article_text
stringlengths 294
32.8k
⌀ | topic
stringlengths 3
42
|
|---|---|
Faster postal service linked to better voter turnout
A more efficient U.S. Postal Service can increase voter turnout in all states regardless of their mail voting laws, according to a Washington State University study.
WSU researcher Michael Ritter analyzed election data from 2012 through 2020, when the pandemic encouraged many more people than usual to vote by mail. He found that in general more accessible mail voting laws, such as universal mail-in voting and no-excuse mail voting, increased the probability that individuals would vote. Restrictive laws, such as requiring a witness's signature or identification for mail-in ballots, had a negative effect.
Faster postal service helped increase the likelihood of voting especially in those restrictive states—raising the probability individuals would vote by 3.42%.
"Across the board, this study shows that having better postal administration makes it more likely there will be more positive voter turnout outcomes linked to all mail voting laws," said Ritter, lead author of the study published in the Election Law Journal. "But in states that have the most restrictive mail voting laws, having better postal administration makes a huge difference—it may not seem huge, but for individuals who sometimes are on the fence about voting by mail or not voting at all, it can tip the balance."
For this study, Ritter created models to estimate the probability whether individuals would become voters in the 2018 and 2020 elections in connection to mail voting laws and postal service efficiency. He drew on data from midterm and presidential elections from 2012-2020, the mail voting laws of each state and the efficiency of local postal services based on their average, on-time, first class mail delivery, which can vary by zip code.
Mail delivery speed can determine whether a ballot arrives in time to be counted, Ritter said. Other research has indicated that a "non-trivial" number of mail ballots were not counted during the 2020 election because they were not delivered in time.
This study found that in states with the most restrictive mail voting laws, such as Alabama, the probability an individual would vote was 62%. This was lower than in states with universal all-mail voting, like Washington, Oregon, Utah and Colorado, where the probability of a person becoming a voter in 2018 and 2020 was 70%. For the 33 states with no-excuse absentee laws, meaning voters can request a mail-in ballot for any reason, the probability was 65%.
In addition, so-called "cure" laws pushed voter probability higher, increasing it by as much as 3.2%. These laws mean officials will contact voters if there are problems with their mail-in ballot, such as a missing signature, giving voters a chance to correct it and have their vote counted.
Postal efficiency was particularly disrupted in 2020 with the pandemic causing huge numbers of people to vote by mail while the postmaster general at the time was reducing the numbers of postal processing machines. Then-President Trump also falsely warned that mail-in voting was rife with fraud. Ritter noted that many studies have shown that voter fraud of any kind in the U.S. is very rare.
Even with the pandemic officially over and a new administration in office, disputes over mail-in voting are likely to continue, Ritter said, making evaluation of the postal administration's role in elections even more important.
"Mail voting is very popular for the elderly, the disabled and even for individuals who just simply want more convenience to cast a ballot," he said. "My research and research from others in the field have indicated that mail voting is a key driver of higher turnout, so it will likely continue to be very pivotal in the 2024 election."
More information: Michael Ritter, Assessing the Impact of the United States Postal System and Election Administration on Absentee and Mail Voting in the 2012 to 2020 U.S. Midterm and Presidential Elections, Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy (2023). DOI: 10.1089/elj.2022.0060
Journal information: Election Law Journal
Provided by Washington State University | US Federal Elections |
Nearly one year into the pandemic — after COVID-19's school closures, lay-offs and childcare crisis pushed American parents over the edge financially and emotionally — Congress expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) as part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan. The credit brought some relief to an otherwise dark moment for both parents and children.
Previously, the CTC gave most middle-income parents $2,000 per child, but with the American Rescue Plan, the expansion increased the amount to $3,600 per child. The eligibility criteria also broadened to reach more economically disadvantaged children, offering the credit to families who paid no federal income tax.
Despite helping an estimated 61 million children in 36 million households across the country, Congress has yet again failed to pass the expansion.
Expert analyses agree that the effects were significant. In fact, in 2021, the United States saw a historic decline in child poverty — nearly 46 percent, according U.S. Census Bureau data — which advocates say was a result of the increased child tax credit and its accessibility. While the expansion was meant to be a one-off, parents and advocates hope that if it proved to be socially successful, which it did, Congress would make it a permanent staple for American parents. Parents shared cheery anecdotes with news outlets explaining how the extra income went to subsidizing childcare costs, paid for rent, gas, and even helped rebuild savings for their children. It was life changing.
Despite helping an estimated 61 million children in 36 million households across the country, Congress has yet again failed to pass the expansion. Indeed, in January 2022, Republicans and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.V.) refused to extend it. More recently, an effort to revive it failed again. Roy Chrobocinski, manager director of domestic federal policy at the humanitarian organization Save the Children, told Salon that this failure means many American families will again struggle to pay for necessities.
"Inflation is taking its toll on families, groceries are more expensive, childcare is more expensive, the cost of gas, the cost of travel, everything is more expensive right now — and this lifeline to families in the form of child tax credit really helped to provide the basic necessities to families that were struggling in the midst of the pandemic," Chrobocinski said. "I think we can all agree that life hasn't gotten any easier or cheaper since."
Chrobocinski suggested the reason Congress has failed to pass the expansion yet again is because it struggles to justify the cost. Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist. "You'll hear from other members about how the credit actually decreases people's interest in working so that they can get this 'free' money from the federal government, it puts less pressure on them to work... there are a number of members of Congress who believe that getting people back into the workforce is going to provide more return on investment than it would giving out a tax credit," Chrobocinski said. "We disagree — we think that there is clearly a value in giving families who are in need of assistance a little bit extra assistance — but unfortunately, that argument doesn't always win."
"I think we're gonna see more than 4 million more kids living in poverty, or something around there."
According to researchers at Columbia University, single-parent households, Black and Latino families, and households in rural areas were some of those who benefitted the most from the program.
Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, told Salon the refusal to extend the program once again speaks to a more troubling trend in America — how children are often "invisibilized."
"Here's a policy, the Child Tax Credit, and yet the conversation for some people isn't even about children, it's about adults," Lesley said. "And we see this with the child tax credit but with other policies as well, which is that kids are constantly an afterthought, they're invisibilized in the way we think about things or how we address them."
Lesley said he predicts child poverty will rise as a result of families not receiving an expansion of the child tax credit.
"I think we're definitely going to see more than 3 million, maybe 4 million increase, in the number of kids living in poverty between 2021 and let's say 2023," Lesley said. "2022 is a weird year because [of] the way tax works — some people got the refunds in 2022, but if you compare 2021 to 2023, I think we're gonna see more than 4 million more kids living in poverty, or something around there." | US Federal Policies |
Double your support for intelligent, in-depth, trustworthy journalism.
Associated Press
Associated Press
Leave your feedback
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (AP) — A vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on the American side of a U.S.-Canada bridge in Niagara Falls Wednesday, prompting the closing of four border crossings in the area, authorities said.
The blast happened on the U.S. side of the Rainbow Bridge, which connects the two countries across the Niagara River. Three other bridges between western New York and Ontario were quickly closed as a precaution.
READ MORE: Busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing re-opens but protests continue in Ottawa
Photos and video taken by bystanders and posted on social media showed thick smoke, flames on the pavement and a security booth that had been singed by flames.
Videos showed that the fire was in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection area just east of the main vehicle checkpoint.
Speaking to WGRZ-TV, Mike Guenther said he saw a vehicle speeding toward the crossing from the U.S. side of the border when it swerved to avoid another car, crashed into a fence and exploded.
“All of a sudden he went up in the air and then it was a ball of fire like 30 or 40 feet high,” Guenther told the station. “I never saw anything like it.”
The FBI’s field office in Buffalo said in a statement that it was investigating the explosion.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said she had been briefed on the incident and was “closely monitoring the situation.”
The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission reported that all four of its crossings — the others are Lewiston, Whirlpool and Peace Bridge — were closed.
Further information wasn’t immediately available on the cause of the explosion.
Support Provided By:
Learn more
Support PBS NewsHour:
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
A number of MAGA and Republican figures have reacted to the GOP's series of defeats across the country on election night, most notably in Ohio where voters approved a motion to enshrine abortion protections in the state's constitution.
On Tuesday, voters in Ohio approved Issue 1 ballot which asked yes or no on whether to amend the state's Constitution to protect abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade last June. The yes vote won with 56.4 percent.
The result in Ohio arrived as Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection against challenger Daniel Cameron in a race in which he cited the Republican's support of a near total abortion ban in the state.
Democrats in Virginia also ensured that GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin will not be able to implement his planned 15-week abortion ban after the party maintained their control of the state Senate and won a majority in the General Assembly on Tuesday.
The heavy losses for the GOP in the November elections arrived after the issues of abortion restrictions were widely blamed for the party's poor 2022 midterm showing, in which the GOP failed to retake control of the Senate and only managed a small majority in the House.
There was some good news for Republicans on Tuesday, as Gov. Tate Reeves was reelected in Mississippi, defeating Democrat Brandon Presley. Reeves' campaign focused on job creation, low unemployment and better standards in education.
He had labeled Presley as a liberal supported by out-of-state donors, The Associated Press reported.
However, many Republicans focused on what went wrong rather than what went right.
In response to Tuesday's elections, a number of Republican figures have suggested that hardline views on abortions are not supported by the general public, as well as other issues which are damaging the party's 2024 election hopes.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Turning Points USA founder and political commentator Charlie Kirk wrote: "The postmortem will happen. Abortion/RNC/RGA/establishment vs base etc.
"One thing is immediately clear, we're getting crushed on fundraising," he added while sharing a graphic which showed the Democrats heavily outspent the GOP in races such as the Kentucky gubernatorial race, the local elections across Virginia, and the Issue 1 abortion ballot in Ohio.
A similar sentiment was offered by Joshua Perry, of the pro-Trump media company Right Side Broadcasting Network.
"Blaming Trump for lost elections is what a primary opponent would do," Perry wrote.
"Why aren't the same people blaming Youngkin for the VA GOP losing the House and not winning the Senate? Fact: GOP isn't backing its candidates with the cash to outcompete Democrats. Same goes for abortion."
The Republican National Committee has been contacted for comment via email.
"If we're really going to be honest about this—and I consider myself pro-life, but I understand that's not where the country is—I would say first trimester, 15 weeks seems to be where the country is," Hannity said. "And these issues will be decided by the states."
While appearing on Hannity's Fox News show, Donald Trump's former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that the GOP have been on a "losing streak" ever since the Supreme Court quashed Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health in June 2022, which overturned a constitutional right to abortion.
"On the issue of abortion in Ohio tonight, we continue the losing streak in the pro-life movement," McEnany said. "Every ballot initiative has been lost post-Dobbs for the pro-life movement. As a party, we must, we must not just be a pro-baby party. That's a great thing. We must be a pro-mother party.
McEnany added that the party needs a "national strategy" to help vulnerable women as the 2024 election "could be determined" over abortion rights.
Elsewhere, conservative commentator Matt Walsh suggested that the GOP needs to lean more on abortion restrictions.
"Before you tell me that the pro-life message is a political loser, answer me this: how many Republican candidates fought back hard and effectively on this issue, actively went after the left, ran ads attacking their opponent for supporting the dismemberment of fully developed infants (which nearly every Democrat does), and actually countered the left's pro-abortion narrative with a strong and affirmative pro-life narrative?" Walsh posted on X. "It seems to me that the pro-life message is being blamed in races where the pro-life message was never even articulated."
In a statement after Tuesday's results, President Joe Biden said Americans voted to "protect their fundamental freedoms—and democracy won."
"In Ohio, voters protected access to reproductive health in their state constitution," Biden said.
"Ohioans and voters across the country rejected attempts by MAGA Republican, elected officials to impose extreme abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors and nurses for providing the healthcare that their patients need and that they are trained to provide.
"This extreme and dangerous agenda is out-of-step with the vast majority of Americans."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
fairness meter
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy and the courts. He joined Newsweek in February 2018 after spending several years working at the International Business Times U.K., where he predominantly reported on crime, politics and current affairs. Prior to this, he worked as a freelance copywriter after graduating from the University of Sunderland in 2010. Languages: English.
You can get in touch with Ewan by emailing [email protected].
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. | US Federal Elections |
Once again, a judge has ruled that Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP legislators violated the Florida Constitution.
This time, a judicial appointee of Rick Scott ruled what everyone already knew — that they illegally gerrymandered congressional districts to get a Black Democrat out of office and put a White Republican in
In other words, they cheated.
Just like the previous governor and Legislature did 10 years ago with their last redistricting scheme when a judge concluded they’d conspired to make “a mockery of the Legislature’s proclaimed open and transparent process.”
Maybe we could all celebrate justice prevailing and the cheaters being exposed — except for one key fact: The cheaters also won.
While the districts will now be redrawn, just like they were 10 years ago, the unconstitutional maps were already used to elect politicians who are now in office.
In other words: The poisonous tree they planted has already sown its toxic fruit, allowing some politicians who might never have otherwise been elected to get into seats of power.
We’ve also seen cheaters’ tactics in two of the state’s “ghost candidates” scandals in Seminole County and Miami-Dade. The county GOP chairman was convicted in Seminole. The ghost candidate himself pleaded guilty in Miami. Others still face charges.
Yet the politicians meant to benefit from the schemes — Sens. Jason Brodeur and Ileana Garcia — remain in office.
So you can see why the cheaters keep cheating in Florida. Because even when they’re exposed, their schemes still work … at least for a while.
This behavior will never stop until politicians and operatives who break the rules and violate the constitution are punished the same way common lawbreakers are. And until voters stop electing and reelecting the offenders and beneficiaries of the schemes.
In the latest ruling, the judge spanked DeSantis and GOP legislators like corporal punishment was going out of style.
He ruled that the politicians had drawn maps meant to make it harder for a Black Democrat to get elected in violation of the Florida Constitution that every one of these politicians took an oath to uphold.
The sad thing is that the original maps GOP legislators produced were actually pretty fair. I said so at the time. So did nonpartisan watchdogs.
But DeSantis didn’t want fair. So he vetoed the fair maps and ordered GOP lawmakers to approve districts that would make it harder for a Black Democrat to get elected.
Now, if Florida’s GOP legislators weren’t such pushovers and patsies, they would’ve said: No, Governor, we refuse to violate the Constitution on your behalf.
But there are globs of primordial ooze with stiffer spines. So after a bit of hemming and hawing, they did as DeSantis instructed.
It’s hard to count how many times courts have ruled that DeSantis has violated the constitution. The violations have been cited by judges appointed by Rick Scott, Donald Trump, even by DeSantis himself.
Take a moment to appreciate that wicked irony and hypocrisy — the constant rule-breaking of a governor who removes local elected officials from office because he claims they don’t follow the rules.
It would be refreshing if the people who endorse this behavior just admit they don’t care about the rule of law. They just want to win, rules be damned.
Sometimes, the cheaters cheat even when it might not be necessary. In Seminole County, for instance, Jason Brodeur won by a large enough margin that it looks like he probably didn’t need the help of those charged with crimes. (That’s gotta smart for the three people who are either convicted or facing charges while Brodeur sits fat and happy in office.)
Down in Miami-Dade, though, it’s clear cheating swung the election. In that case, schemers convinced a third-party candidate with the same last name as the Democrat to put his name on the ballot merely to confuse voters. It worked. Despite doing no campaigning, the “ghost candidate” with the same last name as the Democrat fetched more than 6,000 votes — enough to let Republican Ileana Garcia eke out a win by just 32 votes.
Think about that. The ghost candidate there has already confessed to the crime, pleading guilty to the vote-siphoning scheme involving undisclosed payments. But Garcia, the Republican senator who benefitted from the criminal activity, is still in office. How is that justice?
Florida isn’t the only state that cheats during elections. Courts have recently struck down gerrymandering schemes in other states, like Alabama. And it sure isn’t just Republicans. Back when Democrats ran Florida, they gerrymandered as well, before the Fair Districts amendment to the constitution was in place.
But not in modern history has the cheating been so rampant, so proven and yet also gone so unpunished.
If I had my druthers, any lawmaker who breaks the law or violates the constitution would be treated the same way common criminals are.
Any election where illegal chicanery is proven would be invalidated.
And we’d stop letting politicians control the redistricting process — where they essentially choose their own voters — and instead follow the lead of a state like Arizona, which gives the process to a bipartisan commission where no member is allowed to run in any of the districts they draw.
But for now, the very least voters can do is stop rewarding the cheaters and their beneficiaries by keeping them in office — where they’re free to cheat again.
[email protected] | US Local Elections |
The corporate gig Katie Porter erased from her whiteboard
Porter, a leading Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in California, had a stint with a mortgage servicer shortly after working on the issue for the state.
California Rep. Katie Porter has won acclaim in Washington as an unrelenting antagonist of big banks. But in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a major industry player turned to her for advice.
Porter was hired in 2015 as a consultant for Ocwen Financial Corporation, a large mortgage loan servicing provider that faced multibillion-dollar fines and penalties for deceiving homeowners. Her stint in the corporate world came shortly after she oversaw the national mortgage settlement as the state’s independent monitor and before she made her first run for Congress.
The full scope of Porter’s work for Ocwen as it was under legal siege remains unclear, but an aide said in a written statement that she was hired to advise the company in its communication with customers and did not lobby or interact directly with regulators. Nathan Click, a senior adviser to Porter, said she was enlisted to focus on the kind of work she did as California’s monitor during the mortgage settlement, such as “translating the banks’ mumbo jumbo about eligibility into a clear consumer-facing tool.”
But for Porter, a leading U.S. Senate candidate whose career was shaped and accelerated by the financial meltdown in the 2000s, her pass through the revolving door threatens to dilute her public image as an unsparing progressive who has erected walls between herself and the corporate interests she believes are infecting nearly every aspect of the American political system.
Porter’s Ocwen work appeared in an older version of her online resume but was removed within three months of her first campaign for Congress, in April 2017. It has received scant, if any, attention amid her rapid rise — from University of California, Irvine, law school professor to the state’s independent monitor and finally to member of Congress from Orange County. Now, Porter is a top contender for the seat of retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Ocwen in 2013 settled with California and 48 other states for $2.1 billion stemming from allegations that between 2009 and 2012 the company deceived homeowners and engaged in robo-signing and other misconduct. At the time of that settlement, Ocwen held about 6 percent of all California underwater loans, and Porter was working as the state’s independent monitor appointed by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris to oversee the larger, $20-billion mortgage settlement with five major banks. The Ocwen settlement was finalized in 2014, while Porter was still with the state.
In 2015, she accepted the consulting role for the company while teaching at UC Irvine. The work lasted less than six months, Click said, adding that Ocwen was the only financial firm that Porter worked for. It represents an unexplored time in the career of an official who is known for her candor.
POLITICO first approached Porter’s team in May with questions about the consulting, and followed up with a formal request for information in June. Porter declined interview requests about her work for Ocwen, and advisers for her Senate campaign would not reveal how much she was paid.
An Ocwen spokesperson declined to comment, saying the company can’t share the existence or scope of its consulting contracts.
In the prepared statement, Click acknowledged Porter worked for Ocwen, a publicly-traded mortgage servicer headquartered in West Palm Beach, Fla., that today has offices and operations in the U.S., India and the Philippines. Mortgage servicers collect payments from borrowers and pass them on to the owners of the loan. Since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law in 2010, Ocwen and other loan servicers have been hit with state, federal and class-action suits and large settlements for what government officials described as deceptions and shortcuts in mortgage servicing.
Click stated that Porter was approached to advise the business on how to improve its communication with customers. He said she was recommended by the NAACP’s financial literacy arm, whom Porter partnered with during her work as monitor of the national mortgage settlement.
Before taking the job with Ocwen, Porter had established herself as a national authority on consumer protection. A protégé and former law student of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Porter testified to Congress in 2008 about how mortgage servicers were taking advantage of struggling homeowners. Such firms, Porter said at the time, lacked incentives to obey the law and to charge consumers only what they owed. Porter added she was concerned about millions of families whose debts were being collected by the likes of Ocwen and other firms whose representatives weren’t present at the May 2008 hearing.
Nearly four years later, Harris announced the appointment of Porter as California’s monitor after the big banks committed billions in homeowner and borrower benefits in the state. Harris at the time described Porter’s role as central to ensuring that hundreds of thousands of Californains benefited from the banks’ settlement.
In its statement, Porter’s team said that during the mortgage settlement she held companies to account for sending out confusing communications. Aides pointed to reports about her time as monitor “which outlined examples of good and bad bank communications and documented how the monitor staff pushed companies to improve their communications — resulting in much better outcomes for both consumers and companies in the process,” Click said.
While she was serving as monitor, Porter gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal where she contended that the settlements and subsequent changes undoubtedly improved industry practices. But she argued the industry continued to suffer from “incompetence” due to under-investment in technology and the lack of a common platform to handle the transfer of loans from one servicer to another.
“A lot of what debtors and their counsel experience as sort of morally bad conduct by servicers is actually incompetence driven by under-investment in technology,” she said. “The mortgage servicer is not setting out to do this kind of stuff, not these days, not in the regulatory climate we’re in now.”
She listed the 2014 Journal interview on the same resume that included her Ocwen work and pointed to it in her statement to POLITICO.
Porter wrapped up her time as monitor late in 2014. The following year, she took the job with Ocwen. “The company hired her because it said it wanted to make these kinds of improvements,” Click said, and she was asked to draw on her knowledge.
“But,” he added, “the project never took off.”
Porter’s aides declined to say how and precisely why the arrangement with the company ended, but added that she disclosed the work in accordance with University of California policies. A representative for UC Irvine said it would take likely until late August to respond to POLITICO’s request for Porter’s conflict-of-interest disclosure forms required by university policy.
Porter started her campaign for Congress in 2017, almost immediately landing the coveted endorsements of Warren and Harris, then a senator from California. Within three months, she scrubbed the Ocwen work from her resume. Her campaign aides declined to say why.
Porter between 2018 and 2020 also received $2,250 in contributions to her House campaign committee from Phyllis Caldwell and Jill Showell. Caldwell, a director, chaired Ocwen’s Board of Directors from March 2016 to January 2023 while Showell served as senior vice president of government and community relations at Ocwen. Neither responded to inquiries.
Two current and former top employees with Ocwen who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters said they either had no recollection of Porter’s work for the company or were not close enough to it to speak about its precise nature.
A former Ocwen executive said in an interview that Porter would have been an attractive hire for the company because she was a law school professor and monitor familiar with both the laws and individual regulators in charge of enforcing them — “reading a regulation and understanding how it’s applied are not always the same thing.”
“A lot of people approached us and said, ‘if you pay me $50,000, I will make your troubles go away,’” said the former executive. “We didn’t pay fixers. Pragmatically and practically speaking, we couldn’t be sure if that was true” — meaning something they could really do. “What we preferred is somebody who had an attractive background who knew what they were talking about and who understood the personalities.” | US Political Corruption |
Donald Trump is a very honest liar.
When Trump says he is going to hurt you he means it. This is one of the primary reasons his political cultists are so loyal to him.
On this, journalist Masha Gessen warns and advises: "Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: Humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable."
In her new book, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson shares how during the Jan. 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol by his followers, Trump was heard chanting "hang" as Mike Pence was fleeing for his life. Cassidy's account is but one more example of many showing how the disgraced and mentally unwell ex-president likely has what psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank suggests is an erotic relationship to violence.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Cassidy issued the following warning about her former boss: "I think that Donald Trump is the most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history."
Confirming Hutchinson's warnings, in a Sunday post on his Truth Social disinformation platform, Trump again threatened to end freedom of the press and the First Amendment if he returns to power.
They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its "Country Threatening Treason." Their endless coverage of the now fully debunked SCAM known as Russia, Russia, Russia, and much else, is one big Campaign Contribution to the Radical Left Democrat Party. I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events. Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!
Trump is not exaggerating, or posturing, or just being hyperbolic as too many in the American news media, the country's political class, and among the general public would like to believe – which at this point is delusional. When Trump calls the news media "the enemy of the people" and invokes the Nazis and their attacks on the "lugenpresse", he is threatening members of the news media (and public more broadly) with prison – and worse if they dare to oppose him.
At a rally in Iowa last Wednesday, Trump told his followers that he is going to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, which is a little-used law that gives the president unilateral power to deport and detain non-citizens who are older than 14 years old. The Alien Enemies Act was last used by President Roosevelt during World War 2 to put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Trump has also promised to reinstate a ban on travel to America from Muslim countries as well as his regime's evil "family separation" policy – and presumably the concentration camp system that accompanied it.
Trump is threatening to use the Alien Enemies Act against "drug dealers" and "suspected gang members". Trump should not be believed: given his past behavior and announced plans to become a dictator he will likely use that law to target his personal and political enemies. As seen in his recent attacks on Gen. Mark Milley, Trump is escalating his fascist threats of violence as part of his plan to become America's first dictator.
In an interview earlier this month with Hugh Hewitt, Trump summoned the white supremacist conspiracy theory lie that the "Democrats" and "the left" are "importing" black and brown people from "Third World countries" in an attempt to replace "real Americans", i.e. White "Christians":
These are corrupt people. These are fascists. These are Marxists. These are communists. These are sick people that are destroying our country. We have millions of people coming in. I'm in New York right now, and I just rode through the streets. I've never seen anything like it. New York, I've never seen it looking like this. And you have thousands and thousands of people in plain sight that come from foreign countries that most people never even heard of. It's not just countries adjoining us. It's foreign countries that many people have never even heard of. They're coming from all over Africa. They're coming from areas of the world that nobody can believe, and how far it is away for them to get there. These cartels are making a fortune, and they're destroying our country, and we're doing nothing about it. And we have a president that's incompetent and corrupt.
In his interviews and speeches and other communications, Trump is also continuing to announce his plans to deploy the military to occupy America's cities (meaning major cities with large populations of nonwhites in "blue" parts of the country), put homeless people in camps, use the Department of Justice to punish and imprison his political rivals (including President Biden), and to criminalize transgendered people.
We need your help to stay independent
In all, Trump's plans are an extension of a decades-long revolutionary project by the "conservative" movement and white right to end multiracial pluralistic democracy and replace it with a Christofascist plutocracy. These plans to end American democracy are detailed in Trump's Agenda 47 and the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.
In a 2022 essay at Current, historian John Fea reflected upon the lessons for how to turn the United States into a fascist nation as instructed in the 1938 satirical novel "The School for Dictators":
1. Encourage anti-intellectualism.
2. Undermine moral standards, especially among lawmakers.
3. Pursue power for power's sake.
4. Develop a spiritual connection with loyal followers.
5. Rewrite national history.
6. Create political chaos.
Some eight decades later, "The School for Dictators" is a prophetic guidebook for the Trumpocene.
For more than seven years, the American news media has, largely, continued to fail in its responsibilities to defend American democracy against Trumpism and neofascism. In a time of democracy crisis, the news media should be speaking truth to the powerful, shining a light on the threats to democracy and civil society, and helping the public to understand the nature of the challenge and what they should do about it. Instead, the American news media has decided to play referee or alternatively to behave like a traffic cop who does not intervene to stop the crimes he or she is witnessing.
Donald Trump is an objective threat to American democracy and civil society. That is a fact. Instead of stating that fact consistently and plainly, the American news media has decided to be neutral and to create false standards of "fairness" and "balance" and "bothsideism" that reduce these existential dangers to being mere "partisanship" and "polarization" where the Democrats and Republicans, Biden and Trump, those Americans who believe in a real democracy vs the supporters of the MAGA movement and neofascism, are all more or less equivalent.
In all, profits and entertaining and distracting the public matter to the mainstream news media more than telling uncomfortable truths.
In a recent post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, author Stephen Beschloss described such irresponsible behavior by the country's news media in the following way:
Trump is getting worse, more dangerous, more bent on inciting violence. This is not a presidential candidate; this is a criminal defendant seeking to save his own skin no matter how much damage it causes. The media must stop pretending this is a normal presidential horse race.
In this context, a news outlet can cover Trump's affronts to democracy. But it can't quite internalize them. For such a publication to fully behave as though it has a working memory — and a capacity to rationally weigh the significance of disparate pieces of information — would be for it to resemble a partisan rag.
The most salient truth about the 2024 election is that the Republican Party is poised to nominate an authoritarian thug who publishes rationalizations for political violence and promises to abuse presidential authority on a near-daily basis. There is no way for a paper or news channel to appropriately emphasize this reality without sounding like a shrill, dull, Democratic propaganda outlet. So, like the nation writ large, the press comports itself as an amnesiac, or an abusive household committed to keeping up appearances, losing itself in the old routines, in an effortful approximation of normality until it almost forgets what it doesn't want to know.
Once again, as Masha Gessen warns, "Believe the autocrat. He means what he says."
The autocrat – and in the case of Donald Trump, he who wants to be a dictator – is not kidding. Denial, wishcasting, hope peddling, and hiding behind "centrism", "norms", "consensus", "institutions", "the guardrails", "tradition", "American Exceptionalism", "our leaders", "the adults in the room", and other myths and fantasies and failed psychological coping mechanisms will not save you or American democracy from Trump and the Republican fascists' cruelty and destruction and pain. | US Political Corruption |
Series: Friends of the Court
Clarence Thomas’ Beneficial Friendship With a GOP Megadonor
In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”
Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.
The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica.
“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial information through his work as an administrator.
Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate.
ProPublica interviewed Martin, his former classmates and former staff at both schools. The exact total Crow paid for Martin’s education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000, according to public records of tuition rates at the schools.
Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas disclosed a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education from another friend. It is not clear why he reported that payment but not Crow’s.
The tuition payments add to the picture of how the Republican megadonor has helped fund the lives of Thomas and his family.
“You can’t be having secret financial arrangements,” said Mark W. Bennett, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. Bennett said he was friendly with Thomas and declined to comment for the record about the specifics of Thomas’ actions. But he said that when he was on the bench, he wouldn’t let his lawyer friends buy him lunch.
Thomas did not respond to questions. In response to previous ProPublica reporting on gifts of luxury travel, he said that the Crows “are among our dearest friends” and that he understood he didn’t have to disclose the trips.
ProPublica sent Crow a detailed list of questions and his office responded with a statement that did not dispute the facts presented in this story.
“Harlan Crow has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate, especially at-risk youth,” the statement said. “It’s disappointing that those with partisan political interests would try to turn helping at-risk youth with tuition assistance into something nefarious or political.” The statement added that Crow and his wife have “supported many young Americans” at a “variety of schools, including his alma mater.” Crow went to Randolph-Macon Academy.
Crow did not address a question about how much he paid in total for Martin’s tuition. Asked if Thomas had requested the support for either school, Crow’s office responded, “No.”
Last month, ProPublica reported that Thomas accepted luxury travel from Crow virtually every year for decades, including international superyacht cruises and private jet flights around the world. Crow also paid money to Thomas and his relatives in an undisclosed real estate deal, ProPublica found. After he purchased the house where Thomas’ mother lives, Crow poured tens of thousands of dollars into improving the property. And roughly 15 years ago, Crow donated much of the budget of a political group founded by Thomas’ wife, which paid her a $120,000 salary.
“This is way outside the norm. This is way in excess of anything I’ve seen,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to the cascade of gifts over the years.
Painter said that when he was at the White House, an official who’d taken what Thomas had would have been fired: “This amount of undisclosed gifts? You’d want to get them out of the government.”
A federal law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to publicly report most gifts. Ethics law experts told ProPublica they believed Thomas was required by law to disclose the tuition payments because they appear to be a gift to him.
Justices also must report many gifts to their spouses and dependent children. The law’s definition of dependent child is narrow, however, and likely would not apply to Martin since Thomas was his legal guardian, not his parent. The best case for not disclosing Crow’s tuition payments would be to argue the gifts were to Martin, not Thomas, experts said.
But that argument was far-fetched, experts said, because minor children rarely pay their own tuition. Typically, the legal guardian is responsible for the child’s education.
“The most reasonable interpretation of the statute is that this was a gift to Thomas and thus had to be reported. It’s common sense,” said Kathleen Clark, an ethics law expert at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s all to the financial benefit of Clarence Thomas.”
Martin, now in his 30s, told ProPublica he was not aware that Crow paid his tuition. But he defended Thomas and Crow, saying he believed there was no ulterior motive behind the real estate magnate’s largesse over the decades. “I think his intentions behind everything is just a friend and just a good person,” Martin said.
Crow has long been an influential figure in pro-business conservative politics. He has given millions to efforts to move the law and the judiciary to the right and serves on the boards of think tanks that publish scholarship advancing conservative legal theories.
Crow has denied trying to influence the justice but has said he extended hospitality to him just as he has to other dear friends. From the start, their relationship has intertwined expensive gifts and conservative politics. In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, Crow recounted how he first met Thomas. In 1996, the justice was scheduled to give a speech in Dallas for an anti-regulation think tank. Crow offered to fly him there on his private jet. “During that flight, we found out we were kind of simpatico,” the billionaire said.
The following year, the Thomases began to discuss taking custody of Martin. His father, Thomas’ nephew, had been imprisoned in connection with a drug case. Thomas has written that Martin’s situation held deep resonance for him because his own father was absent and his grandparents had taken him in “under very similar circumstances.”
Thomas had an adult son from a previous marriage, but he and wife, Ginni, didn’t have children of their own. They pitched Martin’s parents on taking the boy in.
“Thomas explained that the boy would have the best of everything — his own room, a private school education, lots of extracurricular activities,” journalists Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher reported in their biography of Thomas.
Thomas gained legal custody of Martin and became his legal guardian around January 1998, according to court records.
Martin, who had been living in Georgia with his mother and siblings, moved to Virginia, where he lived with the justice from the ages of 6 to 19, he said.
Living with the Thomases came with an unusual perk: lavish travel with Crow and his family. Martin told ProPublica that he and Thomas vacationed with the Crows “at least once a year” throughout his childhood.
That included visits to Camp Topridge, Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks, and two cruises on Crow’s superyacht, Martin said. On a trip in the Caribbean, Martin recalled riding jet skis off the side of the billionaire’s yacht.
Roughly 20 years ago, Martin, Thomas and the Crows went on a cruise on the yacht in Russia and the Baltics, according to Martin and two other people familiar with the trip. The group toured St. Petersburg in a rented helicopter and visited the Yusupov Palace, the site of Rasputin’s murder, said one of the people. They were joined by Chris DeMuth, then the president of the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. (Thomas’ trips with Crow to the Baltics and the Caribbean have not previously been reported.)
Thomas reconfigured his life to balance the demands of raising a child with serving on the high court. He began going to the Supreme Court before 6 a.m. so he could leave in time to pick Martin up after class and help him with his homework. By 2001, the justice had moved Martin to private school out of frustration with the Fairfax County public school system’s lax schedule, The American Lawyer magazine reported.
For high school, Thomas sent Martin to Randolph-Macon Academy, a military boarding school 75 miles west of Washington, D.C., where he was in the class of 2010. The school, which sits on a 135-acre campus in the Shenandoah Valley, charged between $25,000 to $30,000 a year. Martin played football and basketball, and the justice sometimes visited for games.
Randolph-Macon was also Crow’s alma mater. Thomas and Crow visited the campus in April 2007 for the dedication of an imposing bronze sculpture of the Air Force Honor Guard, according to the school magazine. Crow donated the piece to Randolph-Macon, where it is a short walk from Crow Hall, a classroom building named after the Dallas billionaire’s family.
Martin sometimes chafed at the strictures of military school, according to people at Randolph-Macon at the time, and he spent his junior year at Hidden Lake Academy, a therapeutic boarding school in Georgia. Hidden Lake boasted one teacher for every 10 students and activities ranging from horseback riding to canoeing. Those services came at an added cost. At the time, a year of tuition was roughly $73,000, plus fees.
The July 2009 bank statement from Hidden Lake was filed in a bankruptcy case for the school, which later went under. The document shows that Crow Holdings LLC wired $6,200 to the school that month, the exact cost of the month’s tuition. The wire is marked “Mark Martin” in the ledger.
Crow’s office said in its statement that Crow’s funding of students’ tuition has “always been paid solely from personal funds, sometimes held at and paid through the family business.”
Grimwood, the administrator at Hidden Lake, told ProPublica that Crow wired the school money once a month to pay Martin’s tuition fees. Grimwood had multiple roles on the campus, including overseeing an affiliated wilderness program. He said he was speaking about the payments because he felt the public should know about outside financial support for Supreme Court justices. Martin returned to Randolph-Macon his senior year.
Thomas has long been one of the less wealthy members of the Supreme Court. Still, when Martin was in high school, he and Ginni Thomas had income that put them comfortably in the top echelon of Americans.
In 2006 for example, the Thomases brought in more than $500,000 in income. The following year, they made more than $850,000 from Clarence Thomas’ salary from the court, Ginni Thomas’ pay from the Heritage Foundation and book payments for the justice’s memoir.
It appears that at some point in Martin’s childhood, Thomas was paying for private school himself. Martin told ProPublica that Thomas sold his Corvette — “his most prized car” — to pay for a year of tuition, although he didn’t remember when that occurred.
In 2002, a friend of Thomas’ from the RV community who owned a Florida pest control company, Earl Dixon, offered Thomas $5,000 to help defray the costs of Martin’s education. Thomas’ disclosure of that earlier gift, several experts said, could be viewed as evidence that the justice himself understood he was required to report tuition aid from friends.
“At first, Thomas was worried about the propriety of the donation,” Thomas biographers Merida and Fletcher recounted. “He agreed to accept it if the contribution was deposited directly into a special trust for Mark.” In his annual filing, Thomas reported the money as an “education gift to Mark Martin.” | SCOTUS |
Cindy Powers was driven into bankruptcy by 19 life-saving abdominal operations. Medical debt started stacking up for Lindsey Vance after she crashed her skateboard and had to get nine stitches in her chin. And for Misty Castaneda, open heart surgery for a disease she'd had since birth saddled her with $200,000 in bills.
These are three of an estimated 100 million Americans who have amassed nearly $200 billion in collective medical debt — almost the size of Greece's economy — according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Now lawmakers in at least a dozen states and the U.S. Congress have pushed legislation to curtail the financial burden that's pushed many into untenable situations: forgoing needed care for fear of added debt, taking a second mortgage to pay for cancer treatment or slashing grocery budgets to keep up with payments.
Some of the bills would create medical debt relief programs or protect personal property from collections, while others would lower interest rates, keep medical debt from tanking credit scores or require greater transparency in the costs of care.
In Colorado, House lawmakers approved a measure Wednesday that would lower the maximum interest rate for medical debt to 3%, require greater transparency in costs of treatment and prohibit debt collection during an appeals process.
If it became law, Colorado would join Arizona in having one of the lowest medical debt interest rates in the country. North Carolina lawmakers have also started mulling a 5% interest ceiling.
But there are opponents. Colorado Republican state Sen. Janice Rich said she worried that the proposal could "constrain hospitals' debt collecting ability and hurt their cash flow."
For patients, medical debt has become a leading cause of personal bankruptcy, with an estimated $88 billion of that debt in collections nationwide, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Roughly 530,000 people reported falling into bankruptcy annually due partly to medical bills and time away from work, according to a 2019 study from the American Journal of Public Health.
Powers' family ended up owing $250,000 for the 19 life-saving abdominal surgeries. They declared bankruptcy in 2009, then the bank foreclosed on their home.
"Only recently have we begun to pick up the pieces," said James Powers, Cindy's husband, during his February testimony in favor of Colorado's bill.
In Pennsylvania and Arizona, lawmakers are considering medical debt relief programs that would use state funds to help eradicate debt for residents. A New Jersey proposal would use federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to achieve the same end.
Bills in Florida and Massachusetts would protect some personal property — such as a car that is needed for work — from medical debt collections and force providers to be more transparent about costs. Florida's legislation received unanimous approval in House and Senate committees on its way to votes in both chambers.
In Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts and the U.S. Congress lawmakers are contemplating bills that would bar medical debt from being included on consumer reports, thereby protecting debtors' credit scores.
Castaneda, who was born with a congenital heart defect, found herself $200,000 in debt when she was 23 and had to have surgery. The debt tanked her credit score and, she said, forced her to rely on her emotionally abusive husband's credit.
For over a decade Castaneda wanted out of the relationship, but everything they owned was in her husband's name, making it nearly impossible to break away. She finally divorced her husband in 2017.
"I'm trying to play catch-up for the last 20 years," said Castaneda, 45, a hairstylist from Grand Junction on Colorado's Western Slope.
Medical debt isn't a strong indicator of people's credit-worthiness, said Isabel Cruz, policy director at the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative.
While buying a car beyond your means or overspending on vacation can partly be chalked up to poor decision making, medical debt often comes from short, acute-care treatments that are unexpected — leaving patients with hefty bills that exceed their budgets.
For both Colorado bills — to limit interest rates and remove medical debt from consumer reports — a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said the governor will "review these policies with a lens towards saving people money on health care."
While neither bill garnered stiff political opposition, a spokesperson for the Colorado Hospital Association said the organization is working with sponsors to amend the interest rate bill "to align the legislation with the multitude of existing protections."
The association did not provide further details.
To Vance, protecting her credit score early could have had a major impact. Vance's medical debt began at age 19 from the skateboard crash, and then was compounded when she broke her arm soon after. Now 39, she has never been able to qualify for a credit card or car loan. Her in-laws cosigned for her Colorado apartment.
"My credit identity was medical debt," she said, "and that set the tone for my life." | US Federal Policies |
It's an incredible feeling to finally become free of student debt, to feel the financial weight lifted off your shoulders after years of worrying about making payments.
I've gotten to see this joy over the past year by helping people apply for debt cancellation through the government's Public Service Loan Forgiveness temporary waiver. The PSLF program cancels federal student loans for people who work in public-service jobs for 10 years, and the impact of relief is profound. I've seen school principals finally be able to afford groceries and teachers weep in disbelief. Some, like my sister who is a social worker for the Department of Veterans Affairs, even get a refund check for overpayments in addition to full cancellation.
For the most part, my work has helped trigger celebrations, but not always. After several of her coworkers were already on track to get their loans canceled, Rosey Olivero wrote to me with troubling news. She got a letter from her loan servicer saying she didn't qualify for cancellation. Rosey is a pediatric infectious-disease specialist who specializes in treating children with HIV. She's exactly the kind of public servant that PSLF was intended for. After investigating, we discovered the problem: She had refinanced her federal student loans in 2017 with a private lender.
The vast majority of student loans, about $1.6 trillion worth, is owed directly to the federal government. But there are many private lenders that try to persuade borrowers to refinance with them. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, private lenders hold $128 billion in student-loan debt. These lenders lure people in with a barrage of marketing that promises thousands of dollars of savings through lower interest rates. Once someone agrees to refinance, the companies pay off their federal student loans in full and issue a brand-new private loan in the same amount but with different terms. In the process, borrowers forfeit many protections that come with federal student loans, including the chance to get their loans canceled.
According to the lender's sales pitch, Rosey would save more than $100,000 over the long run by refinancing. At the time, that seemed like a good deal. But if she hadn't refinanced, she would have gotten the entire loan canceled. Today, she still has $90,000 to pay off. The devastating news was a gut punch.
Most federal student-loan payments are still paused until after the Supreme Court hears arguments on President Joe Biden's debt-relief plan. But if student-loan payments resume sometime this year, as they're scheduled to, millions of people will be bombarded with letters, emails, and phone calls from private companies trying to persuade them to refinance their student loans. But reader, be forewarned: There are many reasons to avoid falling for their ploy.
Rise of refinancers
The student-loan-refinancing industry exploded in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Many suddenly unemployed workers went back to school in hopes that more education would make them more competitive in a recession. At the same time, states were drastically cutting funding for universities in an attempt to deal with their own fiscal problems, and universities raised tuition to make up for the shortfall. Total student debt surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2012. Sensing an untapped opportunity, a flurry of fintech startups cashed in with "innovations" that were little more than traditional predatory practices dressed up with new, internet-driven packaging.
Before 2010, federal student loans were created by private institutions like Sallie Mae but guaranteed by the federal government — so if a borrower couldn't end up paying, the government would step in. Student debt was a moneymaking machine: Lenders would even package these guaranteed loans and sell them to investors. But it was a raw deal for the government, and in 2010, President Barack Obama cut out the intermediaries and had the government start issuing federal student loans directly. Private lenders refused to stand by and let their cash cow dry up, so they pivoted to refinancing student loans. Startups like SoFi, LendKey, and CommonBond were soon joined by more-traditional lenders like Discover. And Navient, which spun off from Sallie Mae, quickly became a major refinancer.
These private lenders have spent millions of dollars chasing down customers and lobbying against loan-assistance programs. In the first 1 ½ years of the pandemic, they collectively spent $6 million lobbying lawmakers to resume student-loan payments. While data is sparse, SoFi spent $170 million in marketing in 2017, according to Fast Company, and planned to spend $200 million in 2018.
Refinancing companies are able to grab customers for one reason: interest rates. The high interest rates Congress has set on federal student loans have allowed refinancing companies to turn a quick profit by offering some borrowers much-lower interest rates and promising smaller monthly payments. While this offer may seem like a godsend for cash-strapped graduates, it comes with a slew of downsides.
If you refinance your student loans, you could pay more
Many people who refinance actually end up paying thousands of dollars more in interest over the long run. For example, someone with $100,000 in federal graduate student loans at the current 6.54% interest rate would make monthly payments of $1,138 on the standard 10-year plan and end up paying $36,502 in interest over the lifetime of the loan. But if they refinanced for a lower monthly payment of $660 at a lower interest rate of 5% over a 20-year repayment plan, it would cost them $58,390 in interest over the long term.
People can also get enticed into a variable interest rate: Unlike federal loans, which have a locked-in interest rate from start to finish, privately refinanced loans might start out with a low rate, only to skyrocket years down the line because of changing market rates. In 2018, the Federal Trade Commission sued SoFi, alleging its marketing misled people about how much money they would save if they refinanced. In a comment given to CNBC at the time, a spokesperson for SoFi disputed the FTC's characterization: "We have always been committed to giving our current and prospective members clear and complete information with which to make smart financial choices, and are pleased to have this matter resolved."
But for many borrowers, the complicated and confusing terms of refinancing offers turn into a boondoggle. Nikki Giraffo is a teacher who felt like she was entering a hall of mirrors anytime she tried to explore her options. Every time she called Navient, her federal-loan servicer, she seemed to get a different answer. On one of those calls to Navient, the representative suggested refinancing her loans privately. Nikki ended up refinancing twice, first with Citizens Bank and then with NaviRefi, but did not end up saving any money. Nikki told me that she felt "lied to and pushed around" by the various loan companies. When I asked her whether she regretted refinancing, she told me "1,000%." Nikki is not alone. In one survey, more than one-third of respondents who refinanced their federal student loans said they eventually came to regret it.
