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      Florida taxpayers pick up bill for Ron DeSantis’s culture war lawsuits

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      Since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called “don’t say gay” bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of DeSantis’s many extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.“The list of legal challenges precipitating from DeSantis’s unconstitutional laws is endless,” the Democratic state senator Lori Berman said.“We’ve seen Floridians rightly sue many if not all of the governor’s legislative priorities, including laws that restrict drag shows for kids, prohibit Chinese citizens from owning homes and land in Florida, suppress young and Black and brown voters, ban gender-affirming care and threaten supportive parents with state custody of their children, and of course, all the retaliatory legislation waged against Disney for coming out in support of the LGBTQ+ community,” she said.As a result of the mounting lawsuits against DeSantis, the governor’s legal costs, which the Miami Herald reported last December to cost at least $16.7m, have been soaring.In DeSantis’s legal fight against Disney following the corporation’s condemnation of his anti-LGBTQ+ laws, it is going to cost the governor and his handpicked board nearly $1,300 per hour in legal fees as they look into how the corporation discovered a loophole in DeSantis’s plan to acquire governing rights over Disney World, Insider reports.“Disney is a perfect example. It doesn’t hurt any Floridians. There is nothing. It’s creating a legal issue out of nowhere and now Disney sued so they have to respond and that is going to cost taxpayers’ money. The whole Disney case is just because of DeSantis’s ego and his hurt feelings,” the Democratic state senator Tina Polsky said.“Taxpayers are paying to foot the bills to pass unconstitutional bills and to keep up with his petty vengeance,” she said, adding: “I don’t think they’re aware at all … They’re too brainwashed at this point that they wouldn’t even care.”Meanwhile, in another case covered by the Orlando Sentinel, DeSantis’s administration has turned to the elite conservative Washington DC-based law firm Cooper & Kirk to defend the governor against his slew of “anti-woke” laws. The firm’s lawyers charge $725 hourly, according to contracts reviewed by Orlando Sentinel. As of June 2022, the state authorized nearly $2.8m for legal services from just Cooper & Kirk alone, the outlet reports.With mounting taxpayer-funded legal costs against DeSantis’s legislative agenda, critics ranging from civil rights organizations to the state’s Democratic lawmakers have lambasted DeSantis’s policies as unconstitutional and mere political stunts designed to propel him to the frontlines of the GOP primary.“DeSantis went to Harvard for his [law degree]. This is someone who should understand the constraints placed on him and the state by the United States constitution and the Florida constitution. He knows those constraints, but he doesn’t care. His goal is to intentionally pass unconstitutional laws and set up legal challenges in order for the conservative supreme court to overturn long-held protections,” Berman said.Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, echoed similar sentiments, comparing DeSantis to his main competition and current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, both of whom he said are cut “from the same cloth”.“Ron DeSantis is a Harvard law school graduate. He is a lawyer. Whereas Donald Trump at least could make the argument, ‘I’m just the layperson, I don’t know’ if … something is deemed illegal or unconstitutional … DeSantis does not have that defense,” Jarvis said.Nevertheless, DeSantis appears unfazed.“DeSantis knows very well that … what he is doing is unconstitutional and illegal … Lawyers by training are very cautious so this is quite remarkable to have a lawyer-politician who not only knows better, but does not care,” said Jarvis.To DeSantis, it does not matter whether he wins or loses the legal battles as he knows he “ultimately controls the Florida supreme court”, according to Jarvis.“He is playing a ‘heads, I win, tails, you lose’ game. If he gets one of these crazy policies passed and they’re challenged and the court upholds him … he can say to the press and to the public, ‘I was right and the proof is in the pudding because the courts agreed with me,’” he explained.“But even better for DeSantis when they rule against him … DeSantis is able to stand up and say, ‘These crazy judges want our children to watch drag shows, they want our children to be taught to be gay, they want Disney to be this terrible company. That’s why you need a strong governor and why you will benefit from having me as president because I will make sure to get rid of these judges and replace them with judges that have traditional American morals,’” Jarvis added.As DeSantis continues to fight his costly legal battles, the state’s supermajority Republican legislature appears to encourage him wholly.“We’re in a litigious society,” the state senate president, Kathleen Passidomo, told the Tallahassee Democrat while the senate budget chair, Doug Broxson, told the outlet: “We want the governor to be in a comfortable position to speak his mind.”With Republicans rushing to DeSantis’s defense, perhaps the most glaring example of the legislature’s endorsement of his legal wars is the $16m incorporated into the state’s $117bn budget to be used exclusively for his litigation expenses.Speaking to the Guardian, the state’s Democratic house leader, Fentrice Driskell, called the budget a “carte blanche” from Republicans and the result of zero accountability.“The legislature is supposed to be a check on executive power. By giving him a carte blanche to go and fight these wars in court, it’s basically just saying that there are no checks and balances when it comes to the state government in Florida,” said Driskell.“It’s a waste … They are just allowing this single person to impose his will on the state of Florida and they’re willing to waste taxpayer dollars to do it,” she said, adding: “Most Floridians can’t afford their rent and property insurance rates are through the roof. We could have redirected that money towards affordable housing.”Driskell went on to describe Medicaid iBudget Florida, a waiver that provides disabled Floridians with access to certain services and which currently has a waitlist of more than 22,000 residents.“It’s very difficult for them to get off that waitlist because the Republicans underfund Medicaid. We could put that money towards funding the waitlist and getting people off of it. I think there’s only $2m that was put in the budget for that this year. If we added the $16m that was added for these culture wars, my goodness, that’s $18m. Presumably we could help get nine times more people off of the waitlist,” said Driskell.As DeSantis remains embroiled in his legal woes at the expense of Florida taxpayers, there is perhaps a single group of people that have benefited the most out of all the legal drama, Jarvis told the Guardian.“The lawyers who got that $16.7m, that’s money from heaven. That’s money that fell into their laps … Anytime there’s a loser, and the loser here is the Florida taxpayer, there is a winner. The winners here are the lawyers who are collecting those enormous fees. The more that plaintiffs file lawsuits and the more they fight these crazy policies, you know that’s just money in the bank for these lawyers,” Jarvis said.“DeSantis has been God’s gift to lawyers,” he added. More

