(WASHINGTON) — A former Navy reservist who the government said expressed admiration for Hitler, among other antisemitic views, was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors described Hatchet Speed as an avowed antisemite who posed an increasing threat to the public.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden agreed that Speed’s hateful motivations warranted a longer sentence beyond other rioters who were not accused of specific acts of violence in the Capitol assault.
While Speed was not charged with assault or destruction of government property, prosecutors say he went on a spending spree after Jan. 6, acquiring weapons and ammunition worth thousands of dollars.
Speed, also a member of the far-right Proud Boys group, was first sentenced last month to three years in prison for possessing unregistered gun accessories.
Despite pleas from the defense, Judge McFadden ordered the four years in addition to the previous sentence.
Speed will also be required to serve time on probation and pay upwards of $10,000 in fees to the government.
He wore a dark green, short-sleeve jump suit as he appeared in court Monday and declined to make a statement in his own defense.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Department of Education has approved $42 billion dollars in student loan forgiveness for more than 615,000 public service workers since October 2021, the agency said Monday, touting what it described as Biden administration changes to encourage wider use of a particular debt cancellation program.
Amid legal challenges and sharp GOP criticism over President Joe Biden’s broader push to forgive $400 billion in federal student loans — with up to $20,000 canceled for each borrower — the government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program is increasingly being advertised as a secondary option, along with income-driven repayment plans, that the White House is trying to make more accessible.
The PSLF program was first congressionally authorized in 2007 to cancel student debt for government employees (like educators, firefighters, police officers, those in the military) as well as not-for-profit employees and others providing public services who make at least 10 years of payments on their loans.
However, the original PSLF program was “poorly implemented” and many borrowers weren’t successfully able to receive forgiveness, according to U.S. Education Undersecretary James Kvaal.
Kvaal told ABC News that some public servants had the “wrong type” of loans or were using ineligible repayment plans, like bank-based loans made with federal subsidies.
For years, Kvaal said, student loan borrowers were making payments under PSLF, thinking they were getting closer to debt cancellation, to no avail.
“When Secretary [Miguel] Cardona got here, he found that only 7,000 people had ever gotten forgiveness in the history of the program. And in many cases, that’s because of the fine print in the program,” Kvaal said.
In October 2021, for one year, the Biden administration issued what it called a limited waiver temporarily changing the rules of PSLF. On Monday, at the start of Public Service Recognition Week, the Department of Education credited those changes and others with greatly expanding the use of the program.
“The difference that Public Service Loan Forgiveness is making in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans reminds us why we must continue doing everything we can to fight for borrowers and why families cannot afford to have progress derailed,” Cardona said in a statement.
Kvaal likened the administration’s changes to a “reset” of a flawed system.
“We [the department] were able to do a one-time reset on public service loan forgiveness to say: Everyone out there who was eligible for the program but didn’t file the right form at the right time — we’re going to count all of those old payments,” he said. “We’re going to count the years you spent in public service while making payments on your student loans and recognize that progress.”
Beyond the yearlong waiver, the Department of Education is also set to implement similar regulatory changes starting in July, such as allowing payment credits under PSLF even for payments that are made late or in installments and crediting certain periods of forbearance and deferment (such as for military service or cancer treatment) toward the 10-year payment threshold.
Student debt forgiveness was one of President Biden’s signature campaign promises, and he initially rolled out his major loan cancellation plan in August 2022, intending to begin forgiving loans last October. (Federal student loan repayments have been paused since 2020 and the onset of COVID-19.)
Biden’s plan would have forgiven up to $10,000 of federal student loan debt per borrower, so long as they annually made under $125,000 or $250,000 as a married couple, with an additional $10,000 canceled for people who received Pell grants, which are given to low-income families.
But the sweeping proposal, which the White House has said could be used by more than 40 million Americans, was soon halted by lawsuits and the Supreme Court heard arguments on its legality in February. A decision is expected by the summer.
More than 170 Republican lawmakers oppose the president’s plan, filing amicus briefs with the Supreme Court.
“Joe Biden had no legal authority whatsoever. I think the larger issue is it’s unfair to people who paid off their loans. It’s unfair to people who didn’t take out loans,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s Republican former attorney general who first brought the case before the Supreme Court, previously told ABC News in an interview.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee and co-authored the House Republican brief. Foxx believes the president is scamming the American people and rejects both forms of student debt forgiveness.
