The governor stepped forward from the line of greeters to be the first to shake the president’s hand. After speaking for a few seconds, the president patted Newsom on the chest before the two turned to greet others. 

Newsom’s front-and-center approach during Biden’s trip is reflective of a rising media profile in recent weeks that has renewed speculation of presidential aspirations. 

The president, 80, and governor, 55, spent the afternoon together, first going from the airport to a nature center where they walked along a bridge over the San Francisco Bay ahead of an event. Then, Newsom, standing at a podium with a presidential seal on it, praised Biden, saying that no president has delivered more on combating climate change. 

When questions were swirling over whether Biden would run for reelection given concerns with his age and low approval rating, Newsom was viewed as a possible presidential contender. Some even wondered if the governor would take the unprecedented and politically-challenging step to primary the president.

But on the way to the Golden State, where Newsom has been governor since 2019, the White House painted their relationship as nothing but positive. 

“This is a governor that has supported the president's agenda, his economic policies,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One on Monday before touching down in California. “That’s what you're going to see from this president, and that’s what you're going to see from their relationship — continuing working — good working relationship.”

Neither Newsom nor the White House revealed until days out from the visit that the governor would be joining Biden at the event, let alone greeting him at the airport. 

Newsom has long been in the national spotlight — beyond the sunny West Coast — but recently even more so, through his decisions to go after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a GOP presidential hopeful, over migrants from the Sunshine State being flown to California. He also made the notable decision to sit down for a one-on-one with Fox News host Sean Hannity — a network and host not always friendly to Democrats.

Along the beautiful backdrop of the San Francisco Bay in Palo Alto on Monday, Newsom touted the president’s work with the Inflation Reduction Act to combat climate change. The two sat next to each other, both in suits and no ties and wearing baseball hats, listening to an environmental student introduce the president.

Newsom stood up to clap when the president took to the podium, where Biden then showcased some of his signature bashing of certain Republicans. 

“Unfortunately, some of our MAGA Republicans friends in Congress are trying to undo the progress we’ve made,” the president said about his work on climate. 

“We didn’t let that happen,” Biden added.

The president then reiterated a familiar line that this “isn’t your fathers’ Republican party,” while giving a campaign plea to the couple dozen of people in attendance at the nature center.

“With your help, we’re going to stop them again,” Biden said.

The Biden-Newsom dynamic was on display again as the president greeted some of the event attendees, shaking hands and taking selfies while the governor looked on. Biden was side-by-side with Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), who introduced the president to some guests, and Newsom stayed just behind them, smiling along.

Newsom has been in California politics since 2003 and never served in Congress, while Eshoo has been in the House since 2013 and is a close ally to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif). 

The California stop showcased how the White House and Biden campaign appear to be using Newsom as an asset in 2024, an effort which could rev up as the governor becomes even more outspoken on immigration and critical of some of his Republican gubernatorial counterparts.

Newsom is expected to join Biden for a campaign fundraising event while the president is in the San Francisco area, where the two aim to use their star quality to rake in cash in the Bay Area ahead of Biden’s first 2024 campaign finance report, which drops in July.

The report will be the first time Biden will showcase just where he’s garnering support for his reelection bid to the White House. Other fundraising stops ahead of the report include other wealthy, safe-Democratic areas, including New York and Chicago.

The proliferation of AI — a technology that can create text, image and video — raises concerns about the spread of misinformation and how voters will react to artificially generated content in the politically polarized environment.

Already, the presidential campaigns for former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) have produced high-profile videos with AI.

Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, said the proliferation of the AI systems available to the public, awareness of how simple it is to use them and the “erosion of the sense that creating things like deepfakes is something that good, honest people would never do” will make 2024 a “significant turning point” for how AI is used in campaigns.

“I think now, increasingly, there's an attitude that, ‘Well, it’s just the way it goes, you can't tell what’s true anymore,’” Barrett said.

The use of AI-generated campaign videos is already becoming more normalized in the Republican primary.

After DeSantis announced his campaign during a Twitter Spaces conversation with company CEO Elon Musk, Trump posted a deepfake video — which is a digital representation made from AI that fabricates realistic-looking images and sounds — parodying the announcement on Truth Social. Donald Trump Jr. posted a deepfake video of DeSantis edited into a scene from the television show "The Office," and the former president has shared AI images of himself.

Last week, DeSantis’s campaign released an ad that used seemingly AI-produced images of Trump embracing Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  

“If you proposed that 10 years ago, I think people would have said, ‘That's crazy, that will just backfire,’” Barrett said. “But today, it just happens as if it's normal.”

Critics noted that DeSantis’s use of the generated photo of Trump and Fauci was deceptive because the video does not disclose the use of AI technology.

“Using AI to create an ominous background or strange pictures, that’s not categorically different than what advertising has long been,” said Robert Weissman, president of the progressive consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen. “It doesn’t involve any deception of voters.”

“[The DeSantis ad] is fundamentally deceptive,” he said. “That’s the big worry that voters will be tricked into believing things are true that are not.”

Someone familiar with DeSantis’s operation noted that the governor’s presidential campaign was not the only campaign using AI in videos.

“This was not an ad, it was a social media post,” the person familiar with the operation said. “If the Trump team is upset about this, I'd ask them why they have been continuously posting fake images and false talking points to smear the governor.”

While proponents of AI acknowledge the risks of the technology, they argue it will eventually play a consequential role in campaigning.

“I believe there's going to be new tools that streamline content creation and deployment, and likely tools that help with data-intensive tasks like understanding voter sentiment,” said Mike Nellis, founder and CEO of the progressive agency Authentic.

Nellis has teamed up with Higher Ground Labs to establish Quiller.ai, which is an AI tool that has the ability to write and send campaign fundraising emails.

“At the end of the day, Quiller is going to help us write better content faster,” Nellis told The Hill.  “What happens on a lot of campaigns is they hire young people, teach them to write fundraising emails, and then ask them to write hundreds more, and it's not sustainable. Tools like Quiller get us to a better place and it improves the efficiency of our campaigns.”

As generative AI text and video become more common — and increasingly difficult to discern as the generated content appears more plausible — there’s also a concern that voters will become more skeptical about all content AI generates.

Sarah Kreps, director of the Cornell Tech Policy Institute, said people may start to either “assume that nothing is true” or “just believe their partisan cues.”

“Neither one of those is really helpful for democracy. If you don't believe anything, this whole pillar of trust we really on for democracy is eroded,” Kreps said.

ChatGPT, which is OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot, burst onto the scene with an exponential rise in use since its November launch, along with rival products like Google’s Bard chatbot and image and video-based tools. These products have the administration and Congress scrambling to consider how to address the industry while staying competitive on a global scale.

But as Congress mulls regulation, between scheduled Senate briefings and a series of hearings, the industry has been largely left to create the rules of the road. On the campaign front, the rise of AI-generated content is magnifying the already prevalent concerns of election misinformation spreading on social media.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, released a blog post in January 2020 stating it would remove “misleading manipulated media” that meets certain criteria, including content that is the “product of artificial intelligence or machine learning” that “replaces or superimposes content onto a video, making it appear to be authentic.”

Ultimately, though, Barrett said the burden of deciphering what is AI-generated or not will fall on voters.

“This kind of stuff will be disseminated, even if it is restricted in some way; it’ll probably be out in the world for a while before it is restricted or labeled, and people have to be wary,” he said.

Others point out that it’s still too difficult to predict how AI will be integrated into campaigns and other organizations.

“I think the real story is that new technologies should integrate into business at a deliberate and careful pace, and that the inappropriate/almost immoral uses are the ones that are going to get all the attention in the first inning, but it’s a long game and most of the productive useful integrations will evolve more slowly and hardly even be noticed,” said Nick Everhart, a Republican political consultant in Ohio and president of Content Creative Media.

Weissman noted that Public Citizen has asked the Federal Election Commission to issue a rule to the extent of its authority to prohibit the use of deceptive deepfakes.

“We think that the agency has authority as it regards candidates but not political committees or others,” Weissman said. “That would be good, but it’s not enough.”

However, it remains unclear how quickly campaigns will adopt AI technology this cycle.

 “A lot of people are saying this is going to be the AI election,” Nellis said. “I’m not entirely sure that’s true. The smart and innovative campaigns will embrace AI, but a lot of campaigns are often slow to adopt new and emerging technology. I think 2026 will be the real AI election.”

Earlier this month, the Republican National Committee (RNC) rolled out its “Bank Your Vote” campaign to encourage GOP voters to get comfortable with the practice ahead of 2024. And former President Trump, the front-runner in the GOP primary who for years has cast doubt on early voting and mail ballots, has over the past few months begun to urge voters to embrace those methods after a disappointing midterm election.

“We don’t want to wait till the fourth quarter to start scoring touchdowns,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said during a press call announcing the mail voting campaign earlier this month.

“We’re going to lead the charge on getting the Republican ecosystem to chase ballots and build an advantage before Election Day.”

Some divisions within the party are apparent as GOP voters remain skeptical of mail voting after Trump and his closest allies heaped doubt on the process in 2020. Only over the past few months, after Republicans failed to take back the Senate and only managed to flip the House by a slim margin, have the staunchest critics in the party somewhat changed their tune.

Trump’s campaign notably pivoted on the issue earlier this year, when it began urging Republicans to embrace so-called ballot harvesting, which is the process of allowing third parties to collect and submit absentee and mail ballots.

“Either we ballot harvest in the states where it’s legal, or you can say goodbye to our country, because the Democrats would win EVERY election,” his campaign wrote in a fundraising email in February.

The former president later implored Republican voters to rethink mail-in ballots and early voting during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March.

“Republicans must compete using every lawful means to win,” Trump said. “That means swamping the left with mail-in votes, early votes and Election Day votes. We have to do it.”

It’s not just Trump, either. Some of his closest allies have begun to shift on voting amid signs their opposition to early mail voting could pose a threat to the party’s chances next year. Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake last month announced a ballot-chasing initiative aimed at registering new voters and keeping track of Republican and independent voters, including those on early voting lists. During her address, Lake appeared to recognize the need for Republicans to rethink their approach to collecting ballots.

“We’ve been playing checkers. They’ve been playing chess,” Lake said at the event announcing the operation. “We’re going to show up to a knife fight with a gun.”

Trump and Lake were some of the loudest vocal opponents of voting by mail, both claiming without evidence that mail-in ballots contributed to fraud in the 2020 and 2022 elections. Their abrupt shift has left some wondering whether voters will follow suit, though McDaniel says the party is more unified on the issue than ever.

“We’ve always had paid voter contact or volunteers trying to bank as many votes as possible,” McDaniel said. “But that certainly is a challenge if you have people in your ecosystem saying don’t vote early or don’t vote by mail and those cross messages do have an impact.”

“I don’t think you’re seeing that heading into 2024. I think you’re seeing all of us singing from the same songbook,” she said.

Trump’s top rival in the Republican presidential primary, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, told one voter in Iowa last month that he embraces ballot harvesting, noting the difference in the practices between Florida and other states.

“We’re gonna do ballot harvesting. I’m doing it, yes,” DeSantis said.

“Each state is different,” he continued. “In Nevada, they sent everyone a ballot, which is bad but we’re going to do ballot harvesting. I’m not going fight with one hand tied behind my back.”

Last year, DeSantis signed legislation that established an Office of Election Crimes and Security under Florida’s Department of State that would conduct investigations and look into voter fraud allegations. Additionally, the law includes penalties for ballot harvesting.

“They’ve put in such good protections that there’s a lot of confidence in voting in Florida where you may lack that in other states,” said Christian Ziegler, chairman of the Florida GOP.

McDaniel noted on the press call that the RNC had also pushed for more protection, through the recruitment of 80,000 poll watchers and poll workers, as well as the filing of 100 election integrity lawsuits in the 2022 cycle.

“I hope that once Republicans do take power in some places, they could conceivably look at actually strengthening the election system by bringing some of those safeguards to the early and mail voting process,” said Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project, a group that pushes for more restrictive voting laws.

Ahead of last year’s midterm elections, DeSantis encouraged voters to cast their ballots early in case they were not able to get to the polls on Election Day.

"If you wait till Election Day, you get a flat tire, you can't take a mulligan," DeSantis told a crowd at a campaign stop in Florida last year. "Whereas if you vote early, you do it, you're in the can. If something happens [while you're on your way], you got another shot at it."

Florida Republicans saw major victories up and down the ballot last cycle, with DeSantis winning reelection by nearly 20 points and Republicans flipping the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County.

“We’re probably the only place that had a red wave last cycle,” Ziegler said. “We’re operating with a lot more confidence than other areas, but with that said, the Democrat Party has embraced vote by mail across the country for various reasons, and we can’t just sit back and wait for Election Day.”

“I think there’s a strong desire from my conversations with Republicans in other states of whatever it takes to win," he said. “You’ve seen President Trump, you’ve seen Gov. DeSantis come out and say look we need to change the election laws but until we do, we need to kick the Democrats’ ass at their own game.”

The order sides with the Justice Department in allowing Trump to see evidence collected in the case — including classified documents — but only in the presence of his attorneys.

It also blocks him from disseminating any information from the case with reporters or on social media, mirroring a similar order agreed to in the hush money case being prosecuted by authorities in New York.

“Defendants shall only have access to Discovery Materials under the direct supervision of Defense Counsel or a member of Defense Counsel’s staff. Defendants shall not retain copies of Discovery Material,” Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, wrote in the order.

The Justice Department in its Friday request said that restrictions were required, as its investigation could yield additional arrests.

“The materials also include information pertaining to ongoing investigations, the disclosure of which could compromise those investigations and identify uncharged individuals,” the department wrote.

Eleven conservatives shut down all floor action for almost a week earlier in the month to protest Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) handling of the debt ceiling talks. That forced the Speaker to host a string of closed-door meetings last week with hard-liners, who want concrete assurances he’ll demand deeper spending cuts in the coming fight over government funding.

While those detractors allowed floor votes to resume during the course of those talks, there was little sign of progress by week’s end, when the hard-liners left Washington grumbling about McCarthy’s strategy for 2024 spending and warning that they’re ready to shut down the floor once again if the Speaker doesn’t meet their ill-defined demands. 

“I haven't been overly pleased or participatory ... but I'll just say that I don't think we're moving in the right direction as far as solving this massive growth in national debt,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), the former head of the far-right Freedom Caucus, of the McCarthy talks. 

“My biggest concern is, what's the coalition that the Speaker has built?” he continued. “We want to know who his coalition partners are. Is it the Democrats, or is it going to be the conservative voices and the other Republicans in the conference?”

Asked whether the conservatives would resort to their successful strategy of blocking floor action, Biggs didn’t pause. 

“Oh, I think it's always on the table,” he said. “I'm an 'all tools' guy.”  

“That is a distinct possibility,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) echoed when asked whether the floor could shut down this week.

Those threats highlight the dilemma facing McCarthy and GOP leaders as they attempt the delicate balancing act of cutting deals with Biden and the Democrats — for the sake of enacting must-pass bills like raising the debt ceiling and funding the government — without infuriating the conservative firebrands who view deficits as a greater threat than a default or a shutdown.

“I'm not worried about a shutdown,” Rep. Ralph Norman (S.C.) said. “The country's going to be permanently shut down if we don't get our spending under control. And I'm tired of hearing, 'We'll do it tomorrow.'”

After shutting down the House floor two weeks ago, the conservative rebels backed off of their revolt last Monday, announcing they would let legislative business resume — for the time being. Emerging from a closed-door meeting with McCarthy, Gaetz — one of the 11 GOP defectors — said the group would work toward renegotiating the “power-sharing agreement” conservatives struck with McCarthy during January’s drawn-out Speaker race — a characterization McCarthy has disputed. 

McCarthy has tapped a familiar top deputy, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), to help in the effort to mitigate the conservatives’ concerns, according to those familiar with the talks. Graves took a lead in the negotiations with the White House over the debt ceiling bill, and he appears to be doing the same in the current talks. 

“The Speaker introduces Garret and then five minutes later walks out,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), another hard-liner who helped gum up the floor earlier in the month. 

After days of talks last week, however, some conservatives said there were no breakthroughs to report. 

“Haven't had anything new since Monday,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) said as he was leaving Washington late last week. “I guess we'll see what next week brings to us.” 

Asked what requests he’s made of leadership, Rosendale was vague. 

“I never asked for anything but good government,” he told a reporter. “That's what you need to put in there." 

But if there’s no progress by the time the House is set to vote on another rule — which could happen as soon as Wednesday — Gaetz last week suggested conservatives might block floor activity once again.

“There’ll be more votes next week and more rules, and if there’s not a renegotiated power-sharing agreement, then perhaps we’ll be back here next week,” he told reporters last Monday.

Despite the lack of any concrete agreement, some of the rebels said they were satisfied McCarthy would give them a greater voice in the budget talks to come.

“I think he just committed to us that he would forge ahead with a conservative, a fiscally conservative agenda, and he gave us his word that he would work with us and keep us in the loop,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), one of the GOP defectors, told CNN on Thursday night. “And I think that’s the key thing as he should with all different factions with the party.”

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), another one of the Republican rebels, aired an optimistic tone about the direction of talks with McCarthy.

“There have continued to be constructive, healthy conversations on how we're gonna work together this entire conference to cut spending,” Good said Thursday.

Asked whether they were making progress, he responded, “I think so.”

“My hope would be that we’ll see that demonstrated going forward,” he added.

Not all the GOP rabble-rousers, however, were pleased with the progress — or lack thereof — made thus far.

“It’s not going well, and we don’t have future meetings scheduled,” Gaetz said Thursday.

The talks with McCarthy were going poorly, he said, “because they’re all about spending at this stage of the game” — an issue that has been center stage in the leadership-conservative squabble.

The GOP hardliners for months have pushed to cut fiscal 2024 spending down to 2022 levels, which would lead to a reduction of about $130 billion from current spending. But the debt limit deal struck by Biden and McCarthy set 2024 spending well above that figure — essentially frozen at 2023 levels with a 1 percent increase set for 2025 — in a move that infuriated conservatives.

In an apparent attempt to allay that anger, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) — the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee — said her panel would mark up bills below the cap, at 2022 levels. But even that show of good faith was not enough to earn the trust of the GOP hard-liners, who accused leadership of utilizing budgetary “gimmicks,” known as rescissions, to make the cuts appear larger than they are. 

“The American people aren't stupid,” Good said. “The American people need us to cut spending.” 

So when the day became America’s newest federal holiday in 2021, she was thrilled. 

“I was as jubilant as many,” said Johnson, founder and executive director of Galveston’s Nia Cultural Center. “I was very happy that it will be commemorated throughout the country … and I was also curious to see how it would play out in the new arena of being nationally sanctioned.” 

Juneteenth is recognized June 19 to commemorate the last of the enslaved peoples being freed in Galveston by Union forces. Though the city of Galveston has celebrated the holiday since 1866, the push to make the day a federal holiday dates back more than 100 years. 

On June 19, 1865, Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3, which declared, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” 

President Abraham Lincoln had legally freed the enslaved in Texas more than two years previously with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. But the nearly 250,000 enslaved people in Galveston had no idea they had been freed. 

“The information hadn't reached them yet,” said Kabria Baumgartner, associate professor of History and Africana Studies and associate director of Public History at Northeastern University.

But that doesn’t mean the order was necessarily accepted by parts of the Confederacy. Some enslavers continued to keep the information from those they had enslaved, utilizing the forced labor for one more harvest season. 

“There was pushback in other parts of the Confederacy, even though it became pretty clear at that point that the Confederacy had lost the war,” Baumgartner said. 

Eventually, though, the emancipation of enslaved peoples was accepted. 

Early Juneteenth celebrations were primarily held in Texas following General Order No. 3.

“African Americans, even then, referred to it as a freedom celebration,” Baumgartner said. “And then from there, the holiday spread to other parts of the South into Oklahoma, and then California and Wisconsin by the 20th century, and it became a wider celebration.” 

Newspaper articles from these early celebrations recount African Americans celebrating the day with a dinner and discussion and marches through the street. 

Then, in 1872, a group of African American ministers and businessmen in Houston bought 10 acres of land and declared the property Emancipation Park to be used for annual Juneteenth celebrations.

