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      Republicans and Democrats deadlocked as US debt ceiling deadline nears – as it happened

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      From 8h agoThe deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over raising the debt ceiling has gone on for months, and the stakes could not be higher. If an agreement is not reached by as soon as 1 June, the United States could default on its bond payments and other obligations, with potentially catastrophic implications for the economy.There are plenty of issues in Washington over which the two parties cannot agree, but the high consequences of a failure to raise the debt limit has some scholars arguing that Biden should invoke the 14th amendment to order the Treasury department to continue paying its bills, even if the ceiling isn’t increased.This weekend, prominent liberal constitutional scholar Laurence H Tribe wrote of his support for the solution in the New York Times:
      The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.
      The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.
      The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.
      There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.
      And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: 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.
      In a Sunday interview with ABC, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen was pressed on whether Biden would consider following the advice of Tribe and others. The answer was pretty much no.Here’s a clip of the exchange:The debt ceiling deadlock continued to loom over Washington, with little sign of progress made between Democrats and Republicans ahead of a potential government default on 1 June. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen appeared to rule out Joe Biden invoking the 14th amendment to order the government to keep paying its bills, but the president will meet with congressional leaders tomorrow in hopes of breaking the logjam.Here’s what else happened today:
      Biden will veto a Republican border security proposal, in the unlikely chance it makes it to his desk.
      Despite the carnage in Texas, there’s little sign of a change in heart among House GOP leaders towards gun control.
      A former official in Barack Obama’s administration backed Biden’s strategy of not negotiating over the debt ceiling.
      Airlines could be forced to compensate passengers for cancelled or delayed flights under new rules the transportation department is considering.
      Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, gave a preview of his strategy to regain the chamber’s majority next year.
      A story to watch this week is the situation at America’s southern border, where asylum restrictions first imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic will be ending on Thursday.Last week, Joe Biden ordered 1,500 national guard troops to the border to prepare for what some fear will be an influx of new asylum seekers. Immigration is one of the most contentious issues in Washington, and the GOP has in recent years been especially adroit at using it to rally their base, and as a cudgel against Democrats.On the campaign trail, Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador under Donald Trump who is now facing off against him for the GOP’s presidential nomination, bashed both the Biden administration and Congress for failing to overhaul the US immigration system.Here are her comments on Fox News:In a speech at the White House, Joe Biden characterized the new rules on airlines as part of his campaign to rest power from large corporations, the Guardian’s David Smith reports:After a winter where air travel was marred by bad weather and the total meltdown of one of the country’s major carriers Southwest, the Biden administration today announced it would consider imposing new rules to require airlines to compensate passengers for delays and cancellations.The transportation department will consider rules governing when airlines must give passengers compensation, hotels or meal vouchers in instances where flights are cancelled or delayed.“When an airline causes a flight cancellation or delay, passengers should not foot the bill. This rule would, for the first time in U.S. history, propose to require airlines to compensate passengers and cover expenses such as meals, hotels, and rebooking in cases where the airline has caused a cancellation or significant delay,” transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said.You can read more about the transportation department’s plans here.Even if Joe Biden wins re-election next year, the balance of power in Washington could shift dramatically by the time he begins his second term.While it’s too soon to say what the race for the White House will look like by the time polls open in November 2024, the GOP is seen as having a good shot of retaking the Senate next year, since several Democrats representing states that supported Donald Trump in 2020 are up for re-election. Republicans need to win only two of those seats to gain a majority in the Senate, which, assuming the party maintains control of the House, would put them in control of Congress just as Biden begins his second term.In an interview with CNN, the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell confirmed that the party would look to oust Democratic senators from red states West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, as well as Pennsylvania, a swing state. But the Kentucky lawmaker said retaking the Senate majority was no sure thing.“I just spent 10 minutes explaining to you how we could screw this up, and we’re working very hard to not let that happen. Let’s put it that way,” McConnell said.You can read the rest of the interview here.In Texas, authorities have named the driver suspected of killing eight people with a car yesterday.The Guardian’s Joanna Walters is anchoring a live blog focused on the latest news from the tragic weekend in the state. Follow it below:Ahead of the 2024 election, the Guardian’s Peter Stone reports that a rightwing lawyer tied to Donald Trump is urging the GOP to try to restrict college students’ access to the ballot box:Rightwing election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a key ally of Donald Trump as he pushed bogus claims of fraud to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win, is facing intense fire from voting watchdogs and bipartisan criticism for urging curbs on college student voting, same day voter registration and absentee voting.The scrutiny of Mitchell, who runs the Election Integrity Network at the pro-Trump Conservative Partnership Institute to which a Trump Pac donated $1m dollars, was sparked by recent comments Mitchell made to Republican donors, and a watchdog report criticizing her advisory role with a federal election panel.Long known for advocating stricter voting rules that are often premised on unsupported allegations of sizable voting fraud, Mitchell last month promoted new voting curbs on students in a talk to a group of wealthy donors to the Republican National Committee, efforts that critics call partisan and undemocratic.The debt ceiling deadlock continues to loom over Washington, with little sign of progress made between Democrats and Republicans ahead of a potential government default on 1 June. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen appeared to rule out Joe Biden invoking the 14th amendment to order the government to keep paying its bills, while also being sued by a union that wants her to ignore the debt ceiling.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Biden will veto a Republican border security proposal, in the unlikely chance it makes it to his desk.
      Despite the carnage in Texas, there’s little sign of a change in heart among House GOP leaders towards gun control.
      A former official in Barack Obama’s administration backed Biden’s strategy of not negotiating over the debt ceiling.
      The Associated Press reports that a union of government workers has sued Janet Yellen to force the Treasury secretary to continue paying the government’s bills, even if Congress does not increase the debt limit.Here’s more about the suit:
      The lawsuit, filed by the National Association of Government Employees, says that if Yellen abides by the debt limit once it becomes binding, possibly next month, she would have to choose which federal obligations to actually pay once the debt limit bars the government from further borrowing. Doing so, the lawsuit contends, would violate the Constitution’s separation of powers.
      Some analysts have argued that in that case, the government could prioritize interest payments on Treasury securities. That would ensure that the United States wouldn’t default on its securities, which have long been regarded as the safest investments in the world and are vital to global financial transactions.
      But under the Constitution, the lawsuit argues, the president and Treasury secretary have no authority to decide which payments to make because the Constitution grants spending power to Congress.
      “Nothing in the Constitution or any judicial decision interpreting the Constitution,” the lawsuit states, “allows Congress to leave unchecked discretion to the President to exercise the spending power vested in the legislative branch by canceling, suspending, or refusing to carry out spending already approved by Congress.”
      The NAGE represents 75,000 government employees that it says are at risk of being laid off or losing pay and benefits should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling. The debt limit, currently $31.4 trillion, was reached in January. But Yellen has since used various accounting measures to avoid breaching it.
      Joe Biden will veto a border security proposal introduced by Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, the White House has announced.The GOP last week introduced the Secure the Border Act of 2023, their attempt to break the long-running deadlock in Washington over reforming America’s immigration system. House speaker Kevin McCarthy says it would improve technology deployed to monitor the United State’s southern and northern borders and increase the number of Border Patrol officers, while also satisfying rightwing priorities such as restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall.In a statement, the White House office of management and budget said the legislation would not improve border security:
      The Administration strongly supports productive efforts to reform the Nation’s immigration system but opposes H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act of 2023, which makes elements of our immigration system worse. A successful border management strategy must include robust enforcement at the border of illegal crossings, deterrence to discourage illegal immigration, and legal pathways to ensure that those in need of protection are not turned away to face death or serious harm. The Biden-Harris Administration’s approach to border management is grounded in this strategy – expanding legal pathways while increasing consequences for illegal pathways, which helps maintain safe, orderly, and humane border processing. However, the Administration is limited in what it can achieve by an outdated statutory framework and inadequate resources, particularly in this time of unprecedented global movement. H.R. 2 does nothing to address the root causes of migration, reduces humanitarian protections, and restricts lawful pathways, which are critical alternatives to unlawful entry.
