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    The US debt-ceiling ‘deal’ was a giant exercise in bipartisan class warfare | Clara Mattei

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    The headlines around the debt-ceiling legislation focused on the ability of the US to meet its financial obligations on time and in full through 2024. This was no small accomplishment, especially as it arrived within a forever-fractured political environment and only 18 months from a presidential election.But the actual terms of the debt-ceiling legislation reveal a political consensus that is at once troubling and longstanding. While topline US spending will increase this year and next, its increase is reserved almost exclusively for defense and for veterans’ medical care. Other programs, including social welfare and enforcement of the tax code by the IRS, will have their budgets cut. Americans seeking food-stamp benefits will also face increased work requirements – a curiously unrelated throw-in policy that reflects a longstanding wish of Republicans and some Democrats.Here, the bipartisan consensus is clear: federal overspending is fine when it supports military ventures; it is a problem when it supports social welfare. In navigating the debt-ceiling legislation and the price inflation that has persisted over the last year, US policymakers have consistently drawn on the failed economic doctrine of austerity – popularized in the 20th century and still prominent today – to intervene in a dysfunctional economy. In using these economic instruments, which are known to fail, they reveal their political ends.At its core, austerity is a suite of economic policies that aims to reduce aggregate demand among the largest population in any society – the working class. Rising interest rates and reduced social benefits, especially in an inflationary economy, require working classes to do more with less. This means working more hours for less money. And who benefits from that environment? A society’s upper crust – the capital class.The recent debt-ceiling agreement, like the Federal Reserve’s continued increases in interest rates, has been presented under the false pretense that curbing expenditures is a necessary intervention for an economy living beyond its means. This narrative is plainly false. In a capitalist economy like ours, it’s never the size of the debt that matters. What matters is how that debt can be wielded to convince Americans to accept economic decisions as somehow unavoidable – painful concessions that are the result of rational deliberations from economic experts.The same excusing of economic pain is used to justify military spending at the cost of social spending. Many have argued, convincingly, that the military-industrial complex is to blame for this double standard, with defense spending doubling as a means of economic upward redistribution toward those with influence and power. But even for those who would be critical of that narrative, the question remains: where is the federal debate around unlimited defense spending? Where are the economic hawks lamenting the undisciplined excess of military adventure?This lack of economic self-reflection illustrates the power of another false principle guiding the American economy, including its tendency toward austerity: it’s not whether the state spends but rather where the state spends. Under austerity capitalism, it is acceptable to use public resources to enrich the very few who profit from real wealth (in the form of dividends and interests), while widespread structural dispossession explicitly serves to “discipline” working people. In other words: economic policy is used as the most important economic lever to perpetuate class warfare.This principle is readily and concretely evident in the recent debt-ceiling legislation. Of the $15tn in excess US debt, more than half ($8tn) is due to war expenditure.Against any imperative of cutting expenditures, the latest debt agreement conspicuously exonerates military spending from any cuts. Meanwhile, US spending on the war in Ukraine is predicted to go up in the coming years, reaching $895bn in 2025. These are unprecedented numbers, a shocking 40% of global military expenditure.And while state spending boosts the profits of big shareholders in the military-industrial complex, and props up stakeholders in the Mountain Valley pipeline despite protests from climate activists in Appalachia, the same policy defunds the Internal Revenue Service, the agency charged with investigating tax evasion. As even the lightest examination makes clear, the US impulse to spend on its military serves the same interests as its refusal to enforce its tax code.Defenders of the Biden administration’s debt-ceiling bill argue, plausibly, that the legislation could have been worse for working people if the priorities of the most conservative Republicans were met. But the specifics of this worst-case scenario offer little cover for what we got instead: a concretization of austerity policies and a whole new set of levers for one-sided class warfare.