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      Joe Biden to address nation but delays debt ceiling bill signing; White House press secretary addresses president’s fall – live

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      From 3h agoWhite House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden won’t be signing the debt ceiling bill that passed Congress until tomorrow at the earliest.“It won’t be today. The House and the Senate have to do their business, so we’re going to work very quickly to get this done to make sure we can sign it hopefully as soon as tomorrow,” Jean-Pierre said. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said that the debt ceiling must be raised by 5 June, which means that Biden must sign the bill by the weekend to avoid default. Jean-Pierre said the White House is confident they can get the bill signed before June 5.Jean-Pierre did not specify what Congress needs to do before getting it on Biden’s desk. Biden is planning to address the deal in a speech tonight at 7pm. Jean-Pierre said that he will focus on the bipartisan nature of the deal and how it benefits Americans.“When you think about what could have happened here, to our seniors, to our veterans, to American families,” Jean-Pierre said. “That is something the president believes he has an opportunity to talk directly to the American people [about]. This could’ve been, as we’ve said over and over again, devastating.”“He believes this is a good moment to lay that out and how we were able to come together to avert this crisis.”An appeals court ruling has revived an anti-discrimination lawsuit accusing an Albuquerque teacher of cutting off one Native American girl’s hair and asking another if she was dressed as a “bloody Indian” during class on Halloween.Associated Press reports:Outrage over the girls’ treatment propelled legislation in New Mexico and beyond that prohibits discrimination based upon hairstyle and religious head garments.The American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit accused Albuquerque Public Schools and a teacher of discrimination and fostering a hostile learning environment. ACLU of New Mexico Deputy Director Leon Howard said the ruling affirms that public schools are subject to antidiscrimination protections in the New Mexico Human Rights Act.The appellate ruling validates that all “students must feel safe at school and confident that their culture, history, and personal dignity are valued and respected by the public schools they attend,” Howard said in a statement.A lower court had determined that a public high school does not qualify as a “public accommodation” under the state’s civil rights law. The appellate ruling returns the lawsuit to state district court for a hearing on its merits.“If a public secondary school official in their official capacity were to refuse services to an individual based on the individual’s race, religion, or sexual orientation, then the New Mexico Human Right Act would surely apply,” Appeals Court Judge J. Miles Hanissee wrote.Lawmakers in Connecticut voted on Friday to prohibit anyone under 18-years old from being issued a marriage license.The legislation got passed in the Senate unanimously after a 98-45 bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives in May.Currently, in the state, a 16 or 17-year old can obtain a marriage license of their local probate court judge approves a petition that gets filed on the minor’s behalf by a parent or guardian, the Associated Press reports.According to a spokesperson from Democratic governor Ned Lamont office, the governor is planning sign the legislation into law.During the vote, senator Herron Gaston told his colleagues that his sister was married to a 50-year old man while she was 17-years old.
      “I’ve seen the devastating impact it has had on her physically, how it deprived her of her innocence and of her childhood,” he said.
      “She bore five children from this marriage and eventually had to flee from the island of Saint Lucia and down to Florida in order to get away from her abuser,” the Associated Press reports.
      A US air force colonel “misspoke” when he said at a Royal Aeronautical Society conference last month that a drone killed its operator in a simulated test because the pilot was attempting to override its mission, according to the society.Guardian staff and agencies report:The confusion had started with the circulation of a blogpost from the society, in which it described a presentation by Col Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, the chief of AI test and operations with the US air force and an experimental fighter test pilot, at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London in May.According to the blogpost, Hamilton had told the crowd that in a simulation to test a drone powered by artificial intelligence and trained and incentivized to kill its targets, an operator instructed the drone in some cases not to kill its targets and the drone had responded by killing the operator.The comments sparked deep concern over the use of AI in weaponry and extensive conversations online. But the US air force on Thursday evening denied the test was conducted. The Royal Aeronautical Society responded in a statement on Friday that Hamilton had retracted his comments and had clarified that the “rogue AI drone simulation” was a hypothetical “thought experiment”.“We’ve never run that experiment, nor would we need to in order to realise that this is a plausible outcome,” Hamilton said.For more details, click here:A federal judge who was presiding over Disney’s lawsuit against Florida governor Ron DeSantis has disqualified himself, citing a third-degree relative who has stock in the company “which could be substantially affected by the outcome of this case”, according to CNN.Walker had denied a motion from DeSantis’ lawyers to disqualify him from the case, saying that questions in previous cases raised “substantial doubts” about his impartiality.The judge criticized DeSantis’ lawyers, who “cherry-pick language from these cases to support their position without acknowledging the wholly distinguishable context underlying each decision”.Disney filed a lawsuit against DeSantis in April saying that the governor violated the company’s right to free speech after it spoke out against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that banned instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. DeSantis took over the special district that Disney ran at its massive theme park in Florida near Orlando.Here’s quick summary of what’s happened today:
      Though the debt ceiling bill has passed Congress, the bill won’t be signed by the White House by Saturday at the earliest. The White House said that it is waiting for lawmakers to wrap up the bill and send it to Joe Biden’s desk for signing.
