List of All Articles with Tag 'politics'

Prosecutors investigating the former president's handling of classified files obtain an audio tape.

KHARTOUM A senior U.S. official said violations of a ceasefire in Sudan have led Washington to "seriously question"

Senators are racing the clock to pass a bill to suspend the nation's debt limit through January 1, 2025 -- but it's not yet clear when a final vote will take place as the threat of default looms.

In a bombshell development in the classified documents case against Donald Trump, a report by CNN says federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which the former president acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran — potentially undercutting his argument that he declassified everything. The recording indicates Mr Trump understood he retained classified papers after leaving the White House and suggests he would like to share the information but is aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records. The network cites multiple sources. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating the classified papers case, is also looking at the former president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. In a new development he is examining Mr Trump’s firing of cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, whose office said the vote was secure, The New York Times reports. Mr Krebs was fired by Mr Trump shortly after the election. Meanwhile, as more Republican contenders join the party’s primary race, Mr Trump has promised a year-long celebration of America to mark 250 years of independence if he wins the presidency again. Read More Trump caught on tape discussing classified documents he kept after leaving White House, reports say Trump legal team asks for judge in hush-money case to be removed Trump accuses DeSantis of faking his own name in wave of attacking social media posts

Veering away from a default crisis, the House overwhelmingly approved a debt ceiling and budget cuts package, sending the deal that President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated to the Senate for swift passage in a matter of days, before a fast-approaching deadline. The hard-fought compromise pleased few, but lawmakers assessed it was better than the alternative — a devastating economic upheaval if Congress failed to act. Tensions ran high as hard-right Republicans refused the deal, but Biden and McCarthy assembled a bipartisan coalition to push to passage on a robust 314-117 vote late Wednesday. “We did pretty dang good,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said afterward. Amid deep discontent from Republicans who said the spending restrictions did not go far enough, McCarthy said it is only a “first step." Biden, watching the tally from Colorado Springs where Thursday he is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy, phoned McCarthy and the other congressional leaders after the vote. In a statement, he called the outcome “good news for the American people and the American economy.” Washington is rushing after a long slog of debate to wrap up work on the package to ensure the government can keep paying its bills, and prevent financial upheaval at home and abroad. Next Monday is when the Treasury has said the U.S. would run short of money and risk a dangerous default. Biden had been calling lawmakers directly to shore up backing. McCarthy worked to sell skeptical fellow Republicans, even fending off challenges to his leadership, in the rush to avert a potentially disastrous U.S. default. A similar bipartisan effort from Democrats and Republicans will be needed in the Senate to overcome objections. Overall, the 99-page bill would make some inroads in curbing the nation’s deficits as Republicans demanded, without rolling back Trump-era tax breaks as Biden wanted. To pass it, Biden and McCarthy counted on support from the political center, a rarity in divided Washington. A compromise, the package restricts spending for the next two years, suspends the debt ceiling into January 2025 and changes some policies, including imposing new work requirements for older Americans receiving food aid and greenlighting an Appalachian natural gas line that many Democrats oppose. It bolsters funds for defense and veterans, and guts new money for Internal Revenue Service agents. Raising the nation's debt limit, now $31 trillion, ensures Treasury can borrow to pay already incurred U.S. debts. Top GOP deal negotiator Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana said Republicans were fighting for budget cuts after the past years of extra spending, first during the COVID-19 crisis and later with Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, with its historic investment to fight climate change paid for with revenues elsewhere. But Republican Rep. Chip Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus helping to lead the opposition, said, “My beef is that you cut a deal that shouldn’t have been cut.” For weeks negotiators labored late into the night to strike the deal with the White House, and for days McCarthy has worked to build support among skeptics. At one point, aides wheeled in pizza at the Capitol the night before the vote as he walked Republicans through the details, fielded questions and encouraged them not to lose sight of the bill’s budget savings. The speaker has faced a tough crowd. Cheered on by conservative senators and outside groups, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus lambasted the compromise as falling well short of the needed spending cuts, and they vowed to try to halt passage. A much larger conservative faction, the Republican Study Committee, declined to take a position. Even rank-and-file centrist conservatives were unsure, leaving McCarthy searching for votes from his slim Republican majority. Ominously, the conservatives warned of possibly trying to oust McCarthy over the compromise. One influential Republican, former President Donald Trump, held his fire: "It is what it is,” he said of the deal in an interview with Iowa radio host Simon Conway. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said it was up to McCarthy to turn out Republican votes in the 435-member chamber, where 218 votes are needed for approval. As the tally faltered on an afternoon procedural vote, Jeffries stood silently and raised his green voting card, signaling that the Democrats would fill in the gap to ensure passage. They did, advancing the bill that hard-right Republicans, many from the Freedom Caucus, refused to back. “Once again, House Democrats to the rescue to avoid a dangerous default,” said Jeffries, D-N.Y. “What does that say about this extreme MAGA Republican majority?” he said about the party aligned with Trump’s ”Make America Great Again” political movement. Then, on the final vote hours later, Democrats again ensured passage, leading the tally as 71 Republicans bucked their majority and voted against it. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the spending restrictions in the package would reduce deficits by $1.5 trillion over the decade, a top goal for the Republicans trying to curb the debt load. In a surprise that complicated Republicans' support, however, the CBO said their drive to impose work requirements on older Americans receiving food stamps would end up boosting spending by $2.1 billion over the time period. That's because the final deal exempts veterans and homeless people, expanding the food stamp rolls by 78,000 people monthly, the CBO said. Liberal discontent, though, ran strong as nearly four dozen Democrats also broke away, decrying the new work requirements for older Americans, those 50-54, in the food aid program. Some Democrats were also incensed that the White House negotiated into the deal changes to the landmark National Environmental Policy Act and approval of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline natural gas project. The energy development is important to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., but many others oppose it as unhelpful in fighting climate change. On Wall Street, stock prices were down Wednesday. In the Senate, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell are working for passage by week's end. Schumer warned there is ”no room for error." Senators, who have remained largely on the sidelines during much of the negotiations, are insisting on amendments to reshape the package. But making any changes at this stage seemed unlikely with so little time to spare before Monday's deadline. ___ AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller, AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Seung Min Kim and Jill Colvin and video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Debt ceiling deal advances pipeline and tweaks environmental rules. But more work remains. Republicans get their IRS cuts; Democrats say they expect little near-term impact Progressives and conservatives complain as Biden-McCarthy debt deal passes

