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  • Pentagon’s suicide prevention committee recommends age limit and waiting period for on-base gun purchases | CNN Politics

    Pentagon’s suicide prevention committee recommends age limit and waiting period for on-base gun purchases | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A suicide prevention committee that was established by the Pentagon last year is recommending instituting a waiting period for gun purchases on bases and raising the minimum age for buying firearms in an attempt to reduce the number of suicides among service members.

    The Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee (SPRIRC) announced the suggested measures as part of a broader set of 127 recommendations to reverse the current trend of suicides in the military, which has steadily increased over the last 15 years.

    The committee recommended putting in place a seven day waiting period for gun purchases on Defense Department facilities and a four day waiting period for ammunition purchases.

    The committee was created by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in May 2022 to review the Department of Defense’s ongoing suicide prevention efforts. The committee submitted a first set of 10 recommendations to Austin in December before submitting its latest report.

    Dr. Craig Bryan, one of the members of the committee, said a high percentage of suicides on base involved guns purchased at base military exchanges.

    “There’s a very strong scientific basis showing that waiting period, even as short as seven days, significantly reduce suicide rates,” said Bryan, a lethal means safety expert, in urging the Defense Department to “follow the science.”

    The committee also recommended raising the minimum age to purchase weapons on base to 25 years old.

    “There’s arguably only one thing that all researchers agree on,” said Bryan, “and that one thing is that taking steps to slow down convenient access to highly lethal methods like firearms is the single most effective strategy for saving lives.”

    According to the Defense Department’s annual report, 519 service members died by suicide in 2021, the most recent number for which numbers are available. Though the latest figure is a slight decrease from the previous year’s 582 suicides, the overall number has still been trending upward.

    “We will review those closely,” said Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder of the latest recommendations. “I don’t have anything to announce today in terms of what steps we may take, but again this is a very important topic to the Secretary and to the entire Department of Defense.”

    However, Dr. Rajeev Ramchand, an epidemiologist with the RAND corporation and another member of the SPRIRC, told reporters on Friday that service members the committee spoke with said they felt the Defense Department’s “current approach … was more of a check-the-block approach” and that suicide prevention was “not discussed frequently.”

    Ramchand gave an example of a series of required suicide prevention trainings that took place over a course of several days, saying service members sat in a dark auditorium where many of them fell asleep or “were on their phones.”

    “It’s hard to think this is having an effect,” Ramchand said.

    In addition to gun safety regulations, the committee also urged the Defense Department to address the lack of mental health services available for service members, including hiring psychologists and other mental health specialists quickly.

    “When service members were getting into care, they might not be seen for their second visit for about 6 weeks,” said Rebecca Blais, a sexual assault and suicide expert who is on the committee.

    Often, when job openings in mental health services were posted, the hiring process could drag out over a year, at which point the psychologist or other professional was no longer available, Blais said.

    In cases where mental health services were not available or already booked, the committee urged the Defense Department to increase insurance payments so service members could seek mental health experts outside of the military’s healthcare system.

    Editor’s Note: If you or a loved one have contemplated suicide, call The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with a trained counselor.

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  • Mayorkas goes on the offensive as GOP scrutiny builds, says it’s up to Congress to fix immigration system | CNN Politics

    Mayorkas goes on the offensive as GOP scrutiny builds, says it’s up to Congress to fix immigration system | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pointed the finger back at Congress to fix the country’s broken immigration system and maintained that he will not resign from his post in an new interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace.

    House Republicans, who have been fierce critics of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, have been moving to build a case against Mayorkas as they consider launching rare impeachment proceedings against a Cabinet secretary.

    “I’m not going to resign,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Chris Wallace on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which is now streaming on HBOMax and airs Sunday night at 7 p.m. ET on CNN.

    “I call upon Congress – as the president has done, as this nation has done – to actually fix an immigration system that has been broken for decades,” he added.

    Republican lawmakers have argued that Mayorkas’ claims of having operational control of the border are unfounded and that the record arrests mark a dereliction of duty – two themes that have come up repeatedly in congressional hearings and have been cited as reason to impeach the secretary.

    Ahead of potential proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security is bringing on a private law firm to help with potential impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas.

    “I don’t have any intention of being uncooperative. I have complete confidence in the integrity of our decision making,” Mayorkas told Wallace.

    Over recent weeks, key committee chairman already held two congressional hearings over the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border. Earlier this month, the House Judiciary Committee, which would have jurisdiction over an impeachment resolution, held its first border-related hearing.

    “These numbers make clear that the Biden administration does not have operational control of the border,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan said during a February hearing. “Month after month after month, we have set records for migrants coming into the country and frankly, I think it’s intentional.”

    Pressed by Wallace on what it means for the border to be secure and if it means people aren’t illegally crossing the border, Mayorkas said: “Of course not. By that measure, the border has never been secure, right?”

    Asked again by what measure the border is secure, he said: “There is not a common definition of that. If one looks at the statutory definition, the literal interpretation of the statutory language, if one person successfully evades law enforcement at the border, then we have breached the security of the border.”

    He added: “What our goal is – to achieve operational control of the border, to do everything that we can to support our personnel with the resources, the technology, the policies that really advance the security of the border, and do not come at the cost of the values of our country. And I say that, I say that, because in the prior administration, policies were promulgated, were passed, that did not hew to the values that we hold dear.”

    The Biden administration faces unprecedented movement across the Western Hemisphere that has contributed to a surge of migrants at the border, including more people from different countries, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The US is largely barred from deporting migrants to Cuba and Venezuela, presenting a unique set of challenges for DHS.

    “The level of migration that has gripped our hemisphere is extraordinary,” Mayorkas said, stressing that Congress needs to pass reform to fix the immigration system, which Republicans and Democrats agree is broken.

    US border authorities encountered migrants more than 2.3 million times along the US-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. Of those, more than 1 million migrants were turned away at the border.

    In early January, the Biden administration expanded a humanitarian parole program to include Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Cubans to provide a legal pathway for them to enter the US instead of crossing the border. The administration also made those nationalities eligible for Title 42, meaning they can now be turned away by authorities if they don’t apply for the program.

    Since then, there has been a significant decline in migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela crossing the US-Mexico border unlawfully, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which attributed the drop to new border measures.

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  • McCarthy leans on ‘five families’ as House GOP plots debt-limit tactics | CNN Politics

    McCarthy leans on ‘five families’ as House GOP plots debt-limit tactics | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The White House and Senate Democrats have calculated that Speaker Kevin McCarthy won’t have enough votes to raise the national borrowing limit and will end up caving to their demands to avoid a first-ever debt default – with no strings attached or any conditions whatsoever.

    House Republicans are trying to prove them wrong.

    Behind the scenes, McCarthy is beginning to chart out a new strategy to ensure the House GOP can muster 218 votes to raise the national debt ceiling and tie that to an array of cuts to federal spending, as the standoff with the White House shows no signs of easing.

    In the speaker’s office last week, leaders of the so-called “five families” of the House GOP – representing the various ideological wings of the conference – met for the first time to discuss the range of possibilities and to kick around ideas about raising the debt limit, according to multiple attendees. McCarthy didn’t attend the session but enlisted a close confidant, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, to lead the discussions, with top committee chairmen and other members of leadership also participating. Talks are expected to pick up when the House returns from a two-week recess after the Presidents Day holiday.

    The goal, according to multiple Republicans, is to begin to develop a consensus about a proposal that can pass the House with GOP votes and strengthen their conference’s negotiating position as Washington stares into a looming debt default this summer. The belief among Republicans is such a plan would force the White House and Senate Democrats to back off their insistence that they will only accept a “clean” debt ceiling increase without any spending cuts attached.

    The move gives a window into McCarthy’s management of his razor-thin majority, allowing his most conservative members to try to find consensus with more moderate lawmakers – replicating a dynamic that ultimately allowed him to win the speakership after a messy, 15-ballot fight. But it also is a break to how one of his predecessors, John Boehner, dealt with the debt limit the last-time the country nearly defaulted – in 2011 when many of the decisions were made by the leadership, prompting a revolt among the rank-and-file.

    The private GOP talks have been positive so far, attendees said, even as they acknowledged they are in the very early stages, weighing a range of potential budget cuts and not nearing any agreement yet.

    Rep. Patrick McHenry, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, said the meeting amounted to a “healthy discussion” that showed “goodwill” in an effort “to come up with an approach that unifies Republicans and enables us to unlock the rest of the legislative year.”

    “That’s the purpose of the conversation: How do you move the debt limit out of the House of Representatives?” McHenry told CNN.

    The discussions are expected to run parallel to talks between McCarthy and President Joe Biden, with the speaker making clear he believes the next step will be to continue discussions with Biden. The group could potentially help McCarthy present a GOP proposal to the president in future conversations and help vet any White House offer.

    But despite both Biden and McCarthy sounding positive after their first face-to-face encounter earlier this month, there’s been little tangible progress toward finding a deal as Democrats continue to hold firm to their demands to raise the borrowing limit with no horse-trading with Republicans.

    Republicans believe that the White House is slow-rolling Biden’s discussions with the speaker in order to ratchet up pressure to pass a clean debt ceiling increase, something McCarthy has publicly and privately rejected.

    “They say they don’t want to put the economy in jeopardy,” McCarthy told CNN when asked about the lack of progress with Biden since the last White House meeting. “I think that would be the wrong approach.”

    Behind the scenes, McCarthy has been proactive in ensuring regular communication between the five families, a nickname from the “The Godfather” of warring New York mob families who tried to maintain the peace.

    “There’s a level of trust and engagement within the five families that I have not seen in the previous four years,” said South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson, chairman of the Main Street Caucus, a center-right group. “We’re working really well together.”

    Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio, who leads the pragmatic-minded Republican Governance Group, said the group meeting with Graves was “very productive, and we will continue to have those until we come up with something.”

    Another reason Republicans are eager to outline their vision: Democrats have hammered them for not having a plan – and have tried to speak for them. Indeed, perhaps the most memorable moment of Biden’s State of the Union address was when the president suggested Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare, eliciting jeers and boos from GOP lawmakers in the audience.

    “It’s intellectually dishonest,” Joyce said, noting that McCarthy has said repeatedly that Medicare and Social Security cuts are off the table.

    Some Democrats have speculated that they could peel off at least six House Republicans to back a so-called discharge petition – a lengthy process that forces a bill to the floor if 218 lawmakers sign on – once they get closer to a debt default and still don’t have a resolution.

    But moderate Republicans are ruling out using the discharge petition for a clean debt ceiling hike and are insisting on extracting spending cuts in exchange for raising the nation’s borrowing limit – a sign that the conference is in lockstep with McCarthy’s negotiating strategy.

    “If it’s tied to a clean debt ceiling, I wouldn’t do that,” said Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a Biden-won district in Nebraska. “The President’s got to give us some compromise.”

    The hardline House Freedom Caucus, which ended up forcing McCarthy to make key concessions to win the speakership, is one of the five groups taking part in the debt ceiling talks.

    Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the group and attended the five families meeting, said there’s a consensus on this point: “We’re not going to accept ‘no negotiation,’” a reference to the White House’s position. “And there’s not going to be a clean debt ceiling, alright?”

    South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, also a member of the hardline group, agreed.

