Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Stephanie Grisham, one of former President Donald Trump’s most senior and longest-serving advisers, says she is “terrified” that her former boss may run for office again.

“I am terrified of him running in 2024,” Grisham, who served as both Trump’s press secretary and first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, told “Nightline” co-anchor Juju Chang in a wide-ranging exclusive interview on the eve of the publication of Grisham’s new book.

“I don’t think he is fit for the job,” Grisham said. “I think that he is erratic. I think that he can be delusional. I think that he is a narcissist and cares about himself first and foremost. And I do not want him to be our president again.”

Asked by Chang what scares her the most, Grisham painted a grim picture of what could happen if Trump ends up running again in 2024.

“I think he would foment more violence,” she said. “He won’t have consequences. He won’t need to be reelected again.”

“I think he will line his pockets,” she added. “I think his family will line their pockets. I believe that he wanted to help the country in the beginning; I believe he wants to help himself now.”

In her new book, titled “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” out this Tuesday, Grisham describes a White House in perpetual chaos, where she says “casual dishonesty” flowed through the air “as if it were in the air conditioning system.” The book is filled with accusations about the former president, and includes a host of alleged wrongdoings that range from downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus to making sexual comments about a young female White House staffer.

But amid all the turmoil laid out in the book, Grisham remained by the former president’s side for nearly his entire four-year term in the White House, before resigning after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

“How did you go from one of the loyalist loyals to one of their fiercest critics, seemingly overnight?” Chang asked Grisham, who responded, “Definitely not overnight. It’s kind of a journey.”

Grisham, who is perhaps best known for never holding a televised press briefing during her time as White House press secretary, has faced a barrage of criticism for speaking out now, nearly a year after leaving the White House.

The former president and his family have forcefully responded to the latest tell-all book by a former close ally, with Melania Trump’s office saying in a statement, “The author is desperately trying to rehabilitate her tarnished reputation by manipulating and distorting the truth about Mrs. Trump. Ms. Grisham is a deceitful and troubled individual who doesn’t deserve anyone’s trust.

“Stephanie didn’t have what it takes and that was obvious from the beginning,” former President Trump said in a statement. “Now, like everyone else, she gets paid by a radical left-leaning publisher to say bad and untrue things.”

Grisham has also received harsh pushback from some former colleagues, including former Trump White House Director of Communications Alyssa Farah, who responded to the book live during her guest-host appearance on “The View” Monday.

“First and foremost, I don’t believe in profiting off of public service. I had a chance to write my White House tell-all and declined. The American people, the taxpayers paid my salary. I’m not going to go write a book and cash in,” said Farah, who resigned from the White House in December following the election.

“Reading some of the reviews, some of the critics are saying, you know, if you’re admitting to lying then, what makes us think that you’re not lying now?” Chang asked Grisham about her role as press secretary.

“Well, I don’t think I’m admitting to lying at all,” Grisham responded. “I tried to give the press the most honest answers I could, and there were oftentimes I was given information that I knew to be true that perhaps wasn’t true.”

But Chang pushed back, pointing out that Grisham had already admitted that a 2019 tweet she posted targeting former Chief of Staff John Kelly had been untrue.

“To be fair, you did say that the John Kelly tweet was not sincere,” Chang said to Grisham, who acknowledged, “That was not sincere,” and added, “And I regret and apologize for so much.”

“But you said that, ‘I never lied?'” Chang followed up. “Oh no,” Grisham said. “I would s– I– I just would say I– I tried my best.”

Beyond not holding a press briefing, Grisham writes in the book that she was once tasked by the former president with figuring out how to completely ban members of the media from the White House grounds. “I researched different places we could put them other than the press briefing room. Each time the president asked me about my progress on the matter, I let him know I was still working on options,” she writes.

“Should the American public believe what you’re saying now when you, in many ways, were non-responsive and not communicating transparently or honestly during — by your own admission?” Chang asked.

“Fair question — the fact is, the president never wanted me to do a briefing,” said Grisham who added that “I was glad that that was something he didn’t want from me, because I didn’t want to have to go out there and say something dishonest.”

Farah, however, pushed back on Grisham’s claim that Trump told her not to hold press briefings.

“That would surprise me,” Farah said. “When I worked for him, it was, ‘Go get out on TV, Alyssa. Kayleigh, go give a briefing.’ He wanted people out.”

“She could have done backgrounders in her office,” Farah said of Grisham. “But it seemed like she was largely MIA on the job.”

Grisham also claims in the book that she observed the former president, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 18 women, develop an “unusual interest” and behave “inappropriately” toward a young female staffer during his time as president, including during one trip where he summoned the unnamed aide to his cabin on Air Force One, allegedly telling other staffers, “Let’s bring her up here and look at her ass.”

“What I do know is that he behaved inappropriately. And since the woman worked for me, I tried to protect her and keep his unusual interest in her under wraps,” Grisham writes. “If the president didn’t see her with the press corps, he would ask me where she was. He would ask me if she were coming with us on foreign trips. When she did come along on trips, he often asked me to bring her to his office cabin in the aircraft, which he’d rarely done with anyone else.”

