A Chinese fighter jet conducted what U.S. military officials called an aggressive midair intercept of an American surveillance plane as it flew over the South China Sea on Friday, the latest in a series of incidents in the region between the two powers.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees military operations in Asia, said the incident involved a Chinese J-16 and an Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane that was flying in international airspace. The military published video Tuesday of what it called an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” that caused turbulence for the U.S. crew onboard the RC-135. The footage shows the Chinese J-16 moving directly in front of the U.S. plane, causing it to shudder as it flew through the fighter’s jet wash.
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The U.S. did not specify where the reconnaissance plane was flying—only that it was above the South China Sea, where Beijing has made territorial claims over resource-rich shoals that neighboring nations also claim. “The United States will continue to fly, sail, and operate—safely and responsibly—wherever international law allows, and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Joint Force will continue to fly in international airspace with due regard for the safety of all vessels and aircraft under international law,” the military said in a statement. “We expect all countries in the Indo-Pacific region to use international airspace safely and in accordance with international law.”

Read More: Pentagon Says Record Defense Budget Is Necessary To Compete With China

The episode marks at least the third time since December that Chinese jets buzzed U.S. military planes over the South China Sea. Incidents in December and February also forced Washington to register the protest with Beijing.

The dustup comes during a tense period between the two nations that included a public spat over a Chinese spy balloon transiting over American airspace. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has repeatedly attempted to speak with China’s defense minister, General Li Shangfu, in recent months only to be rebuffed. Austin is now at the outset of a weeklong trip through Asia, with stops planned in India, Japan, and Singapore, where is slated to give what’s being billed as a major speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a three-day long conference.

Read More: The Chinese Spy Balloon Was Shot Down By the U.S. Military. Here’s How It Went Down.

“The U.S. is clear about the reason why China-U.S. military dialogue faces difficulties,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters on Tuesday. “The U.S. should earnestly respect China’s sovereignty, security and interest concerns, immediately correct wrong practice, show sincerity and create necessary atmosphere and conditions for dialogue and communication between Chinese and U.S. militaries.”

The Biden Administration has labeled Beijing a “pacing challenge” that holds the potential to reshape the international order. The Pentagon’s budget request includes a 40% increase for the Administration’s so-called Pacific Defense Initiative, which aims to counter China’s military expansion in the Pacific region. And yet the two nations have limited military and diplomatic interactions with one another—a situation that hasn’t improved since China flew its spy balloon across the continental U.S.

With just days to spare until a government default, lawmakers in Washington are facing intense pressure this week to support the passage of a bipartisan debt ceiling bill that key members of both parties oppose.

To get the legislation through a closely divided Congress, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have assembled a coalition of Republicans and Democrats willing to back the compromise, but the effort still faces a number of procedural hurdles that could stall its final passage.

The first obstacle comes on Tuesday evening, when the House Rules Committee will convene to determine whether the agreement comes to a vote by the full House of Representatives amid concerns from a handful of far-right Republicans who have threatened to thwart the deal. Two of the committee’s nine GOP members—Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Chip Roy of Texas—have come out against the deal, signaling that conservatives may have some leverage to block the bill or stall its passage in an attempt to extract more concessions from Biden.
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The compromise deal, which Biden and McCarthy reached over the weekend, is far from the “clean” debt ceiling increase Democrats had initially sought, but it also leaves out many of the provisions that Republicans pushed for in their House-passed debt ceiling bill. At least a dozen far-right conservatives have argued that the agreement does not do enough to cut future deficits, while progressive Democrats have expressed frustration over the inclusion of work requirements and spending caps that White House negotiators originally rejected—prompting leaders on both sides to wage an all-out sales pitch to rally key lawmakers behind the compromise.

“I feel very good about it,” Biden told reporters on Monday. “There is no reason it shouldn’t get done” in time to avoid default, he added. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the government could run out of cash to pay its bills on time by June 5 unless Congress acts.

Complicating matters is that McCarthy made a series of procedural concessions to conservatives during his marathon, 15-round bid to become speaker in January, including a promise to only advance legislation out of the rules committee if all nine Republicans backed it, Norman said at a news conference on Tuesday. “The whole bill is a violation,” he said. “That’s not what we agreed to.”

McCarthy also agreed as part of his speakership concessions to restore the ability of any one member to force a House vote to overthrow the Speaker—a move that Republicans have so far not publicly threatened, but continues to hang in the balance. Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told reporters on Tuesday that a motion to vacate is “on the table” and that he will decide “in conjunction with others” about how to proceed.

“No one in the Republican party could have done a worse job,” he said of McCarthy on Tuesday. “This is a career defining vote for every Republican.” Rep. Scott Perry of Florida, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, echoed that sentiment, arguing that McCarthy “totally failed to deliver” on holding the line during debt limit talks.

How the House ultimately votes on the bill will reveal the extent of McCarthy’s political power. He can lose no more than four Republican votes on the floor before needing Democratic support to pass the legislation, and doing so could damage his standing among conservatives.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” McCarthy predicted that he would have all the necessary GOP votes and downplayed concerns that far-right members of his conference would move to vacate him as speaker. “Well, that’s okay, because more than 95% of all those in the conference were very excited,” McCarthy said. “There’s not one thing in the bill for Democrats.”

He said that he expects a vote in the House on Wednesday, in hopes of enacting the legislation before a looming deadline to avert a default in less than a week. If the proposed bill does clear the House, it will then move for a vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it could face yet another obstacle: amendments.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, said on Twitter that he would seek an amendment to renegotiate military funding levels, calling for a short-term debt limit extension of 90 days. Under the current framework, the deal boosts spending for the military next year by about 3% and also increases funding to improve medical care for military veterans, including a $20.3 billion fund dedicated to veterans who have been exposed to toxic substances or environmental hazards.

Meanwhile, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, said he would push for an amendment to remove a provision in the bill to expedite federal permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a controversial 303-mile natural-gas pipeline between West Virginia and Virginia that has been repeatedly stalled on environmental concerns. The pipeline has been a key goal of Republicans and a plan championed by Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, who has said that finishing the pipeline would lower energy costs for his state.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has warned that the bill would need to be voted on by the weekend in order to get the legislation passed in time.

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy released Sunday evening the legislative text for a bill to lift the nation’s debt ceiling and fund the government for two years in exchange for new limits on federal spending, moving one step closer to ending a partisan standoff that has brought the government to the verge of defaulting for the first time in U.S. history.

The compromise deal, which now faces an uncertain future in the House and Senate, is far from the “clean” debt ceiling increase Democrats had initially sought, but it also leaves out many of the provisions that Republicans pushed for in their House-passed debt ceiling bill.
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“The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want,” Biden said in a statement. He urged both chambers to pass the deal quickly, saying it would prevent “what could have been a catastrophic default and would have led to an economic recession, retirement accounts devastated, and millions of jobs lost.”

Read more: What to Know About the History of the Debt Ceiling

But some conservatives have expressed early concerns that the agreement does not do enough to cut future deficits, while liberals see it as a major concession. If passed by Congress, the deal to raise the debt ceiling would enact changes in environmental permitting, institute tighter work requirements for food stamps, and claw back some money from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), according to the 99-page legislative text.

With the health of the economy hanging in the balance and financial markets watching closely, lawmakers said they expect a vote in the House on Wednesday, in hopes of enacting the legislation before a looming June 5 deadline to avert a default.

Here’s a look at what’s in the deal:

New work requirements for federal aid programs

In a major win for Republicans, the debt ceiling deal institutes new work requirements for low-income Americans who receive food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.

The deal raises the age limit until which able-bodied, low-income adults without dependents would be required to work to receive food stamps, from 50 to 54. The expanded restrictions would expire in 2030.

Biden’s negotiators were able to secure some exemptions for homeless people and veterans, whose circumstances can make it difficult to comply with the program’s work requirements. But the agreement on work requirements is seen as a significant concession by Democrats, who had initially rejected the proposed change and said it would lead to fewer people being able to afford food but not actually increase job participation.

The deal is also expected to modify the formula used by states to calculate cash assistance for low-income households under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, but no changes to Medicaid were made.

Clawing back money from the IRS

In another concession to Republicans, the Biden Administration agreed to claw back $20 billion of the $80 billion in new IRS funding that was designed to crack down on wealthy Americans and corporations that evade taxes.

That $80 billion in funding was included in the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature economic bill, in order to increase government revenue and help pay for the climate and health-care spending in the measure. But it has since become an attack line for congressional Republicans, who have warned, despite the claim having been debunked, that tens of thousands of new IRS agents would be hired to pry into the lives of hard-working Americans.

Read more: Why Republicans Keep Spreading the ‘87,000 IRS Agents’ Lie

Democrats say the money is meant to modernize the tax collection agency, which has been plagued by understaffing, and could yield $200 billion in additional revenue over the next 10 years. Since the fall, the IRS has hired 5,000 customer service agents to assist Americans throughout tax season, upgraded its phone and online chat features, and fully staffed 361 Taxpayer Assistance Centers around the nation, a Treasury Department official told TIME in March.

Rescinding unspent COVID-19 rescue money

The deal takes back around $30 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief funds that were approved by Congress during the Biden and Trump presidencies, with exceptions made for veterans’ medical care, housing assistance, and the Indian Health Service. The rollbacks also include slashing $400 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Health Fund.

Some Democrats and public health advocates have warned that such cuts would hurt efforts to prepare for the next big virus and take money away from the persistently underfunded public-health system, affecting vulnerable populations the most. The spending cuts would also delay the replenishment of the Strategic National Stockpile, raising the possibility that the U.S. could face a shortage of essential medical supplies should another pandemic emerge, creating a repeat of the early days of COVID-19 when masks, swabs, ventilators, and other supplies had to be rationed.

