Politics

(WASHINGTON) — After weeks of brinkmanship, the Senate voted Thursday night to raise the debt limit by $480 billion until Dec. 3.

The procedural move to break the GOP filibuster, which required 60 votes, was the first hurdle cleared, with a final count of 61-38. At least 10 Republicans needed to side with all Democrats to clear the hurdle to move forward to a final vote; 11 ultimately voted to advance the vote.

Democrats then raised the debt limit with a simple majority — 50-48. No Republican voted w/ Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced earlier in the day that Democrats and Republicans had reached an agreement to avert the U.S. defaulting on its debt for the first time.

“We have reached an agreement to extend the debt ceiling through early December, and it’s our hope that we can get this done as soon as today,” Schumer said Thursday morning, referring to a Senate vote.

McConnell followed Schumer and confirmed the deal was close to a vote — with the GOP leader claiming credit for saving the American people from default and the Democrats from themselves.

“The Senate is moving toward the plan I laid out last night to spare the American people a manufactured crisis,” he said.

Republican leaders initially struggled to find 10 GOP votes to break the filibuster following weeks of messaging to members that Democrats should go it alone.

But 11 Republicans ultimately voted to advance the debt ceiling vote. They were: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, West Virginia Sen. Shelly Moore Capito and Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso.

The agreement to raise the debt ceiling by $480 billion gives the Treasury Department the borrowing authority it says is needed to get the government through to Dec. 3.

The Senate deal comes a little more than a week before Oct. 18 — the date Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pegged as when the U.S. will no longer be able to cover its debts. Dec. 3 is the expiration date of the stopgap government funding bill needed to keep the government running.

The deal also comes as Democrats are still working to pass President Joe Biden’s sweeping domestic policy agenda, paving the way for a busy two months.

Some Republicans have privately expressed frustration with McConnell, after following GOP messaging for weeks that Democrats would have to raise the debt ceiling on their own.

“In the end, we’ll be there,” Thune, the Republican Whip, said. “It’ll be a painful birthing process.”

Before the debt hike hits Biden’s desk, it also needs to pass the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hinted in a letter Thursday night that the House may have to return early from recess to vote on the debt ceiling legislation. The House was expected to return Oct. 19 — one day after Yellen warned lawmakers the U.S. would default — so it’s likely they will have to come back sometime next week.

Real-world consequences of the U.S. defaulting could include delays to Social Security payments and checks to service members, a suspension of veterans’ benefits and rising interest rates on credit cards, car loans and mortgages.

After White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s lukewarm reception to McConnell’s offers on Wednesday, the White House appeared more receptive on Thursday, now that Democrats on the Hill signaled their agreement.

“This is a positive step forward, the debt ceiling, short term deal that we’re seeing and it gives us some breathing room from the catastrophic default we were approaching because of Senator McConnell’s decision to play politics with our economy,” deputy press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

Pressed on the change in tone, she said, “This is a temporary respite, but we’re not going to let up until Senator McConnell stops obstructing and allows us to put this behind us for good.”

Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say if the White House would sign on to Democrats beginning the budget reconciliation process for a longer-term debt ceiling fix, considering they’ll have more time now to navigate the complicated process, but it’s clear a longer-term solution will be needed.

“We’ll defer to them on the process,” she said of congressional Democrats, “But as the agreement shows there’s no, there’s nothing stopping Congress from addressing the debt limit, through regular order, which is what we have been asking for.”

Mariam Khan contributed to this report.

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(MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz.) — There was no significant 2020 election fraud in Arizona’s Maricopa County, partisan election reviewers again acknowledged in testimony before Congress on Thursday.

The state Senate-ordered review of the county’s presidential election published its findings in September, nearly 11 months after the election, and came to the same conclusion Maricopa County did: President Joe Biden won the county.

“The most significant findings of the audit is that the hand count of the physical ballots very closely matches the county’s official results in the presidential and U.S. Senate races,” former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who served as the Senate’s liaison with auditors, said in his testimony.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee had invited Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the cyber security group that conducted the review but had never managed an election audit before it was hired in Maricopa County. Logan himself had disputed the results of the election after it was certified by election officials and Congress in January, although he has since deleted the Twitter account where he posted them. He declined to appear in front of the committee to testify.

“I invited the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, Doug Logan, to testify to give him the opportunity to defend his company’s actions to Congress and the American people. Unfortunately, less than 36 hours before the hearing, Mr. Logan informed the Committee that he is refusing to appear,” committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “Clearly, Mr. Logan doesn’t want to answer tough questions under oath about the highly questionable, partisan audit that his company led.”