“I wouldn’t leave her in the cabin with him. I always sat there,” Grisham told Chang. “And he would just talk to her about, you know, ‘Did you see my speech? What did you think?’ You know, I think have her compliment him.”

But Chang challenged Grisham, asking, “And yet in many ways were you helping in some ways normalizing his other inappropriate behavior and enabling in some way this behavior?”

“I’ve thought about that a lot,” Grisham replied. “At the White House, it’s not like there’s a human resources office that you can go to say, ‘Hey, the president of the United States is acting inappropriately.'”

Grisham’s claims about the staffer were corroborated by Farah, who said on “The View” that “I was aware of the situation and of the female and I did report it to the chief of staff.”

“It was a challenging situation I don’t know if anything was done,” she said.

“What were you worried that might happen?” Chang asked Grisham.

“I was worried that a young, impressionable girl would be put into a situation that made her uncomfortable,” said Grisham, who also admitted that she now believes “most” of the women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, including former porn star Stormy Daniels. “I was worried he would sexually harass her.”

As the first lady’s chief of staff, Grisham had an up-close look at the woman she says Secret Service agents referred to as “Rapunzel.” Regarding the #FreeMelania hashtag that became a rallying cry for those who theorized online that the first lady didn’t want to be in the White House, Grisham said that idea was misguided.

“The #FreeMelania hashtag I think was people hoping that she wanted to leave,” Grisham said. “The truth is, she liked it there. I think there was a rumor for years that she had a whole separate house somewhere, which was not true. We would laugh about the #FreeMelania hashtag all the time.”

Grisham also described what it was like to be the person to inform the first lady that her husband was being accused of an extramarital affair and was being sued by Daniels.

“That was tough. As a woman, I’ve been cheated on before, so that was painful for me,” Grisham recalled. “It was very, very awkward. I’ve never had to do anything like that before.”

Grisham also claimed that staffers had a secret nickname for the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both held senior positions in the White House, referring to the pair as “the interns.”

“We called them the interns because as interns usually are, they come into places and think they know everything,” Grisham said.

In the book, which publisher HarperCollins calls “the most frank and intimate portrait of the Trump White House yet,” Grisham also claims Trump had an infatuation with dictators and writes how the former president allegedly sought to cozy up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin during an overseas trip for the Group of 20 summit in Osaka in 2019. Grisham alleges that during a private meeting before the press was brought into the room, Trump told Putin, “Okay, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes. But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave we’ll talk. You understand.”

“Putin was coughing. He kept coughing, kept clearing his throat, and I did find it odd that he wouldn’t just take a drink of water … and he knows ways to get in someone’s head,” Grisham told Chang.

As one of Trump’s longest-serving political aides, Grisham’s time working for the former president dates back to his 2016 campaign when she served as a press wrangler before moving deeper into the Trumps’ inner circle. As other top aides resigned or were forced out — with some even speaking out against Trump while he was still in office — Grisham continued to stand by the president.

Grisham told Chang that one of her biggest regrets was not doing more from inside the White House during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when, as she alleges, Trump was thinking more about getting reelected than how to get the virus under control.

“It was about having him look presidential for reelection. I wish I would have told him he needs to wear a mask. I wish I could’ve been louder with that,” she said.

“Do you think that misinformation or dishonesty cost lives?” Chang asked about the White House’s response to the pandemic.

“Yes,” Grisham replied. “I will always think that, and I don’t know that I — you can ever forgive yourself fully for being a part of that.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Krysten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, is clapping back after she was videotaped and chased into a school bathroom over the weekend by a group of pro-Biden agenda activists, confronting her over her objections holding up Democratic efforts on Capitol Hill.

President Joe Biden has also weighed in on the encounter, when asked on Monday, calling it not appropriate but also “part of the process” for someone without Secret Service protection.

Sinema, in a new statement on Monday, called the display caught on video and posted online “no legitimate protest” and “wholly inappropriate.”

She claimed activists entered Arizona State University, where she was teaching, using “deceptive” and “unlawful” means.

“After deceptively entering a locked, secure building, these individuals filmed and publicly posted videos of my students without their permission — including footage taken of both my students and I using a restroom,” the statement said.

While she wrote she supports the First Amendment, she shunned the protest — by a group she doesn’t name but claims to have met with several times since she was elected to the Senate.

“Yesterday’s behavior was not legitimate protest. It is unacceptable for activist organizations to instruct their members to jeopardize themselves by engaging in unlawful activities such as gaining entry to closed university buildings, disrupting learning environments, and filming students in a restroom,” she wrote.

Video posted to Twitter on Sunday by the organization Living United for Change in Arizona or LUCHA, showed people chanting at and chasing the first-term senator into a bathroom, pressing her to support Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and progressive immigration policy.

ABC News has reached out to LUCHA for comment.

The confrontation comes as the moderate Democratic senator, along with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., continue intra-party negotiations on the topline number for a larger social spending package to accompany the already Senate-passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.

“In the 19 years I have been teaching at ASU, I have been committed to creating a safe and intellectually challenging environment for my students. Yesterday, that environment was breached. My students were unfairly and unlawfully victimized. This is wholly inappropriate,” Sinema continued.

Her statement ended by putting the onus also on elected officials to foster a healthy environment for politics.

