The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, the retail giant Target, the brewer of the beer Bud Light — in the past month, all these businesses have been the focus of consumer boycotts for marketing to LGBTQ+ customers. From Los Angeles, Genia Dulot has the story.
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President Joe Biden is set to sign the Fiscal Responsibility Act, legislation that suspends the U.S. government’s debt limit through January 2025 and avoids a potentially disastrous default on U.S. financial obligations.
He is scheduled to deliver remarks on the legislation’s passage Friday evening.
The U.S. Senate voted Thursday night 63-36 in support of the measure. Democratic senators John Fetterman, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders, who is an independent but caucuses with Democrats, joined 31 Republicans in voting against the bill.
“Tonight, senators from both parties voted to protect the hard-earned economic progress we have made and prevent a first-ever default by the United States,” Biden said in a statement Thursday.
The bill allows the government to continue to borrow more money over the next 19 months to meet its obligations, exceeding the current $31.4 trillion debt limit.
Despite objections by far-right Republican lawmakers who said it did not go far enough to cut spending and from Democratic progressives who said it trimmed too much, the bill passed the House of Representatives under a 314-117 vote Wednesday night.
The legislation does not set a new monetary cap, but the borrowing authority would extend to January 2, 2025, two months past next year’s presidential election.
In addition, the legislation calls for maintaining most federal spending at the current level in the fiscal year starting in October, with a 1% increase in the following 12 months.
“With the latest debt limit debate now behind us, our leaders must get serious about reforming this process so that we never again jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States,” Kelly Veney Darnell, interim CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said in a statement sent to VOA.
“Bipartisan legislation like the Responsible Budgeting Act, introduced in the last Congress, would require lawmakers to routinely address our fiscal health by annually debating and voting on significant deficit reducing legislation — but without the full faith and credit of the country hanging in the balance,” she said.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who negotiated the deal with Biden, told reporters that getting the bill passed “wasn’t an easy fight.” He emphasized the budget savings and criticized Democrats who wanted to separate the debate about future government spending from the need to suspend the debt limit so current financial obligations could be met.
“We put the citizens of America first and we didn’t do it by taking the easy way,” McCarthy said. “We didn’t do it by the ways that people did in the past by just lifting [the debt ceiling]. We decided you had to spend less, and we achieved that goal.”
McCarthy said he intends to follow Wednesday’s action with more efforts to cut federal spending.
The measure does not raise taxes on the wealthy, a step wanted by Democrats. Nor will it stop the national debt total from continuing to increase, perhaps by another $3 trillion or more over the next year-and-a-half until the next expiration of the debt limit.
Other pieces of the legislation include a reduction in the number of new agents hired by the country’s tax collection agency, a requirement that states return $30 billion in unspent coronavirus pandemic assistance to the federal government and extending from 50 to 54 the upper age bracket for those required to work in order to receive food aid.
Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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President Joe Biden spoke to graduates of the Air Force Academy at an uncertain time for global peace. VOA spoke to an alumnus of the institution who graduated at another uncertain time — the Vietnam era — about what it was like to be in that seat more than 50 years ago. Anita Powell reports.
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The U.S. Senate voted Thursday night 63-36 in support of a measure that will allow the United States to continue to pay its bills. The U.S. had been on track to run out of cash in four days. The bipartisan legislation now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature.
“Tonight, senators from both parties voted to protect the hard-earned economic progress we have made and prevent a first –ever default by the United States,” Biden said in a statement.
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted Wednesday night, with wide support from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, to allow the government to continue to borrow more money over the next year-and-a-half to meet its financial obligations, exceeding the current $31.4 trillion debt limit.
The legislation does not set a new monetary cap, but the borrowing authority would extend to Jan. 2, 2025, two months past next year’s presidential election.
In addition, the legislation calls for maintaining most federal spending at the current level in the fiscal year starting in October, with a 1% increase in the following 12 months.
“The responsible thing for America is to pass it,” one Senate leader, Democrat Dick Durbin, had told reporters.
Both Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, supported suspension of the debt limit and called for swift passage of the legislation.
Schumer told the Senate, “Time is a luxury the Senate does not have if we want to prevent default. There is no good reason — none — to bring this process down to the wire. … I hope we see nothing even approaching brinksmanship. The country cannot afford that now.”
The House approved the legislation on a 314-117 vote despite objections by far-right Republican lawmakers who said it did not go far enough to cut spending and from Democratic progressives who said it trimmed too much.
