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      Biden ‘confident’ of reaching deal with McCarthy to avoid US debt default

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      Joe Biden and the Republican speaker of the US House, Kevin McCarthy, said on Wednesday they thought a deal to avoid a US debt default was in reach.Speaking at the White House, Biden said: “I’m confident that we’ll get the agreement on the budget, that America will not default.“We’re going to come together because there’s no alternative way to do the right thing for the country. We have to move on.”On Tuesday, Biden and McCarthy met for an hour at the White House, a meeting the president called productive.Biden, who has faced some criticism for his handling of the issue, is due to travel to the G7 summit in Japan but has cut the trip short to pursue a debt ceiling deal. Plans to visit Papua New Guinea and Australia were postponed.On Wednesday, the president said: “I’ll be in constant contact with my team while I’m at the G7 and be in close touch with speaker McCarthy and other leaders as well.“What I have done in anticipation that we won’t get it all done till I get back is, I’ve cut my trip short in order to be [here] for the final negotiations and sign the deal with the majority leader.”Biden said he expected to return to Washington on Sunday and hold a press conference. Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told CNN that Biden’s decision to cut short his Asia trip sent “the message that … America does not default on its debt”.Also on Wednesday, McCarthy spoke to CNBC.He said: “I think at the end of the day we do not have a debt default. The thing I’m confident about is now we have a structure to find a way to come to a conclusion. The timeline is very tight. But we’re going to make sure we’re in the room and get this done.”A failure to honour US debts could have catastrophic impacts on the US and world economies. The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has indicated that without agreement, default could come as early as 1 June.Republicans want sharp spending cuts. Democrats say Republicans should agree to a “clean” debt bill, the sort they repeatedly passed under Donald Trump. But Biden also seemed ready to make some compromises, including some work requirements on federal programs, though not on healthcare programs.Financial markets appeared to be buoyed as McCarthy joined the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, and the White House in pledging the US would not fail to pay its debt obligations. US stock indexes opened higher on Wednesday.Biden was widely reported to have agreed to a key demand from McCarthy: that negotiations be carried out by a small group of aides, removing, for now, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.Politico said Biden was now represented by the White House counselor Steve Richetti, budget director Shalanda Young and legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell. Garret Graves, a Louisiana Republican and McCarthy ally, was leading the Republican team.McCarthy, who controls the House by just five seats, is widely seen to be at the mercy of the far right of the Republican caucus. But according to Politico, Graves “isn’t a bomb-thrower or grandstander, and Democrats told us they’ve seen him as a steady hand in other bipartisan policy negotiations”.Politico reported that the new negotiators “huddled on Capitol Hill last night to start negotiations, reflecting the time crunch as the clock ticks toward a possible 1 June default”. Punchbowl News said “full-scale negotiations [were] set to kick off” on Wednesday.It will not be a simple process. The negotiators, Punchbowl said, had “a very difficult task ahead of them. They need to find a deal that can pass Congress in the next 15 days. To do that, they’ll have to come up with a framework over the next few days.“This is a massive lift that will require deft negotiating, cooperation from all sides and incredible flexibility on behalf of our national political leadership. Basically everything that Congress hasn’t done at all this year and traditionally isn’t very good at.”House Republicans are demanding $4.8tn in spending cuts, mostly to Democratic priorities including welfare and environment spending. Demonstrating the political vice in which Biden finds himself, progressives have warned him not to give in.“It’s really important we don’t give ground,” Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told Axios. “We have made it clear … that if they give on these core Democratic values, there will be a huge backlash.”Jean-Pierre told CNN that Republicans “want to cut healthcare, they want to increase poverty, and it’s not going to save much money”.Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, also spoke to CNBC.“It creates uncertainty that’s bad for the American people. It’s bad for the economy. That’s bad for business,” he said. “And so our view has consistently been that any resolution of this matter has to be at least two years in nature. And that was a position that was once again made clear in the meeting yesterday.”Punchbowl said: “If Democrats want to hike the debt limit until 2025, McCarthy is going to demand a lot in return.”Jeffries insisted: “Our view is that if we’re going to have a thoughtful conversation about deficit reduction, that conversation can’t simply be one-sided, based on the rightwing ideological perspective of a handful of extreme Maga Republicans.“That’s not how you make public policy.” More

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      The fall of Rudy Giuliani, once the toast of New York, continues unabated | Lloyd Green

