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  • Timeline: The special counsel inquiry into Trump’s handling of classified documents | CNN Politics

    Timeline: The special counsel inquiry into Trump’s handling of classified documents | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The federal criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents escalated in stunning fashion this week with Trump’s indictment.

    The indictment hasn’t been unsealed yet, so details of the charges aren’t publicly available. But the investigation – led by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith – revolves around sensitive government papers that Trump held onto after his White House term ended in January 2021. The special counsel has also examined whether Trump or his aides obstructed the investigation.

    Federal authorities have recovered more than 325 classified documents from Trump. He has voluntarily given back some materials, his lawyers turned over additional files after a subpoena, and the FBI found dozens of classified records during a court-approved search of his Mar-a-Lago home last summer.

    Trump has denied all wrongdoing and claims the investigation is a politically motivated sham, intended to derail his ongoing campaign to win the Republican 2024 nomination and return to the White House.

    Here’s a timeline of the important developments in the blockbuster investigation.

    An official from the National Archives and Records Administration contacts Trump’s team after realizing that several important documents weren’t handed over before Trump left the White House. In hopes of locating the missing items, NARA lawyer Gary Stern reaches out to someone who served in the White House counsel’s office under Trump, who was the point of contact for recordkeeping matters. The missing documents include some of Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as the map of Hurricane Dorian that Trump infamously altered with a sharpie pen.

    In a taped conversation, Trump acknowledges that he still has a classified Pentagon document about a possible attack against Iran, according to CNN reporting. The recording, which was made at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey, indicates that Trump understood that he retained classified material after leaving the White House. The special counsel later obtained this audiotape, a key piece of evidence in his inquiry.

    NARA grows frustrated with the slow pace of document turnover after several months of conversations with the Trump team. Stern reaches out to another Trump attorney to intervene. The archivist asks about several boxes of records that were apparently taken to Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s relocation to Florida. NARA still doesn’t receive the White House documents they are searching for.

    After months of discussions with Trump’s team, NARA retrieves 15 boxes of Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago. The boxes contained some materials that were part of “special access programs,” known as SAP, which is a classification that includes protocols to significantly limit who would have access to the information. NARA says in a statement that some of the records it received at the end of Trump’s administration were “torn up by former President Trump,” and that White House officials had to tape them back together. Not all the torn-up documents were reconstructed, NARA says.

    NARA asks the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records and whether he violated the Presidential Records Act and other laws related to classified information. The Presidential Records Act requires all records created by a sitting president to be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administration.

    NARA informs the Justice Department that some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago included classified material. NARA also tells the department that, despite being warned it was illegal, Trump occasionally tore up government documents while he was president.

    On April 7, NARA publicly acknowledges for the first time that the Justice Department is involved, and news outlets report that prosecutors have launched a criminal probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. Around this time, FBI agents quietly interview Trump aides at Mar-a-Lago about the handling of presidential records as part of their widening investigation.

    The FBI asks NARA for access to the 15 boxes it retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January. The request was formally transmitted to NARA by President Joe Biden’s White House Counsel’s office, because the incumbent president controls presidential documents in NARA custody.

    The Justice Department sends a letter to Trump’s lawyers as part of its effort to access the 15 boxes, notifying them that more than 100 classified documents, totaling more than 700 pages, were found in the boxes. The letter says the FBI and US intelligence agencies need “immediate access” to these materials because of “important national security interests.” Also on this day, Trump lawyers ask NARA to delay its plans to give the FBI access to these materials. Trump’s lawyers say they want time to examine the materials to see if anything is privileged, and that they are making a “protective assertion of executive privilege” over all the documents.

    Trump’s lawyers write again to NARA, and ask again that NARA postpone its plans to give the FBI access to the materials retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.

    Debra Steidel Wall, the acting archivist of the United States, who runs NARA, informs Trump’s lawyers that she is rejecting their claims of “protective” executive privilege over all the materials taken from Mar-a-Lago and will therefore turn over the materials to the FBI and US intelligence agencies, in a four-page letter.

    The Justice Department subpoenas Trump, demanding all documents with classification markings that are still at Mar-a-Lago. At some point after receiving the subpoena, Trump asks his lawyer Evan Corcoran if there was any way to fight the subpoena, but Corcoran tells him he has to comply, according to notes Cochran took and later gave to investigators. Also after getting the subpoena, Trump aides are captured on surveillance footage moving document boxes into and out of a basement storage room – which has become a major element of the obstruction investigation.

    News outlets report that investigators subpoenaed NARA for access to the classified documents they retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. The subpoena is the first public indication of the Justice Department using a grand jury in its investigation.

    As part of the effort to comply with the subpoena, Corcoran searches a Mar-a-Lago storage room and finds 38 classified documents. According to a lawsuit that the former president later filed, Trump invites FBI officials to come to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the subpoenaed materials.

    Federal investigators, including a top Justice Department counterintelligence official, visit Mar-a-Lago to deal with the subpoena for remaining classified documents. The investigators meet with Trump’s attorneys, including Corcoran, and look around the basement storage room where the documents were stored. Trump briefly stops by the meeting to say hello to the officials, but he does not answer any questions. Corcoran hands over the 38 classified documents that he found. Trump lawyer Christina Bobb signs a sworn affidavit inaccurately asserting that there aren’t any more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

    Trump’s attorneys receive a letter from federal investigators, asking them to further secure the room where documents are being stored. In response, Trump aides add a padlock to the room in the basement of Mar-a-Lago.

    Federal investigators serve a subpoena to the Trump Organization, demanding surveillance video from Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s company complies with the subpoena and turns over the footage. CNN has reported that this was part of an effort to gather information about who had access to areas at the club where government documents were stored.

    The FBI executes a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago – a major escalation of the investigation. The search focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are located. Federal agents found more than 100 additional classified documents at the property. The search was the first time in American history that a former president’s home was searched as part of a criminal investigation.

    Trump sends a message through one his lawyers to Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying he has “been hearing from people all over the country about the raid” who are “angry,” and that “whatever I can do to take the heat down, to bring the pressure down, just let us know,” according to a lawsuit he later filed. Hours later, after three days of silence, Garland makes a brief public statement about the investigation. He reveals that he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant, and that the Justice Department will continue to apply the law “without fear or favor.” Garland also pushes back against what he called “unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department.”

    Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart approves the unsealing of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant and its property receipt, at the Justice Department’s request and after Trump’s lawyers agree to the release. The warrant reveals the Justice Department is looking into possible violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records, as part of its investigation.

    Trump files a federal lawsuit seeking the appointment of a third-party attorney known as a “special master” to independently review the materials that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. In the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers argue that the Justice Department can’t be trusted to do its own review for potentially privileged materials that should be siloed off from the criminal probe.

    In a major ruling in Trump’s favor, Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, grants Trump’s request for a special master to review the seized materials from Mar-a-Lago. She says the special master will have the power to look for documents covered under attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.

    The Justice Department appeals Cannon’s decision in the special master case.

    Cannon appoints senior Judge Raymond Dearie to serve as the special master and sets a November 30 deadline for the Brooklyn-based federal judge to finish his review of the seized materials.

    A maintenance worker drains the swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago, which ends up flooding a room where there are computer severs that contain surveillance video logs, according to CNN reporting. It’s unclear if the flood was accidental or on purpose, and it’s possible that the IT equipment wasn’t damaged, but federal prosecutors found the incident to be suspicious.

    Former Trump administration official Kash Patel testifies before the federal grand jury in the classified documents investigation. A Trump loyalist, Patel had publicly claimed that Trump declassified all the materials that ended up at Mar-a-Lago, even though there is no evidence to back up those assertions.