The White House says the deal, however, would protect critical funding to prepare for future pandemics.

Read more: Why the Debt Ceiling Matters and What Happens if Congress Refuses to Raise It

A faster approval process for energy projects

Biden’s agreement with McCarthy also includes a provision intended to speed up the approval process for energy projects, which can sometimes drag on for years. As part of the deal, only a single federal agency will be required to take charge of a project’s environmental review, rather than having multiple agencies each perform their own environmental assessments, as it currently stands.

Both parties have expressed support for the change, though Republicans also sought new restrictions on lawsuits from project opponents, which is not part of the deal.

In addition, Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, managed to slip into the deal a provision meant to accelerate the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline—a multi-billion-dollar natural gas pipeline in his state that’s been repeatedly stalled on environmental concerns.

Funding for veterans

The deal boosts spending for the military next year by about 3% and also increases funding to improve medical care for military veterans, including a $20.3 billion fund dedicated to veterans who have been exposed to toxic substances or environmental hazards.

An end to the freeze on monthly student loan payments

Biden refused to retreat on his plan to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for tens of millions of Americans, but the deal reached Saturday does codify his plan to end the ongoing freeze on monthly student loan payments and interest at the end of the summer.

The move comes amid calls from GOP lawmakers, who have blasted the roughly $5 billion cost each month of keeping nearly all federal student loans paused, to resume collecting payments. In their own House-passed debt ceiling bill, Republicans would have permanently curtailed the Education Department’s authority to freeze student payments.

The White House didn’t go that far, but the future of the program remains uncertain as the Supreme Court prepares to decide in the coming weeks about the legality of Biden’s student loans plan.

A two-year cap for discretionary spending

Negotiators agreed to cap annual discretionary spending for two years, keeping non-defense spending levels flat next year and raising them by 1% in 2025. That means funding for most domestic programs—such as housing, education and road safety initiatives—will stay the same next year at around $936 billion.

Over the course of negotiations, spending caps had emerged as a major sticking point for Republicans, who initially sought 10 years of annual spending limits before ultimately settling on two years.

A higher debt ceiling beyond the 2024 election

In exchange for the spending cuts, the deal would raise the limit on how much the government can borrow through the end of 2024, meaning that Biden will not have to deal with the debt ceiling again until after the next presidential campaign.

This was a top priority for the Biden Administration, since debt limit negotiations during a period of divided government often create a major headache for the president. If the deal passes, it will ensure that the U.S. does not have to go through debt limit talks again until the next House term.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

Kamala Harris this week had clearly, finally, and decisively earned a piece of the action. It sure took long enough.

After two years on the sidelines, carrying garbage headlines and defending some fairly patently indefensible policies, the Vice President merited a good news cycle befitting her role in helping President Joe Biden make inroads with women—specifically, women of color—and delivering him the White House. So this week, the ex-Senator made a quick stop back home in California to help roll out what is being billed as the world’s largest semiconductor site, a direct product of the Biden Administration’s successful push for $53 billion for new tech manufacturing included in last year’s CHIPS and Science Act.
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At long last, Harris got to spike a football in her home end zone. It was a subtle sign that the West Wing is finally starting to understand that the—at best—benign neglect afforded to the Office of the Vice President for much of Biden’s term may spell trouble for his prospects next year.

When a sitting President runs for a second term, the role of the Vice President can be a tricky one. It’s as if the voters are asked to cast two ballots: one for the top of the ticket, and one for the back-up plan. It gets even dicier when the incumbent President is the oldest ever to try again.

To be sure, Harris is starting from an unenviable place. For the last two years, leaks and sniping from the West Wing dogged her and her team. Turnover was rampant, morale ebbed more than it flowed, and missteps were amplified by those looking for trouble. Harris, for her part, did herself few favors with some standout flubs during interviews and speeches. Biden’s team did her even dirtier, saddling her with the politically impossible task of dealing with the immigration crisis on the U.S.-Mexican border even as it was unclear day to day whether the White House would treat it as anything more than an annoying hiccup.

Slowly, though, Biden’s team has started to realize they might be unable to stay in power if they can’t use Harris in strategic ways—and move her away from no-win tasks like migration and give her spots where she can credibly make the case. Abortion rights, for one, has given her a sweet spot. Voting rights is another. And, as was the case in her native California, the up-sides of domestic spending plans like the CHIPS Act can give the Silicon Valley workers—and tech donors—reasons to stick with Biden.

All VPs go through such a tension, especially if they have political ambitions of their own. People lacking ambition seldom set up shop on the west front of the West Wing, where the VP’s ceremonial offices are. But usually, the gray-haired old men around an incumbent President realize their own obits are tied to the fortunes of the person sitting in the VP’s office; Biden’s team has sat in those club chairs before but somehow missed that Harris is now the heir to their boss’ own legacy.

At the grand opening in California, Haris spoke effusively about how “semiconductors are the brain of modern technology,” and “essential to every electronic device that we currently use.”

It was all plenty bland, but soaring rhetoric wasn’t exactly needed when Applied Materials’ $4 billion investment is expected to employ 1,500 construction workers to get the 180,000-square-foot facility up and running, and then host 2,000 engineering jobs once open. It represents the single biggest upgrade to American chip capacity of late, and it’s merely one more proof point that the Biden team can cite as it prepares to seek a second term next year. And, there in Silicon Valley, Harris was finally getting cut into the victory laps that the White House for more than two years seemed to routinely deny their own understudy.

It took seemingly forever for the Office of the Vice President to get looped in, but as is the case in Washington, in the words of one of her biggest boosters, “it’s better late than never.” Scoreboards only really matter when the crowds shuffle out of a stadium; anything seen before that is a snapshot that misses the tension of an ongoing contest. Harris at long last getting her due can only be seen as a hint of a reboot in an administration that has for way, way too long missed that one of their biggest assets has been stuck in neutral in the driveway.

From the start, Harris’ relationship with Biden was an awkward one. She made headlines early in the campaign by attacking Biden’s record on desegregation only to concede it was a stunt without substance. Biden’s pledge to pick a woman as his running mate left him with a handful of options, and Harris’ moment to plug into the Biden orbit was far from smooth. The President, frankly, needed Harris far more than she needed him, but she smartly bided her time with Biden, and it’s finally paying off.

In a perverse way, Harris has never had more power inside the cozy boys’ club of Biden’s making. If the President is going to seize a second term, he needs Harris and all that she represents, the doors that she opens, and the symbolism incumbent on her very existence. There is exactly a zero-percent chance he can win a second term without her, the OVP knows this, and is finally starting to flex its clout after two years of patiently watching the team across the alley operate in a cloud of dismissiveness, paranoia, and delusion.

The task at hand now is fixing the fractured relationship between the two political teams that nominally share an interest in having Harris as a player, both now and into the future. To get across the finish line. Biden might have to not only boost Harris in the short term, but fully embrace that his legacy will be wrapped up in her legacy for the balance of his life.

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AUSTIN, Texas — After years of legal and ethical scandals swirling around Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s GOP-controlled House of Representatives has moved toward an impeachment vote that could quickly throw him from office.

The extraordinary and rarely-used maneuver comes in the final days of the state’s legislative session and sets up a bruising political fight. It pits Paxton, who has aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump and the state’s hard-right conservatives, against House Republican leadership, who appear to have suddenly had enough of the allegations of wrongdoing that have long dogged Texas’ top lawyer.
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Paxton has said the charges are based on “hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims.”

Here is how the impeachment process works in Texas, and how the 60-year-old Republican came to face the prospect of becoming just the third official to be impeached in the state’s nearly 200-year history:

The process

Under the Texas constitution and law, impeaching a state official is similar to the process on the federal level: the action starts in the state House.

In this case, the five-member House General Investigating Committee voted unanimously Thursday to send 20 articles of impeachment to the full chamber. The next step is a vote by the 149-member House, where a simple majority is needed to approve the articles. Republicans control the chamber 85-64.

The House can call witnesses to testify, but the investigating committee already did that prior to recommending impeachment. The panel met for several hours Wednesday, listening to investigators deliver an extraordinary public airing of Paxton’s years of scandal and alleged lawbreaking.

If the full House impeaches Paxton, everything shifts to the state Senate for a “trial” to decide whether to permanently remove Paxton from office, or acquit him. Removal requires a two-thirds majority vote.

A sudden threat

But there is a major difference between Texas and the federal system: If the House votes to impeach, Paxton is immediately suspended from office until the outcome of the Senate trial. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott would have the opportunity to appoint an interim replacement.

The GOP in Texas controls every branch of state government. Republican lawmakers and leaders alike have until this week taken a muted posture toward the the myriad examples of Paxton’s misconduct and alleged law breaking that emerged in legal filings and news reports over the years.

It’s unclear when and why exactly that changed.

In February, Paxton agreed to settle a whistleblower lawsuit brought by former aides who accused him of corruption. The $3.3 million payout must be approved by the House and Republican Speaker Dade Phelan has said he doesn’t think taxpayers should foot the bill.

Shortly after the settlement was reached, the House investigation into Paxton began.

Republican or Republican

The five-member committee that mounted the investigation of Paxton is led by his fellow Republicans, contrasting America’s most prominent recent examples of impeachment.

Trump’s federal impeachments in 2020 and 2021 were driven by Democrats who had majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives. In both cases, the impeachment charges approved by the House failed in the Senate, where Republicans had enough votes to block conviction.

In Texas, Republicans control both houses by large majorities and the state’s GOP leaders hold all levers of influence. But that hasn’t stopped Paxton from seeking to rally a partisan defense.

When the House investigation emerged Tuesday, Paxton suggested it was a political attack by Phelan. He called for the “liberal” speaker’s resignation and accused him of being drunk during a marathon session last Friday.

