US debt ceiling talks hit bump as White House says ‘real differences’ remain – as it happened

By temporary On May 20, 2023 31

White House says ‘talks will be difficult’ in debt limit deal

“Real differences” exist between the two sides in the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, a White House official told the Guardian after Republican lawmakers said they were pausing their participation in the ongoing talks.

“There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult. The President’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate,” the official said.

Talks between negotiators appointed by Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling suddenly veered off course, with Republicans saying the discussions are “not productive” and the White House acknowledging “real differences” between the two sides. There is still time for a deal to be reached, but not a lot of it: the best estimate of when the US government will run out of cash and potentially default on its bond payments and other obligations remains 1 June.

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Here’s a look back at the day’s news:

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Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.

A top House Democrat threatened to stop the reauthorization of a foreign spying program after reports emerged that the FBI queried its database for information about the January 6 insurrection and Black Lives Matter protests.

Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.

Biden’s decision to cancel his trip to Australia may prove very costly for some in the White House press corps.

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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch says emergency measures taken during the Covid-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans were perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

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The Associated Press reports:

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The 55-year-old conservative justice points to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions.

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Gorsuch’s broadside is aimed at local, state and federal officials, and even his own colleagues.

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He says officials issued emergency decrees “on a breathtaking scale.”

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His comments came in an eight-page statement that accompanied an order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.

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The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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The emergency orders about which Gorsuch complained were first announced in the early days of the pandemic, when Trump was president, and months before the virus was well understood and a vaccine was developed.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court got rid of a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.

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Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say, leveling harsh criticism of how governments, from small towns to the nation’s capital, responded to the gravest public health threat in a century.

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The justice, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, called emergency measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

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He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions. His broadside was aimed at local, state and federal officials — even his colleagues.

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“Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,” Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page statement Thursday that accompanied an expected Supreme Court order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.

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The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Talks between negotiators appointed by Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling suddenly veered off course, with Republicans saying the discussions are “not productive” and the White House acknowledging “real differences” between the two sides. There’s time for a deal to be reached, but not a lot of it: the best estimate of when the US government will run out of cash and potentially default on its bond payments and other obligations remains 1 June. We’ll see if the GOP and Democrats find cause to sit down again before today is through.

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Here’s a look back at what else has happened today so far:

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Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.

Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.

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About an hour ago, and just a few minutes before reports emerged that the debt limit talks had broken down, Donald Trump called for the GOP to demand, well, “everything” in the negotiations.

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Here’s what he wrote on Truth social:

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n

REPUBLICANS SHOULD NOT MAKE A DEAL ON THE DEBT CEILING UNLESS THEY GET EVERYTHING THEY WANT (Including the “kitchen sink”). THAT’S THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ALWAYS DEALT WITH US. DO NOT FOLD!!!

n

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Here’s more of the grim assessment of the debt ceiling talks given by Garret Graves, the House Republican appointed by Kevin McCarthy to negotiate with the White House.

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“We’re not there,” he told reporters as he departed a meeting with Joe Biden’s officials, the Wall Street Journal said. “We’ve decided to press pause because it’s just not productive.”

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He said he was not sure if the two sides would be getting together over the weekend. “Until people are willing to have reasonable conversations about how you can actually move forward and do the right thing, then we’re not going to sit here and talk to ourselves,” he added.

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The Journal also saw Biden’s negotiators, director of the White House office of management and budget Shalanda Young and adviser Steve Ricchetti, leaving the meeting. Asked if the two sides would meet again today, Ricchetti replied, “playing by ear.”

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Negotiations between representatives of Joe Biden and Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy to raise the US debt ceiling ahead of the 1 June deadline for a potential default have broken down, according to reporters at the US Capitol.

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ABC News says that Garret Graves, who McCarthy appointed earlier this week to negotiate with the White House, described the talks as on “pause”:

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BREAKING: Rep. Garret Graves, who has been negotiating with White House officials on behalf of Speaker McCarthy, says debt ceiling talks are on “pause.”

Graves called the talks “not productive” and branded the administration’s requests as “unreasonable.”

— Gabe Ferris (@GabeFerris) May 19, 2023

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Punchbowl News cited a source saying the two sides are at an “impasse”:

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DEBT LIMIT TALKS between the White House and House Republicans have been paused, per multiple sources involved in the talks.

