Politics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A group of U.S. Senate Democrats called on President Joe Biden to prepare to invoke the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment to avoid a debt default if negotiations with Republicans fail, according to a letter released on Thursday.

Led by independent Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats, the 11 lawmakers said while they appreciated Biden’s efforts to find a bipartisan deal to lift the debt ceiling, Republicans in Congress were “not acting in good faith.”

“We write to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which clearly states: ‘the validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned,’” they wrote Biden, a fellow Democrat.

“Using this authority would allow the United States to continue to pay its bills on-time, without delay, preventing a global catastrophe,” they said.

Biden is continuing negotiations with House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy during his trip to the G7 Summit in Japan this week, ahead of the June 1 date when the U.S. Treasury has said the government could start running out of funds if the debt ceiling is not lifted.

The periodic lifting of the federal government’s borrowing limit allows the government to pay for spending Congress has already authorized.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward, Paul and Susan Heavey; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Leslie Adler)

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HIROSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden held a call with his debt ceiling negotiation team on Friday while he was traveling in Japan for the Group of Seven (G7) summit, according to White House officials.

“The President’s team informed him that steady progress is being made,” one of the officials said, adding that Biden remained confident that Congress would take action to prevent a default.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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By Costas Pitas

(Reuters) -U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who returned to Washington last week after a months-long absence due to shingles, is continuing to suffer from a medical complication known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a spokesperson said on Thursday.

Feinstein had also previously suffered encephalitis, her office said, after the New York Times reported on medical conditions that had not been publicly disclosed.

“While the encephalitis resolved itself shortly after she was released from the hospital in March, she continues to have complications from Ramsay Hunt syndrome,” a spokesperson for the 89-year-old Democrat said.

Ramsay Hunt Syndrome affects the facial nerve and can cause partial facial paralysis or weakness.

Feinstein said earlier on Thursday that she did not have encephalitis, saying it “really has never been diagnosed,” CNN reported.

First elected to the Senate in 1992, Feinstein had been sidelined since February as she recovered from shingles. Her absence led to calls from some fellow Democrats that she step aside and allow someone else to take her place.

The Senate Judiciary Committee that she sits on was deadlocked with her away, slowing Democrats’ drive to approve some of President Joe Biden’s most controversial nominees to vacant court positions.

Feinstein, who will not seek re-election in 2024, said on May 10 after her return to Washington that she would work a lighter schedule and that she was experiencing some side effects of her illness, which included vision and balance impairments.

“I’m back in Washington, voting and attending committee meetings while I recover from complications related to a shingles diagnosis,” Feinstein said in a statement provided earlier on Thursday to the New York Times. “I continue to work and get results for California.”

(Reporting by Costas Pitas in Los Angeles; Editing by Alistair Bell and Tim Ahmann)

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By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a case in which Republicans sought to keep in place a policy introduced under former President Donald Trump that had let American officials quickly expel hundreds of thousands of migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border.

The policy, known as Title 42, was implemented by Trump’s administration in March 2020 – early in the COVID-19 pandemic – as a measure tied to a public health emergency. President Joe Biden’s administration allowed the policy to expire last week, with new asylum restrictions taking effect.

At issue in the case, which the court had agreed to hear in December, was whether a group of Republican state attorneys general could intervene to defend the Title 42 policy after U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan in November ruled the public health order unlawful in a lawsuit by asylum-seeking migrant families. The Supreme Court had voted 5-4 in December to keep in place the Title 42 policy, putting on hold Sullivan’s decision.

The Supreme Court removed the case from its argument calendar after the Justice Department said in February that the case would become moot because Title 42 would expire in light of a Biden administration announcement that the recognition of a COVID-19 public health emergency would end effective May 11.

The justices on Thursday threw out a lower court’s ruling that rejected the states’ bid to intervene, concluding that the states’ request was now moot.

In a statement agreeing with the decision, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had dissented from December’s decision to maintain Title 42, repeated his criticism that “the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis.”

Gorsuch added that the court in December “took a serious misstep when it effectively allowed nonparties to this case to manipulate our docket to prolong an emergency decree designed for one crisis in order to address an entirely different one. Today’s dismissal goes some way to correcting that error.”

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

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(Reuters) – Oklahoma’s governor has signed into law a bill making it a felony to provide gender-affirming healthcare to a minor.

Indiana has enacted a law requiring teachers to tell parents when students ask to be called by a new name or different pronoun. North Dakota has approved a law that lets public school teachers and state employees ignore using a transgender person’s preferred pronoun.