Phelan’s office brushed off the accusation as Paxton attempting to “save face.” None of the state’s other top Republicans have voiced support for Paxton since.

Paxton issued a statement Thursday, portraying impeachment proceedings as an effort to disenfranchises the voters who gave him a third term in November. He said that by moving against him “the RINOs in the Texas Legislature are now on the same side as Joe Biden.”

The marriage wrinkle

But Paxton, who served five terms in the House and one in the Senate before becoming attorney general, is sure to still have allies in Austin.

A likely one is his wife, Angela, a two-term state senator who could be in the awkward position of voting on her husband’s political future. It’s unclear whether she would would or should participate in the Senate trial, where the 31 members make margins tight.

In a twist, Paxton’s impeachment deals with an extramarital affair he acknowledged to members of his staff years earlier. The impeachment charges include bribery for one of Paxton’s donors, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, allegedly employing the woman with whom he had the affair in exchange for legal help.

Years in the making

The impeachment reaches back to 2015, when Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges for which he still has not stood trial. The lawmakers charged Paxton with making false statements to state securities regulators.

But most of the articles stem from Paxton’s connections to Paul and a remarkable revolt by the attorney general’s top deputies in 2020.

That fall, eight senior Paxton aides reported their boss to the FBI, accusing him of bribery and abusing his office to help Paul. Four of them later brought the whistleblower lawsuit. The report prompted a federal criminal investigation that in February was taken over by the U.S. Justice Department’s Washington-based Public Integrity Section.

The impeachment charges cover myriad accusations related to Paxton’s dealings with Paul. The allegations include attempts to interfere in foreclosure lawsuits and improperly issuing legal opinions to benefit Paul, and firing, harassing and interfering with staff who reported what was going on. The bribery charges stem from the affair, as well as Paul allegedly paying for expensive renovations to Paxton’s Austin home.

The fracas took a toll on the Texas attorney general’s office, long one of the primary legal challengers to Democratic administrations in the White House.

In the years since Paxton’s staff went to the FBI, his agency has come unmoored by disarray behind the scenes, with seasoned lawyers quitting over practices they say aim to slant legal work, reward loyalists and drum out dissent.

Texas history

Paxton was already likely to be noted in history books for his unprecedented request that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Joe Biden’s defeat of Trump in the 2020 presidential election. He may now make history in another way.

Only twice has the Texas House impeached a sitting official.

Gov. James “Pa” Ferguson was removed from office in 1917 for misapplication of public funds, embezzlement and the diversion of a special fund. State Judge O.P. Carrillo was forced out of office in 1975 for using public money and equipment for his own use and filing false financial statements.

—Bleiberg reported from Dallas.

House Republican leaders on Thursday signaled that they were making progress toward a bipartisan deal with President Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling, but warned that a potential agreement would require a level of compromise likely to disappoint both parties.

Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said that negotiators had worked “well past midnight” and would continue to meet until they find a resolution to avert a default on the nation’s debt ahead of the projected June 1 deadline. But he said there are still “outstanding issues” holding up the negotiations.

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“I don’t think everybody is going to be happy at the end of the day,” McCarthy said about members of his party worried he will make too many concessions in the final deal. “That’s not how this system works.”

At the same time, anxiety has been growing in some Democratic circles that Biden would go too far in accepting Republican demands. The two sides remain at odds over a GOP proposal to cut spending by imposing tougher work requirements for federal aid programs and introducing caps on future spending. Negotiators have been at an impasse over how much the federal government should spend next year and for how long to cap spending after that, with Republicans demanding a 1% cap on annual spending for six years while the White House has signaled it would agree to freeze discretionary spending next year and increase spending by 1% in fiscal year 2025.

Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a key McCarthy ally who has been a part of the negotiations, said he does not expect a deal will be made on Thursday, adding that there are still “thorny issues” yet to be resolved. “We have legislative work to do, policy work to do,” he said. “The details of all that stuff really are consequential to us being able to get this thing through.”

As negotiators inch closer to an agreement, the contours of a possible deal have been slowly taking shape. The two sides have discussed a framework for an agreement that would claw back some $30 billion in untapped COVID-19 relief money and approve permitting reforms for energy development, according to those familiar with the talks.

Some hard-right Republicans, however, have expressed concern that McCarthy’s negotiators would retreat from the additional spending cuts they included in the House-passed debt limit bill last month, such as revoking Biden’s student loan forgiveness program and scrapping swaths of the Inflation Reduction Act. “That certainly doesn’t get me excited,” Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a conservative member of the House Freedom Caucus, told reporters on Thursday. Biden and Democrats, meanwhile, have said those provisions are a non-starter and continue to push back on any attempt to undo their legislative accomplishments as part of a deal to raise the debt limit, accusing Republicans of holding the nation’s economy “hostage.”

Former President Donald Trump, who has said that Republicans should force a default if they do not get what they want from the White House, spoke with McCarthy on Thursday about the negotiations. “He was talking about, ‘Make sure you get a good agreement,'” McCarthy said of their brief conversation.

Even if McCarthy can get his members to sign off on a potential bipartisan deal in the House—no easy task with a slim majority of just five votes—any bill to raise the debt limit would then have to pass the Senate. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, the conservative chair of the Senate Republican Steering Committee, said Thursday on Twitter that any deal McCarthy makes “will not face smooth sailing in the Senate” if it doesn’t include substantial spending and budgetary reforms, vowing to “use every procedural tool” available to him to delay a compromise bill.

Further complicating matters, a group of 35 House GOP members wrote a letter to McCarthy on Thursday afternoon urging him to hold the line on spending cuts while adding additional requests for the final bill, including border provisions and an end to funding for the FBI’s new headquarters. The letter signals that a compromise bill may fracture the unity McCarthy has created within his party since his marathon 15-round speakership vote.

But negotiators are in danger of running out of time. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the government might be unable to cover all its payment obligations as soon as next Thursday, and two prominent credit ratings agencies have warned that they could downgrade the U.S. government’s coveted AAA debt rating in the event of a default—an outcome that could result in higher interest costs.

Lawmakers are set to leave Washington on Thursday for the Memorial Day holiday without a deal, though talks are expected to continue into the weekend. Congressional leaders have instructed members to be on call to return for a vote should a deal be reached.

McCarthy has said that a deal must be reached this week to have enough time for legislation to pass through the House and Senate. Under legislative rules, House lawmakers have 72 hours to read the bill once the text is released, though that rule has been waived in the past.

Four years ago, before Gabriela Orozco was old enough to vote, she knew Bernie Sanders was her candidate to take on Donald Trump. She liked how the Vermont Senator wanted to remake the federal government to help those most in need.

Now, the 20-year-old college student finds herself once again looking for an alternative to Joe Biden. But “Sanders is old now,” she tells me when we talk in Washington, D.C.’s National Press Club, where longshot presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has just delivered a speech. What did she think of Williamson when the spiritual author ran ahead of 2020? Orozco pauses, both of us aware of Williamson greeting fans a few feet behind her. “There was a reputation of her as a bit of a crazy lady,” she says softly.
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Orozco’s willingness to give “a crazy lady” a second look is a sign of how much has changed since 2020, when many Americans knew of Williamson as the kooky crystal woman preaching a politics of love. Now the options for those dissatisfied with the Democratic establishment are scant and Williamson is more clearly evangelizing from the gospel of Bernie Sanders.

“During the last campaign, it was this urgent sense that if only we could defeat the former president, then maybe life will go back to normal,” Williamson tells me later that evening. “Now people realize the problem was bigger than just one man.”

Indeed, the crowd of about four dozen people who came to hear Williamson propose an Economic Bill of Rights was littered with onetime Sanders supporters, some of whom punctuated her speech with snaps and loud hums of approval. When Williamson mentioned her support for Medicare for All and her plans to cancel all college loan debt, the applause was so piercing, it sounded like balloons popping.

Williamson’s chances of winning the nomination aren’t much better than four years ago. She is polling in the single digits, below another longshot candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Audience members I spoke to were resigned to the party nominating Biden again, and only one committed firmly to voting for Williamson in the primary. But they all hope she can do in 2024 something akin to what Sanders did eight years ago: nudging the party to the left.

“I was a big Bernie supporter in 2016 and 2020,” says Blake, a 26-year-old who works for a government contractor and didn’t want his last name published. “One of the things that I really like about Marianne is, regardless of what people say about her electability, she’s pushing the Overton window to the left. And I think that enables Biden and the more establishment Dems to maybe push further left on issues.”

Of course, Williamson ran as a progressive in 2019, too. Despite entering the race with no prior experience in elected office, her status as a celebrity author whose profile had been elevated by the likes of Oprah Winfrey enabled her to clear the thresholds to qualify for the primary debate stage. But facing nearly two dozen rivals, including a left-wing champion in Sanders, she often got lost in the crowd. It didn’t help that she was quickly branded the “orb queen” for her talk of the “dark psychic force” operating in America and for her spiritual fans, who penned many tweets studded with crystal ball emojis. Now, her brand has evolved; it’s all about no-nonsense Sandersesque policy.

“I won’t turn that down,” she says when I ask her about the comparison to the Vermont independent. “I don’t think that a candidacy like mine would exist had there not been a Bernie Sanders. I don’t think there would have been a Bernie Sanders had there not been an Occupy Movement. Everything in life, whether it has to do with our individual journeys, or the journey of a nation—one thing leads to another.”

Fighting political corruption is an animating theme of the evening. When an audience member asks what Americans can do about it, she admits it’s unlikely gerrymandering will end or Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which unleashed unlimited corporate spending in elections, will be overturned anytime soon. But just as Sanders is now delighting in using his leadership position in the Senate to hold corporate executives to account, Williamson envisions taking on the powerful people the rest of D.C. is palling around with.