“By the 20th century, it's some of the same forms of celebration: food and music and conversation,” Baumgartner said. “And people are referring to it as Black People's Independence Day.”

Today, Juneteenth is also called Emancipation Day, Freedom Day and Jubilee Day.  

But there’s a second part of General Order No. 3 that often gets overlooked. That part called for “an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.” 

It’s this line, historian Sam Collins told The Hill, that made the Galveston emancipation different from others. 

“Absolute equality is not about everyone having equal results. Absolute equality is about creating a climate or environment or community where every human being has an equal opportunity to become the best version of themselves without hurdles or barriers hindering their growth or development,” said Collins, who serves on the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Ruby Bridges Foundation.

But the way in which this order was delivered was also an important part of the story: When the orders were presented in Galveston, the city became occupied by Black troops, said Collins.

According to the African American Civil War Museum, when African Americans were finally allowed to join the armed forces in July 1862 — nearly a year-and-a-half after the start of the war — United States Colored Troops (USCT) accounted for more than 10 percent of the Union Army and 25 percent of the Union Navy.

These numbers were staggering, considering African Americans made up only 1 percent of the Northern population. 

“While Granger is there and has been celebrated as the hero of the Juneteenth story, he was not alone,” said Collins, co-founder of Galveston’s Nia Cultural Center Juneteenth Legacy Project Headquarters. “Some reports estimate as high as 75 percent [of soldiers] were United States Colored Troops.”

The contributions of these USCT are part of why many considered the fight for Juneteenth’s federal status so important: It would help educate a nation on a day that many were unaware of.

It wasn’t until the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in 2020 that attention around Juneteenth really began to grow, said Collins.

“Juneteenth did not become more important in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, but it became more popular and with that popularity. The petition received increased signatures,” he explained. “There were not many signatures on the petition before the murder of George Floyd, but the consciousness of the country was kind of shaken or awakened.”

That petition was created by activist Opal Lee, who at the time was 94 years old. Lee was born and raised in Texas, and at the age of 12, a white mob torched her family’s home — on Juneteenth.

“It is not lost on me that the summer of 2020 saw the largest support of Juneteenth to be a national holiday because of the death of George Floyd highlighted the systemic racism that still exists because of the residual effects of slavery,” Lee wrote in her petition. “We can't let the swell of support just simply disappear until the summer rolls around again. We have make sure Congress follows through with their commitment to honor the lives of those who came before us.”

Lee, known today as the grandmother of Juneteenth, had her goal achieved in 2021, when President Biden signed legislation marking June 19 as a federal holiday. She was present for the signing. 

“By making Juneteenth a federal holiday, all Americans can feel the power of this day, and learn from our history, and celebrate progress, and grapple with the distance we’ve come but the distance we have to travel,” Biden said. 

“Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments,” he added. “They don’t ignore those moments of the past. They embrace them. Great nations don’t walk away. We come to terms with the mistakes we made. And in remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger.”

When Biden signed the legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday, recognizing “America’s original sin,” he was also surrounded by prominent Black figures including Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), and Reps. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). These leaders, as well as others, had helped lead the push for the federal legislation. 

But they weren’t the first ones to urge the nation to legally recognize the holiday. The effort to make Juneteenth a federal holiday had been in the works since the 1800s.

Back in 1879, Texas State Rep. Robert Evans (R) tried to pass legislation declaring Juneteenth a holiday. It would take 100 years before State Rep. Albert Ely Edwards (D) authored House Bill 1016 to make Juneteenth a paid holiday in Texas. 

Edwards, who died just one year before Biden’s signing, became known as Mr. Juneteenth. 

Meanwhile, Opal Lee worked with another name that often goes unheard: Ronald Myers.

Myers worked for more than 25 years in the push to federally recognize Juneteenth, even establishing the Juneteenth Observance Foundation. He died in 2018.

“We've forgotten the contributions of these individuals that came before us that laid the groundwork and laid the foundation on which we stand today,” Collins said. “This is history that is not taught in the classroom. It's not taught in our mainstream schools. So this is the history that we have to continue to share, to tell the truth of what happened.”

The lawmakers are battling one another for the replacement to the J. Edgar Hoover Building to be in their home state, but are all fighting for a replacement to be included at all in the upcoming government spending package in the face of GOP dissatisfaction with the FBI. A spending deal is needed by Sept. 30 to avert a government shutdown. 

Separately, the Democratic foursome — Maryland Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, and Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner — is fighting an expansion of direct long-distance flights out of DCA as part of the FAA reauthorization bill that also must pass by Sept. 30. 

The push-pull nature of their efforts is putting them in the middle of key battles as the race to craft must-pass legislation heats up. 

“It sort of feels like we always are [in the eye of the storm]. ... It's a challenge,” Kaine told The Hill. “It's just like, 'One more thing.’”

While the FBI fight has been going strong for months, the issue surrounding Reagan National and the impact on other DMV airports cropped up late last week, in the form of a proposed amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill would increase the number of flights out of DCA serving destinations outside of the 1,250-mile perimeter. 

At present, the airport has only 11 flights to cities outside that perimeter. The amendment, which is supported by both Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the panel’s ranking member, would add four flight slots for long-distance cities. A Thursday markup on the bill was scrapped as negotiations continue over an unrelated provision centered on airline pilot qualifications. 

However, the DMV-based senators are going to the mat to stop the amendment, saying they will use every tool available to them to defeat it. They penned an op-ed in The Washington Post on Thursday taking aim at the proposal, arguing that Reagan National is already bursting at the seams and cannot handle more flights without an increase in delays and longer lines. 

“It’s just an issue we’ve got to battle on,” Kaine said, noting that members are discussing a compromise amendment for inclusion in the FAA bill. “Warner and I just want to say, 'Don’t screw around on it. It’s working right now. Please don’t screw around with it.' We don’t like the compromise. … We have every option on the table.”

Those supportive of the amendment argue it should be easier to visit the nation’s capital. 

Left unsaid by supporters is that lawmakers widely prefer traveling out of DCA instead of either Dulles International Airport or Baltimore/Washington International Airport, both of which are better suited to handle long-distance flights but are further from the city.

Meanwhile, the FBI battle has put the group of Democratic senators in a spot they generally don’t find themselves: fighting one another. The push to find a new headquarters for the FBI has been roughly decadelong process that is nearing an end, with the General Services Administration expected to announce a locale in the near future. It is considering a site in Northern Virginia and two in Prince George’s County, Maryland. 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tossed a wrench into the push in recent weeks by expressing support for eliminating funding for the effort over the FBI’s role in the indictment of former President Trump. 

However, Democrats still find it hard to believe that it would be excluded altogether. 

“[Kaine] and I both believe the idea that somehow the whole notion of the FBI building is going to be held hostage is evident that a lot of House members have never visited the FBI headquarters that literally is falling in on itself,” Warner told The Hill. “It’s never a dull time.” 

Virginia seemed to gain an advantage this week, as an FBI document showed that the Bureau prefers the new headquarters be located close to its training academy in Quantico, Va., upsetting those in the Old Line State.

Senators in both delegations acknowledged the moderate high-wire act they are pulling off in the series of talks as they deal with issues that come with representing states that encircle the District. 

“We obviously have very different views on the best home for the FBI,” Van Hollen said, noting that the locations in Prince George’s County would cost taxpayers roughly $1 billion less than those in Virginia.

“In Congress, part of the job is working together as allies on one project where we have mutual interests, and duking it out where you don’t,” Van Hollen added.

Trump was recently indicted on 37 counts of criminal conduct related to his handling of classified documents, including obstruction of a federal investigation and willful retention of national defense information. 

The indictment against him outlines the lengths he allegedly took to retain classified information, despite repeated efforts by the federal government to retrieve the documents. Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges and maintains his innocence. 

Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general toward the end of his presidency, called Trump a “consummate narcissist,” who “constantly engages in reckless conduct.” Barr said Republicans should carefully consider whether he is the best candidate to lead their party and compared Trump to a 9-year-old. 

“He will always put his own interests — and gratifying his own ego — ahead of everything else, including the country's interest. There's no question about it,” Barr said in an interview with Robert Costa on CBS News’s “Face the Nation."

“He’s like a 9-year-old, defiant 9-year-old kid, who's always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it. It's a means of self-assertion and exerting his dominance over other people. And he's a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country's, his personal gratification of his ego. But our country can't be a therapy session for a troubled man like this,” Barr said of Trump. 

In a separate interview Sunday with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Christie, the former New Jersey governor and current Republican presidential primary candidate, dismissed Trump’s attacks on former officials he personally appointed to serve in his Cabinet. Christie compared Trump to a “petulant child” lashing out at those who disagree with him. 

Christie, who helped both of Trump's previous bids at the White House, recalled Trump’s promise in 2016 to hire the best people to work in his Cabinet and that he would know how to manage them well. Christie then listed various officials who left his administration and who subsequently faced a barrage of insults about their intelligence and competence. 

“Donald Trump, if you believe what he said when they left, that means he didn't pick the very best people and doesn't know how to pick personnel. If you believe what — about them what he said at the beginning, the great stuff, then this guy is the worst manager in the history of the American presidency,” Christie said of Trump.

“Either way, Republicans should listen to what he says. He's a petulant child when someone disagrees with him. … If you disagree with Donald Trump, the petulant child comes out, and he calls you names,” Christie added. 

Senate negotiators are expected to unveil funding legislation in the coming days, with plans to begin considering proposals over the next week as the annual appropriations season starts to heat up.

“It will be very difficult,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who is also an appropriator, told The Hill of challenges Congress will face in averting a shutdown this year. “We’ve got to agree to our agreements and stick with it.”

House GOP negotiators dialed up the temperature earlier this week when they announced they would mark up their fiscal 2024 spending plans to levels lower than the budget caps set as part of a deal struck between President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The matter was the subject of intense debate in a House hearing earlier this week, when Republicans defended the strategy as a means to further curb spending and tackle the nation’s deficit, while Democrats accused them of reneging on the agreement.

“Do you think any of us would have made a deal if we thought your [2022] number was the deal? What kind of deal is that? What kind of respect for yourselves is that?” said Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, at the time. 

The White House and House GOP leadership agreed to spending caps for fiscal 2024 as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA). Congress passed the bill earlier this month to raise the debt limit before an early June deadline to prevent a national default, along with several proposals aimed at cutting spending to buy necessary GOP support.

However, McCarthy has faced pressure from hard-line conservatives in the weeks since the bill’s passage, with the right flank flexing its muscles in the lower chamber to push leadership to seek more cuts through the annual appropriations process. 

Some Republican negotiations have expressed confidence that the conference will back the partisan bills now that leaders have affirmed they’ll mark up their legislation to fiscal 2022 levels, but there is uncertainty as to whether the party will stick together through the process. 

Hard-line conservatives are already making threats to thwart their party’s spending bills, raising the risks of a potential government shutdown later this year. Some have also accused leaders of resorting to budgetary “gimmicks” because GOP appropriators have proposed clawing back and repurposing some funding previously allocated for Democratic priorities.

“We need true 2022 levels, and then we ought to be utilizing targeted cuts and rescissions to go beneath that, not pretend 2022 levels plussed up with rescissions,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said.

At the same time, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) has signaled the upper chamber will take a much different path, saying earlier this week, “In the Senate, we’re going to follow the agreement that everybody agreed to as passed and signed into law.”

Several appropriation subcommittee chairs and ranking members said Thursday they weren’t yet made aware of what their allocations would be for their various spending bills. But some are expecting an aggressive markup schedule this year, with hopes of passing funding bills out of committee after having not done so last year.

The House got a head start on their fiscal 2024 bills this year, with the full committee sending the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill and the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food, and Drug Administration bill, to the House earlier this week. 

Congress technically is supposed to finish passing its dozen annual appropriations bills by a late September deadline — when fiscal 2024 begins. But it’s seldom that lawmakers finish all of the bills on time, instead opting to pass a temporary stopgap bill to keep the government funded at current levels to buy time for a deal without the threat of a shutdown.

However, lawmakers on both sides are worried about added pressure from the FRA, which includes a penalty of automatic across-the-board cuts if lawmakers don’t put a bow on their annual spending bills by the end of the calendar year.

The different starting points both chambers are taking in the appropriations process underline the challenges Congress will face in trying to reach a bipartisan compromise later this year.

In recent days, even some Senate Republicans have withheld support for the House GOP plan, instead opting to wait and see what the conference can produce in the coming months. 

Pressed on whether he supported the direction, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said he “supported the deal that passed which was, you know, obviously different spending levels.”

“We’ll wait and see what the Senate produces in terms of a package. House is going to do their thing,” he told The Hill on Thursday. “So I don't have a lot of control over that, but hopefully we can control what we do here in the Senate.”

In remarks to The Hill on Thursday, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, expressed confidence that the GOP-led panel will be able to pass its bills in the weeks ahead. But whether House Republicans will be able to get their partisan plans across the floor without Democratic support is another question. 

“[House Appropriations Chairwoman] Kay Granger (R-Texas) has demonstrated she has control of her committee, and she'll produce the bills probably by the August break,” Cole said. “Then the leadership needs to see can they produce these bills, can they get them across the floor?” 

“Then we’re in a position to sit down and have a genuine negotiation,” Cole said.

Mike Lillis and Laura Kelly contributed. 

Presented with suggestions both that Trump kept the documents "like a child with a toy" and that he kept them for financial or power reasons, Esper said on CNN's "State of the Union" that he thinks "both theories could be true and likely are true to some extent."

“People have described him as a hoarder when it comes to these type of documents. But, clearly, it was unauthorized, illegal and dangerous," Esper said of Trump.

"And, look, we have a case playing out right now in Massachusetts where that young airman from the Massachusetts National Guard is being charged on similar types of accounts under the Espionage Act for taking and retaining unauthorized documents that affected our national defense.”

Trump earlier this month pleaded not guilty to 37 counts related to allegations that he violated the Espionage Act and obstructed justice by taking classified records with him after his presidency and then refusing to turn them over to the government.

Esper on Sunday also agreed that, if the indictment's charges are proven true, Trump can't be trusted with the nation's secrets again, even as Trump runs for another four years in the White House in the 2024 presidential race.

"I mean, it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk. You cannot have these documents floating around. They need to be secured. We know how that happens, that only authorized persons are allowed to see documents or receive information from documents," Esper said.

The former defense secretary explained concerns that foreign agents or another country could "discover documents that outline America's vulnerabilities or the weaknesses of the United States military" that could then be exploited against the U.S.

"Think about how that could be exploited, how that could be used against us in a conflict, how an enemy could develop countermeasures, things like that. Or, in the case of the most significant piece that was raised in the allegation, about U.S. plans to attack Iran, think about how that affects our readiness, our ability to prosecute an attack, if indeed we know that Iran eventually develops a nuclear weapon and we need to act on it," Esper said.

The DOJ reportedly has a July 2021 audio recording in which Trump discusses a classified Pentagon document detailing a potential U.S. attack on Iran.

"So, I'm quite concerned about this. These are very serious allegations and need to be taken seriously by everybody involved." 

The Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found 53 percent of total respondents — 80 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats — would support a pardon in the interest of national unity, showing a large partisan divide in opinion.

Among political independents, 52 percent said Trump should not be pardoned.

Trump was indicted on 37 felony charges related to the mishandling of classified documents — many in violation of the Espionage Act — and was arraigned at a Miami court on Tuesday. It is alleged that Trump took the documents with him from the White House and kept them at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office, as well as misled investigators when they requested the documents.

But to be pardoned, Trump would first have to be convicted. That is an outcome that a majority of Americans also think will be unlikely, the poll found.

Only 43 percent of respondents — 18 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats — said Trump is likely to be convicted.

However, exactly half of respondents said that he should drop out of the 2024 race because of the charges, with a conviction or not. The most recent polling shows Trump still in the lead for the 2024 GOP nomination, making a rematch between him and President Biden likely.

The survey was conducted between June 14-15 among 2,090 registered voters — with no margin of error provided.

Suarez’s announcement earlier this week did not come as a big surprise, as he had been teasing a campaign for weeks. But his relatively low profile, not to mention his more moderate political record, has left his party confused.

Even Suarez’s hometown paper, The Miami Herald, called his candidacy “a head-scratcher.” 

“Is he the hip moderate or the right-wing Biden baiter? If the latter, he’ll be fighting for ground to which Trump and DeSantis already have staked a huge claim,” the paper’s editorial board wrote on Thursday.

Some Republicans have suggested he could be angling for vice president, especially since he’s a Latino politician at a time when the party is determined to court more voters in that demographic. Whatever the case, most observers are skeptical of his candidacy, while others are outright hostile.

One of the loudest GOP voices criticizing Suarez’s entrance into the race is former Miami-Dade County Mayor and current Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), who has referred to the mayor as “a complete fraud.” 

“I know that he weaves a really good tale, but believe me, I know Francis Suarez very well. I will never, ever support him for president,” Gimenez told Fox News this week. 

Others are more generous, suggesting the Miami mayor could be one of several candidates, including former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who are trying to chip away at the frontrunners’ support.

“…They could act as battering rams on a wall and little by little they’re taking shots,” said Daniel Garza, president of the LIBRE Initiative, which is an advocacy group that promotes free-market ideas among U.S. Hispanics. 

“The idea for Mayor Suarez is to showcase his record, his ideas, and whatever else he can bring to the table,” Garza said. “And then take shots at the other candidates.”

Suarez told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos on Thursday that he was running for president because he has “a different message than what other candidates have.”

“People want someone who can unify them,” Suarez said in the interview. “I was elected by 85 percent of and reelected by 80 percent. And as I’ve traveled the United States, from states like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, [and] Nevada, what people want is for someone to bring them together. They want to know more. They want to hear more about my track record.” 

Suarez, who’s the son of former Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez, has since launched a media blitz and delivered an address at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

The younger Suarez was first elected as a Miami city commissioner in 2009 and later became mayor in 2017. He’s well-known for his interest in cryptocurrency and has said he wants to make Miami “a crypto hub.” 

Suarez notably did not vote for Trump in 2016. He told Real Clear Politics in an interview published Friday that he wrote in Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) instead. Four years later, he said he wrote in former Vice President Mike Pence instead of voting for Trump. In the same interview, Suarez denied reports that he voted for Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum over DeSantis in 2018. 

Suarez will also likely face questions over being under investigation by the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust for his work for property developer Rishi Kapoor. The Miami Herald reported last month that Kapoor paid Suarez $170,000 to push a project. According to the publication, Suarez’s office denied that a meeting between the two took place and Kapoor’s attorney has said Kapoor has “no record or recollection of any such meeting.” 

Despite being a well-known face in Florida politics, Suarez has a lot of work to do to build his name ID nationally.

This will be especially imperative over the next two months, as Republicans gear up for the first presidential primary debate in August. In order to qualify, Suarez will need to poll at a minimum of 1 percent in three national polls and garner a minimum of 40,000 unique donors and at least 200 unique donors from 20 or more states and territories.

On Wednesday, a pro-Suarez super PAC, SOS America, launched a six-figure digital ad buy in the early contest states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. 

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” said Chapin Fay, a spokesperson for SOS America PAC. “That’s why the super PAC jumped in this week and we are going to be working with laser light focus on getting him qualified for the debates at the end of the summer. That’s really our goal.” 

Suarez is notably the third Floridian to jump into the race, joining Trump and DeSantis, who has been polling in second place. 

“For many of our members, there’s sort of this political love triangle with all of these Florida candidates that are running,” said Armando Ibarra, president of the Miami Young Republicans. 

All three candidates have laid claim to success in the Sunshine State. Trump had a big political presence in Florida before permanently relocating there after his presidency. DeSantis has touted the state’s economic growth during the pandemic after he kept the state open throughout much of the pandemic. 

Suarez, meanwhile, has highlighted Miami’s impact as the largest city in the state. 

“Miami is the economic engine driving all of Florida’s economic success, so we’re going to highlight that,” Fay said. 

The digital ad buy the pro-Suarez PAC released highlights Suarez’s “Miami Model” in an effort to draw a contrast between him and President Biden. 

