The Hill’s Morning Report — McCarthy hunts for GOP backers on debt bill
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Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who needed 15 ballots to lock in enough votes to be Speaker, likes to say it’s not where you started but where you finish that counts.
On Thursday, the House Republicans’ debt ceiling plan, which was introduced a day earlier with considerable fanfare as the “Limit, Save, Grow Act,” remained a work in progress. House leaders say it will be voted on early next week. Twenty-four hours after its big reveal, rank-and-file Republicans sounded dubious.
The GOP proposes pairing their opening bid of a $1.5 trillion debt ceiling increase with their companion wish list of long-term spending cuts. It’s the GOP’s first legislative effort to compel President Biden to cut a deal with conservatives to shrink federal spending. But before conservatives get to that point, they need to agree on their terms among themselves, and that’s taking some time.
Axios: Speaker at risk of falling short on GOP votes for debt ceiling bill.
McCarthy says Congress will not cause a default. Wall Street and investors seem to believe Washington’s divided government will resolve the differences before creating economic mayhem. And the White House warns House conservatives they have set up a risky play.
With a four-vote margin and no Democratic support, McCarthy and his team will be horse-trading down to their own wire. A handful of conservatives want higher work requirements for welfare; at least one wants to repeal larger portions of Biden’s climate and social benefits law enacted last year. Some Republicans say they’re still sifting through the mammoth bill, creating more uncertainty — and a potential headache — for GOP leadership (The Hill).
“I want the anticipation,” McCarthy told reporters. “I want you to see as the clock goes up. I want you to write stories like, I’m teetering, whether I could win or not, and the whole world hangs in the balance. And then I want to write a story after it passes: Would the president sit down and negotiate?”
Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), who has been deeply involved in crafting the bill’s pairing of a debt limit hike in exchange for $4.5 trillion in what Republicans describe as “savings” over a period of years, acknowledged the needed votes are not yet lined up for action early next week.
“Full transparency: Are there people that have raised … some issues and some cats and dogs? Yeah, and we’re having conversations,” Graves told The Hill. “I’m confident that we’re going to be able to get there.”
▪ The Hill: Cheat sheet: What’s in Republicans’ sweeping 320-page debt limit proposal?
▪ The Hill: House GOP setting up election-year debt limit fight.
▪ Bloomberg News: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Thursday praised McCarthy and slammed Biden over his resistance to negotiating with the House majority over a debt ceiling measure.
▪ The Hill: The White House took aim on Thursday at McCarthy’s debt limit plan and its potential impact on U.S. manufacturing as well as job creation tied to funding for climate initiatives now in law (Politico).
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▪ The Hill: Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su on Thursday defended her record as key Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee remain undecided about her nomination to the top job. A committee vote is scheduled next week.
▪ The Hill: A showdown looms as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee invites Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to testify about the high court. Republicans say Roberts should decline.
LEADING THE DAY
➤ POLITICS
Biden and his team are preparing to announce his reelection campaign next week, NBC News reports. While Biden has often publicly reiterated his intention to run in 2024, he has delayed a formal announcement. Biden’s team is targeting Tuesday for the release of the video to coincide with the four-year anniversary of his 2020 campaign launch, sources tell The Washington Post, while cautioning that the official announcement could be delayed.
Los Angeles Times: Biden’s the favorite for reelection despite bad polls. How come?
The Supreme Court is expected to release a decision today regarding the validity of a lower court ruling that had sought to limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, had declared invalid the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of mifepristone, part of the most commonly used method for ending pregnancies in the United States.
An appeal of the ruling made its way to the Supreme Court, where Justice Samuel Alito announced a temporary stay on the order, set to lapse today at midnight following a two-day extension. The Supreme Court’s ruling will be its first major decision about abortion access after it struck down Roe v. Wade last summer. Ahead of the announcement, The Hill’s Nathaniel Weixel breaks down some of the possibilities and consequences of four decisions the court could make.
▪ The New Republic: What to watch in the Supreme Court’s mifepristone ruling.
▪ FiveThirtyEight: Telehealth abortions surged after Roe was overturned — but the Texas ruling could change that.
▪ The Associated Press: Wyoming abortion clinic opens despite arson, legal obstacles.
Abortion has become the trickiest political issue and a divisive one internally for the Republican Party as strategists and candidates look to the 2024 presidential primary. Most Americans support abortion in some or all circumstances, according to a 2022 Gallup poll, which found 35 percent support legalization of abortion access in all circumstances and 50 percent of respondents support access under certain circumstances.