If you refinance your student loans, you risk losing out on government assistance
The Education Department offers various payment plans to ease the debt burden for borrowers. Income-driven plans allow borrowers to pay a percentage of their income toward the loans with no penalty — giving people the ability to pay little or nothing on their student loans when they can't afford to. And the Biden administration has proposed changes that will allow millions more people to make $0 monthly payments while not accruing interest. This summer, the Education Department will also conduct a massive account adjustment that will cancel debt for millions of people and put millions more much closer to cancellation.
The most headline-grabbing piece of student-debt news over the past few years was Biden's plan to cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loans ($20,000 for those with Pell Grants) for anyone making less than $125,000 a year. While the plan is under threat from lawsuits and could be overturned by the Supreme Court, if it's upheld, roughly 20 million people will see all of their student loans canceled. But if you're unlucky enough to have previously refinanced your loans with a private company, you will be screwed out of this cancellation.
Refinancing companies are telling people to leave $10,000 or $20,000 of federal student loans un-refinanced to stay eligible for Biden's cancellation plan. But even if you do that, you are locking yourself into a long-term private loan that will prevent you from being eligible for any future cancellation.
If you refinance your student loans, you can put your family at risk
To get approved and the lowest rates, most people who refinance their student loans are required to have a cosigner — someone who agrees to pay if you can't. This is most often a spouse, parents, or children. If a borrower loses their job or isn't able to work, the cosigner is still on the hook for the debt. If the cosigner can't make the payments, either, it can destroy their credit and the lender can sue to garnish their wages. It's also not uncommon for the terms of the loan to require a lump-sum payment if the cosigner dies or files for bankruptcy. Imagine being forced to come up with $400,000 with 30 days' notice after the death of a close family member — when things go bad, they go very bad.
Federal student loans, by contrast, do not require a cosigner. If you get laid off or fall on hard times and can't make a payment, none of your loved ones will be saddled with this debt. You can file paperwork that will lower or eliminate your payments. People undergoing cancer treatment, for example, can get their federal loans deferred. And if you die, your loans get discharged.
In my years of helping people buried in debt, the most painful conversations have surrounded cosigners. It's bad enough to find your own life in financial ruin, but to be the cause of financial stress to those you love the most is heart-wrenching. Recent changes to the law require private student loans to be discharged if you die, but that isn't the case with older loans. Since refinancing companies love to target doctors loaded up with medical-school debt, this became an additional source of stress during the worst of the COVID-19 crisis. As Andrew Tisser, an emergency-room doctor who refinanced with a private company, put it, "If I were to die from COVID right now, my family would be stuck with $433,000." Most private student loans allow for some kind of "cosigner release" so no one else is on the hook for your loans. But in my experience, it's hard to get these private lenders to honor their own policies.
Refinancing companies make the system worse for everyone
Private refinancing companies don't just hand out their loans to anyone. The ideal targets for these companies are people who have a solid credit score, high income, and a large student-loan balance — in the hundreds of thousands. They typically target doctors, lawyers, and people with graduate degrees in STEM fields since they represent the lowest risk.
While refinancing companies use "colorblind" metrics like income, the school you graduated from, and your major, it just so happens that the kind of people whom refinance companies approve turn out to be mostly well-off white men. A 2020 study by the Student Borrower Protection Center found students who attended historically Black colleges and universities got rejected more often and had higher rates when approved.
And by siphoning off the people most likely to pay off their whole loan balance, refinancing companies leave the government with the borrowers who are most likely to end up not being able to pay, which drives up the cost of higher education for everyone.
So who should consider refinancing their student loans?
There is one situation where it might make sense to refinance: if your student loans are already private. This is especially true for people with private loans from before legal protections were added in 2018. If refinancing a loan that is already private can get you a lower interest rate or release your cosigner, then it's absolutely in your best interest to refinance. But since interest rates are rising, you're unlikely to find a better deal anytime soon.
For everyone else, the risks of refinancing are almost always too high. Many of the well-paid student debtors targeted by refinancing companies might think that they have more financial security and can afford to take that risk. But as the recent wave of mass layoffs at Silicon Valley giants like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook show, a sudden job loss can happen to anyone. Most Americans are one slip on a banana peel away from bankruptcy. Millions of people are unable to work because of long COVID. You are much better off having the protections that come with federal student loans if you get laid off or have a sudden medical emergency.
Private lenders are quick to swarm borrowers with tantalizing offers of large savings and may seem like a godsend for hardworking people living with the constant pressure of student loans. But if you fall for the pitch, you risk losing out on a whole lot of protections.
When I asked Nikki what advice she would give, she told me, "Trust no one. Hang up the phone. They are preying on literal desperation."
Thomas Gokey is a co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors where he currently serves as a case worker and policy director.
About Discourse Stories
Through our Discourse journalism, Insider seeks to explore and illuminate the day’s most fascinating issues and ideas. Our writers provide thought-provoking perspectives, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise. Read more Discourse stories here. | US Federal Policies |
Gaetz: Johnson victory proves MAGA power over Republican party
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) held up newly-elected Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) as a shining example of the strength of the “MAGA movement,” after every GOP member of Congress voted for him to be Speaker on Wednesday, ending three weeks of chaos in the House.
“He is sharp. He will be as respected in the homes of our most meaningful, righteous and patriotic donors as he will at the rallies with our most enthusiastic and meaningful activists,” Gaetz said.
House Republicans made Johnson the Speaker after three previous Republicans could not gather enough support after being named the nominee. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was kicked out of the job more than three weeks ago and the House had passed no bills from then until Johnson was elected.
“The swamp is on the run, MAGA is ascendant, and if you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement, and where the power of the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention,” Gaetz said.
“They are crying, they are hand-wringing, they are bed-wetting over on K Street, because we have an honorable, righteous man who is about to take this position,” he continued. “He’s going to do great things for the country.”
Gaetz spearheaded the effort to oust McCarthy earlier this month, citing a lack of trust and broken promises.
After being elected, Johnson committed to unify the GOP caucus and get back to work.
“We’re in the majority right now,” Johnson said after being sworn in as Speaker. “We’ve gone through a little bit of character building, and you know what it’s produced: more strength, more perseverance and a lot of hope.”
“And that’s what we’re about to deliver to the American people,” he added.
The House is expected to focus on government funding, as a continuing resolution passed late last month to avert a government shutdown runs out of money in just three weeks.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Congress |
For all of Donald Trump’s rhetorical innovations, personality quirks, and alleged criminal malfeasance, what has made him truly unique as a political figure is how much he has merged fan culture with American politics. It’s not unusual for Americans to idolize presidents—Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama are still actively revered by many—but no other president has inspired the same level of merchandise lines or themed car flags. A MAGA bumper sticker often isn’t simply a statement of loyalty; it’s a cultural signifier of community much like the dancing bear bumper sticker is for a Grateful Dead fan.
Nowhere is this more clear than at Trump’s rallies. He’s turned his campaign events into something that has more in common with a Bruce Springsteen concert than a Harry Truman whistle-stop tour.
A late-November Trump rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa, was as good an example of the genre as any. Held in a fading blue-collar city about 30 miles from the interstate, attendees started lining up for the rally early in the morning for the chance to see Trump appear in a high school gym decorated with banners celebrating victorious softball and bowling teams.
The line to get in wrapped around the school’s parking lot, forming an elongated C that stretched from the entrance of the building around the lot. Throughout, there were vendors selling Trump- and MAGA-branded clothing. Some set up full bazaars with shot glasses and keychains for sale alongside baseball hats and T-shirts. Others wheeled carts up and down the line, offering the most popular accessories. For the hungry, there was a food truck nearby.
Attendees were willing to stand for hours to get in, even if they were skeptical that they would get a chance to see the candidate. Pam Bygness of Coalville, Iowa, was way at the back of the line. She had attended Fort Dodge Senior High and didn’t think its gym could hold all the people waiting to get in. But she was still willing to wait for hours for her chance to see Trump. “He is truly a patriot,” she said. “You tell me what other man could go through what he has gone through to keep fighting for this country.”
At least half of those attending were showcasing their zeal in their fashion choices—including taking advantage of vendors swarming the rally. John Miller of Fort Dodge was wearing a brand-new T-shirt displaying Trump standing with an American flag and giving the middle finger with both hands above the slogan “One For Biden. One For Harris.”
Ashley Long of Des Moines had come wearing a Trump hat and a T-shirt with the image of the former president and a single word: “Revenge.” These had been sold by a right-wing podcaster, and Long described the shirt as “a joke” and the “opposite of Obama’s ‘Hope’ ” slogan. (Trump’s legal troubles have only made Long more supportive of him, she said, but she did caveat that if Trump did “something super heinous,” she could still support someone else. “It would have to be a video of Trump punting a baby for him not to be my guy,” she said.)
Chris Seedorf of Albert Lea, Minnesota, was wearing an American-flag cowboy hat and a shirt with a cartoon of a shotgun-wielding Trump modeled on Elmer Fudd and the slogan “Be Very Quiet I’m Offending Liberals.” Seedorf said he’d “take a bullet for” Trump and that Trump was the only politician he’d commit such an act of self-sacrifice for. Of the former president, Seedorf said: “He’d do it, too, for everyone else.”
Once attendees were let inside the high school gym, folding chairs were laid out on the basketball court, and the bleachers were packed up to the rafters. The soundtrack, which had favored early Elton John in Trump’s first presidential campaign, was now more tilted toward late Elvis. The music was interrupted by a preprogram where state elected officials did their best imitations of Trump’s populist rhetoric to entertain the crowd. One state representative started his speech by telling “transgender males” to “put their jockstraps back on” and ended it with an extended impression of Yoda, while another derided former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a “disrespectful little shit.” But they were undercards at best.
Trump has long drawn a community of superfans called “Front Row Joes” who treat his events with the same regard that Deadheads used to treat a live show. While Jim and Sandy Pamperin of St. Paul, Minnesota, weren’t quite in that community—Sandy had been to a mere eight Trump rallies while Jim had only been to three, including a canceled one in Iowa earlier this year—it was still an important event for them. Newlyweds married in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, just weeks before, they were treating the Trump rally as part of the celebration. As Sandy Pamperin said, “There is no better place to have a honeymoon.” Dressed in Trump gear and given prime seating, the couple was excited to get their picture taken with the former president after the event.
Eventually, finally, Trump took the stage, and the crowd stood to applaud him as Lee Greenwood blared from the speakers. They didn’t all sit down until the former president was 20 minutes into his speech, a variation on the all-too-familiar form: He riffed on a prepared text jampacked with dark “American Carnage”–style rhetoric assailing his opponents, chock-full of lines like “Crooked Joe Biden is also waging a demented crusade to annihilate Iowa ethanol,” and extended tangents about topics like the 2018 Florida gubernatorial primary, Xi Jinping’s granite-like physique, or the low crime in Fort Dodge. (According to Trump, “You don’t have people getting bopped over the top of the head” in the north-central Iowa town.)
At other typical caucus events, candidates at least face a handful of questions from voters, but there was none of that here. After all, while one might question Ron DeSantis on his foreign policy after his stump speech, no one would dare question Mick Jagger about what key he was singing in after a concert.
Instead, they stood, clapped, and cheered as Trump mocked long-standing foes like California Democrat Adam Schiff (“We call him pencil-neck,” Trump said, to guffaws), mocked transgender athletes participating in women’s sports, and shared humorous dismay about the salacious allegations of the infamous 2016 Steele dossier. Trump said of himself, to hoots and hollers, “He’s not into golden showers as they say—they call them. He’s not. I don’t like that idea.”
Afterward, attendees quickly streamed out. They had seen the show, bought their merchandise, and taken the selfies to prove that they were there. For hardcore Trump devotees, it was yet another milestone for them to mark down. And for those less devoted, it was a rare opportunity that was not to be missed. After all, presidential candidates come to Iowa all the time—but how often does Donald Trump come to your town?
Trump loyalists, let alone those motivated enough to attend his rallies, don’t make up a majority of Republican primary voters or general election voters. But they represent a key faction within the GOP and are perhaps the decisive reason for Trump’s political strength—even after 91 criminal charges, four tumultuous years in the White House, and one attempt to storm the Capitol and overturn a presidential election. Even when Trump’s political fortunes were at their lowest ebb after he left office, he still had a base devoted to him, not so much for his politics but for his personality and what that personality represents.
It’s certainly not enough to win the general election next year on its own—after all, Trump did not receive a plurality of the popular vote against Clinton or Biden. But it is enough to explain his current strength in the Republican primary, where a significant fraction of the GOP electorate is devoted to him. For all the efforts of his rivals to displace him from the lead, all the television ads devoted to touting their virtues, and the constant stream of court cases and legal documents outlining Trump’s failings, he has one advantage they just can’t touch.
Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have partisans. Donald Trump has fans. | US Campaigns & Elections |
“It’s no longer breaking news when I tell the American people that there is something wrong with Joe Biden. Everyone can see that now. It’s not in question anymore. It’s what are the Democrats going to do about it?” Jackson told Hannity. “The natural course of any of these illnesses, I don’t know if it’s Alzheimer's, dementia, or multi-infarct dementia. I’m not making a diagnosis, but I’m saying he has a cognitive issue related to his age. The natural course of all these illnesses is that they get worse with time. They don’t get better.”
“The White House is nothing more than an assisted living facility right now,” he continued.
While speaking with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Jackson, who served as a physician in the White House under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, reiterated his concern, saying the president’s cognitive decline is “an embarrassment,” “scary,” and “dangerous.”
Jackson pointed to the economy and inflation, crime, foreign affairs, the United States’s border crisis, and threats of terrorism.
“We have big issues right now that this country needs to be dealing with, and we need a commander-in-chief, and we need a head of state, that’s cognitively and physically fit to do the job, and this man is absolutely not,” Jackson said. “In the Bush Administration, we passed out presidential m and m’s. In the Obama Administration we passed out presidential kisses. In the Trump Administration and the Reagan Administration, it was presidential jellybeans. I’m assuming now if you go up you get a presidential Jell-O cup. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s sad.”
“The Democrats are in damage control right now. They are frantic. They realize that they have made this mistake. They put this man in office and expected him to be our president for four years, and he’s not going to make it four years, I don’t think,” he added. “He’s certainly not going to make it another four years, and now they are desperately trying to figure out what do they do about this.”
At the age of 81, Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history. If elected to a second term, he would be 86 upon leaving office. | US Federal Policies |
Office of the Suffolk County District Attorney
toggle caption
Karen Vergata was 34 years old when she went missing. There have been no charges made related to her death.
Office of the Suffolk County District Attorney
Karen Vergata was 34 years old when she went missing. There have been no charges made related to her death.
Office of the Suffolk County District Attorney
"Fire Island Jane Doe" — whose remains were scattered between Fire Island and Ocean Parkway in New York — has been identified after nearly three decades. Her identity also comes just three weeks after a suspect in a string of killings in the area around Gilgo Beach was arrested.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney announced at a news conference Friday that the remains belonged to Karen Vergata, a 34-year-old woman from Manhattan who had gone missing around Feb. 14, 1996.
That year, her legs and feet were found near Davis Park Beach on Fire Island. Fifteen years later, additional remains, including her skull, were discovered along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach.
Authorities were able to confirm Vergata was Fire Island Jane Doe after developing a DNA profile last August from the remains, Tierney said. The FBI later used the DNA in a genealogy review and made a presumptive match. In October, officials took a swab from a relative of Vergata which definitively identified the remains.
Vergata's remains "significantly" expanded "the timeline and geographic reach" of the investigation into the string of deaths on Long Island, Suffolk County police previously said.
She was one of 11 victims whose remains were found near Ocean Parkway between Nassau and Suffolk counties. The identities of remains belonging to three people — a female toddler, the toddler's mother and an Asian man — are still unknown.
The discovery of Vergata's identity comes three weeks after Suffolk County police arrested Rex Heuermann and charged him with the murders of three women — Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman and Melissa Barthelemy — whose remains were found near Gilgo Beach.
Heuermann is slated to next appear in court on Aug. 15. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled his proposal on Saturday to avoidby extending government funding for some agencies and programs until Jan. 19, and continuing funding for others until Feb. 2.
The approach is unusual for a stopgap spending bill. Usually, lawmakers extend funding until a certain date for all programs. Johnson decided to go with the combination approach, addressing concerns from GOP lawmakers seeking to avoid being presented with a massive spending bill just before the holidays.
"This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories," Johnson said in a statement after speaking with GOP lawmakers in an afternoon conference call. "The bill will stop the absurd holiday-season omnibus tradition of massive, loaded up spending bills introduced right before the Christmas recess."
The bill excludes funding requested by President Biden , Ukraine and the U.S. border with Mexico. Johnson said separating Biden's request for an emergency supplemental bill from the temporary, stopgap measure "places our conference in the best position to fight for fiscal responsibility, oversight over Ukraine aid, and meaningful policy changes at our Southern border."
Hardline conservatives, usually loathe to support temporary spending measures of any sort, had indicated they would give Johnson some leeway to pass legislation, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, to give Congress more time to negotiate a long-term agreement.
But, some were critical in their reactions following the conference call.
"My opposition to the clean CR just announced by the Speaker to the @HouseGOP cannot be overstated," Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, tweeted on X. "Funding Pelosi level spending & policies for 75 days - for future 'promises.'"
The federal governmentunder funding levels approved last year by a Democratic-led House and Senate. Facing a government shutdown when the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Congress that funds the government through Nov. 17, but the fallout was severe. Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the speakership days later, and the House was effectively paralyzed for most of the month while Republicans tried to elect a replacement.
Republicans eventually were unanimous in electing Johnson speaker, but his elevation has hardly eased the dynamic that led to McCarthy's removal — a conference torn on policy as well as how much to spend on federal programs. This past week, Republicans had to pull two spending bills from the floor - one to fund transportation and housing programs and the other to fund the Treasury Department, Small Business Administration and other agencies - because they didn't have the votes in their own party to push them through the House.
A document explaining Johnson's proposal to House Republicans, obtained by The Associated Press, said funding for four spending bills would be extended until Jan. 19. Veterans programs, and bills dealing with transportation, housing, agriculture and energy, would be part of that extension.
Funding for the eight other spending bills, which include defense, the State Department, Homeland Security and other government agencies would be extended until Feb. 2.
The document sent to GOP lawmakers and key staff states that Johnson inherited a budget mess. He took office less than three weeks ago and immediately began considering appropriations bills through regular order. Still, with just days remaining before a shutdown, a continuing resolution is now required.
"This proposal is just a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns — full stop," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Saturday on Johnson's proposal. "With just days left before an Extreme Republican Shutdown—and after shutting down Congress for three weeks after they ousted their own leader — House Republicans are wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties."
Underscoring the concerns about the possibility of a shutdown, the credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service lowered its outlook on the U.S. government's debt on Friday to "negative" from "stable," citing the cost of rising interest rates and political polarization in Congress.
House Republicans pointed to the national debt, now exceeding $33 trillion, for Moody's decision. Analysts have warned that with interest rates heading higher, interest costs on the national debt will eat up a rising share of tax revenue.
Johnson said in reaction to Moody's announcement that House Republicans are committed to working in a bipartisan fashion for fiscal restraint, beginning with the introduction of a debt commission.
for more features. | US Federal Policies |
Carlee Russell, the Alabama woman who told police she was kidnapped after she went missing for two days, was arrested on Friday and charged with two misdemeanors for making false statements to police, Hoover Police Department Chief Nicholas Derzis announced during a press conference on Friday.
"The story open wounds for families whose loved ones really were victims of kidnappings," Derzis said.
He added that he shares in the "frustration" that Russell was only charged with misdemeanors and said that he is calling on an "enhancement" to be added to the law.
"Existing laws only allowed the charges that were filed to be filed," he said.
Russell was charged with two class A misdemeanors that are each punishable with up to one year in prison -- false reporting to law enforcement authorities and falsely reporting an incident, Derzis said.
Lane Tolbert, chief assistant district attorney at the Jefferson County District Attorney's Bessemer Division office, told ABC News on Thursday that prosecutors advised police on "what we think the charges should be," but said that charges would be filed by the Circuit Clerk of Jefferson County, Bessemer Division's office.
According to Tolbert, each of the charges that Russell is facing are class A misdemeanors in Alabama and punishable by up to one year in prison.
Asked about the charges on Friday by ABC News, a spokesperson for the circuit clerk's office declined to comment.
The announcement comes after prosecutors confirmed to ABC News on Thursday that they discussed potential charges against Russell with the Hoover Police Department after the 25-year-old admitted through a statement from her attorney on Monday that she made up the whole thing.
Derzis told reporters during a press conference on Monday that Russell's disappearance was a "hoax" and read a statement provided to police by Russell's attorney, Emory Anthony, acknowledging that "there was no kidnapping."
"My client has given me permission to make the following statement on her behalf. There was no kidnapping on Thursday, July 13th 2023. My client did not see a baby on the side of the road. My client did not leave the Hoover area when she was identified as a missing person. My client did not have any help in this incident. This was a single act done by herself," the statement as read by Derzis said.
"We ask for your prayers for Carlee as she addresses her issues and attempts to move forward. Understanding that she made a mistake in this matter, Carly again, asks for your forgiveness and prayers," the statement continued.
Before her disappearance Russell called 911 on July 12 at around 9:30 p.m. ET to report a toddler on Interstate 459 in Alabama, but the Hoover Police Department said in a press release last week that investigators have not found any evidence of a child walking on the side of the road. According to Derzis, Russell also told police after she returned home on July 15 that she was taken by a male and a female when she stopped to check on the toddler that she reported on the highway.
Hoover police met with Anthony earlier this week to discuss the case.
ABC News reached out to Anthony and Russell's family for comment on the charges.
Derzis said during a press conference on July 19 that Russell searched for Amber Alerts and the movie "Taken" on her phone before her disappearance.
Russell also made searches related to bus tickets in the hours before she went missing, Derzis said.
"Taken," the 2008 movie starring Liam Neeson, centers around a young woman who is abducted and the quest to save her from her kidnappers.
"There were other searches on Carlee's phone that appeared to shed some light on her mindset," Derzis said, adding he would not share them out of privacy.
Asked about the charges on Friday by ABC News, a spokesperson for the circuit clerk's office declined to comment.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Four current and former L.A. Sheriff’s Department employees died of suicide in a 24-hour span
Warning: This story includes discussion of suicide.
The suicide deaths of four current and former Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department employees over a 24-hour span have prompted a plea from Sheriff Robert Luna urging deputies to check on the well-being of their colleagues and friends.
“We are stunned to learn of these deaths, and it has sent shock waves of emotions throughout the department as we try and cope with the loss of not just one, but four beloved active and retired members of our department family,” Luna said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “During trying times like these it’s important for personnel regardless of rank or position to check on the well-being of other colleagues and friends.”
Suicide prevention and crisis counseling resources
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, seek help from a professional and call 9-8-8. The United States’ first nationwide three-digit mental health crisis hotline 988 will connect callers with trained mental health counselors. Text “HOME” to 741741 in the U.S. and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line.
Luna said he had the “deepest concern for our employees’ well-being,” adding that the department was “urgently exploring avenues to reduce work stress factors to support our employees’ work and personal lives.” He said the department’s Homicide Bureau would investigate the deaths.
There is no indication that that the deaths were related or that foul play was involved, but department sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said the third and fourth deaths were discovered as word of the earlier deaths were spreading through the agency.
Luna’s comments came a day after the suicides of one former and three current employees, which occurred within a 24-hour span that began Monday.
Among them was Cmdr. Darren Harris, who became a recognizable figure on TV news over a 25-year career during which he served as a chief department spokesperson. Harris was found dead in his home in Santa Clarita on Monday morning, according to multiple sources. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said the sources, who agreed to speak with The Times on the condition of anonymity because his death hasn’t been publicly acknowledged.
Harris rose steadily through department ranks, with several stopovers in media relations, along with stints in which he oversaw the Transit Services Bureau and ran the Santa Clarita station.
When a mobile shooting range caught fire in early October, it wasn’t the first time the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department suffered such an incident.
Sometime after noon Monday, authorities found the body of Greg Hovland, a sergeant who worked in the Antelope Valley before his retirement, at his Quartz Hill home, according to the sources. Another employee was found dead shortly after sunset at a residence in Stevenson Ranch. The fourth death was reported at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, when sheriff’s homicide detectives responded to a hospital in Pomona where an employee died from suicide.
Observers said the suicides underscored a long-standing problem for law enforcement officers across Los Angeles as elsewhere. In recent years, studies have shown that more officers have died by suicide than the number killed in the line of duty. Officers also have higher risks of suicide than the general population, a disparity that some researchers have attributed to the stresses of police work and heightened public scrutiny over recent high-profile law enforcement killings — combined with their easy access to firearms.
The risk is particularly acute among members of smaller departments, researchers say, which tend to have fewer resources available for officers struggling with suicidal thoughts. According to the website Blue H.E.L.P., which tracks officer suicides, 81 officers have taken their lives this year across the country; in 2022, there were 172 suicides.
In his statement, Luna said the department’s Psychological Services Bureau and the Injury and Health Support Unit were working to provide counseling and other resources to the families of the officers.
“Additionally, the department has a Peer Support Program that members can use for additional assistance,” Luna said in his statement.
Four other Sheriff’s Department employees died by suicide this year, said Nicole Nishida, an agency spokesperson.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. | US Police Misconduct |
Former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and 3 GOP electors indicted with Trump lose bids to move Georgia charges to federal court
At least five of Trump's co-defendants have asked to move their trials from state to federal court, but a federal judge has refused all of the requests.
- U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled Clark "submitted no evidence" a letter he was charged with writing was part of job at the Justice Department.
- Clark had argued his job as assistant attorney general should protect him from state-level charges.
- Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued to keep Clark's trial in state court because his actions went beyond his federal duties.
A federal judge refused Friday to move former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark's trial on election racketeering charges with Donald Trump from state to federal court, weeks after rejecting a similar request from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones also rejected similar requests from three Republican presidential electors for Trump.
At least five of Trump’s co-defendants have asked to move their cases by arguing they were indicted for performing federal jobs, which should have protected them from state-level charges. But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said their alleged attempts to overthrow the 2020 election went far beyond official duties.
Clark, who was an assistant attorney general at the time, is charged with writing a letter to Georgia officials with false statements about Justice Department concerns with the election. Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen refused to sign or send the letter.
Jones ruled that "Clark has submitted no evidence" the letter was part of his job overseeing environmental litigation or acting as the head of the civil division.
"To the contrary, the evidence before the Court indicates the opposite: Clark’s role in the Civil Division did not include any role in the investigation or oversight of State elections," Jones wrote.
Three GOP electors who asked for federal trials also rejected
Jones also rejected requests for federal trials from three Republican presidential electors − Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, state Sen. Shawn Still and Cathy Latham − who argued their federal roles should protect them from state charges.
The electors were charged for meeting Dec. 20, 2020, and filling out forms as electors for Trump despite President Joe Biden winning the state. Jones ruled that because the electors were acting under the advice of Trump's private campaign lawyers, they were not fulfilling federal roles.
"Because the President’s private litigation is 'unofficial conduct, the Court finds that any directives from the attorneys in this private litigation to engage in activities that would benefit the litigation are not related to any federal officer duties of the President," Jones wrote.
Clark, Trump and Meadows were charged as part of a 41-count indictment in Fulton County Superior Court. All 19 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Clark, who headed the environment and natural resources division at the Justice Department, was charged for drafting a letter that was never sent with false statements about Georgia’s election.
Clark drafted the letter on Dec. 28, 2020, for Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to sign and send to Gov. Brian Kemp and legislative leaders. The letter falsely said the department “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia,” according to the indictment.
But the department hadn’t found widespread fraud in the election. Rosen refused to sign the letter.
Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue each testified in depositions that the civil division had no role in bringing election-related lawsuits. Rosen testified that Clark’s letter was “strange” in part because Clark“didn’t have responsibility for election issues.”
Clark argued in trying to move his trial that drafting the letter was part of his official duties, at Trump's request.
“It is not a good-faith prosecution; it is a political ‘hit job’ stretched out across 98 pages to convey the false impression that it has heft and gravity," said Clark's lawyer, Harry MacDougald.
But one of the prosecutors, Donald Wakeford, argued that Clark had presented no evidence that his actions were authorized by Trump. Clark also provided no explanation of what federal law he was trying to enforce or what authority or appropriate expertise he had when looking into allegations of problems with the election, Wakeford said.
“This case does not involve federal authority,” Wakeford said, arguing for the case to be returned to the state court. “There is no federal authority here to protect.” | US Political Corruption |
Robert F. Bukaty/AP
toggle caption
Police respond to an active shooter situation in Lewiston, Maine, late on Wednesday.
Robert F. Bukaty/AP
Police respond to an active shooter situation in Lewiston, Maine, late on Wednesday.
Robert F. Bukaty/AP
Maine Gov. Janet Mills said at a Thursday press conference that 18 people were killed and another 13 injured in the shootings last night in Lewiston, Maine.
She said she and President Biden have ordered all U.S. and Maine flags lowered to half-staff immediately for five days in their honor.
The cities of Lewiston, Lisbon and Bowdoin remain under a shelter-in-place order as law enforcement continue searching for Robert Card, whom Mills named as a person of interest and described as armed and dangerous. People should not approach him under any circumstances, she added.
She said all of Maine's 1.3 million residents are sharing in the sorrow of people who lost loved ones.
"This is a dark day for Maine," she said. "I know it's hard for us to think about healing when our hearts our broken. But I want every person in Maine to know that we will heal together. We are strong, we are resilient, we are a very caring people."
For more coverage of the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, you can follow NPR's live blog here. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
No, Biden can’t let ‘Dreamers’ join ObamaCare
There’s just one little, teensy weensy problem with President Biden’s announcement that he will let “Dreamers” join the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) or Medicaid — it’s illegal. I know what you’re thinking: When has an action being illegal ever stopped Biden? And you’re right, it usually doesn’t. But while illegality won’t stop him, the U.S. Supreme Court almost certainly will.
The DREAM Act (hence, the name Dreamers) was first introduced in 2001, often with some bipartisan support. It would have granted permanent resident status to certain young illegal immigrants brought to the United States by their parents, and it could have created a path to U.S. citizenship.
Frustrated that he couldn’t get Congress to pass the latest version of the DREAM Act, President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on June 15, 2012, which was, not coincidentally, only four months before the 2012 presidential election.
Obama’s executive order stated: “Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security is taking steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people. Over the next few months, eligible individuals who do not present a risk to national security or public safety will be able to request temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization.”
Obama stressed that the DACA program was “not a pathway to citizenship” for Dreamers. President Trump twice offered to move in that direction in exchange for Democrats funding his border wall. They refused.
Biden has also failed to pass Dreamer legislation, even though the House and Senate were both held by Democrats during Biden’s first two years. So, he’s decided to make DACA recipients eligible to enroll in ObamaCare and Medicaid. Both programs are heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
But notice that Biden is ignoring the clear language of the law in both programs, which exclude undocumented individuals.
Healthcare.gov (the ObamaCare website) says, “Undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible to buy Marketplace health coverage, or for premium tax credits and other savings on Marketplace plans. But they may apply for coverage on behalf of documented individuals.”
And the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is even more explicit: “Individuals granted deferred action under DHS guidance issued on June 15, 2012 are not eligible to purchase coverage through the Marketplace.”
The question of whether illegal immigrants would be eligible for ObamaCare was raised during debate, and the bill’s proponents strongly dismissed the possibility. It almost certainly wouldn’t have passed if they had been eligible. It barely passed as it was.
As for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), while there are several caveats, undocumented immigrants are not eligible to enroll in either program.
How does Biden plan to skirt the law? The White House states, “The Department of Health and Human Services will shortly propose a rule amending the definition of ‘lawful presence,’ for purposes of Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage, to include DACA recipients.”
And there you have it. The Biden administration plans, without congressional approval, to change the definition of those who are considered lawfully present in the United States to include Dreamers. Both ObamaCare and Medicaid allow certain noncitizens who are “lawfully present,” such as green card holders, to participate. So, Biden will just claim that Dreamers are lawfully present.
One wonders why we go to the trouble of electing representatives if the president is going to do whatever he wants anyway.
Dreamers are the most sympathetic group of undocumented people hoping for citizenship. And a large majority of the public supports a pathway to citizenship for them. But Biden doesn’t get to defy the law just because Congress won’t change it. And that’s the issue.
This practice has become commonplace since Obama’s presidency.
Democrats want to pass a bill or change a law they don’t like. But they don’t have the votes. So, the president signs an executive order to do it anyway, even though Democrats know that doing so is illegal. (Recall that Obama said exactly that about the Dreamers before he issued his DACA executive order, and there was Biden’s repeated effort to extend his eviction moratorium.)
Democrats then take credit for doing something “courageous” and task progressives to publicly assert that what the president has done is clearly legal and appropriate.
If a lawsuit is filed to stop the president’s plan, as it almost surely will be, Democrats will claim it’s just another example of Republicans trying to hurt immigrants and the poor. If the Supreme Court strikes down the action, which is almost certain, Biden and other progressives can blame it on the white supremist justices and assert that’s why they need to pack the court with more progressives.
SCOTUS may save us from Biden’s overreaches, but who will save us from the progressive onslaught?
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Federal Policies |
A southeastern Oklahoma sheriff's office says the recording in which the sheriff and others are reportedly heard discussing killing two journalists was illegal and predicted felony charges will be filed.
A statement on the sheriff's office Facebook page, the first public statement since the comments by Sheriff Kevin Clardy and others were reported by the McCurtain Gazette-News, does not address the recorded comments about killing journalists and hanging Black people, but calls the situation “complex” and one “we regret having to address.”
The statement calls the past 72 hours “amongst the most difficult and disruptive in recent memory” and says the recording was altered and involves many victims.
“There is and has been an ongoing investigation into multiple, significant violation(s) of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act ... which states that it is illegal to secretly record a conversation in which you are not involved and do not have the consent of at least one of the involved parties,” according to the statement.
Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, said under Oklahoma law, the recording would be legal if it were obtained in a place where the officials being recorded did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Bruce Willingham, the longtime publisher of the McCurtain Gazette-News, said the recording was made March 6 when he left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a county commissioner’s meeting because he suspected the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act.
Willingham said he twice spoke with his attorneys to be sure he was doing nothing illegal.
The newspaper released portions of the recording in which Clardy, sheriff's Capt. Alicia Manning and District 2 County Commissioner Mark Jennings appear to discuss Bruce and Chris Willingham, a reporter for the newspaper who is Bruce Willingham's son. Jennings tells Clardy and Manning “I know where two deep holes are dug if you ever need them,” and the sheriff responded, “I’ve got an excavator.”
Jennings also reportedly says he’s known “two or three hit men” in Louisiana, adding “they’re very quiet guys.”
In the recording, Jennings also appears to complain about not being able to hang Black people, saying: “They got more rights than we got.”
Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix was also present during the conversation.
The Associated Press could not immediately verify the authenticity of the recording. None of the four have returned telephone calls or emails from The Associated Press.
A spokesperson for the FBI’s office in Oklahoma City said the agency’s policy is not to confirm or deny any ongoing investigation. Phil Bacharach, a spokesperson for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, said the agency had received an audio recording and is investigating the incident, but declined to comment further.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and state Rep. Eddy Dempsey, a Republican who represents the area, have called for Clardy, Manning, Jennings and Hendrix to resign.
More than 100 people gathered outside the McCurtain County Courthouse in Idabel on Monday, with many of them calling for the sheriff and other county officials to resign.
The sheriff's office statement said there have been “a large number of threats of violence including death threats” against unspecified county employees, officials, their families and friends since the conversation was first reported.
The statement said the sheriff's office will issue news releases until its investigation concludes “and findings are forwarded to the appropriate authorities for felony charges to be filed on those involved.” | US Police Misconduct |
Liz Cheney had hoped to author the last chapter of Donald Trump’s political career during her time as vice chair of the January 6 committee. But, as the former president runs to reclaim the White House on an extreme, antidemocratic platform, the former Wyoming representative is now concerned that the 2021 insurrection was just the beginning.
“We may have many darker chapters ahead,” Cheney writes in her new book, Oath and Honor, which hit shelves Tuesday.
In an interview, which has been edited for clarity and length, the former number three House Republican and daughter of the former vice president discussed her work to stop Trump in 2024, why she hopes Democrats take back the House, and her own political future—including a potential third-party White House bid. “The Republican Party right now has become an anti-Constitution party,” Cheney told me. “I think we ought to look for ways we can come together to work to stop that.”
Vanity Fair: It’s been a wild year for the House of Representatives. We’ve seen the majority dedicate itself to Trump once again. We’ve had these pitched battles over the gavel, culminating with the ouster of Kevin McCarthy and the ascent of Mike Johnson—neither of whom come off looking very good in your book. What’s it been like watching all this play out from the outside rather than inside the chamber?
Liz Cheney: Well, it’s been sad watching the continued descent of the House Republicans. And I do think the election of Mike Johnson is clarifying. It’s clear that he’s somebody who’s acted in ways that he knew were inconsistent with the law, with the Constitution, and did so in order to placate Donald Trump. And so I think the country needs better people than we have today in the House of Representatives. So I would say, the main reaction I have watching the whole thing is just sort of a combination of disgust and sadness.
You and Adam Kinzinger, the only two Republicans on the January 6 committee, are no longer in Congress—and Mitt Romney, who’s maybe the most prominent anti-Trump Republican currently serving, is retiring after this term. How much worse does this get when there are so few Republicans, if any right now in office, who are actually committed to the Constitution and willing to put the country ahead of Trump?
Well, it could get much worse. You know, I spend a lot of my time talking, especially to young people on college campuses, but to audiences all over the country, making the point that we have to demand excellence from our elected officials. We’re certainly not demanding much today. That means that we need more people running for office, because, you know, too often there’s not an excellent choice on the ballot. And so we need more people to get engaged, to run themselves, and people need to take individual responsibility for the choices that we make at the ballot box. And make sure that people are casting their votes for serious candidates who are going to uphold the Constitution.
It’s been about a year since the January 6 committee released its final report. What do you hope the legacy of the committee will be?
I’m very proud of the work we did. I think it was really important. I think that the report itself lays out just a mountain of evidence and facts and testimony from those people who know Donald Trump best, mostly Republicans, at the highest levels—the Justice Department, people he appointed in the White House, family members, you know—about just the depth and the breadth of his plan to overturn the election and seize power. And so I think having that record there, it’s just crucially important. And so I hope that it’s something that people continue to turn to and reference if there’s ever any questions about what kind of president Donald Trump would be if given the chance again.
Our political memory can sometimes be short. Are you confident that Americans are bearing in mind that warning, three years after he left office? Do you think there’s a risk that some of the immediacy and just the memory of how bad it got can kind of ameliorate a little bit?
I do think that it’s important for people not to lose sight of what happened, and I think there’s a concerted effort underway by Republicans in Congress to whitewash what happened. And I think we have to fight against that. But I think, at the end of the day, you sort of have to recognize that there’s a majority of people, Republicans and Democrats and independents, that understand how dangerous he is. And there is certainly a percentage of the Republican Party that will never be convinced. But they aren’t the majority. And so, I think, the important thing is for people to be willing, in my view, to put partisanship aside, to put together a coalition of people that believe in the Constitution, and really go vote that way in 2024.
How have you felt about the response from President Biden and the Democrats to this threat from Trump and his allies?
Democrats stand and recognize that threat. I think that it’s not only Democrats. I think if you go back, the vast majority of witnesses [to testify before] the select committee were Republicans. But I also think that the judiciary has played an exemplary role here in terms of judges and justices, whether appointed by [Barack] Obama or [George W.] Bush or Trump, that we’ve seen across the board, almost without exception, a real recognition and understanding of the threat that exists. The [former] president here was willing to go to war with the courts, said he’s not going to abide by the ruling of the courts. And I think you’ve seen from the judicial system adherence to the Constitution, to the fundamental underpinnings of the republic.
In other recent interviews you’ve done, you’ve suggested that, because of their alliances with Trump, you would prefer a Democratic majority to a Republican majority. Would that be an accurate characterization?
It is a difficult choice to have arrived at, as you can imagine. And I haven’t changed my views on policy. I’m a conservative, and there are many, many things I disagree with Democrats on. But if the question is, Who do you want in the majority in a situation in which we might have a presidential election thrown into the House of Representatives?—and that could happen; it could well be nobody gets to 270—you have to think about who you want in charge on January 6 of 2025. And it is really important that Mike Johnson not be sitting in the Speaker’s chair, if we end up in that set of circumstances. We’ve come to a place where you can’t count on this group of elected Republicans to defend the Constitution. That’s very sad. But that’s where we are.
Extending that logic, then, if Donald Trump is the nominee in 2024 for the Republicans, does that mean voting for Joe Biden?
If Donald Trump’s the nominee for the Republicans, then Democrats and Republicans and independents have to come together to defeat him. I don’t know who the Democratic nominee is going to be yet. We don’t know for sure. I don’t know who else is going to be in the race. So I’m not endorsing any single candidate right now. But I would not be voting for Donald Trump and will be working to put together a coalition that has the best chance of beating him.
There’s been speculation about your own intentions about a possible run, and I’ve seen you say that you’re leaving the door open. Why do you think there’s been that speculation? Do you think that there’s a hunger for another voice in the race, besides the two that currently seem like they’re going to be the nominees?
I think there’s a real fear, certainly that I see anecdotally around the country, that Donald Trump might—well, you look at the polls. It’s entirely possible that he could be the nominee, and you can’t rule out the possibility that he could win, and I think that fear drives people to recognize, Well, we have to make sure that doesn’t happen. So how are we going to make sure it doesn’t happen? And I think that’s why you see more people this time around thinking about whether or not a third party makes sense. Or whether or not an independent candidacy makes sense. People are searching for something that will help ensure that we avoid the very worst outcome.
I’m wondering if all of this has led you to reflect on the Republican Party as a whole, before Trump. I think sometimes he’s sort of presented as a divergence from the norm. Do you think that he’s a symptom of something deeper that was wrong in the party that allowed his ascent in the first place?
You know, I think that what Trump has done is effectively convinced a lot of people that he speaks for them, that he represents them. I think he tapped into a real sense many people have around the country that the government doesn’t listen to them, that they’re voiceless. And so I think that reflecting on what that means—a number of people are not Republican that are part of that coalition—involves what I suppose we used to call Reagan Democrats. That involves independents, as well as people who have never been involved in politics before. The success that he has had in convincing people to believe his lies is something that goes beyond partisanship. The political science analysis of the factors that contributed to his rise is something that is important to look at for the future. But I watch and I hear Democrats sort of condemning the Republican Party back to the kind of establishment, under Abraham Lincoln, and I think that’s wrong and partisan. Both parties have had significant failures, and both parties have had successes.
In response to the stand that you took when you were in office and your work on the January 6 committee, you faced a lot of criticism from members of your party; of course, you were primaried. Now that you have the book, and you’ve been speaking to the media, that’s kicked up some of these criticisms again. I saw Lindsey Graham dismissing your warnings as just a “hatred” of Trump. How do you think your message is breaking through to the people it needs to break through to?
Lindsey Graham has demonstrated a sort of capacity for flattery of Donald Trump that really exceeds any I’ve ever seen. I think it’s sad. I think Lindsey Graham is somebody who has been in the right place on national security issues—certainly when Senator McCain was alive. Since Senator McCain’s passing, Lindsey Graham has decided to sort of hitch his wagon to Donald Trump, and that is a sad thing to see. But, you know, Lindsey Graham is not my audience. | US Political Corruption |
Donald Trump's legal problems just got very real.
We now have trial dates being set, jockeying among various co-defendants and even Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, taking the stand to essentially say he was only following orders. It now appears certain that one way or the other, Trump will be facing a jury before the 2024 election. And for all his blustering about how every indictment makes him more popular, he wants his Republican supporters to do something about it.
My colleague Amanda Marcotte has a full rundown of the Republican hysteria around the threat to their Dear Leader. The party is in such disarray that it's difficult to anticipate how successful they might be at their various gambits to interfere in the 2024 elections around the country. But the outlines of what the MAGA caucus in the House of Representatives plans to do in Washington are clear. They want to impeach Joe Biden, as we all predicted the moment they took the majority in 2022, and flood the zone with investigations. And they want to hold the government hostage by shutting down the government. If all goes well, they might even wreck the economy in the process.
We need your help to stay independent
Trump has exhorted them on his social media platform Truth Social for months to put a stop to what the GOP refers to as the "weaponization" of the Department of Justice. And he's taken it to the campaign trail as well. At a Pennsylvania rally this summer, Trump excoriated congressional Republicans whom he believes have not been fighting for him hard enough:
The Republicans are very high class. You've got to get a little bit lower class...Any Republican that doesn't act on Democrat fraud should be immediately primaried and get out — out! They have to play tough and ... if they're not willing to do it, we got a lot of good, tough Republicans around ... and they're going to get my endorsement every single time.
The problem is that there isn't a whole lot his loyal House majority can do to help him. They are running investigations as fast as they can think of them. Aside from all the bogus Hunter Biden nonsense and the absurd impending impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, they're now set upon investigating the Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg and Fulton County prosecutor Fanni Willis with the supposed intention of defunding them for their alleged misconduct. They don't seem to realize that these are local and state offices and are hardly dependent upon whatever small amounts of money the federal government might provide. It does make for a good Truth Social post though.
Still, Republicans do have one card up their sleeves that it looks like they are going to play quite soon. You'll recall that the House Freedom Caucus was quite bent out of shape last spring when Kevin McCarthy made a deal with the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. They even staged a little hissy fit soon afterward blocking a vote on the floor and putting the House into gridlock for a week. They now plan to flex their muscles over the appropriations bills with a renewed threat of a government shutdown. And if the putative leader of their majority, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, doesn't like it, they are pretty much on record saying that they are ready to pull the plug on his speakership. (All it would take is one member to call to vacate the chair and it will only take four GOP votes against him to put an end to his reign.)
During this summer's recess, the rebels, led by former Sen. Ted Cruz's chief of staff, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, the battle lines have been drawn. (Roy was working for Cruz back in 2013 when he helped the House Tea Party caucus lead that disastrous government shutdown.) The Freedom Caucus released a statement making it clear that they will oppose any short-term funding bill that doesn't meet their demands:
"In the eventuality that Congress must consider a short-term extension of government funding through a Continuing Resolution, we refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats' bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,"
They are hand-waving about cuts, including Ukraine military funding and "woke" Pentagon spending. But the most important ransom demand, which is gaining traction in the whole caucus, is to cut funding for the Department of Justice and the FBI if they don't succumb to their demands. That's right, the Republicans are now agitating to defund the police.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., has two amendments that would "prohibit the use of federal funding for the prosecution of any major presidential candidate prior to the upcoming presidential election on November 5th, 2024." Another one, proposed by Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz is to "defund Jack Smith's office and end the witch hunt." He has the support of one of the most powerful people in the Republican Party:
The Holman rule would allow amendments to House appropriations legislation to reduce the salary of or fire specific federal employees, or cut a specific program. It has never been used for the purpose Greene proposes and was completely out of use since 1983 until the Trump-crazed GOP took over in 2017. (Greene was still an obscure Trump devotee posting about space lasers and QAnon on Facebook groups at the time.)