    Garland announces that he is appointing special counsel Jack Smith to take over the investigation.

    A federal appeals court shuts down the special master review of the documents that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. The appeals panel rebuked Cannon’s earlier decisions, writing that she essentially tried to “interfere” with the criminal probe and had created a “special exception” in the law to help Trump.

    Trump attorney Timothy Parlatore testifies before the special counsel’s grand jury, where he described how Trump’s lawyers scoured his properties for classified materials. He later left Trump’s legal team.

    Trump’s legal team searches four of his properties in Florida, New York and New Jersey for additional classified material. They find two more classified files in a Florida storage unit, and give them to the FBI. Around this time, Trump’s team also finds additional papers with classification markings at Mar-a-Lago, and they give those materials to the Justice Department. They also turn over a laptop belonging to a Trump aide who had copied those documents onto the computer, not realizing they were classified.

    A string of key witnesses testify before the special counsel’s grand jury in Washington, DC. This includes Trump administration officials Robert O’Brien and Ric Grenell, who handled national security and intelligence matters; Margo Martin, a communications aide who continued working for Trump after he left the White House; and Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son, Matthew Calamari Jr., longtime Trump employees who oversee security for the Trump Organization.

    In response to a new subpoena from the special counsel, Trump’s lawyers turn over some material related to a classified Pentagon document that he discussed at a recorded meeting in 2021. However, Trump’s team wasn’t able to find the specific document – about a potential US attack on Iran – that prosecutors were looking for.

    Corcoran, the lead Trump attorney, testifies before the grand jury in Washington, DC. This occurred after a federal judge ordered him to answer prosecutors’ questions, ruling that attorney-client privilege did not shield his discussion with Trump because Trump might been trying to commit a crime through his attorneys. Corcoran later recused himself from handling the Mar-a-Lago matter.

    The first public indications emerge that the special counsel is using a second grand jury in Miami to gather evidence. Multiple witnesses testify in front of the Miami-based panel, CNN reported.

    Trump lawyers meet with senior Justice Department officials – including special counsel Smith – to discuss the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The sitdown lasted about 90 minutes, and Trump’s team raised concerns about the probe, which they have called an “unlawful” and “outrageous” abuse of the legal system.

    News outlets report that the Justice Department recently sent a “target letter” to Trump, formally notifying him that he’s a target of the investigation into potential mishandling of classified documents.

    News outlets report that Trump has been indicted in connection with the classified documents investigation. Trump also says in a social media post that the Justice Department informed his attorneys that he was indicted – and called the case a “hoax.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • ‘Maybe they don’t exist’: Republicans question legitimacy of alleged audio recordings of Biden bribery scheme | CNN Politics

    ‘Maybe they don’t exist’: Republicans question legitimacy of alleged audio recordings of Biden bribery scheme | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa claimed on the Senate floor earlier this week that the foreign national who allegedly bribed then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter has 17 audio recordings of their conversations but questioned whether those tapes even existed in an interview with CNN days later.

    “I don’t even know where they are. I just know they exist, because of what the report says. Now, maybe they don’t exist. But how will I know until the FBI tells us, are they showing us their work?” Grassley said Thursday.

    And Grassley is not the only Republican questioning the validity of the supposed tapes.

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, who is overseeing the GOP investigation into the Biden family business dealings and has been quick to make the alleged bribery scheme a focus of his work, admitted to not knowing whether the tapes were legitimate.

    “We don’t know if they’re legit or not, but we know that the foreign national claims he has them,” Comer said of the alleged recordings during a Tuesday interview on Newsmax.

    House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, who also serves on the Oversight panel and has made the Department of Justice and FBI a target of his investigative efforts, told CNN of the tapes, “I have no reason to doubt anything Senator Grassley says, but I don’t know if they exist or not.”

    And Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who led his own investigation into the Biden family in 2020 and has long peddled the notion of wrongdoing, said in a separate Newsmax interview, “I’m not even aware that we verified those recordings exist.”

    The tapes are the latest unverified allegations Republicans have raised as they’ve launched investigations into the Biden family’s business dealings as well as the work of the FBI. While Republicans have used their subpoena power to go after the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, they have still not established a direct link to President Biden.

    Grassley first raised the existence of audio recordings after the FBI document that memorializes these allegations redacted them in the version shown to House Oversight Committee members.

    Prior to the full committee viewing the redacted document, Comer and the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, had viewed a version of the document that included mention of the recordings, according to two sources familiar with their briefing.

    In a statement to CNN the chairman said, “The FBI’s Biden bribery record contains several investigative leads, but it is unclear what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these allegations.”

    The FBI document at the heart of this debate, known as an FD-1023, summarizes multiple conversations a trusted FBI informant had with a foreign national alleging that an executive with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma offered both Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden bribes of $5 million.

    Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump to serve during his administration, said when these bribery allegations came to light he tapped Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady to look into the 1023 form and other claims. Barr has described this effort as a “screening, clearing house function” and said once the information was checked out the allegations were passed on to Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who is overseeing an ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden. Investigators were unable to corroborate the claims in the 1023.

    “That information was checked out, and it was determined that it was not likely to have been disinformation. It doesn’t say whether it’s true or not, but there was no sign there was disinformation. And so it was provided to the ongoing investigation in Delaware to follow up on and check out,” Barr said on Fox last week.

    Acting assistant director for the FBI’s office of congressional affairs Christopher Dunham has explained in previous correspondence with Congress that an FD-1023 form is “used by FBI agents to record unverified reporting from a confidential human source,” and noted that there are strict Justice Department guidelines about when that information can be provided outside of the FBI.

    Comer subpoenaed the document last month, and House Republicans have railed against the FBI for continuing to keep an unclassified document under close hold.

    “Congress still lacks a full and complete picture with respect to what that document really says. That’s why it’s important that the document be made public without unnecessary redactions for the American people to see,” Grassley said on the floor earlier this week.

    House Republicans were poised to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress earlier this month for his refusal to turn over the document, but a last-minute deal between Comer and Wray that included allowing the full committee to view the form halted the contempt proceedings. They are still publicly clamoring for the FBI to provide more detail about what steps were taken to investigate the claims in the document.

    Democrats meanwhile continue to dismiss the allegations. The White House continues to frame Republicans’ investigative efforts as politically motivated. White House spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement to CNN, “Everything in their so-called investigation seems to be mysteriously missing: informants, audio tapes, and most importantly of all – any credible evidence.”

    Raskin, who has painted the allegations as secondhand, told CNN, “It was thoroughly checked out by the Trump Justice Department, and they couldn’t find anything there. And if anybody would have an incentive to find something there it would have been the Trump Justice Department.”

    Another Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, accused Republicans of having alternative motives for surfacing the allegations in the first place.

    “What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to muddy the water because Trump is in so much trouble. They got to distract from that and pretend like, you know Joe Biden, which they say he’s sleepy and boring, is now somehow Tony Soprano,” he said.

    But Republicans who viewed the version of the FD-1023 form that redacted mention of the audio recordings are continuing to raise questions.

    One of those members, GOP Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina, told CNN, “My assumption was that if they were going to redact things in that document that it would have been names and places and not actual corroborating evidence. So I think it’s unfortunate that the FBI decided to do that. And I look forward to seeing hopefully an unredacted copy of that 1023.”

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  • Trump-appointed judge blocks parts of Indiana ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth | CNN Politics

    Trump-appointed judge blocks parts of Indiana ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Trump-appointed judge in Indiana has blocked parts of a state law banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth from going into effect next month.

