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      US Congress averts shutdown but the deadlock remains over Ukraine aid

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      Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress managed to ward off a damaging federal government shutdown with a last-minute compromise reached this week – but remain deadlocked over approving further military assistance for Ukraine and Israel, and tightening immigration laws.Congress was up against a Friday midnight deadline to reauthorize government spending or see a chunk of the federal departments cease much of their operations.On Wednesday, top lawmakers including Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, and Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, announced they “are in agreement that Congress must work in a bipartisan manner to fund our government”, and the following day lawmakers passed a short-term spending measure that Joe Biden signed on Friday.But similar agreement has proven elusive when it comes to funding both the continuation of Ukraine’s grinding defense against Russia’s invasion and Israel’s assault on Gaza.Last month, a bipartisan Senate agreement that would have paired the latest tranche of military aid with measures to limit the number of undocumented people and asylum seekers crossing into the country from Mexico was killed by Republicans – reportedly so Donald Trump, who is on the cusp of winning the Republican presidential nomination, could campaign on his own hardline approach to immigration reform.The Senate then approved a $95bn bill that would authorize aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan without changing policy at the border, but Johnson has refused to put it to a vote in the House. Meanwhile, the government funding saga isn’t quite over. This week’s agreement pushed the funding deadlines for the two bills authorizing spending to 8 and 22 March. In their joint statement, the House and Senate leaders said lawmakers would vote on the 12 separate appropriations bills funding federal departments before these dates.As Russia’s invasion enters its third year, enthusiasm for Kyiv’s cause has cooled among the American right. While it still has high-profile champions among the GOP, including the party’s top senator, Mitch McConnell, it is Democrats who have been loudest in sounding the alarm over the holdup of aid as Russia advances in the country.“Every day that House Republicans refuse to hold a vote on the bipartisan National Security Supplemental, the consequences for Ukraine grow more severe,” Biden said on Thursday.And though Biden’s administration faces intense criticism from some of his allies for his support for Israel – on Tuesday, a write-in campaign to protest his Middle East policy picked up 100,000 votes in vital swing state Michigan’s Democratic primary – the president insisted the aid would help both Israel’s fight against Hamas and the needs of Gaza’s civilians.“This bill will help ensure that Israel can defend itself against Hamas and other threats. And it will provide critical humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people and those impacted by conflicts around the world. Because the truth is, the aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough, and nowhere fast enough. Innocent lives are on the line,” he said.The biggest obstacle at this point appears to be Johnson, a rightwing lawmaker and Trump ally elevated to the speaker’s job in October after an unusual intraparty revolt cast Kevin McCarthy from the post. On Wednesday, a coalition of parliamentary leaders from European countries including France, Spain, Finland and Ukraine sent an open letter to Johnson asking him to allow a vote on Ukraine aid.“While Speaker Johnson believes we must confront Putin, and is exploring steps to effectively do so, as he said at the White House, his immediate priority is funding America’s government and avoiding a shutdown,” the speaker’s office replied.Centrist lawmakers in Congress’s lower chamber, which the GOP controls by a meager two seats, are reportedly planning to circulate a discharge petition, which, if signed by a majority of members, could force Johnson to put Ukraine aid up for a floor vote. Asked about that at a press conference, the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, was not ready to endorse the idea.“The most effective way to secure aid for our democratic allies, including, but not limited to, Ukraine, is to take the bipartisan bill that is pending before the House right now and put it on the floor,” Jeffries said, adding: “All legislative options remain on the table.” More

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      ‘Huge tax breaks’: private equity prepares for a boon from Congress