None of this is going to happen, of course. Even if they could easily pass these ridiculous proposals in the House, which is unlikely, the senate isn't going to go along with it. And in case they've forgotten, they'll need to get a presidential signature on it too. I'm pretty sure President Biden isn't going to do that.
And if they do shut down the government just for kicks anyway, one of the functions that will just keep going is the Department of Justice. NBC News reported:
The Justice Department said in a 2021 memo that in a shutdown, "Criminal litigation will continue without interruption as an activity essential to the safety of human life and the protection of property." The Justice Department's plans assume that the judicial branch remains fully operational, which it has said in the past can carry on for weeks in the event of a funding lapse.
Special counsel Jack Smith's office is funded by a "permanent, indefinite appropriation for independent counsels," the department said in its statement of expenditures. Given its separate funding source, the special counsel would not be affected by a shutdown and could run off of allocations from previous years."
This is all more of the performance art that passes for politics in the Republican Party these days. A government shutdown over something that will make no difference is a perfect illustration of how preposterous they've become. Unfortunately for them, Republicans always take a big hit in popularity when they pull this stunt but they just can't seem to help themselves. And better leaders than Kevin McCarthy have gone down with the ship when they do it.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, each time this happens people get more cynical about their government. And that way lies (even more) madness. | US Political Corruption |
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.
Stephen Groves, Associated Press
Stephen Groves, Associated Press
Leave your feedback
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government is heading toward a shutdown that will disrupt many services, squeeze workers and roil politics as Republicans in the House, fueled by hard-right demands for deep cuts, force a confrontation over federal spending.
READ MORE: White House prepares for government shutdown as House Republicans lack a viable endgame for funding
While some government entities will be exempt — Social Security checks, for example, will still go out — other functions will be severely curtailed. Federal agencies will stop all actions deemed non-essential, and millions of federal employees, including members of the military, won’t receive paychecks.
Here’s a look at what’s ahead if the government shuts down on Oct. 1.
A shutdown happens when Congress fails to pass some type of funding legislation that is signed into law by the president. Lawmakers are supposed to pass 12 different spending bills to fund agencies across the government, but the process is time-consuming. They often resort to passing a temporary extension, called a continuing resolution or CR, to allow the government to keep operating.
When no funding legislation is enacted, federal agencies have to stop all non-essential work and will not send paychecks as long as the shutdown lasts.
Although employees deemed essential such as air traffic controllers and law enforcement officers still have to report to work, other federal employees are furloughed. Under a 2019 law, those same workers are slated to receive backpay once the funding impasse is resolved.
Government funding expires Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year. A shutdown will effectively begin at 12:01 a.m. if Congress is not able to pass a funding plan that the president signs into law.
It is impossible to predict how long a shutdown would last. With Congress divided between a Democratic-controlled Senate and Republican-led House, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s hard-right conservatives looking to use the shutdown as leverage for spending cuts, many are bracing for a stoppage that could last weeks.
Millions of federal workers face delayed paychecks when the government shuts down, including many of the roughly 2 million military personnel and more than 2 million civilian workers across the nation.
Nearly 60 percent of federal workers are stationed in the Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security departments.
Federal workers are stationed in all 50 states and have direct interaction with taxpayers — from Transportation Security Administration agents who operate security at airports to Postal Service workers who deliver mail.
Some federal offices will also have to close or face shortened hours during a shutdown.
Beyond federal workers, a shutdown could have far-reaching effects on government services. People applying for government services like clinical trials, firearm permits and passports could see delays.
Businesses closely connected to the federal government, such as federal contractors or tourist services around national parks, could see disruptions and downturns. The travel sector could lose $140 million daily in a shutdown, according to the U.S. Travel Industry Association.
Lawmakers also warn that a shutdown could rattle financial markets. Goldman Sachs has estimated that a shutdown would reduce economic growth by 0.2 percent every week it lasted, but growth would then bounce back after the government reopens.
Others say the disruption in government services has far-reaching impacts because it shakes confidence in the government to fulfill its basic duties. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned, “A well-functioning economy requires a functioning government.”
The president and members of Congress will continue to work and get paid. However, any members of their staff who are not deemed essential will be furloughed.
The judiciary will be able to continue to operate for a limited time using funds derived from court filings and other fees, as well as other approved funding.
Notably, funding for the three special counsels appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland would not be affected by a government shutdown because they are paid for through a permanent, indefinite appropriation, an area that’s been exempted from shutdowns in the past.
That means the two federal cases against Donald Trump, the former president, as well as the case against Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, would not be interrupted. Trump has demanded that Republicans defund the prosecutions against him as a condition of funding the government, declaring it their “last chance” to act.
Prior to the 1980s, lapses in government funding did not result in government operations significantly shuttering. But then-U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, in a series of legal opinions in 1980 and 1981, argued that government agencies cannot legally operate during a funding gap.
Federal officials have since operated under an understanding they can make exemptions for functions that are “essential” for public safety and constitutional duties.
Since 1976, there have been 22 funding gaps, with 10 of them leading to workers being furloughed. But most of the significant shutdowns have taken place since Bill Clinton’s presidency, when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and his conservative House majority demanded budget cuts.
The longest government shutdown happened between 2018 and 2019 when then-President Trump and congressional Democrats entered a standoff over his demand for funding for a border wall. The disruption lasted 35 days, through the holiday season, but was also only a partial government shutdown because Congress had passed some appropriations bills to fund parts of the government.
It’s the responsibility of Congress to fund the government. The House and Senate have to agree to fund the government in some way, and the president has to sign the legislation into law.
Congress often relies on a so-called continuing resolution, or CR, to provide stopgap money to open government offices at current levels as budget talks are underway. Money for pressing national priorities, such as emergency assistance for victims of natural disasters, is often attached to a short-term bill.
But hardline Republicans say any temporary bill is a non-starter for them. They are pushing to keep the government shut down until Congress negotiates all 12 bills that fund the government, which is historically a laborious undertaking that isn’t resolved until December, at the earliest.
Trump, who is Biden’s top rival heading into the 2024 election, is urging on the Republican hardliners.
If they are successful, the shutdown could last weeks, perhaps even longer.
Associated Press reporters Fatima Hussein, Lindsay Whitehurst, Josh Boak and Lisa Mascaro
Support Provided By:
Learn more
Politics
Sep 22 | US Federal Policies |
Michigan-based McLaren Health Care has confirmed that the sensitive personal and health information of 2.2 million patients was compromised during a cyberattack earlier this year. A ransomware gang later took credit for the cyberattack.
In a new data breach notice filed with Maine’s attorney general, McLaren said hackers were in its systems for three weeks during July 28 through August 23 before the healthcare company noticed a week later on August 31.
McLaren said the hackers accessed patient names, their date of birth and Social Security number, and a wealth of medical information, including billing, claims and diagnosis information, prescription and medication details, and information relating to diagnostic results and treatments. Medicare and Medicaid patient information was also taken.
McLaren is a healthcare provider with 13 hospitals across Michigan and about 28,000 total employees. McLaren, whose website touts its cost efficiency measures, made over $6 billion in revenue in 2022.
News of the incident broke in October when the Alphv ransomware gang (also known as BlackCat) claimed responsibility for the cyberattack, claiming it took millions of patients’ personal information. Days after the cyberattack was disclosed, Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel warned state residents that the breach “could affect large numbers of patients.”
TechCrunch has seen several screenshots posted by the ransomware gang on its dark web leak site showing access to the company’s password manager, internal financial statements, some employee information, and spreadsheets of patient-related personal and health information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and diagnostic information.
Alphv/BlackCat claimed in its post that the gang had been in contact with a McLaren representative, without providing evidence of the claim.
When reached by email, McLaren spokesperson David Jones declined to comment beyond the company’s public statement or answer our questions about the incident. The spokesperson would not say if the company received a demand for payment, or if it paid the hackers. McLaren would not make its chief information security officer George Goble available for an interview.
McLaren currently faces at least three class action lawsuits related to the cyberattack. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
- House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNBC in an interview he does not think the U.S. will default on its debt as tense negotiations over the debt ceiling continue.
- "I think at the end of the day we do not have a debt default," McCarthy told CNBC's "Squawk Box" Wednesday morning.
- Leaders are running out of time to raise the debt ceiling before a June 1 deadline when the government is set to run out of money.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNBC in an interview Wednesday he does not think the U.S. will default on its debt as tense negotiations over the debt ceiling continue.
"I think at the end of the day we do not have a debt default," McCarthy told CNBC's "Squawk Box."
Leaders are running out of time to raise the debt ceiling before a June 1 deadline when the government is set to run out of money. McCarthy met Tuesday with President Joe Biden at the White House alongside the vice president and other top congressional leaders in an attempt to hammer out a deal before the president left for the G-7 Summit in Japan.
McCarthy refrained from saying Wednesday that he was optimistic about the state of the talks, but said he was encouraged by Biden's willingness to negotiate. Biden on Tuesday said he would cut short his trip to Asia to further engage in debt limit talks.
"The only thing I'm confident about is now we have a structure to find a way to come to a conclusion," McCarthy said. "The timeline is very right. But we're going to make sure we're in the room and get this done."
Lifting the debt ceiling is necessary for the government to cover spending commitments already approved by Congress and the president — and prevent default. Doing so does not authorize new spending. But House Republicans have said they will not lift the limit if Biden and lawmakers do not agree to future spending cuts.
McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in separate interviews with "Squawk Box" Wednesday morning agreed that negotiations were moving forward, but the two remained entrenched in their positions.
Jeffries called a Republican request to attach work requirements to federal food benefits a "nonstarter" but said he remains optimistic about negotiations.
"It was a very positive meeting yesterday," Jeffries said. "It was calm. It was candid in terms of the discussion and I'm optimistic common ground will be found in the next week or two."
Jeffries noted the last time work requirements were proposed, in the 2018 Farm Bill, Republicans including McCarthy voted against it.
"It's entirely unreasonable to think that at this particular point in time, in the context of a debt ceiling showdown that has been manufactured, as part of an effort to avoid default, that these types of so-called work requirements can be imposed on the American people," he said.
McCarthy on the other hand maintained that work requirements were the "responsible" thing to do, and noted that Biden voted in favor of work requirements when he was a senator.
"Work requirements only go to those able-bodied people with no dependents," McCarthy said. "You could be in school and be waived. You could be looking for a job and be waived. But what we've found is with every statistical data is that it helps people get a job, it helps our supply chain, it helps the economy and the individual even stronger, and that's what we should be doing."
While Republicans have been pushing for work requirements, Democrats have been asking for revenue-raising mechanisms to be part of the debate. McCarthy said taxes would not be discussed.
"There is not going to be a tax discussion in this debt ceiling," McCarthy said. "The president admitted that yesterday."
Defaulting on sovereign debt would wreak havoc on the economy and roil global markets. A default on Treasury bonds could throw the U.S. economy into a tailspin. The last time congressional Republicans threatened a default in 2011, Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time ever to AA+ from AAA.
The Treasury Department has taken extraordinary steps to keep paying the government's bills, and expects to be able to avoid a first-ever default at least until early June. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned last week failure to hike the debt ceiling would cause an "economic catastrophe."
If the U.S. were to default, gross domestic product would drop 4% and more than 7 million workers would lose their jobs, Moody's Analytics recently projected. Even a brief default would lead to the loss of 2 million jobs, according to the data. | US Federal Policies |
- The Joint Economic Committee released a report on the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling.
- It said Americans could lose $20,000 in retirement savings, and private student-debt loads could surge.
- Republicans have floated a range of spending cuts to raise the debt ceiling that Democrats have rejected.
A new congressional report delves into the catastrophe that would result should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling.
On Thursday, the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) — a congressional group that reviews economic policy — released a report analyzing the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling. Since Republicans took over a majority in the House, they have expressed their intent to use raising the debt ceiling, and keeping the US on top of paying its bills, as leverage to achieve their own priorities, largely in the form of major spending cuts.
With the US expected to run out of extraordinary measures to pay its bills as soon as July, Democratic lawmakers — and President Joe Biden — have been slamming GOP lawmakers for failing to put forth a plan to raise the debt limit and keep the country from default, which would be unprecedented with severe consequences. The JEC report highlighted how Americans could be impacted should the country default for the first time ever this year.
"This report shows that a Republican default crisis means real dollars coming out of American families' wallets and savings decimated. This is not a hypothetical exercise to the millions of Americans – including veterans and seniors – who rely on the United States government for benefits, pensions, and disability," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
"House Republicans' approach is dangerous and destabilizing," he continued. "Even the threat of a breach will raise costs on everything from car loans to mortgages. Republicans are gambling with Americans' savings, benefits, and lives, all to play a political game."
According to the report, a default would cause a $20,000 loss to Americans' retirement savings, based on think tank Third Way's report on the 2011 debt limit negotiations. Along with that, small business loans could increase $44 a month, a new homeowner could see their monthly mortgage payment increase $150 a month, and private student-loan borrowers could experience a $23 increase to their monthly payments due to interest rates that would surge.
Currently, the Treasury is able to shuffle around spending to afford its obligations, like getting Social Security checks to Americans. But once the US defaults, the government will no longer be able to meet those obligations, meaning interest rates will surge in the financial sector and federal benefits will be withheld.
This is just the latest report highlighting the consequences of a default. Earlier this month, a report from Moody's Analytics found that even if the country does avoid a default, Republicans' proposed spending cuts could trigger "a recession in 2024, costing the economy 2.6 million jobs at the worst of the downturn and pushing unemployment to a peak of near 6%."
That's why Biden and Democratic lawmakers have been insisting that raising the debt ceiling be bipartisan, without any negotiations.
"Instead of making threats about default, which would be catastrophic, let's take that off the table," Biden said during remarks earlier this month. "Let's — as I said at the beginning, let's have a conversation about how to grow the economy, lower costs, and reduce the deficit. I just laid out the bulk of my budget; Republicans in Congress should do the same thing. Then we can sit down and see where we disagree."
Over the past week, the White House has been ramping up its attacks on the conservative House Freedom Caucus over its plan to raise the debt ceiling, but only if Congress passes legislation that block student-debt relief, recoup unspent pandemic funds, and end environmental programs, among other things.
"The Freedom Caucus's devastating cuts to families' budgets and American priorities would not reduce the deficit because they would just go toward paying for MAGA House Republicans' $3 trillion in tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and large corporations," a White House official said in a statement to Insider. | US Federal Policies |
U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer is calling it a career.
The 75-year-old Portland congressman — for more than a quarter century a Capitol Hill ambassador of sorts for his hometown — announced Monday he will not seek reelection next year.
“I have concluded that my personal time and energy will be better spent not involved in campaigning,” Blumenauer told OPB, adding he wants to spend time instead focusing on his priorities at the local level. “I want to help put Portland back together.”
The decision caps a career in public service that has spanned more than two thirds of Blumenauer’s life. And it comes as some of the policies that he has fought most closely to pass are showing glimmers of promise if Democrats can retake the House next year
Blumenauer, known for taking on his share of long-shot proposals, says he’s coming off a major win in helping steer record investments in green energy as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the signature climate legislation signed by President Joe Biden last year. He says he’s set the stage for some of his other top priorities, including loosening federal cannabis policy, to pass into law.
The past several weeks, Blumenauer said, have been “an opportunity to step back and reflect on what would be accomplished if I ran for reelection. Most of these things have been done or are in the pipeline.”
News of Blumenauer’s retirement would once have set off a frenzy of interest among ambitious Democrats. Rooted in deep-blue Portland, the 3rd Congressional District is a safe stronghold for the party, and likely to offer whoever win’s next year’s primary the prospect of a lengthy congressional career.
But as news of Blumenauer’s likely retirement gained speed in recent weeks, the list of potential candidates has so far remained fairly small.
Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal has hired staff with an eye toward a run. Jayapal’s sister, Pramila Jayapal, is a member of the U.S. House from Washington state and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Political observers believe those ties will give the county commissioner a leg up in raising funds and making connections. Jayapal has yet to announce a run.
Also considering a run is state Rep. Travis Nelson, a Democrat from Portland. Nelson told OPB last week his interest in the seat was contingent on Blumenauer retiring.
“I have some things I’d love to work on at the federal level,” Nelson said. “Medicare for all, the environment and union/income inequality issues are all things I’m passionate about.”
Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales is also rumored to be considering a run. Morales didn’t respond to an inquiry.
Blumenauer says other Democrats have been eyeing his job for years, and he expects a crowded primary for the seat next year: “When it sinks in… I think there will be people coming out of the woodwork.”
Blumenauer was hosting a gathering with friends and supporters on Monday to mark his announcement.
By the time his term ends in 2024, Blumenauer will have spent 51 years in elected office, a run that began when he won a seat on the Oregon House of Representatives at age 23. He moved to the Multnomah County commission five years later, and Portland City Hall nine years after that. Blumenauer won election to Congress in 1996, filling a seat that had formerly been held by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden.
“He’s had an extraordinary career,” said former U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, a Springfield Democrat who worked closely with Blumenauer for decades before retiring last year. “I don’t know another elected official who’s served 50 years in Oregon.”
Blumenauer took office proclaiming many of the values that had been a success for him as a Portland city leader, including preaching the gospel of smart development, efficient light rail and environmentally friendly urbanism. His trademark bow tie has remained a staple, as has the congressman’s enthusiasm for bicycles, which he often praises as “the most efficient form of transportation ever designed.”
But Blumenauer has picked up other interests along the way. For more than a decade he has pressed for cannabis to be de-scheduled as an illegal drug, among other policies — a fight that led Politico to label him “the dean of marijuana legalization backers” on Capitol Hill.
That fight has not been particularly fruitful, but Blumenauer sees hope on the horizon. He has long supported a bill that would allow banks to work with cannabis businesses in states where the drug is legal. But while the proposal has passed in the U.S. House repeatedly, it’s been stopped up in the Senate. This year, though, a Senate bill being pushed by U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley is showing some signs of hope.
Some other Blumenauer priorities that haven’t come to fruition: Taxing billionaires who go to space, pressing President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency, and fundamentally reshaping the nation’s agriculture system.
During a long career, Blumenauer did achieve influence on the nation’s trade policy. Before Democrats lost control of the House last year, he served as the chair of a tax subcommittee on the subject. It was an apt role for a politician from a state that relies heavily on international trade. Lately, Blumenauer has pushed for tightening exemptions on which imports pay taxes and duties, which he argues is being exploited by China.
“He has an educated, persuasive legislative style,” DeFazio said. “He goes to people with facts, and he goes back to them with facts and he tries to wear them down.”
Blumenauer has at times seemed to capitalize on his image as the quintessential Portland lawmaker: Wonky, eco-friendly, and obsessed enough with active transportation that he recently had a new bike bridge named after him.
Recently he has joined the chorus of people concerned about the city’s future. When announcing his 2022 reelection campaign, Blumenauer declared Portland was “broken.”
“There’s been kind of a spark that’s been missing,” Blumenauer told OPB last year, saying he was running for reelection in part to help rekindle the flame that once made Portland a national darling for smart growth. “Collectively it seems like we have challenges unlike any we have ever faced.”
Blumenauer’s concerns remain. But he’s concluded Congress is perhaps not the best place to address them.
While not the impetus for his retirement, Blumenauer says House dysfunction in recent weeks — as bitter intraparty feuding among Republicans left the chamber briefly leaderless — played a part.
“It did put a fine point on it,” said Blumenauer, who expects his party will retake the House next year. “With these people who are there… it just doesn’t seem like the most productive way to be involved.”
The longtime politician will instead use his connections over decades in office to work on his longtime priorities — “energy, transportation and bicycles,” he says — as a private citizen. He’ll spend more time with his family, who he says have been shortchanged by his decades in Congress. And he’ll offer advice to whoever eventually fills his seat.
“If I had it to do over again, I might not have taken on quite so many thorny issues,” Blumenauer said. “I might have been a little more focused and not [taken on] so many controversies. But the good news is I’ve done that, and stuff is ready.”
Editor’s note: Blumenauer’s wife, Margaret Kirkpatrick, is a member of the OPB board of directors. | US Congress |
House Democrats Highlight How Republican Funding Bill Fails to Honor Our Commitment to Veterans
WASHINGTON — During today’s House Appropriations Subcommittee markup of the 2024 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, House Democrats highlighted how Republicans cannot claim to fully fund veterans’ programs with a bill that does not fully fund the Toxic Exposures Fund and underfunds military construction projects.
The legislation is an attempt to hide the fact that House Republicans already voted to immediately rescind $2 billion from funding for claims processing and appeals, health care both within and outside of VA, research, and education and training for veterans as part of the Default on America Act.
This bill:
- Drastically underfunds by $14.7 billion the Toxic Exposures Fund, created with bipartisan support in the PACT Act to ensure veterans exposed to Agent Orange, burn pits, and other toxic substances will always be cared for.
- Underfunds other veterans’ medical care needs by allowing the transfer of $4.5 billion in medical care funding to areas outside of health care.
- Cuts funding for critical military construction. The bill backtracks on our promises to our servicemembers and their families by cutting military construction by over $1.3 billion compared to the current level.
- Built on a framework that fails to treat veterans’ medical care as its own funding category, thereby jeopardizing veterans’ health care.
“While I have appreciated the work we’ve done together over the past few years, unfortunately, I cannot support this bill for a variety of reasons,” Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL-23) said. “As part of the Republican’s Default on America bill they just passed, they included no protections for veterans funding, despite making promises their proposed cuts would not impact veterans. Verbal promises clearly mean nothing when they could have included these protections in law – ensuring veterans funding would not be subject to political funding battles – and they made the conscious choice not to do so. On top of that, Republicans voted to immediately rescind $2 billion for veterans for claims processing and appeals, healthcare both within and outside of VA, research, and education and training for veterans. The bill before us today continues the Republican’s disturbing trend that does not protect veterans. My friend, Chairman Carter was quoted in Punchbowl on Monday saying this FY24 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill is written to an imaginary topline – so clearly, the bill before us is nothing more than a messaging bill. And the message Republicans are sending to the American people is they are not interested in protecting veterans. In spite of the imaginary top line of this bill, it still underfunds our commitment to our veterans.”
Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz’s full remarks as prepared for delivery are here.
“With this funding level, Republicans not only turned their backs on their commitment to our veterans who have been exposed to toxins, it pits veterans against veterans, using them as pawns in Republicans’ gambit to slash other nondefense programs and priorities across the federal government that they know veterans, servicemembers, and their families rely on,” Appropriations Committee Ranking Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) said. “So do not tell me that Republicans are fully funding veterans’ programs. The larger Republican agenda does nothing to protect veterans from their proposed cuts. I cannot support this bill.”
Congresswoman DeLauro’s full remarks as prepared for delivery are here.
Key provisions of the bill can be found here. The text of the draft bill is here. Information on Community Project Funding in the bill is here. | US Federal Policies |
Trump Has Never Been More Vulnerable
The former president thinks he’s invincible. But after yesterday’s indictment in Georgia, getting through what’s coming next would take superpowers he doesn’t have.
When Donald J. Trump surrenders to Fulton County authorities sometime before August 25, on RICO, perjury, forgery, and a slew of other charges relating to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, he will, according to the Fulton County sheriff, have to have his mugshot taken. For at least as long as it takes for the photograph to be generated, Trump will cease to be the gold-obsessed, real estate mogul-cum-ex-president that he is. He will instead be reduced to being one of 19 co-defendants charged with 13 counts in a sprawling anti-racketeering case, brought by District Attorney Fani Willis and her team, and will face the full might of the law as he begins a trial process that could see him sentenced to years in a Georgia penitentiary.
As with his other arrests over the past four months, Trump will have to state his height and weight, along with various other identifying details. In April, in New York, he came in at one inch shorter than the height that he has, historically, claimed to be. Similarly, while his weight came in at 240 pounds, it’s not clear whether that number includes the vast amount of hot air, which weighs in at 21 grams per cubic foot, that surrounds this bullshit artist and keeps him afloat as he proceeds from one lie, insult, threat, or act of intimidation to the next.
That cushion of hot air has been keeping Trump going for months now as he seeks to capitalize on his burgeoning rap sheet to consolidate his support among the extremists of the GOP base. To put it another way, he is hoping to become a one-man anti-gravity machine, converting the nearly 100 indictments now attached to his name into a presidency-winning political plus. This in a country that into the recent past used to turn against high office seekers for such trivial offenses as admitting to smoking marijuana in college or plagiarizing lines from another politician’s stump speech (President Biden’s efforts to capture the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1988 were essentially scuppered when he had to admit to borrowing lines from Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the UK Labour Party). Trump, on the other hand, now has a rap sheet that rivals those of the best-of-the-best of corrupt, machine politicians over the centuries.
On the surface, Trump’s utterly surreal strategy, down to efforts to monetize the image of any potential mugshot, is looking fairly savvy; the demagogue’s support within the GOP has soared since its nadir in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections, and most horse-race pundits assume that he’s unbeatable in the GOP primaries.
Yet there are limits to how much a presidential candidate of an ostensibly law-and-order party can truly stick it to the man, or to how much an autocratic and authoritarian billionaire (self-proclaimed) can reinvent himself as an outlaw folk hero. Anyone who thinks about it for a New York minute will see it as an absurdity.
Trump isn’t Robin Hood, or Bonnie and Clyde. He isn’t Fred Hampton or Angela Davis. He isn’t Abbie Hoffman or David Dellinger. What he is is a self-absorbed, dangerous, and unstable narcissist. His putative crimes were carried out for no purpose more grand or more idealistic than to cling onto power. His only ideology is onanism.
Current Issue
The Fulton County indictment, released late Monday evening, makes clear the extreme lengths that Trump and his sycophantic made-men-and-women were willing to go in their efforts to prevent a peaceful transfer of power and to overturn a presidential election result. In copious detail, it lays out the hows and whys of Trump’s moves to solicit illegal interventions from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Vice President Mike Pence; the ways Trump and cronies such as Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and Mark Meadows ginned up the fake electors plot; the lengths to which they went to illegally access computer voting systems; and the deliberate lies and misinformation that they spread, including in official settings where they perjured themselves in order to maintain Trump’s hold on power. It also charges him with impersonating a public officer. The reality TV president is now being held legally liable for the act he’s been putting on all these years.
DA Willis has made clear that she wants to move to trial within a matter of months—which, when added to special counsel Jack Smith’s stated aim of also bringing Trump to trial on federal charges by early in 2024, means that Trump might well be facing a barrage of trial dates and damning testimony through the GOP primary process. Even if he emerges as the GOP presidential nominee—and I am not at all convinced he will—he will almost certainly end up a deeply wounded presidential candidate.
Trump can and has pulled all kinds of tricks aimed at delegitimizing the myriad felony charges he now faces, and he has so solidified the cult of the personality around him that for tens of millions of Americans he could, as he once boasted, quite literally shoot somebody in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and not lose their support. In doing so, he has temporarily boosted his poll numbers to improbably high levels. But at the end of the day, those tens of millions of Americans who have bought lock, stock, and barrel into the Trump Cult do not an electoral majority make. They didn’t make a majority in 2016, when Trump lost the popular vote but won the presidency due to the quirks of the Electoral College system. They didn’t make a majority when Democrats captured Congress in 2018. They didn’t make a majority when Trump lost the presidency to Biden, and the GOP lost the Senate to the Democrats, in 2020. And they didn’t make a majority last year, when the great majority of Trump-backed election deniers—including Kari Lake and Mark Finchem in Arizona or Jim Marchant in Nevada—were handed their political hats by local electorates.
Given the electoral limits of Trumpism over the past four electoral cycles, it makes precious little sense to think that the man in the mug shot will do better electorally in 2024 than he ever has before. But as the country’s demographics continue to shift against the Republican Party, that is what he would have to do to win the presidency once again.
Hot air eventually cools, and anti-gravity machines do not exist. Trump wants to come off as invincible, a comic-book superhero battling endless conspiracies hatched by the Deep State. Don’t buy it. The man’s more vulnerable now than he has ever been. At the moment, many of his GOP rivals for the presidential nomination—as well as his co-conspirators, both indicted and unnamed—are rallying around him. But Trump, of all people, should know just how transactional these relationships are.
They may stick with The Boss as long as they think he remains able to rally his rent-a-mob against them. But the moment he seems even marginally weak, many will turn on him in a heartbeat. Don’t be surprised if at least some of the 18 co-defendants who, as things currently stand, will be tried along with Trump in Fulton County, decide in the coming months to cut their losses and testify against their Great Leader. And don’t be surprised if, in the heat of legal battle, the unindicted co-conspirators identified by Jack Smith also turn on Trump.
We may, at long last, be entering the final act of the Trump tragedy. You can’t fly too close to the sun before gravity takes over. | US Political Corruption |
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.
Alanna Durkin Richer, Associated Press
Alanna Durkin Richer, Associated Press
Eric Tucker, Associated Press
Eric Tucker, Associated Press
Leave your feedback
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said Wednesday she won’t recuse herself from Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case in Washington, rejecting the former president’s claims that her past comments raise doubts about whether she can be fair.
Chutkan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama and was randomly assigned to Trump’s case, said in her written decision that she sees no reason to step aside. The case, scheduled for trial in March, accuses the Republican of illegally scheming to overturn his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
There’s a high bar for recusal, and legal experts had widely considered Trump’s request to be a long shot aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the case publicly that could only sour the relationship between the judge and the defense in court.
In seeking Chutkan’s recusal, defense lawyers cited statements she had made in two sentencing hearings of participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol in which they said she had appeared to suggest that Trump deserved to be prosecuted and held accountable. They said the comments suggested a bias against him that could taint the proceedings.
WATCH: Federal judge sets March trial date for Trump’s federal election interference case
But Chutkan vigorously objected to the those characterizations of her comments.
“It bears noting that the court has never taken the position the defense ascribes to it: that former ‘President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned,’” Chutkan wrote. “And the defense does not cite any instance of the court ever uttering those words or anything similar.”
It’s the second time Trump has tried unsuccessfully to get a judge removed from one of the criminal cases against him. Judge Juan Manuel Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s New York hush money criminal case, rejected similar demands that he step aside, saying he is certain of his “ability to be fair and impartial.”
Chutkan has stood out as one of the toughest punishers of defendants charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has personally assailed her on social media as he tries to make the case that the prosecution is politically motivated.
Federal special counsel Jack Smith’s team said there was no valid basis to have Chutkan removed from the case. Like Chutkan, they said she never said that Trump was legally or morally to blame for the events of Jan. 6 or that he deserved to be punished.
Chutkan is also considering a request by Smith’s team for a narrow gag order that would bar Trump from making “inflammatory” and “intimidating” comments about witnesses, lawyers and other people involved in the case. Trump’s lawyers objected this week to that request.
Chutkan has scheduled trial to begin March 4, 2024, over the vigorous objections of defense lawyers who said that would not give them enough time to prepare. The case in Washington’s federal court is one of four criminal cases confronting the former president as he seeks to regain the White House.
Richer reported from Boston.
Support Provided By:
Learn more
Politics
Sep 13 | US Federal Elections |
Trump rips Barr after remark about ‘limited’ verbal skills
Former President Trump lashed out Sunday at his former attorney general, Bill Barr, who had criticized Trump’s verbal skills in a public forum Friday.
In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump suggested Barr was trying to “get even” with him for being tough on him while in office.
“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB,” he wrote, using the term meaning “Republican in Name Only.” “He just didn’t want to be Impeached, which the Radical Left Lunatics were preparing to do.”
“I was tough on him in the White House, for good reason, so now this Moron says about me, to get even, ‘his verbal skills are limited,’” the former president continued. “Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!”
Barr, who resigned in late 2020 after Trump refused to concede the election, had knocked the former president’s “verbal skills” at an event at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.
“If you get him away from ‘very, very, very,’ you know, the adjectives … they’re unfamiliar to him, and they spill out, and he goes too far,” he said.
The former head of the Justice Department has become one of Trump’s most prominent critic within the GOP, regularly refuting his claims of voter fraud and “persecution” at the hands of law enforcement.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Political Corruption |
Congress Averts US Government Shutdown Hours Before Deadline
The Senate overwhelmingly passed bipartisan legislation Saturday to avoid a disruptive US government shutdown, sending the bill to President Joe Biden for his expected signature just hours before a midnight deadline.
(Bloomberg) -- The US narrowly averted a disruptive and costly shutdown of federal agencies as Congress passed compromise legislation to keep the government running until Nov. 17.
The legislation, passed in both chambers Saturday just hours before a midnight deadline, buys Democrats and Republicans time to negotiate longer-term federal funding. It doesn’t include new funding for Ukraine.
President Joe Biden signed the bill late Saturday night, capping an extraordinary day in Washington that began with the country careening to what appeared to be an inevitable and prolonged federal funding lapse.
“Tonight, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate voted to keep the government open, preventing an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hardworking Americans,” Biden said in a statement.
Final passage by the Senate was set in motion earlier in the day by embattled House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who called the bluff of the far-right Republicans and pushed the last-minute compromise. They’d threatened to oust him from leadership if he didn’t shut down the government, a move most in Congress see as highly unpopular with voters.
“If somebody wants to remove me because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try,” McCarthy told reporters.
In unusually swift action in the typically slow-moving Capitol, the bill made it through both chambers in less than 12 hours.
“Total roller coaster,” Representative Guy Reschenthaler, the House GOP chief deputy whip, said of the day’s events.
Americans to investors globally have been watching Washington closely in recent days as the the risk of a shutdown grew. Even a short-term funding breach would pause many federal functions and paychecks, while economists predicted that a long-term shutdown could impede the Federal Reserve’s efforts to quell inflation without widespread job losses. Markets also considered how an impasse could further harm perceptions of US governance.
The legislation, which is devoid of deep spending cuts and border policies demanded by Republican hardliners, marks a rare bipartisan victory in a fiercely divided Washington.
“After trying to take our government hostage, MAGA Republicans won nothing,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after final passage.
But the exclusion of the Ukraine aid — at least for now — is a blow to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who last week met with Biden and lawmakers and personally pleaded for new weapons systems, including F-16 fighter jets and longer-range ATACMS missiles.
Biden and other lawmakers sought to assure Ukraine that the US remains committed to the war effort. The US has sent $44 billion to Ukraine since the Russian invasion last year and Biden has requested an additional $24 billion to refill accounts that the Pentagon says are nearly depleted.
“We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted,” Biden said, adding that McCarthy has committed to passage of a separate Ukraine aid package.
The bill passed the Senate on an 88-9 vote, just hours after an overwhelming House vote that included nearly all Democrats and more than half of Republicans.
The legislation includes $16 billion in disaster relief funding but not aid for Ukraine. Lawmakers in both parties who support the Ukraine funding said that would be handled separately.
--With assistance from Billy House, Derek Wallbank and Aradhana Aravindan.
(Updates with Biden signing legislation into law late Saturday night Washington time.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | US Congress |
A U.S. landlord was charged with murder and hate crimes Sunday after allegedly stabbing a Muslim woman and 6-year-old boy dozens of times in an attack that police linked to the war between Israel and Hamas.
The child, who was stabbed 26 times, died at a hospital, but the 32-year-old woman, believed to be his mother, is expected to survive the "heinous" Saturday attack, according to a statement from the Will County sheriff's office in Illinois.
Late Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement that he and his wife were shocked and sickened to learn of the murderous attack.
“This horrific act of hate has no place in America, and stands against our fundamental values: freedom from fear for how we pray, what we believe, and who we are. As Americans, we must come together and reject Islamophobia and all forms of bigotry and hatred. I have said repeatedly that I will not be silent in the face of hate. We must be unequivocal. There is no place in America for hate against anyone."
The sheriff's office did not give further details or the victims' nationality, but the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) described the child as Palestinian-American.
"Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis," said the statement, which located the killing about 64 kilometers west of Chicago.
Authorities said the woman managed to call 911 as she fought off the landlord, named by the sheriff's office as 71-year-old Joseph Czuba.
"Deputies located two victims inside the residence in a bedroom. Both victims had multiple stab wounds to their chest, torso, and upper extremities," the sheriff's statement said.
A serrated military-style knife with a seven-inch blade was pulled from the boy's abdomen during the autopsy, the statement said.
When police arrived, they found Czuba sitting on the ground near the driveway of the residence with a laceration on his forehead. He was taken to the hospital for treatment before being charged with murder, attempted murder, and two counts of hate crimes.
"He knocked on the door and attempted to choke her, and said, 'you Muslims' must die," Ahmed Rehab, head of CAIR's Chicago office, told reporters, citing text messages sent by the woman to the murdered boy's father from her hospital bed.
The attack was "our worst nightmare," CAIR said in a statement.
Israel declared war on Hamas Oct. 8, a day after waves of the militant group's fighters broke through the heavily fortified border and shot, stabbed and burned to death more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.
The subsequent relentless bombing by Israel has flattened neighborhoods and left at least 2,670 people dead in the Gaza Strip, the majority ordinary Palestinians. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Have you ever wondered what goes on in the mind of a cybercriminal? How do they plan and execute their attacks on unsuspecting victims? What are the tools and techniques they use to break into computers and networks and steal data?
Knowing these answers could help get you off a hacker’s target list. Cybercrime is a serious and growing threat that affects millions of people and businesses around the globe – not to mention that cybercriminals are consistently finding new ways to attack us.
Just so you are aware of what you are up against, let me lay out the four steps that a cybercriminal will often take when plotting a cyberattack. Then, you’ll become more powerful with some important tips on how to protect yourself from becoming their next target.
Cybercriminals' steps when plotting a cyberattack
These are the 4 steps that a cybercriminal will always take when plotting a cyberattack.
1. Finding their target
A cybercriminal has to find a specific person or organization to attack before they can do anything else. They use various ways to do this; however, they typically will aim for whoever seems to be the easiest and most vulnerable target. Here are some of the ways they can target an individual or business.
Social media: Cybercriminals can use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Threads to find personal info, such as location, occupation, hobbies, interests, etc., that can help them tailor their attacks or scams.
The dark web: Cybercriminals can also use the dark web to buy or sell stolen data such as credit card numbers, passwords, usernames, etc., that can be used to access online accounts or commit identity theft.
Information brokers: Cyberswindlers use information brokers to obtain data that is collected from public sources, such as motor vehicle records, court reports and voter registration lists. This deeply intimate information can reveal personal details, such as your full name, address and phone number, that can be used to target or impersonate you.
Network scanning: Cybercrooks use network scanning tools to comb the internet for devices or systems that have vulnerabilities or weak security. They exploit these vulnerabilities to gain access or launch attacks.
This first step is perhaps the most important of a hacker's manipulation game, because it makes or breaks a hacker's game. You see, without a target, there's no crime to commit.
2. Researching their target
After finding a potential target, a cybercriminal will likely do some research to gather as much information as possible in order to steal your credentials. They’ll tap into various tools and techniques to do this, such as:
Reconnaissance tools: They can deploy reconnaissance tools to scan the target’s network and discover their IP address, open ports, operating system, services, etc. This can help them identify any vulnerabilities to exploit later.
Social engineering: This is used to trick the target into revealing sensitive info, such as passwords, security questions, or personal details. They do this by impersonating something or someone the target trusts, such as a friend, a colleague or a customer service rep from a familiar organization. These tools include phishing emails or phone calls to lure the target into clicking on malicious links or attachments or downloading dangerous malware.
Keyloggers. This popular sneaky technique is used by cybercriminals to secretly record the keystrokes of the target and capture login credentials, messages and emails. They often install keyloggers on the target’s device by using malware or physical access to continue spying for extended periods of time scooping up account numbers, credit cards and any valuable data.
By researching their target, a cybercriminal can gain a better understanding of their habits, preferences and vulnerabilities. This can help them plan and execute a more effective and customized attack.
3. Breaking into the network
This is when the hacker really begins to be creative. The most widely deployed way that a hacker will break into a network is with phishing.
Phishing emails & websites
This could be a phishing email scam with malicious links attached or even a phishing website that is designed to look like a legit company so that the victim falls for it and hands over their information.
This is one of the most popular attacks now that hackers are using phishing-as-a-service tools that basically do all the dirty work for them. By giving these hackers a bulletproof template that could trick anyone, they just have to sit back and allow the victim to fall for the trick.
Digitized human hair follicle
Other clever tools a hacker might use include a creepy way of displaying a digitized human hair follicle on a victim's phone or tablet screen so that when they go to brush it away, malware is downloaded immediately.
Fake ads
Hackers might use fake ads and post them on social media sites like Facebook, hoping that the victim will fall for them. Instead of it going to a real company, it leads you and me straight into the grasp of criminals. The possibilities are truly endless for a good hacker.
4. Taking control of the network
This is the final stage of the hacker’s attack and the most rewarding one for them. After gaining access to a system, they exfiltrate any valuable information they can grab as quickly as possible with the help of post-exploitation tools, such as AdFind and Cobalt Strike, which are designed to collect and transfer data from compromised networks. They will either disappear with the stolen data or use it to extort money from their victims, depending on the target and the motive of the attack.
What can I do to protect myself from these hackers?
Fortunately, there are precautions that you can take to avoid becoming the next victim of these cybercriminals.
Invest in removal services
A hacker cannot easily use you as a target if they cannot find your information on the internet. Data broker sites run by scammers get fed with the personal data a hacker steals from you including email addresses, Social Security numbers and more. They do this so that they can sell the information to third parties and make a profit.
While no service promises to remove all your data from the internet, subscribing to a good removal service is the most effective way to constantly monitor and automate the process of deleting your information from hundreds of sites continuously.
Have good antivirus software
Having strong antivirus software installed can help keep hackers out of your phone, tablet and computer. This will also prevent you from clicking malicious links intending to install malware, allowing hackers to gain access to your personal information.
See my expert review of the best antivirus protection for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices by heading to CyberGuy.com/LockUpYourTech.
Use identity theft protection
Identity theft companies can monitor personal information like your home title, Social Security number, phone number and email address and alert you when they are being sold on the dark web or being used to open an account in your name. They can also assist you in freezing your bank and credit card accounts to prevent further unauthorized use by criminals.
The great part of some identity theft companies is that they often include identity theft insurance of up to $1 million to cover losses and legal fees and a white glove fraud resolution team, when a U.S.-based case manager helps you recover any losses.
Kurt's key takeaways
Cybercriminals typically follow a four-step process when plotting a cyberattack, which includes finding a target, researching their target, breaking into the network and taking control. To protect yourself, I strongly suggest you erase personal information from the internet, have good antivirus software and use identity theft protection services.
Why do you think Americans have become the single biggest target of hackers? Do you think you are prepared to protect yourself from cybercriminals who are constantly looking for ways to attack you? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.
Copyright 2023 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
izusek | E+ | Getty ImagesThe clock is ticking for the U.S. to avoid a default on its debt, and some are sounding the alarm about potential disruptions to Social Security and Medicare.On Thursday, Jan. 19, the U.S. outstanding debt is set to hit its statutory limit, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote in a recent letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.The debt limit or debt ceiling is the total amount of money the U.S. can borrow to meet its legal obligations including Social Security and Medicare benefits, as well as military salaries, tax refunds, interest on the national debt and other payments, Yellen wrote.When the limit is reached, the U.S. will have to take "extraordinary measures" to avoid defaulting on its obligations, she said.The Treasury Department cannot provide an estimate of how long the government can expect to pay the government's obligations through extraordinary measures, Yellen wrote. But it is unlikely that cash will be exhausted before early June, she said.Negotiations over the federal debt ceiling mark one of the first big challenges the new Congress will face.McCarthy has agreed to tie lifting the debt ceiling to spending cuts. That has advocates for Social Security and Medicare worried that lawmakers will try to amend those programs."We're looking at as early as June a train wreck on this issue," said Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare."The consequences are dire, because a default would not only disrupt Social Security and Medicare benefits, but also cause a global economic recession or worse," he said.How benefit payments could be delayedIf the U.S. were to default on its debt, it would be unprecedented.The big question is whether the Treasury Department would be able to prioritize what does and does not get paid if that occurs.Unlike a government shutdown, where Social Security and Medicare benefits continue to flow, that may not be the case with a default, according to Adcock."There's a good chance that benefits for retirees and people with disabilities and survivors would be disrupted," he said.Halfpoint Images | Moment | Getty ImagesThe Treasury Department may be able to prioritize some payments, and that would include Social Security, said Jason Fichtner, chief economist at the Bipartisan Policy Center who previously served in several senior roles at the Social Security Administration.However, the Social Security Administration may delay payments to ensure it has enough cash on hand, he said.Meanwhile, Medicare payments may fluctuate, while other areas like federal employee salaries and food benefits through SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) may stop. The process may be politically "messy," Fichtner said."Social Security I'm sure will get paid, interest on the debt will get paid," he said. "After that, flip a coin, who gets paid?"Why some worry about Social Security benefit cutsAs House Republicans plan to focus on curbing government spending, some worry that could entail cuts to Social Security benefits and Medicare in exchange for votes to increase or suspend the debt limit.Among the ideas Republicans have pitched include raising Social Security's full retirement age to 70, changing the way benefits' annual cost-of-living adjustments are measured to make them less generous, or making it so benefits are means tested through the middle class, Adcock said.Moreover, they could raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67 from 65, he said.To make those changes, there would need to be enough support in the Senate, with 60 votes."That's a pretty high threshold," Adcock said. "I don't think there would be 60 votes in the Senate to do benefit cuts."More from Personal Finance:4 key money moves in an uncertain economyHere's the best way to pay down high-interest debt63% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheckThe White House has also indicated it is not willing to negotiate."As President Biden has made clear, Congress must deal with the debt limit and must do so without conditions," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.For Social Security reform to progress successfully, both parties would need to come to the table and be willing to make concessions, Fichtner said.Without such a bipartisan legislative proposal on paper by June, it would be difficult to include Social Security in the debt ceiling negotiations, he said."With Social Security, you're going to have to have a grand bargain that includes changes to the benefit formula and revenue increases," Fichtner said."And that's just not something that they can get done in a debt crisis environment," he said. | US Federal Policies |
The families of the six Walmart workers gunned down by a store manager last year received a check for $2,500 from a non-profit group on Wednesday — the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting in Chesapeake, Va.
Andre Bing opened fire in the break room of the Walmart as the workers gathered for a pre-shift meeting on Nov. 22, 2022, before turning the gun on himself.
The victims included 38-year-old Brian Pendleton of Chesapeake; 52-year-old Kellie Pyle of Chesapeake; 43-year-old Lorenzo Gamble of Chesapeake; 70-year-old Randy Belvins of Chesapeake, and 22-year-old Tyneka Johnson of Portsmouth.