    The law, known as SEA 480, which Indiana’s Republican-controlled legislature passed earlier this year, prohibits physicians from providing minors with treatments such as puberty blocking medication, hormone therapy and surgery intended to help transition genders.

    But US District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2018, issued a preliminary injunction Friday that blocks the ban on most of those treatments. His order does, however, allow the prohibition on gender reassignment surgeries for minors to take effect on July 1, as planned.

    “Because Plaintiffs have some likelihood of success on the merits of constitutional claims, a preliminary injunction is in the public interest,” Hanlon said in a 34-page opinion. “While the State has a strong interest in enforcing democratically enacted laws, that interest decreases as Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits of their constitutional claims increases.”

    “And for the reasons above, Plaintiffs risk suffering irreparable harm absent an injunction,” Hanlon continued.

    The decision comes after the American Civil Liberties Union sued to stop the law from going into effect on behalf of four transgender youth and their families, a physician and a health care clinic, shortly after Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the measure in early April.

    “Today’s victory is a testament to the trans youth of Indiana, their families, and their allies, who never gave up the fight to protect access to gender- affirming care and who will continue to defend the right of all trans people to be their authentic selves, free from discrimination,” Kevin Falk, the legal director for the ACLU of Indiana, said in a statement following the preliminary injunction. “We won’t rest until this unconstitutional law is struck down for good.”

    The governor’s office declined to comment on the judge’s decision.

    Transgender youths’ access to gender-affirming care – medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from the gender they were designated at birth to the gender by which they want to be known – has become a flashpoint in red states across the country.

    Some Republicans have expressed concern over long-term outcomes and whether children should be able to make such consequential decisions, even with parental consent. In contrast, major medical associations say such care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria – a psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align, according to the American Psychiatric Association.

    Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have moved this year to restrict gender-affirming care for minors.

    But similar to Indiana, judges in several states have blocked some of those laws from going into effect, including in Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas and more recently in Florida.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Georgia state election board investigation clears Fulton County of 2020 election wrongdoing | CNN Politics

    Georgia state election board investigation clears Fulton County of 2020 election wrongdoing | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Georgia State Election Board dismissed the years-long investigation into alleged misconduct by Fulton County election workers during the 2020 election, saying it had found no evidence of conspiracy.

    “Over the course of the investigation, it was confirmed that numerous allegations made against the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections, and specifically, two election workers, were false and unsubstantiated,” according to a press release from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.

    Former President Donald Trump and his campaign had targeted Fulton County election workers at State Farm Arena in Atlanta by baselessly claiming they were counting fake mail-in ballots during the 2020 election.

    The investigation – conducted by Georgia Secretary of State investigators, along with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Federal Bureau of Investigation special agents – concluded that “there was no evidence of any type of fraud as alleged.”

    The attorney representingformer election workers Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman said his clients had been “collateral damage” in an effort to subvert the presidential election.

    “This serves as further evidence that Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss – while doing their patriotic duty and serving their community – were simply collateral damage in a coordinated effort to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. Lies about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss have been proven false over and over again, and those who perpetuate them should be held accountable,” attorney Von DuBose said.

    A team representing Trump presented heavily edited video before Georgia lawmakers in a December 2020 state Senate hearing that purportedly showed election workers producing “suitcases” of illegal ballots, according to court filings. That allegation was investigated by state election officials and quickly proven to be false.

    Tuesday’s announcement echoes that there was no wrongdoing committed by election officials in Fulton County.

    According to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, “three law enforcement agencies reviewed the entire unedited video footage of the events in question surrounding [the two election workers] at State Farm Arena,” and that “all allegations made against [the two election workers] were unsubstantiated and found to have no merit.”

    “We remain diligent and dedicated to looking into real claims of voter fraud,” Raffensperger said. “We are glad the State Election Board finally put this issue to rest. False claims and knowingly false allegations made against these election workers have done tremendous harm. Election workers deserve our praise for being on the front lines.”

    Citing significant improvements in Fulton County elections, the State Election Board on Tuesday also unanimously voted to end an attempted state takeover of the county’s election board, a review that was implemented after lawmakers requested it under Georgia’s 2021 voting law.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Schumer outlines plan for how Senate will regulate AI | CNN Business

    Schumer outlines plan for how Senate will regulate AI | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a broad, open-ended plan for regulating artificial intelligence on Wednesday, describing AI as an unprecedented challenge for Congress that effectively has policymakers “starting from scratch.”

    The plan, Schumer said at a speech in Washington, will begin with at least nine panels to identify and discuss the hardest questions that regulations on AI will have to answer, including how to protect workers, national security and copyright and to defend against “doomsday scenarios.” The panels will be composed of experts from industry, academia and civil society, with the first sessions taking place in September, Schumer said.

    The Senate will then turn to committee chairs and other vocal lawmakers on AI legislation to develop bills reflecting the panel discussions, Schumer added, arguing that the resulting US solution could leapfrog existing regulatory proposals from around the world.

    “If we can put this together in a very serious way, I think the rest of the world will follow and we can set the direction of how we ought to go in AI, because I don’t think any of the existing proposals have captured that imagination,” Schumer said, reflecting on other recent proposals such as the European Union’s draft AI Act, which last week was approved by the European Parliament.

    The speech represents Schumer’s most definitive remarks to date on a problem that has dogged Congress for months amid the wide embrace of tools such as ChatGPT: How to catch up, or get ahead, on policymaking for a technology that is already in the hands of millions of people and evolving rapidly.

    In the wake of ChatGPT’s viral success, Silicon Valley has raced to develop and deploy a new crop of generative AI tools that can produce images and writing almost instantly, with the potential to change how people work, shop and interact with each other. But these same tools have also raised concerns for their potential to make factual errors, spread misinformation and perpetuate biases, among other issues.

    In contrast to the fast pace of AI advancements, Schumer has stressed the importance of a deliberate approach, focusing on getting lawmakers acquainted with the basic facts of the technology and the issues it raises before seeking to legislate. He and three other colleagues began last week by convening the first in a series of closed-door briefings on AI for senators that is expected to run through the summer.

    In his remarks Wednesday, Schumer appeared to acknowledge criticism of his pace.

    “I know many of you have spent months calling on us to act,” he said. “I hear you. I hear you loud and clear.”

    But he described AI as a novel issue for which Congress lacks a guide.

    “It’s not like labor, or healthcare, or defense, where Congress has had a long history we can work off of,” he said. “Experts aren’t even sure which questions policymakers should be asking. In many ways, we’re starting from scratch.”

    Schumer described his plan as laying “a foundation for AI policy” that will do “years of work in a matter of months.”

    To guide that process, Schumer expanded on a set of principles he first announced in April. Formally unveiling the framework on Wednesday, Schumer said any legislation on AI should be geared toward facilitating innovation before addressing risks to national security or democratic governance.

    “Innovation first,” Schumer said, “but with security, accountability, [democratic] foundations and explainability.”

    The last two pillars of his framework, Schumer said, may be among the most important, as unrestricted artificial intelligence could undermine electoral processes or make it impossible to critically evaluate an AI’s claims.

    Schumer’s remarks were restrained in calling for any specific proposals. At one point, he acknowledged that a consensus may even emerge that recommends against major government intervention on the technology.

    But he was clear on one point: “We do — we do — need to require companies to develop a system where in simple and understandable terms users understand why the system produced a particular answer, and where that answer came from.”

    The Senate may still be a long way off from unveiling any comprehensive proposal, however. Schumer predicted that the process is likely to take longer than weeks but shorter than years.

    “Months would be the proper timeline,” he said.