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      Some of largest and most profitable companies in the US are primed to save billions of dollars from a congressional tax deal that critics say gives “billions in tax credits to the biggest corporations while giving pennies to middle-class children and families”. And private equity funds could be among the deal’s biggest beneficiaries, a Guardian analysis suggests.The tax cuts passed the House of Representatives at the end of January as part of an agreement that pairs handouts for businesses with a moderate expansion of the child tax credit. The Senate could vote on the bill over the coming weeks, and the White House has indicated that Joe Biden would sign it into law.The deal, led by Democratic senator Ron Wyden and Republican congressman Jason Smith – the chairs of Congress’s tax-writing committees – would roll back a series of tax measures that were designed to partially offset the cost of the 2017 Trump tax cuts.Weakening these provisions would allow companies to claim bigger tax deductions for certain expenses, including buying new equipment, spending money on research and development, and paying interest on their debt, as the Guardian previously reported.Last year the American Investment Council (AIC), private equity’s main trade group, spent more than $3m lobbying the federal government, according to OpenSecrets – more than any single year since 2009. Including their subsidiaries, five of the country’s largest private equity funds – Blackstone Group, KKR & Company, Carlyle Group, Cerberus Capital Management and Apollo Global Management – together spent an additional $21m lobbying over the same period.“Increasing the interest deductions, which private equity firms have been the worst abusers of, is just another example of how the Wyden-Smith tax deal hands out billions in tax credits to the biggest corporations while giving pennies to middle-class children and families,” the Democratic congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, one of two dozen House Democrats who voted against the bill, told the Guardian.“While private equity is cheering on the huge tax breaks they will get if this deal passes the Senate, American families are living paycheck to paycheck and struggling with rising costs.”‘Debt can supercharge the returns of private equity’Tax policy experts told the Guardian that raising the cap on interest deductibility could provide an especially generous subsidy for private equity funds, which rely heavily on debt.“The model of the private equity industry is often to … buy public corporations, take them private and load them up with debt,” said Steve Wamhoff of the non-profit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. These heavy debt burdens help explain why companies bought by private equity funds are about 10 times more likely than other firms to go bankrupt.“The deductions that are allowed for interest expenses really make that a more viable business model,” Wamhoff said.Debt is cheaper when companies get a tax break for deducting the interest they pay on that debt, and “cheaper money, which has to be repaid by their takeover targets, is what makes private equity go,” said Carter Dougherty of Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), an advocacy coalition.“The magic of the private equity business model, and the way that it’s able to generate outsized returns, is its reliance on debt for the acquisition,” said Brendan Ballou, author of Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America.If you invest $20m in a business and get 10% returns, you only get $2m back,” Ballou explained. “But if, of that $20m, you actually only put up $2m yourself, you actually make 100% return. So debt, or leverage, allows you to get bigger returns than you normally would if you actually had to put up your own cash.”That’s how “debt can supercharge the returns of private equity”, Ballou said.Asked for comment, the AIC referred the Guardian to two letters previously signed by the group, one of which states that “debt financing plays an important role in supporting job-creating investments”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There’s already a strong bias in the tax code for debt, and this bill doubles down on that bias to boost private equity’s predatory practices, which will only drive more American companies into bankruptcy and decrease market competition,” said the Texas congressman Lloyd Doggett, one of three Democrats who voted against the bill in the House ways and means committee, in a statement.“There’s nothing fair about private equity companies lining their pockets while shifting the tax burden to American families already dealing with high costs.”‘A complete wasteful giveaway’The Trump tax law established new limitations on how much interest companies could deduct from their tax bills in a single year. That annual cap on interest deductions was tightened further in 2022.Higher interest rates have made debt more expensive, so private equity funds have found themselves having to invest more of their own money, rather than relying as extensively on borrowed money.That shift, in turn, has lowered potential returns, adding to the industry’s sense of urgency to loosen the cap on interest deductions, AFR’s Carter Dougherty said.Not only would the Wyden-Smith deal undo the tighter limit created by the Trump law, but it would do so retroactively, meaning corporations could amend their 2022 and 2023 tax returns to take advantage of the newly generous subsidies.Making these tax cuts retroactive “would be just a complete wasteful giveaway”, Chye-Ching Huang, the executive director of the Tax Law Center at the New York University School of Law, told the Senate finance committee last November. “You can’t change past investments or wages by giving away tax cuts.”Loosening the interest deduction threshold would cost $64bn over the next 10 years if it were made permanent, according to an estimate provided to members of the House ways and means committee by the US Congress’s non-partisan joint committee on taxation.While the Wyden-Smith deal only rolls back the provision through 2025, tax policy experts told the Guardian that corporations and their trade groups would probably work to extend it further.In a statement to the Guardian, a Wyden spokesperson said: “The provision dealing with business interest was a Republican priority in negotiations, and it’s clear that it would become law in a Republican Congress without any matching benefit for working families. With the support of finance committee Democrats, Senator Wyden set a standard for this divided Congress that any tax cuts for corporations must be matched with an investment in children and families that the Joint Committee on Taxation scores as equal, and that’s why the bill includes a child tax credit expansion that helps 16 million children from low-income families get ahead.”Smith’s office did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      Biden calls for compromise while Trump goes full red meat at US-Mexico border