The sixth and youngest victim was 16-year-old Fernando Chavez-Barron.
Virginia-based healthcare company Sentara Health cut a check for $15,000 at the remembrance event, according to local outlet 13 News Now.
The $2,500 gift was more cash than the families received from the multibillion dollar discount chain.
There were no Walmart executives in attendance at the event, according to 13 News.
“We supported these families with funeral, travel, and other expenses,” a Walmart spokesperson told The Post on Wednesday.
“Additionally, all Walmart associates and their families have access to confidential grief and wellness support resources at no cost – including phone, chat-based or video support.”
Reps for Sentara Health did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
During the luncheon, event organizer Mary Bibbs called for more measures to be put in place to prevent similar incidents in the future.
“How are we all coming together and addressing violence, mental health, opioid abuse? How are we moving the needle forward in the right direction?” Bibbs asked.
“We know that last year’s incident, that mass shooting, can happen anywhere at any time,” she said during the event, which was titled “Our Path Forward.”
Law enforcement never identified a clear motive, nor did they confirm if Bing suffered from mental health issues.
Police did, however, find a list when they searched Bing’s body containing the names of colleagues he wished to target.
At least 50 people were in the store at the time of the incident, many of whom were picking up last-minute Thanksgiving groceries.
Walmart’s Sam Circle location has since memorialized the six victims with an outdoor space to “honor the victims and provide a place of comfort,” the company said, with greenery and six seating structures, each with a plaque donning the name of the workers who were killed, according to 13 News. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Rep. Jason Smith calls Gaetz’s push to oust McCarthy a ‘waste of time’
Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) push to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is a “waste of time,” that will slow walk passing individual spending bills, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said Sunday.
When asked on Fox News Business’s “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo,” about Gaetz’s threat, Smith said, “It’s an absolute waste of time if he brings a motion to vacate.”
“The only way a motion to vacate could be successful is is Matt Gaetz did exactly what he yells at Speaker McCarthy doing and that’s working with the Democrats,” Smith continued.
The Missouri Republican argued Gaetz would need over 200 Democrats to vote for McCarthy’s removal due to the over 200 Republicans that he said are “100 percent” behind McCarthy.
Smith’s comments come shortly after Gaetz told CNN and ABC News he would make good on his threat to unseat McCarthy from the Speakership this week after he backed a bipartisan measure to keep the government open.
Gaetz for months has threatened to file a motion to vacate, which would essentially be a vote on ending McCarthy’s Speakership.
Only a few Republicans would have to vote with Gaetz to unseat McCarthy — if Democrats join the push.
The minority party would generally be expected to back such a motion, since Democrats would prefer one of their own — Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) — as Speaker.
But so far, they’ve played their cards close to the vest. In a separate interview on CNN on Sunday, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) didn’t say how she’d vote and urged Democrats to follow the lead of Jeffries.
Gaetz has argued Democrats could “bail out,” the Speaker, and vowed to not back any deals with Democrats.
Meanwhile, Smith said Gaetz is “absolutely” going to reach out to Democrats to reach the 218 votes needed to pass.
“So basically, Gaetz is going to work with [Rep.] Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and the rest of the Democrats in order to remove the Republican Speaker,” Smith said. “And let me tell you, if you remove a Republican Speaker that then puts the Democrats empowered, these investigations will be done and stalled,” in reference to the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden and his family’s foreign business dealings.
Smith further argued a motion to vacate from Gaetz would slow walk passing the individual spending bills, which conservative lawmakers were demanding instead of a short-term stopgap funding bill.
After exhausting options to pass a GOP-only stopgap plan, McCarthy rushed on Saturday to roll out a bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) to the ire of hard-line House Republicans.
The CR will fund the government at current spending levels through Nov. 17. The funding increases federal disaster assistance by $16 billion to meet the Biden administration’s previous request, but does not include any funding for Ukraine, a White House priority largely opposed by several GOP members.
The CR also lacks spending cuts or border policy changes, dealing a blow to hardline conservatives who objected to any CR without such changes.
Despite the continued pushback from some GOP members, the measure was cleared by the House in a largely bipartisan 335-91 vote on Saturday, with one Democrat and 90 Republicans voting in opposition. The bill then overwhelmingly passed in the Senate in an 88-9 vote, with nine Republicans opposing the bill.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Congress |
Say what you will about Donald Trump, he has not lost his capacity to surprise. Trump’s declaration of allegiance to New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez caught me unawares. I used to think Trump and the Republican Party he leads were blindly partisan. Now I discover they’re blindly bipartisan when it comes to support for political corruption.
Like an idiot, I worried that Senator Chuck Schumer’s tepid response to the indictment of Menendez would be a gift to Trump. “Bob Menendez has been a dedicated public servant and is always fighting hard for the people of New Jersey,” Schumer said initially. “He has a right to due process and a fair trial.” Oh, please. After other Democrats (most notably Menendez’s New Jersey Senate colleague and onetime character witness, Cory Booker) called on Menendez to resign, Schumer toughened up, but not by much. “Like you, I was just deeply disappointed, disturbed when I read the indictment,” Schumer said. “For senators, there’s a much, much higher standard” than what’s merely legal, Schumer explained, and “Senator Menendez fell way, way below that standard.” Schumer made it sound as though Menendez got caught parking in front of a fire hydrant.
I feared it would be all too easy for Trump to say: “I get indicted for demanding that every ballot be counted, and Democrats call me a crook. Menendez gets caught with envelopes stuffed with cash and gold bars, and Cryin’ Chuck Schumer calls him a ‘dedicated public servant.’”
I also feared that candidates at Wednesday’s Republican debate would be all over Menendez. After all, Republicans piled merrily onto Hunter Biden when he was indicted two weeks ago on gun charges, even though the president’s son holds no public office. Imagine, I figured, what they’ll say about a sitting United States senator, a Democrat, who got himself a Mercedes-Benz convertible by giving up intelligence secrets. (I presume the “non-public information” Menendez handed Egyptians about embassy employees in Cairo, though not classified, included the names of a few spies.) It wasn’t even Menendez’s first indictment for political corruption. His previous trial ended with a hung jury and a letter of admonition from the Senate Ethics Committee. Did I mention that Menendez hired Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell? Yes, Lowell was Menendez’s lawyer first, defending him in the earlier corruption case, but since when did Republicans care about the details when hurling mud?
My fears were unfounded. It doesn’t matter that Schumer lacks the courage to call for Menendez’s resignation, because Republicans aren’t calling for it either.
At the debate, held just a few hours after Menendez’s New York City arraignment, Menendez’s name did not come up. Not even once! And in a Thursday interview with Henry Rodgers of The Daily Caller, the hard-right news site co-founded by Tucker Carlson, Trump did everything but declare Menendez his comrade in arms. “I think this was an attack,” Trump said about Menendez’s indictment, “that shows again, in a certain different way, because he wasn’t getting along too well with the Democrats and with Biden and he disagrees with Biden on a lot of things.” Trump also said the indictment was evidence of “a two-tier system of justice because Biden has stolen a lot more than he has. I mean he has taken a lot more money than Menendez.”
I’m not sure what Trump means when he says Biden thinks Menendez isn’t a team player. Yes, he’s a bit on the hawkish side, more so than most of his fellow congressional Democrats. But so is Biden. In today’s curious ideological configuration, it’s mostly Republicans agitating to cut off aid to Ukraine and mostly Democrats who want to keep the spigot on. Granted, Republicans want to start a war with Mexico, but Menendez is not on board with that. On immigration he is, if anything, a whisker more dovish than Biden.
You certainly can’t find evidence of disagreement with Biden in Menendez’s voting record. According to FiveThirtyEight, Menendez has voted with Biden 100 percent of the time, one of only nine senators to do so. NBC News turned up the interesting fact that Menendez blocked consideration of a bipartisan bill to toughen the Foreign Agents Registration Act in 2020. But that was before Biden was president, and Menendez may have been acting to protect candidate Biden; a Democratic staff email obtained by NBC News warned that “the R’s will seek to weaponize” the bill against Hunter Biden, either during the 2020 campaign or, if Biden got elected, after.
Trump’s suggestion that Biden has “taken a lot more money than Menendez” is pure fantasy. It builds on an unhinged accusation Trump’s been making lately that Biden “got paid for Rigging the Election,” to quote a September 24 Trump post on Truth Social. Why Biden would need to be bribed into rigging an election in his own favor—and how Biden could achieve that as a private citizen—went unexplained.
Of greater interest in Trump’s Truth Social post, which came two days after Menendez’s indictment, is that this first comment on the matter took the Shame-on-Bob line that I expected:
Senate Democrats should all resign based on Senator Bob Menendez! They all knew what was going on, and the way he lived. Why doesn’t the FBI raid Senate Democrat’s [sic] homes like they illegally raided Mar-a-Lago, where nothing was done wrong based on the Presidential Records Act.
On Sunday on Truth Social, Trump said it was obvious from “the way he lived” that Menendez was a crook, and shame on Menendez’s fellow Democrats for protecting him. On Wednesday in his Detroit speech to nonunion auto workers, Trump withheld criticism of Menendez and said Biden’s unspecified crimes “would’ve made Senator Menendez look like a baby.” By Thursday, Trump was ready to claim Menendez as a fellow martyr—persecuted, like Trump himself, over political differences.
Granted, Trump’s public statements tend toward the erratic, and one can make too much of his perceived shifts. But the direction of these shifts aligned him better with what other Republicans were saying. According to Politico, Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, urged Menendez not to resign. (In a closed-door session Thursday with Democrats, Menendez said he will not.) Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, said Democrats wanted Menendez to resign only so that a Democratic New Jersey governor could replace him. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, insinuated the same. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, following a trajectory similar to Trump’s, said on Sunday that Menendez should resign, but two days later backtracked and said that was up to Menendez. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, articulated the GOP line most clearly. He said that while the charges against him were “serious and troubling,” it was also true that “the Department of Justice has a troubling record of failure and corruption in cases against public figures, from Ted Stevens to Bob McDonnell to Donald Trump to Bob Menendez the last time around.” Note that he attached the word “corruption” to the Justice Department, not to Menendez.
News commentary on congressional Republicans’ muted response to Menendez’s legal troubles has mostly said that Republicans don’t want to criticize Menendez lest they invite criticism of Trump and his four indictments. What’s sauce for the goose, they fear, can be sauce for the gander. But that analysis presumes the Republicans are playing defense, which they aren’t.
The GOP is playing offense. Republicans have declared war on the FBI. They’ve created an entire Select Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. That these efforts are hilariously incompetent doesn’t detract from the reality that congressional Republicans have joined Trump in seeking a wholesale delegitimization of the criminal justice system. It’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to openly embracing political corruption, even when the crook is a Democrat. Don’t forget that it was Trump who commuted the prison sentence of Rod Blagojevich, the onetime Democratic governor of Illinois who hung a “For Sale” sign on a Senate vacancy. Trump demonstrated an affinity for criminals well before he entered politics. He is corrupt himself. It makes sense that he’s now positioning himself as an advocate for corruption, Republican and Democratic alike. | US Political Corruption |
Despite overwhelming bipartisan support for policies that help parents and caregivers balance work and family life, the 117th Congress ended with yet another stalemate on paid family leave. This continued gridlock is, in part, a result of too many advocates continuing to push for federal policies that simply cannot gain the support of congressional majorities. If a comprehensive approach is untenable, we should explore other avenues to family leave with a higher likelihood of success. Supporting family leave at the state level could be the ideal compromise. Today, most working-class families lack access to any sort of paid leave that would allow them to take time off to bond with a newborn child or provide acute care for an elderly parent. Federal support for action at the state level is a pragmatic approach to providing families with the help they need. In fact, some states are already stepping up in the face of federal inaction. Since 2002, 11 states have passed comprehensive paid leave programs, and another five states are expected to introduce programs within the next two years. America’s “laboratories of democracy” are delivering the family policies voters want and need. But without federal support, there are limits to this approach. If we want to keep the momentum going among states, Congress must step in and support these efforts. Building a paid family leave program from scratch is no easy task. It’s not surprising that early adopting states are those with the administrative and fiscal capacity to handle the costs of collecting contributions, handling claims, and paying benefits. The first four states could all build it into their existing Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) programs. Adopting states are also relatively wealthier, making it easier to cover the cost of administration. Conversely, the associated administrative costs may deter less wealthy states from building their own family leave programs. A recent report commissioned by the Department of Labor estimated administrative costs make up four to six percent of benefit spending. That is in addition to the cost of setting up a whole new administrative apparatus for states that do not already have TDI. Proposals for paid family leave in Maine, for example, were estimated to have startup costs of $40 million with another $20-$40 million in annual administrative costs. In 2017, the Trump administration attempted to address these challenges with a proposal to mandate the addition of parental leave to existing state unemployment insurance (UI) programs. The proposal would have reduced startup costs and provided federal support for administrative costs. Two decades earlier, the Clinton administration floated a similar “baby UI” proposal. Both cases were promising ideas that were botched in execution: where Trump made the mistake of using unfunded mandates, Clinton’s use of an executive order led to inevitable backlash from Congress. Despite their shortcomings, these failed attempts contain the seeds for Congress to craft a workable bipartisan compromise on paid family leave. However, as I discuss in a new report, three major reforms will be necessary. First, Congress should allow — but not mandate — states to add paid family leave to UI programs. States should continue to take the lead while the federal government plays a supporting role. Second, Congress should broaden the federal unemployment tax wage base (the main source of revenue for administrative funding) which has shrunk over time and will need to grow to support new program administration. Lastly, reforms must eliminate onerous “experience rating” provisions that force states to punish employers with higher payroll taxes when their employees receive benefits. States should be free to adopt flat employer- or employee-side payroll taxes as they see fit to fund both programs. Together, these reforms would give states the resources to craft paid family leave programs that work for families, workers, and businesses. A purely federal approach — as demonstrated time and again — is unfeasible. Rather than tabling the issue (and ignoring the urgent unmet needs of so many American families), Congress should start considering alternatives to a purely federal program by supporting family leave at the state level. Joshua McCabe is a senior family economic security analyst at the Niskanen Center | US Federal Policies |
When will we restart federal student loan payments?
On Feb. 28, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the Biden administration’s executive order canceling $10,000 to $20,000 of student debt for most borrowers. The court’s conservative majority sounded skeptical. Anticipating a decision to block the order, some debt cancelation advocates have suggested a Plan B: Implement an indefinite pause on student loan repayments. Doing so would be a mistake — turning a temporary, emergency measure by the Trump administration into a permanent feature of Biden administration policy.
Although restarting payments for 40 million people risks further burdening struggling borrowers — not to mention an unenviable administrative task — the alternative is even worse. An indefinite pause would blur the lines between grants and loans, opening the door for shady schools to hike tuition with the promise that students need not worry about the extra debt. Better to turn payments on now with a concerted effort to help struggling borrowers and focus on fixing the long-term problems facing American higher education.
Payment-pause proponents emphasize the sizable minority of federal student loan borrowers who struggle to repay their debt. Most undergraduates who finish a degree (especially a four-year degree) can afford their student debt payments: Less than one in 10 bachelor’s degree graduates who borrow ever default on a student loan. However, just six in 10 undergraduate students will finish a two- or four-year degree within six years of starting school. Stop-out early and the odds of defaulting jump dramatically because borrowers must repay without the earnings bump accompanying a college credential.
The situation facing Black borrowers is particularly egregious: Almost one in two Black federal student loan borrowers will default. Behind the subprime lending crisis, this stands among the leading examples of how centuries of state-enforced racial inequality continue to influence the present day. Even a federal student aid program designed to encourage social mobility ends up leaving many Black borrowers worse off.
Proponents of an indefinite pause argue that, under the circumstances, it would simply be unfair to turn student loan payments on. Ideally, Congress would take action to fix the underlying problems, but political gridlock makes that all but impossible. The next best option, they say, is to simply limit the damage.
The well-off would gain the most from this move. By one estimate, 65 percent of the financial benefits of the payment pause goes to borrowers earning more than $75,000. That’s fine by pause proponents, who say it’s better to protect struggling borrowers at the cost of helping wealthy people (a lot).
But this view dramatically underestimates the long-term risks of an indefinite payment pause, including on the populations they are most concerned about. While it is difficult to predict exactly what would happen if the president announced that borrowers would no longer be expected to pay student loans — at least during this administration — an alarming range of consequences loom.
One is the reaction of colleges and universities. Most school administrators and financial aid officers will continue to do right by students, but some schools will have a strong incentive to raise prices. Many for-profit colleges are notorious for urging applicants to pay exorbitant tuition with student debt. It seems unlikely that unscrupulous actors will pass up the opportunity to emphasize that with no payment pause end date in sight, students should treat loans like grants. Even some non-profit institutions at risk of losing students and revenue might feel pressure to raise tuition, taking comfort that borrowers may not be on the hook anyway.
Yet, student advocates have for years emphasized the important difference between grants and loans. Financial aid awards can be difficult to understand, particularly for first-generation students whose families do not have experience with college, and sometimes obscure the difference between money that does or does not need to be paid back. An indefinite payment pause would make it harder to communicate this distinction because it will become impossible to know whether federal student loans are in fact loans at all.
The confusion may not matter during a Biden presidency, but what happens if a future president flips on the repayment switch after taking office? In the meantime, existing borrowers may have taken out a mortgage or car loan, only to suddenly find it unaffordable. Students who were encouraged to treat loans like grants would need to make payments they had counted on avoiding. And existing inequalities would ensure low-income borrowers and borrowers of color face the worst financial consequences.
The far better option is to turn payments on as planned using newly enhanced tools to mitigate the impact on the most vulnerable borrowers. The Department of Education already has a plan to wipe clean all defaults, giving every borrower a fresh start to stay current on their debt. It also has existing income-based repayment plans and a new, more generous income-based plan that should dramatically lower monthly payments and default rates if more borrowers use them.
Over the long run, Congress will have to act to fix our problems with student debt. It has taken some limited steps to improve the student loan system through simplifying applications for federal financial aid and streamlining administrative hurdles to enrolling in income-based repayment plans. It needs to do more to address quality and costs. That means tightening requirements so that postsecondary programs eligible for federal aid don’t leave students worse off than when they started. Congress has approved bipartisan increases in the Pell Grant for low-income students recently — and approved a huge increase as part of the 2011 debt ceiling deal — so advocates should not give up on bringing costs down.
Privately, some hope that further dysfunction brought on by a permanent payment pause will force bold solutions on policymakers. Yet, recent experience tends to cut the other way — broken systems often remain that way. Failed public institutions tend to harm the most vulnerable, while wealthier people can afford alternatives.
Throwing a wrench in the student loan system is likely just to break it. Students and borrowers would be better served by a determined political and policy effort at repair.
Rory O’Sullivan is an independent higher education policy consultant, who researches and writes on higher education policy relating to student loan servicing, federal financial aid and accountability. Previously, O’Sullivan worked as the lead higher education policy staffer for the Gates Foundation and deputy director at Young Invincibles.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Federal Policies |
Dems see a big upside to Johnson’s conservative funding push
The new speaker has leaned into the right flank’s spending crusade, giving House Democrats plenty of election messaging on cuts to education, Amtrak, LGBTQ policies and abortion rights.
House Democrats were already attacking swing-district Republicans over conservative funding bills before Kevin McCarthy lost the speakership. Speaker Mike Johnson is giving them even more fodder.
The Louisiana Republican is staking his legislative reputation on churning through the full stack of a dozen annual funding bills, many of them including conservative riders like a national ban on mail-order abortion pills. By the end of Johnson’s first full week as speaker, House Republicans had passed three of the 12 spending measures, and he’s hoping to clear another handful before the Nov. 17 government shutdown deadline.
House Democrats have hit GOP Rep. Mike Garcia, who won his Southern California district by a tenth of a percentage point in 2020, for supporting the spending bills. The nonprofit arm of House Majority PAC mailed fliers to Garcia’s constituents this fall, noting the funding cuts and claiming that “no family is safe from Mike Garcia’s extreme agenda.”
“These mailers are going out — and these hit ads are going out — based on a first negotiation position,” Garcia said in an interview, “which is probably more conservative than what we’re going to end up with.”
That’s a safe bet. The bills stand no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate or earning President Joe Biden’s signature in their current form. And Republican leadership chose this strategy — rather than sticking to the funding levels set in the bipartisan debt limit compromise, they pushed forward with a slate of partisan spending measures, all of which eventually need buy-in from both chambers.
“It’s the Freedom Caucus members who want these irrational policies and appropriations. So I think it’s going to hurt individually,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), former House majority leader and a 24-year veteran of the Appropriations Committee. “The Republicans, because they have such a small margin, they’ve got to have almost everybody vote for it. So they can’t let their marginal members take a pass.”
Here are six spending issues Democrats are eager to exploit at the polls next year:
Schools
In mailed fliers attacking Garcia and New York Rep. Mike Lawler, House Majority Forward noted in late September that the GOP’s education funding bill could result in the firing of 108,000 teachers, school aides and staff.
“It’s just very puzzling to us,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said in a brief interview, “that they continue to put their members in positions to support these terrible cuts that are not going to become law.”
The measure that funds the Education Department is so controversial that it hasn’t even been approved in committee. Under the new speaker’s direction, GOP leaders plan to send the measure straight to the floor, where Republicans could be asked to go on record in support of cutting the Education Department’s budget by more than $12 billion, or 15 percent. The measure would also cut funding by nearly $15 billion, or 80 percent, for the Title I grant program that helps schools that serve a high percentage of low-income students.
Abortion
Several controversial riders on spending bills are related to curbing abortion access. One of the most contentious — though it’s a tough competition — is a nationwide ban on mail-order abortion pills, attached to the bill that funds the FDA and the Department of Agriculture.
The anti-abortion language has become such a problem that Johnson proposed a working group to resolve the issue, with the goal of passing the agriculture spending bill by Thanksgiving. But unless leadership removes the rider completely, Republican centrists are signaling they won’t back it. Meanwhile, some conservatives have sworn they won’t vote for the bill if the federal curb on abortion pills is stripped, and anti-abortion groups are likely to keep pushing to include it.
The bill has already tanked on the floor once in September, and its author, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), has suggested taking that funding legislation straight to conference with the Senate, rather than push it to another potentially doomed vote. Still, he’s publicly dismissed concerns that the bill poses a political liability: “I don’t understand that question whatsoever,” Harris said. “I mean, we were hired to come to Washington to actually pass appropriations bills. That’s all we’re talking about doing.”
Agriculture
That same legislation has problems beyond abortion. It would put GOP lawmakers on record in support of more than $1.1 billion in cuts to agriculture programs — reductions that spur hesitation from members in farm-heavy districts.
“We have some farmers who want X, that some of us aren’t sure about,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).
As Roy and other members of the House Freedom Caucus pushed over the summer for deeper reductions, Iowa Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra said he was “mortified” by some of the proposed cuts, arguing that further shrinking USDA funding would affect food safety and exports that farmers in his state rely on.
Before Roy’s district was redrawn as a more deep-red seat in 2021, he was frequently the target of Democratic campaign attacks highlighting bills he voted to support. Now he has advice for his Republican colleagues facing tight reelection bids: “I took vote after vote after vote. And you know what I did? I ran on them. I ran on the tough votes,” Roy said in an interview.
“If there’s something we voted on that you didn’t like, just say it,” the Texas Republican added. “I’m not worried at all about my colleagues across the spectrum within the Republican Party.”
FBI and law enforcement
The House bill to fund the departments of Commerce and Justice, as well as science programs, has also been too controversial to earn an approval vote in committee. The measure would cut the FBI’s budget by more than $1 billion, or about 9 percent, and reduce the Justice Department’s funding by more than 6 percent, while nixing several violence prevention efforts, including funding to help universities respond to sexual assault, domestic violence and stalking.
“Who’s defunding the police now?” Pennsylvania Rep. Matt Cartwright, the top Democrat on the funding panel in charge of that bill, said in an interview.
LGBTQ rights
The GOP bills broadly seek to bar funding for gender-affirming care, Pride Flag displays and drag queen performances, issues Democrats have chalked up to bigotry and a major distraction.
Packing the bills with anti-LGBTQ policies could be out of step with public opinion, amid growing acceptance among Republicans for issues like same-sex marriage. Recent national polls have also found that a majority of Americans oppose criminalizing gender-transition care for minors, while supporting laws against discrimination and ensuring health insurance companies aren’t denying care based on sex or gender.
Rail
One week into Johnson’s speakership, House Republicans were forced to postpone their vote on the transportation funding bill after a mini revolt from GOP lawmakers in the Northeast Corridor over cuts to Amtrak. Those members said they aren’t comfortable with cutting more than $1 billion from the rail company, which receives annual subsidies from both states and the federal government and has a heavy concentration of stations in the region.
The Senate, meanwhile, just passed a bipartisan three-bill spending package that includes more than $1 billion for the Northeast Corridor and about $1.3 billion for the national network, funding similar to current levels.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), whose district is a straight shot to New York City by rail, said “without question” Democrats will feature the House GOP’s funding cuts in campaign ads next year.
“Because how do you deal with a 67 percent cut to Amtrak?” said DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. “Our votes are public, as they should be. And the public needs to know what harm these bills are doing to them.”
On Monday, Biden took his own swipe at House Republicans over the rail funding proposal. “Our MAGA Republican friends in Congress are proposing to slash Amtrak’s budget,” the president said at an Amtrak facility in Delaware. “We’re trying to make train travel easier, faster, safer, more reliable. They’re trying to make it slower, harder and less safe.”
Ally Mutnick, Zach Montellaro, Meredith Lee Hill, Alice Miranda Ollstein, Alex Daugherty, Tanya Snyder and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report. | US Federal Policies |
Two-and-a-half years before his radical move to topple the US house speaker, Matt Gaetz was making front-page headlines for different reasons.
The New York Times revealed the Department of Justice was investigating if the Florida Republican had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him.
In Florida, the age of consent is 18, and it's a crime to use cash or gifts to induce a person across state lines for sex.
Subsequent reports said investigators were also looking into Gaetz's encounters with women recruited by his friend, Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg, via a dating website designed to connect women with "sugar daddies".
Gaetz denied all wrongdoing, said he'd never paid for sex, and voiced "a suspicion that someone is trying to recategorise my generosity to ex-girlfriends".
Later, he wrote a newspaper column blaming "partisan crooks" in the Justice Department. "My political opponents want to sensationalise and criminalise my prior sex life," he wrote.
Greenberg, whom Gaetz reportedly called his wingman, pleaded guilty to crimes ranging from scamming $US430,000 in COVID relief to writing fake letters to make a teacher – a political opponent – look like a paedophile.
He also pleaded guilty to a sex-trafficking charge relating to the 17-year-old.
In December, Greenberg was jailed for 11 years under a plea deal that saw him co-operate with prosecutors. Greenberg's lawyer Fritz Scheller had suggested that his client's co-operation would probably make Gaetz uncomfortable.
Earlier this year, however, the department told Gaetz's lawyers he wouldn't be charged.
But his links to the prolific criminal are now part of a broad and long-running investigation being conducted by the five Democrats and five Republicans who comprise the house's Ethics Committee.
Announcing its probe back in April 2021, the committee said:
"… Matt Gaetz may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift …"
There's no clear timeline on the investigation, which was paused during the criminal probe.
Gaetz insists he's done nothing wrong. And some Washington observers believe Kevin McCarthy's refusal to back him up helped fuel the personal beef that, this week, had stunning consequences in congress.
'He's blaming me'
Matt Gaetz says his problems with Kevin McCarthy boil down to promises McCarthy made to secure votes to become speaker, and then broke.
McCarthy's decision to work with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown breached the deal that put him in the speaker's chair after 15 gruelling voting rounds in January, Gaetz says.
"This isn't personal, Jake," he insisted to CNN's Jake Tapper this week. "This is about spending. This is about the deal Kevin McCarthy made."
Tapper told Gaetz he had seen "personal communications … in which you blame McCarthy for your ethics investigation".
Gaetz insisted he was "fine with being investigated by anyone and everyone".
But Gaetz also told reporters it "seems that the Ethics Committee's interest in me waxes and wanes based on my relationship with the speaker", and that "Speaker McCarthy is trying to signal to the Ethics Committee to pursue me".
McCarthy has described the dispute as personal.
"He's blaming me for an ethics complaint against him that happened in the last congress," McCarthy told CNBC.
"He wants me to try to wipe that away. I'm not going to do that. That's illegal."
Ripple effects in Ukraine
The bipartisan stopgap budget measure that averted a government shutdown – and triggered Gaetz's move on McCarthy – will keep funding the government until November 17.
But in what some Democrats branded a win for a Republican "pro-Putin caucus", Ukraine support was left out of the package.
Gaetz has been one of the most vocal opponents to Ukraine funding. He wanted to go further, moving an amendment to a spending bill that would have banned it.
He argued that the US had too much debt, its war funding had pushed up fuel and food prices, and the money would be better spent securing America's southern border.
"Our nation is being invaded … and yet we go spend all this money on the border of another country," he told the house.
All house Democrats opposed Gaetz's proposal, but 93 of the house's 221 Republicans supported it. That's a significant increase on the 70 members who supported a similar move by Gaetz in July.
President Joe Biden later warned: "We cannot under any circumstance allow America's support for Ukraine to be interrupted."
But it has been – including $US24 billion that the president requested from congress in July.
And McCarthy's replacement could block future Ukraine funding bills from even going to a vote.
"Ukrainian spending will become a very big point of contention for the next speaker," Republican strategist John Feehery told the ABC.
"And how he deals with that is unclear, because you do have a split [in the party]."
When it comes to getting support to Ukraine, "time is not our friend", White House national security spokesman John Kirby said this week.
"We have enough funding authorities to meet Ukraine's battlefield needs for a bit longer, but we need congress to act to ensure that there is no disruption in our support."
What now?
Two house Republicans are now actively campaigning to be given the speaker's gavel.
One is a man Matt Gaetz calls a mentor – a college wrestler-turned-co-founder of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan. He has repeatedly voted against Ukraine funds, voicing concerns about unclear battlefield goals and a lack of spending oversight.
The other is House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a shooting survivor who is currently being treated for blood cancer. He has a record of supporting Ukraine funds.
The party's de facto leader, Donald Trump, has also flirted with the thought of stepping in for a short time – legally possible, albeit a break in convention. But he's now given his precious endorsement to Jordan.
Republicans look likely to vote on Tuesday, before a house vote could take place as early as Wednesday.
With the house speaker-less and paralysed, the clock ticking towards a possible shutdown, and Ukraine support in limbo, Democrats are voicing serious concerns.
"The rest of this century looks radically different if the United States abandons Ukraine," Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told Associated Press.
"If the decision in the house is to elect a speaker who will fight against Ukraine funding, that's a decision that will be written about in the history books."
The man who brought it all on sees things differently.
When Jordan told CNN he would be against an aid package for Ukraine as speaker, Gaetz tweeted the video and wrote: "Things are looking up."Loading... | US Congress |
Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law will hold a hearing on “Social Media and the Teen Mental Health Crisis.” The hearing will reportedly feature testimony from Arturo Bejar, a new whistleblower who has come forward to shine light on Meta’s failure to respond to internal information about harms to young people on the platform. Fight for the Future applauds Mr. Bejar’s act of bravery. The more the public knows about the predatory and manipulative business practices of Big Tech giants, the better.
Unfortunately, the hearing will be used to promote the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a dangerous bill that would fail to address the harms of Big Tech while posing a significant threat to human rights, free expression, and particularly the safety of LGBTQ youth. Last week, LGBT Tech organized a new letter signed by 74 LGBTQ organizations, explaining why the changes that have been made to KOSA fail to address concerns about how the bill can and will be weaponized against LGBTQ youth. As it currently stands, KOSA still allows state attorneys general to force platforms to censor content for younger users simply by claiming that content causes depression or anxiety.
Digital rights group Fight for the Future issued the following statement, which can be attributed to the groups’ director, Evan Greer (she/they):
“KOSA raises serious substantive concerns. But it’s also politically unfeasible. It faces opposition from dozens of human rights, LGBTQ, civil liberties, racial justice, and press freedom organizations, as well as high profile members of the House and Senate. Instead of being used to promote a misguided and ultimately unworkable bill, Arturo Bejar’s testimony should light a fire under lawmakers to stop grandstanding and start actually legislating. That means abandoning flawed and unconstitutional proposals like KOSA, the EARN IT Act, and the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act and working to advance measures that will actually address the harms of Big Tech. KOSA and similarly misguided bills won’t work, and they’re not going to pass. But Congress can and should advance privacy, antitrust and algorithmic justice legislation, and the FTC should use its existing authority to crack down on Big Tech’s manipulative and deceptive business practices like autoplay, infinite scroll, surveillance advertising, and intrusive notifications.
Under the First Amendment, the government can’t tell platforms which content they can and can’t recommend to which users. But lawmakers and regulators can address harms by targeting the commercial surveillance that powers algorithmic recommendations. The more time wasted debating KOSA, the less time Congress will have to consider meaningful proposals that can address the harms of Big Tech without triggering a constitutional challenge or throwing marginalized people under the bus.
Time is running out. If a few big egos in DC insist on pushing a misguided and unworkable bill, they’re going to squander the momentum that advocates have worked so hard to build toward meaningful regulation of Big Tech. If KOSA supporters really care about protecting kids, it’s time for them to start acting like adults. That means genuinely listening to the concerns raised by civil liberties and LGBTQ experts about how the duty of care model and content filtering requirements are fundamentally unworkable. It means working in good faith to identify areas of consensus, where child protection, human rights, and civil liberties experts all agree.
KOSA’s duty of care could be removed and replaced with a set of strict privacy rules and a ban on the use of minor’s personal data to power recommendation algorithms, for example. That could accomplish many of the bill’s stated goals without raising the same civil liberties and human rights concerns. If KOSA supporters continue to plug their ears and ignore the life or death concerns that have been raised about their bill, we all know what will happen: Congress will do nothing, and Big Tech will win again.”
Fight for the Future hopes to break the impasse on kids safety legislation by helping build consensus between civil liberties and child protection organizations. Toward that end, we have prepared a memo on the ongoing concerns with KOSA and a memo on alternative measures that will actually protect kids online.
### | US Federal Policies |
- Rep. Patrick McHenry became speaker pro tempore after Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted on Tuesday.
- One of his first acts was to tell Rep. Nancy Pelosi to vacate her hideaway office.
- Pelosi said in a statement that the one-day eviction notice was a "sharp departure from tradition."
The new Republican interim House speaker made one of his first acts in office the ordering of Rep. Nancy Pelosi to immediately vacate her hideaway office.
Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina became speaker pro tempore role after Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his role on Tuesday.
McCarthy, a Republican, was ousted after a wing of his own party turned against him.
Politico was the first to report that Pelosi, a Democratic lawmaker who was House speaker until the start of this year, received email correspondence telling her to leave her hideaway office in the Capitol last night.
Hideaway offices are private, unlisted offices in the Capitol, which only the most senior members of the House typically get. Traditionally, the rooms are reserved for senators.
"Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed," said an email from a top aide on the Republican-controlled House Administration Committee, according to Politico.
The news outlet, which reviewed the message, said the email outlined how the room was being reassigned by McHenry for "speaker office use."
Axios reported that the email was sent about an hour and a half after McHenry became the acting speaker.
In a statement Tuesday, Pelosi denounced the eviction as a "sharp departure from tradition."
She added: "As Speaker, I gave former Speaker [Dennis] Hastert a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished."
Pelosi continued: "Office space doesn't matter to me, but it seems to be important to them. Now that the new Republican Leadership has settled this important matter, let's hope they get to work on what's truly important for the American people."
Pelosi missed the vote on removing McCarthy because she was in San Francisco for the memorial service of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, which also meant she was unable to retrieve her belongings herself, she said, per Politico.
According to a Pelosi spokesperson, who spoke to Politico, House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries' staff helped pack up Pelosi's office on Tuesday night.
Representatives for McHenry, Pelosi, and the House Administration Committee did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment. | US Congress |
Acting before Supreme Court ruling, House votes to block Biden's student loan forgiveness plan
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 218-203 to pass a bill that would repeal President Joe Biden’s plan for mass student debt relief.
The vast majority of Republicans voted in favor of the resolution and the vast majority of Democrats in opposition, but at least two Democrats appeared to cast yea votes.
The plan, which would forgive up to $20,000 in student loans for Americans with individual incomes of less than $125,000, is on hold because of two challenges now being considered by the Supreme Court. The high court typically issues its decisions for the term by the end of June.
But Republicans in Congress are determined to block the forgiveness plan before the court rules. The legislation, which now heads to the Senate, would also restart payments on student loans, which have been on pause since the onset of the pandemic.
Biden's plan would contribute to inflation, said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, during a debate over the resolution before Wednesday's vote. It would in turn hurt "working Americans" most.
"Democrats want future taxpayers and hardworking Americans to foot the bill," she said. "Americans shouldn't buy it. ... Those who will pay: those without degrees and those who can afford to pay their debt."
This is the first time Congress has voted on legislation exclusively seeking to block Biden’s plan. GOP members in the House already voted to kill Biden's plan as part of a bill to raise the debt ceiling last month.
Here’s what you need to know.
Americans are split on debt forgivenessas Supreme Court gears up to rule on student loan cases
What’s up with the Supreme Court case?
The court in February heard arguments on two cases challenging the plan, which would cancel either $10,000 and $20,000 in student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans. Roughly 16 million of the more than 25 million borrowers who applied for this forgiveness last fall were approved before it was put on hold pending the litigation.
The Supreme Court expected to announce its decision within the next month or so.
Republicans already tried to block forgiveness in debt ceiling plan
Republicans attempted to repeal Biden’s program as part of a larger package of proposals earlier this spring to lower the nation’s debt ceiling, an issue that remains unresolved.
The GOP-led House passed the bill, which included other proposed spending cuts. But it never made it out of the Democrat-controlled Senate.
House passes GOP debt limit plan,which would cut Biden's student loan forgiveness proposal
Some Democrats skeptical of mass student debt relief
The Republican-sponsored legislation to block Biden’s mass student debt relief plan could face a similar fate as it now face the Senate. The White House has already said it would veto the proposal.
“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,” the White House said.
Democrats generally have decried the resolution as a greedy and misinformed attempt to deny much-needed financial relief to tens of millions of Americans. "We've repeatedly seen how willing our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are to put politics over people and special interests over students and this (resolution) is no different," said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., during the Wednesday debate.
At least 43 million Americans would be eligible for relief under Biden's plan, Democrats stressed, with the vast majority (90%) earning less than $75,000. To frame this as a handout to the wealthy is false and unfair, they said.
But some moderate Democrats, including Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, have expressed skepticism about mass relief. The plan is estimated to cost about $300 billion.
What does all of this mean for the pause on student loan payments?
If the bill were to become law, it would also nullify the moratorium on student loan payments. The payment pause was first enacted and extended under the Trump administration, after which it was extended repeatedly under Biden.
Otherwise, the pause – which also faces its own lawsuits – will likely end later this year.
The Biden administration has stated payments will kick back in two months after June 30 or the day the Supreme Court issues its ruling, whichever happens first.
But as reported by Politico, internal Education Department documents indicate October will be the first month borrowers are expected to resume payments. According to the documents, department officials anticipate needing several months to transition back into payments.
Plan B to cancel student loan debt?The White House won't go there even as pressure mounts
What about other forms of student debt forgiveness?
The Biden administration has tried to relieve student loan debt through a variety of avenues, including public-service loan forgiveness and what’s known as Borrower Defense to Repayment.
The latter program concerns borrowers who were defrauded by their colleges. These tend to be for-profit or career-training institutions.
As part of a settlement of one such class-action case, the Education Department recently discharged some $6 billion in student loans for more than 200,000 defrauded borrowers. Now, the Republican chairs of the House education and oversight committees are requesting documents to ensure the department’s settlement agreement is legal.
Public-service loan forgiveness, which pertains to people who've worked for at least a decade in industries such as public education and health care, could also be hampered by the bill passed out of the House Wednesday.
In early May, the department announced it had forgiven $42 billion in student loan debt for public service workers.
But a recent analysis by the Student Borrower Protection Center and American Federation of Teachers suggests as many as 268,600 public service workers who had their loans forgiven at some point between September 2022 and March 2023 could have their debt reinstated.
"This is a disaster," AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. "For years, the AFT and SBPC have fought the damage forced by the Trump Administration on student loan borrowers and their families. Now, MAGA politicians don’t just want to stop that progress, they want to reinstate student debt previously cancelled for more than 260,000 teachers, nurses, firefighters, and others.
"It’s an immoral clawback of the absolute worst kind."
Should colleges be held accountableas student loan debt spirals?
Contact Alia Wong at (202) 507-2256 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @aliaemily. | US Federal Policies |
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.
Zeke Miller, Associated Press
Zeke Miller, Associated Press
Leave your feedback
WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday that there are “no good options” for the United States to avoid an economic “calamity” if Congress fails to raise the nation’s borrowing limit of $31.381 trillion in the coming weeks. She did not rule out President Joe Biden bypassing lawmakers and acting on his own to try to avert a first-ever federal default.
Her comments added even more urgency to a high-stakes meeting Tuesday between Biden and congressional leaders from both parties.
READ MORE: 5 things to know about the debt ceiling crunch
Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads over whether the debt limit should even be the subject of negotiation. GOP lawmakers, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, are demanding spending cuts in return for raising the borrowing limit, while Biden has said the threat of default shouldn’t be used as leverage in budget talks.
Yellen, interviewed on ABC’s “This Week,” painted a dire picture of what might happen if the borrowing limit is not increased before the Treasury Department runs out of what it calls “extraordinary measures” to operate under the current cap. That time, she said, is expected to come in early June, perhaps as soon as June 1.
“Whether it’s defaulting on interest payments that are due on the debt or payments due for Social Security recipients or to Medicare providers, we would simply not have enough cash to meet all of our obligations,” she said. “And it’s widely agreed that financial and economic chaos would ensue.”
An increase in the debt limit would not authorize new federal spending. It would only allow borrowing to pay for what Congress has already approved.
Biden’s White House meeting with McCarthy, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will be the first substantive talks between Biden and McCarthy in months.
House Republicans on April 26 passed a bill that would raise the debt limit but impose significant federal spending cuts. But those cuts are unlikely to win the support of all Republicans in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and Biden has said he will only negotiate about government spending once Congress takes the risk of default off the table.
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who left the Democratic Party in December, encouraged Biden and McCarthy to meet each other half way.
“There’s not going to be just a simple clean debt limit — the votes don’t exist for that,” she told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “So the sooner these two guys get in the room and listen to what the other one needs, the more likely they are to solve this challenge and protect the full faith and credit of the United States of America.”
Yellen was asked on ABC whether Biden could bypass Congress by citing the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that the “validity” of U.S. debt “shall not be questioned.” Yellen did not answer definitively, but said it should not be considered a valid solution.
“We should not get to the point where we need to consider whether the president can go on issuing debt. This would be a constitutional crisis,” she said.
“What to do if Congress fails to meet its responsibility? There are simply no good options,” she added.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., agreed about the risks of invoking the 14th Amendment, He told ABC that the Constitution is “very clear that spending — all those details around spending and money actually has to come through Congress.”
He criticized Biden for not being willing to negotiate on spending cuts, arguing the debt limit exists to force a broader conversation on government outlays. “It’s about not just debt that’s incurred,” the senator said. “But it’s also raising the limit of what we can continue to be able to add on this.”
The 14th Amendment question was studied by Obama administration lawyers during the 2011 debt limit showdown, which informed Biden’s refusal to negotiate now with Republicans on raising the debt limit. At the time, Justice Department lawyers said they did not believe the president had the unilateral power to issue new debt.
Biden, in an interview with MSNBC on Friday, was asked about the 14th Amendment proposal, saying, “I’ve not gotten there yet.”
Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and the committee’s top Democrat, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the debt limit debate posed a national security threat.
“The Russians and the Chinese would seek to exploit it,” Himes said. “The United States has never really come close defaulting on its debt before. So it’s hard for us to imagine what that might look like.”
Turner argued that Biden would bear the brunt of the responsibility. “I think if the president fails to negotiate with Congress and has continued out-of-control spending that threatens our economy, that it is a national security threat,” he said.
Support Provided By:
Learn more | US Federal Policies |
Colorado's Secretary of State Jena Griswold criticized a judge's ruling that stated Donald Trump could remain on the state's 2024 primary ballot, despite saying he "engaged in an insurrection," by calling it a "get-out-of-jail-free card" on Saturday.
The legal challenges that have sought to remove Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, from various state ballots cite a Civil War-era clause in the 14th Amendment that prohibits officials who have taken an oath to uphold the United States Constitution from holding office if they've "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" or "given aid or comfort" to those who did. Those seeking to ban Trump from the ballots argue his actions after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden that led to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot amounts to insurrection.
In Colorado, District Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled on Friday that the former president could remain on the state's ballot while also stating in her decision that he engaged in an insurrection against the Constitution with his actions before and during the riot, which could be used in an appeal.
While speaking about the ruling on Saturday with MSNBC's host Ali Velshi, Griswold critiqued the ruling and said that "the idea that any official who would engage in insurrection would be barred from taking office, except the presidency, is incredibly surprising." She added: "That basically means that the presidency is a get-out-of-jail-free card for insurrection."
Griswold also emphasized how despite Friday's ruling being one of the first to state that Trump "engaged in an insurrection," she still finds it troubling that he could become president again.
In addition, while speaking with Newsweek via phone on Saturday afternoon, Griswold said it is not only noteworthy that the court took the time to hear the arguments and ruled that Trump engaged in an insurrection, but is "a clear warning of the danger of Donald Trump to American democracy."
The Colorado case was brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a progressive government watchdog group. Noah Bookbinder, the president of CREW, addressed Wallace's ruling in a thread on X, formerly Twitter, and said the group plans to file an appeal.
"The Colorado court's decision today affirms what @CREWcrew's clients alleged in this lawsuit: that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection based on his role in January 6th. That finding came after a thorough evidentiary hearing," he wrote on Friday.
Bookbinder continued: "The court did not order him removed from the ballot, however, finding that the president is not an officer of the United States and so not subject to the 14th amendment's disqualification clause. We will be filing an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court shortly. This is the first time a presidential candidate has been found to have engaged in insurrection. We are proud to have brought this historic case. Today was not the end of this effort, but another step along the way."
Griswold also believes this is not the last we will hear about this case and told Newsweek, "I think this case will continue to play out...this case will very likely move forward to the Colorado Supreme Court and we will see what the Colorado Supreme Court does. As secretary of state, I'll follow whatever court decision is in place at the time to certify the ballot on January 5."
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, previously provided an official statement to Newsweek on Saturday celebrating the dismissal of the ballot challenge.
