Tag: Breaking News: Politics

Trump’s tax returns released by House Ways and Means Committee
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Democratic Members of the House Ways and Means Committee led by Chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Kent Nishimura | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

The House Ways and Means Committee released six years of former President Donald Trump‘s tax returns on Friday, offering the most detailed account yet of his finances while in the White House.

The panel voted last week to make the returns public with redactions of sensitive information, after a lengthy legal battle. The Ways and Means Committee last month obtained Trump’s federal income tax returns for the years 2015 to 2020, along with tax records for some of his business entities. The panel had sought the records since 2019, when Trump was president, and he tried to block their release in court.

The individual and business tax returns released by the committee can be found here.

The panel released a report earlier this month summarizing the ex-president’s returns. The summary prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation showed Trump declared negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020. He paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017.

Trump’s financial records — some of which came to light through New York Times reporting in recent years — show the former president who ran for office in part on his business acumen routinely declared large losses and paid little or no taxes in multiple years. The tax returns suggest that many of Trump’s businesses saw significant losses from the year he launched his first presidential bid through his first term as commander in chief. Trump has repeatedly said he was smart to use deductions or losses to minimize his tax burden.

A copy of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2015 individual tax return is seen after Trump’s tax returns, obtained late last month after a long court fight, were made public by the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee in Washington, U.S., December 30, 2022.

Julio Cesar Chavez | Reuters

The financial records show:

Trump and his wife Melania declared negative income of $31.7 million, and taxable income of $0, on their 2015 return. They paid $641,931 in federal income taxes.

On their 2016 return, the Trumps declared negative income of $32.2 million, and again recorded $0 of taxable income. They paid $750 in taxes.

Trump and his wife declared $12.8 million in negative income in the 2017 return, with $0 in taxable income. They again paid $750 in taxes.

The 2018 return showed a rosier picture for the Trumps’ finances: they declared $24.4 million in total income, and $22.9 million in taxable income. They paid $999,466 in federal income taxes.

Trump and his wife declared $4.44 million in total income, along with $2.97 million in taxable income, on their 2019 return. They paid $133,445 in taxes.

The 2020 return declared negative income of $4.69 million and no taxable income. They paid no tax and claimed a refund of $5.47 million.

The returns show major losses for many Trump properties during the six years. For instance, a 2015 tax return for “DJT [Donald J. Trump] Holdings LLC” showed a $12 million loss for Trump Turnberry Scotland. The Turnberry golf course lost up to millions of dollars each year until the final year of Trump’s presidency, returns show. Trump paid $63 million in his 2014 purchase of the property, according to an Independent report at the time.

Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel in the Old Post Office building lost millions of dollars each year during his first term in office, tax returns show. The hotel was a hub of activity for Trump allies and others who hoped to curry favor with the former president, and GOP-aligned political committees spent tens of millions of dollars there. Trump’s company completed a deal to buy the building in 2013, arranging for a 60-year lease agreement and putting about $200 million toward developing it into a hotel. NBC News reports the property lost more than $70 million while Trump was in office. The Trump Organization announced earlier this year that it had closed a $375 million sale of the Old Post Office property.

Trump reported foreign bank accounts in the United Kingdom, Ireland and China on his returns from 2015 through 2017. The 2018 through 2020 returns list only an account in the U.K.

The Democratic-led panel released the returns only days before Republicans are set to take control of the House. The vast majority of House GOP lawmakers have defended Trump, who has launched another bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

In a statement by the Trump campaign Friday, the former president criticized the House panel for releasing the returns and the Supreme Court for allowing the committee to obtain them.

Trump argued the documents “once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”

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The former president broke with decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax returns as a candidate in the 2016 election. The 2024 campaign will be Trump’s third bid for president — but the first where the public will have a clearer picture of his finances and business record.

The Democratic-led Ways and Means Committee said it wanted Trump’s tax returns as part of a probe of how the IRS audits presidential returns. The agency is required to audit the sitting president’s returns every year.

House Republicans have signaled their new majority will take a softer tone toward Trump and push to investigate the Biden administration.

In a statement Friday, Ways and Means Committee ranking member Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, contended Democrats unleashed “a dangerous new political weapon” by releasing the returns.

— CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed to this report.
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December 30, 2022
U.S. records 100 million Covid cases, but more than 200 million Americans have probably had it

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The U.S. recorded more than 100 million formally diagnosed and reported Covid-19 cases this week, but the number of Americans who’ve actually had the virus since the beginning of the pandemic is probably more than twice as high.

Covid-19 has easily infected more than 200 million in the U.S. alone since the beginning of the pandemic — some people more than once. The virus continues to evolve into more transmissible variants that dodge immunity from vaccination and prior infection, making transmission incredibly difficult to control as we go into the fourth year of the pandemic.

The U.S. officially recorded more than 100 million cases as of Tuesday, just under one third of the total population, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data isn’t perfect and likely a huge undercount of the actual number of infections, scientists say. While it counts people who’ve tested positive more than once or caught Covid multiple times, it doesn’t capture the number of Covid patients who were asymptomatic and never test or tested at home and didn’t report it.

Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director under the Obama administration, estimates that the reported data reflects less than half of the actual total.

“There are have been at least 200 million infections in the U.S., so this is a small portion of them,” Frieden said. “The question really is will we be better prepared for Covid and other health threats going forward, and the jury is very much still out on that,” he said.

The CDC estimated last spring that nearly 187 million people in the U.S. had caught Covid at least once through February 2022, more than double the number of officially reported cases at the time. The estimate was based on a survey of commercial lab data that found about 58% of Americans had antibodies as a result of a Covid infection. The survey did not account for re-infections or antibodies from vaccination.

The CDC has subsequently recorded more than 21 million confirmed cases from March through Dec. 21 of this year, although this is an underestimate because people who use rapid tests at home are not picked up in the data.

The more than 21 million additional confirmed cases on top of the CDC’s February estimate of about 187 million total infections gives a low-end estimate of more than 208 million infections since the pandemic began.

“It’s really hard to stop this virus, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve shifted the focus to hospitalizations and deaths and not just counting cases,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.

The U.S. has made significant progress since the darkest days of the pandemic. Deaths have dropped about 90% from the pandemic peak in January 2021 when more than 3,000 people were succumbing to the virus daily before widespread vaccination. Daily hospital admissions are down 77% from a peak of more than 21,000 in January 2022 during the massive omicron surge.

Despite this progress, deaths and hospitalizations remain stubbornly high given the widespread availability vaccines and treatments. About 400 people are still dying a day from the virus and about 5,000 are admitted to the hospital daily. The virus is still circulating at what would have been considered a high level earlier in the pandemic, with nearly 70,000 confirmed cases reported a day on average, a significant undercount due to testing at home.

More than a million people have died in the U.S. from Covid since the pandemic began, more than any another country in the world.

“I think people have gotten hardened to it,” Frieden said of Covid’s toll. “Covid is a new bad thing in our environment, and it’s likely to be here for the long term. We don’t know how this will evolve, whether it will get less virulent, more virulent — have years that get better and worse.”

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is stepping down this month, has said the U.S. can consider the pandemic over when Covid hospitalizations and deaths decline to a level similar to the burden from the flu.

For the first, the two viruses are circulating simultaneously at high levels. From October through the first week of December, flu killed 12,000 people while Covid took more than 27,000 lives during that period.

“We’re still in the middle of this — it is not over,” Fauci told the radio show “Conversations on Health Care” in November. “Four hundred deaths per day is not an acceptable level. We want to get it much lower than that.”

Frieden said 95% of people who are dying from Covid aren’t up to date on their shots and 75% of people who would benefit from the antiviral Paxlovid are not receiving it.