“The Biden administration is breaking the law to achieve its goal of blanket loan cancelation – celebrating this effort is a slap in the face to taxpayers and ignores the underlying drivers of college costs,” Foxx said in a statement.
As the debate plays out around the bigger forgiveness program, other initiatives like PSLF remain legal, allowing some of the millions of borrowers who carry more than $1 trillion in student debt to see those sums canceled.
Pennsylvania social worker Colleen Cox, 61, received a letter in late February with a zero balance on her roughly $85,000 in student loans.
Cox said the PSLF cancellation was an “unbelievable gift,” but the system as a whole must be fixed.
“The most vicious way of people making money is on the backs of our students,” Cox told ABC News. “They just shouldn’t be saddled with this kind of usury and horrible debt just to get their education.”
(WASHINGTON) — Just weeks before the start of the busy summer travel season, President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced a new process on Monday that seeks to provide relief for frustrated air travelers by requiring airlines to provide passengers with boosted compensation, including meals and hotels, if they are left stranded and it’s the airline’s fault.
In his remarks, Biden noted that he knows American air travelers have been left frustrated in recent years.
“I know how frustrated many of you are at the service you get from your U.S. airlines … I get it. That’s why our top priority has been to get American air travelers a better deal,” Biden said.
“We know how frustrating delays, cancellations or make bookings are for travelers,” Biden said. “Last holiday season, travelers were stranded for days and had to scramble to find other ways to reaching their destinations. Many missed family gatherings, spent Christmas at an airport, waited countless hours in line, or on the phone because there weren’t enough pilots, there weren’t enough personnel. That’s unacceptable. And while flight delays and cancellations have come down since then, there’s still a problem. American air travelers deserve better. And that’s what we’re going to do. That’s what we’re doing here today.”
He pointed to two actions the administration is taking to help air travelers.
The administration will be launching an expanded website with a dashboard that hosts all the information about airlines and what compensation would be guaranteed. The website would note which airlines currently offer cash compensation, provide travel credits or vouchers, or award frequent flyer miles and cover the costs for other amenities.
The second action the administration will be taking later this year would allow for air travelers to be compensated not only for their flights but also for their meals, taxis, rideshares, and hotels if you’re left stranded and the airline is at fault.
“Historically, when delays and cancellations are the airline’s fault, the law has only required airlines to refund customers the price of their flight ticket, but not the cost of meals or hotels or transportation when you get left in limbo,” Biden said.
“If your flight is very delayed or canceled, and the airline could have prevented that from — you deserve more than just being — getting the price of your ticket, you deserve. You deserve being fully compensated. Your time matters. The impact on your life matters,” he said.
He noted this new rule should take affect “later this year.”
But the airline industry is likely to resist.
“We can expect that the airlines’ trade group will fight this proposal vigorously, citing the risk of higher fares and less competition,” said industry analyst Henry Harteveldt Monday on a Zoom call.
A consequence of the proposal is that airfares may go up, especially for budget airlines like Spirit, Breeze and Allegiant, according to Harteveldt. The money for compensation needs to come from somewhere, he said.
“If the proposal comes out with compensation that is too expensive for the airlines, some airlines may have to raise their fares so much that some passengers may be priced out of the market,” said Harteveldt.
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers are staring down a fast-approaching deadline to raise the debt ceiling or risk default as early as June 1, but the timeline to reach a solution is actually much shorter.
Memorial Day recess for the House and Senate and President Joe Biden’s upcoming travel shrink the number of working days for lawmakers to come to a debt ceiling deal by June, which is when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned the federal government could become unable to pay all of its bills on time.
Yellen, whose estimate relied on the most recent data, wrote she could not definitively say when the so-called “X-date” for default would begin.
In total, according to tentative House and Senate calendars, both chambers will be in session at the same time for just eight days before the end of May.
“Time is of the essence,” said Shai Akabas, the director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “The clock is ticking.”
The House and Senate each have roughly a dozen working days before the end of May. Though the schedules are subject to change, the House is set to be out of town starting May 26 and will return on June 5, while the Senate will be away from May 22 to May 29.
Complicating the issue further is Biden’s schedule: the president is traveling to Japan for a meeting with G-7 leaders from May 19 to May 21, followed by a trip to Australia for the Quad Leaders’ Summit on May 24.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre deflected when asked last week if Biden would change his itinerary for the debt ceiling showdown as he did as vice president in 2011, stating she had no changes to share at the time.
