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      ‘The exact opposite of Donald Trump’: Republican senator Tim Scott’s vision for America

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      About 45 minutes into his New Hampshire town hall, Tim Scott said he needed to reveal a secret to the Republican voters who had gathered to hear from the presidential hopeful.“Listen, this might surprise some of y’all,” Scott told attendees with subtle laughter in his voice. He paused briefly: “I’m Black.”The line was met with loud laughter from the mostly white crowd, and it underscored the unique role that Scott faces in the Republican presidential primary ahead of the 2024 election. The 57-year-old senator of South Carolina and erstwhile Donald Trump ally, who filed paperwork on Friday to declare his presidential candidacy ahead of a formal launch event on Monday, hopes to become the first Black politician to win his party’s nomination and go on to defeat Joe Biden in the general election next November.Scott’s chances of success appear slim, as Trump continues to dominate in national polls thanks to the enduring loyalty of many Republican primary voters. But Scott believes his sunny vision for America’s future can sway a significant number of Republicans who are ready for “new leadership” in the party.To do that, Scott will need to take on Trump and convince fellow Republicans to abandon the vengeful worldview embraced by the former president in favor of a more positive message about the direction of the country. Relying on Reaganesque optimism about the brighter days ahead, Scott has called for a new era of American policy based on “personal responsibility”, deeply rooted in rightwing principles like restricting abortion access and rigorously enforcing border security.But it remains unclear whether enough Republicans are interested in dumping Trump.“You cannot lean into ‘the best days ahead of you’ until you deal with the cancer inside of you at the moment,” said Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee and a vocal Trump critic. “The way you do that is to take down the guy who’s perpetuating that narrative.”‘From cotton to Congress’As he spoke to the voters at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire earlier this month, Scott pointed to his own family history as an example of America’s promise. He was raised by a single, working mother, and his grandfather dropped out of school in the third grade to pick cotton on a South Carolina farm.That grandfather lived long enough to see his grandson win a seat in the US House of Representatives, where Scott served one term before being appointed to the Senate in 2013. Scott is currently the only Black Republican serving in the Senate.“One of the reasons why we say in my family ‘from cotton to Congress in one lifetime’ is because my grandfather had a stubborn faith,” Scott told the New Hampshire voters. “He had faith in God. He had faith in the American people, but he also had faith in the future of this great nation.”Echoing his message from 2021, when he delivered the Republican response to Biden’s first presidential speech to a joint session of Congress, Scott accused Democrats of turning Americans against each other by bringing attention to systemic oppression.“When I talk to my friends on the other side of the aisle, particularly the ones who disagree with me vehemently, the one thing I can tell them is that the proof of my life disproves your lies,” Scott said at the town hall. “America is a beautiful country. We are the land of opportunity and not the land of oppression.”Scott went on to list the benefits of his “opportunity zones” policy, an initiative aimed at directing private investment into America’s economically disadvantaged communities. He encouraged Americans to “take responsibility for yourself” and reject “today’s cultural victimhood”, alluding to the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” narrative that has been criticized on the left as unrealistic and racist.“My mentor literally taught me that if you take responsibility for yourself, that in that mirror, you see the problem. But in the same mirror, you find the promise,” Scott said at the town hall.Scott’s upbeat tone cast quite a contrast from Trump, whose presidential campaign thus far has focused on promising “retribution” to his political enemies if he wins the White House next year.“Everything about Tim Scott is out of the ordinary. He is the exact opposite of Donald Trump, and that’s why he is so intriguing,” said the Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “He is as nice and kind-hearted as Trump is tough and critical.”Scott’s message was greeted like a breath of fresh air from attendees of his town hall, some of whom said they are looking for the Republican party to break free from Trump’s influence and move in a new direction.“I really liked the guy. I thought he was very good and forthcoming, and he’s got a great message,” Bruce Nest, a 70-year-old anti-Trump voter from Nashua, said after Scott’s town hall.Though Scott’s tone is markedly different from Trump’s, the two politicians’ platforms have far more in common. Like Trump, Scott has called for a tougher stance against China and emphasized the importance of preventing migrants from entering the US. On abortion, which will take center stage in the 2024 election because of the supreme court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v Wade, Scott has vowed to sign “the most conservative, pro-life legislation” that could pass Congress. But Scott has refused to specify his preferred timeframe for a potential federal abortion ban.In the Republican primary, the senator’s tone and temperament alone may be enough to sway some voters.Nest’s wife, Debra, 70, argued it was “time to give someone else a chance” to lead the Republican party. “We want to pass the baton,” she said. “I’m looking for someone to pass the baton to.”But Trump’s enduring popularity left some town hall attendees skeptical.