Seventy-one lawmakers from the majority Republican party in the House voted against the bill, as did 46 Democrats.
In a statement following Wednesday’s vote, Biden celebrated the agreement as a “bipartisan compromise.”
“It protects key priorities and accomplishments from the past two years, including historic investments that are creating good jobs across the country,” Biden said. “And, it honors my commitment to safeguard Americans’ health care and protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid [pensions and health care insurance for older Americans and welfare payments for impoverished people]. It protects critical programs that millions of hardworking families, students, and veterans count on.”
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who negotiated the deal with Biden, told reporters that getting the bill passed “wasn’t an easy fight.” He emphasized the budget savings and criticized Democrats who wanted to separate the debate about future government spending from the need to suspend the debt limit so current financial obligations could be met.
“We put the citizens of America first and we didn’t do it by taking the easy way,” McCarthy said. “We didn’t do it by the ways that people did in the past by just lifting [the debt ceiling]. We decided you had to spend less and we achieved that goal.”
McCarthy said he intends to follow Wednesday’s action with more efforts to cut federal spending.
The measure does not raise taxes, nor will it stop the national debt total from continuing to increase, perhaps by another $3 trillion or more over the next year-and-a-half until the next expiration of the debt limit.
Other pieces of the legislation include a reduction in the number of new agents hired by the country’s tax collection agency, a requirement that states return $30 billion in unspent coronavirus pandemic assistance to the federal government and extending from 50 to 54 the upper age bracket for those required to work in order to receive food aid.
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Justice Department prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of former President Donald Trump from a meeting held after he left office in which he talks about holding on to a classified Pentagon document related to a potential attack on Iran, according to media reports.
CNN, which first reported on the tape, said Trump suggested on the recording that he wanted to share information from the document with others but that he knew there were limitations about his ability to declassify records after he left office.
The comments on the recording, made in July 2021 at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, would seem to undercut the former president’s repeated claims that he declassified the documents he took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, after leaving office. The recording could also be key for prosecutors looking to prove Trump knew his ability to possess classified documents was limited.
A Trump spokesman said in a statement that the investigation was “meritless” and amounted to “continued interference in the presidential election.”
The recording has been provided to special counsel Jack Smith, whose team of prosecutors has spent months investigating the potential mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and whether Trump or anyone else sought to criminally obstruct the probe. The investigation shows signs of being in its final stages, with prosecutors having interviewed a broad cross-section of witnesses before the grand jury.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment. No one has been criminally charged.
The criminal investigation began last year after the National Archives and Records Administration alerted the FBI to the presence of classified documents in 15 boxes of records sent back, belatedly, from Mar-a-Lago by Trump and his representatives.
Investigators initially issued a subpoena for the remaining classified records, but after they received only about three dozen during a June 2022 visit to Mar-a-Lago, returned with a search warrant two months later and recovered about 100 more documents marked as classified.
Smith, the special counsel, is also investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election — the subject of a similar, ongoing inquiry by prosecutors in Atlanta. New York prosecutors charged Trump earlier this year with falsifying business records.
According to the CNN report, the recording was made during a gathering at Bedminster with aides to Trump and two people who were working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
It said Meadows’ autobiography includes a description of what appears to be the same meeting. A lawyer for Meadows declined to comment Wednesday when reached by The Associated Press.
CNN said witnesses including General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been questioned about the episode. A spokesman for Milley declined to comment on reports that he had been interviewed.
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Meta on Wednesday threatened to block all news articles on Facebook and Instagram in California if state lawmakers move forward with a bill that would tax the tech company for news content.
The California Journalism Preservation Act would tax the advertising profits that platforms like Meta and Google make from distributing news articles. About 70% of the money collected would then go to support newsrooms around the state.
Meta has warned it will pull news links from Facebook and Instagram entirely if the bill is passed.
“If the Journalism Preservation Act passes, we will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram, rather than pay into a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement on Wednesday.
Katie Harbath, chief executive at the tech policy firm Anchor Change and a former director of public policy at Facebook, said this latest threat from Meta is “following a pattern.”
Meta previously pulled news from Facebook in 2021 in response to an Australian law that forced the platform to pay for news content. Meta reversed the ban a few days later once the government agreed to change elements of the law.
Tech giants are also threatening to pull news content in Canada if a similar measure is enacted there.
“This all feels like it’s sort of the dance that the platforms and regulators and the news organizations go through when these types of bills pop up,” Harbath added.
Media freedom groups see these sorts of threats as a danger to press freedom.
