Archive by Author

The Hill's Morning Report — McCarthy urges Biden to negotiate on debt

Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday stuck by his insistence that Republicans will force steep federal debt reductions by negotiating a budget accord with President Biden and Senate Democrats, which he says can avert the projected dire economic impact from a standoff: default.

“I would like to sit down with all the leaders and especially the president and start having discussions,” McCarthy said Tuesday at the Capitol, telling reporters that leaders have an estimated six months before the U.S. will not be able to cover its bills without a hike in the Treasury’s authority to borrow.

“Who wants to put the nation through some type of threat at the last minute with the debt ceiling? Nobody wants to do that,” the Speaker added.

McCarthy has been repeating conservatives’ arguments for federal spending cuts or capped spending almost daily.

“We don’t want to put any fiscal problems to our economy and we won’t,” he said last week. “But fiscal problems would be continuing to do business as usual.”

The Hill: House Republicans oppose any debt limit increase without serious spending cuts. 

The White House, rejecting what it says are hostage demands using the debt ceiling as a weapon, is spurning the new Speaker’s push for negotiations with the president. Based on past experience, Biden’s advisers insist they have the superior — and more publicly embraced — arguments about current federal spending, deficit reduction and the strength of the economy.  

Biden’s national economic director, Brian Deese, told Bloomberg TV on Friday that Congress will have to deal with the debt ceiling without conditions. Hitting the statutory borrowing limit and defaulting would be a “self-inflicted” economic wound, he added. “It’s a sacred obligation, the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Wrangling over federal spending and debt using showdowns over obligations approved during past Congresses has been a political fixture in Washington for more than a decade. But investors, businesses and the Federal Reserve worry that this is the year in which politics and fiscal policy might careen into disaster.

Bank of America analysts wrote in a note to clients this week that a default in late summer or early fall is “likely,” while Goldman Sachs called the possibility that the government would not be able to make good on its bills a “greater risk” than at any time since 2011, The New York Times reported. When the nation approached the brink in that episode, its credit rating was downgraded and market gyrations pressured lawmakers to blink.

The upshot that year proved economically costly by stunting U.S. growth and roiling investors and consumer confidence. “Political brinkmanship that engenders even the prospect of a default can be disruptive to financial markets and American businesses and families,” the Treasury Department explained when describing 2011 events in a 2013 report.

Related Articles

▪ The New York Times explainer: How close is the U.S. to hitting the debt ceiling? How bad would that be? 

▪ The Hill: White House calls on the Speaker to publicize details of deals he made with conservatives.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ CONGRESS & POLITICS

The Biden documents controversy on Tuesday simmered with a new suggestion by McCarthy that Attorney General Merrick Garland may not bring “fresh eyes and non-bias” to the special counsel review of the president’s recently found classified documents and the separate criminal investigation by a special counsel of former President Trump’s defiant retention of secret presidential records at Mar-a-Lago.

“Is it right that Garland should even be in charge of this?” the Speaker asked reporters in the Capitol. “That’s why the House will look into these investigations, as well.”

The Wall Street Journal: The Justice Department considered but rejected an FBI role in the search for any additional Biden documents.

Meanwhile, the White House is struggling to get its messaging fine-tuned about the Biden document discoveries, report The Hill’s Brett Samuels and Alex Gangitano.

▪ The Hill: White House charges GOP with hypocrisy on Trump, Biden.

▪ The Hill: Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC News on Tuesday that he was “surprised” that government documents were taken to Biden’s private office after he left the Obama administration.

▪ CNN: House Republicans lay groundwork for impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

McCarthy is playing offense by putting early pressure on Senate Democrats running for reelection in red states to back proposals being passed by the House, such as a ban on exporting oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China, reports The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has to decide how much latitude to give members of his caucus with the Senate majority at stake next year. 

Truth & consequences? McCarthy and House GOP leaders placed embattled Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) on the Small Business and Science committees (The Hill).

2024 Watch: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is a beneficiary of the ongoing controversy over classified documents in Washington, which has ensnared the sitting president and the GOP’s sole announced presidential candidate, writes The Hill’s Niall Stanage in his latest Memo.  

▪ Politico Magazine, Jonathan Martin: DeSantis takes on the likeability issue (sort of).

▪ Vox: DeSantis’s war on “wokeness” is a war against the First Amendment.

▪ Yahoo News: Trump on the possibility of DeSantis running against him in 2024: “We’ll handle that the way I handle things.”

Wes Moore, seen as a fast-rising star in his party, will be sworn in today as Maryland’s Democratic governor, becoming the state’s first and the nation’s third Black governor. Moore succeeds term-limited Republican Gov. Larry Hogan (The Hill). 

▪ The Washington Post: For Black voters, great expectations of America’s lone Black governor.

▪ The Washington Post: Defeated New Mexico GOP candidate for the state legislature Solomon Peña, 39,was arrested and charged with paying people to fire in December on the houses of four Democratic officeholders. At the heart of the alleged plot, according to Albuquerque authorities, were election-fraud conspiracies.

▪ MSNBC: During a Washington speech on Tuesday about the state of the working class, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called declining U.S. life expectancy an “issue of enormous consequence” at a time when this country spends twice as much per capita on health care as other industrialized nations.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ ECONOMICS IN THE ALPS

The annual World Economic Forum meeting is officially underway in Davos, Switzerland, bringing lawmakers and business leaders to the swanky alpine town. Normally a draw for influential figures, many of the world’s most powerful heads of state skipped it this year. The only Group of Seven leader present is Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany. The highest-ranking Biden administration official dispatched to Davos is Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, although lawmakers including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) are participating (CNBC).

Amazon’s Andy Jassy, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Pfizer’s Albert Bourla are among the CEOs who fly in, joining corporate leaders who may be booked for breakfast-through dinner meetings whether they are panelists or not. Hotels in Davos serve as settings for private meetings between business titans and existing and prospective clients. 

It’s called the World Economic Forum and has a grand mission statement, but is the confab in the Alps becoming a flashy corporate conference? The New York Times’s DealBook investigates. 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen faced a tricky balancing act in Davos on Tuesday as she spoke to hundreds of CEOs, politicians and global leaders — assuring European leaders their beleaguered companies will get cash while insisting the European Union (EU) is not turning protectionist. Von der Leyen set out a sweeping plan to keep Europe’s industry competitive in a race to attract green tech and climate-related investment (Politico EU).