    Clara E Mattei is an assistant professor of economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City and the author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism 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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      Joe Biden hails ‘big win’ as bipartisan debt ceiling bill reaches his desk

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      The bipartisan bill to solve the US debt ceiling crisis just days before a catastrophic and unprecedented default was on its way to Joe Biden’s desk on Friday as the US president prepared to address the nation and hailed “a big win for our economy and the American people”.The compromise package negotiated between Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, passed the US Senate late on Thursday.Biden acknowledged that it leaves neither Republicans nor Democrats fully pleased with the outcome. But the result, after weeks of torturous negotiations, shelves the volatile debt ceiling issue until 2025, after the next presidential election.“No one gets everything they want in a negotiation, but make no mistake: this bipartisan agreement is a big win for our economy and the American people,” Biden tweeted after the Senate voted 63 to 36 to pass the deal agreed between Biden and McCarthy last weekend, which passed the House on Wednesday.The final Senate vote capped off a long day that ground into night, as lawmakers spent hours considering amendments to the legislation. All 11 of the proposed amendments failed to gain enough support to be added to the underlying bill.Several of the amendments were introduced by Senate Republicans who expressed concern that the debt ceiling bill passed by the House did too little to rein in government spending.“Tonight’s vote is a good outcome because Democrats did a very good job taking the worst parts of the Republican plan off the table,” the Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said after the vote.As part of the negotiations over the bill, McCarthy successfully pushed for modest government spending cuts and changes to the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs. Those changes were deemed insufficient by 31 Republican senators, who echoed the criticism voiced by the 71 House Republicans who opposed the bill a day earlier.The Senate minority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, supported the bill, even as he acknowledged that lawmakers must take further action to tackle the federal government’s debt of more than $31tn.Senate Democrats lobbied against certain provisions in the bill, namely the expedited approval of the controversial Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, introduced an amendment to remove the pipeline provision from the underlying debt ceiling bill, but that measure failed alongside the 10 other proposed amendments.Refusing a once-routine vote to allow a the nation’s debt limit to be lifted without concessions, McCarthy brought Biden’s White House to the negotiating table to strike an agreement that forces spending cuts aimed at curbing the nation’s deficits.“The fact remains that the House majority never should have put us at risk of a disastrous, self-inflicted default in the first place,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat. “We should prevent the debt ceiling from being used as a political hostage and stop allowing our country to be taken up to the edge of default.” More

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      Kevin McCarthy’s victory lap over the debt ceiling bill could end early

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      Kevin McCarthy was all smiles on Wednesday night after the House passed the debt ceiling bill, crafted by the Republican speaker and Joe Biden, in a resounding, bipartisan vote of 314 to 117.“I’ve been thinking about this day before my vote for speaker because I knew the debt ceiling was coming,” McCarthy told reporters. “I wanted to make history. I wanted to do something no other Congress has done, that we would literally turn the ship and for the first time in quite some time, we’d spend less than we spent the year before. Tonight, we all made history.”But the details of the debt ceiling vote reveal a more nuanced picture of the dynamics in the Republican-controlled House, and they suggest McCarthy’s victory lap may soon be cut short.The debt ceiling bill, which will suspend America’s borrowing limit until 2025 and enact modest cuts to government spending, was supported by 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats in the House. Although roughly two-thirds of House Republicans voted for the bill, 71 members of McCarthy’s own conference opposed the legislation due to complaints that it did not go far enough to rein in government spending.Speaking to reporters after the final vote, McCarthy brushed off questions about why the bill he helped craft proved more popular among House Democrats than his Republican colleagues. Instead, McCarthy focused attention on his successful effort to defy Democrats’ wishes for a “clean” debt ceiling bill with no strings attached. Biden spent months insisting he would not negotiate over the debt ceiling, but the White House was ultimately dragged into talks with Republicans, McCarthy reminded reporters.“We were never going to get everybody, but we have spent four months bringing everybody together. And whether you voted for or voted against it, you wanted something more,” McCarthy said. “But history will write this is the largest [spending] cut in American history.”Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus did not view the bill the same way. Many of them argued the deal struck by McCarthy and Biden bore little resemblance to the legislation originally passed by House Republicans last month, which would have enacted much deeper spending cuts and stricter work requirements while only raising the debt ceiling into 2024.Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, chair of the Freedom Caucus, attacked McCarthy for failing to “hold the line for the bill that we passed” in his negotiations with Biden.