“We’re going to be focusing on Joe Biden’s America versus Francis Suarez’s Miami,” Fay said. “In our view, the country is totally out of control, and when you compare it to how well Miami is doing, especially since coming out of pandemic, the record and the differences couldn’t be starker.” 

Blinken met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and will attend a working dinner with the foreign minister. Blinken spoke on the phone with Qin last week ahead of his trip to discuss “the importance of maintaining open lines of communication,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

The Associated Press reported that neither Qin or Blinken made substantial comments to reporters ahead of their first meeting on Sunday. The news service also noted that Blinken will meet with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, and potentially Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Monday.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been growing as the two countries compete for global influence. Their relationship has also been strained by numerous crises, including close military confrontations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, the spy balloon incident last February and recent reporting that China has been spying on the U.S. from Cuba for years.

Blinken’s trip to Beijing comes after he canceled his initial trip in February over the Chinese surveillance balloon that crossed the United States before being shot down. With this trip, he has become the first secretary of State in five years to travel to China.

On Saturday, President Biden said the spy balloon incident was more “embarrassing” for China “than it was intentional.”

“And so, I’m hoping that, over the next several months, I’ll be meeting with [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] again and talking about legitimate differences we have but also how there’s areas we can get along,” Biden added.

Ahead of his trip, Blinken spoke with Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Hayashi Yoshimasa and Foreign Minister Park Jin. In comments made to Park, Blinken emphasized the need for China to use its power to “encourage Pyongyang to engage in serious and sustained diplomacy.” 

Blinken will be in China Sunday and Monday before leaving to travel to London. 

“Donald Trump's position on the national debt is identical to Joe Biden's. And to me, the Republican Party has to be the party of growth, and fiscal responsibility, and reform. I think we owe it to those kids of mine and yours, to my granddaughters, to square our shoulders and be straight with the American people about the magnitude of this national debt,” Pence told host Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.”

Pence, who announced his bid for the White House earlier this month, also said that Trump “promised to govern as a conservative” in 2016, but “he makes no such promise today.” Pence noted that he splits with the former president on two issues, the national debt and anti-abortion policies.

"Not only has he been walking away from a clear commitment to the right to life, but, look, we have a national debt the size of our nation’s economy," Pence added. "Joe Biden’s policy is insolvency. He won’t even talk about the 70 percent of the federal budget that represents entitlements, that’s driving that debt."

Todd then said that putting entitlements on the table for the national debt is “unpopular,” adding that Trump took entitlements off the table because it would attract more voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa.

"Inflation's gone up 16 percent in the last two and a half years. It's crushing the family budgets of millions of Americans, two- thirds of which are living paycheck to paycheck,” Pence added. “They're starting, in my judgment, to understand that, as government wraps up debt, inflation is happening, and it's crushing.”

Trump has come out against spending cuts for programs like Medicare and Social Security, saying he would not touch those programs if elected president. Pence told Todd on Sunday that he would create a new program to give Americans “a better rate of return than they have in the government.”

DACA, formally the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, marked its 11th anniversary Thursday with little fanfare.

The program still grants work papers, deferral from deportation and in some cases international travel allowance to about 580,000 Dreamers — undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors.

But more and more Dreamers are falling out of DACA eligibility because of their age, and many who are technically eligible can’t sign on because of a legal challenge against the program.

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DACA was initially conceived in 2012 by the Obama administration as a stopgap to protect Dreamers — and to court the Latino vote — ahead of expected congressional action on immigration.

A 2013 comprehensive immigration reform push nearly made it to the finish line, passing the Senate in a bipartisan vote, but key GOP primary upsets soured House leadership on the bill, which never got a floor vote.

The legislative logjam that’s persisted in the decade since has left DACA as the only means for Dreamers to formally participate in the economy and receive protection from deportation.

The program was enacted through an executive memorandum by the Obama administration, which decided to limit eligibility to Dreamers who had lived in the United States for at least five years before the memo was issued, setting the cutoff date at June 15, 2007.

At the time, that set eligibility for DACA from the ages of 15 to 30, though Dreamers as young as 5 at the time could age into the program when they turned 15.

The last of those 5-year-olds turned 16 Thursday, making them the last contingent who aged into DACA eligibility.

The oldest DACA beneficiaries turn 41 this year, and have lived in the United States for at least a quarter century.

“They're part of the essential fabric of the United States at this point,” said Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-Texas), a former chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

“They’re teachers and nurses, essential workers. They're supporting themselves and their families and also helping to uphold the American economy. And I think it's unrealistic to just say you're gonna deport these millions of people.”

While the Biden administration has supported DACA in the courts and taken two major executive measures to protect the program — a memo on President Biden’s first day in office and a rule further codifying DACA in 2022 — it has not moved to expand the cutoff date.

“The administration should explore every avenue under executive authority to protect this cohort. It's not a substitute for Congress passing legislation, but, especially in view of this stalemate, the administration should do everything it can to protect them,” said Castro.

But the last seven such cohorts have faced a tumultuous path aging into DACA.

While the program faced legal challenges from the beginning, it was aggressively attacked through both the courts and the executive branch during the Trump administration.

President Joe Biden speaks at a political rally at the Philadelphia Convention Center in Philadelphia, Saturday, June 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions formally rescinded DACA in 2017, vowing to fully terminate the program in six months and setting off a flurry of court battles.

“When the rescission first happened, there was an arbitrary cutoff date that was March 2018,” said José Muñoz, deputy communications director of United We Dream, an immigrant youth advocacy organization.  

“Until we got the injunction that eventually led all the way to the Supreme Court the first time, there was a lot of worry because there was a very specific date where folks were going to start being unable to renew and there were folks who were gonna possibly lose their work permit, and it felt really imminent,” added Muñoz, a DACA recipient who arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a baby.

Though the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s recission of the program on procedural grounds, GOP-led states continued to challenge DACA’s legality in court.

Biden on his first day in office issued a memo backing the program, raising hopes that action would fortify DACA from further legal challenges.

But later that year, Texas District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled on a lawsuit against DACA, declaring the program illegal and enjoining the Department of Homeland Security from enrolling any new applicants, though he issued a stay to allow existing beneficiaries to remain in the program.

The Fifth Circuit upheld Hanen’s ruling, and the Supreme Court was due to review the legality of DACA, but the Biden administration issued its rule recodifying DACA, and the case was tossed back to Hanen, who could issue a new ruling at any time.

“The courts have this case — it's been heard,” said Rep. Sylvia García (D-Texas), adding she expects a resolution in the next two months.

“We cannot continue more years of being in legal limbo. We know what we need to do. The courts want the Congress to act, so we should do our job and act,” added García, who on Thursday re-introduced the American Dream and Promise Act, a bill that would provide DACA-like protections for Dreamers and other groups of vulnerable immigrants.

Bills with the same name and essentially the same content have twice passed the House, in 2019 and 2021, but have never cleared the Senate.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas marked the program’s anniversary this week echoing concerns about uncertainty for Dreamers and urging Congress to replace DACA with legislation.

“Today, on the 11th anniversary of DACA’s inception, the Dreamers — our friends and neighbors, teachers and nurses, firefighters and little league coaches who contribute to the strength of our nation – live in uncertainty, waiting to receive the permanent protection they deserve.  For many of them, America is the only country and only home they have ever known,” Mayorkas said.

“I strongly urge Congress to finally give Dreamers the support they merit. In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security will continue to advocate on behalf of DACA recipients every day, in the courts and through our actions, until Congress provides an enduring solution.”

According to a Migration Policy Institute report from 2021, the American Dream and Promise Act then would have protected up to 4.4 million people, including Dreamers, the children of temporary visa holders sometimes referred to as “legal Dreamers,” and beneficiaries of the Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure programs.

And in 2022, a report by FWD.us found that a majority of Dreamers graduating high school that year — about 100,000 — were not eligible for DACA and would not get legal work papers and in some cases be rendered ineligible for in-state tuition for college.

Those numbers show an increasing number of Dreamers who for one reason or another are ineligible for DACA or blocked from applying by court action.

Proponents of the Dream and Promise Act, which launched with seven Democratic and four Republican sponsors, say leaving the issue to the courts will perpetuate the program’s legal whiplash, making it a better political bet to attack the decade-old legislative impasse.

“Republicans have been saying that Democrats are for open borders for at least a few years now. That message has been in heavy rotation during the last few campaign cycles, and yet Democrats won the presidency in 2020 and had a stronger than expected 2022,” Castro said.

“And the polling of Americans shows that there's high support for Dreamers and so we shouldn't be so timid. Yeah, we – I mean Democrats – we shouldn't be so timid when the lion's share of the American people are with us on this.”

That prevailing public opinion, García said, also reflects a degree of impatience among the electorate.

“It's important to me that we reflect the American support that's there for Dreamers – 72 percent, I've seen some polls showing as high as the 80s support Dreamers,” said García.

“And frankly, the public just doesn't understand why we haven't done it.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday called to defund special counsel Jack Smith and his office — which is handling the Trump documents case — through the appropriations process.

“This is a weaponized government attempt to take down the top political enemy and leading presidential candidate of the United States, Donald J. Trump. We cannot allow the government to be weaponized for political purposes,” Greene said on the House floor.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) would not rule out subpoenaing Smith or asking him to testify as part of his focus on the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement agencies, telling reporters this week he is keeping all options on the table.

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But there is not yet widespread agreement on using spending authority to fight back against the ongoing Mar-a-Lago documents case.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday he had not heard calls to defund the FBI within the House Republican Conference. But he expressed support for eliminating funding for a new FBI building headquarters in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

“I understand the FBI loves to have a big new palace or something, but I don't think that's what the taxpayers want,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy, though, expressed support for Jordan’s moves to probe Smith.

“We have an oversight role,” McCarthy said.

Earlier this month, Jordan requested that the DOJ provide more information about how Smith was appointed to the Special Counsel role and for information related to the August 2022 search warrant execution at Mar-a-Lago. Jordan cited testimony from a former FBI agent, who told the committee’s Republicans he disagrees with the approach to the raid.

McCarthy referenced that testimony while defending Congress’s oversight role and arguing President Biden was unfairly treated much better than Trump when classified documents were found in his garage.

“What's concerning to me that now raises a whole new question — was even the same way they handled this from the very beginning, not equal justice, not equal procedure?” McCarthy said.  “Because it's not me saying this. This is now the former — now retired, just recently — director of the local FBI office questioning the way they would handle this. And this was Jack Smith overriding them.”

The Department of Justice declined to fulfill Jordan’s document production and information requests.

“Protecting the confidentiality of non-public information regarding investigations and prosecutions preserves the American people’s confidence in the evenhanded administration of justice by guarding against the appearance of political pressure or other improper attempts to influence Department decisions,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte said in a letter to Jordan on Friday, Politico reported.

Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 counts on Tuesday related to allegations that he violated the Espionage Act and obstructed justice by taking classified records with him after his presidency and then refusing to return them. 

The backlash against Smith amid the Trump indictment adds to a longtime distrust of the FBI and DOJ among Republicans that grew out of Trump’s presidential rise and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

(AP Photo/John Bazemore/Jose Luis Magana)

Even before the latest Trump indictment, many Republicans had been interested in cutting back on funding to the FBI and DOJ over alleged political bias.

“Members have their concerns because we do see a weaponization of the DOJ. And so why would we fund a Department of Justice to a certain level, when what they're going to do is use that money to do political targeting?” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said.

Greene brought up the possibility of cutting some FBI and DOJ funding in a meeting with a group of lawmakers that included hard-line conservatives, appropriators, and other ideological corners of the conference about government funding. The meeting followed a group of conservative members shutting down floor action in part due to anger about spending caps outlined in the debt limit compromise bill signed into law earlier this month.

Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a House Appropriations subcommittee chairman, came out of the meeting saying that there is “a lot of chatter” about rescinding funding for a new FBI headquarters. 

“That's in play right now,” he added.

But Womack was skeptical about the prospects of eliminating any more FBI or DOJ funding.

“We got some members in districts where they like their FBI, they like their federal programs,” Womack said. “I think we have to be careful that we don't get mad at the administration and take it out on the rank and file.”

And one hard-line conservative Republican in the meeting pumped the brakes on calls to defund the DOJ.

“I was in DOJ for 15 years, and I made the point that DOJ includes the Bureau of Prisons, includes DEA — includes all kinds of agencies that are really important in what we value,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) said. “And so we should be careful in how we describe that.”

The White House has spent the last year digging itself out of a host of economic setbacks— from sky high interest rates that have kept people from buying homes and cars to gas prices that hit historic highs— that has left many voters feeling worse off financially.

But with inflation falling this week to the lowest rate since March 2021 and the Federal Reserve opting to keep interest rates unchanged for the first time since January 2022, the Biden campaign is readying to convince Americans that they are better off now than they were four years ago.

“Democrats writ large often say one thing about the economy and then they move on. They move on to health care, they move on to any other also important issue. What we need to be doing is be relentless about the economy. We need to talk until we are blue in the face, until we sound like we're repeating [points] 500 times,” said Gabe Horwitz, senior vice president of the economic program at Third Way.

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The labor market has been a major selling point for the president, with unemployment down around 3.7 percent and millions of jobs added under his tenure. When inflation was still higher than normal and interest rates were on the rise, the White House would often point to jobs as a reason to prove the U.S. was not headed for a recession.

Just in time, however, for administration officials to fan out across the country later this month to tout the president’s economic agenda, inflation dropped sharply in May, with consumer prices rising just 0.1 percent. 

The second installment of the “Investing in America tour” this summer will involve Cabinet members and more than a dozen officials traveling to over 20 states, highlighting “the Republicans who to this day continue to try to overturn it and send good jobs and factories overseas,” according to a White House official. 

Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said Team Biden has a strong case to share on the trail because the jobs market in particular is “the best labor market in generations.”

“I think the case is really strong. People hate inflation, and the media has talked a ton about inflation. That has been dominating their perception of the economy for a couple of years. But my guess is, unless something really changes, the inflation normalizing in the face of still strong labor markets—I think that’s a really good record they should be able to run on,” he said.

Republicans have used the economy for a case against Biden throughout his presidency to rally their base against Democrats. The party focused on it during the 2022 midterms, pointing to higher-than-normal gas prices and the steep cost of groceries.

The House Ways and Means Committee cleared legislation this week to help workers and small businesses “navigate price spikes, worker shortages, and supply chain failures in President Biden’s economy,” according to the committee.

“Main Street has struggled in the Biden economy. We’ve heard directly from small businesses during our hearings around the country about the real challenges they face today. Their testimony exposed the painful reality that the economy under President Biden is harming small businesses,” Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said in a statement.

The White House, meanwhile, points to other parts of their agenda to make the argument that their economic plan is working, from protecting Social Security and Medicare to avoiding the first-ever national default.

Biden’s success in negotiating the debt limit bill with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) could lead to support from swing-state voters who want to see fiscal responsibility from the White House, argued Horwitz.

“Between what he was able to accomplish in the Inflation Reduction Act and what he was able to accomplish in a bipartisan manner on the debt limit bill, Biden showed that he cares about fiscal responsibility, and we know that voters are very sensitive to that, especially swing voters,” said Horwitz, a former appropriations and budget staff for House Democrats.

Biden is set to rally with union workers on Saturday in Philadelphia, which comes after he received a slew of union endorsements on Friday. 

On what his message will be at the rally, Biden said, "Every major labor union in the country is endorsing me tomorrow. And I’m saying that my philosophy about building from the middle out and the bottom up is working."

President Joe Biden speaks at a political rally at the Philadelphia Convention Center in Philadelphia, Saturday, June 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

He has been working to shore up those endorsements and solidify support from blue collar workers, many of whom connected with former President Trump’s messaging in the 2016 election. The campaign’s union endorsements this month put wind behind the president’s back on the campaign trail, experts say.

“There’s tons of workers out there in the U.S. economy who don't have a four-year college degree and make pretty modest amounts of money. It’s a big voting bloc, and they have — for the past couple of decades — not been served well at all by the economy,” Bivens said.

“If you’ve got a bunch of unions appreciating the strides and the labor market and the effect that has on low-and-moderate wage workers, you would think that would pay dividends, electorally.”

There are early signs of Americans overall feeling better about the economy and more confident in its trajectory. 

The closely watched University of Michigan survey of consumers showed a sharp jump in U.S. satisfaction with the economy this month, according to data released Friday.

Consumer sentiment rose 8 percent from May and a whopping 28 percent from a record low set last year. Americans also expect inflation to keep falling throughout the year and settle close to pre-pandemic levels.

Joanne Hsu, director of the Michigan survey of consumer, said the jump reflects “greater optimism as inflation eased and policymakers resolved the debt ceiling crisis.”

Even so, Hsu warned, “sentiment remains low by historical standards” and American households are bracing for their incomes to decline.

“A majority of consumers still expect difficult times in the economy over the next year,” Hsu said.

To ward off any worries about the economy and questions over if another downturn is possible, the White House is working to push out the positive strides the economy has experienced recently.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre kicked off a daily briefing this week with a graphic showing inflation falling, calling the data “evidence that the president's economic plan is working.”

And the president has been pushing out his messaging on the economy ahead of campaign season heating up.

“We have taken action to bring down the cost of gas at the pump, prescription drugs, and health insurance premiums,” Biden said in a statement this week. “While there is more work to do, the plan that I laid out a year ago to bring down the cost of living and sustain stable and steady growth is working.”

—Sylvan Lane contributed to this report.

“Congress needs to act," Biden said during remarks at the National Safer Communities Summit at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. "Let me be clear about something: if this Congress refuses to act, we need a new Congress."

Biden renewed his calls for Congress to ban AR-15s and high-capacity magazines, end immunity for gun manufacturers and pass universal background checks that require safe storage for firearms.

He noted that AR-15s are “not only a weapon of war, they’re the single biggest driver of profits for the gun industry. That’s why they’re selling them.”

The president also took a stab at Republicans over their rhetoric on crime, which was a major talking point in last year's midterm elections and is expected to be in 2024, as well. Republicans have largely blamed Democratic policies for the uptick in crime in liberal cities, such as Chicago and San Francisco.

“For those who say they’re concerned about crime, you can’t deal with crime without dealing with gun violence,” Biden said.

His remarks were to a roomful of young activists at the summit, which was hosted by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and a coalition of gun violence prevention groups — including Everytown, Moms Demand Action and Giffords.

“I know many people here who have been impacted by gun violence, lost someone they love, fought so hard for so many years. A lot of you are tired. You’re tired, I get it," Biden said, making a joke about his age. "Try being 110 and doing it again."

"All kidding aside, a lot of people are frustrated," he argued.

Biden referenced his age once again, which is a topic that is expected to follow him to Election Day as voters question whether he has the stamina to finish the job. He will be 86 years old at the end of a second term.

“I’ve been doing this a long time," Biden said. "I know I don’t look that old. I’m a little under 103."

The event on Friday marked nearly one year since Biden signed the bipartisan gun safety bill into law. He acknowledged in his remarks that he doesn’t see that legislation as “enough,” also noting that gun violence prevention advocates don’t think it went far enough.

The legislation enhanced background checks for gun purchasers between the ages of 18 and 21, made obtaining firearms through straw purchases or trafficking a federal offense and clarified the definition of a federally licensed firearm dealer.

It also allocated $750 million to help states administer red flag laws and aimed to close the so-called boyfriend loophole.

The documents “include information pertaining to ongoing investigations” which could be used to further cases against uncharged individuals, the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrote. 

The suggested protective order, which will be reviewed by Judge Bruce Reinhart, would allow Trump to review the 31 documents the DOJ is using in the case only while in the presence of his attorneys.

“Defendants shall only have access to Discovery Materials under the direct supervision of Defense Counsel or a member of Defense Counsel’s staff. Defendants shall not retain copies of Discovery Material. Defendants may take notes regarding Discovery Materials, but such notes shall be stored securely by Defense Counsel,” the DOJ wrote.

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The filing indicates the Justice Department won’t try to block Trump from having access to records he stored for many months at Mar-a-Lago.

It also includes similar language to a protective order agreed to in another Trump case that bars the former president from disclosing evidence in the case. New York state prosecutors made that request as they pursue a 34-count indictment of Trump relating to a hush money scandal.

