McCarthy tries to unite House Republicans around debt ceiling proposal – live | US politics

The day so far

Disney takes DeSantis to court as resort feud escalates

Speaking of Senate news, Mitch McConnell is certainly looking forward to next year, when Democrats will have to defend a number of seats held by their lawmakers representing conservative states.

Perhaps the most difficult for Democrats to hang on to will be West Virginia’s, which is currently held by Joe Manchin. He’s cast himself as a conservative Democrat, and derailed progressive priorities such as stronger measures to fight climate change. Yesterday, he threatened to vote to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, Joe Biden’s marquee legislation to combat rising temperatures and cut prescription drug prices, which the senator personally played a role in crafting.

We’ll see if that is enough to convince voters in the strikingly Republican state to give him another six years – should he ask for it, since Manchin has not said whether he will run again. But if he does, he may have to go up against the state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice.

Justice, together with his dog, Babydog, has a “special announcement” scheduled for Thursday afternoon. The Washington Post says that will be the start of his Senate campaign.

Manchin, too, was once governor of West Virginia, but unlike Justice stuck with the Democratic party. Justice, however, switched to the GOP in 2017, in an event presided over by Donald Trump.

Senate Democrats have demanded answers from the supreme court after a series of reports indicating at least two justices have relationships with parties interested in the court’s decisions that they did not disclose.

But the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, said on the floor today that the court continues to have his confidence:

McConnell has played a major role in the creation of the court’s current six-justice conservative majority, beginning in 2016, when he blocked Barack Obama’s appointment of a new supreme court justice. That paid off when Donald Trump won the White House and appointed conservative Neil Gorsuch, the first of three appointments he would make. The trio were among the signatories of last year’s decision overturning Roe v Wade, along with other decisions seen as victories for the political right.

The House Democratic minority, unsurprisingly, wants nothing to do with the Republican debt limit bill.

Their leadership said as much at a press conference this morning, as Politico reports:

The party’s rank-and-file lawmakers have also signed on to a letter urging speaker Kevin McCarthy to “uphold the full faith and credit of the United States of America by allowing prompt floor consideration of legislation to raise the debt ceiling without any extraneous policies attached.”

House speaker Kevin McCarthy fired back at the White House over its strenuous disapproval of the bill Republicans seem set to pass in the House to raise the debt ceiling while slashing spending.

Here’s the word, from McCarthy’s deputy spokesman Chad Gilmartin:

President Biden’s reckless spending has already threatened the financial well-being of every American family, and now his irresponsible refusal to negotiate with Speaker McCarthy threatens the entire American economy with the first default in our history. House Republicans have the only plan that responsibly raises the debt ceiling and avoids a default while growing the economy and making us less dependent on China. Biden said it was his ‘great honor’ to negotiate debt ceiling agreements before — he should honor the American people today by doing his job and coming to the table again.”

In New York City, the trial of a civil lawsuit brought against Donald Trump by author E Jean Carroll alleging rape continues today. Here’s the latest on the legal entanglement, which is one of many facing the former president, from the Guardian’s Chris McGreal:

E Jean Carroll, the advice columnist suing Donald Trump for rape, is expected to testify on Wednesday in the civil trial of the former president for alleged battery and defamation.

The trial opened on Tuesday with Carroll’s lawyer, Shawn Crowley, telling the jury of three women and six men she was seeking “to clear her name, to pursue justice and to get her life back”.

Carroll alleges the former president raped her in a New York department store changing room in 1996, then attempted to “destroy her” by accusing her of lying when she went public years later.

Joe Tacopina, representing Trump, told the jury he will show that Carroll conspired with other women to falsely accuse the former president of sexual assault because they “hate” him.

In a statement that is not at all a surprise, the White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt has slammed the Republican proposal to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending.

Here’s what LaBolt says of the bill, which he calls the “Cut Growth Act”:

Speaker McCarthy has cut a deal with the most extreme MAGA elements of his party to accelerate taking food assistance from hundreds of thousands of older Americans and to carve out one industry from his draconian cuts without making a single change to provisions that will strip away health care services for veterans, cut access to Meals on Wheels, eliminate health care coverage for millions of Americans, and ship manufacturing jobs overseas. House Republicans are selling out hard-working Americans in order to defend their top priority: restoring the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest and corporations at a cost of over $3 trillion. President Biden will never sacrifice opportunity and economic security for working and middle-class families in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest and corporations. Budgets are a statement of values — and House Republicans have made clear who they are fighting for.

House Republicans optimistic about debt ceiling passage

A transgender lawmaker in Montana who has been prevented from speaking on the floor of the state House of Representatives says the chamber’s Republican leadership will try to censure or expel her:

Since last week, first-term Democrat Zooey Zephyr has not been allowed to speak on the House floor after Republican leaders accused her of making disrespectful comments. A group of conservative lawmakers in the chamber has demanded her censure, with a letter that misgendered Zephyr, the first openly trans woman elected to Montana’s legislature. Read more about the standoff here:

As we wait to see if House Republicans have their ducks in a row, the chief justice of the supreme court yesterday declined an invitation from Senate Democrats to testify about the court’s ethics, after a series of reports showed links between two conservative justices and parties with interests in the court. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly:

Democrats and progressives reacted angrily after John Roberts, the chief justice of the supreme court, declined an invitation to testify before the Senate judiciary committee about corruption allegations against members of his court.

Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut senator, said: “The marble pillars of the supreme court and platitudes about its independence no longer provide refuge. He must face the nation.”

Sheldon Whitehouse, from Rhode Island, said: “The gaping hole in today’s response from Roberts … is that it overlooks the complete failure of process regarding ethics questions involving the justices. When there’s no ref, there’s no rule.”

To Democrats, GOP debt ceiling bill is ‘DOA’

After night of negotiating, does GOP have votes for debt limit bill?