“The speaker himself has said on numerous occasions, the greatest threat to America is our debt, and now is the time to act. We had the time to act, and this deal fails – fails completely,” Perry said on Tuesday. “We will do everything in our power to stop it and end it now.”Those efforts fell short. After Freedom Caucus members failed to quash the bill when it came before the House rules committee on Tuesday, McCarthy’s Republican critics staged one final attempt to prevent the legislation’s passage. Twenty-nine House Republicans opposed the procedural motion to set up the final vote on the debt ceiling bill, and that resistance would have been enough to kill the legislation if Democrats had not come to McCarthy’s assistance. In the end, 52 Democrats supported the procedural motion, clearing the way for the bill’s ultimate passage.But McCarthy’s failure to advance the bill along party lines did not go unnoticed by Democrats.“It appears that you may have lost control of the floor of the House of Representatives,” said the New York representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, on the floor on Wednesday night. “Earlier today, 29 House Republicans voted to default on our nation’s debt and against an agreement that you negotiated. It’s an extraordinary act that indicates just the nature of the extremism that is out of control on the other side of the aisle.”The bold act of defiance from dozens of McCarthy’s fellow Republicans raised questions about his future in the speaker’s chair. Because of Republicans’ narrow majority in the House, McCarthy had to endure 15 rounds of voting before he secured the speakership back in January. To win over the skeptics within his conference, McCarthy offered a number of concessions to allay their concerns about his leadership.One of those concessions could now come back to haunt him. According to the House rules approved after McCarthy’s victory, any single member of the chamber can introduce a “motion to vacate”, which would force a vote on ousting the sitting speaker.Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, one of the Freedom Caucus members who opposed the debt ceiling bill, said on Wednesday that McCarthy “should be concerned” about a potential motion to vacate.“After this vote, we will have discussions about whether there should be a motion to vacate or not,” Buck told CNN.But even Buck acknowledged that he and his allies may not have the votes to remove McCarthy, and the speaker has said he is “not at all” concerned about losing his gavel. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was one of eight Freedom Caucus members to support the debt ceiling bill, dismissed suggestions of ousting McCarthy as “absolutely absurd”.“I think they would find out that it’s not as popular as they think, just because it looks good on Twitter right now,” Greene told reporters on Wednesday night. “It would be a really dumb move.”Even if McCarthy’s critics could somehow muster the votes to oust him, it remains entirely unclear who could earn enough support in the House Republican conference to replace him. So McCarthy’s speakership appears to be safe – for now. More

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      Who won the debt ceiling negotiations? – podcast

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      On Wednesday night the House debated legislation to increase the US debt limit until January 2025, before passing the bill by a vote of 314 to 117, in a rare showing of bipartisan action.
      It then narrowly passed the Senate late on Thursday night, heading straight to Biden’s desk to sign just days before the 5 June deadline. This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the congressional reporter for the Washington Post, Marianna Sotomayor. They discuss whether Biden and McCarthy are right to see this as a win, or have they failed by simply giving into the demands of the other side

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      US debt ceiling deal narrowly passes senate averting catastrophic federal default

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      The Senate narrowly passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling on Thursday night, sending the legislation to Joe Biden’s desk and averting a federal default that could have wreaked havoc on the US economy and global markets.The final vote was 63 to 36, with 46 Democrats and 17 Republicans supporting the bill while five Democrats and 31 Republicans opposed the legislation. Sixty votes were needed to pass the bill.“Tonight’s vote is a good outcome because Democrats did a very good job taking the worst parts of the Republican plan off the table,” the Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said after the vote. “And that’s why Dems voted overwhelmingly for this bill, while Republicans certainly in the Senate did not.”Biden applauded the Senate’s accomplishment and promised to sign the bill as soon as it reaches his desk, with just days to go before the 5 June default deadline.“Tonight, senators from both parties voted to protect the hard-earned economic progress we have made and prevent a first-ever default by the United States,” Biden said in a statement. “Our work is far from finished, but this agreement is a critical step forward, and a reminder of what’s possible when we act in the best interests of our country.”The Senate vote came one day after the House passed the debt ceiling bill in a resounding, bipartisan vote of 314 to 117. The bill – which was negotiated between Biden and the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California – will suspend the government’s borrowing limit until January 2025, ensuring the issue will not resurface before the next presidential election.The final Senate vote on the bill capped off a long day in the upper chamber, where lawmakers spent hours considering amendments to the legislation. All 11 of the proposed amendments failed to gain enough support to be added to the underlying bill.Several of the amendments were introduced by Senate Republicans who expressed concern that the debt ceiling bill passed by the House did too little to rein in government spending.As part of the negotiations over the bill, McCarthy successfully pushed for modest government spending cuts and changes to the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs. Those changes were deemed insufficient by 31 Republican senators, who echoed the criticism voiced by the 71 House Republicans who opposed the bill a day earlier.“It doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t do the basic things that it purports to do,” Senator Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah, told Fox News on Thursday morning. “In case after case, the cuts that it proposes won’t materialize.”The Senate minority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, supported the bill, even as he acknowledged that lawmakers must take further action to tackle the federal government’s debt of more than $31tn.