“The Discovery Materials, along with any information derived therefrom, shall not be disclosed to the public or the news media, or disseminated on any news or social media platform, without prior notice to and consent of the United States or approval of the Court,” the department wrote.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw Trump’s previous challenge to the investigation, referred the motion to Reinhart, who approved the initial search of Mar-a-Lago.

—Updated at 4:46 p.m.

Experts are skeptical the conservative-majority justices will uphold Biden's forgiveness proposal, but his administration has been mum on alternative plans. 

“I think it's definitely important because if Biden's plan falls down, he hasn’t proposed any solutions that actually address the problem, the underlying cause of why students are being forced to take out so much money just to attend higher education,” a GOP Senate aide told The Hill. 

While Democrats have stayed quiet, likely to avoid weakening Biden’s case in front of the Supreme Court, Republicans have been on the move. 

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On Wednesday, GOP senators proposed five bills, packaged as the “Lowering Education Costs and Debt Act,” which aim to tackle how colleges give students information before they attend and would enact changes to federal student loan options. 

Two of the five bills focus on the data a student is given before attending school, such as creating a uniform template for financial aid offer letters so applicants can better compare their options, and requiring updates to the college reporting system that informs students of success rates in school programs. 

The other three bills would tackle problems with the federal student loan system, such as simplifying repayment options, setting requirements for students to be informed on how long a loan would take to pay back and what their monthly payments would be, and reforming loans for graduate students. 

“Our federal higher education financing system contributes more to the problem than the solution. Colleges and universities using the availability of federal loans to increase their tuitions have left too many students drowning in debt without a path for success,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said. 

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) listens during a hearing concerning the state of mental health in youth with the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee at the Capitol on Thursday, June 8, 2023.

“Unlike President Biden’s student loan schemes, this plan addresses the root causes of the student debt crisis. It puts downward pressure on tuition and empowers students to make the educational decisions that put them on track to academically and financially succeed,” Cassidy added.

Two of the bills were previously introduced and obtained bipartisan support. The Republican aide said the rest have “nothing partisan about it. It's just good, real solutions trying to address some issues that Americans are having to deal with," but not everyone agrees.

"None of this addresses the root problem," the Student Debt Collective said in response to the legislation. "We don't have an 'information' crisis. We have a student debt crisis. These bills will guarantee the crisis only gets worse for future generations. This is doubling down on debt-for-education."

While the Senate is narrowly controlled by Democrats, some members of the majority have been willing to play ball with Republicans on student loans. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), along with Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), recently voted with their GOP colleagues against Biden’s student debt relief plan. 

In the Republican-controlled House, the majority introduced the Federal Assistance to Initiate Repayment (FAIR) Act on Thursday. Under that bill, borrowers who already paid off the original principal and interest amount on their student loans would receive debt relief. Borrowers who have defaulted can also get the mark off their credit report by enrolling in an affordable program and making their monthly payments. 

Other measures in the act include halting Biden’s new income-driven repayment program, simplifying the federal student loan repayment options and requiring the Department of Education to take certain steps to support student loan servicers as repayments turn back on with the termination of the pandemic-related pause at the end of the summer.

“The nearly $300 billion dollar Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan results in just two in 10 undergraduate students fully repaying their loans,” House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said. “The FAIR Act would offer an alternative to Biden’s IDR plan, providing borrowers with a predictable and affordable IDR plan, while also protecting taxpayers and bringing clarity to borrowers and servicers as the return to repayment process begins.” 

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) speaks during a press event to highlight the introduction of the "Parents Bill of Rights" on Wednesday, March 1, 2023.

With the Supreme Court set to release its decision on Biden's student loan forgiveness in the next two weeks, Republicans now have the ability to run on their platforms as an alternative to Biden’s plan, which was expected to cost around $400 million. 

“Voters are anxious about the economy and their own personal pocketbooks, and there is little appetite for a massive tax increase or further government spending to pay for this student loan boondoggle,” said Robert Blizzard, a veteran Republican strategist. 

Democrats have not been as clear on their next steps, but Biden has already received plenty of backlash for the bipartisan debt ceiling agreement that puts an end to the student loan pause at the end of the summer. 

While advocates were hoping they could get the president to extend the student loan pause again, especially if the Supreme Court ruled against debt relief, payments will now officially resume in October, and interest will begin accruing again in September. 

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced Friday they were introducing the College for All Act, which aims to make tuition free for most families at four-year institutions and community college completely free, though the measure has little chance of making it through Congress.

"I am so proud to lead this legislation that would free millions of students from a lifetime of debt and transform our country's higher education system by ensuring that everyone can afford to pursue a higher education degree," Jayapal said.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks during a House Progressive Caucus press conference on the threat of defaulting at the Capitol on Wednesday, May 24, 2023.

The Student Debt Collective and the NAACP are holding a Monday rally on Juneteenth as they push the Biden administration for a new plan to cancel student loans even if the Supreme Court rules against the current attempt.

Before Biden released his proposal, top-level Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) were calling for $50,000 in student debt relief. On the campaign trail, Biden said he was only willing to go as high as $10,000.

“While the findings are appalling, they are wholly unsurprising given the public outcry from residents and organizers in the City of Minneapolis and the many events that have transpired in the public view in the years leading up to, during, and since the tragic murder of George Floyd,” the Caucus, chaired by Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), said in a statement. 

The DOJ’s findings, released Friday, come after a two-year investigation following the murder of George Floyd. Floyd, 49, was killed when a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes. Other officers stood in the vicinity but did not intervene, and they stopped bystanders from intervening even as Floyd repeatedly said he could not breathe. 

Floyd’s murder sparked global protests against police brutality. 

The DOJ’s investigation found that officers would use excessive force even when no force was necessary, disregarded the safety of people in their custody and failed to intervene when fellow officers used unreasonable force.

The report also found numerous cases in which officers dismissed claims from people in custody that they could not breathe. 

Black people were stopped by police at more than six times the rate of white people in Minneapolis, the DOJ’s report estimated.

In March, the Minneapolis City Council approved an agreement with the state to revamp its policing system, including changes to the use of force; to stops, searches and arrests; using body-worn and dashboard cameras; officer training and wellness; and responding to mental health and behavioral calls.

That same month, the CBC announced it sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding data on the status of President Biden’s 2022 executive order on police accountability. That executive order called for establishing a national law enforcement accountability database to track officer misconduct, as well as creating guidance and practices to address mental health crises and improve safety conditions in prisons and jails.

“The Congressional Black Caucus has worked closely with the White House and the DOJ on ensuring implementation of President Biden’s executive order on policing and we applaud Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta, and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for concluding this investigation with an enforceable consent decree with the City of Minneapolis,” the CBC said Friday. “The CBC will continue to push for public safety reform in Congress because we cannot rest until we ensure that all communities are safe from discriminatory and oppressive policing.”

Ducklo will be based in Delaware and officially join in mid-July, the campaign confirmed to The Tennessee Lookout. Ducklo is the chief communications officer for Nashville Mayor John Cooper (D).

After the 2020 campaign, Ducklo was hired as deputy press secretary in the White House before resigning in February 2021 amid controversy over threats he made to a reporter.

He warned then-Politico reporter Tara Palmeri in an off-the-record conversation that he would “destroy her” if she published a story about his then-relationship with a reporter for Axios, Alexi McCammond, Vanity Fair reported. Ducklo also reportedly made misogynistic comments and accused Palmeri of being “jealous” of their relationship.

When there was talk of Ducklo joining the campaign in May, some Biden allies pushed back on the idea. Michael LaRosa, the former press secretary to first lady Jill Biden, accused the president’s team of being “tone-deaf” “in the post #MeToo, anti-bulling world,” Politico’s West Wing Playbook reported. But others, such as senior adviser Anita Dunn, defended him to Politico and said he took responsibility for his mistake.

The Biden campaign has announced other hires this week in the communications office.

Michael Tyler, the former national press secretary at the Democratic National Committee, will be its communications director. He is slated to start on the campaign full time at the beginning of next month.

And Rob Flaherty, Biden’s digital director, is expected to join the campaign after departing the White House this week, The Associated Press reported.

The communications team already includes Kevin Munoz, former assistant press secretary at the White House, who is now a spokesperson for the campaign.

Biden officially launched his reelection campaign in April through a video message.                

“You’re asking me a hypothetical question about something from two years from now, when we don’t even know if this is going to go forward or if there’s even going to be a conviction, so I think I just tend to stay away from hypotheticals,” Burgum said in an interview Friday on "The Hugh Hewitt Show." 

He suggested President Biden was in a position to pardon Trump now, and then “the nation can get back” to focusing on other issues.

“If you want to ask someone about pardoning President Trump, I mean, ask Biden. He could do it right now, and then the nation can get back and focusing on the things that do matter the most to the most number of Americans,” Burgum added. 

Burgum, a long-shot candidate who entered the race with an economy-focused agenda, is the latest primary candidate to answer the question that has already divided many in the race. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence also recently tried navigating the issue, saying that “these are serious charges” but it’s “premature” to discuss pardons. 

“I take the pardon authority very seriously. It’s an enormously important power of someone in an executive position. And I just think it’s premature to have any conversation about that right now,” Pence said on "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show."  

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley sought a similar balance when asked the question, saying, “I would be inclined in favor of a pardon. But I think it’s really premature at this point when he’s not even been convicted of anything.”

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy took a different approach. Immediately following news of the federal indictment, he pledged to pardon Trump, and recently called on other candidates in the race to follow suit. 

“I have signed a commitment to pardon President Trump promptly on January 20, 2025, for the federal charges,” Ramaswamy wrote in a letter this week. “I respectfully request that you join me in this commitment or else publicly explain why you will not.”

Trump was arraigned Tuesday in a federal court in Miami on 37 counts of criminal charges related to obstruction and willful retention of national defense information. Trump pleaded not guilty and denies any wrongdoing.

A jury will now decide if Robert Bowers will receive the death penalty for committing the most deadly antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Sentencing is scheduled for June 26.

Bowers, 50, opened fire on worshipers at Tree of Life on the morning of Oct. 17, 2018; an additional two attendees and five police officers were injured in the attack. Bowers surrendered after being shot multiple times by police.

His defense has never claimed his innocence but rather sought to convince the jury to spare his life. His attorneys repeatedly offered a guilty plea on all charges in exchange for life in prison, but federal prosecutors chose to go forward with the trial.

The jury found Bowers guilty on all 63 felony charges, 22 of which can carry the death penalty, including the federal hate crime charges. The trial began in April.

The specific capital offense charges include 11 counts of obstructing free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death and 11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death.

His attorneys argue that he should not be given the death penalty because his motive was not to prevent worship, a key factor for the hate crime charges. The defense has also claimed that Bowers suffers from multiple mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and epilepsy. 

The guilty verdict was lauded by Pittsburgh’s congressional delegation. 

“This resounding conviction ... is a clear rebuke of the hate and antisemitism that motivated the defendant to target worshippers observing Shabbat morning services,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said in a statement Friday.

“May the memories of those taken from us be forever a blessing. And may the strength and resilience shown by the survivors, the victims’ family members and the entire Jewish community throughout this heartbreaking trial forever be an inspiration to us all,” Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) added.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) called the verdict a "step towards justice."

Bowers's attorneys did not present any witnesses for the defense, but did cross-examine the victims and first responders who spoke on behalf of the prosecution.

“There is no disagreement, there is no dispute and there will be no doubt as to who shot the 11 congregants,” Bowers’s lead attorney Judy Clarke said during the trial. “On Oct. 27, 2018, Robert Bowers, the man seated at that table, loaded with ammunition and firearms entered the synagogue.”

Clarke is well-known for her attempts to keep mass shooters and terrorists off of death row. She defended the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, the Unabomber and the man who shot then-Rep. Gabby Giffords (D) and five other people in Arizona in 2011.

The Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to death, though his case is being appealed. The Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who died in prison Saturday, and Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner successfully avoided the death penalty.

Federal prosecutors asked surviving victims and witnesses a slate of questions in their attempt to prove the hate crime charges. Prosecutor Troy Rivetti asked victim Andrea Wedner, who was injured and whose mother died in the attack, whether Bowers prevented her from worshiping.

“Did you go there to worship and pray?” Rivetti asked her. “Did the defendant prevent you from praying? Did the defendant come into the chapel and shoot you?”

She answered "yes" to each question.

Bowers’s defense further tried to argue that he did not seek to kill Jews specifically; Clarke even attempted to have the religious elements of the hate crime charges removed but was not successful.

“The prosecution says that Robert Bowers had a deep and abiding prejudice, that he hated Jews,” she said during the trial. “We know that there is more to the story.”

According to police testimony, Bowers told arresting officers that he wanted to “kill all Jews.” Investigators found that he frequently shared white supremacist content online and often railed against immigration and refugee resettlement.

A congregation at the synagogue had held an event supporting refugee resettlement not long before the shooting.

In closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors reiterated that Bowers’s killings were methodical, planned and intentional.

“We ask that you hold this defendant accountable for everything he did to the worshippers who survived and told you what happened that day, and hold him accountable for all those who could not tell you what happened that day,” prosecutor Mary Hahn told the jury. 

The defense again argued that Bowers did not strike the synagogue to target Jews, but rather those who support immigrants. Immigrants are not a protected class under hate crime legislation.

“Stopping religious study was not his intent or motive,” Long said. 

Prosecutors called that claim “absurd.”

Jury deliberations began late Thursday and wrapped up late Friday morning, following multiple questions by the jury seeking clarification on the specific meanings of the hate crime charges.

The synagogue is in the historically Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood of east Pittsburgh.

In responding to Clarke’s attempts to avoid execution, prosecutors have said that the death penalty is “specifically warranted here,” due to Bowers’s antisemitism and choice to commit the attack during a service.

Clarke has received support in her aims from some representatives of two of the three congregations at the synagogue. The rabbi of New Light and members of the Dor Hadash congregations penned letters to the Justice Department urging prosecutors to avoid the death penalty.

“We are still attending to our wounds, both physical and emotional, and I don’t want to see them opened any more,” rabbi Jonathan Perlman wrote.

However, families of nine of the 11 victims published a letter in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle last year, saying that taking a plea deal would be giving Bowers an “easy way out."

“We are not a ruthless, uncompassionate people; we, as a persecuted people, understand when there is a time for compassion and when there is a time to stand up and say enough is enough,” they wrote. “His crimes deserve the death penalty.”

Bowers’s is a rare case of a mass shooter going to trial, as most end in the death of the attacker. The man who killed 12 in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater in 2012 was sentenced to life in prison, as was the man who killed 17 at a high school in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. The white supremacist who killed nine at a church in Charleston, S.C., was given the death penalty. 

Updated at 5:14 p.m.

“But I mean, that’s just my thinking,” the “Terminator” star and former Republican governor of California said in an interview on CNN’s “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” airing Friday.

“I just don't think that you get reelected with 30 percent or 33 percent of the people voting for you in your polls,” Schwarzenegger, a critic of Trump, told Wallace of the 2024 GOP front-runner.

“I think those are great poll numbers amongst conservatives. But I think if you put it all together, it's not enough,” added Schwarzenegger, 75.

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A CBS News and YouGov poll released earlier this week found 61 percent of likely GOP voters said they would vote for Trump in the 2024 Republican primary. In a separate Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday, President Biden beat Trump by four points in a hypothetical head-to-head rematch.

“You need the swing voters. You need the independents, you need everybody to jump in there in order to win,” Schwarzenegger said of Trump’s chances of landing back in the Oval Office.

“You have to drag a lot of people over across that line,” he continued.

“And so the question is, can he do that?” the Netflix “FUBAR” actor said. “I believe he can’t.”

The 45th president and Schwarzenegger engaged in a war of words in 2017, when the former action movie star replaced Trump as host of the reality TV competition “Celebrity Apprentice.” Trump repeatedly mocked Schwarzenegger’s ratings as the new face of the NBC series.

Wallace noted that Schwarzenegger has been “wrong about Donald Trump” before.

“You said he’s going to be irrelevant. He’s not, in fact: He’s the leading candidate for the Republican nomination,” Wallace said, referencing remarks Schwarzenegger made days after the deadly 2021 riot at the Capitol by supporters of Trump.

“We don't know the future. I just predicted that,” Schwarzenegger replied. “But we will see — remember the future still goes on. So we will see in a few years from now how right I was or not.”

“I cannot prove it right now,” Schwarzenegger added. “But eventually, I think it will be true. I will be right.”

The unverified claims involving Biden and his son Hunter Biden are murky, but are being aired by the 89-year-old Iowa Republican, who was invited to give a presentation Wednesday to the Senate Republican Steering Committee about the claims made by an unnamed foreign national. 

Grassley doesn’t have much to go on, other than an FD-1023 form from the FBI stating that the unnamed foreign national claimed to have two recorded phone conversations with then-Vice President Biden and 15 recorded phone conversations with Hunter Biden, revealing what the Iowa senator described as an “alleged bribery scheme.”   

Biden’s allies say Grassley is trying to recycle the unsubstantiated and debunked claims that former President Trump made before the 2020 election accusing Biden of doing political favors as vice president to help Hunter Biden’s business dealings connected to Ukraine.   

“Republicans are once again reminding Americans they are doing Donald Trump's political dirty work, and that tells you everything you need to know about the seriousness of these political stunts,” said Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee.   

“Congressional Republicans are openly admitting they’re peddling debunked conspiracy theories in an embarrassing attempt to improve their political prospects heading into 2024,” the spokesperson said. 

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During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump and his supporters spread the claim that Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor in order to halt an investigation of his son, who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for sitting on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.    

The Associated Press at the time described the allegation as “a widely discredited theory.”   

Grassley doesn’t know if the phone recordings exist or if the FBI was able to track them down. But he says the FBI has been extremely reluctant to talk about the information contained in the document, despite it being unclassified.    

Grassley, a senior member of Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, are the only two Republicans on Capitol Hill who have read the unredacted version of the document.    

Other GOP lawmakers have read a redacted version that blotted out reference to the claim by the unnamed foreign national.   

“They asked me to make a presentation to the caucus,” Grassley said of his briefing. “I’ve read the unredacted version [of the FD-1023 form], so I know more than the members of the House Oversight Committee.   

“The only judgment we’re trying to make is if the FBI is doing its work,” he said. “They haven’t communicated with me.”   

Grassley also discussed the issue in detail during a speech on the Senate floor Monday.    

“As I’ve repeatedly asked since going public with the existence of the 1023: What, if anything, has the Justice Department and FBI done to investigate?” he said.   

The veteran lawmaker said he’s trying to get the FBI to share the FD-1023 form, a standard document that outlines a source’s allegations, more widely with the public and the media. According to the society of former special agents of the FBI, the FD-1023 is the form special agents use to record raw, unverified reporting from confidential human sources   

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, this month said that the FBI and Justice Department under the leadership of then-Attorney General Bill Barr reviewed the allegations made by the unnamed foreign national and found they did not merit further investigation.   

Raskin said the FD-1023 form that Grassley and Comer reviewed contained an allegation from the unnamed foreign national that relayed a conversation with another person and that the source could not corroborate the information.    

Raskin dismissed the claim as “secondhand hearsay” and argued the “confidential human source said that he had no way of knowing about the underlying veracity of the things that he was being told,” according to a New York Times report.   

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) speaks to reporters outside the Capitol following a procedural vote regarding the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Wednesday, May 31, 2023.

NBC News, citing a senior law enforcement official, reported this month that the FBI and Scott Brady, then the U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, reviewed the allegation in 2020 and found the bribery allegation wasn’t substantiated.   

Republican senators say if any evidence emerges that Biden was involved in improper activity benefiting Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden lavishly to sit on its board, it could shake up the political landscape ahead of the 2024 election.   

Some GOP senators are skeptical of the FBI’s and the Department of Justice’s handling of the allegations against the Bidens, even though it was the Trump Justice Department made the initial assessment that they did not warrant deeper investigation.   

“I think the FBI is the premier law enforcement agency in all of human history, but some Americans — many Americans — have a lost a lot of confidence in them,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who cited the controversial decision of then FBI Director James Comey to investigate both Hillary Clinton and Trump during the 2016 presidential election.    