“The next decades will see the greatest industrial transformation of our times — maybe of any time,” she declared. “And those who develop and manufacture the technology that will be the foundation of tomorrow’s economy will have the greatest competitive edge.”

▪ CNBC: EU announces new green proposals to rival Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

▪ Time magazine: Why “polycrisis” was the buzzword of day one in Davos. 

▪ The Wall Street Journal: At Davos, the mood is somber as many CEOs question the economic outlook.

U.S. climate change envoy John Kerry said at the forum that the world will eventually move to a low-carbon economy, but it may be too late to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Kerry addressed the net-zero carbon emission efforts being made by many companies but acknowledged he learned the most important tool for fighting the climate crisis “as secretary [of State], and I’ve learned it since, reinforced in spades, is: money, money, money, money, money, money, money. And I’m sorry to say that” (CNBC).

“I’m convinced we will get to a low-carbon, no-carbon economy — we’re going to get there because we have to,” he said. “I am not convinced we’re going to get there in time to do what the scientists said, which is avoid the worst consequences of the crisis.”

Falling corporate tax rates in the U.S. are part of a global trend that has governments charging big business less in tax while looking to make spending cuts across a wide range of social programs, writes The Hill’s Tobias Burns. Reports from nonprofit Oxfam, the U.S. Government Accountability Office and other organizations are showing that as governments weigh austerity measures in the wake of the pandemic, corporations with surging profits are being asked to foot less of the bill.

➤ INTERNATIONAL

A helicopter crash near a kindergarten outside Kyiv this morning killed at least 18 people, including Ukraine’s interior minister and three children, according to authorities. The cause for the crash was not immediately clear. Government officials who were killed include Denys Monastyrsky, his deputy, Yevhen Yenin, and state secretary Yurii Lubkovych (NBC News). Reuters and The New York Times published crash site photos.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled today to speak to the Davos gathering via video. He wants weapons. Vitali Klitschko, Kyiv’s mayor, is in Switzerland (The New York Times).

Separately, a Russian missile strike over the weekend at an apartment complex in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro exposed a gaping hole in Ukraine’s air defenses as some fear more brutal Russian attacks are on the horizon, writes The Hill’s Brad Dress. The Dnipro strike killed 44 people, including five children, in one of the most devastating attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population in the war. 

Ukrainian officials said they did not possess a defense system capable of downing Russia’s Kh-22 missiles used in the attack, underscoring a pressing need for Kyiv to bolster its defenses for the winter months. Russia may have been targeting energy grids and critical infrastructure rather than the Dnipro apartment complex, but Moscow’s strategy to pound critical infrastructure in Ukraine is coming under increasing worry it will inflict more mass civilian casualties, especially after the appointment of a new commanding general last week.

The Pentagon’s top general, Mark Milley, met in Poland on Tuesday for the first time in person with his Ukrainian counterpart in what appeared to be a symbolic show of support as the U.S. intensifies its military assistance to Ukraine (The Washington Post). Milley’s visit is part of a weeklong trip to Europe that also includes a stop today in Brussels for a NATO military chiefs of defense meeting. While in Germany, Milley will join Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for an in-person meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base. After that, Milley will travel to Norway to participate in meetings with chiefs of defense from various partner nations (The Hill).

▪ Politico EU: Bulgaria to the rescue: How the EU’s poorest country secretly saved Ukraine.

▪ The New York Times: Overcoming initial concerns by Israel about its relationship with Russia, the Pentagon is sending some U.S. arms stored in Israel to Ukraine. 

Scholz on Tuesday said he’s in talks with allies about possibly supplying heavy tanks to Ukraine. He said a decision would be in lockstep with other allied nations.

“I am always thinking about the situation,” Scholz told Bloomberg News in Berlin. “We always act together with our allies and friends — we never go alone.”

Germany has faced increasing pressure to supply Ukraine with tanks and the government’s reluctance led to the resignation of the country’s defense secretary. Berlin has so far resisted providing the modern tanks or allowing partners to do so, saying Western tanks should be supplied to Ukraine only if there is agreement among Kyiv’s main allies, particularly the United States (Reuters and Bloomberg News).

The New York Times: Untested German defense minister has allies watching closely.

Scholz spoke with Bloomberg News about a range of topics, from a potential trade war with the U.S. — which the chancellor said won’t happen — to a potential recession and lessons his country learned from Germany’s dependence on Russia for natural gas. The full interview is available HERE.

▪ Reuters: Russia to make “major changes” to armed forces from 2023 to 2026.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: China’s shrinking population is a deeper problem than its slow economic growth.

▪ NPR: Climate activist Greta Thunberg was detained by German police while protesting a coal mine expansion.

OPINION

■ My new co-worker Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) is a distraction and a danger to democracy, by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), contributor, NBC News. https://nbcnews.to/3IZqwH7 

■ Water is a terrible thing for California to waste, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board. https://on.wsj.com/3IZJSM3

WHERE AND WHEN

👉 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 meet briefly at noon on Friday and return for legislative business on Jan. 24. 

The Senate meets Friday at 1 p.m. for a pro forma session. 

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m.

Vice President Harris is in Washington with no public schedule today.

The Treasury secretary is in Zurich, Switzerland, to meet with Vice Premier Liu He of China. From Switzerland, Yellen will travel with a three-nation itinerary to Africa.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken at 8:45 a.m. will speak to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington. He will participate in a roundtable at 9 a.m. with a group of mayors who are attending their annual gathering. Blinken will meet at 1:30 p.m. with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu at the Department of State.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 3 p.m. 

ELSEWHERE

➤ TECH

A new wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s self-driving software is dangerously overhyped. Its blind spots may be able to teach us about Elon Musk, the company’s erratic CEO, The New York Times reports. To Musk, because collision generated data, it was valuable, and with enough data, the company could speed up the development of the world’s first truly self-driving car. 

“My guess as to when we would think it is safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at their destination: probably toward the end of next year,” Musk declared in 2019, though his prediction never materialized. “I would say I am certain of that. That is not a question mark.”

▪ The New York Times: Musk goes to trial over his 2018 plan to take Tesla private.

▪ Business Insider: Musk says he declined Davos, but organizers say he wasn’t invited.

As New York magazine reports in a deep dive into Musk’s new, “hardcore” Twitter, the site’s staff spent years trying to protect the platform against impulsive ranting billionaires — then one made himself the CEO. Meanwhile, social media users have expressed anxiety about algorithmic suppression, or “shadowbanning,” for years. Now they’re getting some unexpected clarity as Musk tries to look into the practice. But as The Atlantic reports, even he likely can’t do much to fix the problem.