      Meanwhile, credit agency Fitch said that it could still downgrade the US government’s credit rating even though a deal has been passed. The agency said that the standoff over the limit “lowers confidence” in the ability of the government to pay its bill.
      The Republican National Committee set its requirements for qualifying for its first presidential debate in August. Candidates will need at least 40,000 individual campaign donors and poll at 1% across multiple national polls.
      The Department of Justice closed its investigation into Mike Pence for his having classified documents in his Indiana home. Pence faces no charges. The closing of the investigation comes as Pence is gearing up to announce a run in the 2024 election.
      Joe Biden is set to sign the debt ceiling bill that passed the Senate last night. He will deliver remarks tonight on the bill at 7 pm.
      Stay tuned for more live updates.Youtube announced today that it will no longer remove videos that make false claims about the 2020 election, saying in a blog post that continuing to remove these videos could “have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm”.The video platform said that it has removed “tens of thousands” of videos since it implemented its policy against election misinformation in December 2020.“The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society – especially in the midst of election season,” the company said.The company said it will continue to remove content that discourages people from voting or contains misinformation about how to vote.Credit rating agency Fitch said on Friday that a downgrading of the US government credit rating is still possible, despite Congress passing a bipartisan bil to raise the debt ceiling . Fitch has put the US on a negative credit watch and said that while the passing of the bill is a “positive consideration”, “repeated political standoffs” over the debt limit “lowers confidence in governance on fiscal and debt matters”.The country’s credit rating has only been downgraded once in history. Credit rating agency S&P downgraded the country’s credit for the first time in 2011 after an impasse between Republicans in Congress and then-president Barack Obama. The downgrade occurred after the deal was made, as it was settled too close to the default date.A downgrading of the country’s credit rating will be costly for the country as it will make it more expensive for the country to borrow money, along with lowering confidence in the American dollar.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden won’t be signing the debt ceiling bill that passed Congress until tomorrow at the earliest.“It won’t be today. The House and the Senate have to do their business, so we’re going to work very quickly to get this done to make sure we can sign it hopefully as soon as tomorrow,” Jean-Pierre said. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said that the debt ceiling must be raised by 5 June, which means that Biden must sign the bill by the weekend to avoid default. Jean-Pierre said the White House is confident they can get the bill signed before June 5.Jean-Pierre did not specify what Congress needs to do before getting it on Biden’s desk. Biden is planning to address the deal in a speech tonight at 7pm. Jean-Pierre said that he will focus on the bipartisan nature of the deal and how it benefits Americans.“When you think about what could have happened here, to our seniors, to our veterans, to American families,” Jean-Pierre said. “That is something the president believes he has an opportunity to talk directly to the American people [about]. This could’ve been, as we’ve said over and over again, devastating.”“He believes this is a good moment to lay that out and how we were able to come together to avert this crisis.”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding the daily press briefing right now and addressed a question on Joe Biden’s fall last night. Biden was in Colorado Springs at the graduation ceremony of the US Air Force Academy. Biden tripped on a sandbag onstage, caught himself with his hands and was helped up by three people.“He tripped over a sandbag on the stage, briefly he tripped and got up, and continued what he was there to do,” Jean-Pierre said. “There was no need for the doctor to see him.”Biden addressed reporters upon returning to Washington Thursday night, joking that “I got sandbagged”.The Republican National Committee is tightening the requirements candidates will have to meet in order to get on the debate stage in August. There are nine Republican 2024 presidential candidates so far, and a handful more are expected to announce their runs in the coming weeks.Candidates will have to get at least 40,000 individual campaign donors and receive at least 1% of voters in multiple national polls, according to the Washington Post. The first debate will be held in Milwaukee and hosted by Fox News.Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are currently the clear frontrunners, according to polls, with Trump ahead of the Florida governor by at least 30 points. Other candidates, like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, have been polling well under 10%.Donald Trump’s attorneys have been unable to find a classified document the former president said he had in a recording that was ultimately given to prosecutors, according to CNN.The recording, taken in July 2021 at a Trump golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, has the former president saying that he retained a document on a potential attack on Iran.Prosecutors have subpoenaed Trump for all classified materials and have recovered classified documents throughout 2022. Trump attorneys turned over more documents in March, but it did not include the document on Iran.A Florida man who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 was sentenced on Friday to three years in prison, the latest in a string of prison sentences for those who participated in the January 6 insurrection.45-year-old David Moerschel, a neurophysiologist from Punta Gorda, Florida, was convicted in January with three other members of the Oath Keepers, reported the Associated Press.Several members of the antigovernment extremist group have been charged for their roles in a plot led by several far-right groups to stop Joe Biden from becoming president after the 2020 election results.In total, nine people associated with the Oath Keepers have been tried with seditious conspiracy, AP reported, including Moerschel.Six have been convicted on the charge.House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has invited Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to speak to Congress during his visit to Washington DC on June 22. Modi will also meet with Joe Biden for a state dinner that night.In a letter to Modi, McCarthy said that Modi in his address “will have the opportunity to share your vision for India’s future and speak to the global challenges our countries both face”. More

