Politics

(NEW YORK) — Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., has been indicted on 13 counts, including seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York said Wednesday.

The embattled congressman was taken into custody Wednesday morning on Long Island, New York.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

May 10, 12:52 PM EDT
Several House Republicans reiterate calls for Santos to resign

About a dozen GOP members of the House had previously called on Santos to resign or be expelled from Congress in the face of allegations against him, and several of them are reiterating that stance today.

In a statement today, fellow New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, said, “The charges against Rep. Santos are extremely serious and deeply disturbing and as I’ve previously said, he simply doesn’t have the trust of his constituents or colleagues. The sooner he leaves, the sooner his district can be represented by someone who isn’t a liar and fraud.”

Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., told reporters on his way into a conference meeting this morning, “I can’t wait for him to be gone.”

Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Tex., tweeted, “George Santos should be immediately expelled from Congress and a special election initiated at the soonest possible date,” while Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told reporters, “This has been going on now since we took the majority. Frankly, I would have hoped along the way that Mr. Santos would have done what I believed was the right thing and not force leadership to force his action, but for him to do it on his own.”

The office of Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, says his position remains unchanged from the his Jan. 12 statement which said, in part, “I do not believe George Santos can effectively serve and should resign.”

In other statements released Tuesday night by Santos’ fellow New York Republicans, Rep. Nick LaLota said, “These charges bring us one step closer to never having to talk about this lying loser ever again,” while Rep. Mike Lawler said, “I reiterate my call for George Santos to step down” and Rep. Anthony D’Esposito said, “As a retired NYPD Detective, I am confident the justice system will fully reveal Congressman Santos’ long history of deceit, and I once again call on this serial fraudster to resign from office.”

Other GOP House members from New York who have previously called for Santos to step down include Rep. Nick Langworthy and Rep. Brandon Williams.

Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., told CNN Tuesday night, “I do believe that if a member of Congress is charged with a federal crime they should resign,” and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., told CNN, “We should really hold our own accountable and recruit someone who’s going to be better.”

-ABC News’ Lauren Peller, Gabe Ferris, Katherine Faulders and Jay O’Brien

May 10, 11:16 AM EDT
House GOP leadership standing by Santos

House Republican leadership is continuing to stand by Santos following the 13-count indictment. Among the House’s GOP leadership, there have been no calls today for Santos to resign.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy says that Santos, “like every American,” will have his “day in court.”

“He will go through his time in trial and let’s find out how the outcome is,” McCarthy said.

The speaker said that Santos “was never put on committee, so he won’t serve on committee.”

Asked if money laundering, wire fraud, and lying to Congress concerns him, McCarthy responded, “It always concerns me.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, during a press conference this morning, said that the charges were serious — but did not call on Santos to resign.

“There’s a presumption of innocence, but the charges are serious,” Scalise said. “He’ll have to go through the legal process.”

-ABC News’ Gabe Ferris, Lauren Peller and Katherine Faulders

May 10, 10:33 AM EDT
Santos misled House about finances, indictment says

In addition to being charged with defrauding campaign donors and falsely applying for unemployment benefits, the indictment alleges that Santos mislead the House of Representatives about his finances, specifically in to two financial disclosure forms he filed as a candidate.

in May 2020, during his first unsuccessful campaign, Santos overstated one source of income while failing to disclose his investment firm salary, the indictment says.

And in September 2022, while running again, Santos again included falsehoods in his financial disclosure forms, according to the indictment.

Santos lied about earning a $750,000 salary and between $1 million and $5 million in dividends from his company, the Devolder Organization, according to the indictment, and falsely claimed to have a checking account that held between $100,000 and $250,000, and a savings account with deposits of between $1 and $5 million.

“These assertions were false. Santos had not received from the Devolder Organization the reported amounts of salary or dividends,” prosecutors said in the indictment.

May 10, 10:17 AM EDT
Santos to be arraigned this afternoon, could face 20 years

Santos was placed under arrest this morning and will be arraigned on the indictment this afternoon.