“Elect someone, get her in there, who sees that game for what it is, who has nothing to gain by pleasing the insurance companies, or pleasing the pharmaceutical companies, or pleasing Big Ag, or pleasing big chemical companies, or pleasing big food companies, or pleasing gun manufacturers, or pleasing big oil, or pleasing defense contractors,” Williamson urges. “It will please me to make them squirm.”

After the speech, I talk with Markus O’Bryan, a 30-year-old real estate agent and one-time president of his high school’s Young Republicans club. By 2020, O’Bryan had gone through a political transformation and backed Sanders in the primary, which he says explains why he finds Williamson compelling for 2024. “I had a look at her policies, obviously, and her policies almost directly line up with Bernie Sanders-type policies,” he says.

Besides Medicare for All and canceling all student loan debt, Williamson, like Sanders, supports passing the PRO Act to boost union protections and putting checks on banking executives. Sanders has endorsed Biden for reelection, but told Insider in March, “I know Marianne … I’m sure she’s going to run a strong campaign and raise very important issues.”

Williamson’s fans are among the many Democrats who aren’t satisfied with Biden’s leadership, or the fact he’s running again. “She seems to be one of the few of all the candidates that has an interest in representing the working class, especially among Democrats,” says Troy Bent, a 47-year-old math and special education teacher who found himself drawn to Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren during the last cycle. “As usual, we’re faced with: ‘Vote for the lesser of two evils,” says Bent, who adds, “This year, I’m not going for it.”

With the Democratic Party in lockstep with Biden, I ask Williamson what she’s doing differently this time around.

“Some of the things I’m doing differently have to do with making the sausage,” she responds. “Nothing you talk to TIME Magazine about.”

She means campaign logistics. Though she didn’t tell me any details, Politico reported that Williamson recently parted with two top campaign staffers, including her campaign manager. An anonymous staffer told Politico that their departures were “mutually agreed-upon” after the campaign decided to go in a more progressive direction.

Before the end of our interview, I have to know what Williamson hopes to achieve out of this campaign short of winning. She’s clearly strategic. We both know earning the nomination will be tough; maybe there’s something else?

“At the end of this, whether it takes us to the White House or not, we will know that we presented the American people with the option of moving in the direction of that new beginning,” she says. “I personally believe that if I’m successful at reaching enough people with this vision, and have a fair shot at introducing myself to them, then I will win the nomination and I will win the presidency.”

So it’s the party and the media that are standing in the way? She says her one-word answer like a full sentence: “Duh.”

President Joe Biden announced Thursday he is nominating Air Force General Charles “CQ” Brown Jr. to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an appointment that would make him the second Black officer to hold the highest post in the U.S. military.

“General Brown has built a reputation across the force as an unflappable and highly effective leader—as someone who creates an environment of teamwork, trust and an execute with excellence,” Biden said, during an afternoon ceremony held in the White House Rose Garden with Brown at his side. “You’ve been an essential leader in making our nation and our force us stronger. You’ve made history.”
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Brown, 60, is an F-16 fighter pilot and four-star general with leadership stints in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East before taking over as Air Force chief of staff in 2020.

If confirmed by the Senate, Brown would be the second Black Joint Chiefs chairman after Army General Colin Powell, who served in the role from 1989 to 1993. It would also mark the first time in history that the Pentagon’s top two leaders, along with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, were Black men.

“He is an incredibly capable and professional officer,” Austin told reporters at the Pentagon before the announcement. “What he brings to the table, to any team, is that professionalism, that deep experience, and war-fighting—and I have personal knowledge of that.”

Brown is set to succeed retiring-Army General Mark Milley as the president’s top military adviser at a time when the Biden Administration is juggling a range of global challenges, including aiding Ukraine in its war with Russia and navigating the increasingly tense global competition with China. As the former commander of Pacific Air Forces, Brown is well acquainted with the challenges stemming from Beijing. In 2020, he developed an “Accelerate, Change or Lose” initiative within the Air Force to maintain military superiority over adversaries.

Read more: Biden Relents To Ukrainian Pressure For Fighter Jets

Born to an Army family in San Antonio, Brown became an officer after completing his undergraduate degree in engineering at Texas Tech University in 1984. Ten years later, he earned a master’s degree in aeronautical science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Over his career, he logged more than 3,000 flying hours, including 130 combat hours, steadily rising through the ranks to earn a brigadier general’s star in 2009. He’s served as a wing commander at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea, and Aviano Air Base, Italy. He was operational director of strategic deterrence and nuclear integration at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, during the Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. A year later, he oversaw the daily bombing campaign against ISIS as the top air commander in the Middle East, and in 2018 took control of Pacific Air Forces.

Brown’s broad background, as well as his reputation as a bold leader, is expected to limit opposition in the Senate, whose approval is needed for the appointment. The Senate confirmed Brown 98-0 to become chief of staff of the Air Force after former President Donald Trump nominated him in 2020.

A potential obstacle to his confirmation is Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville’s blockade of Pentagon nominees over the Defense Department’s abortion-travel policy. Roughly 200 senior civilian and uniformed nominees are on hold because of the Alabama senator’s opposition to allowances paid to cover travel to obtain abortions—a result of last year’s Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. (The military does not pay for the procedure itself.)

Read more: Pentagon Accounting Error Means $3 Billion More For Ukraine

But Brown’s support for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within the military may also draw attention from conservative lawmakers, who routinely criticize the Pentagon for policies they deem to be a “woke” agenda. TIME listed Brown as one of the world’s most influential people in 2020 after he took a stand against systemic racism in a viral video posted after George Floyd’s death. “I can’t fix centuries of racism in our country, nor can I fix decades of discrimination that may have impacted members of our Air Force,” Brown said in June 2020 as then-President Trump considered ordering the U.S. military to quell racial-justice protests. “I’m thinking about how I can make improvements personally, professionally, and institutionally.”

It was a candid public statement for an officer in such a senior position, particularly one who had yet to receive Senate confirmation. But to those who know him, it was representative of Brown’s character. Two months later he became the nation’s first Black chief of a military service and cemented his status as a leader who’s not afraid to speak his mind—even if it’s not expedient to do so.

In late May, a migrant woman from Honduras crossed into Dallas, fleeing violent threats from gang members back home and seeking asylum in the U.S. While she waited in Mexico, men from a cartel would rape her every couple of days as part of a “rent payment,” according to her attorney.

What happens next to the woman is mired in problems exacerbated by the Biden Administration’s new border rules. When she approached border officials near the Mexican city of Matamoros to cross over into Texas, she hadn’t scheduled an appointment through the federal government’s new CBP One App, which only offers 1,000 daily appointment slots and has been riddled with glitches and accessibility issues. The woman had tried to secure an asylum appointment through the app for four months before giving up, says Priscilla Orta, supervising attorney at Project Corazon, who represents her. (The woman, who exchanged messages with TIME, did not give permission to use her name because of concerns speaking to the media would affect her case.)
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Without an asylum appointment, the woman will have to prove to a judge that she had a good enough reason to enter the U.S. without going through the app—a difficult proposition under the new rules. So when her court date comes around in August, she faces a high risk of being deported back to Honduras.

If she had approached the border just a week earlier, the harrowing details of her case would have likely led to U.S. officials granting her an asylum appointment and emergency parole, according to Orta. That’s been standard U.S. policy applied at most ports, even during the pandemic. But in recent weeks, as the Biden Administration has overhauled the rules of the border, cases like these are often being treated like just any other asylum case, with little consideration for emergency circumstances. It has become much harder to get speedy asylum appointments for migrants in emergency situations at two ports of entry in particular, Matamoros and Reynosa, according to immigration advocates.

“I always felt like, no matter how bad it got, there was a safety valve for the most extreme cases. They shut that valve. They cut it off,” Orta says. “This is worse than anything I experienced under the Trump Administration.”

Read More: Biden’s Rightward Shift on Immigration Draws Comparisons to Trump

Another immigration advocate working in the same area says it has become harder for emergency exceptions to be made at these ports. A third, working in Nogales, Arizona, reports it has been harder for emergency cases to get an appointment quickly since January, when the U.S. government increased its reliance on scheduling migrant appointments through the the CBP One App, which doesn’t ask migrants why they are seeking asylum or provide space to flag any urgent threats.

“CBP is processing individuals who arrive at ports of entry and is not turning people away,” Justin Long, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesperson, tells TIME in a statement. “CBP will make processing determinations upon the noncitizen’s arrival at a port of entry, on a case-by-case-basis, and outcomes may vary depending on the specific circumstances of each case.” Long said CBP is prioritizing processing migrants with documentation and those who have made appointments through the CBP One app.

Every port may work differently. When policy is built on a case-by-case basis, there’s going to be more variability in the response—even for those facing similar circumstances, says Julia Gelatt, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. A person crossing the border in Matamoros, for example, may not receive the same treatment as another crossing in Tijuana—even if they are dealing with a similar threat. That flexibility allows local CBP offices to take into account issues such as crowding at detention facilities. But the new guidance that they should prioritize migrants who have made appointments through the CBP One app—which doesn’t allow them to specify their circumstances—has effectively meant all asylum claims are lumped together.

After the pandemic-era immigration policy Title 42 expired in May, the Biden Administration instituted a strict new rule stating if a person did not seek asylum in the country they passed through to get to the U.S. or didn’t use the CBP One phone app to do so, any asylum claim they make in the U.S. will likely be rejected.

The U.S. government “wants everyone to use the CBP One app no matter what the circumstance is…everyone is treated the same right now,” says Felicia Rangel, executive director of the Sidewalk School. But since the app doesn’t allow migrants to explain dire situations, it can leave people fleeing extreme violence—who previously might have been given special consideration by border officials—waiting in the same lottery system as everyone else arriving at the border.