    “We got to get 218,” he said of the early talks. “We’re trying to get the framework. We want all buy in.”

    Norman argued that it didn’t make sense for the groups to publicly float competing proposals, even though one of the so-called families, the Republican Study Committee, has outlined its preferred approach, although the group did not lay out specific cuts or spending proposals.

    “There’s no sense in us, one group putting something out, another group puts something out,” Norman said.

    Norman, who initially opposed McCarthy’s speakership bid but ultimately backed him, said the California Republican’s effort to build consensus has helped his standing within the conference.

    “To his credit, Kevin has done a good job of getting us all together and getting us on the same page,” Norman said.

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  • Republican AGs sue ATF over new rule regulating pistol-stabilizing braces | CNN Politics

    Republican AGs sue ATF over new rule regulating pistol-stabilizing braces | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A coalition of primarily GOP-led led states sued the Biden administration Thursday in an effort to block a new federal rule that subjects pistol-stabilizing braces to additional regulations, including higher taxes, longer waiting periods and registration.

    The rule, announced earlier this year by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, went into effect on January 31. Gun control proponents have argued that stabilizing braces effectively transform a pistol into a short-barreled rifle, which is heavily regulated under the National Firearms Act.

    But in the lawsuit filed by 25 Republican state attorneys general, a Second Amendment advocacy coalition and two of its members, and a disabled gun owner who uses the stabilizing braces, the plaintiffs argue the regulations are “arbitrary and capricious” and are not covered by the 1934 law or the Gun Control Act of 1968.

    “The rule regulates pistols and other firearms equipped with stabilizing braces, even though the text, structure, history, and purpose of the NFA and GCA show that the statute does not regulate such weapons,” states the lawsuit, which names US Attorney General Merrick Garland, the ATF and its director as defendants.

    ATF declined to comment on the lawsuit. CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment on the suit.

    The coalition of states challenging the rule is led by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who said Thursday during a news conference announcing the suit that the ATF’s new rule “is also another case of a federal agency not staying in its lane and doing the job the Constitution clearly delegates to Congress – writing laws.”

    “Let’s call this what it is: An effort to undermine Americans’ Second Amendment rights,” he said. “This is an egregious final rule turning millions of common firearms accessories into ‘short-barreled rifles.’ This is a completely nonsensical regulation.”

    According to the new rule, manufacturers, dealers and individual gun owners have 120 days to register tax-free any existing short-barreled rifles covered by the rule. They can also remove the stabilizing brace or surrender covered short-barreled rifles to the ATF, the agency said.

    Restrictions on stabilizing braces have been hotly debated after they were proposed by the ATF in 2020, when the bureau suggested a new rule that would regulate pistol braces under the NFA. The 2020 proposal sparked a major backlash from groups such as the National Rifle Association.

    The regulations challenged on Thursday were given new life in 2021 after pistols with stabilizing braces were used in mass shootings in Boulder, Colorado, and in Dayton, Ohio. At the time, Garland unveiled several proposals aimed at curbing gun violence, including reupping the restriction on pistol braces.

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  • Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

    Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.



    CNN
     — 

    In Lord Byron’s satirical epic poem, “Don Juan,” the main character marvels at “the whole earth, of man the wonderful, and of the stars … of air-balloons, and of the many bars to perfect knowledge of the boundless skies — and then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes.”

    The balloon from China floating eastward over the United States last week riveted the nation’s attention for a lot longer.

    At first, the enormous balloon, carrying a smaller substructure roughly the length of three city buses, seemed to symbolize America’s wide-open vulnerability to what the Pentagon described as surveillance from a rising power.

    But the downing of the balloon off the Carolinas Saturday gave President Joe Biden’s administration a way to unleash its fighter jets without any loss of life.

    “I told them to shoot it down,” said Biden, peering at reporters through his Ray-Ban aviators at a Maryland airport. Referring to his national security team, Biden added, “They said to me let’s wait till the safest place to do it.”

    The incident led to the abrupt postponement of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China and an apologetic statement from Beijing calling it a “civilian airship” that had “deviated far from its planned course.” The US Navy and Coast Guard are taking part in an effort to recover the aircraft. which may yield evidence of its true purpose.

    Some Republicans criticized the President for not shooting it down sooner. China called the downing of the balloon an “obvious overreaction” and said it “reserves the right” to act on “similar situations.”

    In May 1937, the golden age of transcontinental passenger airships came to a catastrophic end in roughly 30 seconds after a spark set the hydrogen fuel on the Hindenburg ablaze, killing 36. But balloons for other uses survived, and they remain a tool of surveillance, even in the era of spy satellites.

    “The question is whether China carefully considered the consequences of its actions,” wrote David A. Andelman. “Intentional or otherwise, if it was indeed monitoring air flows, their engineers might have suspected these weather phenomena would eventually take these balloons over the United States.”

    He pointed out that China has an enormous fleet of satellites which can surveil other nations. “Between 2019 and 2021, China doubled the number of its satellites in orbit from 250 to 499.”

    In the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby observed, “To understand how a balloon — at once menacing and farcically Zeppelin-retro — might become a defining image of the new cold war, consider how this alleged Chinese spy contraption captures both sides of the present moment. It is provocative enough to cause Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a much-anticipated trip to Beijing. It is clumsy enough to symbolize China’s immense capacity to blunder — a tendency that President Biden’s team has lately exploited, to devastating effect.”

    05 opinion cartoons 020423

    02 Marie Kondo tidying

    “It is not hard to tidy up perfectly and completely in one fell swoop,” Marie Kondo wrote in the 2011 book that sold more than 13 million copies worldwide and launched her career as a Netflix star and curator of “joy.”

    “In fact, anyone can do it.”

    It was an apt sentiment at a time when striving for perfection at home and at work was the norm, despite it being a sometimes soul-crushing aspiration — and one that began to vanish with the arrival of the pandemic in 2020.

    So it was understandable that people took notice when Kondo, who gave birth to her third child in 2021, recently said, “My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life.”

    As Holly Thomas wrote, “Her benign comment, while welcomed with relief in some circles, prompted a surprisingly febrile reaction in others. … Kondo’s success was built on tidying, and encouraging us to tidy in turn. Where was her loyalty to tidying? How dare she pivot out of her well-ordered lane after selling us a way to live?”

    But that’s the wrong way to look at it, Thomas added. “The discomfort … with Kondo’s personal rebrand demonstrates a rigidity that’s reflected across many areas of life. … On a more sinister level, there can be an implicit sense that once you’ve established a particular trait or activity as inherent to your identity, it is somehow greedy or unfaithful to try your hand at something new.”

    Jura Koncius wrote in the Washington Post, “Kondo, 38, has caught up with the rest of us, trying to corral the doom piles on our kitchen counters while on hold with the plumber and trying not to burn dinner. The multitasker seems somewhat humbled by her growing family and her business success, maybe realizing that you can find peace in some matcha even if you drink it in a favorite cracked mug rather than a porcelain cup.”

    The new Kondo might welcome a bill in Maryland that would provide tax breaks to companies that switch to four-day work weeks as a pilot project. “We are three years into a pandemic that upended work life (and life-life) as many of us knew it,” wrote Jill Filipovic. “We are living in an era in which out-of-work demands, most especially parenting and other forms of caregiving, are more extreme than ever. And we are living in a country that, unlike other nations, provides meager support as its people strive to balance it all…”

    “No wonder so many workers report being fed up and burned out. No wonder so many women, who continue to do the lion’s share of the nation’s parenting, drop out of the workforce.”

    03 opinion cartoons 020423

    The 2024 presidential campaign is just starting to come into focus. Former President Donald Trump has locked on to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the biggest threat to his campaign for the GOP nomination.

    Trump “mercilessly slammed DeSantis again … first at a South Carolina campaign rally and then in remarks to the media,” Dean Obeidallah noted. “On his campaign plane, Trump berated DeSantis as ‘very disloyal’ and accused him of ‘trying to rewrite history’ in recent pronouncements about Covid-19 policy in Florida.”

    If DeSantis enters the race, Obeidallah observed, “he’ll need to show the red meat-loving GOP base that he can punch back against Trump.”

    Yet Trump’s derisive nicknames for DeSantis haven’t stuck, as SE Cupp said. “I know we’re just getting started, but this Trump doesn’t seem to pack the punch that 2016 Trump did. … Maybe he’s lost his touch as he’s faced one political storm after the other.”

    Some other potential rivals are queueing up, with Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, planning to announce her candidacy on February 15 and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mulling a possible run.

    “Haley is a formidable candidate who brings the executive experience from her days as governor as well as the foreign policy experience from her time as ambassador,” wrote Gavin J. Smith, who worked in both the Trump administration and Haley’s executive office in South Carolina. “This experience, paired with her ability to bring people together, her background as a mom and a military spouse, and her track record of fighting the uphill battle of running against old White men — is exactly why she is the right candidate, at the right moment, for Republicans to rally behind as we look to win back the White House in 2024.”

    Mike Pompeo has lost 90 pounds on a diet and exercise regimen. He has a new book out that attacks the media and lambastes some of his Trump administration colleagues. “Based on a close reading of his book,” Peter Bergen wrote, “I bet he will take the plunge. Pompeo could be looking to benefit as Trump loses altitude among some Republicans, and at 59, Pompeo is a spring chicken compared with President Joe Biden and Trump, so if it doesn’t work out well this time around, he sets himself up for other runs down the road.”

    When Biden sums up the State of the Union Tuesday evening, the camera will reveal one change from last year, reflecting divided party control of Congress: Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy — rather than Nancy Pelosi — will be in the backdrop, alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, as Biden speaks from the House podium.

    David Axelrod, who served as a strategist and adviser to former President Barack Obama, has some advice for Biden: “Acknowledge the stress people feel, explain how you’ve tried to help but don’t tell them how great things are. Or worse, how great YOU are. You can’t persuade people of what they don’t feel — and will lose them if you try.”

    “Rather than claim his place in history, the President should paint the picture of where we’ve been and, even more important, where we’re going…”

    Biden met with McCarthy last week, as each staked out their positions on the coming battle over America’s debt limit.

    In 2011, Obama and GOP leaders in Congress narrowly averted a default in US debt payments. Republican Lanhee J. Chen pointed out that one of the people “who facilitated the 2011 deal was none other than Joe Biden. Now, many in Washington are trying to predict what might unfold over the next several months as the once-and-future dealmaker approaches yet another debt ceiling crisis — but this time as commander in chief.”

    “The current crisis presents an opportunity for moderates in both parties to unite around the need both to raise the debt ceiling but also to put in place lasting changes that will fundamentally improve America’s fiscal trajectory.”

    01 opinion cartoons 020423

    For CNN Politics, Zachary B. Wolf spoke with Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor, who argues that the President would have legal grounds to ignore the debt ceiling entirely. Moreover, Hockett disputed the notion that US government debt is on an unsustainable path: “When we measure a national debt, we look at it as a percentage of GDP. It’s much, much lower than the Japanese national debt is, for example, relative to Japanese GDP. And you don’t see anybody worrying about the integrity or the worthiness of the Japanese national debt or whether Japan’s economy can sustain its debt.”

    Following Biden’s speech on Tuesday, the new Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, will give the GOP response. “The 40-year-old certainly provides a contrast to the 76-year-old former President Donald Trump by virtue of her age and gender,” wrote Julian Zelizer.