He was placed under arrest on a 13-count, 19-page indictment that outlines three main schemes.

If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 20 years in prison — though it’s by no means certain he would serve that much time.

May 10, 10:11 AM EDT
Santos defrauded campaign donors, prosecutors say

Federal prosecutors in Central Islip, New York, accuse Santos of engaging in a “scheme to defraud” his campaign donors.

According to the indictment, Santos solicited donations for his run for office “under the false pretense” that those funds would actually be used for politics.

Instead, prosecutors said Santos spent “thousands of dollars of the solicited funds on personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments.”

Santos is also charged with illegally receiving unemployment benefits during the pandemic even though “he was employed and was not eligible for unemployment benefits,” the indictment said.

Santos is also charged with lying to the House of Representatives on his financial disclosures. Taken together, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said. Santos relied on “repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself.”

May 10, 9:59 AM EDT
Santos received unemployment while working: Docs

Among the accusations in the charging documents are allegations that Santos applied for unemployment benefits during the pandemic, falsely claiming to have been unemployed since March 2020, according to prosecutors.

He collected money from then until April 2021, “when Santos was working and receiving a salary on a near-continuous basis and during his unsuccessful run for Congress,” referring to his first run for the job, which he lost. In total, prosecutors say he collected more than $24,000 in benefits.

He was actually being paid a $120,000 salary as regional director of an investment firm at the time, according to prosecutors.

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(NEW YORK) — Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., has been indicted on 13 counts, including seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York said Wednesday.

Investigators have been focusing on Santos’ financial disclosures, according to sources.

In a series of campaign disclosure amendments filed in January, Santos marked two loans that he had previously reported as loans from himself — $500,000 from March 2022 and $125,000 from October 2022 — as not from “personal funds from the candidate.”

In a previous version of his campaign disclosure, the $500,000 was reported as a loan from George Anthony Devolder-Santos, with a checked box indicating it was from “personal funds of the candidate.” But in an amendment to that report filed earlier this year, that box was left unchecked.

Santos, who was elected in November to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, has been under mounting scrutiny over his finances — with 2022 disclosures indicating millions in assets after previously disclosing less than $60,000 in income in 2020.

Additionally, as ABC News previously reported, the FBI contacted a Navy veteran, Richard Osthoff, about a GoFundMe campaign Santos established to raise money for the veteran’s service dog.

Santos established the GoFundMe account under the auspices of a charity, Friends of Pets United, and raised $3,000 to help Osthoff pay for surgery to remove a tumor from the dog, sources said.

But Osthoff told ABC News Santos did not come through with the money and ignored text messages about it. The dog, Sapphire, subsequently died.

Santos insisted earlier this year he would serve out his term despite mounting controversies surrounding his past falsehoods, scrutiny of his finances, and multiple investigations.

Santos, who has admitted to fabricating parts of his biography, has denied any criminal wrongdoing.

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(WASHINGTON) — Amid concerns over a looming immigration surge at the southern U.S. border, Biden administration officials have revealed what they described as a “comprehensive, multi-agency, multi-country plan” to “humanely manage the border” when a Trump-era policy known as Title 42 lifts this week.

The officials acknowledged that the policy placed “significant conditions” on the existing rule.

Under the finalized policy, migrants will be required to either first apply for protection in a third country or apply for admission via the CBP One App while also presenting at a legitimate port of entry to be considered, one official confirmed. Those who don’t follow those steps, the official said, would be quickly removed.

“We are also significantly expanding, starting on Thursday, our use of expedited removal at the border. This is our traditional title eight consequences for individuals who are encountered between ports of entry,” the official said. “We have spent much of the last year building out additional interview rooms and adding phone lines to both CBP and ICE facilities in order to facilitate the interviews that are required under the expedited removal process for asylum officers. We have retained and will be ready to deploy up to 1,000 asylum officers to handle credible fear interviews at the border again starting this Thursday.”

The official did not specifically say how the finalized rule differed exactly from the proposed policy previously revealed.