"We're at an impasse," a source involved with the talks tells me.

Not one issue, but multiple issues have proven problematic, I am told.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 19, 2023

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The GOP has demanded spending cuts and the cancellation of Biden’s student debt relief program in exchange for their votes to raise the government’s legal borrowing limit before it runs out of money, which is predicted to happen in about two weeks. After months of resisting talks, Biden this week agreed to have his deputies sit down with McCarthy’s team to hash out a deal.

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South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott has submitted paperwork to officially begin his campaign for president, Reuters reports.

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Scott, the sole Black GOP lawmaker in the Senate, has on Monday scheduled a “major announcement” in North Charleston – expected to be the kickoff of his campaign. He’s been making the rounds of early voting states in recent weeks, including Iowa and New Hampshire, and adopted the slogan “Faith in America.”

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He joins a Republican primary field alongside former president Donald Trump, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and ex-United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who polls typically show in a distant second place to Trump, is also expected to announce his presidential campaign next Wednesday.

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In a meeting with G7 leaders in Japan, Joe Biden announced America would support a joint effort with allies to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s and other fourth-generation aircraft, CNN reports, citing a senior administration official.

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The Biden administration has been under pressure from Congress and Washington’s allies to step up efforts to bolster Ukraine’s air force amid an intensifying aerial campaign by Russia.

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For the latest on the development, and news from the war, follow the Guardian’s live blog:

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Fresh off of indicting Donald Trump on felony charges of falsifying business records, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is now weighing whether to prosecute one of his former top lieutenants, Allen Weisselberg, over perjury allegations, the New York Times reports.

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Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, was sentenced to five months in jail earlier this year after pleading guilty to tax crimes. According to the Times, the new charges Bragg is considering center on an instance in 2020 when Weisselberg may have perjured himself in sworn testimony before the state’s attorney general Letitia James, who is also investigating Trump and his family.

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Bragg is trying to pressure Weisselberg to testify against Trump, which he has refused to do, though he did agree to provide information used to convict the former president’s business on tax fraud charges.

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It’s the latest development in a complicated case that could amount to a major legal problem for the former president. Here’s more from the Times:

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n

One of Donald J. Trump’s longtime lieutenants, Allen H. Weisselberg, was recently released from the notorious Rikers Island jail complex after pleading guilty to a tax fraud scheme. Yet Mr. Weisselberg’s legal troubles are far from over.

n

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is now considering a new round of criminal charges against Mr. Weisselberg, 75, and this time he could be charged with perjury, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

n

The threat of new charges represents the latest effort in a two-year campaign to persuade Mr. Weisselberg to testify against Mr. Trump. And it comes at a crucial time, just weeks after the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, unveiled an indictment of the former president.

n

Mr. Weisselberg has so far refused to turn against his former boss, but the prosecutors recently ramped up the pressure, warning his lawyers that they might bring the perjury charges if their client declined to testify against Mr. Trump, two of the people said.

n

The potential perjury charges stem from statements Mr. Weisselberg made under oath during a 2020 interview with the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who was conducting her own separate civil investigation into Mr. Trump and his family business. It is not clear which part of his testimony raised red flags for prosecutors and Ms. James, or how Mr. Bragg might prove that Mr. Weisselberg intentionally made a false statement.

n

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Two things are happening simultaneously in the Republican presidential primary field: more candidates are arriving, Donald Trump is staying as popular as ever.

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Just take a look at poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight for evidence of that. Trump’s lead over other Republicans has only grown in recent weeks, particularly since his late-March indictment by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. Before that, the gap between him and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, wasn’t quite so immense, but it’s since yawned further.

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According to the New York Times, DeSantis made to donors yesterday a fairly straightforward argument: he’s more electable than Trump.

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“You have basically three people at this point that are credible in this whole thing: Biden, Trump and me. And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president – Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” he told donors.

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That was his message to a behind-closed-doors gathering of wealthy Republicans. In the months ahead, we’ll find out what the party’s rank and file think.

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Good morning, US politics blog readers. Joe Biden will not be president forever. Voters will either re-elect the Democratic leader next year, or replace him with one of several Republican challengers – and the ranks of those candidates are set to get even deeper in the days to come. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, will announce his presidential campaign on Wednesday, the Miami Herald reports, after spending months pursuing conservative policies in the state that he will argue to voters should be implemented nationally. According to the New York Times, he’s given donors an even sharper message behind closed doors, saying only “Biden and me” have a chance at winning next year.

