Crooked Media - What A Day: The struggle is deal

Anybody else getting pretty fucking sick of Republicans holding the global economy hostage?
 

• While the rest of us were spending our Memorial Day weekend thinking about the sacrifices American troops have made for their country (and the Succession series finale), the White House and congressional Republicans were in the octagon fighting it out over the debt ceiling as zero-hour for the government running out of money and causing a global economic crisis quickly approaches.
   

• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden reached a final agreement to raise the federal debt ceiling on Sunday, and it’s full of enough “compromises” that getting all necessary support in Congress may be a tough hill to climb for both sides. President Biden was circumspect in a statement outside the White House on Sunday evening, saying, “The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis, a default, for the first time in our nation’s history…Takes the threat of a catastrophic default off the table.”
   

• Okay, Joe, but [winces]…what else is in the agreement? The deal keeps non-defense spending basically stagnant in 2024 and limits its increase in 2025 to 1 percent. It also suspends the debt limit until January 2025, a key priority for the Biden administration, and ensures that we don’t have to go through this bullshit again in a year. The Congressional Budget Office released a report late Tuesday saying that the deal would cut $1.5 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Democrats won some new expanded benefits for veterans, homeless Americans, and young people aging out of foster care. The GOP proposal to repeal many of the clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act also didn’t make it to the final deal, thankfully.

That’s about the end of the “good” news. 
 

• The bad news? Well, McCarthy bragged that the bill in its current form would be the “most conservative deal we’ve ever had.” Not all of his caucus agrees, but most people to the left of oh, say, Mitt Romney would. The agreement rescinds about $30 billion in unspent coronavirus relief money previously-approved through congressional bills. The Inflation Reduction Act stipulated that the IRS would receive $80 billion in new funding over the next decade. This deal claws back $1.4 billion, and Biden agreed to take an additional $20 billion from the agency over the next two years. The deal also expands work requirements for SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), a long-held Republican obsession. But the CBO report indicates that the number of exceptions demanded by the Biden administration for SNAP recipients may mean that as a result of this deal, even more people will be eligible for the program than were before. In one final blow, the deal also kneecaps President Biden from extending the yearslong pause on student loan payments that began during the coronavirus pandemic. 

• Congressional Democrats who would otherwise oppose the deal for giving too many concessions to the GOP mob are now put between a rock and a hard place, forcing them to either vote for the deal that gives so much to Republicans, or oppose the agreement President Biden created, putting the economy at risk. White House Budget Director Shalanda Young, who was one of the president’s lead negotiators on the deal, urged Congress to pass it nonetheless, saying, “This agreement represents a compromise, which means no one gets everything that they want and hard choices had to be made.” Gotta be honest, this doesn’t feel great! 

Members of Congress are now reviewing the bill and the House will begin voting as soon as Wednesday. The far-right flank of the House GOP is already threatening to oust McCarthy as soon as they can, because even a deal this deeply conservative isn’t evil enough for them. Cool party!

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Crowdsourcing tools have become central to certain aspects of our modern American dystopia, like paying for essential medical treatment that should be covered by (cough) universal healthcare, but it’s recently taken up an even more sinister function: as a fundraising tool for far-right extremists. People like Daniel Goodwyn, who pleaded guilty for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection, have raised tens of thousands of dollars in crowdfunding campaigns from other right-wing sympathizers who consider the indicted insurrectionists to be “political prisoners” instead of treasonous criminals, which…lol. So now, the Justice Department wants Goodwyn to forfeit the more than $25,000 he raised, and prosecutors in the over 1,000 January 6-related criminal cases are increasingly asking judges to impose fines on top of prison sentences to offset these donations. Most of those charged in these cases have taxpayer-funded public defenders, so it’s all but certain that they’re simply pocketing the money and using their criminal activity for explicit material gain. These crowdfunding efforts have mostly been orchestrated through GiveSendGo, the self-described “#1 Free Christian Funding Site,” because more mainstream sites like GoFundMe have barred January 6 defendants from using their platform.

A New York federal appellate court ruled on Tuesday that OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma can shield members of the Sackler family, the company’s owners, from opioid lawsuits as an indirect protection of bankruptcy proceedings. The Sacklers will be forced to hand over an additional $6 billion towards fighting the opioid crisis they created as part of the agreement.

The trial of Robert Bowers, the man responsible for the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA in 2018 began on Tuesday. In opening statements, his own lawyer acknowledged that Bowers planned the attack, made antisemitic statements, and “shot every person he saw,” during the attack. 

Ukrainian drones hit wealthy districts in Moscow, the first major military action outside of Ukraine, while Kyiv also suffered air strikes for the third time in 24 hours. 

As artificial intelligence continues to develop at breakneck speed, deep-fakes and other easily-disseminated misinformation pose a huge threat to the 2024 election. 

U.S. consumer confidence has reached a six-month low, particularly concentrated in the over-55 demographic. 

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) announced his plan to resign from Congress, possibly as soon as this week, due to his wife’s ongoing health issues.

The Carter Center announced that former first lady Rosalynn Carter, 95, has dementia. 

Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney gave a commencement speech at her alma mater Colorado College over the weekend. About half of the students turned their chairs around and sat with their backs to her in protest.

Last week, retail giant Target acquiesced to the violence of far-right extremists in their stores over the company’s Pride collection by pulling some of the items entirely and relocating others to more removed corners of their locations. Now, the LGBT+ community is looking for answers about the dangerous precedent this sets. Progressive lawmakers and LGBT activist groups are lobbying corporations not to cave to far-right activism and develop new strategies to combat the rising tide of anti-LGBT violence. History has repeatedly demonstrated that kowtowing to far-right extremists doesn’t, uh, end well, and it’s clear that if corporations want to capitalize on their “allyship” during Pride month, they should not abandon the LGBT community and tacitly legitimize the views of violent right-wing bigots at the first signs of pushback.

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Disgraced CEO of Theranos and overall weird blood lady Elizabeth Holmes reported to a Texas prison today to begin her 11-year sentence for overseeing the massive blood-testing fraud at her former company. 

Researchers in Southern California used drones to observe great white sharks and found that they’re near and around humans in the water much more often than previously thought (scary!) but the overwhelming majority of the time, don’t bother anyone (okay, good!), meaning shark attacks could be even less likely than prior measurements indicated. Love that for us!