Florida governor’s campaign gets off to shaky start after launch was marred by glitches
The House has finished its legislative work for the week, and members are preparing to go home for Memorial Day weekend without a deal reached on raising the debt ceiling.
The House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, told reporters this morning that debt ceiling talks continued well past midnight last night, and negotiators are working around the clock until a deal is reached.
Continue reading...Florida governor announces candidacy for the Republican nomination
With the executive and legislative branches locked in a standoff over raising the debt ceiling, let’s check on the third branch of government: the judiciary. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that supreme court chief justice John Roberts gave a speech in which he vowed that the court would maintain the highest ethical standards, despite allegations of improper ties between some justices and parties with interests in their cases:
The chief justice of the US supreme court, John Roberts, said he and the other justices were working to hold themselves to the “highest standards” of ethical conduct.
Continue reading...Yellen tells Congress there is unlikely to be any wiggle room if catastrophic default is to be avoided
Fresh off of winning an expensive civil judgment against Donald Trump, advice columnist E Jean Carroll is once again suing the former president over statements he made about her on CNN:
The author and columnist E Jean Carroll will go back to court to demand “very substantial” additional damages from Donald Trump for the disparaging remarks he made about her during a televised CNN town hall just a day after he was found liable in a civil case for sexually assaulting her.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan agreed to the extra step of personally instructing Trump on the restrictions after listing them May 8 in what’s known as a protective order.
Trump is allowed to speak publicly about the case, but he risks being held in contempt if he uses evidence turned over by prosecutors in the pretrial discovery process to target witnesses or others involved in the case.
Continue reading...South Carolina senator makes speech referencing work and immigration as he announces campaign to run for Republican nomination in 2024 race
Tim Scott is on stage now announcing his presidential bid.
“America is the greatest nation on God’s green earth,” the senator began. “And our greatness doesn’t come from politicians, doesn’t come from the government. It comes from we, the people.”
Continue reading...Pair to meet in person after ‘productive’ phone call on Sunday but Democrats warn Republican demands are not acceptable
Joe Biden was due to meet Kevin McCarthy on Monday as the White House sought to stave off a US debt default, a potentially catastrophic event the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has said will happen on or around 1 June if no deal to raise the $31.4tn debt ceiling is reached.
If the debt limit is not raised, the US government will default on its bills: a historic first with probably catastrophic consequences. Federal workers would be furloughed, global stock markets would be likely to crash and the US economy would probably drop into recession.
Continue reading...Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, has said that without action the US will cease to be able to pay its debts around 1 June
Negotiations for a deal to raise the US debt ceiling and thereby avoid a default with potentially catastrophic consequences for the world economy briefly resumed Friday before concluding with no progress cited by either side.
Republicans had returned to the bipartisan talks with the White House on Friday evening, hours after negotiations had come to an abrupt stop earlier in the day.
Continue reading...Republican Florida governor reportedly dismissed Donald Trump’s chances as he gears up to announce his candidacy on Wednesday
The odds for Republican presidential candidates who are not Donald Trump appear to be long, but that doesn’t mean running is a bad idea. The former president is in an array of legal trouble, facing a felony indictment in New York City and an ongoing investigation by justice department special counsel Jack Smith. Meanwhile, in Georgia, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that we could learn whether a county district attorney will bring charges against Trump or his allies in late July. If any of these matters became serious enough to knock him out of the race, candidates like Tim Scott or Ron DeSantis could benefit:
The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia signalled Thursday that charging decisions in the case may come starting the final week of July, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
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...Donna Deegan becomes city’s first female mayor by beating Daniel Davis, Republican backed by hard-right governor
In a major electoral upset on Tuesday, voters in Jacksonville elected their first female mayor, defeating a Republican backed by business leaders and endorsed by Ron DeSantis, the state governor and prospective presidential candidate.
Jacksonville is the most populous Florida city, with about 950,000 residents. Donna Deegan, a Democrat, earned 52% of the vote, beating Daniel Davis. About 217,000 people voted, a turnout of 33%.
Continue reading...Ex-prosecutors express criticism as key Republican allies attempt to derail investigations into former president
As Donald Trump’s legal troubles mount at the federal, state and local levels, the ex-president and his lawyers are banking on their political allies in the Republican party to make attacks on a New York prosecutor who has charged Trump with criminal offenses and to also get them to help derail investigations that endanger his 2024 campaign.
Former prosecutors and members of both parties have voiced strong criticism about the drives by Trump, his lawyers and Republican House allies to attack prosecutors who have filed charges against Trump, or are investigating him, calling such moves antithetical to democratic principles and the rule of law, as well as fruitless.