“It is the duty of elected leaders to avoid fostering an environment in which honestly-held policy disagreements serve as the basis for vitriol — raising the temperature in political rhetoric and creating a permission structure for unacceptable behavior,” she wrote.

Biden was asked about the recent protests facing both Sinema and Manchin in his remarks on Monday about the debt ceiling.

“Joe Manchin had people on kayaks show up to his boat to yell at him. Senator Sinema last night was chased into a restroom. Do you think that those tactics are crossing a line?” a reporter asked.

“I don’t think they’re appropriate tactics, but it happens to everybody,” Biden replied. “The only people it doesn’t happen to are people who have Secret Service standing around them. So it’s part of the process.”

Asked if Sinema has given the White House a topline number for the social package — somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $3.5 trillion — Biden said “I’m not going to negotiate in public.”

As the video went viral on Twitter over the weekend, accumulating more than five million views by Monday, pundits of all parties united in agreement that the behavior crossed a privacy line.

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(WASHINGTON) — Two weeks before the “calamity” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen predicts could strike by Oct. 18, President Joe Biden on Monday blasted Republicans for “playing Russian roulette with the U.S. economy” in refusing to join Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so the U.S. does not default on its debt for the first time ever.

“The Republicans in Congress — what they are doing today is so reckless and dangerous in my view. Raising the debt limit is It’s about paying what we already owe, what has already been acquired. Not anything new,” Biden said. “The United States is a nation that pays its bills and always has. From its inception, we have never defaulted.”

“Not only are Republicans refusing to do their job, they are threatening to use their power to prevent us from doing our job, saving the economy from a catastrophic event. Frankly, I think it’s hypocritical, dangerous, and disgraceful. Their obstruction and irresponsibility knows no bounds, especially as we are clawing our way out of this pandemic,” he continued.

Biden’s amping up the pressure on the GOP to get on board comes ahead of Senate Republicans planning to block another bill down this week to raise the debt limit — an issue lawmakers have historically come together on for years.

Democrats are trying to pass a straightforward debt limit hike on their own with 50 votes — and no Republican support. But Republicans are filibustering the Democratic strategy — requiring 60 votes to move forward — and insisting that Democrats raise the debt ceiling through the much more complicated process of budget reconciliation that Biden says could involve hundreds of votes that could mean it wouldn’t get in time to avoid catastrophe.

Republicans have said they won’t support spending on Biden’s agenda, while Democrats are reiterating the point that raising the debt ceiling does not authorize new government spending but allows the government to pay for spending that previous politicians have already OK’d — including former President Donald Trump and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Biden seized on that point.

Pres. Biden: “The reason we have to raise the debt limit is, in part, because of the reckless tax and spending policies under the previous Trump administration. In four years, they incurred nearly $8 trillion in additional debt.” https://t.co/UkSrTz2XPz pic.twitter.com/9Y6Yh0Vphj

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 4, 2021

“Raising the debt limit is usually a bipartisan undertaking. And it should be. That is what is not happening today,” Biden said. “The reason we have to raise the debt limit is in part because of the reckless tax and spending policies under the previous Trump administration.”

“Republicans in Congress raised the debt three times when Donald Trump was president. Each time the Democratic support. Now they won’t raise it. Even though they are responsible for more than $8 trillion in bills incurred in four years under the previous administration,” he claimed.

He called on Republicans to allow Democrats to hold a vote this week without “procedural tricks,” he said, because at this point, “We are not expecting Republicans to do their part.”

“We are simply asking them not to use procedural tricks to block them from doing the job they won’t do. A meteor is headed for our economy,” Biden said. “You don’t want to help save the country? Get out-of-the-way so you don’t destroy it.”

Asked following his remarks if it’s possible the U.S. will not pay its debt, Biden said he couldn’t guarantee it.

“I can’t believe that will be the end result because the consequence is so dire. I don’t believe that. But can I guarantee it? If I could, I would, but I can’t,” he said, before leaving the room.

Biden gave a warning to Americans on the effects they could feel in the coming days.

“In the days ahead, even before the default date, people may see the value of their retirement accounts shrink. They might see interest rates go up, ultimately raising their mortgage and car payments. The American people, look, just say it this way. As soon as this week, your savings and your pocketbook could be directly impacted by this Republican stunt,” he said.

The impassioned plea echoed the treasury secretary’s at a hearing last week, where she warned raising the debt ceiling is “necessary to avert a catastrophic event for our economy.”

“It has nothing to do with future programs of payments, it’s entirely about paying bills that have already been incurred by this Congress, in previous Congresses, and it’s about making good on past commitments — as you said, paying our credit card bill,” Yellen said in a hearing last week.

While lawmakers came together and voted to avoid a government shutdown, Democrats were forced to remove language from that bill that would have also raised the debt ceiling as Republicans argue they’ll have to go at it alone through the budget reconciliation process.

McConnell, in a letter to Biden ahead of his remarks, reiterated his party’s opposition to helping Democrats and warned the president that it is time for him to “engage directly” with Democrats in Congress on raising the debt limit by themselves.

“Your lieutenants in Congress must understand that you do not want your unified Democratic government to sleepwalk toward an avoidable catastrophe when they have had nearly three months’ notice to do their job,” McConnell wrote.