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The governor won’t be alone in making his candidacy official. On Monday, South Carolina senator Tim Scott will make a “major announcement” in North Charleston – most likely the start of his presidential campaign. But in order to win the GOP’s nomination and face Biden in the November 2024 general election, either man will have to succeed at something no Republican candidate has managed to pull off since 2016: beat Donald Trump.

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Here’s a look at what we expect to happen today:

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Debt ceiling negotiations are ongoing in Washington DC, though a deal is not expected to be reached until the weekend or Monday, according to Punchbowl News.

Joe Biden is continuing his travel in Japan and meeting with G7 leaders. Due to the time difference, his day has already pretty much wrapped up.

Kamala Harris is traveling to Los Angeles, where she’ll focus on maternal health in a tour of a non-profit.

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Closing summary

Here’s a look back at the day’s news:

Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.
A top House Democrat threatened to stop the reauthorization of a foreign spying program after reports emerged that the FBI queried its database for information about the January 6 insurrection and Black Lives Matter protests.
Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.
Biden’s decision to cancel his trip to Australia may prove very costly for some in the White House press corps.

After reports emerged that the FBI broke its own rules by using a repository of foreign intelligence to search for information about the January 6 insurrection and the protests following George Floyd’s death, a top Democrat is threatening not to support the reauthorization of a contentious surveillance program.

At issue is section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows US authorities to surveil the communications of foreigners outside the country and expires at the end of the year unless renewed. The information is not meant to be used for domestic purposes, but according to a court order released today the FBI did just that.

The Biden administration says it supports reauthorizing section 702, but it looks like it will have to win over skeptics in its own party. Here’s what the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee Jerry Nadler had to say about today’s revelations:

NEW: Ranking Member @RepJerryNadler statement on declassified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions: pic.twitter.com/ycZrVzzwrC

— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) May 19, 2023

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So what’s the hangup in the debt ceiling talks?

Based on comments from Republicans, it appears they’re far apart with Joe Biden’s team over total government spending. Last month, House Republicans approved a bill to increase the debt limit while also capping government spending in the next fiscal year at its levels from the 2021-2022 fiscal year. That amounts to a spending cut, since spending on government often increases from year to year.

Biden and the Democrats have opposed this outright, arguing it would harm the economy and the government’s ability to provide services. But in comments to reporters, GOP speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy indicated the party was sticking to its guns:

“We’ve got to get movement by the White House and we don’t have any movement yet.”

— House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says there is a “pause” in debt ceiling negotiations, blaming the White House pic.twitter.com/EAKosX54p8

— The Recount (@therecount) May 19, 2023

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“We’ve got to get movement by the White House and we don’t have any movement yet.”

— House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says there is a “pause” in debt ceiling negotiations, blaming the White House pic.twitter.com/EAKosX54p8

— The Recount (@therecount) May 19, 2023

CNN spoke to Republican representative Dusty Johnson, who confirmed the spending issue was a top sticking point, but not the only one:

GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson tells me that 2024 spending levels is the "biggest" stick point in the debt ceiling talks — tho not the only problem.

“We are too far apart on the topline number,” Johnson said. "McCarthy is holding the line. He knows where the Republican conference is."

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) May 19, 2023

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GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson tells me that 2024 spending levels is the “biggest” stick point in the debt ceiling talks — tho not the only problem.

“We are too far apart on the topline number,” Johnson said. “McCarthy is holding the line. He knows where the Republican conference is.”

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) May 19, 2023

Johnson still thinks a deal is *possible* by the early June deadline, but also said: “We’re in bad shape.”

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) May 19, 2023

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Johnson still thinks a deal is *possible* by the early June deadline, but also said: “We’re in bad shape.”

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) May 19, 2023

Here’s a different sort of American media story. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington spoke to disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz, who is pursuing a lawsuit against Fox News – which she fears presents a threat to US democracy:

The woman suing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for defamation in the wake of the $787m settlement with the voting machine company Dominion has accused the media giant of waging a campaign of “vitriolic lies” against her that amounts to a threat to democracy.

Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.

The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.