The review, which took over five months, was paid for largely through private fundraising groups that raked in upwards of $6 million in donations. One of the groups was run by Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, who promoted baseless conspiracies about the election.

While the report concluded there was no significant difference between the vote totals from Maricopa County showing Biden had won and the results from the review, some Republicans in Arizona, including House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., still pushed back on the results.

Biggs continued to falsely insist during Thursday’s hearing that “we don’t know” if Biden won the 2020 election.

Former President Donald Trump has continued to say that the election was corrupt, despite the auditor’s findings. At a rally in Georgia late last month after the release of the audit report, he still insisted that Biden lost in Arizona.

“Headlines claiming that Biden won are fake news and a very big lie,” adding that the so-called forensic audit showed that Trump had won. “They had headlines that Biden wins in Arizona when they know it’s not true. He didn’t win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona.”

Vote totals were certified across the country by bipartisan officials, and the more than 60 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies to dispute the results of the election failed in the courtrooms, even those with Trump-appointed judges.

Two officials from Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors, both Republicans, also testified Thursday. Bill Gates and Jack Sellers both spoke out against the partisan review and did not entertain the notion that the election was stolen.

Maloney played a voice message left by former President Donald Trump’s close ally Rudy Giuliani, who spent months pursuing conspiracy theories related to election fraud in some of the nation’s battleground states.

Giuliani asked if there was a “way to resolve this so it comes out well for everyone. We are all Republicans, I think we all have the same goal.”

“Let’s see if we can get this done outside of the courts, gosh,” he said.

Gates said he believed that was an attempt to interfere with election results.

“That voicemail was left at a time we were in litigation with the state Senate overturning over the ballots and the election machines. I think he was trying to get us to settle that lawsuit, so that they could very quickly get the ballots in advance of the January 6 certification of the electoral college,” Gates said.

Neither Gates nor Sellers responded to pressures from Giuliani and other Trump allies, like one from Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward to “stop the counting.”

The so-called audit has cost taxpayers at least $450,000, according to the Arizona Republic’s review of the process’ records. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs initially said that the county would need to create a new contract for its voting machines, since they were likely compromised. That was rescinded as a part of a deal the county struck with the state Senate in late September.

Audit officials and Republicans, including Trump, have alleged a number of violations were discovered in the partisan review. The county has debunked all of their claims and created a website to address the allegations made by the Cyber Ninjas.

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(ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill.) — President Joe Biden renewed his call for private employers to require their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, saying “we are going to beat this pandemic” if more Americans get their shots.

“Without them, we face endless months of chaos in our hospitals, damage to our economy and anxiety in our schools and empty restaurants and much less commerce,” Biden said during a speech in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, where he toured a construction site overseen by Clayco, which is one of the Midwest’s largest construction companies and announced new vaccination requirements for its employees Thursday.

“I know these decisions aren’t easy, but you’re setting an example and a powerful example,” he said of Clayco’s new requirement.

Biden said that the U.S. is in a position to “leap forward” economically and that businesses “have more power than ever before to change the arc of this pandemic.”

“I know that vaccination requirements are tough medicine, unpopular to some, politics for others, but they’re life-saving, they’re game-changing for our country,” he said.

Biden’s remarks came just hours after the White House released a new report outlining the importance of requirements in driving up vaccination rates and helping Americans return to work.

The 26-page report says more than 185 million Americans are now fully vaccinated and that “the unprecedented pace of the president’s vaccination campaign saved over 100,000 lives and prevented 450,000 hospitalizations.”

“These requirements work,” Biden said. “More people are getting vaccinated. More lives are being saved.”

According to the White House, more than 3,500 organizations have already instituted some form of vaccine requirement, including 25% of businesses, 40% of hospitals, and colleges and universities serving 37% of all graduate and undergraduate students. They said thousands more businesses will institute requirements over the weeks ahead as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule for businesses with more than 100 workers is still being finalized.

White House COVID-19 Data Director Cyrus Shahpar also announced on Thursday that 78% of adults in the U.S. have now received at least one vaccine dose.

Biden’s visit, which was rescheduled from last week so the president could focus on infrastructure negotiations in Washington, D.C., comes nearly a month after he laid out a six-point plan to combat the pandemic, which included a vaccination requirement for federal government employees, health care workers and all businesses with more than 100 employees, which he said “wasn’t my first instinct.”

“Vaccination requirements work,” Biden said. “And there’s nothing new about them. They’ve been around for decades. We’ve been living with these requirements throughout our lives.”