And the latest such action came in Florida on Wednesday when Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that bans gender-affirming medical care such as puberty blockers or hormone therapy for transgender youths – a measure that joins the state’s growing list of legislation that limits the rights of LGBTQ people.

This month’s rush of bills, certain to attract court challenges, has become central to the Republican agenda in statehouses across the country and inflamed the so-called culture war in the United States that also encompasses abortion, gun rights and school curricula.

A group of Florida parents has already sued in federal court to try to stop new law there.

To many political observers, these measures offer a preview of the 2024 elections, with Republicans portraying Democrats as out of touch on issues of sex and religion, and Democrats calling Republicans extremist and anti-democratic.

Republicans have introduced more than 500 bills affecting LGBTQ people in 2023, with at least 48 passing, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights group. Those numbers are up from 315 bills introduced and 29 passed in 2022.

The majority of those bills specifically affect transgender people, touching on nearly every aspect of a transgender person’s public life. Some seek to ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports. Others require transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender assigned at birth or prevent transgender people from changing their sex on identity documents.

Neal Allen, chair of the political science department at Wichita State University, said it remains unclear whether the transgender issue will help Republicans defeat Democrats in 2024, but that many Republicans are more concerned about an internal party challenge from the right.

“You have to win the first election first. And the vulnerability of most Republican state legislators right now is in the primary, if at all,” Allen said.

‘FLORIDA IS THE VANGUARD’

Among the governors at the forefront is DeSantis, who is expected next week to announce a bid for the 2024 Republican U.S. presidential nomination. The bill he signed on Wednesday also adds obstacles for transgender adults and grants courts jurisdiction in child custody battles in some cases involving gender-affirming care.

“I’ve watched anti-trans legislation for four years now and I can tell you that Florida is the vanguard,” said Erin Reed, an independent researcher who tracks the bills. “You see it pushed in Florida, and then you see it emanate across the country.”

LGBTQ rights activists are pushing back.

Florida protesters flung underwear at state House Republicans from the gallery with messages such as “not your business” and “leave my genitals alone.”

Demonstrators swarmed the Texas House, leading lawmakers to send a bill banning gender-affirming care back to committee. The bill finally passed the legislature on Wednesday.

In Montana, protests contributed to the censure of transgender state Representative Zooey Zephyr, who was banned from the state House floor by Republican legislators.

President Joe Biden’s administration has entered the fray. Last month, the Justice Department sued Tennessee to challenge its Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming care for minors, one of several states where it has filed a complaint or supported lawsuits.

Some Republicans have said they have momentum.

The State Freedom Caucus Network, a coalition of conservative legislators in 11 states, has helped pass transgender-related bills in five states.

“In five to 10 years, I feel like the country will look back on this and realize that it was a horrible mistake to let (gender-affirming care) occur,” said Andrew Roth, president of the network. “I think that’s the eventual conclusion of this.”

A recent Fox News poll found 57% of respondents believe political attacks on families with transgender children is a major problem. A Data for Progress poll found 72% of Democrats, 65% independents and 55% Republicans think too much legislation is aimed at limiting LGBTQ rights.

But a Reuters/Ipsos poll from March found 55% of respondents agreed that doctors should be banned from providing transgender treatment to minors, versus 33% who disagreed.

The major pediatric, endocrinology and mental health associations endorse gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy when appropriate, some calling it life-saving for many transgender youths.

But many Republican supporters of the bills distrust the prevailing medical consensus, characterizing the treatments as dangerous and experimental. Some have called the measures chemical castration or child abuse.

Since 2021, least 15 states have banned gender-affirming care for minors.

“It’s catastrophically bad,” said Cathryn Oakley of the Human Rights Campaign. “The number of young folks who are going to be losing access to medically necessary, best-practice, age-appropriate healthcare is really scary.”

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Paul Thomasch)

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By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – Oklahoma’s governor has signed into law a bill making it a felony to provide gender-affirming healthcare to a minor.

Indiana has enacted a law requiring teachers to tell parents when students ask to be called by a new name or different pronoun. North Dakota has approved a law that lets public school teachers and state employees ignore using a transgender person’s preferred pronoun.

And the latest such action came in Florida on Wednesday when Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that bans gender-affirming medical care such as puberty blockers or hormone therapy for transgender youths – a measure that joins the state’s growing list of legislation that limits the rights of LGBTQ people.

This month’s rush of bills, certain to attract court challenges, has become central to the Republican agenda in statehouses across the country and inflamed the so-called culture war in the United States that also encompasses abortion, gun rights and school curricula.