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  • Koch network raises more than $70 million, launches new anti-Trump ads in early voting states | CNN Politics

    Koch network raises more than $70 million, launches new anti-Trump ads in early voting states | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The influential network associated with conservative billionaire Charles Koch has collected more than $70 million for political races, the group announced Thursday, as it gears up to help shape the outcome of next year’s contests up and down the ballot and encourage Republican voters to bypass former President Donald Trump in the White House nomination fight.

    Americans for Prosperity Action has pledged to back a single contender in the GOP presidential primary for the first time in its history. It has not yet announced whom it will support, but the group could dramatically reshape the Republican field by deploying its vast resources and standing army of conservative activists on behalf of a single candidate.

    The sums raised by the group will help advance those efforts. The lion’s share of the total announced Thursday came from two organizations affiliated with Koch: $25 million from his Kansas-based industrial conglomerate Koch Industries, and another $25 million from Stand Together, a nonprofit he founded, AFP Action spokesman Bill Riggs confirmed.

    The New York Times first reported the fundraising total.

    The group is also launching new digital spots, shared first with CNN, that cast Trump as a candidate Republicans can’t risk supporting in 2024.

    “Instead of making (President Joe) Biden answer for his reckless progressive agenda, Trump makes the debate about indictments, personal grievances and the election he lost,” one 30-second spot, titled “The Choice,” says.

    The second, called “Unelectable,” describes Trump as a serial loser who caused Republicans to lose the House, Senate and the White House. “If Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, we could lose everything,” the narrator says.

    The ads will run in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, officials said.

    “President Trump continues to fight against the swampy D.C. insiders who would love nothing more than to have an establishment puppet they can control in the White House,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email. “No amount of dirty money from shady lobbyists and mysterious donors will ever stop the America First movement, and that’s why President Trump continues to dominate poll after poll — both nationally and statewide. We welcome this fight.”

    AFP Action on Thursday also announced its first US House endorsements of the cycle, saying it will back Republican Reps. Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Young Kim of California, Zach Nunn of Iowa and John James of Michigan, along with former GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico.

    In addition to attempting to stir doubts about Trump among the GOP faithful, network officials have said part of their 2024 strategy is to bring more general election voters into the GOP primary process to alter the outcome of early contests.

    Americans for Prosperity already has reached out to 1.4 million potential new Republican and swing voters in nearly a dozen states, officials said.

    In a statement to CNN earlier this month, Americans for Prosperity CEO Emily Seidel said the group’s voter interactions have demonstrated to it that many Trump supporters are “receptive to arguments that he is a weak candidate, his focus on 2020 is a liability, and his lack of appeal with independent voters is a problem.”

    “That tells us that many Republicans are ready to move on, they just need to see another candidate step up and show they can lead and win,” she added.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Christie pushed back Sunday on that characterization.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Comparing the Biden reelection angst to the now-forgotten Obama version | CNN Politics

    Comparing the Biden reelection angst to the now-forgotten Obama version | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    There is some fascinating reporting from CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere about the increasing levels of angst top Democrats are expressing about President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.

    Dovere refers to worried conversations among Democrats and donors, contrary to all the public evidence, that maybe Biden won’t end up running for reelection.

    “They feel like time is already running out and that the lack of the more robust campaign activity they want to see is a sign that his heart isn’t really in it,” Dovere writes.

    Here’s a longer excerpt:

    In a race that many expect will likely come down to a few hundred thousand votes in a few states, the doubters argue that every day without a packed schedule on the stump will prove to voters that Biden’s age is as big a worry as they believe it is. Or that the president and people around him aren’t taking the threat of losing to Donald Trump or another Republican seriously enough, and they’re setting up for Election Night next year to be 2016 déjà vu.

    “If Trump wins next November and everyone says, ‘How did that happen,’ one of the questions will be: what was the Biden campaign doing in the summer of 2023?” said a person who worked in a senior role on Biden’s 2020 campaign.

    Read the entire report.

    On “Inside Politics” on Thursday, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Dovere for his takeaway on how much people currently inside Biden world privately agree with the concerns coming from outside.

    “Inside Biden world, the real circle of people around the president, they don’t agree with this at all,” he said. “What they would say is, ‘How many times do we have to go through this? How many times do people have to doubt Joe Biden and say he can’t win an election? … And then at the end of the day, he won the primaries, he won the nomination, he won the election in 2020.’”

    Dovere also quotes Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential reelection campaign manager, who has been privately advising Biden’s team.

    At this point in that cycle, Obama’s campaign was much more fully formed, according to Dovere, who writes of Biden’s reelection effort:

    The headquarters in Wilmington discussed to be open by mid-July still isn’t. No staff is currently on the ground in competitive states, and names of potential hires have only started to be collected for review by the president and top advisers.

    The dozen people who are working for Biden-Harris 2024 full-time are mostly camped out at desks in the Democratic National Committee near Capitol Hill in Washington, with some griping about the delays in hiring staff and others still grumbling about how long it took to get on the payroll themselves. There is still no campaign finance director.

    Obama may have had more infrastructure in place, but that doesn’t mean his 2012 effort was worry free. It’s hard to believe it now – more than a decade later – but Obama’s primary journey in 2012, while a sure thing and a cakewalk, was also beset by frustrations.

    For instance, Gallup released a poll before the 2010 midterm election suggesting that more than a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults would back his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, if she challenged him for the nomination. She obviously never did.

    Obama was extremely weakened after that 2010 midterm, suffering what he called a “shellacking,” when Republicans claimed a much larger House majority than the barely-there edge Republicans currently enjoy in the House.

    In the summer of 2011, although it was not reported publicly at the time, Sen. Bernie Sanders seriously considered challenging Obama, according to subsequent reporting by Dovere for The Atlantic. Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid intervened to talk Sanders down, and Messina told Dovere that the prospect of a Sanders challenge had Obama’s campaign team “absolutely panicked.”

    At this point in Obama’s presidency, the summer of 2011, his approval rating among all adults was 44%, just about tied with Biden’s Gallup approval rating of 43% at the end of June.

    Obama’s approval rating among Democrats at this point in his presidency was 79%, which is about the same as Biden’s approval rating among Democrats today – 82% in the Gallup polling from the end of June. But Obama had slightly more support among Republicans, which may have something to do with the ever-more-partisan national political environment.

    A prison inmate got 40% of the Democratic vote in the West Virginia primary in 2012. CNN’s Jake Tapper wrote about it for ABC News at the time and noted that Sen. Joe Manchin would not say who he voted for – Obama or inmate Keith Judd – according to one report.

    In other red states, Obama also struggled in the primaries, getting less than 60% in primaries in Kentucky and Arkansas.

    These were not exactly contested races, and the fact that Obama didn’t have a stronger showing is probably a reflection of who shows up to vote in a nationally uncontested Democratic primary when the real race that year was on the Republican side.

    When the situation was reversed in 2020 and then-President Donald Trump faced some token challengers, Republicans simply canceled multiple primaries. South Carolina canceled its primary even though its former governor, Mark Sanford, was challenging Trump.

    This year, it’s another former South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, and a sitting South Carolina senator, Tim Scott, who are running in the single digits in national primary polls.

    For Biden, his biggest challenger so far is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose campaign is driven by anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

    Yes, Kennedy is registering in polls – more than 10% in many. But his out-of-the-mainstream views also mean he can’t get the backing of his family members, much less be viewed as a viable Biden alternative.

    For an idea of how much of a long shot Kennedy is, read this analysis from CNN’s Harry Enten.