▪ Vox: The clock is ticking on a TikTok ban. Millions spent on lobbyists, a billion dollars spent on safeguards. Will it be enough to stay in the United States?

▪ The Wall Street Journal: The Federal Trade Commission’s plan to ban noncompete clauses shifts companies’ focus.

▪ Bloomberg News: Microsoft to cut engineering jobs this week as layoffs go deeper.

➤ STATE WATCH

Prior to the atmospheric river events inundating California, the state was in the midst of a three-year drought and has a long history of dealing with extreme dry weather and subsequent water shortages, writes The Hill’s Gianna Melillo. To adapt to these weather extremes, many local and state efforts to collect excess rainwater have been implemented throughout the years. These include upgrading highway medians to capture stormwater, expanding reservoir capacity, improving reservoir efficiency, upgrading cities to include permeable pavement and other low-impact development features, and installing solar panels on canals to help prevent rainwater evaporation.

▪ The Washington Post: An Arizona city cuts off a neighborhood’s water supply amid drought.

▪ The Guardian: Warning of unprecedented heatwaves as El Niño set to return in 2023.

▪ The Washington Post: How dark money groups led Ohio to redefine gas as “green energy.”

The D.C. Council on Tuesday rejected Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto and is moving forward with legislation to update the city’s criminal code, which hasn’t been updated for more than a century. In a 12-1 vote, the council moved to override Bowser’s veto of the Revised Criminal Code Act, which determines what punishments to assign to crimes, including sentence lengths, and classifies what types of crimes are misdemeanors (WTOP).

➤ HEALTH & PANDEMIC

Since the start of the pandemic, COVID-19 has killed more than 1 million people in the United States and life expectancy has been cut by nearly 2.5 years since 2020. But a very early look at 2022 data from Johns Hopkins University suggests there were significantly fewer COVID-19 deaths last year — at 267,000 — compared to the first two years of the pandemic. More than 350,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported in 2020 and that number rose to 475,000 deaths in 2021.

The final count will differ from this early data as states continue to review death certificates and refine their reporting, and it will be months before the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releases preliminary mortality data to compare to other causes of death (CNN).

▪ Forbes: Pregnant women with COVID-19 are eight times more likely to die than their uninfected counterparts.

▪ The Washington Post: China is finally divulging COVID-19 data. The World Health Organization says there’s more to the story.

Information about COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot availability can be found at Vaccines.gov.

Étienne-Émile Baulieu, the 96-year-old scientist who came up with an idea for an “unpregnancy pill” decades ago has led an eventful life, from his teenage days in the French Resistance to his friendships with famous artists, The New York Times reports. Baulieu wrote in a 1990 book that he hoped that by the 21st century, “paradoxically, the ‘abortion pill’ might even help eliminate abortion as an issue.”

The New York Times: A sickle cell cure brings a mix of anxiety and hope.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,100,609. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 3,907 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🏛️ More than two centuries after Lord Elgin, a British aristocrat, returned from Greece in the early 1800s with some of the greatest treasures of antiquity, the collection may return to its roots. It includes statues of Greek gods and carved frieze panels that show battling centaurs that once decorated the Parthenon in Athens.

With an informal offer and a counteroffer on the table, the talks have reached a stage that “had not been seen before,” according to a person on the Greek side of the negotiations (The New York Times).

The so-called Elgin Marbles are housed at the British Museum. The debate about the marbles deepened in recent years as new thinking about actions by former empires have resulted in the return by Western museums of other nations’ ancient treasures, including Benin bronzes, Italian antiquities — and other fragments from the Parthenon, which were relinquished in December by the Vatican to Greece. 

Stay Engaged

We want to hear from you! Email: Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch. Follow us on Twitter (@asimendinger and @kristinakarisch) and suggest this newsletter to friends!

What is ChatGPT? AI technology sends schools scrambling to preserve learning

Not even two months after its creation, a new artificial intelligence (AI) technology called ChatGPT is getting banned from schools and stirring controversy among educators. 

ChatGPT, a free and easy-to-use AI search tool, hit the ground running when it was launched to the public in November. A user types in a question and ChatGPT spits back out an easily understandable answer in an essay format.

Although a huge advancement in the technology field, educators and school systems must grapple with the new tool and the challenges it introduces.

“While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success,” Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for New York City’s Department of Education, said.

New York City and Seattle public schools have banned the use of ChatGPT from their devices and networks, citing concerns about cheating and a negative impact on learning.

How ChatGPT became popular so quickly

Adam Conner, vice president for technology Policy at the Center for American Progress, said ChatGPT became so popular quickly because it is one of the first AI technologies of its kind to be available to the public in a way the public can understand it.

“What is different about GPT is that it is generative, that it creates the kind of outputs in ways that normal human beings understand as opposed to [the technology] just kind of outputting code or data” that only a subset of the population understands, Conner said. 

Unlike other search engines, such as Google, ChatGPT can be conversational, giving human-like responses and dialogue with a user. A user can ask ChatGPT to create a resignation letter, discussion prompts for classes and even tests for students. 

Jim Chilton, CTO of Cengage Group, an education technology company, says ChatGPT can be thought of as a “virtual best friend.”

“I did this with a calculus example, ‘generate me a calculus final exam.’ Not only did it generate it, but it also was able to answer each of the problems that it gave me. It explained step by step how it solved the calculus problem, reminding me of the principles as you went through to solve the problem.”

Cheating and learning concerns

What makes ChatGPT a challenge for educators is the AI technology comes up with unique wording for answers to the same question. 

For example, when asking ChatGPT “What is an apple?”, one response begins, “An apple is a fruit that grows on a tree in the rose family, and is typically round and red, green, or yellow in color.” When asked the same question again, ChatGPT starts, “An apple is a pomaceous fruit, meaning it is produced by a deciduous tree in the rose family, cultivars of the species Malus domestica.”

These varying answers, which may all be correct, make it supremely difficult for an educator to discern whether a student used ChatGPT to write an assigned essay. 

In a statement given to The Hill, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company is already working with educators to address their concerns about ChatGPT.

“We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else, so we’re already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system. We look forward to working with educators on useful solutions, and other ways to help teachers and students benefit from artificial intelligence,” the spokesperson said.