“Bipartisanship is not a light switch that Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer may flip on to borrow money and flip off to spend it,” he continued. “We have no list of demands. For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well.”

The party standoff comes in an extremely polarized environment, when lawmakers are also debating passing one of the largest government spending packages in history, Biden’s approximately $2 trillion Build Back Better agenda and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal.

Biden reiterated in his remarks that raising the debt limit has “nothing to do with my plan for infrastructure or building back better — zero.”

As the negotiations on Capitol Hill have become intertwined, Republicans insist that if Democrats want to pass such a major spending bill through special budget rules that would require no Republican support, they can raise the debt ceiling on their own, too.

And if lawmakers remain deadlocked on raising the debt ceiling, the government could go into default — essentially, unable to pay bills, directly impacting the wallets of millions of Americans.

“It would be disastrous for the American economy, for global financial markets, and for millions of families and workers whose financial security would be jeopardized by delayed payments,” Yellen warned lawmakers in a hearing last week.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a “Dear Colleague” letter to his caucus on Monday said a deal must be reached “by the end of the week,” an exceedingly ambitious timetable in the partisan environment.

“Let me be clear about the task ahead of us: we must get a bill to the President’s desk dealing with the debt limit by the end of the week. Period. We do not have the luxury of waiting until October 18th,” he wrote.

Schumer also threatened to scrap the Senate’s recess next week if the GOP doesn’t help them rase the debt limit.

Currently, the federal debt is at $28.43 trillion, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s tracker. The current debt ceiling is actually $28.4 trillion — underscoring the pressure Yellen is under to continue paying the bills through “extraordinary measures.”

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(NEW YORK) — In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Stephanie Grisham, one of former President Donald Trump’s most senior and longest-serving advisers, said she regrets enabling a culture of dishonesty at the White House.

“You are talking about this cultural culture of casual dishonesty at the White House, so you were, as press secretary, even if you weren’t getting briefings, enabling that culture, weren’t you?” Stephanopoulos asked Grisham on Good Morning America Monday morning.

Grisham, whose new tell-all book “I’ll Take Your Questions Now” is out this week, responded, “Yes, I was. And I’ve reflected on that and I regret that. Especially now when watching him, and so many people, push the false election narrative. I now want to, in whatever way I can, educate the public about the behaviors within the White House because it does look like he’s going to try to run in 2024.”

Stephanopoulos challenged Grisham, who served nearly the entire four-year term in the Trump White House before resigning after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, asking, “but you stayed until the final two weeks … what took you so long?”

“Yes, that’s a fair question and it’s a complicated question,” Grisham responded, adding that she was at first drawn to Trump’s ability to attract large crowds and his support among Republicans. But she said that when she joined the West Wing, she “started to see what it was really like and I regretted that decision immediately.”

The former president has forcefully responded to the latest tell-all book by a former close ally, with Melania Trump’s office saying in a statement, “The author is desperately trying to rehabilitate her tarnished reputation by manipulating and distorting the truth about Mrs. Trump. Ms. Grisham is a deceitful and troubled individual who doesn’t deserve anyone’s trust.”

Grisham, who also told Stephanopoulos it was the former president who told her not to hold briefings during her time in the role, said she is unsure if she could have done more to protect a young female staffer who she writes in her new book Trump had developed a “unusual interest” in and had “behaved inappropriately” toward.

“Should you have done more to protect her?” Stephanopoulos pressed.

Grisham responded, “I don’t know if I could have, there’s, there’s not an HR department at the White House,” before Stephanopoulos pushed back and suggested she could have brought the issue to White House chief of staff.

“I didn’t feel comfortable talking to Mark Meadows,” Grisham responded. “I don’t believe he would have done anything. So I did the best I could, in terms of never letting her be alone with him in the cabin. I tried to keep her off trips as often as I could. I did the best I could, I think, in that environment.”

Another major theme in the book is the former president’s infatuation with world dictators. Grisham recalls how the former president tried to cozy up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin during an overseas trip for the Group of 20 summit in Osaka in 2019.

“How do you explain why the president was so placating of President Putin?” Stephanopoulos asked. Grisham said that, in her opinion, “I got the feeling that he wanted to impress dictators, I think he almost admired how tough they were.”

While other top aides resigned or were forced out, with some even speaking out against Trump while he was still in office, Grisham stood by the president throughout nearly the entirety of the Trump administration’s four-year term, through numerous controversies — and when asked on Monday by Stephanopoulos if it was a mistake to work for President Trump, she quickly replied, “Yes.”

“Why do it?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“I do believe he gave voice to a lot of people who did feel forgotten,” Grisham said. “But I think that many of us, myself included, got into that White House, and got heavy with power and … we didn’t think about serving the country anymore, it was about surviving.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Facing an onslaught of political pressure tactics and plunging public approval, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sails into a new term set to decide some of the most divisive cases in decades on abortion, gun rights, the death penalty and religious freedom.

By the end of June 2022, the court’s conservative majority has the potential to roll back 50 years of abortion rights precedent; declare a right to carry a handgun outside the home; bolster the death penalty; and, allow some American parents to use taxpayer funds for religious schools.