    But the Trump approach is still in the background, he added. “Sanders represents a new generation of Republicans eager to weaponize the same outrage machine with familiar talking points about the threats of immigration, the so-called radical left’s attacks on education, and an economy in shambles under Biden — while showing that they can govern without the self-defeating chaos and tumult that rocked the nation from 2017 to 2021.”

    For more on politics:

    Elliot Williams: I had a security clearance. It’s easier to lose classified documents than you think

    Frida Ghitis: The most important of George Santos’ secrets

    06 opinion cartoons 020423

    The death of a young man after a traffic stop and brutal police beating in Memphis cries out for a response to a national problem, wrote Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Tyre Nichols, who was laid to rest on Wednesday, was killed for driving while Black,” she wrote. “The former Memphis police officers fired for his killing will get an opportunity to defend themselves in court against the criminal charges, as they should. Nichols got no such opportunity…”

    “The question we should be asking now is, why are Black people stopped so often for traffic violations? Why are so many across the United States dying at the hands, or tasers or guns of police officers during these stops? And what can be done to change this horrific situation?”

    “Here’s one thing we know: Body cameras are not the answer. Body camera footage is not prevention; there was body camera footage of Nichols’ killing. It is evidence, not a prophylactic.”

    In the summer of 1966, when the young civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael “climbed onto the back of a truck with generator-powered lights below, he looked as though he had stepped onto a floodlit stage.” Carmichael lamented that after six years of shouting for freedom, “We ain’t got nothing. What we’re going to start saying now is ‘Black Power!’”

    Mark Whitaker, who wrote about that moment for CNN Opinion, is the author of a forthcoming book, “Saying It Loud: 1966 – The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement.”

    The day after Carmichael spoke, “a short Associated Press story describing the scene was picked up by more than 200 newspapers across America. Overnight, the Black Power Movement was born. … In 1966, the Black Power pioneers established the principle that all Black lives deserve to matter.”

    Florida’s governor is engaging in a bad faith attack on the College Board’s “proposed Advanced Placement African American Studies course, citing concerns about six topics of study, including the Movement for Black Lives, Black feminism and reparations,” wrote Leslie Kay Jones, assistant professor in the sociology department at Rutgers University. “Gov. Ron DeSantis said the course violates the so-called Stop WOKE Act, which he signed last year, and the state criticized the inclusion in the course of work by a number of scholars, including me.”

    “By villainizing CRT (critical race theory) and then representing African American Studies as synonymous with CRT, the DeSantis administration paved the way to convince the public that the accurate teaching of African American Studies as a field of research was a Trojan horse for teaching students ‘to hate.’ … I must ask where ‘hate’ is being stoked in African American Studies? Is it in the factual teaching that enslaved Black people were considered 3/5ths of a human being?”

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    Manish Khanduri: ‘Blisters inside my blisters.’ Why we walked the entire length of India

    Lev Golinkin: Germany’s quiet betrayal of victims of the Holocaust

    Darren Foster: After 15 years of reporting on opioids, I know this to be true

    Joyce Davis: How Russia outmaneuvered the US in Africa

    AND…

    Judy Blume

    Young adult author Judy Blume is the subject of a new documentary, set to air in April on Amazon Prime. One of her books, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is the basis for a new film, also aimed for an April release.

    “To say Blume is widely loved would be an understatement, as the documentary shows,” wrote Sara Stewart. “It features interviews with some of the author’s more famous adoring fans, including Molly Ringwald, Samantha Bee and Lena Dunham. It also showcases her correspondence with now-adult women who wrote to Blume, initially, as teenagers — and she wrote back, beginning friendships that would last decades.”

    “All of these women speak about the ways Blume’s books changed them, made them feel seen and understood in a way that their parents often did not.” At a time when books touching the topics she covers are increasingly being banned in schools, Blume’s voice rings out.

    At 84, she “is still fighting the good fight,” wrote Stewart. At the Key West, Florida, bookstore Blume co-founded, “the shelves bear signs proclaiming, ‘We Sell Banned Books.’”

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  • Law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders from having guns is unconstitutional, court rules | CNN Politics

    Law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders from having guns is unconstitutional, court rules | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, a conservative-leaning appeals court ruled Thursday.

    The ruling is the latest significant decision dismantling a gun restriction in the wake of the Supreme Court’s expansion of Second Amendment rights last year in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision.

    The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said that the federal law targeting those believed to pose a domestic violence threat could not stand under the Bruen test, which requires that gun laws have a historical analogy to the firearm regulations in place at the time of the Constitution’s framing.

    “Through that lens, we conclude that (the law’s) ban on possession of firearms is an ‘outlier’ that our ancestors would never have accepted,” the 5th Circuit said.

    The Justice Department signaled Thursday night that it plans to appeal the ruling. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that Congress had determined the statute “nearly 30 years ago.”

    “Whether analyzed through the lens of Supreme Court precedent, or of the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment, that statute is constitutional. Accordingly, the Department will seek further review of the Fifth Circuit’s contrary decision,” he said.

    The Justice Department did not specify its next step in seeking review of the ruling, which could include asking the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals for an en banc rehearing by all the judges on the court, or asking the US Supreme Court to take up an appeal.

    The court’s opinion was written by Judge Cory Todd Wilson, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump. He was joined by Reagan-appointee Judge Edith Jones and Judge James Ho, another Trump appointee who also wrote a concurrence.

    The 5th Circuit panel was not persuaded by the historical parallels put forward by the US Justice Department, which was defending the conviction of a person who possessed a firearm while under a domestic violence restraining order that had been imposed after he was accused of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. The Justice Department argued that the domestic violence law was analogous to 17th-and 18th century regulations that disarmed “dangerous” persons.

    “The purpose of these ‘dangerousness’ laws was the preservation of political and social order, not the protection of an identified person from the specific threat posed by another,” the 5th Circuit opinion read. “Therefore, laws disarming ‘dangerous’ classes of people are not ‘relevantly similar’” to “serve as historical analogues.”

    A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a CNN inquiry. If the 5th Circuit’s ruling is appealed, it could set up another showdown over gun rights at the Supreme Court.

    Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said clarity from the court is necessary.

    “One of two things is true: Either this kind of blind, rigid, context-free, and common-sense-defying assessment of history is exactly what the Supreme Court intended in its landmark ruling last June in Bruen, or it isn’t,” Vladeck said.

    “Either way, it’s incumbent upon the justices in the Bruen majority to clarify which one they meant – and to either endorse or reject the rather terrifying idea that individuals under an active domestic violence-related restraining order are nevertheless constitutionally entitled to possess firearms,” he added.

    The defendant challenging his conviction, Zackey Rahimi, had lost in an earlier round before the 5th Circuit, before the Supreme Court issued its Bruen ruling last year. The previous 5th Circuit opinion was withdrawn after the Bruen decision was handed down, and the appeals court did another round of briefing directed at the new test.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • McCarthy hopeful after first meeting with Biden on debt limit: ‘I think that at the end of the day, we can find common ground’ | CNN Politics

    McCarthy hopeful after first meeting with Biden on debt limit: ‘I think that at the end of the day, we can find common ground’ | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not walk away from his highly anticipated White House meeting on Wednesday with an agreement in hand to address the debt limit, but signaled optimism that both he and President Joe Biden can reach consensus “long before” the United States reaches default.

    McCarthy called it “a good first meeting,” adding, “We both have different perspectives on this, but I thought this was a good meeting. We promised we would continue the conversation and we’ll see if we can get there. I think that at the end of the day, we can find common ground.”

    “I told the president I would like to see if we can come to an agreement long before the deadline and we can start working on other things,” McCarthy added in remarks outside the White House.

    Following his first White House meeting since he won the speakership, McCarthy said he believes that a funding agreement could be reached for the next two years and that “you won’t see omnibuses anymore.”

    “You’ll see the Senate and the House actually do what the American public has elected them to do,” he added.

    The highly anticipated meeting was expected to influence how the fight to raise the national debt limit unfolds as the White House and the new House GOP majority are at odds over how to resolve the critical issue.

    House Republicans say that lifting the borrowing cap must be tied to spending reductions. The White House, however, has countered that it will not offer concessions or negotiate on raising the debt ceiling.

    The US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress in January, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills and escalating pressure on Capitol Hill to avoid a catastrophic default.

    The debt limit fight will be an early test of McCarthy’s leadership as House speaker, where he has to balance competing demands from different factions of his conference amid a razor-thin majority. It will also shed light on how, and to what extent, McCarthy and Biden are able to work with one another.

    Senate Republicans have indicated they will sit back and see how the House GOP maneuvers a way to raise the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit – before deciding if they need to insert themselves into the process.

    McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday the nation has reached “a critical point” with respect to the debt limit.

    Republicans face a political risk as they push to cut spending: If they propose cuts to popular government programs and services, they could face a public backlash.

    While McCarthy had not settled on any individual proposal ahead of the Biden meeting and was unlikely to make a specific offer, he had heard suggestions from key players in his conference.

    Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, McCarthy has been involved in extensive preparations, consulting regularly with allies on and off the Hill including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as well as his relevant committee chairs who he has been leaning on for their policy expertise, such as Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith of Missouri and Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, sources familiar with the preparation told CNN.

    McCarthy and his House GOP allies are hashing out initial demands, discussing steep cuts to domestic programs and a trim to defense spending – all the while steering clear of two programs to avoid voter blowback: Medicare and Social Security.

    House Republicans had been hoping to strengthen their negotiating hand with the White House by uniting around a proposal, but finding conference-wide consensus on spending cuts has proved challenging.

    The view from Republicans heading into Wednesday’s meeting was that it is still early and there are still months of negotiations ahead – meaning there’s plenty of time for McCarthy to lay out specifics. Still, leaders have also been aware they have to begin laying the groundwork with their members now.

    The White House, meanwhile, has continued to emphasize the critical importance of avoiding a catastrophic default.

    McCarthy’s position that cuts to Medicare and Social Security are not on the table in exchange for a debt ceiling increase has drawn skepticism the White House. And when asked for his message to McCarthy in the meeting, the president told CNN, “Show me your budget and I’ll show you mine.”

    A White House spokesperson told CNN that Biden would remind McCarthy of his “Constitutional obligation to prevent a national default, as every other House and Senate leader in U.S. history has done, and as Leaders (Mitch) McConnell, (Chuck) Schumer, and (Hakeem) Jeffries have pledged to do.”

    “He will underscore that the economic security of all Americans cannot be held hostage to force unpopular cuts on working families,” they added.

    In a memo to “interested parties” dated Monday that was written by National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, Biden’s top economic advisers said the president intended to pose two questions to McCarthy on Wednesday: Whether McCarthy will commit to the US not defaulting on its financial obligations and when McCarthy and House Republicans will release their budget.

    Biden, the officials wrote, “will seek a clear commitment from Speaker McCarthy that default – as well as proposals from members of his Caucus for default by another name – is unacceptable.”

    They added, “President Biden will ask Speaker McCarthy to publicly assure the American people and the rest of the world that the United States will, as always, honor all of its financial obligations.”

    A day ahead of the meeting, the president suggested McCarthy was entering the talks from a weakened position, hampered by agreements he made with an unruly GOP conference.