While technologies continue to be created to catch plagiarism or cheating with AI, an arguably bigger concern is students using ChatGPT and not learning the material.

“It’s worrying that they’re not learning the research skills, the critical thinking skills. I think this would be the highest concern. The reason why we have them write these papers isn’t for them to write papers. It’s to really build those skills around thinking,” Sean Glantz, a regional chapter support coordinator for the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), said of students. 

ChatGPT isn’t always right

ChatGPT is a machine learning model, meaning it improves with increased interaction with users on the platform. 

ChatGPT evolves with human interactions, with its creators saying this “dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises and reject inappropriate requests.”

As it learns, it can produce incorrect information. While a concern in some ways, this can actually be a benefit to teachers. 

Glantz, who is also a high school computer science teacher in California, says the incorrect information ChatGPT gives may help teach students to fact-check statements and learn more about the technology they are using. 

“When this thing gives us an incredibly convincing answer, and it’s totally wrong, well, ‘How did it arrive at that?’ That provides an opportunity to get into a discussion around what is the language learning model? What is artificial intelligence, right? What is machine learning?” Glantz said.

Because ChatGPT is a language learning model, the errors are also a sign that the technology is working as it should.

It is “validation of the technology and its current maturity state, and I think we will get you to see it get smarter over time, particularly as it learns and gets more material, more information, more facts for you to build its intelligence upon,” Chilton said.

Are the schools’ bans useful?

While some believe there is merit in a ban perhaps temporarily due to rapid use of ChatGPT among students, experts and teachers say the bans do not seem useful or equitable in the long term. 

Although Conner said he does believe the bans on ChatGPT have “sort of a purpose,” he said, “everybody knows it’s not a universal solution.”

One major issue with the bans, Glantz said, is “equity and access.”

When a school bans ChatGPT, they can only enforce it on school computers and WiFi. While this works for students who don’t have access to technology outside of school, many students have personal devices at home they can use to access the AI technology.

“The students that are most impacted when a piece of software like ChatGPT is banned on school computers and school WiFi, that affects the kids that only have access to technology when they’re at school, using school technology,” Glantz said.

Glantz said he has seen some students go as far as to use a WiFi hotspot in school to get around the ban.

Teaching students how to use ChatGPT is also important because this type of technology could be important for jobs in the future, so “making sure that we’re giving the students those skill sets to leverage technology is going to be really important,” Glantz said.

Maneuvering around or with ChatGPT may be the beginning of figuring out the relationship between schools and AI technology.

“The decisions going forward with how to address ChatGPT and AI in schools will have to be a responsibility that falls on the company, educators, parents and administrators,” according to Conner.

Source: TEST FEED1

Five ways a debt limit crisis could derail the US economy

The biggest threat the U.S. economy faces this year could be the fight over the federal debt limit.

Congress and the White House have roughly six months to avoid an unprecedented and potentially catastrophic default on the federal debt. But there is no clear path to keeping the U.S. solvent, with House Republicans fiercely opposed to any debt ceiling increase unaccompanied by serious spending cuts.

If lawmakers fail to strike a deal to avoid default, experts say the shock could plunge the world into recession and a financial crisis. Even a prolonged showdown over the debt ceiling could rattle markets and derail a global economy already weakened by inflation, rising interest rates and the lingering scars of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There are a number of economic challenges that exist aside from the fact that debt limit negotiations are needed,” said Rachel Snyderman, senior associate director at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), in a Tuesday interview. The BPC is a bipartisan think tank that closely tracks the debt limit and how long the Treasury Department can avoid a default through extraordinary measures.

“The clock is really ticking for lawmakers to get serious about finding a solution together to not only address the debt limit, but I think have a broader discussion about our nation’s fiscal challenges,” she said.

Rising recession risks

A showdown over the debt limit is always risky, but the chances of serious damage are even higher, as American businesses and households brace for a potential recession.

Many economists are already expecting the U.S. economy to slow into a recession after two years of high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s blitz of interest rate hikes. Other economists are more optimistic and expect the U.S. economy to simply stagnate for a few quarters, but few experts expect another year of strong and steady growth.

Snyderman said an economic slowdown could shorten the window for raising the debt ceiling by depriving the federal government of sorely needed tax revenue. Congress could also find itself struggling to find the money to stave off a steeper recession if its hands are tied by debt ceiling negotiations or an inability to borrow money to fund stimulus.

“If the government were to need to respond to an economic downturn, its toolkit is going to be more limited,” she said.

Global financial crisis

If the U.S. fails to stay solvent and default on its debt for the first time, the implications for financial markets could be dire.

The U.S. dollar cemented itself as the world’s reserve currency thanks to global faith in the ability of the federal government to always pay its debts. 

Banks, financial firms, business and sovereign nations use trillions of U.S. dollars and Treasury bonds to back up their assets and conduct international transactions, making the U.S. indispensable in the global financial system. 

Both the U.S. dollar and Treasury bonds are considered to be among the safest assets in the world. But a default on the national debt would show the world that the U.S. dollar and Treasury bonds can not be trusted, triggering a crisis of confidence that could tank the global financial system.

“Failing to [raise the debt limit] would literally be Congress choosing not to pay the government’s bills,” Snyderman said. 

“We have access to capital markets. We have the ability to issue more debt. This is not like developing countries in the past that haven’t had that type of access, and have no other alternatives other than to default,” she continued. “A U.S. default would purely be a political decision.”

Americans could lose crucial federal benefits

A default on the national debt would block the federal government from spending hundreds of billions of dollars on programs millions of Americans depend on for food, medical care and basic necessities.

House Republicans are expected to propose a bill that would direct all federal revenue toward making payments to debt holders and away from social safety net programs if the U.S. runs out ways to avert a default.

Experts say entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare — for which the Treasury manages spending — could also be at risk if the government defaults on its debt.

“If we hit the debt ceiling, and the Treasury runs out of extraordinary measures, and they really can’t meet their obligations, somebody’s not going to get paid,” David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, told The Hill in a recent interview.

“It might be someone who owns a Treasury bond. It might be a Social Security recipient,”  Wessel said.

Data from the Treasury showed Social Security leading a list of the top 10 categories and agencies for government spending in fiscal 2022, with a price tag of more than $1.2 trillion. Medicare clocked in as fifth on the list, amounting to more than $750 billion for the 12-month period ending in late September.