“I think he has a really good backstory, and I think he will connect to a lot of different ethnicities and different cultures of America,” said Robert Plourde, a 59-year-old voter from Loudon. “It remains to be seen whether he has enough traction with the Republican party that really doesn’t know him, I think, nationally right now.”Stuck at 1%When Scott formally launches his campaign on Monday, he will join a growing Republican primary field where candidates not named Trump have struggled to break through. The most recent Morning Consult poll showed Scott has drawn the support of just 1% of Republican primary voters across the country.There is some evidence to suggest that a crucial share of Republican voters are looking to move on from Trump. One AP/NORC poll taken last month found that nearly half of Republicans do not want Trump to seek re-election, but the same survey showed Trump still enjoys a favorability rating of 68% among Republicans.Even in Scott’s home state of South Carolina, a Winthrop University survey taken last month found that 7% of Republicans supported the senator, putting him in fourth place. The former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who served as South Carolina’s governor and appointed Scott to the Senate, outpaced him by 11 points while Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis led in the poll.Scott’s advisers point out that the Iowa caucuses are still nine months away. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, senior campaign officials noted Scott’s campaign committee has nearly $22m in cash on hand. Scott has also received hefty financial support from some Republican megadonors; last year, the tech billionaire and fellow school choice proponent Larry Ellison poured $15m into a Super Pac aligned with the senator.Perhaps Scott’s greatest challenge at this early stage will be distinguishing himself from the other Republican presidential candidates. Scott has not made much of an effort thus far to distance himself from Trump on matters of policy, even as he has refused to commit to supporting the former president in the election if he wins the nomination.Appearing on the Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show in February, Scott was asked what differences there were between his campaign platform and Trump’s.“Probably not very many at all,” Scott replied. “I’m so thankful that we had President Trump in office. Frankly, the policies that we were able to pass from 2017 to 2020 were monumental.”Scott’s embrace of his opponent’s record has intensified speculation that this White House bid is simply a ploy to bolster his chances of becoming Trump’s running mate, although the senator has dismissed those suggestions.“If you’re going to go for it, go for it all,” Scott told reporters last month. “Period.”With Trump maintaining his massive lead in national polls, Steele is skeptical that Scott or any other Republican candidate can seriously fight for the nomination without directly confronting the former president.“Unless your name is Donald Trump, you’re running for vice-president,” Steele said. “Until shown otherwise, that they’re willing to take this man down and willing to really press the point that he is wholly incompetent and too politically damaged to be the nominee of the party again, everybody’s running for something other than the current presidential race.”‘I know it because I’ve lived it’As Scott continues to insist that he is truly running to win the Republican nomination, his team has pointed to two factors that could help him: his personal story and his evangelical faith. In a video released last month, Scott emphasized those points.“I was raised by a single mother in poverty. The spoons in our apartment were plastic, not silver,” Scott said in the video. “But we had faith. We put in the work and we had an unwavering belief that we too could live the American dream. I know America is the land of opportunity, not a land of oppression. I know it because I’ve lived it.”Scott’s video was filmed at Fort Sumter, the South Carolina military site where the civil war began in 1861, which Scott said represented America’s strength and resilience. That message of unity may not resonate with all Republican primary voters; after all, when a group of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021, some of them entered the building waving Confederate flags.“That storyline doesn’t land the same way it used to because a lot of the folks that you’re going to be talking to don’t necessarily look at that as a positive,” Steele said. “They see that as part of the problem, which is why white nationalism has reared its ugly head the way it has.”Scott’s efforts to connect with white evangelical voters, who make up a substantial portion of the Republican primary electorate, will also likely encounter roadblocks. Evangelical voters represent a core piece of Trump’s base, and they have shown hesitation in abandoning the former president. According to data compiled by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in March, 62% of white evangelicals held favorable views of Trump.“I think it’s going to be pretty heavy lifting for Senator Tim Scott, or really any other candidate aside from Donald Trump, to gain a lot of loyalty from white evangelical voters,” said Melissa Deckman, the chief executive of PRRI.Scott’s fumbled answers on abortion policy could add to his troubles with that cohort. He remains staunchly anti-abortion, but he has bristled when reporters try to nail down his specific views on enacting a nationwide ban. When asked about his preferred cut-off point for banning the procedure, Scott told NBC News last month: “I’m not going to talk about six or five or seven or 10 [weeks].”“For the [Republican] base, the positions on abortion really matter,” Deckman said. “And when you have someone like Tim Scott or Nikki Haley sort of waffling on that issue, not trying to pin down the specifics of where they stand, I think it’s going to be harder for them to pull people away from Donald Trump in the primary.”That task is already proving difficult for Scott. On Monday, he will start finding out if it is, in fact, impossible. More