"We applaud today's ruling in Colorado, which is another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges," Cheung's statement read. "With this decision, Democrats' 14th Amendment challenges have now been defeated in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire. These cases represent the most cynical and blatant political attempts to interfere with the upcoming presidential election by desperate Democrats who know Crooked Joe Biden is a failed president on the fast track to defeat."
On Tuesday, Michigan judge James Redford also denied a request to keep Trump off the state's 2024 presidential primary ballot, saying that the request is a "political question" and not a question to be decided by the courts.
"The question of whether Donald J. Trump is qualified or disqualified from appearing on the 2024 general election ballot in Michigan is not ripe for adjudication at this time," the judge ruled.
Meanwhile, Trump was indicted on four counts in August by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in relation to the Capitol riot, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Trump has pled not guilty to all counts and has maintained his innocence.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
fairness meter
About the writer
Natalie Venegas is a Weekend Reporter at Newsweek based in New York. Her focus is reporting on education, social justice issues, healthcare, crime and politics while specializing on marginalized and underrepresented communities. Before joining Newsweek in 2023, Natalie worked with news publications including Adweek, Al Día and Austin Monthly Magazine. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor's in journalism. You can get in touch with Natalie by emailing [email protected]
Languages: English.
Natalie Venegas is a Weekend Reporter at Newsweek based in New York. Her focus is reporting on education, social justice... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. | US Federal Elections |
A federal judge ruled that the jury hearing E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit will only need to decide how much money Donald Trump will have to pay her, after the judge found the former president was liable for making defamatory statements.
The finding is a significant blow to Trump, who is facing numerous criminal indictments and civil lawsuits – many of them coming to a head as he embarks on a presidential campaign.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said that a federal jury’s verdict earlier this year against Trump will carry over to the defamation case set to go to trial in January involving statements Trump made in 2019 about Carroll’s sexual assault allegations.
Carroll, a former magazine columnist, alleged Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim.
In May after a two-week trial, a jury found Trump sexually abused Carroll and defamed her when he said in 2022 that he didn’t rape her, didn’t know her, and that she wasn’t his “type.”
In that case, the jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
“The truth or falsity of Mr Trump’s 2019 statements therefore depends – like the truth or falsity of his 2022 statement – on whether Ms Carroll lied about Mr Trump sexually assaulting her,” the judge ruled Wednesday. “The jury’s finding that she did not therefore is binding in this case and precludes Mr Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements.”
Kaplan ruled the trial set for January 15 will be limited to damages.
Although her initial lawsuit was filed in 2019, the judge previously allowed Carroll to include comments Trump made at a CNN town hall earlier this year.
On Wednesday, Kaplan also rejected Trump’s argument that any future damages be capped, meaning the previous award shouldn’t be a factor for the jury. Carroll is seeking more than $10 million in damages.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing. He has appealed the jury’s verdict and all rulings against him.
This story has been updated with additional details. | US Federal Policies |
President Biden's claim during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night that he reduced the deficit by a record $1.7 trillion was misleading and lacked context, according to several fact-checkers.
"In the last two years, my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history," Biden said at the Capitol.
Several liberal media outlets quickly took issue with Biden's remarks.
"Biden's boast leaves out important context," wrote CNN. "It is true that the federal deficit fell by $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 — but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction."
The Washington Post similarly called out the president.
"Biden misleadingly claims to have lowered the deficit by a huge amount even though his policies have added significantly to the national debt," wrote Glenn Kessler, the Post's fact-checker.
The New York Times and FactCheck.org also said Biden's comments "need context."
Biden was correct that the annual federal deficit decreased from $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020 to $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2022, translating to a $1.7 trillion drop. However, as the fact-checkers noted, this simple calculation lacks context, which reveals Biden's fiscal policy were hardly the lone or leading factor in driving down the deficit.
STATE OF THE UNION: BIDEN LAYS OUT ECONOMIC PLAN, CALLS FOR BIPARTISANSHIP BUT REPEATEDLY CHIDES REPUBLICANS
In February 2021, before Biden enacted any fiscal legislation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) already estimated that the budget deficit would plummet in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 because emergency COVID pandemic spending would lapse. Specifically, the CBO calculated the combined annual deficits for 2021 and 2022 would be $3.31 trillion — a steep anticipated drop considering that total was slightly higher than 2020 alone.
However, the deficits for 2021 and 2022 actually ended up totaling $4.15 trillion, according to the CBO. In other words, the deficits for those years were about $840 billion more than expected but still ended up at a lower figure compared to 2020. The reason for the higher-than-expected deficit was a host of Biden-supported spending policies — most notably COVID relief funding from 2021 that is estimated to add nearly $1.9 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.
"All said, the decline in the deficit over the past fiscal year is more than entirely the result of waning COVID relief and not of historic deficit reduction by President Biden as the White House claims," the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote in an October blog post. "In fact, the president's actions to date have increased deficits by $4.8 trillion through 2031."
Biden also claimed during his State of the Union address that former President Trump's administration was the real culprit of raising the deficit, not him as many Republicans argue.
"Under the previous administration, the American deficit went up four years in a row," said Biden. "Because of those record deficits, no president added more to the national debt in any four years than my predecessor. Nearly 25% of the entire national debt that took over 200 years to accumulate was added by just one administration alone, the last one."
This claim is technically correct but again "lacks context," according to the Post and other fact-checkers.
The national debt — the accumulation of annual deficits over decades — increased by $7.8 trillion during Trump's four years as president, equating to roughly 25% of the nation's $31 trillion in debt.
However, much of that increase was due to massive, multi-trillion-dollar spending supported by both parties that was meant to stabilize the economy during the pandemic.
"While Biden's statistic is accurate, it leaves a misleading impression because trillions of dollars of the accumulated debt under Trump was due to bipartisan coronavirus relief packages," wrote FactCheck.org, which also noted an "even bigger share of the debt inherited by Biden" was accumulated when he was vice president under the Obama administration.
Another key factor was mandatory government spending linked to funding Medicare and Social Security that was set before Trump entered office and could not be controlled. According to the CBO, the government collected $14.3 trillion in revenue and spent $21.9 trillion from fiscal years 2018 to 2021. During those years, spending on programs such as Medicare and Social Security totaled $14.7 trillion alone. Discretionary, or optional spending implemented through an appropriations bill totaled about $5.8 trillion, according to the New York Times fact-checker.
The Post noted Biden has increased the national debt about $850 billion more than the CBO originally projected. Meanwhile, FactCheck.org wrote that the "pre-pandemic deficits under Trump are significantly lower than any year under Biden so far." | US Federal Policies |
WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - With just a week before Washington runs out of money to keep the federal government fully operating, warring factions within the Republican Party in the U.S. Congress on Sunday showed no signs of coming together to pass a stopgap funding bill.
Congress so far has failed to finish any of the 12 regular spending bills to fund federal agency programs in the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1.
House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy will push an ambitious plan this week to win approval of four large bills, including military and homeland security funding, that he hopes would demonstrate enough progress to far-right Republicans to win their support for a stop-gap spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, as well.
Republican Representative Michael McCaul, a 19-year veteran of Congress who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, urged the group of party "holdouts" to stop blocking Republican-backed spending bills while at the same time "saying don't bring bipartisan bills to the floor."
"Republicans need to vote for Republican bills" to avert a shutdown, McCaul said on ABC's "This Week" broadcast.
But some of those "holdouts," who want deep spending cuts that go beyond a deal passed earlier this year, showed no sign of relenting.
"Continuing resolutions don't solve the problem. They just kick the can down the road," Republican Representative Tony Gonzalez told CBS News' "Face the Nation."
In June, President Joe Biden signed into law an increase in U.S. borrowing authority that he brokered with McCarthy, which also came with around $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years.
Ultra-right House Republicans want to go further with around $120 billion in additional cuts just for the new fiscal year, which could hit programs ranging from education and environmental protection to Internal Revenue Service enforcement and medical research.
Similarly, Republican Representative Tim Burchett told CNN's "State of the Union" that he has never voted for a temporary funding bill and won't this time around.
He warned that if McCarthy allows legislation to pass the House with Democratic support, "I would look strongly at" a move to strip McCarthy of his speakership.
"This dysfunctional Washington cannot continue," Burchett said, referring to the way Congress handles the federal budget, which is on a path to a $1.5 trillion deficit for the fiscal year that ends on Saturday.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned in an ABC interview that a government shutdown will require his agency to immediately suspend air traffic controller training courses at a time when air travel is "getting back to normal" following a high volume of flight delays and disruptions last year.
Aides to McCarthy were not immediately available for comment on whether negotiations over a CR were continuing on Sunday.
But he has been pushing for a 30-day bill to keep federal offices open, coupled with a strict border security plan that would basically suspend most immigration into the United States at a time of record numbers of people seeking asylum on the border with Mexico.
Even some of the Senate's most conservative Republicans on Sunday appealed to House counterparts to stop blocking a stop-gap bill.
"We would like for the House to begin that process of sending us a CR to keep the government open and functioning," Senator Marsha Blackburn told Fox Business News.
Appealing to those conservatives' eagerness for conducting investigations into Biden and some other top administration officials, Blackburn added: "If you shut down the government you can't continue that."
Reporting by Richard Cowan and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Bill Berkrot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | US Congress |
Donald Trump has been complaining recently about the pictures used of him on Fox News.
"They purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big 'orange' one with my chin pulled way back," he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The former president obviously prefers the mugshot taken in Atlanta's Fulton County jail, where he was booked on charges of plotting to overturn Georgia's 2020 election result on Thursday.
Within minutes of the picture being released, it appeared on Mr Trump's website along with a statement saying he had been arrested despite committing no crime. "What has taken place is a travesty of justice," it said, along with a call for campaign contributions.
Mugshots have destroyed other political careers. For him, it has already become a campaign symbol.
In fact, in a matter of hours his official campaign was selling T-shirts featuring the image. "NEVER SURRENDER," they read. Mugs and stickers are also available.
It is yet another example of how Mr Trump continues to defy political gravity.
We are no longer surprised when his poll ratings rise with each criminal indictment against him. The Georgia charges, after all, were the fourth in five months.
We can also see that the man who may have to spend the better part of next year in a courtroom, not on the campaign trail, is still the clear frontrunner to win the Republican party's presidential nomination for 2024.
He is rewriting the laws of politics right in front of our eyes.
Anyone who doubts Mr Trump's continuing grip on the party should watch one moment from Wednesday night's televised Republican debate.
Mr Trump chose to skip the event because he is so far ahead of his rivals he believed he had nothing to gain from being there. Yet he still loomed over the stage.
All eight candidates were asked to raise their hand if they would still support Mr Trump for president if he is found guilty in court. Six hands went up in the air - even if Florida Governor Ron DeSantis conspicuously waited to see what the others did before raising his.
Three quarters of the people running against Mr Trump will not dare to say he should not be president if he has a criminal conviction.
More on Trump and 2024
"Someone's got to stop normalising this conduct, okay?" arch Trump-critic Chris Christie said. "Whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of president of the United States." He was then practically booed off the stage.
Arguably, Mr Christie has it wrong. The Republican Party is not normalising Mr Trump's conduct. It is celebrating his actions and rewarding him with more support and adulation each time his legal problems become more serious.
"They are not after me, they are after you - I'm just standing in the way," Mr Trump often says. His supporters love that.
It is a phrase I've had repeated back to me around the country. Even though no one is quite sure what it actually means, it encapsulates the idea that he is more than another politician. He presents himself as a potential martyr for his support base.
Mr Trump has an almost unique talent for attracting attention. He is using this moment to suffocate his rivals and opponents by starving them of the oxygen of publicity. He has successfully merged his legal problems with his political campaign - and turned both into a reality TV show.
That is why he brings cameras with him when he is arrested. That is why he called into right-wing TV stations to describe what it was like being booked in a notorious Atlanta jail. And that is why he will use this mugshot as the ultimate accolade. | US Federal Elections |
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! With 2022 midterms and control of the House and Senate decided (well, mostly!) campaign 2024 begins – with Republican hopefuls. Former President Donald Trump has already launched his campaign. Well-funded Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was just sworn in for a second term. Former Vice President Mike Pence, and a host of other well regarded Republican politicians are "visiting" Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and other key decisive states, lining up fund-raising, and building campaign teams.On the Democratic side, all eyes are on President Biden. He and his team have given every indication that he’s not not-running, but whose indications nonetheless are prompting hopefuls to (quietly) determine what they might do in the event that the president decides not to run.If two weeks is a lifetime in politics, two years is an eternity. But unlike in previous elections – when essentially a two-year forecast of the political environment was fully unpredictable, this time around, we kind of know what we’re going to be discussing two years from now – even though we can’t know how it will affect the race.BIDEN FAMILY 'FULLY' SUPPORTS 2024 RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN: SENIOR ADVISORAs the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, "there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns."Typically, it’s the unknown unknowns that wreak havoc with forecasters. In 2002, Republican George W. Bush had won seats in both the House and Senate, the war in Iraq had not yet started, and no one could predict that the handling of that war would make his reelection bid far from certain. In 2010, Democrat Barack Obama was coming off a major defeat in the midterms, and no one could predict that he would be able to win reelection partially because of some support for ObamaCare, and that Super Storm Sandy in the last weeks of the 2012 campaign would enable Obama to blunt his opponent’s attacks. If two weeks is a lifetime in politics, two years is an eternity. But unlike in previous elections – when essentially a two-year forecast of the political environment was fully unpredictable, this time around, we kind of know what we’re going to be discussing two years from now – even though we can’t know how it will affect the race. In 2014, Hillary Clinton was a popular former Secretary of State, who was widely expected to be the Democrat’s 2016 nominee – no one realized that she’d have real trouble getting the nomination over an unknown Vermont independent Senator (Bernie Sanders) and that her opponent would be a novice candidate, Donald Trump, who would be able to make effective use of a (then-) unknown email server, together with a government investigation, to wind up winning the White House. In 2018, people may have thought Trump was vulnerable, but no one anticipated a once-in-a-century pandemic would help the man Obama had prevented from running in 2016, to finally capture the White House after two campaigns that had, frankly, flopped. While there are undoubtedly unknown unknowns in store for American politics, but there are a large set of known unknowns that will fuel the debate. We don’t know how they’re likely to turn out – but we can be pretty sure that they will be driving the debate in 2024. MAJORITY OF DEMS RUMORED TO BE CONSIDERING PRESIDENTIAL RUN WON'T COMMIT TO BACKING BIDEN IN 2024With the exception of our direct involvement in wars, foreign policy issues rarely affect US politics. Trump won in 2016 in large part because of his commitment to wind down "forever wars," and he ran his administration on the theme of "America First" – and pledged to reduce our commitment to foreign alliances.Ironically it was Biden who willfully executed that commitment – pulling out of Afghanistan – in a SNAFU of a withdrawal that sent his job approval into a tailspin – and probably is one of the reasons he wasn’t able to get as much of his "Build Back Better" agenda passed as he had hoped. Since then, Biden's political focus has been primarily domestic: Passing the part of "Build Back Better." The Democratic electorate’s focus on abortion and the continued impact of Donald Trump helped him make the 2022 midterms fairly successful – and rekindled expectations that Biden is running in 2024.But it’s the known unknowns overseas that will likely have a profound impact on the 2024 campaign: China, Ukraine/Russia, and the impact of those actions on oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela, inflation, and the U.S. economy.They’ll determine whether voters believe that Democrats have made the country better – or think that instead, it’s time to return a Republican to the White House. For better or worse, the United States is clearly very involved in the Ukraine war. Russia attacked Ukraine but the U.S. has devoted substantial resources both to helping them fight that war – and to trying to ensure the Europeans help as well. ZELENSKYY WARNS RUSSIA PLANNING ‘PROLONGED’ ATTACK WITH IRANIAN SHAHED DRONESRight now the war looks like it’s not ending anytime soon. The Ukrainians have proven themselves more effective than anticipated – but it doesn’t seem as though the conflict has an end in sight. The world's major oil-producing nations are either close to Russia, or currently taking a wait-and-see attitude to the war. Rather than raising oil output to fight against rising prices, the Saudis have gone along with trying to keep prices high. The Iranians seem to have turned down Biden’s earlier offer to get back into the nuclear deal, and instead are selling weapons to the Russians. And the Venezuelans have sent some signals that they might be willing to play ball with the U.S. – in the event that the war continues to go south for the RussiansWe don’t know how the war is going to turn out – (I certainly claim no expertise) but I know that we – and the Saudis, Venezuelans, and even the Iranians will know a great deal more in the next two years. IF the war turns out badly for the Russians, they are likely to want to figure out a way to be helpful to the U.S. – in the form of low oil prices.CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTERWe also know that an outcome favorable to the Ukrainians will help return Ukrainian grain to the world market. Ukraine represents 8% of global grain sales and would help mitigate inflation.But we also know that it could go the other way – a long-term stalemate between Russia and Ukraine, or worse, will likely mean continued high oil and grain prices – and either continued inflation or a serious recession. Similarly, we don’t know the outcome of the emerging tension with China. Basically, the Biden administration has doubled down on Trump’s approach with the Chinese. The U.S. – through the CHIPs act passed with support of several Republican senators – has essentially thrown the gauntlet down with the Chinese. This will likely have a major impact on U.S. manufacturing and the prices for computers, phones, cars, and other chip-dependent products.We’ll know more about whether these steps are working by early 2024 than we know today. We’ll know if the approach is working to help the U.S. economy – and whether it’s fueling growth or failing. Even though the steps have been taken on a bipartisan basis – the voters will know whom to blame if it’s failing – and who can take credit if it works.There are a host of other simmering conflicts in various parts of the world – protests in Iran… a Middle East that may (or may not) be embracing the "Abraham Accords"… and South East Asia – which is working hard to try to take up much of the manufacturing which the Biden administration is trying to move out of China.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPWhile each of these can be dismissed as foreign policy side shows that rarely affect American politcs – the outcome of any of them will have a dramatic impact on the U.S. economy and the 2024 voter.We don’t know how they’ll turn out. That is unknowable…that they’ll have a dramatic impact on all of us is demonstrable. Arnon Mishkin is director of the Fox News decision desk. | US Federal Elections |
Hunter Biden on Tuesday offered to testify publicly before the U.S. Congress in response to a subpoena from Republicans investigating nearly every aspect of his business dealings as they pursue an impeachment inquiry into his father, President Joe Biden.
The Democratic president's son slammed the inquiry as a "fishing expedition" and refused to give closed-door testimony but said he would "answer any pertinent and relevant question" in front of the House Oversight Committee next month, setting up a potential high-stakes face-off.
Representative James Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, subpoenaed Hunter Biden in early November in the inquiry's most aggressive step yet and one that tests the reach of congressional oversight powers. Comer's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
So far, Republicans have failed to uncover evidence directly implicating President Biden in any wrongdoing. But lawmakers insist their evidence paints a troubling picture of "influence peddling" in the Biden family's business dealings, particularly with clients overseas.
The subpoena demanded Hunter Biden appear before the Oversight Committee for a deposition by mid-December. His uncle James Biden was subpoenaed the same day, as well as former business associate Rob Walker.
Hunter Biden's attorney Abbe Lowell said in Tuesday's letter that his client had "misgivings about your motives and purpose" but had previously offered to speak with the committee without a response.
"Your empty investigation has gone on too long wasting too many better-used resources. It should come to an end," Lowell wrote. "From all the individuals you have requested depositions or interviews, all you will learn is that your accusations are baseless. However, the American people should see that for themselves."
He offered to appear on December 13, the date named in the subpoena, or another day next month.
The subpoenas were bitterly opposed by Democrats, and the White House called for the subpoenas to be withdrawn. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, wrote that the subpoenas are "irresponsible" and the product of an overzealous House GOP majority that "weaponized the oversight powers of Congress."
Congressional Republicans are also probing the Justice Department's handling of a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden's business dealings. That long-running case had been expected to end with a plea deal, but it imploded during a July plea hearing.
Hunter Biden is now charged with three firearms felonies related to the 2018 purchase of a gun during a period he has acknowledged being addicted to drugs. No new tax charges have been filed, but prosecutors have indicated they are possible in Washington or California, where he now lives. | US Political Corruption |
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.
Farnoush Amiri, Associated Press
Farnoush Amiri, Associated Press
Leave your feedback
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans plan to hold their first hearing next week in their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
The hearing — scheduled for Sept. 28 — is expected to focus on “constitutional and legal questions” that surround the allegations of Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s overseas businesses, according to a spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee.
Republicans — led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — have contended in recent weeks that Biden’s actions from his time as vice president show a “culture of corruption,” and that his son used the “Biden brand” to advance his business with foreign clients.
The spokesperson also said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of Oversight, plans to issue subpoenas for the personal and business bank records of Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden “as early as this week.” McCarthy appointed Comer to lead the inquiry in coordination with Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Ways & Means Chairman Jason Smith.
The White House has called the effort by House Republicans in the midst of the presidential campaign “extreme politics at its worst.”
“Staging a political stunt hearing in the waning days before they may shut down the government reveals their true priorities: To them, baseless personal attacks on President Biden are more important than preventing a government shutdown and the pain it would inflict on American families.,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday.
WATCH: Brooks and Capehart on Biden’s impeachment inquiry and tensions among House Republicans
McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry last week after facing mounting pressure from his right flank to take action against Biden or risk being ousted from his leadership job. At the same time, the speaker is struggling to pass legislation needed to avoid a federal government shutdown at the end of the month.
The California lawmaker launched the inquiry without a House vote, and it’s unclear if he would have enough support to approve it from his slim GOP majority. Some lawmakers have criticized the evidence so far as not reaching the Constitution’s bar of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
An inquiry is a step closer to an impeachment of the president, a constitutional tool which until recently was rare in Congress.
But McCarthy and other Republicans have been facing months of direct challenges from Trump — who is now the Republican front-runner to challenge Biden in next year’s election — to move forward with proceedings against his opponent. The action also is seen as an effort to distract attention from the indicted former president’s legal challenges and turn a negative spotlight on Biden.
The impeachment inquiry is expected to build upon the work that Comer and others have done since gaining the House majority in January. There are several investigative lanes but Comer has been tasked with following the money that went through Biden’s son’s and brother’s various businesses accounts.
The chairman has claimed repeatedly that the Biden family engaged in an influence-peddling scheme, but has yet to directly tie any of that to the president himself.
Republicans have focused much attention on an unverified tip to the FBI that alleged a bribery scheme involving Biden when he was vice president. The bribery claim, which emerged in 2019 and was part of Trump’s first impeachment, relates to the allegation that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor in order to stop an investigation into Burisma, the oil-and-gas company where Hunter Biden was on the board.
Democrats have countered that the Justice Department investigated the Burisma claim when Trump was president and closed the matter after eight months, finding insufficient evidence to pursue it further. Other countries were also pushing for the firing of the Ukrainian official, viewing him as corrupt. And a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s has testified to Congress that the bribery allegation is untrue.
Support Provided By:
Learn more
Politics
Sep 18 | US Political Corruption |
The House Republican Party is sliding even deeper into disarray as it feuds over its next speaker, apparently oblivious to the picture of US government dysfunction it is sending at a moment of worsening global crises.
GOP lawmakers did select Steve Scalise as their nominee for the job that is second in the line of presidential succession on Wednesday. But by nightfall it was clear the Louisiana Republican and current majority leader was struggling to find the votes he needs to secure the gavel during a floor vote.
While party leaders still hoped to hold a vote on the speakership in the full chamber on Thursday, senior Republicans were also considering what to do should Scalise lack the support to win the job, CNN’s Manu Raju and Melanie Zanona reported.
“Steve is nowhere near 217,” said one Republican member, referring to the tally Scalise would need on the floor to become speaker. But a number of GOP sources also doubt that Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, the runner-up to Scalise in Wednesday’s closed-door election, can unite the party and claim the top job either. That could create an opening for a compromise candidate, whoever that may be, to emerge.
The worsening debacle in the House follows the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week by eight Republicans voting with Democrats.
In theory, Scalise is on the cusp of becoming the most powerful Republican in Washington. In reality, even if he can somehow win the votes he needs, he risks neutering his potential House speakership before it starts with concessions to extremists needed to win the gavel.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Scalise is sizing up the same dilemmas that McCarthy faced during the 15 rounds of balloting it took him to win the job in January – and that eventually led to his ouster as speaker last week.
There were also increasing signs on Wednesday night of a growing brawl for the position of majority leader, which could open up if Scalise becomes speaker. Several candidates, including Reps. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma and Byron Donalds of Florida, plan to run. But some GOP leaders are irritated that the jockeying is distracting from the imperative to find a speaker.
As soon as Scalise edged ahead of Jordan on a vote of 113 to 99 on Wednesday, the magnitude of his challenge became apparent. He was still well short of the 217 votes – a majority of the current House – needed to claim the speakership on the floor. That means he can only lose four votes in a GOP conference that surpassed even its own reputation this week for stunt politics, divisions and chaos.
“We still have work to do,” Scalise told reporters – a remarkable understatement before heading into individual meetings with members who have refused to back him but often struggle to define exactly what they want. Their demands and grandstanding is in keeping with a Donald Trump-era GOP that is better at tearing institutions down than governing.
Scalise worked overnight on Wednesday to try to build a majority that could sweep him to the speakership. Several members of the conference have already said they plan to vote for Rep. Jim Jordan, even though the hardline Ohio Republican has pledged to nominate his colleague ahead of a House vote that party leaders hope, but cannot guarantee, will take place on Thursday.
The party’s regicidal week after ousting McCarthy has underscored the complications of the tiny House majority it eked out in the midterm elections and the searing internal divides that make the GOP conference unmanageable. The power vacuum is sending a message of incompetence to the moderate voters in swing districts the party needs to keep the House in 2024. And the negligence represented by leaving the House chamber empty during a moment of global crisis, following the horrific Hamas incursion into Israel, is handing valuable propaganda victories to adversaries who argue that US power is waning.
“We need to govern and we can’t govern without a speaker,” Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday. “The longer we play games with this … that only emboldens our adversaries like Chairman Xi (who) talks about how democracy doesn’t work. Putin loves this, the Ayatollah loves this.”
Scalise faces a treacherous path to victory
Scalise knows adversity. He battled back from grievous injuries he suffered in a shooting at a congressional baseball practice in 2017 and has recently been treated for blood cancer. In order to secure a sustainable speakership, the Louisianan must avoid falling into the traps that doomed McCarthy in his painstaking search for his own governing majority in January. The decisive blow to the former speaker was made possible by a concession he granted to hardliners that allowed a single member to call a vote to oust him. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz used that trip wire and was joined by seven other Republicans to vote him out.
While Scalise is more conservative and popular than McCarthy ended up being in the GOP conference and is known as a strong fundraiser – a key consideration for members eying reelection – it’s difficult to see what he has to offer holdouts who ultimately turned against McCarthy. The Californian really only had two red lines – an unwillingness to trigger a US debt default and shut down the government. When both those scenarios seemed inevitable in recent months, McCarthy used Democratic votes to advance stop-gap solutions – a strategy that ended up being fatal to his speakership. His appeasement of the far right made no difference, even after he inserted conservative culture war priorities into appropriations bills, expelled high-profile Democrats from key committees and even initiated an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
Several high-profile rebel Republicans warned on Wednesday that they would not vote for Scalise, and that he was still well short of the votes needed to win.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – who spent considerable time forging a political bond with McCarthy and is a vehement Trump supporter more in tune temperamentally and ideologically with Jordan than Scalise – expressed concerns about Scalise’s health. “Unfortunately, Steve is going through a cancer battle of his own,” Greene told CNN’s Manu Raju, alluding to her father whom she said she lost from cancer. “And I like Steve a lot and I like him so much I would like to see him put his full efforts into defeating that.”
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace said she couldn’t vote for Scalise, at least initially, because before he entered Congress he delivered a speech to a White supremacist group founded by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. Scalise later apologized and said he regretted the move. But Mace, who voted to oust McCarthy, told CNN’s Jake Tapper: “I’m trying to reconcile it, and right now, I can’t.”
Scalise may also be paying a price for being seen as a member of the House GOP establishment in a party that lionizes outsiders and insurgents. He failed to win over another hardliner, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, despite meeting with her privately. “My main concerns are the way this place is run,” Boebert said. “I think that there’s a problem with leadership in our conference.”
As the evening wore on Wednesday, senior Republicans were becoming increasingly pessimistic that Scalise would ever secure sufficient support to win the gavel. “He has no path to 217,” one top House Republican said on condition of anonymity.
A backlash against hardliners
The situation is infuriating some of the mainstream Republicans whose victories in key districts last year paved the way to the GOP majority and whose reelection races will decide the destiny of the House next year.
“The majority of the majority has been disregarded by a handful of members repeatedly and flagrantly and as a result we deposed … our speaker a week ago with 208 Democrats,” said New York Rep. Mike Lawler said, while demanding accountability for the extremists who ousted McCarthy. “The idea that somehow rearranging the deck chairs here is going to fix the problem or somehow that Kevin McCarthy was the problem is laughable,” he told CNN.
The nature of the chaotic Republican conference means that if Scalise does somehow manage to squeak into the speaker’s chair, his troubles may only be beginning. Republicans will want their new leader to deliver huge spending cuts and legislation to satisfy their goals but will still be unable to force the hands of the Senate or the White House, which are both controlled by Democrats.
Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, said that even if Scalise eventually breaks through, he will face exactly the same intractable problems that McCarthy failed to solve, beginning with a possible government shutdown next month.
“The job didn’t get easier because the person doing the job has changed,” Blessing said. “The new speaker is going to inherit the inbox of the old speaker.” | US Congress |
I often rely on my crystal ball when Congress approaches a potential government shutdown or a debt ceiling crisis.
But I didn’t consult mine lately.
You don’t need a crystal ball to see that it’s likely the government shuts down this weekend.
DEMOCRATIC SEN. BOB MENENDEZ STEPS DOWN 'TEMPORARILY' AS CHAIRMAN OF SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE
The House and Senate appear to be talking past one another right now on divergent spending plans. And even if there wasn’t a chasm between the spending bills now before the House and Senate, the parliamentary mechanics of Capitol Hill would make it challenging at best to avert a shutdown. There’s not enough time. That fact alone may mean there’s almost no way for Congress to recover to fund the government before money expires at 12:00:01 am Sunday.
A bipartisan, 45-day Senate funding bill scored 77 yeas Tuesday night. It has the backing of both Senate leaders. But conservatives like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., say they will make the Senate run all parliamentary traps and not allow speedy passage of the package. That’s because it includes money for Ukraine.
"So U.S. government workers, get this," said Paul. "If they force a shutdown by forcing us to send more money we don't have to Ukraine, they will in essence be saying ‘We're going to continue to pay Ukrainian government workers, but not U.S. government workers.’ That is particularly galling."
An effort by Paul to slow the process means the Senate could take until Saturday or Sunday to pass the bill, skipping through various parliamentary hurdles.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., helped author the package. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told McConnell he wouldn’t entertain the Senate bill in the House, no matter what.
"I would like to see something much different," said McCarthy. "(They) put a focus on Ukraine and (didn’t) focus on the southern border. I think their priorities are backwards."
Seventy-seven votes – more than three-quarters – is a substantial bloc of support for anything in the Senate. Sure, all it takes is one senator or a small group of senators to slow things down. But it’s rare for the Senate to conjure up that many votes on anything.
However, the Senate’s strength did little to impress House conservatives.
"Seventy-seven senators are wrong," said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla. "If you look at $33 trillion in debt, 77 senators have been wrong for a long time up here. Just because they come to some silly agreement over there that changes nothing about our country, does it mean that they're right? That just means that they're weak."
McConnell defended the Senate’s approach which fell on deaf ears among House Republicans.
"We can take the strategy approach and fund the government for six weeks at the current rate of operations or we can shut the government down in exchange for zero meaningful progress on policy," said McConnell. "Shutting down the government isn't an effective way to make a point."
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he opposed the Senate’s parliamentary move to advance a "shell" of a spending package because the measure won’t prevent a shutdown.
TRIPLE HOUSE MELTDOWN ON DEFENSE BILL MAY MARK THE WORST RUN FOR A HOUSE MAJORITY IN MODERN HISTORY
"We must avert a shutdown. That means a bill to fund the government needs to pass in both chambers with bipartisan support," said Tillis. "It makes absolutely no sense for the Senate to waste the rest of the week voting on a spending bill that is dead on arrival in the House. In fact, it guarantees a shutdown."
Members of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus has a bill which Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said would be a "better fit" to address a potential shutdown.
"I hope that will be a fallback or landing spot for people," said Bacon.
Why?
Because it’s unclear if McCarthy’s still unfinished, interim spending bill with border security can pass.
"It’s a great question," said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., "We’ll see what happens."
Regardless, the Senate plan – or even the Problem Solvers caucus proposal could score 275-300 votes.
Some Republicans attributed McCarthy’s effort to placate the right to pressure applied by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. Gaetz has touted calling for a new Speaker’s election should the California Republican drift too far from conservative principals or align with Democrats to avoid a shutdown.
"This is just a pissing match between McCarthy and Gaetz," said one senior House GOPer. "That’s the whole reason the government could shut down. I don’t think he intends to use (his resolution to vacate the chair)."
Gaetz may say otherwise. But the Florida Republican hasn’t made his move yet.
This is what concerns centrist Republicans who represent districts carried by President Biden like Bacon. Moreover, there is a mother lode of about 200 House Republicans who are outraged at the tactics of a small, vocal few.
"We should never let five or ten people push us around like this," said Bacon.
If you haven’t noticed, Republicans are essentially tussling with each other.
That said, after weeks of infighting, Republicans did finally coalesce around one subject: border security. McCarthy latched onto that after a lengthy impasse between his own lawmakers trying to advance bills onto the floor. McCarthy now wants President Biden to meet with him about the border – even though the Speaker never made that request dating back to late July.
"The President needs to make a decision," warned Rep. August Pfluger, R-Tex. "If he wants to keep the government open, he needs to shut down the border. No border security, no funding."
The border inflection point gave the GOP a rallying cry. But moderate Republicans who represent battleground districts fear the political impacts of a shutdown. Moreover, they also fear the wrath of ultra-conservative voters in a primary.
So some of these Republicans may need to have it both ways as the government funding deadline looms.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called out the GOP.
"In the House, Republicans have tried everything but bipartisanship," said Schumer. "The Speaker twisted himself into pretzels again, trying to avoid his responsibility of governing."
So, there’s a standoff.
And some GOP members might be okay with a shutdown.
"People in my district are willing to shut the government down for more conservative fiscal policies," said Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., on Fox.
Regardless, there’s not much time.
During an appearance on FOX Business, McCarthy was asked if he could keep the government open.
"I believe so," said the Speaker.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
There’s a chance the government may not shutter early Sunday morning. But if that’s the case, the bills presently before the House and Senate don’t appear to be the legislative vehicles which would prevent a shutdown.
And for that, we’ll need a crystal ball. | US Congress |
Five children missing from Washington state were found and rescued as authorities took their parents into custody in Mexico, U.S. officials said on Friday. The parents, identified as Edgar Salvador Casian-Garcia, 34, and his girlfriend, Araceli Medina, 38, became the first fugitive couple to appear on the U.S. Marshals Service's 15 Most Wanted list in February, after almost two years on the run.
Casian-Garcia and Medina, who were wanted in connection with various child abuse offenses, including suspected sex trafficking, and the murder of a child in Washington state, set off an international manhunt and in 2021 allegedly fled to Mexico, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
The couple now faces charges for the murder of a child as well as multiple counts of child sexual abuse, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children announced after their arrest. The pair will remain in custody of Mexican authorities while they await extradition back to Washington, according to the agency. The five children who were found and rescued have been returned to the U.S. and placed in protective custody.
"We are so thankful that all five missing children have been rescued safely," said John Bischoff, who oversees the Missing Children Division at NCMEC, in a statement included with the agency's announcement.
"The crimes that Araceli Medina and Edgar Casian-Garcia are charged with are heinous and we commend the unwavering dedication of law enforcement," Bischoff's statement continued. "This successful rescue is a testament to the critical importance of collaboration and community involvement in safeguarding our most vulnerable population."
Authorities began to investigate Casian-Garcia and Medina after they discovered two abandoned girls, later identified as Casian-Garcia's biological daughters, then 8 and 3 years old, at a gas station in Tijuana in late 2020. The children allegedly showed signs of "severe physical and sexual abuse," the Marshals Service said, and they were taken into protective custody in Mexico as an investigation eventually got underway in Washington.
Police say that Casian-Garcia and Medina took four of his biological children and an infant they share together with them when they fled to Mexico in 2021. At the time, their 7-year-old son Edgar Jr., was missing, according to NCMEC. Although the couple initially told investigators, prior to fleeing the country, that the child was staying with relatives in California, authorities earlier this year found human remains near their home in Washington that they later identified as belonging to Edgar, Jr.
The eastern Washington branch of the U.S. Marshals previously offered a $25,000 per person reward to anyone who could offer information leading to the arrests of Casian-Garcia and Medina. They face charges for aggravated murder in the first degree, four counts of rape of a child in the first degree and three counts of assault of a child in the first degree, according to the agency.
for more features. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Drones, hidden cameras, thermal vision scopes—these are just a few examples of the high-tech equipment recommended by the animal liberation group Direct Action Everywhere, according to a manual released by the organization this week. The document, which was reviewed by WIRED, is a rare glimpse into how the organization is using tech to target factory farms in often brazen operations that have rescued pigs, goats, ducks, and chickens.Extremist groups are experimenting with generative AI to flood social media with propaganda and misinformation, researchers at Tech Against Terrorism have told WIRED. A new report from the group details how, in recent months, terrorists and other extremist organizations have been using artificial intelligence to manipulate imagery and thwart content moderation. As platforms have struggled to keep up with this flood of extremist content, a new tool called Altitude, built in collaboration between Tech Against Terrorism and Google, is seeking to address the problem. The tool centralizes the collection of verified terrorist content, allowing companies to easily vet posts shared to their platforms.Israel is exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by likely imposing devastating internet blackouts in the region. Last week, Israel reportedly imposed a full internet shutdown in the area as its troops moved into the Gaza Strip. After internet access was restored, the area suffered two additional connectivity blackouts. The most recent lasted for about 15 hours on Sunday as Israel was carrying out an intense operation to cut off Gaza City in the north from southern Gaza.In other infrastructure news, a report from the cybersecurity firm Mandiant reveals that last year, the Russian military intelligence agency known as Sandworm carried out a power grid attack targeting a Ukrainian electric utility causing a blackout for Ukrainian civilians. According to the report, the cyberattack coincided with the start of a series of missile strikes targeting Ukrainian critical infrastructure across the country.The third GOP presidential primary debate was livestreamed on Rumble, a YouTube alternative home to what the Southern Poverty Law Center says is one of America’s most notorious white nationalists, Nick Fuentes. Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict last month, Fuentes has used his Rumble channel to push antisemitic hate speech and Holocaust denial conspiracies, racking up hundreds of thousands of views. Fuentes’ YouTube account was terminated in 2020 after Google demonetized it.And there's more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories, and stay safe out thereOn Wednesday, you and everyone you know had trouble getting ChatGPT to ghostwrite their emails as developer OpenAI was hit by what it thought was a distributed denial-of-service attack. For nearly two hours, users who tried to access the chatbot were greeted with a message telling them “ChatGPT is at capacity right now.”In a tweet, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman initially blamed its outage on a surge in interest in the platform's new features. By Wednesday night the company announced that the periodic outages were due to an “abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack.”While it’s unclear who is behind the attack, a group known as Anonymous Sudan claimed responsibility on Wednesday, posting on Telegram that it had targeted OpenAI for "general biases towards Israel and against Palestine." OpenAI has since resolved the issue.The US arm of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted trades in the US Treasury market on Thursday. The bank appears to be the latest victim of the prolific ransomware gang known as Lockbit. According to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Lockbit has hit 1,700 US organizations since 2020 and extorted more than $100 million in ransom demands. Last month it threatened Boeing with a leak of sensitive data."ICBC has been closely monitoring the matter and has done its best in emergency response and supervisory communication," China's foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a press conference.Signal is beta testing usernames that will allow people to communicate using the encrypted service without exchanging phone numbers, further enhancing the app's privacy applications. The feature will go live in early 2024.Support for usernames is a major step for the messaging service as Signal has apparently been working on the feature for years. Though accounts will still need to be associated with a phone number at setup, the introduction of usernames will allow users to connect without having to share it.Cooperation between government, researchers, and tech companies aimed at countering disinformation online is evaporating thanks to a sustained campaign by US Republicans in the press, courts, and on Capitol Hill. Tech employees tell NBC the FBI has halted communications with social media firms about foreign influence campaigns, a move the FBI director attributed to a September ruling in the country's most conservative appellate court forbidding the government from "significantly" encouraging social media companies to remove misinformation.“We’re having some interaction with social media companies,” FBI director Christopher Wray said in testimony last week to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “But all of those interactions have changed fundamentally in the wake of the court rulings.”According to NBC, all the FBI’s interactions with tech platforms now have to be supervised by Justice Department lawyers. | US Political Corruption |
MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. -- The wife of Rex Heuermann, charged in the deaths of three women whose remains were found along a Long Island beach roadway, filed for divorce Wednesday, her attorney said.
Asa Ellerup filed the complaint in Suffolk County Supreme Court. Her attorney, Robert Macedonio, declined any additional comment.
Meanwhile, authorities spent another day at the Massapequa Park home where the couple had lived, continuing their search of the premises.
Heuermann, an architect, was charged last week with murdering the three women, and is a suspect in a fourth death, a prosecutor said.
He has pleaded not guilty and remains in custody under suicide watch; an email seeking comment about the divorce filing was sent to his attorney.
The bodies of Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello and Megan Waterman were discovered in a quarter-mile (0.4-kilometer) section of Ocean Parkway.
They were among 10 sets of human remains found along Long Island's Gilgo Beach in 2010 and 2011, an accidental discovery while authorities were searching for another woman who had gone missing.
That woman, Shannan Gilbert, was found dead in 2011 in another area, a coastal marsh, in what Suffolk County police labelled an accidental drowning, which her family has refuted.
The Gilgo Beach discoveries turned into a longstanding New York mystery about who was responsible for their deaths. While authorities didn't think it was likely that one person was responsible for all the remains, they did think the presence of some of the bodies near each other indicated the work of a serial killer.
Investigators are working to link Heuermann, 59, in the death of a fourth person, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, prosecutors said.
Police searching his home in recent days have been seen taking out boxes of material, including more than 200 firearms, a filing cabinet and a computer, as well as a large doll in a glass case and other household items.
Heuermann lived in the house, across a bay from where the remains were discovered, for decades. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
WASHINGTON — While Donald Trump wants to take his case for returning to the White House to some 200 million American voters, he may first need to win over five — a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
As the 2024 presidential primaries near, the former president, already under four criminal indictments, is likely to face yet another legal challenge that appears headed for the courts: whether the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists seeking office applies to his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt.
“The question of Donald Trump’s disqualification under the 14th Amendment will be decided by the Supreme Court,” predicted Michael Luttig, a renowned conservative former federal appellate judge who was once himself considered for the high court by President George W. Bush.
The post-Civil War 14th Amendment bans anyone who took an oath to uphold the Constitution but who subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies” of the Constitution from seeking any federal or state office.
And while the liberal-leaning group Free Speech for People has been demanding that elections officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia honor that prohibition by keeping Trump off primary and general election ballots, those efforts were recently boosted by unlikely allies. Two law professors, both members of the conservative Federalist Society, released a lengthy law review article concluding that Trump is absolutely disqualified from running for office because of his Jan. 6 actions.
“If the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of presidency, or any other state or federal office covered by the Constitution,” wrote the University of Chicago Law School’s William Baude and the University of St. Thomas School of Law’s Michael Paulsen. “All who are committed to the Constitution should take note and say so.”
Trump campaign officials did not respond to multiple HuffPost queries on the matter.
One former Trump White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, said that while he is not convinced the effort to keep Trump off the ballot will succeed, he found the analysis persuasive. “It does seem very compelling,” he said.
Ironically, despite 91 felony counts against him in four separate criminal indictments, including two related to his efforts to remain in office despite losing reelection, Trump could continue seeking the presidency even if he is convicted and imprisoned. Only a Supreme Court ruling disqualifying him on 14th Amendment grounds can keep his name off the ballot.
And because the high court keeps its own schedule and is not bound by electoral deadlines, there exists the possibility that Trump could lock down enough delegates to win the Republican nomination — or even be officially nominated — only to be subsequently removed from the presidential ballot.
“He knew these indictments were coming, and he ran for president anyway, knowing full well he was taking the Republican Party down with him. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
That prospect has some Republicans who have been vocally anti-Trump for years worried about the potential fallout.
“It would break the country,” said David Kochel, a longtime GOP consultant in Iowa. “If you removed Trump from the ballot with a legal trick like this, you’d be inviting violence that would put Jan. 6 to shame.”
Another anti-Trump Republican, former New Hampshire state party chair Fergus Cullen, agreed that Trump’s demise has to come at the ballot box for many Republicans to accept its legitimacy. “I’m afraid the only way for this vampire to be killed in a way voters will accept is if God or the voters drive the stake in themselves,” he said.
Other top Republicans, though, say the blame lies with one person, and one person only: Donald Trump.
“He knew these indictments were coming, and he ran for president anyway, knowing full well he was taking the Republican Party down with him,” said Oscar Brock, a Republican National Committee member from Tennessee. “It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Blocking Insurrectionists
Free Speech for People started laying the groundwork for keeping Trump off the 2024 ballot back in June 2021, more than a year before Trump officially declared his candidacy. In five-page letters sent to elections officials in every state and the District of Columbia, legal director Ron Fein wrote that the 14th Amendment’s restriction was every bit as binding as the other constitutional requirements, such as that candidates be at least 35 years old and natural-born U.S. citizens.
“A constitutionally ineligible insurrectionist is no more eligible for candidacy than would be a five-year-old or a previous two-term president, and his filing would be obviously defective,” those letters stated.
Two years later, secretaries of state and elections boards are getting more detailed, 20-page packets telling them that they have a constitutional duty to bar Trump, complete with draft orders declaring Trump ineligible. “We therefore write to request that you exercise your authority and obligation to exclude Mr. Trump from the ballot,” the new letters state.
Fein said he hopes secretaries of state enforce the 14th Amendment prohibition and strike Trump from the ballot, but that his group is prepared to sue elections officials if they fail to do so. “We’ve assembled top-notch legal teams and we’re ready to go,” he said.
Fein and other anti-Trump activists received a timely and weighty gift last month with the release of Baude and Paulsen’s “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.” In it, they conclude that elections officials and judges have not just the ability, but the affirmative obligation to ban Trump from running again.
The 126-page analysis provides the legal and historical underpinnings for the case against Trump, offering a step-by-step guide for coming court battles.