Both programs are on track to insolvency in the coming years, with Medicare roughly six years from being insolvent and about twice that time remaining for Social Security, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Some Republicans have expressed interest in recent months in seeking potential reforms to such programs as part of debt limit talks with Democrats. However, other Republicans have pushed back on proposals to leverage the negotiations for concessions on entitlement programs since the party took back the House this month. 

Higher interest rates

The nation could also see higher interest rates for its debt as a potential consequence, experts warn.

“U.S. Treasury debt is considered about the most risk-free borrowing instrument in the world because the U.S. has had a long, long history of making good on, not only paying interest, but then repaying the principle of debt when it comes due,”  Paul Van de Water, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told The Hill.

“So, anything that would make the U.S. government look like a less trusty borrower would increase the interest rate that lenders would demand to lend money to the U.S. Treasury,” he added. 

Van de Water, a former analyst for the Congressional Budget Office, also said such an impact  could extend to costs that hit harder at home for Americans, warning of potentially higher interest rates domestically since many borrowing rates can be tied to Treasury rates.

“Individual rates on home mortgages and credit card debt would go up, rates in other countries’ borrowing might go up,” he said. “And of course, when you have an increase in interest rates, that slows the economy, in that the expectation of a slower economy can have negative effects on the stock market as well.”

Falling public trust

Polls show a vast majority of Americans already disapprove of how Congress is handling its job, and experts doubt that dissatisfaction will improve if lawmakers manage to pull off what would be an unprecedented default this year if they fail to act the debt limit.

According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the debt limit has been raised nearly 90 times under both Republican and Democratic administrations in the past 63 years.

However, the task has become increasingly partisan over the years, with both sides engaging in high-stakes clashes down to the final stretch before eventually avoiding a default. 

Republicans are for significant spending cuts as part of concessions they hope to gain from Democrats in debt limit negotiations. By contrast, Democrats have insisted on a clean bill to address the debt limit, while pushing back on proposals by Republicans to draw down certain spending. 

Source: TEST FEED1

McCarthy goes on attack against red-state Senate Democrats

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is playing offense by putting early pressure on Senate Democrats running for reelection in red states to back proposals being passed out of the GOP-controlled House.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) must decide how much political cover to give members of his caucus running for reelection in states such as West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, with control of the chamber on the line in 2024. 

Schumer has taken shots at McCarthy and House Republicans in recent days, accusing them of pushing an “extreme” agenda. But McCarthy is punching back, hitting Democrats in states that former President Trump carried in 2016 and 2020. 

“We’ve got a number of bills coming up in the future: securing our border, producing more energy, stopping this COVID emergency across America so we can all get back to work,” McCarthy told Fox News over the weekend, citing bills that House Republicans plan to move along with legislation that passed last week to prohibit the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.   

McCarthy called on Democrats up for reelection such as Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Jon Tester (Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) to press Schumer to bring the oil export ban and other House-passed legislation up for a vote in the Senate. Trump carried West Virginia with 69 percent of the vote, Montana with 57 percent and Ohio with 53 percent. 

“Manchin, Sherrod Brown, Tester and others who say they’re moderates and that they want to work together, here’s an example that 113 Democrats [in the House] voted for,” he said of stopping the export of oil reserves to China.  

Republican strategists and aides say they expect McCarthy to also ramp up pressure on these Democrats to consider legislation passed by the new House GOP majority last week to rescind more than $70 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service. That money was included in the Inflation Reduction Act to beef up the agency’s auditing power.  

“Now that he’s the Speaker, he can go on offense. It took everything for McCarthy to become Speaker, and now that he has the gavel, he can go completely on offense, drive messaging and help House Republicans put points on the board,” said Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist and former House leadership aide.  

“With divided government, Republicans now have a chance to show how they will run the House differently and it sets the stage for the next presidential election,” he said, adding that McCarthy’s moves now will help “define the national media environment” heading into the 2024 election.  

“You’ll start seeing a drumbeat coming out of the Republican leadership consistently,” he said. “Republicans are going to be taking it to Democrats, especially in the Senate, to say, ‘Why aren’t you moving our agenda?’”  

Vin Weber, a GOP strategist and former member of the House GOP leadership, said McCarthy can “put real pressure” on Senate GOP incumbents in red states.  

“They’re all in relatively swing or conservative states,” he noted of several senators, including Manchin, Tester, Brown, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), adding that McCarthy can “put in stark relief their positions on cutting-edge issues.” 

Brown has announced he plans to run for reelection in 2024, but Manchin, Tester and Sinema have stayed silent on their plans to run for another term. Rosen is expected to run for reelection.

Weber said growing pressure from the House to act on hot-button issues such as border security and American energy independence could weigh on Manchin’s and Tester’s decisions to run again in GOP-leaning states.  

“This is the best way to get those guys to decide not to run again — to immediately start putting them in a difficult position on issues that would affect their reelection,” he said, pointing out that Republican candidates would be favored to win in West Virginia and Montana if Manchin and Tester retire.  

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) followed up on McCarthy’s comments over the weekend by hitting Manchin, Tester and Brown for not embracing what Republicans say are popular elements of the House GOP agenda.  

“Joe Manchin, Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown like to talk a big game to voters back home, but when it matters most they are reliable votes for Joe Biden’s radical agenda in Washington. Whether it’s shipping American oil reserves to the Chinese Communist Party or doubling the size of the IRS to audit working Americans, they will always back the Biden-Schumer agenda instead of standing up for their constituents,” said NRSC spokesman Philip Letsou.  

Schumer has deflected Republican attacks by insisting that Senate Democrats are ready to work together with House Republicans to enact sensible legislation, but he says McCarthy is looking at policies that would undercut women’s access to quality health care and cut Medicare and Social Security benefits.  

“I want to work with Speaker McCarthy to get things done, but so far, House Republicans have been focused on delivering for wealthy special interests and the extreme wing of their party,” Schumer wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter circulated to fellow Senate Democrats on Friday.  

A Democratic aide said Senate centrists are happy to work with House Republicans on bills that help everyday Americans, such as legislation to speed the construction of transmission lines to get wind- and solar-generated energy to market but argued that McCarthy seems more interested in scoring political points.  

Schumer on Tuesday sought to shift attention to the upcoming clash between Senate Democrats and House Republicans over raising the debt limit and warned McCarthy against holding the issue hostage to get Democrats to agree to fiscal reforms.  

