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  • Biden announces new environmental justice initiatives | CNN Politics

    Biden announces new environmental justice initiatives | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden announced new environmental justice actions on Friday, including an executive order that the White House says will make environmental justice a central mission of federal agencies.

    “Under this order, environmental justice will become the responsibility of every single federal agency – I mean, every single federal agency,” Biden pledged at a White House Rose Garden signing ceremony surrounded by climate and environmental justice advocates just before Earth Day.

    He continued, “Every federal agency must take into account environmental health impacts on communities and work to prevent those negative impacts. Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government woven directly into how we work with state, local, tribal, and territorial governments.”

    The executive order, which will still be up to agencies to implement, will create a new Office of Environmental Justice inside the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

    Friday’s move comes as as many environmental justice groups have been frustrated at the administration’s recent approval of a major Alaska oil project. CNN also reported Friday that the Biden administration is planning to roll out aggressive new rules to regulate planet-warming pollution from natural gas power plants – a move that could face fierce legal challenges.

    Friday’s move also took place as Biden is preparing to announce his reelection bid as soon as next week, CNN reported Thursday. During his last presidential campaign, he worked hard to court environmental justice activist groups.

    Biden’s new order directs agencies to work more closely with impacted communities and improve “gaps” in scientific data to try to better tackle the impacts of pollution on people’s health, a White House official said. If toxic substances were released from a federal facility in the future, the order requires federal agencies to notify nearby communities.

    The order comes a few years after Biden announced his signature “Justice40” initiative, vowing to direct 40% of federal climate and clean funding from new legislation to disadvantaged communities. On Friday, three additional agencies – the Department of Commerce, the National Science Foundation and NASA – will also join the initiative.

    Biden also took a swipe at Republicans in his speech, contrasting his action on environmental justice with the GOP’s policies.

    During his remarks on Friday, the president detailed how he’s spent much of his tenure in office surveying damage from extreme weather events, calling the threat of climate change “an existential threat to our nation” and criticizing congressional Republicans for attempting to block his legislative priorities focused on climate.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, recently unveiled provisions in his debt limit proposal that would overturn clean energy tax credits passed in the Inflation Reduction Act last year. The proposal also includes HR 1 – the GOP’s version of an energy permitting bill.

    Republicans, Biden argued, would “rather threaten to default on the US economy, or get rid of some $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies … than getting rid of $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies to an oil industry that made $200 billion last year.”

    “Imagine seeing all this happen – the wildfires, the storms, the floods – and doing nothing about it,” he continued. “Imagine taking all these clean energy jobs away from working class folks all across America. Imagine turning your back on all those moms and dads living in towns poisoned by pollution and telling them, ‘Sorry, you’re on your own.’ We can’t let that happen.”

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • Debt default could occur in early June, forecasters say, backing Yellen | CNN Politics

    Debt default could occur in early June, forecasters say, backing Yellen | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Two new analyses are backing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s forecast that the nation could default on its debt – and unleash economic chaos – as soon as early June if Congress doesn’t act.

    The projections, which are roughly in line with those issued last week by Yellen and the Congressional Budget Office, add to the pressure on House Republicans and President Joe Biden, who may have only a few weeks to hammer out their vast differences over addressing the debt ceiling. Biden is meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday to work on a deal, the first movement in months.

    A weaker-than-expected tax season, spurred in part by disaster-related filing extensions for much of California and parts of Alabama and Georgia, has increased the odds that Treasury won’t have enough funds to pay the federal government’s bills in early June, according to an updated estimate released Tuesday by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

    “The coming weeks are critical for assessing the strength of government cash flows,” said Shai Akabas, the center’s director of economic policy. “If a solution is not reached before June, policymakers may be playing daily Russian roulette with the full faith and credit of the United States, risking financial disaster for their constituents and the country.”

    The so-called X-date, when the US could default, could arrive between early June and early August, according to the center. In February, it projected the default could take place during the summer or early fall.

    Meanwhile, Moody’s Analytics last week pegged the default date at June 8, significantly earlier than its prior projection of August 18. But the X-date could hit as soon as June 1 or as late as early August, according to that analysis.

    Cumulative income tax receipts are tracking more than 30% below collections a year ago, in part because of weaker capital gains revenue as a result of last year’s stock market declines, Moody’s said.

    Tax receipts are running $150 billion below government projections for fiscal year 2023, which began in October, according to a report issued Monday by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, an independent research organization. This is due mainly to a drop in capital gains income and weakening corporate profit margins.

    In Yellen’s letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week, she said the exact date of default is impossible to pinpoint since the amount of revenue the federal government collects and the amount it spends is variable. She noted it could come as early as June 1 but could be a number of weeks later.

    Even if the Treasury Department doesn’t completely run out of funds, it could be difficult for the agency to manage its payments and stay below the debt ceiling when it only has a tiny cash balance, Akabas said. How much revenue the agency collects in the next three weeks is critical to whether the nation will default next month.

    “Treasury is skating on very thin ice in the month of June. If it’s $10, $20, $30, $40 billion below what we anticipate, that means that they’re really going to be in a crunch situation,” he said of revenue.

    Unable to keep borrowing to pay the nation’s obligations, the Treasury Department has been using cash and “extraordinary measures” to avoid default since the US hit its $31.4 trillion debt ceiling in January.

    If government collections wind up being enough to keep Treasury’s coffers flush through early June, then it’s likely the government won’t default until later in the summer. The agency will get another injection of funds from second quarter estimated tax payments, which are due June 15, and from an extraordinary measure that becomes available at the end of that month.

    Investors are growing skittish about the debt ceiling impasse and a potential default.

    Last week, the Treasury Department sold $50 billion of four-week securities scheduled to mature on June 6 at a record 5.84%, the highest yield for any Treasury Department bill auction since 2000, Akabas noted.

    “Even now, the looming deadline is raising costs to the government and therefore, to all taxpayers,” he said.

    If the government was to default for the first time, it would trigger an economic meltdown in the US and send shock waves through the global financial system.

    If the default lasts for about a week, then close to 1 million jobs would be lost, including in the financial sector, which would be hard hit by the stock market declines, according to Moody’s. Also, the unemployment rate would jump to about 5% and the economy would contract by nearly half a percent.

    But if the impasse dragged on for six weeks, then more than 7 million jobs would be lost, the unemployment rate would soar above 8% and the economy would decline by more than 4%, according to Moody’s. The effects would still be felt a decade from now.

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  • Supreme Court justice ties lessons from reality show ‘Survivor’ into commencement address | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court justice ties lessons from reality show ‘Survivor’ into commencement address | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    When Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered her commencement address to American University law students on Saturday, she leaned on an unexpected source for life advice: The reality television show “Survivor.”

    “I am a ‘Survivor’ superfan,” Jackson told graduates of the American University Washington College of Law in her first commencement speech since her elevation to the high court. “That’s right. When I say ‘Survivor,’ I am indeed referring to the reality TV show, where people are stranded on an island and compete to become the last person standing.”

    The long-running reality series served as the central theme of Jackson’s speech as she weaved in certain episodes to teach life lessons on how to survive a legal career.

    “If you make the most of the resources you have, use your strengths to make your mark and play the long game in your interactions with others, you will not only survive – you will thrive,” she said.

    Jackson, who was confirmed to the court last year, barely mentioned her day job during her remarks in Washington, but she did note that May is a “busy time.” She also revealed that it has not entirely sunken in as yet that she is a Supreme Court justice.

    “I still wake up some mornings confused as to whether this is really happening to me or am I living in a dream,” Jackson said.

    Her speech detailed her “incredible journey” since graduating from law school. She noted, for instance, that while it is well known that she is the first African American woman to serve on the high court, she also was only the 40th female African American to be appointed to a federal district court, and only the ninth to serve on the federal circuit court.

    Jackson’s speech came as the justices are racing to finish more than 30 opinions by the end of June that include divisive issues such as affirmative action, voting rights and religious liberty. As the junior-most justice on the bench, it is unlikely that Jackson will be assigned to write the majority opinion in any of the cases that most capture the public’s attention, especially because of the court’s strong 6-3 conservative majority. To date, she has cast her vote with fellow liberal justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor on high-profile disputes that usually fall along traditional ideological lines.

    In addition, she has been the most vocal member of the court during oral arguments, often dominating the dais to ask questions. “Justice Jackson had a record setting term with over 78.8k words spoken across all arguments,” Adam Feldman, a Supreme Court scholar, tweeted recently.

    The high court is running unusually late in issuing opinions, so it is difficult to cull together detailed vote patterns for Jackson. In some cases, she has found herself siding with conservatives.

    On Saturday, she made no mention of tensions on the Supreme Court, nor did she refer to increasing pressure from outside parties to have the court adopt an ethics code directed at the justices themselves.

    Instead, she spoke directly to the students about life in the law. Quoting the host of her favorite reality show, Jackson turned to the graduates and said: “Survivors ready? Go!”

    “You are ready.”

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  • Inside the Treasury Department team monitoring early economic warning signs as default threat looms | CNN Politics

    Inside the Treasury Department team monitoring early economic warning signs as default threat looms | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Nearly five months before the US was projected to hit the debt ceiling, a small team inside the Treasury Department began alerting top officials to early effects already being felt in the US financial system.

    The cost of insuring US debt, as measured by the price of credit-default swaps, was rising – a sign that investors were beginning to view US bonds and other securities as increasingly risky.

    That early warning – and subsequent ones over the last month as the swaps pricing has surged – came out of the Treasury Department’s Markets Room and its eponymous team of nine financial analysts who are responsible for monitoring and analyzing global financial markets to inform the policy work of top Treasury Department and White House officials.

    As the US rapidly approaches a potential default date in early June, top US officials are increasingly relying on the Markets Room to monitor for signs of disruption in the financial markets.

    “In the same way that a doctor wants to understand the vital signs of a patient as they’re thinking about how to treat them, at Treasury keeping abreast of understanding the various ways in which the economy is healthy or unhealthy. And part of that is understanding the market,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told CNN in an interview.

    “So, we’re spending a lot of time with them better understanding what the costs are today, in order to make sure that we’re in a position to share that information with Congress, in order to prevent us from getting into a position where for the first time in our history, we’re unable to pay all of our obligations on time.”

    That work begins each day before dawn, when staffers take turns waking up around 3:30 a.m. ET to compile data about overnight market developments and begin making calls to contacts working in European and Asian markets.

    At around 7 a.m. ET, those data and insights land in the inboxes of top policymakers at the White House and Treasury Department.

    At 9 a.m. ET, before the US markets open, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her senior leadership team huddle virtually with the Markets Room and other key Treasury Department aides for a briefing on the state of the financial markets and issues to watch for that day.

    “Almost every American is influenced by what’s happening around the globe and global markets either through your 401(k), or your attempt to borrow money for your small business or for your home. So, this team of individuals, every morning, provides us a briefing and an update on what’s happening around the world,” Adeyemo said.

    In recent weeks, that daily briefing has heavily focused on reverberations of the debt limit standoff, from updates on auctions of Treasury bills to market reactions and commentary from market analysts and economists.

    Much of the rest of the day is spent monitoring developments in the financial markets and fielding inquiries from top policymakers at Treasury and the White House for analysis on those developments.

    And at the end of the day, the Markets Room also helps policymakers digest the biggest developments in the financial markets with another widely read one-page memo delivered after the US markets close and before the Asian markets open.

    Beyond the Treasury Department, a White House spokesperson said the unit’s twice-daily memos are “a valuable asset” for officials at the National Economic Council and Council of Economic Advisers.