Republicans in the House and Senate who are aligned with Trump have dug into the argument that the FBI and Justice Department have been weaponized for political reasons.   

Kennedy called on Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee “and tell us what’s going on.”    

“If they say, ‘We’ve got the 1023, we’re investigating,’ I think you’ll see most people back off,” he said.    

Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.), another Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said GOP lawmakers want to know more about why Brady, the U.S. attorney, decided not to investigate the allegation.

“Why on earth, if you really think there’s no 'there' there, wouldn’t you answer the simple question about, how do you arrive at that decision?” Tillis said, summarizing a discussion among fellow Republicans on the Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning.    

“If there’s an active investigation, we stand back, let the investigation go,” he said. “It’s not unprecedented to say, ‘Let’s just get the facts that allowed a U.S. attorney to not pursue it.”   

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee business meeting on Feb. 16, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)

Tillis said Republicans are “suspicious.”   

“Maybe there is an active investigation [and] they don’t want that known,” he said. “Why don’t they resolve the issue by telling us the facts that led them to not move on.”   

Still, even some Republican senators are skeptical of an anonymous claim that Biden was involved in a bribery scheme.    

“I have known President Biden probably for 25 years. I like him, I respect him, I disagree with him more times than not, but if you ask me, ‘Is Joe Biden the type of guy who would take a $5 million bribe,’ my answer is, based on my experience, no,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said at a Judiciary Committee business meeting Thursday.    

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) arrives to the Capitol for a procedural vote regarding a nomination on Tuesday, June 13, 2023. (Greg Nash)

Graham is the ranking member of the committee and has endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid.    

Up until now, GOP senators have largely been content to leave the Biden investigation to Comer and other Republican members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.   

But the slow progress, combined with mounting concerns over Trump’s legal problems, have spurred GOP senators look for ways to get more involved in pressing for the FBI to scrutinize Biden’s business dealings before winning the 2020 election.   

One Republican senator familiar with internal conversations said Republican senators have barely talked among themselves about the 37-count indictment that Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith unveiled against Trump last week.   

Instead, they’re focusing on trying to level the political playing field by finding a “game changer” they hope will put scrutiny on Biden instead, the senator said.   

The episode left observers shocked by how sensitive documents were shuffled and stored across the property, even after court filings last year revealed Trump had more than 300 classified records in the Florida home.  

Trump’s indictment last week detailed how the documents were at one point kept on the stage of a ballroom, while at other times, the files were stacked high in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.  

“I knew it was going to be bad, but I literally felt sick to my stomach after reading it,” said Larry Pfeiffer, who served as senior director of the White House situation room and chief of staff at the CIA over his career. 

“As a guy who's spent 32 years working to create and produce this intelligence for our national policymakers, it was nauseating to see somebody who served as our commander in chief, as our president, treat this material so recklessly," he added. "Seeing the photographs of boxes on ballroom stages and in bathrooms next to a toilet and spilled out on the floor because of his carelessness just made me sick.” 

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A high-level inventory of the 31 documents the Justice Department is using in the case — just a fraction of those stored at the property — revealed their classification level while offering details about their subject matter and how the information was collected. 

The documents include signals intelligence, like intercepted communications or other data, as well as from human sources. Some of the documents contain information about U.S. nuclear programs or military capabilities. Others offer insight into foreign governments, including their military plans. 

“That is something that is always alarming to see having made its way outside of a SCIF,” said Tess Bridgeman, who worked as deputy legal adviser to the National Security Council (NSC) in the Obama administration, using an abbreviation for sensitive compartmented information facility. 

“When you look at some of the portion markings indicating sensitive signals intelligence and even more so sensitive human intelligence, it’s not just indicating what we know are secrets that are very closely guarded but also how we know it, which raises the concern that it's not just the information that could be compromised, it's also sources and methods that could be compromised,” Bridgeman continued. 

An aerial view of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is seen in 2022 in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Some of the documents in the trove appear to be special access programs documents, experts said, given the redactions over what are likely the code words required to access them. 

“These documents, as I think we feared last year, appear to be what you would expect the president to have, which is some of the most sensitive intelligence or, in some cases, military planning documents that exist,” Pfeiffer said.  

“Some of the documents where even the code words are redacted — that's some pretty sensitive stuff. That is more than likely Special Access Programs that are run by the Pentagon, which, when I was chief of staff of CIA, I didn't even have access to," he said. "I mean, that's some very sensitive, sensitive stuff. So just having this material that would normally be inside locked safes with limited access, inside SCIFs, inside fortified facilities, and here he's got them stacked up in his shower at Mar-a-Lago — it’s just crazy.” 

Some former national security officials said the manner in which the documents were kept was representative of Trump’s broader patterns with national security information while president.  

“I found the indictment to be a really vivid picture for the American public of what the national security community dealt with for four years when he was president. He had a blatant disregard, just did not care to follow the rules,” said Elizabeth Neumann, Trump’s assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security, during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”  

But many Republicans have minimized Trump’s handling of the documents at Mar-a-Lago. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sought to contrast the episode with the discovery of some classified documents on President Biden’s property, including in his garage, from his tenure as vice president. 

McCarthy said while a garage door “opens up all the time,” Trump’s handling of the documents was different because “a bathroom door locks.” 

But experts said that is cold comfort given that Mar-a-Lago has long been a target of foreign intelligence outfits, many of which are sophisticated enough to breach a hotel and golf club consistently hosting visitors.  

“I guarantee that any foreign intelligence service worth its weight is going to be able to get in and out of a Florida resort hotel and access materials, and you're never going to know they were ever there. Some people say, ‘Oh, they got cameras.’ Hey, you know, having a camera isn’t going to stop somebody who really knows what they're doing from getting in and out of a place either,” Pfeiffer said.  

A Chinese businesswoman was convicted for trespassing and lying to authorities after pushing her way into Mar-a-Lago while Trump was in office. She was carrying a Faraday bag that blocks electromagnetic signals and multiple cellphones, and a device was found in her hotel room that helps detect hidden cameras.  

“So I'm hoping and praying that nobody accessed that material,” Pfeiffer said. “But I am sure there are people inside the intelligence community who were sweating bullets trying to figure out what possibly could have been compromised and what measures maybe need to be taken, or I'm guessing by now have been taken, to mitigate any losses.” 

The intelligence community began conducting a damage assessment of the impact of the handling of the documents shortly after the search at Mar-a-Lago. 

“Once you know it's plausible that something was compromised, a decision has to be made essentially whether to treat it as already compromised, whether to cut off those streams of information to protect sources and methods, whether to consider military plans to have been disclosed. So those things I think should not be taken lightly, even if we don't know for sure that they were disseminated,” Bridgeman said.  

Pfeiffer said it’s possible some sources as a result were even exfiltrated — removed from their location for safety reasons but otherwise cutting off a stream of intelligence.

Some of the markings on the documents indicate they may have been shared with the U.S. by allies, including close working partners like the Five Eyes, which includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, in addition to the U.S. 

“That is one of the concerns here, that there could be compromised information that didn't originally come from the United States intelligence community, which obviously would have a chilling effect on whether people want to share with us,” Bridgeman said, a dynamic she noted that could already be underway with Trump’s announced candidacy. 

“You can imagine it might have a chilling effect on other countries’ willingness to share important information with us even now,” she said, “if we can't guarantee that the information will be protected past 2024.”  

Trump was charged with 37 counts in connection with the probe, including 31 counts of violating the Espionage Act and others for obstructing justice, concealing documents and making false statements. 

As the prosecution gets underway, there remain numerous unanswered questions about the documents, including whether they’ve all been recovered and why the Justice Department chose to focus on these 31.  

Pfeiffer pointed to reporting about Trump’s referencing of a document on military planning that he admits he did not declassify, a piece of intelligence CNN reported was never found by Trump’s attorneys. 

“It's not been made clear, in at least the public reporting, whether that document was ever retrieved or not. So it makes you wonder if there are still investigative activities going on to determine if there are more documents available or similar documents that have not been recovered,” he said. 

Attorneys have also been speculating about the rationale behind selecting the 31 documents detailed in the indictment, with the inclusion of highly classified records suggesting the Justice Department does not plan to declassify them for the trial. 

“One possibility is that these 31 documents are actually the tip of the iceberg that are considered, despite their sensitivity, less sensitive than some others,” Bridgeman said. 

A poll of 976 business leaders by ResumeBuilder.com, the job-seekers website, found that 20 percent of employers already have a four-day workweek. Another 41 percent said they plan to implement a four-day week, at least on a trial basis. 

American employers have experimented with a four-day workweek over the decades, typically in times of recession. But the idea has gained traction in recent years.  

If a four-day week ever becomes standard, it would mark the biggest change to the national work schedule since the five-day workweek, adopted by automaker Henry Ford in 1926.  

We can’t say, however, that the four-day workweek would rank as the most profound change to the American workplace, not even in the last three years. That distinction probably goes to remote work, a movement that exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic and shows no signs of abating. 

Proponents of the four-day week contend that companies can trim a full day from the week without a loss of productivity.  

A trial of the four-day workweek in Iceland in the 2010s yielded “phenomenal results, like less stress, lower work-family conflicts, more energy levels,” said Juliet Schor, a Boston College researcher, in a well-circulated TED podcast. “Productivity stays the same or gets better. Doesn’t cost anything.” 

Another trial of the four-day week, last year in the United Kingdom, found increased job satisfaction and work-life balance, superior products, better customer service and reduced stress, sick days and absences, by one account.  

History suggests, though, that it may not be so simple to compress five days’ work into four. 

Volkswagen adopted a four-day workweek in 1993, with shorter hours and less pay, amid a downturn in the auto industry. For many workers, the four-day week didn’t feel much shorter. 

“They started to take work home with them,” said Iwan Barankay, an associate professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “They were still under pressure to get work done, and they were doing it on their own time.” 

With as much as half of America’s white-collar work now happening at home, Barankay believes a four-day week might increase pressure on workers to toil on their own time. 

“People still, in the end, will be evaluated for performance,” he said. “And if they feel they can’t get the work done in four days, some of it will bleed into Fridays.” 

In the U.K. pilot, shortening the workweek forced employers to take a close look at how workers actually spent their time. Employees frittered away parts of the day checking Facebook, scanning headlines and planning vacations. But slack time, as it turns out, was not the biggest drag on productivity.  

The top time-suck was meetings. To make workers more productive in a four-day week, researchers say, employers need to hold fewer of them. 

“Meetings are the No. 1 thing that the companies get control over in order to make this work,” Schor said, in her TED interview. “How many meetings are there? How long do they last? How many people go to them? How much time do you have to prepare for them?” 

Most workers love the idea of a four-day workweek. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll this spring found that 75 percent of us would rather work four 10-hour days than five eight-hour days. 

But advocates are pushing for eight-hour days, citing evidence that employees will do the same amount of work in fewer hours. By the same argument, proponents say workers should earn the same pay for a four-day week as for a five-day week.  

Pay matters. In the WaPo-Ipsos poll, 73 percent of respondents said they would rather work five days with more pay than four days with less. 

Most U.S. companies still favor the five-day week. Advocates are pushing for a large-scale pilot of the four-day workweek in America, with employers agreeing to eight fewer hours of weekly work at the same weekly pay. 

The new ResumeBuilder survey suggests corporate America is warming to the idea. Roughly three in 10 U.S. employers will offer a four-day workweek by year’s end, the survey found. 

Among the companies that already offer four-day workweeks, most said the four-day week has helped them compete for top talent. A majority also said the four-day schedule has boosted profitability.  

Some firms said they expect employees to work the same hours in a four-day week as in five days, a proposition that has met with objections from labor leaders concerned about long hours. A few employers said they had reduced paid leave for workers with a shorter week. 

The typical firm with a four-day week offers the reduced schedule to most employees, but not all, depending on work location, level of responsibility, performance and other factors. 

Lawmakers in several U.S. states have proposed four-day or 32-hour workweeks or pilot programs. 

But change comes slowly to the American workforce. The last real revision to the workweek arrived with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set the standard workweek at 44 hours, a figure adjusted downward to 40 hours in a 1940 amendment.     

“The question here is whether this can be rolled out to larger companies,” Barankay said of the four-day week. “What does it mean if you need your workforce to do more work?” 

"Cancer's escaped the political gravitational pull," said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University Law School.

But this year could be different because Democratic lawmakers and research advocates are raising the alarm that the new debt ceiling deal could dramatically curb future NIH spending growth. 

The legislation, which President Biden recently signed into law, keeps nondefense discretionary spending kept roughly flat for 2024 and gives only a 1 percent increase in 2025. Health agencies could see cuts to keep the government’s nondefense budget under $652 billion.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), chair of the Senate appropriations subcommittee in charge of funding the Department of Health and Human Services, said she has concerns the new budget constraints will have a negative impact on funding cancer research.

"The deal that was passed would lead to flat funding" for arguably the next two years, Baldwin told The Hill, adding that she anticipates putting together an appropriations bill will be challenging because of the caps. 

In the House, the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), noted the level of nondefense spending in the cap is about $9 billion below current levels, so the money is going to have to come from somewhere.

"Nine billion dollars is a cut. And so where does it come from? Twelve appropriations bills," DeLauro said.

But Republicans are playing down those concerns.

"I don't see any reason why [the spending caps] would jeopardize that at all," Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), co-chairman of the House Cancer Caucus, said during an event on cancer care sponsored by The Hill. "You can't outlaw cancer. ... But what you can do is, you can guarantee funding."

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the Appropriations Committee who previously backed NIH as the leading Republican on the Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee, claimed that because Republicans have fewer spending priorities than Democrats, the NIH legislation won't get bogged down with other issues. 

Still, he said he anticipates a tough appropriations process.

"I don't think it'll [NIH] be shortchanged, but I would expect the entire Labor-H [Labor, Health and Human Services] budget to be under a lot of pressure," Cole said. 

President Biden has said he wants to build on the bipartisan progress in the fight against America’s No. 2 killer, and he has made fighting cancer a priority of his administration by relaunching the "cancer moonshot." 

The first iteration of the moonshot was created in 2016, at the tail end of the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president. 

"We had a broad goal of speeding impact, speeding progress in anything that impacted patients. And a lot was done in that time. But it was the final year of an administration. And so we were in a sprint," said Danielle Carnival, the White House moonshot coordinator.

Carnival said it helps to have a president who wants to prioritize cancer research, but changing administrations didn't slow the work being done. The National Cancer Institute (NCI), which oversees the initiative, says it has already spent $1 billion on more than 240 research projects.

"It was important to have that carved out sustained funding, specifically for cancer moonshot initiatives," Carnival said.

"We worked really hard with agencies and departments to make sure that even if there wasn't a central White House office like there was in 2016, and there is now, focused on this effort, that the work continued and that collaboration continued" across the government, Carnival added.

Carnival said funding cancer research has always been a bipartisan effort, and she was not concerned Congress would shortchange it moving forward.

Last year, Biden announced his intent to "supercharge" the moonshot with a plan to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years.

Biden also asked Congress to reauthorize the National Cancer Act, which officials said would help build new clinical trial networks and modernize data collection to improve detection and treatment. 

The moonshot provides a significant injection of funding, but it also aims to go beyond the research of treatments and drugs.

Carnival said the new plan emphasizes the role the public can play by getting back to cancer screenings missed during the pandemic, quitting smoking and participating in trials.

The administration in April released its National Cancer Plan to "end cancer as we know it," a roadmap for the moonshot and a call to action to improve all facets of cancer care.

The plan emphasized eight goals, including eliminating inequities in prevention, treatment and even research. 

Cancer is extremely well funded, especially compared to other diseases and public health threats. The federal government, drug companies and nonprofits have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the effort. 

But there's concern about how it is being spent. Some of the most well-funded cancers are the most survivable, while cancers that are the most lethal receive the least amount of research money.

"You will have certain cancers that have extraordinarily high profiles, and there's a lot of public support to amply fund them. And I think Congress and even the NIH is sensitive to that. So there's a real correlation between advocacy, public clamoring for a particular disease and Congress's and NIH's support," said Gostin, who is also a member of the National Cancer Institute's National Cancer Advisory Board.

"All things being equal, funding should reflect the actual burden of disease. And that funding should go to things that cause the most harm to the most people, rather than any political calculation or things that tear [at] the heartstrings," Gostin said.

Cervical, ovarian, and uterine cancers have consistently ranked near the bottom in funding from the National Cancer Institute. Experts have said the impact of that can be seen in fewer clinical trials available to patients and decreased trial enrollment in the ones that are available, resulting in a lower number of high-level treatment options.

For example, NCI funded just less than $121 million in ovarian cancer studies in fiscal 2018, the most recent data available. Breast cancer meanwhile received nearly $575 million. The disparities in money will make it difficult, if not impossible, for research into those underfunded cancers to catch up.

Suneel Kamath, a GI medical oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic who has researched funding disparities in cancer, said the federal government, and the cancer moonshot specifically, can step in to try to reverse the longstanding inequities. 

"Your research into difficult-to-treat diseases is not going to be a five-year plan, you know, it's going to be 20- and 30-year investment, and I think that's something that a federal agency can do, whereas private entities, if they're not getting enough return on investment in a certain period of time, that money might dry out for them," Kamath said. 

The federal government supplies much of the money for basic, early-stage research, and then usually hands it off to the private sector to fund the development of treatments, take them through late-stage clinical trials and eventually submit them to the Food and Drug Administration.

The pharmaceutical industry has an incentive to put money into lucrative therapies and treatments, which can skew investments into specific cancers. 

A study from last year found that among 10 of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, revenues generated from the sale of cancer drugs increased by 70 percent from 2010 to 2019, to $95.1 billion.

Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former White House adviser, said industry has a bias, but he doesn't necessarily see an overreliance on industry money in research.

The government can shape research priorities with incentives like orphan drug designation and pediatric exclusivity. Agencies just have to make sure companies don't exploit them.

"Drug companies do something really important. I don't want to minimize what they do. That doesn't mean you pay a king's ransom for what they do," Emanuel said.

Research funding is well aligned with incidence rates — how commonly a disease affects people — but it's very poorly aligned with mortality rate, Kamath said. 

A more significant factor is the success of early research and trials. "If the win is going to be, you know, very delayed or may not occur at all, that does detract funding and then it becomes this kind of feed-forward cycle unfortunately," Kamath said. 

If initial outcomes are poor, that particular disease won't get the money needed to better understand it and develop something that will make an impact and reverse the cycle. 

"From a federal and governmental perspective, that's an opportunity to plug that hole. We don't have to have the same ROI in a short period of time," Kamath said. 

"We can choose to say, this matters to the people in our society and our community. We're going to keep funding this even though you know, we're not getting the dividends yet. Because it matters."

“Why did the Ukraine FBI informant file refer to you as the big guy?” a New York Post reporter asked at the end of an event focused on addressing junk fees.

“Why’d you ask such a dumb question?” Biden replied.

The reporter was referencing an FBI record that has been pushed by House Republicans to allege the Biden family was part of a corruption scheme related to a Ukrainian oligarch. Multiple conservative outlets reported in recent days that the record includes notes that an oligarch involved in the alleged scheme referred to Biden as the “big guy” during a conversation.

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But White House officials have repeatedly noted that Republican lawmakers have been unable to confirm or verify the corruption allegations against Biden, which the president himself has dismissed as “malarkey.”

“Every time a right wing talking point about this absurd allegation falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny, the far right moves the goal posts,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, tweeted Thursday.

“Informant? Disappeared! Audio tapes? Don’t exist! It wasn’t investigated? Actually Trump’s DOJ/FBI did! Now coercion! Crazy,” Sams tweeted.

“[College Board] will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics,” the company told the Florida Department of Education Office of Articulation.

“Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for careers in the discipline,” it added. 

The College Board says the Florida office recently asked it to modify any courses that conflict with the new Florida rule restricting teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom through 12th grade.

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In a May 19 letter to College Board, Florida demanded the company do an audit of its courses and relay which ones would need to be modified to comply with the new rule by June 16. 

DeSantis, a 2024 presidential candidate, had said in January that the AP African American Studies course would not be allowed in his state. Although the company says changes were in the works before the governor’s comment on the class, the course was regardless amended, causing outrage from those who believe the College Board bowed to DeSantis’s demands. 

