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      Donald Trump and Fox News play it safe in town hall as network faces lawsuit

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      Donald Trump and Fox News played it safe on Thursday with a town-hall event in Iowa that swerved past the former US president’s election lies and liability for sexual abuse.The uncharacteristic omissions were a striking contrast to Trump’s recent town hall on rival network CNN and likely a source of relief for both his own lawyers and those of Fox News.In April, the beleaguered network agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787m to avert a trial in the company’s lawsuit over its promotion of Trump’s debunked claims about the 2020 election.The case had already embarrassed Fox News over several months and raised the possibility that its founder, Rupert Murdoch, and stars such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity would have to testify publicly. Fox News still faces a defamation lawsuit from another voting technology company, Smartmatic.But Thursday night’s town hall with Trump in the Des Moines suburb of Clive was pre-taped, giving Fox News the option of editing out egregious lies about the 2020 election in general, or Dominion and Smartmatic in particular, before it was broadcast.The choice might have been informed by CNN’s fateful decision last month to go live with a Trump town hall from New Hampshire. The ex-president repeated a fusillade of bogus election claims and insulted writer E Jean Carroll a day after being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation against her; Carroll now intends to go back to court to seek additional damages.Fox News’s version, hosted by Hannity before a partisan pro-Trump crowd, managed to avoid references to either the stolen election conspiracy theory or the Carroll case. Instead, via soft questions and rambling answers, it took aim at Joe Biden and Republican primary election rivals such as Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor.Hannity began: “Unlike fake news CNN, it’s not my job to sit here and debate the candidate. We are going to ask him about the issues of the day that matter to the people – the voters who will also have their questions as well.”Despite this promise, Hannity launched the event by showing film of 80-year-old Biden suffering a fall at a US Air Force Academy graduation ceremony earlier on Thursday. Republicans and Fox News have long sought to make the president’s age an election issue.After Trump had entered to whoops, cheers and chants of “USA! USA!”, Hannity asked him to comment on the incident. “Not so good,” said Trump, 76, wearing his usual dark suit, white shirt and long red tie, perched on a tall chair opposite a tieless Hannity. “It’s sad, it’s sad. They’re representing – we are all representing the country when you become president – and you’re sort of not allowed to do that.“But it’s happened. It’s happened and it’s happened pretty badly. We won’t go into it, but we all know the ones and they count those acts, you know, they never forget. But that was a bad fall.”Hannity went on to suggest that Biden is “cognitively not there”. Trump replied that he had urged Hannity not to joke about the matter, for example by referring to Biden needing a “sippy cup”. He added “This is the most dangerous time in the history of our country because of the power of the weaponry and we have somebody that doesn’t understand what’s happening.”Later Trump also went on the offensive against his Republican primary rivals, whose names elicited boos from the crowd. He dismissed DeSantis’s claim to be a better candidate because he can theoretically serve two terms. “I heard ‘DeSanctis’ say, ‘Oh, I get eight years, he gets four.’ You don’t need four and you don’t need eight. You need six months.”The former president mocked Chris Christie’s approval rating in his native New Jersey, branded Asa Hutchinson as “Ada” Hutchinson and suggested that DeSantis will soon no longer be his main challenger: “I really go after the one who second and I think the one who second is going down so much and so rapidly that I don’t think he’s going to be second that much longer. I think he’s going to be third or fourth. He had a very bad day today. He got very angry at the press.”As the audience chuckled, Trump added: “At the fake news, he got angry.”Just as in the CNN town hall, Trump stressed his role in appointing supreme court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade, the supreme court precedent that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion, but warned against alienating voters by taking an extreme position on the issue. DeSantis recently signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida.Trump said: “I did something that nobody thought was possible. I got rid of Roe v Wade and by doing that, it put pro-lifers in a very strong negotiating position. Now they’re negotiating different things and I happen to be of the Ronald Reagan school in terms of exemptions, where you have the life of the mother, rape and incest. For me, that’s something that works very well and for probably 80, 85%, because don’t forget, we do have to win elections.”The issue had energised Democrats in last year’s midterm elections, he noted. “When you didn’t have the exceptions, they went after the people viciously – the ads – and those people generally speaking didn’t do very well in terms of election.”The former president also railed against multiple criminal investigations into his conduct (“If my poll numbers went down, it would all end”), insisting that everything he did in handling classified documents was “right” and making false assertions about the quantity of documents found in Biden’s possession. He made racist comments about Washington’s Chinatown district and claimed that he could settle the war between Russia and Ukraine “in 24 hours”.Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said: “In what was mostly an incoherent, rambling appearance full of recycled lies on Fox News, Donald Trump told the truth at least once in his safe space – no one did more to pave the way for abortion bans across the country than him.“Whenever Trump is given a platform, he reminds America not only how much of a failure his presidency was, but just how extreme and dangerous he is. While President Biden focuses on continuing to deliver historic results for working families and protecting Americans’ hard-won freedoms, all Trump does is remind the American people why they rejected him and his failed presidency.”DeSantis, aiming to recover from a glitchy campaign launch, was touring New Hampshire on Thursday. In Laconia, he took a dig at former reality TV star Trump by remarking that “leadership is not about entertainment”. Former vice-president Mike Pence and former New Jersey governor Christie are expected to join the race next week. 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