“We should celebrate these great tools we have, but we’re not doing a good job of getting getting them into people and that would not just save lives, but reduce the disruption from from Covid,” he said.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid taskforce coordinator, has said people who are up to date on their vaccines and get treated when they have a breakthrough infection face almost no risk of dying from Covid at this point in the pandemic. Jha has called on the older Americans in particular, who are more vulnerable to severe illness, to get boosted so they have more protection during the holidays.

“There are still too many older Americans who have not gotten their immunity updated who have not gotten themselves protected,” Jha told reporters at the White House last week.

Michael Osterholm, a leading epidemiologist, said new Covid variants will pose the biggest threat to progress the U.S. has made in 2023.

China has eased its stringent zero Covid policy, which sought to crush outbreaks of the virus, in response to widespread social unrest during the fall. Infections are now soaring in the country, raising concern that Covid now has even more space to mutate.

The virus has continued to mutate into ever more transmissible versions of omicron over the past year, at the same time that immunity from vaccination or prior infection has waned off.

“We want to believe that after three years of activity, all the immunity that we should have acquired through either vaccination or previous infection should protect us,” said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But with waning immunity and the variants — we can’t say that.”

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December 28, 2022
TikTok banned on government devices under spending bill passed by Congress

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Researchers at the University of Vermont analyzed 1,000 TikTok videos under the most popular hashtags related to body image and eating

Jakub Porzycki | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Under the bipartisan spending bill that passed both chambers of Congress on Friday, TikTok will be banned from government devices, underscoring the growing concern about the popular video-sharing app owned by China’s ByteDance.

The bill, which still has to be signed into law by President Joe Biden, also calls on e-commerce platforms to do more vetting to help deter counterfeit goods from being sold online, and forces companies pursuing large mergers to pay more to file with federal antitrust agencies.

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Congress failed to pass many of the most aggressive bills targeting tech, including antitrust legislation that would require app stores developed by Apple and Google to give developers more payment options, and a measure mandating new guardrails to protect kids online. And though Congress made more headway this year than in the past toward a compromise bill on national privacy standards, there remains only a patchwork of state laws determining how consumer data is protected.

Center-left tech industry group Chamber of Progress cheered the exclusion of several antitrust bills that would have targeted its backers, which include Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta.

“What you don’t see in this year’s omnibus are the more controversial measures that have raised red flags on issues like content moderation,” Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich said in a statement following the release of the package text earlier this week. The group earlier raised concerns about a prominent antitrust measure, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.

Another industry group, NetChoice, also applauded Congress for “refusing to include radical and unchecked progressive proposals to overhaul American antitrust law in this omnibus.”

But the bills lawmakers passed in the spending package will still make their mark on the tech industry in other ways.

TikTok ban on government devices

The banning of TikTok on government devices could benefit rival platforms like Snap and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram that also fight for young consumers’ attention. The bill includes an exception for law enforcement, national security and research purposes.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as FBI Director Christopher Wray, have voiced fear that TikTok’s ownership structure could make U.S. user data vulnerable, since companies based in China may be required by law to hand over user information. TikTok has repeatedly said its U.S. user data is not based in China, though those assurances have done little to alleviate concern.

The company has been working toward a deal with the administration to assuage national security fears through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

“We’re disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices — a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests — rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement following the release of the package text. “The agreement under review by CFIUS will meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level. These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies — plans that we are well underway in implementing — to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them.”

Deterring online counterfeit sales

The spending package also includes the INFORM Consumers Act, which seeks to deter counterfeit, stolen or harmful products from being sold online. The bill requires online marketplaces like Amazon to promptly collect information like bank and contact details from “any high-volume third party seller” and to verify that data.

Though Amazon initially opposed the bill last year, writing that it was “pushed by some big-box retailers” and claiming it would punish small businesses that sell online, the company ended up supporting a version of the bill, saying it was important to have a federal standard rather than a patchwork of state laws. Etsy and eBay had earlier supported the bill.

“Passing the bipartisan INFORM Act would be a major victory for consumers, who deserve to know who they’re buying from when they visit an online marketplace,” Kovacevich said in a statement. “This legislation has been through years of hearings and markups and has earned the support of both parties as well as brick-and-mortar stores and online marketplaces.”

Etsy’s head of Americas advocacy and public policy, Jeffrey Zubricki, said in a statement the bill “will achieve our shared goal of protecting consumers from bad actors while avoiding overly broad disclosure requirements that would harm our sellers’ privacy and hinder their ability to run their creative businesses.”

Higher fees for big mergers

While more ambitious antitrust measures targeting digital platforms didn’t make it into the end-of-year legislation, there is one bill to help raise money for the antitrust agencies that scrutinize mergers. The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act will raise the cost companies pursuing large mergers must pay to file with the antitrust agencies, as they’re required to do under the law. The bill also lowers the cost for smaller deals and allows the fees to be adjusted each year based on the consumer price index.

The measure is meant to help fund the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division, which have seen a large uptick in merger filings over the past few years without adequate budget increases.

While it fell short of antitrust advocates’ hopes, the inclusion of the merger filing fee bill still gained praise.

“This is a major milestone for the anti-monopoly movement,” said Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, backed in part by the Omidyar Network. Miller said the bill will “significantly strengthen antitrust law for the first time since 1976.”

“Big Tech, Big Ag and Big Pharma spent extraordinary sums in an unprecedented effort to keep Congress from delivering on antitrust reform and undermine the ability of state and federal enforcers to uphold the law — and they lost,” Miller added.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who sponsored the bill, said in a statement earlier this week its inclusion “is an important step to restructure merger fees after decades of the status quo so we can provide our antitrust enforcers with the resources they need to do their jobs.”

“This is clearly the beginning of this fight and not the end,” she said. “I will continue to work across the aisle to protect consumers and strengthen competition.”

Empowering state AGs in antitrust cases

Another antitrust bill included in the package was a version of the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act. The bill gives state attorneys general the same power as federal enforcers in antitrust cases to choose the district in which they bring their cases and prevent them from being consolidated in a different district.

Under the legislation, companies defending against claims of antitrust violations won’t be able to pick what they perceive to be a more favorable venue to fight the case.

That’s what happened in an antitrust case against Google brought by a group of state attorneys general accusing the company of illegally monopolizing the digital advertising market. The company transferred the case from Texas to New York, to be heard alongside private antitrust complaints against the company in the pretrial proceedings.

Last year, attorneys general from 52 states and territories wrote Congress in support of the legislation.

Transparency on ransomware attacks

The bipartisan RANSOMWARE Act also made it into the spending bill, requiring the FTC to report to Congress on the number and types of foreign ransomware or other cyberattack complaints it receives.

The FTC also must report to Congress trends in numbers it sees in these complaints, including those that come from individuals, companies or governments of foreign adversaries like China, North Korea, Iran and Russia. And it must share information on its litigation actions related to these cases and their results.

The FTC can also share recommendations for new laws to strengthen resilience against these attacks as well as for best practices that businesses can follow to protect themselves.

Research into tech impacts on kids

A version of the Children and Media Research Advancement (CAMRA) Act is included in the package, directing the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct or support research on the effects of media and technology on infants, kids and adolescents.

Those effects could include the impact on cognitive, mental and physical health by technologies like social media, artificial intelligence, video games or virtual reality, according to the legislation. The director of the National Institutes of Health must deliver a report to Congress on its work within two years of the law’s enactment.

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December 23, 2022
Jan. 6 committee sends DOJ historic criminal referral of Trump over Capitol riot

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The Jan. 6 select House committee in a unanimous vote Monday referred former President Donald Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation and potential prosecution for his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

The committee’s historic referral says there is sufficient evidence to refer Trump for four crimes: obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, making knowingly and willfully materially false statements to the federal government, and inciting or assisting an insurrection.