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      Fresh US abortion bans show Republicans trying to soften message

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      After repeated failed attempts to pass stricter bans, Republicans in some US states are changing their messaging, touting “common sense” abortion laws presented as more lenient than outright bans, but that are more restrictive than they seem when looked at in detail.Nebraska’s state legislature passed a 12-week ban on Friday, days after another 12-week ban cleared its final hurdle in North Carolina.Meanwhile, South Carolina’s senate will again weigh a six-week abortion ban that the legislature has repeatedly tried and failed to pass in previous weeks.In Nebraska, Republican lawmakers praised the ban as a compromise, but their Democratic colleagues did not see it that way. “This place is morally bankrupt,” said the Omaha state senator Machaela Cavanaugh. “I’m looking forward to 2025 when I no longer have to serve with many of you.” Cavanaugh filibustered for hundreds of hours in recent months in an attempt to stop the bill passed on Friday, an anti-trans measure to which the abortion ban was attached.Two weeks ago, a six-week ban was tanked in Nebraska, partly by one of its original co-sponsors – the Republican state senator Merve Riepe – who had come to think of it as too extreme, as many women do not yet realize they are pregnant at six weeks. Ahead of the earlier vote, which Riepe abstained from, he passed around a news article warning that abortion was hurting the Republican party, according to the Washington Post. Polling has consistently found that strong majorities of Americans oppose abortion bans.The Nebraska ban includes no exceptions for fetal anomalies or pregnancies incompatible with life and threatens doctors with jail time.Republicans in Nebraska’s technically non-partisan legislature (where each lawmaker nonetheless identifies either as Republican or Democrat) have painted the bill as a huge step down from the six-week ban.Nebraskans crowded the statehouse as the bill progressed on Wednesday, drowning out the lively debate on the house floor with angry chants and foot stomping. By the end of the night, lawmakers were forced to seek refuge, fleeing the capitol rotunda through a back tunnel flanked by police escorts in a bid to avoid angry protesters.With the legislative session about to end, lawmakers craftily advanced the ban by attaching it to a measure limiting gender-affirming care to transgender people.“You are willing to drive this state into the ground. You look ridiculous,” Cavanaugh, said on Wednesday, adding: “Women will die, children are dying, and you are responsible.”In North Carolina, the 12-week ban was passed on Wednesday, when Republican politicians overrode the Democratic governor’s veto. The fresh ban brings the current limit down from 20 weeks.Republicans described the bill as “pro-life plan, not an abortion ban”, as they passed it amid protestors chanting “shame” from inside the state legislature. But the bill will make it incredibly difficult to obtain an abortion in North Carolina, a state that has become somewhat of a safe haven for abortion in the increasingly restrictive Bible belt.Most notably, the bill limits the use of medication abortion – the most common US method of abortion – to 10 weeks of pregnancy, and requires three in-person visits to get pills or any other form of the procedure. Those restrictions will make it harder to get an abortion for those with uncompromising work schedules, those who can’t afford to pay for childcare and those traveling from out of state.Further worsening the effect of abortion bans on low-income people and women of color, it will also make people seeking abortions wait 72 hours between visits. It will require women to watch ultrasounds before they have an abortion, and to be warned about unfounded medical side-effects of abortion before having one.Strict licensing requirements written into the bill could also shutter a number of the state’s remaining 14 clinics, and oblige abortion providers to report details on people who have sought an abortion to the state department of health and human services.And in South Carolina on Wednesday, a six-week abortion ban finally progressed to the senate, after weeks of Republicans repeatedly trying and failing to move it forward. But even if it passes, it must be upheld by the state supreme court, which blocked a similar six-week ban earlier this year. (The composition of that supreme court has since changed – the judge who wrote the decision striking down the ban has been replaced by judge who GOP lawmakers hope will overturn it.) Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic women have repeatedly united in a filibuster to stop the bill from passing. They have said they plan to do so again.Some 900 amendments were affixed to the legislation – many by Democrats hoping to delay the passage of the bill. Some of those amendments included making the state liable for funeral costs of people who die after being denied an abortion, and making men liable for child support and the costs of half of all pregnancy expenses, starting from fertilization. More

