The announcement comes as Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces mounting pressure from his right flank to take action against Biden while he also is struggling to pass legislation needed to avoid a federal government shutdown at the end of the month.
Congress
Legal challenges to congressional districts also are ongoing in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. And new districts seem likely in New York and North Carolina, based on previous court actions.
A short-term funding measure to keep government offices fully functioning will dominate the September agenda, along with emergency funding for Ukraine, federal disaster funds and the Republican-driven probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.
Under the Obama administration, Ed Siskel oversaw the White House legal response to congressional oversight and the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Siskel, a Chicago native and the nephew of movie critic Gene Siskel, served for two years as the top lawyer in Chicago.
The last such request from the White House, made in November, was met and then some — Congress approved more than what the Democratic president had requested.
Congress has until Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year, to act on government funding. They could pass spending bills to fund government agencies into next year, or simply pass a stopgap measure that keeps agencies running until they strike a longer-term agreement.
While the study of mysterious aircraft or objects often evokes talk of aliens, Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.
The outcome leaves open, at least temporarily, the yearslong investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings. He had been charged with two misdemeanor tax crimes of failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes from over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018.
The divide was reflected in his audience. While lawmakers repeatedly rose to their feet in thundering applause of President Isaac Herzog’s recounting of Israel’s founding, a handful of leading young progressive Democrats boycotted his speech.
The anniversary push will formally launch July 4 with an event during a Major League Baseball game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago Cubs at American Family Field in Milwaukee.
President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have been working the phones in an intense push to sell Congress on the 99-page bill that would suspend the nation's debt limit through 2025 to avoid a federal default while limiting government spending.
The Biden administration is racing to strike a deal with Republicans as the nation careens toward a potentially catastrophic debt default if the government fails to increase the borrowing limit, now at $31 trillion, to keep paying the nation’s bills.
Crucial debt ceiling negotiations are still far from success, but a deal is possible by the end of the week, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said after a brief meeting Tuesday with President Joe Biden and other congressional leaders.
Freshman U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, who succeeded longtime U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush in Illinois’ 1st Congressional District, said the debt ceiling debate has already gone on too long and threatens the standing of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Top lawmakers, including Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had for months been asking the Justice Department to provide access to the documents — or at least an assessment of what was in them — so that Congress could gauge the potential national security harm.
In a presidential proclamation on Thursday and a subsequent statement on Friday, Biden acknowledged “a wave of discriminatory state laws” aimed at trans Americans, squarely blaming “MAGA extremists” for “advancing hundreds of hateful and extreme state laws that target transgender kids and their families.”