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

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

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      Ron v Don / Britain’s numbers game: Inside the 2 June Guardian Weekly

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      Whether DeSantis has it in him to wrest Republican playground bragging rights from Trump remains to be seen, as David Smith reports from Washington.The Guardian Weekly has a split cover this week, depending where in the world you get the magazine.Our North America edition puts the cover focus on the US race for the Republican presidential nomination. Ron DeSantis finally confirmed his candidacy, despite a nightmare launch on social media platform Twitter, which means the Florida governor is already playing catch-up with his arch-rival, Donald Trump.To capture the schoolyard-rumble feel of the race, illustrator Neil Jamieson tried to channel his 10- and 13-year-old kids who, he says, love to press each other’s buttons. “This cover leans in to the work of my hero George Lois, the legendary American creative director of Esquire whose acerbic wit and eye for composition redefined the American magazine cover in the 1960s,” adds Neil.Whether DeSantis has it in him to wrest the Republican playground bragging rights from Trump remains to be seen, as David Smith reports from Washington.For readers elsewhere, the cover reflects the record figures of people migrating to Britain – a subject that affects the lives of many around the world, more recently from countries such as Hong Kong, India and Ukraine, to name but a few.As our big story explores, one of the main talking points is not that the numbers are so high but why, when migration is such a dynamic and enduring reality of the modern world, successive Conservative governments have perpetuated the simplistic notion that UK immigration can easily be reduced.Home affairs editor Rajeev Syal breaks down the figures, while south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen finds out why Indians studying abroad are so keen on British universities. Finally, Daniel Trilling outlines how the UK’s controversial policy to stop small migrant boats crossing the Channel is partly inspired by Greece’s hardline crackdown, one area in which post-Brexit Britain seems happy to emulate its European neighbours.If you’ve wondered what inspires people to stand on one leg blindfolded for hours, or to attempt the loudest burp, don’t miss Imogen West-Knights’ long read on how the weird and wonderful Guinness World Records is still thriving in the digital age.In Culture, as the TV series Succession ended this week, writer Jesse Armstrong discusses the show’s genesis and the real-life characters who inspired its fearsome media mogul protagonist, Logan Roy.Get 12 issues of the Guardian Weekly magazine for just £12 (UK offer only) More

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      Ron DeSantis says he will ‘destroy leftism’ in US if elected president

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      Predicting two terms in the White House should he defeat Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination next year, Ron DeSantis said he would go on to “destroy leftism in this country”.“I will be able to destroy leftism in this country and leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history,” the Florida governor told Fox News.DeSantis declared his long-expected run last week, in a glitch-filled appearance on Twitter with its owner, Elon Musk.The widely panned launch followed a long phony war period in which DeSantis toured early voting states and launched a campaign-oriented book but nonetheless fell further and further behind the former president in primary polling.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, including criminal charges over a hush money payment to a porn star; being found liable for sexual assault and defamation; and facing indictment for his election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress and for his retention of classified records.Nonetheless, Trump maintains big leads over the rest of the field. Most polling averages put Trump more than 30 points ahead of his nearest challenger: DeSantis.Undaunted, the governor told Fox & Friends on Monday: “At the end of the day, I’ve shown in Florida an ability to win huge swaths of voters that Republicans typically can’t win – while also delivering the boldest agenda anywhere in the country.”Democrats and many political observers suggest that hardline record, including attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, moves to control teaching in public schools, loosened gun control laws and a six-week abortion ban, will cost DeSantis in a general election.The governor’s high-profile fight with Disney, a major employer in his state, over its opposition to his so-called “don’t say gay” law prohibiting discussion of sexuality and gender identity in public classrooms, has also cost him support among some major donors.Speaking to Fox News, DeSantis said the fight with Disney was about “standing for parents … standing for children. And I think a multibillion-dollar company that sexualises children is not consistent with the values of Florida or the values of a place like Iowa”, which will hold the first Republican contest next year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDeSantis, 44, has amassed a significant campaign war chest and remains the clear strongest challenger to Trump, ahead of candidates including the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott and Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas.Polling concerning a hypothetical general election between DeSantis and Joe Biden puts the governor and the president neck-and-neck.Speaking to Fox News, DeSantis said: “I think there’s a reason why the legacy media is attacking me more than they’re attacking anybody else, because I think they realise that if I’m successful in winning the Republican nomination, we’re going to bring it home in the general election.“And I pledge to Republican voters if you nominate me, I will be taking the oath of office on January 20, 2025, on the west side of the Capitol. No more excuses about why we can’t get it done. We need to get it done, and I will get it done.” More

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      DeSantis’s limp start to 2024 race delights Trump but battle is not over

