Guarantors’ aided Republican congressman after he was charged with fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds
The identities of two people who guaranteed George Santos’s $500,000 bail after the Republican congressman was charged with 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds were set to be revealed on Thursday.
Earlier this week, a federal judge in Long Island, New York, set 12pm ET as the time for the guarantors’ identities to be released.
Continue reading...Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, secured a number of cuts on federal spending, with the borrowing limit suspended until 2025
Joe Biden signed a bill on Saturday to suspend the US debt ceiling, ending a months-long standoff with the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and averting a federal default that could have upended the world economy.
Economists warned that a default could have caused the US unemployment rate to double while significantly damaging gross domestic product.
Continue reading...Compromise package to suspend debt ceiling passed US Senate late on Thursday with 63 votes to 36
The bipartisan bill to solve the US debt ceiling crisis just days before a catastrophic and unprecedented default was on its way to Joe Biden’s desk on Friday as the US president prepared to address the nation and hailed “a big win for our economy and the American people”.
The compromise package negotiated between Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, passed the US Senate late on Thursday.
Continue reading...US president took a tumble at the end of a ceremony honoring air force graduates in Colorado; White House vows to use veto
Supreme court justices on Thursday took aim at pharmacies who overcharge the government for prescription drugs, their unanimous ruling reopening a pathway for legal action by individuals seeking to protect taxpayers’ money.
The case involves “whistleblowers” ostensibly acting for the government, whom a lower court said could not sue pharmacies claiming their own “objectively reasonable” reading of the law allowed them to overbill federal health programs including Medicare and Medicaid.
Continue reading...Moderate Republicans have touted the historic cuts while Democrats present the deal as a crucial compromise
Mike Pence is expected to launch his 2024 presidential bid within the next two weeks, The Messenger reports.
In a screenshot of an email sent by former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to delegates of the Georgia Republican Party, Lake wrote:
Continue reading...Freedom caucus has attacked House leader Kevin McCarthy’s deal with Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling before the default deadline of 5 June
Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have attacked the proposed spending cuts in the debt ceiling bill as woefully inadequate, and vowed to oppose the legislation when it hits the floor.
“We had the time to act, and this deal fails – fails completely,” Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, chair of the Freedom Caucus, said on Tuesday. “We will do everything in our power to stop it and end it now.”
Continue reading...House speaker says he isn’t worried the agreement will fail as prominent rightwinger Chip Roy calls it a ‘turd sandwich’
The Republican speaker of the US House, Kevin McCarthy, insisted on Tuesday that supporting the debt ceiling deal would be “easy” for his party and it was likely to pass through Congress despite one prominent rightwinger’s verdict that the proposed agreement is a “turd sandwich”.
Amid loud denunciations from the Republican right and also from closer to the centre, McCarthy said he was not worried the agreement would fail, or that it would threaten his hold on the speaker’s gavel.
Continue reading...Some members of Congress question if they received enough concessions in Biden and McCarthy’s agreement
US political leaders appeared bullish on Monday that they can sell a bipartisan compromise debt ceiling deal to enough mainstream lawmakers – overcoming boisterous criticism from left and right – urgently enough to avert a first-ever national default on the $31.4tn the US owes creditors.
Despite a lot of diplomacy and even arm-twisting still to come on Capitol Hill in the next few days, Joe Biden left the White House to head to Delaware on Monday afternoon smiling and teasing reporters as he took questions, while the first lady, Jill Biden, waited on the lawn.
Continue reading...President says deal struck with Kevin McCarthy protects ‘historic economic recovery’ but it needs approval from a divided Congress
Joe Biden has said a bipartisan deal to raise the $31.4tn US debt ceiling and avoid a default is ready to move to Congress and urged lawmakers to pass the agreement he struck with Kevin McCarthy.
“This is a deal that’s good news for ... the American people,” the president said at the White House on Sunday night after a call with McCarthy to put the final touches to a tentative deal struck the previous day. “It takes the threat of catastrophic default off the table, protects our hard-earned and historic economic recovery,” he said.
Continue reading...Default deadline pushed to 5 June as work requirements for food aid recipients reportedly emerge as final sticking point
President Joe Biden and top congressional Republican Kevin McCarthy held a phone conversation on Saturday evening, according to a person familiar with their plans, amid signs that a deal in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations was close to being struck.
McCarthy said earlier on Saturday that he was making “progress” in negotiations on raising the federal government’s debt ceiling, as the nation faced risk of default in little more than a week.
Continue reading...Republican gives positive remarks to reporters as 11 Democratic senators sign letter to Biden urging him to use 14th amendment to avoid default
Eleven Democratic senators have signed a letter to Joe Biden urging him to consider invoking the 14th amendment to prevent the United States from defaulting if the debt ceiling is not raised.
The letter, which first became public yesterday, was signed by Democrats Tina Smith, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Ed Markey, Mazie Hirono, Peter Welch, Richard Blumenthal, Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse, John Fetterman and Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.
Continue reading...Members voted along party lines to refer a resolution to remove the lying congressman to the House ethics committee
Republicans successfully sidestepped an effort to force them into a vote to expel George Santos, the New York representative, from Congress, which could have narrowed their already slim four-seat majority.