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      It might be seen as the first US presidential debate of 2024. Two candidates and two lecterns but 300 miles – and a political universe – apart.Joe Biden and Donald Trump spent Thursday at the US-Mexico border, a vivid display of how central the immigration issue has become to the election campaign. Since it is far from certain whether official presidential debates will happen this year, the duelling visits might be as close as it gets.And it was as clarifying about the choice facing voters as any verbal clash on the debate stage. Biden came to push legislation and appeal to the head. Trump came to push fear and appeal to the gut. It is sure to be a close-run thing.That they were at the border at all represented a win for Republicans, who have forced Democrats to play on their territory as the debate over immigration in Washington shifts further to the right.Border crossings have been at or close to record highs since Biden took office in January 2021, though they have dropped so far this year, a trend that officials attribute to increased Mexican enforcement and seasonal trends. Democrats have become increasingly eager to embrace restrictions as they are confronted by migrants sleeping in police stations and airplane hangars.Where the presidents went on Thursday, and who went with them, told its own story. Biden headed to the Rio Grande Valley city of Brownsville which, for nine years, was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. He was accompanied by the homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Republicans earlier this month narrowly voted to impeach over his handling of the border.Trump, who has echoed Adolf Hitler by arguing that immigrants entering the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country”, travelled to Eagle Pass in the corridor currently witnessing the highest number of crossings – though they have fallen in recent months.The former president was joined by Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who deployed thousands of national guard troops and laid concertina wire and river buoys to deter illegal immigration through a programme called Operation Lone Star – sparking legal and political standoffs with the White House.It was also Abbott who vowed to “take the border to President Biden” by busing thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities, a move of diabolical genius that nationalised an issue which has, polls show, overtaken inflation as voters’ number one concern.In public remarks, Trump went full red meat, appealing to racist instincts in ways that offered a sobering reminder of the stakes of the election. “This is a Joe Biden invasion,” he said, insisting that “men of a certain age” were coming from countries including China, Iran, Yemen, DR Congo and Syria. “They look like warriors to me.”The former president – who favours travel bans and “ideological screening” for migrants – plucked assertions out of the air: “It could be 15 million, it could be 18 million by the time he gets out of office … A very big population coming in from jails in the Congo … We have languages coming into our country that nobody even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages.”View image in fullscreenTrump went on to describe the alleged crimes of illegal immigrants and claimed that Biden has “the blood of countless innocent victims” on his hands. It is safe to assume that, at this summer’s Republican national convention, a series of gratuitous and lurid stories will be told along with a parade of victims’ families.Biden, who has been on the defensive on the issue in recent months, had a very different objective. He wanted to shame congressional Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan effort to toughen immigration policies after Trump told them not to pass it and give Biden a policy victory.“Join me – or I’ll join you – in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill,” he said, attempting to turn the tables on Trump. “We can do it together. It’s the toughest most efficient, most effective border security bill the country has ever seen. So instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done?”That’ll be the day. But in truth any president would have struggled with this escalating crisis. Congress has been paralysed on the issue for decades. Trump left vital agencies in disarray. Climate change, war and unrest in other nations, along with cartels that see migration as a cash cow, have conjured a perfect storm for Trump’s nativist-populist message to frame the conversation.Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice-president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, says: “It seems most people are hearing about the issue of immigration from Republicans rather than from Democrats. That means you are allowing your opponents to define what your position is and that would be political malpractice for any candidate or elected leader.”Last week a Marquette Law School Poll national survey found 53% of voters say Trump is better on immigration and border security, while only 25% favour Biden on the issue. And for the first time a majority (53%) said they support building a wall along the entire southern border – a promise that Trump has been making since he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015.The dynamic leaves Biden caught between trying to please the right while not alienating the left. Republicans and Maga media are demanding draconian measures and pushing emotional buttons by highlighting cases such as the arrest of Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.Biden duly embraced immigration policies that he ran against as a candidate in 2020 such as restricting asylum laws and promising to “shut down the border” if given new authority. But such measures were condemned by progressives and could put his own coalition at risk in a crucial election year.De Castro adds: “If you go back to the early 2000s, there was similarly a lack of alignment on this issue. It took work to get there, but then, for many years, Democrats were seen as aligned as the party that believed in legal immigration and a path to legality for immigrants here and smart enforcement. In some ways they have lost their voice on this, and they need to recoup that.”If Biden and Trump do share a debate stage later this year, America can only hope for a substantial debate on immigration policy. But the four-year electoral cycle and soundbite age are the enemy of the long-term reform that is sorely needed. This knottiest of political problems goes way beyond America’s borders.Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a group focused on young voters, says: “Any immigration plan actually has to address the root causes. People are coming out of deep economic need and also fleeing very violent situations. Until you address that it doesn’t matter what kind of barriers they try and create physically at the border to make it more difficult. If they want real solutions, they have to address that.” More

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      Trump attacks Biden immigration policies in Texas speech as both visit US-Mexico border – live