The president also met with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, who implemented a requirement for employees to be vaccinated in August and now boasts a 99% vaccination rate.

Biden’s visit also comes as the president’s overall approval rating is declining, including his handling of COVID-19. In a Quinnipiac poll among U.S. adults released Wednesday, fewer than four in 10 Americans now say they approve of Biden’s overall job performance, four points lower than Quinnipiac reported in a poll three weeks ago. Meanwhile, 50% disapprove and 48% approve of his COVID-19 response.

ABC’s Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report

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(WASHINGTON) — With the fall of the Afghan government, the Biden administration has so far brought roughly 60,000 Afghans to the U.S., with plans for tens of thousands more to arrive in the next year.

But those high numbers belie a broken refugee resettlement program that has been struggling to bring new refugees to the U.S. — and now, new data shows just how bad the situation is.

In the 2021 fiscal year — from Oct. 1, 2020, through Sept. 30 of this year — the U.S. admitted its lowest number of refugees in the program’s over 40-year history: just 11,411, according to newly released State Department data.

That means that in the last year, including President Joe Biden’s first nine months, the U.S. resettled fewer refugees than former President Donald Trump’s final full fiscal year, when 11,814 total refugees were admitted. Biden had pledged to admit up to 62,500 refugees during his young term, while Trump’s administration took several steps to dismantle the refugee resettlement program and bring admissions to a halt.

The Afghans who have been brought to the U.S. in the last two months do not count toward this total because they were granted entry under “humanitarian parole” — a short-term legal status — given the urgency of the unprecedented U.S. airlift that evacuated them from Kabul.

Those Afghans will now have access to support and services usually given to refugees because of the federal government funding bill that passed last week, but their future legal status is in question, as a White House proposal to fast track them to receive a green card was left out.

Either way, they’re not legally considered refugees. Just 872 Afghans were admitted under that category in the 2021 fiscal year, according to the data.

Trump admitted 604 Afghans as refugees in his final full fiscal year.

Biden had vowed to boost refugee admissions during the 2020 campaign and in his administration’s earliest days, but in the spring, he signed a memo that kept Trump’s refugee cap of 15,000 — the program’s lowest — only to then backtrack and raise it to 62,500 after outrage among Democrats and refugee advocates.

But those Trump-era efforts to dismantle the program led to this small number, and now they endanger Biden’s promise to admit 125,000 refugees in the fiscal year of 2022, which runs through next Sept. 30.

There had been some uptick in the number of admissions under the Biden administration — climbing from 283 in March to 1,533 in June to 3,774 in September — but advocates say the administration didn’t do enough to make repairs and expand those numbers.

“If we are to reach President Biden’s goal of welcoming 125,000 refugees, the administration must be aggressive and innovative in ramping up processing,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the largest U.S. faith-based resettlement agency. “We urge the Biden administration to do everything in its power to align refugee admissions with our core values as a welcoming nation.”

There have been warnings for months now that the U.S. refugee resettlement program has not recovered from the previous four years. In particular, the major resettlement agencies in the U.S. had been forced to slash staffing as federal funds dried up, the pipeline of potential refugees had been blocked by new rules advocates have called onerous, and the pandemic meant the required in-person interviews weren’t happening.

While several resettlement agencies in the U.S. say the Trump-era damage is obvious, they expressed some disappointment that Biden’s team hasn’t done more to reverse that, saying responsibility now lies with them.

“The U.S. is taking in fewer refugees than ever at a time when there are more refugees in the world than at any point in recorded history, which is unacceptable. The Biden administration will need to prioritize creating more efficient and equitable methods of processing for refugees in order to reach the ceiling of 125,000 refugees for the fiscal year that’s just begun,” said Myal Greene, president and CEO of World Relief, another Christian humanitarian group.

In his executive order last February, for example, Biden directed the Departments of State and Homeland Security to “consider all appropriate actions” to permit virtual interviews between USCIS case officers and refugee applicants, as the pandemic makes in-person interviews still challenging.

But eight months later, no changes have been made in that process. The number of refugee interviews conducted in the first quarter of this fiscal year was zero, according to USCIS data, compared to 1,373 in all of fiscal year 2020 and 44,538 in FY 2019. Data from USCIS is so far only available for the first quarter of FY 2021.

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(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats emerged from a closed door special caucus meeting on the debt ceiling on Wednesday and said they intend to take GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell up on his short-term debt ceiling increase.

Multiple senators and aides told ABC News Democrats are rejecting McConnell’s other offer that would have Republicans expediting Democrats passing a longer-term debt ceiling increase using the budget reconciliation process that they’re using to pass the multi-trillion dollar social spending bill.