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      George Santos: aide who alleged sexual harassment details payments to staffer

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      A man who was briefly an aide to the New York congressman and fabulist George Santos said he got his job after sending payments to a top deputy of the scandal-embroiled Republican.Derek Myers, 31, told House ethics committee staff on Wednesday that in January, while he was trying to get a job in Santos’s Washington office, he sent at least seven $150 payments to Vish Burra, its director of operations.Myers shared details including receipts and text messages with the Associated Press. His account raises questions about potential ethical improprieties.Myers said he began sending the money unsolicited because he believed Burra, a rightwing operative, was not getting paid and could not afford food. Myers said he also hoped the payments might help secure a job.“Burra was a powerful person,” Myers said. “I wanted him to advocate on my behalf.”Burra, who helped escort Santos away from journalists after his arraignment in federal court in New York last month, declined to comment.House staffers questioned Myers as part of an investigation of workplace sexual harassment allegations Myers made after being dismissed by Santos in February.A former journalist, Myers became a legislative assistant but lasted less than a week. Santos told Myers he was concerned by a background check that showed Myers had been charged with wiretapping in Ohio after publishing a recording of a trial.In a February letter to the House ethics committee, Myers said he was ousted after he spurned Santos’s sexual advances, alleging the congressman ran his hand along his inner leg and touched his groin. Santos denied the allegation, calling it “comical”.The ethics committee is investigating several allegations of improper behavior by Santos, who has admitted to fabricating much of his biography and faces federal charges including fraud and money laundering.Last month, Republicans sidestepped a vote to expel Santos, referring the matter to the ethics committee. The committee has not divulged who it is interviewing or when a decision might be reached.On Wednesday, staffers spent two hours questioning Myers about his sexual harassment allegation, his relationship with Burra and whether he witnessed illegal behavior. He described finding Burra online, then pushing for a job.Myers provided documentation, including emails and texts and receipts showing Venmo payments to Burra. Myers said Burra did not ask for money but once requested he “send more pizza”, which he took to be a reference to a pizza emoji used in Venmo subject lines.Investigators asked Myers about a text exchange after he was offered the job.Myers asked: “Did you get payroll yet.”“No. You didn’t have to do that man,” Burra replied, adding: “I’m gonna pay you back for sure.”Myers acknowledged that he secretly recorded at least one conversation with Santos and shared it with a journalist. He also said he went to the FBI, with the intention of being an informant. He decided to speak out about alleged harassment, he said, after he was forced to leave the job. More

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      The debt ceiling fight was never about debt. It was about Republican power | Mark Weisbrot