Some potential 2024 contenders, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — who recently signed a six-week abortion ban into law — are known as supporters of the red-state trend toward tighter restrictions. But organizations that favor the bans were frustrated when former President Trump made no such reference during his November campaign announcement, despite his past role nominating conservatives for seats on the Supreme Court (The Washington Post).
“His silence spoke very loudly to the pro-life movement,” Kristan Hawkins, president of the national anti-abortion group Students for Life, told the Post. “We were pretty disappointed.”
Meanwhile, during a Wednesday Fox News interview in Los Angeles, former Vice President Mike Pence said, “I fully support efforts to take the abortion pill off the market,” (The Hill).
▪ The Hill: House GOP leaders distance themselves from any national abortion ban, deferring to House committees and states.
▪ Politico: Lost on abortion politics, Republicans struggle for a solution.
▪ The Hill: Leading anti-abortion group calls Trump’s position unacceptable.
Guns: Americans purchased nearly 60 million of them during the pandemic, The Hill’s Daniel de Visé reports. One-fifth of U.S. households purchased guns between 2020 and 2022, a national arming that exposed more than 15 million Americans to firearms in the home for the first time, according to an analysis by The Trace, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that tracks gun violence. Yearly gun sales are running at roughly twice the level of 15 or 20 years ago, and all the new weapons may be fueling a historic surge in gun deaths, which reached record highs during the same period.
“It’s a totally different type of gun ownership now,” said John Roman, a senior fellow in the Economics, Justice and Society Group at NORC, a research organization based at the University of Chicago. “It’s not a rifle stored away somewhere that you take out twice a year to go hunting. It’s a handgun, probably a semiautomatic handgun, that you keep in your bedside table or in your glove compartment, or that you maybe carry around with you.”
The Hill: Guns apprehended at airport checkpoints rise in first quarter of 2023, TSA says.
As Politico reports, it’s clear former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is itching to launch a campaign — and take on Trump. The former president, Christie said, “can’t be a credible figure on the world stage; he can’t be a credible figure interacting with Congress; he will get nothing done.” The ex-governor, who helped Trump with his transition to the White House in 2017 before those preparations were deep-sixed by the incoming chief executive, recently extended his attacks to DeSantis, dismissing Florida’s governor as not ready for prime time.
Christie says his political calculus ahead of 2024 comes down to a simple question: Could he actually win?
▪ The New York Times: Christie, in New Hampshire, reconnects with 2016 supporters.
▪ The Wall Street Journal: Trump tops DeSantis in test of GOP presidential field, new poll shows.
2024 Watch: Miami Republican Mayor Francis Suarez told Fox News he is “close” to a decision about running in the GOP presidential primary next year (The Hill), while conservative radio host Larry Elder announced his bid Thursday (The Hill) … Trumpon Saturday will address an Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition event in Clive, Iowa, by phone while audiences also hear from declared and potential GOP presidential candidates former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Pence, business executive Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) (The Hill). …Trump is chipper about his 2024 endorsements from Florida lawmakers, who are bypassing potential GOP rival DeSantis (The Hill).
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of political operatives — spanning the ideological spectrum from former members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus to a Democrat who challenged Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — has started a political action committee aimed at “stopping MAGA” and eradicating what they call an authoritarian streak among some GOP lawmakers.
The group, Mission Democracy PAC, will challenge far-right members of Congress in their often deep-red home district (The New York Times).
The Hill: House Republicans passed by a party-line vote a transgender sports ban for schools. The bill, which will not pass the Senate, would prohibit schools that receive federal funding from allowing people “whose sex is male” to participate in sports designated for women or girls.
➤ ADMINISTRATION
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers worry about the ramifications of a potential invasion of Taiwan by China, while the Treasury Department talks up “constructive” economic relations with Beijing and the president finalizes plans to wall off investment by U.S. businesses in key parts of China’s economy while encouraging Group of Seven leaders to do the same, according to Bloomberg News.
Those were among Thursday’s headlines reinforcing the reality of strained U.S.-China relations and a public focus on national security.
Lawmakers confronted stark realities during a Wednesday wargame exercise envisioning options should China invade Taiwan. The U.S. needs to act more quickly to help Taiwan militarily and with weapons, according to some of the conclusions by members of the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which is working to identify the greatest risks posed by China against U.S. national security and competitiveness interests (The Hill).
With next month’s G-7 summit in his viewfinder, Biden aims to sign an executive order in the coming weeks that will limit investment by U.S. businesses in key parts of China’s economy, Bloomberg reported. The administration, which has been debating the measure for almost two years, plans to take such action before the May 19-21 gathering of leaders from the leading industrial nations in Hiroshima, Japan. The U.S. has been briefing its G-7 partners on the investment curbs, and would like to get an endorsement at that meeting, even though the other countries aren’t expected to announce similar restrictions.
