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

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

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      in Elections

      ‘They fought for freedom’: the nightly vigil to sanctify the January 6 rioters

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      The clock had just struck 9pm when Jeff Sabol, a Colorado man accused of dragging a police officer down a flight of stairs at the US Capitol on January 6 and beating him, placed a call from inside Washington’s jail.Dozens of yards and several layers of concrete and razor wire away, on E Street Southeast, Tommy Tatum, a hulking Mississippian who had been present at the Capitol on January 6 but not arrested, stood with a microphone in one hand and a cellphone in the other.“Hey, are you guys out there? We’ve had some technical difficulties for a variety of reasons,” Sabol’s voice rang out from the phone and over a sound system, drawing cheers from a group of about 15 people who had gathered, carrying American flags and wearing shirts with slogans such as “Abolish the FBI”.Sabol’s voice grew echoey, and the sounds of others filled the room behind him. “Thirty seconds!” he cried.And then, the two groups, one confined behind the jail’s walls over charges they attacked the Capitol in a failed attempt to keep Donald Trump from losing power and the other made up of their friends and loved ones on the sidewalk outside, sang the American national anthem in unison: “O say can you see …”Thus concluded the 303rd evening of the “Freedom Corner”, perhaps the only regular public protest by Trump supporters in America’s capital city, where the demand is accountability – not for the former president, but for the government they believe is persecuting them.The target of their demonstration is Washington DC’s city jail, where an overwhelmingly Black inmate population has long endured terrible conditions. Over the past two years, the Freedom Corner protesters have been joined by some of the hundreds of people swept up in the sprawling federal investigation into the violence on January 6, prompting demonstrators to gather outside on a corner sandwiched between the building and the tilted headstones of the Congressional Cemetery to decry the injustice within.“These are really good guys. They’re fathers, they’re uncles, they’re veterans. Most of them have served this country. They fought for us, they fought for our freedom,” said Helena Gibson, a regular attendee of the vigil who was present at the Capitol on January 6 but said she did not enter the building.“Because these are really great amazing mentors, stand-up men, they don’t deserve what’s happening to them.”The storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters immediately after a speech by the then president has been linked to nine deaths, and saw the halls of the 223-year-old building turned into a war zone. Rioters surrounded and beat overwhelmed police officers, sent lawmakers and the then vice-president, Mike Pence, fleeing and attacked with such violence his Secret Service detail asked others to say goodbye to their families for them.But the Republican party’s right wing has invested in downplaying the incident, even though the mayhem played out on live television, was explored in detail by a bipartisan congressional committee who said Trump and his allies may have broken the law, and is the subject of an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith that could lead to charges against the former president.On the same day last March when the Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired an episode of his now-cancelled show featuring footage he claimed proves the January 6 rioters were, in fact, “sightseers”, the Republican congressman Mike Collins tweeted: “I’ve seen enough. Release all J6 political prisoners now.”In the unlikely event that happens, they would be met with open arms on Freedom Corner. Ringed in by orange traffic barriers and watched by several police cars, attendees set out snacks on a portable table, run the banners of Donald Trump and the United States up a flagpole and livestreamed the entire two-and-a-half-hour gathering on multiple cellphones.“I definitely think people committed crimes that day. I mean, it’s never been our opinion, my opinion, that no one should be charged,” said Nicole Reffitt, a Texas woman whose husband, Guy Reffitt, was last year sentenced to seven and a quarter years in prison after a jury convicted him of obstructing Congress, interfering with police officers and threatening his own children – one of whom turned him in to the authorities.“I believe my husband was overly charged. And, you know, and then he was persecuted for the events of that day, and not necessarily for what he really did.”The vigils began last year on the day her husband was sentenced, said Reffitt, one of the first attendees at Freedom Corner, along with Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot dead by police in the Capitol during the attack. Since then, they have attracted activists from across the country.Carrying a pole with a US flag over her shoulder, as some of the rioters did during the attack, Jamie Crowe said she has traveled to Freedom Corner more than 30 times from Pennsylvania “to support the people that are patriots that marched to the Capitol peacefully”.Though polls have found about a quarter of Republican voters approve of January 6, a majority of Americans do not share that view. Crowe said she was not in Washington when the attack happened, but watched coverage on television.Asked how she could view the same images the rest of America did yet reach a different conclusion about the riot, Crowe said: “I love this country more than you can imagine.”As she spoke, the vigil was holding its nightly roll call of those who died and had been arrested. “Hero,” the crowd intoned with the bang of a tambourine after each name.“And we’ll do like we do every night. We’ll say her name,” Tamara Perryman announced after the names were read, then led the crowd in repeating, “Ashli Babbitt, Ashli Babbitt.”“We just want justice, fair justice, like anybody would want,” said Perryman, whose husband, Brian Jackson, was arrested last year on charges related to lobbing a flagpole at officers defending the Capitol.“If throwing that flag was truly assault, then give him his assault charge and let him go home. Because that is not a year in prison, nor is it eight to nine years in prison [the sentence he could face’],” Perryman said.Last year, 34 January 6 defendants, including Reffitt’s husband, Guy, signed a document submitted in a federal court filing asking that they be moved to the US military prison in Guantánamo Bay if conditions in Washington’s jail do not improve.“My husband’s never been in jail, so I had no idea how the system was,” Reffitt said, describing how her husband has endured inedible food and has slept without a pillow, because prisoners are not allowed to have them.“These are humans in here, and this is not how you rehabilitate anybody,” Reffitt said.Melissa Wasser, policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, sees plenty to protest at the city’s jail. Her group has sued over detention conditions, and documented everything from flooding in the facility’s showers to instances where staff has punished prisoners by withholding food and water.“I’m glad that there there’s been more coverage of the jail in these conditions. Again, you know, it should not have taken the complaints of these white January 6 defendants and their families for people to act on this,” Wasser said. “Local residents, advocates, family members of the mostly Black residents have been raising these problems for years.” A spokesperson for the city’s department of corrections declined to comment.Statistics released in January show 90% of those in the department’s custody are Black in a city where the group makes up about 45% of the population. In a database National Public Radio maintains of January 6 defendants, most appear to be white.“These guys and their families were shocked beyond belief. They could not believe that an American citizen of any stripe, of any race, of any criminal background could be treated this way,” said Joe McBride, an attorney who has represented multiple January 6 defendants, three of whom ended up in the capital city’s lock-up.“These guys were like, ‘I have rights, rights, I have rights.’ And I had to explain to them, at great pain, that their government doesn’t give a flying fuck about them.”But McBride is no fan of detainees’ tendency to call up the Freedom Corner on prison phones to chat, nor of the developing community of counter-protesters.“It was good for a time, but it appears to me that that event has reached its natural conclusion, and could potentially now be causing more harm than good,” he said.In a solidly Democratic city where many residents feel put upon by repeated instances of pro-Trump demonstrators showing up from out of town during his presidency, Freedom Corner may be Washington’s most hated regular protest, and has attracted a dedicated group of opponents.On Monday’s Memorial Day holiday, the Freedom Corner crew marched from the Capitol to their usual spot about two miles away, but were joined along their route by their chief nemesis: a livestreamer named Anarchy Princess.“Terrorists coming, watch out, there’s terrorists behind me,” the counter-protester, wearing a baseball cap and aviator sunglasses, cried into a megaphone as the group walked. “The Nazis are behind me, Trump’s little cry baby losers, they insurrected the Capitol, are behind me. Fuck Ashli Babbitt!”As the group neared their destination, where a large and noisy group of counter-protesters had also massed, video showed Witthoeft – Babbitt’s mother – pushing Anarchy Princess, and later grabbing a megaphone she was using to broadcast siren noises and smashing it on the ground. Police arrested Witthoeft the following day.Witthoeft was released later on Tuesday evening, and told the Guardian she planned to keep the vigils up “until I feel like I’m done doing what I need to do, and I don’t feel that way yet”. Anarchy Princess could not be reached for comment.After finishing their singing of the national anthem on Tuesday evening, the group on the corner trained their eyes on the prison’s windows, where January 6 detainees have, in the past, been able to make their lights flicker in a tribute to their streetside supporters. That wasn’t happening that night.“They’ve moved them so we can no longer see them flashing the lights,” said a protester who went by the pseudonym Dude and sported a gray camouflage National Rifle Association hat.Perryman wasn’t so sure. Earlier in the night, Sean McHugh, who was found guilty in April of charges related to attacking Capitol police officers with bear spray, had called Freedom Corner and said he had to move cells because of a mold outbreak.“Some things truly are coincidence and just a matter of happenstance,” Perryman said. “But it is easy to get into that mindset where, ‘Oh gosh, are they really messing with me or am I just paranoid?’ You know what I mean?” More