“It’s reckless for Speaker McCarthy and MAGA Republicans to try and use the full faith and credit of the United States as a political bargaining chip. A default would be catastrophic for America’s working families and lead to higher costs,” he said in a statement.  

Schumer bent over backward last month to protect vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents from an amendment sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to cut funding for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s office unless the Biden administration reinstated former President Trump’s Title 42 border policy.  

Schumer scrambled to help set up a vote on an alternative amendment sponsored by Sinema to extend Title 42, giving Democratic colleagues political cover to vote against Lee’s proposal.  

He will be likely faced with similar challenges over the next two years as Senate Republicans try to force Democratic colleagues to vote on various House-passed bills.  

Schumer, who controls the Senate floor agenda, could simply refuse to schedule votes on House GOP bills, but Republican strategists and conservative activists say they will take to television and radio to ramp up pressure on the Senate to act.  

“You can go on talk radio and say, ‘If this guy had any guts, he could insist on this vote,’” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, of what tactics GOP lawmakers and activists could use to pressure Manchin and Tester to push for the consideration of House bills.

Norquist said there’s already an effort to coordinate with the Republican-controlled state legislatures in Montana, Ohio and Arizona to instruct their Democratic and Independent senators to support House-passed tax legislation.  

We’re “getting state legislatures to pass resolutions instructing their senators … to vote for the bill on the IRS. It’s being introduced in Arizona and we’re going to introduce it in Montana and Ohio,” he said.  

He said there’s also a push to instruct Democratic senators to support the continuation of the Trump-era tax cuts that will focus on its most popular elements, such as the doubling of the child tax credit to $2,000 per child.  

Source: TEST FEED1

The Memo: How Biden’s document controversy could help Ron DeSantis

The furor over President Biden’s handling of sensitive documents could have an unexpected beneficiary: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

The reason is simple. While the controversy self-evidently makes Biden more vulnerable, it also ensures endless mentions of former President Trump’s own troubles with apparently classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

If there is a third option for the presidency in 2024, DeSantis is clearly best placed right now. Double trouble for Biden and Trump is good news for the recently reelected Florida governor.

“It’s not very profound, but if there are three competitors and two of them are suspected of some crime or moral shortcoming, then the one who isn’t has to look good by comparison,” said John ‘Mac’ Stipanovich, a longtime Republican operative in Florida.

Stipanovich, a critic of both DeSantis and Trump despite his decades-long association with the GOP, added of the Florida governor, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that he is setting himself up for a 2024 run.”

If DeSantis does indeed run, his first task will be to get past Trump. The reflected spotlight from the Biden documents to the Mar-a-Lago documents keeps a bad story for the former president in the news.

Trump is in legitimate danger of prosecution on obstruction charges. On at least two occasions over more than a year, the Trump team said or implied that they were returning all relevant documents in their possession while not actually doing so.

But more generally, a scenario in which both competitors in the last presidential election are besmirched — and under investigation by separate special counsels — creates an opening for an outsider. 

That’s particularly the case when Trump is making scarcely credible claims about his own rectitude and Biden appears to have been caught out in a bad case of double standards.

In a newly relevant CBS “60 Minutes” interview originally broadcast last September, Biden was asked by Scott Pelley what he thought when he saw photographs of documents marked as top-secret laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago after an FBI raid.

Biden answered, “How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible?”

As of Tuesday, documents marked as classified, dating from Biden’s time as vice president, had been found in an office he used in Washington, in the garage of his Wilmington, Del., home, and elsewhere in the same house.

There are real differences between the Biden and Trump cases — most glaringly, the Biden team’s willingness to turn the documents over to the National Archies promptly, and the Trump team’s extreme resistance to doing so.

But the simplest summation — “they both did it” — is likely to fuel public cynicism and thus bolster the appeal of anyone who can stand apart.

“Whether it is DeSantis or any of the other non-Washington people — Kristi Noem or Nikki Haley — you can run against The Swamp,” said GOP consultant Doug Heye, referencing the current governor of South Dakota and the former governor of South Carolina.

“The Swamp is neither Democrat or Republican, it is Washington,” added Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee.

Though Heye said the long-lasting significance of the documents furor could not be predicted with confidence now, it would at the very least provide ammunition for a campaign-launch speech from any other candidate.

Susan MacManus, a professor emerita at the University of South Florida and a longtime commentator on the state’s politics, sounded a similar theme.

“A lot of people say they don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch. They want fresh faces in high places,” she said. “I hear that everywhere, from both parties and from other people.”

“People were already saying they don’t see any difference,” MacManus added — and the classified documents furors have further hardened that perception.

It’s certainly true that public appetite for a second face-off between the 80-year-old Biden and the 76-year-old Trump seems very limited.

A CNBC poll released in December found that broad majorities of Americans did not want to see either man run in 2024. The poll indicated 70 percent did not want Biden to seek a second term, and 61 percent did not want Trump to try to win the White House back.

Significantly, the poll also showed that significant numbers of Republican and Democratic voters express resistance to the front-runner in their own party. A startling 57 percent of Democrats did not want Biden to run again, while 37 percent of Republicans were opposed to a Trump 2024 bid.

There are various candidates who might seek to take on the mantle of the outsider, insurgent candidate, of course.

But polls show DeSantis way out ahead of the rest of the field when it comes to Republican alternatives to Trump.

An YouGov-University of Massachusetts Amherst poll conducted earlier this month tested a multicandidate field and found Trump clinging to a 3-point lead over DeSantis, 37 percent to 34 percent. The next strongest candidate, former Vice President Mike Pence, attracted just 7 percent support.

DeSantis’s polling and fundraising strength means he doesn’t even have to enter the presidential race anytime soon.

He can, instead, sit back and wait for his rivals to slip up — a wish that has already come true.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Source: TEST FEED1

White House struggles with messaging strategy over Biden documents 

The White House is once again struggling with its messaging, this time on the discovery of classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president, where administration officials have sought to minimize the damage due to the revelation but have struggled to address it cohesively. 

Democrats, meanwhile, have had scattered reactions, ranging from praising the Biden administration over its cooperation with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and National Archives to suggesting a congressional review of the materials over national security concerns. Others have acknowledged what a political headache it has become for the president.

The disjointed responses are in part a reflection of mixed messaging by the White House, including when it prematurely told reporters last week that a search of classified documents potentially kept by Biden was “complete” before the administration said days later that more documents were found.