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      Never work with animals, children or egotistical space billionaires. There’s a lesson in there that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida learned the hard way when he used Elon Musk’s Twitter Spaces social media platform to announce his run for US president.Thousands of listeners were greeted with long silences, odd snatches of music and the sound of Musk, would-be kingmaker of the American right, muttering that the “the servers are straining somewhat”. The glitch was soon being described as a “DeSaster”, one of the most embarrassing campaign fiascos in memory.No one was more gleeful than Donald Trump, who regards DeSantis as his principal rival for the Republican nomination in 2024. But for those in the party who crave an alternative to the disgraced former president, it fueled disquiet about his putative rival’s big match temperament – and encouraged them to seek other options. No one is writing DeSantis off, but he enters the race weakened and in a wide, scattered field of lesser candidates that Trump now dominates.“DeSantis’s launch was awful; Trump’s comments are nuts,” tweeted Bill Kristol, a founding director of Defending Democracy Together who served in the Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush administrations. “Doesn’t every normal Republican elected official and donor think the party can (and should!) do better?”The Grand Old Party has been transformed since the moment that Trump staged a comparatively lo-tech campaign launch by trundling down an escalator at Trump Tower in New York in 2015. The celebrity businessman soon energised grassroots supporters, shook the Republican establishment and prevailed in the primary election against divided opposition.Eight years on, Trump, now 76 and facing myriad criminal investigations, has again established himself as the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination. He has spent the months since he launched his own campaign working to destroy the once-ascendant DeSantis, 44, who has tried to remain above the fray.In the end Trump did not succeed in knocking the man he brands “Ron DeSanctimonious” out of the race but did sow doubts about his record, personality and loyalty. The governor did himself no favors by giving mixed messages on US support for Ukraine, picking a thankless fight with Disney and failing to impress during in-person meetings.Last month, when DeSantis went overseas on a “trade mission” and met business leaders in London, the Politico website quoted attendees as saying he “looked bored” and “stared at his feet” and describing him as “horrendous” and “low wattage”. One reportedly said: “It felt really a bit like we were watching a state-level politician. I wouldn’t be surprised if [people in attendance] came out thinking ‘that’s not the guy.’”Far from closing the gap on Trump during a book tour, DeSantis instead saw it widen to 30 percentage points or more in some opinion polls. Some of his potential donors have expressed buyers’ remorse and put their financial backing on hold.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, said: “Everybody thought it was a two-horse race; it’s a one-horse race. The Republican establishment, the Republican donors, Republican media, everybody wants Trump gone so they’ve all put their hopes in DeSantis and now that’s gotten pretty shaky over the last four months because the more people get to know him, they don’t like him.”Walsh, who challenged Trump in the 2020 primaries, added: “You’re going to see a bunch of people get in now because they think DeSantis is weak and so they want to be the number two guy.”This week’s shambolic campaign launch only reinforced the view that DeSantis was overhyped as a “Trump slayer” and peaked too soon. But there is a constituency of Republicans unwilling to return to twice-impeached, once-indicted Trump, especially after disappointing midterm election results. They hunger for another choice to take on Joe Biden.Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times in Iowa, which holds the first Republican caucuses early next year, said: “I was talking with a moderate retired Republican schoolteacher just this morning from western Iowa and she doesn’t like the meanness of Trump and DeSantis, so she’s looking for an alternative. Whether that’s Tim Scott or Asa Hutchinson or Chris Sununu, who knows?”Ambitious Republicans smell blood. This week saw Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator, throw his hat in the ring with a brand of optimism that contrasts with Trump and DeSantis’s dark rhetoric. But Scott, 57, has only 1% of support among registered Republicans, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.He joined fellow his South Carolinian Nikki Haley, a former governor of the state and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. The 51-year-old has emphasised her relative youth compared with Biden and Trump as well as her background as the daughter of two Indian immigrants. She attracts about 4% support among Republican voters.Notably DeSantis, Scott and Haley have been reluctant to directly denounce Trump, preferring to let allies do the dirty work or make oblique remarks about the need to end a culture of losing or embrace greatness rather than grievance. Their reticence is a striking insight into Trump’s lock on the party’s base.But one candidate, the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, has been more forthright in calling for Trump to drop out of the race to deal with his hush money criminal case in New York. Hutchinson, 72, has touted his experience leading the deeply conservative state but has limited name recognition nationwide.Other potential contenders include Mike Pence, 63, a former vice-president who broke with Trump over the January 6 insurrection; Chris Christie, 60, a former governor of New Jersey who is a pugnacious Trump critic; and Chris Sununu, 48, the governor of New Hampshire who has said he does not believe Trump can beat Biden.Glenn Youngkin, 56, a hedge fund manager turned Virginia governor who has made much of parents’ rights in schools, is said to be reconsidering a White House bid after previously ruling it out. Meanwhile Vivek Ramaswamy, 37, a former biotechnology investor and executive, is already waging a quixotic campaign.The bigger the field, the more that Trump stands to benefit. As in 2016, a bevy of candidates may well divide the anti-Trump vote while his base holds fast. It could put pressure on DeSantis to set himself apart by taking off the gloves against the former president, a risky strategy that backfired for fellow Floridians Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in 2016.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “The only way Ron DeSantis peels off Trump voters is if he fights as hard and dirty as Trump because they’re looking for a champion who will break boundaries, break the rules and really go for it. That’s what they’re looking for: are you willing to go toe to toe and stand up to Trump in every way?”DeSantis is still relatively well placed. He was polling in double digits and boasted of a war chest of more than $110m before he even entered the race. His team said he brought in $8.2m in the first 24 hours after his campaign launch, breaking a record of $6.3m held by Biden.DeSantis can also point to a list of rightwing legislative accomplishments to make the case that he is effectively Trump without the drama. His opposition to coronavirus pandemic restrictions and his “anti-woke” agenda guarantee favorable coverage from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News network and other rightwing media.He has many friends in the Florida Republican party despite Trump having made the state his adopted home. Christian Ziegler, the state party chairperson, said he had a “great relationship” with both men. “The organisation is going to stay neutral and I encourage all our party leaders to do the same because, no matter who wins the primary, we’ve got to make sure that we go get the voters of whoever loses to cross over and shake hands and vote for whoever our Republican nominee is.“We’ve got to keep our eye on what the reality is and what the real goal is. The real enemy here are the Democrats and what they’re trying to do to our kids, our communities, our state, our country.”Democrats, for their part, exulted in DeSantis’s campaign launch debacle and give his candidacy short shrift.Antjuan Seawright, a party strategist based in Columbia, South Carolina, said: “He has a math problem, meaning he is always going to be considered a runner-up to Trump, who is the leading candidate in their party. He has a policy problem because in many cases he’s trying to out-Trump Trump when it comes to policy.“He has a political problem: he has not had his hood checked or his tyres kicked outside of Florida and so he’s never been battle-tested. He has a constituency problem because with so many people in the race, where does his following come from?”Seawright added: “The Republican primary, quite frankly, has calcified around the idea of nominating Trump again.” More

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      DeSantis appears to back woman who led Amanda Gorman poem school ban