    “Those offices also rely on the Markets Room’s real-time updates – either in memos or meetings – when more regular monitoring is warranted,” the spokesperson said.

    Officials say the Markets Room is focused on monitoring the global economy’s recovery from the pandemic-induced recession, lingering inflation and the trajectory of the global economy.

    Albert Lee, the Markets Room director, described the unit as an early warning system on the global financial system for top US policymakers.

    In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the team was among the first to sound alarm bells inside the federal government about early shocks in pockets of the financial system and predicting rate cuts from the Federal Reserve.

    The team also played a critical role during the banking crisis earlier this year, tracking the sharp selloff of stock and outflows of deposit at Silicon Valley Bank that ultimately triggered the bank’s collapse.

    As the Treasury Department acted to address the second-largest bank failure in US history and prevent any spillover effects in the banking sector, top Treasury Department officials leaned on the Markets Room team to track the feedback of their policy actions.

    “It was critically important for us to understand how markets were interpreting the actions that we took that made clear to the American people that your deposits were safe,” Adeyemo said. “We were monitoring signs of distress in the banking sector.”

    With one week until the government can potentially no longer pay its bills, the US stock market is only just beginning to show signs of concern about a potential default and Treasury officials say the team is focused on tracking further reactions from the stock market as well as the Treasury securities market.

    The stock market’s reaction has, up until now, been relatively muted – especially as compared to the 17% drop the S&P 500 suffered amid the 2011 debt ceiling crisis. But Treasury officials say volatility in the securities market is already affecting the federal government, raising the cost to borrow.

    Yields on short-term Treasury securities have surged and recent auctions for securities are leaving a heftier price tag for the federal government, which Adeyemo said recently incurred $80 million in additional costs for a recent auction of Treasury bills.

    “So, the cost of borrowing has already gotten more expensive when it comes to us borrowing in the short term for the US government,” Adeyemo said. “So as the debt limit manufactured crisis goes on, and costs go up for the government, it also means that costs will go up for the American people as well.”

    Adeyemo declined to disclose what contingencies are being prepared should the US default. But when the US faced a similar standoff on the debt in 2011, Federal Reserve officials and Treasury Department officials quietly prepared a plan to prioritize payments on US debt and delay paying other government bills and obligations, like Social Security and payments to veterans, according to transcripts of a central bank meeting released in 2017.

    “The most important thing for the American people, for our country, for our credibility, not only with our creditors, but with the American people is to pay all of our bills on time. That’s what our system is built to do,” Adeyemo said. “I’ve spent a good part of a decade working here at the Treasury Department. What I can tell you is that there’s no plan that would allow us to meet all of our commitments other than Congress, raising the debt limit.”

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  • Top US officials have ‘candid and productive discussions’ in Beijing amid ongoing tensions | CNN Politics

    Top US officials have ‘candid and productive discussions’ in Beijing amid ongoing tensions | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senior American and Chinese officials had “candid” and “productive” discussions on Monday in China, according to read-outs from both Washington and Beijing, as the two countries grapple with how to maintain communication amid intense friction.

    Top US State Department and National Security Council officials met with Chinese officials in Beijing on Monday “as part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and build on recent high-level diplomacy between the two countries,” according to a readout from the US State Department.

    The trip by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink and NSC Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs Sarah Beran to the Chinese capital comes as the Biden administration works to navigate its complicated relationship with Beijing.

    There have been a number of exchanges as the United States works to rectify normal channels of communications amid ongoing tensions between the two nations, including two military-related incidents in the past week.

    According to the readout from the State Department, Kritenbrink and Beran, accompanied by US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, met with Ministry of Foreign Affairs Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu and Director General of the North American and Oceanian Affairs Department Yang Tao. They also “met with members of the U.S. Embassy community.”

    “The two sides exchanged views on the bilateral relationship, cross-Strait issues, channels of communication, and other matters. U.S. officials made clear that the United States would compete vigorously and stand up for U.S. interests and values,” the readout said.

    China’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the two sides had “candid, constructive, and productive communication on improving China-US relations” and “properly managing differences” in line with the consensus reached by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, who met on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali in November.

    China also clarified its “solemn position” on Taiwan and other major issues of principle, according to its readout, which added that the two sides agreed to continue communication.

    The self-governing democracy of Taiwan has become a key source of tension between the two countries. China’s ruling Communist Party claims the island as its own, despite never having controlled it and has not ruled out using force to take it.

    On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that a conflict in the Taiwan Strait would be “devastating” and affect the global economy “in ways we cannot imagine,” while underlining US support for the island democracy and the importance of deterrence.

    State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said Monday that other bilateral issues discussed in Monday’s meeting included climate change, precursor chemicals from China that are used in fentanyl production, human rights, and wrongfully detained American citizens. There are three Americans publicly known to be wrongfully detained in China: Mark Swidan, Kai Li and David Lin.

    Patel did not say if the meeting in Beijing yielded progress on rescheduling Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s own visit to the Chinese capital, which was postponed after the spy balloon incident earlier this year. Instead, Patel reiterated that the department hoped to schedule the trip “when conditions allow.”

    US officials have emphasized their desire to maintain open channels of communication with China as a means to prevent the “competitive” relationship from veering into conflict. China rebuffed a formal meeting of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu while they were both in Singapore, though the two ministers shook hands and “spoke briefly,” the Pentagon said.

    “The most dangerous thing is not to communicate and as a result, to have a misunderstanding, a miscommunication,” Blinken said at a press availability in Sweden last week after the US asserted that a Chinese fighter jet conducted an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” during an intercept of a US spy plane in international airspace.

    On Sunday, the US accused a Chinese warship of cutting in front of an American vessel that was taking part in a joint exercise with the Canadian navy in the Taiwan Strait, forcing the American vessel to slow down to avoid a collision. The Chinese defense minister accused the US of “provocation.”

    John Kirby of the US National Security Council on Monday attributed the incidents to an “increasing level of aggressiveness” by China’s military.

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  • Anita Dunn, Biden’s brawler-in-chief, looks to 2024 | CNN Politics

    Anita Dunn, Biden’s brawler-in-chief, looks to 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Anita Dunn saw an opportunity with “Dark Brandon.”

    The liberal meme, created by Joe Biden’s most online fans as a play on the right-wing “Let’s Go Brandon” code bashing the president, depicts a grinning Biden with red lasers shooting out of his eyes. After Dunn, Biden’s top messaging and communications adviser, became aware of the meme, she brought it to the president – and they jumped on an opportunity to go on the offensive in the never-ending social media meme wars.

    He’s nodded to Dark Brandon in official speeches, aides have shared the image on social media, and his 2024 campaign is selling $32 T-shirts emblazoned with his online alter-ego. While it’s a minor part of his repertoire, it shows how Dunn – a longtime Democratic operative and Biden confidante – has used her influence to engage in the kind of street brawling needed to combat perceptions of the aging president and the challenge ahead as he seeks a second term.

    “It fits well with who she is, which is a f**k-sh*t-up-brawler. It’s not a coincidence that the stuff that came behind Dark Brandon was very much in line with Anita’s way of seeing the world,” Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital strategy, told CNN.

    CNN spoke to more than a dozen current and former White House and administration officials, lawmakers and Democratic strategists – many of whom requested anonymity to speak freely – who paint a picture of Dunn as a deeply loyal aide with a big-picture view of Biden’s strategy – with a hand in nearly all aspects of his political life.

    Her instincts for brawling are now directly intertwined with the president’s political fortunes, as she bolsters an already expansive role as a presidential adviser with steering 2024 messaging from the White House. For a president who relies on a very tight circle of trusted advisers, sources say Dunn has emerged as a powerful chief political communicator, a key strategist and someone who will fight on his behalf. She takes these responsibilities on with a combination of deep experience and Biden’s trust.

    While sources both inside and outside the White House say no communicator is better prepared for the moment than Dunn, her messaging task ahead is massive: A high-profile candidate of Biden’s age has never run before, and the president is facing low approval ratings after two years in the White House, which could be a drag on his reelection campaign. With Biden widely expected to face a familiar, but powerful, foe in former President Donald Trump, the mission facing Biden’s advisers is to find a message that can resonate enough with voters to beat Trump again.

    Just a third of Americans (33%) say that Biden winning in 2024 would be a step forward or a triumph for the country, per a May CNN poll conducted by SSRS. Voters also have serious questions about Biden’s age – he’s 80 now, and would be 86 at the end of a potential second term. Recent Washington Post/ABC News polling indicates that nearly two-thirds of respondents feel that Biden lacks the mental sharpness (63%) or is not in good enough physical health (62%) to serve effectively as president.

    Those poll numbers mean that Dunn’s most important task ahead is to help the president communicate to an unconvinced American public why he deserves a second term. And that has given her a White House portfolio that is virtually unparalleled.

    “The circle is small and isn’t exactly expanding anytime soon. That makes voices like Anita’s carry a significant amount of weight,” a Biden adviser said.

    Ostensibly, Dunn’s White House role centers around messaging, political strategy, oversight and crisis communication on the key issues facing the White House.

    “Like the rest of the senior staff, Anita works to act on the strategies and agenda President Biden assigns for her portfolio,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.

    She’s in close touch with Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, outside groups and prospective candidates. A former Hill aide, Dunn is keenly aware of congressional dynamics, but her work inside the Obama White House has shaped her views on how to approach the daily challenges confronting the president.

    “She has this perch where she spans the overall strategic plan for (Biden) and for the White House, and also communicates outward with the political apparatus of the (Democratic National Committee) and the campaign and tries to keep the entire Joe Biden enterprise swimming in the same direction,” a White House aide said.

    She’s also playing an active role in Biden’s reelection campaign strategy, with multiple sources familiar with the dynamic indicating she is spearheading 2024 political messaging from the White House and coordinating with senior campaign staff.

    A former White House senior adviser put it more bluntly: When it comes to 2024, “she’s running everything.”

    Pressed in an interview with CBS News on how she will balance those two roles, Dunn declined to comment, citing the Hatch Act.

    “I’m going to be here at the White House serving the people,” she said. “I’m a White House employee, and I have a government job, and I will continue to do my government job.”

    For an incumbent president running for reelection, there is no commodity more valuable than time, especially time spent in front of the cameras, with an audience of critics looking for signs of fatigue. And with Biden officially jumping into the 2024 race, it’s expected that his current pace of activity will continue for the foreseeable future – using the bully pulpit to highlight key policies at the White House, visiting battleground states to showcase his accomplishments and traveling abroad to meet world leaders. That makes everything he says – and how and where he says it – part of an implicit reelection campaign.

    Dunn – in concert with a tight circle of aides, including White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, deputy chiefs of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon and Bruce Reed, senior adviser Mike Donilon, and counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti – is key to making those decisions and how to communicate them.

    For instance, Dunn was central to a recent decision to frame the president’s age as a sign of wisdom and experience.

    “It’s a legitimate thing to raise the question of age,” Biden told donors at a recent campaign fundraiser. “I hope what I’ve been able to bring to this job, and will continue to bring, is a little bit of wisdom.”

    His explicit use of that framing had Dunn’s fingerprints all over it – part of Bidenworld’s effort to mitigate a weakness by tying it to legislative accomplishments that supporters believe have little precedent over the past several decades.

    Multiple sources told CNN that Dunn has been a decision-maker for campaign issues such as staffing, announcement timing, headquarters location and selecting campaign leadership.

    She’s also recently been involved in strategically elevating the profile of Vice President Kamala Harris, making it clear internally that the West Wing needs to do a better job at bolstering Harris heading into the campaign, a source familiar with the dynamic said.