“I can’t talk about the specifics of changes that were made. I will note that they were not major changes, we did receive many thousands of comments, we worked feverishly to address and respond to it and all of that will be available for public inspection early tomorrow,” they advised.

Officials said that the finalized version of the sweeping restriction on asylum, first proposed by the Biden administration earlier this year, would be published Thursday morning, acknowledging that the policy — which has drawn considerable criticism from the president’s own party — placed “significant conditions” on the existing rule.

The change is almost certain to be challenged in court.

Following up on the announcement that the administration would stand up regional processing centers across Latin America last month, one official shed additional light on the initiative, saying they would eventually open more than 100.

“In the coming days, we will launch an online platform for individuals to make appointments to be able to visit a center near them and in many cases within their home countries,” they said, adding that over 140 federal personnel as well as NGO staffers would “be deployed to support the activities at the centers.”

It is currently unclear how long turnaround times for appointments might be or how long the whole process might take.

“We’re continuing to work those details but I’m quite certain that we will be have additional updates in the next several days,” the official said.

When asked whether the efficacy of the centers might be too little or too late to assuage the wave from the end of Title 42, the official pledged more would be done to facilitate legal migration.

“This will not be the last and certainly was not the first legal pathway made available in an innovative fashion by the administration to deal with this unprecedented challenge,” they said.

Stating that they had been preparing for the end of Title 42 for over a year, the officials sought to showcase that readiness with statistics.

“We have more than 24,000 law enforcement personnel deployed to the border, along with another 1,100 new border patrol processing coordinators, which has doubled the number we had last year,” one official said. “Thousands of contracts personnel have been hired over the last year and a half. And we have 400 volunteers who have put their hands up to help our frontline personnel manage what will be challenging conditions in some of our facilities.”

They added that the administration had also deployed over 1,400 medical support staff to the border, increased its capacity to hold individuals at border patrol facilities by more than 7,000 beds over the last two years, and increased repatriation flight capacity by more than 70% over the last year.

But despite it all, the administration officials — as the president himself did earlier — sought to set expectations low, saying they were bracing for a “rough couple of weeks.”

Here, the executive branch officials point the finger squarely at Congress, namely Republicans, for proving only “limited resources to address the moment at hand.”

“We have asked Congress for an updated framework. We have asked Congress as well for additional resources. Specifically, we asked Congress for $4.9 billion for border security and management. And Congress only gave us half of that,” one said.

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(NEW YORK) — A day after Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., was charged by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, the embattled congressman could make his first court appearance as soon as Wednesday, according to sources familiar with the matter.

While the charges remain sealed, sources have previously told ABC News that the FBI, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, and the district attorneys’ offices in Queens and Nassau counties have been investigating Santos.

Only when Santos appears in court will the criminal charges be unsealed.

Investigators have been focusing on Santos’ financial disclosures, according to sources.

In a series of campaign disclosure amendments filed in January, Santos marked two loans that he had previously reported as loans from himself — $500,000 from March 2022 and $125,000 from October 2022 — as not from “personal funds from the candidate.”

In a previous version of his campaign disclosure, the $500,000 was reported as a loan from George Anthony Devolder-Santos, with a checked box indicating it was from “personal funds of the candidate.” But in an amendment to that report filed earlier this year, that box was left unchecked.

Santos, who was elected in November to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, has been under mounting scrutiny over his finances — with 2022 disclosures indicating millions in assets after previously disclosing less than $60,000 in income in 2020.

Additionally, as ABC News previously reported, the FBI contacted a Navy veteran, Richard Osthoff, about a GoFundMe campaign Santos established to raise money for the veteran’s service dog.

Santos established the GoFundMe account under the auspices of a charity, Friends of Pets United, and raised $3,000 to help Osthoff pay for surgery to remove a tumor from the dog, sources said.

But Osthoff told ABC News Santos did not come through with the money and ignored text messages about it. The dog, Sapphire, subsequently died.