“McConnell caved! McConnell caved,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told reporters with a fist raised.

“We intend to take this temporary victory and then try to work with the Republicans to do this on a longer-term basis,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., told CNN.

“There’s not going to be reconciliation,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told reporters emphatically, adding that the short term fix must pass as soon as possible.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., agreed, saying she was glad McConnell “folded“ and said Democrats would “never“ use reconciliation to increase the debt ceiling.

It’s unclear if a vote on the new proposal would occur Wednesday night or Thursday, though the latter appeared more likely.

As the U.S. barrels toward an unprecedented default in a game of brinkmanship on Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered Democrats two options to increase the debt ceiling on Wednesday. Both options require that Democrats increase the ceiling by a specific amount, which the party has not wanted to do, fearing political implications of an increase to the nation’s borrowing limit approved solely by Democrats.

Democrats rejected an offer for that Republicans to help Democrats expedite the budget process known as reconciliation to hike the debt limit by a specified amount but instead took a short-term increase of the debt ceiling to a specified amount for two months — until December.

It comes after Republicans have refused to allow Democrats to move forward on raising the debt ceiling with a simple majority vote, subsequently preventing the country from entering a self-inflicted financial crisis, potentially worse than the 2008 crisis.

“Republicans remain the only party with a plan to prevent default,” McConnell said, though he has maintained for weeks that Democrats should go the process alone. “We have already made it clear we would assist in expediting the 304 reconciliation process for stand-alone debt limit legislation. To protect the American people from a near-term Democrat-created crisis, we will also allow Democrats to use normal procedures to pass an emergency debt limit extension at a fixed dollar amount to cover current spending levels into December.”

While some Democrats took short-term extension as a win, Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said McConnell’s two offers were “BS,” adding the GOP leader is “heartless” and, sarcastically, “He could give a rip.”

Asked by ABC News’ Mariam Khan if Schumer should accept one of McConnell’s options, given the nation is on a deadline, Hirono replied, “Why should we accept any part of a BS offer?”

Ahead of McConnell’s proposition, Senate Republicans had planned to filibuster a House-passed measure on Wednesday that would suspend the debt limit until December 2022. At least 10 Republicans would need to join all Senate Democrats to break the GOP filibuster and allow a simple majority vote to pass the bill — which President Joe Biden has called for, telling Republicans at a meeting with business leader earlier to “get out of the way.”

Without Republican support, Biden and other Democrats raised carving out an exception to ending the filibuster for the debt ceiling vote, which would take the support of all 50 Democratic senators — but it doesn’t seem to be a pathway forward either.

Moderate Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who along with fellow moderate Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., has balked at changes to the filibuster rules, dug into his position earlier, putting the responsibility of the economic crisis squarely on the shoulders of Senate leaders to solve.

“This should not be a crisis. I’ve been very, very clear where I stand, where I stand on the filibuster. I don’t have to repeat that. I think I’ve been very clear. Nothing change,” Manchin told reporters on Capitol Hill. “But the bottom line is we have a responsibility to be the adults. Our leadership has the responsibility to lead.”

“The only thing I can say at this time to Leader Schumer, and to Leader McConnell, please, lead, work together,” he added.

Schumer had said earlier on the floor that the Senate must move forward with “the responsible thing and vote to allow the U.S. to keep paying its bills.”

“Republicans’ obstruction on the debt ceiling over the last few weeks has been reckless and irresponsible but nevertheless, Republicans will today have the opportunity to get what they’ve been asking for,” Schumer said in the morning. “The first and easiest option is this: Republicans can simply get out of the way, and we can agree to skip the filibuster vote so we can proceed to final passage of this bill.”

But Republicans letting Democrats govern so easily, despite Democrats suspending the debt ceiling multiple times in a divided Washington under former President Donald Trump.

GOP leaders have maintained for months that Democrats must act to raise the federal debt limit on their own, because they have total control of Washington and are planning to pass a multi-trillion social and economic package without Republican support.

But Democrats and Biden have reiterated that paying off U.S. debt is a historically bipartisan measure and that the funds Congress would be approving were spent, in part, under then-Senate Majority Leader McConnell.

McConnell has said repeatedly that Democrats should have to hike the debt limit to cover the cost of potentially trillions in yet-passed parts of Biden’s agenda, though the debt limit must be raised to cover spending that already took place under the Trump administration with unified GOP support.