    There’s certainly nothing as dangerous to Biden as when Sen. Ted Kennedy tried to displace then-President Jimmy Carter in 1980, inarguably wounding Carter before he was trounced by Ronald Reagan.

    There’s also nothing like the spirited primary challenge by Pat Buchanan that wounded then-President George H.W. Bush’s chances in 1992. Nor is there a serious independent bid that could feature in the general election, like Ross Perot’s in ’92. Bush ultimately lost the three-way race to Bill Clinton.

    All of this suggests that while Democrats will continue to worry about Biden’s age, his campaign structure, his unique ability to stumble over words and all of the ways Republicans attack him, he’s a lock to be their nominee barring unforeseen events.

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  • Top House Democrats rebuke Jayapal comments that Israel is a ‘racist state’ as she tries to walk them back | CNN Politics

    Top House Democrats rebuke Jayapal comments that Israel is a ‘racist state’ as she tries to walk them back | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Top House Democrats are rebuking Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal’s comments from earlier this weekend that “Israel is a racist state,” which she sought to walk back on Sunday.

    “Israel is not a racist state,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu said in a statement that did not mention the progressive leader by name.

    A draft statement signed by a handful of other House Democrats and circulating among lawmakers’ offices on Sunday expresses “deep concern” over what it calls Jayapal’s “unacceptable” comments, adding, “We will never allow anti-Zionist voices that embolden antisemitism to hijack the Democratic Party and country.”

    Their pushback comes ahead of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint meeting of Congress later this week, which some progressives have said they’ll skip, citing concerns about human rights. House progressives have been vocal about their opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the US sponsorship of Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.

    Jayapal, a Washington State Democrat, said “Israel is a racist state” on Saturday while addressing pro-Palestine protesters who interrupted a panel discussion at the Netroots Nation conference in Chicago.

    “As somebody who’s been in the streets and participated in a lot of demonstrations, I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us, that it does not even feel possible,” she told protesters chanting “Free Palestine.”

    Jayapal sought to clarify her remarks in a Sunday afternoon statement, saying that she does “not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist,” while offering an apology “to those who I have hurt with my words.”

    She went on to call out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “extreme right-wing government,” which she said she believes “has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies.”

    But her initial remark – made after protesters yelled “Israel is a racist state” during a panel she was participating in with Illinois progressive Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Jesús “Chuy” García – struck a nerve with some members of her own party.

    Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has signed the statement circulating among Democratic lawmakers, told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Sunday that not only was Jayapal’s statement “hurtful and harmful, it was wholly inaccurate and insensitive. I’m thankful that she retracted it.”

    The Florida Democrat added that Jayapal had spoken to a number of Jewish members of Congress on Sunday “and that is in part, I think, what resulted in the retraction and apology.”

    “We need to make sure we continue to work together,” Wasserman Schultz said. “But we all have to be careful about what we say in the heat of the moment, and I think she learned that the hard way.”

    CNN reached out to Jayapal earlier Sunday before she released her statement.

    In her statement, the congressman reiterated her commitment to “a two-state solution that allows both Israelis and Palestinians to live freely, safely, and with self-determination alongside each other.”

    And she explained her earlier comment by saying, in part, “On a very human level, I was also responding to the deep pain and hopelessness that exists for Palestinians and their diaspora communities when it comes to this debate, but I in no way intended to deny the deep pain and hurt of Israelis and their Jewish diaspora community that still reels from the trauma of pogroms and persecution, the Holocaust, and continuing anti-semitism and hate violence that is rampant today.”

    The draft statement from some Democrats nodded to antisemitism and also invoked American national security.

    “Israel is the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people and efforts to delegitimize and demonize it are not only dangerous and antisemitic, but they also undermine Americas’s national security,” the lawmakers write.

    House Democratic leadership also touted Israel as “an invaluable partner.”

    “Our commitment to a safe and secure Israel as an invaluable partner, ally and beacon of democracy in the Middle East is ironclad,” the leaders wrote in their own statement. “We look forward to welcoming Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the United States House of Representatives this week.”

    Jayapal said Friday she doesn’t believe she will attend Herzog’s speech Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “I don’t think I am. I haven’t fully decided.”

    “I think this is not a good time for that to happen,” Jayapal told CNN’s Manu Raju when asked if Speaker Kevin McCarthy had made a mistake in inviting Herzog.

    Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri have all said they will not attend.

    Democratic leadership has been supportive of Herzog’s visit, with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York extending the invitation last year. “I look forward to welcoming him with open arms,” Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said at a news conference last week, calling Herzog “a force for good in Israeli society.”

    Herzog will visit the White House on Tuesday. “As Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary, the visit will highlight our enduring partnership and friendship. President (Joe) Biden will reaffirm the ironclad commitment of the United States to Israel’s security,” the White House said in a statement.

    “President Biden will stress the importance of our shared democratic values, and discuss ways to advance equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis,” the statement continued.

    Netanyahu has not been invited to Washington by the Biden administration since taking office again in December last year, amid a raft of policy differences between the two governments.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • Fact check: After getting target letter in 2020 election probe, Trump tells another election lie | CNN Politics

    Fact check: After getting target letter in 2020 election probe, Trump tells another election lie | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    On Tuesday morning, former President Donald Trump announced he had received a target letter, an indication he could soon be indicted, in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation into Trump’s lie-filled effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.

    On Tuesday night, Trump went out of his way to tell another election lie.

    At a town hall event in Iowa, Fox host Sean Hannity gently suggested that Trump, now a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, should embrace early voting, mail-in voting and legal “ballot harvesting,” which is known less pejoratively as ballot collection.

    Hear what Trump advisers are telling him to do in order to avoid jail time

    Trump said he would do so, but he refused to offer an unequivocal endorsement. Instead, he added the kind of false claim he deployed in 2020.

    “I do,” he said of supporting the methods Hannity mentioned, “but I also have to say something else, ‘cause the one thing a lot of people, including you, don’t talk about: they also create phony ballots, and that’s a real problem. That’s my opinion. They create a lot of phony ballots.”

    Trump didn’t say who “they” were, but his claim is pure fiction.

    There was a tiny smattering of voter fraud in the 2020 election that was not even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state. While a minuscule number of people – some of them Trump supporters – voted illegally by doing such things as sending in a ballot for a deceased relative, voting twice or voting while prohibited because of a felony record, there was no sign that anyone created “a lot of phony ballots” in this election or any other recent federal election.

    David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit, called Trump’s claim “100% false.” Becker said in a message to CNN on Wednesday: “All ballots have a variety of security measures that make it nearly impossible for anyone to simply print them up and have them counted.”

    trump honig 0718 split

    Hear what ex-prosecutor thinks will happen next to Trump

    “Even if someone attempting fraud could produce an exact duplicate of a type of the hundreds of thousands of different ballot types in any national election, which is very unlikely, the ballot would still need to be returned by a registered voter who hadn’t otherwise voted, and the signature and/or driver’s license number would have to match what is on file,” Becker said

    “I talk to election officials all the time, all over the country, Rs and Ds, and in my 25 years working in this space I don’t recall hearing of any effort to create phony ballots in ANY election. It would be about the dumbest crime one could commit – zero chance it works and close to 100% chance you get caught and go to prison.”

    Trump previously delivered wild conspiratorial claims about unnamed people having supposedly “dumped” phony Biden votes into the 2020 totals in the middle of the night. Those stories, too, were wholly imaginary. Biden’s position improved late on Election Night in some states simply because ballots from legal mail-in voters and legal urban voters, both of which tended to favor Democrats, were counted as normal.