The Associated Press: Trade envoy Katherine Tai, in Tokyo on Thursday, said the United States is not seeking to “decouple” the U.S. economy from China.
Also on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called for a “constructive” and “healthy” economic relationship between the United States and China, one in which the two nations work together to confront challenges. Yellen’s comments, which were delivered at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, struck an upbeat tone about the U.S.-China relationship following months of heightened tensions between the world’s two largest economies (The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times).
Yellen stressed the importance of securing American national security interests and protecting human rights.She also emphasized that actions against China, such as cutting it off from the world’s most advanced semiconductors, are aimed at protecting U.S. national security.
The Associated Press: Amid growing policy differences over drug policy and Venezuela, Biden met Thursday at the White House with Colombian President Gustavo Petro to talk about shared interests in climate change, migration and energy.
IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES
➤ INTERNATIONAL
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, who has said his chairmanship will end in October, declared Thursday that Ukraine’s “rightful place” is in the military alliance and pledged more support for the country on his first visit to Kyiv since Russia’s invasion just over a year ago. President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Stoltenberg, who has marshaled support from NATO members, to push for even more from them, including warplanes, artillery and armored equipment. Zelensky said he was grateful for an invitation to a NATO summit in July in Vilnius, Lithuania, but said his country needs a roadmap for becoming a member.
“The time has come for the [alliance’s] leaders to define the prospects of Ukraine’s acquisition of NATO membership, to define the algorithm of Ukraine’s movement towards this goal, and to define security guarantees for our state for the period of such movement — that is, for the period before NATO membership,” he said (The Hill).
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s youngest minister knows there is more than one way to beat Russia in the war — and the tech-savvy Minister of Digital Transformation is fighting back on several virtual fronts. As The Hill’s Brad Dress reports, from overseeing a project securing drones to the rollout of an air raid alert app and a volunteer IT army to protect infrastructure and combat Russian disinformation, Mykhailo Fedorov is defending Ukraine and protecting his people with one digital strategy after another. Fedorov says these efforts are working exceptionally well. For one, Ukraine has become “as efficient as possible” at defeating Russian propaganda.
▪ The Washington Post: Ukraine planned attacks on Russian forces in Syria, leaked document shows.
▪ ABC News: Hungary has added honey and certain meat products to a list of food items it has temporarily banned from being imported from Ukraine in an effort to relieve market pressures on local farmers.
▪ CNBC: Ukraine’s corn and wheat exports are set to plummet. Here’s what that means for the world’s food supply.
In Sudan, fighting intensified Thursday as the capital, Khartoum, was bombarded by warplanes in what amounts to one the most intense attacks among the days-long violence. The clashes, between the Sudanese Army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), follow an unsuccessful attempt at a cease-fire and have upended a promise by the factions’ leaders for the northeastern African country to transition to a civilian-led democracy. With the two generals vying for power, residents said that the fighting had destroyed hospitals, airfields and homes — and left civilians caught in the crossfire. And concerns are increasing that the chaos could draw nearby nations — including Egypt, which has troops in Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Libya — into the conflict (The New York Times).
The U.N. has estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 people — mostly women and children — have fled Sudan amid the fighting to seek safety in neighboring Chad. Diplomatic pressure is being stepped up to end the fighting, which has left more than 300 people dead in the last week, with calls for a new three-day truce as Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan, approaches this weekend (BBC).
▪ CNN: “We saw corpses in the street”: People flee Sudan’s capital as violence torments the city.
▪ The New York Times: Uneven cease-fire in Sudan makes escape hard for desperate civilians.
▪ ABC News: U.S. forces sent to Djibouti to prep for a possible Sudan evacuation.
➤ SPACE
🚀 A gigantic SpaceX Starship rocket, in a test its creators hope will lead to transport of humans to Mars, blew up on Thursday minutes after leaving a Texas launch pad. It had no crew or satellite cargo and failed to separate from its booster, breaking up over the Gulf of Mexico (KTLA). SpaceX posted on Twitter, “As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation.” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said his company will try again this year.
The New York Times: Starship exploded, but SpaceX had reason to pop champagne anyway. While the four-minute flight ended in a dramatic way, there was much to learn.
Have a few minutes for video? CNET has a SpaceX highlight reel featuring Starship’s development (and explosions).
☄️ Meanwhile in Ukraine, a mysterious flash that lit up skies over Kyiv Wednesday night generated much speculation. Officials initially suspected it was a NASA satellite falling to Earth, but the agency told the BBC it was still in orbit. Ukrainian space officials said later the flash had probably come from a meteor entering the atmosphere. The country’s air force was confident it was not a Russian air attack — an event all too familiar since the invasion last year.