A group of Florida parents has already sued in federal court to try to stop new law there.

To many political observers, these measures offer a preview of the 2024 elections, with Republicans portraying Democrats as out of touch on issues of sex and religion, and Democrats calling Republicans extremist and anti-democratic.

Republicans have introduced more than 500 bills affecting LGBTQ people in 2023, with at least 48 passing, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights group. Those numbers are up from 315 bills introduced and 29 passed in 2022.

The majority of those bills specifically affect transgender people, touching on nearly every aspect of a transgender person’s public life. Some seek to ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports. Others require transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender assigned at birth or prevent transgender people from changing their sex on identity documents.

Neal Allen, chair of the political science department at Wichita State University, said it remains unclear whether the transgender issue will help Republicans defeat Democrats in 2024, but that many Republicans are more concerned about an internal party challenge from the right.

“You have to win the first election first. And the vulnerability of most Republican state legislators right now is in the primary, if at all,” Allen said.

‘FLORIDA IS THE VANGUARD’

Among the governors at the forefront is DeSantis, who is expected next week to announce a bid for the 2024 Republican U.S. presidential nomination. The bill he signed on Wednesday also adds obstacles for transgender adults and grants courts jurisdiction in child custody battles in some cases involving gender-affirming care.

“I’ve watched anti-trans legislation for four years now and I can tell you that Florida is the vanguard,” said Erin Reed, an independent researcher who tracks the bills. “You see it pushed in Florida, and then you see it emanate across the country.”

LGBTQ rights activists are pushing back.

Florida protesters flung underwear at state House Republicans from the gallery with messages such as “not your business” and “leave my genitals alone.”

Demonstrators swarmed the Texas House, leading lawmakers to send a bill banning gender-affirming care back to committee. The bill finally passed the legislature on Wednesday.

In Montana, protests contributed to the censure of transgender state Representative Zooey Zephyr, who was banned from the state House floor by Republican legislators.

President Joe Biden’s administration has entered the fray. Last month, the Justice Department sued Tennessee to challenge its Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming care for minors, one of several states where it has filed a complaint or supported lawsuits.

Some Republicans have said they have momentum.

The State Freedom Caucus Network, a coalition of conservative legislators in 11 states, has helped pass transgender-related bills in five states.

“In five to 10 years, I feel like the country will look back on this and realize that it was a horrible mistake to let (gender-affirming care) occur,” said Andrew Roth, president of the network. “I think that’s the eventual conclusion of this.”

A recent Fox News poll found 57% of respondents believe political attacks on families with transgender children is a major problem. A Data for Progress poll found 72% of Democrats, 65% independents and 55% Republicans think too much legislation is aimed at limiting LGBTQ rights.

But a Reuters/Ipsos poll from March found 55% of respondents agreed that doctors should be banned from providing transgender treatment to minors, versus 33% who disagreed.

The major pediatric, endocrinology and mental health associations endorse gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy when appropriate, some calling it life-saving for many transgender youths.

But many Republican supporters of the bills distrust the prevailing medical consensus, characterizing the treatments as dangerous and experimental. Some have called the measures chemical castration or child abuse.

Since 2021, least 15 states have banned gender-affirming care for minors.

“It’s catastrophically bad,” said Cathryn Oakley of the Human Rights Campaign. “The number of young folks who are going to be losing access to medically necessary, best-practice, age-appropriate healthcare is really scary.”

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Paul Thomasch)

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By Andy Sullivan

LAKE CHARLES, La. (Reuters) -In Washington, Republican U.S. Representative Clay Higgins has been a vocal advocate for spending cuts. Back home in Louisiana, it’s a different story.

The cowboy-hat wearing conservative regularly highlights federal funding for hospitals, bridges and ports in his district, while voting against the spending bills that include them as “unsustainable” and “socialist garbage.”

Now as Republicans in Congress press Democratic President Joe Biden to accept trillion-dollar spending cuts to avert a debt default that could come as soon as June 1, Higgins must balance his small-government ideals with the needs of his constituents.

While Higgins easily won re-election in his solidly Republican district last year, his constituents rely heavily on federal dollars, especially after severe storms in 2020.

“I know so many people that need assistance,” said Roy Willis, 79, one of roughly 200 homeowners in Higgins’ district who received grants to repair storm damage to their properties.

A Reuters analysis of federal expenditure data found that Republican-leaning states like Louisiana stand to lose more than Democratic-leaning states under the spending cuts backed by House Republicans.