“We propose to the committee advancing referrals where the gravity of the specific offense, the severity of its actual harm, and the centrality of the offender to the overall design of the unlawful scheme to overthrow the election, compel us to speak,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, as he addressed his fellow panel members.

“Ours is not a system of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass,” Raskin said.

While the Justice Department, which is already conducting an investigation of Trump, takes criminal referrals seriously, it is not obligated to charge anyone with a crime.

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However, the House panel’s referral underscores how seriously the committee views Trump’s actions after the election, in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, invasion of the halls of Congress by a mob of his supporters.

The nine-member panel is comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Cheney was defeated in the GOP primary earlier this year, losing to Rep.-elect Harriet Hageman, while Kinzinger did not seek re-election this year.

Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crimes related to the 2020 election and the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Five people died as an immediate result of the riot, one of them a Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick. Nearly 140 other Capitol and Washington, D.C., police officers were injured in the attack, and several cops took their own lives on the heels of the riot.

If Trump were to be charged and convicted of insurrection, he theoretically could be barred from holding federal office again under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Trump last month announced that he will seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

The committee on Monday also recommended that the DOJ investigate and potentially prosecute Trump’s election law attorney John Eastman for his role in advancing a plan to overturn the election results. Eastman’s referral was for his alleged violation of two criminal statutes: impeding an official proceeding of the United States government, and conspiring to defraud the United States.

Eastman was the author of a two-page memo that outlined a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify several states’ Electoral College electors when Congress met for that purpose on Jan. 6.

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) carries the comittee’s final report as he departs after the final public meeting of the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 19, 2022.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Panel member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, said the committee would refer four members of Congress “for appropriate sanction by the House Ethics Committee for failure to comply with lawful subpoenas.” He did not name them, but House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is among the members who defied a subpoena from the committee.

As it made its referrals, the committee released a 154-page executive summary of its investigation.

The committee’s actions Monday come after nearly 18 months of investigation, which included more than 1,200 witness interviews, the examination of hundreds of thousands of documents, the issuance of more than 100 subpoenas, and public hearings.

The DOJ already is conducting a criminal probe of Trump for those actions, which involved an effort to reverse his losses to President Joe Biden in several swing states, and to pressure Pence to refuse to accept Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.

The members of the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol sit beneath a video of former U.S. President Donald Trump talking about the results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election as they hold their final public meeting to release their report on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 19, 2022.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

The DOJ also is separately investigating him for his removal of government documents from the White House when he left office in January 2021.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, in a statement Monday lauded the committee’s work.

“With painstaking detail, this executive summary documents the sinister plot to subvert the Congress, shred the Constitution and halt the peaceful transfer of power,” Pelosi said, adding that she respects the panel’s findings.

“Our Founders made clear that, in the United States of America, no one is above the law,” Pelosi said. “This bedrock principle remains unequivocally true, and justice must be done.”

Jack Smith, who was appointed special counsel for the DOJ last month to handle its investigations of Trump, said at the time of that appointment, “I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice.”

Smith added at that time: “The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgement and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”

Trump has called the investigations into his conduct after the 2020 election “witch hunts,” and defended his actions as legitimate.

He has falsely claimed he won the election, and that Biden’s victory was the result of widespread voter fraud in the swing states he lost.

Trump also has claimed that Pence had the authority to reject the Electoral College votes of those contested swing states. However, Pence concluded he did not have that power, a conclusion that is backed by a wide array of constitutional scholars and others.

A Trump spokesman over the weekend told NBC News in a statement, “The January 6th un-Select Committee held show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history.”

“This Kangaroo court has been nothing more than a vanity project that insults Americans’ intelligence and makes a mockery of our democracy,” the spokesman said.

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December 19, 2022
Judge does not hold Trump office in contempt of court despite DOJ request

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a rally to support Republican candidates ahead of midterm elections, in Dayton, Ohio, November 7, 2022.

Gaelen Morse | Reuters

A federal judge on Friday did not grant a Justice Department request to hold former President Donald Trump‘s office in contempt of court for allegedly failing to comply with a grand jury subpoena, NBC News reported.

The department wanted Judge Beryl Howell to find Trump’s office in contempt for not fully complying with the subpoena issued in May, which demanded he return classified documents still in his possession, according to a person familiar with the issue who spoke to NBC News.

The Justice Department had no comment on Howell’s rejection of the request, which came after a closed hearing was scheduled for the matter in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

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The hearing was sealed because it relates to grand jury proceedings. NBC News was part of a media coalition seeking access to the hearing.

Trump’s lawyers Evan Corcoran, Jim Trusty and Timothy Parlatore were seen entering Howell’s chambers around the time of the scheduled hearing at 2 p.m. ET, NBC reported.

The trio then was leaving the courthouse at just before 3:30 p.m.

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation of Trump for his failure to return government documents when he left the White House, as well as for possible obstruction of justice.

An August FBI raid of his residence at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, found thousands of such records, more than 100 of which were marked classified or highly classified.

Trump last month announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Trump’s spokesperson, in a statement Friday, said, “The President and his counsel will continue to be transparent and cooperative, even in the face of the highly weaponized and corrupt witch-hunt from the Department of Justice.”

“Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 emails after they were subpoenaed by Congress, yet absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable,” the spokesperson said.

“If the Department of Justice can go after President Trump, they will surely come after any American who they disagree with.”

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December 9, 2022
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema leaves Democratic Party to become independent

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Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has switched parties to become an independent, complicating the Democrats’ narrow control of the U.S. Senate.

Sinema said in a tweet Friday that she was declaring her “independence from the broken partisan system in Washington and formally registering as an Arizona Independent.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. was informed of Sinema’s plans to become independent on Thursday. In a statement Friday, Schumer said Sinema asked to keep her committee assignments.

“Kyrsten is independent; that’s how she’s always been,” Schumer said. “I believe she’s a good and effective senator and am looking forward to a productive session in the new Democratic majority Senate. We will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes.”

By keeping her committee assignments, Sinema signaled she intends to continue to caucus with Democrats as an independent, like Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine do. A senior Biden administration official told NBC News that the White House learned of Sinema’s intention to switch parties “mid-afternoon Thursday” and that she intended to continue to caucus as before.

If Sinema still caucuses with Democrats, her switch to independent would not change much about how the party functions with its new 51-49 majority. The outright advantage in the chamber will make it easier for Democrats to advance President Joe Biden’s nominees and issue subpoenas.

Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia have been wild cards for Democrats since the party gained narrow control of the Senate from Republicans in 2020. Both had an outsize role in policymaking, as Manchin significantly curbed Democrats’ dreams of passing sweeping legislation. Neither senator was up for reelection until 2024 and many expect Manchin to lean further conservative now that the midterms have passed.

Sinema had exerted her own influence on major Democratic bills even before she left the party. She notably rejected a corporate tax increase as part of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier this year, instead opting for a 15% minimum tax.

Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection win Tuesday in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoff election gave the Democrats one more vote in the chamber and boosted the party’s hopes that a 51-49 majority in the Senate would give Sinema and Manchin less control on crucial bills. The chamber was previously split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote.

Sinema, who shared her party switch with a handful of news outlets along with her tweets at 6:01 a.m. ET, prides herself on “maverick” behavior like her Arizona predecessor, the late Sen. John McCain. She has made a career in the chamber by trying to work with Republicans as frequently as she did her former party, and told Politico in an interview Friday that switching party affiliations was a logical next step for her.

“Registering as an independent is what I believe is right for my state,” Sinema said in the interview. “It’s right for me. I think it’s right for the country.”

Sinema, a 46-year-old and the first openly bisexual senator, was not always the conservative-leaning Democrat that her last four years legislating would indicate. She has always maintained an independent streak and continues to buck Senate norms with colorful outfits and wigs.

