children in America.
      In 2023, more than 500 mass shootings have taken place and “well over 30,000” deaths as a result of gun violence, he said, describing it as “totally unacceptable”.Joe Biden, who was introduced by Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, announced the creation of the first ever federal office of gun violence prevention and said he was “determined to send a clear message about how important this issue is to me and to the country”.He said that after every mass shooting, he has heard the same message all over the country: “Please do something. Do something to prevent a tragedy.” He said his administration has been working “relentlessly to do something”.He said that last year, he signed into law the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which he descried as “the most significant gun safety law” and an “important first step”.
      For the first time in three decades, we came together to overcome the relentless opposition from a gun lobby, gun manufacturers and so many politicians opposing common sense gun legislation.
      “We’re not stopping here,” Biden added.Harris said she “owed” it to the parents and children she has comforted who has been traumatized by losing a family member to gun violence.
      On this issue, we do not have a moment to spare nor a life to spare.
      The vice president said the administration will “use the full power of the federal government” to “strengthen the coalition of survivors, and advocates, and students, and teachers, and elected leaders, to save lives and fight for the rights of all people to be safe from fear”.Kamala Harris, speaking at the Rose Garden, said Americans “should be able to shop in a grocery store, walk down the street, or sit peacefully in a classroom” and be safe from gun violence.The US has been “torn apart by the fear and trauma that results from gun violence”, the vice president said, standing besides Joe Biden and Florida congressman Maxwell Frost.
      In our country today, one in five people has lost a family member to gun violence. Across our nation every day, about 120 Americans are killed by a gun.
      The impact of gun violence is not equal across all communities, she said.
      Black Americans are 10 times more likely to be victims of gun violence and homicide. Latino Americans twice as likely.
      Harris said that, as a former courtroom prosecutor, she had seen “with my own eyes what a bullet does to the human body”.
      We cannot normalise any of this. These are not simply statistics. These are our children.
      My colleague David Smith is at the Rose Garden event and has tweeted this picture of Biden and Harris emerging from the White House:Tennessee state representative Justin Jones has been spotted heading to the Rose Garden ahead of Joe Biden’s speech announcing the formation of the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, according to a White House pool report.Jones is one of the “Tennessee Three”, along with Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson, who was expelled earlier this year for his role in a pro-gun control protest inside the Tennessee Capitol.Throughout his presidency, Joe Biden has used executive actions to regulate homemade firearms – known as ghost guns – in the same way as traditional firearms, and to clarify who counts as a gun seller and thus is required by law to conduct background checks.Last year he also signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that, among other things, tightens background checks and bolsters mental health programs.Biden has advocated for re-instating the national assault weapons ban and expanding background checks since he was vice-president. A historic increase in gun homicides in 2020 pushed community-based violence prevention further up the administration’s agenda.Joe Biden is expected to announce the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention during a Rose Garden event at 2.45pm Eastern time.The office will be overseen by the office of the vice president, Kamala Harris, who will also be speaking at the event.In a statement released on Thursday, Biden said:
      In the absence of that sorely-needed action, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention along with the rest of my Administration will continue to do everything it can to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities, and our country apart.