      While Republicans have the votes to pass the bill through the House, the Democratic majority in the Senate is unlikely to approve it. And even if they did, the White House says, “If the President were presented with H.R. 2, he would veto it.”Texas is also reeling from the deaths of eight people killed when a car plowed into them outside a shelter for migrants, the Guardian’s Christian von Preysing-Barry reports:Neighbors held a small vigil Sunday night on a dirt path along a busy road in Brownsville, at the eastern end of the US-Mexico border, where eight people were killed and 10 were injured at a bus stop that morning.A small display of flowers and a row of candles grew as shaken people visited the dimly lit curb where the appalling crash occurred.A car had plowed into a group waiting at a bus stop across from the Ozanam Center, an overnight shelter housing a growing migrant population, most fleeing crises in their home countries in Central and South America, Haiti and parts of Africa.The victims have not yet been named but many are believed to be Venezuelan.The hostility of many House Republicans to tighter gun control has remained a constant, even as America has been rocked by successive mass shootings.The thoughts of House majority leader Steve Scalise, who was himself a victim of gun violence, are telling. Here’s what he had to say, in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt:Gun violence is again on the political agenda, after a gunman killed eight people in a mass shooting in Texas this weekend. Here’s the latest on the tragedy, from the Guardian’s Charlie Scudder:Ashok Kolla walked past the news cameras at the Allen Premium Outlets on Sunday, phone to his ear, trying to find the woman from Hyderabad who was unaccounted for after the deadly mass shooting at the mall a day earlier.“Can you tell me which hospital she is at?” Kolla said into the phone.Kolla is a volunteer with the Telugu Association of North America, or Tana, an Indian American nonprofit. When Indian immigrants are hurt or killed, Kolla springs into action, tackling bureaucratic and logistical challenges to connect victims in the US with their families back in India.He lives in Frisco, Texas, just a few miles from Allen. After a gunman killed eight people, injured seven others and was shot dead by police on Saturday, Kolla got word: at least two victims were members of his community.The debt ceiling standoff may be consuming much of top lawmakers’ time, but Democrats aren’t relenting in their demands for more accountability for supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s ties to conservative political figures is an American embarrassment, and the question is whether that is shameful enough to the country’s highest-ranking judge to do something about it, the Senate judiciary committee’s chairperson said on Sunday.“This tangled web around justice … Thomas just gets worse and worse by the day,” Illinois’s senior Democratic senator, Dick Durbin, said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I don’t know what is going to come up next. I thought I heard it all, but disclosures about his activities just embarrass me.”Durbin, who is also the majority whip in the upper congressional chamber, added: “The question is whether it embarrasses the supreme court and … chief justice [John] Roberts, [who] has the power in his hands to change this first thing tomorrow morning.”The Guardian’s David Smith reports that Joe Biden is bracing for his own bout of legal trouble, in the form of potential charges against his son, Hunter:The White House is bracing for political fallout from a looming decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Joe Biden’s son Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.In a signal that the investigation is nearing completion, Hunter’s lawyers last month held a meeting with David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware, at the justice department in Washington, the Washington Post said. A separate report by CNN noted that Hunter’s longtime lawyer Chris Clark was among those entering the department headquarters.Republicans would be sure to seize on a high-profile criminal case against Hunter, 53, in an effort to inflict political damage on the US president, who last week announced his bid for re-election in 2024.The big news in the debt ceiling negotiations will come tomorrow, when congressional leaders meet with Joe Biden at the White House. Today, there’s news of political import in New York City, where the civil trial of a rape allegation against Donald Trump is nearing its conclusion. The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has the latest:The jury in E Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit accusing Donald Trump of rape and defamation is to hear closing arguments in New York on Monday.The three women and six men who have listened to seven days of testimony, including three by Carroll herself, will then retire to consider whether they believe the advice columnist’s account of the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store dressing room in 1996.Trump missed a Sunday afternoon deadline to notify the court if he wished to testify. During a visit to Ireland last week, the former president had threatened to turn up in court to confront Carroll after calling her a “disgrace” and a liar.If a standoff over the debt ceiling sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Republicans used the issue as a bargaining chip twice during Barack Obama’s presidency, including in 2011, when the deadlock resulted in one of the major ratings agency’s downgrading the United States’s debt for the first time.Daniel Pfeiffer was a senior advisor in Obama’s White House, and in a column for the New York Times today, he argued that Joe Biden’s strategy of refusing to negotiate with Republicans is wise. Here’s why:
      The only politics that matter is avoiding default — and Mr. Biden’s approach is the best way to do that. It also offers Mr. Biden a chance to highlight two qualities that he will likely run on in 2024: He’s a man of principle, but he’s also a sensible man who can get things done.
      The biggest impediment to negotiations is that, with Mr. McCarthy, the president faces a weak negotiating partner. That said, Mr. Biden should have two objectives. The first is to make sure the debt limit is extended through the election so that we are not right back in this precarious position next year.
      To get that, he will need to work with Mr. McCarthy to find a framework for fiscal negotiations. Perhaps that means drawing Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, into the process. Mr. McConnell has repeatedly said he has no plans to get involved and that it was up to Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Biden to work out a deal. But in the past, deals with Mr. McConnell’s imprimatur were able to garner enough Republicans to succeed in the House and save face for a Republican speaker.
      This will not be easy. The House Republicans might be too far right to be part of a deal. After all, any deal between the president and the speaker will still require a majority of the House and at least 60 Senate votes. It’s frankly very hard to see a deal or deals that could have Mr. Biden’s support as well as the support of a majority of House Republicans — especially since Mr. McCarthy has made it clear that, to continue his speakership, his strategy is to stay in the good graces of the Freedom Caucus and other MAGA Republicans.
      Still, the most important reason to avoid entering into negotiations over the debt limit itself goes beyond politics. It is why, in 2011, Mr. Obama pledged never again after trying to negotiate with the Republicans. Allowing the Republicans to use the threat of default as extortion could cripple the remainder of Mr. Biden’s presidency.
      This time it’s spending cuts and work requirements for Medicaid recipients. What happens when the debt limit comes up again next year? Will the Republicans demand a federal abortion ban? A pardon for the Jan. 6 perpetrators?
      Pfeiffer closes with these words:
      The 2023 debt ceiling crisis seems much more dangerous the ones President Obama dealt with when I worked in the West Wing. A lot is going to happen in the next few weeks, but if Democrats want to avoid default and once again save the nation from radical Republicans, their best bet is sticking with President Biden and calling the Republicans’ bluff.
      The deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over raising the debt ceiling has gone on for months, and the stakes could not be higher. If an agreement is not reached by as soon as 1 June, the United States could default on its bond payments and other obligations, with potentially catastrophic implications for the economy.There are plenty of issues in Washington over which the two parties cannot agree, but the high consequences of a failure to raise the debt limit has some scholars arguing that Biden should invoke the 14th amendment to order the Treasury department to continue paying its bills, even if the ceiling isn’t increased.This weekend, prominent liberal constitutional scholar Laurence H Tribe wrote of his support for the solution in the New York Times:
      The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.
      The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.
      The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.
      There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.
      And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: 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.
      In a Sunday interview with ABC, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen was pressed on whether Biden would consider following the advice of Tribe and others. The answer was pretty much no.Here’s a clip of the exchange:Good morning, US politics blog readers. This week looks to be a crucial one for the long-running negotiations between Republicans and Democrats over increasing the debt ceiling, as a potential default on 1 June grows ever nearer. But things aren’t exactly looking good at the moment. Joe Biden and his Democratic allies continue to refuse to negotiate over an increase, saying the legal limit on how much debt the US government can accrue should be raised without preconditions. The GOP, meanwhile, wants the White House to agree to cut spending and implement conservative reforms to areas like permitting. The top leaders in Congress are meeting with Biden tomorrow in hopes of making some progress on the deadlock.Here’s what else is going on today:
      Biden will at 1.45pm eastern time announce new rules to compensate passengers when flights are delayed or canceled.
      Closing arguments are expected to start today in advice columnist E Jean Carroll’s civil suit alleging rape by Donald Trump.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 2pm. More