Santos insisted earlier this year he would serve out his term despite mounting controversies surrounding his past falsehoods, scrutiny of his finances, and multiple investigations.

Santos, who has admitted to fabricating parts of his biography, has denied any criminal wrongdoing.

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(WASHINGTON) — A day after being found liable for battery and defamation, former President Donald Trump is set to participate in a prime-time town hall on CNN on Wednesday — after years of bitter battle with the cable network over its sharply critical coverage.

It’s the first time the recently indicted and twice-impeached former president will appear on the network since the 2016 presidential campaign, with Trump as the first candidate CNN will provide a town hall setting to as part of a series of such forums during the 2024 presidential cycle.

On Tuesday, before the jury reached a verdict in the civil case alleging rape brought by E. Jean Carroll, Trump said that the event, moderated by CNN This Morning anchor and former CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins, “could turn into a disaster for all, including me,” but claimed in a post on his Truth Social media platform, “They made me a deal I couldn’t refuse!!!”

A CNN spokesperson told ABC News that “No subject is off limits” as criticism mounted of both Trump and CNN.

The network has promoted the town hall, taking place at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire at 8 p.m. ET, as featuring Trump fielding questions from Republican and undecided voters.

Trump, who during and after his time in office had repeatedly blasted the network as “fake news,” said CNN was “desperate to get those fantastic (TRUMP!) ratings once again.”

Critics of CNN said it should not be giving Trump a live, prime-time platform — “normalizing” him as just another presidential candidate — and claiming it’s part of new CNN effort to appeal to a more conservative audience.

“Jury finds Trump guilty of sexual assault. Great timing for the CNN Town Hall!” Norman Ornstein, a political scholar, said in a tweet on Tuesday following news of Trump being found liable.

The former president also is currently under multiple investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

CNN has tried to rebut those critics’ claims by stating it was only giving Trump — the current GOP primary front-runner — the same platform it would be giving other 2024 presidential hopefuls.

“This Town Hall is part of a longstanding CNN tradition of hosting leading presidential candidates for Town Halls and political events, connecting those running for office directly with constituents, as part of the network’s robust campaign coverage,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement. “CNN is no stranger to these types of events and this Town Hall will be the first of many in the 2024 election cycle.”

David Zaslav, the CEO of CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a recent interview with CNBC that Trump’s stature in the 2024 race warranted his appearance on the network.

“We need to hear both voices,” Zaslav said.

The Great Task, a political action committee sponsored by former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, launched a new ad Tuesday it said was scheduled to air on CNN this week in New Hampshire “ahead of and during the former President’s scheduled town hall on the network in the state.”

The ad warns voters that “Donald Trump is a risk America can never take again,” highlighting scenes from the Jan. 6 insurrection.

At the same time, some observers have highlighted the personal matchup between Trump and Collins, who earned a reputation for tough but fair coverage during Trump’s tenure and who was once barred from a Rose Garden event after objecting to her questions.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a panelist on ABC News’ The View, and a former member of Trump’s communications team, tweeted that Collins “is one of the toughest interviews out there. Anyone thinking that Trump will get away with lying without being called out needs to watch her past interviews. Honestly surprised he agreed.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump, a twice-impeached former president facing multiple criminal investigations and charges in one — as he denies wrongdoing and says he is being politically persecuted — has solidified a very early lead in the 2024 Republican primary polls.

The support for his comeback bid appears to be driven, in part, by voters who say they would cast a ballot for him even if he faces additional criminal charges.

In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released over the weekend, 51% of the 1,006 adults surveyed listed Trump as their preferred 2024 Republican nominee, compared with 25% for his nearest opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And, when incorporating which way undecided adults would lean, 49% said they would back Trump in a general election against President Joe Biden, with 42% of respondents supporting Biden.

Trump’s backers include those who think he broke the law, with 18% of respondents who said Trump should face criminal charges in investigations of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results also saying they would be inclined to vote for him.