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      From “America’s mayor” to a human punchline, Rudy Giuliani’s descent continues unabated. On Monday, news broke of the septuagenarian Giuliani being slammed with a $10m sexual harassment and unpaid wages lawsuit brought by Noelle Dunphy, 43, a former aide. The mighty have fallen.Once he was the toast of town. As a federal prosecutor he sent a congressman to jail, locked up mobsters and indicted white-collar criminals. As mayor, he made the streets again feel safe. Love him or hate him, crime precipitously dropped on his watch.In the days and months following 9/11, he projected strength, confidence and reassurance. He had braced himself for a calamity; he just didn’t know its source or when it would happen. He was steady when crunchtime arrived.As mayor, his tenure was consequential. His eight years at city hall rank up there with Fiorello La Guardia, Michael Bloomberg and Ed Koch. All that feels like aeons ago.These days, Giuliani and the words “defendant” and “buffoon” stand adjacent. He remains under criminal investigation by a Georgia prosecutor. Beyond that, he is a defendant in at least three separate pending election-related defamation lawsuits.His life is tumultuous. He is plagued by an image problem. His appearance in Borat 2 will forever haunt him.Watching him shove his hands down his pants was pathetic and pitiable. His awkwardness and desperation remain indelible.But it doesn’t end there. In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s defeat at the hands of Joe Biden, hair dye running down Rudy’s face became another unforgettable scene in American political lore.It presaged what followed. In that moment, you knew that Rudy had gone off the rails, worse that he possessed no limits when it came to Trump.Yet Giuliani’s latest woes cannot be described as wholly surprising. He always possessed a penchant for drama and a tropism for the transgressive. He loved the opera and his life emerged as operatic. As a prosecutor, he dressed up “undercover”. Then as mayor, he performed onstage in drag with Trump.All that came with a darker side. The warning signs were there. We just chose to ignore them.Amid his first campaign for mayor, in 1989, a story broke of a concentration camp survivor, Simon Berger, being held in federal custody, facing a blackboard that read “Arbeit Macht Frei”, the slogan written across the gates of Auschwitz. Berger would be acquitted. Decades later, Dunphy alleged that Giuliani has a problem with Jews.Fast forward to May 2000. Giuliani publicly announced that he was leaving Donna Hanover, his second wife. No one was more shocked than Hanover. Rudy had shredded the boundary between public and private.A year later, Rudy attempted to stretch out his term as mayor beyond its legal limits. Then again, his mother was a fan of Mussolini and his father spent time for armed robbery at Sing Sing, a prison located in upstate New York.Rudy also sought to make Bernie Kerik, his police commissioner, head of US homeland security. That went badly. Kerik eventually wound up in prison and George W Bush was left to do clean-up on aisle seven.During the 2016-17 presidential transition, rumours swirled of Giuliani coveting an appointment as secretary of state. That moment never arrived.There were “whispers from the staff ‘about his health and stability’,” Michael Wolff wrote in Fire and Fury, his 2018 blockbuster.To be sure, they were the same whispers echoed at a pre-inaugural lunch held at a Manhattan steakhouse by veterans of Giuliani’s time at city hall, and those with significant ties to the Trump administration.For the record, Dunphy’s pleadings are replete with references to Giuliani and alcohol.Giuliani and Ukraine made headlines, too. He and his buddies played Inspector Clouseau. In the end, Giuliani avoided prosecution, but Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas were convicted on federal charges.The political dexterity and judgment that Giuliani once demonstrated has vanished. He is conscious of the decline. “I don’t care about my legacy,” he adds. “I’ll be dead.”Nearly three years after the 2020 election, Trump refuses to concede and remains the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. “Giuliani, on the other hand, [is] finished in every conceivable way,” wrote Giuliani biographer Andrew Kirtzman.Along the way, Rudy’s future grows bleaker and more mirthless. More

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      George Santos: Democrats move to expel indicted Republican from Congress