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      White House prepares for possible charges against Hunter Biden

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      The White House is bracing for political fallout from a looming decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Joe Biden’s son Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.In a signal that the investigation is nearing completion, Hunter’s lawyers last month held a meeting with David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware, at the justice department in Washington, the Washington Post said. A separate report by CNN noted that Hunter’s longtime lawyer Chris Clark was among those entering the department headquarters.Republicans would be sure to seize on a high-profile criminal case against Hunter, 53, in an effort to inflict political damage on the US president, who last week announced his bid for re-election in 2024.Attacks on Hunter and his alleged laptop in the 2020 campaign fizzled but the 53-year-old is taking an increasingly public role at his father’s side, appearing at a state dinner honouring the French president, Emmanuel Macron; at the Kennedy Center Honors; and on a recent trip to the Republic of Ireland.Hunter’s taxes and foreign business dealings have been under investigation by a federal grand jury in Delaware since at least 2018. His membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have raised questions by Republicans about whether he traded on his father’s public service.As the FBI sought to interview him in 2020, Hunter was forced to publicly acknowledge that he was under scrutiny, stating: “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”Then media reports last October claimed that federal agents believed they had enough evidence to criminally charge Hunter on two matters: failing to report all his income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and making a false statement in relation to buying a gun in 2018.According to the Washington Post, Hunter filled out a federal form in which he allegedly answered “no” to the question of whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance”. Yet the president’s son has acknowledged his long struggle with drug addiction and, in his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things, recalled spells in 2018 when he smoked crack “every 15 minutes”.If prosecutors agree that evidence is likely to lead to a conviction at trial, it would represent a political gift to Republicans whose efforts to paint the Biden family as corrupt have failed to gain much traction beyond rightwing media.Hunter’s new career as a painter previously raised ethical questions and now his legal and financial woes continue to pile up, posing political risks for his father’s re-election campaign.This week, Hunter was ordered to appear in a court in Arkansas in a paternity case involving Lunden Roberts, a woman with whom he had a child, now four years old. Citing a “substantial material change” in his income, Hunter’s lawyers have been seeking to lower child support payments from what they say are currently $20,000 a month.Republicans, now in control of the House of Representatives, have opened their own investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter’s business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of his finances. Last month, an IRS special agent requested whistleblower protection to disclose information about alleged political interference and mishandling of the tax investigation.On Friday, the Axios website reported growing disagreement between the White House and Hunter’s own team over how to handle the onslaught. Without consulting his father’s aides, the site said, Hunter hired the lawyer Abbe Lowell to take a more aggressive stance, while his team is planning to create a legal defence fund to help pay mounting bills that have reportedly put him millions of dollars in the red.Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer in George W Bush’s White House, declined to comment on whether he had been approached to act as an adviser to such a fund. “I’m an attorney and I get lots of calls from people who are interested in legal issues,” he said on Friday. “I end up engaging as a lawyer only for a small fraction of those but I’m not at liberty to discuss any of those types of calls publicly under the lawyer’s ethics rules for confidentiality.”A legal defence fund could trigger further ethical problems for the White House. Anthony Coley, a former spokesman for the justice department, told Axios: “For this fund to work, it must be extraordinarily transparent and even restrictive by prohibiting foreign citizens and registered lobbyists from contributing. Without these type of guardrails, the fund will be a legitimate headache for the White House.”Biden has said he has never spoken to his son about foreign business. There are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president. The attorney general, Merrick Garland, told a congressional hearing that he would not interfere with the department’s investigation and had left the matter in the hands of Weiss, the US attorney for Delaware, who would be empowered to expand his investigation outside the state if needed.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “If Biden’s son gets indicted, that obviously is going to lead to a long process that will most likely continue through the election and will give fodder to Republican claims about Hunter Biden being corrupt.“On the other hand, I’m sure there will be people in the Biden camp, though not Biden himself, who will point to this as evidence of the rule of law, that the change from Trump to Biden is clear. That is, he did not interfere in the justice department’s investigation. It was straight up. It’s kind of good news for America, maybe bad news for Joe Biden’s family.”Whether charges against Hunter would carry much sway with voters remains doubtful, especially if his father faces a rematch against Trump, who recently became the first former president to be indicted and has more legal headaches to come.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, commented: “If there’s traction on the things that arguably could have affected policy during his dad’s vice-presidency, that could be troublesome. But if it’s simply troubled guy doing troubled guy things, it’s bad for Hunter and it will be touted a bit in the conservative press but I don’t think it’ll have a significant bearing on the president’s re-election.” More

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      Alarm after lawyer who aided Trump’s 2020 election lie attacks campus voting