Sinema started her career as a Green Party activist focusing on LGBTQ rights. She switched to the Democratic Party in 2004 and was elected to the U.S. House in 2012.

Sinema utilized her friendliness with Republicans to be a key broker on several signature bills of Biden’s first term, aiding on issues including infrastructure, guns and same-sex marriage. But her views on increasing taxes on the wealthy and opposition to changing filibuster rules did not win her favor with her former party.

She notably rejected a corporate tax increase as part of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier this year, instead opting for a 15% minimum tax.

Long before her announcement Friday morning, some Arizona Democrats had already started trying to find a replacement to primary her. Groups like the Primary Sinema PAC emerged late last year after her reluctance to filibuster reform prevented Democrats from moving forward with an exception for voting rights legislation, leading to the central committee of the Arizona Democratic Party to issue a no-confidence vote in its senator.

Primary Sinema PAC does not support a single candidate, but rather funds local Arizona groups to pressure Sinema and to lay the groundwork for the candidate that emerges. Speculation had already started that Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., would challenge her.

Sinema’s decision to switch parties would prevent her from having to face a primary from the left.

In her interview with Politico though, Sinema did not say whether she would seek a second term in the U.S. Senate: “It’s fair to say that I’m not talking about it right now.”

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December 9, 2022
U.S. lawmakers press federal banking regulators on the industry’s exposure to crypto after Alameda stake in bank comes to light

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The logo of FTX is seen on a flag at the entrance of the FTX Arena in Miami, Florida, November 12, 2022.

Marco Bello | Reuters

Top Senate Democrats pressed key banking regulators on possible ties between the industry and digital currency exchanges following the bankruptcy of major cryptocurrency firm, FTX.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tina Smith, D-Minn., members of the Senate Banking, House and Urban Affairs Committee, sent letters Wednesday to the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency asking about the close ties between crypto markets and traditional banking following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.

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The letters are the latest in a series of inquiries to various financial institutions and regulators about cryptocurrency oversight.

“It appears crypto firms may have closer ties to the banking system than previously understood,” the senators wrote to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Martin Gruenberg, acting chair of the FDIC and Michael Hsu, acting comptroller of the OCC. “Banks’ relationships with crypto firms raise questions about the safety and soundness of our banking system and highlight potential loopholes that crypto firms may try to exploit to gain further access.”

The letter referenced reporting from The New York Times that revealed former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s sister company Alameda Research invested $11.5 million in Washington state-based Moonstone Bank. The amount was more than double the bank’s worth at the time, according to the report.

The head of Moonstone’s parent company FBH Corp also chairs Bahamas-based Deltec Bank, which offers banking services to FTX trading partner and stablecoin issuer Tether, according to the letter.

Silvergate Capital Corp., Provident Bancorp Inc., Metropolitan Commercial Bank, Signature Bank, Customers Bancorp Inc. are among several noted banks experiencing heightened volatility after the FTX failure. Crypto deposits made up 90% of Silvergate’s overall deposit base. The bank’s average quarter-to-date deposits fell to $9.8 billion from an overall deposit base of $11.9 billion, the letter states.

Crypto loans comprised over half the equity capital for Provident bank, which is experiencing potential losses as high as $27.5 million, the senators wrote.

“Banks’ relationships with crypto firms raise questions about the safety and soundness of our banking system and highlight potential loopholes that crypto firms may try to exploit to gain further access to banks,” the senators wrote.

Warren and Smith acknowledged that the banking system has remained relatively unscathed by the FTX failure, but the company’s entanglement with small banks exposes potential loopholes that crypto firms could use to gain further access to traditional financial institutions.

FTX’s investment in Moonstone could be interpreted as a way to bypass banking licenses in the U.S., according to a Nov. 25 CoinTelegraph article cited in the letter.

To better understand the banking industry’s exposure to crypto, the senators asked for responses to a roster of questions, including all business relationships between FTX, Alameda and Moonstone, by Dec. 21.

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December 8, 2022
Raphael Warnock beats Trump pick Herschel Walker in Georgia Senate runoff, NBC projects

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Reverend Raphael Warnock, Democratic Senator for Georgia, gather with supporters during the midterm Senate runoff elections in Norcross, Georgia, December 6, 2022.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent from Georgia, is projected to beat Republican challenger Herschel Walker in the state’s runoff election to win a full six-year term in the Senate, according to NBC News.

Warnock’s projected victory over Walker will give Democrats a 51-49 majority in the Senate, a potentially crucial boost that caps much-better-than-expected midterm elections for the party in control of the White House.

It also marks a major loss for former President Donald Trump, who had championed Walker and campaigned for him. Trump was already under fire from some Republicans after many of his handpicked candidates underperformed in key midterm races, helping Democrats keep majority control of the upper chamber of Congress.

The outcome of Georgia’s protracted, bitterly competitive Senate contest could have a major impact on Congress, both for the remainder of President Joe Biden‘s first term and for the 2024 cycle, when Democrats again face a tough electoral map.

The race went to a runoff after neither Warnock nor Walker won more than 50% of the vote in the Nov. 8 general election. While Warnock got more votes than Walker, third-party candidate Chase Oliver, a Libertarian, secured just over 2% of the vote, keeping either of the two main contenders from clinching a majority, according to NBC News’ count.

But only Warnock and Walker were on the ballot for the runoff, eliminating any potential coattail effect that Walker might have benefited from in November, when Georgia’s GOP Gov. Brian Kemp handily won reelection.

Instead, Walker’s gaffe- and scandal-plagued campaign was on full display, as more reports about the former NFL star’s personal life continued to come out in the runoff period.

Republicans circled the wagons around the ex-NFL star after The Daily Beast and other news outlets reported that Walker, who expressed staunchly anti-abortion views on the campaign trail, had paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion years earlier. Walker denied the allegations, even as his adult son Christian Walker castigated his father on social media. Less than two weeks before the midterms, a second woman came forward to claim Walker had pushed her to get an abortion.

Walker’s personal life had already been under scrutiny before those allegations came to light. Earlier in the campaign, Walker had acknowledged fathering multiple other children who were not previously known to be related to him. The Senate bid has also raised questions about Walker’s mental health, and accusations by Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, resurfaced that he had been abusive and threatening toward her.

Just last week, The Daily Beast reported allegations by Cheryl Parsa, an ex-girlfriend of Walker’s, accusing the Senate candidate of violent behavior and infidelity.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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December 6, 2022
Trump Organization convicted in New York criminal tax fraud case

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The entrance to Trump Tower on 5th Avenue is pictured in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 19, 2021.

Shannon Stapleton | Reuters

Two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization were convicted Tuesday of multiple crimes, including tax fraud, falsifying business records and conspiracy by a jury in New York City.

The convictions come weeks after the company’s owner, former President Donald Trump, declared his candidacy for the White House in the 2024 election.

Trump was not personally a defendant in the case, which related to a scheme by his company to avoid taxes on compensation to its then-chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and other executives since 2005.

A jury in Manhattan Supreme Court began deliberations in the case this week after a trial that featured testimony by Weisselberg, who earlier pleaded guilty.

The Trump Organization faces fines of up to $1.6 million at sentencing in the case.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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December 6, 2022
Former Trump national security advisor John Bolton says he is considering 2024 presidential bid

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John Bolton, who was former President Donald Trump‘s national security advisor for more than a year, said Monday he is “absolutely” considering launching a 2024 presidential bid — in large part to challenge Trump.

Bolton, speaking on NBC News’ “Meet The Press Now,” said the “one thing” that would spur him to run would be “to make it clear to the people of this country that Donald Trump is unacceptable as the Republican nominee.”

Bolton called it “un-American” for Trump to “challenge the Constitution” when he suggested over the weekend that the nation’s supreme law could be terminated in order to put him back in the White House.