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      The debt ceiling drama seems to be nearing its end, as the US House of Representatives passed legislation that would lift the debt ceiling in accordance with a deal reached last weekend between Joe Biden, the president, and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House. The Republicans have been fighting to force cuts in spending and/or eligibility for food stamps (Snap), Medicaid, childcare and pre-schools, education and grants for higher education.By linking these and other provisions to the lifting of the debt ceiling, the Republicans tried to use the threat of default on the public debt to force Democrats to accept them. The legislation, which now goes to the Senate where it is expected to pass, did not satisfy most of their desires.The worst abuse that Republicans managed to include will be suffered by the hundreds of thousands of poor people who will likely lose access to food assistance under the Snap program. Many are in poor health and will not be able to complete the work requirements that Republicans have insisted on imposing for people of age 50-54; others will lose benefits due to additional red tape.There was also damage done by the fictitious narrative that Republicans were able to successfully promote about the “ticking time bomb” of the public debt. There is no bomb and if there were, it would not be ticking.The relevant measure of our debt burden is how much we pay annually in net interest on the debt, as a share of our national income (or roughly, GDP). That number was 1.9% for 2022. That is not big, by any comparison. We averaged about 3% in the 1990s, while experiencing America’s then longest-running economic expansion.The constant repetition of the “threat” posed by our national debt was a big win for Republicans, who are always looking to cut spending on social needs and safety nets; and more strategically important, to cut spending that could aid recovery from an economic downturn when Democrats are in power.In the Great Recession (December 2007 to June 2009), Republicans fought against measures to stimulate an economic recovery, which were already too small as proposed by Democrats. By October 2010, unemployment was still at 9.4%. In the election a month later, Republicans gained 63 seats to take the House and six Senate seats.The debt ceiling was used to threaten the Biden administration with a default on the public debt if they did not agree to Republican demands, mostly for spending cuts. The ceiling itself doesn’t affect new spending; it’s just holding up a chunk of the spending that our government is already obligated by law to carry out. In a democracy, this type of extortion should not be permitted.But Republican power isn’t based on democracy; on the contrary, it’s become highly dependent on institutions and practices that most people, including experts, would consider undemocratic or anti-democratic. Republicans benefit enormously from the fact that 80% of senators are elected by about 50% of voters. And if that’s not slanted enough, there is the filibuster, which effectively requires a 60-vote majority to win almost any pro-democracy reforms. This includes changes that are needed even for the Senate as presently constituted: eg representation for Washington DC, which has more population than a couple of states. We are the only democracy in the world where people who live in our national capital city don’t have full voting rights.Then there is voter suppression and gerrymandering, for both state and federal elections. These two methods of influencing election outcomes have gone hand-in-hand. Of course swing states are prime targets: recall that Republican presidents who ruled for 12 of the past 22 years came to power while losing the popular vote.When Republicans win, they then use their power to stack the cards further in their favor. This includes packing the judiciary, where Republican judges advance their agenda.Their decades-long struggle to control the judiciary reached its pinnacle with a 6-3 majority of the US supreme court, with five justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.The current Republican majority now “substitutes a rule by judges for the rule of law”, the dissenting justices wrote when that majority revoked the right to abortion last year.Dozens of senators have described the supreme court as “captured” by “dark money” from Republican donors, including “rightwing billionaires”, and it is currently facing lost credibility as well as accusations of corruption.If the Republicans had gotten all that they had included in their legislation to lift the debt limit, it would have reduced the public debt by less than one half of 1% next year.This makes it even clearer that the debt ceiling fight was never really about debt reduction. It’s part of a vicious cycle in which political power is abused in order to consolidate a system that is increasingly undemocratic; and then further abused. The debt ceiling is just one part of that cycle, and should not have been negotiated; it needs to be abolished.
      Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC and the author of Failed: What the “Experts” Got Wrong About the Global Economy More

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      Republican senator says ‘I don’t want reality’ in hearing on race and education

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      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.The panel is chaired by Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described democratic socialist, a belief system Mullin vociferously opposes.The hearing took place under the title “Solving the Child Care Crisis: Meeting the Needs of Working Families and Child Care Workers”.The five witnesses included the the New Mexico secretary for early childhood education and care and the president of the Independent Women’s Forum of Washington DC.Taking his turn for questions, Mullin held a book called Our Skin and said: “I’m going to read exactly what this book says. You guys might find it interesting.“‘A long time ago, way before you were born, a group of white people made up an idea called race. They sorted people by skin colour and said that white people were better, smarter, prettier, and they deserved more than everybody else.’“This would be taught if we socialise our pre-K system, this would be.”Asked by Sanders if he disagreed with the book, Mullin said: “One thousand percent. How about we teach Jesus Loves Me? … and teaching Jesus loves and loves the little children. The lyrics go, ‘Red and yellow, black and white. They’re all precious in our sight.’”The hymn Mullin was referring to, Jesus Loves the Little Children, was written by C Herbert Woolston.Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race, by Jessica Ralli and Megan Madison, has been seized upon by rightwingers in the ongoing battle over the teaching of race.Saying he was “Cherokee Native American” and adding: “I think we have experienced a little bit of racism before in my life”, Mullin continued: “I’ll ask everybody on the panel. Which is better to teach?”Two witnesses attempted to answer. The senator talked over them.Turning to Cheryl Morman, president of the Virginia Alliance for Family Child Care Associations, Mullin asked: “So which one is better?”Morman said: “I disagree. First, it is important that we teach Jesus and Jesus is what we teach.”Mullin interjected: “So which one is better?”Morman said: “But the reality is –”Mullin cut her off: “I don’t want reality, I’m asking the question, which one is better?”Amid laughter – and with Mullin the recipient of a sideways look from the Republican next to him, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama – an unidentified senator said: “Got it on tape.”“Misspoke,” said Mullin, before returning to the attack. More