Amid Democrats’ calls for carving out the filibuster, McConnell told members in a lunch meeting about the two options: a short-term extension or an expedited reconciliation process — but those would also give Republicans exactly what they’re asking for politically: an increase to the nation’s borrowing limit approved solely by Democrats, for the GOP to seize on in midterms.

White House economists and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have warned that without action, Americans will feel the real-world effects of a self-inflicted economic crisis in the coming days. Consequences include delays to Social Security payments and checks to servicemembers, a suspension of veterans’ benefits, and rising interest rates on credit cards, car loans and mortgages.

ABC News’ Mariam Khan contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. Supreme Court case about state secrets and brutal CIA black-site interrogations after 9/11 took an abrupt turn Wednesday when a trio of justices demanded answers from the Biden administration about why the plaintiff — Al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah — is still held without charges in a military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, even though the war in Afghanistan has concluded.

“I don’t understand why he’s still there after 14 years,” said a clearly exasperated Justice Stephen Breyer.

The controversial wartime detention of alleged terrorist combatants was not the immediate focus of the case but was raised after more than an hour of oral arguments by Breyer and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor.

The justices had all been wrestling with how to balance the government’s need to keep secret the foreign location of Zubaydah’s interrogation — in an effort to protect national security interests — and the detainee’s need to obtain testimony from two former CIA contractors about what happened when he was in their custody.

Zubaydah is pursuing a claim against Polish officials in Polish court for their alleged complicity in his harsh treatment at a CIA black site in the country, as outlined in a U.S. Senate report, and wants on-the-record testimony about what happened there. The U.S. government has never formally confirmed, nor denied, the existence of a site in Poland and contends testimony from the contractors could compromise secrets.

Justice Gorsuch suggested one “off-ramp,” or solution, to the entire case could be allowing Zubaydah to speak for himself about how he was treated, especially since many details have already been declassified in a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002, was waterboarded 83 times, spent 11 days in a coffin-size confinement box and was subjected to “walling, attention grasps, slapping, facial holds, stress positions and sleep deprivation,” according the report.

“Why not make the witness [Zubaydah] available? What is the government’s objection to the witness testifying to his own treatment and not requiring any admission from the government of any kind?” Gorsuch asked acting Solicitor General Brian Fletcher, representing the Biden administration.

“I understand there are all sorts of rules and protective orders,” he continued, “I’d just really appreciate a straight answer to this: will the government make Petitioner [Zubaydah] available to testify as to his treatment during these dates?”

Fletcher, apparently caught off guard, explained that he could not offer an answer without first consulting with the Defense Department. He pledged to comply with the justices’ request. Under terms of his detention, Zubaydah is allowed to communicate only with his legal team.

“Well, gosh,” replied Gorsuch, “this case has been litigated for years and all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, and you haven’t considered whether that’s an off-ramp that — that the government could provide?”

The exchange was a remarkable moment that united justices from across the ideological spectrum.

Justice Sotomayor joined Gorsuch’s argument, saying, “We want a clear answer. Are you going to permit him to testify, yes or no?”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was participating virtually in the argument because of a COVID-19 diagnosis last week, attempted to throw the government a lifeline. “Is the US still engaged in hostilities under the AUMF against Al-Qaeda?” he asked.

“That is the government’s position, that notwithstanding withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, we continue to be engaged in hostilities with Al Qaeda and therefore that detention under law of order remains proper,” Fletcher replied.

It is unclear whether the terms of his detention could or would be modified to allow him to testify publicly about his treatment in CIA custody.

The government insists any official testimony that implicates Poland as the location of a CIA black site would breach the trust of our allies and harm future intelligence agreements.

Zubaydah says his pursuit of a case in Polish court could benefit from an eyewitness account of what happened to him, even though many details are already in the public domain. “I want to shine a light on what happened,” said his attorney David Klein.

A majority of the justices appeared inclined to show deference to the government’s national security concerns about formally confirming Poland as a black site location, but they were also skeptical of a sweeping assertion of state secrets privilege that prevents Zubaydah from providing his own account in a court of law.

The justices are expected to hand down a decision in the case by the end of June 2022.

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will wrestle with the limits of the government state secrets privilege in a high-stakes case brought by the first al-Qaida suspect detained and harshly interrogated at a CIA “black site” after Sept. 11, 2001.

Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002, was waterboarded 83 times, spent 11 days in a coffin-size confinement box and was subjected to “walling, attention grasps, slapping, facial holds, stress positions and sleep deprivation,” according to a declassified 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report.