    Calling McCarthy a “decent man,” Biden nonetheless said he had been forced to cater to extremist Republicans in his quest to become speaker.

    Biden said at a high-dollar fundraiser in Manhattan that McCarthy had to make commitments “that are just absolutely off the wall for the speaker of the House to make.”

    Responding to the president’s fundraiser comments, McCarthy told reporters, “Apparently, he doesn’t understand … I’m looking forward to sitting down with the president, negotiating for the American public, the people of America, on how we can find savings. We’ve watched what the spending has done, we watched it brought us inflation, we watched the challenge that it happened. We’re looking forward to changing the course.”

    Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, told “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday that Biden should “absolutely not” negotiate on raising the nation’s borrowing limit and raised fears a default could tank the US economy. He reiterated his support for Biden’s position, while leaving the door open for spending cuts during future negotiations.

    House GOP Whip Tom Emmer said he doubted there would be any agreement on Wednesday, but said,”Everything’s on the table” when asked about defense spending cuts.

    He also said he expected McCarthy to reassure the president that there will not be a default and that spending cuts for Social Security and Medicare will not be considered.

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  • First on CNN: Biden administration to strengthen Obamacare contraceptive mandate in proposed rule | CNN Politics

    First on CNN: Biden administration to strengthen Obamacare contraceptive mandate in proposed rule | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration wants to make it easier for women to access birth control at no cost under the Affordable Care Act, reversing Trump-era rules that weakened the law’s contraceptive mandate for employer-provided health insurance plans.

    The proposed rule, unveiled Monday by the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury, would remove an exemption to the mandate that allows employers to opt out for moral convictions. It would also create an independent pathway for individuals enrolled in plans offered by employers with religious exemptions to access contraceptive services through a willing provider without charge.

    The proposed rule would leave in place the existing religious exemption for employers with objections, as well as the optional accommodation for contraceptive coverage.

    The administration crafted the proposed rule keeping in mind the concerns of employers with religious objections and the contraceptive needs of their workers, a senior HHS official told CNN.

    “We had to really think through how to do this in the right way to satisfy both sides, but we think we found that way,” the official said, stressing that there should be no effect on religiously affiliated employers.

    Students at religiously affiliated colleges would have access to the expanded accommodation, just like workers in group health plans where the employer has claimed the exemption.

    Now that the proposed rule has been announced, the public will have the opportunity to comment during the next few months. Officials expect there to be many thousands of public comments, and it will be “many months” before the rule could be finalized.

    HHS expects the proposal would affect more than 100 employers and 125,000 workers, mainly through providing the proposed independent pathway for employees to receive no-cost contraception.

    Women using that pathway would obtain their birth control from a participating provider, who would be reimbursed by an insurer on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. The insurer, in turn, would receive a credit on the user fee it pays the government.

    “If this rule is finalized, individuals who have health plans that would otherwise be subject to the ACA preventive services requirements but have not covered contraceptive services because of a moral or religious objection, and for which the sponsoring employer or college or university has not elected the optional accommodation, would now have access,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a news release.

    How many people benefit, however, would depend on whether women and their health care providers know the independent pathway exists and whether providers and insurers are willing to set it up.

    “We’ll just have to see how widely that information is spread and in what way to providers and individuals,” said Laurie Sobel, associate director for Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, noting that the proposed rule would not require data collection to show the pathway’s takeup.

    But the Planned Parenthood Federation of America cheered the initiative.

    “Employers and universities should not be able to dictate personal health care decisions and impose their views on their employees or students,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, the group’s CEO. “The ACA mandates that health insurance plans cover all forms of birth control without out-of-pocket costs. Now, more than ever, we must protect this fundamental freedom.”

    The requirement to provide no-cost contraception is not in the Affordable Care Act itself. Instead, HHS under former President Barack Obama included it as one of the women’s preventive services that all private insurance plans must offer without charge.

    The mandate was controversial from the start, sparking lawsuits from religiously affiliated employers and closely held companies that said it violated their beliefs. Exemptions and accommodations have been available for such employers.

    The Trump administration, however, weakened the mandate. Under the rules issued in 2018, entities that have “sincerely held religious beliefs” against providing contraceptives are not required to do so. That provision also extends to organizations and small businesses that have objections “on the basis of moral conviction which is not based in any particular religious belief.”

    The rules also include an optional accommodation that lets objecting employers and private universities remove themselves from providing birth control coverage while still allowing their workers and dependents access to contraception. But the employer or university has to voluntarily elect the accommodation, which risks leaving many without access.

    The Trump administration changes were temporarily blocked after a Pennsylvania district court judge issued a nationwide injunction in 2019. But the following year, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration could expand exemptions for employers who have religious or moral objections to covering contraception.

    At the time, the National Women’s Law Center estimated that the ruling would impact about 64.3 million women in the United States with insurance coverage that included birth control and other preventive services without out-of-pocket costs.

    Employers are not required to notify HHS if they have a moral objection. The agency estimates about 18 employers have claimed that exemption and around 15 employees are affected.

    Still, if the rule is finalized, senior HHS officials say it is “plausible” there could be potential lawsuits brought by religiously affiliated employers – similar to what has been seen in the past.

    “There’s no new obligation on them to participate in any sort of process. This is simply an additional channel for employees in those employer health plans to receive access to contraceptive services,” another senior HHS official said.

    The contraceptive mandate has taken on increased importance now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing many states to impose severe restrictions on abortion access.

    The Biden administration in turn has focused on continuing access to birth control at no cost. The Health, Labor and Treasury department secretaries last year met with health insurers and issued guidance underscoring Obamacare’s contraceptive coverage requirements for private insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

    “Now more than ever, access to and coverage of birth control is critical as the Biden-Harris Administration works to help ensure women everywhere can get the contraception they need, when they need it, and – thanks to the ACA – with no out-of-pocket cost,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a news release.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Biden and McCarthy to meet Wednesday amid debt ceiling showdown | CNN Politics

    Biden and McCarthy to meet Wednesday amid debt ceiling showdown | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet Wednesday, a White House official confirmed, the first such gathering since the California Republican captured the speakership earlier this month.

    The meeting comes as the Treasury Department continues to take extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills after the US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress.

    “I want to find a reasonable and a responsible way that we can lift the debt ceiling but take control of this runaway spending,” McCarthy said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

    “So I want to sit down together, work out an agreement that we can move forward to put us on a path to balance at the same time, not put any of our debt in jeopardy at the same time,” he said.

    Hard-line Republicans, who hold significant sway in the House because of their party’s slim majority, have demanded that lifting the borrowing cap be tied to spending reductions.

    The White House, however, has countered that it will not offer any concessions or negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. And with the solution to the debt ceiling drama squarely in lawmakers’ hands, fears are growing that the partisan brinksmanship could result in the nation defaulting on its debt for the first time ever – or come dangerously close to doing so.

    McCarthy on Sunday suggested that defense spending could potentially be on the table, but he made clear that cuts to Social Security and Medicare weren’t an option.

    “I first think, our very first responsibility, we both should have to pass a budget. We both should have to pass the appropriation bills so the country can see the direction we’re going. But you cannot continue the spending that has brought this inflation, that has brought our economic problems. We’ve got to get our spending under control,” he said.

    Earlier this month, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the two men would meet on a range of topics, but insisted that raising the debt limit was “not negotiable.”

    “President Biden looks forward to meeting with Speaker McCarthy to discuss a range of issues, as part of a series of meetings with all new Congressional leaders to start the year,” Jean-Pierre said. “Like the President has said many times, raising the debt ceiling is not a negotiation; it is an obligation of this country and its leaders to avoid economic chaos.”

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  • Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden delivered a Thursday speech to hail economic progress during his administration and to attack congressional Republicans for their proposals on the economy and the social safety net.

    Some of Biden’s claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context, though others were correct. Here’s a breakdown of the 14 claims CNN fact-checked.

    Touting the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, Biden said, “Last year, we funded 700,000 major construction projects – 700,000 all across America. From highways to airports to bridges to tunnels to broadband.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “700,000” figure is wildly inaccurate; it adds an extra two zeros to the correct figure Biden used in a speech last week and the White House has also used before: 7,000 projects. The White House acknowledged his misstatement later on Thursday by correcting the official transcript to say 7,000 rather than 700,000.

    Biden said, “Well, here’s the deal: I put a – we put a cap, and it’s now in effect – now in effect, as of January 1 – of $2,000 a year on prescription drug costs for seniors.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims that this cap is now in effect and that it came into effect on January 1 are false. The $2,000 annual cap contained in the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last year – on Medicare Part D enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending on covered prescription drugs – takes effect in 2025. The maximum may be higher than $2,000 in subsequent years, since it is tied to Medicare Part D’s per capita costs.

    Asked for comment, a White House official noted that other Inflation Reduction Act health care provisions that will save Americans money did indeed come into effect on January 1, 2023.

    – CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this item.

    Criticizing former President Donald Trump over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden said, “Back then, only 3.5 million people had been – even had their first vaccination, because the other guy and the other team didn’t think it mattered a whole lot.”

    Facts First: Biden is free to criticize Trump’s vaccine rollout, but his “only 3.5 million” figure is misleading at best. As of the day Trump left office in January 2021, about 19 million people had received a first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The “3.5 million” figure Biden cited is, in reality, the number of people at the time who had received two shots to complete their primary vaccination series.

    Someone could perhaps try to argue that completing a primary series is what Biden meant by “had their first vaccination” – but he used a different term, “fully vaccinated,” to refer to the roughly 230 million people in that very same group today. His contrasting language made it sound like there are 230 million people with at least two shots today versus 3.5 million people with just one shot when he took office. That isn’t true.

    Biden said Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires, “who pay virtually only 3% of their income now – 3%, they pay.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “3%” claim is incorrect. For the second time in less than a week, Biden inaccurately described a 2021 finding from economists in his administration that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018; after CNN inquired about Biden’s “3%” claim on Thursday, the White House published a corrected official transcript that uses “8%” instead. Also, it’s important to note that even that 8% number is contested, since it is an alternative calculation that includes unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.

    “Biden’s numbers are way too low,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute think tank, though Gleckman also said we don’t know precisely what tax rates billionaires do pay. Gleckman wrote in an email: “In 2019, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabe Zucman estimated the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of about 23 percent in 2018. They got a lot of attention at the time because that rate was lower than the average rate of 24 percent for the bottom half of the income distribution. But it still was way more than 2 or 3, or even 8 percent.”

    Biden has cited the 8% statistic in various other speeches, but unlike the administration economists who came up with it, he tends not to explain that it doesn’t describe tax rates in a conventional way. And regardless, he said “3%” in this speech and “2%” in a speech last week.

    Biden cited a 2021 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy think tank that found that 55 of the country’s largest corporations had made $40 billion in profit in their previous fiscal year but not paid any federal corporate income taxes. Before touting the 15% alternative corporate minimum tax he signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, Biden said, “The days are over when corporations are paying zero in federal taxes.”

    Facts First: Biden exaggerated. The new minimum tax will reduce the number of companies that don’t pay any federal taxes, but it’s not true that the days of companies paying zero are “over.” That’s because the minimum tax, on the “book income” companies report to investors, only applies to companies with at least $1 billion in average annual income. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, only 14 of the companies on its 2021 list of 55 non-payers reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion.