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      Donald Trump has begun delivering remarks during his visit to the US-Mexico border. He begins by commending the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on his efforts at the border.Trump moves on to say that the US is being “overrun” by “Biden migrant crime”, which he claims is a “new form of vicious violation” to the country.He accuses Biden of being the most incompetent president the US has ever had, and of transporting “entire columns of fighting-aged men” who “look like warriors” to the US.Trump’s comments are the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seems to be going beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead are going into the territory of outright extremism or racism.Joe Biden is now delivering remarks in Brownsville in South Texas.Biden begins by speaking about the devastating wildfires in the Texas Panhandle that has crossed into Oklahoma. He says he stands with everyone affected by these wildfires. “When disaster strikes, there’s no red state or blue state,” he says.He then moves on to his visit to the US-Mexico border. He says he has been briefed from officials from the border patrol, immigration enforcement and asylum officers, who he says are all doing “incredible work under really tough conditions”. They desperately need more resources, he says.Trump also speaks about the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was out on her morning run at the University of Georgia when authorities say a stranger dragged her into a secluded area and killed her.A Venezuelan man, identified as Jose Antonio Ibarra, has been arrested for the death of Riley. Ibarra is an immigrant who entered the US illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.Trump has blamed Joe Biden and his border policies for the Augusta University student’s fatal beating.Donald Trump has begun delivering remarks during his visit to the US-Mexico border. He begins by commending the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on his efforts at the border.Trump moves on to say that the US is being “overrun” by “Biden migrant crime”, which he claims is a “new form of vicious violation” to the country.He accuses Biden of being the most incompetent president the US has ever had, and of transporting “entire columns of fighting-aged men” who “look like warriors” to the US.Trump’s comments are the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seems to be going beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead are going into the territory of outright extremism or racism.Donald Trump has been meeting with officials from the national guard and the department of public safety as he tours Eagle Pass alongside Texas governor Greg Abbott.The lower house of Alabama’s legislature has passed a law to protect providers of in vitro fertilization care, the Montgomery Advertiser reports, after the state supreme court earlier this month ruled embryos used in the procedure were “children”.The court’s decisions raised the possibility that practices providing the care, which is typically used by people who struggle to have children, could face civil suits or criminal prosecution. The bill, backed by the legislature’s Republican majority, would prevent that by protecting providers from those consequences.Here’s more, from the Advertiser:
      The Alabama state House passed overwhelmingly passed legislation Thursday granting civil and criminal immunity to in vitro fertilization patients and medical professionals.
      The bill passed by a vote of 94-6.
      Filed by Terri Collins, R-Morgan County, HB237 reaffirms Attorney General Steve Marshall’s statement that the state has ‘no intention of using the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision as a basis for prosecuting IVF families or providers.’
      ‘This would at least keep the clinics open and the families moving forward,’ Collins said.
      The state Supreme Court in February ruled that frozen embryos are legally protected as children, a controversial decision that thrust the state into the national spotlight. The ruling has been condemned by both Democrats and Republicans.
      In the wake of the court’s ruling, multiple clinics that offer IVF care in the state halted all appointments indefinitely, including Alabama Fertility and the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System.
      In Brownsville, Joe Biden is meeting with members of the border patrol on what looks to be the banks of the Rio Grande, which forms the border between Texas and Mexico:Joe Biden has arrived in Brownsville, Texas, before his meetings with federal officials and a speech about border security.According to the White House, he’s expected to meet with officers from US customs and border protection, immigration and customs enforcement and other federal agencies. He will deliver remarks at 4.30pm ET, where he will likely press Congress to act on a border security compromise that Republicans are presently blocking.Donald Trump has arrived in Texas, where he’ll be visiting the border with Mexico in the town of Eagle Pass:Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, will probably outline hard-line measures he would take to stop people from entering the country without permission, if elected. Such crossings have surged since Joe Biden took office, for a variety of reasons. Here’s more about that:The House of Representatives has just approved a measure that will push back government funding deadlines and ward off a shutdown that would have begun after Friday:It’s now up to the Senate to approve the bill, and Congress will then shift to considering full-year appropriations bills. Here’s more on that:Donald Trump’s latest ballot headache is in Illinois, where a judge ordered his name removed yesterday on 14th amendment grounds. The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports that he is appealing the ruling:Donald Trump has appealed a decision from an Illinois state judge who decided he should be removed from that state’s ballot because of the 14th amendment, an ongoing issue for Trump in the courts.Tracie Porter, the Cook county circuit judge, made the decision on Wednesday, reversing the previous decision by the Illinois state board of elections, which said Trump could stay on the ballot. The order was put on hold pending an appeal from Trump, which came swiftly on Thursday.The Illinois decision came after the Colorado supreme court ruled similarly, saying Trump couldn’t hold office again because he had participated in an insurrection while an officer of the United States. Another decision in Maine, by the state’s secretary of state, decided to keep Trump off the ballot there as well, though that is now on hold.The