“The Fiscal Responsibility Act avoids the catastrophic consequences of a default on our nation’s debt,” McConnell said on the floor on Thursday morning. “The deal the House passed last night is a promising step toward fiscal sanity. But make no mistake: there is much more work to be done. The fight to reel in wasteful government spending is far from over.”As some of their colleagues lamented the state of America’s debt, defense hawks in the Senate Republican conference warned that the legislation does not sufficiently fund the Pentagon, leaving the US military vulnerable in the face of foreign threats.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchumer and McConnell attempted to allay those concerns by entering a statement into the record reaffirming that America stands ready to “respond to ongoing and growing national security threats”.“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries,” the joint statement read. “The Senate is not about to ignore our national needs, nor abandon our friends and allies who face urgent threats from America’s most dangerous adversaries.”The Senate leaders released a second statement aimed at reassuring colleagues who expressed alarm over a provision stipulating that an across-the-board spending cut will be enacted if Congress does not pass all 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024. The measure was designed to incentivize Congress members to pass a full budget, which has proven to be a difficult task in recent years, but lawmakers fear the policy will lead to more spending cuts.“We share the concern of many of our colleagues about the potential impact of sequestration and we will work in a bipartisan, collaborative way to avoid this outcome,” Schumer and McConnell said. “The leaders look forward to bills being reported out of committee with strong bipartisan support.”Senate Democrats also lobbied against certain provisions in the bill, namely the expedited approval of the controversial Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, introduced an amendment to remove the pipeline provision from the underlying debt ceiling bill, but that measure failed alongside the 10 other proposed amendments.Despite their personal concerns about the details of the bill, most Senate Democrats, including Kaine, supported the legislation to get it to Biden’s desk and avoid a devastating default that economists warned could result in millions of lost jobs. With the immediate crisis averted, Democrats reiterated their demands to eliminate the debt ceiling and remove any future threat of default.“The fact remains that the House majority never should have put us at risk of a disastrous, self-inflicted default in the first place,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat. “We should prevent the debt ceiling from being used as a political hostage and stop allowing our country to be taken up to the edge of default.” More

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      Biden falls on stage at Air Force Academy ceremony; Senate blocks student relief program – live

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      From 2h agoJoe Biden took a heavy fall on stage on Thursday afternoon at the conclusion of a lengthy ceremony honoring graduating air force recruits in Colorado.The president gave the commencement address at the event, which lasted around five hours. Biden, 80, tripped and fell to the ground as he turned to his left to shake an officer’s hand following his speech.He remained down for several seconds before an air force officer and two Secret Service agents helped him back to his feet. He walked back to his seat unaided after pointing to an item on the stage.White House communications director Ben LaBolt said on Twitter that Biden was unhurt. “He’s fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” he said.Republicans in particular have made an issue of Biden’s age as he seeks re-election next year. He would be 86 at the conclusion of a second term.In April, the White House was reportedly working on a plan to boost support for Vice-President Kamala Harris in the face of the mounting criticism.Biden is no stranger to mishaps. Last year he fell off his bike during a ride in Delaware after catching his foot on a pedal.An Oklahoma Republican senator said “I don’t want reality” in a recent hearing on race and education.Martin Pengelly reports:Questioning a witness about childcare and the teaching of race, the Oklahoma Republican senator Markwayne Mullin said: “I don’t want reality.”The remark prompted laughter in the hearing room.Mullin said he “misspoke” and returned to hectoring his witness about whether a book meant to teach children about racism was appropriate for early learning classes.Mullin is an election denier, former cage fighter and plumbing company owner who sat in the US House before being elected to the Senate last year.His confrontational style has caused comment before. In March, for example, he told a Teamsters leader to “shut your mouth” during a fiery exchange.Mullin’s remark about reality and its uses came on Wednesday in a hearing held by the Senate health, education, labour and pensions committee.For more, click here:Donald Trump has responded to President Joe Biden’s fall at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, saying, “I hope he wasn’t hurt,” before adding, “That’s too bad.”Speaking to reporters, Trump said, “Well, I hope he wasn’t hurt. The whole thing is … crazy. You gotta be careful about that … because you don’t want that even if you have to tiptoe down a ramp,” as the crowd responded with applause.Trump went on to recall an incident during his presidency in which he was captured tiptoeing down a ramp next to a general after he gave an address at West Point, New York, in June 2020.Trump’s slow walk at the time prompted widespread concern online over his fitness as president.Recalling the incident, Trump said:
      “That was the best speech I think I ever made and it was pouring rain … and horrible and cold and windy. And they had a ramp that was pure as an ice skating rink and it was like 25 feet long …
      I have nice leather [shoes] … and I said, ‘You know what, general? Get ready, if I grab you, you just get ready ’cause I got this stupid ramp that somebody put up and there’s no stairs, right?’ … So I tiptoe down and I suffered for that. They never covered my speech but the smart people understood that … ”
      He went on to add: “That’s a bad place to fall … That’s not inspiring.”
      Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that he has “conversations with dead people” every day.Speaking to the Free Press in response to a question about how he thought his late father and former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy, as well as his uncle and the 35th US president, John F Kennedy, would address the country’s issues today, Kennedy replied:“I do meditations every day,” Kennedy said. “That’s kind of the nature of my meditations. I have a lot of conversations with dead people.”He went on to add in a text message, “They are one-way prayers for strength and wisdom. I get no strategic advice from the dead,” the outlet reported.Kennedy is currently in the presidential race against President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination and is a prominent conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic.For more details, click here:A Pride flag was put up over the Wisconsin capitol building on Thursday as part of the state’s show of effort to support LGBTQ+ rights across the country.During a noon ceremony in front of dozens of spectators, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, instructed the flag to be raised and will fly above the state capitol throughout the entirety of June to mark Pride month. The flag flies below the US flag and the Wisconsin state flag.Speaking to spectators, Evers said that he was “jazzed as hell” to be at the ceremony, adding, “You belong here. You are welcome here … It’s a signal that I will always stand with LGBTQ Wisconsinites, including our trans and gender non-conforming kids, and will fight to protect them with every tool and every power that I have,” the Associated Press reports.The flag-raising ceremony comes as LGBTQ+ rights have come under increasing attack from rightwing lawmakers across the country.Joe Biden is on his way back to Washington DC after taking a tumble at the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado, this afternoon.The Associated Press released a photograph of the 80-year-old president climbing the steps to board Air Force One on Thursday afternoon, Biden holding the handrail as he ascends.Aides said Biden was unhurt in the fall.Read more:Another supporter of Donald Trump who took part in the deadly January 6 riot in Washington DC has been sentenced to a lengthy prison term.Roberto Minuta, described by prosecutors as one of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes’ “most trusted men”, received a four-year term for seditious conspiracy from US district court judge Amit Mehta.Minuta, of Prosper, Texas, was not initially at the Capitol because he was part of a “security detail” for Trump ally Roger Stone, who was attending Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally nearby. But prosecutors said he sped to the scene of the riot in a golf cart once he learned of the breach of the Capitol building.Once inside, he joined a crowd pushing against police and screamed, “This was bound to happen,” CNN reported.Exactly one week ago, Mehta sentenced Rhodes to 18 years in prison, also for seditious conspiracy. It was the longest sentence handed down to date to a January 6 riot participant.“The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government,” Mehta told the far-right group’s leader.Joe Biden took a heavy fall on stage on Thursday afternoon at the conclusion of a lengthy ceremony honoring graduating air force recruits in Colorado.The president gave the commencement address at the event, which lasted around five hours. Biden, 80, tripped and fell to the ground as he turned to his left to shake an officer’s hand following his speech.He remained down for several seconds before an air force officer and two Secret Service agents helped him back to his feet. He walked back to his seat unaided after pointing to an item on the stage.White House communications director Ben LaBolt said on Twitter that Biden was unhurt. “He’s fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” he said.Republicans in particular have made an issue of Biden’s age as he seeks re-election next year. He would be 86 at the conclusion of a second term.In April, the White House was reportedly working on a plan to boost support for Vice-President Kamala Harris in the face of the mounting criticism.Biden is no stranger to mishaps. Last year he fell off his bike during a ride in Delaware after catching his foot on a pedal.Punchbowl has details of a Senate deal it says “came together relatively quickly Thursday” to try to get the debt ceiling bill passed in the chamber tonight.A group of Republican “defense hawks”, it says, demanded a public commitment from Senate leadership to take up a spending bill later this year focused on Ukraine and other priorities, including Israel and China.They also reportedly secured a deal with Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer to bring up about a dozen appropriations bills they wanted heard before the end of the year.It remains to be seen if a final vote will happen tonight. Schumer is hopeful it will, saying the chamber will “stay in session until we send the bill avoiding default to President Biden’s desk. We will keep working until the job is done.”Senators have voted to block one of Joe Biden’s flagship policy promises, progressing a bill that would repeal his student debt relief program and end the administration’s pause on federal student loan payments.The vote was 52-46 to advance the legislation, NBC reported, with Democrats Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Jon Tester (Montana), plus Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema, breaking ranks and joining Republicans.The bill, however, will not become law because Biden said in a statement last month that he would veto it.“This resolution is an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief,” Biden said.