To be sure, polls in recent cycles have been wrong, including in the 2022 midterms, when surveys predicted a red wave fueled by economic anxiety only for Democrats to have a strong cycle, holding the Senate and narrowing losses in the House. And Democrats insist that Biden remains in a strong position with so much time before the 2024 race, pointing both to last year’s results and a string of legislative accomplishments passed with little margin for error in his first two years in office.

Still, national surveys like the most recent one conducted by ABC News do capture attitudes among voters, even when they seem contradictory. The survey was taken before a jury found Trump liable in a case brought by E. Jean Carroll alleging that he raped her and later defamed her by denying he assaulted her.

Follow up interviews with several of the poll respondents indicated there remains seemingly inexorable support from Trump from a slice of the GOP, despite his scandals and defeats. And even among those not wed to the idea of supporting Trump in a primary, they said their financial worries are encouraging them to overlook his legal peril and support him in a hypothetical rematch against Biden.

Rebecca, a 19-year-old college student who declined to give her last name, told ABC News that she had worries over “everything about [Trump] getting rid of certain files, and then the allegations of him and women,” referencing Trump’s possession of classified documents after leaving office and accusations of sexual misconduct, which he denies.

Still, Rebecca would vote for Trump even if charged, she said, “because he might be a bad person, but he is a good president.”

When pressed on if she had any concerns about having a criminal as commander-in-chief, if Trump were to be convicted, Rebecca said she would consider who was running against him. Yet when asked who could run against him who would make her reconsider her vote, she answered, “To be honest, I’m not quite sure.”

That sentiment played out in seven conversations with people who responded to the ABC News/Washington Post poll who said criminal charges wouldn’t in themselves be deal-breakers in deciding who to vote for next year.

Sherry, a 56-year-old who said she is living on disability assistance, accused Trump of trying to “bribe the officials when they was trying to change over the election process.” Still, she said other politicians are also “crooks and criminals” and that she could not bring herself to vote for Biden in a 2024 general election.

“There’s nobody left. At least he had the jobs and everything going, you just had to weed out a lot of his comments and stuff,” she said of Trump.

“Since Biden’s been in office, I’ve been struggling bad. I’ve had to have help from my little brother, my kids, and I don’t like that,” Sherry said. “I didn’t have to have all that help when Trump was in office. Since Biden’s been in office, every month it’s like, am I going to make it? If my house wasn’t paid for, I wouldn’t make it.”

Those comments reflect the larger results from the poll, in which American adults said by a 54-36% margin that Trump did a better job handling the economy when he was president than Biden has done in his term so far — even as Biden and his defenders are quick to point to the country’s rebound from the onset of COVID-19, including low unemployment, despite persistently high inflation.

Other respondents had related gripes with Biden’s foreign policy, such as the use of international aide, while praising Trump’s rhetoric on limiting entanglements abroad.

Alice Castaneda, a 58-year-old living in Texas, said in the initial poll that she identifies as very liberal — and hadn’t voted for a Republican before Trump — but “always wanted Trump” and suggested “[Biden’s] doing more for other countries. And for us, we’re poor here in Texas.”

Conversations with the respondents suggested such economic worries also helped Trump gin up support among groups where Republicans typically get swamped.

Twenty-seven percent of Black respondents in the ABC News poll said they would vote for Trump, which would mark a jump from the 12% support he won in 2020. And 43% of Hispanic people say they’d definitely or probably support Trump or lean that way, which would be a rise from the 32% support he won three years ago.

Black and Hispanic respondents who later spoke to ABC News said it would be hard for Trump to relate to voters of color but rebuked the idea from Trump’s critics that his past comments on immigrants and lawmakers of color were racist.

“What he says about some being criminals and x, y and z, it sounds a little harsh. And me, coming from a Hispanic background, I find it harsh,” said 32-year-old Philadelphia resident Kayla Gonzalez. “But I find that he’s doing the correct thing. I think they should try to come here legally.”