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      Ron DeSantis on Friday appeared to defend a woman who got Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem The Hill We Climb removed from a Miami school, even though she has attended events alongside white supremacist and far-right groups.The Republican Florida governor, who entered the race for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination with a botched launch on Twitter on Wednesday, said parents such as Daily Salinas were saving children from political ideology “the left [is] trying to jam in” to schools.“They don’t want the parents involved in education because they view you as an impediment to their ideological agenda,” DeSantis told the Florida parent educators association homeschool convention in Orlando.“They view you as an impediment to their ability to indoctrinate kids with their beliefs and their agendas. I’m sorry, I choose our beliefs as parents over the beliefs of the ideological left.“We want parents to be armed with the ability to make sure their kids are in a safe environment, and yet you have narrative, and you have the left trying to jam this in.”Salinas, a parent of two children at the Bob Graham education center in Miami Lakes, who has been photographed attending rallies by the neo-fascist Proud Boys group, admitted she had read only “snippets” of several books she sought to have banned from the campus.They include the ABCs of Black History, poetry by Langston Hughes and books on Cuba, all of which she has criticized for “indirect hate messages”, references to critical race theory and gender indoctrination.Salinas also posted antisemitic memes on Facebook – for which she later apologized.“I’m not an expert. I’m not a reader. I’m not a book person. I’m a mom involved in my children’s education,” Salinas told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement.Salinas is also aligned with Moms for Liberty, a rightwing activist group committed to the removal from the nation’s classrooms of books relating to sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and racism in American history.In his speech on Friday, DeSantis alluded to coverage of the removal of Gorman’s work from the school’s elementary school library, a decision made by the Miami-Dade school district following a single complaint, from Salinas, as a “ridiculous poem hoax” fomented by what he called the leftwing “legacy media”.“This is some book of poems, I never heard of it, I had nothing to do with any of this, that was in an elementary school library and the school or the school district determined that was more appropriate to be in the middle school library. So they moved it,” he said.“These legacy media outlets are … trying to create a political narrative that is totally divorced from the facts and if they’re going to do something like this ridiculous poem hoax and actually put that out there and think that you’re going to believe it, they’re insulting your intelligence and our country.”DeSantis, who is trailing far behind former president Donald Trump in the race for the Republican 2024 nomination, repeated the falsehood that no books had been banned from Florida’s schools.“The media, when they talk about ‘book ban’, understand that is a hoax. They are creating a false narrative,” he said.Yet in April, the writers’ organization PEN America that has been tracking public school book bans for two years, produced a report showing Florida was one of the most prolific states for educational book bans, with 357 separate bans across 12 school districts in the first half of the current school year.Nationwide, the group recorded 1,477 book bans, with 20% attributed to complaints from Moms for Liberty.“These groups pressured districts to remove books without following their own policies, even in some cases, removing books without reading them,” the report said.“That trend has continued in the 2022-23 school year, but it has also been supercharged by a new source of pressure: state legislation.”This month the Guardian reported on the harmful impact on Florida’s teachers of a range of new education laws introduced by DeSantis, including vague legislation without defined criteria that requires school districts to remove “inappropriate” material from campus libraries. More

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      Joe Biden vows ‘there will be no default’ after latest round of debt ceiling talks with Republicans – as it happened