Continue reading...Gregory W Becker faces grilling from Senate Banking committee over collapse of bank; US president and congressional leaders due to talk
While Republicans in statehouses under their control are moving to restrict abortion access, the party’s current presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has remained mum about how far he would go in curbing the procedure.
He was asked repeatedly last week at a town hall hosted by CNN if he would sign a nationwide abortion ban, but refused to answer. He was similarly unclear in an interview published yesterday by the Messenger.
Continue reading...Virginia congressman Gerry Connolly condemns ‘devastating and unconscionable’ assault on two staffers
Police in Virginia on Monday named the suspect in an attack in which two staffers at the district office of a Democratic congressman were assaulted with a metal baseball bat and required hospital treatment.
Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, was arrested after the attack at Gerry Connolly’s office in Fairfax. Held without bond, Pham faced charges of malicious wounding and aggravated malicious wounding.
Associated Press contributed to this report
Continue reading...Agent for bestselling Australian children’s author says she has ‘nothing to say’ about the ban and Duval county ‘is not important’
Bestselling Australian author Mem Fox has become the latest victim of ultra-conservative Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with the writer’s 1988 children’s book Guess What? being banned in the Jacksonville county of Duval.
The book, about a witch called Daisy O’Grady, appears to have fallen foul of Florida’s parental rights in education bill, widely referred to as the “don’t say gay” law, championed by DeSantis, the Republican widely considered to be Donald Trump’s closest rival for the 2024 presidential race.
Continue reading...The former South Carolina governor – far behind Donald Trump in the polls – says nationwide ban is currently unviable
Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who is vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has distanced herself from calls for a federal abortion ban, saying that to promise such a universal barrier to terminations would be to lie to the American people.
In an interview with CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Haley declined to follow some of her other potential Republican rivals for the presidency by backing a nationwide ban through congressional legislation. Instead, she said she supported the right of each state to set its own abortion limits.
Continue reading...John Kennedy’s comments about Mexicans ‘eating cat food’ came as he urged the US military to enter country to ‘stop the cartels’
Mexicans “would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback” Steakhouse restaurant if it were not for their nation’s proximity to the US, and their country should be invaded because of the presence of drug cartels there, the US senator John Neely Kennedy said.
The Louisiana Republican’s racist remarks drew a strong condemnation from Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, who called Kennedy “a profoundly ignorant man”. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, meanwhile, urged the 37 million Americans of Mexican descent – along with other Latinos in the US – “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.
Continue reading...Experts say party’s ‘tough-on-crime’ approach for 2024 could spark rise in violence and worsen US mass incarceration
Republican and rightwing rhetoric over the state of crime in the US could spark a rise in violent incidents and worsen the country’s mass incarceration problem, experts say, as “tough-on-crime” political ads and messaging seem set to play a large role in the 2024 election.
Violent crime was a huge focus for Republican candidates during the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans spent about $50m on crime ads in the two months leading up to those elections, the ads pushing a dystopian vision of cities ridden by murder, robbery and assault, and of Democratic politicians unwilling to act.
Continue reading...Florida governor lands in crucial early-voting state in Republican nomination process after weeks of lagging behind Trump
Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has rolled out a hefty list of endorsements from Iowa lawmakers as he visited the crucial early-voting state on Saturday in an attempt to garner support for his potential Republican presidential campaign.
The pro-DeSantis Super Pac Never Back Down announced endorsements from 37 Republican Iowa state senators and representatives, including the Iowa senate president, Amy Sinclair, and the state house majority leader, Matt Windschitl.
Continue reading...Chris Sununu said the audience’s conduct ‘doesn’t shine a positive light’ on the state, which will hold the first Republican primary
The governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, said it was “embarrassing” that Republican voters from his state laughed and applauded when Donald Trump mocked E Jean Carroll during a CNN town hall this week.
Sununu may yet have to court such voters in a presidential run of his own.
Continue reading...Walkout lasting more than a week has thrown statehouse into disarray and jeopardized Democrats’ legislative agenda
Oregon Republicans boycotted the statehouse for a ninth day on Thursday, denying lawmakers the quorum necessary to pass legislation, in a protest that could derail hundreds of bills, including proposals on gun control and abortion rights.
While Democrats control the capital in the Pacific north-west state, Republicans have leveraged rules requiring two-thirds of lawmakers be present to pass legislation, which means Democrats need a certain number of Republicans to be there too.
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