“This is not a court that has the opportunity to inch forward and tip toe around issues,” said University of Chicago law professor and legal historian Farah Peterson. “We should all be watching these cases very closely because suddenly the court has new members interested in taking up issues of grave public concern.”

The justices are also expected to address challenges to the Biden administration’s nationwide vaccine mandate; continuation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, for young immigrants; partisan drawing of congressional districts with new census data; and, Harvard’s use of racial affirmative action.

The blockbuster docket will play out as public approval of the Supreme Court in Gallup polling hits its lowest point in more than two decades — 40% in September, down precipitously from a ten-year high of 58% just last year.

“Not since Bush v. Gore has the public perception of the court’s legitimacy seemed so seriously threatened,” said Irv Gornstein, executive director of Georgetown Law’s Supreme Court Institute.

On the heels of a term marked by moderation and unanimity, most court watchers are braced for a sharp pivot to more polarizing decisions, foreshadowed in part by the justices’ 5-4 vote this summer to allow Texas to ban nearly all abortions across the state on technical grounds.

Taken together with a presidential commission weighing an overhaul of the bench, and mounting pressure on the court’s oldest liberal member to retire, veteran legal analysts say it could be one of the most consequential years for the Supreme Court in a generation.

“We’re going to have a huge explosion whichever direction they rule,” said Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal advocacy group, of the abortion cases. “Even if they try to rule down the middle and come up with a middle ground, you’re going to have outrage from the left or serious concerns from the right.”

Several justices have tacitly acknowledged in recent high-profile speeches and interviews that stubborn public perception of them as a politically-motivated group — combined with the hot-button decisions on the horizon — may significantly undermine the court’s credibility.

The court announced last month that it would continue live-streaming oral arguments to the public at least through the end of the year, continuing an act of transparency prompted by the pandemic but even as the justices return to in-person sessions on Oct. 4.

“We don’t trade votes, and members of the court have different judicial philosophies,” Justice Stephen Breyer said in an interview on “Good Morning America” this month. “The great divisions are probably much more along those lines than what we would think of as political lines.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett used a joint appearance with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell at the University of Kentucky to reject the notion that the justices are simply politicians in robes.

“To say the court’s reasoning is flawed is different from saying the court is acting in a partisan manner,” Barrett told students. “I think we need to evaluate what the court is doing on its own terms.”

Justice Clarence Thomas used a speech at the University of Notre Dame to warn critics against “destroying our institutions because they don’t give us what we want, when we want it.”

To many observers, however, the court’s opinions remain impossible to view without a political lens.

“If right-side judicial philosophies always produce results favored by Republicans and left-side judicial philosophies always produce results favored by Democrats, there is little chance of persuading the public that there is a difference between the two,” said Gornstein.

Last year, the justices handed down unanimous or near-unanimous decisions in roughly 60% of cases, according to an ABC News analysis. On several hot-button social issues, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined liberal Justices Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, to forge common ground.

“Barrett, for example, voted with Roberts and Kavanaugh over 90% of the time,” said FiveThirtyEight contributor Laura Bronner. “Based on what we know so far she seems like she’s going to be a core component of the conservative triad at the center of the court.”

That triad could be the key to just how quickly the court continues its shift to the right and whether it’s prepared to set into motion major societal changes on several controversial issues.

“The conditions for the right side running the table have never looked better,” said Gornstein. “But I don’t think sweeping right-side rulings in all politically salient cases is inevitable.”

The court’s coming term will be dominated by the issue of abortion rights, centered on a case out of Mississippi that asks the justices to directly reconsider the landmark precedent in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey.

“Roe v. Wade is on thin ice,” said Florida State University law professor and abortion law historian Mary Ziegler. “At the moment it really feels more as if it’s a question of when, not if; and how, not whether.”

As Americans snatch up guns at record pace and shooting deaths soar, the justices will also decide a major case out of New York on whether the Second Amendment creates a right to carry a handgun outside the home.

“It would mean that you could expect more people to be carrying handguns in places like New York City, Boston and Los Angeles” if the court affirms such a right, said Southern Methodist University law professor Eric Ruben. “One of the things that the justices, especially the ‘institutionalist justices,’ are going to be considering is ripple effects that could undermine a decade’s worth of precedent and the lower courts.”

The court will decide whether to reinstate the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhohkar Tsarnaev and whether a Texas man sentenced to death has a First Amendment right to his pastor praying aloud and laying hands on him in the execution chamber.

A pair of cases will also test the government’s power to keep national security secrets: A former alleged associate of Osama bin Laden detained for decades at Guantanamo Bay is demanding the CIA turn over information on alleged torture at black sites overseas; and, a group of Muslim men in California is seeking to sue the FBI for alleged unlawful surveillance.

Analysts say the conservative Supreme Court supermajority is at a crossroads, the cases ahead set to reveal how far and how fast they’ll move the court’s jurisprudence to the right.

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(WASHINGTON) — In order for the bipartisan infrastructure bill and larger social spending package to pass, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Sunday the $3.5 trillion budget resolution price tag will likely be lowered.