    Dunn is expected to remain in her White House role but continue to advise Biden on 2024 matters, multiple sources said, with campaign manager and former White House staffer Julie Chavez Rodriguez leading the charge from the campaign side.

    It’s a similar model to how former President Barack Obama’s top advisers coordinated between the West Wing and the campaign, and not unusual.

    “You want a strategist like Anita at the White House. Reelects are about organizing, ground game, targeting digital and ads and messages to particular audiences. It is a game of execution,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a longtime Democratic strategist who served as communications director during the Obama administration after Dunn.

    “The most important messaging that people will judge the president on is the job he is doing at the White House,” Palmieri said.

    Dunn’s deep loyalty and instinct to fight has also raised eyebrows outside the White House. TJ Ducklo, a 2020 Biden campaign aide who resigned from his White House role after privately threatening a reporter weeks into the administration, is expected to play a role in the 2024 campaign, a decision that has been publicly defended in a rare on-the-record statement from Dunn. (That reporter later called for Ducklo’s redemption.)

    “TJ made a mistake, took responsibility for it, and paid a price,” Dunn said in her statement – in her personal capacity – to Politico’s “West Wing Playbook” last month.

    One former senior White House adviser, however, called that an “unforced error” by Dunn. The former adviser asked for anonymity to speak freely without retribution.

    Her allegiance to Ducklo, the adviser said, “leaves the president vulnerable and exposed to unnecessary criticism and charges of hypocrisy.”

    “It’s in direct contradiction to the president’s own values and integrity and the standards that he himself demanded of everybody in the White House,” the former adviser said.

    A current White House aide fired back.

    “The president has values. Taking responsibility when you have done wrong means a lot. So does forgiveness,” that aide said.

    Dunn, 65, is one-half of a Washington power couple at the epicenter of Bidenworld – husband Bob Bauer is the president’s personal attorney and the lead attorney handling the special counsel investigation into classified documents found at Biden’s private office and residence. Yet she has risen from roles in the Jimmy Carter White House to the Senate to building public affairs powerhouse SKDK to the 2008 Obama campaign entirely on her own, sparked by her intense preparation.

    “She made preparation her friend,” said veteran Democratic operative Minyon Moore, who has known Dunn for decades.

    “Every time she walks in a room, she’s probably more prepared than most of her counterparts. And I think that’s how she was able to tackle the business very early, because they knew she had done her homework. They knew she could think through many layers. She was smart as heck. And so, you want a person like Anita in the room,” Moore said.

    Dunn operates largely behind the scenes – actively eschewing Washington’s social scene, social media and most television appearances.

    Her loyalty to Biden was cemented when she was among a small group of advisers working toward a potential 2016 presidential run, Biden wrote in his 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” Though he ultimately decided against running, Dunn’s encouragement solidified a strong level of trust, multiple people close to her say.

    Dunn joined Biden’s 2020 campaign as a senior adviser and is widely credited for helping turn the tide of Biden’s political fortunes in that campaign’s Democratic primary after she was tapped to lead the operation following a fourth-place showing in the Iowa caucuses.

    She encouraged a sharper messaging posture from her desk in the center of the campaign “bullpen” workspace.

    When Biden arrived in the White House, Dunn briefly joined the administration as a senior adviser before returning to SKDK in August 2021, the temporary nature of her service allowing her to skirt disclosure of a cadre of investments and high-profile clients.

    She continued to advise Biden informally and rejoined the White House in May 2022 in a permanent capacity, a move requiring multimillion-dollar financial disclosures.

    Dunn’s omnipresence in Biden’s orbit has been just as clear in the period when she was out of the White House as when she’s been in. She was a constant presence on conference calls or in visits to the White House.

    “The president trusts her counsel – and there’s good evidence as to why,” one adviser said, pointing to her central role in his path to the presidency, loyalty during Biden’s 2016 deliberations and her work inside the West Wing.

    Over her career, Dunn has developed a reputation as an aggressive messaging tactician with strict discipline.

    She’s led White House messaging efforts on legislative accomplishments, seeking to highlight the legislation’s tangible impacts on real Americans, though some Democrats argue the White House has not done enough to sell those measures to the public.

    “What she tries to do is find the connective tissue,” said a senior administration official, who talks to Dunn regularly. “There’s nobody in government that has a better big picture perspective of what’s going on.”

    Multiple colleagues suggested Dunn can inspire a certain level of anxiety in her subordinates – demanding a high level of results and keeping the receipts – while also being seen as a supportive mentor. At the White House, Dunn is known for leading a weekly meeting known as “Fridays at 5,” a 5 p.m. in-person convening that is met with both eye-rolling (given its timing) and appreciation. It includes the entire communications staff, from interns to press assistants to the highest levels. Dunn will lead shout-outs at the beginning of each meeting, identifying achievements and often spotlighting junior staff.

    “It’s really emblematic of Anita,” the White House aide said. “The fact that she took it upon herself to establish this very expansive view of who’s on the communications team across the entire White House and set a weekly meeting where those people get direct exposure to her, as the senior adviser to the president, is really neat.”

    Dunn’s counsel isn’t only valued inside the White House walls – Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who ran against Biden for president in 2020, regularly seeks her advice.

    “She’s someone that you feel like you can trust and she’s going to have your back. And I think that’s why she’s been such a trusted adviser to President Biden,” the Minnesota senator told CNN, saying that Dunn has been a key messaging coordinator for her Senate colleagues in advancing Biden’s policies.

    That intense loyalty to the president is ultimately why Dunn has been given such a powerful role inside Biden’s political operation.

    “The people that were there and believed in him when he was counted out hold a unique bond and trust with the president. That relationship, with her obvious expertise, means she’s empowered to do what she needs to do,” a former colleague said.

    “Few people have the experience and discipline to keep their eye on the ball like she does. She’s not distracted, and she knows what messages are going to land, even if the pundits disagree,” the former colleague added.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Garland denies claims of meddling in Hunter Biden probe, as White House says president uninvolved in son’s business dealings | CNN Politics

    Garland denies claims of meddling in Hunter Biden probe, as White House says president uninvolved in son’s business dealings | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday rejected claims the Justice Department interfered in the Hunter Biden probe as the White House insisted President Joe Biden wasn’t involved in his son’s business dealings.

    In congressional testimony publicly released on Thursday, two IRS whistleblowers who worked on the probe alleged to lawmakers that the president’s son had been given preferential treatment by the Justice Department. The whistleblowers made several explosive allegations, including that the IRS had recommended far more serious charges for the president’s son, that US Attorney in Delaware David Weiss was blocked from bringing charges in other states and that Garland denied a request from Weiss to be named as a special counsel.

    Hunter Biden has since agreed to plead guilty next month to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal with federal prosecutors to resolve a felony gun charge. His attorney, Chris Clark, on Friday said “any suggestion the investigation was not thorough, or cut corners, or cut my client any slack, is preposterous and deeply irresponsible.”

    When pushed on the allegations during a news conference Friday, Garland said that Weiss was “permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

    “I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution, given that he has this authority,” Garland said.

    Garland rejected any claim that he would not appoint Weiss as a special counsel, stating that “Mr. Weiss never made that request to me.”

    “Mr. Weiss had, in fact, more authority than a special counsel would have,” Garland added. “He had and has complete authority, as I said, to bring a case anywhere he wants in his discretion.”

    Additionally, Garland said he would “support Mr. Weiss explaining or testifying” about the allegations raised by the whistleblowers “when he deems it appropriate.”

    Later Friday, the White House wouldn’t say whether Biden was present in July 2017 when Hunter Biden is alleged to have texted a Chinese business partner, claiming he was sitting with his father, and using that claim as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.

    The questions referred to a portion of the testimony in which a IRS supervisor-turned-whistleblower told House lawmakers that Justice Department prosecutors denied requests to look into messages allegedly from Hunter Biden where he used his father as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.

    “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” according to a document the whistleblower gave to Congress, which quotes from texts that are allegedly from Hunter Biden to the CEO of a Chinese fund management company.

    The message continues: “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight.” The message goes onto say, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

    The second, unnamed IRS whistleblower also testified to lawmakers about this alleged WhatsApp message, saying prosecutors questioned whether they could be sure Hunter Biden was telling the truth that his father was actually in the room in the messages. The unnamed whistleblower testified that they did not know whether the FBI investigated the message.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pressed repeatedly on the issue, referred questions to the White House Counsel’s Office, insisting the matter had been addressed.

    Ian Sams, a spokesman for the counsel’s office, said in an email that Joe Biden hadn’t been in business with his son. He did not specifically provide information about Joe Biden’s whereabouts when Hunter texted the Chinese businessman on July 30, 2017.

    “As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son,” he wrote. “As we have also said many times before, the Justice Department makes decisions in its criminal investigations independently, and in this case, the White House has not been involved.”

    Asked whether Joe Biden had been involved in coercive business dealings by his son, Jean-Pierre said: “I appreciate the question. I believe my colleague at the White House counsel has answered this question already, has dealt with this, has made it very clear. I just don’t have anything to share outside of what my colleagues have shared.”

    In a statement Friday, Hunter Biden’s lawyer Chris Clark suggested the messages were written at a time when the president’s son was suffering from addiction.

    “The DOJ investigation covered a period which was a time of turmoil and addiction for my client. Any verifiable words or actions of my client, in the midst of a horrible addiction, are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family,” the statement read.

    President Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business arrangements.

    “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said in 2019.

    This story and its headline have been updated with additional developments on Friday.

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  • Buttigieg says Supreme Court case was designed for ‘clear purpose of chipping away’ at LGBTQ equality | CNN Politics

    Buttigieg says Supreme Court case was designed for ‘clear purpose of chipping away’ at LGBTQ equality | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday slammed the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of a Christian web designer in Colorado who refuses to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings out of religious objections, saying the case was designed “for the clear purpose of chipping away” at LGBTQ equality.

    “It’s very revealing that there’s no evidence that this web designer was ever even approached by anyone asking for a website for a same-sex wedding,” Buttigieg, the first out Cabinet secretary confirmed by the Senate, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, in a 6-3 opinion, ruled Friday for Lorie Smith, the Colorado web designer, on free speech grounds, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing, “All manner of speech – from ‘pictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings,’ to ‘oral utterance and the printed word’ – qualify for the First Amendment’s protections.”

    Smith said in court filings that a man had inquired about her services for his same-sex wedding. But as CNN previously reported, the man in question says that he never reached out to Smith – and that he’s straight and married to a woman.

    “There’s something in common between this Supreme Court ruling and what we’re seeing happening in state legislatures across the country, which is kind of a solution looking for a problem,” Buttigieg said Sunday. “In other words, sending these kinds of things to the courts and sending these kinds of things to state legislatures for the clear purpose of chipping away at the equality and the rights that have so recently been won in the LGBTQ+ community.”

    Two contenders for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination took a different stance on the Supreme Court ruling in separate interviews Sunday on “State of the Union.”

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the decision “protects all of our First Amendment rights,” adding that “the government doesn’t have the right to tell a business the nature of how they need to use their expressive abilities.”

    Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd acknowledged that the ruling made him “uncomfortable because we’re protecting speech that I don’t agree with. And I don’t agree with an anti-LGBTQ sentiment.”

    “But we have to be protecting the speech even if we don’t like or agree with the speech. That’s a foundational element in our country,” Hurd said.

    In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested that the court’s decision in the Colorado case would be more far-reaching.

    “The decision’s logic cannot be limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity,” she wrote.

    “The decision threatens to balkanize the market and to allow the exclusion of other groups from many services,” Sotomayor said, adding that “a website designer could equally refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, for example.”

    Christie pushed back Sunday on that characterization.