Bolton, who has periodically been a vocal Trump critic since departing his administration in September 2019, called the former president’s declaration “an existential threat to the republic itself.”

Trump, who has regularly spread false claims of widespread election fraud since his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020, claimed in a social media post Saturday that, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

Trump appeared to walk back that statement earlier Monday, saying it was “Fake News” to claim he “wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution.” In follow-up posts, Trump declared in all caps that “IF AN ELECTION IS IRREFUTABLY FRAUDULENT, IT SHOULD GO TO THE RIGHTFUL WINNER OR, AT A MINIMUM, BE REDONE.”

Bolton rejected Trump’s clarifications, saying his sentiment is “not merely wrong and outrageous, it is disqualifying.”

“Donald Trump, if he were to take the oath of office again, God forbid, would either be lying about preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution, or maybe he wouldn’t say it at all,” Bolton said. “You can’t have this kind of approach. It’s not something one can disagree with. This is foundational to the republic.”

Bolton called on GOP leaders to denounce Trump, who is currently the only Republican to announce his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. Numerous other Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump’s ex-Vice President Mike Pence, are expected to be gearing up to run for the GOP nomination.

The Biden administration said attacks on the Constitution should be “universally condemned.” Many top Republicans, however, have avoided publicly addressing Trump’s remarks when asked for comment.

Bolton, noting that many Republican leadership roles are currently up for consideration, said that every prospective candidate should repudiate Trump’s remarks.

“And honestly, if they don’t, there’s one thing that would get me to get into the presidential race, which I looked at in prior elections, it would be to make it clear to the people of this country that Donald Trump is unacceptable as the Republican nominee,” Bolton said.

When pressed on those remarks, Bolton confirmed he would “absolutely” consider getting into the 2024 race. To be a presidential candidate, he said, one must not only declare support for the Constitution but also opposition to “people who would undercut it.”

Referencing the defunct House Un-American Activities Committee, Bolton said, “I think when you challenge the Constitution itself the way Trump has done, that is un-American.”

He challenged other Republicans to say the same. “I don’t see why they aren’t saying it right now,” he said.

Nearly all GOP voters “disagree that Donald Trump is more important than the Constitution,” Bolton said. “What does a candidate have to lose by appealing to 95% of the base of the Republican Party?”

He said he wanted to see “Shermanesque statements” denouncing Trump from other potential candidates, and if he does not, “then I’m going to seriously consider getting in.”

Asked for his views on the 2024 race and what his potential campaign might look like, Bolton predicted that national security issues will dominate that election cycle “The isolationist virus that Trump has let loose needs to be addressed, as well,” he added.

Bolton contrasted Trump, a “whiner,” with the late GOP President Ronald Reagan’s more “optimistic” message. The former national security advisor said his possible presidential platform might be “very Reaganesque.”

Bolton described his politics as “pretty libertarian” and said he was “not a social conservative.”

He added that he believes the 2024 presidential field will be “very crowded,” and that he might make a decision on whether to run “earlier than some would think.”

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December 5, 2022
Senate approves bill enforcing railroad labor agreement before strike deadline, sends to Biden

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The Senate passed legislation that would force a tentative rail labor agreement and thwart a national strike.

A separate vote on adding seven days of paid sick leave to the agreement failed.

The approved bill, passed by a vote of 80 to 15, now goes to President Joe Biden, who had urged Congress to act quickly before this month’s strike deadline and “send a bill to my desk for my signature immediately.” The measures come after talks had stalled between the railroads and four unions, which had previously rejected the agreement.

Biden has said he was reluctant to override the vote against the contract by some unions but stressed that a rail shutdown would “devastate” the economy. Labor groups have said that enforcing an agreement with the legislation denies them the right to strike.

In a statement after the Senate vote, Biden said he would sign the bill into law “as soon as Congress sends it to my desk.”

“I know that many in Congress shared my reluctance to override the union ratification procedures. But in this case, the consequences of a shutdown were just too great for working families all across the country,” Biden said in the statement.

An aerial view of shipping containers and freight railway trains at the BNSF Los Angeles Intermodal Facility rail yard in Los Angeles, California, September 15, 2022.

Bing Guan | Reuters

The legislation, which was approved by the House on Wednesday, enacts new contracts providing railroad workers with 24% pay increases over five years from 2020 through 2024, immediate payouts averaging $11,000 upon ratification and an extra paid day off.

The House on Wednesday approved a separate measure that would have added seven days of paid sick leave to the contract instead of just one. That measure was defeated in the Senate vote. Paid sick leave has been the main point of disagreement during negotiations between railroads and the unions.

SMART Transportation Division, which represents some of the rail workers, said in a statement it was “unfortunate” that its members weren’t able to approve the labor agreement, but thanked Biden and congressional leadership for attempting to “achieve more.”

“Our members are forced to work more hours, have less stability, suffer more stress and receive less rest. The ask for sick leave was not out of preference, but rather out of necessity,” the union said. “No American worker should ever have to face the decision of going to work sick, fatigued or mentally unwell versus getting disciplined or being fired by their employer, yet that is exactly what is happening every single day on this nation’s largest freight railroads.”

Jeremy Ferguson, president of SMART-TD, told CNBC earlier Thursday there’s growing concern that some rail workers will quit after receiving their backpay without guaranteed paid sick time.

“I keep hearing that some are going to do that. It’s always a possibility,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t happen. I want every member to stay employed and enjoy all the benefits that we do have and we are going to need more employees if we’re going to have adequate time off.”

The parties had until Dec. 9 to reach an agreement before workers promised a strike, which the industry estimated would cost the U.S. economy $2 billion per day. Without an agreement, rail movement of certain goods was set to be curtailed as soon as this weekend in preparation for the strike.

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December 1, 2022
Sarah Palin loses election for Alaska House seat to Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, ending comeback, NBC News projects

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Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives Sarah Palin talks with reporters near the corner of Seward Highway and Northern Lights Boulevard on U.S. election night, in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S. November 8, 2022.

Kerry Tasker | Reuters

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the only Republican woman ever to be nominated for vice president, was defeated in her political comeback bid to represent the state in the U.S. House of Representatives, NBC News projected Wednesday night.

Palin’s loss to Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, was her second defeat in an election for Alaska’s at-large House seat in less than three months.

The race took weeks to be called because the winner was determined by Alaska’s new ranked choice voting system.

In late August, Peltola beat Palin and another Republican, Nick Begich, in a special election for the seat. It was left vacant by the March death of GOP Rep. Don Young, who had held office for nearly a half-century.

Peltola, a former state representative, became the first Alaska Native in Congress.

But she immediately faced a rematch against Palin and Begich in the election for a full two-year term.

Peltola finished fourth in a nonpartisan primary in June.

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In mid-August, none of the remaining three candidates in the special election received more than 50% of the vote. The winner then was determined by a ranked-choice voting system that was approved by state voters two years before.

Palin griped about the ranked-choice system after her first loss, calling its adoption a “mistake.” But Begich said “ranked-choice voting showed that a vote for Sarah Palin is in reality a vote for Mary Peltola.”

“Palin simply doesn’t have enough support from Alaskans to win an election,” Begich said at the time.

The late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona tapped Palin to be his running mate in his 2008 presidential race against the Democratic nominee and eventual winner, Barack Obama, and his running mate Joe Biden, who was elected president himself two years ago.

Palin resigned as governor of Alaska in July 2009, less than a year after the presidential election loss, saying ethics complaints against her threatened to bog down the state.

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November 23, 2022
Democratic senators urge regulators to monitor SoFi trading activity, expressing concern during crypto meltdown

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Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) questions Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Powell during a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on the CARES Act, at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, September 28, 2021.

