President Joe Biden on Saturday signed the debt ceiling bill, a capstone to months of negotiations that pushed the U.S. to the brink of default.
Biden signed H.R. 3746, the "Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023," two days before Monday’s default deadline, on which the U.S. would run out of cash to pay its bills, according to a White House release.
In the release, Biden thanked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “for their partnership."
In his first formal Oval Office address Friday evening, Biden declared a “crisis averted.”
A federal judge ruled that a first-in-the-nation Tennessee law strictly limiting drag shows in public or in places where children could be present is unconstitutional.
In his late Friday decision, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker wrote that the law was “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad,” and infringed upon the First Amendment right of drag performers.
The ruling comes as LGBTQ+ rights, particularly trans rights, have become a major conservative battleground and talking point in the leadup to the 2024 election. At least 26 bills have been introduced nationwide this year aiming to limit drag performances.
The Tennessee General Assembly passed a law in March criminalizing “adult cabaret entertainment” taking place in public or in the presence of minors. Friends of George’s, an LGBTQ+ theater group based in Memphis, sued over the law, claiming that it violated First Amendment rights.
Parker, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, at the time agreed that the law was “vague and “overly-broad,” and temporarily blocked the law.
“The AEA can criminalize — or at minimum chill — the expressive conduct of those who wish to impersonate a gender that is different from the one with which they were born in Shelby County,” Parker wrote in his 70-page ruling. “Such speech is protected by the First Amendment.”
The decision also stated that laws infringing on the First Amendment right to freedom of speech must be “narrow and well-defined,” but the AEA is “neither,” the judge wrote.
Spectators are salivating at the opportunity for former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to savage each other at the Republican National Committee's first sanctioned 2024 debate in August. Others are hoping former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will make himself into a human grenade on stage as he did with Sen. Marco Rubio in 2016.
But what if these high-profile matchups don't happen?
The RNC unveiled its qualifying criteria for the Aug. 23 debate on Friday. While it’s too early to know exactly which candidates may or may not make the stage, the various party-loyalty requirements and polling and fundraising thresholds raise plenty of questions about a number of prominent candidates.
The field is already large and poised to grow next week, if, as expected, Christie, Mike Pence and Doug Burgum each jump in. Those potential entries would bring the number of major candidates who have held federal or statewide office to eight.
And with a handful of other Republicans who've never been elected spending seven figures on self-funded TV ads, the number of credible candidates is quickly approaching double digits.
The bigger the field, the greater the chance the party has a number of candidates too large to fit on one stage together. The RNC said in its announcement that it could add a second debate the night after, if needed, to accommodate more candidates, though it didn’t specify what kinds of numbers would require splitting the field.
But the RNC's requirements are also stricter than they've been in the past, making it equally possible just a few candidates make the stage. Candidates who have long, impressive political resumes but are struggling to gain any traction in the polls may be left out in the cold.
Perhaps the biggest question is around Trump's participation. The RNC requires that all participants pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee, something that could cause Trump, who bailed on televised debates in both 2016 and 2020, to sit it out entirely.
The debates stand alone when it comes to penetration: 24 million people watched the first debate in 2015, which also aired on Fox News Channel, a staggering number for cable television. A larger field of candidates could benefit the frontrunner, Trump, who commands a loyal following after eight years dominating GOP politics.
The polls that will count for qualification are still at least a month away from even entering the field, but that doesn’t mean it’s too soon to wonder who’s likely to make the cut — and who might be on the outside looking in when Republicans gather in Milwaukee later this summer.
Donald Trump: The former president will obviously have no problems meeting the polling (1 percent in three national polls or two national polls plus one state poll) or fundraising (40,000 individual donors) thresholds. But can Trump stomach the pledge to support the party’s nominee and promise not to participate in any unsanctioned debates?
Candidates have until Aug. 21 — two days before the first debate — to deliver those signed pledges. A protracted “Will he or won’t he?” guessing game up right up until the deadline would be in keeping with Trumpian precedent.
Ron DeSantis: Even though he has the second-highest name ID in current polls, the debates could offer DeSantis his first chance to personally introduce himself to a national GOP primary electorate — and draw contrasts with Trump. That’s if they’re on the same stage, though.