“Meta’s blackmail threats when confronted with the possibility of having to compensate news organizations for using their content have become all too common,” said Vincent Berthier, the head of the tech desk at Reporters Without Borders.
“Being one of the leading platforms means having the responsibility to defend everyone’s right to access information, not having the power to cut off people’s access to journalism if legislators don’t bend to its will,” he told VOA in a statement Thursday.
“Meta should stop trying to blackmail elected leaders and instead focus on showing that the company is compatible with democratic principles,” Berthier added.
Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, previously condemned Meta’s threat to block news content in Canada, saying in a March statement that the ultimatum “directly threatens the survival of Canadian media and, at the same time, access to news and information, one of the pillars of democracy.”
“It is unacceptable to threaten journalism with banishment,” Berthier said in the statement. “Meta should seek to show that it is able to play a positive role in the fight against disinformation and for access to pluralistic information, rather than trying to influence public policies that might jeopardize its economic interests.”
In a statement Wednesday, the California Broadcasters Association, California News Publishers Association and News/Media Alliance criticized Meta’s latest ultimatum.
“Meta’s threat to take down news is undemocratic and unbecoming,” the statement said. “We have seen this in their playbook before and they have been publicly admonished in other countries for this behavior.”
The California bill is an attempt to support a news industry that has been floundering for years. Between 2008 and 2020, about 30,000 journalism jobs disappeared, according to the Pew Research Center, marking a 26% drop in newsroom employment.
“As news consumption has moved online, community news outlets have been downsized and closing at an alarming rate,” the California bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, said at a hearing on the bill in May.
“Every day, journalism plays an essential role in California and in local communities, and the ability of local news organizations to continue to provide the public with critical information about their communities and enabling publishers to receive fair market value for their content that is used by others will preserve and ensure the sustainability of local and diverse news outlets,” the bill says.
The Australian law generated nearly $150 million for news organizations, Columbia University’s Bill Grueskin found.
But Harbath said she’s skeptical that the California bill will be enough to help the news industry.
“I don’t know that these bills are going to necessarily achieve what people think they’re going to achieve,” she said. “I just don’t know if they’re really going to get as much money as they actually need by doing this.”
It’s important “to think creatively going forward about what these business models should look like,” Harbath added.
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The US Border Patrol has recorded more than 8,000 migrant deaths along the US-Mexico border since 1998. VOA immigration reporter Aline Barros visited a South Texas county with a high number of migrant deaths. Camera: Henry Hernandez, Hai Lun, Victor Hugo Castillo, Ning Lu
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The effort to avoid a U.S. default shifts to the Senate after the House of Representatives approved a measure late Wednesday to suspend the country’s borrowing limit and cap some federal spending.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said they hope to get the bill approved in the Senate in the coming days and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature.
The U.S. Treasury Department has warned it will run out of money to pay the nation’s bills as early as Monday if the debt limit is not raised.
The measure passed in the House by a vote of 314-117 despite objections by Republicans who said it did not go far enough in cutting spending and by Democrats who said it cut too much.
Seventy-one lawmakers from the majority Republican party voted against the bill, as did 46 Democrats.
In a statement following Wednesday’s vote, Biden celebrated the agreement as a “bipartisan compromise.”
“It protects key priorities and accomplishments from the past two years, including historic investments that are creating good jobs across the country. And, it honors my commitment to safeguard Americans’ health care and protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It protects critical programs that millions of hardworking families, students, and veterans count on.”
McCarthy told reporters that getting the bill passed “wasn’t an easy fight.” He emphasized the budget savings and criticized Democrats who want to separate the debate about spending from the task of suspending the debt limit.
“We put the citizens of America first and we didn’t do it by taking the easy way,” McCarthy said. “We didn’t do it by the ways that people did in the past by just lifting it, we decided you had to spend less and we achieved that goal.”
McCarthy said he intends to follow Wednesday’s action with more efforts to cut federal spending.
The bill now heading to the Senate includes waiving the existing borrowing limit until January 2025 and a two-year budget deal that keeps federal spending flat in 2024 and increases it by 1% in 2025. The measure does not raise taxes, nor will it stop the national debt total from continuing to increase, perhaps by another $3 trillion or more over the next year and a half.
Other pieces of the legislation include a reduction in the number of new agents hired by the country’s tax collection agency, a requirement that states return $30 billion in unspent coronavirus pandemic assistance to the federal government and extending from 50 to 54 the upper age bracket for those required to work in order to receive food aid.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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