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      From 3h agoJoe Biden said he has had “several productive conversations” with Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy, and despite outstanding differences over raising the debt ceiling, “there will be no default”.“The only way to move forward is with a bipartisan agreement, and I believe we’ll come to an agreement that allows us to move forward and that protects the hardworking Americans in this country,” the president said at the White House during an event to introduce Charles Q Brown Jr, his nominee for chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.He spoke positively of his negotiations with McCarthy, and said, “our staffs continue to meet, as we speak as a matter of fact, and they’re making progress. I made clear, time and again, that defaulting on our national debt is not an option … congressional leaders understand that and they’ve all agreed there will be no default.”He then went on to criticize the GOP’s negotiating platform, saying “speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order. I don’t believe the whole burden should fall on the backs of the middle-class and working-class Americans, my House Republican friends disagree.”After weeks of uncertainty and tension, reports indicate that Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is nearing a deal with Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for cutting some government spending. But both the GOP-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate have to approve whatever compromise emerges in order to prevent a US government default that could happen as soon 1 June. At the Treasury, they’re not taking any chances – the Wall Street Journal reports that officials have dusted off a plan in case the limit is not lifted in time.Here’s what else happened today:
      Ron DeSantis is trying to make the most of yesterday’s campaign announcement on Twitter, which was marred by the site’s prevalent technical glitches.
      The supreme court’s conservatives weakened environmental protections concerning waterways in a case brought over a couple’s attempt to build a lakeside house in Idaho.
      Donald Trump had classified materials lying around at Mar-a-Lago and sometimes showed them to people, the Washington Post reported.
      Centrist Democrats are annoyed that McCarthy has allowed House lawmakers to head home for the Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt standoff first.
      Kamala Harris paid tribute to rock’n’roll star Tina Turner, who died yesterday, aged 83.
      Earlier today, most of the supreme court’s conservative justices banded together to weaken environmental protections on America’s waterways in a case stemming from a couple’s attempt to build a lakeside house in Idaho, the Guardian’s Oliver Milman reports:The scope of a landmark law to protect America’s waterways has been shrunk by the US supreme court, which has sided with an Idaho couple who have waged a long-running legal battle to build a house on wetlands near one of the state’s largest lakes.In a ruling passed down on Thursday, the conservative-dominated court decided that the federal government was wrong to use the Clean Water Act, a key 50-year-old piece of legislation to prevent pollution seeping into rivers, streams and lakes, to prevent the couple building over the wetland beside Priest Lake in Idaho.The justice’ decision in effect overhauls the definition of whether wetlands are considered “navigable waters” under the act and are therefore federally protected.Michael Regan, the administrator of the EPA, said he was disappointed by a ruling that “erodes longstanding clean water protections”, adding that the agency would consider its next steps in protecting American waterways.Donald Trump used Twitter to great effect during his 2016 campaign and for most of his presidency.And while he has not tweeted since the platform banned him shortly after the January 6 insurrection in 2021 (even though owner Elon Musk let him back on last year, after he bought the company) Twitter has this afternoon become host to the latest flare-up in the feud between Trump’s surrogates and Ron DeSantis’s allies.The opening volley from Trump’s team:And the retort from top DeSantis aide Christina Pushaw:To which the former president’s people said:And on and on. Follow the tweets if you want more.The Washington Post reports new details of how Donald Trump handled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, including that they were visibly displayed and shown off by the former president to visitors, and that staff moved boxes of papers the day before federal agents searched the property last year.Trump’s possession of government secrets from his time as president that he was not authorized to keep is one of three major issues being investigated by Jack Smith, the justice department’s special counsel. The Post reports that grand jury activity slowed down this month, and Trump’s attorneys have taken steps that indicate a decision over whether to bring charges against the former president could happen soon.Here’s more from the Post’s report:
      Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before FBI agents and a prosecutor visited the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.
      Trump and his aides also allegedly carried out a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers even before his office received the May 2022 subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive ongoing investigation.
      Prosecutors in addition have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others, these people said.
      Taken together, the new details of the classified-documents investigation suggest a greater breadth and specificity to the instances of possible obstruction found by the FBI and Justice Department than has been previously reported. It also broadens the timeline of possible obstruction episodes that investigators are examining — a period stretching from events at Mar-a-Lago before the subpoena to the period after the FBI raid there on Aug. 8.
      That timeline may prove crucial as prosecutors seek to determine Trump’s intent in keeping hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House, a key factor in deciding whether to file charges of obstruction of justice or of mishandling national security secrets. The Washington Post has previously reported that the boxes were moved out of the storage area after Trump’s office received a subpoena. But the precise timing of that activity is a significant element in the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.
      Grand jury activity in the case has slowed in recent weeks, and Trump’s attorneys have taken steps — including outlining his potential defense to members of Congress and seeking a meeting with the attorney general — that suggest they believe a charging decision is getting closer. The grand jury working on the investigation apparently has not met since May 5, after months of frenetic activity at the federal courthouse in Washington. That is the panel’s longest hiatus since December, shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead the probe and coinciding with the year-end holidays.
      Sam Levine has a fascinating report today on the plight of Robert Zeidman, a cyber forensics expert who took up a challenge from the Trump ally and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell…Robert Zeidman was not planning on making the trek to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in August 2021 for a “cyber symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who was pledging to unveil hard data that showed China interfered with the 2020 election.Zeidman, a 63-year-old consultant cyber forensics expert, voted twice for Trump because he did not like the alternative candidates. He thinks there was some fraud in the 2020 election, though not enough to overturn the result. And he believed it was possible Lindell could have discovered evidence voting machines were hacked. He was curious to see Lindell’s evidence, and a bit skeptical, so he thought he would follow along online.But Lindell – one of the most prolific spreaders of election misinformation – was pledging $5m to anyone who could prove the information was not valid data from the 2020 election, and Zeidman’s friends encouraged him to go.Zeidman hopped on a plane from his home in Las Vegas, figuring he would meet a lot of interesting people and witness a historic moment.“I still had my doubts about whether they had the data,” he said in an interview on Monday. “But I thought it would be a question of experts disagreeing or maybe agreeing about what the data meant.“I didn’t think it would be blatantly bogus data, which is what I found.”More:The top US general has issued a stark warning about how a debt default would affect the military, Reuters reports, with chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley saying it would undercut its readiness and capabilities, as well as US national security as a whole.“I think it would be very, very significant without a doubt in that absolutely clear, unambiguous implications on national security,” Milley told a press conference.