Kevin Dietsch | Pool | Reuters

Four Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Banking Committee urged federal regulators to look into SoFi’s cryptocurrency trading activity in a letter on Monday, warning its “digital asset activities pose significant risks to both individual investors and safety and soundness.”

SoFi shares were down more than 6% Monday afternoon.

In two separate letters, one to federal officials and another to SoFi CEO Anthony Noto, the lawmakers expressed deep concerns over a lack of regulation in cryptocurrency markets.

“Over the past year, several meltdowns in the crypto market have wiped out trillions in value, including another huge crash last week,” the letter to Noto said.

SoFi is unique among institutions singled out for regulatory scrutiny because it operates as both a bank holding company and as a crypto exchange, through a subsidiary.

SoFi pitches itself as a digital financial services company with 3.9 million members as of Q1 2022. SoFi began as a student loan company in 2011. Since then, the San Francisco-based, Nasdaq-traded company made its first foray into crypto through a partnership with Coinbase in 2019. But lawmakers have honed in on SoFi’s February 2022 acquisition of Golden Pacific Bancorp.

That acquisition converted SoFi into a bank holding company and, according to lawmakers, subjected it to “consolidated supervision by the Federal Reserve.” It’s this new regulatory oversight that has prompted lawmakers’ objections to SoFi’s expanding cryptocurrency offerings.

Bank holding companies have to conform to strict regulations on the kinds of financial products they can offer. Heightened financial and risk controls mean that SoFi’s crypto activities “pose significant risks to both individual investors and safety and soundness,” the lawmakers said.

The lawmakers — Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and fellow committee members Jack Reed, D-R.I., Chris Van Hollen D-Md., and Tina Smith D-Minn. — point to SoFi’s financial guidance as evidence. Investor education material from SoFi warns that a cryptocurrency offered on SoFi’s crypto platform, Dogecoin, has “no special use case or features.” SoFi’s literature calls it a pump-and-dump scheme.

To offer products that the company knows are “pump-and-dumps” flies in the face of SoFi’s new obligation to “fundamental principles of investor protection and safety and soundness,” lawmakers wrote.

In the letter to Noto, the Democrats said they are “concerned that SoFi’s continued impermissible digital asset activities demonstrate a failure to take seriously its regulatory commitments and to adhere to its obligations.” They urged leaders of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to “ensure that SoFi complies with all consumer financial protection and banking regulations.”

“SoFi takes our regulatory and compliance commitments seriously, including our non-bank operations within the digital assets space,” a SoFi spokesperson said in a statement. “We believe we have been fully compliant with the mandates of our bank license and all applicable laws. Additionally, we maintain consistent, constructive dialogue with each of our regulators. Cryptocurrency remains a non-material component of our business. We look forward to sharing the requested information with the Senators in a timely fashion.”

The letters to regulators and SoFi come as crypto markets weather their worst crisis yet. The implosion of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the engagement that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried had with U.S. regulators, have drawn the ire of Congress and the public.

Lawmakers have demanded an explanation from SoFi on its risk management, credit, financial and compliance systems by Dec. 8. The company has already endured tumult over potential plans to forgive student loan balances, with shares down over 24% since President Biden announced his intentions.

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WATCH: Ether drops 4% in a week, and Bahamas regulator confirms FTX asset seizure: CNBC Crypto World

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November 21, 2022
Attorney General Merrick Garland will name special counsel in Trump criminal probes

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump claps as he announces that he will once again run for U.S. president in the 2024 U.S. presidential election during an event at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, November 15, 2022.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland will appoint a special counsel on Friday to determine whether criminal charges should be filed against former President Donald Trump in connection with two pending investigations.

News of the planned appointment of the special counsel, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, came three days after Trump announced plans to run for president in 2024. The Republican faces multiple criminal investigations.

NBC News soon after reported that the special counsel, whose name has not been announced, will make decisions for two Department of Justice investigations of Trump.

One is focused on whether Trump broke the law and obstructed justice in connection with his removal of hundreds of documents from the White House, which were shipped to his residence at Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. The other probe is related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by a mob of Trump supporters.

Garland is scheduled to make a public statement at 2:15 p.m. ET Friday.

Garland’s appointment of a special counsel could tamp down concerns that he would have a conflict of interest if he were the one to decide whether Trump should be proecuted. The attorney general was appointed by President Joe Biden, a Democrat who defeated Trump in his 2020 re-election bid.

Biden could again face Trump again in the 2024 election.

A White House official told NBC News on Friday, “DOJ makes decisions about its criminal investigations independently, and we are not involved, so I would refer you to DOJ for any questions on this.”

Barbara McQuade, an NBC News legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, in a Time magazine article on Thursday argued against the idea of a special counsel being appointed in the Trump probes, saying it could potentially delay prosecution so long that he would avoid being held accountable for potential crimes.

“Practical consideration also militate against appointing a special counsel: time,” McQuade wrote.

“Appointing a new lawyer to take over the investigation will create delay. A new lawyer would need to hire his own staff, all of whom would need time to get up to speed,” she wrote.

“If Trump is seeking to regain the Oval Office, then DOJ must complete not only the investigations, but the trials before Jan. 20, 2025. That’s when a newly sworn in President Trump could take the ultimate act of partisanship in prosecution — and pardon himself.”

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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November 18, 2022
Biden administration asks Supreme Court to allow student debt forgiveness plan to continue

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U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about student loan debt at the White House on Aug. 24, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Alex Wong | Getty

The Biden administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to reinstate its federal student loan program after a federal appeals court issued a nationwide injunction against the plan.

The administration’s request, which was previewed in another court filing Thursday, blasted the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit for blocking the debt relief plan. That injunction was issued earlier in response to a lawsuit by a group of Republican-controlled states.

“The Eighth Circuit’s erroneous injunction leaves millions of economically vulnerable borrowers in limbo, uncertain about the size of their debt and unable to make financial decisions with an accurate understanding of their future repayment obligations,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in Friday’s filing with the Supreme Court.

Prelogar also wrote that if the Supreme Court declines to vacate the injunction, it could consider the filing as a petition to the high court to hear the Biden’s administration appeal of the decision by the lower court.

And if the Supreme Court accepts the administration’s appeal, if could “set this case for expedited briefing and argument this Term,” she wrote. Keeping President Joe Biden‘s plan on hold while the appeal unfolds, Prelogar said, could keep borrowers in uncertainty about their debts until “sometime in 2024.”

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Monday’s injunction by the 8th Circuit panel of three judges in St. Louis was the latest in a series of legal challenges to Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for millions of Americans.

The Biden administration stopped accepting applications for its relief earlier in the month after a federal district judge in Texas struck down its plan last week, calling it “unconstitutional.”

In the case at issue in the 8th Circuit, another federal judge rejected the challenge to the debt relief program brought by the six states — Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina.

The judge ruled that while the states raised “important and significant challenges to the debt relief plan,” they ultimately lacked legal standing to pursue the case.

Standing refers to the idea that a person or entity will be affected by the action they seek to challenge in court.

The GOP-led states appealed after their lawsuit was denied.

The appeals panel ruled Monday that Missouri had shown a likely injury from the administration’s program, pointing out that a major loan servicer headquartered in the state, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, or MOHELA, would lose revenue under the plan. Missouri’s state Treasury Department receives money from MOHELA.

Borrower defaults could rise amid ‘ongoing confusion’

A top official at the U.S. Department of Education recently warned that there could be a historic rise in student loan defaults if its forgiveness plan is not allowed to go through.

“These student loan borrowers had the reasonable expectation and belief that they would not have to make additional payments on their federal student loans,” U.S. Department of Education Undersecretary James Kvaal wrote in a court filing. “This belief may well stop them from making payments even if the Department is prevented from effectuating debt relief,” he wrote.