Regarding the counterargument that the amendment’s drafters were only concerned with Confederate officials and army officers regaining positions of authority and did not mean for the prohibition to apply going forward, Baude and Paulsen provide 10 pages of detailed rebuttal.
“They didn’t say we’re going to ban former Confederate officers or persons who violated their oaths in ‘the late war.’ And I think that language was in earlier drafts: ‘in the late war,’” Paulsen said in a recent podcast. “They decided to adopt a general rule, a prospective rule, that not just Civil War traitors, but anybody who betrayed their oaths to the Constitution and held an office that required such an oath would be prohibited, and it would be prospective.”
Regarding a favorite claim by Trump supporters that Jan. 6 was not really an “insurrection,” the pair point out that Congress itself, by an overwhelming and bipartisan vote, described it as such in a resolution giving the congressional gold medal to four Capitol Police officers who defended the building that day.
And on the crucial point of whether Trump “engaged in” or provided “aid and comfort” to those actively participating in the assault on the Capitol, Paulsen and Baude point out that it was Trump himself who assembled his followers in Washington, D.C., on that day, who told them to march on the Capitol to pressure lawmakers and his own vice president into awarding him a second term, and who that afternoon inflamed his mob further by attacking Mike Pence for not doing as he’d demanded.
“It is unquestionably fair to say that Trump ‘engaged in’ the January 6 insurrection through both his actions and his inaction,” the pair wrote.
Waiting On The High Court
While Baude and Paulsen’s article has not yet been published by the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, it has already entered the political discourse around the Republican primary race.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson brought it up at the first GOP debate in Milwaukee last week. “This is something that could disqualify him, under our rules, and under the Constitution,” he said, adding to reporters later that “Trump is putting our voters in a very difficult position, and we need to think about this seriously.”
At a recent candidates’ forum in Atlanta, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told reporters that while he respected Luttig’s views on the matter, he was not concerned about how it played out. “The voters of our party are going to need to determine this question,” he said.
The other candidates running for the 2024 nomination, though, have continued their strategy of not criticizing Trump for his Jan. 6 actions or the legal consequences arising from them, and have largely remained silent on the 14th Amendment issue, as well.
Officials in charge of administering elections across the country, however, have taken notice. “The Attorney General’s Office is now carefully reviewing the legal issues involved,” wrote New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, who will oversee the state’s first-in-the-country Republican primary, in a joint statement with state Attorney General John Formella.
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s office said in a statement that Trump’s 14th Amendment standing will be investigated, but that no decision will be announced until the candidate filing deadline in February. “If Donald Trump files in New Mexico to run for president we will make a determination at that time,” a spokesperson said.
Which leaves the question of when, precisely, a court case might wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. If any elections official removes Trump from a state ballot, that decision would have to move up through that state’s courts before it could then be appealed to the nation’s high court. A challenge seeking to remove Trump’s name from a ballot would have an even longer route.
Luttig, for one, believes that the importance of the question will force the justices to move quickly. “Sooner rather than later,” he said. “I believe it must, and will, be decided before the primaries.”
Norm Eisen, a former White House lawyer under President Barack Obama who later worked on the House’s first impeachment of Trump, is less optimistic about a quick answer.
“The Supreme Court moves on a timetable of its own determination,” he said. “If they don’t move quickly, the issue might not be resolved by the primaries, and may not be decided by the convention.”
And a late ruling that disqualified Trump, RNC member Brock said, would put the party in an enormous bind if he is, in fact, the nominee — particularly since Trump is not likely to be cooperative about “releasing” his delegates so that they can vote for a candidate who is actually eligible to run.
He said the scenario is nothing the RNC ever planned for. “We never built the tools,” he said. “Because no one ever envisioned a situation when a likely convicted felon would be the Republican nominee for president.” | SCOTUS |
GOP lawmakers in Congress will hold a press conference on Wednesday afternoon to urge the House and Senate to pass appropriations bills and a national security aid package that secure "fiscal sanity" and tougher border security measures, such as higher asylum standards.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., will lead the press conference alongside members of the House Freedom Caucus and Sens. Mike Braun, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson and Roger Marshall. A source familiar told Fox News Digital the press conference will also focus heavily on aid to Ukraine negotiations.
"For years, too many in Congress – and I’m talking about both parties and Republican leadership – have just accepted the status quo with CR’s [Continuing Resolutions] or stood idly by as Democrats shoved through massive spending package after massive spending package with no consideration of the consequences. We can’t squander it," Scott is expected to say, Fox News Digital learned exclusively.
"I’ve had enough. Families have had enough. When I talk to Florida families, and hear how Biden’s inflation crisis is affecting them, they need us to fix this ASAP," Scott is expected to say. "So now Republicans in the Senate need to stand with our colleagues in the House as they force the return of fiscal sanity in Washington by passing spending bills that get us on the path to a balanced budget, so we can get our country back on track."
Tensions are high as both chambers are expected to vote on an emergency supplemental bill as early as next week that the Biden administration requested in October. That package requested $61.4 billion for Ukraine, $14.3 billion for Israel (with $10.6 billion allocated for military aid), $13.6 billion for some border provisions like speeding up asylum processing, and significant investments in Indo-Pacific security assistance, totaling around $7.4 billion. Additionally, there's $9 billion earmarked for humanitarian aid in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza.
In January and February, Congress will also have to finalize an annual budget for the government. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., suggested creating two separate deadlines for funding different parts of the government in an effort to prevent Congress from lumping all 12 spending bills into a massive "omnibus" package.
Bills concerning military construction and Veterans Affairs; Agriculture; Energy and Water; Transportation and Housing and Urban Development must be worked out by Jan. 19 while the remaining eight appropriations bills must be decided upon by Feb. 2.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Fox News' Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report. | US Congress |
The Senate is operating with a heavy workload this week as it races to confirm the nominee for Israeli ambassador, organize a larger defense spending bill, and begin passing appropriations bills ahead of the deadline to avert a government shutdown.
The Senate has made Israel a top priority this week after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack. Schumer passed a bipartisan resolution condemning Hamas on Tuesday and organized an all-members classified briefing on Wednesday. He is also working with GOP leadership on the start of a larger aid bill that will include assistance for Israel.
That defense bill will include four tranches: three aid bills for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel and a border security measure.
Jack Lew, President Joe Biden’s nominee to be ambassador to Israel, will have his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday morning. Committee Chairman Ben Cardin (D-MD) has said he’s hoping to move forward with a vote to send Lew’s nomination to the floor “as soon as possible,” ideally sometime this or next week.
Lew, who was treasury secretary under President Barack Obama, has come under scrutiny from Republicans over his handling of Iran sanctions following the Israel attack. Most of the GOP conference have said they’re waiting to see how Lew performs at his highly anticipated confirmation hearing before deciding how they’ll vote, though some have already come out in opposition.
On the government funding front, the House and Senate must pass their 12 respective appropriations bills and deliver them to the conference committee, where legislation is sent to sort out differences by Nov. 17 to avert a shutdown.
Schumer has faced public calls for weeks, especially from Republicans, to start bringing the Senate’s bills to the floor for passage. Senators on both sides of the aisle have argued that doing so would place pressure on the House to find a solution to the speaker crisis and thus bring leaders to the table to reach consensus on government funding levels and a defense bill.
The top Senate Democrat reached a deal with members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on amendment vote thresholds for the minibus, which combines three of the 12 appropriations bills, on Tuesday evening.
Four committee members, three Republicans and one Democrat, told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that they expected a floor vote on the minibus in the coming days. Another member, a Democrat, speculated that the legislation would receive floor time early next week at the latest. | US Congress |
The US Senate has voted to formally impose a dress code, unanimously rejecting a plan to allow lawmakers to wear casual clothing in the chamber.
Last week Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ended enforcement of an informal and unwritten code requiring senators wear business attire on the floor.
The change, widely seen as a move to accommodate Democratic Senator John Fetterman, outraged Republicans.
Members of both parties voted for a resolution establishing a dress code.
Since returning to work in April from treatment for clinical depression, Mr Fetterman has consistently sported hoodie sweatshirts and shorts. To stay within the unwritten dress code, he voted from the side of the chamber.
But the new, revised simple code will require lawmakers to wear "business attire" in the chamber.
The bipartisan resolution, though, only defined business attire for men, describing it as a coat, tie and long trousers. It did not address sleeve length or neckline height for women's clothes, two sources of controversy in recent years.
It also did not mention footwear or hats.
The resolution will also require the chamber to vote on any changes to the code or its enforcement.
Senator Joe Manchin, the Democratic author of the resolution, said many lawmakers had not known the code was not written down until 18 September, when Mr Schumer directed the Senate's sergeant-at-arms to stop enforcing it.
Mr Schumer had said senators could wear what they wanted, including suits and ties, and a few lawmakers had appeared eager to give floor speeches or cast votes in sweats or shorts.
The resolution's Republican author, Mitt Romney, said that following an official code would allow senators to show their "respect and admiration" for the institution of government.
In a speech Mr Romney noted that formalizing the dress code is not the most pressing issue for the US Congress, where fractious political fights are pushing the government toward shutting down in a few days.
"But nonetheless, it's a good thing," he said. "It's another example of Republicans and Democrats being able to work together."
Senators have long worn more casual clothes in other parts of the Capitol, and then changed to enter the chamber.
When Mr Schumer relaxed the code, Republican critics attacked Mr Fetterman on social media for weakening decorum in the senate.
In response to the resolution being introduced on Wednesday, Mr Fetterman posted a photo on X, formerly Twitter, of actor Kevin James in the role of Doug Hefferman from the sitcom King of Queens. Dressed in a flannel, T-shirt and jeans, James halfway smiles and shrugs. | US Congress |
House Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Friday plans to release more than 40,000 hours of security footage taken during the January 6 attack on the Capitol, pleasing former president Donald Trump and far-right members of the Republican Party and infuriating some Democrats, who charge that the footage poses a security risk.
“Truth and transparency are critical,” Johnson said in a statement. “This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials.”
On Friday, roughly 90 hours of security video was posted to the website of the House Administration Committee, which oversees and processes the January 6 footage. Johnson added that a viewing room within the Capitol complex will be made available to members of the public.
The push to make January 6 footage publicly available has been led by some of the most far-right Republican members of Congress, including Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Texas Congressman Chip Roy. Trump, slated to stand trial in March on federal charges related to his attempt to overturn the election, applauded Johnson's decision.
“Congratulations to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson for having the Courage and Fortitude to release all of the J6 Tapes, which will explicitly reveal what really happened on January 6th!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
The GOP-led Administration Committee handling the footage is chaired by Georgia Representative Barry Loudermilk, who in March launched an investigation into the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6 attack and urged criminal referrals against the former president. As part of its work, the bipartisan congressional committee investigated Loudermilk for a tour of the Capitol he gave to constituents the day before the attack.
“The goal of our investigation has been to provide the American people with transparency on what happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and this includes all official video from that day,” Loudermilk said in a statement Friday. “We will continue loading video footage as we conduct our investigation and continue to review footage. As I’ve said all along — the American people deserve transparency, accountability, and real answers supported by facts instead [of] a predetermined political narrative.”
Democrats quickly slammed the decision as posing a serious security risk. “It is unconscionable that one of Speaker Johnson’s first official acts as steward of the institution is to endanger his colleagues, staff, visitors, and our country by allowing virtually unfettered access to sensitive Capitol security footage,” ranking Democratic member of the Administration Committee Joseph Morelle said Friday. “That he is doing so over the strenuous objections of the security professionals within the Capitol Police is outrageous. This is not transparency, this is dangerous and irresponsible.”
Hannah Muldavin, a former spokesperson for the January 6 committee, told Roll Call that the release poses a “serious security concern and shows that [Speaker Johnson’s] allegiance, like Kevin McCarthy’s before him, is to Donald Trump and the ultra-right-wing faction of the House.” Muldavin added that Johnson had not only voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory but also led “the legal campaign to overturn it.”
Johnson confirmed that the videos would blur the faces of private citizens to “avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind.” He also estimated that 5% of the videos, which “may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture,” would not be available.
The footage, which shows how the January 6 rioters breached and entered the Capitol, has long been a point of controversy, with Democrats worried that the recordings could be used to jeopardize Capitol security or mislead the public about the events of January 6. In February, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy granted exclusive access to the footage to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who used it to downplay the severity of the attack.
At the time, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described Carlson’s use of the footage as “one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on television.” | US Congress |
Politics|Trump’s Former Accounting Firm Begins Turning Over Documents to Congresshttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/17/us/politics/mazars-accounting-trump-documents.htmlMazars USA delivered an initial set of documents related to the former president’s finances to the House Oversight Committee as part of a settlement.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York TimesSept. 17, 2022, 5:32 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Mazars USA, the longtime accounting firm for former President Donald J. Trump that cut ties with him and his family business this year, has begun turning over documents related to his financial dealings to Congress.After a yearslong legal fight, the House Oversight Committee has received a first trove of documents from the firm, which recently entered into a legal settlement agreeing to produce a range of financial documents from several years before Mr. Trump took office and during his early presidency. Mazars said in February it could no longer stand behind a decade of annual financial statements it had prepared for the Trump Organization.More tranches of documents are expected to follow.“They have sent us a number of documents,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the committee, said in an interview Saturday. “We’re reviewing them.”ImageCredit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMs. Maloney declined to say exactly what documents the panel had received so far, but she said that “Mazars is being very cooperative.”“We are the only committee that has gotten financial documents,” she added.The documents Mazars is providing Congress concern Mr. Trump’s financial dealings from 2014 to 2018. He took office in 2017 after a career in real estate and other businesses.The Oversight Committee has been in a lengthy struggle to obtain financial documents from Mr. Trump as part of its investigation into allegations of conflicts of interest, inadequate financial disclosures and violations of the emoluments clauses of the Constitution, which bar the president from receiving profits from a domestic or foreign government other than his official compensation.In 2019, Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal attorney, testified before the committee that Mr. Trump’s financial statements had falsely represented the former president’s assets and liabilities and that Mr. Trump had “inflated his total assets when it served his purposes” and, at other times, “deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.”The committee then issued a subpoena to Mazars, prompting Mr. Trump to file a lawsuit against the firm to prevent the company from complying. The committee subsequently won a series of legal victories, including before the Supreme Court in July 2020.This month, the committee reached a settlement with Mr. Trump and Mazars that allows the panel to obtain key financial documents.The agreement states that Mazars must turn over any documents between 2014 and 2018 that indicate any false or undisclosed information about Mr. Trump’s assets, income or liabilities; communications related to any potential concerns that financial information provided by Mr. Trump’s companies was inaccurate; documents from November 2016 to 2018 related to the Old Post Office Building, a federal property in Washington that Mr. Trump’s company converted into a hotel through a lease deal; and documents from 2017 and 2018 related to relationships between Mr. Trump’s businesses and foreign states.ImageCredit...Kenny Holston for The New York TimesThe settlement allows for Mazars to exercise its “independent judgment” in determining which documents are responsive to the committee’s subpoena.“These documents will inform the committee’s efforts to get to the bottom of former President Trump’s egregious conduct and ensure that future presidents do not abuse their position of power for personal gain,” Ms. Maloney said in a statement announcing the settlement.The Oversight Committee is also engaged in an investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of presidential records and classified documents.“Some of the most classified information, we don’t even know where it is,” Ms. Maloney said. “Right now, we don’t know how much is still out there.”The federal government failed for more than a year and a half to retrieve classified and sensitive documents from Mr. Trump before resorting on Aug. 8 to a court-approved search of his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.Ms. Maloney has requested a formal assessment from the archives of what presidential records, if any, removed from the White House by Mr. Trump remained unaccounted for and whether the archives believed they might still be in his possession.She suggested authorities search other properties of Mr. Trump’s to ensure all sensitive material is returned.“We’ve been very active going after getting these documents and will continue until we are certain that we have retrieved all of them,” she said. | US Political Corruption |
Pause on student loan payments about to end for millions
The Biden administration has given its clearest indication yet that the years-long pause of student loan repayments will come to an end in the coming months.
Optimism that the White House would keep offering borrowers relief from making their payments was crushed last week, when Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told a Senate panel that the payments would officially resume due to the pandemic emergency being over.
That means borrowers, who have been jolted around since March 2020 with last-minute extensions and uncertainty over exactly when they should expect payments to start up again, will finally have to make payments — many for the first time.
President Biden said in November that payments would resume either 60 days after the Supreme Court rules on his student loan forgiveness plan — which would permanently eliminate some debt — or 60 days after June 30, whichever came first.
But student loan groups had been optimistic the president was bluffing again, hoping for another extension from Biden amid his 2024 reelection campaign.
That optimism turned to fury after Cardona’s speech at the Senate Appropriations hearing Thursday.
Cardona’s comments “are grossly out of touch and concedes a lot. It’s going to lead to a really large political defeat,” said Braxton Brewington, press secretary of The Debt Collective.
Despite the backlash, the Education secretary doubled down on his statement during a House hearing Tuesday, after Education Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) asked if he will “commit to no more extensions of the repayment pause.”
“We communicated that after the Supreme Court decision is made, loan repayments will start within 60 days of the decision,” Cardona responded.
Advocates have emphasized research from the administration showing that many borrowers will default on their student loans if they resume this summer, particularly if the Supreme Court blocks Biden’s relief plan. Concerns have also been raised that student loan student loan servicers are not ready to turn back on the accounts.
“We’re confident, senator, that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of the targeted debt relief, providing relief for millions of borrowers,” Cardona said last week.
In February, the Biden administration stood in front of the high court to defend its program against two lawsuits: one by six Republican attorneys general who claim their states will be negatively affected by a loss of tax revenue from the debt relief, and another by two student borrowers who say there wasn’t a required comment period for them to voice their opinions on the program.
With the cases at the mercy of the conservative-leaning Supreme Court, there is high skepticism over Biden’s chances of victory, further raising the stakes of the Education secretary’s comments.
It was “premature” for Cardona to rule out another extension, Brewington said. He argued that if the court rules against debt relief, it is “incredibly irresponsible” for the administration to restart payments, and if the court rules for it, borrowers still need time for the relief to hit their accounts.
Robert Moran, a former senior policy adviser in the Education Department under President George W. Bush, predicted the resumption of payments will be “a morass” for borrowers.
“Many borrowers will have difficulty making payments,” he said. “Making matters worse is that the Department is not communicating with these actors. This lack of communication will only result in further confusion for all involved.”
Other experts note that the administration’s handling of the expiration of the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy shows a willingness to take heat from the left.
“The Biden administration has shown it won’t back away from taking action, even if it might be politically fraught,” said Debra Dixon, who served as a chief of staff in President Obama’s Education Department.
She argued that another extension would be inconsistent with the administration’s other actions post-COVID emergency.
“Restarting loan payments now that the emergency period related to the pandemic has officially ended would be consistent with other actions the Biden administration has taken recently, even in the face of potential political fallout. I don’t foresee another extension, and the administration is trying to give borrowers as long of a runway as possible,” said Dixon, now a principal at Ferox Strategies.
The president campaigned on student loan forgiveness in 2020 and was pushed by progressives to forgive up to $50,000 of a borrower’s loans. Although some were disappointed when he announced his plan only included forgiveness of up to $20,000, they still looked at it as a positive step and necessary relief.
Whether the restarting of payments impacts Biden’s reelection campaign is contingent on if voters still have the issue top of mind by Election Day. Some advocates say young voters would make it a major issue.
“Our argument is that it is a really poor political strategy for people to be getting student loan bills in the mail at the same time as they’re getting their ballots, and that’s going to lead to huge democratic collusion and decreased turnout,” Brewington said.
But while Cardona’s comments are concerning to some, not all hope is lost.
Moran said speculation is still swirling about whether the administration really will resume payments this time. But, he argues, such a move is due.
“It is past time. Will be three and half years before the first payment is due. Pandemic is over, so we need to return all aspects of life to a level of normalcy,” said Moran, a principal at Bose Public Affairs Group.
But Brewington disagrees and says there’s still time for the White House to reverse course and extend the pause — after all, they’ve done it before.
“They’ve said final and then final in all caps and final in bold and then extended the pause,” Brewington said. “There’s no reason they can’t do it again.”
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Federal Policies |
A new vote is being held in the US House of Representatives among indications of a government shutdown beginning at midnight on Saturday.
Faced with a rebellion by fellow hard-line Republicans, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is trying to secure agreement on a temporary 45-day respite.
It's not clear if he measure - stripped aid to Ukraine - will pass.
The fourth shutdown to occur over the past decade, it could affect everything from air travel to marriage licenses.
Most government employees will be furloughed without pay, and crucial nutrition programmes will be halted.
It follows a hard-right revolt in the US House of Representatives.
Republicans control the House by a slim majority, while Democrats hold the Senate by a single seat.
That means spending bills to keep the government open require buy-in from both parties in order to advance through both chambers to President Joe Biden's desk.
On Saturday morning, Speaker McCarthy said he would put a 45-day continuing resolution (CR) plan to the floor - a stop-gap would keep federal agencies open until Congress can agree on a new funding bill.
The CR would include disaster relief funding, but would not include US foreign aid for Ukraine, which Democrats have been insisting on.
A rebel faction of right-wing Republicans has, so far, held up negotiations in the House, the lower congressional chamber, with a demand for significant cuts in spending, including a call for no more US funding of the war in Ukraine.
Receiving vocal support online from former President Donald Trump, the hard-liners have tanked efforts by Mr McCarthy to shepherd legislation needed to break the impasse through the House.
While the Speaker could ostensibly turn to Democrats for the votes he would need to approve a spending measure, it is a move that would likely trigger an effort by the rebel faction to oust him from his plum leadership post.
Mr McCarthy has also refused to take up a short-term funding bill making its way through the Senate. The bill, which includes $6bn (£4.9bn) for Ukraine and $6bn for disaster aid, is a last-ditch effort to avert a lengthy shutdown and appears to have strong bipartisan support in the upper chamber.
On Friday, House Republicans' short-term funding measure, which included strict border policies championed by the hardliners, was rejected by as many as 21 members of the party and failed to pass.
In a closed-door meeting, Mr McCarthy said that Republicans would have to opt for the House bill or the Senate's version, or risk being blamed for a shutdown.
But the rebel lawmakers asserted they would not budge for anything less than a long-term spending bill with their priorities addressed.
"This take it or leave it or I'll blame you won't work on us," South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a moderate who voted against the House bill on Friday, wrote on X.
"I'm in this for the long run and have no problem taking on DC to do it."
Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, slammed Mr McCarthy for bringing up "truly radical" proposal that could not make it through both chambers.
"The Speaker needs to abandon his doomed mission of trying to please [Republican] extremists," he said.
The White House backed Mr Schumer's calls for the House to get behind his spending bill.
"The path forward to fund the government has been laid out by the Senate with bipartisan support - House Republicans just need to take it," press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote in a statement on Friday.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: "The failure of House Republicans to act responsibly would hurt American families and cause economic headwinds that could undermine the progress we're making."
Ms Yellen warned that "key government functions", including loans to farmers and small businesses, food and workplace safety inspections, and major infrastructure improvements would all be affected.
Shutdowns take place when Congress is unable to approve the roughly 30% of the federal budget it must approve before the start of each fiscal year on 1 October.
This means that, on Monday, hundreds of thousands of federal workers except those deemed "essential" will be at home without pay. Many of these employees live paycheque to paycheque, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.
More than 1.4 million active-duty members of the military and tens of thousands of air traffic controllers will be among those working, without pay.
It is a troubling development for any federal workers holding student loan debt. Loan repayments for over 40 million people will restart on Sunday after being paused since the start of the pandemic.
The shutdown will also have an immediate impact on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which provides grocery assistance to seven million pregnant women and new mothers.
A prolonged shutdown could also affect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a grocery benefit known as "food stamps" that serves 40 million low-income Americans, and hinder the implementation of a new programme to serve free breakfast and lunch to students in high-need school districts.
Museums, national parks, research facilities and communities health centres with federal government oversight or funding are likely to suspend operations for the period of the shutdown.
Additionally, the government agency at the helm of relief and recovery from natural disasters is currently scrambling to conserve cash in the event a shutdown collides with an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season.
Budget disputes that cause this kind of disruption do not occur anywhere else in the world and has been criticised as an example of Washington's growing dysfunction and partisan divides.
The last government shutdown, under Mr Trump in 2019, lasted a record 34 days.
It erased $11bn in economic output, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and federal workers were seen standing in line at food banks. | US Congress |
A federal judge has dismissed ex-President Donald Trump's bid to throw out charges of election interference on the basis of "presidential immunity".
Mr Trump's lawyers had argued his attempts to reject the 2020 results fell within his duties as president.
But Judge Tanya Chutkan found no legal basis for concluding presidents cannot face criminal charges once they are no longer in office.
Mr Trump is accused of unlawfully trying to overturn his election defeat.
"Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time," Judge Chutkan wrote late on Friday.
"That position does not confer a lifelong 'get-out-of-jail-free' pass."
She added that Mr Trump's presidency "did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens".
The ruling is the first by a US court confirming that presidents can be prosecuted like any other citizen. Mr Trump is the first current or former US president to face criminal charges.
After the ruling, a Trump campaign spokesperson told CBS, the BBC's US partner, that "the corrupt leftists will fail and President Trump will keep fighting for America and Americans, including by challenging these wrongful decisions in higher courts".
Mr Trump is facing four criminal counts - including conspiracy to defraud the US - related to his alleged efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
He has pleaded not guilty. The Washington DC trial, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, is scheduled to begin in March in the midst of his campaign for next year's White House election.
It is not clear whether Mr Trump's legal team will appeal against the latest ruling, one of several legal setbacks the former president has recently faced in the case.
Earlier this week, Judge Chutkan also blocked an attempt by Mr Trump to obtain records related to the congressional investigation into the US Capitol riot in 2021.
In an opinion, filed on 27 November, the Obama appointee referred to the effort as a "fishing expedition".
Judge Chutkan had already issued a gag order and denied a request to remove language from the indictment which Mr Trump's lawyers believe could prejudice a jury against him during the trial.
The federal case in Washington DC is one of several legal battles in which the former president is currently embroiled.
He is also facing criminal indictments relating to his handling of classified documents and allegedly false accounting involving hush money.
In his home state of New York, Mr Trump, his family and Trump Organization executives are facing a civil fraud trial.
The judge in the case has already ruled the Trump Organization committed fraud.
The trial will determine the penalties, with prosecutors seeking a $250m (£202m) fine and business restrictions on the Trump family and the Trump Organization.
More on the US election
- Explained: A simple guide to the US 2024 election
- Republicans: Who are the challengers to Trump?
- Analysis: Four surprises that could upend the election
- Policies: What a Trump second term would look like
- Voters: 'It's like 2020 all over again - with higher stakes' | US Political Corruption |
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.
Christina A. Cassidy, Associated Press
Christina A. Cassidy, Associated Press
Leave your feedback
ATLANTA (AP) — An effort to access voting system software in several states and provide it to allies of former President Donald Trump as they sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election has raised “serious threats” ahead of next year’s presidential contest, according to a group of experts who urged federal agencies to investigate.
The letter sent by nearly two dozen computer scientists, election security experts and voter advocacy organizations asks for a federal probe and a risk assessment of voting machines used throughout the country, saying the software breaches have “urgent implications for the 2024 election and beyond.” The breaches affected voting equipment made by two companies that together count over 70 percent of the votes cast across the country, according to the letter.
“The multistate effort to unlawfully obtain copies of voting system software poses serious threats to election security and national security and constitutes a potential criminal conspiracy of enormous consequences,” the group wrote in a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, special counsel Jack Smith, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “We must protect our most sacred tenet of democracy — the security of our vote.”
WATCH: How challenges to the Voting Rights Act could reshape the political landscape
The letter, sent to the agencies late Monday, was organized by the left-leaning group Free Speech for People, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on election and campaign finance reforms. The group also has filed challenges in a handful of states seeking to ban Trump from the ballot in 2024 under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment.
The FBI, Justice Department and Smith’s office declined comment. The cybersecurity agency did not immediately respond.
Trump’s loss in the 2020 election helped fuel unfounded conspiracy theories around voting machines that in turn led to threats against election workers, a push in many conservative counties to hand-count ballots and defamation lawsuits by companies that make the equipment. Authorities in three states — Colorado, Georgia and Michigan — have charged people in connection with breaches at local election offices, but there has been no public indication of a federal probe.
The letter sent this week outlines what is known publicly about the efforts to access those voting systems, which began in the weeks after the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden. It cites a Dec. 18, 2020, meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump allies, including lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, discussed a desire to access voting machines in presidential swing states Trump lost, according to congressional testimony. It also details subsequent efforts to secure that access.
Powell, Giuliani and Trump were among 19 people charged this summer in Fulton County, Georgia, where state prosecutors have alleged they were part of a conspiracy to overturn Trump’s loss in the state. That included the unauthorized breach of voting systems in rural Coffee County, Georgia.
READ MORE: Report finds people with disabilities continue to face outsized barriers to voting
Powell has since pleaded guilty to reduced charges and has agreed to testify against her co-defendants. Prosecutors alleged she had conspired with others to access election equipment without authorization in the county and hired a computer forensics firm to copy software and data from voting machines and computers.
The letter to federal officials cites various documents and news reports to highlight potential connections between Powell and three people charged in a similar effort in Michigan, where state prosecutors allege there was unauthorized access to ballot tabulators in three counties. Powell has not been charged in the Michigan case.
In addition to Georgia and Michigan, the letter mentions voting system breaches or attempts to access voting-related systems in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and Colorado as well as various individuals involved in the efforts. It stresses that possession of voting system software could enable people with ill intent to practice how to meddle in the 2024 election, allowing them to identify vulnerabilities and test potential attacks.
“And they could use their knowledge of the software to fabricate evidence of stolen votes, either for disinformation or to challenge election results,” the letter said.
In Colorado, former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters has pleaded not guilty to state charges alleging she was part of a “deceptive scheme” to provide unauthorized access to the county’s voting systems during a May 2021 breach that eventually resulted in a copy of the voting system hard drive being posted online.
Peters, whose trial is scheduled for next year, has said she had the authority to investigate concerns that the voting equipment had been manipulated. She has appeared at several events with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump ally who has promoted election conspiracy theories.
Federal authorities have been involved in the Colorado case, but the extent of any investigation is unknown. In September 2022, Lindell said he received a subpoena from a federal grand jury investigating the breach in Colorado and was ordered to hand over his cellphone to FBI agents.
In the Michigan case, a special prosecutor said local clerks who turned over the ballot tabulators and others who analyzed the equipment “were deceived by some of the charged defendants.” They have not been charged.
Among the 22 people who signed the letter to the federal agencies was Douglas W. Jones, a computer scientist who said the effects of the various breaches were not limited to the local election offices where they occurred because the voting system software involved is used by many offices across the country. The letter says those involved accessed equipment made by two of the leading manufacturers, Dominion Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software.
“In 2024, no matter which way the election goes, election deniers on one side or the other could easily grasp on the breaches following the 2020 election and suggest that those breaches allowed the 2024 results to be cooked,” he said.
Election technology expert Kevin Skoglund, who also signed the letter, said a federal probe was necessary because many of those involved have not been investigated or been asked to give up their copies of the election software.
“Every software copy that is reclaimed reduces the risks of further distribution, disinformation and harm to the security of future elections,” Skoglund said. “There should be consequences for widely sharing parts of our national critical infrastructure or others will be encouraged to repeat these schemes.”
Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this report.
Support Provided By:
Learn more | US Federal Elections |
BUCKINGHAM, Va. — Seven months after election conspiracy theories consumed the community here and drove the entire election staff to quit, Buckingham County struggled to report its results in Tuesday's elections.
Local results were posted just before 10 a.m. Wednesday, making Buckingham the last county in the state to report unofficial tallies.
Unofficial election results are typically reported online within hours of polls closing, after which it takes days to canvass ballots and confirm official results. The missing results Tuesday night spurred concerns and frustration in the community, residents said in interviews.
“It’s unusual for a county not to report any results over 12 hours after the polls closed, and more unusual to not release any kind of statement relating to the delay,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research that helps support election officials.
Local officials did not immediately respond to questions about the late results. Andrea Gaines, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Elections, said the county struggled to input results.
"Buckingham County had some issues with the spreadsheet being used to upload their results. Their Election Day precinct results are all in now, and they are currently entering their early voting and absentee totals," she said in an email to NBC News.
Earlier this year, local Republicans pushed baseless allegations of voter fraud, which eventually drove four people to quit their jobs in Buckingham County's elections department. The conflict shook the community and threatened future elections: Many longtime poll workers said they would not work the polls again. A resident who had made claims of voter fraud was hired as a replacement registrar, then fired shortly after amid controversy.
A third registrar, Ginger Chiesa, took the reins this spring, assuming the difficult task of getting the county's voting apparatus back up and running. Seven months later, under her leadership, polls opened across the county, and many hoped the community might be ready to move forward from the conflict.
Voting ran smoothly throughout early voting and on Tuesday, election workers across the county said, even as new poll workers worked to learn new processes, troubleshoot equipment and remember all the rules.
One poll worker, serving as the chief in her polling place for the first time, called the elections office with a question: Are dogs allowed in the polling site? Off the phone, she joked with a friend who had voted that she had been in tears at 5:45 a.m. preparing to open the polling site.
But after the polls closed, voters hoping to check out the unofficial election night results online would be sorely disappointed.
“When I woke up this morning and saw that Buckingham had zero precincts reporting, my first thought was, I reported at 7:15, why can’t my team get that recognition?” said Bob Abbott, a poll worker who served as chief election officer in the Georgia Creek Precinct. “The election officials at Georgia Creek deserved to be rewarded for their amazing teamwork and hard work. And now we’re going to get questions instead.”
Abbott, a disabled military veteran, said he was exhausted and in pain after a long day working the polls.
The missing results felt like a “kick in the nuts,” he said. So at 6:32 a.m., he emailed the electoral board and registrar to resign his post as an election officer. He’d planned to resign after the results were canvassed but was too frustrated to wait.
Paul Garrett, a candidate for the county board of supervisors and a former county election worker who quit his job earlier this year, said early Wednesday he had no idea when he’d know the results of his race.
“They won’t tell anybody anything,” he said. “It’s a mess.”
At the start of the year, Garrett was frustrated by the suspicion cast on election workers by Republicans. Now, he can't help but wonder what's going on.
He added: "Somebody just texted me right now and said this is sad, any idea when the results will be in?" | US Local Elections |
Police dispute sex abuse claims in case of man missing for 8 years
The Houston Police Department said the investigation is still open, but no charges have been filed in the case of a man missing since he was a teen.LEARN MORE
An 18-year-old South Carolina native is dead following a date with someone they met online.
A missing 18-year-old was found dead this week after going to meet someone from an online dating site in person. Now authorities have arrested two people in connection to the crime.
Investigators say Kierstyn Williamson, a South Carolina native, was last seen and heard from during the evening hours of June 30, prompting family members to report the disappearance.
Union County, North Carolina sheriff's deputies began looking into the case Sunday after receiving a tip Williamson was at a home in Monroe, North Carolina.
The sheriff's office said at the time of the disappearance, Williamson was expecting to meet a man, 25-year-old Joshua Newton, in person for the first time after talking to him online for a month. Authorities said Newton had picked Williamson up from work in Laurens, South Carolina, and drove the victim back to his Monroe home — the location of the sheriff's tip.
After a 36-hour search and investigation, Union County sheriffs found Williamson's body a few miles from Newton's house on the side of a road.
Union County Sheriff's Office
Authorities arrested two suspects, including Newton, in what is now a homicide investigation. He was charged with first degree murder and obstruction of justice, while his 22-year-old live-in girlfriend Victoria Smith was charged with obstruction of justice and accessory after the fact. Police say Smith helped Newton hide Williamson's body after he killed the victim.
"My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of the victim in this case as they begin to mourn this unimaginable loss," Union County Sheriff Eddie Cathey said in a statement. The investigation is ongoing.
The Houston Police Department said the investigation is still open, but no charges have been filed in the case of a man missing since he was a teen.LEARN MORE
Two people were killed and 28 more were injured in the July 2 shooting.
Patrick Crusius is expected to receive multiple life sentences for the 2019 attack in which he drove hundreds of miles to target Hispanics in El Paso.
A less redacted version of a search warrant affidavit for Trump's Florida residence said agents were worried about the location of some documents.
Two people were killed and 28 more were injured in the July 2 shooting.
Six recent incidents have prompted government officials to investigate why there have been so many scary close calls at airports.
All of the top 10 cities on the list are either in the South or the Southwest. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
January 13, 2023 03:00 AM As part of a flurry of first-week activity, prominent Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and four co-sponsors are pressuring the Biden administration over federal employees continuing to work remotely. Along with four GOP colleagues, Comer introduced the Stopping Home Office Work's Unproductive Problems, or SHOW UP, Act this week to try and force federal workers to get back to the office. BOWSER BATTLE WITH BIDEN OVER TELEWORK LATEST IN ON-AGAIN OFF-AGAIN PANDEMIC "President Biden’s unnecessary expansion of telework crippled the ability of departments and agencies to fulfill their responsibilities and created cumbersome backlogs," said Comer, who chairs the powerful House Oversight Committee, in a statement. "The federal government exists to serve the American people and these substantial delays for basic services are unacceptable." The act would send the federal workforce back to the office within 30 days of passage, then have agencies submit studies saying how telework affected their mission, with no permanent remote positions allowed until formal "telework plans" have been approved. The bill has four co-sponsors, all Republicans, and is unlikely to pass in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But as a messaging bill, it furthers pressure on the Biden administration to address pandemic-related policies persisting nearly three years after the virus first reached American shores. "Biden administration officials must lead by example and work in person for the American people," Comer said. The White House did not respond to questions from the Washington Examiner about the bill. Comer's office says remote work has resulted in problems for constituents getting help from agencies like the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Just 3% of federal employees teleworked before 2020, according to NPR, a number that swelled to 59% that year. The figure is now 46%, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Comer's call also puts him in league with an unlikely ally: Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser (D). Bowser last week called for federal employees to either return to the office or give up the real estate for new housing. In Bowser's case, the idea is more centered on her long-standing affordable housing push but still ratchets up pressure on Biden to address the situation. “Right now, 25,000 people call downtown home. Here’s our goal: We will add 15,000 residents over the next five years and 87,000 more before it’s all said and done,” Bowser said upon beginning her third term in office. “That’s a bold goal, but the fact is, no matter what we do, it won’t be fast enough without the help of the White House.” The situation is complicated for Biden. The president said in September the pandemic is over and in December that "people are back to work." Yet the White House extended the emergency over the virus just this week, which grants Biden extended powers and provides the legal justification for his $500 billion student debt transfer. Aside from any health concerns, returning to the office has become an issue for employee unions — a crucial constituency for Biden. The National Archives reached an agreement in December with the American Federation of Government Employees in which all full-time positions will be eligible for remote work. With everything else that's going on in Washington, Democratic strategist Brad Bannon argues the remote work issue is a distraction at best. "President Biden is much better off addressing issues Americans really care about, like inflation and jobs," he said. "The GOP House caucus makes itself look foolish by prioritizing its political vendettas while the president does the heavy lifting." CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER The bill comes at a time when many private employers are calling employees back to the office, with Disney and Snapchat parent company Snap telling employees to begin reporting to the office at least four days a week. Whether federal employees join them behind the desk remains to be seen. | US Federal Policies |
US Markets Loading... H M S Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., listens to the opening testimony during a House Rules Committee meeting on "Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy (DRIVE) Act" on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, November 2, 2015. Al Drago/CQ Roll Call The Biden administration announced new regulations to improve income-driven repayment plans. Republicans are already pushing back, saying the new regulations further burden taxpayers. Broad forgiveness is still in limbo, and headed to the Supreme Court on February 28. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. As student loan relief hangs in court limbo, the Biden administration is moving ahead on making monthly payments cheaper for some borrowers — and it's already attracted ire from the right.On Tuesday, the Education Department officially released its new regulations for income-driven repayment (IDR) plans. The changes are meant to make payments cheaper, and "create faster pathways to forgiveness," according to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.But Rep. Virginia Foxx, who now chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, said that the announcement is "a repeat of the same playbook that got us into this college affordability crises in the first place." Foxx has been an outspoken opponent of Biden's broad student loan forgiveness and other pandemic-era debt-relief measures."Because President Biden couldn't get his radical free college agenda through Congress, he has resorted to doing it through the backdoor by executive fiat," Foxx said in a statement. "Expansions of already generous repayment options, institutional shame lists, and other failed policies of the past won't lower the cost of college for students and families. It does, however, turn the federal loan program into an untargeted grant with complete disregard for the taxpayers that fund it." Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton also took to Twitter to criticize the plan, saying that Biden's "proposed changes encourage students to take out as much debt as possible because the taxpayers pick up the tab. This is the opposite of the message we should be sending young Americans."—Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) January 10, 2023Under IDR, borrowers are meant to make monthly payments based on their incomes, with eventual loan forgiveness after at least 20 years of payments. But, as Insider reported, those plans currently have deep flaws, prompting the push for refreshed regulations. The National Consumer Law Center found that just 32 borrowers ever have qualified for full forgiveness under IDR.The new proposed regulations to IDR plans that Biden announced on Tuesday would cut monthly payments for undergraduates in half and give borrowers in default a chance to access the repayment plans, among other things. The reforms will enter a 30-day public comment period, and senior administration officials told reporters on Monday that the Education Department plans to implement them by mid-2023.Amid GOP criticism, Democratic lawmakers have lauded the reforms. "The Biden administration's proposed rules for higher education are big structural changes to lower costs for working people and hold colleges accountable," Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. "These plans will significantly cut monthly loan payments and it's part of a real transformation of the student loan system."As administration officials noted, it plans to implement not only those changes to IDR, but also Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt this year — which is headed to the Supreme Court on February 28. Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Read next Economy Student Loans Student debt relief More... | US Federal Policies |
Democrat lawmakers in Nevada are embroiled in scandal after voting to pass a massive spending bill that gave large sums of money to their own private employers and organizations within which they work outside their legislative roles.
Assembly Bill 525 was passed by both houses of the Democrat-controlled Nevada legislature in June, right before the end of the legislative session, and included millions of dollars for a number of private and non-profit organizations.
Some of those legislators that supported the legislation failed to disclose the connections they had to these organizations, according to multiple reports, and others voted in favor of the bill despite their known connections to the organizations receiving funds.
One of those legislators, Democrat Assemblywoman Michelle Gorelow, was hired to lead non-profit Arc of Nevada just weeks after she voted yes on the bill, which appropriated $250,000 in taxpayer funds for the organization. Her hiring by the group led to an outcry of criticism, including accusations of unethical conduct.
Gorelow recently announced she would not be seeking re-election after an ethics complaint was filed against her by a local Nevada Republican operative, Chuck Muth.
Democrat Assemblywoman Tracy Brown-May, who sits on the board of directors for Arc of Nevada and voted for AB 525, has also faced scrutiny. She was named in the complaint filed by Muth "as a person who may have knowledge about the facts and circumstances surrounding the alleged ethics violations," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
According to the report, Brown-May has served on the organization's board since last year, and as its treasurer for eight years prior. "I don’t know why there would be an ethics complaint against someone for starting a new job," she told the outlet about Gorelow. Brown-May has also said her own role with the organization is voluntary, meaning she would not have to file a financial disclosure as required by assembly members.
When reached for comment Brown-May reiterated to Fox News Digital her status as a volunteer on the board, and highlighted the organization's role as an advocate "for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities."
"Before voting on AB525, we received an opinion from the LCB legal division, a non-partisan branch of the legislature, that each elected official was allowed to vote on AB525. I did not advocate on behalf of my employer or the organizations I volunteer with for them to be included in this bill," she told Fox.
"This legislation will do a lot of good in our communities and that is why it received bi-partisan support in the Nevada Assembly and was signed into law by the Republican Governor of Nevada," she added, noting its signing into law by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.
In her own statement to Fox, Gorelow didn't address accusations of unethical behavior, and instead touted the 25 years of work she said she'd done in the non-profit field. She stated it was her work "advocating for women and children's healthcare isses" that inspired her to run for office.
"These funds provided by AB525 will be used to implement an early intervention program which provides services to children from birth until 3 years old who have a qualifying intellectual and/or developmental delay," she said, adding that the bill would also provide multiple organizations "funds to help vulnerable populations across Nevada," and that she would continue to support "the most vulnerable" in the face of those "who reject providing critical support to non-profits."
Other Democrat Assembly members who voted for AB 525 have also found themselves in the line of fire, including Cameron "C.H." Miller, who failed to submit a financial disclosure that he serves as president and CEO of the Urban Chamber of Commerce, which was appropriated $100,000 in taxpayer funds.
According to local CBS affiliate KLAS, Miller admitted in a video posted on social media before AB525 was voted on in committee that he was employed by the group, and said he would be abstaining from any votes related to it. However, no abstentions were recorded in the final vote on the bill, the outlet reported.
Assemblywoman Venicia Considine's employer, Legal Aid of Southern Nevada, also received $4.25 million from the legislation, as well as a separate spending bill she supported that originated in the state Senate. Considine did disclose her connection to the group through financial disclosure, but her vote in favor of the legislation has still raised ethical questions from Republicans.
When reached for comment, Miller pointed to his social media post about his connections to the organization, and added that he "received clear guidance from the LCB legal division that abstentions weren’t necessary, and all legislators were cleared to vote on this bill."
"I clearly disclosed my affiliation on the record and proceeded to vote on the legislation only after obtaining adequate legal guidance. Because I believe the 56 non-profits included in the bill will continue to do immense work to support Nevadans across our state, including minority-owned businesses," he added.
In her own statement to Fox, Considine also pointed to the Legislative Counsel Bureau's opinion that she could vote on the bill.
"I had no part in advocating for funding to be included in this legislation. I stand by my vote because it will provide much needed funding to countless non-profits across the state of Nevada. The legislation received massive bi-partisan support in the Nevada Assembly and passed with a 39-3 margin, and was signed into law by Governor Joe Lombardo," she said.
"There’s a culture of corruption in the Democrat Assembly under Speaker [Steve] Yeager. Michelle Gorelow’s departure is an admission of guilt for her breach of ethics and a clear sign that it’s time for change in Carson City. With Tracy Brown-May, Cameron Miller, and others also facing scandal, will Yeager and the Democrats call for accountability from them, or allow this corruption to continue?" said Better Nevada PAC spokesperson John Burke, a SuperPac aligned with Lombardo.
Fox reached out to Steve Yeager, the Democrat Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, who, in addition to his role as speaker, serves as vice chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Ethics. He told Fox that because assembly members are part-time legislators, only serving in legislative sessions for 120 days every other year, they have other jobs outside the state government.
He noted the approval Legislative Counsel Bureau for "all" Assembly members to vote on the bill, and said Nevada has "a long history of supporting non-profits through the state," before accusing Better Nevada PAC of pushing the story that the Democrats in question breached ethical standards. | US Political Corruption |
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday refused to say whether the Biden administration would support cooperation with a congressional subpoena for a former official to testify as part of the investigation into the president's alleged mishandling of classified documents.