    A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to a CNN request on Tuesday night to explain what Trump was talking about this time.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Biden’s student loan forgiveness program faces a new threat from Senate Republicans | CNN Politics

    Biden’s student loan forgiveness program faces a new threat from Senate Republicans | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program may face a new threat from Senate Republicans even before the US Supreme Court rules on whether it can be implemented.

    Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Joni Ernst of Iowa and John Cornyn of Texas are planning to introduce a resolution to overturn Biden’s debt relief program, which promises up to $20,000 of debt relief for eligible borrowers, as soon as this week.

    Biden would very likely veto the measure if it succeeds in both the Senate and House. But votes would force members of his own party, who have not all been in support of the student loan forgiveness program, to take a public stance.

    The program is currently blocked. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in late June or early July.

    “President Biden’s student loan scheme does not ‘forgive’ debt, it just transfers the burden from those who willingly took out loans to those who never went to college, or sacrificed to pay their loans off,” Cassidy said in a statement.

    The Republican senators plan to introduce their resolution using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to roll back regulations from the executive branch without needing to clear the 60-vote threshold in the Senate that is necessary for most legislation.

    It was unclear whether the Congressional Review Act would apply to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program until the Government Accountability Office made a determination on the matter earlier this month.

    Biden issued his first veto last week concerning a retirement investment resolution, which was also brought under the Congressional Review Act.

    While many key Democratic lawmakers have urged Biden to cancel some federal student loan debt, not every member of the party has been supportive.

    Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada who won a competitive reelection race last year, has previously been critical of Biden’s forgiveness plan.

    “I’ll review the full text of the CRA when it is released, but like I said before, I disagree with President Biden’s executive action on student loans because it doesn’t address the root problems that make college unaffordable,” she said in a statement sent to CNN.

    Her statement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

    Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has previously called Biden’s student loan forgiveness program “excessive.” His office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

    Biden’s one-time student debt forgiveness program is estimated to cost $400 billion over time.

    Individual borrowers who made less than $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021 and married couples or heads of households who made less than $250,000 a year could see up to $10,000 of their federal student loan debt forgiven.

    If a qualifying borrower also received a federal Pell grant while enrolled in college, the individual is eligible for up to $20,000 of debt forgiveness. Pell grants are awarded to students from very low-income families who are more likely to struggle paying back their student loans.

    While the debt relief would help borrowers with student loans now, the program wouldn’t change the cost of college in the future – and some critics argue that it could even lead to an increase in tuition. A separate proposal from Biden, expected to take effect later this year, would create a new income-driven repayment plan that could lower monthly payments for both current and future borrowers.

    The legal challengers to the student loan forgiveness program argue that the Biden administration is abusing its power and using the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext for fulfilling the president’s campaign pledge to cancel student debt.

    The White House has said that it received 26 million applications before a lower court in Texas put a nationwide block on the program in November, and that 16 million of those applications have been approved for relief – though no debt has been canceled yet. It’s possible the government moves quickly to forgive those debts if it gets the green light from the Supreme Court.

    If the justices strike down Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, it could be possible for the administration to make some modifications to the policy and try again – though that process could take months.

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  • Trump legal team will look to challenge ‘every potential issue’ once indictment is unsealed | CNN Politics

    Trump legal team will look to challenge ‘every potential issue’ once indictment is unsealed | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s legal team will look to challenge “every potential issue” in his indictment once the charges are unsealed, an attorney for the former president said Sunday.

    “We’re not doing anything at the arraignment because that would be showmanship and nothing more because we haven’t even seen the indictment yet. We will take the indictment, we will dissect it, the team will look at every – every – potential issue that we will be able to challenge and we will challenge it,” Joe Tacopina told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    Tacopina and other Trump lawyers have done several TV interviews in anticipation of the former President’s first appearance in court Tuesday, when he will learn the charges that the Manhattan grand jury has approved against him.

    At times, the lawyers have vowed to ask for the charges to be dismissed. But the full slate of charges still aren’t known. And crucially, a judge will ultimately determine if the law is sound enough for the case to move forward to trial.

    Former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said in an interview with NBC News on Sunday, “We can speculate on what evidence we think they may or may not have, but even with the indictment published, we really will not know what the district attorney’s evidence is and what they would present at trial.”

    Vance’s team investigated the case but did not charge it, leaving it under the purview of his successor, Alvin Bragg.

    Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in the indictment. The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office began when Trump was still in the White House and relates to a $130,000 payment made by his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels in late October 2016, days before the presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier.

    Trump has denied the affair.

    The Trump team’s court strategy could center around challenging the case because it may rely on business record entries that prosecutors tie to hush money payments to Daniels seven years ago, beyond the statute of limitations for a criminal case.

    Tacopina suggested in TV interviews Sunday that the statute of limitations may be passed, and said the Trump businesses didn’t make false entries.

    “They’re not false entries. But assuming they were, they’re misdemeanors way beyond the statute of limitations, so they had to cobble them together to try and get a felony,” he said.

    Tacopina on Sunday also said a request to move the case to a different New York City borough isn’t on the table yet for Trump’s legal team.

    “There’s been no discussion of that whatsoever,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in another interview. “It’s way too premature to start worrying about venue changes until we really see the indictment and grapple with the legal issues.”

    CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct Cy Vance’s comments to NBC.

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  • Gaming the government is not going well | CNN Politics

    Gaming the government is not going well | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Governing is not, or at least it shouldn’t be, some kind of game.

    But this week it feels like powerful people are treating it like one, running trick plays to score points, trash talking and making threats, and exploiting rules to bring things to a halt.

    In Florida, a brewing grudge match pits Disney, one of the state’s largest employers, against its governor, the ambitious Republican Ron DeSantis who is eyeing a presidential run.

    How the state government’s relationship with its notable corporate citizen turned petty is getting hard to follow.

    The basic storyline, as laid out by CNN’s Steve Contorno, is that Disney spoke out against a law DeSantis pushed to limit what teachers can say in the classroom. Faulting its “woke” corporate behavior, DeSantis and Republicans in the state moved to install their political allies onto a quasi-government board that oversees the area that includes Disney World. But the company moved to defang the board before the new appointees took on their roles.

    Rather than sending a message to Disney, DeSantis now looks outmaneuvered and is threatening more action against the company.

    It’s not clear if he’s serious or not, but the most bizarre idea he suggested is building a state prison on public land next to the Magic Kingdom. Watch him here.

    The appearance of a Republican potentially trying to sabotage a massive employer is the kind of play DeSantis’ potential rivals for the Republican presidential nomination are happy to point out.

    “I think it rightfully makes a lot of people question his judgment and his maturity,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Tuesday in a conversation with the website Semafor.

    Christie said if DeSantis “can’t see around a corner that (Disney CEO) Bob Iger created for you,” then “that’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi and negotiating our next agreement with China.”

    In Washington, where the Senate rulebook has been befuddling people for centuries, Republicans are citing the Senate rules and making clear they won’t let Democrats replace, even temporarily, the ailing Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    Feinstein, 89, has been out of the office since early March while dealing with a case of the shingles. But since Democrats only have a one-seat majority on the panel, her absence has ground judicial nominations to a halt.

    For a rules-minded guy like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, another octogenarian just returning from his own month-plus convalescence after a fall, there’s no need to let Democrats get another vote on the committee and push through scores of nominations caught in limbo. McConnell suggested if Democrats culled the herd of nominees, they might get some confirmed.

    “They could move a number of less controversial nominees right now. Right now,” he said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “They want to sideline Senator Feinstein, so they can ram through the worst four as well.”