“We have learned from our mistakes in the recent rollout of AP African American Studies and know that we must be clear from the outset where we stand,” the College Board said.

Although Florida did not directly mention the AP Psychology course, that is the one the company focused on in its rebuttal Thursday. 

It noted the American Psychological Association says college-level courses need to have a foundation on topics such as sexual orientation and gender identity. 

“We don’t know if the state of Florida will ban this course. To AP teachers in Florida, we are heartbroken by the possibility of Florida students being denied the opportunity to participate in this or any AP course. To AP teachers everywhere, please know we will not modify any of the 40 AP courses—from art to history to science—in response to regulations that would censor college-level standards for credit, placement, and career readiness,” the College Board said. 

The Hill has reached out to the Florida Department of Education for a response.

House Republican leaders this week announced a plan to write 2024 spending bills at fiscal 2022 levels, an attempt to assuage House Freedom Caucus members who effectively shut down all work in the chamber last week over their dissatisfaction with the debt ceiling deal struck by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Biden. 

The news outraged Democrats and landed like a thud with GOP appropriators in the Senate, leaving them to scramble to get a funding bill through Congress before the end of September.

"It's going to be a problem," Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the No. 5 Senate Republican and an Appropriations Committee member, told The Hill. "I don't want to co-opt what Sen. [Susan] Collins [R-Maine] might say, but ... we struck an agreement that will write to those numbers." 

"We'll go into a collaborative conference, try to hash it out," Capito continued. "But I don't think it's going to be easy." 

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The Senate has eight working weeks between now and the end of September before a spending deal is needed, with the annual monthlong August recess sandwiched in between. 

In total, the decision to put the bills together at the 2022 levels would represent a $120 billion haircut that Democrats in both chambers and most Senate Republicans are not at all prepared to swallow.

A number of Senate Republicans were already upset that the debt ceiling agreement likely will not allow for an increase in defense spending in any 2024 funding deal, and the possibility of even greater cuts is making the road to an agreement even more treacherous than before.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) addresses reporters after the weekly policy luncheon on Wednesday, May 31, 2023. (Greg Nash)

“I’m not concerned that we lack the capacity to do it,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), a Senate Appropriations Committee member, told The Hill. “But we have to have the will to get on it.” 

If there’s anything that makes some senators hopeful that they can reach a resolution, it’s the carrot and stick included in the debt ceiling deal. If a spending accord is not struck, a 1 percent cut across the board for defense and nondefense priorities would go into effect next year — a result almost no one in the upper chamber wants. 

Senators on both sides of the aisle are warning the national security implications will be dire if the cuts take place.

“I think there’s an incentive for both sides to try and get to a deal even though it’s going to be really hard,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican. “Moving bills here is hard enough. It’s going to be really challenging I think in the House.” 

McCarthy and House Republicans have attempted to assuage concerns that a shutdown may be the end result of their decision and have insisted they are adhering to the debt deal. The say the budget caps represent a ceiling, not a floor, meaning writing bills at 2022 numbers is reasonable.

Democrats could not disagree more. They note lawmakers generally look at spending caps as spending levels to aim for, not a number to come in under, and they believe McCarthy is “reneging” on his deal with the White House, according to Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). 

“This is a big problem,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a Senate appropriator. “This is obviously a bad start in the House because the ink was barely dry … before Speaker McCarthy ran away from the bargain he struck.” 

“It seems pretty clear that Speaker McCarthy’s No. 1 priority is political survival and I think feels he has to cater to the far-right, MAGA crowd there,” Van Hollen continued. “It’s clearly going to make for some rocky moments over the next couple of [months].” 

 The gripes of Senate Democrats echo their House colleagues. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Democrats will oppose anything under the spending levels laid out in the debt ceiling deal.

“The Senate is going to mark up to the deal that was made. And so House Republicans are going to completely make themselves irrelevant [and] make their members vote on these deep, deep cuts, and it has no possibility of becoming law,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters Tuesday in the Capitol. 

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has already vowed to bring up the series of a dozen appropriations bills at the levels agreed to in the recently passed debt ceiling bill. 

And some in the Senate are simply ignoring the House’s actions as lawmakers realize that any spending deal will have to move in a similar fashion to the debt ceiling deal, which drew conservative ire but ultimately passed in a bipartisan fashion.

“It doesn’t strike me as serious. … I don’t think it can pass the House and even if it does it definitely can’t pass the Senate,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a Senate appropriator. “We’re going to have to do a bipartisan appropriations bill and they can start out with whatever partisan position they want, but this ain’t it.”

Wyden sent a letter to PGA Tour leadership asking for information on the deal between it and LIV Golf, an organization that was backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). He also announced his plan to introduce legislation to remove PIF’s special tax exemption that applies to specific forms of investment by foreign governments and funds.

“The PGA Tour’s involvement with PIF raises significant questions about whether organizations that tie themselves to an authoritarian regime that has continually undermined the rule of law should continue to enjoy tax-exempt status in the United States,” Wyden wrote in a letter to PGA Tour leadership.

“In addition, I believe it is critical that lawmakers understand what risks this arrangement may pose to America's national interests, particularly with respect to foreign investment in U.S. real estate, such as locations neighboring military facilities or sensitive manufacturing centers, and how you plan to mitigate those risks,” he continued.

Wyden also wrote that there was “no good reason” to help the Saudi-backed fund with a taxpayer subsidy.

The PGA Tour announced last week that it agreed to merge with its Saudi-backed competitor to create one larger golf organization. The agreement said it will combine the PGA Tour’s and LIV Golf’s commercial businesses into one for-profit entity that has yet to be named, and that it will see a capital investment by the PIF.

Lawmakers have raised national concerns about the merger, with Wyden previously calling it a “shameless cash grab.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also sent a letter to PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan earlier this week, asking for more details on its “drastic reversal” on LIV Golf, which it had previously greeted with legal challenges.

Monahan defended his organization's decision to merge, accusing lawmakers of not helping fend off the challenge from LIV Golf in a letter earlier this month.

Wyden is asking for the PGA Tour to respond to his request no later than June 23.

“No matter the outcome, America will pay a high price for the former president’s reckless petulance. So will he,” Rove wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Rove, who served as a senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to Bush, wrote that the country has been “plunged into an unprecedented crisis” after Trump was indicted on 37 felony counts last week. The former president pleaded not guilty to all 37 charges Tuesday as he maintains that the federal case against him is a “witch hunt” orchestrated by the weaponization of the government.

Rove said that this indictment is much more serious than Trump’s indictment in connection to falsifying business records in the Manhattan court, where he also pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records earlier this year.

“Unlike Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s charges of falsifying business records, this indictment is devastating in its rigor of evidence and the seriousness of the alleged crimes,” Rove wrote. “Even so, the case will further tear our country apart, as it has a heavy impact on the presidential campaign and—wrongly—undermines confidence in our justice system.”

“The blame for this calamity rests solely on Mr. Trump and his childish impulse to keep mementos from his time in the Oval Office, no matter what the law says,” he added.

Related coverage from The Hill

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Rove also wrote that when Trump’s trial is over, the county will face a “period of anger, division and recrimination” as some Republicans call for law enforcement agencies, like the FBI, to be eliminated. He said that the call to cut funding to an agency like the FBI is “no different than scrapping the San Francisco Police Department.”

He also suggested that if Trump did not take his “precious keepsakes,” then the country may have avoided the divisive aftermath of his indictment.

Rove, who is also a Fox News contributor, has criticized the former president in the past, saying in April that Trump’s focus on making fun of his rivals is “not smart.” He also said earlier this month that voters could learn a lot about political candidates by “how they trade blows,” pointing to Trump’s ongoing feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who announced his bid for the White House last month.

A Fox News chyron deemed Biden a “wannabe dictator” during Trump’s speech Tuesday night following his arraignment. Trump himself decried Biden as a “corrupt sitting president” who, in tandem with the Justice Department, was targeting the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill have been constantly attacking the White House, accusing Biden of politicizing the Justice Department.

Biden and his aides have repeatedly stressed in recent days that they’ve had no contact with special counsel Jack Smith or Attorney General Merrick Garland about the Trump case. Biden has vowed throughout his presidency that he would restore a sense of independence to the Justice Department after Trump routinely weighed in on or called for investigations during his four years in the White House. 

Still, the White House must convince some skeptical Americans that the president is sticking to that pledge as leading Republicans paint the Justice Department’s indictment of Trump as a political maneuver against Biden’s top rival.

Biden was asked last week, hours before Trump was indicted, why Americans should have faith in the Justice Department.

“Because you’ll notice I have never once, not one single time, suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do, relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge. I’m honest,” Biden responded.

But that doesn’t seem to be resonating with voters. An ABC News/Ipsos survey published Sunday found nearly half of those polled from a variety of political affiliations said they believe the charges against Trump are politically motivated. 

In a CBS News survey published the same day, 76 percent of likely Republican voters said they were most concerned about the indictment being driven by politics, compared to 12 percent who said they were concerned by the national security risks posed.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated this week that Biden “respects the rule of law” and “wants to make sure that we restore the integrity of the Department of Justice.” On Wednesday, she took a stab at Fox News for the “wannabe dictator” chyron.

“There are probably about 787 million things that I can say about this that was wrong about what we saw last night, but I don’t think I’m going to get into it,” she said, referring to the $787 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.

But otherwise, Biden, Jean-Pierre and other top officials have steadfastly avoided commenting on Trump’s case, allowing Republicans to fill the void with assertions that the charges are political in nature and Biden has a hand in them.

Asked specifically if she wanted to respond to Trump’s implication that Biden directed the DOJ to arrest him, Jean-Pierre flatly said she would not comment.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) was also mum during Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday, a notable strategy compared to the several press releases it sent during GOP presidential nominee Chris Christie’s CNN town hall the night prior.

Trump pleaded not guilty to charges on 37 counts following a Department of Justice indictment alleging he violated the Espionage Act by mishandling some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and obstructed justice in taking classified records from his presidency and then refusing to return them.

Unlike others in the White House, first lady Jill Biden opted to address Trump on the campaign trail this week, teeing others up to do the same when fundraising trips pick up in the coming days for Biden and Vice President Harris.

“My heart feels so broken by a lot of the headlines that we see on the news,” she said in a closed-door fundraiser in New York on Monday with an Associated Press reporter present. “Like I just saw, when I was on my plane, it said 61 percent of Republicans are going to vote, they would vote for Trump. … They don’t care about the indictment. So that’s a little shocking, I think.”

She then alluded to the baggage that comes with electing Trump during a fundraising trip to the San Francisco area on Tuesday, framing the 2024 election as a choice between “corruption and chaos” under Trump or calm stability under her husband.

“We cannot go back to those dark days,” she said.

Meanwhile, Trump allies on Capitol Hill have rallied around him since he was indicted, spreading the narrative that the Justice Department is corrupted by politics.

“If the people in power can jail their political opponents at will, we don’t have a republic,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said last Thursday on Fox News.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called the indictment a “brazen weaponization” of the Justice Department and compared it to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

For some Biden allies, they trust that the president has followed his instincts on the issue. By refusing to comment on Trump’s case, he is instead further fulfilling his pledge to depoliticize the Justice Department.

“As he promised, Biden has steered clear of interfering with the attorney general. The chant of a weaponized Justice Department by Trump and his supporters is as hollow as it is deceitful,” said Biden ally and former Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.).

Ivan Zapien, a former DNC official, said Biden is sticking to his strategy from the 2020 campaign of staying out of the drama with his predecessor. 

“Part of Joe Biden’s winning brand in 2020 was that he was going to return governing to regular order, and he has done that — no need to change that,” Zapien said. “I think there will be serious PTSD in the suburbs across America, and Biden laying low and playing it by the book will remind people of one of the reasons they voted for him — as advertised, cool, calm and collected President Joe.”

That’s not keeping Trump from drumming up claims that the charges are “ridiculous” and that they are part of a witch hunt against him, often bringing up the current president as the person to blame for the situation he’s in.

Trump on Tuesday accused special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the investigation into him, of being an “uncontrolled Trump hater” and involved in “political hit jobs.” The former president has claimed since the indictment first dropped that he’s a victim and part of a scheme out of the Biden administration to take down his 2024 campaign for the White House. That has proved to be ironic to some political watchers.

“It really is fascinating to watch Trump try to politically inoculate himself from his many misdeeds,” said Carney, a senior policy adviser at Nossaman. “He’s one of the few presidents in our history who unabashedly proclaims to be the victim while perpetrating crimes.”

Jean-Pierre said the senator's blockade on the nominees was hurting military families and risking "our military readiness by depriving our armed forces of leadership."

"What the senator is doing by holding these nominations, it's a threat to our national security. Period. That's what he's doing," Jean-Pierre told reporters at a Wednesday briefing. "These are important nominations that we need, that the American people need to keep our country safe."

Tuberville began blocking confirmations to senior Pentagon posts in March to protest a Defense Department policy enacted last year that provides paid leave and reimburses travel costs for service members who travel to get an abortion.

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The GOP senator has blasted the policy as a violation of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits using federal taxpayer funds for abortion services.

Some Republican senators, including Joni Ernst (Iowa), have tried to get Tuberville to end the block, but Tuberville has rejected them, according to Punchbowl News. Ernst had offered a bill as part of the annual defense spending legislation to reverse the abortion policy, but Tuberville is only interested in ending his holdup if the Pentagon drops the policy or if the policy is codified via legislation.

Tuberville is blocking what is usually a speedy process to confirm Pentagon nominees.

If he persists, the Senate would have to consider each nominee in a longer process that eats up valuable floor time.

The backlog has grown over the past few months and could eventually affect the confirmation of the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with other senior positions in the Joint Chiefs.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in May blasted the holdup as endangering national security, calling the block "irresponsible."

The White House on Wednesday did not say what conversations U.S. officials are having with Tuberville to end the block, but Jean-Pierre repeated it was "shameful that he's doing this."

"Senators," Jean-Pierre said, "should not play politics with our military assistance, with our military readiness, and with our military family."

"I'm going to run for president," Suarez says in a video posted online. "I'm going to run for your children and mine. Let's give them the future they deserve. It's time to take things into our own hands. It's time to get things started." 

"America's so-called leaders confuse being loud with actually leading," he added. "All Washington wants to do is fight with each other instead of fighting for the people that put them in office." 

The video comes less than a day after Suarez filed to run for president with the Federal Election Commission. On Wednesday, pro-Suarez super PAC known as SOS America, launched a six-figure digital ad buy in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

Suarez is the third Florida resident to join the growing Republican primary, including Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has trailed in second place in most polling. He is also the first Hispanic candidate to jump into the GOP field this cycle, representing a critical constituency for the party.

But the Miami mayor faces an uphill climb to the nomination, given the current state of the polls and his relatively low national name recognition.

In order to qualify for the first Republican debate in August, Suarez will need to poll at a minimum of 1 percent in three national polls and garner a minimum of 40,000 unique donors and at least 200 unique donors from 20 or more states and territories.

The debt limit legislation, negotiated between President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), featured an agreement to set new top lines on discretionary spending over the next two fiscal years. 

Yet McCarthy, under heavy pressure from his right flank, has since balked at those figures, arguing they’re not the target levels but merely represent a spending ceiling Congress cannot surpass. Behind Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, Republicans intend to mark up their 2024 spending bills at lower, 2022 levels, estimated to cut an additional $120 billion in federal outlays.

Those cuts are a non-starter with Democrats, whose support will be needed to pass the appropriations bills into law and prevent a partial government shutdown on Oct. 1. 

Related coverage from The Hill

• Democrats fume as House GOP plans steep spending cuts despite debt ceiling deal
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The dynamics set Congress on a collision course in September over the size and scope of government spending — a debate complicated by the conservative threat for McCarthy to hold the party line on deficit reduction or face a challenge to his Speakership. 

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the House minority leader, has said Democrats will oppose anything less than the agreed-upon debt ceiling levels. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said the GOP’s strategy “all but guarantees a shutdown.” And Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, delivered a similar warning, saying House Republicans will never win Democratic support for their spending cuts, but they might very well succeed in shuttering the government. 

“The Senate is going to mark up to the deal that was made. And so House Republicans are going to completely make themselves irrelevant [and] make their members vote on these deep, deep cuts, and it has no possibility of becoming law,” Aguilar told reporters Tuesday in the Capitol. 

The conservative threat to McCarthy’s power, he added, has created a situation where the tail is wagging the dog. 

“These are the deals that Kevin McCarthy has to make in order to hold the gavel,” he said. 

Muddling the issue is a disagreement between McCarthy and his conservative detractors over the precise nature of the concessions he made in January as he struggled to win their support for his Speakership. The hard-liners maintain McCarthy promised to fight for 2022 spending levels in 2024 and to refuse votes on any proposal above that level.

“That was the agreement in January: that the Speaker would not put legislation on the floor that exceeded 2022 spending levels,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said Tuesday. 

Yet McCarthy has disputed that account in no uncertain terms.  

“We never promised we're going to be all at '22 levels. I said we would strive to get to the '22 level, or the equivalent of that amount in cuts,” the Speaker said earlier in the month as he defended the debt ceiling deal from the conservative critics.

That legislation, dubbed the Financial Responsibility Act (FRA), included an incentive to Congress to pass all 12 regular appropriations bills in a timely manner. If the appropriations are not made by Jan. 1, then any continuing resolution (CR) would have to cap spending at 99 percent of current levels — a 1 percent across-the-board cut that would affect even military spending. 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) talks to reporters outside of his office on Monday, June 12, 2023.

That threat is already spooking defense hawks, who are warning of the harm to national security in the age of great power competition, particularly with Russia and China. But a growing number of lawmakers appear increasingly resigned that a CR will be necessary, setting up yet another showdown between House Republicans and Senate Democrats. 

“My guess is we'll go ahead and pass the CR at the 99 percent level,” said Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.). “And then if there's a shutdown, it'll be the Senate that shuts it down.”

But the Jan. 1 sequester date leaves some uncertainty about what would happen when the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

Some members of the House Appropriations Committee were already feeling the time crunch, and they now have even more pressure after Granger’s announcement on spending levels. Now, the House must quickly pass those bills, and the Democratic-controlled Senate — which is sure to reject the House GOP spending levels — will have to act.

“There is a prospect that we could be at an impasse come into September,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a subcommittee chairman on the House Appropriations.

“This governing majority of ours doesn't need to be toying around with shutting down the government,” Womack.

McCarthy has also said he will not bring up any omnibus legislation that combines appropriations into one large package, further complicating the timeline. Congress has not passed all 12 regular appropriations bills on time since 1996. 

Many hard-line conservatives, for their part, say they’re not threatening to force a government shutdown to get the spending levels they want — at least not yet.

“We're trying to get on the same team, Republicans, to focus on spending cuts. I don't think anybody wants a shutdown. I sure don’t,” said Gaetz.

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), a more moderate member of the House Appropriations Committee, called discussion of a shutdown “a little premature.”

Yet others are downplaying the severity of a shutdown, arguing the nation’s soaring debt poses an even greater threat to the nation’s economic well-being. 

“I'm not worried about a shutdown,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said. “The country's going to be permanently shut down if we don't get our spending under control. And I'm tired of hearing, 'We'll do it tomorrow.' 

“We're gonna do it now. Or attempt to."

For transgender Floridians, the law is forcing difficult decisions about where, and even whether, they will be able to get medical care. 

Damon McGuire, a transgender woman and Orlando-based photographer, said Florida’s restrictions took her by surprise. She had been unprepared for the fact that the law, billed by Republicans in the state legislature as a way to protect children, would impact her ability to obtain care as a 35-year-old.

“It’s devastating,” McGuire told The Hill.

McGuire, who only began to seriously explore her gender identity during pandemic lockdowns in 2020, has not yet been able to obtain gender-affirming treatment. 

She had been scheduled to speak with a Planned Parenthood provider about receiving hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on May 20, just three days after DeSantis signed the law. But the measure took effect immediately, and her appointment was canceled.

"You're talking about potentially tens of thousands of trans people across the state who got a call two weeks ago that their health care provider would no longer be renewing their prescriptions," said Brandon Wolf, a spokesman for Equality Florida, an LGBTQ-focused civil rights group. "It is nothing short of a health care crisis in the state of Florida for trans adults right now."