On Tuesday, Biden and top congressional leaders will gather at the White House for debt ceiling talks. It will be the first meeting between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Biden on the issue since February.
Since then, House Republicans narrowly passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling for one year while also enacting steep government spending cuts. The White House and Democrats, meanwhile, continue to demand a clean debt ceiling increase not tied to federal spending.
“There have been some small steps in the past week or so with the passage of the House legislation and the invitation of the congressional leaders to the White House,” said Akabas. “But we’re still in the early stages of these discussions. So there’s a lot that remains to be done, and not that much time. We need to see an acceleration in these activities.”
Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, the two parties still appeared adamantly opposed on who bears responsibility for addressing the debt ceiling.
Biden on Friday slammed “MAGA Republicans” for what he called a “manufactured crisis” on the debt ceiling.
“Let’s get it straight. They’re trying to hold the debt hostage to us to agree to some draconian cuts, magnificently difficult and damaging cuts,” he said, arguing the 2024 budget and the debt ceiling are two unrelated issues.
McCarthy, in response to Yellen’s warning about a possible June 1 default, was resolved House Republicans “did their job” when they passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act.
“After three months of the Biden administration’s inaction, the House acted, and there is a bill sitting in the Senate as we speak that would put the risk of default to rest,” McCarthy said. “The Senate and the President need to get to work — and soon.”
Americans, too, are divided on who they would blame for a default. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll found 39% would mainly blame the Republicans in Congress, while 36% said they’d mainly blame Biden and 16% would blame both parties equally.
Last week, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young signaled the White House would be open to a short-term fix on the debt limit.
“The important thing to do is to make sure we do this and leave the drama behind, regardless of what length we end up in,” Young said.
Young echoed other administration officials who’ve sounded the alarm on the potential political and financial risks of a default.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified last week that U.S. adversaries like China and Russia could seize on a default, and economists have painted a grim picture for Americans’ pocketbooks if the U.S. were unable to pay bondholders and other bills.
“Of course, we’re concerned,” Young said. “We’re calling on the reasonable people in this town to do the right thing.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s job approval rating hit a career low in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll and a broad 68% of Americans say he’s too old for another term as president — views that put him in a trailing position against top Republicans in early preferences for 2024.
Just 44% see Biden’s potential opponent, Donald Trump, as too old. (Trump is 76; Biden, 80.) Beyond chronological age, Trump far surpasses Biden in being seen as having the mental sharpness and the physical health it takes to serve effectively as president, with wide doubts about Biden on both fronts.
Another difference looks equally problematic for Biden should Trump emerge as the Republican nominee: Americans by 54-36% say Trump did a better job handling the economy when he was president than Biden has done in his term so far.
Trump is not Biden’s only challenge: Given his weaknesses, both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lead Biden in preference for the presidency in 2024.
Indicative of those results, Biden’s approval rating, battered by inflation, is just 36% in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. That’s down 6 percentage points from February and a point off Biden’s previous low in early 2022. Fifty-six percent disapprove of his performance.
Biden’s approval rating is numerically the lowest on record for any first-term president a year and a half from the next presidential election in polling dating to Harry Truman. Similar was Gerald Ford, at 40% approval in May 1975; Jimmy Carter, at 37% in May 1979; and Trump, at 39% in April 2019. None were re-elected.
Challenges
Trump, while the clear leader for the GOP nomination, has challenges of his own. Fifty-six percent say he should face criminal charges in investigations of whether he tried illegally to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. About as many as 54% say he should face charges in investigations of his handling of classified documents after leaving office and his role in events leading to the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. Fewer, about four in 10 in each case, say he should not be charged.
There’s a closer division in views about the charges of falsifying business records on which Trump has been indicted in New York. Forty-nine percent say this case was “brought appropriately, to hold Trump accountable under the law like anyone else.” Forty-four percent think it was brought “inappropriately, to try to hurt Trump politically.”
Ninety percent of Democrats think the charges are appropriate; 82% of Republicans say they’re inappropriate. Independents split 47-40%.
Perhaps reflecting the legal swirl around Trump, Biden scores 8 points better on another personal characteristic, being honest and trustworthy. But neither is well-rated on the attribute. Biden is seen as honest and trustworthy by 41% of Americans, Trump by 33%.