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      Pence will not face charges over classified files found at Indiana home

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      The US Department of Justice has closed its investigation into former vice-president Mike Pence without filing any charges related to classified documents found in his Indiana home, a department official said on Friday.The department notified Pence through a letter, the official added.Representatives for Pence, who served under Donald Trump, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, although the Guardian confirmed the development via a source familiar with the investigation, and a Pence spokesperson told the Washington Post Pence is “pleased but not surprised” the investigation has come to an end.Pence is expected next week to jump into the increasingly crowded Republican field for president in the 2024 election, as is former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis are currently the frontrunners for the nomination, despite Trump still being the subject of multiple criminal investigations and civil legal action.Though Pence was Trump’s vice-president during his single term, Pence has since turned against Trump in significant ways, testifying against him in front of a federal grand jury in April on the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Meanwhile, Trump has said that Pence did “something wrong” by not standing by his lies that the election was rigged and he defeated Joe Biden.After revelations of classified material found at Trump’s Florida residence last year after he left office, the National Archives called on former presidents and vice-presidents to make checks for any material that should be in the government’s possession.A lawyer for Pence had notified authorities about the discovery of records with classified markings, prompting an FBI search for records at his Indianapolis residence this year.A justice department special counsel, Jack Smith, is investigating Trump’s handling of classified materials since leaving office in January 2021.A separate special counsel was appointed to conduct an investigation after Biden reported finding some classified material in his possession. More