It became clear how serious the debt limit situation was earlier this week, when Joe Biden cut short his planned trip to Asia in order to be back in Washington DC on Sunday, saying he needed to ensure that the US government is able to avoid a default.

The president kept his travel plans to Japan, but nixed stops in Australia and the first-ever presidential visit to Papua New Guinea, a decision critics say harmed Washington’s efforts to build alliances against China.

It also proved to be a very expensive decision for the media organizations who place their reporters in the White House press corps and task them with following the president’s every move. The Washington Post reports that the White House Travel Office had booked a charter flight to Australia for the dozens of journalists that were planning to come along with Biden, while their employers were also planning to shell out thousands for their hotels, transportation and logistics.

All of that had to be canceled, but according to the Post, news outlets are now on the hook for as much as $25,000 per person in the form of sunk costs for charter flights and other travel arrangements. While the country’s biggest news outlets all have reporters at the White House, the news industry has been financially tumultuous for the better part of 15 years, and the Post says some reporters fear the debacle will make their bosses cut back on travel with the president – which could mean less scrutiny of what Biden and his successors actually do with their time.

Here’s more from the Post:

The now-canceled charter flight, organized by the White House Travel Office, cost $760,000, or about $14,000 for each of the 55 journalists who’d booked seats on it. Journalists will immediately lose their deposits, about $7,700 each, and may be on the hook for the rest, according to a memo sent to reporters on Wednesday by Tamara Keith, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

But a lengthy list of other costs — hotel reservations, ground transportation, a shared press-filing center, among them — may also be unrecoverable. And journalists will lose some or all of the cost of their return flights from Sydney to Washington, as they scramble for last-minute flights from Hiroshima to Washington.

Bottom line: The bill for not going to Australia could run upward of $25,000 per person before any refunds kick in, according to several people involved in efforts to recover the money. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations over the funds.

In an interview, Keith said her organization is seeking to recover as much of the travel money as possible, though it wasn’t clear how much was possible.

“When the president travels amid a budget crisis or a debt ceiling crisis, his [travel] plans can change,” she said, noting that presidents Obama and Trump also canceled trips during their terms. “These are the risks we undertake with our eyes open. We hope it never happens. But it just did.”

Speaking of pandemic emergency measures, Reuters reports that migrant encounters at the US southern border continue to plunge after last week’s expiration of Title 42.

The rule, imposed by Donald Trump’s administration as Covid-19 spread in March 2020, allowed the US to turn away most asylum seekers, and its expiration at midnight last Friday raised fears of a surge in new border crossers. But that hasn’t materialized, and top homeland security official Blas Nunez-Neto said border authorities are seeing 70% less encounters since it ended. That may be because Joe Biden unveiled a slew of new restrictions to replace Title 42, leading to accusations by immigration rights groups that he is imitating his predecessor’s policies.

Here’s more from Reuters:

Speaking in a call with reporters, Nunez-Neto said the number had continued to tick down after an average 4,000 encounters a day as of May 12.

“In the last 48 hours there were 3,000 encounters a day on the border, this is a more than 70% reduction,” he said.

Nunez-Neto also said about 11,000 people were removed from the U.S. in the last week and sent to more than 30 countries, including more than 1,100 people from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba returned to Mexico.

Supreme Court justice Gorsuch slams pandemic emergency measures

The Associated Press reports:

The 55-year-old conservative justice points to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions.

Gorsuch’s broadside is aimed at local, state and federal officials, and even his own colleagues.

He says officials issued emergency decrees “on a breathtaking scale.”

His comments came in an eight-page statement that accompanied an order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.

The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The emergency orders about which Gorsuch complained were first announced in the early days of the pandemic, when Trump was president, and months before the virus was well understood and a vaccine was developed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court got rid of a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.

Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say, leveling harsh criticism of how governments, from small towns to the nation’s capital, responded to the gravest public health threat in a century.

The justice, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, called emergency measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions. His broadside was aimed at local, state and federal officials — even his colleagues.

“Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,” Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page statement Thursday that accompanied an expected Supreme Court order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.

The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Members of the Supreme Court sit for a new group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. Bottom row, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a heavily blacked-out court order released on Friday.

The Associated Press reports:

FBI officials said the violations predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. But the problems could nonetheless complicate FBI and Justice Department efforts to receive congressional reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program that law enforcement officials say is needed to counter terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime.