Election
Regardless, Trump outperforms his in-party rivals at this early stage of the 2024 contest. In an open-ended question, 43% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say they’d like to see the party nominate Trump for president next year, and when the six best-known candidates are named, he advances to 51%. That’s double the preference for his nearest potential opponent, DeSantis, at 25%.
DeSantis comes closest to Trump, 27% versus 36%, among moderates. But there aren’t that many of them in the party. Conservatives, who account for about two-thirds of Republicans and Republican leaners, favor Trump over DeSantis by 55-27%.
That said, substantial majorities of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they would be satisfied with either Trump (75%) or DeSantis (64%) as their party’s nominee. Fewer than a quarter would be dissatisfied with either; more are undecided about DeSantis. Satisfaction with Trump was far lower — 51% — as he fought for the nomination in March 2016.
Compare Trump’s position to Biden’s in his party: Just 36% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would like to see their party nominate Biden for president next year. Fifty-eight percent prefer someone other than Biden, unchanged from February.
Looking (far) ahead to November 2024, in a Biden-Trump matchup, 44% of Americans say they’d definitely or probably vote for Trump, 38% for Biden, with 12% undecided. When the undecideds are asked how they lean, it’s 49-42%, Trump-Biden.
A Biden-DeSantis matchup looks essentially the same. Forty-two percent of Americans say they’d definitely or probably vote for DeSantis, 37% for Biden, with 16% undecided. Including undecideds who lean either way, it’s 48-41%, DeSantis-Biden.
These results — with DeSantis doing as well as Trump against Biden — suggest that Biden’s challenge is not about Trump per se, but about perceptions of Biden himself.
Notably, among those who say Trump should face criminal charges in the investigations into whether he illegally tried to overturn the 2020 election results, 18% are inclined to vote for him over Biden anyway. Seventy-one percent in this group take Biden.
At the same time, among people who say Biden is too old for the job, 36% are inclined to support him anyway, while 54% in this group favor Trump. One reason is that among people who say Biden is too old, 62% also say Trump is too old.
Age/attributes
Biden already is the nation’s oldest president. As mentioned, 68% see him as too old for another term; this includes 43% who see both Biden and Trump as too old and 26% who say so only of Biden. Fewer — 44% — see Trump as too old while, again, 43% say this about Trump and Biden alike and a scant 1% say it about Trump only.
Nearly half of Democrats — 48% — say Biden is too old for another term; about as many say the same about Trump. Many more independents — 75% — say this about Biden, versus 51% for Trump. Among Republicans, 79% see Biden as too old; just 28% say this of Trump.
Among adults age 65 and older, 62% see Biden as too old, versus 40% who say the same about Trump. Among the youngest adults, aged 18 to 29, 75% see Biden as too old, versus 53% for Trump.
Beyond age alone are questions of mental acuity and physical health. Just 32% overall think Biden has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president, down steeply from 51% when he was running for president three years ago. More — 54% — think Trump has the required mental sharpness, in his case up 8 points from three years ago. The gap is even wider in terms of having the physical health to serve effectively — just 33% think Biden has it, versus 64% for Trump.
ANALYSIS
Ninety-four percent of Republicans and 69% of independents think Biden lacks the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively, as do 21% of Democrats. As with age, these views aren’t entirely determinative of voter preferences: Among people who fault Biden on this question, 15% support him against Trump anyway.
Beyond broad appeal, these doubts about Biden seem to limit his strength of support, a potential factor in bringing voters to the polls. Just 18% of Americans strongly approve of Biden’s performance in office, essentially flat since late in his first year. Trump, at this point four years ago, had more strong support — 28%.
A key difference is within Biden’s own party. As reflected in opposition to his being the 2024 nominee, just 37% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents voice strong approval for Biden’s work in office. Among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents four years ago, Trump’s strong approval was far higher — 58%.
Approval/groups
Biden has trouble across a range of groups. His approval rating from Black people, a core Democratic group, is just 52%, down from 82% when he took office. Indeed, 27% of Black people say they’d definitely or probably vote for Trump in 2024, or lean toward him. Trump won 12% of Black voters in 2020.
Biden has even lower approval — 40% — from Hispanic people (a point from his low) and 32% among white people (matching his low). In a Biden-Trump matchup, 43% of Hispanic people say they’d definitely or probably support Trump or lean that way. Trump won 32% of Hispanic voters in the last election.