He wants the U.S. government to publicly confirm that Poland was one of the locations of his interrogation and allow depositions of two CIA contractors involved with his treatment through the agency’s controversial rendition, detention and interrogation program, also known as the “torture program.”

Zubaydah and his legal team said the information is critical to a case they are pursuing overseas against Polish government officials for alleged complicity in his treatment.

The Biden administration said in court documents that revealing the information would “cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”

“We have a confrontation in this case between openness and secrecy — major principles that have so corrosively confronted one another during this entire era of modern American history,” said University of Chicago law professor and legal historian Farah Peterson.

Zubaydah, 50, has been detained at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without charge since 2006. For years, the government asserted that he was a plotter in the 9/11 attacks, but officials later acknowledged that he was not tied to the operation, according to the 2014 report.

Today, the Biden administration calls Zubaydah “an associate and longtime terrorist ally of Osama bin Laden.” His attorneys insist “none of these allegations has support in any CIA record.”

While many details of Zubaydah’s treatment in U.S. custody have been public for years — published in declassified congressional documents, media reports and other outside investigations — the American government has never formally confirmed, nor denied, the existence of a black site in Poland or that Zubaydah was held there for five months between 2002 and 2003.

The European Court of Human Rights, independent investigations by international advocacy groups and several former top Polish officials have each pointed to the existence of a CIA site in Poland and alleged that Zubaydah was held there.

“It’s [about] protecting whether the [U.S.] government has any official confirmation of what foreign country does, or does not, cooperate with them,” said Beth Brinkmann, a former deputy assistant attorney general for the Obama administration, at a recent event at William & Mary Law School. “There’s an interesting government interest in the government saying something and confirming something.”

“It might have a chilling effect on other countries being willing to cooperate with us if they know it might come out,” added Andrew Pincus, a Yale Law School professor, at the same event.

Zubaydah’s attorneys argue that because so many details of the CIA program are widely known, the government’s blanket assertion of the state secrets privilege is too broad and illegal.

“The two former CIA contractors who devised and implemented the torture program … have twice testified under oath about what they saw, heard and did at various black sites, including what they did to Abu Zubaydah and some of what they observed at the black site at issue in this litigation,” they wrote in court documents. “It is undisputed that this testimony contains no state secrets.”

Lower courts have split over the subpoenas for evidence in Zubaydah’s case. A federal district court sided with the government, but the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the decision.

“The district court erred in quashing the subpoenas in toto rather than attempting to disentangle nonprivileged from privileged information,” the panel wrote.

The Supreme Court will now parse whether sensitive information already in the public domain can be still subject to the state secrets privilege and to what extent information from government contractors may be protected for national security concerns.

A decision in favor of Zubaydah could help him expose more information about the now-defunct, secretive CIA program and advance his case against Polish officials overseas. A decision siding with the U.S. government could bolster the power of the state secrets privilege and limit future attempts at exposure of classified information related to national security.

The CIA did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the case.

Several family members of 9/11 victims have weighed in on the case at the Supreme Court in support of Zubaydah.

“The arc of the moral universe has been twisted and bent over the last 20 years, with justice sadly eluding both the families of the 9/11 dead and the accused, who were, like Mr. Zubaydah, tortured at government black sites,” said Adele Welty, the mother of New York City firefighter Timothy Welty, who was killed in the attack. “In the interest of justice so long denied, we implore the government to separate properly classified information from unclassified and release all relevant documents.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Asked last week what the biggest sticking points were in the ongoing negotiations over the partisan budget reconciliation bill, California Rep. Ro Khanna, a member of the progressive caucus, texted ABC News one word: “climate.”

In television interviews since, several other progressive leaders have also been quick to underscore their commitment to the climate-related provisions in the sweeping budget package, suggesting the issues are top of mind as debate continues with key holdouts Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. Without Republican support around the budget proposals, Democrats cannot afford to lose either vote.

Although the White House is eager to strike a deal on the budget bill, the upcoming United National Climate Change Conference in Glasglow, Scotland, at the end of the month is adding pressure for the president to deliver on climate change.

In his recent public remarks to both domestic and foreign audiences, President Joe Biden has not only outlined bold benchmarks for dramatically reducing the United States’ total greenhouse gas emissions and dependency on fossil fuels over the next 10 years, but he has also leaned on other nations to up their commitments, too.

“The president cannot show up in Glasgow empty-handed,” Jamal Raad, co-founder and executive director of climate change advocacy group Evergreen Action, told ABC News. “The current budget reconciliation package includes major pieces of legislation that will drive down emissions and let us be taken seriously on the global stage.”