    In other words, there will clearly still be some large and profitable corporations paying no federal income tax even after the minimum tax takes effect this year. The exact number is not yet known.

    Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told CNN in the fall that the new tax is “an important step forward from the status quo” and that it will raise substantial revenue, but he also said: “I wouldn’t want to assert that the minimum tax will end the phenomenon of zero-tax profitable corporations. A more accurate phrasing would be to say that the minimum tax will *help* ensure that *the most profitable* corporations pay at least some federal income tax.”

    There are lots of nuances to the tax; you can read more specifics here. Asked for comment on Thursday, a White House official told CNN: “The Inflation Reduction Act ensures the wealthiest corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, precisely the corporations the President focused on during the campaign and in office. The President’s full Made in America tax plan would ensure all corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, and the President has called on Congress to pass that plan.”

    Noting the big increase in the federal debt under Trump, Biden said that his administration has taken a “different path” and boasted: “As a result, the last two years – my administration – we cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion, the largest reduction in debt in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by a total of $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 – but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected as the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits.

    Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics – an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency – told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021.

    National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote on the White House website last week that the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill “facilitated a strong economic recovery and enabled the responsible wind-down of emergency spending programs,” thereby reducing the deficit; David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, told Egan in October that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the recovery that has pushed the deficit downward. And Deese correctly noted that Biden’s signature legislation, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to bring down deficits by more than $200 billion over the next decade.

    Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved.

    Biden said, “Wages are up, and they’re growing faster than inflation. Over the past six months, inflation has gone down every month and, God willing, will continue to do that.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim that wages are up and growing faster than inflation is true if you start the calculation seven months ago; “real” wages, which take inflation into account, started rising in mid-2022 as inflation slowed. (Biden is right that inflation has declined, on an annual basis, every month for the last six months.) However, real wages are lower today than they were both a full year ago and at the beginning of Biden’s presidency in January 2021. That’s because inflation was so high in 2021 and the beginning of 2022.

    There are various ways to measure real wages. Real average hourly earnings declined 1.7% between December 2021 and December 2022, while real average weekly earnings (which factors in the number of hours people worked) declined 3.1% over that period.

    Biden said he was disappointed that the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives “added $114 billion to the deficit.”

    Facts First: Biden is correct about how the bill would affect the deficit if it became law. He accurately cited an estimate from the government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

    The bill would eliminate more than $71 billion of the $80 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that Biden signed into law in the Inflation Reduction Act. The Congressional Budget Office found that taking away this funding – some of which the Biden administration said will go toward increased audits of high-income individuals and large corporations – would result in a loss of nearly $186 billion in government revenue between 2023 and 2032, for a net increase to the deficit of about $114 billion.

    The Republican bill has no chance of becoming law under Biden, who has vowed to veto it in the highly unlikely event it got through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

    Biden said that “MAGA Republicans” in the House “want to impose a 30 percent national sales tax on everything from food, clothing, school supplies, housing, cars – a whole deal.” He said they want to do that because “they want to eliminate the income tax system.”

    Facts First: This is a fair description of the Republicans’ “FairTax” bill. The bill would eliminate federal income taxes, plus the payroll tax, capital gains tax and estate tax, and replace it with a national sales tax. The bill describes a rate of 23% on the “gross payments” on a product or service, but when the tax rate is described in the way consumers are used to sales taxes being described, it’s actually right around 30%, as a pro-FairTax website acknowledges.

    It is not clear how much support the bill currently has among the House Republican caucus. Notably, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju this week that he opposes the bill – though, while seeking right-wing votes for his bid for speaker in early January, he promised its supporters that it would be considered in committee. Biden wryly said in his speech, “The Republican speaker says he’s not so sure he’s for it.”

    Biden claimed the unemployment rate “is the lowest it’s been in 50 years.”

    Facts First: This is true. The unemployment rate was just below 3.5% in December, the lowest figure since 1969.

    The headline monthly rate, which is rounded to a single decimal place, was reported as 3.5% in December and also reported as 3.5% in three months of President Donald Trump’s tenure, in late 2019 and in early 2020. But if you look at more precise figures, December was indeed the lowest since 1969 – 3.47% – just below the figures for February 2020, January 2020 and September 2019.

    Biden said that the unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic Americans are “near record lows” and that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is “the lowest ever recorded” and the “lowest ever in history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims are accurate, though it’s worth noting that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities has only been released by the government since 2008.

    The Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.7% in December, not far from the record low of 5.3% that was set in August 2019. (This data series goes back to 1972.) The rate was 9.2% in January 2021, the month Biden became president. The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate was 4.1% in December, just above the record low of 4.0% that was set in September 2019. (This data series goes back to 1973.) The rate was 8.5% in January 2021.

    The unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 5.0% in December, the lowest since the beginning of the data series in 2008. The rate was 12.0% in January 2021.

    Biden said that fewer families are facing foreclosure than before the pandemic.

    Facts First: Biden is correct. According to a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, about 28,500 people had new foreclosure notations on their credit reports in the third quarter of 2022, the most recent quarter for which data is available; that was down from about 71,420 people with new foreclosure notations in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 74,860 people in the first quarter of 2020.

    Foreclosures plummeted in the second quarter of 2020 because of government moratoriums put in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Foreclosures spiked in 2022, relative to 2020-2021 levels, after the expiry of these moratoriums, but they remained very low by historical standards.

    Biden said, “More American families have health insurance today than any time in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is accurate. An analysis provided to CNN by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies US health care, found that about 295 million US residents had health insurance in 2021, the highest on record – and Jennifer Tolbert, the foundation’s director for state health reform, told CNN this week that “I expect the number of people with insurance continued to increase in 2022.”

    Tolbert noted that the number of insured residents generally rises over time because of population growth, but she added that “it is not a given” that there will be an increase in the number of insured residents every year – the number declined slightly under Trump from 2018 to 2019, for example – and that “policy changes as well as economic factors also affect these numbers.”

    As CNN’s Tami Luhby has reported, sign-ups on the federal insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, have spiked nearly 50% under Biden. Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law and then the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act temporarily boosted federal premium subsidies for exchange enrollees, and the Biden administration has also taken various other steps to get people to sign up on the exchanges. In addition, enrollment in Medicaid health insurance has increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic, in part because of a bipartisan 2020 law that temporarily prevented people from being disenrolled from the program.

    The percentage of residents without health insurance fell to an all-time low of 8.0% in the first quarter of 2022, according to an analysis published last summer by the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services. That meant there were 26.4 million people without health insurance, down from 48.3 million in 2010, the year Obamacare was signed into law.

    Biden said, “And over the last two years, more than 10 million people have applied to start a small business. That’s more than any two years in all of recorded American history.”

    Facts First: This is true. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. Not every application turns into a real business, but the number of “high-propensity” business applications – those deemed to have a high likelihood of turning into a business with a payroll – also hit a record in 2021 and saw its second-highest total in 2022.

    Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high-propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Among them: some newly unemployed workers seized the moment to start their own enterprises; Americans had extra money from stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden; interest rates were particularly low until a series of rate hikes that began in the spring of 2022.

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  • What to know about George Santos and his campaign finance issues as questions grow | CNN Politics

    What to know about George Santos and his campaign finance issues as questions grow | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Rep. George Santos began his third week as a congressman with an array of questions still swirling around the New York Republican’s personal and campaign finances.

    He ended the week with even more unanswered questions – after his campaign submitted a raft of changes to federal election regulators, including appearing to install a new campaign treasurer without that person’s permission.

    “I can’t think of another example (of a campaign) that has presented such a wide variety of legal concerns,” said Erin Chlopak, senior director of campaign finance at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center and a former lawyer with the Federal Election Commission. “I feel like the George Santos saga is like a campaign finance law school course, all in one.”

    Santos, who faces multiple investigations about his finances and lies about his biography and resume, repeatedly refused to respond to reporters’ inquiries about his filings and finances this week – saying at one point that he does not “touch” FEC reports.

    Leaving his office Friday morning on Capitol Hill, Santos told a reporter that he would put together a news conference “soon” to “address everything.”

    “We’ll give you all the answers to everything you’re asking for,” he said.

    Santos’ personal lawyer Joe Murray declined to comment when reached by CNN this week. “In light of all the complaints that have been filed, it would just be inappropriate to discuss anything about it,” he said.

    Santos’ longtime campaign treasurer Nancy Marks has not responded to multiple inquiries from CNN.

    Here’s what you should know about the latest developments:

    As of Friday afternoon, it was not clear who serves as treasurer of the Santos campaign – the person responsible for filing disclosure reports with the FEC, authorizing spending and ensuring that the campaign complies with federal campaign finance laws.

    Earlier this week, Santos’ campaign filed paperwork installing Thomas Datwyler, a Wisconsin-based political consultant, as the new treasurer of his campaign and several Santos-aligned political committees.

    But in a statement Wednesday, Datwyler’s lawyer said that his client had turned down the treasurer’s position and that the campaign had filed the paperwork without Datwyler’s authorization.

    Campaign finance experts say only someone with access to the campaign committee’s login credentials can file electronic amendments with the FEC.

    Derek Ross, Datwyler’s attorney, told CNN that agency officials said they were aware of the situation and sent letters to Datwyler on Friday to “confirm the authenticity and accuracy of the various filings.”

    Datwyler’s team has responded, “notifying the FEC that the filings are unauthorized and Mr. Datwyler should be removed as treasurer,” Ross said.

    Santos, like all congressional candidates, faces a looming Tuesday deadline to file new reports with the FEC that detail his fundraising and spending during the closing weeks of 2022.

    Santos this week also filed a slew of amended reports with the FEC that only added to the confusion about the source of the loans he has said he made to his campaign.

    In some filings, the campaign did not check boxes denoting that two six-figure loans came from the candidate’s personal funds.

    Campaign finance experts say it’s hard to tell whether the unmarked boxes amounted to little more than sloppy bookkeeping or point to something more serious. Over the course of his campaign, Santos’ reports have offered inconsistent information about the loans.

    But how Santos achieved the financial windfall to provide more than $700,000 in loans to his successful 2022 campaign has been a central question ever since the 34-year-old flipped a Long Island-based House seat in November, helping Republicans secure their narrow majority in the chamber.

    During his unsuccessful 2020 campaign for the House, he reported a salary of $55,000 and no assets in his candidate filings to Congress.

    Two years later, Santos reported a $750,000 salary from the Devolder Organization, which he said had earned between $1,000,001 and $5 million in income the previous year. He also reported owning an apartment in Rio De Janeiro, a checking account valued at between $100,001 and $250,000, and a savings account worth between $1,000,001 and $5 million.

    For weeks, Santos has faced questions about the dozens of expenses his campaign has reported at exactly $199.99, one cent below the threshold above which the campaign is required to retain receipts.

    The Campaign Legal Center has filed a complaint with the FEC that describes the disbursements as “odd and seemingly impossible.” It notes that one of the $199.99 expenses was purported to be for a “hotel stay” at the luxury W Hotel South Beach in Florida in October 2021, where the lowest-price room typically would have cost more than $700.

    But The Washington Post first reported this week that Santos’ campaign briefly reported in an earlier submission to the FEC a raft of additional just-under-$200 expenses – but described both the recipients and purpose of the disbursements as “anonymous.”