“Three and a half trillion should be a minimum, but I accept that there’s gonna have to be a give and take,” Sanders told ABC “This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

House progressives have warned leadership they will not vote on President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill until the larger human infrastructure bill is also ready for a vote. The budget resolution calls for investments in climate change policy, child care and other social programs, and is wider in scope than the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes measures to improve the nation’s physical infrastructure.

“Both these bills are going forward in tandem,” Sanders said, reiterating the progressive call to hold out on passing infrastructure until the social spending bill is also passed.

Moderate Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have said they will not support the bill’s $3.5 trillion price tag. Due to the slim Democratic majority in the Senate, neither bill will pass unless they have all the votes of the Democrats.

Sinema released a statement Saturday accusing progressives of “an ineffective stunt” and slammed House Democratic leadership for failing to pass the bipartisan infrastructure deal.

“Denying Americans millions of good-paying jobs, safer roads, cleaner water, more reliable electricity and better broadband only hurts everyday families,” Sinema wrote.

Asked by Karl to respond to her statement, Sanders said he thinks Sinema is “wrong” and said both bills must go forward together, adding that he voted for the infrastructure bill.

“We’re not just taking on or dealing with Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema, we’re taking on the entire ruling class of the country,” Sanders responded. “Right now the drug companies, the health insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry are spending hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent us from doing what the American people want.”

“This really is a test on whether democracy can work,” Sanders said. “I hope very much and I expect that the Democratic caucus and the president — I know he will — stand firm.”

Biden spent last week negotiating with members and visited Capitol Hill on Friday to meet with House Democrats. According to sources in the room for the meeting, the president suggested lowering the price tag for his social policy bill to a number ranging from $1.9 to $2.2 trillion to reach a compromise.

Sanders said he’s not sure it is “accurate” to say Biden would settle on a reconciliation package around $2 trillion.

“The president also said that a smaller investment could create historic achievements, but [for] you, $2 trillion is not enough?” Karl pressed.

“What the president is saying is that what we are trying to do is for the working families of this country, for the children, for the elderly, we’re trying to pass the most consequential piece of legislation since the Great Depression, and he’s right,” Sanders responded.

Sanders also said “no” when asked by Karl if a $2 trillion price tag for the larger bill would be enough.

Manchin has said he will not vote to go over $2 trillion on the reconciliation bill. Asked how they can proceed without his vote, Sanders said the bill is paid for by increasing taxes on “the wealthiest people not paying federal taxes.”

“If Manchin wants to pay for it, I’m there, let’s do it, and by the way, you could pay for it at $3.5 trillion, you can pay for it at $6 trillion,” Sanders said. “We have massive income and wealth inequality in this country.”

Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has called the $3.5 trillion price tag too high. Pressed on whether the Democratic infighting will not only hurt Democrats in the midterms, but also hurt McAuliffe in his November race, Sanders said he “wishes Terry McAuliffe the best of luck” and emphasized the popularity of the reconciliation bill.

“What we are fighting for is precisely what the American people want,” Sanders said.

Sanders emphasized his confidence in passing both bills.

“At the end of the day, I am absolutely convinced we’re going to have a strong infrastructure bill, and we’re going to have a great consequential reconciliation bill which addresses the needs of the American people,” Sanders said.

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(WASHINGTON) — After two days of Democratic infighting and drama, the fate of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure agenda remained unclear Friday night after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to repeatedly put off a vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill because progressive Democrats had vowed to vote against it — unless there’s a deal on a larger spending package.

The feuding has so jeopardized Biden’s top legislative priorities that he went to Capitol Hill Friday afternoon to meet with House Democrats to make clear he wants both the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion social safety net and climate policy measure to pass.

“It doesn’t matter when. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in six minutes, six days, or six weeks. We’re gonna get it done,” Biden told reporters as he emerged.

Behind closed doors, Biden suggested that a smaller topline social policy bill price tag ranging from $1.9-$2.2 trillion could be the compromise in tense negotiations involving the White House, Democratic progressives, moderates and two key Senate Democrats, according to sources in the room.

Such an investment, together with the $1.2 trillion bipartisan highway bill, would still be a huge investment, he told the caucus, the sources said.

“Even a smaller bill can make historic investments,” they quoted Biden as saying.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill “ain’t going to happen until we reach an agreement on the next piece of legislation,” he added, according to the sources. “Let’s try to figure out what we are for in reconciliation … and then we can move ahead.”

He made clear he campaigned on the proposals in the larger package, they said, but did not suggest or endorse a specific timeline for votes in the House or Senate.

One Democrat inside the room told ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott they were “massively disappointed.”

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the lawmaker told her “when the president of the United States comes, it’s to close the deal — not to say hello.” The member added, “Most of us are at a loss for words. There was no plan. No strategy. No timing.”

Earlier Friday, Pelosi and House Democrats held another caucus meeting for more than two-and-a-half hours as they tried to find a path forward on their policy agenda after Democratic leadership and the White House failed to bring progressives and moderates together behind the president’s broader agenda.

Inside that closed-door gathering, which typically has the feel of a pep rally-turned-group therapy session, Pelosi seized the opportunity to take the temperature of her caucus. Centrist members from swing districts pushed for an immediate vote on the Senate-passed infrastructure bill. Progressives insisted that they will block it unless the Senate first approves the massive social policy package – hardening the stance they have taken for several weeks.