Read More: ‘It’s Like a Lottery.’ Migrants Struggle to Make Asylum Appointments Through U.S. Government App

“The app is a lottery system. It’s not prioritizing based on vulnerability or need for protection. It’s prioritizing based on who has the luck of the draw and…who has been waiting the longest to get a CBP One appointment,” says Gelatt. “There’s no intention even of targeting it for people who have humanitarian protection needs.”

Some immigration advocates note the app may not ask about why someone is seeking asylum because it could be considered official documentation and be used against them if the explanation differs from what they say on their official asylum application or interview. But “the issue is that there’s no way to flag the urgency of cases,” says Joanna Williams, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative, based in Nogales, Arizona. Before the government expanded the use of the CBP One App in January, non profits, shelters, and attorneys would alert the U.S. government to more extreme cases. That’s no longer standard procedure.

Some attorneys say that those in dire circumstances have faced barriers to seeking asylum for urgent humanitarian reasons for years. “It’s actually been very hard for advocates to effectively have these humanitarian parole requests acknowledged, reviewed and adjudicated in a timely manner,” says Chelsea Sachau, an attorney at the Arizona-based Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.

But the extreme reliance on the CBP One App and the refusal of some ports of entry to consider emergency cases has only exacerbated the problem for fast-tracking these cases, immigration advocates say.

-With reporting by Vera Bergengruen

(WASHINGTON) — The founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison for orchestrating a weekslong plot that culminated in his followers attacking the U.S. Capitol in a bid to keep President Joe Biden out of the White House after the 2020 election.

Stewart Rhodes is the first person charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack to be sentenced for seditious conspiracy, and his sentence is the longest that has been handed down so far in the hundreds of Capitol riot cases.

It’s another milestone for the Justice Department’s sprawling Jan. 6 investigation, which has led to seditious conspiracy convictions against the top leaders of two far-right extremist groups authorities say came to Washington prepared to fight to keep President Donald Trump in power at all costs.
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Before handing down the sentence, the judge told a defiant Rhodes that he is a continued threat to the U.S., saying it’s clear Rhodes “wants democracy in this country to devolve into violence.”

“The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said.

It was one of the most consequential cases brought by the Justice Department, which has sought to prove that the riot by right-wing extremists like the Oath Keepers was not a spur-of-the-moment protest but the culmination of weeks of plotting to overturn Biden’s election victory.

Read More: What Mike Fanone Can’t Forget

Prosecutors had sought 25 years for Rhodes, who they say was the architect of a plot to forcibly disrupt the transfer of presidential power that included “quick reaction force” teams at a Virginia hotel to ferry weapons into D.C. if they were needed. The weapons were never deployed.

In remarks shortly before the judge handed down the sentence, Rhodes slammed the prosecution as politically motivated, noted that he never went inside the Capitol and insisted he never told anyone else to do so.

“I’m a political prisoner and like President Trump my only crime is opposing those who are destroying our country,” Rhodes said.

In a first for a Jan. 6 case, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta agreed with prosecutors to apply enhanced penalties for “terrorism,” under the argument that the Oath Keepers sought to influence the government through “intimidation or coercion.” Judges in previous sentencings had shot down the Justice Department’s request for the so-called “terrorism enhancement” — which can lead to a longer prison term — but Mehta said it fits in Rhodes’ case.

Prosecutors argued that a lengthy sentence is necessary to deter future political violence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy pointed to interviews and speeches Rhodes has given from jail repeating the lie 2020 election was stolen and saying it would be again in 2024. In remarks just days ago, Rhodes called for “regime change,” the prosecutor said.

People “across the political spectrum” want to believe that Jan. 6 was an “outlier,” Rakoczy said. “Not defendant Rhodes.”

A lawyer for Rhodes, who plans to appeal his conviction, said prosecutors are unfairly trying to make Rhodes “the face” of January 6. Attorney Phillip Linder told the judge that Rhodes could have had many more Oath Keepers come to the Capitol “if he really wanted to” disrupt Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote.

“If you want to put a face on J6 (Jan. 6), you put it on Trump, right-wing media, politicians, all the people who spun that narrative,” Linder said.

Another Oath Keeper convicted alongside Rhodes in November — Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs — was expected to receive his sentence later Thursday.

Two other Oath Keepers, acquitted of the sedition charge but convicted of other offenses, will be sentenced Friday. And four other members found guilty of seditious conspiracy at a second trial in January are scheduled to be sentenced next week.

The convictions were a major blow for the Oath Keepers, which Rhodes founded in 2009 and grew into one of the largest far-right anti-government militia groups. Recruiting past and present members of the military and police officers, the group promotes the belief that the federal government is out to strip citizens of their civil liberties and paints its followers as defenders against tyranny.

Rhodes’ sentence may forecast what prosecutors will seek for former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy alongside other leaders of his far-right group this month for what prosecutors said was a separate plot to block the transfer of presidential power. The Proud Boys will be sentenced in August and September.

Rhodes, 58, and the other Oath Keepers said there was never any plan to attack the Capitol or stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. The defense tried to seize on the fact that none of the Oath Keepers’ messages laid out an explicit plan to storm the Capitol. But prosecutors said the Oath Keepers saw an opportunity to further their goal to stop the transfer of power and sprang into action when the mob began storming the building.

Messages, recordings and other evidence presented at trial show Rhodes and his followers growing increasingly enraged after the 2020 election at the prospect of a Biden presidency, which they viewed as a threat to the country and their way of life. In an encrypted chat two days after the election, Rhodes told his followers to prepare their “mind, body, spirit” for “civil war.”

In conference call days later, Rhodes urged his followers to let Trump know they were “willing to die” for the country. One Oath Keeper who was listening was so alarmed that he began recording the call and contacted the FBI, telling jurors “it sounded like we were going to war against the United States government.”

Another man testified that after the riot, Rhodes tried to persuade him to pass along a message to Trump that urged the president not to give up his fight to hold onto power. The intermediary — who told jurors he had an indirect way to reach the president — recorded his meeting with Rhodes and went to the FBI instead of giving the message to Trump. Rhodes told the man during that meeting that the Oath Keepers “should have brought rifles” on Jan. 6.

Before Thursday, the longest sentence in the more than 1,000 Capitol riot cases was 14 years for a man with a long criminal record who attacked police officers with pepper spray and a chair as he stormed the Capitol. Just over 500 of the defendants have been sentenced, with more than half receiving prison time and the remainder getting sentences such as probation or home detention.

___

Richer reported from Boston.

After Ron DeSantis’s glitch-riddled presidential campaign launch on Wednesday, Donald Trump did something entirely predictable: he mocked him on social media. The former President posted a video with the words “Ron! 2024” superimposed on a SpaceX rocket going up in flames.

But the needling was aimed at more than just his most formidable 2024 rival. It was also a repudiation of Musk, the owner of both Twitter and SpaceX, who in recent months has become something of a hero to the MAGA right.

After purchasing Twitter, Musk swiftly reinstated the accounts of Trump allies who were removed under the previous ownership for spreading misinformation. Then he released the so-called Twitter Files, a series of internal documents that showed the company’s deliberations on crucial content moderation decisions. Republicans widely cited the material as evidence that the platform had been systematically suppressing conservative speech. Musk has further amplified right-wing banter to his more than 140 million followers. And last month, he welcomed the recently fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson to launch a new show on Twitter.
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But now, the MAGA-Musk relationship is far more complicated. While the billionaire has made Twitter a haven for hard-right Trumpian voices, he’s appeared to cross the man who leads the MAGA movement, which has been a source of many of his most loyal supporters since taking over the influential communications platform, even as Trump has stayed on his alternative site Truth Social.

Musk tweeted last year that he would support DeSantis for president if he ran. In April, he appeared on Carlson’s show, then still on Fox, and suggested that he didn’t want Trump back in the White House: “I would prefer, frankly, that we put someone, just a normal person as president.” He’s continued to send messages that he’s eager for an alternative to Trump. On Monday, he raised eyebrows after retweeting South Carolina Senator Tim Scott’s presidential announcement video. Then on Wednesday night, he participated in DeSantis’s campaign launch during a live audio conversation on Twitter, which he co-moderated with the venture capitalist and GOP donor David Sacks.

Despite his comments last year, Musk has tried to tamp down the perception that he’s endorsing DeSantis; he suggested at a Wall Street Journal forum on Tuesday that he’s merely promoting his social media firm. But he’s still been drawing the ire of some of the former President’s fiercest allies and surrogates, who see him as a self-interested businessman whose proclamations are disingenuous.

“Sacks and Musk are oligarchs,” Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon tells TIME. “DeSantis comes from billionaires’ lunch to launch at an oligarch’s ball.” (The Florida governor held a lunch on Wednesday with donors at the Four Seasons in Miami before the Twitter Spaces event.)

Musk’s latest moves have also made some MAGA influencers worried about whether he may tilt the platform’s scales during the primary. “The thing that I’m concerned about is, will Elon suppress Trump supporters on the website?” says Alex Bruesewitz, a GOP consultant and CEO of the Trump-allied firm X Strategies. “Will Community Notes be biased in one direction over the other?” he asks, referring to the site’s fact-checking service. “Those are things that we’re gonna have to wait and see.”

Hours after the DeSantis campaign launch, a pro-Trump Super PAC’s tweet criticizing DeSantis’s record in Congress showed a Community Note with points undermining the attack.

To Peter Loge, a political communications professor at George Washington University, the DeSantis Twitter launch was designed as “a clever political stunt” that would be mutually beneficial to both parties. “This isn’t a complicated political strategy,” Loge tells TIME. “Elon Musk wants money and attention. Ron DeSantis desperately needs somebody to pay attention to him.”