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      Democrats moved on Tuesday to expel George Santos from Congress.The New York Republican won election in November last year but his résumé has been shown to be largely made up and his campaign finances and past behaviour, some allegedly criminal, have been scrutinised in tremendous detail.Last week, federal prosecutors indicted Santos on multiple counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying to Congress. Appearing in court on Long Island, he pleaded not guilty and claimed to be the victim of a political witch hunt.Now, House Democrats have triggered a political manoeuvre designed to force Republicans to either break with Santos or publicly vote to defend him.To succeed, a privileged resolution introduced by Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, must attract two-thirds support in the House. The resolution could come to a vote within two days.On Tuesday, Garcia told reporters: “The Republicans in the House are actually going to have to go on record and make a decision about if they’re actually going to stand for truth and accountability, or if they’re going to stand with someone that’s clearly a liar.”Some Republicans have said Santos should quit but as yet party leaders have not broken with him, saying he has a right to seek acquittal while representing his district.Republicans control the House by just five seats – and Democrats would be favoured to win Santos’s seat should it fall vacant. In January, amid a far-right rebellion, Santos supported Kevin McCarthy through 15 votes for speaker.Garcia also said Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic minority leader, was “involved” in the process.McCarthy told reporters he would talk to Jeffries about referring the resolution to the House ethics committee, which he hoped would “move rapidly” despite rarely doing so or imposing heavy punishments.Only five members of the House have ever been expelled. Three were kicked out for fighting for the Confederacy in the civil war. Two were expelled after being convicted of crimes.The last, James Traficant of Ohio, was expelled in 2002. Like Santos, Traficant cut a somewhat picaresque path through the halls of power.Reporting his death in 2014, the New York Times said Traficant was known for his “colorful personality and wardrobe, his legislative theatrics and his wild mop of hair.“So it was something of a surprise when the hair turned out to be fake, a fact that was made clear when he had to remove his toupée during booking after his arrest on bribery and racketeering charges.”Traficant did not let his expulsion stop him running for re-election, as an independent and from federal custody in Pennsylvania. Though unsuccessful, he received more than 28,000 votes.Santos has announced a run for re-election. McCarthy has said he does not support such a move.On Tuesday, Garcia told MSNBC McCarthy had “lost all control of his caucus. He needs Santos for key votes on the on the deficit, on the budget, and so … he’s been working with literally a liar and a huge fraudster in the Congress.“So now McCarthy’s going to actually have to make a choice, if he will support George Santos … or if he’s actually going to listen to the American people.“And so we’re gonna continue to push this as best possible. We think it’s absolutely the right approach. And we’ve given plenty of time to George Santos to resign. We’ve been calling for his resignation for months and for months. It’s time for him to do the right thing.” More

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      Gavin Newsom presidential run is ‘no-brainer’, Arnold Schwarzenegger says

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      A presidential run by the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, is a “no-brainer”, according to one of the Democrat’s predecessors, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film star and “governator” who ran the golden state for eight years from 2003.“I think it’s a no-brainer,” Schwarzenegger told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on Tuesday. “Every governor from a big state wants to take that shot.”Schwarzenegger also discussed his exercise regime and described how, at 75, he plans “to live forever”.Newsom, 55, is one of few names proposed as a credible alternative to Joe Biden, the 80-year-old Democrat in the White House – though such suggestions have quietened since Biden announced his re-election campaign.Shortly after election day next year, Biden will turn 82. Newsom can in all likelihood wait until 2028 to take his own tilt at the presidency, not least as his term in state office will end in 2027.First elected in 2018, Newsom steered California through the Covid pandemic but had to fight off a recall before winning re-election.Schwarzenegger, 75, said: “What do I think about his performance? When you become part of the club, you don’t criticise governors – because you know how tough the job is. It’s impossible to please everybody.“Before I ran for governor, I had an 80% approval rating. As soon as I announced, I had a 43% approval rating. Immediately, half of the people said, ‘Fuck him! I’m not going to see his movies anymore.’“I would run things differently [than Newsom], but I’m a Republican, so of course I would. I don’t criticise him for not doing it my way.”Schwarzenegger earned the “governator” nickname, based on his famous roles in the Terminator films, when he won election as governor in 2003. He left office in 2011, unable to run for president because he was born in Austria.Asked for his view of Ron DeSantis of Florida, the leading Republican challenger to Donald Trump for the GOP nomination next year, Schwarzenegger was mildly critical.“I was against some of the stuff he did with Covid,” Schwarzenegger told the Reporter, of the governor who moved against mask and vaccine mandates and other public health measures.“But who am I to judge? That’s for the people of Florida. My style is different. His is too conservative for me. That doesn’t mean I think he’s terrible. He’s just not my style.”In a passage of possible interest to Biden, the Reporter asked Schwarzenegger about his own battle against the effects of age.“I never had cosmetic surgery,” he said. “I never tried any gimmicks. Years ago, I [went to] UCLA, where they have world-renowned experts on ageing. I asked if anything has been created, or that is about to be available, that reverses ageing.“He says, ‘Absolutely nothing, end of story.’ The only thing you can do is the old-fashioned stuff. I could wipe out earlier because I smoke cigars, but then it gets counterbalanced by me eating well and then exercising.“… I still work out every day, I ride my bike every day, and I make movies – show business is another part of my life. I add in my life, I never subtract.“I don’t need money. I get money because you have to have a certain value and the agents negotiate. But I have a great time doing it. I love everything that I do. There’s no retiring. I’m still on this side of the grass, so I’m happy. My plan is to live forever – and so far, so good!” More