The RNC did not respond to questions on Friday about how — if a second debate stage is needed — they would group the candidates. There are at least two options: keep the highest-polling candidates together, as Republicans did in 2015, or split them up randomly. That’s how Democrats approached their large field in 2019, which led to some oddities, like now-President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) not appearing on the same stage until the third debate.
Nikki Haley: The former South Carolina governor isn’t polling in double-digits like Trump or DeSantis, but she should have no trouble with the polling threshold, having pulled 1 percent or greater in every one of the 50 national polls conducted this year. A Haley spokesperson said she reached the fundraising mark earlier this year.
Tim Scott: Haley’s fellow South Carolinian isn’t polling quite as high — at least before his campaign launch last month — but he should be fine. He hit at least 1 percent in the last five national polls collected by RealClearPolitics and nine of the last 10.
Scott has also built a strong fundraising base during his Senate tenure.
Vivek Ramaswamy: Ramaswamy has hit at least 1 percent in the last eight polls listed by RealClearPolitics (and 17 of the last 18). Despite the fact he’s self-funding much of his campaign, Ramaswamy has said he’s reached the donor threshold — an effort bolstered by solicitations for $1 donations seeking to build his list and check this qualification box, even if it has little impact on his coffers.
Mike Pence: Pence will have the polling: He’s one of only four candidates to hit 1 percent in every national poll this year (along with Trump, DeSantis and Haley).
But the former vice president’s late entry — he’s planning to launch his campaign next week — could complicate efforts to reach the donor threshold before Aug. 21, especially without real access to the party’s more conservative small-donor base. Pence has also demurred when asked in the past if he’d support Trump as the nominee again, a question he’d effectively have to answer by signing a loyalty pledge.
Chris Christie: If he runs, the former New Jersey governor could meet the polling threshold. He was at 1 percent or greater in three of the nine May polls in the RealClearPolitics average — a paltry performance, to be sure, but good enough if there are enough polls during the qualifying period.
The RNC’s polling standards are strict, especially around sample size, and many of the polls in the RealClearPolitics database wouldn’t meet them. Friday’s press release specified that polls must survey at least 800 likely Republican primary voters, which is both a large number and a specific screen.
Most national pollsters conduct surveys of around 1,000 voters, a sample size too small to contain 800 Republicans without an oversample. And some pollsters are hesitant to classify anyone as a “likely voter” so far before an election.
Even with that, donors would be the biggest hurdle for Christie to clear. Like Pence, he has a shorter runway than candidates who are already running and could struggle with grassroots donors more aligned with Trump.
Larry Elder: Elder didn’t come close to ousting Gavin Newsom in the 2021 California recall election, but he did manage to build a decent donor list during the campaign. An Elder spokesperson described the campaign as “well on our way” to meeting the donor threshold by the deadline.
As for the polling, he has a shot. Elder reached 1 percent in three polls in May; he’d just need to accomplish that same feat from July 1-Aug. 21.
Chris Sununu: Sununu might not end up running at all, but the polling bar could be doable if he did. He’s been at 1 percent in five of the last seven national polls, and he’d easily clear that in surveys from New Hampshire, the state where he was first elected governor in 2016.
Again, the donor mark would be a tougher one to clear.
Asa Hutchinson: Hutchinson has been in the race for months, which gives him a leg up over some of the other candidates vying for the Trump-critical lane, like Pence and Christie. In a statement, Hutchinson said he intends to qualify but criticized the donor threshold, saying it “will keep some candidates from being on the debate stage and benefits candidates who generate online donations through extreme rhetoric and scare tactics
Hutchinson has reached 1 percent in seven of the past 11 national polls in the RealClearPolitics database, suggesting that wouldn’t necessarily be out of reach for him once the polls start to count next month.
Doug Burgum: The North Dakota governor is poised to join the race next week, and perhaps he’ll start to register in the national polls once pollsters begin including him in their list of candidates.
Burgum, a former software executive who sold his company to Microsoft, is going to self-fund, but he said he’ll also seek outside donations. He’ll need 40,000 donors in fewer than 11 weeks — roughly equal to 5 percent of his state's population.