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      Rightwing election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a key ally of Donald Trump as he pushed bogus claims of fraud to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win, is facing intense fire from voting watchdogs and bipartisan criticism for urging curbs on college student voting, same day voter registration and absentee voting.The scrutiny of Mitchell, who runs the Election Integrity Network at the pro-Trump Conservative Partnership Institute to which a Trump Pac donated $1m dollars, was sparked by recent comments Mitchell made to Republican donors, and a watchdog report criticizing her advisory role with a federal election panel.Long known for advocating stricter voting rules that are often premised on unsupported allegations of sizable voting fraud, Mitchell last month promoted new voting curbs on students in a talk to a group of wealthy donors to the Republican National Committee, efforts that critics call partisan and undemocratic.Mitchell’s private RNC address to rich donors zeroed in on curbing college campus voting rules, automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters and same-day voter registration, as the Washington Post first reported.The talk by Mitchell, who has done legal work for Republican committees, members of Congress and conservative groups such as the National Rifle Association, focused on college campuses in key swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin, all of which have large college campuses.In an audio of her remarks obtained by liberal journalist Lauren Windsor, Mitchell slammed college voting procedures.“What are these college campus locations? What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.”Further in one part of her presentation cited by the Post, Mitchell charged blithely that “the Left has manipulated the electoral systems to favor one side … theirs. Our constitutional republic’s survival is at stake.”It’s unclear if the RNC will back the latest proposals made by Mitchell, who the committee has worked with previously. But an RNC spokesperson offered effusive praise of Mitchell to the Post, saying: “As the RNC continues to strengthen our Election Integrity program, we are thankful for leaders like Cleta Mitchell who do important work for the Republican ecosystem.”But voting rights watchdogs voice alarm at Mitchell’s proposals to the RNC donor crowd.“Mitchell’s comments behind closed doors give up the game,” said Danielle Lang, the lead voting rights litigator with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “The current wave of additional voter restrictions is about only one thing: punishing disfavored populations of voters.”Lang added: “Sadly, we should not be surprised that Mitchell, who was central to attempts to overturn the will of the people in 2020, speaks so blithely about attacking voters she dislikes.”Similarly, Republicans and Democrats alike deplore Mitchell’s comments to the RNC contributors.“It’s absurd for Cleta Mitchell or others to suggest our path to victory is by making it harder for young people to vote,” said ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent. “Republicans should not fear how people vote. Good candidates with good messages should resonate with voters.”Key Democrats agree.“Mitchell seems to have a very difficult time separating her partisan agenda from the responsibility we all have to uphold a basic democratic respect for the right to vote,” Democrat House member Jamie Raskin told the Guardian.Mitchell didn’t respond to a Guardian request for comment about her RNC remarks.Besides the firestorm over Mitchell’s RNC remarks, she is facing more heat related to other recent efforts she has made to restrict voting rights.Mitchell has served for over a year on a bipartisan advisory board for the federal Election Assistance Commission, a post that she’s used to promote curbs on mail in voting, voter registration and student voting, according to an April report from the watchdog group American Oversight.American Oversight’s study, which came after it obtained Mitchell emails from 2020- 2022 using the Freedom of information Act, included some exchanges where Mitchell suggested legal challenges to absentee voting rules and attacked a voting rights group while serving on the EAC advisory board.“Cleta Mitchell played a central role in former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election,” said American Oversight executive director Heather Sawyer “So it isn’t surprising that she has used her role as an advisor to the Election Assistance Commission to push an explicitly anti-voting agenda.”“She has disparaged voting rights organizations, called for challenging absentee voting procedures, and is urging new rules that would make voting harder for students and working people. Mitchell’s partisan and ideological commitment to restricting ballot access has no place at an agency tasked with helping states administer free and fair elections.”The fears over Mitchell’s blunt advocacy for curbing student and other voting rights, comes after her role advising Trump as he tried to overturn Biden’s win in 2020 has received legal scrutiny in Georgia. It also comes amid criticism of aggressive poll watching drives she pushed for in 2022 through her Election Integrity Network.Mitchell was subpoenaed last year, along with several other key Trump lawyers and allies including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, by a special grand jury in Georgia in a wide ranging criminal probe by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis into efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart Biden’s win in the state.A major focus of that inquiry is Trump’s hour-long conference call on 2 January 2021, which Mitchell participated in, pressuring Georgia’s Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to just “find” him 11,780 votes to block Biden’s win there.Trump falsely claimed that “we won by hundreds of thousands of votes” and vaguely warned Raffensperger of a “criminal offense” to which the Georgia official replied “the data you have is wrong”.The Fulton county inquiry is widely expected to lead to several indictments including quite possibly Trump, and Willis has said she will make final decisions about who will be charged this summer.Just days after the 2021 call with Raffensperger, Mitchell abruptly left her long time law firm Foley & Lardner, and soon joined the Conservative Partnership Institute as senior legal fellow, where she has led its self styled Election Integrity Network and advocated for curb voting rights.CPI has flourished financially since Mitchell and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, CPI’s senior partner, joined in early 2021.CPI’s tax filings for 2021 showed grants and contributions of $45m up from $7.1m the prior year.In other conservative circles, Mitchell wields considerable influence as a board member of the right wing Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and as chair of the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s board.Now though, Mitchell’s latest attacks on student voting rules are viewed by watchdog groups and some members of Congress as badly misguided, and emblematic of her partisan agenda.“We should applaud, not bemoan, equitable access to voting for students.Our young people will inherit our democracy but participate at some of the lowest rates,” Lang of the Campaign Legal Center said. “While that is improving, young people still face disproportionate burdens in voter registration and voter access.”In a similar vein, Raskin said: “Mitchell’s attacks on college student voting are directly reflective of the GOP’s increasing electoral losses among young people.”Mitchell and Republicans, he added, ought to focus on policies and candidates that “actually appeal to young voters, rather than a legislative program to stop them from voting.”. More

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      Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema vows to never join Republican party

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      US senator Kyrsten Sinema has vowed to never join the Republican party after she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent late last year.In an interview aired on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Arizona senator said that she is “absolutely” done with the country’s two-party political system.The show’s host, Margaret Brennan, asked: “Now that you’re an independent, you’ll never become a Republican?”“No,” said Sinema, who has been accused of actually being a Republican after past legislative actions that have been hostile to Democrats’ agenda. She added: “You don’t go from one broken party to another.”Sinema elaborated by saying: “Arizona is one of the states that has the highest level of independents in the country. We are a state of folks who don’t often march to the drum that is being taught to us, right. So most of us don’t fit neatly in one box or another. And I think the challenge that we have right now in our political discourse is to make it OK for folks to think on their own.”Reports emerged last month that Sinema was preparing to run for re-election in 2024 as an independent after landing her office as a Democratic candidate in 2018.Those reports came after Sinema in December switched her party affiliation from Democrat to independent. She announced the change almost immediately after Democrats and independents who caucus with them had secured a 51-49 majority in the Senate.“I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington,” Sinema said in a statement at the time.Despite reports about her re-election plans, Sinema herself has remained tight-lipped in that respect.“It sounds like you want a second … term,” Brennan told Sinema in the interview aired on Sunday. Sinema replied: “I’m not here to talk about elections today.”Brennan countered, “Why keep people guessing?”Sinema said: “I want to stay focused on the work that I’m doing. I hope folks who are here today can tell how much it matters to me to actually make progress, solve challenges, deliver results.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That is why I get up and go to work every day. I don’t get up and go to work every day so that people can say, you know, is she running again or not? That’s just not my concern.”During her first term as senator, Sinema has often withheld her support for various legislative initiatives put forth by the Joe Biden White House, including voting rights protections. That drew the ire of progressives, many of her colleagues and supporters of the Democratic president.Sinema nevertheless has maintained that she has a working relationship with the White House – particularly on immigration reform legislation – despite her changed party affiliation.“I talked to the White House several times this week. I feel confident that if we are able to get a workable plan that has the support of 60-plus senators in the United States Senate, I feel confident that President Biden would support it. I feel confident,” said Sinema.Sinema’s pursuit of another Senate term as an independent could mean a competitive three-way race for her seat in Arizona. Democratic US House representative Ruben Gallego, 43, has declared as a candidate, and unsuccessful 2022 Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, 53, has said she is exploring a run. More

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      Moms for Liberty, meet John Birch: the roots of US rightwing book bans