    Various Senate rules have been confusing people for centuries. Even if Feinstein were to resign, Sen. Mitt Romney suggested Tuesday that Republicans could block changes to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    “I don’t think Republicans are going to lift a finger in any way to get more liberal judges appointed, so whether she’s resigned or leaves temporarily from the judiciary committee, I think we will slow walk any process that makes it easier to appoint more liberal judges,” Romney said.

    Feinstein’s absence isn’t the only problem, as CNN’s Tierney Sneed and Lauren Fox have pointed out, since Republican senators can also use the “blue slip” tradition to veto judicial nominees the Biden administration has put forward for their states.

    If the importance of judicial nominees is still in question, look no further than the furor that a Trump-appointed federal judge has caused by ruling to suspend the 23-year-old FDA authorization for mifepristone, the first drug used in a medication abortion.

    The decision by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk out of the federal court in Amarillo, Texas, has sent the abortion issue straight back to the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule by Wednesday in a case that could remove nationwide access to a medication that American women have been using for decades, even in states that have sought to protect abortion rights.

    Kacsmaryk was all but selected by opponents of the drug to hear the case since he is the only federal district judge in Amarillo.

    It’s not the rulebook, but rather the teamwork making House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s life difficult. He wanted to send a message of unity to Wall Street with a speech there Monday. His goal was to calm nerves about the looming debt ceiling showdown and project that Republicans have a plan to raise the debt ceiling and impose spending cuts. Their plan probably won’t get any support from Democrats.

    But almost on cue Tuesday, conservative Republicans began to poke holes in McCarthy’s plan, calling it into question as the US hurtles toward a potential default if there is no debt ceiling agreement by June. McCarthy, at least for now, seems disinclined to allow a vote on any proposal that could get support from Democrats in the House. And he seems unable to find a proposal that can get all Republicans on board. Those Senate rules make it impossible for anything to pass through that chamber without support from ten Republicans, so long as Feinstein is not voting. Read more from CNN’s Stephen Collinson.

    Suffice it to say the debt ceiling, the abortion medication and Disney’s status in Florida are issues where there’s not a winner and a loser, even if they’re being treated that way by the powerful people who are supposed to be in charge.

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  • Justice Department challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors | CNN Politics

    Justice Department challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a complaint challenging a recently enacted Tennessee bill that prohibits gender-affirming care for minors, saying it “denies necessary medical care to youth based solely on who they are.”

    DOJ argues in its complaint that the legislation violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by discriminating on the basis of both sex and transgender status and asks the court to issue an immediate order to block the law from taking effect on July 1.

    “SB 1 makes it unlawful to provide or offer to provide certain types of medical care for transgender minors with diagnosed gender dysphoria. SB 1’s blanket ban prohibits potential treatment options that have been recommended by major medical associations for consideration in limited circumstances in accordance with established and comprehensive guidelines and standards of care,” a news release from the department states. “By denying only transgender youth access to these forms of medically necessary care while allowing non-transgender minors access to the same or similar procedures, SB 1 discriminates against transgender youth.”

    In a statement to CNN, Gov. Bill Lee said, “Tennessee is committed to protecting children from permanent, life-altering decisions. This is federal overreach at its worst, and we will work with Attorney General Skrmetti to push back in court and stand up for children.”

    Senate Bill 0001, signed into law by the Republican governor last month, prohibits health care providers “from performing on a minor or administering to a minor a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”

    The legislation specifies that minors who receive care cannot be held liable but lawsuits could be brought against their parents “if the parent of the minor consented to the conduct that constituted the violation on behalf of the minor.” It also grants the attorney general the authority to fine health care professionals who provide the care with a civil penalty of $25,000 per violation.

    Gender-affirming care that began prior to July 1 is not considered a violation “provided that the treating physician must make a written certification that ending the medical procedure would be harmful to the minor,” though access to such care must conclude by March 31, 2024. The legislation expresses concern over long-term outcomes and questions whether minors are capable of making such consequential decisions.

    Major medical associations agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria, which, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align.

    Though the care is highly individualized, some children may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. Surgical interventions, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors.

    US Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry Leventis said in a statement that SB 1 violates the constitutional rights of the state’s “most vulnerable victims.”

    “Left unchallenged, it would prohibit transgender children from receiving health care that their medical providers and their parents have determined to be medically necessary. In doing so, the law seeks to substitute the judgment of trained medical professionals and parents with that of elected officials and codifies discrimination against children who already face far too many obstacles,” Leventis said.

    Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the news release that “no person should be denied access to necessary medical care just because of their transgender status.”

    “The right to consider your health and medically-approved treatment options with your family and doctors is a right that everyone should have, including transgender children, who are especially vulnerable to serious risks of depression, anxiety and suicide,” Clarke said.

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  • 5 ways a debt default could affect you | CNN Politics

    5 ways a debt default could affect you | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and House Republicans may have as little as a month to prevent the US from defaulting on its debt, which would impact millions of Americans and unleash economic and fiscal chaos here and around the world.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Monday that the government may not be able to pay all of its bills in full and on time as soon as June 1. However, the forecast was uncertain, and the default date might come several weeks later, she said. The US hit its $31.4 trillion debt ceiling in January, and Treasury has been using cash and “extraordinary measures” to satisfy obligations since then.

    Just what would happen if the nation defaults on its debt is unknown since it’s never actually happened before. A close call in 2011 roiled the financial markets and prompted Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the US’ credit rating to AA+ from AAA.

    Yellen gave a sense of the turmoil it would cause in her letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday.

    “If Congress fails to increase the debt limit, it would cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position, and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests,” she wrote.

    To be clear, a debt default doesn’t mean all payments would stop and people would permanently lose out on money they are owed. Treasury would have the funds to satisfy some obligations, but it’s not certain how the agency would handle the disbursements. Much would also depend on how long it takes Congress to address the borrowing cap.

    “Tens of millions of people across the country who expect payments from the federal government may not get them on time,” said Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

    Here are five ways that Americans could be affected by debt default:

    About 66 million retirees, disabled workers and others receive monthly Social Security benefits. The average payment for retired workers is $1,827 a month in 2023.

    Almost two-thirds of beneficiaries rely on Social Security for half of their income, and for 40% of recipients, the payments constitute at least 90% of their income, according to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

    These payments could be delayed in a debt default scenario, though it’s possible Treasury could continue making on-time payments because of the entitlement program’s trust fund, Akabas said.

    The benefits are disbursed four times a month, on the third day of the month and on three Wednesdays. Roughly $25 billion a week is sent out, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

    “Even a short delay in the payment of Social Security benefits would be a burden for the millions of Americans who rely on their earned benefits to pay for out-of-pocket health care expenses, food, rent and utilities,” Max Richtman, the committee’s CEO, said in a statement.

    Many other government payments could also be affected, including funding for food stamps; federal grants to states and municipalities for Medicaid, highways, education and other programs; and Medicare payments to hospitals, doctors and health insurance plans.

    More than 2 million federal civilian workers and around 1.4 million active-duty military members could see their paychecks delayed. Federal government contractors could also see a lag in payments, which could affect their ability to compensate their workers.

    Also, certain veterans benefits, including disability payments and pensions for some low-income veterans and their surviving families, could be affected.

    “Such calamity would place further stress on our servicemembers, retirees, and veterans, as well as their families, caregivers, and survivors,” Rene Campos, senior director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America, said in a blog post. “Though life in uniform is not always predictable, those who serve or have served their country expect their country to honor their commitment to service.”

    About $25 billion in pay or benefits for active-duty members of the military, civil service and military retirees, veterans and recipients of Supplemental Security Income is sent out on the first day of the month, according to the CBO.