    “What Sonia Sotomayor … was saying in her opinion was that … this decision could be used to deny people of LGBTQ backgrounds the ability to access this business. That’s simply not true,” he told Bash.

    “They can access this business. They just can’t force the owner to do something that is against her personal religious beliefs. And so, if they want to come in and they want a web design for their business, they want a web design for a charity, they want a web design for anything else that they’re doing, they could certainly do that,” he added.

    Meanwhile, Buttigieg was asked about a recent video shared by a campaign Twitter account for Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential bid that attacked rival Donald Trump over his past promises to protect LGBTQ rights and highlighted measures championed by the Florida governor to curb such protections.

    After cautioning that he was “going to choose my words carefully, partly because I’m appearing as secretary, so I can’t talk about campaigns,” Buttigieg said the bigger issue when sees such videos was: “Who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off?”

    “I just don’t understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning thinking that he’s going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America,” the secretary said.

    The DeSantis campaign has come under criticism for marking the end of Pride Month by re-posting the video from the DeSantis War Room Twitter account. Both Christie and Hurd on Sunday also criticized the sharing of the video.

    In response to the online criticism, Christina Pushaw, the rapid response director for the DeSantis campaign, said Pride Month was “unnecessary, divisive, pandering.”

    “Opposing the federal recognition of ‘Pride Month’ isn’t homophobic,” Pushaw said in a tweet. “We wouldn’t support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either.”

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  • Iowa House passes 6-week abortion ban in special session called by GOP governor | CNN Politics

    Iowa House passes 6-week abortion ban in special session called by GOP governor | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Iowa’s state House passed a bill Tuesday night that would ban most abortions in the state as early as six weeks into pregnancy, acting quickly in the special session ordered by GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds with the sole purpose of restricting the procedure in the state.

    The bill now heads to the Senate, where it must earn approval before it can move to Reynold’s desk for her signature.

    Senate File 579 prohibits physicians from providing most abortions after early cardiac activity can be detected in a fetus or embryo, commonly as early as six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.

    The bill includes exceptions for miscarriages, when the life of the pregnant woman is threatened and fetal abnormalities that would result in the infant’s death. It also includes exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rapes reported within 45 days and incest reported within 140 days.

    The state House voted 56-34 largely along party lines to advance the measure following a roughly 12-hour day that saw the measure move through rounds of consideration and debate. Debate in the state Senate continued late into Tuesday night.

    The bill would immediately take effect with Reynolds’ expected signature.

    However, while the bill language makes clear it is “not to be construed to impose civil or criminal liability on a woman upon whom an abortion is performed in violation of the division,” guidelines on how physicians would be punished for violating the law are left up to Iowa’s board of medicine to decide – leaving the potential for some vagueness in how the law ought to be enforced in the interim.

    “There may or may not ever be rules promulgated,” said Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair, a Republican, amid several questions from Democrats on the floor. There were no legal penalties for physicians added in the bill, she said.

    “As far as clarity, this is about as clear as mud,” Democratic state Sen. Molly Donahue said on the floor.

    Reynolds last week called for Iowa’s legislature to convene for the special session “with the sole purpose of enacting legislation that addresses abortion and protects unborn lives,” weeks after Iowa’s Supreme Court declined to lift a block on the state’s 2018 six-week abortion ban, deadlocking in a 3-3 vote whether to overturn a lower court decision that deemed the law unconstitutional.

    The new bill and its 2018 predecessor are nearly identical, though the latter was not enacted immediately, granting the board of medicine time to flesh out how it planned to administer the law.

    Democratic backlash to the bill and Reynolds’ special session grew throughout the day, with state House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst saying in a statement, “Women are not free when they cannot make their own healthcare decisions. And after today, women won’t be free.”

    Iowa’s Senate Democratic Leader Pam Jochum said in a statement that her Republican colleagues were “ignoring Iowans in their rush to pass an extreme ban” and that “their actions today threaten the health and futures of all Iowa women.”

    “This extreme Republican power grab infringes on the personal freedom of every Iowa woman and girl. There are women alive today who will not be alive in six months because of this law,” Jochum added.

    Iowa’s position as the first-in-the-nation caucus state for the coming GOP presidential primary has thrust its state politics onto the national stage, with Republican candidates jockeying for the favor of its voters.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence posted his support of the bill on Twitter Tuesday night, writing, “Grateful to see Iowa Republicans and Governor @KimReynoldsIA Standing For Life! Pro-Life Americans are Cheering You On!”

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  • Pentagon watchdog finds some Western weaponry sent to Ukraine was stolen before being recovered last year | CNN Politics

    Pentagon watchdog finds some Western weaponry sent to Ukraine was stolen before being recovered last year | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Criminals, volunteer fighters and arms traffickers in Ukraine stole some Western-provided weapons and equipment intended for Ukrainian troops last year before it was recovered, according to a Defense Department inspector general report obtained by CNN.

    The plots to steal the weaponry and equipment were disrupted by Ukraine’s intelligence services and it was ultimately recovered, according to the report, titled “DoD’s Accountability of Equipment Provided to Ukraine.” CNN obtained the report via a Freedom of Information Act request. Military.com first reported the news.

    But the inspector general report noted that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Defense Department’s ability to track and monitor all of the US equipment pouring into Ukraine, as required by law under the Arms Export Control Act, faced “challenges” because of the limited US presence in the country.

    According to the report, which examined the period of February-September 2022, the Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv “was unable to conduct required [end-use monitoring] of military equipment that the United States provided to Ukraine in FY 2022.”

    “The inability of DoD personnel to visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored significantly hampered ODC-Kyiv’s ability to execute” the monitoring, the report added.

    The report is dated October 6, 2022. In late October, the US resumed on-site inspections of Ukrainian weapons depots as a way to better track where the equipment was going. The department has also provided the Ukrainians with tracking systems, including scanners and software, the Pentagon’s former under secretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, told lawmakers in February.

    But the report underscores how difficult it was in the early days of the war for the US to track the billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment it was sending to Ukraine.

    Republicans have criticized the Biden administration over what they view as a lack of accountability over the billions of dollars of aid going to Ukraine. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said earlier this year that he supports Ukraine but doesn’t “support a blank check.” The same sentiment has been shared by Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    CNN reported in April 2022 that the Biden administration was willing to take the risk of losing track of weapons supplied to Ukraine despite a lack of visibility, as they saw it as critical to Ukraine’s defeat of Russian forces.

    “We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” a source briefed on US intelligence told CNN at the time. “It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”

    US European Command tried to alleviate the issue last year by requesting and maintaining hand receipts from the Ukrainians, which the Ukrainians made a “good faith effort” to provide, the report says, citing EUCOM personnel. The personnel did not provide the IG with corroborating paperwork by the time the investigation concluded, however, the report notes.

    The Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv also asked the Ukrainian government for expenditure, loss, and damage reports for US-provided equipment, the report says, and they “made efforts to prevent illicit proliferation of defense material provided by the United States.”

    Still, criminal organizations managed to steal some weaponry and equipment provided by the US and its allies, the report says.

    In late June 2022, an organized crime group overseen by an unnamed Russian official joined a volunteer battalion using forged documents and stole weapons, including a grenade launcher and machine gun, and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, the report says. Ukraine’s intelligence service disrupted the plot, according to the report.

    That same month, Ukraine’s intelligence services also disrupted a plot by arms traffickers working to sell weapons and ammunition they stole from the frontlines in southern Ukraine, as well as a separate plot by Ukrainian criminals posing as aid workers who stole $17,000 worth of bulletproof vests, the report says.

    And in August 2022, Ukraine’s intelligence services discovered a group of volunteer battalion members who stole 60 rifles and almost 1,000 rounds of ammunition and stored them in a warehouse, “presumably for sale on the black market.”

    The report does not specify whether the weapons and equipment were American, but the anecdotes are outlined in a highly redacted section that deals with Ukrainian tracking of US-provided weaponry.

    The Pentagon inspector general wrote that some larger items like missiles and helicopters were easier to track through intelligence mechanisms. Smaller items, like night-vision devices, however, were harder to monitor.

    The report ultimately does not make any recommendations, noting that the Defense Department “has made some efforts to mitigate the inability to conduct in-person” monitoring.

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  • DeSantis and his team unleash on Rep. Donalds for questioning Florida’s new Black history standards | CNN Politics

    DeSantis and his team unleash on Rep. Donalds for questioning Florida’s new Black history standards | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused Rep. Byron Donalds – the only Black Republican in Florida’s congressional delegation – of aligning himself with Vice President Kamala Harris by critiquing the state’s new standards for teaching Black history.

    Donalds tweeted Wednesday that the new standards are “good, robust, & accurate.” But the two-term congressman added that a new requirement for middle school students to be taught that slaves learned skills they later benefited from “is wrong & needs to be adjusted.” He added that he has “faith that (Florida Department of Education) will correct this.”

    In the face of that seemingly gentle criticism, DeSantis’ administration and online allies unloaded on Donalds, who has backed former President Donald Trump over his home state governor for the 2024 nomination. Jeremy Redfern, the spokesman for the governor’s office, called Donalds a “supposed conservative.” Christina Pushaw, the campaign’s rapid response director, replied to Donalds’ tweet: “Did Kamala Harris write this tweet?” DeSantis’ Education Commissioner Manny Diaz tweeted that Florida would “not back down … at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman.”

    DeSantis joined the pile on during his Iowa bus tour, telling Donalds to “stand up for your state.”

    “You got to choose: Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you doing to side with the state of Florida?” he said.

    Responding to the blowback to his remarks, Donalds on Twitter called the online attacks aimed at him “disingenuous” and said DeSantis supporters were “desperately attempting to score political points,” adding that that is why he is “proud to have endorsed” Trump.

    “What’s crazy to me is I expressed support for the vast majority of the new African American history standards and happened to oppose one sentence that seemed to dignify the skills gained by slaves as a result of their enslavement,” he wrote on Twitter.

    This week’s clash with Donalds is the latest example of how the DeSantis campaign’s failure to win support from key members of his state’s GOP has come back to bite him as he runs against Trump. Last week, Rep. Greg Steube, who has also endorsed Trump, put DeSantis on blast over property insurance rates in the state continuing to soar.

    “The result of the state’s top elected official failing to focus on (and be present in) Florida,” Steube said, tweeting out a headline that linked the sharp rise in premiums to DeSantis’ time in office.

    The war of words between two Florida Republicans this week is all the more remarkable because of how closely aligned Donalds and DeSantis once appeared.

    Donalds introduced DeSantis and his family at the governor’s election night victory party last year, heaping praise on the man he called “America’s governor.” He played DeSantis’ 2018 election opponent, Democrat Andrew Gillum, during debate preparation. DeSantis had also formed a close alliance with Donalds’ wife, a school choice advocate who received a plum appointment to the Florida Gulf Coast University board of trustees.

    But there was a notable break in their relationship in April when Donalds endorsed Trump over DeSantis. Donalds had previously stated publicly he would wait on an announcement until the field was set. The decision stunned DeSantis’ political operation, which had clearly underestimated the governor’s failures to build a rapport with fellow Republicans. Ultimately most Florida Republicans in the House lined up behind Trump.

    The back and forth with Donalds stems from the new standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, which were approved earlier this month by the Florida Board of Education. While education and civil rights advocates have decried many elements of the new standards as whitewashing America’s dark history, much of the national attention has focused on one passage that clarifies middle school students should learn “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

    Amid intense objections to the language, Harris responded by holding a press conference in Jacksonville where she accused Florida’s leaders of “creating these unnecessary debates.”

    “This is unnecessary to debate whether enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said. “Are you kidding me? Are we supposed to debate that?”