    Those anonymous entries later were removed in revised filings.

    Clopak of the Campaign Legal Center said those entries just add to the cloud surrounding Santos’ campaign.

    “We have campaign finance disclosure laws to serve to ensure a number of interests,” she said. “One of the things is to make sure that voters are informed about the sources of … the money that they spend and what they spend it on.”

    “When people file reports indicating that the recipients of their campaign spending is ‘anonymous,’ that defeats the very purpose of those transparency laws,” Clopak said.

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  • Treasury takes more extraordinary measures to avoid debt default | CNN Politics

    Treasury takes more extraordinary measures to avoid debt default | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is taking another step to temporarily delay the US defaulting on its debt.

    Less than a week after announcing that the nation hit its $31.4 trillion debt ceiling set by Congress, Yellen wrote to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday to say that she is adding to the extraordinary measures that will allow the government to keep paying its bills on time and stall the catastrophic economic and fiscal consequences of a default.

    She will stop fully investing the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Thrift Savings Fund, part of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System, in interest-bearing securities of the US.

    This is in addition to the measures announced last week, when Yellen said Treasury will begin to sell existing investments and suspend reinvestments of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund.

    These funds are invested in special-issue Treasury securities, which count against the debt limit. Treasury’s actions would reduce the amount of outstanding debt subject to the limit and temporarily allow it to continue paying the government’s bills on time and in full.

    Yellen’s actions are mainly behind-the-scenes accounting maneuvers. No federal retirees or employees will be affected, and the funds will be made whole once the impasse ends, she wrote.

    The extraordinary measures should last at least until early June, Yellen has said, though she stressed that her forecast is subject to “considerable uncertainty.”

    Despite Yellen’s warnings to Congress to act promptly, little, if any, progress toward a resolution has been made between House Republicans and the White House.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated Monday that the Biden administration is not open to negotiating on the debt limit, pushing back against comments from West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin that the position was “a mistake.”

    “It was done three times in the past, in the past administration under Donald Trump, so this is nothing unusual,” she told CNN during a White House briefing. “This is something that should be done without conditions, and we should not be taking hostage key programs that the American people really earned and care about – Social Security, Medicare should not be put into a hostage situation.”

    McCarthy also blasted the administration’s position, tweeting last week that he’s ready to meet to discuss “a responsible debt ceiling increase to address irresponsible government spending.” He noted that he accepts President Joe Biden’s invitation to sit down, though no such meeting has been set.

    As part of the drawn-out negotiations to win the speaker vote earlier this month, McCarthy promised his conservative members that any effort to lift the debt ceiling would be accompanied by spending cuts.

    The Senate, meanwhile, is taking a back seat in the standoff for now. Senate Republicans say they will wait to see how the House GOP maneuvers a way to raise the borrowing limit before deciding if they need to insert themselves into the process.

    Despite the current situation, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN Monday that “we won’t default,” without elaborating.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday laid out the severe consequences of a default, saying “every single American will pay the price.” He called on House Republicans to reveal the fiscal measures they want to take.

    “Well, I say to my Republican colleagues: If you want to talk about spending cuts, then you have an obligation – an obligation – to show the American people precisely what kind of cuts you are talking about,” he said.

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  • Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics

    Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Since winning a difficult battle to become speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy has made public claims that are misleading, lacking any evidence or plain wrong.

    Here is a fact check of recent McCarthy comments about the debt ceiling, funding for the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s resort and residence in Florida, President Joe Biden’s stance on stoves and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

    McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

    McCarthy has cited the example of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, his Democratic predecessor as House speaker, while defending conservative Republicans’ insistence that any agreement to lift the federal debt ceiling must be paired with cuts to government spending – a trade-off McCarthy agreed to when he was trying to persuade conservatives to support his bid for speaker. Specifically, McCarthy has claimed that even Pelosi agreed to a spending cap as part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling under Trump.

    “When Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s what transpired. To get a debt ceiling, they also got a cap on spending for the next two years,” McCarthy told reporters at a press conference on January 12. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo told McCarthy in a January 15 interview that “they” would not agree to a spending cap, he responded, “Well Maria, I don’t believe that’s the case, because when Donald Trump was president and when Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s exactly what happened for them to get a debt ceiling lifted last time. They agreed to a spending cap.”

    Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are highly misleading. The deal Pelosi agreed to with the Trump administration in 2019 actually loosened spending caps that were already in place at the time because of a 2011 law. In other words, while congressional conservatives today want to use a debt ceiling deal to reduce government spending, the Pelosi deal allowed for billions in additional government spending above the pre-existing maximum. The two situations are nothing alike.

    Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, said when asked about the accuracy of McCarthy’s claims: “I’m going to steer clear of characterizing the Speaker’s remarks, but as an objective matter, the deal reached in 2019 increased the spending caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011.”

    The 2019 deal, which was criticized by many congressional conservatives, also ensured that Budget Control Act’s caps on discretionary spending – which were created as a result of a 2011 debt ceiling deal between a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House – would not be extended past 2021. Spending caps vanishing is the opposite of McCarthy’s suggestion that the deal “got” a spending cap.

    Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email that McCarthy is “trying to rewrite history.” Bennett said, “As Republicans in Congress and in the Administration noted at the time, in 2019, Speaker Pelosi and Democrats were eager to reach bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit and, as part of the agreement, avert damaging funding cuts for defense and domestic programs.”

    In various statements since becoming speaker, McCarthy has boasted of how the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House “repealed 87,000 IRS agents” or “repealed funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.”

    Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are false. House Republicans did pass a bill that seeks to eliminate about $71 billion of the approximately $80 billion in additional Internal Revenue Service funding that Biden signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act – but that funding is not going to hire 87,000 “agents.” In addition, Biden has already made clear he would veto this new Republican bill even if the bill somehow made it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, so no funding has actually been “repealed.” It would be accurate for McCarthy to say House Republicans “voted to repeal” the funding, but the boast that they actually “repealed” something is inaccurate.

    CNN’s Katie Lobosco explains in detail here why the claim about “87,000 new IRS agents” is an exaggeration. The claim, which has become a common Republican talking point, has been fact-checked by numerous media outlets over more than five months, including The Washington Post in response to McCarthy remarks earlier this January.

    Here’s a summary. While Inflation Reduction Act funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations. Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up the vast majority of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

    The IRS has not yet released a detailed breakdown of how it plans to use the funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, so it’s impossible to say precisely how many new “agents” will be hired. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000.

    In his interview with Fox’s Bartiromo on January 15, McCarthy criticized federal law enforcement for executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida, which the FBI says resulted in the recovery of more than 100 government documents marked as classified and hundreds of other government documents. Echoing a claim Trump has made, McCarthy said of the documents: “They knew it was there. They could have come and taken it any time they wanted.”

    Facts First: It is clearly not true that the authorities could somehow have come to Mar-a-Lago at any time, without conducting a formal search, and taken all of the presidential records they were seeking from Trump. By the time of the search, the federal government – first the National Archives and Records Administration and then the Justice Department – had been asking Trump for more than a year to return government records. Even when the Justice Department went beyond asking in May and served Trump’s team with a subpoena for the return of all documents with classification markings, Trump’s team returned only some of these documents. In June, a Trump lawyer signed a document certifying on behalf of Trump’s office that all of the documents had been returned, though that was not true.

    When FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney visited Mar-a-Lago without a search warrant on that June day to accept documents the Trump team was returning in response to the subpoena, a Trump lawyer “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room,” the department said in a court filing after the August search. In other words, according to the department, the government was not even allowed to poke around to see if there were government records still at Mar-a-Lago, let alone take those records.

    In the August court filing, the department pointedly called into question the extent to which the Trump team had cooperated: “That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”

    McCarthy wrote in a New York Post article published on January 12: “While President Joe Biden wants to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on, House Republicans are certainly cooking with gas.” He repeated the claim on Twitter the next morning.

    Facts First: There is no evidence for this claim; Biden has not expressed a desire to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on. McCarthy was baselessly attributing the comments of a single Biden appointee to Biden himself.

    It is true that a Biden appointee on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., told Bloomberg earlier this month that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and said, “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the day before McCarthy’s article was published by the New York Post, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

    To date, even the commission itself has not shown support for a ban on gas stoves or for any particular new regulations on gas stoves. Commission Chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric said in a statement the day before McCarthy’s article was published: “I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” Rather, he said, the commission is researching gas emissions in stoves, “exploring new ways to address health risks,” and strengthening voluntary safety standards – and will this spring ask the public “to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for reducing any associated risks.”

    Trumka told CNN’s Matt Egan that while every option remains on the table, any ban would apply only to new gas stoves, not the gas stoves already in people’s homes. And he noted that the Inflation Reduction Act makes people eligible for a rebate of up to $840 to voluntarily switch to an electric stove.

    Defending his plan to bar Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff from sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, a committee Schiff chaired during the Democratic majority from early 2019 to the beginning of this year, McCarthy criticized Schiff on January 12 over his handling of the first impeachment of Trump. Among other things, McCarthy said: “Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistleblower.”

    Facts First: There is no evidence for McCarthy’s insinuation that Schiff lied when he said he didn’t know the anonymous whistleblower who came forward in 2019 with allegations – which were subsequently corroborated – about how Trump had attempted to use the power of his office to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, his looming rival in the 2020 election.

    Schiff said last week in a statement to CNN: “Kevin McCarthy continues to falsely assert I know the Ukraine whistleblower. Let me be clear – I have never met the whistleblower and the only thing I know about their identity is what I have read in press. McCarthy’s real objection is we proved the whistleblower’s claim to be true and impeached Donald Trump for withholding millions from Ukraine to extort its help with his campaign.” Schiff also made this comment to The Washington Post, which fact-checked the McCarthy claim last week, and has consistently said the same since late 2019.

    The New York Times reported in 2019 that, according to an unnamed official, a House Intelligence Committee aide who had been contacted by the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed a formal complaint did not inform Schiff of the person’s identity when conveying to Schiff “some” information about what the person had said. And Reuters reported in 2019 that a person familiar with the whistleblower’s contacts said the whistleblower hadn’t met or spoken with Schiff.

    McCarthy could have fairly repeated Republican criticism of a claim Schiff made in a 2019 television appearance about the committee’s communication with the whistleblower; Schiff said at the time “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower” even though it soon emerged that the whistleblower had contacted the committee aide before filing the complaint. (A committee spokesperson said at the time that Schiff had been merely trying to say that the committee hadn’t heard actual testimony from the whistleblower, but that Schiff acknowledged his words “should have been more carefully phrased to make that distinction clear.”)

    Regardless, McCarthy didn’t argue here that Schiff had been misleading about the committee’s dealings with the whistleblower; he strongly suggested that Schiff lied in saying he didn’t know the whistleblower. That’s baseless. There has never been any indication that Schiff had a relationship with the whistleblower when he said he didn’t, nor that Schiff knew the whistleblower’s identity when he said he didn’t.

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  • House GOP keeps up attacks on IRS with bill to abolish the agency | CNN Politics

    House GOP keeps up attacks on IRS with bill to abolish the agency | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Republican-controlled House has made the Internal Revenue Service a political target after Democrats bolstered the agency with new funding last year.

