Crooked Media - What A Day: The mock-us caucus

What is left to say about the debt ceiling? Unfortunately, too much!
 

• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers in a letter on Friday that the U.S. government will run out of money on June 5 if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling. This is an update on the projections Yellen had previously given Congress, which were at the time “as soon as” June 1. But the Treasury’s new estimates provide more specificity and more urgency for GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to stop fucking around with the global economy. 
   

• President Biden and McCarthy have reported “progress” in the past few days on a deal to lift the debt ceiling, but as of this afternoon, no agreement has been reached, and the two sides seem to still be far apart. Why? Because Republicans refuse to do a clean debt ceiling raise (something they agreed to many times under disgraced former President Trump) without cuts to “discretionary spending.” Medicare and Social Security are off the table, as are cuts to defense spending (come on) which leaves a wide swath of necessary government services that disproportionately aid financially-disadvantaged Americans that Republicans want to hack away at.
   

• We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Republicans do not actually care about reducing the federal deficit. They famously want to make the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations permanent, which would add trillions of dollars to the deficit year over year. It’s the same “socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor,” that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about so many decades ago.  

So where do negotiations stand?
 

• The tentative agreement in the works would raise the debt ceiling for two years (a key White House priority), freeze government spending on domestic programs, but slightly increase(!) military spending, according to sources close to the negotiations. The deal will likely rescind some of the new funding for the IRS (which by the way, was extremely successful and allowed the agency to function properly after years of austerity, which is why conservatives hate it) but House conservatives are split on their support for the deal. House Democrats, by contrast, have been remarkably united in their approach to the deal, maintaining the position that the Biden administration started with, which is that it would not negotiate with economic terrorists. 
   

• The clown car that is the far-right House Freedom Caucus seems to be upset with the deal too, calling it “watered-down” because I guess it doesn’t hurt poor people to the extent they wish to see. Even as avaricious as McCarthy’s current deal seems to be, divided support in his caucus could ultimately cost him the Speakership, which, you may recall, he only achieved after a record 15 votes.   

Late Friday, President Biden said a deal to resolve the debt ceiling crisis was “very close” at hand. A “compromise” may be able to be achieved, but it seems that no one would be happy about it, because any compromise involves Republicans getting the spending cuts targeted at essential programs that they want, and weakening the IRS. It seems that the majority of concessions made will be from the White House, because Republicans would rather start a global economic disaster than see anyone except the wealthy receive government subsidies. Happy Memorial Day weekend!

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On Thursday night, the Indiana state Medical Licensing Board voted to reprimand Indianapolis physician Dr. Caitlin Bernard for “violating a patient’s privacy” when she told a reporter last year that she performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from neighboring Ohio, where the state’s laws prohibited the girl from getting an abortion in the wake of the Dobbs decision. However, the board rejected accusations from Indiana’s Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita that Dr. Bernard violated state law by not reporting the child abuse to Indiana authorities, nor did they agree to Rokita’s request to suspend her medical license. Dr. Bernard has been consistent in the defense of her actions, and she told the board that she did indeed follow Indiana’s reporting requirements and hospital policy by reporting the child abuse to the hospital social workers. The girl’s rape was already being investigated by Ohio authorities. Conservative news outlets and Republican politicians falsely accused Bernard of fabricating the story, until a 27-year-old man in Columbus, OH was charged with the rape. Dr. Bernard’s attorneys maintained that she gave no identifying information about the girl that would have violated privacy laws. Thursday’s hearing lasted for 13 hours, and Bernard rejected the claim that her public discussion of a case (in which she included no identifying information) led to the misconduct allegations, saying, “I think if the attorney general, Todd Rokita, had not chosen to make this his political stunt we wouldn’t be here today.”

A GOP-led committee in the Texas House of Representatives recommended that state attorney general and fellow Republican Ken Paxton be impeached on Thursday for a wide range of abuses of office. Paxton denounced the proceedings as “political theater” and invited his supporters to protest at the state Capitol tomorrow. January 6: Texas edition! 

The Nixon Administration’s former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger will turn 100 years old this weekend. 150,000 Cambodians will not. He is the last surviving member of Richard Nixon’s cabinet. 

A Russian missile hit a psychiatric clinic and a veterinary clinic in eastern Ukraine on Friday, killing two people and wounding 30. 

The British Cycling Federation has barred transgender women from competing in the women’s category, and the “open” category will allow male athletes, transgender women and men, and non-binary cyclists. 

President of Microsoft Brad Smith said that his biggest concern regarding artificial intelligence is deep fakes, or realistic but false content, particularly videos. 

A South Carolina circuit court judge temporarily halted the state’s six-week abortion ban from going into effect until it is reviewed by the state Supreme Court. 

In the West Bank, more than three million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation, where deadly raids have long been carried out with regularity. But now, under the most right-wing government in Israeli history, incursions have increasingly been executed during the day and in densely-populated urban areas. According to the United Nations, 108 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as of May 15, twice as many as at the same point last year, and at least 19 were children. One of the most shocking recent attacks occurred on March 16, just days before the start of the holy month of Ramadan in the city of Jenin. That day, undercover Israeli forces carried out an operation targeting two Palestinian militants, but also killed 14-year-old Omar Awadin, who was one of at least 16 Palestinian civilians in the area, none of whom were armed. After The Washington Post viewed footage from multiple area security cameras, the raid appears to violate the international ban on extrajudicial killings. The Post shared its findings with international law experts, all of whom said the raid qualifies as a violation of extrajudicial killing prohibitions.

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On Friday, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration stripped Morris & Dickinson Co.—one of the country’s largest drug distributors—of its license to sell highly-addictive painkillers after an investigation determined that the company chose not to flag thousands of suspicious orders when the opioid crisis was ravaging swaths of America. 

Jessica Watkins, a member of the far-right Oath Keepers, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison on Friday for her role in the January 6 insurrection.

Another member of the Oath Keepers, Kenneth Harrelson, was sentenced to four years in prison today. At least all of his buddies will be there with him!