    Americans’ investments would take a direct hit. Case in point: Markets had what was then their worst week since the financial crisis during the 2011 debt ceiling standoff after the Standard & Poor’s downgrade.

    Even if the debt ceiling impasse is resolved soon after a default, stocks could shed as much as a third of their value. That would wipe out around $12 trillion in household wealth, according to Moody’s Analytics.

    If a default occurs, yields on US Treasuries will inevitably rise to compensate for the increased risk that bondholders won’t receive the money they’re owed from the government.

    Since interest rates on loans, credit cards and mortgages are often based on Treasury yields, the cost of borrowing money and paying off debt would rise. That’s on top of the increased costs Americans are already facing from the Federal Reserve rate hikes.

    Families and businesses would also have a tougher time getting approved for lines of credit since banks would have to be more selective about to whom they loan money. That’s because their costs of borrowing money will also rise, which limits the amount of money they can lend out.

    A debt default could trigger an economic downturn, which would prompt a spike in unemployment. It would come at a particularly fragile time – when the nation is already dealing with rising interest rates and stubbornly high inflation.

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

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

    “It would be a body blow to the economy, and it would be a manufactured crisis,” said Bernard Yaros, an economist at Moody’s.

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  • Supreme Court halts execution of Richard Glossip | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court halts execution of Richard Glossip | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US Supreme Court on Friday put on hold the execution of Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma death row inmate whose capital conviction the state attorney general has said he could no longer support.

    The latest round of litigation was brought to the Supreme Court by Glossip, with the support of the Oklahoma Attorney’s General office, who asked for his May 18 execution to be set aside.

    The emergency hold on his execution will stay in place while the justices consider his request that they formally take up his case.

    There were no noted dissents from Friday’s order. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in Friday’s ruling.

    Glossip has maintained his innocence, having been convicted in 1998 of capital murder for ordering the killing of his boss.

    A review launched by Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general found that prosecutors had failed to disclose evidence to Glossip that they were obligated to produce and that the evidence showed that the prosecutors’ key witness – the supposed accomplice of Glossip’s who committed the murder – had given false testimony.

    Despite Oklahoma’s assertions that it could no longer stand by Glossip’s conviction, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeal declined Glossip’s request that his execution be halted.

    In their filings with the US Supreme Court, Glossip’s attorneys argued that – in addition to the obviously irreparable harm he would suffer if the execution moves forward – Oklahoma “will also suffer harm from its Department of Corrections executing a person whom the State has concluded should never have been convicted of murder, let alone sentenced to die, in the first place.”

    Glossip’s case has been before the Supreme Court before, including in a major challenge the justices heard in 2015 that he and other death row inmates brought to the lethal injection protocol used in executions.

    In that case, the court’s conservative majority rejected the inmates’ claims that the lineup of the lethal drugs, which had come under scrutiny after several botched executions, violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Glossip has narrowly avoided being executed on several occasions, including months after the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling, when the execution was called off at the last minute by state officials because of questions about the drugs they were planning to use.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to testify before Congress | CNN Business

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to testify before Congress | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will testify before Congress next Tuesday as lawmakers increasingly scrutinize the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence, according to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

    During Tuesday’s hearing, lawmakers will question Altman for the first time since OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, took the world by storm late last year.

    The groundbreaking generative AI tool has led to a wave of new investment in AI, prompting a scramble among US policymakers who have called for guardrails and regulation amid fears of AI’s misuse.

    Also testifying Tuesday will be Christina Montgomery, IBM’s vice president and chief privacy and trust officer, as well as Gary Marcus, a former New York University professor and a self-described critic of AI “hype.”

    “Artificial intelligence urgently needs rules and safeguards to address its immense promise and pitfalls,” said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate panel on privacy and technology. “This hearing begins our Subcommittee’s work in overseeing and illuminating AI’s advanced algorithms and powerful technology.”

    He added: “I look forward to working with my colleagues as we explore sensible standards and principles to help us navigate this uncharted territory.”

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  • Why Ron DeSantis can win the GOP nomination for president | CNN Politics

    Why Ron DeSantis can win the GOP nomination for president | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the 2024 presidential race this week. But the Florida governor begins his campaign to win the GOP nomination with his poll numbers flailing and with former President Donald Trump as the clear primary front-runner.

    Still, DeSantis remains by far the best hope for anti-Trump forces within the GOP. And a few recent historical examples indicate he has a real chance to be his party’s nominee.

    Trump has turned what polls once showed was a competitive primary matchup into a giant advantage over DeSantis. The former president was ahead of DeSantis by about 10 points nationally at the end of last year. Trump was polling in the low 40s, while DeSantis was in the low 30s.

    Today, Trump is averaging over 50% nationally among GOP voters. DeSantis has dropped back into the low 20s. No one else is even in double digits.

    The numbers do look slightly better for DeSantis in the early-voting states. What had been a DeSantis lead in New Hampshire, according to University of New Hampshire polls, has now become a Trump edge. Trump was up 42% to 22% in its latest survey. Limited released data in Iowa points to a similar trendline.

    While the numbers don’t look great for DeSantis at this time, remember he hasn’t formally gotten into the race as yet. We don’t know what might happen when he hits the campaign trail as a candidate. History does show us that there is time for DeSantis to mount a comeback.

    Back in 2007, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was averaging in the low 20s nationally ahead of the 2008 Democratic primary season. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was dominating the national polls for the Democratic nomination with nearly 40% of the vote. Her lead grew slightly larger during the second half of the year.

    And yet, Obama ended up defeating Clinton.

    That same cycle, Arizona Sen. John McCain was stuck in the low 20s in early national surveys of the Republican primary. After falling back into the mid-10s in the second half of the year, McCain would also make a massive comeback.

    History suggests that someone in DeSantis’ polling position has a roughly 1-in-5 (20%) chance of winning the nomination. To put that in perspective, you have a 1-in-5 chance of choosing your pinky finger in a game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe on your fingers.

    Trump, of course, has a significantly higher chance of winning the GOP nod. The only past candidate pulling in anywhere close to Trump’s share of the primary vote in early national surveys and then didn’t become his party’s nominee was Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy in the 1980 cycle. Most candidates polling in Trump’s current position or better (Bob Dole in 1996, Al Gore in 2000, George W. Bush in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016) won their party nominations with relative ease.

    These early poll numbers are meaningful in what they tell us about the state of the race. Trump is in a much better position than he was at this point in the 2016 cycle, when he was in the single digits. (That cycle is an awful comparison to this one, however: The leader at this point in the race back then, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, was in the mid-teens nationally.)

    To beat the odds, DeSantis probably needs at least one of two things to happen.

    One, he needs to ensure that more of the party establishment doesn’t rally around Trump. The former president already has more than four times as many endorsements from members of Congress and governors than he did throughout the 2016 primary cycle.

    There’s likely no stopping Trump if he has the party behind him and he is able to dominate press coverage like he has shown he can.

    Keep in mind that all presidential contenders with a similar share of endorsements from top elected officials this early in the cycle have gone on to be their party’s nominee. That said, most GOP members of Congress and governors have not yet weighed in. The party has, in other words, not yet decided.

    The second option for DeSantis is to win in either Iowa or New Hampshire. That’s not sufficient to win the nomination, but it likely is necessary. Both Obama (Iowa) and McCain (New Hampshire) won one of the early contests to jumpstart their campaigns.

    The good news for DeSantis is that he is polling better in those states than he is nationally, even if he trails Trump in both. A DeSantis win in either state would show us if Trump’s lead is built on a solid foundation or like a deck of cards.

    The bottom line for DeSantis is this: He has a solid chance of winning his party’s nomination, but it won’t be easy.

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