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      Republicans love to make up fake crises. Here are five of the biggest | Robert Reich

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      Republican leaders have mastered the art of manufacturing crises to divert the public’s attention from the real crisis of our era – the siphoning of income, wealth and power from most Americans by a small group at the top.Consider the fake fears they’ve been whipping up:1. WokenessFlorida’s governor (and now Republican presidential candidate) Ron DeSantis has declared a “war on woke”.Immediately after the mangled launch of his presidential campaign, DeSantis claimed on Fox News that “the woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism”.What?What exactly is “woke”? The term gained popularity at the start of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, when many Americans – including white Americans who were seeing the extent of the problem for the first time – awoke to the reality of police brutality against the Black community.DeSantis’s own general counsel has defined “woke” as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them”.He’s right. We all need to be woke.2. Trans peopleFormer president Donald Trump says that one of his top priorities if he’s re-elected in 2024 will be a “sweeping federal rollback of transgender rights”.DeSantis and other Republican governors have signed a stream of laws in recent months aimed at transgender rights.At least 10 states have banned gender-affirming care for minors and another 21 have introduced bills to do so, even as multiple studies have found access to gender-affirming care reduces the risk of depression and suicide for trans children.Other bills target gender-affirming care for adults. Some ban drag shows.Why have Republican lawmakers targeted transgender people as dangers to the public? There’s not a shred of evidence that trans people are threats to anyone.But targeting trans people is a way to court evangelicals. It’s also a way to stir up the base against people who are different, making trans people the sort of scapegoats that historically have fueled fascist movements.3. Critical race theoryVirginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s “day one” executive order banned the teaching of critical race theory. DeSantis and Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, have also banned it from schools.Here again, though, there’s no evidence of a public threat. CRT simply teaches America’s history of racism, which students need to understand to be informed citizens.Banning it is a scare tactic to appeal to a largely white, culturally conservative voter base.4. Couch potatoesIn the fight over raising the debt ceiling, Kevin McCarthy’s House Republicans added work requirements to food stamps and welfare, arguing that too many “couch potatoes” collect government benefits.Like Ronald Reagan’s claim about so-called “welfare queens”, the “couch potato” myth is a cruel racial dog whistle. Work requirements will burden many people who often have difficulty finding work that pays enough to live on.The plain fact is that most poor recipients of public benefits already work extremely hard.In addition, evidence shows that work requirements don’t lead to long-term increases in employment or to more stable jobs. Most people subject to work requirements remain poor. Some become poorer.5. Out-of-control government spendingIn fact, discretionary spending has fallen more than 40% in the past 50 years as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product (from 11% to 6.3%).Lately, rising deficits have been driven by social security and Medicare (which is to be expected, as boomers retire). They’ve also been driven by defense spending.But a major culprit for the US’s soaring debt is George W Bush’s and Donald Trump’s huge tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy and big corporations – and that will have added $8tn and $1.7tn, respectively, to the debt by the end of the 2023 fiscal year.House Republicans are even proposing to cut funding for the IRS, which would make it harder for the tax agency to go after rich tax cheats and thereby reduce the debt.All five of these so-called crises have been manufactured by the Republican party. They’re entirely made up.Why? To deflect attention from the near record share of the nation’s income and wealth now going to the richest Americans.As the super-wealthy and big corporations pour money into politics – especially into the Republican party – they don’t want the rest of America to notice they’re rigging the economy for their own benefit, that their unrestrained greed is worsening the climate crisis and that they’re also undermining democracy.The game of the Republicans and their major donors is to deflect and distract – to use scapegoating, racism and outright lies to disguise what’s really going on.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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

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