But Manchin has expressed skepticism around some of the energy proposals, including new tax incentives for renewable energy production and disincentives for utility companies that do not accelerate a transition to cleaner energy sources. From a state with deep roots in coal, Manchin has repeatedly indicated he is reluctant to support measures viewed as punishing fossil fuels.

On CNN’s State of the Union last month, Manchin expressed his support for many, if not all, of the social programs outlined in the current budget proposal, but when pressed on the climate and carbon emissions proposal he said, “The [energy] transition is happening. Now they’re wanting to pay companies to do what they’re already doing. Makes no sense to me at all for us to take billions of dollars and pay utilities for what they’re going to do as the market transitions.”

In a document obtained by ABC News showing negotiations on the budget from over the summer, Manchin also listed that he was not in favor of cutting subsidies for fossil fuels if energy companies were going to be given tax credits for the production of renewable energies.

Biden campaigned on eliminating tax subsidies for fossil fuel companies, and when asked about it by ABC News on Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said ending them was still the White House’s goal.

The president’s initial proposals for large-scale government spending to foster renewable energy production were scrapped and scaled back to pass the bipartisan infrastructure deal in the Senate in early August. Progressives were told at the time that many of the ideas would be salvaged and included in the partisan budget reconciliation package.

Currently, the budget includes over $300 billion in proposed clean energy tax credits intended to support energy companies’ work to ramp up the production of renewables, cleaner cars and greener buildings; incentives for consumers to buy electric vehicles; fees and stricter rules around methane leaks; and $150 billion for a Clean Electricity Performance Program designed to incentivize utility companies to supply at least 4% more clean energy year over year with the target of reaching 80% zero-emission electricity nationwide by 2030.

Speaking to Margaret Brennan on CBS’s Face the Nation, progressive Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Sunday the climate provisions in the budget package were non-negotiable to her. She described a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a “code red for humanity.”

“I think some of the climate provisions that we have, we cannot afford to increase carbon or just fossil fuel emissions at this time. That is simply the science. That is not something we can kick down the line,” Ocasio-Cortez told Brennan.

“You’re going to run right into Sen. Joe Manchin on those issues though, you know that,” Brennan replied to Ocasio-Cortez, and the congresswoman did not disagree.

“Yes, and I think Sen. Manchin is going to run to the science,” Ocasio-Cortez responded.

On ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, argued that on the issue of fighting climate change, the top-line spending totals for the entire budget package were probably too small.

“When we especially talk about the crisis of climate change, and the need to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, the $6 trillion that I had originally proposed was probably too little, $3.5 trillion should be a minimum,” Sanders told ABC’s Jonathan Karl.

Beyond climate provisions, the budget also includes funding for new social programs like universal pre-K, paid medical leave and free community college.

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(WASHINGTON) — As the nation barrels toward default, Republicans are poised to sink a Democratic effort to suspend the federal borrowing limit.

Republicans in the Senate are filibustering a House-passed measure that would suspend the debt limit until December 2022. At least 10 Republicans would need to join all Senate Democrats to break a GOP filibuster and allow a simple majority vote to pass the bill.

Democrats argue that this would give Republicans exactly what they’re asking for: an increase to the nation’s borrowing limit approved solely by Democrats.

“Tomorrow’s vote is not a vote to raise the debt ceiling. It’s, rather, a procedural step to let Democrats raise the debt ceiling on our own,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday. “We’re telling Republicans that we’re not asking you to vote for it, just let us vote for it.”

But Republicans aren’t backing down. They’ve maintained for months that Democrats must act to raise the federal debt limit on their own, because they have total control of Washington and are planning to pass a multi-trillion social and economic package with zero input from Republicans.

“They said they’re perfectly prepared to do the job themselves,” Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell insisted to reporters Tuesday. “The easiest way to do that is through the reconciliation process as I pointed out for two months.”

McConnell, R-Ky., has said repeatedly that Democrats should have to hike the debt limit to cover the cost of potentially trillions in yet-passed parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda, though the debt limit must be raised to cover spending that already took place under the Trump administration with unified GOP support.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told ABC News on Tuesday he won’t support moving forward on a vote.

“We are not going to empower a radical march toward socialism,” Graham, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Senate budget committee chairman, floated a potential solution that would involve temporarily suspending the chamber’s filibuster rules that require 60 votes for most legislation.

“Where it may come down to is a demand that at least for the debt ceiling that we end the filibuster … and pass it with 51 votes,” Sanders suggested.

But the 50-member Democratic caucus would have to remain unified to do this, and both moderates Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema have balked at any changes to the filibuster rules.

