Category Archives: US Politics

Biden and McCarthy to hold White House talks in bid to reach debt deal

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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.

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US debt ceiling talks ‘productive’ as Biden and McCarthy to meet 10 days from deadline

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A Sunday night phone call between the president and Republican House speaker was reported to have struck a more positive tone

US president Joe Biden and House Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy have held a “productive” phone call on the continued impasse over the debt ceiling and promised to meet on Monday after Biden returned to Washington.

McCarthy, speaking to reporters after the call, said there were positive discussions on solving the crisis and that staff-level talks were set to resume later on Sunday.

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Trans girl denied graduation ceremony after US school’s dress-code ruling

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ACLU says verdict of federal judge not to reverse decision in Gulfport, Mississippi is ‘as disappointing as it is absurd’

A transgender girl in Mississippi did not participate in her high school graduation ceremony Saturday because school officials told her to dress like a boy and a federal judge did not block the officials’ decision, an attorney for the girl’s family said.

Linda Morris, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, said the ruling handed down late Friday by federal judge Taylor McNeel in the Mississippi city of Gulfport “is as disappointing as it is absurd”.

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Viral story of migrants displacing unhoused veterans from hotels turns out to be false

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Leader of non-profit organization accused of fabricating stories about veterans being kicked out of hotels in upstate New York

Recent reports about how migrants displaced unhoused veterans from upstate New York hotels have turned out to be false after circulating widely among rightwing media outlets.

In an odd saga involving apparently altered receipts and paid unhoused actors, the chief executive of Yerik Israel Toney Foundation (YIT) – a non-profit organization focused on housing military veterans – has been accused of fabricating stories about unhoused veterans getting kicked out of hotels to make space for migrants.

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Mother of girl who died in US border patrol custody says agents ignored her

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Mabel Alvarez Benedicks says eight-year-old daughter ‘cried and begged for her life’ but did not receive hospital care for influenza

The mother of an eight-year-old girl who died in US border patrol custody said on Friday that agents repeatedly ignored pleas to hospitalize her medically fragile daughter as she felt pain in her bones, struggled to breathe and was unable to walk.

Agents said her daughter’s diagnosis of influenza did not require hospital care, Mabel Alvarez Benedicks said in an emotional phone interview. They knew the girl had a history of heart problems and sickle cell anemia.

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Debt ceiling talks briefly resume as US default deadline creeps closer

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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.

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FBI broke own rules in January 6 and BLM intelligence search, court finds

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Critics decry ‘egregious’ abuse after Fisa court shows repeated violations related to vast foreign intelligence database

FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the January 6 insurrection and racial justice protests in 2020, according court order released Friday.

FBI officials said the thousands of violations, which also include improper searches of donors to a congressional campaign, predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. But the problems could nonetheless complicate FBI and justice department efforts to receive congressional reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program that law enforcement officials say is needed to counter terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime.

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Georgia prosecutor signals charges in 2020 election inquiry may come end of July

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Fani Willis prepared her team for remote work during that time, expected to be the window for indictments

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.

The indication from the prosecutor, Fani Willis, first came during a meeting with her full team where she told them to make preparations to work remotely during the final week of July and through the first weeks of August, the people said.

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China wants to subordinate west, US politician claims on UK visit

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Republican Mike Gallagher, leading delegation to London, says world is in ‘window of maximum danger’

Beijing wants to “subordinate and humiliate” the west, according to the Republican chair of a newly created China committee in Congress who is leading a delegation of hawkish US politicians on a two-day trip to the UK.

Mike Gallagher argued that China, under President Xi Jinping, believed in “the inevitable demise of capitalism”, and said he hoped to better understand how far British politicians of all parties shared his committee’s concerns.

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House speaker McCarthy says ‘I see the path’ to debt ceiling deal with Democrats – as it happened

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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.

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Gun violence is top public health concern for quarter of Americans – poll

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After several mass shootings this year, 26% of Americans believe guns are the number one public health threat

A quarter of Americans now believe guns are the number one public health threat, according to new polling.