“The man’s been a millionaire all his life, he’s used to a certain standard. So, it’s kind of hard to understand what a person that’s on the bottom is going through when you’re always on the top,” added Tommy Miller, a Black truck driver from Georgia who lamented the past rise in gas prices. “I like the man … because he did a lot of good things.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will travel to New York state’s Hudson Valley region on Wednesday to talk about the federal debt limit, and it appears he will be reiterating the same message he’s been sharing for weeks.

A White House official said Biden plans to hammer home his view that a default would prove catastrophic, that the Republicans’ plan is bad for Americans and that he’s open to talking about certain spending cuts — but not in the context of the debt ceiling.

Biden’s remarks in Valhalla, New York — part of a congressional district he won in the 2020 presidential election that is now represented by a Republican — will come one day after he met with congressional leaders about their impasse over the debt limit. The high-stakes meeting ended without a consensus on Tuesday, just weeks before a June 1 deadline to reach a deal or the U.S. government defaults on its obligations for the first time.

“The president will lay out the stakes for hardworking families across New York and the United States: default would threaten 8 million jobs, a recession and retirement plans for millions of Americans,” the White House official said.

“The president will also make clear that he believes in fiscal responsibility,” the official added. “His budget would cut the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years. And instead of cutting programs hardworking Americans rely on, he believes we must cut wasteful spending on big oil by $30 billion and big pharma by $200 billion, and make sure the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif, suggested Tuesday that energy-related cuts could be something he thought he and Biden could agree on.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., who represents the congressional district that includes Valhalla, said he has accepted a White House invitation to appear alongside Biden on Wednesday.

“America is not a deadbeat nation,” the White House official said. “We pay our bills. Congress has a constitutional duty to prevent default.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver the commencement speech at the West Point military academy this month, the first woman to do so, a White House official told ABC News.

Harris’ remarks at the May 27 commencement ceremony will mark her first visit to the U.S. Military Academy West Point, according to the official.

“We are honored to have the Vice President as our commencement speaker,” West Point’s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Steven W. Gilland, said in a statement provided by the White House. “As an accomplished leader who has achieved significant milestones throughout her career, we look forward to her inspiring remarks to our cadets.”

Harris and vice presidents before her have traditionally delivered commencement addresses at U.S. military academies. Last year, she did so at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and the year before, she spoke at the U.S. Naval Academy.

President Joe Biden, meanwhile, is scheduled to deliver remarks at this year’s U.S. Air Force Academy and Howard University commencement ceremonies.

Biden delivered West Point’s commencement speech in 2016, when he was vice president.

Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama also delivered commencement addresses there while they were in office.

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(WASHINGTON) — A high-stakes meeting Tuesday between President Joe Biden and congressional leaders on the debt ceiling ended with no solution as the nation barrels toward a June 1 deadline to reach a deal or risk default.

“Everybody in this meeting reiterated the positions they were at. I didn’t see any new movement,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters as he left the White House.

Biden, who later labeled the meeting “productive,” told reporters he’ll sit down with the leaders again on Friday and their staffs will meet daily in the interim to continue discussions.

When asked about the short time left to reach a deal, he said he’d skip next week’s long-scheduled trip to Japan to meet with G-7 leaders if necessary.

“I’m still committed,” he said of the trip. “But obviously this is the single most important thing that is on the agenda.”

Both parties dug into their familiar talking points as they emerged from the short meeting, with each side stating the other has the responsibility to act.

“The House raised the debt limit, the Senate has not and the president hadn’t been negotiating,” McCarthy said, pointing to the Save, Limit, Grow Act narrowly passed last month to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for reducing funding for federal agencies to 2022 fiscal year levels and limiting growth in government spending to 1% per year.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries left the meeting with a message to their Republican counterparts to “take default off the table.”

“The bottom line is very simple. There are large differences between the parties,” Schumer said of the two 2024 budget proposals offered by Biden and by House Republicans.