“[The bill] would weaken America’s middle class. Americans should be able to have a little more breathing room as they recover from the economic strains associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.”Seeking to repeal Biden’s program to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for certain borrowers, the bill passed the House last week 218-203.Its overall fate rests with the supreme court, which is currently weighing the legality of the program Republicans say is an unfair and unnecessary welfare handout.Documents were uncovered last month showing that Republican states fighting the loan forgiveness plan made false claims they would “suffer injuries” or be financially affected, a debt forgiveness campaign group claimed.Read more:Mark Kelly, Democratic senator for Arizona, says he’s a yes on the debt ceiling bill.“It’s ridiculous that, once again, DC has come to the brink of wrecking our economy,” Kelly, a former Nasa astronaut, said in a tweet.Two Republican senators have told CNN that the chamber is looking to wrap up a final vote on raising the debt ceiling tonight, clearing the way for the bill to hit Joe Biden’s desk over the weekend and in plenty of time to avoid a national default.The network reports that Florida’s Rick Scott and Utah’s Mitt Romney both say that’s the goal. Voting on any amendments and a vote on final passage need to be accomplished by the end of the day for that to happen.Additionally, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and Senate majority leader, has said the chamber will remain in session until there’s an outcome.CNN says, however, there’s lingering dissent from certain members.Montana Democrat Jon Tester told the network:
      The debt needs to be addressed, [but] this is the wrong way to address the debt. Just the wrong way. It empowers the folks on the far right and, quite frankly, I don’t think they have the best interest of the country in mind. And I haven’t talked to anybody that’s enamored with this deal.
      A minimum of 60 senators are needed to avoid a filibuster on the bill, which would delay its passage beyond the deadline for the US to avoid defaulting on its payment obligations.Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri have said they will oppose, or are thinking about opposing, the bill, but Schumer and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell are hopeful they have the numbers between them to get the bill past the finishing post tonight or tomorrow.The White House has slammed congressional Republicans for demanding that the FBI hand over a document related to Joe Biden, a spokesperson deriding what he called “a silly stunt”.Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, and the Kentucky congressman James Comer demanded the document last month, saying it concerned an unspecified “alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden when he was vice-president to Barack Obama.The FBI did not comply. After threats of congressional action, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, reportedly offered to let the Republicans see the document.According to CNN, the document is connected to work done by Rudy Giuliani for then president Donald Trump in 2020.Trump’s first impeachment arose from the former New York mayor’s attempts to find dirt on Biden in Ukraine.As CNN pointed out, in 2020 Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, told reporters: “We can’t take anything we received from Ukraine at face value.”In comments to Fox News earlier today, Grassley said: “It’s a non-classified document, [Wray] admits it exists.“We aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice-President Biden are accurate or not. We’re responsible for making sure the FBI does its job and that’s what we want to know.”Asked if he’d read the document, Grassley, 89, said he had but would not “characterise it” on air.A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, tweeted video of Grassley’s remarks and said: “Wow. Chuck Grassley admits the truth of his and James Comer’s silly FBI form stunt.”Comer is chair of the House oversight committee, one of the Republican-led panels seeking to dig up dirt on the president, his son Hunter Biden and other Democratic targets.In a statement, Sams added: “By congressional Republicans’ own admission, this clearly is not an exercise to get to the truth or uncover facts.“Instead, they are simply staging sad political stunts to push thin innuendo and spread insinuations to attack the president and get themselves booked on Fox News.”Joe Biden has just wrapped up a lengthy commencement address to graduating cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He made no mention of the debt ceiling bill currently working its way through Congress, but touched on other political flashpoints including the war in Ukraine, cooperation with China and the threat posed by artificial intelligence.The president’s remarks included a renewed promise to Ukraine that the US would always stand beside the country, and continue to send military and humanitarian aid as it continues to fight against Russia’s invasion:
      Support for Ukraine will not waver. We always stand up for democracies. Always. I ask you to contemplate what happens if it wavers and Ukraine goes down. What about Belarus? What about the rest of eastern Europe?
      It was an upbeat, inspirational speech from the commander in chief, welcoming graduates to their future careers in the air and space forces:
      The world you graduate into, it is not only changing rapidly, the pace of change is accelerating as well. We’re seeing proliferating global challenges from Russia’s aggression and brutality in Europe, to competition with China, and a whole hell of a lot in between, growing instability, to food insecurity and natural disasters, all of which are being made worse by the existential threat of climate change.
      The threat from the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), Biden said, could not be underestimated:
      We’re seeing emerging technologies, from AI and 3D printing, that can change the character of conflict itself. I met in the Oval Office with with leading scientists in the area of AI. Some are very worried that AI can actually overtake human thinking and planning. So we’ve got a lot to deal with, a lot to do.