"I'm just not going to comment from here, which is consistent with what we've been doing from here," Jean-Pierre told Fox News' Mark Meredith, who asked if the administration would support cooperating with the subpoena issued for former White House Counsel Dana Remus.
Fox News first reported that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, subpoenaed Remus on Monday to appear for a deposition and requested transcribed interviews from several other officials with knowledge of President Biden’s alleged improper retention of classified records.
Comer first requested Remus appear for a transcribed interview before the House Oversight Committee in May, which came after the panel obtained information that they said "contradicts important details from the White House’s and President Biden’s personal attorney’s statements about the discovery of documents at the Penn Biden Center, including the location and security of the classified documents."
Comer has described Remus as a "central figure in the early stages of coordinating the packing and moving of boxes that were later found to contain classified materials." In May, he said Remus could be a witness "with potentially unique knowledge" about the matter.
Comer and Jordan also requested an interview with Annie Tomasini, a senior Biden aide and director of Oval Office Operations who took "inventory" of Biden's documents at the Penn Biden Center over a year before they were said to be found. Tomasini is a close friend of the Biden family and Hunter Biden.
Additionally, they requested an interview with Anthony Bernal, a senior advisor in First Lady Jill Biden’s office, and Ashley Williams, a special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office Operations; and Katharine Reilly, who works in the White House chief of staff's office.
House Republicans identified Remus, Bernal, Williams, Tomasini and an unknown staffer, in addition to Kathy Chung, a top aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, as individuals who made multiple visits to the Penn Biden Center and were involved with the retrieval of boxes of documents and materials ahead of early November 2022, which was when Biden's personal attorneys "unexpectedly discovered Obama-Biden documents" in a locked closet at the Biden think tank.
Biden attorneys claim that classified documents were first discovered at the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2, 2022, but Comer has pointed to contact between Remus and Cheung dating back to May 2022. | US Political Corruption |
The family of a teenager who was found dead eight years ago on a road near the hunting estate of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh says they're going to exhume his body for an independent autopsy.
Stephen Smith's death was initially ruled an unsolved hit-and-run, but his mother has rejected that suggestion and says she hopes the new autopsy will help answer questions about what really happened to her son.
"Our family is so very grateful to all of you who came together to help us in our fight for justice for Stephen," Sandy Smith wrote on a GoFundMe page that had raised more than $60,000 to pay for the exhumation.
"Thank you for not allowing Stephen's story to be swept under a rug," she added. "This is Stephen's year."
Earlier this month, Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of the 2021 shooting deaths of his wife and son, Maggie and Paul, and sentenced to two consecutive life terms in state prison. Murdaugh admitted to lying to police during the investigation but maintains he did not kill the pair.
During the investigation into the killings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh two years ago, the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division announced that it was also opening its own inquiry into Smith's death, the Augusta Chronicle reported.
A spokesperson said at the time that the agency would look into Smith's death "based upon information gathered during the course of the double murder investigation of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh."
Smith's family has long dismissed the idea that he was killed in a hit-and-run, suggesting that his injuries weren't consistent with a hit-and-run and that there was no debris along the rural road where his body was found, about 15 miles from the Murdaugh estate.
Sandy Smith has said her son, who was openly gay, was killed after his car ran out of gas.
Both Smith and Murdaugh's oldest son, Buster, graduated from the same Hampton County high school in 2014, NBC reported.
Though he's been convicted of the two murders, Murdaugh still faces a slew of other criminal charges related to alleged financial crimes, some of which the former lawyer admitted to on the stand during his trial. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Biden admin close to making deal that will regulate TikTok 01:50 - Source: CNN New York CNN Business — Facebook and TikTok failed to block advertisements with “blatant” misinformation about when and how to vote in the US midterms, as well as about the integrity of the voting process, according to a new report from human rights watchdog Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy Team (C4D) at New York University. In an experiment, the researchers submitted 20 ads with inaccurate claims to Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. The ads were targeted to battleground states such as Arizona and Georgia. While YouTube was able to detect and reject every test submission and suspend the channel used to post them, the other two platforms fared noticeably worse, according to the report. TikTok approved 90% of ads that contained blatantly false or misleading information, the researchers found. Facebook, meanwhile, approved a “significant number,” according to the report, though noticeably less than TikTok. The ads, submitted in both English and Spanish, included information falsely stating that voting days would be extended and that social media accounts could double as a means of voter verification. The ads also contained claims designed to discourage voter turnout, such as claims that the election results could be hacked or the outcome was pre-decided. The researchers withdrew the ads after going through the approval process, if they were approved, so the ads containing misinformation were not shown to users. “YouTube’s performance in our experiment demonstrates that detecting damaging election disinformation isn’t impossible,” Laura Edelson, co-director of NYU’s C4D team, said in a statement with the report. “But all the platforms we studied should have gotten an ‘A’ on this assignment. We call on Facebook and TikTok to do better: stop bad information about elections before it gets to voters.” In response to the report, a spokesperson for Facebook-parent Meta said the tests “were based on a very small sample of ads, and are not representative given the number of political ads we review daily across the world.” The spokesperson added: “Our ads review process has several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live.” A TikTok spokesperson said the platform “is a place for authentic and entertaining content which is why we prohibit and remove election misinformation and paid political advertising from our platform. We value feedback from NGOs, academics, and other experts which helps us continually strengthen our processes and policies.” Google said it has “developed extensive measures to tackle misinformation on our platforms, including false claims about elections and voting procedures.” The company added: “We know how important it is to protect our users from this type of abuse – particularly ahead of major elections like those in the United States and Brazil – and we continue to invest in and improve our enforcement systems to better detect and remove this content.” While limited in scope, the experiment could renew concerns about the steps taken by some of the biggest social platforms to combat not just misinformation about candidates and issues but also seemingly clear cut misinformation about the process of voting itself, with just weeks to go before the midterms. TikTok, whose influence and scrutiny in US politics has grown in recent election cycles, launched an Elections Center in August to “connect people who engage with election content to authoritative information,” including guidance on where and how to vote, and added labels to clearly identify content related to the midterm elections, according to a company blog post. Last month, TikTok took additional steps to safeguard the veracity of political content ahead of the midterms. The platform began to require “mandatory verification” for political accounts based in the United States and rolled out a blanket ban on all political fundraising. “As we have set out before, we want to continue to develop policies that foster and promote a positive environment that brings people together, not divide them,” Blake Chandlee, President of Global Business Solutions at TikTok, said in a blog post at the time. “We do that currently by working to keep harmful misinformation off the platform, prohibiting political advertising, and connecting our community with authoritative information about elections.” Meta said in September that its midterm plan would include removing false claims as to who can vote and how, as well as calls for violence linked to an election. But Meta stopped short of banning claims of rigged or fraudulent elections, and the company told The Washington Post those types of claims will not be removed for any content involving the 2020 election. Looking forward, Meta has banned US ads that “call into question the legitimacy of an upcoming or ongoing election,” including the midterms, according to company policy. Google also took steps in September to protect against election misinformation, elevating trustworthy information and displaying it more prominently across services including search and YouTube. The big social media companies typically rely on a mix of artificial intelligence systems and human moderators to vet the vast amount of posts on their platforms. But even with similar approaches and objectives, the study is a reminder that the platforms can differ wildly in their content enforcement actions. According to the researchers, the only ad they submitted that TikTok rejected contained claims that voters had to have received a Covid-19 vaccination in order to vote. Facebook, on the other hand, accepted that submission. Additional reporting by CNN’s Clare Duffy. | US Federal Elections |
PHOENIX — Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs announced Thursday that $2.3 million in American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funding, as well as three executive orders, will go towards making changes to elections.
The governor hopes the changes will improve the state's elections going into the 2024 election year and support free, fair, and secure elections.
“As Secretary of State, I oversaw the most secure elections in Arizona history, but I know we must continue to improve Arizona’s elections ahead of 2024,” said Governor Hobbs in a press release. “Election officials and voters are facing new challenges when it comes to administering elections and participating in our democracy. I am thrilled to immediately address some of the problems identified by the Bipartisan Elections Task Force to ensure Arizona voters can make their voices heard.”
The three executive orders will authorize paid civic duty leave for state employees to serve as poll workers, make state buildings available as polling locations, and require state agencies to provide voter registration information and assistance to Arizona citizens, according to Hobbs' administration.
The $2.3 million in ARPA funds will support election-related measures, including:
- $1 million for a statewide elections fellowship program, as well as temporary staffing support and expert consultants for counties, particularly those that have lost institutional knowledge and expertise due to staff turnover.
- $700,000 to maintain AVID, the statewide voter registration database.
- $600,000 for other 2024 election administration initiatives, including county-level election security, election security tabletop exercises for state and county officials, ballot reconciliation best practices, resources for county officials to better support voters with disabilities, and poll worker recruitment and emergency poll worker deployment efforts.
In January, the Governor established the Bipartisan Elections Task Force and co-chaired the group with former Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell.
The bipartisan group included Arizona election administration and security experts, voting rights advocates, legislators, and current and former election officials.
The group issued its final report Wednesday, with recommendations Hobbs' administration said focused on:
- Election Administration: poll worker communication platform; incentives to improve poll worker recruitment; annual election officer certification trainings; election fellowship program; comprehensive website for voter information
- Voter Registration: requiring provisional ballot forms to serve as voter registration forms; improving cross-county voter registration; voting rights restoration; funding for the statewide voter registration database, the Access Voter Information Database (AVID)
- Early Voting: disability resource liaison; changing emergency voting to final weekend voting; preventing ballot return interference
- Election Day and After: ensuring timely recounts; reconciliation best practices guidelines
- Election Equipment and Security: election security advancements; election worker code of conduct
“This Task Force is made up of talented, bipartisan experts who have diverse on-the-ground experience with Arizona’s elections,” said Purcell in a press release. “It was rewarding to see them come together week after week to brainstorm where additional support is needed, collaborate on potential solutions, and develop the proposals in the final report. Thank you to Governor Hobbs for bringing us together with a unified goal and for her unwavering commitment to protecting democracy in our State.” | US Federal Policies |
Double your support for intelligent, in-depth, trustworthy journalism.
Joey Cappelletti, Associated Press
Joey Cappelletti, Associated Press
Ali Swenson, Associated Press
Ali Swenson, Associated Press
Leave your feedback
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan is joining an effort to curb deceptive uses of artificial intelligence and manipulated media through state-level policies as Congress and the Federal Elections Commission continue to debate more sweeping regulations ahead of the 2024 elections.
Campaigns on the state and federal level will be required to clearly say which political advertisements airing in Michigan were created using artificial intelligence under legislation expected to be signed in the coming days by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. It also would prohibit use of AI-generated deepfakes within 90 days of an election without a separate disclosure identifying the media as manipulated.
Deepfakes are fake media that misrepresent someone as doing or saying something they didn’t. They’re created using generative artificial intelligence, a type of AI that can create convincing images, videos or audio clips in seconds.
There are increasing concerns that generative AI will be used in the 2024 presidential race to mislead voters, impersonate candidates and undermine elections on a scale and at a speed not yet seen.
Candidates and committees in the race already are experimenting with the rapidly advancing technology, which in recent years has become cheaper, faster and easier for the public to use.
The Republican National Committee in April released an entirely AI-generated ad meant to show the future of the United States if President Joe Biden is reelected. Disclosing in small print that it was made with AI, it featured fake but realistic photos showing boarded-up storefronts, armored military patrols in the streets, and huge increases in immigration creating panic.
In July, Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, used an AI voice cloning tool to imitate former President Donald Trump’s voice, making it seem like he narrated a social media post he made despite never saying the statement aloud.
Experts say these are just glimpses of what could ensue if campaigns or outside actors decide to use AI deepfakes in more malicious ways.
So far, states including California, Minnesota, Texas and Washington have passed laws regulating deepfakes in political advertising. Similar legislation has been introduced in Illinois, New Jersey and New York, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen.
Under Michigan’s legislation, any person, committee or other entity that distributes an advertisement for a candidate would be required to clearly state if it uses generative AI. The disclosure would need to be in the same font size as the majority of the text in print ads, and would need to appear “for at least four seconds in letters that are as large as the majority of any text” in television ads, according to a legislative analysis from the state House Fiscal Agency.
Deepfakes used within 90 days of the election would require a separate disclaimer informing the viewer that the content is manipulated to depict speech or conduct that did not occur. If the media is a video, the disclaimer would need to be clearly visible and appear throughout the video’s entirety.
Campaigns could face a misdemeanor punishable by up to 93 days in prison, a fine of up to $1,000, or both for the first violation of the proposed laws. The attorney general or the candidate harmed by the deceptive media could apply to the appropriate circuit court for relief.
Federal lawmakers on both sides have stressed the importance of legislating deepfakes in political advertising, and held meetings to discuss it, but Congress has not yet passed anything.
A recent bipartisan Senate bill, co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and others, would ban “materially deceptive” deepfakes relating to federal candidates, with exceptions for parody and satire.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson flew to Washington, D.C. in early November to participate in a bipartisan discussion on AI and elections and called on senators to pass Klobuchar and Hawley’s federal Deceptive AI Act. Benson said she also encouraged senators to return home and lobby their state lawmakers to pass similar legislation that makes sense for their states.
Federal law is limited in its ability to regulate AI at the state and local levels, Benson said in an interview, adding that states also need federal funds to tackle the challenges posed by AI.
“All of this is made real if the federal government gave us money to hire someone to just handle AI in our states, and similarly educate voters about how to spot deepfakes and what to do when you find them,” Benson said. “That solves a lot of the problems. We can’t do it on our own.”
In August, the Federal Election Commission took a procedural step toward potentially regulating AI-generated deepfakes in political ads under its existing rules against “fraudulent misrepresentation.” Though the commission held a public comment period on the petition, brought by Public Citizen, it hasn’t yet made any ruling.
Social media companies also have announced some guidelines meant to mitigate the spread of harmful deepfakes. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced earlier this month that it will require political ads running on the platforms to disclose if they were created using AI. Google unveiled a similar AI labeling policy in September for political ads that play on YouTube or other Google platforms.
Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy contributed from Washington.
Support Provided By:
Learn more
Support PBS NewsHour:
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm. | US Federal Policies |
Wearing a Robert Kennedy Jr campaign T-shirt, Kevin O’Keeffe found there was standing room only as the candidate, introduced as “Bobby Kennedy”, walked on a sunbaked stage decked with hay bales to whoops and applause.
“He supports freedom of speech, and he’s questioned the efficacy of the vaccine, which is legitimate at this point,” said O’Keeffe, 52, who works for a telecommunications company in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “I like his views on foreign policy and keeping us out of the war. He cares about his fellow Americans in a way that a lot of the politicians nowadays I don’t think really do.”
He was far from alone in rooting for Kennedy at the Iowa state fair in Des Moines last weekend. The longshot challenger to Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2024 drew one of the biggest and most energetic crowds, outnumbering conventional politicians on the Republican side. The shouts of “We love you, Robert!” and “Thank you, Robert!”, and subsequent mobbing of Kennedy for handshakes and selfies, hinted at the stirrings of a movement.
In a nation that has seen plenty of political convulsions over the past decade, Kennedy, a 69-year-old environmental lawyer who has never before run for public office, is proof that Americans’ appetite for insurgents and outsiders, mavericks and populists, remains undimmed. Even when a campaign traffics in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and has been hit by antisemitism scandals.
Kennedy rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic because of his strident and widely condemned opposition to vaccines. He has styled himself as a hammer of the elites – quite a feat for a scion of one of America’s most storied political dynasties. He has scrambled old political allegiances, striking an anti-establishment nerve on the far left and far right over the Ukraine war and other issues.
Brandy Zadrozny, a senior reporter for NBC News, summed up his supporters as “anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, internet contrarians, billionaire tech bros, Camelot nostalgists and rightwing provocateurs who seem to be pumping Kennedy as a spoiler candidate”.
In his speech from the Des Moines Register newspaper’s political soapbox, Kennedy wore blue jeans and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He spoke of his father, former attorney general Robert Kennedy, and uncle, President John F Kennedy, as figures from a golden age when America was the envy of the world.
His campaign chairman, Dennis Kucinich, held up a map as Kennedy railed against proposed pipelines that would run through Iowa to transport liquefied carbon dioxide away from ethanol plants for burial underground. It was a retro, 20th-century presentation but more locally targeted than many candidates offered.
Such is the celebrity-style clamor for Kennedy that, for an interview with the Guardian, he slipped away from the crowds and sat in the back of a black limousine with security detail present. Kucinich, a former congressman and past presidential contender, offered to take an Uber back to the hotel but Kennedy insisted that he climb in too, then asked an aide for some fried bacon from the fair.
His uncle, Ted Kennedy, was once floored by the simple question, “Why do you want to be president?” This Kennedy does have an answer for that one: “I’m running for president because I feel like I’m losing my country and because I feel like the Democratic party is going in a bad direction. In particular, it has become the party of war – the Ukraine war was an unnecessary war.
“It has become the party of censorship. It’s become the party of a pugnacious neocon-driven foreign policy and a Wall Street-driven domestic policy. Those are all the opposite of the Democratic party that I grew up with, so I’m running to bring the party back to its traditional values.”
The political class was rattled in 2016 by the two-headed insurgency of not only Donald Trump on the right but Bernie Sanders on the left, channeling frustrations with the status quo in very different ways. Kennedy argues that Democrats, once the party of the poor and middle class, now own most of the nation’s wealth and dominate its richest counties.
“Americans feel ignored by both political parties,” he said. “Their wealth is being strip mined by large corporations, corporate interests, and you’re seeing a level of desperation that I’ve never seen in this country. They just don’t feel that anybody’s listening, and they felt like Bernie was maybe listening, and they felt like Donald Trump was maybe listening as well.”
Many are disturbed by Kennedy’s flirtations with the far right, including racists and antisemites. He has appeared on Infowars, a channel run by Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and granted interviews to pro-Trump extremists Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. A Super Pac supporting Kennedy’s presidential run owes half its money to a longtime Republican mega-donor and Trump backer, according to campaign finance reports.
Kennedy insists that he is happy to receive support from across the spectrum and focus on issues that united Americans rather than divide them. He said: “My message is a populist message. The Republicans are appealing to a populist base and I appeal to the same base. I appeal to working people, middle class people and the poor.”
So what did he make of Trump’s presidency? Kennedy seemed a little reluctant to reply and kept his answer short: “I don’t think it was the shining apex of American exceptionalism.”
Trump is facing 91 criminal charges across four cases, many related to an attempted coup after his 2020 election defeat. Democrats warn starkly that his return to the White House could spell the end of American democracy. But again Kennedy swerved: “There’s authoritarian impulses on both sides. On one side it’s the authoritarianism of rightwing demagoguery, and on the left it’s the authoritarianism of the elites, which is equally dangerous because it involves censorship.”
Equally dangerous? “I would say equally dangerous,” he reiterated. “What do you think is more dangerous? The attack on the Capitol building on January 6 or the revelations that the White House has been using the CIA and the FBI to censor its critics? What do you think is more dangerous for the republic? Both parties are doing things that are equally dangerous.”
He added: “Once a government can silence its critics it has licence for every atrocity and so it’s shocking to me that people in the Democratic party now think it’s OK to silence people. I’ve never thought that’s right. I’ve always spoken to people who I don’t agree with. That’s an important part of being American.”
It is an exercise in false equivalence fueled by personal animus. Kennedy accuses the government of colluding with social media companies to deny his freedom of speech, making him the first person censored by the White House after Biden’s inauguration. In reality he was suspended from platforms such as Instagram and Twitter for spreading coronavirus vaccine misinformation.
Without the pandemic, it might be argued, there would be no Kennedy candidacy. He has long promoted bogus theories linking vaccines to autism, antidepressants to school shootings and chemicals present in water sources to transgender identity. But now his anti-scientific views have moved from the fringe to resonate with millions of people, especially consumers of rightwing media.
His anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, prospered during the pandemic, with revenues more than doubling in 2020 to $6.8m, according to filings made with charity regulators. Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of Covid, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. In 2021 he published a book, The Real Anthony Fauci, in which he accused America’s top infectious disease expert of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against western democracy”.
In his Guardian interview, Kennedy is unrepentant, saying: “Show me where I got one thing wrong.” He tossed out far-fetched claims that might have been plucked from dark corners of the web: “The British study that just came out said 98% of the people who died were triple vaccinated”; “If you look at the data, countries that were least vaccinated had the least Covid deaths”. He did not take the vaccine himself and did catch the virus but “it didn’t stop me from skiing”.
Earlier this year the UN’s World Health Organization declared an end to Covid as a public health emergency, stating that immunity increased due to “highly effective vaccines” developed in record time. A modelling study by the Commonwealth Fund and Yale School of Public Health at the end of last year found that Covid vaccines kept more than 18.5 million people in the US out of the hospital and saved more than 3.2 million lives.
Kennedy’s own family have distanced themselves from him. Jack Schlossberg, President Kennedy’s grandson, said in an Instagram video: “He’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame. I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is an embarrassment.”
But at the state fair there was a significant constituency thrilled to hear Kennedy keep saying the unsayable, renewing questions about what the rise of such candidates tells America about itself and its yearning. Gail Buffington, 62, wearing a white “Kennedy 2024” cap and “RFK Jr for president 2024” T-shirt, said: “I believe in freedom of speech, peace and civil liberties. Trump drew a large crowd too, and I was in that crowd, and I got nothing but thumbs up from everybody.” | US Federal Elections |
Good morning. Donald Trump makes a lot of wild claims and it’s not often the White House feels the need to address one. But the former president’s call for the US constitution to be “terminated”, over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen, prompted a stern dressing down from the Biden administration which said it should be “universally condemned”.In Australia, a former British policeman claims he was bashed, stabbed with a syringe and denied prescription drugs while wrongfully jailed for more than 200 days and has lodged a $2.1m lawsuit against the state of Queensland.And a volcanic eruption in Indonesia has spewed a cloud of ash 15km into the sky and forced the evacuation of nearly 2,000 people.AustraliaEamonn Charles Coughlan is suing the state of Queensland and a police officer for $2.1m over being wrongfully jailed. Photograph: Supplied by Renee Eaves Policing | A former British policeman wrongfully jailed for more than 200 days has lodged a $2.1m lawsuit against the state of Queensland and a police officer who, court documents allege, stated he “hated” the man, threatened to beat his wife and unnecessarily searched through her underwear drawers. Liberal party | Fewer than one in five teal independent voters were disaffected Coalition voters, with most identifying as far to the political left as Labor voters regard themselves, a major study has found. GP crisis | Drastic measures are needed to preserve Medicare, according to a new report from the Grattan Institute which argues for a major overhaul of the way general practices operate. Gender inequality | Australian women have poorer health, lower incomes and less engagement in the labour force than men, a new report says. Biodiversity | Australia is being urged to take a leadership role at a global summit that aims to reach what has been described as the nature equivalent of the landmark Paris agreement on climate change. Brittany Higgins | Brittany Higgins will launch a compensation claim against former Morrison government minister Linda Reynolds – her boss at the time of her alleged rape – in coming weeks, as the former staffer calls for justice system reform. WorldDonald Trump announces a third run for president as he speaks at Mar-a-Lago in November. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP US politics | The Biden White House rebuked Donald Trump after the former president said the US constitution should be “terminated” over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Indonesia | A volcano has erupted in Indonesia, spewing a cloud of ash 15km into the sky and forcing the evacuation of nearly 2,000 people, authorities have said, as they issued their highest warning for the area in the east of Java island. China | An attempt to flood social media platforms with spam in order to drown out coverage of the lockdown protests in China was probably backed by the Chinese government, according to analysis by a US cybersecurity firm. Ukraine | A draft resolution is circulating at the United Nations in New York for a Nuremberg-style tribunal to hold the Russian leadership accountable for crimes of aggression in Ukraine. Medicine | Early next year, a radical new treatment for Parkinson’s disease involving tissue transplants will receive its first trial with patients. Full StoryAnti-Chinese government protests in New York, amid China’s zero-Covid policy. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/ReutersHow far could China’s zero-Covid protests go?China has been rocked by an outpouring of communal anger at the government’s restrictive zero-Covid lockdown policies. Could the protests develop into something more substantial? Tania Branigan reports in today’s Full Story.In-depthArtist’s impression of SKA-Low on Wajarri country in Western Australia. Its tree-like antennas will map the sky 135 times faster than existing telescopes. Photograph: Supplied by DISRConstruction of the world’s largest radio astronomy observatory, the Square Kilometre Array, has officially begun in Australia after three decades in development. SKA-Low is so named for its sensitivity to low-frequency radio signals. It will be eight times more sensitive than existing comparable telescopes and will map the sky 135 times faster. It’s been described by scientists as a gamechanger and a major milestone in astronomy research.Not the newsSome of the crime and thriller books that make this year’s list. Composite: Jonny WanEscape the endless cycle of depressing news and lose yourself in the best books of 2022.The world of sportA dejected Mat Ryan of Australia after losing 2-1 to Argentina and getting knocked out during the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022 Round of 16 match. Photograph: Robbie Jay Barratt/AMA/Getty Images World Cup | Mat Ryan says he is “not surprised” his FC Copenhagen goalkeeping rival publicly sledged his mistake that gifted Argentina their second goal, while promising not to let it define him after an otherwise unblemished World Cup campaign. France 3-1 Poland | A stunning double from Kylian Mbappé saw France cruise past Poland with its attack clicking at just the right moment. England v Senegal | The Three Lions take on the African champions – follow live. Cricket | West Indies’ hopes for a draw were battered by a bowling onslaught as Australia won the first Test. Pelé | The Brazilian football great Pelé posted on Instagram on Saturday evening to say that he is feeling “strong” and “with hope”, after reports that he had been moved to palliative care. The Australian’s Newspoll has Anthony Albanese ending the year on a popularity high. Punctuation, sentence structure and grammar are emphasised in an overhaul of the school syllabus, says the Sydney Morning Herald. And policymakers expect Australians to enjoy their first Christmas in years unaffected by Covid restrictions and bushfires before being stung by inflation and interest rates in 2023, the Brisbane Times reports.What’s happening today Indigenous justice | The National Indigenous Legal & Health Justice Conference gets under way in Hobart. Climate crisis | The four-day World Renewable Energy Congress begins in Perth. Protests | A rally in support of Violet Coco will be held in Sydney. Sign upIf you would like to receive this Morning Mail update to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here. And finish your day with a three-minute snapshot of the day’s main news. Sign up for our Afternoon Update newsletter here.Prefer notifications? If you’re reading this in our app, just click here and tap “Get notifications” on the next screen for an instant alert when we publish every morning.Brain teaserAnd finally, here are the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword | US Political Corruption |
House Republicans reacted to Rep. Jamaal Bowman's (D-NY) fire alarm-pulling incident on Saturday, with one even calling to expel the New York Democrat from Congress.
Bowman pulled a fire alarm on Saturday as Republicans began voting on the stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown. The "Squad" member claimed he thought it would open the door rather than set off the fire alarm.
"I was just trying to get to my vote," Bowman explained to reporters. "The door that's usually open wasn't open. And you know, I didn't mean to cause confusion… I didn't know I was going to trip the whole building. I thought it would help me open the door."
The U.S. Capitol Police and the House Administration Committee are both investigating the incident. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) argued that the alarm-pulling fiasco was "serious" and warrants further inquiry.
"I'm going to have a discussion with the Democratic leader about it, but this should not go without punishment. This is an embarrassment," McCarthy said.
Other House Republicans expressed similar sentiments: Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) described the event as "potentially criminal" and "unbecoming" to Fox News, suggesting that Bowman consider stepping down.
"That any member of Congress would think it's appropriate to pull a fire alarm to try and delay Congress from doing its business is shameful," Lawler said. "It's unbecoming. And he should strongly consider resigning from Congress if he did that."
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) drafted a resolution to expel Bowman from Congress. She reportedly plans to formally introduce the bill on Monday.
When asked about the Republicans' accusations, Bowman described it as "total BS" to reporters. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told Fox News that he has "no further comment" on the incident until he sees a video of it.
The U.S. Capitol Police confirmed to Fox News Digital that it is actively investigating the incident, but no additional details were available.
Fox News' Chad Pergram, Kelly Phares, Brooke Curto, Elizabeth Elkind, and Houston Keene contributed to this report. | US Congress |
President Joe Biden delivered a Thursday speech to hail economic progress during his administration and to attack congressional Republicans for their proposals on the economy and the social safety net.
Some of Biden’s claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context, though others were correct. Here’s a breakdown of the 14 claims CNN fact-checked.
Infrastructure projects
Touting the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, Biden said, “Last year, we funded 700,000 major construction projects – 700,000 all across America. From highways to airports to bridges to tunnels to broadband.”
Facts First: Biden’s “700,000” figure is wildly inaccurate; it adds an extra two zeros to the correct figure Biden used in a speech last week and the White House has also used before: 7,000 projects. The White House acknowledged his misstatement later on Thursday by correcting the official transcript to say 7,000 rather than 700,000.
A cap on seniors’ drug spending
Biden said, “Well, here’s the deal: I put a – we put a cap, and it’s now in effect – now in effect, as of January 1 – of $2,000 a year on prescription drug costs for seniors.”
Facts First: Biden’s claims that this cap is now in effect and that it came into effect on January 1 are false. The $2,000 annual cap contained in the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last year – on Medicare Part D enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending on covered prescription drugs – takes effect in 2025. The maximum may be higher than $2,000 in subsequent years, since it is tied to Medicare Part D’s per capita costs.
Asked for comment, a White House official noted that other Inflation Reduction Act health care provisions that will save Americans money did indeed come into effect on January 1, 2023.
- CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this item.
Vaccinations under Trump
Criticizing former President Donald Trump over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden said, “Back then, only 3.5 million people had been – even had their first vaccination, because the other guy and the other team didn’t think it mattered a whole lot.”
Facts First: Biden is free to criticize Trump’s vaccine rollout, but his “only 3.5 million” figure is misleading at best. As of the day Trump left office in January 2021, about 19 million people had received a first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The “3.5 million” figure Biden cited is, in reality, the number of people at the time who had received two shots to complete their primary vaccination series.
Someone could perhaps try to argue that completing a primary series is what Biden meant by “had their first vaccination” – but he used a different term, “fully vaccinated,” to refer to the roughly 230 million people in that very same group today. His contrasting language made it sound like there are 230 million people with at least two shots today versus 3.5 million people with just one shot when he took office. That isn’t true.
Billionaires and taxes
Biden said Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires, “who pay virtually only 3% of their income now – 3%, they pay.”
Facts First: Biden’s “3%” claim is incorrect. For the second time in less than a week, Biden inaccurately described a 2021 finding from economists in his administration that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018; after CNN inquired about Biden’s “3%” claim on Thursday, the White House published a corrected official transcript that uses “8%” instead. Also, it’s important to note that even that 8% number is contested, since it is an alternative calculation that includes unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.
“Biden’s numbers are way too low,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute think tank, though Gleckman also said we don’t know precisely what tax rates billionaires do pay. Gleckman wrote in an email: “In 2019, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabe Zucman estimated the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of about 23 percent in 2018. They got a lot of attention at the time because that rate was lower than the average rate of 24 percent for the bottom half of the income distribution. But it still was way more than 2 or 3, or even 8 percent.”
Biden has cited the 8% statistic in various other speeches, but unlike the administration economists who came up with it, he tends not to explain that it doesn’t describe tax rates in a conventional way. And regardless, he said “3%” in this speech and “2%” in a speech last week.
The impact of a new corporate tax
Biden cited a 2021 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy think tank that found that 55 of the country’s largest corporations had made $40 billion in profit in their previous fiscal year but not paid any federal corporate income taxes. Before touting the 15% alternative corporate minimum tax he signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, Biden said, “The days are over when corporations are paying zero in federal taxes.”
Facts First: Biden exaggerated. The new minimum tax will reduce the number of companies that don’t pay any federal taxes, but it’s not true that the days of companies paying zero are “over.” That’s because the minimum tax, on the “book income” companies report to investors, only applies to companies with at least $1 billion in average annual income. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, only 14 of the companies on its 2021 list of 55 non-payers reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion.
In other words, there will clearly still be some large and profitable corporations paying no federal income tax even after the minimum tax takes effect this year. The exact number is not yet known.
Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told CNN in the fall that the new tax is “an important step forward from the status quo” and that it will raise substantial revenue, but he also said: “I wouldn’t want to assert that the minimum tax will end the phenomenon of zero-tax profitable corporations. A more accurate phrasing would be to say that the minimum tax will *help* ensure that *the most profitable* corporations pay at least some federal income tax.”
There are lots of nuances to the tax; you can read more specifics here. Asked for comment on Thursday, a White House official told CNN: “The Inflation Reduction Act ensures the wealthiest corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, precisely the corporations the President focused on during the campaign and in office. The President’s full Made in America tax plan would ensure all corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, and the President has called on Congress to pass that plan.”
Biden and the federal deficit
Noting the big increase in the federal debt under Trump, Biden said that his administration has taken a “different path” and boasted: “As a result, the last two years – my administration – we cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion, the largest reduction in debt in American history.”
Facts First: Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by a total of $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 – but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected as the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits.
Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics – an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency – told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021.
National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote on the White House website last week that the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill “facilitated a strong economic recovery and enabled the responsible wind-down of emergency spending programs,” thereby reducing the deficit; David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, told Egan in October that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the recovery that has pushed the deficit downward. And Deese correctly noted that Biden’s signature legislation, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to bring down deficits by more than $200 billion over the next decade.
Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved.
Wage growth
Biden said, “Wages are up, and they’re growing faster than inflation. Over the past six months, inflation has gone down every month and, God willing, will continue to do that.”
Facts First: Biden’s claim that wages are up and growing faster than inflation is true if you start the calculation seven months ago; “real” wages, which take inflation into account, started rising in mid-2022 as inflation slowed. (Biden is right that inflation has declined, on an annual basis, every month for the last six months.) However, real wages are lower today than they were both a full year ago and at the beginning of Biden’s presidency in January 2021. That’s because inflation was so high in 2021 and the beginning of 2022.
There are various ways to measure real wages. Real average hourly earnings declined 1.7% between December 2021 and December 2022, while real average weekly earnings (which factors in the number of hours people worked) declined 3.1% over that period.
House Republicans and the deficit
Biden said he was disappointed that the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives “added $114 billion to the deficit.”
Facts First: Biden is correct about how the bill would affect the deficit if it became law. He accurately cited an estimate from the government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The bill would eliminate more than $71 billion of the $80 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that Biden signed into law in the Inflation Reduction Act. The Congressional Budget Office found that taking away this funding – some of which the Biden administration said will go toward increased audits of high-income individuals and large corporations – would result in a loss of nearly $186 billion in government revenue between 2023 and 2032, for a net increase to the deficit of about $114 billion.
The Republican bill has no chance of becoming law under Biden, who has vowed to veto it in the highly unlikely event it got through the Democratic-controlled Senate.
House Republicans and taxes
Biden said that “MAGA Republicans” in the House “want to impose a 30 percent national sales tax on everything from food, clothing, school supplies, housing, cars – a whole deal.” He said they want to do that because “they want to eliminate the income tax system.”
Facts First: This is a fair description of the Republicans’ “FairTax” bill. The bill would eliminate federal income taxes, plus the payroll tax, capital gains tax and estate tax, and replace it with a national sales tax. The bill describes a rate of 23% on the “gross payments” on a product or service, but when the tax rate is described in the way consumers are used to sales taxes being described, it’s actually right around 30%, as a pro-FairTax website acknowledges.
It is not clear how much support the bill currently has among the House Republican caucus. Notably, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju this week that he opposes the bill – though, while seeking right-wing votes for his bid for speaker in early January, he promised its supporters that it would be considered in committee. Biden wryly said in his speech, “The Republican speaker says he’s not so sure he’s for it.”
The unemployment rate
Facts First: This is true. The unemployment rate was just below 3.5% in December, the lowest figure since 1969.
The headline monthly rate, which is rounded to a single decimal place, was reported as 3.5% in December and also reported as 3.5% in three months of President Donald Trump’s tenure, in late 2019 and in early 2020. But if you look at more precise figures, December was indeed the lowest since 1969 – 3.47% – just below the figures for February 2020, January 2020 and September 2019.
Unemployment among demographic groups
Biden said that the unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic Americans are “near record lows” and that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is “the lowest ever recorded” and the “lowest ever in history.”
Facts First: Biden’s claims are accurate, though it’s worth noting that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities has only been released by the government since 2008.
The Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.7% in December, not far from the record low of 5.3% that was set in August 2019. (This data series goes back to 1972.) The rate was 9.2% in January 2021, the month Biden became president. The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate was 4.1% in December, just above the record low of 4.0% that was set in September 2019. (This data series goes back to 1973.) The rate was 8.5% in January 2021.
The unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 5.0% in December, the lowest since the beginning of the data series in 2008. The rate was 12.0% in January 2021.
Foreclosures
Biden said that fewer families are facing foreclosure than before the pandemic.
Facts First: Biden is correct. According to a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, about 28,500 people had new foreclosure notations on their credit reports in the third quarter of 2022, the most recent quarter for which data is available; that was down from about 71,420 people with new foreclosure notations in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 74,860 people in the first quarter of 2020.
Foreclosures plummeted in the second quarter of 2020 because of government moratoriums put in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Foreclosures spiked in 2022, relative to 2020-2021 levels, after the expiry of these moratoriums, but they remained very low by historical standards.
Health insurance coverage
Biden said, “More American families have health insurance today than any time in American history.”
Facts First: Biden’s claim is accurate. An analysis provided to CNN by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies US health care, found that about 295 million US residents had health insurance in 2021, the highest on record – and Jennifer Tolbert, the foundation’s director for state health reform, told CNN this week that “I expect the number of people with insurance continued to increase in 2022.”
Tolbert noted that the number of insured residents generally rises over time because of population growth, but she added that “it is not a given” that there will be an increase in the number of insured residents every year – the number declined slightly under Trump from 2018 to 2019, for example – and that “policy changes as well as economic factors also affect these numbers.”
As CNN’s Tami Luhby has reported, sign-ups on the federal insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, have spiked nearly 50% under Biden. Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law and then the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act temporarily boosted federal premium subsidies for exchange enrollees, and the Biden administration has also taken various other steps to get people to sign up on the exchanges. In addition, enrollment in Medicaid health insurance has increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic, in part because of a bipartisan 2020 law that temporarily prevented people from being disenrolled from the program.
The percentage of residents without health insurance fell to an all-time low of 8.0% in the first quarter of 2022, according to an analysis published last summer by the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services. That meant there were 26.4 million people without health insurance, down from 48.3 million in 2010, the year Obamacare was signed into law.
Business applications
Biden said, “And over the last two years, more than 10 million people have applied to start a small business. That’s more than any two years in all of recorded American history.”
Facts First: This is true. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. Not every application turns into a real business, but the number of “high-propensity” business applications – those deemed to have a high likelihood of turning into a business with a payroll – also hit a record in 2021 and saw its second-highest total in 2022.
Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high-propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Among them: some newly unemployed workers seized the moment to start their own enterprises; Americans had extra money from stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden; interest rates were particularly low until a series of rate hikes that began in the spring of 2022. | US Federal Policies |
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is ramping up his pledge to confront former President Donald Trump on the Republican presidential campaign trail, though he doesn't want to share his plans just yet.
"Get ready. That’s all I’m going to tell you," Christie told Fox News Thursday after he filed to place his name on the presidential primary ballot in New Hampshire, which holds the second contest in the 2024 GOP nominating calendar.
"Because if I give [Trump] and the Secret Service a tip as to where I’m going to be, it will be a lot harder for me to get to him. Remember, he’s the only guy walking around with Secret Service protection. So, that makes all of this a little more complicated. But I also was in law enforcement, so hang with me," Christie said.
For months, Christie, who's making his second White House run, vowed to take down Trump on the debate stage.
Christie, who like Trump is a master of in-your-face politics, repeatedly touted that he's got the debate chops to target Trump. The former president remains the commanding frontrunner for the Republican nomination as he makes his third straight White House run, even while juggling an historic four criminal indictments, including two for his alleged attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Biden.
But with Trump skipping the first two GOP presidential debates and saying he won't take the stage at next month's third debate, Christie pledged early last month that he'd find another way to make sure that the former president is not the Republican Party's 2024 nominee.
"We’ve got 100-plus days until the primary. Donald Trump and I will come face-to-face, whether it’s on a debate stage or whether it’s when he’s walking out of a building somewhere," Christie said.
Christie placed all his chips in his campaign for president eight years ago in the Granite State. However, his campaign crashed and burned after a disappointing and distant sixth-place finish in New Hampshire, far behind Trump. Trump crushed the competition in the primary, boosting him toward the nomination and, eventually, the White House.
Christie became the first among the other GOP 2016 contenders to endorse Trump and for years was a top outside adviser to the president, chairing Trump’s high-profile commission on opioids. However, the two had a falling out after Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Biden. In the past 2½ years, Christie has become one of the harshest Trump critics in the Republican Party.
Christie kept up his verbal attacks on Trump as he took questions from reporters.
"He’s completely full of crap, and he makes it up as he goes along," Christie charged.
And Christie argued that the former president is "a soulless human being. He cares about no one but himself. And any New Hampshire voter who thinks he gives a damn about you, your life, your family, you’re kidding yourself. He doesn’t. So, if you think this race has been interesting up until now, I haven’t got my tank full of gas yet. He’s in for it."
And Christie emphasized that "guys from New Jersey are used to dealing with obnoxious blowhards from New York our whole life, so we have no problem dealing with them in a presidential race."
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung, responding to Christie's broadsides, told Fox News, "What a sad, pathetic parasite. He should really drop this fake tough guy act because everybody knows he's at b----."
Christie has been the most vocal Trump critic in the still relatively large field of Republican presidential contenders. The former governor, considered one of the most effective communicators in the GOP, and the rest of his rivals remain far behind Trump.
He took aim at some of his other rivals, in particular Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, charging them with what he called the "pathetic act of trying to be like him [Trump] but not be like him."
But he saved most of his venom for multimillionaire biotech entrepreneur and first-time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who is Trump's biggest supporter in the 2024 field.
Ramaswamy, who came under repeated attack from Christie, Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina at the first two debates, said he may skip next month's debate in Miami, Florida.
"I’m considering my options," he told Fox News Wednesday after filing for the New Hampshire primary.
Asked by Fox News about Ramaswamy's comments, Christie said, "I don’t think he liked that treatment up there. I don’t think he was used to getting pushed back on. He’s used to just shooting his mouth off and have nobody interrupt and nobody tell him he’s wrong. ... If he doesn’t want to show up, I don’t think anybody will miss him."
Christie also slammed Ramaswamy for his rival's suggestion Thursday that the U.S. build a wall not only on the nation's southern border with Mexico but on the northern border with Canada.
After Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire announced a new task force to help make the state's border with Canada more secure, Ramaswamy took to social media to write, "It’s not "Build-the-Wall" anymore. It’s Build *Both* Walls. I visited the Northern & Southern Borders this month. This isn’t a technical challenge, the country that put a man on the moon can fix this. It’s a question of political will."
Christie said it was "another dumb idea" from Ramaswamy and called his rival a "joker."
"If he really wants to be considered a serious candidate in this race with these dumb ideas he's putting forward, how about you guys start pressing him on it," Christie told reporters.
Ramaswamy, responding, told Fox News, "Wake up from your slumber, Chris. This is how a bipartisan establishment created our border crisis in the first place. The number of illegal crossings at our northern border this year surpasses the last 10 years combined. Once we seal the southern border, the northern border is the next frontier, and I refuse to play from behind."
Ramaswamy campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News, "I will avoid making jokes about beaches or bridges, but the gentleman from New Jersey sure talks a big game for someone who can't even qualify for the debate stage."
Christie has yet to reach all the polling and donor thresholds the Republican National Committee is mandating the presidential candidates hit to qualify for the third debate.
But a confident Christie told Fox News, "I will qualify, and I will be there." | US Campaigns & Elections |
If you happen to miss the camera above the entrance, the sign will inform you. “FACIAL RECOGNITION & CCTV IN OPERATION ON THIS SITE” it declares in black letters as the automatic door slides to one side.
When you enter, the camera scans the contours of your face, instantly cross-referencing it against a database of known shoplifters.
Since you are a law-abiding citizen, the computer finds nothing. The video footage and any associated biometric data is instantly deleted. It does this hundreds of times a day, as customers filter in and out of the shop.
If your face is matched, managers at the shop will receive a silent alert and a picture of you, the suspected thief. Within seconds, you would find yourself shadowed by a chirpy member of staff, pleasantly informing you: “I’ll be right behind you if you need any help.”
“Our technology enables [shops] to do what they’ve always done, but in quite an inefficient way trying to rely on human memory,” says Simon Gordon, chief executive of Facewatch, the company that operates the technology.
Business is booming. Gordon says Facewatch has doubled in size in each of the last four years and has licensed its technology in hundreds of shops. The British company works with the likes of Budgens, Costcutter, House of Fraser and Spar.
“We’re seeing reductions of 35pc, 40pc, and sometimes a lot higher than that in crime, and big reductions in violence against staff as well,” Gordon says.
In one store, he says one in four customers were stealing something before the technology was rolled out. That number has dived.
But the technology is not a silver bullet. It can deter crimes but cannot guarantee prosecutions. And those who are stopped by the technology can merely move on to another location.
Now, major supermarkets are joining forces with the police in a radical data sharing tie-up known as Project Pegasus that supporters hope will cut down on retail crime. However, opponents say it marks a civil liberties intrusion.
In recent weeks, a group of the UK’s biggest retailers have been thrashing out details of the new operation to help them to work closer with police on identifying criminal gangs hitting their stores.
Alongside cash from the Home Office, retailers including Tesco, Co-op, John Lewis, Next and Sainsbury’s are each handing over up to £600,000 to fund the project. It will involve a team of data specialists combing through CCTV, incident reports and body-cam footage to connect the pieces.
An executive at one retailer participating in the project says sharing information is the only way to crack down on the organised crime gangs stealing from shops. “Unless we get retailers to come together collaboratively, we don’t make a material difference.”
Richard Walker, Iceland’s executive chairman, says: “Ultimately, the issue is that police are so thinly stretched and dealing with stuff elsewhere. Shoplifters know this. They know that the police very rarely attend.”
Katy Bourne, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex who is chairing Project Pegasus, says: “The problem has been that police forces haven’t been actually seeing the bigger picture. Nobody’s actually got that single vision of all the threats at the moment. And that’s the game changer.”
Not everyone is convinced, however. The tie-up is a novel security collaboration between private companies and the state. Fraser Sampson, the biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner and a former police officer, says it may cross a line.