    DeSantis and state education officials have fiercely defended the new standards in recent days. Redfern and others have pointed to similar language that appeared in the course framework for a new Advanced Placement African American Studies course piloted by the College Board. Florida was widely criticized by Democrats for blocking the course from being taught in state public schools.

    According to one document, the AP course intended to teach students: “In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South. Once free, American Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.”

    The College Board said Thursday it “resolutely” disagrees with the notion that enslavement was beneficial for African Americans after some compared the content of its course to Florida’s recently approved curriculum.

    On Thursday, DeSantis said the state standards are “very clear about the injustices of slavery in vivid detail.”

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  • Top moments from the White House Correspondents’ dinner | CNN Politics

    Top moments from the White House Correspondents’ dinner | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden joked about a range of topics at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday but struck a serious tone as he called for the release of wrongfully detained Americans abroad.

    The annual dinner, hosted inside the Washington Hilton, drew thousands of guests in support of freedom of the press, something Biden called “the pillar of a free society, not the enemy.”

    Here are the top moments from this year’s dinner.

    Biden used the opportunity to address a crowd gathered to support freedom of the press to send a clear message: “Journalism is not a crime.”

    He began his remarks on a serious note and immediately addressed the wrongful detentions of American journalists Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Austin Tice in Syria, reassuring the room full of journalists and the families of the detainees that his administration is committed to bringing them home.

    “I promise you, I’m working like hell to get them home,” Biden said.

    In attendance Saturday evening was Brittney Griner, the WNBA star who was freed from Russia late last year after being wrongfully detained. Biden and First Lady Jill Biden held a pull-aside meeting with Griner and her wife at the event, per the White House pool.

    The president and First Lady also met privately with the family of Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter that the US State Department has deemed “wrongfully detained” in Russia. Several journalists in attendance wore pins to urge his release.

    The daughter of jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navanly, Dasha Navalnaya, told CNN earlier Saturday the White House Correspondents’ dinner represents an especially important event for those who are wrongfully detained because “America as a country represents freedom of speech, freedom of political expression.”

    Comedian Roy Wood Jr., known for his role on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” did not hold back in his roast of Washington politics Saturday evening, saving jabs for both parties.

    He immediately addressed the classified documents found in Biden’s Delaware home, telling the president as he stepped aside from the podium, “Real quick, Mr. President. I think you left some of your classified documents up here.”

    Wood also pointed to protests in France in response to the government raising the retirement age. “Meanwhile in America, we have an 80-year-old man begging us for four more years of work,” he quipped, alluding to Biden’s reelection bid.

    But the comedian went on to dub former President Donald Trump the “king of scandals.”

    “Keeping up with Trump scandals is like watching Star Wars movies,” he said. “You got to watch the third one to understand the first one, then you got – you can’t miss the second one because it’s got Easter eggs for the fifth one.”

    Watch: Iconic moments from past White House Correspondents’ dinners

    Biden’s jokes, meanwhile included a number of quips aimed at his predecessor’s recent scandals.

    He joked that he was offered $10 to keep his remarks under ten minutes. “That’s a switch, a president being offered hush money,” he joked in reference to Trump’s indictment in an alleged hush money scheme.

    Biden also poked fun at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is likely to be top candidate for the GOP presidential nomination if he enters the 2024 race.

    “I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready, but Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me, he got there first,” Biden said.

    Disney filed a lawsuit against the governor and his oversight board earlier this week, accusing him of punishing the company for exercising its free speech rights with his political influence.

    The White House Correspondents’ dinner honored several journalists for their impactful work last year, including CNN’s Phil Mattingly for his coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington and Politico’s publishing of the Supreme Court draft opinion that would later overturn Roe v. Wade.

    While Biden also applauded the journalists for their work, he poked fun at their tough questioning.

    “I get that age is a completely reasonable issue, it’s on everybody’s mind,” he said, referring to his reelection bid. “By everyone I mean the New York Times.”

    Biden also joked about how he dodges the media’s questions. “In a lot of ways, this dinner sums up my first two years in office: I’ll talk for 10 minutes, take zero questions and cheerfully walk away.”

    In recent weeks, the media industry has taken several hits – from high-profile terminations to layoffs, something Wood addressed head on.

    “The untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job,” Wood said, referring to the anchor’s departure from Fox News, which prompted applause.

    “Okay, some people celebrate it,” he responded. “But to Tucker’s staff, I want you to note that I know what you’re feeling. I work at the Daily Show, so I too have been blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a fake news program.”

    Saturday’s event saw a number of celebrities in attendance, including model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen and her husband, singer John Legend.

    Actress Julia Fox posed with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer while actress Rosario Dawson and actors Liev Schreiber and Billy Eichner all took turns on the red carpet.

    During the event, identical twin brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott, who host “Property Brothers” on HGTV, drew big laughs as their sketch-style video showcased how they would renovate the White House.

    “We’ve been doing this a long time and we think we know how to turn the White House into the White Home,” the pair said in video.

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  • Sullivan declines to say if Biden brought up jailed Navy officer with Japanese PM but says US working ‘extremely hard’ on case | CNN Politics

    Sullivan declines to say if Biden brought up jailed Navy officer with Japanese PM but says US working ‘extremely hard’ on case | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said Sunday that the White House is working “extremely hard” on the case of a US Navy officer jailed in Japan but declined to say whether President Joe Biden had brought it up during his trip to the country.

    “There are certain times when saying less in public and more in private is the best way to resolve these cases. This is one of those instances,” Sullivan said on “State of the Union” when asked if Biden had raised the case of Lt. Ridge Alkonis with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his trip to Hiroshima for the Group of Seven summit, which concluded Sunday.

    On Friday, a pair of Democratic lawmakers from California had asked Biden to once again bring up the issue with Kishida.

    In a letter addressed to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, US Sen. Alex Padilla and US Rep. Mike Levin said that “while we understand the sensitive nature of this case” around Lt. Ridge Alkonis, “it is important to resolve this situation promptly to prevent further irritants in the U.S.-Japan relationship.”

    “Lieutenant Alkonis has served almost a year in Japanese prison after being involved in a tragic and unforeseeable car accident due to a medical emergency he suffered while driving. Despite your repeated interventions from your Administration, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Ambassador Rahm Emanuel. Lieutenant Alkonis’ case remains stalled in the Japanese system,” the pair wrote.

    Alkonis, who was stationed in Japan, was sentenced to three years in Japanese prison in October 2021 for negligent driving resulting in the death of two people and injuries to a third person in May 2021. CNN previously reported that Alkonis said he suffered from acute mountain sickness as he was driving with his family from Mount Fuji, which caused him to lose consciousness. That argument was rejected by the court, and his appeal was denied in July 2022.

    Biden raised the Alkonis case with Kishida during the prime minister’s visit to the White House in January, and the two countries agreed to establish a working group to solve the problem. But Alkonis has since expressed despair about his situation, according to a handwritten note to his wife.

    “I’m not doing that good,” he wrote in a letter dated April 30, which was shared with CNN. “The walls and bars seem to be making my cell even smaller as of late.”

    His family has requested that he be transferred back to the US under the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons, which would allow him to serve out his sentence there.

    Alkonis’ wife, Brittany Alkonis, told CNN earlier this week that parts of the US government have been “incredibly proactive” on that request but claimed that the US Department of Defense as well as the Japanese government had not productively engaged. Ridge Alkonis has not been designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department.

    “Prison has always been a hard place. You know, he talks about how just anything that would bring you happiness is not allowed. He says it’s just soul crushing,” Brittany Alkonis told CNN.

    “Lieutenant Alkonis’ service records make clear that he is an extraordinary officer, and we believe he deserves better,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote to Biden and Harris. “We ask that you insist on a prompt prisoner transfer under the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons, so that he, his wife, and their three young children can be reunited in California.”

    Brittany Alkonis and her children have been able to visit Ridge Alkonis every few weeks in prison, with the current setup allowing for five half-hour visits per month, she said. Her children – all under the age of ten years old – are the ones who are “paying the price” for this challenging situation, she said.

    “They’re hurting. They try to make sense of this. We talk about it all the time,” Brittany Alkonis said. “But my son asked me the other day, he said, ‘Mommy, you said the president is getting daddy home, then why isn’t he home yet.’”

    This story and headline have been updated with additional details.

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  • Voting rights advocates in the South emboldened by Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

    Voting rights advocates in the South emboldened by Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    With a sense of relief that the conservative Supreme Court did not use a major Alabama redistricting case to further gut the Voting Rights Act, civil rights advocates and election attorneys are preparing for a new flood of redistricting litigation lawsuits challenging political maps – especially in the South – they say discriminate against minorities.

    In the 5-4 case decided Thursday, Alabama must now draw a second majority-Black US congressional district after Republicans were sued by African American voters over a redistricting plan for the 27% percent Black state that made White voters the majority in six of the seven districts.

    The six White majority districts are represented by Republicans; the Black majority district is represented by a Democrat.

    “I don’t think it’s going to stop Republicans from drawing racist maps,” Aunna Dennis, executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause, told CNN. “But I think that this empowers those of us pushing back and fighting that.”

    The majority opinion – written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by the court’s three liberals and, in most parts, by Justice Brett Kavanaugh – effectively maintained the status quo around how courts should approach Voting Rights Act lawsuits that allege a legislative map discriminates by race.

    By letting old precedent around the Voting Rights Act to stand in the case, called Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court has likely emboldened voting rights advocates to bring cases they previously thought would have been doomed.

    Several election law attorneys and voting rights advocates have suggested to CNN they believe the decision could have a ripple effect across the South, in states like Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas where cases claiming Section 2 violations are already working through the courts.

    According to the Democracy Docket, a liberal-leaning voting rights media platform that tracks election litigation, there are 31 active federal cases involving Voting Rights Act redistricting claims similar to those in the Alabama case.

    “I suspect that there are a number of states with lawyers who were considering filing a lawsuit similar to the Milligan lawsuit, but they held off because the prospects of how everyone thought Milligan would go were so dim. But now, you’re going to have a whole range of suits filed,” said Alabama voting rights attorney J.S. “Chris” Christie, who filed one of the two lawsuits that were before the justices in the Milligan case.

    “Some of those will win, and some of them won’t. All redistricting suits are not the same,” Christie said, noting that Kavanaugh did not join an important part of Roberts’ opinion, depriving that section of a majority.

    Still, he said, “Lawyers who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged and are going to pursue those cases aggressively, knowing that the Voting Rights Act precedents are there.”

    The ruling was a shock. The right-leaning high court, sometimes in decisions penned by Roberts himself, had been on a spree of landmark rulings over the last several years that had whittled down the scope of the Voting Rights Act. And in the flurry of emergency litigation last year ahead of the 2022 midterms, the Supreme Court repeatedly put on hold lower court rulings – including in the Alabama case – that would have ordered the redrawing of political maps ahead of last year’s elections, helping Republicans to narrowly reclaim the US House.

    That meant that, at least in Alabama, the election was carried out under a redistricting plan that the Supreme Court has now affirmed to be likely unlawful.

    “The fact remains that the Supreme Court previously allowed the same map that they just determined unconstitutionally, and systemically diluted Black votes be used in the 2022 election,” the Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement.

    In Alabama, lower courts said early last year that the state’s congressional map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting power. The courts ordered it redrawn in a way that was expected to produce a second majority-Black district, which would have shifted the partisan makeup of the state’s congressional delegation from 6-1 to 5-2.

    But, in February 2022, the Supreme Court put those decisions on hold until the justices could hear and decide the case themselves.