“Unless the Department is allowed to provide one-time student loan debt relief,” he went on, “we expect this group of borrowers to have higher loan default rates due to the ongoing confusion about what they owe.”

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November 18, 2022
Nancy Pelosi to step down as House Democratic leader after two decades, with GOP set to take narrow majority

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday she will not seek reelection to her congressional leadership role, ending a two-decade streak as the top House Democrat that saw her become the first woman to lead the chamber.

Pelosi, speaking on the House floor, said she will remain a member of Congress and serve out the term to which she was just elected.

“With great confidence in our caucus, I will not seek reelection to Democratic leadership in the next Congress,” Pelosi said between rounds of applause throughout the 14-minute speech.

“For me, the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic Congress that I so deeply respect,” Pelosi said. “And I am grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility.”

The announcement came a day after news outlets projected that Democrats would narrowly lose their House majority to Republicans following the midterm elections.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, speaks in the House Chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022.

Carolyn Kaster | AP

Pelosi, 82, has kept her future plans under wraps in the aftermath of the midterms, when Democrats exceeded expectations up and down the ballot. Republicans, who anticipated that a “red wave” would deliver them sweeping majorities in Congress, will instead take a thin lead in the House, per NBC News estimates.

Pelosi has also said that a recent attack on her husband, Paul Pelosi, by a hammer-wielding home intruder would affect her decision on whether to remain in leadership.

Current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is considered the top candidate to become speaker in the next Congress. On Tuesday, McCarthy won a party vote to become the GOP nominee for speaker, though he secured fewer votes than the 218 he will need when the full House casts its leadership votes in early January.

Much remains unclear about how the flip in House leadership will shake up Democrats’ top ranks. House Majority Steny Hoyer, D-Md., has served under Pelosi for years — but the 83-year-old announced later Thursday that he, too, would decline to seek a top role.

“I have decided not to seek elected leadership in the 118th Congress,” Hoyer said in a letter shared by his office. Like Pelosi, Hoyer said he planned to continue serving in Congress “and return to the Appropriations Committee as a member to complete work in which I have been involved for many years.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are looking for younger figures to usher in a new generation of leadership. Hoyer in the letter threw his support behind 52-year-old Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York to become the Democratic leader in the House. “He is a skilled and capable leader who will help us win back the Majority in 2024 as we strive to continue delivering on our promises to the American people,” Hoyer wrote.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the influential veteran Democrat from South Carolina, also backed Jeffries for Democratic leadership, along with No. 4-ranking Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Rep. Pete Aguilar of California.

Elected to Congress in 1987, Pelosi became the highest-ranking woman in congressional history in 2002, when she was elected House minority whip in the wake of that year’s midterms. She became House minority leader in 2003, and rose to speaker of the House after Democrats won back the majority in 2006.

In her two stints as speaker, Pelosi presided over a laundry list of major political milestones and crises, as well as two impeachment proceedings against then-President Donald Trump. She navigated Congress during the 2008 financial crisis, the tumultuous battle to pass the Affordable Care Act and the efforts to approve trillions of dollars in coronavirus-related relief funds. More recently, she steered the House to pass a major infrastructure bill and the sweeping legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act, which included tax and health-care provisions.

Pelosi, whose relationship with Trump was famously fraught, ignored that former president entirely in her speech, even as she highlighted her proudest moments during the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

She did, however, make an apparent reference to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by a violent mob of Trump’s supporters, whose attack forced lawmakers to flee their chambers and temporarily halt their efforts to confirm Biden’s win in the 2020 election.

“Indeed, American democracy is majestic, but it is fragile,” Pelosi said. “Many of us here have witnessed its fragility firsthand — tragically in this chamber.”

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Biden, in an adulatory statement shared just after Pelosi’s speech, called her “the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history.”

The president also noted her “fierceness and resolve to protect our democracy” during the Capitol riot, and appeared to reference the violent assault on Paul Pelosi, who was hospitalized following an attack in the couple’s San Francisco home, while Nancy was in Washington, D.C.

“It’s a threat of political violence and intimidation that continues and she and her family know all too well, but that will never stop her from serving our nation,” Biden’s statement said. “She might be stepping down from her leadership role in the House Democratic Caucus, but she will never waiver in protecting our sacred democracy.”

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November 17, 2022
Republicans take control of the House, NBC News projects

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) talks to reporters during his weekly news conference in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on March 18, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Republicans will take majority control of the House, NBC News projects, ousting Democrats from key positions of power and complicating President Joe Biden‘s legislative hopes for the remainder of his term.

With the Senate staying in Democrats’ hands, congressional leadership will be divided for at least the next two years.

The outcome in the House was expected, but it didn’t happen in the way Republicans hoped it would. Democrats broadly exceeded many analysts’ expectations, dashing GOP hopes of a “red wave” that would not only net them a sweeping House majority but provide a symbolic repudiation of Democratic leadership.

Instead, Republicans are projected to take a slim lead in the House — 221-214, according to NBC’s estimate based on the handful of races that have yet to be called. The GOP’s win in the lower chamber of Congress only became clear more than a week after Election Day.

The results widened a rift within the party, as some conservatives quickly blamed their losses in winnable races on former President Donald Trump‘s influence over the quality and messaging of key candidates. Nearly all of Trump’s picks in the most competitive House races were defeated, as were many of his preferred candidates for Senate and in key gubernatorial and secretary of state elections.

Trump has defended his endorsement record while lashing out at his critics, including multiple Republican leaders. Despite his weakened standing in the Republican Party, Trump on Tuesday night launched his 2024 presidential campaign.

One day before NBC’s projection, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., won a party vote to become the GOP nominee for speaker of the House. McCarthy won in a 188-31 vote, NBC reported, signaling that the narrow Republican majority in the next Congress may grapple with internal divisions. To become speaker, McCarthy needs at least 218 votes — a majority of the chamber — when the full House votes in early January.

Democrats’ performance cut against a persistent narrative that the party was vulnerable due to a range of factors, including Biden’s unpopularity and historical trends that disfavor the party in the White House.

But it wasn’t enough for Democrats to keep their grip on a narrow House majority. GOP candidates up and down the ballot sought to capitalize on widespread anxieties about crime and inflation, which ranked as top issues throughout the cycle and formed the basis of many attacks on Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House.

Biden’s low approval ratings hardly helped Democrats in tough House and Senate races, forcing some to distance themselves from the administration.

While Democrats overcame political headwinds in major swing states, they faltered in the solid-blue stronghold of New York, where Republicans performed stronger than some analysts expected. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who came under fire from his own party after a messy New York redistricting fight, lost his race and ceded his seat to GOP challenger Mike Lawler.

Biden said in a statement Wednesday evening, “Last week’s elections demonstrated the strength and resilience of American democracy.”

“There was a strong rejection of election deniers, political violence, and intimidation. There was an emphatic statement that, in America, the will of the people prevails,” Biden said.

The president congratulated McCarthy and expressed a willingness to work across the aisle. “The American people want us to get things done for them. They want us to focus on the issues that matter to them and on making their lives better,” Biden said. “And I will work with anyone – Republican or Democrat – willing to work with me to deliver results for them.”

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November 16, 2022
Biden administration warns of ‘historically large increase’ in student loan defaults without debt forgiveness

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Student loan borrowers gather near The White House to tell President Biden to cancel student debt on May 12, 2020.

Paul Morigi | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Student loan default rates could dramatically spike if the Biden administration’s loan forgiveness plan is blocked, a top official for the U.S. Department of Education said in a new court filing.

The warning came as the Department of Justice asked a federal judge in Texas to stay an order that has temporarily blocked the Biden administration’s debt relief program.