“We can try to come together on those in a budget and appropriations process, but to use the risk of default, with all the dangers that has for the American people, as a hostage and say it’s my way or no way … is dangerous,” Schumer added.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell categorically declared the U.S. would “never default.”

“It never has, and it never will,” McConnell said. “However, elections have consequences. We now have divided government.”

Biden said he was “pleased” by McConnell’s comments and said “everyone in the meeting understood the risk of default.”

Biden has said raising the debt ceiling is non-negotiable, and told reporters he was considering the 14th Amendment to get around the debt ceiling and continue borrowing money — a solution Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told ABC would risk an “unconstitutional crisis” — but that it would take time to get litigated.

While both sides still seemed miles apart on a debt ceiling fix, a rare point of agreement did emerge ahead of the meeting: opposition to a short-term solution.

“He’s gotta stop ignoring problems,” McCarthy said about Biden before the meeting Tuesday. “And why continue to kick the can down the road? Let’s solve it now.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during the daily briefing, “A short-term extension is not our plan, either. That is not our plan.”

Jean-Pierre reiterated the Biden administration’s view that it is Congress’ duty to enact a clean raise to the debt ceiling without conditions.

McCarthy said he believed a deal in principle on the matter is needed by next week in order to avert default, which Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns could come as soon as June 1 though there’s still uncertainty about the exact date when the government would be unable to pay all of its bills.

Administration officials have warned adversaries like China and Russia could take advantage if the U.S. were to default, and economists state there would be wide-reaching impacts that could trigger a global financial crisis.

“It’s widely agreed that financial and economic chaos would ensue,” Yellen said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”.

If the U.S. were to default for the first time in history, Americans are split on who would bear responsibility.

A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found 39% would mainly blame the Republicans in Congress, while virtually as many, 36%, say they’d mainly blame Biden. Sixteen percent volunteer that they’d blame both parties equally.

ABC News’ Ben Gittleson, Jay O’Brien and Gabe Ferris contributed to this report.

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(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — A coalition in Florida launched an effort Monday to get a question on the ballot in the 2024 general election that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

The group, Floridians Protecting Freedom, is proposing asking voters if they support a constitutional amendment that would allow a woman to have an abortion up to when the fetus can survive outside the womb, typically between 24 weeks’ and 28 weeks’ gestation.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, 15 states have ceased nearly all abortion services.

Florida will be the 16th state once a new six-week abortion ban is implemented — but only if the state’s current 15-week ban is upheld as legal challenges play out in court.

“No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider,” reads the language of the proposed ballot question. “This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

However, for it to appear on a ballot, the coalition needs to gather nearly 900,000 signatures — representing 8% of the total number of votes cast in the last presidential election — by Feb. 1, 2024.

What’s more, signatures must be collected from at least half of the state’s 28 congressional districts, according to Florida’s Constitution.

Once the Florida Secretary of State certifies that an initiative has crossed the threshold of signatures, its state’s Attorney General, Ashley Moody, is required to file a petition with the Florida Supreme Court seeking asking whether it can be included on the ballot.

However, the Attorney General can challenge the ballot initiative. In 2019, Moody challenged a ballot imitative seeking to legalize marijuana for recreational use, saying it was too long and couldn’t be adequately summarized, according to the Orlando Sun Sentinel.

“Floridians deserve the freedom to control their lives, their bodies, their health care, and their futures,” Kara Gross, legislative director at the ACLU of Florida — one of the groups in the coalition — said in a statement.

“The decision about whether and when to continue a pregnancy is one of the most, if not the most, important decisions we make. We should be free to make this decision in consultation with our medical providers and those we love and trust, without political interference.”

The governor’s office did not immediately reply to ABC News’ request for comment.

It comes after several successful ballot initiatives related to abortion rights were launched last year.

In August, 59% of Kansas voters said “No” to repeal the right to abortion in the state’s constitution in the first state-level test since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Meanwhile, during the November 2022 election, voters in California, Michigan and Vermont enshrined abortion rights in their constitutions while those in Kentucky and Montana states voted against further restricting access to abortion services.

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