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      Moms for Liberty is a Florida-based pressure group which campaigns for book bans in US public schools, an issue at the heart of the national debate as Republican-run states seek to control or eliminate teaching of sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and racism in American history.But rightwing calls for school book bans are by no means a new phenomenon – and a look at the Moms for Liberty website indicates why.Moms for Liberty seeks to organise “Madison Meetups”, events it describes as “like a book club for the constitution!”, featuring discussion of “liberty, freedom and the foundation of our government”. Under “resources that we have found helpful”, the only resource offered is The Making of America, a book by W Cleon Skousen.In the early 1960s, Skousen was a hero to and a defender of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that campaigned against what it claimed was the communist threat to America.Matthew Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, is the author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. He points out that though the Birchers were not the only ones promoting book bans in the 60s, “they were likely the most visible group promoting book bans or promoting the policing of content in schools, libraries, movie theaters, even on newsstands”.The Birchers, Dallek adds, focused on “the so-called erosion of the moral fiber of the United States, but also the struggle to rid the country of what they regarded as really the socialist left wing”.The society still exists but its influence is greater than its presence, most obviously through a resurgence of Bircher-esque thought and action in the Republican party of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.In the society’s heyday, Dallek says, book bans and school board elections, another current battlefield, “gave Birchers a way to take action in their community.“They looked at where their kids went to school and their local library and the movie theater they would pass by. Part of their agenda was to insert what they considered Americanist publications, as opposed to communist propaganda.“What’s frightening now is that I don’t recall a time where those efforts were so often successful. Moms for Liberty and the other successors to the John Birch Society, they’re having a lot more success at actually implementing their vision.”Last month, the writers’ organisation Pen America reported a 28% rise in public school book bans in just six months. As the 2024 election approaches, attacks on the place of race in history classes and teaching on LGBTQ+ issues seem certain to feature in Republican debates and town halls.Dallek considers the Birchers’ influence on the Republican party over more than 60 years. But he can’t recall the society inspiring “any sweeping legislation like Florida has now passed, through three major bills. And one in particular, it’s very Orwellian. They have these education minders who have to approve all texts in school libraries. That was certainly a dream of the Birch Society.”Tactics are familiar too. Birchers often protested against what they called pornography in books and teaching, as a vehicle for communistic thought. Now, the hard right sees pornography in books on LGBTQ+ rights, in drag queen story hours, or in the casting of children’s plays.Dallek says: “Whatever the language is, whether it’s ‘woke’, or ‘progressive’, or ‘pornographic’, or ‘communistic’, in a way the brilliance of the Birchers and other groups is in the way they use language. They’re able to distill ideas and aspects of the culture they find offensive and brand them as something evil, something un-American, something that will twist and pollute the minds of kids.“I don’t know that they meant that it was literally communistic to teach sex ed in schools but it was a kind of brilliant shorthand, because they were able to mobilise a lot of supporters by saying this was a civilizational battle. A battle for whether your children will grow up being moral or not, whether they’ll have a decent life.“And if we want to bring it back to today, Ron DeSantis is out there claiming, ‘We’re only banning books that are pornographic or that kids should not be exposed to.’ But then when you’re talking about banning Toni Morrison? I mean, come on. It’s ridiculous.”But it’s real. The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, and her masterpiece Beloved have been removed from some Florida libraries.Dallek notes other echoes. For instance, the role of rightwing women.“Historically, schools have been in terms of teaching jobs often reserved for women. And so, ironically, in the 1960s and 70s, as feminism becomes a major force in the culture and many women expect to work outside the home and be active politically, conservative, really far-right women take an element of that and get active in their communities.“Women have been on the frontlines of many of these fights to ban books, to police what kids are learning. Parental rights, the whole idea … is I think focused at the moms and … imposing their version of Christian morals on public education and many public spaces.“To go back to the W Cleon Skousen thing” on the Moms for Liberty website, “it does suggest a link to the past. Skousen continued to write in the 1980s and 90s. He was a defender of the John Birch Society and was held up as a hero.”Skousen died in 2006. Seventeen years later, to Dallek his recommendation from Moms for Liberty “suggests there really is a tradition in modern American politics, on the far right, that has become much more mainstream.“Groups like Moms for Liberty understand that. That there’s a set of ideas, and a literature, and a whole kind of subculture around this effort to police ideas and morality in schools. And they are tapping into that very effectively.”
      Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette More

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      Rightwingers praise free speech at CPAC Hungary – then eject Guardian journalist

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      US Republicans and their European allies tore up news headlines and ejected a Guardian journalist from a conference of radical rightwing activists, on the same day that they highlighted the importance of free speech.Speaking at the second annual meeting in Budapest of the US Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC), Kari Lake, a failed Republican gubernatorial candidate, said that “truth-tellers and peacemakers” were being destroyed by “fake news”.“It’s always opposite day in the media: if they’re telling what you’re doing is bad, it’s probably good,” said Lake before tearing up a sheaf of printed articles about the conference aimed at cementing radical rightwing ties across the Atlantic.Despite being a former TV news anchor, Lake made hostility towards the press a central theme in her unsuccessful 2022 election campaign, which included an advert in which she smashed TVs and pledged to “take a sledgehammer to the mainstream media’s lies and propaganda”.Addressing CPAC, she said her childhood ambition was to be a journalist, but that during the Covid pandemic she had realized that “some of the news wasn’t true”.Lake was one of the most high-profile Republicans in the midterm elections to embrace Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud. She lost her bid to become the governor of Arizona but refused to concede and continued making false claims of electoral wrongdoing.The CPAC audience also watched a recorded message from Donald Trump in which the former president said conservatives were “fighting against barbarians” and listed freedom of speech as one of the cardinal virtues of the far right.“We believe in tradition, the rule of law, freedom of speech and a God-given dignity of every human life. These are ideas that bind together our movement,” Trump said.Not long afterwards, a Guardian journalist was ejected from the conference, during an interview with Rick Santorum.The former Republican senator was praising Hungary’s parental leave policies, when one of the conference organisers grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away mid-sentence.A security guard then led the reporter to the exit.Meanwhile, speakers including the Newsweek comment editor, Josh Hammer, were preparing for a panel on “Free Speech”.CPAC later described the reporter’s registration for the conference as a “system error”.The International Press Institute (IPI) denounced the Guardian’s ejection from the event as a “shameless move” and an “attack on media freedom”.Enmity towards the media has been a constant theme at CPAC’s Hungarian iteration. Last year the organizers refused entry to journalists from all US media outlets, including Vice, Vox, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker and the Associated Press.This year, most independent journalists were refused accreditation for the event, held in a country where the IPI has said media freedom “remains suffocated”. During the Covid outbreak, Viktor Orbán’s government passed a law imposing prison sentences of up to five years for spreading disinformation. More

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      Clarence Thomas scandal deepens with report of rightwing activist’s secret payments to wife – as it happened