“No. We need a vote,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said outside the morning caucus meeting. “We need to be real. Are we going to deliver universal pre-K to this country, or not? Are we going to expand health care to our seniors and improve vision and dental, or not?”

Pelosi told members that Democrats ought to move quickly and that the situation was “perishable,” according to sources familiar with her comments.

“We cannot and I will not ask you to vote for the BIF (Capitol Hill shorthand for bipartisan infrastructure framework) until we have the best possible offering that we can stick with,” Pelosi told Democrats. “And it’s not just me. This is about the president of the United States.”

“So, that’s why it is our intention to bring up the vote today. It is our intention to win the vote today,” she added, according to sources familiar with her comments.

As she arrived at the Capitol Friday morning, ABC News asked Pelosi whether she was trying to get members on board by promising a second reconciliation bill early next year in an effort to appease members now, after vowing again on Thursday that a reconciliation bill would follow the vote on the bipartisan package.

“I don’t know about that but a reconciliation bill is not excluded. It’s not necessarily connected to this,” she said.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer arrived a minute ahead of Pelosi, telling reporters only “we’ll see” when asked whether the House would vote on the measure before the end of the day.

Pelosi had insisted for two mornings that she planned to go ahead with a vote on the Senate-passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., exiting the morning caucus meeting on Friday, said she’s “seen more progress in the last 48 hours than we’ve seen in a long time on reconciliation.”

She reiterated the progressives’ position that they’ll vote “no” unless there is agreement with the moderate Democratic senators on a larger social spending package to accompany it.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who along with and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. object to the larger bill’s cost, told reporters on Thursday he already conveyed to leadership his topline number is $1.5 trillion — far below progressives $3.5 trillion number.

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(WASHINGTON) — With at-home rapid COVID-19 tests hard to come by and many stores limiting purchases, the White House on Friday acknowledged the current supply crunch, promising to double the number of rapid tests available for sale within the next two months.

“You’re right that the at-home rapid test is under a lot of demand,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said, emphasizing that “overall, testing capacity across the country remains robust.”

“The manufacturing is scaling up significantly, doubling across the next couple of months, and we’re just going to keep at it to encourage those manufacturers to increase capacity and to drive down the cost of those tests.”

The White House has touted the effectiveness of its new vaccine mandates and employee testing requirements, and it has committed to shoring up testing by investing billions of dollars.

Yet the U.S. has struggled since the start of the pandemic to meet demand for tests. As he began his tenure, President Joe Biden pledged a World War II-style production push to ramp up supply. But while PCR tests, which rely on labs to process them and take longer to produce results, are now widely available, the at-home rapid tests are hard to find.

Demand for testing generally has soared some 300% to 650% in some areas of the country, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told senators Thursday, making the case that while “sufficient supply” remains, the issue becomes “getting [it] to the right places.”

Senators on both sides of the aisle grilled Becerra on the testing shortage they’re seeing in their states, saying that even though the federal government has supplied billions of dollars for schools and businesses to acquire tests, actually securing them has become a challenge.

“You need to know that right now there is a real crush to be able to get the testing that can get the results back in a timely enough manner to make a difference,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said, adding that schools and businesses have told her “there’s no place to get the testing, or certainly not to get the rapid test.”

Consumers have felt that crush at checkout.

“Due to high demand, deliveries may be delayed,” reads a banner across the CVS at-home testing page. “We appreciate your understanding as our associates work around the clock to support you.”

“We may experience intermittent delays in supply in some locations and are working with the all of our testing partners to meet patient demand,” Walgreens corporate spokesperson Erin Loverher told ABC News.

Following the doubling of testing volume in June to July, with much of the heightened consumption coming from the southern surge states, Walgreens is seeing “incredible demand,” the Loverher said. As such, a cap has been placed on over-the-counter at-home COVID testing products “in an effort to help improve inventory,” while the company continues to “work diligently with our partners to best meet demand.”

CVS spokesperson Matthew Blanchette told ABC News the company has also begun to ration rapid test-kit purchases.

In order to preserve the straining supplies of point-of-care and over-the-counter rapid tests, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked labs in September to use laboratory-based tests over rapid ones whenever possible to “meet the current test demand” despite what it called a “temporary shortage.”

In late September, the Biden administration struck a new $1.2 billion deal for millions more rapid COVID-19 tests from Abbott and Celltrion, part of the $2 billion already announced by the White House to expand testing.

Abbott spokesperson John Koval told ABC News that the company would be ramping up production significantly, and by the end of October it aims to produce “as many or more” rapid tests as at the height of their production — surging capacity up to at least​ 50 million tests a month.

The company is restarting production at its Illinois plant and rehiring in Maine after laying off several hundred workers when demand was down, Koval said.

“Overall, we’ll continue to pull every lever we can to further expand the manufacturing and the production of these tests in order to make them more widely available and to drive down the cost per test,” Zients said Friday.

ABC News’ Anne Flaherty and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden went to Capitol Hill Friday afternoon to meet with House Democrats, White House officials said, amid party infighting that has put his legislative agenda in jeopardy.

Biden, who has kept a low public profile most of the week while negotiating behind the scenes trying to break the impasse, spoke behind doors with liberal and moderate lawmakers for about half an hour.