There are an estimated 94,900 transgender adults living in Florida, the second-highest number in the country, according to the Williams Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law.

Under Florida’s Senate Bill 254, health care providers are prohibited from administering puberty blockers, HRT and surgeries to transgender minors. Those who violate the law risk being convicted of a third-degree felony crime, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Including Florida, 20 states have enacted laws or policies that heavily restrict or ban access to gender-affirming health care for transgender youths, including 17 that have done so this year.

Yet unlike bans on gender-affirming health care in other states, the Florida law mandates adults sign an informed consent form approved by a state medical board appointed by the governor. The form doesn't exist yet.

The law also states that only physicians are allowed to provide gender-affirming health care, and the initial visit to sign the consent form has to be in person. Violating those requirements is now a criminal offense.

The physician-only provision has proven to be particularly onerous, as health centers that previously relied on nurse practitioners or were telehealth-only suddenly had to pivot. 

Jerrica Kirkley, co-founder and chief medical officer of Plume, said she estimates that about 80 percent of transgender adults have been receiving care from a nurse practitioner.

"That's a very large portion of the population who is potentially suddenly without care. I think there is a lot of fear, there's a lot of confusion," Kirkley said. "If they were getting care from a nurse practitioner, how can they continue their care? If they live in an area where the health centers have been traditionally staffed by nurse practitioners, for example, how are they going to start care? Can folks who have established care via telehealth continue their care?"

Plume is the world's largest virtual clinic for transgender, nonbinary and gender non-conforming people and operates in 45 states. But in the wake of the law taking effect, Kirkley said they are opening in-person clinics in Florida for the first time since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The law only requires the initial visit to fill out the consent form to be in person, so Kirkley noted telehealth companies such as Plume will still be able to provide follow-up care virtually.

But removing the ability of patients to have a telehealth visit throws up a significant barrier to access.

"The problem is that a lot of our patients don't live in big cities. They live in rural cities in Florida that may take them up to two to three hours to get to a health center to seek care. So transportation's obviously going to be a huge barrier for these patients," said Samantha Cahen, a nurse practitioner and director of the transgender care program at Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida.

Planned Parenthood is one of multiple providers in Florida to temporarily suspend gender-affirming services in response to the new law, although Cahen said care is expected to resume shortly for returning adult patients.

Syvonne Carter, president and CEO of 26Health, a nonprofit health center in Orlando aimed at the LGBTQ population, said seeing the impact of the law on that community has been "heartbreaking."

The clinic sees about 2,000 patients a year across primary care, mental health and its adoption services. Carter said the new restrictions forced the center to stop providing HRT and other gender-affirming services, which has impacted about a third of their patients.

A growing number of transgender people in the U.S. are leaving states with restrictive laws they say target the LGBTQ community. More than 40 percent of transgender adults surveyed in a recent Data for Progress poll said they had considered moving over anti-LGBTQ legislation in their state.

McGuire, the Orlando photographer, said she is planning to move to Ohio in September, where gender-affirming health care for transgender youths and adults is still legal.

But moving expenses and the cost of housing have skyrocketed in recent years, and for many, leaving isn’t an option.

DJ, a 34-year-old transgender and nonbinary person in Tampa, who asked that their last name be withheld over concerns for their personal safety and privacy, said they have no plans to move. They have enough of their prescribed testosterone to get them through at least the next three months, and plan to go to a Planned Parenthood Clinic after that.

In the meantime, they plan to raise awareness about the plight of transgender people in Florida.

“I feel like there's a fight in me,” said DJ.

Gender-affirming health care for transgender youths and adults is considered medically necessary and often life-saving by most major medical organizations. For DJ, who has been receiving HRT for more than a year, it has meant being able to look at themselves in the mirror for the first time.

“I see myself fighting for it,” they said of gender-affirming health care. “I see myself happy – sustainably happy – for the first time in my life.”

This story has been updated.

The Justice Department’s (DOJ) recent indictment of Trump for his handling of classified documents has only added to his legal woes.

Trump and his legal team are already juggling two indictments and civil cases with filing deadlines or court dates stretching through the summer into the heart of 2024 campaign season. Two other criminal investigations could bring more charges.

Here’s a look at Trump’s major legal battles going forward.

Federal classified document criminal case

On Tuesday in Miami, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 federal criminal charges that he allegedly held onto classified national security documents after his term in the White House and resisted attempts by the government to recover the materials.

The charges, which include 31 counts of violating the Espionage Act, follow the investigation led by DOJ special counsel Jack Smith.

Trump attacked Smith before and and after the arraignment, dismissing the case as politically motivated, as he’s also done with others against him.

Some have argued the charges shore up the argument that Trump shouldn’t be elected for another four years in the White House but, legally, the charges don’t prevent Trump from being in the race. Trump said shortly after the indictment that he sees “no case” in which he’d drop out of the 2024 race.

A trial is still months away, and there’s no next appearance set yet for Trump. 

Walt Nauta, who was Trump’s valet in the White House and became his personal aide at Mar-a-Lago, has also been indicted as a co-conspirator to Trump’s alleged document mishandling in the case.

Nauta faces six counts and is set to be arraigned June 27; Trump has been ordered not to speak with Nauta about the case. 

Federal criminal investigation into Jan. 6 

Smith’s team has continued to bring witnesses before a grand jury in its other investigation, which probes efforts to interfere with the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election leading up to and including the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald and Nevada GOP committee member Jim DeGraffenreid, both of whom were involved in a plot to send fake electors in 2021, were reportedly spotted Tuesday inside the D.C. federal courthouse where the grand jury meets.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon recently received a subpoena in special with the investigation, according to NBC News.

The investigation has not yet turned up any charges but could add to the federal charges Trump faces.

New York hush money criminal case

Trump’s legal team is mounting its defense after Trump pleaded not guilty in April to 34 state criminal charges of falsifying business records.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) has accused Trump of making a series of false entries as he reimbursed his then-fixer, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 hush payment made to porn actor Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has until Aug. 29 to file any motions to dismiss the indictment ahead of trial. Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has set a Jan. 4, 2024, hearing to consider the motions.

Merchan also tentatively set a trial to begin on March 25 of next year, in the heat of the presidential primary season.

Meanwhile, Trump is making two other moves: attempting to transfer the case to federal court and demanding Merchan’s recusal.

Prosecutors oppose those motions, which are set to be resolved in the coming days. The federal court has set a June 27 hearing, if needed, but a ruling could come earlier. If Trump’s motion is granted, it would expand the jury pool beyond deep-blue Manhattan to include a broader area of New York.

Trump earlier this month demanded Merchan’s recusal, citing apparent small-dollar donations he made to President Biden and liberal-leaning groups, the judge’s participation in a previous case related to Trump and reports that Merchan’s daughter works at a progressive digital agency.

Reuters reported that an opinion from the New York Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, which seems to refer to Merchan's situation without mentioning him by name, signaled he does not need to recuse.

Fulton County (Ga.) criminal investigation into 2020 election 

The Georgia district attorney investigating election interference attempts in the state has signaled she could bring charges against Trump in the first half of August.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) last month asked Georgia judges not to schedule trials and in-person hearings in that period, without giving an explicit reason for the request. 

Willis has been leading a probe into whether Trump and his allies tried to interfere in the state’s 2020 election results. 

The investigation followed news of a phone call in which Trump, then the president, asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to “find” some 11,000 votes, which would have flipped Biden’s win in the state. Trump has defended the phone call as “absolutely perfect.”  

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows were among a number of figures in Trump’s orbit subpoenaed in the Georgia case. 

E. Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuits

Trump is appealing a jury’s verdict last month that awarded writer E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages.

The jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and defaming her by denying her claims in an October 2022 statement. Trump has further asked for a new trial.

As the appeal proceeds, Carroll’s first lawsuit against Trump, which hasn’t yet reached trial, is moving ahead.

That suit accuses Trump of defaming Carroll when she initially came forward in June 2019, including during an interview Trump gave The Hill at the White House three days after the allegation was first published.

The DOJ, including during the Biden administration, has attempted to step in and replace Trump as the defendant, arguing that he made the statements at issue in the scope of his employment as president. A thorny legal battle ensued over whether DOJ was allowed to substitute itself for Trump, holding up the case for months. It ended with no clear resolution, which leaves it to the jury to decide.

But that may soon change.

In recent court filings, the DOJ has signaled it is reassessing its position after a series of developments, including Carroll adding Trump’s CNN town hall comments about the recent verdict to her original lawsuit. A judge granted her request Tuesday to add the comments.

“We look forward to moving ahead expeditiously on E. Jean Carroll's remaining claims,” Robbie Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said in a statement following the decision.

The DOJ has a July 13 deadline to request that it be allowed to step away from the case, which would leave Trump on the hook for any damages. The matter is set to be fully briefed by Aug. 3 so that the judge can make a ruling.

New York attorney general’s civil fraud lawsuit

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) is bringing a $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against Trump, his three adult children and his business entities. 

The suit follows a multiyear investigation into whether the former president and his company misled investors and tax authorities by inflating and then deflating property values to get investments and tax and loan benefits. 

Trump sat for his second deposition in the case earlier this year. In a deposition last August, he pleaded the Fifth, declining to answer questions. The former president and his family have bashed James and decried the suit as politically motivated. 

The trial has been set for Oct. 2.

But James said this week that her case against Trump, as well as Bragg’s and Willis’s, may have to be put on pause as the former president faces down the federal classified documents case.

“In all likelihood, I believe that my case, as well as DA Bragg and the Georgia case, will unfortunately have to be adjourned pending the outcome of the federal case,” James said.

Twenty House Republicans joined Democrats on Wednesday in voting to table a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), breaking from the majority of the GOP conference on a measure that was backed by leadership.

The House voted 225-196-7 to effectively kill the measure, which was spearheaded by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.). It called for censuring and condemning Schiff “for conduct that misleads the American people in a way that is not befitting an elected Member of the House of Representatives.”

It also would have directed the Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation into Schiff’s “lies, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.”

Twenty Republicans voted with Democrats in favor of the motion to table: Reps. Kelly Armstrong (N.D.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Ore.), Juan Ciscomani (Ariz.), Tom Cole (Okla.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Kay Granger (Texas), Garret Graves (La.), Thomas Kean Jr. (N.J.), Kevin Kiley (Calif.), Young Kim (Calif.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Mark Molinaro (N.Y.), Jay Obernolte (Calif.), Mike Simpson (Idaho), Mike Turner (Ohio), David Valadao (Calif.) and Steve Womack (Ark.).

Schiff, in comments after the vote, said he was “frankly surprised.”

“And I think it showed a lot of courage for Republican members to stand up to the crazy MAGA folks,” he said.

“I’m astounded by the vote frankly; it was basically almost 1 of 10 Republicans voted against this resolution,” Schiff later added.

“I thought it would certainly pass. Didn't imagine they would set themselves up for another defeat on the floor. After the fiasco we saw last week.”

More Adam Schiff coverage from The Hill

• Schiff suggests DOJ’s detailed indictment proves Trump’s ‘maligned intent’
• Schiff denounces brawl at California school over Pride Month resolution
• Schiff backs writers’ strike amid Senate campaign

Massie signaled ahead of Wednesday’s vote that he would support the motion to table the censure resolution, zeroing in on a nonbinding “whereas” clause in the measure that said Schiff should be fined $16 million if the Ethics Committee finds that he “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information.” That dollar figure, according to Luna, was half the amount of money American taxpayers paid to fund the investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia.

According to the Justice Department, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation cost $32 million.

“Adam Schiff acted unethically but if a resolution to fine him $16 million comes to the floor I will vote to table it. (vote against it),” Massie wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning.

“The Constitution says the House may make its own rules but we can’t violate other (later) provisions of the Constitution. A $16 million fine is a violation of the 27th and 8th amendments,” he added in a subsequent tweet.

One notable GOP vote in favor of tabling the resolution was from Turner, the current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who was the ranking member when Schiff led the panel during the last Congress. A number of allegations made against Schiff in the resolution stem back to his time as chairman and ranking member of the committee.

Earlier this year, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blocked Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from serving on the Intelligence Committee, following through on a longtime promise.

Following Wednesday’s vote, Schiff said he was grateful to have Turner’s support.

“I’m grateful that he demonstrated the courage to do that and I appreciate the opportunity that I had to work with him on Intel,” Schiff said.

Five Democrats, all of whom sit on the House Ethics Committee, voted present: Reps. Mark DeSaulnier (Calif.), Veronica Escobar (Texas), Glenn Ivey (Md.), Deborah Ross (N.C.) and Susan Wild (Pa.). Republican Reps. George Santos (N.Y.) and Darrell Issa (Calif.) also voted present.

Hours before the vote Wednesday, Santos posted a video on Twitter arguing that Schiff needed to be investigated. It is unclear why he ultimately voted present.

“To not carry out a censure would be a miscarriage of justice and a dereliction of our sworn duty as members of the House of Representatives. We must preserve the integrity of the U.S. House of Representatives and censure Adam Schiff today,” Santos said in the video.

Santos is, however, under investigation by the Ethics Committee amid questions about his finances.

Updated at 7:35 p.m. EDT.

The June pause marks the first interval in one of the fastest quantitative tightening cycles in the history of the U.S. central bank, carried out through 10 consecutive hikes since last year that raised interest rates by 5 percent in 15 months.

But the Fed’s latest projections show the cycle isn’t yet finished, with rates expected to increase to a range of 5.5 to 5.75 percent at some point this year, up from a current range of 5 to 5.25.

In the wake of major failures in the banking sector that spurred depositor bailouts from the government and led to fears of a general financial collapse earlier this year, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell painted a picture Wednesday of an economy that’s fundamentally healthy but still dogged by price levels that are reluctant to subside.

Here are the main takeaways from Powell’s Wednesday press conference.

Sticky core inflation will require two more hikes this year

Inflation is divided into two main categories: headline and core. The headline number includes some of the prices that consumers feel most acutely, like gas and food.

But economists consider the less volatile prices in core manufactured goods and basic services to be a better measure of the underlying inflation in the economy.

Still changing: Five takeaways from the steep May inflation decline

Powell said Wednesday that he’s not seeing the progress he’d like to see in the core, and that’s the reason the Fed will make additional hikes this year to slow economic activity.

“Look at core inflation over the past six months, a year. You’re just not seeing a lot of progress, not the kind of progress we want to see,” Powell said. “We see inflation forecasts are coming in low again, and that tells us we need to do more.”

Core prices in the consumer price index (CPI) have fallen to 5.3 percent annually off a high of 6.6 percent in September, while headline CPI has fallen much further, to 4 percent in May from 9.1 percent last year.

The Fed has implicitly rescinded its recession prediction

The Fed predicted a “mild recession” in March for some time later this year following scores of similar predictions from commercial economists, but its latest forecast for gross domestic product (GDP) walks back this expected downturn.

Fed bankers more than doubled their 2023 annual GDP forecast to 1 percent growth, up from 0.4 percent in March.

This increases the odds that the Fed will achieve its desired “soft landing,” which would entail a resumption of the economy’s normal growth cycle in the wake of the booming recovery from the pandemic shutdowns without a huge jump in unemployment.

Is your credit affected? Powell says credit crunch is doing the work of Fed’s rate hikes

“There is a path to getting inflation back down to 2 percent without having to see the kind of sharp downturn and large losses in employment,” Powell said.

Unemployment is currently near 50-year lows at 3.7 percent, having ticked up slightly in May from 3.4 percent in April.

No mention of profits despite beige book evidence

Powell did not mention on Wednesday the role that profits are playing in the current phase of inflation, despite mentions of “unusually high” profits in the latest anecdotal summary of U.S. economic conditions in the Fed’s beige book.

“Contacts reported far fewer supply chain disruptions – instead noting that many sectors of the economy are enjoying unusually high profit margins,” the Philadelphia Fed reported in May.

Instead, Powell referenced research by former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and economist Olivier Blanchard that pointed the finger for inflation going forward at workers and wages over margin expansion and supply chain problems.

“Although tight labor markets have thus far not been the primary driver of inflation, the effects of overheated labor markets on nominal wage growth and inflation are more persistent than the effects of product-market shocks. Controlling inflation will thus ultimately require achieving a better balance between labor demand and labor supply,” the wrote.

A new bonanza: Companies boasted ‘unusually high profits’ after supply issues eased

Recent research from the San Francisco Fed suggests a minimal role for labor costs in the current inflation.

“Labor-cost growth is responsible for only about 0.1 percentage point of recent core PCE inflation,” Fed researchers wrote, referring to the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index.

Housing and rents are now a major driver of inflation

Shelter costs represent nearly half of core inflation measurements, and the housing sector’s interest rate sensitivity means it’s now contributing disproportionately to consumer inflation. 

Shelter inflation is at 8 percent annually, double the headline number in the CPI.

“We do need to see rents bottom out here or at least stay quite low in terms of their increases,” Powell said Wednesday.

“We’re watching that situation carefully,” he said. “I do think we will see rents and housing prices filtering into housing services inflation.”

“Excluding shelter, CPI inflation is now [down] to what we would consider normal levels: 2.2 percent over the past year,” University of Central Arkansas economist Jeremy Horpedahl wrote Tuesday.

Other Fed board members have voiced concern about the housing sector recently.

“We expect lower rents will eventually be reflected in inflation data as new leases make their way into the calculations,” Fed board member Michelle Bowman said at an event last month in Boston.

“The residential real estate market appears to be rebounding with home prices leveling out, which has implications for our fight to lower inflation,” she said.

Fallout from bank failures isn’t over yet

The outsized role that the financial sector plays in the U.S. economy continues to present difficulties for the Fed, especially after a spate of large bank failures earlier this year that threatened “systemic” collapse.

The trouble in that sector inspired bank managers to tighten their credit conditions, which has a similar effect to interest rate increases and essentially did some of the Fed’s work for it.

“It feels like something that will be around for some time,” Powell said.

Powell said central bankers are monitoring credit conditions “very carefully.”

“As we see things unfold, as we see what’s happening with credit conditions and also all the individual banks out there … we can take their macroeconomic implications into account in our rate settings,” he said.

The legislation — titled the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS) Act — cleared the chamber in a largely party-line 221-210 vote. One Democrat — Rep. Jared Golden (Maine) — broke from the party and supported the measure.

The measure was initially scheduled to be considered in the House last week, but the vote was delayed because 11 conservatives launched a revolt in the chamber that halted floor action for nearly a week. The GOP rebels were protesting the debt limit deal struck by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Biden, which was signed into law earlier this month to avoid a default.

The impasse, however, finally broke Tuesday when the 11 conservatives agreed to advance the REINS Act and four other bills to the floor, unleashing them for final votes.

Republicans have argued Congress should have control over the federal rulemaking process rather than federal agencies because the officials that run them are not elected by voters.

“It's long past time we limit the rampant executive overreach that makes up the fourth branch of government and rein in the nameless, faceless bureaucrats in basements across Washington, D.C.,” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), the sponsor of the bill, wrote in a statement following the vote.

The measure would require that all major rules proposed by federal agencies be approved by Congress before taking effect. 

A “major rule,” according to the legislation, is any federal rule or regulation that may have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more; leads to a significant increase in costs or prices for consumers, individual industries, government agencies or geographic regions; or one that has a notably unfavorable effect on competition, employment, investment, productivity, innovation or the capacity of enterprises in the U.S. to compete with foreign initiatives.

Although the bill has little chance of being considered by the Democratic-led Senate, let alone signed into law by President Biden, it would represent a major shift in the federal rulemaking process and strip significant authority from the executive.

It could also undercut the influence of agency experts and outside advocates that contribute to the rulemaking process.

Federal agencies have broad authority to issue rules — but that power in many ways stems from Congress. Congress regularly calls on agencies to craft the regulations needed to carry out policies approved by lawmakers.

The rulemaking process requires a public notice and comment period, and agencies are required to show they considered the feedback from the public in crafting their final rule. Regulations also often include a cost-benefit analysis, requiring agencies to show regulations are needed despite any costs they may impose on the industry. The final rule generally takes effect no less than 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register by the agency.