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      From 7h agoRightwing judicial activist Leonard Leo made secret payments to Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, ten years ago and emphasized “No mention of Ginni” on the documents, according to a new Washington Post investigation.In January 2012, Leo directed GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill the Judicial Education Project, a non-profit group he advises. He then ordered that money be used to pay Ginni Thomas, telling Conway that he wanted to “give” Thomas “another 25k”.“No mention of Ginni, of course,” Leo told Conway, who later became a senior adviser to Donald Trump, the Post reports. The subsequent bill sent to the JEP by Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, titled the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting”, according to documents reviewed by the Post.Later that year, the JEP filed an amicus brief in a case that challenged a civil rights law that sought to protect minority voters. In a 5-to-4 majority which Clarence Thomas was part of, the supreme court stripped away a formula in the Voting Rights Act that determined which states had to get federal permission before altering their voting rules and procedures.Following the Post’s revelations about the secret payments, Leo defended himself, telling the outlet:
      “It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment. The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues…
      As an advisor to JEP I have long been supportive of its opinion research relating to limited government, and The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas’s help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes…
      Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”
      The investigation comes amid a handful of reports in recent weeks surrounding Clarence Thomas, who received luxury gifts, travel and tuition payments from the GOP billionaire donor Harlan Crow without publicly disclosing them. He has since faced a slew of impeachment calls.In response to the reports, Democrats have been calling for investigations into Clarence Thomas and for tighter ethics standards for the supreme court justices, which Republicans have condemned as an “assault … well beyond ethics … [and] about trying to delegitimize a conservative court”.Meanwhile Leo himself has been accused of illegally misusing $73m from non-profit groups and diverting money to his businesses, according to a complaint from the non-profit watchdog organization, Campaign for Accountability.It’s slightly past 4pm in Washington DC. Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      Rightwing judicial activist Leonard Leo made secret payments to Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, ten years ago and emphasized “No mention of Ginni” on the documents, according to a new Washington Post investigation. The investigation comes amid a handful of reports in recent weeks surrounding Clarence Thomas, who received luxury gifts, travel and tuition payments from the GOP billionaire donor Harlan Crow without publicly disclosing them. He has since faced a slew of impeachment calls.
      Kellyanne Conway has pushed back against the recent Washington Post investigation into Ginni Thomas, saying: “These people will stop at nothing,” referring to the slew of ethics advocates, protestors and Democratic lawmakers who have called for investigations into Clarence Thomas and his impeachment. “They want Clarence Thomas to resign. So Joe Biden, of all people, can replace him with one of his own,” Conway said.
      Lawmakers in North Carolina have passed a 12-week abortion ban, a change from the current 20-week ban in response to the supreme court’s overturn of Roe v Wade last year. The vote, which came on Thursday as a 29-20 party-line vote, was met with opposition from about 100 observers who watched the debate in the state senate, the Associated Press reports. The Democratic governor Roy Cooper has vowed to veto the bill.
      The Democratic senator and member of the senate judiciary committee Peter Welch has condemned the secret payments made to Ginni Thomas, calling it a “coverup” and “evasion”. Speaking to MSNBC on Friday, Welch said: “I use the word ‘deceit’. I used the word ‘coverup’. I’d use the word ‘evasion’ … it’s clear that Leonard Leo knew that if this saw the light of day, it would cause controversy. And the bottom line here is that the court is getting itself in this amount of trouble and that’s bad for our democracy.”
      Speaking to reporters on Friday, president Joe Biden accused Maga Republicans of trying to hold the debt “hostage to get us to agree to some draconian cuts”. “Whether you pay the debt or not doesn’t have a damn thing to do with what your budget is … let’s get it straight. They’re trying to hold the debt hostage to get us to agree to some draconian cuts, magnificently difficult, damaging cuts,” said Biden.
      Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says she is resigning effective 30 June. Walensky’s announcement comes as the World Health Organization today declared that the Covid-19 virus is no longer a global health emergency.
      The court in New York has released some material from defendant Donald Trump’s pre-trial deposition – the session in which he mistook plaintiff Carroll for his second wife, Marla Marples, despite saying the writer was “not his type”. And he says the picture was “very blurry”. It clearly shows Carroll. Trump is depicted next to his first wife, Ivana Trump. Trump points to a photograph he’s been shown and says: “It’s Marla, yeah, that’s my wife.”
      President Joe Biden has chosen Neera Tanden, the current White House staff secretary and senior adviser, to be his new domestic policy adviser, the Associated Press reports. Tanden, who has 25 years of experience of public policy, will be the first Asian American to lead any of the three major White House policy operations, he said. She will succeed Susan Rice who was previously a foreign policy expert.
      An investigation by ProPublica has found that South Carolina’s Democrat representative James Clyburn sought GOP assistance in protecting his district at a cost to Black Democrats. “Facing the possibility of an unsafe district, South Carolina’s most powerful Democrat sent his aide to consult with the GOP on a redistricting plan that diluted Black voting strength and harmed his party’s chances of gaining seats in Congress,” the outlet reported.
      The former North Carolina representative Madison Cawthorn has been fined $250 after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor following the discovery of a loaded gun in his carry-on luggage at Charlotte airport last year. According to the Associated Press, a judge in Mecklenburg county court where the hearing took place allowed Cawthorn to keep the 9mm gun, which Transportation Security Administration seized last year.
      That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.The former North Carolina representative Madison Cawthorn has been fined $250 after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor following the discovery of a loaded gun in his carry-on luggage at Charlotte airport last year.According to the Associated Press, a judge in Mecklenburg county court where the hearing took place allowed Cawthorn to keep the 9mm gun, which Transportation Security Administration seized last year.“I’m very happy and thankful that the judge gave a really clear ruling that sides with the law,” Cawthorn told reporters after the hearing, the Associated Press reports.In 2021, Cawthorn was found with an unloaded gun while trying to board a plane at Asheville Regional Airport. Cawthorn was eventually allowed to board but had his gun confiscated.Cawthorn served one term in Congress after winning the election at age 25, which made him one of the youngest members in Congress at the time. Cawthorn, a Trump supporter, lost the 2022 GOP primary to Chuck Edwards.“How Rep. James Clyburn Protected His District at a Cost to Black Democrats” is the alarming ProPublica headline.Here’s the investigative website’s standfirst to go with their scoop: “Facing the possibility of an unsafe district, South Carolina’s most powerful Democrat sent his aide to consult with the GOP on a redistricting plan that diluted Black voting strength and harmed his party’s chances of gaining seats in Congress.”According to ProPublica, a Clyburn spokesperson acknowledged that the office “engaged in discussions regarding the boundaries of the 6th Congressional District by responding to inquiries” but did not reveal the extent of Clyburn’s role.“Any accusation that Congressman Clyburn in any way enabled or facilitated Republican gerrymandering that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred is fanciful,” Clyburn’s office said in a statement to the outlet.President Joe Biden has chosen Neera Tanden, the current White House staff secretary and senior adviser, to be his new domestic policy adviser, the Associated Press reports.Tanden, who has 25 years of experience of public policy, will be the first Asian American to lead any of the three major White House policy operations, he said. She will succeed Susan Rice who was previously a foreign policy expert.“As Senior Advisor and Staff Secretary, Neera oversaw decision-making processes across my domestic, economic and national security teams. She has 25 years of experience in public policy, has served three Presidents, and led one of the largest think tanks in the country for nearly a decade,” Biden said in a statement.“She was a key architect of the Affordable Care Act and helped drive key domestic policies that became part of my agenda, including clean energy subsidies and sensible gun reform. While growing up, Neera relied on some of the critical programs that she will oversee as Domestic Policy Advisor, and I know those insights will serve my Administration and the American people well,” he added.The jury in the civil trial, where writer E Jean Carroll accuses Donald Trump of raping her and then defaming her by calling her a liar, is not sitting today, but there is still some news.The court in New York has released some material from defendant Trump’s pre-trial deposition – the session in which he mistook plaintiff Carroll for his second wife, Marla Marples, despite saying the writer was “not his type”.And he says the picture was “very blurry”. It clearly shows Carroll. Trump is depicted next to his first wife, Ivana Trump.Trump points to a photograph he’s been shown and says: “It’s Marla, yeah, that’s my wife.”He’s then told it’s actually Carroll. He responds, apparently nonchalantly: “I assume that’s Carroll, because it’s very blurry.”Carroll, second from left, laughing, does not appear blurry in this image.Hello again, US politics live blog readers, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have gone for tacos (truly) and the US supreme court’s right wing is once again in trouble. It’s a lively Friday, so stay with us.Here’s where things stand:
      Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says she is resigning effective 30 June.