Officials have been adamant that they are limited in how much they can say about the discovery of the documents, what’s in them and when the president was informed of the situation, citing an ongoing Justice Department investigation and the appointment of a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was chosen by Biden to lead the agency.

“We understand that there’s a tension between the need to be cooperative with an ongoing DOJ investigation and rightful demands for additional public information. And so we’re trying to strike that balance and being as clear as we can,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson for investigations, told reporters on Tuesday.

Addressing the matter to the public has largely been left to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who has at times sparred with reporters over questions about why the White House didn’t reveal the discovery when it was made in November, when Biden learned of it and whether any other searches were underway.

On Thursday, Jean-Pierre said that “you should assume that it’s been completed, yes” in response to a question about a second set of documents that turned up at Biden’s home in Delaware, including in his garage. But on Saturday, the White House acknowledged that five more classified documents had been found at Biden’s home — the first time it was the administration, not a news report, that revealed a discovery. 

When questioned on Tuesday over whether she’s being directed to not be forthcoming, Jean-Pierre said that she knew as much as the press did at the end of last week, before the next discovery was revealed on Saturday.

She also pushed back when asked if she’s upset that she came out to the briefing on Friday with incomplete and inaccurate information.

“Well, what I’m concerned about is making sure that we do not politically interfere in the Department of Justice, that we continue to be consistent over the last two years. And that is continue to refer you all when it comes to an ongoing process,” she said.

Jean-Pierre also added that she and other members of the press office found out about the documents in Biden’s office in Washington in November when CBS broke the news last week. The press secretary has also faced questions about whether the White House would have disclosed the findings at all if not for the CBS report.

Former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie said on ABC on Sunday that one of the biggest questions the White House has to answer is who decided not to tell the public last year when Biden’s attorneys found the materials.

“The political problem is the one that nobody has talked about yet, which is, why did they wait to tell us? I mean, they knew this before midterms,” Christie said. “If you’re Joe Biden, who says, ‘I must be transparent. Donald Trump’s not. He is irresponsible for having these in his home.’ And meanwhile now he knows he’s got a bunch in his home.”

“I think the real interesting part of the special counsel investigation, more interesting than the documents themselves … will be, who made that decision? Did Ron Klain make that decision?” Christie said in reference to Biden’s chief of staff, one of the president’s closest longtime aides and confidants. 

But Matt Bennett, a Democratic strategist and co-founder of centrist think tank Third Way, said it has likely been frustrating for the White House press office to be limited in what it can share with the public. He disputed that the White House’s messaging has made the situation worse, arguing many officials in the building are likely dealing with the same uncertainties as the press.

“This happens where the information comes out slowly, and there’s always this idea that somehow the magical communications person could have made this all go away by perfectly packaging the info so nobody would follow up,” Bennett said. “I don’t think that’s real.”

There were some signs the White House was starting to get its messaging strategy in order roughly a week after the story first broke. 

Bob Bauer, a personal attorney for the president, issued a lengthy statement on Saturday that included a detailed timeline of events and offered an explanation for why the White House may be limited in what it can say. Bauer cited a desire to avoid offering incomplete information, and he noted that frequent disclosures that reveal details about witnesses or contents of the documents could undermine the DOJ investigation.

And the White House organized a press call for reporters on Tuesday to field questions from reporters amid intense criticism that they had not been forthcoming with the public about each new discovery of classified documents — and took the opportunity to take a shot at the GOP.

“At the same time that the president and his team have been fully cooperating, acting responsibly and ensuring that this is handled properly, you’ve seen something far different emerging among elected Republicans. What are they doing? They’ve decided that it’s time for more political stunts and theater,” Sams said.

The White House specifically targeted new House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and his response to the discovery of classified documents, comparing his response to the FBI seizing classified documents from former President Trump’s Florida home.

Sams highlighted that Comer said investigating Trump’s handling of documents won’t be a priority for Republicans but has said that his committee will be investigating Biden’s handling of documents.

“He’s on TV openly admitting that he doesn’t care about the underlying issue and doesn’t even think that President Biden has knowledge about it,” Sams said, addressing an interview Comer gave to CNN over the weekend.

The document controversy has overshadowed what the White House hoped would be an opportunity to contrast Biden’s accomplishments during his first two years in office with some of the dysfunction over the Speakership that was displayed by the new House Republican majority. 

Instead, recent press briefings have been dominated by questions about who knew what and when they were informed, and Democrats who appeared on Sunday shows were pressed for their assessment of the document discoveries.

Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), a longtime leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and its former chairman, said on Sunday that the administration will need to answer questions about why the discovery on Nov. 2 wasn’t revealed when it happened.

“I think the administration will need to answer that question. I’m going to reserve judgment until they do,” he told ABC, adding though that the way the Biden team handled finding documents was “a very sharp contrast” to Trump’s handling of them.

Meanwhile, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who is retiring in 2024, had a different take on the situation.

“Well, it’s certainly embarrassing. Right?” she told NBC. “I mean, it’s embarrassing that you would find a small number of documents, certainly not on purpose.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Russia's Dnipro strike exposes holes in Ukrainian defense system

A Russian missile strike over the weekend at an apartment complex in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro exposed a weakness in Ukraine’s air defenses, just as many fear more brutal Russian attacks are on the horizon.

The Dnipro strike killed 45 people, including six children, and injured another 79 people in one of the most devastating attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population since Moscow’s invasion nearly a year ago.

Russia has targeted critical infrastructure and energy grids in Ukraine with strikes since October, hoping to cow the Ukrainian people into submission after facing numerous setbacks in the war.

In the Dnipro strike, however, Ukraine says it was completely unable to stop the missile that hit the apartment complex because it lacked the defense capabilities to intercept it.

The deadly incident, just days after the Kremlin’s appointment of a new commander to oversee the war, is leading to concerns that a more desperate Russia will increasingly carry out such strikes and Ukraine will struggle to defend against them.

Gian Gentile, the associate director of the nonprofit Rand Corporation’s Arroyoa Center, predicted Russia will keep up the strikes as it prepares to launch a potential ground offensive in coming months.

Gentile said he could not speak with finality on Russian intent, but he believes Moscow is “at the point now where they are intentionally killing civilians” to turn them against the government.

“They may be moderating between going after infrastructure and power nodes” and civilian areas, he added. ”But they are following a playbook that lots of other countries have taken in war — and that is to punish the civilian population.”