No Republican has yet gone on the record to say he or she is prepared to join Democrats to clear the way for a final vote on the debt limit Wednesday, though moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, opened the door to potentially joining the majority.

“I want to make sure we are doing everything that we can to not send us into a situation of default, and I don’t even want to get close,” Murkowski said. “We have to make sure. We just have to ensure.”

The nation technically hit the debt ceiling Aug. 1, with the Treasury Department using extraordinary measures to pay the nation’s bills. But Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that by Oct. 18, her department’s efforts would be fully exhausted and default would be all but certain.

Pressure is mounting alongside partisan gridlock, with no backup plan emerging.

McConnell and his conference are insisting that Democrats use a fast-track budget tool called reconciliation that allows the majority to break a filibuster to pass certain legislation. Use of this arcane process is cumbersome, could take weeks and opens up Democrats to a series of potentially politically painful votes.

But there could be an added political benefit for Republicans in insisting that this process be used. It would put Democrats on the record raising the debt ceiling by a hefty dollar amount, whereas Wednesday’s vote — simply suspending the debt limit by no specified amount — does not. That would feed into the GOP narrative that Democrats are out-of-control spenders.

“We’re very interested in a specific dollar amount,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Tuesday. “They’re going to have to come before the American people and say, ‘We’re going to increase the debt ceiling by X amount, because this is the amount we intend to spend’, and one way or another, it puts them on the record as to their spending proposals.”

Some Democrats say they’d support using reconciliation if it meant a swift resolution of the debt limit issue. Manchin said the process should be considered, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told reporters that “everything should be on the table” when pressed on whether the fast-track budget tool should be considered.

But each passing day limits the time Democrats would have to fast track a debt ceiling increase through the multi-step process to final passage, and Democrats tell ABC News that no work has begun on the reconciliation process, even behind the scenes.

“No, not at the moment,” Sanders told ABC News.

Some Democrats were more emphatic.

“Reconciliation was never on the table,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said. “There’s not enough time to make reconciliation work.”

But on Tuesday, Schumer did not expressly rule it out.

When asked if he was ruling out using the budget process, Schumer repeatedly referenced the Wednesday vote as the preferred way to go about hiking the debt cap.

“Reconciliation is a drawn out, convoluted process. We’ve shown the best way to go. We’re moving forward in that direction,” Schumer said, refusing to entertain a Plan B.

If the nation defaults, the results are sure to be catastrophic. The White House has warned that an unprecedented default could send shockwaves through the global economy and trigger a recession. The political implications for both parties are unclear.

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(WASHINGTON) — Days after the Biden administration reimbursed two Florida school districts whose board members lost their salaries for mandating masks for students, the state’s top education official is trying to strip the districts of the money.

In a series of memoranda, Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran recommended Monday that the Florida Board of Education, which meets Thursday, withhold “state funds in an amount equal to any federal grant funds awarded” to districts that defy Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on school mask requirements.

Corcoran said he found probable cause that 11 school districts, including Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, violated state laws by implementing a mask mandate.

He also recommended that the Board withhold the salaries of the board members in each district, a punishment already handed down in late August to officials in Alachua and Broward counties.

In response to that crackdown, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the Alachua and Broward districts hundreds of thousands of dollars to make up for the lost paychecks. The money was issued through the Project SAFE grant program, which was created last month to reimburse school districts that lose state money for implementing coronavirus mitigation strategies.

The Florida Department of Education has not announced that it has begun withholding salaries from school board members in other districts requiring masks.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona indicated in August that districts punished by Florida for requiring masks for students would be eligible for grant money. “I want you to know that the U.S. Department of Education stands with you,” he wrote in a letter to superintendents.

The 11 districts that Corcoran said violated the law will be under the microscope Thursday, when the Board of Education meets to decide whether to implement the commissioner’s recommendations and punish them.

District officials in Alachua and Broward counties questioned the legality of blocking federal funding on Tuesday.

“We’re always concerned when funds are withheld from public education, but we’re particularly concerned about the state interfering with federal funding. This will almost certainly have to be settled in court,” Dr. Carlee Simon, superintendent of Alachua County Public Schools, said in a statement to ABC News.

Dr. Rosalind Osgood, chair of the school board in Broward County, called Corcoran’s recommendations to the Board of Education “extremely displeasing” and said her district was complying with the law “and saving lives.”

“Our students and staff need academic support, mental health support and job security. The way that the Governor and Commissioner of Education have handled this issue has caused added trauma, unemployment and a major disruption in school board operations,” Osgood said in a statement to ABC News.

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