Perry Johnson: Johnson calls himself a “quality guru” in his self-funded TV ads. He’s spent real money in Iowa and New Hampshire — $1.8 million through next Friday, according to AdImpact — and could register in polls there.
But the donor thresholds can exclude self-funders even if they’re polling well. Just ask Mike Bloomberg four years ago.
Ryan Binkley: The Dallas-area businessman and pastor is advertising in Iowa, though the last independent poll there didn’t even include his name. A Binkley campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about his donor count.
Mike Rogers and Will Hurd: The former congressmen from Michigan and Texas say they’ll make a decision soon on running, but the debate thresholds could preclude close those doors before they open.
NEW YORK — Lawyers for Donald Trump asked a Manhattan judge to recuse himself from presiding over the criminal case against the former president, arguing in a court filing that the judge is biased and has a conflict of interest.
In papers dated May 31 and filed publicly Friday, Trump’s lawyers said the judge, Juan Merchan, has an “actual or perceived conflict of interest” because his daughter works for a digital agency, Authentic, whose clients include a number of Democratic officials.
The lawyers also said Merchan displayed a “preconceived bias” by urging Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, to cooperate against Trump in an earlier case. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax fraud last year after he was indicted alongside the Trump Organization. The company was found guilty at a trial overseen by Merchan.
Susan Necheles, a lawyer who represented the company at trial and is now on Trump’s defense team for his criminal case, said in a court filing that Weisselberg’s lawyer told her that Merchan had encouraged Weisselberg to cooperate with prosecutors.
Trump’s lawyers also asked that Merchan publicly explain political contributions in his name. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Merchan made three political contributions through ActBlue, according to Federal Election Commission records. He gave $15 to President Joe Biden’s campaign, $10 to the Progressive Turnout Project and $10 to Stop Republicans, records show.
“This case before this Court is historic and it is important that the People of the State of New York and this nation have confidence that the jurist who presides over it is impartial. Most respectfully, the foregoing facts compel the conclusion that Your Honor is not and thus should recuse,” Trump lawyers Necheles and Todd Blanche wrote in the filing.
A trial in the case is scheduled for next March.
A court representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said prosecutors would respond in court papers.
Trump pleaded not guilty in April to 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged scheme during the 2016 presidential campaign to pay hush money to cover up allegations of extramarital affairs. The indictment, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, made Trump the first former president ever to face criminal charges.
Trump’s lawyers also asked Merchan to recuse himself in the case against the company. Merchan declined to do so.
Fitch Ratings on Friday warned that it could still downgrade the U.S.’s credit rating even after Congress passed a bill that averts an unprecedented default on government debt.
While the deal to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending are “positive considerations,” Fitch said “repeated political standoffs" over the federal government's borrowing limit "lowers confidence in governance on fiscal and debt matters.”
Fitch issued its negative credit watch for U.S. debt last week. The company said it intends to "resolve" its negative watch by the end of September.
President Joe Biden is expected to sign the legislation later today.
Treasury securities are the lifeblood of financial markets and a benchmark for how everything from municipal debt to credit card rates are priced. A downgrade, which would mark only the second time a ratings service has knocked U.S. bonds from top-tier status, could drive up borrowing costs for consumers, businesses and governments — tightening credit conditions at a time when the economy is already at risk of recession.
That would make for tough political headwinds for Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other 2024 incumbents who waited until the U.S. was days away from default before agreeing to a deal. A similar dynamic influenced S&P’s decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating in 2011 even after President Barack Obama and Republican leaders averted a debt-limit disaster.
So far, the economy has shown surprising resilience despite stubbornly high inflation and a rapid series of interest rate hikes shepherded by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
But U.S. policymakers have risked damaging the economy’s otherwise strong fundamentals thanks to “a steady deterioration in governance over the last 15 years,” according to Fitch’s statement.
“Increased political polarization and partisanship as witnessed by the contested 2020 election, repeated brinkmanship over the debt limit and failure to tackle fiscal challenges from growing mandatory spending has led to rising fiscal deficits and debt burden,” the ratings service said.