      The White House just skirted around a question from the press about whether Joe Biden believes the New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez should resign.The senator, who has an influential position as chair of the US Senate committee on foreign relations, was indicted earlier today on bribery charges.“I’m going to be really careful here and not comment because it is an active matter,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.Jean-Pierre said the matter was the US Senate’s to deal with and that “discussions are happening” there about the “next steps.”Congresswoman Lucy McBath is addressing the press in the west wing at the daily briefing, which today is headlining on the new national gun violence prevention office. The new project will be officially launched just under an hour from now.Georgia representative McBath told how her young son was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2012 and she was “robbed of every dream that a mother holds,” she said, and noted that she would never see her son graduate high school, go to college or get married.“Every single day, over 100 people are shot and killed in the United States. Gun violence has no boundaries,” she said, whether people become victims in suburbs, cities or rural areas.McBath will join Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the rose garden shortly for the formal launch of the new office to prevent gun violence.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris plan to speak in the rose garden at the White House in about an hour on the creation of the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, to be led by the US vice president.In a few moments, the White House press briefing will begin, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accompanied at the podium by Georgia representative Lucy McBath, who campaigns on gun safety. She lost her son to gun violence.This is what she posted yesterday:Joe Biden has told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the US will provide a small number of long-range missiles to help in Ukraine’s fight against Russia, three US officials and a congressional official told NBC News on Friday.The officials did not confirm when the missiles would be delivered and remain anonymous as they have not been authorised to speak on the subject publicly.A congressional official told NBC News that there was still a debate about the type of missile that would be sent and how many would be delivered to Ukraine.The news comes after the White House rejected Zelenskiy’s request for Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to be sent to Ukraine as part of a new military aid package to bolster the country’s counteroffensive.For all the developments in the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion and related geopolitics, follow our Ukraine live blog here.Zelenskiy was given the red carpet treatment at the White House yesterday, after two days in New York at the United Nations General Assembly. Before visiting Biden he was on Capitol Hill meeting with US Senators. More

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      White House planning for government shutdown after chaos on Capitol Hill

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      The Republican-led US House of Representatives has all but disappeared for the long weekend after abruptly wrapping up its work on Thursday when the embattled speaker, Kevin McCarthy, failed to advance a stopgap government spending bill, as members continued to clash with just days left to avert a federal shutdown.The White House on Friday planned to begin telling federal agencies to prepare for a shutdown, AP reported, citing a government official.If Congress does not pass a spending bill before 1 October, the lapse in funding is expected to force hundreds of thousands of federal workers to go without pay and bring a halt to some crucial government services.McCarthy, who had projected optimism at the start of Thursday, now faces a reality in which his speakership hangs by a thread.The California Republican was dealt his second humiliating defeat of the week, after a proposal to take up House Republicans’ defense spending bill failed in a vote of 216 to 212, after five hard-right members – Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Eli Crane of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – joined Democrats in opposing the motion.The Thursday vote marked the second time this week that the motion had failed, after members of the extreme rightwing House Freedom caucus first blocked the bill on Tuesday.Given that the defense spending bill is usually one of the least contentious spending measures in the House, the second failed vote spelled major trouble for the spending talks. Leaving the floor on Thursday, McCarthy voiced exasperation with his critics within the Republican conference.“I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate,” McCarthy told reporters, adding: “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. That doesn’t work.”Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 despite four criminal indictments, has made a point of interfering from the sidelines, urging Republicans to use government funding as leverage to oppose his prosecution, as two of the criminal cases are federal.Emphasizing the serious threat posed by a shutdown, the White House implored Republicans to “stop playing political games with people’s lives”. “Extreme House Republicans showed yet again that their chaos is marching us toward a reckless and damaging government shutdown,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said on Thursday.The White House telling the government to prepare for the possibility of a shutdown is standard practice seven days out from a federal disruption, even one as rare as a government shutdown. As of Friday there was no endgame in sight in the House.McCarthy has repeatedly tried to appease his hard-right flank by agreeing to the steep spending cuts they are demanding to keep government open. But cheered on by Trump, the conservatives have all but seized control in dramatic fashion.On Thursday even a stopgap bill – called a continuing resolution or CR – to keep government funding past the 30 September deadline was a non-starter for some on the right flank.