After the strike, a Kremlin spokesperson said Moscow does not target residential areas and falsely attributed blame for the attack on Ukrainian air defenses, according to the Kyiv Post.

The U.K. Defence Ministry said the Dnipro strike was part of a weekend barrage of missiles targeting power grids and not a direct assault on the multistory apartment complex, noting the Kh-22 missile used in the Jan. 14 attack is“notoriously inaccurate.”

Ukrainian officials on Monday said they do not possess a defense system capable of downing Russia’s Kh-22s, a Soviet-era long-range missile designed to strike ships and aircraft. Ukraine’s Air Force Command said in a Facebook post that Russia has fired more than 210 of the missiles since the war began and Ukraine has shot down none of them.

According to analysts, Kyiv can shoot the missiles down, but they are extremely hard to track. The Kh-22 can reach more than 3,000 mph once fired from Russia’s Tu-22M3 bomber planes.

The missile type, equipped with a conventional warhead, has been used in past strikes, including on a shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk in June that killed around 20 people.

Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense secretary, said Kyiv needs the Patriot missile defense system or a SAMP-T, a defense system co-owned by France and Italy, to effectively take the missiles down.

The U.S. and Germany are each providing Ukraine with one Patriot defense system, and American troops are training Ukrainian personnel on the missile system in Oklahoma.

But Sak said Ukraine will undoubtedly need more of the Patriots.

“It’s a question of quantity because Ukraine is a large country,” Sak told The Hill. “To protect Ukrainian cities, we will need to continue to work with our partners to get more of these systems.”

Others cautioned that while more air defense systems were good, they can only do so much, arguing Ukraine also has to be effective in responding to the attacks.

Konstantin Sonin, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, said there were indications Russia may have modified its missiles or launched the attack from an unclear direction, further stymying Ukraine.

“In this attack, the air defense was extremely unsuccessful,” he said. “I think they’re extremely busy trying to figure out how it was done.”

Russia is reportedly running low on ammunition and inventory, leading to questions if Moscow has the ability to continue the strikes.

But Sak said Russia is continuing to produce more missiles, and with its existing stockpile, Moscow could “at any given moment” conduct two or three mass strikes.

That evidence is also supported by other analysts, who estimate Russia could continue the attacks with the current munitions supply through at least the summer.

The Dnipro attack led to an outpouring of grief from Ukraine, even in a country already beleaguered by war and death.

Noting the sheer number of civilian deaths, Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky said in a Monday evening address that Ukraine is “doing everything to strengthen our air defense as much as possible.”

“What happened in Dnipro, the fact that Russia is preparing a new attempt to seize the initiative in the war, the fact that the nature of hostilities at the front requires new decisions in the defense supply,” he said, “all this only emphasizes how important it is to coordinate our efforts — efforts of all members of the coalition to defend Ukraine and freedom.”

Source: TEST FEED1

McConnell calls on Department of Justice to treat Trump and Biden equally 

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday called on special counsels at the Department of Justice to treat former President Trump and President Biden equally as they investigate their possession of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and Biden’s Washington office and home in Delaware.  

McConnell has feuded with Trump over that past two years but McConnell nevertheless stuck up for the former Republican president, warning federal prosecutors to apply the same set of standards to both investigations.  

“I think the important thing with regard to documents is that both these guys ought to be treated exactly the same way. Exactly the same way. And so I think the attorney general probably did the right thing by having two special counsels,” McConnell told Terry Meiners on Kentucky’s NewsRadio 840 WHAS. 

“What’s good for one candidate for president ought to be good for another one,” the Senate GOP leader added.  

Attorney General Merrick Garland last week appointed Robert Hur, the former U.S. attorney for District of Maryland, to serve as special counsel handling the investigation of classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and at a garage at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.  

Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith in November to oversee the Justice Department’s investigations of Trump, including his possession of more than 300 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.  

Trump has accused the Justice Department of acting out of political motivation, calling its investigation of him “rigged” and dismissing Smith as a “political hit man.”  

Republicans including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called on Garland last week to appoint a special counsel to investigate Biden’s possession of classified documents, arguing the failure to do so would be tantamount to setting a double standard for the former president and sitting president.  

Senate Democrats have largely stayed quiet on the subject of Biden’s possession of classified documents, something the president himself said he was not aware of before they were discovered late last year and reported to the Justice Department. 

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) has called for his panel to receive a briefing on the documents kept at Biden’s office and residence. 

Judy Kurtz contributed.  

Source: TEST FEED1

George Santos gets two committee assignments

The House GOP Steering Committee on Tuesday recommended that embattled Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) sit on the House Small Business Committee and House Science, Space and Technology Committee, according to sources familiar with the assignments.

Santos’s assignment to the panels comes after multiple members of his own party have called on him to resign over his admitted fabrications about his work history and education, questions about his campaign finances, misleading claims of Jewish heritage and reported charges in Brazil related to checkbook fraud (which Santos has denied), among other issues.

The recommendation from the House GOP Steering Committee, a panel of around 30 members of House leadership and elected regional representatives, will have to be approved by the full House Republican Conference. The conference typically approves the steering panel’s recommendation.

Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas) is the newly-assigned chairman of the Small Business Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Small Business Administration and implemented the Paycheck Protection Program loan program authorized in response to COVID-19.  

“I don’t condone what he said, what he’s done. I don’t think anybody does. But that’s not my role. He was elected. He represents a million people,” Williams said of Santos on Tuesday, CNN reported.

Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which has jurisdiction over energy, astronautical, marine and other research areas, as well as agencies like the National Weather Service.

The Hill has reached out to the committee for comment.

Before his resume fabrications were revealed, Santos told NY1 in November that he hoped to sit on the House Financial Services Committee, “based on my 14-year background in capital markets,” and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “based on my, I guess, multicultural background as a human being.”

“I think those would be natural fits, and those are also where my passions lie,” Santos said at the time.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has declined to call on Santos to resign, and said the freshman lawmaker would sit on committees.

“I try to stick by the Constitution. The voters elected him to serve. If there is a concern, and he has to go through the Ethics, let him move through that,” McCarthy told reporters last week, referring to the House Ethics Committee.

“He is going to have to build the trust here, and he’s going to have the opportunity to try to do that,” McCarthy said.

Santos is under investigation in New York, but has not been charged with any crime in the U.S. Lawmakers in the past have continued to serve in Congress and on committees until they were found guilty of a crime.

Source: TEST FEED1