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

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

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      Kevin McCarthy’s victory lap over the debt ceiling bill could end early

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      Kevin McCarthy was all smiles on Wednesday night after the House passed the debt ceiling bill, crafted by the Republican speaker and Joe Biden, in a resounding, bipartisan vote of 314 to 117.“I’ve been thinking about this day before my vote for speaker because I knew the debt ceiling was coming,” McCarthy told reporters. “I wanted to make history. I wanted to do something no other Congress has done, that we would literally turn the ship and for the first time in quite some time, we’d spend less than we spent the year before. Tonight, we all made history.”But the details of the debt ceiling vote reveal a more nuanced picture of the dynamics in the Republican-controlled House, and they suggest McCarthy’s victory lap may soon be cut short.The debt ceiling bill, which will suspend America’s borrowing limit until 2025 and enact modest cuts to government spending, was supported by 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats in the House. Although roughly two-thirds of House Republicans voted for the bill, 71 members of McCarthy’s own conference opposed the legislation due to complaints that it did not go far enough to rein in government spending.Speaking to reporters after the final vote, McCarthy brushed off questions about why the bill he helped craft proved more popular among House Democrats than his Republican colleagues. Instead, McCarthy focused attention on his successful effort to defy Democrats’ wishes for a “clean” debt ceiling bill with no strings attached. Biden spent months insisting he would not negotiate over the debt ceiling, but the White House was ultimately dragged into talks with Republicans, McCarthy reminded reporters.“We were never going to get everybody, but we have spent four months bringing everybody together. And whether you voted for or voted against it, you wanted something more,” McCarthy said. “But history will write this is the largest [spending] cut in American history.”Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus did not view the bill the same way. Many of them argued the deal struck by McCarthy and Biden bore little resemblance to the legislation originally passed by House Republicans last month, which would have enacted much deeper spending cuts and stricter work requirements while only raising the debt ceiling into 2024.Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, chair of the Freedom Caucus, attacked McCarthy for failing to “hold the line for the bill that we passed” in his negotiations with Biden.“The speaker himself has said on numerous occasions, the greatest threat to America is our debt, and now is the time to act. We had the time to act, and this deal fails – fails completely,” Perry said on Tuesday. “We will do everything in our power to stop it and end it now.”Those efforts fell short. After Freedom Caucus members failed to quash the bill when it came before the House rules committee on Tuesday, McCarthy’s Republican critics staged one final attempt to prevent the legislation’s passage. Twenty-nine House Republicans opposed the procedural motion to set up the final vote on the debt ceiling bill, and that resistance would have been enough to kill the legislation if Democrats had not come to McCarthy’s assistance. In the end, 52 Democrats supported the procedural motion, clearing the way for the bill’s ultimate passage.But McCarthy’s failure to advance the bill along party lines did not go unnoticed by Democrats.“It appears that you may have lost control of the floor of the House of Representatives,” said the New York representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, on the floor on Wednesday night. “Earlier today, 29 House Republicans voted to default on our nation’s debt and against an agreement that you negotiated. It’s an extraordinary act that indicates just the nature of the extremism that is out of control on the other side of the aisle.”The bold act of defiance from dozens of McCarthy’s fellow Republicans raised questions about his future in the speaker’s chair. Because of Republicans’ narrow majority in the House, McCarthy had to endure 15 rounds of voting before he secured the speakership back in January. To win over the skeptics within his conference, McCarthy offered a number of concessions to allay their concerns about his leadership.One of those concessions could now come back to haunt him. According to the House rules approved after McCarthy’s victory, any single member of the chamber can introduce a “motion to vacate”, which would force a vote on ousting the sitting speaker.Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, one of the Freedom Caucus members who opposed the debt ceiling bill, said on Wednesday that McCarthy “should be concerned” about a potential motion to vacate.“After this vote, we will have discussions about whether there should be a motion to vacate or not,” Buck told CNN.But even Buck acknowledged that he and his allies may not have the votes to remove McCarthy, and the speaker has said he is “not at all” concerned about losing his gavel. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was one of eight Freedom Caucus members to support the debt ceiling bill, dismissed suggestions of ousting McCarthy as “absolutely absurd”.“I think they would find out that it’s not as popular as they think, just because it looks good on Twitter right now,” Greene told reporters on Wednesday night. “It would be a really dumb move.”Even if McCarthy’s critics could somehow muster the votes to oust him, it remains entirely unclear who could earn enough support in the House Republican conference to replace him. So McCarthy’s speakership appears to be safe – for now. More

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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