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said House Republicans continue to be held captive by the most extreme element of their conference.Many US government services would be disrupted and hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed without pay if federal funding stops on 1 October. Workers deemed “essential” would remain on the job, but without pay.Many government functions would be affected. Among those, the 2 million US military personnel would remain at their posts, but roughly half of the Pentagon’s 800,000 civilian employees would be furloughed. However, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration would continue maintaining nuclear weapons.Agents at the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service and other federal law enforcement agencies would remain on the job. Prison staffers likewise would continue to work.Criminal prosecutions, including the two federal cases against former Trump, would continue. Most civil litigation would be postponed and aid to local police departments and other grants could be delayed.Border patrol and immigration enforcement agents would continue to work, as would customs officers. The Coast Guard would continue operations.Most of the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer-protection workers would be furloughed, as would half of its antitrust employees.Airport security screeners and air-traffic control workers would be required to work and US embassies and consulates would remain open.It is not clear how the 63 US national parks would be affected. They remained open during the 2018-2019 shutdown, through restrooms and information desks were closed and waste disposal was halted. They were closed during a 2013 shutdown.Scientific research at government institutions would be disrupted. The Securities and Exchange Commission would furlough roughly 90% of its 4,600 employees. More

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      McCarthy’s House speakership hangs by a thread as US shutdown looms

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      Kevin McCarthy ended the week in the same predicament that he started it with: teetering on the edge of a government shutdown as his House speakership hangs by a thread.The House wrapped up its work on Thursday with no clear path forward on advancing a stopgap government spending bill – a grim sign with just nine days left to avert a federal shutdown. In an advisory to members, the House Republican whip, Tom Emmer, said spending negotiations were “ongoing”, but he did not specify any plans for a vote on Friday.The announcement came hours after a procedural motion to advance House Republicans’ defense spending bill was defeated by far-right members for the second time this week. McCarthy and his team spent the week trying to appease and cajole the handful of holdouts within their conference who blocked the bill and also oppose a stopgap measure, but those efforts failed to sway enough members to advance the defense bill.The two failed votes on Tuesday and Thursday were particularly worrisome for McCarthy considering the defense spending bill is generally viewed as the least contentious of the funding bills that Congress must pass.“I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate,” McCarthy told reporters on Thursday. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. That doesn’t work.”If the House and the Senate do not pass a spending bill before 1 October, the lapse in funding will probably force hundreds of thousands of federal workers to go without pay and bring a halt to crucial government services. Emphasizing the serious threat posed by a shutdown, the White House implored Republicans to “stop playing political games with people’s lives”.“Extreme House Republicans showed yet again that their chaos is marching us toward a reckless and damaging government shutdown,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said on Thursday. “Extreme House Republicans can’t even get an agreement among themselves to keep the government running or to fund the military.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWith the odds of a shutdown rising, the White House again called on McCarthy to honor the funding deal outlined in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which passed the House and the Senate with bipartisan support earlier this year. That agreement, brokered between President Joe Biden and McCarthy, suspended the debt ceiling and outlined modest spending cuts for fiscal year 2024, but those cuts were deemed insufficient by members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.Capitalizing on House Republicans’ narrow majority, those hard-right members are now demanding steeper cuts in exchange for their support of a stopgap spending bill. McCarthy’s previous concessions to the holdout members, including the launch of an impeachment inquiry against Biden last week, have so far failed to swing enough Republican votes to keep the government open.It also remains unclear whether the Freedom Caucus’s proposed budget – which the White House has warned would include severe funding cuts for border security, education and food safety – can even pass muster with some of the more centrist members of the House Republican conference. Those suggested cuts will certainly fail to win widespread support in the Senate, which has taken a more bipartisan approach to the funding negotiations.In short, House Republicans continue to squabble over a budget plan that has no chance of ever becoming law, and some of them appear willing to shut down the government over the issue.Hanging over the spending fight is the very real question of whether McCarthy will be able to hold on to his speakership. Hard-right Republicans have made clear that, if McCarthy attempts to cut a deal with Democrats to fund the government, they will move to oust the speaker – a viable possibility when it only takes one member to call a vote to vacate the chair. But if hard-right Republicans do not drop their opposition to a stopgap bill, McCarthy may ultimately need Democrats’ support if he wants to avoid a shutdown.Depending on whether McCarthy can strike a deal with his critics, the speaker may soon have to choose between keeping the government open and keeping his gavel. More

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      McCarthy says hard-right Republicans ‘want to burn whole place down’