Biden is at a low in approval among women, another key group for Democrats, with 39% approval, and, at 30%, matches his low among independents, often a swing voter group. Indeed, independents currently slightly favor Trump over Biden, 48-39%. Biden won 54% of independents in 2020.
Among other groups, Biden is at a low of 40% approval among moderates. Half in this group now say they’re inclined to vote for him over Trump in 2024. In 2020, Biden did far better among moderates, with 64% support.
Methodology
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone April 28-May 3, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,006 adults. Partisan divisions are 26-25-41%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, including the design effect. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in polls.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here.
(TALLAHASSEE) — During his first run for governor of Florida in 2018, then-Congressman Ron DeSantis was publicly grappling with a number of issues regarding race that had plagued his campaign.
In one incident, DeSantis came under fire for a public comment he made ahead of the election in which he urged Florida voters not to “monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda”– which drew a strong rebuke from his African American opponent, Democratic Andrew Gillum.
DeSantis pushed back at the time, saying the comment had “zero to do with race.”
Now, video footage exclusively obtained by ABC News of the DeSantis team’s mock debate sessions during that 2018 run for governor show him and his advisers candidly discussing how to handle their response to the “monkey” comment backlash — with DeSantis comparing the issue to a “a mini version of Kavanaugh,” an apparent reference to the firestorm that arose over sexual assault allegations leveled against then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh, which Kavanaugh strongly denied.
“If I show any weakness on that, I think I lose my base,” DeSantis said during the discussions, according to the nearly two and a half hours of private 2018 debate prep footage obtained by ABC News. “I think that I appear to be less than a leader, and so I just think I’ve got to come at it full throttle and say that’s wrong.”
He wanted to come at the issue hard and “speak to those people” who felt “political correctness has gone too far,” DeSantis said in the video.
At another point, his then-adviser Rep. Matt Gaetz — who has gone on to support former President Donald Trump’s third bid for the White House — told DeSantis he was coming in “too hot” on the issue.
“It deserves to be hot!” DeSantis exclaimed. “I mean, I’m sorry!”
“Kavanaugh showed that when you say ‘f— this,” DeSantis said regarding the accusations against the then-nominee. “We did such a horrible job of pushing back on all these stupid stories from the beginning. He’s going to rattle off a list.”
And behind closed doors, DeSantis said that if he had meant the racist comment, he would have apologized.
“Nobody thinks that’s what you meant,” an adviser off camera told DeSantis, who responded, “Right, that’s a thing. I mean, if I honestly meant — I would have apologized, I mean, because it would have been wrong. I mean, I’ll man up.”
The newly obtained videos come amid ABC News’ recent reporting that DeSantis’ team has already quietly begun debate prep for the upcoming GOP primary, including reviewing past debate performances, sources familiar with the preparations have said. DeSantis is now likely to skip announcing an exploratory committee, despite previous reports, and instead is expected to launch a full campaign next month, sources said.
During the 2018 debate prep sessions, DeSantis also appeared to downplay a comment criticized as racist made by a right-wing author David Horowitz, who had hosted a number of conferences that DeSantis had spoken at. “David has done such great work …. and I’ve been a big admirer of an organization that shoots straight, tells the American people the truth and is standing up for the right thing,” DeSantis said in 2015 of Horowitz, who among other things had criticized Black Americans for not feeling “gratitude” toward whites for their “sacrifices” in ending slavery.
At one of the public debates against Gillum in October 2018, DeSantis sidestepped the issue, responding to a moderator’s question on the topic by saying, “How the hell am I supposed to know every single statement someone makes?”
But privately, according to the recordings of the debate prep sessions obtained by ABC News, DeSantis downplayed the comment made by Horowitz, saying it was “stupid” but not racist.
“A lot of the stuff they’re saying isn’t even racist. Like, David Horowitz said that, ‘Oh, Black people should thank white people for ending slavery.’ That’s a stupid comment, but that’s not the same thing,” DeSantis said.
Gaetz cut him off, saying clearly: “You will not win” that argument.
“I’m not gonna get into that,” DeSantis said in agreement. “I know I’m not gonna — I can’t win that, I know.”