    Within the first week of the new Congress, a dozen GOP lawmakers introduced a bill that would abolish the IRS altogether and replace the entire federal tax code with a national sales tax.

    Separately, the House voted to rescind nearly $80 billion in funding for the agency that Democrats approved last year – with many top Republicans repeating the misleading claim that the money will be used to hire 87,000 auditors.

    “Instead of adding 87,000 new agents to weaponize the IRS against small business owners and middle America, this bill will eliminate the need for the department entirely by simplifying the tax code with provisions that work for the American people and encourage growth and innovation,” said Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter, a Republican from Georgia who introduced the Fair Tax Act earlier this month.

    It’s highly unlikely that either bill will become law, given that Democrats still control the Senate. But the measures highlight how America’s two major political parties have very different strategies when it comes to addressing the embattled tax collection agency – which has seen its budget shrink by more than 15% over the past decade and has struggled to not only process returns on time but also answer taxpayers’ questions. Just 13% of phone calls were answered last year.

    Democrats have taken a different approach, making funding the IRS a priority. The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed along party lines last year, approved $80 billion for the IRS over 10 years. By using the money to crack down on tax cheats, it’s estimated that the agency could boost federal revenue by more than $124 billion over that time period.

    The Republicans’ Fair Tax Act is not a new idea. A version was first introduced in Congress in 1999. It’s never had enough support to become law, but it puts forth an appealing message to those Americans who love to hate the federal tax agency.

    It would get rid of the complicated federal tax system, doing away with the annual task of filing tax returns. Instead, the bill would replace federal taxes on individual and corporate income with a national 23% sales tax in 2025, allowing for adjustments to the rate in later years. Americans would pay Uncle Sam whenever they bought a new good or service for personal consumption.

    The bill calls for abolishing the IRS and directing states to collect the new federal tax.

    While every consumer would pay the same tax at the cash register, the bill provides for a monthly tax rebate payment, based on the poverty rate and family size. It’s meant to help offset the tax levy on low-income Americans who tend to spend a higher share of their paycheck on goods and services.

    A national sales tax appears very simple: one rate all Americans pay on new goods and services they buy.

    But some policy experts say the Fair Tax Act is more complicated than it looks.

    “Moving away from taxing income and toward taxing consumption is a step in the right direction for a pro-growth and simpler tax code,” said Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy nonprofit.

    But there could still be complications. First, the tax rate would likely have to be higher than 23% in order for the federal government to pull in the same amount of tax revenue that it does now. One estimate found that a tax rate of about 30% would more likely be able to generate the same amount of revenue – or 44%, if measured the way state sales taxes are typically presented.

    Second, a nationwide sales tax could leave low- and middle-income people worse off. The current tax system is progressive, meaning it takes a larger percentage of income from high-earners than low-income groups. Even with the monthly tax rebate, a national sales tax would still be less progressive.

    A 2011 independent analysis of a similar national sales tax found that, on average, most income groups would pay more tax than they did under the federal tax system at the time – except the top 5% of earners who would see a tax cut.

    Additionally, it’s hard to imagine that lawmakers would pass a bill that does not exclude some things from the sales tax, like health care costs, for example.

    “The basic income tax is simple too,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

    It’s the deductions, credits and exclusions – like for retirement savings and charitable giving – that make it complicated.

    Plus, Americans would likely have to file some paperwork to some tax collection entity in order to receive the rebate, Gleckman said. The administration cost may be less than it is now, but it wouldn’t be zero.

    Tax filing season opens Monday and National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins expects IRS services for taxpayers to improve this year – in part due to the funding increase provided by Congress.

    Since the Inflation Reduction Act was passed in August, the IRS has hired 5,000 new customer service agents. The agency has also worked to improve its technology so that taxpayers can ask questions via an automated service online, said Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo on a call with reporters last week.

    The IRS started the year with about 400,000 unprocessed paper individual returns and about 1 million unprocessed business returns. But it’s in much better shape than the prior year, when it had a backlog of 4.7 million unprocessed individual returns and 3.2 million unprocessed business returns, according to the taxpayer advocate’s annual report to Congress.

    Taxpayer service, like answering the phones and processing returns in a timely manner, has suffered as the IRS’ budget has shrunk.

    The Covid-19 pandemic brought even more challenges for the IRS. It was tasked with administering several rounds of stimulus payments to millions of Americans with a lot of its staff working from home. This caused long delays for many taxpayers who filed a paper return. The IRS is starting to implement a scanning system so that returns filed by paper can quickly be made digital. Previously, paper returns had to be entered manually into the agency’s computer system.

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  • Manchin says it’s a ‘mistake’ for White House to want Democrats to address debt ceiling without GOP | CNN Politics

    Manchin says it’s a ‘mistake’ for White House to want Democrats to address debt ceiling without GOP | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said Sunday that it’s a “mistake” for the White House to want Democrats to deal with the debt ceiling without negotiating with congressional Republicans.

    “I think it’s a mistake because we have to negotiate. This is a democracy that we have. We have a two-party system, if you will, and we should be able to talk and find out where our differences are. And if they are irreconcilable, then you have to move on from there and let people make their decisions,” Manchin, a key Senate moderate, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    “Using the debt ceiling and holding it hostage hasn’t worked in the past,” Manchin continued, adding that he “respectfully” disagrees with his party’s No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, Majority Whip Dick Durbin, on not negotiating with Republicans.

    “Every American has to live within a budget. If they don’t, they’re in trouble financially. Every business that’s successful has to live within a budget. Every state has to live within a budget. Shouldn’t the federal government have some guardrails that, say, ‘Hey, guys … you’re overreaching here and you’re overspending?’ But then pick your priorities. That’s all,” he added.

    The US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress on Thursday, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking “extraordinary measures” to keep the government paying its bills and escalating pressure on Capitol Hill to avoid a catastrophic default.

    The battle lines for the high-stakes fight have already been set. Hard-line Republicans, who have enormous sway in the House because of the party’s slim majority, have demanded that lifting the borrowing cap be tied to spending reductions. Manchin suggested Sunday he was open to spending cuts.

    The White House, however, has countered that it will not offer any concessions or negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. And with the solution to the debt ceiling drama squarely in lawmakers’ hands, fears are growing that the partisan brinksmanship could result in the nation defaulting on its debt for the first time ever – or come dangerously close to doing so.

    GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said Sunday on Fox News that the White House position against negotiating with House Republicans on spending cuts, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, is “very irresponsible.” He said the first step in addressing the debt ceiling situation is for Speaker Kevin McCarthy to sit down with Biden.

    Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, said in the same interview that he believes the White House will ultimately sit down with McCarthy, which he called “a good thing.”

    Fitzpatrick and Gottheimer are the co-chairs of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the House.

    As to whether Social Security and Medicare should be part of these negotiations, Manchin shared his interest in wanting to create a committee that would make the two programs “more financially secure and stable.” But he said no one who currently receives these benefits should receive any cuts.

    “No cuts to anybody that’s receiving their benefits, no adjustments to that. They’ve earned it. They paid into it. Take that off the table,” Manchin said. “But everyone’s using that as a leverage.”

    The senator indicated he was open to raising the income cap for Social Security taxes.

    “I’m open to basically raising – the easiest and quickest thing we can do is raise the cap,” he said.

    Meanwhile, Manchin on Sunday also offered support for fellow Senate moderate Krysten Sinema, calling her a “formidable candidate” for reelection in 2024.

    Sinema announced last month she was leaving the Democratic Party and registering as a political independent, fueling fresh interest from Arizona Democrats to challenge her next year.

    “I would think that she needs to be supported again, yes, because she brings that independent spirit,” Manchin said.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Here’s what will happen to the economy as the debt ceiling drama deepens | CNN Business

    Here’s what will happen to the economy as the debt ceiling drama deepens | CNN Business


    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    After the United States hit its debt ceiling on Thursday, the Treasury Department is now undertaking “extraordinary measures” to keep paying the government’s bills.

    A default could be catastrophic, causing “irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans and global financial stability,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned.

    Yellen on Friday told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the impacts would be felt by every American.

    “If that happened, our borrowing costs would increase and every American would see that their borrowing costs would increase as well,” Yellen said. “On top of that, a failure to make payments that are due, whether it’s the bondholders or to Social Security recipients or to our military, would undoubtedly cause a recession in the US economy and could cause a global financial crisis.”

    She added: “It would certainly undermine the role of the dollar as a reserve currency that is used in transactions all over the world. And Americans — many people — would lose their jobs and certainly their borrowing costs would rise.”

    Dire warnings of debt ceiling trouble aren’t new. Federal lawmakers have reached agreements in the past, and this Congress has some time — until at least early June, according to Yellen’s public estimates — to reach an agreement on whether to raise or suspend the debt limit.

    Many economists say they expect an agreement will be reached. However, given the current “extremely fractious political environment,” it could be a long process that would contribute to “flare-ups” in financial market volatility, Moody’s Investors Service said in a note Thursday.

    Such volatility is coming at a time when the Federal Reserve is trying to bring down inflation while navigating a soft (or softish) landing with minimal harm to the economy.

    So what happens to the economy in a worst-case scenario of default?

    It’s an understandable question with an unsatisfying answer, said Michael Pugliese, vice president and economist with Wells Fargo’s corporate and investment bank.

    “The honest truth is, no one knows,” he said. “A widespread default by the US government is not something we’ve ever experienced and not something we’ve ever even come close to experiencing.”

    While a default isn’t something that can be modeled in the way a more historically common economic event such as a recession can be, the events of 2011 could lend some perspective as to what would happen if the debt ceiling drama turns into a debacle, said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.

    “2011 was the first time in a long time that we came close to a debt ceiling breach,” he said. “And that was a time when there was a lot of political fragmentation and there was a strong desire to essentially attach spending cuts to any debt ceiling increase.”

    The current environment includes similar brinksmanship and desires to attach spending cuts, he said.

    But some fear this fight may be tougher than those in the past, a concern reinforced by the fact it took 15 ballots to elect the Speaker of the House in what is normally the easiest vote taken by a new Congress.

    The economy nearly 13 years ago was different, as well.

    At the time, the Fed was in an easy monetary policy mode and the economy in a weaker position, as it was still recovering from the Great Recession of 2008, Pugliese said. Unemployment was north of 9% in July 2011.

    That same year, Treasury projected the “X date” — the date on which it would be unable to pay its obligations on time — would fall on August 2, 2011. That ultimately was the date when Congress passed, and President Barack Obama enacted, a law increasing the ceiling.

    The actual economic impact of the debt ceiling run-up in 2011 is hard to isolate and quantify, Pugliese said, noting how the sluggish US economic recovery also experienced spillover effects from global events, notably Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

    Still, there were some indications that the protracted congressional battle contributed to a shake-up in the economy then, he said. Real GDP growth was a weak -0.1% on a quarter-over-quarter annualized basis in the third quarter of 2011. Financial markets were roiled, consumer confidence weakened, the US economic policy uncertainty index set a new high and Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency downgraded the United States to AA+ from AAA.

    “I think you would be hard pressed to say [the debt ceiling debacle] was a positive thing,” he said. “I think of it more as one other hurdle among a lot of other hurdles for the economy as it emerged from 9% unemployment at the time.”

