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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Chris Stein (now) and Léonie Chao-Fong (earlier)

McConnell upbeat on avoiding government shutdown after White House talks – as it happened

Joe Biden Chuck Schumer Government Shutdown Hakeem Jeffries Mike Johnson Mitch McConnell
The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, speaks to reporters following a meeting at the White House with congressional leaders.
The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, speaks to reporters following a meeting at the White House with congressional leaders. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Closing summary

Joe Biden met with Congress’s leaders in the Oval Office to find a way to avoid a government shutdown that is set to start on Saturday and would “damage the economy significantly”, in the president’s words. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the negotiations were “making good progress”, and noted that the group pressed Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, leading to “intense” discussions. Johnson was noncommittal after the meeting on if or when he’d do that.

Here’s what else happened today:

  • White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized Johnson’s demands for tougher border security, saying, “I don’t even think he knows what he wants.”

  • Senate Democrats will tomorrow try to pass a bill to protect IVF care, following the Alabama supreme court’s ruling against the procedure.

  • Rightwing House Republicans accused Johnson and his deputies of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” the Democrats over government spending.

  • Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has pulled a “fetal personhood” bill after the Alabama ruling on IVF.

  • Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, said she was voting “uncommitted” in her state’s primary tonight in protest of Biden’s policy towards Israel.

'I don't even think he knows what he wants': White House spokeswoman criticizes House speaker Johnson over border policy

Republican House speaker Mike Johnson has long pressed the Biden administration to take actions to crack down on undocumented migrants crossing the southern border. Yet he also helped kill a bipartisan compromise that would have tightened border security while also approving aid to Ukraine and Israel.

Nonetheless, Johnson reiterated his demand that Biden get tougher on immigration today after meeting at the White House with the president. At her press briefing later in the day, Biden’s spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre was asked what exactly Johnson wants.

“I appreciate the question. I don’t even think he knows what he wants,” Jean-Pierre replied.

The press secretary continued:

You had a bipartisan group of senators coming out of the Senate, working for four months with the White House to put forward a bipartisan piece of legislation that dealt with a … important challenge that we see at the border in immigration. And then so we did that, we’ve moved that forward, we presented it. And we were told no no, we don’t want the border security, we want just the national security supplemental without border security.

Then, the Senate goes back and they pass the national security supplemental without border security, 70-29 … and the speaker refuses to put that to the floor. So what is it that he really wants here? If you look at the border security deal, that proposal, it has components of what the speaker has been talking about for years. So the question is really for him.

Updated

The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell also told reporters he supports holding a trial for Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who House Republicans impeached earlier this month.

Convicting Mayorkas requires approval by a two-thirds majority of senators, which is probably impossible, since Democrats, who have a majority, have rejected the charges against him. They also have not said if they will even bother holding a trial of Mayorkas, or find a way to dismiss the charges without considering them.

McConnell was asked for his thoughts on the matter, and here’s what he had to say:

Updated

McConnell: 'We all agree we need to avoid a government shutdown'

In remarks at the Capitol, the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell signaled he was ready to work with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.

While he noted that the government would probably get close to hitting its shutdown deadline, he expected lawmakers would be able to find an agreement on keeping the government open beyond Friday:

Updated

Americans consider immigration to be the most important issue facing the US, according to a new Gallup poll.

The survey found that 28% of respondents cited immigration as the top issue facing the country, up from 20% who said the same a month ago.

It marks the first time immigration has been the most cited problem since 2019, and come as Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set to make separate visits to the US-Mexico border on Thursday.

A separate question in the survey found that a record-high 55% of respondents said that “large numbers of immigrants entering the United States illegally” is a critical threat to US vital interests, up eight points from last year.

Here’s a clip of Republican House speaker Mike Johnson speaking to reporters after meeting with Joe Biden and top congressional leaders at the White House.

Johnson called the talks “frank and honest” and said his primary concern is addressing migration along the US-Mexico border.

A top Republican in Virginia has apologized for misgendering a state senate Democrat in a row that caused legislative activity in the chamber to be temporarily suspended.

“We are all equal under the law. And so I apologize, I apologize, I apologize, and I would hope that everyone would understand there is no intent to offend but that we would also give each other the ability to forgive each other,” the lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, said in an address to the state senate on Monday.

It all started when Danica Roem, 39, a state senator from Prince William county and the US’s first openly transgender person to serve in any state legislature, had asked Earle-Sears, 59, how many votes were needed to pass a bill on prescription drug prices with an emergency clause.

“Madame President, how many votes would it take to pass this bill with the emergency clause?” Roem asked Earle-Sears, who was presiding over a legislative session at the time.