      Joe Biden accused Maga Republicans of trying to hold the debt ceiling negotiations “hostage to get us to agree to some draconian cuts”.
      Lawmakers in North Carolina passed a 12-week abortion ban, a change from the current 20-week ban in response to the supreme court’s overturn of Roe v Wade last year.
      Rightwing judicial activist Leonard Leo made secret payments to US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, 10 years ago and emphasized “No mention of Ginni” on the documents, according to a new Washington Post investigation.
      There was some confusion late morning, as Joe Biden, during his remarks about jobs figures and the economy, said he’d be holding an important press conference this afternoon (that reporters did not know about.). Turns out that’s not the case, the White House soon clarified. Meanwhile, Potus and Veep (Kamala Harris), unannounced, went out in town for some 5 May tacos together.
      Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says she is resigning effective 30 June.Walensky’s announcement comes as the World Health Organization today declared that the Covid-19 virus is no longer a global health emergency.President Joe Biden praised Walensky’s leadership at the CDC, saying:
      “Dr. Walensky has saved lives with her steadfast and unwavering focus on the health of every American. As Director of the CDC, she led a complex organization on the frontlines of a once-in-a-generation pandemic with honesty and integrity. She marshalled our finest scientists and public health experts to turn the tide on the urgent crises we’ve faced.Dr. Walensky leaves CDC a stronger institution, better positioned to confront health threats and protect Americans. We have all benefited from her service and dedication to public health, and I wish her the best in her next chapter.”
      Speaking to reporters on Friday, president Joe Biden accused Maga Republicans of trying to hold the debt “hostage to get us to agree to some draconian cuts”.
      “Whether you pay the debt or not doesn’t have a damn thing to do with what your budget is … let’s get it straight. They’re trying to hold the debt hostage to get us to agree to some draconian cuts, magnificently difficult, damaging cuts,” said Biden.
      “My predecessor, in the four years he was president, increased that total debt by 40%,” Biden said, adding: “Let’s be clear, this is no small part about paying our bills that we’ve accumulated, not by me, not by my administration, but by former presidents and previous Congresses … We’re not a deadbeat nation. We pay our bills.”
      The Democratic senator and member of the senate judiciary committee Peter Welch has condemned the secret payments made to Ginni Thomas, calling it a “coverup” and “evasion”.Speaking to MSNBC on Friday, Welch said:
      “I use the word ‘deceit’. I used the word ‘coverup’. I’d use the word ‘evasion’ … it’s clear that Leonard Leo knew that if this saw the light of day, it would cause controversy. And the bottom line here is that the court is getting itself in this amount of trouble and that’s bad for our democracy …
      Whatever the relationship is with Thomas and his benefactor, it’s a pretty shocking thing to be getting vacations on yachts in Greece, in New Zealand, to be flying on private chats and have that not be known. And obviously the whole Federalist Society relationship is something that’s extraordinarily important. It’s been very discouraging.”
      He went on to explain the extent that the Federalist Society has over the nomination process of supreme court justices, saying:
      “When these nominees are put forward, the judiciary committee is an afterthought. The Federalist Society is the interview that really matters for those folks to get the … approval on the Republican side. And that has been a long term concerted, unfortunately, effective effort by Leonard Leo.
      We have to have a supreme court in this country that people respect … Anything that any one of those justices does that erodes the confidence that our people are all entitled to …is wrong.”
      Lawmakers in North Carolina have passed a 12-week abortion ban, a change from the current 20-week ban in response to the supreme court’s overturn of Roe v Wade last year.The vote, which came on Thursday as a 29-20 party-line vote, was met with opposition from about 100 observers who watched the debate in the state senate, the Associated Press reports.“Abortion rights now!” some observers shouted while others yelled: “Shame!” The state House passed the bill on Wednesday evening on a similar party-line vote.Meanwhile, the Republican state senator Joyce Krawiec hailed the bill on Thursday, saying: “Many of us who have worked for decades to save unborn babies for the sanctity of human life, we saw it as an opportunity to put forth a very pro-life, pro-woman legislation.”“This is a pro-life plan, not an abortion plan,” she said.The Democratic state senator Sydney Batch pushed back against the bill, saying, “This bill is an extreme and oppressive step backwards for our society and one that will deny women the right to make decisions about their own health care and future.”Democratic governor Roy Cooper has vowed to veto the bill, saying it is an “egregious, unacceptable attack on the women of our state”.The bill also includes additional medical and paperwork requirements for patients and physicians, as well as increased licensing requirements for abortion clinics that would make the procedure more difficult to attain.Meanwhile, across the state are growing fears as Mark Robinson, an extreme Republican who once labeled the transgender movement “demonic” and called Muslims “invaders”, runs for the governor’s office.“We have bills right now going through our general assembly to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth. We have a ban against trans athletes or young people competing in sports right now. We have a lot of discriminatory, just persecuting our own citizens-type of legislation happening in our state,” Anderson Clayton, chair of the state’s Democratic party, told the Guardian.“And Mark Robinson is only going to be the person who’s going to make that worse.”Kellyanne Conway has pushed back against the recent Washington Post investigation into Ginni Thomas, saying: “These people will stop at nothing,” referring to the slew of ethics advocates, protestors and Democratic lawmakers who have called for investigations into Clarence Thomas and his impeachment.Speaking to Fox News on Friday, Conway said:
      “These people will stop at nothing. They want Clarence Thomas to resign. So Joe Biden, of all people, can replace him with one of his own …
      Ginni Thomas was one of my contractors and she had worked with the Heritage Foundation, she … is part of the grassroots. She had worked in the Reagan administration. This is a serious person who for years had worked in public policy At the Polling Company, we did public opinion research and data analytics. We had no business before the court.”
      Rightwing judicial activist Leonard Leo made secret payments to Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, ten years ago and emphasized “No mention of Ginni” on the documents, according to a new Washington Post investigation.In January 2012, Leo directed GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill the Judicial Education Project, a non-profit group he advises. He then ordered that money be used to pay Ginni Thomas, telling Conway that he wanted to “give” Thomas “another 25k”.“No mention of Ginni, of course,” Leo told Conway, who later became a senior adviser to Donald Trump, the Post reports. The subsequent bill sent to the JEP by Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, titled the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting”, according to documents reviewed by the Post.Later that year, the JEP filed an amicus brief in a case that challenged a civil rights law that sought to protect minority voters. In a 5-to-4 majority which Clarence Thomas was part of, the supreme court stripped away a formula in the Voting Rights Act that determined which states had to get federal permission before altering their voting rules and procedures.Following the Post’s revelations about the secret payments, Leo defended himself, telling the outlet:
      “It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment. The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues…
      As an advisor to JEP I have long been supportive of its opinion research relating to limited government, and The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas’s help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes…
      Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”
      The investigation comes amid a handful of reports in recent weeks surrounding Clarence Thomas, who received luxury gifts, travel and tuition payments from the GOP billionaire donor Harlan Crow without publicly disclosing them. He has since faced a slew of impeachment calls.In response to the reports, Democrats have been calling for investigations into Clarence Thomas and for tighter ethics standards for the supreme court justices, which Republicans have condemned as an “assault … well beyond ethics … [and] about trying to delegitimize a conservative court”.Meanwhile Leo himself has been accused of illegally misusing $73m from non-profit groups and diverting money to his businesses, according to a complaint from the non-profit watchdog organization, Campaign for Accountability.Good morning, US politics readers. A prominent conservative judicial activist arranged for Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work over ten years ago and emphasized “no mention of Ginni” on the payments, according to a new report.An investigation by the Washington Post revealed that Leonard Leo, a leader of the Federalist Society who led campaigns to support the nominations of a handful of conservative supreme court justices, directed GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway in 2012 to bill the Judicial Education Project, a non-profit Leo advises.Leo then told Conway, a former advisor to Donald Trump, that he wanted to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25k”, according to documents reviewed by the Post. “No mention of Ginni, of course,” Leo emphasized.The $25,000 bill Conway sent to the Judicial Education Project listed the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting” the Post reports.The investigation comes amid a handful of reports in recent weeks surrounding Clarence Thomas, who received luxury gifts, travel and tuition payments from the GOP billionaire donor Harlan Crow without publicly disclosing them.Here are other developments in US politics:
      North Carolina lawmakers have passed a 12-week abortion ban, which Democratic governor Roy Cooper promised to veto.
      New York mayor Eric Adams and police are facing increasing criticism from protestors for a lack of action over 30-year-old Jordan Neely’s death.
      Senate Democrats are criticizing House Republicans’ proposal to raise the government’s borrowing limit in exchange for spending cuts. More