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in February made a bold prediction about the GOP and the debt ceiling, asserting: "We don't believe they have a plan that can pass with Republican votes in the House."

Marjorie Taylor Greene has claimed without providing evidence that the FBI actually knows the identity of a person who left two pipe bombs near the Capitol a day before the Jan 6 insurrection. Investigators said they have been left stumped in trying to identify a suspect who placed the explosive devices outside the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC. Despite offering a $500,000 reward, the FBI is no nearer to making an arrest in the case, but that has not stopped Ms Greene from suggesting they actually know who did it. The far-right lawmaker from Georgia made the outrageous claim on her Battleground podcast. “The FBI can’t find the pipe bomber? This is ridiculous! This shows you that the FBI doesn’t care about finding the pipe bomber because they know exactly who the pipe bomber is,” she said. “And they use their resources and your hard-earned tax dollars to go after people because they support Trump and were mad about the election of 2020 and these people walked into the Capitol.” In January, David Sundberg, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, said that for two years “a dedicated team of FBI agents, analysts, and law enforcement partners have been tirelessly reviewing evidence and digital media related to this case”. The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Washington police had “conducted approximately 1,000 interviews, visited more than 1,200 residences and businesses, collected more than 39,000 video files, and assessed nearly 500 tips”, according to the bureau. “In raising the reward for information about the pipe bomb suspect from $100,000 to as much as $500,000, the FBI and our partners are seeking to encourage the American public to take a fresh look at our Seeking Information website, which includes images and video of the suspect, the suspect’s backpack, the suspect’s shoes, the explosive devices, and a map of the route the suspect walked the night the pipe bombs were placed,” the FBI said. Read More Marjorie Taylor Greene faces waves of mocking laughter after asking House to follow ‘decorum’ Gavin Newsom mocks Marjorie Taylor Greene in spat over Target pulling Pride products: ‘Are you the space laser person?’

Former President Donald Trump's history of making inappropriate or questionable comments on tape got another chapter on Wednesday with fresh revelations from his post-White House life.

President Joe Biden ended the month of May the same way he began it: with a phone call to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. .

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said Wednesday that nine days of negotiations with state Senate Republican leadership in an attempt to end the longest walkout by lawmakers in state history had reached an impasse, according to a statement from her office.

The Senate must approve the deal and send it to the president's desk this weekend to avoid a default.

The House of Representatives has voted to raise the debt limit, thereby ensuring the United States will avoid defaulting on its debt, despite vocal opposition from many Republicans in the House majority. The legislation had resulted from negotiations between lieutenants of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the White House. The passage of the legislation is the first major hurdle to be cleared for Mr McCarthy, who made a series of concessions on how to negotiate the debt limit during the marathon 15 votes it took for him to become speaker in January. The Senate will take up the legislation for a vote and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has pledged it will pass before 5 June, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the United States will run out of options to maintain its debt obligations. Multiple Republicans vehemently criticised the bill, saying it did not go far enough in its spending cuts as well as highlighting the fact it raised the debt limit until January 2025, rather than raising it a certain dollar amount. Rep Garret Graves (R-LA), one of the chief negotiators with the White House, said that conservative criticism ignored the fact that had it not been for the agreement, the White House would have likely raised the debt limit unilaterally or Democrats would have teamed up with moderate Republicans to raise the debt limit without spending cuts. “So by doing so all you're doing is playing into the hands of the White House,” he told The Independent. “Because if you keep going down this road, if you keep trying to sew this line, that's simply not true that there's some other option out there to save a gazillion dollars, all you're doing is you're moving towards default.” But several House conservatives criticised the bill for multiple provisions, including the fact it did not put in place work requirements for Medicaid. The agreement increases the age for work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, for able-bodied adults without dependent children from 50 to 54. That earned the criticism of many progressive Democrats and led to them opposing the bill. At the same time, the agreement would exempt youth in the foster care system, veterans and people experiencing homelessness from work requirements for SNAP and the Congressional Budget Office estimated that approximately 78,000 would gain benefits in an average month as a result of the deal. But Rep Byron Donalds (R-FL) criticised the legislation for not going far enough in work requirements such as including them for Medicaid. “And I think that's just a smart and prudent thing to do,” he told The Independent. “But when you expand eligibility for the program, at least the way CBO is putting it we're actually taking a step backwards.” Read More What’s in the cliffhanger deal struck by Biden and McCarthy to raise the debt limit? Anti-poverty groups and progressives blast work requirements for aid to poor Americans in debt ceiling deal