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      The House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was dealt his second humiliating defeat of the week on Thursday, when his conference again failed to approve a procedural motion as members continued to clash over government spending levels with just days left to avert a federal shutdown.With no clear path forward in Republicans’ negotiations, the House concluded its work on Thursday without any stated plan to reconvene on Friday.“Discussions related to [fiscal year 2024] appropriations are ongoing,” Congressman Tom Emmer, the House Republican whip, said in a statement. “Members are advised that ample notice will be given ahead of any potential votes tomorrow or this weekend.”A proposal to take up House Republicans’ defense spending bill failed in a vote of 216 to 212, with five hard-right members joining Democrats in opposing the motion. The vote marked the second time this week that the motion had failed, after members of the House Freedom caucus first blocked the bill on Tuesday.The defeat was interpreted as a dismal sign for House Republicans’ prospects of approving a separate stopgap spending bill before government funding runs out at the end of the month.McCarthy had projected optimism heading into the Thursday vote, saying he and his allies had made substantial progress in their talks with the holdout Republicans on Wednesday. But five members of the House Freedom caucus – Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Eli Crane of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – still opposed the procedural motion on Thursday.Leaving the floor on Thursday, McCarthy voiced exasperation with his critics within the Republican conference.“I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate,” McCarthy told reporters. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. That doesn’t work.”The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, chastised his Republican colleagues over their internal divisions, accusing them of jeopardizing Americans’ wellbeing for the sake of a political stunt.Given that the defense spending bill is usually one of the least contentious spending measures in the House, the second failed vote spelled major trouble for the spending talks. If no agreement is reached on a series of funding bills, the federal government will shutter on 30 September. In the event of a shutdown, starting 1 October, hundreds of thousands of federal workers would likely go without pay and key healthcare and other public programs would be affected.“House Republicans continue to be held captive by the most extreme element of their conference, and it’s hurting the American people,” Jeffries said at a press conference. “Why are the American people facing down another manufactured GOP crisis? They need to end their civil war.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere are several unknowns still hanging over McCarthy’s effort, which, as the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has pointed out, could be politically damaging to the party.The first is whether hard-right members of the House Freedom caucus – who have capitalized on McCarthy’s narrow majority – will eventually abandon their blockade as the shutdown deadline approaches.The second is if whatever bill Republicans do pass will include the Ukraine aid and disaster relief funding the Democratic-led Senate is demanding. Without Senate agreement, any measure cannot be enacted.Explaining her vote against advancing the defense bill on Thursday, Greene said she wanted to send a message about the need to end funding for Ukraine. “I just voted NO to the rule for the Defense bill because they refused to take the war money for Ukraine out and put it in a separate bill,” Greene said on X, formerly known as Twitter.McCarthy has made clear to his party that he will approach Biden’s pending request for an additional $24bn in support for Ukraine with considerable scepticism – taking into consideration extremist members, like Greene and Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, who have signaled that their stance against Ukraine funding is non-negotiable.“Is [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy elected to Congress? Is he our president? I don’t think I have to commit anything and I think I have questions for him,” McCarthy told ABC News, as the Ukrainian president prepared to meet Joe Biden at the White House.Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has complicated matters from the sidelines, urging Republicans to use government funding as leverage for his own personal gains.“A very important deadline is approaching at the end of the month,” Trump posted on Truth Social, his own social media platform. “Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border, and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State.”The former president, who faces 91 criminal charges over election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments, as well as assorted civil lawsuits, added: “This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other patriots.” More

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      White House says Republicans ‘playing games with people’s lives’ as shutdown odds increase – as it happened

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      From 3h agoWhite House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attacked rightwing Republicans who were preventing Congress from passing government spending measures today, saying the group was “marching us toward a reckless and damaging government shutdown”.“Extreme House Republicans can’t even get an agreement among themselves to keep the government running or to fund the military,” Jean-Pierre said. “They keep demanding more extreme policies as a condition to do their job and keep the government open from a fact-free impeachment that their own members – their own members – say isn’t supported by the evidence, to severe cuts to food safety, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, education, law enforcement and much more.”She continued:
      The solution is very, very simple: extreme House Republicans need to stop playing political games with people’s lives – there’s so much at stake here. They should abide by the bipartisan deal we made in May, which two-thirds … of House Republicans voted for. A deal is a deal. House Republicans need to do their job, keep the government open and work with us to deliver … for the American people.
      Jean-Pierre declined to say if the government has figured out what services it will be able to continue providing if funding runs out after 30 September, but added: “The best plan is for there to not be a shutdown.”The chaos continued in the House, where an ongoing revolt by far-right Republicans against speaker Kevin McCarthy stopped the advancement of a defense department spending bill for the second time this week. It’s a bad sign for a separate attempt to pass a measure to keep the federal government funded past 30 September, which is also being held up the rightwing insurgents. By the afternoon, GOP leadership told lawmakers they could head home for the week, apparently concluding an agreement to resolve the legislative logjam was a long way off. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the Capitol and the White House to call for more aid to help his country fend off the Russian invasion.Here’s what else happened today:
      The White House accused Republicans of “playing political games with people’s lives”.
      McCarthy blamed “individuals that just want to burn the whole place down” for the ongoing paralysis in the House.