According to the Axios/Ipsos American Health Index, 26% of Americans believe access to guns is the top threat to public health. Around 25% believe opioids and fentanyl are the top concern.

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US China hawks to press UK minister for tougher line on Beijing

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Republican-led group expected to lobby Ben Wallace at informal lunch meeting during Westminster visit

A Republican-led group of China hawks from the US Congress will visit Westminster on Friday where they are expected to meet the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, for lunch and press for the UK to take a tougher line on Beijing.

The 11-strong delegation is led by the Republican congressman Mike Gallagher, who chairs a high-profile, newly created China committee. Some fear a strident anti-Beijing tone will alienate centrist and left-leaning politicians in the UK.

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Pentagon leaks suspect was warned off viewing classified material – prosecutors

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Jack Teixeira was admonished repeatedly for accessing and taking notes on intelligence documents, says court filing

Jack Teixeira, the US air national guard member charged with being behind the so-called Pentagon leaks of highly classified military documents, was warned repeatedly over his mishandling of classified material, according to a court filing.

Justice department lawyers made the disclosure in court papers that urged Teixeira be kept behind bars while he awaits trial in the case stemming from the most consequential intelligence leak in years. The judge is expected to hear more arguments on Friday before issuing a ruling.

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House Republicans sidestep effort to expel George Santos from Congress

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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.

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Montana becomes first US state to ban TikTok

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Greg Gianforte, the governor, signed legislation prohibiting mobile app stores from offering the video-sharing platform by next year

Montana has became the first US state to ban TikTok after the governor signed legislation prohibiting mobile application stores from offering the app within the state by next year.

The move is among the most dramatic in a series of US escalations against TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance. TikTok has come under increasing scrutiny over its ties to China, amid concerns that such links could pose a national security threat.

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Intruder at home of Biden adviser Jake Sullivan bypassed Secret Service agents

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National security adviser confronted apparently intoxicated man at 3am then told his protectors what happened, report says

The US Secret Service was investigating after an apparently intoxicated and confused man walked past agents and into the Washington home of Joe Biden’s national security adviser.

Jake Sullivan confronted the man and told him to leave, the Washington Post first reported, of an incident that happened at about 3am one night in late April. There were no signs of forced entry.

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Trump’s allies attempt to undermine prosecutors endangering his 2024 bid

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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.

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Joe Biden cancels Australian visit amid US domestic debt deadlock

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President had been due to address parliament next week, the first US leader in 10 years to do so, as part of Asia tour

President Joe Biden has cancelled a visit to Australia, the second leg of his upcoming Asia trip, due to the slow-motion crisis building in Washington over the US debt ceiling.

Biden is to attend a three-day summit of G7 leaders that starts on Friday in Hiroshima, Japan, and will return to the US on Sunday.

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OpenAI CEO calls for laws to mitigate ‘risks of increasingly powerful’ AI

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Sam Altman says before Senate judiciary committee that he supports guardrails for technology to minimize harms

The CEO of OpenAI, the company responsible for creating artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT and image generator Dall-E 2, said “regulation of AI is essential” on Tuesday as he testified in front of a Senate judiciary committee panel.

In his first appearance in front of Congress, Sam Altman said he supported regulatory guardrails for the technology that would enable the benefits of artificial intelligence while minimizing the harms.

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Roger Ailes’s widow says Murdochs have ‘wreaked havoc’ on Fox News

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Wife of former CEO forced out over sexual harassment allegations says Rupert Murdoch lacks her husband’s ‘genius’

Rupert Murdoch’s family has “wreaked havoc” on Fox News, said the widow of Roger Ailes, the network’s former chief executive, adding that the 92-year-old media baron would “never come close” to her late husband’s “genius”.

Ailes died on 18 May 2017 at the age of 77. The former Republican operative built Fox News into a rightwing media giant but died less than a year after he was forced out over allegations of extensive sexual harassment.

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