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      The conservative scholar who lit a match to the US right’s education wars

      by

      When two US senators – a Texas Republican and a Delaware Democrat – introduced a bill in June 2022 to expand grants for civics education, most observers saw it as something of an olive branch between the parties.But despite initial momentum, three now-familiar letters stopped the bill in its tracks: CRT.A mostly unknown conservative scholar writing in the National Review claimed the bill would “allow the Biden administration to push Critical Race Theory (CRT) on every public school in the country”, calling the Republican co-sponsors “naive” victims of a hidden leftist agenda.Critical race theory, which posits that racism permeates American institutions, has become rightwing shorthand for any classroom discussion of race.Senator John Cornyn, who proposed the legislation and is the former GOP majority whip, dismissed the allegations, writing on Twitter that “the false, hysterical claims are untrue and worthy of a Russian active measures campaign, not a serious discussion of our bill”.But truthful or not, the criticisms spread like wildfire.The National Review op-ed racked up thousands of interactions on social media, far-right Breitbart News ran an article whose headline pulled word-for-word from the editorial and Florida governor Ron DeSantis released a press release warning the $1bn federal civics bill would “award grants to indoctrinate students with ideologies like critical race theory.” High-profile commentators urged their followers to call lawmakers opposing what they described as “Trojan horse garbage” sponsored by “Rinos”, or Republicans in name only.The senators’ “Civics Secures Democracy Act” went no further.But how did this firestorm start?The story begins years prior and revolves around Stanley Kurtz, the author of the op-ed that lit the match and a little-noticed power player shaping the right’s recent offensives in the education culture wars.A campaign against ‘woke civics’Though his writings are regularly shared by GOP heavy hitters including Fox News analysts, groups like Parents Defending Education and sitting US senators, Kurtz has flown mostly under the radar.A 69-year-old former university instructor and longtime conservative commentator, Kurtz has spearheaded a quiet but influential campaign to cleanse classrooms of what he calls “woke civics” – a term that extends to any hands-on civics lessons entailing student contact with elected officials.He declined a phone interview, saying he “prefer[s] to comment by email”. In written messages, the scholar explained he believes hands-on civics projects “tilt overwhelmingly to the left”.“Any sort of political protest or lobbying done by students is subject to undue pressure from the biases of teachers, peers and non-profits working with schools. Political protest and lobbying ought to be done by students outside of school hours, independently of any class projects or grades,” said Kurtz.Neal McCluskey, director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, has documented over 3,400 ideological “battles” in public schooling – over issues like controversial books or sex education – for more than a decade and said he has yet to see “compelling evidence” that liberal bias in civics classes has become a widespread problem. A 74 review of McCluskey’s tracker revealed that only a handful of incidents concerned civics.The argument amounts to a fabricated “boogeyman”, University of South Carolina law professor Derek Black said.The idea that leftist teachers could “create little warrior bands of students to go out and fight their political wars for them has become a captivating concern for some on the right”, Black said.A national networkIn 2021, Kurtz penned model legislation stipulating that students should be banned from receiving class credit for “lobbying” or “advocacy” at the local, state or federal level.At least eight bills proposed in five states pulled from the document, according to a Pen America report. The conservative Manhattan Institute included the legislation’s anti-lobbying provisions in its own model bill presented at the American Legislative Exchange Council, an annual forum to swap rightwing law-making proposals.Linda Bennett, a recently retired GOP South Carolina state representative, introduced a 2021 bill by the exact same name as Kurtz’s “Partisanship Out of Civics Act”.“No need to reinvent the wheel if somebody’s got it right,” she told The 74.Bennett insisted that her office had become flooded with young students, coerced by their educators, demanding that she “please support allowing teachers to teach critical race theory”. But she could not name a specific school or teacher that had influenced students to take an activist stance.In Texas, a provision from Kurtz’s model bill found its way into the state’s 2021 anti-CRT law and resulted in an unprecedented restriction on students’ civic engagement. The legislation banned assignments involving “direct communication” between students and their federal, state or local lawmakers.In the two years since passage, Texas educators say they have been forced to abandon time-honored assignments such as having students attend a school board meeting or advocate for local causes like a stop sign at an intersection near campus.Sarai Paez, a recent high school graduate from a suburb outside Austin, said the new law is “a step backwards”. Students in her ninth-grade civics class passed a 2018 city ordinance calling for youth representation in their local government – advocacy that would now be outlawed.“There’s no need to take away something that has affected … a group of people in a positive way,” she said.Kurtz and the rightwing lawmakers and advocates who have helped translate his policy agenda into practice are linked by more than just shared philosophy. They’re also connected by money.His employer, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative thinktank “dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy”, has a dozen funders in common with the Manhattan Institute, tax filings reveal, including mega-donors like the Charles Koch Foundation.Texas state representative Steve Toth, co-sponsor of the 2021 legislation restricting civics assignments, also receives campaign funds from the Koch Foundation.Neither Toth nor the Ethics and Public Policy Center responded to requests for comment.Governor DeSantis, in Florida, also shares at least one donor, Fidelity Investments, in common with Kurtz’s think tank.The issues of interest to Kurtz have repeatedly found their way to DeSantis’s bully pulpit. The governor recently doubled down on civics education rooted in “patriotism” and his rejection earlier this year of the College Board’s AP African American Studies curriculum came just a few months after Kurtz began writing critically about the issue. Kurtz named two authors specifically in his September article, Robin Kelley and Kimberlé Crenshaw, who the Florida department of education later objected to.Education department press secretary Cassie Palelis said Florida’s concerns with the course were the “result of a thorough review” and its correspondence with the College Board had begun in early 2022. When asked whether officials referenced Kurtz’s work during that process and, if so, what role it played, Palelis did not address the question.As for the Kurtz model legislation, its influence continues to spread.In January, a district outside of Colorado Springs voted to adopt a new social studies curriculum that bans awarding course credit for service learning or action civics.“We are in it for the long haul,” said David Randall, research director at the National Association of Scholars, which published Kurtz’s model bill. “Our mission is to inspire as many Americans as possible to join this work.
      This report was first published by The 74, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news site covering education in America More