      Rupert Murdoch will step down as chairman of Fox and News Corp, with his son Lachlan Murdoch taking his place, an earthquake in the world of conservative media.
      The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said the GOP is “in the midst of a civil war”.
      The Senate confirmed Randy George as army chief of staff, but Republican Tommy Tuberville’s blockade of about 300 other positions in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion access policy continues.
      Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is now at the White House for a meeting with Joe Biden, where additional US military aid to fight off the Russian invasion is on the agenda:For the latest updates from the meeting, follow our liveblog:Congress isn’t the only Washington institution grappling with dysfunction. The Guardian’s David Smith reports on a new documentary that explores the increasingly intense relationship between the supreme court’s decisions and the American public:When Dawn Porter studied law at Georgetown University in Washington, she would pass the US supreme court every day. “You walk by the marble columns, the frontage which has inspirational words, and you believe that,” she recalls. “You think because of this court Black people integrated schools, because of this court women have the right to choose, because of this court, because of this court, because of this court.”Its profound role in American life is chronicled in Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court, Porter’s four-part documentary series that traces the people, decisions and confirmation battles that have helped the court’s relationship with politics turn from a respectful dance into a toxic marriage.Porter, 57, an Emmy award winner who maintains her bar licence, remembers first year common law classes when she studied the court’s landmark decisions. “Like most lawyers I have a great admiration for not only what the court can do but its role in shaping American opinion as well as American society,” she says via Zoom from New York, a poster for her film John Lewis: Good Trouble behind her.“If there’s a criticism of the court in this series, it comes from a place of longing, a place of saying we can’t afford for this court to lose the respect of the American people. There’s going to be decisions over time that people disagree with. That’s not unusual. What’s unusual is how cases are getting to the court, how they’re ignoring precedent and the procedures by which the decisions are getting made. That’s where I would love people to focus.”House Republican leadership has officially called off votes for the rest of the week, Democratic whip Katherine Clark announced.However, they’ve left the door open to a surprise breakthrough in negotiations over spending bills. “The Rules Committee remains on standby. Members will be given ample notice to return to Washington DC in the event a vote is called tomorrow or over the weekend,” the notice reads.The media world continues to digest the news earlier today, when it was announced that Rupert Murdoch would step down as chair of both News Corp and Fox – the company behind the conservative Fox News network. Here’s the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe with a look at the significance of Murdoch’s decision:Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp – ending a seven-decade run as one of the world’s most transformative and controversial media moguls.In a note to staff first reported in the Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal, he wrote: “For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles.”Murdoch, 92, will become chairman emeritus of the two corporations, the company said in a release.Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s eldest son, now seems to be his successor. In the note Murdoch called Lachlan a “passionate, principled leader” who can take the companies into the future.“On behalf of the Fox and News Corp boards of directors, leadership teams, and all the shareholders who have benefited from his hard work, I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career,” said Lachlan Murdoch, 52, in a statement.“We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination, and the enduring legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted,” he said.The handover comes at a time of uncertainty in a media landscape that Murdoch dominated for so long. Fox is in a competition for eyeballs with much larger and better resourced broadcasters, at a time when Americans are swapping cable television for streamed entertainment, while News Corp, owner of the Times and the Sun newspapers in the UK, is battling for revenues as print sales fall away and advertising migrates to the big social media platforms.After this morning’s fiasco in the House that saw a handful of far-right Republicans successfully block the party’s own defense spending bill, lawmakers have been told not to expect any further votes in the chamber this week, according to media reports:That lawmakers are being told they can go home is a sign of just how deadlocked the chamber is despite a 30 September deadline to approve new government funding or cause a shutdown.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attacked rightwing Republicans who were preventing Congress from passing government spending measures today, saying the group was “marching us toward a reckless and damaging government shutdown”.“Extreme House Republicans can’t even get an agreement among themselves to keep the government running or to fund the military,” Jean-Pierre said. “They keep demanding more extreme policies as a condition to do their job and keep the government open from a fact-free impeachment that their own members – their own members – say isn’t supported by the evidence, to severe cuts to food safety, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, education, law enforcement and much more.”She continued:
      The solution is very, very simple: extreme House Republicans need to stop playing political games with people’s lives – there’s so much at stake here. They should abide by the bipartisan deal we made in May, which two-thirds … of House Republicans voted for. A deal is a deal. House Republicans need to do their job, keep the government open and work with us to deliver … for the American people.