“Unless the [Education] Department is allowed to provide debt relief, we anticipate there could be an historically large increase in the amount of federal student loan delinquency and defaults as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Education Department Under Secretary James Kvaal said in the filing.

“This could result in one of the harms that the one-time student loan debt relief program was intended to avoid.”

The Biden administration stopped accepting applications for its student loan forgiveness plan last week after Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas called the policy “unconstitutional” and struck it down.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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November 16, 2022
Donald Trump announces his 2024 presidential campaign in a bid to seize early momentum

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WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he was running for president in 2024, laying out an aggressively conservative agenda that includes executing people convicted of dealing drugs.

The campaign will be Trump’s third run for president, but his first time trying to persuade voters since his refusal to accept the 2020 election results and his frantic effort to stay in power led to the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation for millions of Americans,” Trump said in a speech at his Florida private club, attacking President Joe Biden’s record in his first two years in office. “I will ensure Joe Biden does not receive four more years.”

Trump filed papers with the Federal Election Commission earlier Tuesday night in which he declared himself a candidate for the presidency and established a new campaign committee.

“This campaign will be about issues, vision and success, and we will not stop, we will not quit, until we’ve achieved the highest goals and made our country greater than it has ever been before,” Trump said.

Trump’s speech on Tuesday echoed his 2016 campaign speeches in many ways, painting a dystopian picture of America as a failing nation ravaged by violent crime during “a time of pain, hardship, anxiety and despair.”

Trump said the “gravest threat to our civilization” was what he called the weaponization of the Justice Department and the FBI, which are currently investigating his handling of classified documents, as well as his role in a massive effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory.

He called for a “top-to-bottom overhaul and clean out of the festering rot and corruption of Washington, D.C.”

By launching his campaign now, just a week after Republicans lost key midterm races, Trump was also rejecting the counsel of current and former advisers who had cautioned him against declaring himself a candidate for president so soon after a defeat for his party.

Trump’s filing with the F.E.C. created the Donald J. Trump for President 2024, and officially launched the 2024 Republican presidential primary, a contest where the dynamics have shifted dramatically in the past week.

Before last Tuesday, Trump, 76, was the undisputed frontrunner in his party’s nominating contest, with polls showing the former president’s support among Republican voters averaging more than 20 percentage points over his closest rival, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

But that was before DeSantis won reelection by an extraordinary 19-point margin, electrifying Republicans nationwide and offering the party a bright spot on a day when Democrats won most of the major Senate and governors’ races.

Now some of the early, post-election polling by YouGov shows DeSantis taking a lead over Trump.

The Florida governor has reportedly met with donors and started assembling his own presidential campaign to challenge Trump for the GOP nomination.

“I have only begun to fight,” DeSantis promised supporters in his reelection victory speech.

Now that Trump is officially Biden’s political opponent in the 2024 election, Attorney General Merrick Garland will need to decide whether to appoint a special counsel to take over the daily management of the Trump investigations. This could help to create even more distance between Biden appointees like Garland in the upper echelons of the Justice Department and any potential decisions about whether to charge Trump with a crime.

The appointment of a special counsel has reportedly been discussed within DOJ already, but no decisions have been made.

The White House is keen to avoid any suggestion that the investigation and potential prosecution of the president’s chief rival is politically motivated, or that it is designed in any way to damage Trump’s 2024 election prospects.

The New York and Georgia state investigations into Trump will likely proceed unimpeded, however, regardless of Trump’s candidate status.

Should Trump win the Republican nomination, he will likely face President Joe Biden in a rematch of the 2020 presidential contest. Biden has yet to formally launch his reelection campaign, but plans for a campaign have reportedly solidified in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, Trump accused Biden of mishandling the economy. “In two years, the Biden administration has destroyed the U.S. economy. Destroyed,” he said.

The prospect of a long primary between Trump and DeSantis would be great news for Democratic campaign strategists, who see DeSantis as a formidable challenger.

Biden likes the idea, too. When a reporter asked him on Nov. 9 about Trump and DeSantis, the president said, “It’ll be fun watching them take on each other.”

Trump is still the undisputed leader of the Republican party, however. This week, the Washington Post reported that Trump plans to build a campaign team that looks and feels more like the skeleton crew of loyal aides who ran his successful 2016 run, and less like the massive operation that his failed 2020 reelection bid grew into.

Trump enters the race with more than $60 million in cash held by his leadership PAC, Save America, and a prodigious fundraising operation that vacuums up small-dollar donations at an unprecedented rate.

Federal Election Commission rules prohibit Trump from using the leadership PAC money to directly finance his presidential campaign.

But in mid-October, Trump transferred $20 million from the leadership PAC to a newly created Super PAC called Make America Great Again Inc. At the time, Trump’s team claimed the MAGA Inc. money would be spent to support midterm candidates, not to help Trump.

But campaign finance watchdogs raised alarms that the lion’s share of the money could eventually find its way from MAGA Inc to Trump’s presidential bid, effectively circumventing rules that prohibited Save America, but not MAGA Inc, from spending money on Trump’s run for president.

As for a campaign message, Trump has previewed his 2024 stump speech during a series of rallies this summer and fall, and in some ways it mirrors his 2016 campaign pitch.

Trump’s vehement insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, is also a central part of his 2024 political persona, and his frequent arena rallies are filled with tirades against what he falsely claims was voter fraud in the last presidential election.

Another question is how Trump’s mounting legal problems will influence him personally and politically. His family real estate and hotel empire is facing a sweeping fraud lawsuit in New York state that could permanently cripple its operations and slash his personal wealth.

Trump is also facing a probe in Georgia of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.

On the federal level, Trump is the subject of an FBI investigation into whether he mishandled state secrets by removing thousands of government documents from the White House in the final days of his presidency, more than 100 of which were classified.

The Justice Department is also investigating Trump’s role in a massive effort to overturn the 2020 election and prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory.

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November 15, 2022
Biden says it’s ‘unlikely’ the missile that hit Poland was fired from Russia

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President Joe Biden of the United States arrives at the formal welcome ceremony to mark the beginning of the G20 Summit on November 15, 2022 in Nusa Dua, Indonesia.

Leon Neal | Pool | via Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden said it is unlikely that the missile that hit Poland and killed two people was fired from Russia, but the United States and allies unanimously agreed to support the country’s investigation.

“I’m going to make sure we figure out exactly what happened,” Biden said.

Early Wednesday morning, Polish officials said a “Russian-made missile” landed on its soil, killing two people. It would mark the first time since Russia’s war in Ukraine began in February of this year that a Russian projectile hit NATO territory.

“There is preliminary information that contests that,” Biden said when asked if the missile was fired from Russia. “I don’t want to say until we completely investigate. It is unlikely in the lines of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia, but we’ll see.”

Biden didn’t address whether the missile could have been fired by Russia from Ukraine or elsewhere.

Biden was speaking in Bali, Indonesia where he is attending the Group of 20 summit, a meeting of the world’s largest economies.

Biden has repeatedly said any attack on NATO soil will be considered an attack on all of the alliance members. He spoke with Polish President Andrzej Duda after the explosion offering his full support, according to the White House. He spokes with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a separate call, the White House said.

Before speaking to reporters, Biden convened a meeting of “like-minded leaders” on the situation. Participants included G-7 members and allies: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Spainish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and European Council President Charles Michel.

“We’re going to collectively determine our next step as we investigate and proceed,” Biden said. “There was total unanimity among folks at the table.”

Biden said the group also discussed Russia’s recent missile attacks in Ukraine, saying the country’s aggression has been “unconscionable.”

“The moment when the world came together at the G-20 to urge de-escalation, Russia continues to escalate in Ukraine,” Biden said. “While we were meeting there were scores and scores of missile attacks in western Ukraine. We support Ukraine fully in this moment; we have since the start of the conflict.”

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November 15, 2022