“The point is, is that they’re taking things that have nothing to do with me, but they’re also making it way worse than they even actually were, and then trying to paint, you know, paint a narrative. And it’s bull—-” DeSantis said, referring to criticism he was facing at the time over his “monkey it up” comment, his association with Horowitz, and reports that he served as an admin for a racist Facebook group, which he denied.
“All this stuff, I mean is just a bunch of crap, I mean it really is,” DeSantis said on the tape.
During one of the prep sessions, the governor’s wife, Casey, attempted to provide an explanation for the governor’s “monkey it up” comment: that DeSantis had only said “monkey” because he had been reading their daughter’s favorite book, “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed'” to their kids at night.
When Casey asked the room if that explanation would “matter,” Gaetz quickly responded, “Nobody cares.”
“Nobody cares?” Casey, off camera, replied.
“Not even a little,” Gaetz said.
A representative for DeSantis did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — Texas lawmakers on Sunday reacted to the latest mass shooting in America — at an outdoor mall north of Dallas — by focusing on the importance of mental health treatment and prayer.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Gov. Greg Abbott pointed to shootings in other states with stricter gun laws and argued that prioritizing mental health could help prevent more violence.
Eight people were killed and seven others were injured before the suspected gunman was killed by police on Saturday in Allen, Texas, authorities have said.
“What we’ve seen across the United States over the past year or two … is an increased number of shootings in both red states and blue states. Shannon, we’ve seen an increased number of shootings in states with easy gun laws as well as states with very strict gun laws,” Abbott, a Republican, told anchor Shannon Bream on Sunday.
“One thing that we can observe very easily is that there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of anger and violence that’s taking place in America. And what Texas is doing, in a big-time way, we’re working to address that anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health crisis behind it,” Abbott said.
Rep. Henry Cuellar, one of the most conservative Democrats in the House, sounded a similar note on the same program.
“It’s one of those things that we need to look at. And again, it’s making sure we get at the root problems. And I do agree with the governor: Mental health is one of the things,” Cuellar said.
Mass shootings “happen across the nation, and we have to get to the bottom of this,” he said.
Republican Rep. Keith Self, meanwhile, rebuked gun reform supporters who have lambasted the offering of “thoughts and prayers” that often follow such shootings.
“Those are people that don’t believe in an almighty God who is absolutely in control of our lives. I’m a Christian, I believe that he is. We have people, though, with mental health [problems] that we’re not taking care of,” Self said on CNN on Saturday.
“Prayer is powerful in the lives of those people that are devastated. And I know people want to make this political,” Self said. “But prayers are important, and they are powerful in the families who are devastated right now.”
In a statement, President Joe Biden again called for a ban on assault-style weapons and other legislative changes.
“Such an attack is too shocking to be so familiar. And yet, American communities have suffered roughly 200 mass shootings already this year, according to leading counts,” Biden said. “More than 14,000 of our fellow citizens have lost their lives, credible estimates show. The leading cause of death for American kids is gun violence.”
“We need more action, faster to save lives,” the president said, urging “a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Enacting universal background checks. Requiring safe storage. Ending immunity for gun manufacturers. I will sign it immediately.”
Last year, in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre, Congress broke a decades-long stalemate to pass a bipartisan bill that strengthened background checks, bolstered mental health support and made other changes.
But Democratic priorities like banning assault weapons have little chance of making it to Biden’s desk, as many Republicans argue such restrictions are ineffective and unconstitutional.
(WASHINGTON) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday said invoking the 14th Amendment to get around the debt ceiling and continue borrowing money to pay the nation’s bills would risk a “constitutional crisis,” downplaying the idea that the amendment would simply solve the looming problem — but she avoided ruling it out entirely.
“What to do if Congress fails to meet its responsibility? There are simply no good options, and the ones that you’ve listed are among the not good options,” Yellen told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos when pressed on whether the Biden administration was considering using the 14th Amendment, which states that the public debt “shall not be questioned.”
Yellen said on “This Week” that the only way for the U.S. to avoid an unprecedented default as soon as next month is for Congress to pass legislation doing so, even as the White House and congressional Democrats appear to be in a stalemate with Republicans over GOP demands to tie steep spending cuts to raising or suspending the debt ceiling.
Amid that debate, President Joe Biden said on Friday, of trying to use the 14th Amendment as a solution: “I’ve not gotten there yet.”