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

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

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

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

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      Debt ceiling talks suspended as US lurches towards default deadline

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      Negotiations for a deal to raise the US debt ceiling and thereby avoid a default with potentially catastrophic consequences for the world economy reached a worrying impasse on Friday.“We’re not there,” Garret Graves of Louisiana, the lead negotiator for House Republicans in talks with the Biden White House, told reporters at the Capitol.“We’ve decided to press pause, because it’s just not productive.”The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has said that without action the US government will cease to be able to pay its debts on or around 1 June.Joe Biden is away at the G7 summit in Japan. White House officials were leading talks for Democrats.One told the Guardian: “There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult. The president’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate.”For decades after 1917, when the federal debt was capped, raising that limit, or ceiling, was usually a routine procedure, if subject to political grandstanding.In 2006, the Illinois Democratic senator Barack Obama voted against a raise under a Republican president, George W Bush.But Republicans have increasingly and effectively employed threats to refuse to raise the ceiling as a bargaining tool and in 2011, as president, Obama was forced to say he regretted his vote of five years before.In the 2011 standoff, the House GOP extracted trillions of dollars in spending cuts which Obama was forced to sell to his party. Now, under Biden, the same dynamic is in play.With the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, beholden to far-right members who made him endure 15 votes before gaining the position, the GOP is demanding hefty cuts to spending, on Democratic priorities including healthcare and climate, in return for a debt ceiling raise.Democrats say Republicans should agree a clean raise – meaning without preconditions – as they did repeatedly under Donald Trump. Democrats also demand that Biden does not blink.At the Capitol on Friday, Graves said: “Until people are willing to have reasonable conversations about how you can actually move forward and do the right thing, then we’re not going to sit here and talk to ourselves.”Republican leaders outside the talks sought to apply pressure. Not long before Graves spoke to reporters, Trump said his party should not give ground.Republicans, the presidential frontrunner wrote on his Truth Social platform, “should not make a deal on the debt ceiling unless they get everything they want (including the ‘kitchen sink’). That’s the way the Democrats have always dealt with us. Do not fold!”Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, aimed fire at Biden, accusing the president of “wait[ing] months before agreeing to negotiate with Speaker McCarthy on a spending deal.“They are the only two who can reach an agreement,” McConnell said. “It is past time for the White House to get serious. Time is of the essence.”Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, countered: “We are in a crisis, for ONE REASON – House Republicans threat to burn down the entire economy if they don’t get their way.”In a recent column for the New York Times, the Harvard law professor Laurence A Tribe, an expert in constitutional law, accused Republicans of playing “chicken or, maybe more accurately, Russian roulette” with the US debt.Tribe went on to outline his theory of how Biden has the authority to raise the ceiling on his own, under the 14th amendment, which says the US national debt “shall not be questioned”.Tribe wrote: “Mr Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms – and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis – that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the treasury department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.”Such a step has support from prominent Democrats.In a letter earlier this week, a group of senators including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders (an independent who caucuses with the party), said: “Using this authority would allow the United States to continue to pay its bills on-time, without delay, preventing a global economic catastrophe.”But Biden has resisted so far.On Friday, an unnamed official told the Washington Post the Biden White House still believed “a path to a reasonable bipartisan budget agreement” was possible, “as long as both sides recognise that they won’t get everything they want and compromise is necessary”.The Post also said the two sides had not agreed when to meet again. More