“I think there’s no doubt whatsoever that there would be a very significant negative impact on the readiness, morale and capabilities of the United States military if we defaulted and didn’t reach a debt ceiling [agreement].”Over at the Capitol, Politico reports that consternation is growing among House Democrats, who want Joe Biden to take a more aggressive stance against the GOP’s demands for spending cuts to raise the debt ceiling:Joe Biden said he has had “several productive conversations” with Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy, and despite outstanding differences over raising the debt ceiling, “there will be no default”.“The only way to move forward is with a bipartisan agreement, and I believe we’ll come to an agreement that allows us to move forward and that protects the hardworking Americans in this country,” the president said at the White House during an event to introduce Charles Q Brown Jr, his nominee for chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.He spoke positively of his negotiations with McCarthy, and said, “our staffs continue to meet, as we speak as a matter of fact, and they’re making progress. I made clear, time and again, that defaulting on our national debt is not an option … congressional leaders understand that and they’ve all agreed there will be no default.”He then went on to criticize the GOP’s negotiating platform, saying “speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order. I don’t believe the whole burden should fall on the backs of the middle-class and working-class Americans, my House Republican friends disagree.”Politico reports from Sioux City, Iowa on how Republican voters in the state that will vote first in the GOP primary next year didn’t think too much about Ron DeSantis’s Twitter Spaces disaster on Wednesday night – if they thought about it at all.The site spoke to attendees at a town hall event hosted by Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who is competing with DeSantis for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked about DeSantis’s glitch-filled launch, Clinton Vos, 63, said: “I knew that it was going to happen today on Twitter but I’m not a Twitter follower.”Curtis Kull, 30, was asked if he’d heard about DeSantis and Elon Musk’s difficulties.“I did not,” he said.Scott Bowman, 65, said he could yet choose to back DeSantis, though he thought the Twitter fumble meant the Florida governor was “going to get a lot of heat, and I just don’t know if DeSantis can hold up to the questions. It’s a fumble by his campaign”.Gwen Sturrock, “a teacher in her 50s”, said she had heard about the Twitter Spaces event “stalling or whatever”.In a perhaps unconscious nod in the direction of Oscar Wilde – who in The Picture of Dorian Gray wrote “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about” – and perhaps giving comfort to any DeSantis aides still seeking plausible spin, Sturrock pointed to one possible upside of the Twitter fiasco.It “might mean that a lot of people were very interested” in the DeSantis campaign, Sturrock said.Here’s some further reading on the DeSantis-Musk mess, from Dan Milmo, our global technology editor:Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy over his role in the January 6 attack on Congress.Prosecutors had sought a 25-year sentence for the first person convicted of seditious conspiracy in relation to the Capitol attack, which was mounted by supporters of Donald Trump in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Lawyers for Rhodes said he should be sentenced to time already served since his arrest in January last year.Here’s more from court in Washington today, from the Associated Press:
      At Thursday’s hearing, in a first for a January 6 case, US district judge Amit Mehta agreed with prosecutors to apply enhanced penalties for ‘terrorism’, under the argument that the Oath Keepers sought to influence the government through ‘intimidation or coercion’.
      Judges in previous sentencings had shot down the justice department request for the so-called “terrorism enhancement” – which can lead to a longer prison term – but Mehta said it fitted Rhodes’ case.
      “Mr Rhodes directed his co-conspirators to come to the Capitol and they abided,” the judge said.
      A defense lawyer, Phillip Linder, denied that Rhodes gave any orders for Oath Keepers to enter the Capitol on January 6. Linder told the judge Rhodes could have had many more Oath Keepers come to the Capitol “if he really wanted” to disrupt Congress’ certification of the electoral college vote.
      Some lighter lunchtime reading, courtesy of House Democrats and after a demand for decorum in the chamber from the far-right Georgia Republican and noted decorum-free controversialist Marjorie Taylor Greene.Of the Wednesday demand, which met with gales of laughter, Jared Huffman, from California, said: “Irony died today on the House Floor, but comedy triumphed as the GOP chose MTG as their keeper of ‘decorum’.”Another Californian, Jimmy Gomez, tried a couple of jokes.Greene calling for decorum, Gomez said, is “like Leonardo DiCaprio telling people to date people their own age” or, in reference to another controversial Republican, “like George Santos telling people not to lie”.Here’s the moment in question:And here’s our story:After weeks of uncertainty and tension, reports indicate that Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is nearing a deal with Joe Biden on raising the debt ceiling in exchange for cutting some government spending. But nothing is done until it is passed, and both the House and Senate have to approve whatever compromise emerges in order to prevent a US government default that could happen as soon 1 June. At the Treasury, they’re not taking any chances – the Wall Street Journal reports that officials have dusted off a plan in case the limit is not lifted in time.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Ron DeSantis is trying to make the most of yesterday’s campaign announcement on Twitter, which was marred by the site’s prevalent technical glitches.
      Centrist Democrats are annoyed that McCarthy has allowed House lawmakers to head home for the Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt standoff first.
      Kamala Harris paid tribute to rock’n’roll star Tina Turner, who died yesterday, aged 83.
      The Treasury is preparing for the possibility that Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling on time, the Wall Street Journal reports.Officials have turned to a plan drawn up in 2011 during a previous debt limit standoff between Democrats and Republicans that resulted in a major credit agency downgrading America’s rating for the first time ever.Twelve years later, the Journal reports that the goal is much the same now as it was then: prevent as much damage to the country’s financial reputation as possible if Washington’s leaders can’t reach an agreement by early June, the approximate deadline when the US will exhaust its cash on hand.Here’s more from their story:
      Under the backup plan created for a debt-limit breach, federal agencies would submit payments to the Treasury no sooner than the day before they are due, the people familiar with the talks said. That would represent a change from the current system, in which agencies may submit payment files well before their due dates. The Treasury processes them on a rolling basis, often ahead of the deadlines. Some payments are already sent to the Treasury one day early, one person said.
      If the Treasury can’t make a full day’s worth of payments, it would likely delay payments until it has enough cash to pay the full day’s worth of bills, the people familiar with the matter said. The plan has been discussed across the government, but the Treasury hasn’t instructed agencies to change how they pay bills.
      The centrist New Democrat Coalition has condemned Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans for adjourning the chamber ahead of the long Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt ceiling standoff.“House Republicans are skipping town –– willing to risk the full faith and credit of the United States and plunge the country into an unprecedented crisis,” read a statement from Annie Kuster, the chair of the House caucus.“As Speaker McCarthy remains beholden to the most extreme elements of his party, New Dems are committed to working with responsible Republicans to advance a solution that will pass the House and Senate. As lawmakers, we have a responsibility to rise above partisanship and act in the best interest of our nation. There is no time to waste.”Reports indicate that Joe Biden and the House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, are nearing an agreement on a bill that would raise the debt ceiling through the 2024 election, which would allow the president to avoid another standoff until after voters go to the polls.That proposal is already receiving pushback on the far right, underscoring that McCarthy will likely need Democratic votes to get any bipartisan bill through the House.“Kevin McCarthy is on the verge of striking a terrible deal to give away the debt limit [through] Biden’s term for little in the way of cuts,” said Russ Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under Donald Trump.“Nothing to crush the bureaucracy. They are lining up Democrats to pass it. The DC cartel is reassembling. Time for higher defcon. #HoldTheLine”Over in the Senate, Republican Mike Lee of Utah has already pledged to “use every procedural tool at my disposal to impede a debt-ceiling deal that doesn’t contain substantial spending and budgetary reforms.” Such a delay in the upper chamber could increase the risk of default. More