Earle-Sears responded: “Yes, sir, that would be 32.”

Roem walked out of the room after being misgendered. Earle-Sears initially refused to apologize for the mistake but finally did so after two separate recesses.

Congressman Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democrat of Michigan, said she was “proud” to cast a ballot for “uncommitted” in her state’s Democratic primary today.

Progressive Democrats in Michigan have urged supporters to vote “uncommitted” as a means of protesting against the war in Gaza, calling on Joe Biden to do more to bring about a ceasefire.

“We must protect our democracy. We must make sure that our government is about us, about the people,” Tlaib said in a video shared to social media.

Tlaib noted that a recent poll showed 74% of self-identified Democrats in Michigan support a ceasefire in Gaza, and she accused Biden of “not hearing us”.

“This is the way we can use our democracy to say: listen. Listen to Michigan. Listen to the families right now that have been directly impacted, but also listen to the majority of Americans who are saying enough. No more wars, no more using our dollars to fund a genocide. No more,” Tlaib said.

“So please, take your family members. Use our democratic process to speak up about your core values [and] where you want to see our country go.”

The day so far

Joe Biden met with Congress’s leaders in the Oval Office to find a way to avoid a government shutdown that is set to start on Saturday and would “damage the economy significantly”, in the president’s words. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the negotiations were “making good progress”, and noted that the group pressed Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, leading to “intense” discussions. Johnson was reportedly noncommittal after the meeting on whether he’d do that.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

  • Senate Democrats will tomorrow try to pass a bill to protect IVF care, following the Alabama supreme court’s ruling against the procedure.

  • Rightwing House Republicans accused Johnson and his deputies of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” the Democrats over government spending.

  • Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has pulled a “fetal personhood” bill after the Alabama ruling on IVF care.

Updated

CNN reports that Republican House speaker Mike Johnson gave a similar recounting of his meeting with Joe Biden, Congress’s top Democrats and the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell.

The biggest question, which Johnson still has not answered, is if and when he will allow a vote on new aid for Ukraine, and what House Republicans might want in return. Here’s more, from CNN:

Schumer says 'making good progress' to avoid shutdown, 'intense' negotiations with Johnson on Ukraine aid

The congressional leaders who met with Joe Biden at the White House made “good progress” on avoiding a government shutdown, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said after the meeting.

The group, which also included Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, also pressed the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to support further aid to Ukraine, a discussion Schumer noted was particularly “intense”.

“We’re making good progress and we’re hopeful we can get this done quickly,” Schumer said, adding that Johnson “said unequivocally he wants to avoid a government shutdown”.

McConnell along with Biden and Congress’s top Democrats are all supporters of aid to Ukraine, but Johnson has waffled, even turning down a package of hardline immigration policy changes Democrats had agreed to in order to win Republican support for Kyiv.

“The meeting on Ukraine was one of the most intense I’ve ever encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office,” Schumer said. “We said to the speaker, ‘get it done.’”

Updated

While the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is at the White House to negotiate with Joe Biden, a member of his party is trying to get Joe Biden declared too old to serve, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:

A Colorado Republican introduced a congressional resolution calling for Kamala Harris to invoke the 25th amendment to the US constitution and remove Joe Biden because he is too old.

The resolution from the US House member Ken Buck has little chance of success.

John Dean, who was White House counsel under Richard Nixon, the president who resigned under pressure from his own party, said: “Just when you think there may be a few normal Republicans, you discover they are all crazy.

“This man [Buck] is leaving public office. He is the person with the cognitive problem not Joe Biden.”

Section four of the 25th amendment provides for the replacement, by the vice-president, of a president deemed incapable. It has never been used. Calls for its use intensified in 2021, after the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, which Donald Trump incited in an attempt to stay in the Oval Office.

Biden warns government shutdown 'would damage the economy significantly'

In brief remarks at the start of his meeting with congressional leaders, Joe Biden warned that a government shutdown would “significantly” damage the nation’s economy, which saw strong growth last year despite tenacious inflation and high interest rates.

Here’s what he had to say, from CNN:

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have sat down for their meeting with the top Republicans and Democrats in Congress, which is aimed at finding a way to avoid a shutdown of government departments that would begin, in part, as soon as Saturday.

Here are some photos from the Oval Office meeting:

Updated

'We're going to prevent a shutdown,' Republican House speaker Johnson says

As he departed the Capitol to meet with Joe Biden and other leaders of Congress at the White House, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson signaled to Fox News that he was looking to forge an agreement with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown:

In addition to Democrats, Johnson will also need to placate Republican lawmakers who want him to cut government spending and use the budget negotiations to take a hard line against Biden’s policies.