“For me there’s a different public appetite and level of support for use of technology to screen out crime or reduce crime compared to when it’s used for law enforcement by the state,” he says.
“People worry a lot with surveillance technology used by the state, used with other databases, which becomes an official record of activity. So if you’re acting as an adjunct of the state rather than protecting your own private business space, there is a different level of public support.”
Contrary to recent reports, insiders insist that facial recognition has so far not been part of the Project Pegasus discussions, despite the police national database – a central record of information that contains around 16 million faces – being compatible with facial recognition schemes.
However, Bourne does not rule out facial recognition becoming part of Pegasus in the future. Live facial recognition has already been used by police forces in large public events such as the Coronation, despite ambiguity about the technology’s legal status.
Earlier this year reports suggested policing minister Chris Philp was keen to extend the use of facial recognition across forces in England and Wales, and allow it to not just be deployed in CCTV devices, but also drones, body worn devices and ANPR number-plate cameras.
Madeleine Stone, of the campaign group Big Brother Watch, is concerned about the slow creep of facial recognition technology.
“It is unacceptable to have police and private companies writing their own rules on the use of such a powerful surveillance technology,” she says. “We urgently need a democratic, lawful approach to the role of facial biometrics in Britain, but so far there hasn’t even been a parliamentary debate on it.”
Facewatch itself was the subject of an investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office. The privacy regulator found that the company operated within the law, but said there were “areas of concern” that the company then addressed, such as reducing the data it collected on subjects caught on CCTV.
Supermarkets gripe that data protection laws are an obstacle. Walker says that GDPR laws have prevented managers at different Iceland stores from sharing photos of shoplifters across WhatsApp groups.
Beyond privacy concerns, the types of cameras collecting the information are also a potential worry. The biggest provider of security cameras in Britain is Hikvision, a Chinese company that has been blacklisted in the US for providing security around Uyghur Muslim camps in Xinjiang.
The Government has banned their use on sensitive sites. Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons and the Co-op have banned new installations of the cameras in the last year in response to pressure groups, although existing ones are still in operation.
So far, more surveillance has not stopped shoplifting. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show retail theft rose by 22pc in the year to September. The British Retail Consortium says almost £1bn was lost across 8 million incidents of theft last year. Meanwhile, violence and abuse against staff has almost doubled against pre-pandemic levels.
The cost of living crisis has been blamed, as have stretched police forces. Shops complain that forces fail to pursue shoplifting cases.
AI surveillance is seen as a cost-effective response to the shoplifting problem. But there has been precious little debate about whether the broader public are willing to accept being scanned as the price of going shopping.
For Facewatch’s Gordon, the argument against using the technology is weak. “Normal customers aren’t going to be tracked and traced. The idea that they are is complete rubbish.”
Instead, he says AI tools simply will give stores a fighting chance against shoplifting gangs. “All we’re doing is supercharging shopkeepers’ ability to try to prevent crime in their store.” | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
WASHINGTON — A settlement that will allow thousands of student loan debts to be canceled will go into effect after the Supreme Court on Thursday declined to block it.
The Supreme Court in a brief order rejected a request made by colleges challenging the settlement.
The case is unrelated to President Joe Biden’s broader effort to forgive student loan debt, which is also before the justices, with a ruling due in the next two months.
The class-action settlement concerns loans that borrowers claim should be canceled because they were taken out based on misrepresentation made by their schools, many of which are for-profit. The settlement could be worth more than $6 billion.
The case arises from a settlement that California-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup approved in November in a case brought by borrowers. The government has already started implementing the settlement.
The application at the Supreme Court was filed by Everglades College, Lincoln Educational Services Corp. and American National University. Lincoln and American National are for-profit enterprises, while Everglades is not-for-profit. All three operate colleges the federal government placed on a list of more than 150 institutions that it said are linked with claims of “substantial misconduct.”
The colleges object to that characterization. The Justice Department says about 3,800 of the affected loans involve the three colleges and approximately 400 of them have already been discharged.
The federal Higher Education Act allows debt cancellations in specific circumstances, but the challengers say Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has exceeded his authority.
“The secretary’s claimed authority amounts to nothing less than the power to cancel, en masse, every student loan in the country,” the challengers said in court papers.
They asked the Supreme Court to put Alsup’s ruling on hold and consider hearing the case on an accelerated basis.
The Justice Department, representing Cardona, said in court papers that the settlement only involves borrowers and the Education Department. As a result, "it neither adjudicates any rights or imposes any duties or liabilities upon the relevant schools" and there is no evidence the schools have suffered any injury, the government's lawyers argued.
Alsup refused the colleges’ request to delay his ruling from going into effect, saying their inclusion on the list of colleges did not affect their rights or have any legally binding impact on them.
The lawsuit was filed in 2019, four years after the collapse of Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit organization, which led thousands of borrowers to file claims seeking to discharge their debt.
In the separate cases involving Biden’s much larger debt relief plan, the Supreme Court in February appeared skeptical that it was lawful.
The program, which would allow eligible borrowers to cancel up to $20,000 in debt, has been blocked since the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary hold in October, and there are major doubts it will ever go into effect.
That plan, which would cost more than $400 billion and affect upwards of 40 million borrowers, is significantly broader than the class-action settlement. | US Federal Policies |
Republican Jim Jordan has failed in his bid to get elected Speaker after the first roll call vote in the US House of Representatives.
The Donald Trump-backed right-wing Ohio lawmaker earned 200 votes in the lower chamber of Congress, with 20 Republicans refusing to vote for him.
His loss means that the House remains without a Speaker, 14 days after Kevin McCarthy was ousted.
Mr Jordan must now try again to get the necessary votes from opponents.
He needs 217 votes to secure the Speaker's chair. Asked earlier if he thought he'd reach that in the first round of voting, Jordan told reporters, "I think so," but if not, "we'll keep voting".
Without a Speaker, the House is unable to pass any bills or approve White House requests for emergency aid. That includes potential help for Israel amid its ongoing war with Hamas.
Democrats remained unified behind their nominee Hakeem Jeffries of New York. He earned more votes than Mr Jordan, but Democrats are the minority party so it was not enough. He received 212 votes.
Republicans who refused to vote for Mr Jordan voted instead for Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker who was ousted on 4 October, or picked other candidates.
Mr Jordan is a founding member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus and seemed to be an outsider in the race, which began two weeks ago.
In his 16 years in Congress, Mr Jordan has faced criticism for his record. He was once labelled a "legislative terrorist" by former Speaker John Boehner.
When nominating Mr Jordan on Tuesday, Republican Representative Elise Stefanik called him a "a patriot, an America First warrior who wins the toughest of fights".
But after the vote it was clear that Republicans remained divided, and they would now need to regroup with their members to see whether they could get Mr Jordan's candidacy back on track - or try to find another option.
Bryon Donalds, a Republican lawmaker who supports Mr Jordan, told the BBC that he was surprised at how many people voted against him.
When asked if another round of votes will be held on Tuesday, he replied: "I'm not sure", but he added that Mr Jordan should not drop out just yet.
Another Republican who voted against Mr Jordan, Mario Diaz-Balart, said he did not feel "pressure at all" to change his vote.
He added that any effort to "intimidate" him would end any negotiations. "If that's the case, that's where you lose me," he said.
A similar scenario played out in January, when Mr McCarthy needed 15 rounds of voting over four days to win the Speaker's gavel.
Fierce resistance to Ukraine war funding among Republican hardliners, including Mr Jordan himself, contributed to the vote that led to Mr McCarthy's ouster. | US Congress |
Donald Trump got gag orders in two cases this month alone. Obviously, it’s absurd that the former president and leading GOP presidential candidate has multiple criminal and civil cases, let alone that two judges have recently felt the need to restrain his menacing actions within those proceedings.
But because the limited orders won’t stop Trump from making statements ranging from ridiculous to dangerous, it’s worth keeping in mind what these orders do — and don’t do.
The first one came earlier this month, in the ongoing New York civil fraud trial. Judge Arthur Engoron barred the parties (but really Trump) from posting or publicly speaking about the judge's staff after Trump reposted on his social media platform about Engoron’s law clerk.
The second one came this week, in the federal election interference case. Special counsel Jack Smith had laid out the former president’s remarks attacking various actors across the legal system. Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington agreed something had to be done, even if in a more limited fashion than Smith wanted. She barred the parties (but again, really Trump) from:
making any public statements, or directing others to make any public statements, that target (1) the Special Counsel prosecuting this case or his staff; (2) defense counsel or their staff; (3) any of this court’s staff or other supporting personnel; or (4) any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony.
But while Chutkan’s order is broader than Engoron’s, she made clear what it doesn’t cover, writing on Tuesday:
This Order shall not be construed to prohibit Defendant from making statements criticizing the government generally, including the current administration or the Department of Justice; statements asserting that Defendant is innocent of the charges against him, or that his prosecution is politically motivated; or statements criticizing the campaign platforms or policies of Defendant’s current political rivals, such as former Vice President Pence.
As you can see, that leaves a lot of options to say threatening things that aren’t captured by Chutkan’s order. The judge likely drew that line to ensure that it complied with the First Amendment in her view. Trump is appealing it anyway, his counsel having argued it’s wrong to restrict a presidential candidate. We’ll see how that goes.
But even after Engoron imposed his order, Trump still posted about his adversary in the fraud trial, New York Attorney General Letitia James, sharing a link showing her address. That raised questions about whether that violated the gag order.
The answer is “no,” to the extent the order covers Engoron's staff and James isn't on it. It wouldn’t violate Trump’s Washington gag either, because the orders apply in their respective cases. Had Trump similarly posted about Smith, he could be in trouble. Still, the question of what trouble he’d be in for any violation is unclear.
Trump’s statements in the days, weeks and months ahead will raise questions about whether he violated these orders. The answer won’t necessarily be “yes,” no matter how unhinged a given statement it is. It depends on which case it comes in, and whom it targets. Again, the crucial question is what the consequences will be for any violation, which will almost surely come.
More broadly, it’s important to keep in mind not only the limited nature of these orders, but their limited purpose within the context of these cases. As Chutkan wrote Tuesday, she felt the need to impose restrictions to protect “the integrity of these proceedings.” They’re not intended to, and can’t, protect the country at large. | US Political Corruption |
Political scientists have described public opinion as being a type of chorus. The song that the American people are now singing lacks harmony and rhythm.
This is to be expected given how the lyrics and the music are new and uncomfortable for many Americans. Over the last seven years, they have experienced truly "historic" events like a coup attempt on Jan. 6, a lethal pandemic that killed more than 1 million people in this country, ascendant neofascism and white supremacy, and a legitimacy crisis. Adding to these "historic" events in some of the worst ways, Donald Trump is now the first ex-president in American history to be indicted and arrested. The disgraced ex-president now faces the real possibility of being sentenced to prison for hundreds of years.
Despite (and because of) Trump's lawlessness and continued threats, including violence and becoming a dictator who will embark on a campaign of revenge and retaliation against his "enemies," if he takes back the White House in 2025, his popularity among Republican voters appears to be stable if not growing. Trump is basically tied with President Joe Biden in the polls.
Sounding the alarm about Trump's enduring power, during a Sunday appearance on ABC's "This Morning," former DNC Chair Donna Brazille warned:
I've never seen anything like this with Donald Trump. I mean, what doesn't kill you make you stronger? I mean, being convicted — I mean, being indicted, that's making him stronger? Raising $10 million using an ugly mug shot to raise money? This is a movement. And anyone who thinks that you can apply the old political rules to try to defeat this candidate based on he's scary, he's ugly, whatever you might want to call him, this is a movement. And we have to respect the fact that it's a movement.
Biden, meanwhile, has accomplished many things, such as steering the country out of the COVID pandemic, student loan relief, stabilizing and growing the economy, passing a bipartisan infrastructure bill, and restoring America's leadership role in the world after the extreme harm done to it by the Trump regime. In a healthy democracy, Biden would be far ahead of Trump in the early 2024 election polling. Moreover, Trump would not even be the Republican Party's presumptive nominee. In reality, he leads his closest rival by 60 points in the polls.
In an attempt to make better sense of this confusing and very troubling moment and what the polls are telling us (or not) about Donald Trump and President Biden and the 2024 Election, the ongoing democracy crisis, and the shape of the country's politics more broadly, I recently spoke with Mike Kulisheck, Senior Vice President, and Shannon Currie, Vice President, from the strategic consultancy and marketing firm the Benenson Strategy Group, Barack Obama's pollsters for his 2012 re-election campaign.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
I always start with emotions and feelings because they are central to the human dimension of politics. How are you feeling about the Age of Trump and this ongoing democracy? How are you reconciling those feelings with what the polls and other data are telling us?
Mike Kulisheck: This is a tense moment to be an American. Trumpism is stress-testing the nation's election system and institutions. Trump's upcoming trials will test the resilience of our system of justice, people's trust in juries, and ultimately, our democracy.
We just fielded a survey about Donald Trump's actions related to the 2020 elections and the January 6 riots that shows a large majority of voters troubled by Trump's behavior and his indictments. But, at the same time, Trump is tied with President Biden in the vote.
We need your help to stay independent
The past four election cycles starting in 2016 reveal a new normal, which is that it's best to prepare for low-probability events. When unprecedented events arise like COVID in 2020, the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, and Trump's trials in 2024, we have to be open to unprecedented reactions by voters. As pollsters, we need to design and analyze surveys with fresh eyes. If this were 20 years ago, voters would disqualify Trump completely based on the fact that he's been indicted on 91 different counts. But the reality of 2024 is that the MAGA Republican base loves him, and a lot of other voters are numb to his behavior.
Public opinion is a type of chorus. What is the chorus that is the American people telling us right now about Donald Trump and the Republican Party?
Shannon Currie: It's more like, different verses, same chorus.
Words matter. When issues are presented without injecting partisan cues and labels, most Americans share the same values and priorities. They want abortion to be available, common sense gun regulations, and the country to invest in renewable energy. They also want to see inflation under control, less crime and affordable healthcare. In this era defined by Trump, the harmony of public sentiment no longer adheres to the conventional balance between Democrats and Republicans – with the middle playing out tune when we least expect it.
Same dance, different beat.
Trump's voters and Republicans more generally live in an alternate reality and echo chamber. How they feeling about the ex-president, Jan. 6, and his many other apparent crimes?
Mike Kulisheck: Our recent poll explores voters' attitudes about Trump's role in efforts to overturn the 2020 elections, the January 6 riots at the Capitol, and the former President's indictments. Predictably, three-quarters of Republicans reject criticism of Trump for what happened after the 2020 elections. That said, a sizable bloc of Republicans are consistently alienated by Trump's behavior and critical of his post-election actions. Among Republicans in our poll, 22% say Trump only cares about himself and cannot be trusted, 22% are less favorable to Trump because of his indictment, 24% say they are less likely to vote for him against Biden because of the indictments, and 44% of Republicans say that if convicted, Trump should face the possibility of prison time. If the base of the Republican Party is the party of Trump, and these are big red flags for him.
"While Trump is holding onto his base, our data reveals fissures in his Republican support that would be more than enough to sink his candidacy and re-elect Joe Biden."
Remember, Donald Trump only lost 6% of Republicans in 2020. While Trump is holding onto his base, our data reveals fissures in his Republican support that would be more than enough to sink his candidacy and re-elect Joe Biden.
Similarly, Trump is on his heels with Independents in our poll when the political conversation is about January 6th, overturning elections, and indictments. Two-in-three Independents say Trump cannot be trusted, 61% say they are less likely to vote for Trump against Biden because of his indictments, and 72% believe he should face prison if convicted. Moreover, in spite of his protestations, Independents believe Trump knew he lost in 2020 and that he attempted to overturn a fair and free election. When asked about the January 6th riots, Independents overwhelmingly say it was an insurrection and an attempted coup.
These are not good numbers for Donald Trump among Republicans or Independents.
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
The conventional wisdom among the news media and punditry is that Trump's criminal indictments have been helping him among Republican voters. What does the polling and other data actually indicate? What are the trends?
Mike Kulisheck: Our polling shows that the indictments are turning off majorities of Independents and enough Republicans to make Trump's path to victory extremely tight in 2024. In a race that will be decided narrowly in a handful of states, Trump cannot afford to lose anyone from his 2020 coalition. But these indictments are rallying the Trump base in a way few anticipated. Between the media's obsession with the horse race, and the "impromptu" courthouse step campaign rallies Trump will likely host after every court appearance, we should brace for another unprecedented and unpredictable 13-month long news cycle focused on Trump, and not about the issues and fears that keep Americans up at night.
What are the issues that are resonating (or not) with the public right now?
Mike Kulisheck: What matters as we head into 2024 is whether voters feel their lives are getting better. Covid related subsidies expired, interest rates are high, and loan payments are no longer deferred. To your previous reference about the chorus of public opinion, both parties have set the stage for this election to be not about the chorus, but one soloist – Trump.
Polls are a tool for parties and politicians and other political actors to shape decision-making in a democracy — even an ailing one like ours. What are the polls signaling – including the new poll from Benenson Strategy Group – to the country's political leadership?
Shannon Currie: America is changing, and our values and beliefs are being tested. No one needs a poll to tell us our nation is at a moral and cultural inflection point. Benenson Strategy Group doesn't focus on whether Biden or Trump is up or down by 1 or 2 points – we want to understand the kitchen table issues that Americans feel are barriers to their future success. The best candidates always remember that elections are about the voters and the best polls help candidates have a conversation with voters about their current aspirations and dreams for their children.
Mike Kulisheck: Given the divisions in the U.S., the middle of the electorate – Independents and moderates – are especially interesting these days. When Independents break strongly one way or another, we pay attention. For example, the reaction among Independents to Trump's recent indictments is meaningful because fully two-thirds break against the former President.
"Our polling shows that the indictments are turning off majorities of Independents and enough Republicans to make Trump's path to victory extremely tight in 2024."
A Biden-Trump rematch pits two extremely well-known candidates against each other. While there will be a lot of mud slung on both sides, good polling will differentiate between the accusations that can change the race versus those that are baked in the cake and unlikely to alter outcomes. For example, voters know that Joe Biden is old. The question is whether Biden's age will change people's votes in an election where the other candidate is Donald Trump. Similarly, even Donald Trump's supporters doubt his truthfulness. Will Democrats pointing out Trump's dishonesty change many minds at this point?
If you were to brief Donald Trump about how the American people feel towards him, what would you highlight? What advice would you give him? Likewise, what would you tell President Biden and his advisers?
Mike Kulisheck: Trump's greatest challenge is calibrating his message to the audience that will get him 271 electoral votes. Trump has always maximized adulation by preaching to his base. He seldom leaves the safety of the rightwing echo chamber. This is a reasonable strategy to win the Republican nomination, but it makes winning a general election harder. The question for 2024 is whether Trump can make himself presentable enough to win back the suburbs, more educated voters, and the bloc of voters across the country that has been activated around the overturning of Roe v. Wade by Trump's hand-picked Supreme Court.
Joe Biden needs to find a way to tell his story of success as President. He has an enviable record of accomplishment. After voting against it, even Republicans are promoting the benefits of Biden's Inflation Adjustment Act to their red-state constituents. Right now, the economy and inflation are moving in the right direction. Making his policy achievements personal for voters is the key to Biden's success in 2024. President Biden also benefits from reminding voters that the 2024 election is a choice between two people with very different views and values when it comes to our shared future as Americans.
Please make an intervention here. Of course, there is going to be the narrative that "The polls were wrong in 2020 and the 2022 midterms! You can't trust the polls! They are unreliable!"
Shannon Currie: The value of good polling is to understand voters' priorities, preferences, and vision for America. A fixation on the horse race – especially this far out from the election – is a lost opportunity to understand the contours along which the 2024 election will proceed and ultimately be decided. Polls are very accurate when it comes to where voters stand on the issues of the day and policy priorities. Reporting should use polls to understand the electorate's priorities and leanings around the issues and actions that will drive their vote decisions.
Where will Trump's voters go, when/if he is forced out of the presidential election?
Mike Kulisheck: It depends on how Trump leaves the race. The risk for Republicans no matter how he leaves the race is that Trump's diehard supporters stay at home on Election Day.
If Republicans nominate someone else, the question is, how will Trump react? He has not revealed himself to be particularly generous in defeat. If the party turns on him, it seems highly likely that Trump will turn on the party, or at least withhold his full support from Republican ticket.
If Trump is forced out of the race because of his indictments and trials, he could see personal advantage in promoting the Republican nominee. In this case, he could rile up his supporters to support the Republican ticket in defense of him and against his perceived unfair treatment.
America's democracy crisis is much bigger than Trump or any other such one leader or party. Using therapeutic language — let's imagine you are a consulting physician — how is the health of the patient? What does treatment look like? What is the prognosis?
Shannon Currie: The American body politic has an infection that is resistant to regularly prescribed antibiotics. We are trying different antibiotics and hoping one will cure the infection. The prognosis is good as long as we have alternate antibiotics to prescribe and time for them to work.
Mike Kulisheck: Our institutions have held so far against repeated attack by Trump and others. Looking ahead, Trump's trials and the 2024 election will reveal the strength and resilience of our institutions and democracy. Sticking with the analogy, we will find out if the antibiotics work or if the infection overpowers the body politic's defenses. | US Political Corruption |
A liberal group bankrolled by millions of dollars from George Soros notched a victory with the Biden administration's newly proposed Title IX rules, which include gender identity and would bar educational institutions from banning transgender athletes.
The Education Department rolled out its Title IX proposed rule on Thursday, which mirrors an action memo from a once shadowy group called Governing for Impact (GFI). GFI quietly works behind the scenes with the Biden administration on policy and also has a high-level Soros employee on its board of directors.
"The U.S. Department of Education (Department) proposes to amend its regulations implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) to set out a standard that would govern a recipient's adoption or application of sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student's eligibility to participate on a male or female athletic team consistent with their gender identity," the Education Department wrote.
"The proposed regulation would clarify Title IX's application to such sex-related criteria and the obligation of schools and other recipients of Federal financial assistance from the Department (referred to below as 'recipients' or 'schools') that adopt or apply such criteria to do so consistent with Title IX's nondiscrimination mandate."
The Education Department's proposal is similar in structure and reasoning to a legal memo GFI earlier supplied to the department. A backbone of the Biden administration's proposal includes bringing in gender identity, which GFI advocated for within the document.
GFI's memo proposed "implementing regulations to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and transgender status; and that Title IX and its implementing regulations require schools to treat students consistent with their gender identity for purposes of Title IX and not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity."
GFI has received immense funding from Soros' Open Society Foundations network. The Foundation to Promote Open Society, a nonprofit in Soros' network, has funneled nearly $10 million to GFI since 2019, records show. The Open Society Policy Center, Soros' advocacy nonprofit, sent $7.45 million to GFI's action fund during that time.
While GFI's total contributions are unknown, the sheer amount of Soros' cash likely makes him one of the group's largest - if not its largest - donors. GFI and its action fund are not required to file tax documents to the Internal Revenue Service since they are fiscally sponsored projects of the New Venture Fund and Sixteen Thirty Fund, not standalone organizations.
GFI's four-person board, meanwhile, includes Tom Perriello, the executive director of Soros' Open Society-U.S, who maintains close access to the White House.
Perriello's name appears in White House visitor logs 13 times on eight different days between May 2021 and September 2022, according to a review of the records. On three of the days he visited, multiple appointments appeared on the forms.
"Open Society is proud to support Governing for Impact's efforts to protect American workers, consumers, patients, students and the environment through policy reform," Perriello previously told Fox News Digital.
"Their work gives voice to people often overlooked in a regulatory environment too often dominated by corporate interests," he said. "Our support for Governing for Impact's work is publicly available on our website and we are transparent about our enthusiasm for their victories for American workers and families."
GFI was established with a vision of preparing the Biden administration for a "transformative governance" and produced "more than 60 in-depth, shovel-ready regulatory recommendations" for dozens of federal agencies," a now-deleted job advertisement on Harvard Law School's website read.
The group has bragged in internal memos of executing more than 20 of its regulatory agenda items as they work with the administration to reverse Trump-era deregulations by focusing on education, health care, housing, labor, and environmental issues.
GFI has also organized legal policy memos for at least ten federal departments and agencies and ten administrative law primers as of 2021, according to an internal slideshow from the group.
"We're glad the administration is revising its Title IX guidance," Rachel Klarman, GFI's executive director, previously told Fox News Digital. "During the transition, Governing for Impact made a number of recommendations for how this policy could be improved, which are available on our public website."
Klarman also previously said that they are proud of the "ongoing efforts to help ensure that the federal government works more effectively for everyday working Americans, not just for members of industry groups that have long devoted vast resources to pursuing their own policy agendas."
The public will have 30 days to provide comments on the rule before its implementation.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Fox News Digital's Andrew Mark Miller contributed reporting. | US Federal Policies |
A Houston man who was believed to have been missing for more than eight years actually returned home within days after he was reported missing in 2015, police said Thursday.
A day after police detectives separately interviewed 25-year-old Rudy Farias IV and his mother, Janie Santana, and determined Farias had only briefly gone missing as a 17-year-old, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said the department's investigation is ongoing and the Harris County District Attorney's Office has not accepted criminal charges against either Farias or Santana.
Police revealed Thursday that on multiple occasions since Farias was reported missing, he and his mother allegedly both provided fictitious names and identifying information when interacting with officers, with HPD detective Christopher Zamora adding that Santana "continued to deceive police by remaining adamant that Rudy was still missing."
"It is a criminal offense to give false names (to police)," Zamora also said during a Thursday news conference. "There were instances when he did that, and his mother. At this time, our DA has declined to accept charges until our investigation is complete."
He also said Farias was "safe" and with his mother, by choice, as of Thursday.
Finner referred to Farias as a "potential" victim a day after Houston-area activist Quanell X sat in on Farias' interview with police and then told reporters that Farias had described being abused, manipulated and even held captive by his mother since he was reported missing in March 2015.
"I'm not going to say he's a victim or not," Finner said Thursday. "We're going to give respect to everybody that's involved. We're going to conduct our investigation. We're kind of right at the beginning of it."
Farias’ mother reported him missing in early March 2015 after he had taken the family’s two dogs for a walk and the animals returned home without him. Authorities had presumed him to still be missing until last Thursday, June 29, when Farias was found outside a church at Avenue L and 76th Street, according to HPD.
But officials now say he came back home within 48 hours after he was reported missing.
Farias' mother released a statement Monday through the nonprofit Texas Center for the Missing, claiming her son was unresponsive when he was located by a good Samaritan who called 911 last week.
“My son Rudy is receiving the care he needs to overcome his trauma, but at this time, he is nonverbal and not able to communicate with us,” Santana said in her Monday statement. “We are asking for privacy during this difficult time but will share more details as Rudy continues to heal.”
Questions about whether Farias had truly been missing began to surface shortly thereafter, with Houston TV station ABC13 reporting Wednesday that some of the family’s neighbors had regularly seen Farias during the years since he had been reported missing. Also Wednesday, detectives from HPD interviewed both Farias and Santana.
Quanell X escorted Farias to his interview with police and later told reporters that he had sat in on the conversation and heard disturbing details about Farias’ relationship with Santana. According to Quanell X, Farias had run away back in 2015 and returned home shortly thereafter, at which point his mother allegedly convinced Farias that he might get in legal trouble if authorities found out he wasn’t actually missing. Quanell X added that Farias told police he had been abused by his mother, including sexually, and he had at times been locked inside his room and given psychedelic drugs.
Houston police forcefully pushed back on some of those claims Thursday. Investigators said Farias never discussed sexual abuse involving his mother.
"The investigation is still going on," Finner said.
However, shortly after Thursday’s press conference, some of Farias’ family members stood outside of HPD headquarters and echoed the allegations of sexual abuse against Farias’ mother. Pauline Sanchez, Farias’ aunt, accused her half-sister of hiding Farias away from the family and added that she hasn’t gotten a chance to talk with her nephew since 2015.
“How is a mom going to do something to her child knowing that is very wrong?,” Sanchez said. “There should be charges.” | US Police Misconduct |
- JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told an audience of business leaders to "help" Nikki Haley's 2024 Republican campaign for president.
- "Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than [Donald] Trump," he said at the Dimon said at a conference hosted by The New York Times' DealBook franchise.
- In the audience was hedge fund veteran Bill Ackman. Billionaire Elon Musk, media titan David Zaslav and Disney CEO Bob Iger were all scheduled to speak later in the day.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has a message for some of the world's wealthiest corporate leaders: Help Nikki Haley's presidential campaign.
"Even if you're a very liberal Democrat, I urge you, help Nikki Haley, too. Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than [Donald] Trump," Dimon said Wednesday at a conference hosted by The New York Times' DealBook franchise.
Present in the audience for Dimon's remarks was a who's who of Wall Street titans, including hedge fund veteran Bill Ackman. Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, media titan David Zaslav and Disney CEO Bob Iger were all scheduled to speak later in the day.
Dimon was clearly addressing his remarks to the people in the room, and not to all liberal Democrats.
The comments come as Haley is riding a wave of new support from key big money political backers. On Tuesday, the political network financed largely by billionaire Charles Koch formally endorsed the former governor of South Carolina.
Haley told CNBC's Squawk Box that she and Dimon spoke by phone recently about the state of the economy. Dimon has a net worth is $1.8 billion, according to Forbes.
At the Dealbook conferene, Dimon stopped short of saying the Republican presidential nominee should be anyone but Trump.
"I would never say that, you know, because he might be the president and I have to deal with him too," said Dimon.
Haley's current momentum extends beyond Wall Street. A recent CNN poll showed 42% of likely GOP primary voters in the key primary state of New Hampshire supported Trump, with Haley in second place, getting 20%. For Haley, that's an 8-point increase since the last CNN/University of New Hampshire poll in September.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was in fourth place in that poll at 9%, behind former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's 14%. | US Federal Elections |
The Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed a prior ruling on Thursday that declared Governor Katie Hobbs as governor of Arizona, serving Kari Lake another loss in her election lawsuit.
Lake, the former Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate who ran against Hobbs in November's election, filed a lawsuit in December challenging the results of the midterm in which she lost to Hobbs by just over 17,000 votes.
The suit alleges that election officials intentionally triggered malfunctions with voting machines on Election Day to disenfranchise same-day Republican voters. Lake's arguments were ultimately dismissed by Maricopa County Judge Peter Thompson, who ruled the lawsuit failed to provide "clear and convincing" evidence of intentional misconduct.
Lake appealed Thompson's decision to the Arizona Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court, although Arizona's high court denied her petition and asked the appeals court to first hear the case.
In its opinion published on Thursday, the Court of Appeals said Lake's claim that the printer issues kept same-day voters from casting ballots "was, quite simply, sheer speculation," adding there was no evidence that voters who experienced these issues were unable to cast their ballots.
Lake had also alleged that a misstep in Maricopa County's chain of custody for early voting may have permitted ballots to be "wrongfully inserted" before counting began. The Court of Appeals, however, said that Thompson's ruling had "reasonably credited testimony from Maricopa County elections officials over testimony from Lake's witness" in relation to these claims.
"For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the superior court's ruling confirming Hobbs' election as governor," read the court's conclusion. The appeals court also denied Hobbs' request for attorney's fees, affirming Thompson's prior decision, as well.
When asked for comment, Ross Tremble, Lake's communications director, pointed Newsweek to a tweet from Lake on Thursday evening, which says that she plans to take her lawsuit to the Arizona Supreme Court.
"BREAKING: I told you we would take this case all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court, and that's exactly what we are going to do," Lake's statement read. "Buckle up, America!"
Lake has repeatedly vowed to not concede in her race with Hobbs, including at an event in Bettendorf, Iowa, last week, where she told the audience that her father used to tell her to "stay in the fight, but if you lose, you lose with dignity."
"I didn't lose, so I'm not doing that," she told the crowd.
The candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump has also said she is "entertaining" a potential Senate run in 2024 against independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema and Democrat Ruben Gallego.
Despite polling that shows a potential race between the three could go in Lake's favor, the Republican said earlier this month that her legal battle remains her priority. | US Federal Elections |
WASHINGTON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday struggled to privately resolve divisions that have prevented them from installing Steve Scalise as speaker of the chamber, which has been leaderless for nine days.
Currently the No. 2 House Republican, Scalise narrowly secured his party's nomination to replace ousted speaker Kevin McCarthy but was short of the 217 votes needed to win the job as several of his fellow Republicans said they would not back him in a vote by the House.
Scalise's bid appeared to be headed in the wrong direction. Several Republicans said they would stick with rival Jim Jordan, who lost to Scalise in a secret-ballot vote on Wednesday. Republicans can afford no more than four defections as they control the House by a narrow 221-212 margin.
McCarthy, who was deposed by a small group of Republicans on Oct. 3, told reporters that Scalise had a "big hill" to get to 217 votes. "He told a lot of people he was going to be at 150 and he wasn't there," McCarthy said.
As they came and went from a closed-door meeting, Republicans appeared no closer to breaking the impasse.
"We're not necessarily getting anywhere," said Representative Nicole Malliotakis.
The Republican infighting has left the chamber unable to act to support Israel's war against Palestinian militants of Hamas and pass government spending bills before funding runs out on Nov. 17.
Republicans hope to avoid a repeat of the embarrassing spectacle that occurred in January, when hardline conservatives forced McCarthy to endure 15 floor votes over four days before winning the gavel.
But some said they would not resolve the situation until they scheduled a vote on the House floor, where lawmakers would have to publicly reveal whether or not they supported Scalise.
“Chairman Xi talks about how democracy doesn't work, and we're proving him right,” Representative Michael McCaul said. "We may just have to bring it to the floor and have another episode like we had with McCarthy."
'AT A STANDSTILL'
Jordan has encouraged his supporters to vote for Scalise, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"We’re at a standstill," said hardline Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Scalise opponent. Asked if the meeting changed her mind, she responded, "No way."
While McCarthy was the first speaker to be removed in a formal vote, the last two Republicans to hold the job wound up leaving under pressure from party hardliners.
Democrats have backed their leader, Hakeem Jeffries, in past speaker votes and are expected to do so again. One Democratic leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they could support a bipartisan compromise but have not yet been approached by Republicans.
Scalise, 58, gained near legendary status within Republican circles by surviving a severe gunshot wound after a gunman opened fire during practice for a charity baseball game in 2017. He also commands widespread respect as a veteran legislator, who has spent years in party leadership positions.
But Scalise also faces new health concerns as he undergoes treatment for multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, which some Jordan supporters cited as a reason not to vote for him.
Jordan was endorsed by former President Donald Trump and appeared to be the favorite of populist minded hardliners.
Trump in an interview with Fox News Radio on Thursday said he did not object to Scalise as speaker.
"Steve is a man that is in serious trouble from the standpoint of his cancer. I mean, he's got to get better for himself," he said in an interview with Fox News Radio.
Several Republicans left Thursday’s conference meeting saying they might need to compromise with Democrats to move forward, given how firmly some Republicans oppose Scalise.
"We really don't have anybody negotiating on our behalf for anything. We're just kind of stuck in our own world," Representative Steve Womack said. "It's pretty simple to me that if the House is going to reopen that the Democrats are going to have to be a willing player in whatever happens."
(This story has been corrected to fix Marjorie Taylor Greene's name in paragraph 13)
Read Next
Reporting by David Morgan, Moira Warburton and Richard Cowan; additional reporting by Makini Brice and Costas Pitas; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone, Lisa Shumaker and Grant McCool
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | US Congress |
Suspect found dead after a teenager and 3 women killed in Memphis
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) — A man believed to have fatally shot three women and a teenager in Memphis, Tennessee, has been found dead following an hours-long manhunt, police have confirmed.
Memphis Police say Mavis Christian Jr., 52, was found in a vehicle on Alta Road at around 3:30 a.m. Sunday. He had what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Christian was wanted in three separate shootings that killed four and left another critically wounded Saturday night.
At around 5:45 p.m. Saturday, police were called to a shooting on Field Lark Drive in southwest Memphis. There, authorities found a woman and a girl, 13, who had been killed, and a 15-year-old girl who had been critically wounded, Memphis Police Officer Christopher Williams told The Associated Press.
Shortly before 9:30 p.m., police found another woman dead on Howard Drive in Whitehaven.
Memphis Police said through the course of their investigation, they determined the shootings were connected, and all involved Christian.
Police said Christian was related to the victims but could not immediately specify how they were related. The names of the victims have not yet been released.
Authorities have not yet released any additional information.
Christian’s criminal record stretched back to a 1996 aggravated assault charge, the Commercial Appeal reported, citing court records. He also faced charges of felony domestic violence, aggravated assault, theft and vandalism in 2018, the newspaper also reported.
The suspect’s uncle, Melvin Christian, told The Associated Press that he didn’t know what might have triggered the violence.
“I hadn’t seen him in years,” Melvin Christian said when reached by phone Sunday.
He said he didn’t know any details about the shootings, including who had been shot. When told that four people had died, he replied, “Oh Lord.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
The New York judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial and his law clerk have received hundreds of harassing messages that court security has deemed “serious and credible” since the former president began publicly criticizing court staff.
Since October 3, when Trump posted on social media a baseless allegation about Judge Arthur Engoron’s law clerk, threats against the judge “increased exponentially” and were also directed to his clerk, according to Charles Hollon, a court officer-captain in New York assigned to the Judicial Threats Assessment unit of the Department of Public Safety, who signed a sworn statement.
Hollon said the threats against the judge and his clerk are “considered to be serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative.”
Trump’s social media posting prompted the judge to impose a gag order prohibiting the former president from making statements about court staff. The gag order was later extended to include Trump’s attorneys from commenting on the judge’s private communications with his law clerk.
At the time, the judge said his chambers had received hundreds of harassing and threatening calls and emails. The additional details made public in the Wednesday filing, however, reveal the extent of that contact, including dozens of messages daily, phone doxing and the increased use of antisemitic language.
Engoron has fined Trump twice for a total of $15,000 for violating the gag order.
Last week, a New York appeals court judge temporarily lifted the gag order after Trump argued it violated his constitutional rights. The ruling to stay the order is temporary to allow time for a fuller panel of judges to weigh in.
In a court filing Wednesday, a lawyer for the Court Administration for New York state asked an appeals court panel to keep the gag order in place and deny Trump’s effort to permanently lift the gag order. Hollon’s sworn statement was included in the filing. Lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office also urged the court to keep the gag order in place, writing that a “speedy denial” is necessary to ensure the safety of court staff as well as “the integrity and the orderly administration of the proceedings through the end of the trial.”
Hollon said Engoron’s law clerk has received 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and 30-50 messages daily on social media platforms and two personal email addresses.
On a daily basis, he said, the judge and his staff receive hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, email and voicemail messages such that security staff are “having to constantly reassess and evaluate what security protections to put in place to ensure the safety of the judge and those around him.”
Since the gag order was lifted on November 16, Hollon said, the number of messages increased. He also said about half of the harassing messages the clerk received were antisemitic.
Trump’s brief on the matter is due Monday. | US Political Corruption |
WASHINGTON — Even as his party has backed away from the issue, Donald Trump is doubling down on his calls to replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” if he’s elected president again.
“I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” Trump said in a pair of late-night posts on social media.
Trump promised “much better Healthcare than Obamacare for the American people,” although he hasn’t offered a replacement plan.
The former president made a similar promise in 2016. The following year, he endorsed a Republican-led bill to undo a substantial portion of the law, repealing the ACA’s subsidy extensions and regulations in an attempt to lower costs on the open market. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that it would have rescinded insurance coverage for about 23 million people. It also threatened protections for pre-existing conditions. It fell short in Congress; as did his effort to get the Supreme Court to invalidate the law.
Republicans have abandoned plans to repeal Obamacare in the years since. But they’ve repeatedly struggled to craft alternatives that achieve the coverage extensions and consumer protections under the 2010 law, which was unpopular when Democrats first passed it and became popular as the GOP tried to nix it in 2017.
Still, some Senate Republicans said they’re open to revisiting the effort to unwind and replace the ACA.
“I would love to see us revisit it,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is running for re-election in 2024. “Lowering premiums is critically important to Texans.”
"I authored legislative language in 2017 that would expand choices and dramatically lower premiums, and my language was adopted in the bill the Senate was considering," Cruz said. "Unfortunately ... John McCain famously thrust his thumb downward and killed the effort."
Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, said the key question is “how we reform and replace” the ACA, arguing that “there’s a lot that we can improve upon” and Republicans can’t “run away from the issue.”
“There is broad recognition that a lot of the plans of the ACA are really expensive and really low-quality,” Vance said when asked about Trump’s calls. “I think it’s always been the position of Republicans that we should have better health care.”
Republicans would need to win control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to have any hope of unwinding the ACA, a law that Democrats strongly support.
And Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said reopening the ACA fight in 2025 would require Republicans to craft a replacement plan ahead of time, which they haven’t done.
“We most certainly can do a better job, but it would require us to start proposing what the change would be now so that we wouldn’t be in a position of repealing without having a better replacement,” Rounds said.
Other Republicans are skeptical that they can disentangle and remove the ACA after 13 years of it being entrenched in the U.S. health care system.
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, who’s in line to chair the Finance Committee if Republicans win control of the chamber, said he wants to overhaul health care but rejected the messaging of repealing or eliminating the ACA.
“I don’t think it should be characterized as repealing any particular law,” Crapo said. “It’s basically part of all of the existing health care structure. And I would not say we should eliminate our entire health care structure. But I just think to talk about it in terms of a decade-old debate is not the right characterization.”
Notably, even some hard-right Republicans say they must have an alternative in order to avoid the pitfalls of 2017.
“The devil's in the details. It depends on — replace it with what?” said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of the Freedom Caucus. “What got Republicans in trouble before is they wanted to take it away but didn’t have a means to replace it that the American people would buy. It’s got to be a well-defined plan.”
“It’s a tough topic,” Norman said.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said he favors “massive reforms to our health care system, frankly, irrespective of Obamacare.” He said the law’s coverage expansions don’t guarantee access to quality care.
“So the president is right about that,” he said, referring to Trump. “But my message to the president would be, well, maybe you shouldn’t have cut a crappy deal with [then-Speaker] Paul Ryan when you were president.”
President Joe Biden responded Monday to Trump’s comments signaling he’d seek to “terminate” and find “alternatives” to the ACA.
“My predecessor has once again — God love him — called for cuts that could rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans in Medicaid,” Biden said. “They just don’t give up.” | US Federal Policies |
January 19, 2023 10:07 AM The United States hit its debt limit, beginning a countdown for the Treasury to miss paying a bill and raising fears of a default. The U.S. hit the debt limit, also known as the debt ceiling, on Thursday, the Treasury Department announced. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the Treasury will take “extraordinary measures” to prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its obligations, but the Treasury will only have a few months before those measures are exhausted. "I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States," Yellen said in a letter Thursday to congressional leadership. Those “extraordinary measures” essentially amount to shifting money around government accounts in order to pay incoming bills without issuing new debt. The measures have been used at least 16 times since first being deployed in 1985, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and as recently as 2021. Those measures won’t last long, though, and lawmakers will have to raise the debt ceiling or face the prospect of default, an outcome thought to be catastrophic. Yellen has previously said the measures would be sufficient to carry the U.S. through early June, setting up a rough deadline for the congressional showdown. FEDERAL DEBT LIMIT: WHAT TO KNOW AS REPUBLICANS AND BIDEN PREPARE FOR BATTLE The U.S. has never defaulted on its obligations in the history of these fiscal showdowns. Republicans see the deadline as an opportunity to exact concessions from the Biden administration and Democrats. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. (Cliff Owen/AP) The GOP hopes to see spending cuts in light of soaring inflation and high deficits. Meanwhile, Democrats have pushed back at the notion of Republicans using the deadline as a political tool, given that raising the ceiling doesn’t involve any new spending but rather simply allows for the government to pay off its previous obligations. Meanwhile, among economists and interest groups, there are near unanimous calls for Congress to raise the debt limit and not play a dangerous game of brinkmanship with the Biden administration. "Without qualification, the debt limit must be increased or suspended, and it should be done so as quickly as possible. Ideally, we would return to the practice of lifting the debt ceiling without relying on extraordinary measures, which have become all too ordinary, and refrain from making the increase anything close to a last-minute showdown," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has expressed willingness to work with President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats on a deal to cap government spending and avoid a default, although details of exact numbers and GOP demands are still unclear. “I want to sit down with him now, so there is no problem,” McCarthy said. “I'm sure he knows there's places that we can change that put America on a trajectory that we save these entitlements instead of putting it into bankruptcy the way they have been spending.” Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), the new chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said on Thursday that House Republicans want to use the opportunity to work with the administration on the budget deficit and spending. “The American people rightfully recognize that maintaining Washington’s status quo, which runs up massive deficits and adds trillions to our national debt, is unsustainable," he said. "Instead of attacking his political opponents, President Biden should be spending this time working with House Republicans to address the debt ceiling in a way that imposes some fiscal sanity." CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Yellen has implored Congress to act quickly to avert even the perception that the government might default. “Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability,” she said in a statement earlier this month. | US Federal Policies |
Maine State Police ordered residents in the state's second-largest city to shelter in place Wednesday night (local time) because of an active shooter situation in multiple locations.
Lewiston Police said in a Facebook post that they were dealing with an active shooter incident at Schemengees Bar and Grille and Sparetime Recreation, a bowling alley.
“Please stay off the roads to allow emergency responders access to the hospitals,” police said.
Fox News' Jacqui Heinrich is reporting that at least 22 people have been killed according to law enforcement sources.
On its website, Central Maine Medical Center said staff were “reacting to a mass casualty, mass shooter event” and were coordinating with area hospitals to take in patients.
The alert for Lewiston was made shortly after 8pm as the Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office reported that law enforcement agencies were investigating “two active shooter events.” The sheriff's office said the suspect was still at large.
“We are encouraging all businesses to lock down and or close while we investigate,” the sheriff's office reported.
A spokesperson for Maine Department of Public Safety urged residents to stay in their homes with their doors locked.
“Law enforcement is currently investigating at two locations right now," Shannon Moss said. "Again please stay off the streets and allow law enforcement to diffuse the situation.”
The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office released two photos of the suspect on its Facebook page that showed a gunman walking into an establishment with a weapon raised to his shoulder.
Gov. Janet Mills released a statement echoing those instructions. She said she has been briefed on the situation and will remain in close contact with public safety officials.
Ange Amores, a spokesperson for the city of Lewiston, said city officials are not commenting on the shooting. Amores said Maine State Police were planning to hold a news conference, likely at city hall, to update the public on Wednesday night.
Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent, said he was “deeply sad for the city of Lewiston and all those worried about their family, friends and neighbours” and was monitoring the situation. King’s office said the senator would be headed directly home to Maine once the Senate’s final vote is held Thursday afternoon.
More to come | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Subsets and Splits