    This time, if the X date were to come without a resolution, there is speculation that the Treasury could prioritize principal and interest payments to prevent a technical default, Pugliese said. There are potentially other “break the glass” options from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, but those are untested and short-term solutions, he added.

    “Someone, somewhere is going to get shortchanged if the government doesn’t have all of its money, whether that’s Social Security beneficiaries, defense contractors, civil service employees, veterans, [etc.],” he said.

    Joggers run past the Treasury Department on January 18, 2023, in Washington, DC.

    Adding to the uncertainty is the current economic climate, Daco said.

    “We are going into this delicate period at a time when the US economy is clearly slowing down and at a time when the global economic backdrop is also weakening … so the economic environment against which this debt ceiling debacle is unfolding is one of increased economic softening.”

    While a self-inflicted recession would be likely after the point when an X date is hit, some upheaval could come sooner, Daco said.

    “Financial markets and private sector actors tend to react ahead of that date,” he said. “If there is the anticipation that we will get very close to that drop-dead date, then financial market volatility generally tends to increase, stock prices tend to react adversely.”

    A Treasury default would undermine the global financial system, said Louise Sheiner, policy director at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy and former senior economist with the Fed and the Council of Economic Advisers.

    “If Treasuries become something that people are worried about holding, then that has ripple effects throughout capital markets throughout the world, in ways that are really difficult to predict,” she said.

    Considering the potential consequences in the United States and abroad, Sheiner believes the debt ceiling will be lifted or suspended — eventually.

    “There’s no other way around it,” she said. “There’s no way that Congress is going to cut spending 20% in the middle of the year. It would plunge the economy into a recession. It would be a terrible policy.”

    She added: “If you care about the long-term debt, you have to actually change different laws, Social Security law, Medicare, or the tax law … you want to do that in the appropriate process, you want to do it well thought out. It’s not the kind of thing that should be done under duress.”

    CNN’s Maegan Vazquez, Matt Egan and Tami Luhby contributed to this report.

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  • Yellen warns of ‘global financial crisis’ if US debt limit agreement isn’t reached | CNN Politics

    Yellen warns of ‘global financial crisis’ if US debt limit agreement isn’t reached | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday warned of the widespread global effects that could be felt if the federal government exhausts extraordinary measures and fails to raise the debt ceiling, telling CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about the ways everyday Americans could face stark consequences.

    Yellen’s warning comes after the United States on Thursday hit its $31.4 trillion debt limit set by Congress, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills.

    While those newly deployed extraordinary measures are largely behind-the-scenes accounting maneuvers, Yellen told Amanpour that “the actual date at which we would no longer be able to use these measures is quite uncertain, but it could conceivably come as early as early June.”

    Speaking exclusively to CNN from Senegal, Yellen said that after the measures are exhausted, the US could experience at a minimum downgrading of its debt as a result of Congress failing to raise the debt ceiling. The effects of the federal government failing to make payments, she argued, could be as broad as a “global financial crisis.”

    “If that happened, our borrowing costs would increase and every American would see that their borrowing costs would increase as well,” Yellen said. “On top of that, a failure to make payments that are due, whether it’s the bondholders or to Social Security recipients or to our military, would undoubtedly cause a recession in the US economy and could cause a global financial crisis.”

    “It would certainly undermine the role of the dollar as a reserve currency that is used in transactions all over the world. And Americans – many people would lose their jobs and certainly their borrowing costs would rise,” she continued.

    Yellen wrote a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday explaining the measures being taken, escalating pressure on Capitol Hill to avoid a catastrophic default.

    Hardline Republicans have demanded that lifting the borrowing cap be tied to spending reductions. The White House has countered by saying that it will not offer any concessions or negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. And so far, Yellen’s warnings have failed to spark bipartisan discussion, with both Republicans and Democrats reaffirming their rigid positions over the past week.

    As part of the debt issuance suspension period using extraordinary measures, the agency intends to sell existing investments and suspend reinvestments of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund. Also, it will suspend the reinvestment of a government securities fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan.

    No federal retirees or employees will be affected, and the funds will be made whole once the impasse ends, Yellen said in the letter.

    “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” she wrote.

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  • Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine announces he’s running for reelection in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine announces he’s running for reelection in 2024 | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia announced Friday that he’s running for reelection in 2024.

    “I have been really grappling with what to do with respect to my time in the Senate, and I’m very happy to announce that I’m going to run for a third term in the Senate,” he told reporters at an event in Richmond, Virginia.

    Kaine’s announcement will likely come as a relief to Democrats as they face a difficult 2024 map and an uphill climb to hold their narrow majority. An open Virginia seat could have made for a competitive race. The Virginia governorship flipped Republican in 2021.

    Video from Kaine’s event Friday was provided by CNN affiliate WTVR in Richmond.

    Kaine, a former Virginia governor who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in her 2016 presidential campaign, explained his decision on Friday, saying, “Here’s why in conversations with friends and especially with Anne and my family I’ve decided to run for a third term. I’m a servant. I love Virginia. I’m proud of what I’ve done. I got a whole lot more I want to do. So those are the four reasons.”

    Kaine was first elected to the US Senate in 2012. During a roundtable discussion Friday before his announcement, he told participants he ran for Senate after 16 years in state and local office because there were issues he wanted to “get done,” including tribal recognition, marriage equality, immigration reform and advances in gun safety.

    “We’ve done two of the four,” he said, adding that he thought the time might be ripe to reach a long-sought deal on immigration reform. “My gut tells me, and some of my conversations with colleagues, that the super-low unemployment rate in the country is opening the door again to a really good immigration reform discussion.”

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  • Opinion: The debt ceiling debate reveals how House Republicans are weaponizing the government | CNN

    Opinion: The debt ceiling debate reveals how House Republicans are weaponizing the government | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 25 books, including the New York Times best-seller, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past” (Basic Books). Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    At the same time that House Republicans are setting up a committee to investigate the “weaponization” of government, they are weaponizing the government.

    Under the leadership of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the GOP is warning President Biden that they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling when the US reaches its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit unless the administration agrees to draconian spending cuts.

    Never one to miss a good brawl, former President Donald Trump is urging his party to “play tough” on the issue to use it as leverage.

    If the crisis is not resolved and House Republicans don’t vote to raise the debt ceiling, the government won’t be able to borrow the money it needs to pay for spending that Congress has already approved. The US could be forced to default on its debt, ruining the credit rating that has made Treasury bills and notes one of the safest investments in the world. The government might have to delay paying benefits such as social security and salaries for federal workers.

    Delivering a stern warning last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that, “failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability.”

    Fearing that House Republicans are dead serious about deploying this budgetary missile – after all, the party is only a few years away from its concerted effort to overturn a presidential election – the US is expected to hit its ceiling as soon as Thursday, but the real crisis may not come until June. To keep things going, Treasury is investigating options such as shifting funds from one department to the other and temporarily stopping specific forms of federal investments.

    The fear running through Washington – and beyond – is that elected officials could prove unable to end the standoff, sending the country into default by this summer, creating global financial chaos and turmoil.

    The political battle that is unfolding is a result of Republicans becoming increasingly radicalized in what they are willing to do to achieve partisan power.

    The measure at the center of this dangerous game of chicken is not part of the Constitution. The federal debt ceiling was enacted by Congress in 1917 through the Second Liberty Bond Act, shortly before the US entered World War I, with the goal of granting the Department of Treasury increased flexibility in handling federal finances. Before, the department had to wait until Congress authorized more money every time that the government needed it.

    For decades, raising the federal debt limit remained a routine matter. Understanding that the government had to pay its bills, even when costs ballooned during times of war, Congress would pass the measure either on a temporary or permanent basis.

    To be sure, there were times when Congress came dangerously close to being too late, such as in April 1979 when the vote was not taken until the very last minute, although technical glitches resulted in about $120 million in debt payments being late.

    A few months later, the House adopted a rule – named after Rep. Richard Gephardt – which empowered the lower chamber to automatically raise the debt ceiling when they passed a budget resolution, tying the two issues together.

    In 1982, the federal debt ceiling was codified into law. The first time that the federal government was forced to take “extraordinary measures” to keep the money flowing was in September of 1985 when Democrats and Republicans could not reach agreement on a budget. Three months later, Congress permanently raised the debt limit to $2.1 billion.

    While there were votes taken against raising the debt ceiling between the 1980s and 2011, including by Democrats such as then-Senator Joe Biden in 2006, they were symbolic. Elected officials took this stand only after knowing that there were enough votes for passage. Expressing opposition to President George W. Bush’s spending on the war in Iraq was their goal—not grounding the economy to a halt.

    The truce against weaponizing this routine procedure ended in 2011. Tea Party Republicans, a radicalized version of Gingrich-era Republicans, were determined to vote against increasing the debt ceiling unless President Barack Obama agreed to massive spending cuts. The administration realized that the new generation of conservatives was not playing around. In this game of chicken, they resolved not to blink regardless of the fallout.

    In May 2011, the Department of Treasury undertook steps to keep paying for its obligations. A few days before funds were set to run out, the administration agreed to pay the ransom. The president signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 that would implement about $920 billion in spending cuts over 10 years and created a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to make recommendations for further cuts.

    The ratings agency S&P weren’t happy with how the negotiations had unfolded, downgrading the credit rating of the US. “The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed.”

    Since that confrontation, the Department of Treasury has continued to grapple with this issue, including in 2013 and 2014. Frustrated with having to navigate through these treacherous political waters, Obama warned that “the issue here is whether or not America pays its bills. We are not a deadbeat nation. And so there’s a very simple solution to this: Congress authorizes us to pay our bills.”

    Now, President Biden might face his biggest challenge yet. The new Trumpian Republicans are determined to win their faceoff with the administration. Based on reports of how McCarthy won the speakership, the Californian was willing to make concessions to the most radical members about moving forward with this strategy and following it through until the end, if necessary.

    What makes this situation so tragic is that there is no reason for this crisis to happen. While vigorous debates about government spending are certainly a legitimate part of politics, forcing a situation that could create economic chaos after Congress has already reached deals over expenditures should not be a legitimate and normal part of politics.

    More than almost any other act, this embodies the willingness of the modern GOP to use virtually any procedure of democracy—from Supreme Court appointments to the budget to the Electoral College—as a partisan weapon. House Republicans seem to be making the bet that doing what is necessary to force spending reductions is worth the risk of the financial fallout.

    At some level, they must believe that should the crisis not be resolved, voters will blame the president and not them. But in the end the people who would suffer would be voters, living in states red and blue, who would face the consequences.

    If Speaker McCarthy wants to show that he is a serious political leader, he should form a coalition with the handful of moderate Republicans and Democrats to quickly enact an increase in the debt ceiling this measure regardless of what risk that might pose to his own future.

    All of this is more reason for Congress to consider serious long-term reform. If one of the two major parties is willing to normalize the weaponization of this process, it’s time to change the way that it works, to take away the weapon being used in partisan warfare.

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  • The debt ceiling drama, explained in 2 minutes | CNN Business

    The debt ceiling drama, explained in 2 minutes | CNN Business

    • Watch: Bannon lawyer pleads with judge to be removed from fraud case
    • Club Q shooting suspect Anderson Aldrich appears in court, charged with 12 new counts

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