Colorado decision went before the US supreme court in February, which has yet to rule on the case, though the justices expressed a load of skepticism of the claims that Trump shouldn’t be allowed to run again.Expect Joe Biden and Donald Trump to outline very different visions for dealing with undocumented migration when they appear on Texas’s border with Mexico today, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:Joe Biden and his all-but-certain Republican challenger, Donald Trump, will make dueling visits to Texas border towns on Thursday, a rare overlap that sets the stage for an election season clash over immigration.In Brownsville, along the Rio Grande, Biden is expected to hammer Republicans for blocking a bipartisan border security deal after Trump expressed his vocal opposition to the measure. Hundreds of miles north-west, Trump will deliver remarks from a state park in Eagle Pass, which has become the epicenter of a showdown between the Biden administration and the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.Hours before the president and former president arrived on the 2,000-mile stretch of border, a federal judge sided with the Biden administration and blocked a new Texas law that would give police power to arrest people suspected of entering the US unlawfully.Trump, who Republicans appear poised to choose as their nominee for a third consecutive time, has once again made immigration a centerpiece of his presidential campaign by describing the United States under Biden as overrun by undocumented immigrants who “poisoning the blood of our country”, rhetoric that echoes white supremacists and Adolf Hitler. While in Texas, the former president is expected to lay out his plans for an immigration crackdown far beyond what he attempted in his first term.Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both will appear on Texas’s border with Mexico later today to discuss their approaches to handling undocumented immigrants. They are visiting border crossings in cities experiencing starkly different situations, and the president is expected to press Republicans to support a bipartisan proposal that would tighten immigration policy in exchange for approving military aid to Ukraine and Israel. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Texas blocked a law that would have allowed police to detain people who enter the state illegally, the latest skirmish in an ongoing fight between the Biden administration and Republicans who control Austin.Here’s what else is going on:
      Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, appeared before a House committee and acknowledged mistakes in how he had handled his hospitalization.
      Biden’s campaign will reach out to backers of a protest-vote effort in Michigan’s Democratic primary aimed at signaling discontent with the president’s support for Israel.
      Brian Fitzpatrick, a centrist House Republican, will try to force the chamber’s leaders to hold a vote on Ukraine aid and border security legislation.
      A federal judge has blocked a law enacted by Texas’s Republican-dominated government that would have allowed state police to arrest people who are suspected of entering from Mexico without authorization, the Associated Press reports.Here’s more:
      The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge David Ezra pauses a law that was set to take effect March 5 and came as President Joe Biden and his likely Republican challenger in November, Donald Trump, were visiting Texas’ southern border to discuss immigration. Texas officials are expected to appeal.
      Opponents have called the Texas measure the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law that opponents rebuked as a “Show Me Your Papers” bill. The U.S. Supreme Court partially struck down the Arizona law, but some Texas Republican leaders, who often refer to the migrant influx as an “invasion,” want that ruling to get a second look.
      Ezra cited the Constitution’s supremacy clause and U.S. Supreme Court decisions as factors that contributed to his ruling. He said the Texas law would conflict with federal immigration law, and the nation’s foreign relations and treaty obligations.
      Allowing Texas to “permanently supersede federal directives” due to a so-called invasion would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority — a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War,” the judge wrote.
      Citing the Supreme Court’s decision on the Arizona law, Ezra wrote that the Texas law was preempted, and he struck down state officials’ claims that large numbers of illegal border crossings constituted an “invasion.”
      The lawsuit is among several legal battles between Texas and Biden’s administration over how far the state can go to try to prevent migrants from crossing the border.
      The measure would allow state law enforcement officers to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. Once in custody, they could agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the country or face a misdemeanor charge for entering the U.S. illegally. Migrants who don’t leave after being ordered to do so could be arrested again and charged with a more serious felony.
      After a write-in campaign in protest of Joe Biden’s support for Israel managed to win about 13% of the vote in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday, a top official on the president’s campaign said this morning that they’d be reaching out to the organizers.But the comments on NPR by Mitch Landrieu, the Biden re-election campaign’s co-chair, did not go over well with one of the groups involved in the effort, which did not prevent the president from winning the swing state’s Democratic primary overwhelmingly.Asked to respond to the “uncommitted” votes, here’s what Landrieu had to say:
      We’re going to continue to talk to them. We’re going to continue to listen to what it is that they have to say. When you’re the commander in chief and when, in fact, you are representing the United States’ interests, there are no issues that are easy. And this is obviously a very painful issue for them and for lots of other folks in the United States of America. We’re going to continue to talk to them and then ask them to think about the choices and what the consequences are about electing somebody who wants to have a Muslim ban, electing somebody who is going to be much, much worse than the difficult circumstances that we have right now. The president is going to reach out, we’re going to continue to listen, and he’s going to continue to work with them as we find an answer to this very difficult problem.
      Here’s what Listen to Michigan, one of the groups supporting the write-in campaign, had to say about that: More