The bill was opposed by pro-regulation groups, arguing the process is needed to protect consumers — from putting limits on polluting industries to ensuring the safety of food and medication.

But by requiring Congress to vote to approve regulations, advocates argue that inaction alone could be used to block needed guidance. 

“By giving one chamber of Congress veto power over any new significant public health and safety protection, no matter how noncontroversial or sensible it may be, the REINS Act is designed to leverage the dysfunction and obstructionism that plague our political process to block agencies’ efforts to fulfill their statutory mandates to pursue public protections,” Elizabeth Skerry, a regulatory policy expert with Public Citizen, a left-leaning advocacy group, told Congress when it considered the bill in March.

The group also pointed to a train derailment in Ohio as a byproduct of inaction, noting the Trump administration chose not to move forward with a regulation that would have required updated braking systems.

The majority of the Democratic caucus also opposed the measure. During debate on the House floor Tuesday night, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said the bill was “bad legislation” and warned about regulations Republicans could block after the recent floor revolt.

“We are considering this bill just a week after a splinter group of the far-right Republicans voted down a rule and held our legislative calendar hostage all to prove a point about a debt ceiling that already has passed Congress and has been signed by the president,” Nadler said. “Even before this radical move, I had no doubt that the REINS Act would grind to a halt the most impactful actions by our regulatory state.”

“But now after seeing what a handful of members will do to make a point, I am certain we cannot let bad measures like this move forward,” he added.

The Republican-led House has introduced multiple resolutions aimed at blocking Biden administration rules since taking the majority in January. On Wednesday, the chamber cleared a measure that seeks to block a Biden administration rule pertaining to pistol stabilizing braces.

And on Wednesday, the House voted to block a proposed rule from the Biden administration that governs efficiency requirements for gas and electric cooking appliances.

House Republicans included the REINS Act in their bill to raise the debt limit and implement spending cuts, which cleared the chamber in a largely party-line vote in April. It was not, however, incorporated in the debt limit agreement Biden and McCarthy struck, which angered conservatives.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) pointed to the exclusion of the measure from the debt limit agreement when discussing the conservative blockade floor last week.

“I'm not here for failure theater. I'm not here for just the performance of politics. I actually want to produce something for the American people,” Boebert said. "So when Limit, Save, Grow had the REINS Act, a great regulatory reform, included in it and that was ditched on the side of the road, completely surrendered, and then the next week we're gonna show up to Washington, D.C., and vote on the REINS Act as a standalone bill where we know it's dead on arrival in the Senate."

“That is performative theater, and I am not here for that. I'm not doing messaging bills and show votes when we had an opportunity to pass real regulatory reform for the American people,” she added.

Even as Trump finds himself in unprecedented legal trouble over his alleged mishandling of classified documents, he is also settling into a familiar spot: centerstage of the daily political news cycle.  

The coverage could help Trump, already the front-runner for the GOP’s presidential nomination next year, as he battles Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other rivals for the Republican nod. 

“It’s obvious this is going to help him in the primary, and I think it’s an open question if it even hurts him in the general,” one Republican operative told The Hill after watching the daylong coverage of this week’s arraignment. “The laws of normal political gravity say it should, but Trump is not bound by the laws of normal political gravity.”  

Trump is certainly crowding out rivals for media attention with the nonstop coverage of his legal travails, even if much of the coverage has been starkly critical given the seriousness of his alleged crimes. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence said the charges were serious enough that he couldn’t defend his former boss, though he said Trump was entitled to his day in court. Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who has increasingly broken with the president who hired him, said Trump was “toast” if the accusations are proven.  

Immediately after he was arraigned Tuesday, Trump’s motorcade made a stop at Miami’s famous Café Versailles, a focal point of the Cuban-American population in Florida. It was an effort by Trump to turn his day in court into a campaign event on the home turf of DeSantis.  

Some of the cable news networks quickly turned away from covering his stop. 

“Folks in the control room, I don't need to see any more of that,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper said as the network played a video of Trump supporters singing “Happy Birthday” to Trump at the Cuban restaurant. “He's trying to turn it into a spectacle, into a campaign ad. That's enough of that. We've seen it already. Let's go over again the 37 charges."  

Trump’s ability to dictate media coverage is a hallmark of his brand. He often attacks the “fake news” media while simultaneously granting interviews that drive ratings and command a loyal audience of both supporters and critics.  

The fact that cable networks were devoting most of their airtime Tuesday to Trump signals his continued ability to drive ratings and clicks — something that caused internal tensions at CNN just weeks ago when the network carried a Trump town hall filled with an audience of Trump supporters. 

CNN’s top news boss Chris Licht has since left the network.  

Some of those covering Trump on Tuesday, such as Tapper, signaled at times that they felt they were being used by the former president and sought to prevent it.

Neither CNN nor MSNBC carried Trump’s post-arraignment address from his New Jersey golf club. During those remarks, Trump made a number of claims, including that the charges brought against him were politically motivated.   

“There is a cost to us as a news organization to knowingly broadcasting untrue things. We are here to bring you the news,” MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow told viewers as Trump spoke from his New Jersey golf club. “It hurts our ability to do that if we live broadcast what we fully expect in advance to be a litany of lies and false accusations, no matter who says them." 

Fox News, the top-rated channel on cable, did cover Trump’s remarks in full, in a break from recent practice.

Trump’s political ascent in 2016 benefited all of the cable news networks in a major way, a fact that his indictment and arraignment have called to mind once again.  

MSNBC, known for its aggressive anti-Trump punditry, experienced some of the best ratings it has in months following news of the former president’s indictments, notching a rare weekly prime-time ratings win.  

Trump has always been a difficult political figure for the media to cover. Press outlets were blamed for propping up Trump in his 2016 run for the White House, and things are no easier after four years of his presidency and the aftermath — which included the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  

Covering Trump’s post-presidential legal fights — all while he is running for the White House again — creates all kinds of ethical choices for the country's largest news organizations.    

“The media have no choice but to cover this, in a way that might very well appear to be sensationalist,” said Rich Hanley, an associate professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University.  

“It’s going to be the leading story every time a motion is filed or anything with the case happens. It will be a narrative in many ways Trump will be able to control with his use of various legal instruments to keep this story percolating,” he added.  

Some industry insiders say the media shouldn’t worry so much about whether their coverage helps Trump. If it is news, cover it, these voices say.  

“This is a huge news story by any measure. It has to be covered and it has to be covered extensively,” said Frank Sesno, a longtime television news reporter who now teaches journalism at George Washington University. “People need to get over the idea that just because there’s a story out there with the word Trump in it, it’s somehow free media that’s only doing him a favor.”  

“We know what’s in store if these MAGA Republicans win because we’ve all lived through this,” Biden said during a fundraiser for the Biden Victory Fund in Los Angeles. 

“Take yourself back in your mind. You remember how U.S. policy was dictated in those late-night tweets. Or how about the constant assault on our most sacred institutions, our democracy and our freedoms, and it's only going to get worse,” she added, taking a jab at Trump, who notoriously would issue startling claims and sweeping policy statements on Twitter at all hours.

Biden compared Trump to her husband, saying the choice is between “chaos and corruption, hatred and division” or “strong, steady leadership.”

The first lady spoke to a group of about 80 people for the afternoon fundraiser and highlighted the incumbent's accomplishments so far.

She also sought to convey that he is ready for another four years amid ongoing attacks from Republicans and lingering concerns from some Democrats over his age. The president would be 86 years old at the end of a second term.

“Optimism, that’s what drives my husband, and nothing can slow him down,” she said. “Joe is ready — as he likes to say — to finish the job. So, as we get ready to jump back into a campaign, I cannot even believe I’m already saying this: Think about how far we’ve come in the last three years.”

The first lady has been on a fundraising swing this week. She was in the San Francisco Bay Area on Tuesday and also warned about reelecting Trump in remarks to donors. 

On Monday, she spoke at a closed-door fundraiser in New York, where she mentioned the Trump indictment, making her the first major Biden surrogate to comment on it.

“My heart feels so broken by a lot of the headlines that we see on the news,” she said, according to an Associated Press reporter present. “Like I just saw, when I was on my plane, it said 61 percent of Republicans are going to vote, they would vote for Trump … They don’t care about the indictment. So that’s a little shocking, I think.”

President Biden is heading out for a fundraising swing Friday, starting in Connecticut. He then will travel to Pennsylvania for a political rally and from there to the San Francisco Bay Area for three days.

The Miami mayor had been teasing a campaign announcement for weeks. 

A pro-Suarez super PAC, SOS America, put out a video earlier this week touting Suarez's record as mayor of Miami. 

Suarez is the third Florida resident to join the growing Republican primary, including Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has trailed in second place in most polling. 

Suarez is the first Hispanic candidate to jump into the GOP field this cycle, representing a critical constituency for the party. But the Miami mayor faces an uphill climb to the nomination, given the current state of the polls and his relatively low national name ID. 

The conservative-leaning court is considering two similar cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) brought on by the conservative group Students for Fair Admissions, which has argued the schools’ admission processes have discriminated against white and Asian American applicants. 

If the court rules for the students, the decision would upend decades of precedent for the limited use of race as a factor in the process, making it one of the biggest reversals for the Supreme Court since it overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

The case also has the potential to force many of the country’s top institutions to change the way they admit students and find race-neutral alternatives to promote diversity in their institutions. 

Here’s what you need to know ahead of the court’s decision: 

How is affirmative action used in the college admissions process?

The admissions process looks different at every college, with some taking race and ethnicity into consideration, while others do not. 

Schools were already limited on using race-based admissions after previous Supreme Court cases said its consideration had to be specifically tailored to each individual and there could be no quotas to have students of certain backgrounds. 

Universities have had to take on a holistic approach where race can be one factor in a line of others such as test scores, high school grades and extracurricular activities. 

Schools have insisted there are no points deducted if someone is a member of a certain race.

It is hard to get an exact count of how many colleges consider race or ethnicity in their admissions, but the practice is more commonly found in highly competitive schools, which are bombarded with many quality applications, where the smallest distinction could make or break acceptance. 

There are already nine states that have banned the consideration of race in college applications: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.

How would schools have to change?

If the Supreme Court rules against Harvard and UNC, any school that uses race or ethnicity as a boost on a person’s application will immediately have to stop the practice. Many will be looking at race-neutral ways to support diversity in their admissions.

If the court does not give a clear definition of race-neutral practices, it would be up to schools to determine how to give equal opportunity to all backgrounds in the process without distinctively basing it on race or ethnicity.

During oral arguments, the justices floated ideas such as socioeconomic considerations and allowing students to mention race in their college essays when describing their life and experiences with discrimination.  

Opponents argue diversity on campuses will suffer

Factoring in race during the admissions process began in the Civil Rights era in order to make up for societal inequities, as racial minorities had fewer educational or economic opportunities due to past discrimination they faced. 

States that have banned affirmative action in college admissions have seen drops in minority enrollment.

Depending on how the court rules, opponents believe it could also limit minorities in their applications by having to hide who they are and what type of obstacles they have faced in life due to their background.

“But now we’re — we’re entertaining a rule in which some people can say the things they want, about who they are and have that valued in the system. But other people are not going to be able to. Because they won’t be able to reveal that they’re Latino or African American or whatever. And I’m worried that that creates an inequity in the system,” liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during oral arguments. 

But advocates say a rollback is fair for all

The Students for Fair Admissions organization feel that race-conscious admissions is unfair to white people and Asian Americans.

Even their attorneys in the cases said they agree there is a need for diversity on campus, but they believe schools can come up with alternative ways to create a diverse student body. 

The liberal-leaning Century Foundation say that states that have already banned race-conscious admissions have come up with relatively successful alternatives, but those successes have been disputed by others. 

Some of the alternatives include guaranteeing admission to the top 10 percent of high school graduates at all schools in the state, or changes to recruitment strategy. 

"I don't see how you can say that the program will ever end," Chief Justice John Roberts told the lawyer for UNC in the oral arguments last year. "Your position is that race matters because it's necessary for diversity, which is necessary for the sort of education you want. It's not going to stop mattering at some particular point, you're always going to have to look at race, because you say race matters to give us the necessary diversity."

The chamber voted 225-196-7 to table the resolution. Twenty Republicans voted with Democrats to table the measure, while seven lawmakers — five Democrats, two Republicans — voted present.

“I think it says that Trump and his MAGA supporters view me as a threat,” Schiff said shortly after the resolution was tabled. “There’s a reason they signaled me out — they think I was effective in holding them accountable. And they won’t stop me.”

“And I think frankly this [is] deeply counterproductive to that goal but that’s their aim, to go after anybody that stands up to them, to try to make an example out of them. But it’s not gonna deter me for a moment,” he added.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) introduced the censure measure in May but brought it to the floor as a privileged resolution on Tuesday, forcing the House to take action on the legislation. Democratic leadership motioned to table the measure, which requires a simple majority vote.

The effort by House Republicans to censure Schiff is the latest iteration of the conference’s longtime crusade against the California Democrat, who became a bogeyman to the right after spearheading efforts against former President Trump while he was in the White House.

A resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff was blocked by the House after twenty Republicans voted with Democrats to table the measure. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Schiff, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, led the first impeachment inquiry into Trump, which ended with the House impeaching him for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Schiff was also at the forefront of Democratic accusations that Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In January, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blocked Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from serving on the Intelligence panel, following through on a promise he made before securing the Speaker’s gavel. He said the decision was made “in order to maintain a standard worthy of this committee’s responsibilities.”

And in May, Luna filed a resolution to expel Schiff, who is running for Senate, from the House.

As Schiff was speaking to reporters in the Capitol following the vote, Luna walked by and announced that she is planning to file another resolution to censure the California Democrat next week.

“I'll be filing to censure you next week,” she said. “And we'll get the votes for that.”

Asked about the interaction, Schiff said “this is what it takes to ratify Donald Trump.”

Luna’s censure resolution, which spans four pages, calls for censuring and condemning Schiff “for conduct that misleads the American people in a way that is not befitting an elected Member of the House of Representatives.” It would also direct the Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation into Schiff’s “lies, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.”

More Adam Schiff coverage from The Hill

• Schiff suggests DOJ’s detailed indictment proves Trump’s ‘maligned intent’
• Schiff denounces brawl at California school over Pride Month resolution
• Schiff backs writers’ strike amid Senate campaign

Luna, a staunch Trump ally, brought the measure to the floor as a privileged resolution the same day the former president pleaded not guilty to 37 counts brought against him by the Department of Justice as part of the investigation into his handling of classified documents. Prosecutors allege that Trump willfully retained classified records and then obstructed efforts by authorities to collect them.

In a letter to Democratic colleagues on Tuesday, Schiff argued that Luna was forcing a vote on the censure resolution — which he called “false and defamatory” — to distract from Trump’s legal woes. He said it would discipline him for his work “holding Donald Trump accountable.”

“This partisan resolution to censure and fine me $16 million is only the latest attempt to gratify the former President’s MAGA allies, and distract from Donald Trump’s legal troubles by retaliating against me for my role in exposing his abuses of power, and leading the first impeachment against him,” he wrote.

“The intent of this resolution goes far beyond me and my role leading investigations of Donald Trump, and his first impeachment — an effort I would undertake again, and in a heartbeat, if it were necessary,” he later added. “This resolution plainly demonstrates the lengths our GOP colleagues will go to protect Donald Trump’s infinite lies – lies that incited a violent attack on this very building.”

Schiff also asserted that the censure resolution was “a clear attack on our constitutional system of checks and balances.”

“Once again, our GOP colleagues are using the leverage and resources of the House majority to rewrite history and promulgate far-right conspiracy theories — all to protect and serve Donald Trump,” he wrote.

In comments following the vote, Schiff said spending time on the floor to vote on the censure resolution was an abuse of the chamber's resources, and argued that it was a reflection of the lack of control McCarthy has over the chamber.

“But to use the House floor time this way is such an abuse of the resources of the House,” Schiff said, “and it shows how little control McCarthy has over the place that this even came to the floor.”

The resolution, which has 10 GOP cosponsors, zeroes in on Schiff’s previous comments about collusion between Trump and Russia. It cites the report from special counsel John Durham, released last month, that offered a scathing assessment of how the FBI launched and conducted an investigation into Trump’s ties to Moscow, concluding that authorities did not have sufficient information to begin the case.

It argues that Schiff “abused” the trust he was afforded as chair and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.

“By repeatedly telling these falsehoods, Representative Shiff purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people,” the resolution reads.

The measure also includes a non-binding “whereas” clause that says if the Ethics Committee finds that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information” that he should be fined $16 million. Luna said that dollar figure is half the amount of money that American taxpayers paid to fund the investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia.

The Justice Department in August 2019 said the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller cost $32 million.

Luna’s call for financial action was a point of concern for Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who signaled ahead of the vote that he would support a motion to table the resolution. He argued that the fine would violate the Constitution.

“Adam Schiff acted unethically but if a resolution to fine him $16 million comes to the floor I will vote to table it. (vote against it)” Massie wrote on Twitter.

“The Constitution says the House may make its own rules but we can’t violate other (later) provisions of the Constitution. A $16 million fine is a violation of the 27th and 8th amendments,” he wrote in a subsequent tweet.

Updated at 6:21 p.m.

The 249-181 vote came as part of a broader fight over gas stoves. Republicans are seeking to play up attempts to regulate them as an example of Democratic overreach.

The bill is unlikely to be taken up by Democratic leaders in the Senate. The White House has expressed opposition to the bill but stopped short of a veto threat.

Republicans’ commentary about the bill focused largely on the gas stoves portion of the rule, and they called the legislation the Save Our Gas Stoves Act.

“Consumers don’t want the government taking away the features on gas stoves that they like and use,” Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), who sponsored the bill, said in a floor speech. 

But Democrats described the bill as misleading and noted that the rule in question also covers electric appliances.

“Let’s set the record straight with a little reality: The Biden administration is not — and I repeat, not — banning gas stoves,” Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a floor speech. 

Wednesday’s vote was originally slated to be held last week, but it was put on the backburner amid a revolt from conservative Republicans that blocked the bill and others from moving forward. 

A small group of Republicans voted against a rule to bring the legislation to the floor last week. Rule votes are typically party-line, and it was the first time in more than 20 years that a majority party in the House had lost a rule vote

On Monday, the conservative defectors announced they would stop blocking floor votes for now as they look to gain more power from party leadership and cut spending.

The legislation taken up Wednesday would block the Energy Department from finalizing a rule that says that new electric and gas stoves that are sold in the U.S. must run at certain efficiency levels. It also sets rules for ovens. 

The Energy Department has estimated that nearly half of the gas stoves on the market are not subject to the requirements. 

Wednesday’s vote follows a previous vote held Tuesday that also targeted gas stoves; that one sought to bar the Consumer Product Safety Commission from banning the stoves or pursuing safety rules that increase their cost. 

The gas stove issue flared earlier in the year when a member of the commission said that a gas stove ban was on the table, citing health concerns. However, the commission’s chair later came out against a ban and said that no proceedings were underway to enact one.

The White House has also expressed opposition to a gas stove ban.

Critics of gas stoves point to studies linking them to childhood asthma and finding they can leak chemicals like cancer-causing benzene. 

The Quinnipiac University survey found that 33 percent say the prejudice is a “very” serious problem, and another 25 percent say it’s “somewhat” serious. 

Eighteen percent of Americans say prejudice against LGBTQ people is “not at all” a problem, and 20 percent say it’s “not so serious” an issue. 

At least 491 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced this year alone in state legislatures across the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Florida's so-called Don't Say Gay law looks to restrict talk of sexual orientation and gender identity in public school classrooms, while other states, such as Michigan, have moved to shore up LGBTQ protections.

Roughly a third of Americans in the poll said they think LGBTQ people in the U.S. face more discrimination today compared to a year ago — though around a quarter think they face less discrimination. Another 35 percent report thinking the demographic faces the same amount of discrimination as a year ago. 

"By large margins, Americans think prejudice against a segment of the population, those identifying as LGBTQ+, is serious. Roughly one-third think it's metastasizing,” said Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy in the report. 

Conducted June 8-12, the poll surveyed 1,929 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.