      Jean-Pierre declined to say if the government has figured out what services it will be able to continue providing if funding runs out after 30 September, but added: “The best plan is for there to not be a shutdown.”For an insight into how House Republicans are feeling after failing to take up the defense spending bill, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman shared some messages he received:Given that the defense spending bill is usually one of the least contentious spending measures in the House, the second failed vote spelled major trouble for the spending talks.If no agreement is reached on a series of funding bills, the federal government will shutter on 30 September. In the event of a shutdown, starting 1 October, hundreds of thousands of federal workers would likely go without pay and key healthcare and other public programs would be affected.There are several unknowns still hanging over House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s effort, which, as the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has pointed out, could be politically damaging to the party.The first is whether hard-right members of the House Freedom Caucus – who have capitalized on McCarthy’s narrow majority – will eventually abandon their blockade as the shutdown deadline approaches.The second is if whatever bill Republicans do pass will include the Ukraine aid and disaster relief funding the Democratic-led Senate is demanding. Without Senate agreement, any measure cannot be enacted.The House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was dealt his second humiliating defeat of the week on Thursday, when his conference again failed to approve a procedural motion as members continued to clash over government spending levels with just days left to avert a federal shutdown.A proposal to take up House Republicans’ defense spending bill failed in a vote of 216 to 212, with five hard-right members joining Democrats in opposing the motion. The vote marked the second time this week that the motion had failed, after members of the House Freedom Caucus first blocked the bill on Tuesday.The defeat was interpreted as a dismal sign for House Republicans’ prospects of approving a separate stopgap spending bill before government funding runs out at the end of the month.McCarthy had projected optimism heading into the Thursday vote, saying he and his allies had made substantial progress in their talks with the holdout Republicans on Wednesday. But five members of the House Freedom Caucus – Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Eli Crane of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – still opposed the procedural motion on Thursday.The Senate voted to confirm Gen Randy George to be army chief of staff, a key vote that follows a months-long hold by Republican senator Tommy Tuberville on more than 300 military promotions.Senators confirmed George by a 96-1 vote, with only Republican senator Mike Lee voting against him.The vote comes a day after the Senate cleared Gen Charles “CQ” Brown to become the next chair of the joint chiefs of staff. The Senate is expected to confirm Gen Eric Smith to lead the Marine Corps later today.The confirmations come as tensions have continued to rise over Tuberville’s decision to single-handedly hold up military appointments as part of his opposition to abortion being provided in the armed forces.As a result of Tuberville’s block on Senate-confirmed promotions, more than 300 senior roles are being filled in an acting capacity. Military officials have bemoaned the effects of Tuberville’s blocks on officers’ families and finances.Even the position of chair of the joint chief of staff stands to be affected, when the current occupant, Gen Mark Milley, steps down at the end of this month.The chaos continues in the House, where an ongoing revolt by far-right Republicans against speaker Kevin McCarthy stopped the advancement of a defense department spending bill for the second time this week. It’s a bad sign for a separate attempt to pass a measure to keep the federal government funded past 30 September, which is also being held up the rightwing insurgents. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the Capitol to call for more aid to help his country fend off the Russian invasion.Here’s what else is happening today:
      McCarthy blamed “individuals that just want to burn the whole place down” for the ongoing paralysis in the House.
      Rupert Murdoch will step down as chairman of Fox and News Corp, with his son Lachlan Murdoch taking his place, an earthquake in the world of conservative media.
      The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said the GOP is “in the midst of a civil war”.