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      US House passes temporary funding bill to avert government shutdown

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      The House has passed a short-term funding bill, narrowly averting a partial government shutdown that would have taken place this weekend.The bill passed with a 320-99 vote on Thursday afternoon. Among Republicans, 113 voted yes and 97 voted no. Meanwhile, 207 Democrats voted yes and 2 voted against it.The two Democrats who voted against the bill were Mike Quigley of Illinois and Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts.The bill’s passage comes after congressional leaders from both parties, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson; the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell; as well as leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees, announced the agreement on Wednesday.“To give the House and Senate appropriations committees adequate time to execute on this deal in principle, including drafting, preparing report language, scoring and other technical matters and to allow members 72 hours to review, a short-term continuing resolution to fund agencies through March 8 and the 22 will be necessary, and voted on by the House and Senate this week,” the statement said.With the House passing the temporary funding bill on Thursday, a congressional vote is now expected next week for six full-year appropriations bills that will extend funding for agencies under the departments of agriculture-FDA, commerce-justice and science, energy and water development, interior, military construction-veterans affairs and transportation-housing and urban development.“These bills will adhere to the Fiscal Responsibility Act discretionary spending limits and January’s topline spending agreement,” congressional leaders said on Wednesday.The remaining six appropriations bills set to be finalized and voted on by 22 March revolve around the departments of defense, financial services and general government, homeland security, labor-health and human services, as well as legislative branch and state and foreign operations.Following Thursday’s vote, Virginia’s Democratic representative Abigail Spanberger said that despite voting alongside colleagues who “understand our fundamental responsibility to keep our government functioning … Speaker Johnson’s leadership has our country yet again one week away from a partial government shutdown and within a month of the whole of the federal government shutting its doors.”“As our country remains on a collision course with a completely preventable potential shutdown, I will continue to press Speaker Johnson to bring bipartisan bills forward that would pass in the US House, pass in the US Senate, and get to the president’s desk,” she added.Before Thursday’s vote, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met with congressional leaders in attempts to help avert a partial government shutdown, which Biden said would “significantly” damage the economy.The bill will now head to the Senate, where the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the chamber could vote as early as Thursday evening.“Once the House acts, I hope the Senate can pass the short-term CR [continuing resolution] as soon as tonight, but that will require all of us working together. There’s certainly no reason this should take a very long time. So, let’s cooperate and get it done quickly,” Schumer said. More

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      House and Senate negotiators reach agreement to prevent shutdown – report

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      With government funding set to partially expire on Friday, House and Senate negotiators have reached an agreement to prevent a shutdown, Politico reported.Funding for some federal departments was previously set to expire after Friday, while the rest faced an 8 March deadline. Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress met with Joe Biden yesterday at the White House, where all sides expressed their desire to avoid a shutdown that the president warned would damage the economy.More details soon … More

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      Mitch McConnell to step down as Republican leader in US Senate

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      Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will step down as Republican leader in the US Senate at the end of this year, a move that will shake up US politics yet more in a tumultuous election cycle.McConnell is 82 and the longest-serving Senate leader in history. He is also a highly divisive figure in a bitterly divided America and the subject of fierce speculation about his health after recent scares in public.Aides said the decision to step aside, which McConnell announced on the Senate floor on Wednesday, was not related to his health.“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”From the White House, Joe Biden, who was a senator alongside McConnell for more than 20 years, said: “I’ve trusted him and we have a great relationship. We fight like hell. But he has never, never, never misrepresented anything. I’m sorry to hear he’s stepping down.”McConnell was concurrently the subject of reporting about when he will endorse Donald Trump for president in his expected rematch with Biden this year.McConnell and Trump have been at odds since 6 January 2021, when Trump incited supporters to attack Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Biden’s win. McConnell voted to acquit the former president in his resulting impeachment trial, reasoning he had already left office, but excoriated him nonetheless. Trump responded with attacks on McConnell and racist invective about his wife, the former transportation secretary Elaine Chao.Nor did Trump leave the scene, as McConnell apparently thought he would. Withstanding 91 criminal charges, assorted civil defeats and attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection, Trump stands on the verge of a third successive nomination.On Wednesday, Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and House impeachment manager, told reporters: “I have a lot of feelings about Mitch McConnell from the second impeachment trial because I felt that he was appalled by what Donald Trump had done, he knew the truth about what Donald Trump had done, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to vote to convict along with seven other Republican colleagues who joined the Democrats.”