Trump’s team declined to comment on Musk’s involvement in the announcement, but one Trump adviser teased the Florida governor for his venue choice, implying that it was indicative of the common perception that he’s socially awkward. “Announcing on Twitter is perfect for Ron DeSantis,” they told TIME. “This way he doesn’t have to interact with people and the media can’t ask him any questions.”

But even as Musk has been muddying his stature among the MAGA faithful, some of Trump’s supporters in Congress remain optimistic that he will live up to the identity he’s cultivated in their orbit as a speech-rights absolutist.

“I don’t know that Elon will suppress MAGA,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who has endorsed Trump, told TIME. “From what I hear and from his actions that I have observed, he is very much so a libertarian when it comes to free speech. He spent a large portion of his fortune on Twitter to show how important free speech is and then handed over the Twitter Files so we could investigate.”

Luna, a social media influencer before arriving to Capitol Hill, sits on the House Oversight Committee, which is currently investigating Hunter Biden. The panel held a hearing earlier this year focused largely on the Twitter Files’ first installment, in a session that highlighted communications between the company’s top executives on the decision to suppress the original New York Post story on the president’s son’s laptop.

While Musk has unambiguously aligned himself with the American right since his $44 billion Twitter acquisition, he hasn’t always been in lock-step with the right-wing nationalist populists who comprise the MAGA movement. He’s widely seen as sympathetic to Vladimir Putin; he once called one of the Russian President’s ally’s tweets predicting an end to the Russia-Ukraine war an “Epic thread!” But Musk has also been providing Ukraine with satellites that have served as vital to its self-defense. At the same time, he’s corporate tycoon who created an electrical vehicles company, a line of business that’s not exactly a favorite among the far-right.

Meanwhile, his rhetoric has been increasingly reactionary. In October, days after the Twitter purchase, he shared a conspiracy theory about former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul. A few months later, he channeled conservative grievances by tweeting, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”

That may have gained him adulation among MAGA diehards, even as he diverges with them on some core policy issues. He’s also resurrected their ability to participate on the platform with arguably the most influential political audience in the world. But Trump and his associates may not be as forgiving over anything seen as a direct assault on Trump the man. Says Bruesewitz: “Just because he says right-wing things doesn’t mean that conservatives are going to give him a pass.”

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Thursday made it harder for the federal government to police water pollution in a decision that strips protections from wetlands that are isolated from larger bodies of water.

It’s the second decision in as many years in which a conservative majority of the court narrowed the reach of environmental regulations.

The justices boosted property rights over concerns about clean water in a ruling in favor of an Idaho couple who sought to build a house near Priest Lake in the state’s panhandle. Chantell and Michael Sackett objected when federal officials identified a soggy portion of the property as a wetlands that required them to get a permit before building.
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More from TIME

By a 5-4 vote, the court said in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that wetlands can only be regulated under the Clean Water Act if they have a “continuous surface connection” to larger, regulated bodies of water. There is no such connection on the Sacketts’ property.

The court jettisoned the 17-year-old opinion by their former colleague, Anthony Kennedy, allowing regulation of wetlands that have a “significant nexus” to the larger waterways.

Kennedy’s opinion had been the standard for evaluating whether wetlands were covered under the 1972 landmark environmental law. Opponents had objected that the standard was vague and unworkable.

Environmental advocates had predicted that narrowing the reach of that law would strip protections from more than half the wetlands in the country.

Reacting to the decision, Manish Bapna, the chief executive of the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, called on Congress to amend the Clean Water Act to restore wetlands protections and on states to strengthen their own laws.

“The Supreme Court ripped the heart out of the law we depend on to protect American waters and wetlands. The majority chose to protect polluters at the expense of healthy wetlands and waterways. This decision will cause incalculable harm. Communities across the country will pay the price,” Bapna said in a statement.

The outcome almost certainly will affect ongoing court battles over new wetlands regulations that the Biden administration put in place in December. Two federal judges have temporarily blocked those rules from being enforced in 26 states.

In Thursday’s ruling, all nine justices agreed that the wetlands on the Sacketts’ property are not covered by the act.

But only five justices joined in the opinion that imposed a new test for evaluating when wetlands are covered by the Clean Water Act. Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas and Alito would have adopted the narrower standard in 2006, in the last big wetlands case at the Supreme Court. They were joined Thursday by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

Conservative Brett Kavanaugh and the court’s three liberal justices charged that their colleagues had rewritten that law.

Kavanaugh wrote that the court’s “new and overly narrow test may leave long-regulated and long-accepted-to-be regulable wetlands suddenly beyond the scope of the agencies’ regulatory authority.”

He cited efforts to control flooding on the Mississippi River and protect the Chesapeake Bay as two projects that could be threatened by the decision.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the majority’s rewriting of the act was “an effort to cabin the anti-pollution actions Congress thought appropriate.” Kagan referenced last year’s decision limiting the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

In both cases, she noted, the court had appointed “itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy.” Kagan was joined in what she wrote by her liberal colleagues Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The Sacketts paid $23,000 for a 0.63-acre lot near Priest Lake in 2005 and started building a three-bedroom home two years later.

They had filled part of the property, described in an appellate ruling as a “soggy residential lot,” with rocks and soil in preparation for construction, when officials with the Environmental Protection Agency showed up and ordered a halt in the work.

They also won an earlier round in their legal fight at the Supreme Court.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the EPA’s determination in 2021, finding that part of the property, 300 feet from the lake and 30 feet from an unnamed waterway that flows into the lake, was wetlands.

The Sacketts’ own consultant had similarly advised them years ago that their property contained wetlands.

Ron DeSantis’s campaign for president launched Wednesday night with glitchy mic checks on Twitter, long silent pauses, and space-age electronic music.

For the Florida Governor, whose principle pitch to Republicans is being a more effective implementer of Donald Trump’s right-wing agenda, it was a disastrous opening night.

More than 600,000 Twitter users waited through 15 minutes of glitches to hear the widely promoted conversation featuring DeSantis and Twitter owner Elon Musk. Eventually, DeSantis launched into a pre-written campaign speech in which he accused President Joe Biden of taking his cues from “the woke mob” and said American decline is “not inevitable.”

Then he made his pitch for why voters should back him. He called for “economic sanity” and denounced “inflationary policies that hurt working people” and pledged to “bring the administrative state to heel.” He promised to “shut down the border and construct a board wall.”

Following that list of boiled-over Trumpisms, DeSantis took a swipe at former President Donald Trump’s leadership of the GOP. “We must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years,” DeSantis said. “We must look forward, not backwards.”

Some of DeSantis’ rivals were quick to mock the technical difficulties. President Joe Biden tweeted “This link works” with a link to a page to donate to his campaign. Republican Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas Governor who recently launched a 2024 campaign, tweeted a similar joke with a donation link.

This is a breaking news story that will be updated.

As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis formally launched his widely expected presidential campaign on Wednesday, he was met by attacks of varying degrees from some of his rivals for the Republican nomination.

But while frontrunner Donald Trump has been loudly attacking DeSantis for months, it was former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley who responded the most forcefully to DeSantis’ entry into the race, releasing a video mocking the Florida governor as a Trump copycat who mirrored the former President’s mannerisms and policy preferences.

“America deserves a choice, not an echo,” the ad said.
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Haley’s attack, which began Tuesday evening with a memo from her campaign to allies calling DeSantis “Trump without the charm,” was likely a preview of what’s coming from current and would-be candidates trying to wound DeSantis, as they all jockey for the role of chief Trump rival.

Several campaigns said little publicly about DeSantis on Wednesday. But among campaign strategists who spoke to TIME, none were hesitant to point out what they see as deficiencies in the Florida governor’s conservative credentials and leadership style.

DeSantis formally filed as a presidential candidate with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, and was set to announce his bid in a Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk, the platform’s owner. Though he tends to trail Trump by more than 30 points in polls, DeSantis is the only other Republican polling consistently in the double digits, giving his rivals plenty of incentive to tear him down.

Read more: Ron DeSantis’s Twitter Launch Signals the Culture-War Campaign to Come

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who rolled out a slate of New Hampshire endorsements, acknowledged the entrance of a new challenger, while gently dinging him as well.

“Competition breeds strength,” he wrote in a tweet welcoming the governor to the race, along with a Fox News appearance highlighting his policy differences with DeSantis. In a different tweet, the entrepreneur suggested DeSantis may be supportive of the recent government bailout of Silicon Valley Bank.

“Since his megadonor [David Sacks] was the most vocal supporter of that bailout [and] he’s moderating the Twitter Spaces with Ron tonight, he should ask,” Ramaswamy wrote. “A legitimate policy question for a Presidential candidate.”

Trump also continued his barrage of attacks on DeSantis on Wednesday, using his social media platform Truth Social to say “Ron DeSanctus can’t win the General Election (or get the Nomination)” because of various votes he took while in Congress, including his support for a national sales tax. “He was, and is, a disciple of horrible RINO Paul Ryan, and others too many to mention,” Trump wrote. “Also, he desperately needs a personality transplant and, to the best of my knowledge, they are not medically available yet. A disloyal person!”

Haley is currently campaigning across Iowa and New Hampshire and is scheduled to participate in a CNN town hall next month. Other candidates are also focusing on their own campaigns across the early states, with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina formally launching his own bid earlier this week in his home state before another trip to Iowa.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday that the Treasury Department was not currently talking to investors about what would happen if a deal on the debt ceiling isn’t reached and the U.S. defaults, affirming her belief that an agreement is possible and emphasizing the necessity for a resolution by the June 1 deadline.