The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal oversight of the U.S. government’s spy powers. The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence released a redacted version on Friday in what officials said was the interest of transparency. Members of Congress received the order when it was issued last year.

At issue are thousands of improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US. That program expires at the end of the year unless it is renewed.

In repeated episodes disclosed Friday, the FBI’s own standards were not followed.

The full AP report is here.

A Washington DC police officer was arrested on Friday on charges that he lied about leaking confidential information to the Proud Boys extremist group leader Enrique Tarrio and obstructed an investigation after group members destroyed a Black Lives Matter banner in the nation’s capital.

The Associated Press reports:

An indictment alleges that Metropolitan Police Department Lt Shane Lamond, 47, of Stafford, Virginia, warned Tarrio, then national chairman of the far-right group, that law enforcement had an arrest warrant for him related to the banner’s destruction.

Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before Proud Boys members joined the mob in storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Earlier this month, Tarrio and three other leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy charges.

A federal grand jury in Washington indicted Lamond on one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements.

The indictment accuses Lamond of lying to and misleading federal investigators when they questioned him in June 2021 about his contacts with Tarrio.

Lamond is scheduled to make his initial court appearance on Friday. He was placed on administrative leave by the police force in February 2022.

Lamond, who supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau, was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington.

Lamond’s name repeatedly came up in the Capitol riot trial of Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders.

Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio rallies in Portland, Oregon.2019. — Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio rallies in Portland, Oregon, in 2019. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

The day so far

Talks between negotiators appointed by Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling suddenly veered off course, with Republicans saying the discussions are “not productive” and the White House acknowledging “real differences” between the two sides. There’s time for a deal to be reached, but not a lot of it: the best estimate of when the US government will run out of cash and potentially default on its bond payments and other obligations remains 1 June. We’ll see if the GOP and Democrats find cause to sit down again before today is through.

Here’s a look back at what else has happened today so far:

Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.
Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.

CNN has more downbeat comments from Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy on the status of the debt limit talks, which indeed appear to be paused:

NEW: Speaker McCarthy confirms to us that debt ceiling talks are on "pause." Says there’s not enough “movement” from White House & suggests that spending levels are part of the impasse.

“We’ve got to get movement by the White House. And we don’t have any movement yet," he said.

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) May 19, 2023

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NEW: Speaker McCarthy confirms to us that debt ceiling talks are on “pause.” Says there’s not enough “movement” from White House & suggests that spending levels are part of the impasse.

“We’ve got to get movement by the White House. And we don’t have any movement yet,” he said.

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) May 19, 2023

That’s a reversal from yesterday, when McCarthy sounded optimistic about the chances a deal is reached before the default deadline, which is estimated as 1 June.

White House says ‘talks will be difficult’ in debt limit deal

Donald Trump tells Republicans ‘do not fold’ an hour before news of impasse

About an hour ago, and just a few minutes before reports emerged that the debt limit talks had broken down, Donald Trump called for the GOP to demand, well, “everything” in the negotiations.

Here’s what he wrote on Truth social:

REPUBLICANS SHOULD NOT MAKE A DEAL ON THE DEBT CEILING UNLESS THEY GET EVERYTHING THEY WANT (Including the “kitchen sink”). THAT’S THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ALWAYS DEALT WITH US. DO NOT FOLD!!!

‘We’re not there’, Graves reportedly says as talks paused

Here’s more of the grim assessment of the debt ceiling talks given by Garret Graves, the House Republican appointed by Kevin McCarthy to negotiate with the White House.

Amid reports that negotiations over raising the debt ceiling have broken down, the top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell is out with a tweet blaming Joe Biden for the impasse:

.@POTUS waited months before agreeing to negotiate with @SpeakerMcCarthy on a spending deal. They are the only two who can reach an agreement. It is past time for the White House to get serious. Time is of the essence.

— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) May 19, 2023

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.@POTUS waited months before agreeing to negotiate with @SpeakerMcCarthy on a spending deal. They are the only two who can reach an agreement. It is past time for the White House to get serious. Time is of the essence.

— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) May 19, 2023

Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans have taken the lead on negotiating with the White House on a deal, but the Senate will eventually have to vote on whatever bill emerges from the talks – assuming that happens.