“I understand [McConnell has] been in a tough situation with Donald Trump taking over his party and I think he’s tried to do what he can but he didn’t show the ultimate courage, which would have been to vote to convict him, to find enough other senators so that we wouldn’t be back in this nightmare again with Donald Trump.”Amid gathering warnings of the threat Trump poses to American democracy, all bar one of McConnell’s leadership team have endorsed Trump regardless. The holdout, Joni Ernst of Iowa, has indicated that she could still do so.“Believe me,” McConnell said in the Senate chamber, “I know the politics within my party at this particular moment in time. I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them. That said, I believe more strongly than ever that America’s global leadership is essential to preserving the shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan discussed. As long as I am drawing breath on this earth, I will defend American exceptionalism.”McConnell entered the Senate in 1985, when Reagan was in the White House.“When I got here,” McConnell said, “I was just happy if anybody remembered my name. President Reagan called me Mitch O’Donnell. Close enough, I thought.”McConnell was elected to lead Senate Republicans in 2006. He was majority leader from 2015 to 2021, a momentous term in which he not only coped with Trump but secured three supreme court justices, tilting the court decisively right.He did so by upending Senate rules. First, McConnell refused even a hearing for Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the conservative Antonin Scalia, saying the switch would come too close to an election and voters should indicate the sort of justice they wanted. After Trump won the White House, McConnell filled the seat with the Catholic, corporately aligned Neil Gorsuch.McConnell next oversaw the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, an anti-Clinton operative and aide to George W Bush, to replace Anthony Kennedy. A staunch conservative replaced a frequent swing vote, even after a tempestuous confirmation.McConnell was memorably reported to have said he stood “stronger than mule piss” behind Kavanaugh, despite the claim by Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor, that the nominee sexually assaulted her at a high-school party, an allegation Kavanaugh denied.Finally, at the very end of Trump’s term, McConnell abandoned the argument he used to block Garland and rammed the hardline Catholic Amy Coney Barrett on to the court in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a hero to progressives.On Wednesday, Adam Parkhomenko, a Democratic strategist, told followers they should “never forget” what McConnell “did to the supreme court and this country”.Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said McConnell would “enjoy a tremendous legacy”, not only through his supreme court work, which led to epochal decisions including Dobbs v Jackson, which removed the federal right to abortion, and rulings on gun control and affirmative action every bit as divisive.“McConnell also contributed substantially to Trump’s nomination and confirmation of 54 ideologically conservative appeals court judges and the filling of all 179 appeals court judgeships at one point in Trump’s tenure,” Tobias said. “The last time that the courts had all of the active judges was in the mid-1980s.”McConnell said he still had “enough gas in my tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics. And I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they have become accustomed.”His desire to win back the majority – in a chamber skewed in Republicans’ favour – will fuel his final months as leader. A new leader will be elected in November to take over in January, he said.Leading contenders to succeed McConnell – and to attempt to match his ruthless politicking and powerful fundraising – include his No 2, John Thune of South Dakota, and two more leadership figures, John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming. Last November, McConnell defeated a challenge from Rick Scott of Florida.Among Republican tributes, Thune said simply: “He leaves really big shoes to fill.”Among Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, said he and McConnell “rarely saw eye to eye … but I am very proud that we both came together in the last few years to lead the Senate forward at critical moments when our country needed us, like passing the Cares Act in the early days of the Covid pandemic, finishing our work to certify the election on January 6, and more recently working together to fund the fight for Ukraine”.Americans, it seems sure, will remember Addison Mitchell McConnell III in very different ways.The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group founded by former Republican operatives, said McConnell would “go down in history as a spineless follower who cowered to a wannabe dictator clown. He chose the power of a tyrant over protecting democracy.” More