    At the heart of the dispute in the Alabama case was the way that, under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, race was used to determine if a map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting procedures “not equally open to participation by members” of a protected class, like racial minorities. Alabama was putting forward an argument for a supposedly “race-blind” approach to VRA redistricting compliance, that if endorsed, would have defanged the provision.

    Already, the Supreme Court led by Roberts had gutted a separate provision of the VRA that required certain jurisdictions (including Alabama and other states in the South) with a history of racially discriminatory voting policies to get federal approval for the maps that they drew.

    The Supreme Court’s emergency move last year to allow the Republican-drawn Alabama map to stay in place had cascading effects in lawsuits across the country.

    Some cases, like a challenge brought to Alabama’s state legislative redistricting plan, were put on hold.

    In a Georgia case that concerned both the congressional and state legislative redistricting plans, a federal judge said that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in at least some of the districts they were challenging, but he declined to grant the preliminary injunction, in part citing the Supreme Court’s emergency order.

    The Supreme Court, meanwhile, also froze a lower court order in a legal challenge brought against Louisiana’s congressional map that made similar arguments as the Milligan case, as Louisiana legislators had drawn just one majority-Black district of the six districts in the 33% percent Black state.

    The justices paused the case, where a federal judge was preparing to redraw the Louisiana map if the Republican lawmakers refused to do so, and said they were taking up the lawsuit but putting it on hold until the Milligan case was decided.

    Now the challengers’ lawyers in that case are anticipating that the Supreme Court will send it back to lower courts, where they were poised to prevail under the approach to VRA redistricting cases that the justices have now left undisturbed.

    Cases in Texas, Mississippi and elsewhere that inched ahead while the Milligan case was pending will go to trial without the threat that the challengers would need to prove their case under a drastically different Section 2 standard.

    “If anything, we no longer need to make adjustments that we had potentially been preparing for because the state of the law remains unchanged,” said Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Sarah Chen, whose group is involved in several challenges to Texas maps, including a lawsuit over Galveston County’s redistricting plan.

    “The Supreme Court did not endorse the radical changes proposed by Alabama in their arguments, the same changes that are also endorsed by opposing counsel in this Galveston redistricting matter,” Chen added.

    While challenges to statewide maps are what get the most national attention, the ruling’s effect on how the VRA is applied to local races like county commission elections and school board seats “is really going to impact voters’ everyday lives,” according to Christie, the Alabama voting rights attorney, who said that Thursday’s opinion will be “huge” in a newly filed challenge to a county commission map in the state.

    “Attorneys who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged to pursue these cases knowing that the VRA precedent is there,” he said.

    Even before they get into a courtroom, voting rights advocates see the Milligan ruling as valuable for discouraging state and local map drawers from diminishing the political power of communities of color, as it squelched expectations that the Supreme Court was about to make VRA challenges more difficult to bring.

    “I am disappointed in today’s Supreme Court opinion but it remains the commitment of the Secretary of State’s Office to comply with all applicable election laws,” Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, the defendant in the Alabama case, said in a statement after the ruling.

    In North Carolina, voting rights advocates had been reeling from a major defeat with the state Supreme Court recently ruling that North Carolina courts couldn’t police partisan gerrymandering. (Litigation over the state’s congressional plan is also before the Supreme Court in a legal dispute that does not concern the Voting Rights Act). They are finding a silver lining in that, thanks to Thursday’s ruling, the GOP legislators will be redrawing North Carolina’s political maps knowing Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters remain in force.

    “We would hope that they would really take this decision to heart that they would make a genuine good faith effort to comply with Section 2,” said Hilary Harris Klein, the senior counsel for voting rights with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

    Thursday’s ruling, said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “puts state legislatures and local redistricting bodies on notice that the Voting Rights Act is here to stay and if they deny communities of color the representation they deserve, that they will face lawsuits.”

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  • Biden faces key test as end of fundraising quarter looms | CNN Politics

    Biden faces key test as end of fundraising quarter looms | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden is racing to boost his campaign war chest as the end of the fundraising quarter approaches Friday, marking the first major test of his campaign’s ability to generate the cash and enthusiasm needed to compete against Republicans in 2024.

    In the closing days of the quarter, the campaign is ramping up its push for grassroots donors, including enlisting former President Barack Obama to tape a video with Biden to help drive small-dollar donations, CNN has learned, along with hosting a slew of down-to-the-wire, high-dollar fundraisers.

    Biden’s campaign is highly attuned to how closely their early fundraising numbers will be examined for signs of the campaign’s operational strength and enthusiasm. Aides have tightly guarded the state of Biden’s campaign haul, refraining from publicly laying out a fundraising target for the second quarter or providing an early read on how much they raised in the opening days of the president’s reelection bid.

    Campaign advisers insist they’ll have the money to run a successful campaign. Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, told CNN in an interview Wednesday that he’s growing more confident about their ability to exceed the $1 billion Biden raised in 2020.

    “There’s no question whatsoever that he will have all of the resources to run a highly competitive campaign at or above the level of four years ago,” Katzenberg said. “The enthusiasm, the support, the loyalty is at a 10.”

    Yet even Biden’s supporters acknowledge that the headwinds he faces in his overall campaign – including dampened enthusiasm and concern over his age – will influence his effort to raise as much as $2 billion for his reelection effort. Some donors have expressed anxiety over a slow start to the money race.

    “Not a lot of people are engaging right now. They’re like, ‘We’re gonna give. We’re gonna support him,’ but people aren’t as engaged in the 2024 operation right now,” one Biden campaign bundler told CNN.

    Katzenberg, who will be on hand at fundraisers in Chicago and New York this week, argued Biden isn’t facing the same time crunch to raise money compared to his 2020 run when he faced a competitive Democratic primary.

    “He’s not on the same path that he was four years ago. There are no primaries. The urgency and the timeline is simply not the same,” he said. “Our fundraising efforts are actually being very strategic and thoughtful about when you can activate people. And you want to activate them at the point when they are ready to actually give, and that is always around very specific moments and around urgency.”

    Biden’s campaign has yet to name a national finance director, a role tasked with overseeing the overall fundraising effort, prompting frustration among some donors who wanted to see a more formal structure from the outset. The campaign’s fundraising apparatus has largely been driven by the Democratic National Committee in the opening months of the campaign.

    When the president announced his reelection campaign in April, the campaign declined to provide figures for first-day or first week fundraising – as some candidates, including Biden in 2019, do when jumping into the race to demonstrate (and generate) excitement.

    One person familiar with the matter said the Biden campaign’s fundraising after the video announcement was “nothing special.” A separate source familiar with the matter said the reelection campaign’s fundraising has been stable since launch date and in line with the Biden team’s projections.

    “The campaign will share its fundraising numbers when we submit our FEC filing next month,” said Kevin Muñoz, a Biden campaign spokesperson. “We are encouraged by the strong response we are seeing from donors and our grassroots supporters, including a significant number of new donors since 2020 that support the President’s agenda for restoring democracy, freedom, and growing the economy by growing the middle class.”

    “While MAGA Republicans duke it out over extreme, divisive, and unpopular policies in their primary, we are ensuring that we have the resources needed to run an aggressive, winning campaign,” Munoz added.

    The Biden campaign declined to share its own fundraising target for this quarter, but campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told CNN in an interview earlier this month she believes the campaign will show “strong momentum and energy.”

    “Folks are gonna want to try to poke holes at anything that they can, but I think that, you know, we’ll continue to show just strong momentum and energy,” Chavez Rodriguez said.

    Biden’s second quarter fundraising haul will likely be compared to that of his recent predecessors.

    When he announced his reelection in 2011, Obama burst out of the gate with a hefty second quarter fundraising haul of $86 million for the reelect and DNC, a record-setting figure for that time. Obama announced his reelection bid in the same fundraising quarter as Biden but had a three week lead on Biden’s entry into the 2024 race.

    Biden, never a prolific fundraiser, raised $21.5 million in his first quarter in the 2020 campaign, a figure that was surpassed by newcomer South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

    How much money Biden and his team can raise in these early stages of the campaign could dictate how his campaign apparatus ultimately looks. So far, Biden’s team had made only a few hires and has relied in large part on the DNC, including for office space as they search for a headquarters building in Wilmington, Delaware.

    DNC fundraising officials organized a summit for top donors and supporters in the days after the launch, an effort to reengage some of the highest contributors from his 2020 bid.

    One tool the campaign hopes to leverage early on in their efforts is a joint fundraising agreement between the campaign, DNC and state Democratic parties, consolidating efforts to raise money early in the race and allow individual donors to contribute up to $929,600 to the Biden Victory Fund.

    The president has spent the past two weeks crisscrossing the country for campaign cash. He raised roughly $5 million in one day of events with California Gov. Gavin Newsom during a two-day swing through California’s Bay Area last week, a source familiar with the events said.

    As the end of quarter approaches, the president is headlining five fundraisers in the span of three days, tapping into high-dollar donors in Chevy Chase, Maryland, New York City and Chicago, where the billionaire Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is hosting an event.

    First lady Dr. Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have also hit the fundraising circuit as well. Harris brought in $1.25 million for the Biden Victory Fund at the LGBTQ Leadership Council Gala in New York City earlier this week, a source familiar with the fundraiser said.

    The campaign also is leaning on its top surrogates this week to mobilize grassroots donors, including the Obama-Biden fundraising video rolling out on social media on Thursday.

    A campaign official argued the Obama-Biden duo is “an effective pairing” to push for small-dollar donors and represented “some of our best performing content from 2020.” Obama and Biden had lunch together at the White House on Tuesday.

    “He is throwing a marker down and saying, ‘Do not mistake, I am 100% in on supporting Joe Biden’s presidency,’” Katzenberg said of the Obama push. “As invaluable as his time is on the fundraising here, his endorsement, enthusiasm and continued support, friendship, loyalty. That’s what this about.”

    Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the chair of the campaign’s National Advisory Board and a prolific fundraiser herself, is hosting a call with other advisory board members Thursday to encourage them to tap into their donor networks in the closing days of the quarter, a campaign official said.

    And advisory board members including Sens. Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Chris Murphy, and Raphael Warnock as well as New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and a handful of members of Congress – Reps. Chrissy Houlihan, Sara Jacobs, and Lauren Underwood — are also expected to assist via e-mails, texts, and online fundraising.

    The campaign is hoping to galvanize online donations after Biden raised $700 million online during the 2020 cycle. White House digital strategy director Rob Flaherty, who ran the 2020 campaign’s digital operation, is expected to join the campaign this summer with an eye in part towards boosting online fundraising.

    Campaign advisers say they’ve seen positive signs about in the number of new donors drawn to the campaign, with one strategist saying, “The donor base right out of the box is expanded.”

    The campaign has sought to use moments like former President Donald Trump’s CNN Town Hall and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Twitter launch snafu to expand their donor network, though the official declined to say specifically how much was raised as part of those efforts.

    Along with about a dozen fundraiser events headlined by the president, Chavez Rodriguez, her deputy, Quentin Fulks, and Democratic National Committee Executive Director Sam Cornale spent part of this month traveling the country to meet with top donors, local Democratic officials and other supporters in an effort to stir up enthusiasm and build fundraising momentum.

    Still, among the donor class, there is a certain malaise – a combination of fundraising fatigue, the lack of a specific Republican opponent as a motivator and a general lack of enthusiasm for Biden’s candidacy.

    Some Biden allies predict the president will have little trouble fundraising if Trump emerges as the Republican nominee, believing the former president is a strong motivator for donors and voters alike.

    But that message and the sentiment behind it belie an overall weariness among those being asked to dig deeper into their pockets.