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      Are you a doctor who hates treating gay people? Come to Florida, where Ron DeSantis has legalised bigotry | Arwa Mahdawi

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      You know what I love about living in the US? Freedom! You can choose between multiple overpriced insurance companies to provide you with healthcare, for example. The healthcare companies, in turn, can seemingly charge you whatever they like for their services. If they want to charge you $1,500 (£1,200) for some toenail fungus cream, that is their prerogative. That’s freedom, baby.As if this wasn’t glorious enough, the healthcare system in Florida has just had a new layer of freedom added to it. On 1 July, a new law goes into effect that means a doctor can look a potential patient up and down, decide they are giving off homosexual vibes and refuse to treat them because interacting with gay people goes against their personal beliefs. The doctor will not face any repercussions for denying care and has no obligation to refer the patient elsewhere.I wish I was exaggerating but I’m not. Last week, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the Protections of Medical Conscience (pdf) bill, which lets medical professionals and health insurance companies deny patients care based on religious, moral or ethical beliefs. While the new law doesn’t allow care to be withheld because of race, colour sex, or national origin, there are no protections for sexual orientation or gender identity. The only bright spot is that hospitals must still abide by federal laws that require them to stabilise a patient with an emergency condition. In other words, you can’t let a patient die just because they’re wearing a Drag Race T-shirt.At least, I don’t think you can: it is hard to say precisely what is allowed under this new law because, like a lot of regressive Republican legislation, the bill is deliberately vague. It does not list which procedures are acceptable to refuse and it doesn’t clearly define what constitutes a “sincerely held religious, moral, or ethical belief”. This lack of clarity is by design: Republicans love passing legislation with vague language because it creates confusion and is more difficult to challenge. It is also a lot scarier for the people affected when you don’t have a clear idea what is allowed and what isn’t. The journalist Mary C Curtis has called the tactic “intimidation by obfuscation”. The American Civil Liberties Union noted that the new law means “Floridians will have to fear discriminatory treatment from medical providers every time they meet a new provider, calling into question everyone’s trust in their medical care.”DeSantis has been a very busy man: in the brief moments he has not spent fighting with Disney, his state’s second-largest employer, he has been signing a flurry of regressive legislation. The day before he signed his bill attacking healthcare equality, he signed a draconian immigration bill that makes life for migrants in Florida very difficult. And, on Monday, he signed a bill that would ban Florida’s colleges and universities from spending state or federal money on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. It also limits how race can be discussed on many courses. In a speech after he signed the bill, DeSantis told prospective college students that if they want to study wacky things such as “gender ideology” they should get the hell out of Florida. “We don’t want to be diverted into a lot of these niche subjects that are heavily politicised; we want to focus on the basics,” said DeSantis. Sounds like a great advert for Florida’s educational institutions, doesn’t it? “Come here if you just want to learn the basics!” I’m not sure what “the basics” are but they clearly don’t include studying Michelangelo or watching animated films since, earlier this year, a Florida principal had to resign after parents were outraged that their kids were shown a picture of Michelangelo’s David and now a Florida teacher is being investigated for showing her class a Disney movie featuring a gay character.Having banned everything in sight, DeSantis’s next big project appears to be modifying Florida’s “resign-to-run” law so that he can run for president while still serving as governor. It’s not clear when he might finally announce his candidacy, but I will tell you this: it is looking very likely that the Republican nominee for 2024 is going to be either DeSantis, a man who has turned the sunshine state into a hotbed of bigotry, or Donald Trump, a fellow bigot who has been found to be a sexual predator by the law. Please feel free to scream. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Republicans aren’t fixing the migrant border plight. In fact they’re making it worse | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      Last week saw the end of Title 42, the Trump-era border restriction which was technically introduced as a health measure during the coronavirus pandemic. The policy allowed the Trump and then Biden administrations to expel without due process the vast majority of people seeking asylum at the United States-Mexico border. Given that the acute phase of the pandemic has passed, the end of the policy – which has been used about 2.7m times – was inevitable.But the end of Title 42 has also reignited the political firestorm over the US immigration and refugee system. Republicans have seemed to gleefully anticipate “chaos” and “disaster” at the border after the policy is lifted. Less biased observers are also concerned that the US refugee processing system will be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of people now expected to seek asylum. The Biden administration has come under fierce criticism from the left for a tough new policy of questionable legality which requires most refugees to seek asylum from abroad using a glitchy cellphone app called CBP One.Not to be outdone, Republicans have responded to the situation by promising to return to the failed and cruel policies of the past. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed a bill which would order the resumption of Trump’s border wall and eviscerate the right to asylum for those who reach the US. Meanwhile, speaking at a CNN town hall last week, Trump defended his policy of family separation and indicated that he would consider reinstating it if he became president again.All of these proposals show that even though there are many reasons to be concerned about the humanitarian situation at the southern border, Republicans have no solutions to it. Migration is driven by human suffering and the desire for a better and safer life, rooted in structural factors like the climate crisis, human rights violations and economic inequality. US government policies have some impact, but they’re not determinative. If people could be prevented from seeking asylum through angry posturing or cruel policies like family separation, then it’s hard to explain why 2019 – a year when Trump was president – saw the largest number of arrivals in 12 years.What’s even worse is that the policies that Republicans want to pursue in other areas of life only make the structural factors underlying migration more severe. The party is opposed to serious efforts to tackle the climate crisis, and it cut foreign aid to Central America under Trump – in some cases actually as punishment for the arrival of migrants at the border. Furthermore, the weak US gun laws which Republicans back create an “iron river” of firearms flowing into Mexico and Central America, where 70% and 50% of guns used in crimes are traced back to the US.The party also has a long history of promoting US military intervention in Latin America, which has caused instability and propped up the regimes that fuel the inequality and violence of today. Republicans are busy right now proposing that the US invade Mexico to take out its drug cartels, an action that would contribute to the country’s insecurity and undoubtedly fuel an increase in migration northwards.If Republicans wanted to actually help deal with the refugee crisis, there are many things they could do. They could join with Democrats to properly fund the system of refugee centers, in which the number of detainees is already exceeding capacity, and immigration courts, where some refugees have been waiting more than a decade for a hearing. They could try to advance proposals to work constructively with the nations with which the United States shares a hemisphere to tackle common problems like the climate crisis, economic inequality and gun violence. And they could work to expand, rather than contract, legal pathways to citizenship and asylum.The Biden administration is now working to do just that, announcing plans to set up immigration processing centers throughout Latin America, with the first to open in Guatemala and Colombia in the coming weeks. Eventually, the administration hopes to reduce the need for desperate people to arrive at the border by offering them an opportunity to apply for asylum from elsewhere. This should not only dial down the political heat at home, but much more importantly mean that would-be migrants don’t have to suffer the harrowing journey north, which for many ends in abuse or death.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut these plans can only be effective and sustainable over the long term with the cooperation of Republicans, both in Congress and in future administrations. For that to happen, the party would need to start seeing immigrants and refugees as fellow human beings in need of assistance rather than as enemies to be quashed. Only then can America really make progress in tackling this problem and escaping the cycle of cruelty in which it is currently trapped.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a newsletter and podcast More