“We are committed to not having missed payments and raising the debt ceiling,” she said while speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit via video link. She said the Treasury Department is not currently in conversations with investors about what might happen if the U.S. does miss payments. “We’re not involved in planning for what happens if there’s a default.”
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Read More: What to Know About the History of the Debt Ceiling

As President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy continue negotiations over raising the federal debt ceiling, Yellen reaffirmed Wednesday that the Treasury would be unlikely to meet all U.S. government payment obligations as early as June 1, without a congressional decision to raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling. Without such action, a U.S. default would be triggered.

Yellen said that the agency is working to reach a more precise forecast to give Congress for the exact date the U.S. is expected to run out of financial resources.

The Treasury Secretary did not specify the kinds of prioritization that be required if a deal is not reached, but noted that the situation would not be operationally feasible for the government. “We will default on some obligation, and that’s really not an acceptable state of affairs,” she said. “It threatens the strong recovery that we have in the U.S. economy. It threatens financial markets. We simply have to raise the debt ceiling.”

Yellen also spoke about the recent turmoil in the U.S. banking sector. She said JPMorgan Chase’s recent acquisition of failing First Republic Bank had been a necessary, but not ideal move for the health of the U.S. banking system. Earlier this month, San Francisco-based First Republic Bank became the third U.S. bank to shutter in just two months, with JPMorgan acquiring most of the bank’s assets in a weekend deal shepherded by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It followed government takeovers of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March.

“In general, seeing greater concentration among the largest banks is not something that’s desirable,” Yellen said of JPMorgan Chase’s merger with First Republic Bank. “But the FDIC, in resolving a company, is…required to take the best bid for a failing bank. And in this case, that was the bid of JPMorgan Chase.” She added, “We want to make sure that there is healthy competition throughout the economy, including in the banking system, but this was something that the FDIC was required to do.”

As the U.S., along with many other countries, continues to face stubborn inflation, Yellen remained hopeful that relief could be on the way, noting that certain factors, such as a tight labor market and high rental costs, have been critical in pushing up inflation rates. “We’ve seen housing price increases taper off. The prices of new newly rented apartments [has] stabilized and over time, I think that will show up in bringing core inflation down further,” she said, “The labor market is also arguably loosening up a little bit, becoming a bit less hot.”

As the debt ceiling crisis looms, negotiations are increasingly likely to include Republican demands to tighten work requirements in state Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) programs, which provide cash assistance to families in poverty.

Each state runs its own TANF program with considerable discretion over who is eligible and how exactly states spend the funds they receive from a federal block grant. To hold states accountable and ensure they meet the goal of moving families from welfare to work, the federal government mandates that states meet certain work participation goals among TANF beneficiaries. Republican proposals for restoring work requirements are aimed at states rather than directly at families.
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The TANF provisions in Speaker McCarthy’s Limit, Save, and Grow Act would change how states calculate what is called their work participation rate (WPR) for beneficiaries. As part of the 1996 welfare reforms under President Bill Clinton, the federal government began requiring states to meet a target where 50 percent of single parents and 90 percent of married parents receiving cash assistance were engaged in at least 30 hours of “work activities” each week (the target is only 20 hours for parents with young children). Eligible work activities include subsidized or unsubsidized employment, community service, vocational training, and job readiness programs.

Work activities sound fine on paper. Still, case workers and beneficiaries alike often complain that they end up spending more time tracking countable hours to comply with these requirements – filling out paperwork and checking boxes – than engaging in the sort of integrated casework focused on ensuring access to family services, intensive job-search assistance, and job training reflecting local employer demands that has proved to be more helpful in getting families back on their feet. It is unclear whether chasing countable hours leads to permanent employment that allows families to leave welfare for good.

The 1996 reforms also included a caseload reduction credit (CRC) that allowed states to reduce their WPR target if they could show they were reducing caseloads over time. The idea was that states should not be penalized for making progress on reducing welfare rolls – a core goal of the reforms. In 2021, only six states were held to a 50 percent WPR standard. The majority use CRCs to get a lower standard, including those with 0 percent standards.

Republicans are targeting what they see as three loopholes that allow states to dodge the full 50 percent standard. The first would update the baseline year for which states can receive credit for declining caseloads to 2022. It was initially set at 1995 levels, but because caseloads declined quickly after 1996, few states were held to the 50 percent standard. Congress reset it in 2005, but states quickly found other ways to reduce their WPR standards.

These are the other two loopholes Republicans want to close. One of these is provisions allowing states to “buy down” their WPR standard by increasing state spending beyond federal requirements. The other is so-called “small check” schemes where states increase the number of TANF beneficiaries meeting work requirements by sending $10 or $20 monthly checks to already working parents receiving other benefits.

If Republicans are successful, states might finally be subject to WPR much closer to 50 percent. Still, there are reasons to doubt that these changes will lead to any meaningful increase in employment among families in poverty. First of all, states are surprisingly creative in finding new loopholes. The “small check” and “buy down” schemes that emerged after the 2005 reforms are a case in point. States will likely find new ways to reduce their WPR standard or inflate the portion of families meeting work activities requirements. Moving some families to solely state-funded programs not subject to federal requirements, for example, would help states reduce TANF caseloads and receive credit for it.

Why are states so keen to take evasive maneuvers? Are they trying to avoid accountability or stymie efforts to make TANF beneficiaries self-sufficient? Hardly. The vast majority of caseworkers and families are both invested in moving from stigmatized welfare to dignified work. The reality is that the changes would recreate impossible federal standards that states simply can’t meet at current funding levels. So instead they’d have to get creative.

Even the much-touted welfare-to-work pilot programs that led to the 1996 reforms could not achieve the rates of work participation that states would be held to under the current Republican proposal. The Congressional Budget Office recently identified several programs and supports that can meaningfully increase employment, but the best options are costly.

Increasing childcare subsidies, for example, would increase employment among single parents but comes with an annual $3 billion price tag. We also know integrated casework that goes beyond the “checking boxes” casework incentivized by federal standards increases employment – if properly funded. Meeting federal standards would be an uphill struggle under the best of circumstances. It becomes impossible after nearly three decades of declining federal support for TANF supports and services.

The $16.5 billion TANF block introduced in 1996 was not designed to keep up with inflation or population growth. As a result, the real value of federal funding has declined by almost 50 percent over time. Republicans are asking states to do more than ever with less than ever. Until Congress begins matching tighter federal mandates with additional financial support for states, expect them to continue evading WPR standards and make little headway on Republicans’ goal of moving more families from welfare to work.

Instead, states will respond to this unfunded mandate by creatively finding new ways to reduce caseloads on paper so they can claim that caseload reduction credit. Whether they do it by moving some families off TANF into other solely state-funded programs or deterring and disqualifying families by burying them under onerous new paperwork requirements, the results will be the same: work requirements done this way will fail to work.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

Ron DeSantis knows exactly what he’s doing. With his apparent decision to join the 2024 presidential race by way of a Twitter conversation with that platform’s firebrand billionaire owner, the Florida Governor is putting America on notice that he’s running a different kind of campaign. In fact, from the start, DeSantis is telling the country that he will do precisely the opposite of what is expected of a White House contender by aiming to overtake Donald Trump as the most unpredictable and incendiary force in politics.
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DeSantis and Elon Musk are scheduled to chat on Twitter on Wednesday evening, a summit of two culture-war generals who are plenty keen to poke at norms, if not fling civility wholesale into the chipper. The lead-off intensity already is drawing attention and anxiety. After all, there are few people—in politics or beyond—who have such a polarizing effect on so many people, or represent just how mean-spirited politics can reap reward for the bold.

DeSantis has made bitter feuds a hallmark of his time leading Florida, a state once seen as a barometer of U.S. politics but in the post-pandemic environment is trending into a hard-right state. His contempt for vaccine– and mask-mandate policies made him a star in some circles. He coasted to re-election last year against a lackluster Democratic rival while positioning himself as a less-indicted version of Trump, his one-time patron. DeSantis’ standoff with Walt Disney World over so-called “wokeness,” his censorship of educators’ lessons on American racism, and his takeover of some schools have elevated him to hero status for a subset of Republican voters. Among his critics, his crusade against abortion rights verges on fanaticism, his rejection of transparency borders on autocracy. In his embrace of Musk, whose free-for-all approach to Twitter has made him an unlikely icon of the right, DeSantis is aiming to further endear himself to the mercurial billionaire’s legions of very-online keyboard-cased activists.

Most campaigns require some level of choke-it-down stagecraft to politics. It’s clear when candidates are showing up in certain places they would have previously spurned, saying things they don’t believe, promising programs they know will never come to pass. They do it because it is required to survive the moment. (See John McCain’s retracted 2000 comments on the Confederate flag at the South Carolina statehouse.) The inauthenticity can be uncomfortable to perform and watch alike, but all candidates—even the most Bulworth of them—can weather a few fleeting betrayals of character in their effort at a bigger goal.

But for a candidate like DeSantis, launching his bid on Twitter alongside Musk represents a real gamble, as viewers may struggle to tell if it represents an approximation of performative politics, or a reflection of his true sensibilities. Americans simply don’t know him well enough to make that judgment.

Either way, there are evident limits, even at its inception, to this approach. The instant burst of contempt for coloring inside the lines will yield goodwill among the most conservative elements of the GOP, but will also test the stomach of the political center of the country. Strategists believe Trump’s constant antics and trolling are among his biggest weaknesses, and here is a candidate seen as a Trumpist without the baggage trying to replicate the performative elements of the ex-President.