    “There was fatigue during the midterms because you had this battle to save the country in 2020. People feel like the fundraising has just never stopped,” said one Democratic fundraiser, adding that any usual “cooling-off period” never arrived.

    “It’s just constant. And every quarter is the most important quarter,” the fundraiser said.

    Uncertainty in the Republican primary field could also hold back fundraising at this stage in the election, with nearly two months before candidates face off in the first GOP debate and more than six months before primary voters cast their first ballots.

    “Ultimately, the campaign is relying on one big thing above all else: They’re relying on Trump or DeSantis or someone who’s just so unpalatable being the nominee. That’ll drive everything,” the fundraiser predicted.

    John Morgan, one of a handful of donors to attend last week’s White House state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, told CNN he’s looking to hold a fundraiser for Biden in the fall.

    “The money is going to pour in – and if Trump is the nominee, it will pour in by double because Republicans will be writing checks too,” Morgan predicted.

    “Everybody was panicked last time but then he got the nomination, and he raised a billion dollars, and if Trump is the nominee, he might raise two billion,” Morgan said.

    The average minimum price to attend one of Biden’s first dozen fundraising events, a Democratic fundraiser said, is approximately $25,000 per person, with the average event raising between $1.5 to $2 million.

    Biden has used these events to test drive and sharpen a 2024 message, seeking to reframe concerns about his age.

    “It’s a legitimate thing to raise the question of age,” Biden told donors at a May fundraiser at the Manhattan apartment of former Blackstone executive Tony James. “I hope what I’ve been able to bring to this job, and will continue to bring, is a little bit of wisdom.”

    Biden has also worked to cater his message to donors who want face time with their candidate.

    “People want his time, which is much more difficult this time around,” compared to when he was a candidate in 2020, one bundler said.

    Ahead of one of this week’s fundraising events, an expected attendee told CNN he had to warn his colleagues who are attending their first Biden fundraiser to manage expectations: “It’s gonna be cool no matter what. You get to shake hands with the president and take a photo with him. We’re all excited for that. But, you know, he is not Barack Obama. He’s not Bill Clinton. He’s not George W. Bush,” the attendee said.

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  • Oklahoma governor calls on officials to resign over recording of racist and threatening remarks | CNN

    Oklahoma governor calls on officials to resign over recording of racist and threatening remarks | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The governor of Oklahoma is calling on four McCurtain County officials to resign after they allegedly participated in a secretly recorded conversation that included racist remarks about lynching Black people and talking about killing journalists.

    The McCurtain Gazette-News over the weekend published the audio it said was recorded following a Board of Commissioners meeting on March 6.

    The paper said the audio of the meeting was legally obtained, but the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that it was illegally recorded and is investigating. The sheriff’s office also said it believes the recording had been altered.

    “I am both appalled and disheartened to hear of the horrid comments made by officials in McCurtain County,” Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement Sunday. “There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office. I will not stand idly by while this takes place,” the statement said.

    The governor called for the immediate resignations of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning and jail administrator Larry Hendrix. He also said he would ask the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into the case.

    McCurtain County is in southeastern Oklahoma, about 200 miles from Oklahoma City.

    The recording was made hours after Gazette-News reporter Chris Willingham filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners, alleging they had defamed him and violated his civil rights, the newspaper reported.

    In the recording, Manning spoke of needing to go near the newspaper’s office and expressed concern about what would happen if she ran into Willingham, the Oklahoman reported, citing additional reporting from the Gazette-News.

    According to the Oklahoman report, Jennings said, “Oh, you’re talking about you can’t control yourself?” and Manning replied: “Yeah, I ain’t worried about what he’s gonna do to me. I’m worried about what I might do to him. My papaw would have whipped his a**, would have wiped him and used him for toilet paper … if my daddy hadn’t been run over by a vehicle, he would have been down there.”

    Jennings replied that his father was once upset by something the newspaper published and “started to go down there and just kill him,” according to the Gazette-News.

    “I know where two big, deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Jennings allegedly said. Clardy, the sheriff, allegedly said he had the equipment.

    “I’ve got an excavator,” Clardy is accused of saying during the discussion. “Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings allegedly said.

    In other parts of the recording, officials expressed disappointment that Black people could no longer be lynched, according to the paper.

    CNN has not been able to verify the authenticity of the recording or confirm who said what. CNN has reached out to all four county officials for comment.

    The Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association voted Tuesday to suspend the membership of Clardy, Manning and Hendrix, the group’s executive director told CNN.

    Willingham and his father, Bruce Willingham, the paper’s publisher, have been advised to temporarily leave town, CNN affiliate KJRH reported.

    “For nearly a year, they have suffered intimidation, ridicule and harassment based solely on their efforts to report the news for McCurtain County,” Kilpatrick Townsend, the law firm representing the Willingham family, told CNN in a statement.

    The McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that there is an “ongoing investigation into multiple significant violations” of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act, which makes it “illegal to secretly record a conversation in which you are not involved and do not have the consent of at least one of the involved parties.” It also said the recording has yet to be “duly authenticated or validated.”

    “Our preliminary information indicates that the media released audio recording has, in fact, been altered. The motivation for doing so remains unclear at this point. That matter is actively being investigated,” the statement said.

    The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has received an audio recording and is investigating, Communications Director Phil Bacharach said.

    The FBI wouldn’t confirm or deny whether it was involved in the investigation, with spokesperson Kayla McCleery saying it is agency policy not to comment.

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  • Senate confirms slate of State Department nominees as Tuberville’s military hold remains | CNN Politics

    Senate confirms slate of State Department nominees as Tuberville’s military hold remains | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Senate confirmed a slate of high-profile State Department nominees late Thursday night, including ambassadors to Italy, Jordan, Georgia, the United Arab Emirates, Niger, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

    The confirmations came after Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told CNN earlier in the evening that he was close to a deal with the State Department to release holds on nominees in exchange for records on the origins of COVID.

    There was no resolution, however, to an ongoing impasse over military nominations as Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama maintains holds in protest over a Pentagon abortion policy.

    Sen. Paul tweeted Thursday evening, “After 2 yrs, the State Department and USAID have agreed to release documents related to risky research conducted in Wuhan. I am pleased that both agencies are going to cooperate in our investigation and provide these critical records.”

    CNN has reached out to the State Department to request comment.

    Meanwhile, pressure intensified over Tuberville’s hold during the Senate’s final week in session prior to the start of the August recess.

    Tuberville’s hold cannot ultimately stop Pentagon nominees from being approved, but moving through dozens of military promotions, which are typically so uncontroversial that they can be approved with a simple agreement, would take months. It would consume the Senate floor and paralyze the body from being able to take up almost any other action, aides say.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday evening that Senate Democrats would not work to release Tuberville’s hold on military promotions, saying that is “the Republicans’ responsibility,” and that he does not regret “not one bit” that he didn’t put one or two promotions on the floor to try and pry open the hold before the recess.

    “This is the responsibility of the Republican Senate caucus. Leader McConnell has condemned what Tuberville has done,” he said. “It’s up to them. Now I think in August, pressure is going to mount on Tuberville. And I think the Republicans are feeling that heat. As you know, I offered Tuberville if he wanted to put his amendment on the floor, (the Republican Sen. Joni) Ernst amendment, I said ‘go ahead.’”

    “So he’s boxing himself into a corner,” Schumer said. “It’s the Republicans’ responsibility. Theirs, and theirs alone.”

    CNN has previously reported that GOP leadership and fellow lawmakers trying to entice Tuberville to back off are treading carefully, knowing that Tuberville is exercising a power that rank-and-file members want to protect for the future while also recognizing that a long-term standoff with the military could have implications on readiness and recruitment.

    ​​”I’m taking all the fire from the other side, but I’m fine with it. I mean, I knew that was gonna happen. I knew it was gonna be tough, but I’m doing it for the right reasons,” Tuberville recently told CNN. The Republican senator is objecting to the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing military service members and their families for travel to obtain abortion care.

    Here are State Department ambassador nominees that were confirmed by the Senate on Thursday:

    • Eric Kneedler to be ambassador to the Republic of Rwanda
    • Hugo Yue-Ho Yon to be ambassador to the Republic of the Maldives
    • Kathleen FitzGibbon to be ambassador to the Republic of Niger
    • Martina Anna Tkadlec Strong to be ambassador to the UAE
    • Robin Dunnigan to be ambassador to Georgia
    • Nicole D. Theriot to be ambassador to the Co-operative Republic of Guyana
    • Ervin Jose Massinga to be ambassador to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
    • Yael Lempert to be ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
    • Julie Turner to be special envoy on North Korean Human Rights Issues with the rank of ambassador
    • William W. Popp to be ambassador to the Republic of Uganda
    • Matthew D. Murray to be US senior official for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation with the rank of ambassador
    • Jennifer L. Johnson to be ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesia
    • Bryan David Hunt to be ambassador to the Republic of Sierra Leone
    • Joel Ehrendreich to be ambassador to the Republic of Palau
    • Jack A. Markell to be ambassador to the Italian Republic and to the Republic of San Marino

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  • The crisis pregnancy center next door: How taxpayer money intended for poor families is funding a growing anti-abortion movement | CNN

    The crisis pregnancy center next door: How taxpayer money intended for poor families is funding a growing anti-abortion movement | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A few blocks from the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, America’s battle over abortion is playing out under one roof.

    On one side of a squat single-story office building, a Planned Parenthood clinic offers reproductive health care and refers patients for abortions. Next door is a branch of Pregnancy Decision Health Center, a crisis pregnancy center that offers counseling and support for pregnant women – but also works to dissuade them from terminating their pregnancies and has been accused of promoting misinformation about abortion.

    Of the two neighboring organizations, only Planned Parenthood provides medical services such as Pap smears, birth control and STD treatments.

    But the crisis pregnancy center is the one receiving money from the state government. Ohio has funneled nearly $14 million in taxpayer funds to the center and others like it over the last decade, according to government records – even as state leaders have cut funding that previously went to Planned Parenthood for programs such as breast and cervical cancer screenings. 

    Ohio isn’t alone. More than a dozen states devote some of their budget to funding crisis pregnancy centers, a CNN review found. About half of those states distribute federal money intended to help needy families to the centers.

    Some of the organizations that receive money have been accused of spreading abortion misinformation or using the funds to advocate anti-abortion causes instead of helping women. 

    “Public dollars should go to promoting public health,” said Ashley Underwood, the director of Equity Forward, an abortion rights advocacy group. Crisis pregnancy centers, she said, “solely exist to deter people from getting abortion services.”

    Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer, a wave of abortion restrictions has swept the country, leaving millions of women with easier access to crisis pregnancy centers than abortion care. Crisis pregnancy centers far outnumbered abortion clinics across the US even before the court’s ruling, and anti-abortion groups are now planning to expand. 

    Pregnancy center leaders and their state government allies say the organizations deserve taxpayer funds because they provide pregnant women with resources like free diapers and ultrasounds. But some of the centers also lie to women about the safety and potential risks of abortion, according to multiple studies, abortion rights activists, and women who have been to the centers. 

    That kind of deception isn’t typical in any other area of health care, said Dr. Amy Addante, an Illinois OB-GYN who performs abortions and has been a vocal critic of crisis pregnancy centers.

    “The purpose of these centers is to try to stop someone from having an abortion,” said Addante. “I cannot think of any other medical decision or any other aspect of health care where there is a group of individuals whose only intent is to stop you from receiving that health care.”

    Big open windows invite patients and passersby into the waiting room at the Pregnancy Decision Health Center (PDHC). With velvety green chairs, leafy plants, and a coffee station that greets visitors as they come in the door, the crisis pregnancy center could pass for an upscale dental office or spa.