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      Suspect named in baseball bat attack at Democratic congressman’s office

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      Police in Virginia on Monday named the suspect in a violent attack in which two staffers for a Democratic congressman were assaulted with a baseball bat, requiring hospital treatment.Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, was arrested after the attack at Gerry Connolly’s office in Fairfax. Connolly told CNN one staff member was hit in the head while the other, an intern on her first day in the job, was hit on the side.Connolly said the attacker, a constituent, caused widespread damage to the office, including shattering glass and breaking computers.“The thought that someone would take advantage of my staff’s accessibility to commit an act of violence is unconscionable and devastating,” Connolly said in a statement.He told CNN the suspected attacker “was filled with out of control rage”.A police spokesperson, Sgt Lisa Gardner, said police were called at about 10.50am. Connolly was not at the office, Gardner said, adding that some staff members hid during the attack.Acts of political extremism, including ones targeting lawmakers, have become increasingly common in the US.Last October, Paul Pelosi, husband of the former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in his home in San Francisco by a man armed with a hammer.Afterwards, the Michigan representative Debbie Dingell predicted “somebody is going to die”.Speaking to Axios, Dingell said that two years previously, after the now fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson broadcast a segment about her, she “had men outside my home with assault weapons that night”.The Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, was the target of a rightwing kidnap plot foiled by law enforcement.Justice Samuel Alito, meanwhile, has complained of an increase in threats to members of the supreme court. Last year, a man was charged with attempting to kill Brett Kavanaugh, like Alito a member of the 6-3 conservative majority.Connolly, 73, has represented the 11th congressional district in Virginia since 2009. A prominent Democratic voice in Congress, he frequently spars with Republicans who control the House.Connolly last week criticised CNN’s decision to host Donald Trump for a town hall in New Hampshire, telling Fox News that the event was a “travesty”.“Why would you put a liar and a convicted criminal on a town hall?” Connolly asked during his appearance on the network. “And why would you give him that privilege? … To me, it is frankly reprehensible.”Trump is not a convicted criminal. Last week, in a civil case in New York, he was found liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll.On Monday, Connolly thanked police and emergency medical professionals. The person who attacked his office was taken into custody, he said, adding that his focus was on ensuring his staff members were “receiving the care they need”.“I have the best team in Congress,” Connolly said. “My district office staff make themselves available to constituents and members of the public every day.”Mark Warner, one of two Democratic senators from Virginia, said: “Intimidation and violence – especially against public servants – has no place in our society. This is an extraordinarily disturbing development, and my thoughts are with the staff members who were injured.”Jason Miyares, the Republican attorney general of Virginia, wished Connolly’s staff members well and said: “Political violence is always unacceptable. The coward who did this should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”But Dan Goldman, a Democratic congressman from New York, linked the attack to remarks about political violence by Republicans.“This is horrifying,” Goldman wrote. “From ‘very fine people on both sides’” – which Donald Trump said about violence at a far-right march in Virginia in 2017 – “to calling January 6 a ‘peaceful protest’, there are serious consequences when elected officials refuse to condemn or outright glorify political violence.” More

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      Rick Perry hints at 2024 presidential bid and revives memories of debate gaffe

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      The former Texas governor Rick Perry’s announcement on Sunday that he could mount a third run for the Republican presidential nomination encountered widespread mockery over a famous debate stage gaffe in which he forgot the name of a government department he said he would abolish.But Perry, 73, also ran into stormier waters, being accused of lying regarding his alleged involvement in Donald Trump’s election subversion.Perry is the longest-serving Texas governor, in office between 2000 and 2015. A telegenic ex-air force pilot, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 and 2016.Both campaigns flopped but, speaking to CNN on Sunday, he said a third run was “something that I haven’t taken off the table”.In response, many observers pointed to Perry’s debate stage nightmare in Rochester, Michigan, in November 2011.Perry said then: “It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, education, and the uh … what’s the third one, there? Let’s see … Commerce, education and the, uh, um uh … The third agency of government I would do away with, uh, education, commerce, and, let’s see … I can’t. The third one. I can’t.“Oops.” The third department turned out to be the Department of Energy, which Perry eventually led under Trump’s presidency. During his confirmation process, he told senators he regretted calling for the department to be eliminated.Trump now faces unprecedented legal jeopardy but enjoys commanding leads in Republican polling. On Sunday, Perry declined to endorse him.“He may get to hear me call him names again,” Perry said, a reference to the 2016 campaign which he quit after failing to qualify for a CNN debate featuring no fewer than 11 presidential hopefuls.He added: “It’s early in the process, I think, for any of us to sit back and say, ‘I’m for this person or that person.’ [A 2024 run] certainly is something that I haven’t taken off the table, but the chances of it happening are probably a little bit slim.“There’s a lot of time left, and we’ll see how this all works out.”Perry resigned as energy secretary in October 2019. To CNN, he denied complicity in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.In 2021 it was reported, first by CNN, that congressional investigators believed Perry texted Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, recommending that Republican-held state legislatures disregard wins for Joe Biden.Perry on Sunday told CNN: “I didn’t send it, and that’s kind of the interesting thing. As a matter of fact, if you go back and look at the congressional testimony, the congressman who brought that up said later, you know what, we’re not really sure where this came from.”In December 2021, the text in question was read on the House floor by Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who sat on the House January 6 committee. Raskin initially said the text was sent by a “House lawmaker” but according to CNN, “learned of the error … from CNN” as it reported Perry’s alleged authorship.On Sunday, Perry added: “I got called on [the texts] a couple times. Number one, it’s not my style of speak, or texting, so to speak. So again, there is a lot of misinformation out there … and that was one piece of it. So I can assure you that that didn’t come from me.”The Guardian contacted Raskin for comment.Another January 6 committee member, however, rejected Perry’s claim not to have sent the tweet in question.Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican now retired from Congress, tweeted: “Well, that’s a lie because he did.” More