As he emerged, he told reporters, “I’m telling you, we’re gonna get this done.”

He added, “It doesn’t matter when. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in six minutes, six days, or six weeks. We’re gonna get it done.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has twice had to delay a vote on a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan Biden supports because progressive Democrats are vowing to defeat it unless they also get a vote on $3.5 trillion social safety net and climate policy measure he also supports — but one that two moderate Democratic senators have objected to as too costly.

Beforehand, some Democrats said they were excited to be hearing from Biden directly and some had complained in recent days that he was not more involved in negotiations.

“He’s going over there to make the case for his legislative agenda, which includes the infrastructure bill, and it includes his Build Back Better agenda that would be in the reconciliation package, so he wants to speak directly to members, answer their questions and make the case for why we should all work together to give the American people more breathing room,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters shortly before Biden was scheduled to leave for the Capitol.

Asked whether he expected to walk out of there with an agreement, Pskai said, “I’m not going to make a prediction of whether there will or won’t be a vote. I’ll leave that to Speaker Pelosi to determine when she will call a vote. But he’s making the case he believes it’s — it’s the right time for him to go up there.”

“The case that the White House is making is that compromise requires everybody giving little. That’s the stage we’re in. But no matter where we end, if we can get something done here, we’re going to have a historic piece of legislation passed Congress that’s going to have a huge impact on the American people,” she added.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a wide-sweeping set of police reform laws Thursday, including one that would prevent an officer from being employed by another police department after being convicted of misconduct.

The new legislation also raises the minimum age to become a law enforcement officer from 18 to 21; sets limits on the use of rubber bullets and tear gas to protect protesters; and establishes new accountability measures.

The legislation, SB2, also known as the “Kenneth Ross Jr. initiative,” will decertify law enforcement officers after conviction for misconduct or serious crimes and prevents them from moving to other departments. Officers can be decertified for excessive force, sexual assault, demonstration of bias and dishonesty.

The bill was named after 25-year-old Kenneth Ross Jr. who was fatally shot by Gardena Police Department Officer Michael Robbins in April 2018 while running away from police in Rowley Park, local Los Angeles ABC station KABC reported. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office determined that the officer “acted lawfully in self-defense” because he believed Ross was an active shooter.

“I’ve lived here 52 years. I knew every officer by first name. When I heard about this shooting I did not know who this officer was and the reason why is because he transferred from Orange County after being involved in three questionable shootings there,” Assemblyman Steven Bradford, a Democrat representing Gardena, said at the signing ceremony.

Bradford said the legislation would end the “wash, rinse, repeat cycle” where an officer can commit a crime and leave a department and get hired by another agency.

The new law means California will join 46 other states that have decertification processes for officers due to bad conduct, Bradford said.

The bill-signing ceremony took place at Rowley Park in Ross’ memory where his mother, Fouzia Almarou, spoke.

“He was the love of my life. I’ll never see Kenneth again. This bill means a lot because it’ll stop police from attacking, targeting and being racist towards Black and brown people,” Almarou said.

Newsom also signed the George Floyd Bill, which requires officers to intervene when witnessing another officer using excessive force and report the incident in real time. Those who don’t could be disciplined in the same way as the cop who used excessive force.

Assemblymember Chris Holden, a Democrat representing Pasadena, authored the bill.

“Derek Chauvin was charged for killing of George Floyd, but justice for George Floyd doesn’t rest in Chauvin’s conviction alone – there were three additional officers who simply stood by and watched him die,” Holden said in a statement.

Another bill, AB490, bans officers from using restraints that can cause position asphyxiation, which occurs when a person is restrained and cannot breathe.

“While many of us witnessed the untimely death of George Floyd last year, Angelo Quinto a native veteran from Northern California also lost his life at the hands of law enforcement when [they] used similar restraints,” Assemblymember Reggie Jones Sawyer, a Democrat representing south Los Angeles, said.

“The new law will not hinder law enforcement from utilizing restraints they might need to use in dangerous situations … but it will place a limit on those restraints as to not keep someone from breathing and the result be an unnecessary death,” he added.

Last year, Newsom signed legislation banning police chokeholds in wake of Floyd’s death in Minneapolis where officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes.

Assemblymember Sawyer also thanked the governor for signing the PEACE Act, which raises the minimum age of officers from 18 to 21.

The act will also have experts from community colleges and community advocates develop a framework for officers to receive a higher education that’ll include psychology, history, ethnic studies, law and emotional intelligence.

“This framework will equip officers with the skills necessary for de-escalation while also guaranteeing they develop an understanding of the history of communities from diverse backgrounds and cultures,” Sawyer said.

Another bill regulates the use of rubber bullets and tear gas at protests. It bans officers from “indiscriminately firing these weapons into a crowd or aiming them at the head, neck or other vital organs,” bill author Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat representing San Diego, said in a release.

Newsom touted the reforms as “another step toward healing and justice for all.”

“Too many lives have been lost due to racial profiling and excessive use of force. We cannot change what is past, but we can build accountability, root out racial injustice and fight systemic racism. We are all indebted to the families who have persevered through their grief to continue this fight and work toward a more just future,” he said in a statement.

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