    Outside, PDHC’s sign towers over the neighboring Planned Parenthood, literally casting a shadow over the clinic’s entrance. Inside, the contrast is even starker: Planned Parenthood’s waiting room looks run-down – old chairs crowd the small space, faded informational posters cover the walls, and daylight is blocked by signage on the windows and mirrored doors meant to protect patients’ privacy.

    Multiple times a week, patients looking for Planned Parenthood mistakenly walk through PDHC’s doors, according to a Planned Parenthood clinician, Jennifer, who asked CNN not to use her last name out of security concerns. Some patients have told Planned Parenthood that PDHC employees told them abortion wasn’t safe or said PDHC tried to delay them and make them late for their Planned Parenthood appointments.

    Lillian Williams is the vice president of health services of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio.

    “They’ve provided an array of misinformation, whether it’s about abortion care or even about contraceptive services,” said Lillian Williams, the vice president of health services of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio.

    Ayla Krueger, a 23-year-old Columbus resident, visited PDHC earlier this month with a friend who was seeking an STD test. She said that during their hour-and-a-half visit, an employee claimed that condoms were only 50% effective, the spread of STDs could only be prevented if people followed “God’s plan” of avoiding sex before marriage, and that if a woman who has an STD gets an abortion, “your STDs travel up your cervix into your organs and could kill you.”

    “I was dumbfounded,” Krueger said of the encounter. “My heart was breaking, thinking about girls who don’t understand what they’re walking into there… and possibly getting coerced.”

    Experts said that the center’s rhetoric was not medically accurate. “We do worry about ascending infections in abortions and pregnancy, but the risk is really, really low,” said Dr. Jonas Swartz, an OB-GYN and professor at Duke University Medical Center. “Crisis pregnancy centers regularly overstate the risk of abortions and this is just one example of that.”

    The center also offers “abortion pill reversal,” according to its website, annual reports and pamphlets at the office. Abortion reversal is a medically dubious, unproven treatment that purports to undo a medication abortion but has been denounced by medical groups and found to be dangerous by researchers. A clinical trial that attempted to study abortion reversal was halted prematurely in 2019 when several participants suffered hemorrhaging.

    Kathy Scanlon, PDHC’s president, declined an interview request and didn’t respond to CNN’s questions about Krueger’s allegations or abortion pill reversal.

    “Every woman deserves care and compassion when facing an unexpected pregnancy,” Scanlon wrote in an email, adding that the center provides “practical pregnancy care and support ranging from free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds to parenting education classes and much-needed baby items” such as diapers and car seats.

    Anti-abortion signs sit on a table during the Ohio March for Life in Columbus.

    Research has found that crisis pregnancy centers commonly disseminate misinformation. A study released last year by The Alliance, an abortion rights advocacy group, found that almost two-thirds of crisis pregnancy centers in nine states promoted false or biased information about abortion on their websites. That included false claims that abortions increased the risk of cancer or infertility.  More than a third of clinics also advertised that they offered abortion pill reversal – and state-funded clinics were more likely than privately-funded ones to offer the unproven procedure and less likely to offer prenatal care, according to the study. 

    Similarly, a 2012 academic study of crisis pregnancy centers in North Carolina found that 86% of centers promoted false or misleading medical information on their websites. 

    Crisis pregnancy center leaders say they are working to help women. Peggy Hartshorn, who founded the Columbus center and is now the chair of Heartbeat International, one of the largest global networks of crisis pregnancy centers, said the allegations that the groups spread misinformation are “a false narrative.”

    She said that the information her centers provide to clients is “very well-researched, medically referenced – we document everything with multiple sources.”

    “Deep down in their hearts, women do not want to have abortion,” Hartshorn said. “Pregnancy centers are good for America, they really are.”

    In Ohio, a new six-week abortion ban that went into effect after the Supreme Court decision, is currently on hold amid court battles. The Planned Parenthood clinic near Ohio State University doesn’t perform abortions – it refers patients to a Planned Parenthood surgical center on the other side of town that does.

    The waiting room in the Planned Parenthood near campus.

    That facility, too, has a state-funded crisis pregnancy center operating across the street. On a recent afternoon, a handful of protesters lined the clinic’s fence with signs depicting bloody fetuses and shouted “you are already a mother” and “abortion is murder” whenever a patient came within earshot. One protester – wearing a reflective vest and holding a clipboard, similar to Planned Parenthood volunteers – tried to direct patients away from the abortion clinic and to the crisis pregnancy center across the street. The center told CNN the protesters weren’t affiliated with their organization.

    It’s not rare for pregnancy centers to operate near abortion clinics. More than 100 pregnancy centers around the country are located within 200 meters of an abortion clinic or Planned Parenthood location, according to a CNN analysis. Some – in states like Delaware, Indiana and Michigan – are next door to clinics. 

    Abortion rights advocates say the intention is to mislead women and block them from accessing abortion.  

    “The purpose of co-locating near a legitimate provider is to intercept someone seeking legitimate health care and divert them into walking through their doors instead,” said Tara Murtha, the co-author of a report about pregnancy centers and a spokesperson for the Women’s Law Project. “It’s basically an obstacle course and a systemic barrier to abortion care.”

    Despite the groups’ apparent spreading of misinformation, at least 18 states have funded crisis pregnancy centers with taxpayer money, according to a CNN review of government records and statements from state agencies. The largest is Texas, which has sent more than $200 million to the groups over the last decade. 

    More than a half-dozen states bankroll crisis pregnancy centers at least partly with funds from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a federal welfare program. Those federal funds are sent to states as a block grant, which gives state officials wide latitude in how to spend it, including on programs like “alternatives to abortion” grants for crisis pregnancy centers. 

    Research has shown that a smaller percentage of poor families are now receiving cash assistance from the TANF program than in previous decades.

    While about 68% of families with children in poverty received cash assistance through TANF in 1996, when the program was created, that percentage declined to just 21% by 2020, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank. The percentage was even lower in some of the GOP-dominated states that use TANF funding to support crisis pregnancy centers, such as Texas and Louisiana.

    “When you look at successes in reducing poverty by strengthening the safety net, cash assistance is the most effective way to help families,” said Aditi Shrivastava, who co-authored the study. “We are seeing states spend less of their money directly on cash assistance, and we don’t think that is what the program should be doing.”

    In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, some states are piloting new efforts to fund crisis pregnancy centers. Lawmakers in Arkansas and Iowa approved state funding for such groups for the first time this year.

    The states have argued that crisis pregnancy centers deserve taxpayer funding because they provide services to pregnant women in need. 

    “If we are going to be the most pro-life state in the union, we have to be prepared when those mothers come to a facility and they need help,” Arkansas state Rep. Robin Lundstrum said at a legislative hearing about the state’s new program earlier this year.

    In Columbus, Pregnancy Decision Health Center is receiving more than $528,000 from the state government in the current fiscal year, according to government records. All of that comes from federal TANF funds. The funding amounts for about a fourth of the center’s total revenue, while the rest comes from private donations, according to the group’s most recent tax records available.

    People participate in the Ohio March for Life.

    Despite the large amounts of money, there’s little oversight of how the taxpayer dollars are being used. 

    Many of the appropriations are written into spending bills passed by GOP-dominated state legislatures. Pennsylvania, for example, has sent more than $70 million over the last decade to crisis pregnancy centers through Real Alternatives, an anti-abortion group that distributes state funding to crisis pregnancy centers. 

    A 2017 report by the state auditor general found that Real Alternatives used hundreds of thousands of dollars of the money it received from Pennsylvania “to fund its activities in other states,” in what the auditor said was an example of the group “siphoning funds intended to benefit Pennsylvania women.” Real Alternatives denied the allegations in a statement, saying that they had “no basis in fact or law.”

    Michigan, which had contracted with Real Alternatives to distribute funding for crisis pregnancy centers, canceled its contract after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed the funding for it in 2019. In a letter about the veto, Whitmer thanked a watchdog group that had issued a report accusing the organization of only helping a fraction of the pregnant women it had agreed to support.

    Real Alternatives, which also receives TANF money from Indiana, said the Michigan report was “riddled with inaccuracies, distortions, half-truths and defamatory statements.”

    A bill in the Ohio legislature that would have required crisis pregnancy centers receiving state funding to provide their clients with only medically accurate information died in committee in multiple recent legislative sessions. The state’s GOP legislative leaders did not respond to requests for comment.

    Meanwhile, some of the same red states that have bankrolled crisis pregnancy centers have stripped funding from Planned Parenthood. In Ohio, for example, the group never received state funding for abortions, but for years it received money for other services like cancer screenings, STD prevention and treatment, and sex education for teens.

    In 2016, however, Ohio lawmakers banned the state from funding any organization that performs abortions, and the law went into effect after it was upheld by a federal appeals court in 2019. That meant that Planned Parenthood affiliates in Ohio lost about $600,000 a year in state funding, and led to the cancellation of some of their non-abortion health programs.

    While Planned Parenthood does receive some additional reimbursements through Ohio’s Medicaid program for providing non-abortion health care to people on Medicaid plans, it no longer receives state grants.

    Planned Parenthood also lost additional federal funding under Title X, a program that funds birth control and reproductive health services, under a Trump administration rule. But the organization started receiving that money again this year after the Biden administration reversed the rule.

    Maria Gallo, a sexual and reproductive health epidemiologist at Ohio State University, said that state funding for crisis pregnancy centers shows how conservative lawmakers prioritize anti-abortion rhetoric over medical care for women.

    “It’s dangerous in part because they are legitimizing (crisis pregnancy centers),” Gallo said. “They are legitimizing that as a source of medical care when they’re not licensed medical facilities.”

    Crisis pregnancy centers drastically outnumber abortion clinics in the United States. There were 790 abortion clinics operating in 2021, compared with about 2,600 crisis pregnancy centers, according to a database compiled by Reproaction, an abortion-rights group.

    That disparity is only likely to grow in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. Hartshorn, the chair of Heartbeat International, said the organization has created an online training program to help people open new pregnancy centers, especially in places without existing ones.

    “We need more people, we need more places, and we need more paths to pregnancy health,” Hartshorn said.

    Thank you notes are displayed in the Planned Parenthood in Columbus.

    A study by the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy found that the groups have taken in more and more money in recent years: They received over $1 billion in revenue in 2019, the most recent year data was available, compared to about $771 million in 2015. 

    Several women who went to state-funded crisis pregnancy centers told CNN they felt misled and manipulated by the groups, and disturbed that they were getting taxpayer money.

    Last year, a woman who asked to be identified by her middle name, Eve, had just lost her job when she suspected she might be pregnant. She and her boyfriend went to Women’s Care Center in Columbus after finding the group on Google. Money was tight, and she chose the center – which is receiving more than $700,000 from the state of Ohio in the current fiscal year – because it promised free pregnancy testing. 

    Eve’s test was positive, and she asked the staff about an abortion. She said they handed her a pamphlet that warned her the procedure could cause infertility – though abortion doesn’t typically affect a person’s ability to become pregnant in the future. For three hours, Eve said the staff pressured her to carry the pregnancy to term.

    “It became very clear that they were against abortion really quickly,” said Eve, who left the center feeling upset and later got an abortion. The center didn’t respond to questions about Eve’s visit but said in an email they are “absolutely committed to accuracy, excellence and transparency in all we do.”

    One day, Eve said she hopes to have kids. But at the time, she didn’t feel financially or emotionally stable enough to have a baby.

    “Nobody wants to make a decision to have an abortion,” Eve said. “And they made me feel really guilty and bad about it.”

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