States that voted for Republican President Donald Trump got on average $2.12 in federal expenditures, covering everything from pension payments to military contracts, for every dollar paid in tax in the 2020 fiscal year, according to the analysis, which used figures collected by the New York State Controller. States that voted for Biden got $1.79 for every dollar paid.

Louisiana, among the poorest states, did even better, receiving $2.62 for every dollar paid. With 47% of state revenue coming from Washington in 2021, Louisiana was second only to Alaska in its reliance on federal funds, according to a Reuters analysis of Census data.

Representative Garret Graves, who represents a district next to Higgins, is the Republicans’ lead negotiator in debt-ceiling talks with Biden.

Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, oversaw the passage last month of the party’s debt-ceiling proposal, which would cut over $4.8 trillion in spending in return for raising the $31.4 trillion debt cap.

As a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, Higgins was an early advocate for dramatic spending cuts, many of which ended up in the House bill.

In a prepared statement, Higgins said he is working to help his constituents and reduce the size of the federal government.

“While devoting myself to restoring fiscal sanity in Congress, I am a practical man and I follow the rules of Congress as I serve my constituents,” he said in a prepared statement. He declined to be interviewed.

But in Higgins’ district, a stretch of swamp and petrochemical plants that includes the city of Lake Charles, local leaders said they are looking for more money, not less.

The Republican plan does not specify program cuts, but local leaders have plenty of suggestions about what should be spared the budget axe: roads and bridges, according to Republican Mayor Nic Hunter. Stormwater drainage and child care assistance, according to state Representative Wilford Carter Sr., a Democrat. Affordable housing and job training, according to the local business association. Harbor dredging, according to port officials. Air-conditioning subsidies and other safety-net programs, according to a regional administrator.

“Nobody’s talking about cuts,” said Carter. “They call me about we need this project, or that project.”

HURRICANE AFTERMATH

Lake Charles was flattened by Hurricane Laura in August 2020, followed by Hurricane Delta that October, and a winter storm and spring flood the following year.

Laura destroyed cranes and docks at the port, which ships liquid natural gas, chemicals, rice and other products. The storm destroyed half of the city’s mature trees, derailed freight cars and caused a chemical fire.

The city’s population dropped 5%. School enrollment is still down roughly 20% from pre-storm levels, and tattered blue tarps cling to many rooftops.

Willis’ home was damaged when a tree came down in the first storm. He hopes the spending cuts backed by Higgins won’t affect local efforts to provide affordable housing. “I’d say to him, keep on fighting to keep these programs going. There are so many people that are in the same position I was,” Willis said.

Congress did not approve rebuilding aid for the region until more than a year after Laura, an unusually long delay that some pin on their representatives in Washington.

Only $32.5 million in federal rebuilding aid has arrived so far, according to the Louisiana Office of Community Development, out of $3.1 billion approved for the state.

“Our federal delegation could have done a better job,” said Bryan Beam, administrator for Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, the regional governing body.

A former sheriff’s deputy, Higgins built a reputation as a tough-talking “Cajun John Wayne” before winning election in 2016. On social media he has dived into the culture wars, tweeting that Biden is pursuing a “Satanic agenda” on religious issues, and referring to public libraries as “liberal grooming centers.”

When it comes to spending, Higgins has been a solid “no” in Washington.

He voted against the 2021 infrastructure package, saying that it contained too many green-energy incentives. “It’s a losing deal,” he said at the time.

He voted against the last two bills that fund annual government operations, although they included $50 million for projects in his district and a proposal he wrote to expand veterans’ health care, which is estimated to cost $70 million over the next five years.

Meanwhile, Higgins’ office keeps a detailed timeline of his efforts to secure disaster aid and funding for a new freeway bridge, and issues a steady stream of press releases about federal awards in his district.

Mitch Landrieu, a Democratic former Louisiana lieutenant governor who now oversees implementation of Biden’s infrastructure law, said the state’s conservative-leaning leaders have often criticized the federal government while also trying to secure its help.

In Lake Charles, some local officials praise Higgins for pressuring the Federal Emergency Management Agency to release money for school repairs after the hurricane; securing $3 million in last year’s government spending bill to weatherproof two local hospitals; and shaking loose an extra $9 million to build a holding pen for the muck dredged up from the channel that connects the port to the Gulf of Mexico.

“He’s been extremely helpful,” said Channing Hayden, the port’s director of navigation, who credited Higgins for protecting roughly $50 million a year for the dredging operations.

Many local leaders are reluctant to criticize Higgins, who said in his statement to Reuters that he might publicly name the local governments that had not worked with him to secure aid.