“But it didn’t seem like he took it off the table. So, is it still a possibility?” Stephanopoulos asked Yellen on Sunday.
“Our priority is to make sure that Congress does its job,” she said. “There is no way to protect our financial system in our economy other than Congress doing its job and raising the debt ceiling and enabling us to pay our bills. And we should not get to the point where we need to consider whether the president can go on issuing debt. This would be a constitutional crisis.”
Stephanopoulos followed up: “Is that a hard and fast position that the president will under no circumstances invoke the 14th Amendment?”
“All I want to say is that it’s Congress’ job to do this. If they fail to do it, we will have an economic and financial catastrophe that will be of our own making, and there is no action that President Biden and the U.S. Treasury can take to prevent that catastrophe,” Yellen replied, later saying, “I don’t want to consider emergency options.”
The treasury secretary echoed the president’s position: that the debt ceiling should not be used as leverage as part of Republicans’ negotiations with the White House over the budget.
“Since 1960, the debt ceiling has been raised 78 times, three times during the prior administration, always with bipartisan support,” Yellen said. “And it simply is unacceptable for Congress to threaten economic calamity for American households and the global financial system as the cost of raising the debt ceiling and getting the agreements on budget priorities.”
Yellen reiterated that she expects the Treasury Department to no longer be able to pay all of its obligations as soon as June 1, a timeline that has jumpstarted negotiations in Washington.
“This would be really the first time in the history of America that we would fail to make payments that are due,” Yellen said. “And whether it’s defaulting on interest payments that are due on the debt or payments due for Social Security recipients or to Medicare providers, we would simply not have enough cash to meet all of our obligations. And it’s widely agreed that financial and economic chaos would ensue.”
Biden is set to meet with the leaders of each chamber of Congress on Tuesday to discuss spending and the debt.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., insists that the president agree to steep budget cuts as a condition of getting GOP support for a debt limit increase. That position is shared by many Republicans on Capitol Hill.
On Saturday, a group of 43 Republican senators signed onto a letter to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that said they would not vote “for cloture on any bill that raises the debt ceiling without substantive spending and budget reforms.”
“It’s entirely reasonable to be able to sit down and say, if we’re continuing to add more and more debt, let’s talk about the whole view,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a signatory of the letter, said Sunday in a separate “This Week” appearance.
Biden, meanwhile, says the debt should be separated from any compromise on the budget and spending.
“I know he wants to set up a process in which spending priorities and levels are discussed and negotiated,” Yellen said on “This Week.” “But these negotiations should not take place with a gun, really, to the head of the American people.”
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. James Lankford on Sunday previewed what he would like to see when President Joe Biden meets with Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other congressional leaders on Tuesday to talk about the looming debt ceiling crisis.
“I would hope that they would all sit down and be able to talk about, ‘OK, what are the parameters? Where are we?'” Lankford, R-Okla., told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“We have $31 trillion in debt. That’s happening as a nation. It’s continuing to accelerate,” Lankford said.” We’re continuing to see high inflation. We have all the risks of a recession that’s out there based on what’s happening on government spending and such.”
Lankford continued: “I would hope they would sit down [on Tuesday] and say: ‘What are the areas that we do have common ground on? What are the areas that we can actually begin to reduce spending?'”
He echoed other Republicans who feel that debt and spending negotiations should have started months ago. Biden and McCarthy last met on the issue in February.
“That’s been the most stunning part about this is: Everyone knew it was coming. It’s time to be able to negotiate it,” Lankford said.
On Saturday, 43 GOP senators, including Lankford, sent a letter to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer saying they won’t back a debt limit increase without “substantive spending and budget reforms.”
That position is at odds with congressional Democrats and the White House who say the nation’s borrowing limit must be raised without preconditions, as it sometimes has in the past.
“I don’t find a single American, whether they’re around government or not around government, that says, ‘The federal government spends every dollar perfectly; there’s nowhere in federal spending we can cut; everything’s very efficient,'” Lankford said Sunday.
“Everyone knows that there’s areas of waste in government,” he said.
Stephanopoulos pressed Lankford on where the GOP would like to see specific spending cuts, given that a recent House proposal they passed remains vague beyond reducing funding for federal agencies to 2022 fiscal year levels and limiting growth in government spending to 1% per year.
“The House bill that they put out was their first parameter,” Lankford responded. “It is the beginning of a negotiation to say the House is well prepared and has been prepared to be able to negotiate this.”
Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned in a letter to lawmakers that the country could run out of money to pay all of its bills as soon as June 1, unless the debt ceiling is raised by Congress.
Lankford on Sunday laid the blame with Biden, whom he maintained was slow-walking negotiations with Republicans.
The president has repeatedly said the debt must be dealt with separate from a compromise on spending.
“I know he wants to set up a process in which spending priorities and levels are discussed and negotiated,” Yellen said on Sunday, in a separate “This Week” appearance. “But these negotiations should not take place with a gun, really, to the head of the American people.”
Lankford cast the unique arrangement in the U.S. as a way to enforce fiscal responsibility, though critics of the debt ceiling says it can manufacture economic crises.
“We’re the only one that has a debt limit like this one. The reason we have it is because it forces a moment to be able to talk about debt and deficit and to say, ‘Where are we going on this?'” Lankford said.
He also pushed back on criticism that only conservatives use the debt ceiling to enact budget and spending changes — and he singled out past votes to that effect by then-Sen. Biden.
“These are not moments where there’s this, quote-unquote, always ‘clean’ [limit increase] unless Republicans are negotiating,” Lankford said.
Yellen warned in her interview that “financial and economic chaos would ensue” if lawmakers fail to act, noting a bipartisan history of raising the debt ceiling.
“It simply is unacceptable for Congress to threaten economic calamity for American households in the global financial system as the cost of raising the debt ceiling and getting agreement on budget priorities,” Yellen said.
“We’ve always paid our bills,” Lankford said in his interview, challenging the “calamity” label. “But Democrats and Republicans have both used this moment to be able to look at it and say, ‘Let’s talk about where we’re going, what’s the direction, what’s the future?'”
Lankford was also asked about a political issue: the 2024 Republican primary race. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Sunday shows Trump leading Biden in the race for the White House.
“I’ve not endorsed anyone in this race and not going to for quite a while, if I do it all. I didn’t in 2016, either. So I’ll stay out of this, as we’ve got an open seat at this point,” Lankford said. “Clearly, President Trump is leading in all the polls on it. But it’s still early. There are several folks that are unannounced that may announce in the next couple of months.”
(NEW YORK) — The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to sentence Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes to 25 years in prison following his conviction along with other members of the anti-government militia group on charges of seditious conspiracy and other felonies stemming from their involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors set forth their requested sentences for Rhodes and eight other Oath Keepers convicted of a range of offenses following two separate trials in November of last year and in January. Six of the nine total defendants were convicted on the key seditious conspiracy charge while three others — Jessica Watkins, Thomas Caldwell and Kenneth Harrelson — were found not guilty of that charge but were convicted of other serious felonies.
“These defendants were prepared to fight. Not for their country, but against it,” prosecutors said Friday evening leading off their 183-page sentencing request. “In their own words, they were “willing to die” in a “guerilla war” to achieve their goal of halting the transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential Election.”
The recommendation for Rhodes is the longest thus far for any person charged in connection with the Capitol attack, reflecting what prosecutors see as his role in a key organizing figure for members of the far-right militia — even as Rhodes was never alleged to have entered the Capitol building itself on Jan. 6.
It also comes the same day that DC district Judge Amit Mehta, who will sentence Rhodes and the other Oath Keepers members, handed down the harshest sentence yet for a Capitol rioter with a lengthy criminal history accused of repeated assaults against police during the Jan. 6 attack. Mehta sentenced Pennsylvania man Peter Schwartz to more than 14 years in prison Friday afternoon, which was 10 years below what prosecutors had sought.
In the sentencing recommendation for Rhodes and the eight other Oath Keepers defendants, the government is seeking to use a terrorism enhancement in urging the judge to accept an upward departure from the typical sentencing guidelines.
As there is no federal charge specifically for domestic terrorism — prosecutors early on in their investigation into the Capitol attack suggested they could use the terrorism enhancement against convicted rioters to seek harsher penalties for the most egregious conduct and more clearly label their actions attacking the U.S. government.
The DOJ has previously sought to use this enhancement for the first Jan. 6 rioter convicted at trial, Guy Reffitt, but a judge rejected it.
“An upward departure… is warranted for all nine defendants, whose relevant conduct was “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct,” prosecutors say in the filing. “All nine defendants were active participants in a sweeping conspiracy to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power.”