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      in US Politics

      McConnell upbeat on avoiding government shutdown after White House talks – as it happened

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      In remarks at the Capitol, the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell signaled he was ready to work with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.While he noted that the government would probably get close to hitting its shutdown deadline, he expected lawmakers would be able to find an agreement on keeping the government open beyond Friday:Joe Biden met with Congress’s leaders in the Oval Office to find a way to avoid a government shutdown that is set to start on Saturday and would “damage the economy significantly”, in the president’s words. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the negotiations were “making good progress”, and noted that the group pressed Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, leading to “intense” discussions. Johnson was noncommittal after the meeting on if or when he’d do that.Here’s what else happened today:
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized Johnson’s demands for tougher border security, saying, “I don’t even think he knows what he wants.”
      Senate Democrats will tomorrow try to pass a bill to protect IVF care, following the Alabama supreme court’s ruling against the procedure.
      Rightwing House Republicans accused Johnson and his deputies of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” the Democrats over government spending.
      Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has pulled a “fetal personhood” bill after the Alabama ruling on IVF.
      Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, said she was voting “uncommitted” in her state’s primary tonight in protest of Biden’s policy towards Israel.
      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson has long pressed the Biden administration to take actions to crack down on undocumented migrants crossing the southern border. Yet he also helped kill a bipartisan compromise that would have tightened border security while also approving aid to Ukraine and Israel.Nonetheless, Johnson reiterated his demand that Biden get tougher on immigration today after meeting at the White House with the president. At her press briefing later in the day, Biden’s spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre was asked what exactly Johnson wants.“I appreciate the question. I don’t even think he knows what he wants,” Jean-Pierre replied.The press secretary continued:
      You had a bipartisan group of senators coming out of the Senate, working for four months with the White House to put forward a bipartisan piece of legislation that dealt with a … important challenge that we see at the border in immigration. And then so we did that, we’ve moved that forward, we presented it. And we were told no no, we don’t want the border security, we want just the national security supplemental without border security.
      Then, the Senate goes back and they pass the national security supplemental without border security, 70-29 … and the speaker refuses to put that to the floor. So what is it that he really wants here? If you look at the border security deal, that proposal, it has components of what the speaker has been talking about for years. So the question is really for him.
      The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell also told reporters he supports holding a trial for Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who House Republicans impeached earlier this month.Convicting Mayorkas requires approval by a two-thirds majority of senators, which is probably impossible, since Democrats, who have a majority, have rejected the charges against him. They also have not said if they will even bother holding a trial of Mayorkas, or find a way to dismiss the charges without considering them.McConnell was asked for his thoughts on the matter, and here’s what he had to say:In remarks at the Capitol, the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell signaled he was ready to work with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.While he noted that the government would probably get close to hitting its shutdown deadline, he expected lawmakers would be able to find an agreement on keeping the government open beyond Friday:Americans consider immigration to be the most important issue facing the US, according to a new Gallup poll.The survey found that 28% of respondents cited immigration as the top issue facing the country, up from 20% who said the same a month ago.It marks the first time immigration has been the most cited problem since 2019, and come as Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set to make separate visits to the US-Mexico border on Thursday.A separate question in the survey found that a record-high 55% of respondents said that “large numbers of immigrants entering the United States illegally” is a critical threat to US vital interests, up eight points from last year.Here’s a clip of Republican House speaker Mike Johnson speaking to reporters after meeting with Joe Biden and top congressional leaders at the White House.Johnson called the talks “frank and honest” and said his primary concern is addressing migration along the US-Mexico border.A top Republican in Virginia has apologized for misgendering a state senate Democrat in a row that caused legislative activity in the chamber to be temporarily suspended.“We are all equal under the law. And so I apologize, I apologize, I apologize, and I would hope that everyone would understand there is no intent to offend but that we would also give each other the ability to forgive each other,” the lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, said in an address to the state senate on Monday.It all started when Danica Roem, 39, a state senator from Prince William county and the US’s first openly transgender person to serve in any state legislature, had asked Earle-Sears, 59, how many votes were needed to pass a bill on prescription drug prices with an emergency clause.“Madame President, how many votes would it take to pass this bill with the emergency clause?” Roem asked Earle-Sears, who was presiding over a legislative session at the time.Earle-Sears responded: “Yes, sir, that would be 32.”Roem walked out of the room after being misgendered. Earle-Sears initially refused to apologize for the mistake but finally did so after two separate recesses.Congressman Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democrat of Michigan, said she was “proud” to cast a ballot for “uncommitted” in her state’s Democratic primary today.Progressive Democrats in Michigan have urged supporters to vote “uncommitted” as a means of protesting against the war in Gaza, calling on Joe Biden to do more to bring about a ceasefire.“We must protect our democracy. We must make sure that our government is about us, about the people,” Tlaib said in a video shared to social media.Tlaib noted that a recent poll showed 74% of self-identified Democrats in Michigan support a ceasefire in Gaza, and she accused Biden of “not hearing us”.“This is the way we can use our democracy to say: listen. Listen to Michigan. Listen to the families right now that have been directly impacted, but also listen to the majority of Americans who are saying enough. No more wars, no more using our dollars to fund a genocide. No more,” Tlaib said.“So please, take your family members. Use our democratic process to speak up about your core values [and] where you want to see our country go.”Joe Biden met with Congress’s leaders in the Oval Office to find a way to avoid a government shutdown that is set to start on Saturday and would “damage the economy significantly”, in the president’s words. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the negotiations were “making good progress”, and noted that the group pressed Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, leading to “intense” discussions. Johnson was reportedly noncommittal after the meeting on whether he’d do that.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Senate Democrats will tomorrow try to pass a bill to protect IVF care, following the Alabama supreme court’s ruling against the procedure.
      Rightwing House Republicans accused Johnson and his deputies of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” the Democrats over government spending.
      Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has pulled a “fetal personhood” bill after the Alabama ruling on IVF care.
      CNN reports that Republican House speaker Mike Johnson gave a similar recounting of his meeting with Joe Biden, Congress’s top Democrats and the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell.The biggest question, which Johnson still has not answered, is if and when he will allow a vote on new aid for Ukraine, and what House Republicans might want in return. Here’s more, from CNN:The congressional leaders who met with Joe Biden at the White House made “good progress” on avoiding a government shutdown, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said after the meeting.The group, which also included Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, also pressed the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to support further aid to Ukraine, a discussion Schumer noted was particularly “intense”.“We’re making good progress and we’re hopeful we can get this done quickly,” Schumer said, adding that Johnson “said unequivocally he wants to avoid a government shutdown”.McConnell along with Biden and Congress’s top Democrats are all supporters of aid to Ukraine, but Johnson has waffled, even turning down a package of hardline immigration policy changes Democrats had agreed to in order to win Republican support for Kyiv.“The meeting on Ukraine was one of the most intense I’ve ever encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office,” Schumer said. “We said to the speaker, ‘get it done.’”While the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is at the White House to negotiate with Joe Biden, a member of his party is trying to get Joe Biden declared too old to serve, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:A Colorado Republican introduced a congressional resolution calling for Kamala Harris to invoke the 25th amendment to the US constitution and remove Joe Biden because he is too old.The resolution from the US House member Ken Buck has little chance of success.John Dean, who was White House counsel under Richard Nixon, the president who resigned under pressure from his own party, said: “Just when you think there may be a few normal Republicans, you discover they are all crazy.“This man [Buck] is leaving public office. He is the person with the cognitive problem not Joe Biden.”Section four of the 25th amendment provides for the replacement, by the vice-president, of a president deemed incapable. It has never been used. Calls for its use intensified in 2021, after the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, which Donald Trump incited in an attempt to stay in the Oval Office. More