For some local residents, Higgins’ push for spending cuts in the face of so much need remains incomprehensible.

Diana Reynolds’ home has been uninhabitable since Hurricane Laura, with black mold crawling up exposed wall studs.

She would have liked to sell her house to the government under a federally funded plan that buys up houses to create a green space to soak up flood waters — but she said was told the funding has run out.

“It’s almost like we’ve been forgotten about by the system. The government has failed us,” she said.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone and Suzanne Goldenberg)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of U.S. Senate Democrats including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren urged President Joe Biden in a letter on Thursday to prepare to invoke the Constitution’s 14th Amendment to avoid a debt default if negotiations fail.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward and Paul Grant; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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By Helen Coster

NEW YORK (Reuters) – CNN is getting more Republicans on the air as it seeks political diversity, the chief executive of parent company Warner Bros Discovery said on Thursday, adding he and CNN chief Chris Licht have told Republicans “they’re not going to get one more vote on Fox News.”

“Our view is there’s advocacy networks on either side,” Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav said at the SVB MoffettNathanson Technology, Media and Telecom Conference. “We have the best journalists in the world. We need to show both sides of every issue.”

Advertisers “don’t want to be part of an advocacy network” but they do want to be part of a news network, Zaslav said.

CNN has taken heat for its broadcast of a May 10 town hall with former Republican President Donald Trump. In a contentious 70-minute broadcast, Trump repeated falsehoods about his 2020 election loss, said that if elected he would pardon many supporters convicted of taking part in a Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and called CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins a “nasty person.”

On Wednesday CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour publicly criticized the town hall in remarks at Columbia Journalism School, the first of the network’s on-air talent to do so.

“I still respectfully disagree with allowing Donald Trump to appear in that particular format,” Amanpour said, according to the CNN “Reliable Sources” newsletter Wednesday night.

Suggesting that live TV may not always be the right format for such events, Amanpour said: “Some of the very best and even most fiery, compelling interviews are, in fact, taped and they are edited, not to change the context or the content or the truth or the intent, but to edit for filibuster and a stream of disinformation,” according to the CNN newsletter.

The Trump town hall attracted 3.3 million viewers, making CNN the most-watched cable news network that evening, according to Nielsen data.

(Reporting by Helen Coster in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

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By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) -Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed into law a bill that bans gender-affirming medical care such as puberty blockers or hormone therapy for transgender youth, and also enacts obstacles for adults to access treatment.

Taking effect in the third most populous U.S. state, the law escalates a Republican political strategy to pursue bills restricting transgender rights. More than 500 bills affecting LGBTQ matters have been proposed across the country and at least 48 have been enacted, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Such bills were once mostly limited to regulating changing rooms and women’s sports but have expanded to limiting healthcare access even for transgender adults. In some cases legislation has sought to charge parents and doctors with child abuse if they provide treatment to transgender youth.

“This will permanently outlaw the mutilation of minors,” DeSantis said at a bill-signing ceremony in Tampa.

“I mean they’re trying to do sex change operations on minors, giving them puberty blockers and doing things that are irreversible to them,” the Republican governor said.

Surgery for minors is exceedingly rare and only occurs after extensive monitoring by multiple medical professionals.

A group of parents of transgender children immediately challenged the law, filing an emergency request in federal court to block its implementation.

DeSantis, who is expected to launch a bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination next week, has staked part of his political future on cultural issues surrounding LGBTQ rights.

In addition to Florida, at least 14 other states have banned treatments for transgender youth, although many face legal challenges in the courts.

Many Republican supporters of the bills distrust the prevailing medical consensus, which endorses gender-affirming care and in some cases considers it life-saving. Instead, opponents of transgender healthcare claim it is dangerous and experimental, with some labeling the measures as chemical castration or child abuse.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) criticized passage of the bill, saying it interfered with the doctor-patient relationship.

“Florida’s bill has created a chilling effect on the medical community by inserting politics into health care,” Marci Bowers, the association’s president, said in a statement.

The Florida law, known as Senate Bill 254, requires transgender adults to obtain written consent on a form adopted by the Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine – two oversight boards whose members are appointed by the governor and have already taken steps to restrict transgender care under DeSantis.

In addition, the new law, which takes effect immediately, grants state courts jurisdiction in child custody battles over transgender minors when a Florida parent opposes treatment that is being pursued under an out-of-state parent.

DeSantis also signed into law a so-called “bathroom bill” requiring all restrooms or locker rooms at public facilities to be used exclusively for people based on their gender assigned at birth.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by David Gregorio)

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