      From Colorado, Biden is heading back to the White House, hopeful of white smoke later from the Senate after it debates the debt ceiling bill that would stave off a national default.The former Republican congresswoman turned avowed Trump foe Liz Cheney declined to rule out a presidential run of her own earlier, telling a policy conference in Michigan: “I am really focused on making sure that Donald Trump isn’t anywhere close to the Oval Office again.”Cheney also said she would not support Trump’s closest challenger in the Republican primary, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.The daughter of the former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney is an arch-conservative who nonetheless turned against Trump over his attempted election subversion and incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Defeated by a Trump-endorsed opponent in her Wyoming primary last year, Cheney emerged as a leader of anti-Trump Republicans, playing a prominent role as the House January 6 committee made criminal referrals regarding Trump to the US Department of Justice.Despite his unparalleled legal jeopardy, Trump leads Republican primary polling by around 30 points, with DeSantis a distant second. Cheney has not declared a run but generally scores in the low single figures, with most other candidates, declared or not.Speaking at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Thursday, Cheney added: “People who are willing to deny elections and people who are embracing this cult of personality around Donald Trump … have to be resisted at every stage.”Ron DeSantis “lashed out” at a reporter who asked why he did not take questions from the audience at a campaign event in New Hampshire.The awkward exchange seems bound to add to reports and observations that the Florida governor, a clear but distant second to Donald Trump in Republican primary polling, lacks the warmth and interpersonal skills necessary for retail politicking, the staple of primary season.DeSantis was appearing at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Laconia. Video tweeted by Jonathan Allen of NBC News showed the governor posing for selfies with audience members, a broad smile fixed in place.The reporter – identified by NBC as Steve Peoples of the Associated Press – asked: “Why not take any questions from voters, governor? Governor, how come you’re not taking questions from voters?”DeSantis said: “People are coming up to me, talking to me. What are you talking about? I’m not here talking to people? Are you blind? Are you blind? People are coming up to me and talking whatever they want to talk about.”Here it is:NBC quoted Vikram Mansharamani, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Senate in New Hampshire last year, as calling the decision not to take audience questions “very disappointing”.“We like to hear from candidates and we have questions of our own [as] citizens here in the state,” Mansharamani said.It’s been a mixed bag so far today in US politics.The senate will later on Thursday take up the debt ceiling bill passed on a bipartisan vote in the House last night. Joe Biden is hopeful the measure averting a national default will be on his desk for signing before Monday.Meanwhile, the supreme court has handed down only a smattering of more minor opinions on the opening day of its June “decisions season”. A ruling weakening labor unions’ rights of where and when to call strikes; and another bolstering individuals’ rights to sue pharmacies who overcharge government programs for prescription drugs, came today.Here’s what else is happening:
      Twitter boss Elon Musk is facing a class action lawsuit for insider trading, investors accusing the billionaire of manipulating the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, costing them billions of dollars.
      Biden has marked the beginning of Pride Month with a tweet denouncing “cruel attacks” on LGBTQ+ rights by Republican legislatures and politicians around the country.
      “Months of distrust” inside Donald Trump’s legal team led to the departure of one of the former president’s top lawyers, and weakens his defense against claims he illegally retained classified documents after leaving office.
      Former vice-president Mike Pence will join the crowded race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination next week. Trump, his former boss, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis are among those already declared. Chris Christie, the ex-governor of New Jersey, will also announce his run next week, reports say.