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

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

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      DeSantis says only he can beat Biden in 2024 presidential election

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      The rightwing governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, reportedly told top donors only he, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are “credible” candidates for president in 2024 – and he is the only Republican who can beat the incumbent Democrat.“You have basically three people at this point that are credible in this whole thing,” DeSantis said during a call on Thursday run by a fundraising committee, the New York Times said, adding that a reporter was listening.“Biden, Trump and me. And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president – Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” DeSantis said.DeSantis has long been expected to run but reports indicate he will make it official on Wednesday, filing documents with the Federal Election Commission and releasing an announcement video.A meeting of donors is reportedly scheduled for Miami the same day, with a rally to follow in DeSantis’s home town, Dunedin, between 30 May and 1 June, according to Bloomberg and the Miami Herald.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, from criminal and civil cases arising from his treatment of women to investigations of his business affairs, his retention of classified documents and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the January 6 attack on Congress.A decision on indictments in the investigation of election subversion in Georgia is expected in August, sources told the Guardian and other outlets.Nonetheless, by presenting himself as the victim of political witch-hunts, Trump has established big polling leads.DeSantis lags by more than 30 points in polling averages but is way ahead of other candidates, declared or not, the former vice-president Mike Pence and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley chief among them. The South Carolina senator Tim Scott is expected to announce his campaign on Monday.Polling pitting DeSantis against Biden produces narrow wins for either man.DeSantis’s bold words on Thursday also reflected his formidable fundraising. Groups including the Super Pac Never Back Down, which organised the call, and Empower Parents (previously Friends of Ron DeSantis) have amassed big war chests.The name change of the latter group indicates DeSantis’s pitch to voters: as the champion of culture-war attacks on progressive values, including restrictions on the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues and a six-week abortion ban, one of the toughest in any state.But a battle the Times said DeSantis did not mention on his call could cast a pall over his campaign.On Thursday, Disney, one of the biggest employers in Florida, pulled out of a $1bn office development in Orlando. DeSantis is battling the entertainment giant over its opposition to his so-called “don’t say gay” public education law, a fight that has cost him donor support.Progressives, Democrats and many observers think DeSantis may have marched too far right to win a general election.On the Thursday call, the Times said, DeSantis said many Republicans thought “We’ve got to win this time”, a veiled jab at Trump’s defeat in 2020 and bad results in midterm elections either side of that contest.He also claimed: “The corporate media wants Trump to be the nominee.”Quoting a voter he said he spoke to in Iowa, he said: “You know, Trump was somebody, we liked his policies but we didn’t like his values. And with you, we like your policies but also know that you share our values.”Of his hardline legislative record, DeSantis said: “When we say we’re going to do something, we … get it done.”The governor also boasted about sales of his book, The Courage to be Free, which he said outpaced similar volumes by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The Times said that claim was “roughly in line with the true totals”.DeSantis said: “I think the voters want to move on from Biden. They just want a vehicle they can get behind [but] there’s just too many voters that don’t view Trump as that vehicle.” More

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

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