🧑🚀 Gen. Chance Saltzman, the U.S. Space Force’s second-ever chief of space operation, had a simple message at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.: The U.S. is in a new era of space activity. He said the space-based tactics of adversaries like Russia and China run the gamut, from the communications jamming of the GPS constellation; to lasers and “dazzlers” that interfere with cameras on-orbit to prevent imagery collection; to anti-satellite missiles like the one Russia tested in late 2021.
“The threats that we face to our on-orbit capabilities from our strategic competitors [have] grown substantially,” Saltzman told CNBC. “The congestion we’re seeing in space with tracked objects and the number of satellite payloads, and just the launches themselves, have grown at an exponential rate.”
OPINION
■ How NATO should deter Vladimir Putin’s Russia, by Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg Opinion columnist. https://bloom.bg/3KTuAYx
■ Pro-life movement is the dog that caught the car, by B.J. Rudell, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3LgPv9h
WHERE AND WHEN
📲 Ask The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.
The House will convene at 11 a.m. on Monday.
The Senate meets for a pro forma session at 10 a.m.
The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9:30 a.m. Biden will speak at 2:15 p.m. in the Rose Garden and sign an executive order making the pursuit of environmental justice a “duty of all executive branch agencies” and “central to the implementation of our bedrock civil rights and environmental laws” (The Hill). The president will depart at 4:10 p.m. for Camp David to spend the weekend.
Vice President Harris is traveling to Miami today for a Telemundo interview at 2 p.m. She will tour the Lirman Coral Lab and the University of Miami’s Hurricane Simulator at 3:50 p.m. Harris will speak at 5:10 p.m. at a university event to announce coastal resilience funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She will depart in the evening and return to Washington at 8:55 p.m.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will chair a meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council at 11:15 a.m., to be live streamed. The secretary will meet with New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) to discuss the economy and other issues at 3:30 p.m.
The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1 p.m.
ELSEWHERE
➤ NEWS MEDIA
BuzzFeed, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 but never made money, will lay off approximately 180 people while shutting down the company’s news division (The New York Times).
Layoffs also hit journalists at Insider, formerly known as Business Insider,where a spokesperson announced the company would begin cutting an estimated 10 percent of its staff in an effort to “keep our company healthy and competitive” (Forbes).
NBC News retracted a story, with updates on Wednesday, after it was revealed that one of the network’s main sources — a young immigrant named Pedro who worked on a Kansas slaughterhouse floor and claimed to be 16 — was actually older. In the U.S. it’s illegal for minors to work in certain dangerous jobs, including at slaughterhouses. NBC later obtained documentation in his home country of Guatemala showing that Pedro, who spoke with both the network and Noticias Telemundo, was 21 years old. Pedro also fabricated his age on paperwork to enter the U.S. legally, ostensibly because it’s easier to enter the country under current immigration law.
☑️ And it’s the end of an era on Twitter, where legacy verification was phased out Thursday and thousands of notable (and not-so-notable) public figures and journalists lost their blue check marks as Musk finalized his often-chaotic push for subscription-based verification (The Verge).
🫂Media maven and former first lady Michelle Obama is promoting a Netflix special she filmed with Oprah Winfrey about life lessons, piggybacking on her book “The Light We Carry.” While interviewed on CBS Mornings by Gayle King this week, Obama offered some advice to young people about the glamorization of marriage, a union she instead described as “hard,” reports The Hill’s Judy Kurtz. “It’s incumbent upon us — people who have had successful marriages — to be really honest about the fact that making a commitment to be with someone means you compromise, and compromise ain’t always fun,” Obama said.
THE CLOSER
And finally … 👏👏👏 Congrats to this week’s Morning Report Quiz winners! We asked about congressional food and drink and readers delivered.
Here’s who went 4/4 with obscure trivia: Paul Harris, Patrick Kavanagh, Mary Anne McEnery, Bob McLellan, Harry Strulovici, Lou Tisler, Peter Sprofera, Stan Wasser, Lori Benso, Pam Manges and Steve James.
They knew that food is a no-go on the Senate floor, but beyond swigging water, members while in the chamber are allowed to stay hydrated with milk.
In 2011, Congress came under fire for suggesting that tomato paste in pizza sauce as part of school lunch be classified as a vegetable.
Indiana Sen. Todd Young (R) was recently appointed to the time-honored role of stocking the Senate’s candy drawer.
Established in the 1830s, members called the first restaurant attached to the House of Representatives the refectory.
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