      There’s plenty more to come. Please stick with us.Twitter boss Elon Musk is facing a class action lawsuit for insider trading, investors accusing the billionaire of manipulating the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, costing them billions of dollars.According to Reuters, the Manhattan federal court lawsuit filed on Wednesday night says Musk, also chief of SpaceX and Tesla, used Twitter posts, paid online influencers, his 2021 appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live and other “publicity stunts” to trade profitably at their expense through several Dogecoin wallets that he or Tesla controls.Investors say this included when Musk sold about $124m of Dogecoin in April after he replaced Twitter’s blue bird logo with Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog logo, leading to a 30% jump in Dogecoin’s price. Musk bought Twitter in October.A “deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation and insider trading” enabled Musk to defraud investors, promote himself and his companies, the filing said.Reuters said that Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, declined to comment on the action. A lawyer for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The investors’ lawyer did not immediately respond to a separate request.Musk was the host of Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s glitchy campaign launch for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination on Twitter Spaces last week.It’s not been a good week for Musk, the world’s second richest man. On Wednesday, it was reported the value of Twitter had plummeted two thirds since he bought the social media platform.Read more: More

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      Apostle of bipartisanship: why US debt ceiling deal was a victory for Joe Biden

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      Sometimes presidencies are about things that don’t happen. Joe Biden will be breathing a mighty sigh of relief that the economic asteroid hurtling towards planet Earth turned into a near miss: America is apparently not going to default on his watch.As a bipartisan deal to suspend the $31.4tn debt ceiling passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, Biden could also claim vindication for the underlying theory of his presidency: that in the age of polarisation it takes an apostle of bipartisanship and a 36-year veteran of the Senate to reach across the aisle and make deals with his opponents.Only Biden, the argument goes, can bridge divides that seem unbridgeable in the age of Donald Trump.Such deals come at a price, of course. Not even the White House claimed that the hard-won budget agreement is a cornucopia of delights for the Democratic base. But it was notable that more Democrats than Republicans voted for the 99-page bill, an unofficial scorecard of who got more of what they wanted, and even progressives who opposed it reserved their contempt for its contents rather than their president.For sure, there will be plenty of time to debate how Biden and Democrats could have played this episode better. They could have raised or abolished the debt limit when they had control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia told the Politico website that if he could “do one thing different, it would have been raising the debt limit late last year”.The president may have also been lulled into a false sense of security by the shenanigans around Kevin McCarthy’s election as House speaker in January. It took 15 ballots and implied a Republican majority mired in division and dysfunction. But Democrats underestimate Republicans’ ability to fall into line at their peril.McCarthy managed to steer his unwieldy coalition into passing a debt limit bill stuffed with conservative priorities and spending cuts. If Biden hoped that moderate Republicans would bow to logic – the debt limit is about spending that Congress has already authorised, not future appropriations – and break ranks, rather than embrace the apocalyptic prospect of default, he had to think again.The president duly cancelled a trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea to hold talks with McCarthy. He deployed a negotiating team that included Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, working such long hours that she admitted to reporters she had run out of clean clothes.What emerged was a deal that protected Biden’s legislative accomplishments including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, fending off Republicans attempts to repeal the latter’s green energy incentives. The White House also swept aside Republican proposals to slash funding for education, healthcare, law enforcement and social security.The argument that “it could have been worse” is hardly an inspiring re-election slogan but the White House would contend that it is realistic in divided government. If anyone channels Biden’s bipartisan spirit it is Young, a former staff director of the House appropriations committee who speaks his language of compromise, flexibility and give and take.She insisted: “Look, the House is not very different from when I was there. You have to have some faith in the governing majority, which I do, because I have a lot of respect for members on both sides of the aisle to do what’s best for the American people. And that is not some pollyannish thing. I know them. And I’ve always thought we could get here if we let the extreme go away.”Letting the extreme go away, as Young puts it, has typically been a doomed enterprise since Trump’s descent on an escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 signalled the descent of the Republican party into a personality cult. The far-right Freedom caucus unleashed sound and fury against the deal, inadvertently complimenting Biden on having outfoxed McCarthy (quite an achievement for a man they also insist is senile).skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn the left, there was opposition from Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives. They condemned work requirements for food aid programmes for some poor Americans, reduced funding for the Internal Revenue Service that could make life easier for wealthy tax cheats, and the speeding up of the permitting process for a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia (home of the conservative Democratic senator Joe Manchin).This could chip away at Biden’s long-term support, fuelling a perception that he is pivoting to the centre as 2024 approaches. But again, it could have been worse.There was no mass revolt against him. Progressives understood that “Maga Republicans” had taken the economy hostage and left Biden with no choice but to negotiate the ransom. Congressman Jamie Raskin said: “We need to make sure this kind of legislative extortion never happens again.” The president constantly benefits from the “Don’t judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative,” dynamic.The bill now heads to the Senate after a House vote that, as a purple blend of Democrats and Republicans, could hardly have been more Bidenesque in hitting the sweet spot between left and right. It was his predecessor who wrote a book entitled The Art of the Deal. But it is Biden who continues to exceed low expectations by finding common ground in the disappearing middle. More

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      US debt ceiling bill passes House with broad bipartisan support – video

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      The House debated legislation to increase the US debt limit until January 2025, before passing the bill by a vote of 314 to 117. Republican representatives passed the bill overwhelmingly. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, praised Democrats for pushing back against ‘extreme Maga Republicans’ before Kevin McCarthy took to the floor claiming the bill would deliver the ‘largest savings in American history’. The White House tactically avoided pushing back against the line to avoid inflaming the hard right. ‘Tonight, we’re gonna give America hope,’ McCarthy said More