The 2020 field of Republicans is still coming together, although this week seems to have brought something of a reset to the crowd. Sen. Tim Scott crossed the starting line on Monday, just barely getting ahead of DeSantis’ expected launch Wednesday evening. (That’s worth a caveat, of course: DeSantis has long shown signs of paranoia and spite; in recent weeks, his team has been testing supporters’ discretion by spreading false information to see who can be trusted—never a sign of a particularly healthy campaign. DeSantis’ whole launch-by-Twitter Spaces gambit could just be part of an elaborate opening meant to give him a chance to again attack the Fake News.)

All of this stick-it-in-your-eye pluck, however, may not be as beneficial should DeSantis succeed in becoming the nominee. The gimmicks that may help him at the moment among the far-right wing of the Republican Party isn’t likely to win him converts in states he’ll need beyond “The Free State of Florida.” In chasing those voters seeking a destructive force in politics, he may well spook twice as many who are open to an alternative to President Joe Biden sticking around the West Wing for another four years. For those voters, reverting to a policy-by-tweet era may prove worse than an incumbent who seems a step off his best days.

DeSantis, to this point, has been largely untested. As TIME’s Molly Ball reports from Tallahassee for the magazine’s latest cover, DeSantis’ legislature has proven compliant in building him a record ready to road-test in Des Moines, Concord, and Columbia. But as other Republican Governors have proven, a record at the statehouse doesn’t always translate in the church basements, VFW halls, and diners where early-nominating states pick their favorite. Just ask Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, or Jeb Bush how their records as Governors launched them to the nomination. For incumbents, it’s even worse if they have to go home in defeat. DeSantis could prove merely the latest state exec who melts on the national stage when the lights get brighter, the scrutiny gets sharper, and the donors turn out to be more fickle.

DeSantis is choosing as divisive an opening day as one can imagine but may be the absolutely perfect microcosm for the campaign to come. At least he’s being honest with America about his playbook from his campaign’s opening day and voters can make a decision accordingly. In that, DeSantis is at least respecting voters enough to tell them some version of this truth: he’s ready to fight anyone about anything, so long as it helps him look like a bigger troublemaker than Trump. If DeSantis is able to sustain this hardcore approach, it stands to be a very, very long 17 months—or longer if he proves more successful.

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Secretary Hillary Clinton defended her friend and former colleague Senator Dianne Feinstein, whose advanced age and failing health have prompted calls for her to resign from the Senate, saying that Feinstein’s resignation would not be “worth the tradeoff” when it comes to judicial appointments.

In a wide-ranging interview Monday at the Chicago Humanities Festival, I asked the former Secretary of State why so many of her fellow Democrats were staying in office well into their 80s, even as the party has strengthened its bench of young talent. I specifically asked about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who refused to retire under a Democratic president and whose death at age 87 in September 2020 gave President Donald Trump a third Supreme Court appointment, and Feinstein, age 89, whose absence from the Senate for months has prompted questions about her fitness to serve. Clinton said she had a “very negative response” to my question.
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“Let me say a word about my friend and longtime colleague Dianne Feinstein,” she continued. “First of all, she has suffered greatly from the bout of shingles and encephalitis that she endured. Here is the dilemma for her: she got reelected, the people of California voted for her again, not very long ago. That was the voters’ decision to vote for her, and she has been a remarkable and very effective leader.”

“Here’s the dilemma: the Republicans will not agree to add someone else to the Judiciary Committee if she retires,” she continued, referencing Feinstein’s powerful committee membership. (When Feinstein was absent from the Senate for nearly three months this year recovering from health issues, it created a logjam on the narrowly divided Judiciary Committee, since Democrats were unable to confirm President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees without Republican support.) “I want you to think about how crummy that is. I don’t know in her heart about whether she really would or wouldn’t, but right now, she can’t. Because if we’re going to get judges confirmed, which is one of the most important continuing obligations that we have, then we cannot afford to have her seat vacant.”

“If Republicans were to say and do the decent thing and say, well this woman was gravely ill, she had just lost her husband to cancer… of course we will let you fill this position if she retires. But they won’t say that,” she continued. “So what are we supposed to do? All these people pushing her to retire: fine, we get no more judges? I don’t think that’s a good tradeoff.”

Read More: Why Dianne Feinstein Shouldn’t Quit

When I asked her again about the broader question of whether Democrats have allowed their leadership to get too old, she pushed back. “I do not believe in broad questions about age,” Clinton, age 75, said, adding that she also didn’t believe in term limits. “If you don’t want to vote for somebody, don’t vote for them. But don’t impose some artificial check on the voters. I don’t buy this whole debate. And frankly, a lot of the people pushing it, I don’t understand what their real agenda is, because part of it is a bank shot against Joe Biden. And I think Joe Biden has done a very good job.”

The comments came shortly after Clinton appeared at the Financial Times Weekend Festival in Washington D.C., where she was asked about the moment Biden, age 80, almost fell during the G-7 summit in Japan. There, she acknowledged his age could be an issue in the election. “Well, I mean, it’s a concern for anyone. And we’ve had presidents who’ve fallen before who are a lot younger, and people didn’t go into heart palpitations,” Clinton responded. “But his age is an issue. And people have every right to consider it.”

At the Chicago Humanities Festival, Clinton did not mince words when she spoke about former President Donald Trump, age 76, currently running for president again in 2024. “You have to think of him not as a former president or even as a presidential candidate so much as a cult leader,” she said. “He has a hold on a significant portion of the Republican Party.”

“He will most likely be the Republican nominee again,” she continued. “And be defeated by Joe Biden again.”

In late December 2012, Republicans controlled the House and refused to raise the debt limit without spending cuts. Sound familiar? With the country days away from defaulting, a list of suggested concessions from the Obama White House arrived in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office. The Nevada Democrat threw the papers in his fireplace and told the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, that the Democrats weren’t budging.

With Reid willing to let the Republicans drive the country to default, McConnell found himself a more risk-averse negotiating partner. He called Joe Biden, then President Obama’s vice president, and Biden gave McConnell something he wanted: a concession that pushed the whole process back to two months later. Reid was livid.
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It was not the only time Democrats on Capitol Hill felt like Biden had negotiated away their leverage. Biden’s love of compromise solutions is a pattern that goes back to his decades in the Senate, says Jim Manley, a former senior communications adviser to Reid and the Senate Democratic Caucus. “He understands how radical the Republican Party has become,” says Manley. “The bad news is his heart is still as a senator who wants to sit down and legislate.”

Now, days away from the country hitting a congressionally-determined debt limit around June 1, anxiety is growing in some Democratic circles that Biden is falling into his old placating ways, ultimately handing Republicans too much for raising an arbitrary ceiling to pay bills on spending already approved by Congress.

“I worry about everything,” Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told TIME when asked if he’s worried that Biden will too easily cave to Republican demands. “I have no reason to believe the Administration is going to go along with any of this. But I want to make sure that there’s meaningful pushback here.”

McGovern has been one of the most outspoken advocates for Biden to resist any compromise with Republicans on the debt ceiling, and instead raise it on his own by invoking an untested legal strategy that argues that it would be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment for the U.S. to fail to make its debt payments. “This is not a negotiation, this is a ransom note,” McGovern said of Republicans. “But whatever, that’s up to [Biden].”

Biden had already given House Speaker Kevin McCarthy a major concession: coming to the table at all. He’d said for months that he wasn’t going to let Republicans use their refusal to pay the country’s debt become a reason for such talks. But that’s exactly the position he has now found himself in, with less than two weeks before the country is expected to default.

Biden rattled some fellow Democrats last week when he told reporters, minutes before flying to Japan, that he might accept Republican demands for new work requirements on government assistance programs. “I voted years ago for the work requirements that exist, but it’s possible there could be a few others but not anything of any consequence,” Biden said.

Republicans also want federal spending cut below last year’s levels and relaxed permit requirements for energy projects. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the GOP proposal that passed the House in April would lead to 600,000 Americans losing health insurance and 275,000 Americans each month losing food subsidies.

Biden is pressing Republicans to think beyond cuts in reducing federal deficits, including changing the way that carried interest is taxed and including projected savings to federal programs from new guidance that allows Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, said a person familiar with the negotiations.

“The President should make it clear that it’s patriotic to pay our debts,” Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tells TIME. “We can talk about reducing the deficit, but we must pay our bills first. President Biden is constitutionally obligated to do so.”

While a recent CNN poll found that 60% of Americans say Congress should only raise the nation’s debt ceiling if it also cuts spending, Biden is facing growing pressure from the left to not cave—or cut a deal at all. They argue making any concessions at all will only encourage more of the kind of brinkmanship the parties are currently locked in.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, expressed confidence in Biden, but argues that the White House will need progressive votes to pass any debt limit deal. “That means no to work requirements, no to big spending cuts and no to bad permitting reform,” she tells TIME.

Jayapal wants Biden to stick to the promises he made on the campaign trail to reduce costs for working Americans. “We didn’t vote for the Joe Biden of 1996 or 1986. We voted for the Joe Biden of 2020,” Jayapal says, adding, “This is not a time, when hunger is at its all-time high, to institute burdensome work requirements.”

Further frustrating many liberals amid the current standoff is that they threw away the chance to avoid it. After the elections last year, while Democrats still controlled both chambers of Congress, they discussed either raising the debt ceiling by a massive amount or eliminating it altogether before Republicans took control of the House. Senators Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, reportedly blocked those efforts. As the negotiations with Republicans have dragged on, more Democrats in the Capitol have expressed regret for not fighting harder for that strategy last year. One person close to Biden dismissed such ruminations as “magical thinking,” particularly since the votes were never there.

Asked what should happen if the government runs out of money in early June and Republicans still haven’t budged, McGovern said that Democrats have filed a procedural move known as a “discharge petition” that would allow a majority of lawmakers in the House to overrule the Republican leadership and call a vote.

But he acknowledged that finding enough Republicans to deploy such a strategy would be difficult.