      Never one to keep quiet, Donald Trump weighed in yesterday on the spending battle in the House, and what he had to say was unlikely to reassure speaker Kevin McCarthy.The former president has many devotees among House Republicans, including McCarthy himself, who hasn’t yet endorsed him but has often been obliging to his demands. But where Trump’s influence can be seen the most is among the hard-right lawmakers who are currently paralyzing business in the chamber by blocking the advancement of a defense spending bill and holding up passage of a measure to keep the government funded beyond 30 September.In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump called on House Republicans to “defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots”, a reference to special counsel Jack Smith’s two criminal prosecutions of the former president for trying to overturn the 2020 election and hiding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.But whatever passes the House must also be approved by the Democratic-led Senate, and there’s no chance they’d sign on to a measure specifically written to protect Trump.And here’s video of an admittedly frustrated Kevin McCarthy explaining why he can’t get his lawmakers to even begin debate on legislation the House passes each year:In comments to Fox News, the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, sounded frustrated about the trouble he’s had advancing an annual defense spending bill:At a press conference, the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, blamed a revolt by “extreme Maga Republicans” for paralyzing the chamber and threatening a government shutdown.“We need the extreme Maga Republicans to get their act together in the civil war that’s happening on the Republican side of the aisle,” Jeffries said.He continued:
      House Republicans continue to be in the midst of a civil war. It’s a civil war that is hurting the ability of the Congress to do the business of the American people and to solve problems on behalf of everyday Americans.
      And what’s happening is that House Republicans continue to be held captive by the most extreme elements of their conference, and it’s hurting the American people. And this is a serious matter. We are less than eight days away from the government shutting down.
      A vote in the Republican-led House to advance an annual defense department funding bill failed for the second time this week, after rightwing lawmakers joined with Democrats to oppose its passage:It’s an ominous sign for the separate effort to fund the government beyond 30 September, since both rightwing Republicans and Democrats oppose a motion to prevent a shutdown proposed by House speaker Kevin McCarthy. More

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      DeSantis falls to fifth in New Hampshire poll in latest campaign reverse

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      The Florida governor Ron DeSantis fell to fifth in a new New Hampshire poll, trailing not just Donald Trump, the runaway leader for the Republican presidential nomination, but Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie.The poll, from CNN and the University of New Hampshire (UNH), was just the latest worrying sign for DeSantis, whose hard-right campaign has struggled ever since a glitch-filled launch with Elon Musk on his social media platform in May.The former president faces 91 criminal charges, for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments, and civil threats including a defamation case in which he was adjudicated a rapist.He denies wrongdoing and claims political persecution. His popularity with Republicans has barely been dented. Though at 39% his support in the New Hampshire poll was lower than in national and other key state surveys, he still enjoyed a commanding lead.Describing “a close contest for second”, CNN put the biotech entrepreneur Ramaswamy at 13%, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley at 12% and Christie, a former New Jersey governor running explicitly against Trump – and focusing on New Hampshire – at 11%.DeSantis was next with 10%, a 13-point drop since the last such poll in July.The Florida governor has run a relentlessly hard-right campaign, seeking to outflank even Trump, by any measure an extremist.“DeSantis’s decline comes largely among moderates,” CNN said, detailing a 20-point drop in such support, “while Haley has gained ground with that group. Ramaswamy’s standing has grown among younger voters and registered Republicans. And Christie’s gains are centered among independents and Democrats who say they will participate in the GOP primary.”Ramaswamy and Haley were widely held to have shown well in the first debate, in Wisconsin last month. The second is in California next week. Trump is again set to skip the contest.Outside the top five in the CNN-UNH poll, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott attracted 6% support and Mike Pence, a former Indiana governor and vice-president to Trump, scored 2%. No other candidate passed 1%.New Hampshire will be the second state to vote. It has been widely reported that Trump is gearing up to attack DeSantis in the first, Iowa, where DeSantis has targeted evangelical voters.According to the author Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch, the Fox News owner, originally believed Trump would lose to DeSantis in Iowa because “it was going to come out about the abortions Trump had paid for”. Iowa polling, however, returns consistent Trump leads.Speaking to the New York Times, David Polyansky, DeSantis’s deputy campaign manager, said: “Winning an Iowa caucus is very difficult. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline. It takes an incredible amount of hard work and organisation, traditionally. So much so that even in his heyday, Donald Trump couldn’t win it in 2016.”The Texas senator Ted Cruz won Iowa then. But Trump won the nomination – and the White House.On Wednesday, at an oil rig in Texas, DeSantis introduced his energy policy, attracting headlines by saying opponents were stoking “fear” about the climate crisis.A spokesperson, meanwhile, was forced to deny Wolff’s report that DeSantis may have kicked Tucker Carlson’s dog.“The totality of that story is absurd and false,” Andrew Romeo told the Daily Beast, of the report involving the former Fox News host. “Some will say or write anything to attack Ron DeSantis because they know he presents a threat to their worldview.” More