The House voted along party lines, 221-204, to refer a resolution to expel the congressman to the House ethics committee, with Santos himself joining his Republican colleagues in voting to do so.
Continue reading...Sebastien Lai, son of Jimmy, also criticises Vatican over failure to hold China to account over human rights abuses
The British son of the jailed Hong Kong media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has criticised Britain and the Vatican for failing to speak out strongly against the crackdown on dissent in the Chinese territory.
At a Washington event about the human rights situation in Hong Kong, Sebastien Lai said self-censorship in the former British colony was the anticipated result of the national security crackdown there, but the “hypocrisy” of some governments trying to trade with China was unexpected.
Continue reading...Joe Biden will veto a border security proposal introduced by Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, the White House has announced.
The GOP last week introduced the Secure the Border Act of 2023, their attempt to break the long-running deadlock in Washington over reforming America’s immigration system. House speaker Kevin McCarthy says it would improve technology deployed to monitor the United State’s southern and northern borders and increase the number of Border Patrol officers, while also satisfying rightwing priorities such as restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall.
The Administration strongly supports productive efforts to reform the Nation’s immigration system but opposes H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act of 2023, which makes elements of our immigration system worse. A successful border management strategy must include robust enforcement at the border of illegal crossings, deterrence to discourage illegal immigration, and legal pathways to ensure that those in need of protection are not turned away to face death or serious harm.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s approach to border management is grounded in this strategy – expanding legal pathways while increasing consequences for illegal pathways, which helps maintain safe, orderly, and humane border processing. However, the Administration is limited in what it can achieve by an outdated statutory framework and inadequate resources, particularly in this time of unprecedented global movement. H.R. 2 does nothing to address the root causes of migration, reduces humanitarian protections, and restricts lawful pathways, which are critical alternatives to unlawful entry.
Supreme court justice did not report Crow’s tuition payments on his annual financial disclosures, ProPublica reports
A new investigation by ProPublica revealed that billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow paid the tuition of Mark Martin, a grandnephew of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.
According to ProPublica, Mark Martin, whom Thomas obtained legal custody over when Martin was 6-years old, attended a private boarding school in northern Georgia called Hidden Lakes Academy for about a year.
“Harlan Crow has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate, especially at-risk youth… he and his wife have supported many young Americans through scholarship and other programs at a variety of schools…
Harlan and Kathy have particularly focused on students who are at risk of falling behind or missing out on opportunities to better themselves… Tuition and other financial assistance is given directly to academic institutions, not to students or to their families. These scholarships and other contributions have always been paid solely from personal funds, sometimes held at and paid through the family business.”
A New York judge has thrown out Donald Trump’s 2021 lawsuit that accused the New York Times of an “insidious plot” to obtain his tax records.
Vice president Kamala Harris will meet with Google and Microsoft CEOs today to discuss AI risks.
Iowa lawmakers have passed a Republican-led bill that allows teenagers to work longer hours and take previously banned jobs.
Continue reading...For the Guardian, Lyz Lenz looks at the relationship between Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, and what the latter’s ouster from Fox News this week means for the former president’s latest campaign for the White House:
At an 18 February 2017 rally, Donald Trump railed against immigrants and violence. He was unusually focused on Sweden, warning the crowd about recent terrorist attacks in the country: “You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” If a terrorist attack in Sweden seemed unbelievable, it’s because it was. There had been no attack by immigrants the night before Trump spoke. The most recent attacks on Sweden, at the time, were a series of bombings between November 2016 and January 2017 that were allegedly connected to the neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance.
Continue reading...Oldest president to seek re-election tackles issue a day after officially kicking off his 2024 bid
Senate Democrats have demanded answers from the supreme court after a series of reports indicating at least two justices have relationships with parties interested in the court’s decisions that they did not disclose.
But the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, said on the floor today that the court continues to have his confidence:
Continue reading...The Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee has asked chief justice John Roberts to testify on 2 May about the court’s ethics, following revelations of undisclosed links between a Republican megadonor and conservative justice Clarence Thomas.
In a letter to Roberts, judiciary committee chair Richard Durbin did not mention those reports about Thomas specifically, but noted that since he last addressed the court’s ethics in 2011 “there has been a steady stream of revelations regarding Justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally. These problems were already apparent back in 2011, and the Court’s decade-long failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence. The status quo is no longer tenable.”
Continue reading...Media empire still faces defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic as shareholders reportedly considering trip to the courts
A top House Republican has signaled that the party will indeed try to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the New York Times reports.
Mark Green, the chair of the House homeland security committee, told donors this weekend that the effort would kick off this week when the secretary testifies before his committee, which happened Tuesday. The Times, citing a recording of a House Freedom Caucus fundraiser it obtained, said the case would focus on Mayorkas’s “dereliction of duty and his intentional destruction of our country through the open southern border.”
Continue reading...Conspiracy theorist and election denier Marjorie Taylor Greene says national guardsman Jack Teixeira has been treated unfairly
Senator Lindsey Graham condemned his fellow Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene as “terribly irresponsible” on Sunday, after the far-right congresswoman defended the air national guardsman charged with leaking Pentagon intelligence documents.
Speaking on ABC’s This Week show, Graham said the leaks had “done a lot of damage to our standing” and criticized “those who are trying to sugarcoat this on the right”.
Continue reading...