Updated

The fallout from Alabama’s supreme court ruling against IVF has reached neighboring Florida, where the Republican-dominated state legislature is delaying its push to pass a “fetal personhood” bill, the Guardian Gloria Oladipo reports:

Florida lawmakers have postponed a bill that would give fetuses civil rights after a similar ruling in Alabama has halted in vitro fertilization treatment at several clinics in the state.

The “fetal personhood” bill had been gaining support amid Florida’s mostly Republican lawmakers. The legislation attempts to define a fetus as an “unborn child”, allowing parents to collect financial damages in the case of wrongful death, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

But the bill has largely stalled after Democrats argued that the legislation could affect in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, as seen in Alabama after the state’s supreme court ruled earlier this month that embryos created through IVF are considered “extrauterine children”. Since the ruling, several Alabama IVF clinics have paused services.

The Florida state representative Dotie Joseph, a Democrat, told the Washington Post that the bill’s language did not protect IVF treatment from being affected.

“We are exposing the healthcare provider to liability if something goes wrong,” Joseph said. “You have a situation where you are creating a chilling effect for people who are proactively trying to have a baby.”

ABC News caught up with Alabama’s Republican senator Tommy Tuberville to hear his latest thoughts on the state supreme court decision restricting IVF care in the state.

Tuberville opposes abortion, but last week struggled to articulate his position on the separate question of whether he supports in vitro fertilization. This morning, he appeared to signal that he supports the care, and noted that the state legislature is moving to pass legislation to ensure its access in Alabama.

Here’s more from ABC:

Speaking after Tammy Duckworth was Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, who argued that Donald Trump’s appointment of conservative justices to the supreme court set the stage for the Alabama ruling against IVF.

Democrats have performed well in state-level and special elections ever since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, a decision supported by the three justices Trump nominated for the court. Here’s what Schumer had to say about the connection between that decision and the ruling earlier this month in Alabama:

This didn’t happen in a vacuum. What happened in Alabama, make no mistake about it, is a direct consequence of the hard-right Maga supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. And, as sure as we’re standing here, there are going to be other awful decisions that emanate from this overturning of Roe v Wade, in the future. Thanks to Maga extremism, and the hard-right judges, the extremist judges that former President Trump and the Republican Senate put on the courts, today the United States is an embarrassment to the world when it comes to reproductive freedom.

Senate Democrats push to protect IVF access after Alabama supreme court ruling curbing care

Senate Democrats will seek passage of legislation to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) care, after Alabama’s supreme court earlier this month determined that embryos used in the procedure are “children” and providers in the state stopped seeing patients.

In a speech at the Capitol, Illinois’s Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth spoke of her own experience with using IVF to start a family.

“My infertility would become one of the most heartbreaking struggles of my life, my miscarriage more painful than any wound I ever earned on the battlefield,” said Duckworth, who lost both of her legs while serving with the US army in Iraq.

“So, it’s a little personal to me when a majority male court suggests that people like me, who are not able to have kids without the help of modern medicine, should be in jail cells and not taking care of their babies in nurseries.”

She went on to blame Republicans who orchestrated the overturning of Roe v Wade for the ruling against IVF:

I know I’m not alone when I struggled to understand how politicians who support this kind of policy can possibly call themselves pro- life. After Roe v Wade was overturned, actually, even before then, when Donald Trump promised to only appoint justices who would overturn it, I warned that red states would come for IVF, and now they have. But they aren’t going to stop in Alabama. Mark my words: if we don’t act now, it will only get worse.

Duckworth said she will tomorrow ask the Senate to pass the Access to Family Building Act, which will protect IVF care, by unanimous consent – meaning all senators must agree. It’s unclear if it has the support to pass.

Updated

Punchbowl News this morning published a rundown of where Congress’s leaders are when it comes to the government funding debate, which offers some interesting details of the potential winners and losers, should a shutdown occur.

Perhaps most interesting was their observation about Mike Johnson, who was elevated to House speaker in the wake of Kevin McCarthy’s unprecedented ouster, but doesn’t have much experience with negotiating government funding, and has perhaps the most to lose:

Johnson has never been part of a high-stakes negotiation. He’s drawn illogical lines in the sand – no more CRs – and then had to back down. He’s refused to take positions on big issues. Other top House Republicans are growing tired of him and have no faith in his leadership.

But we’re beginning to see Johnson edge closer to reality. He told House Republicans on a conference call Friday that the compromise he’s negotiating with the rest of the Big Four doesn’t include any major policy wins for the GOP. That’s true.

…

Johnson is going to have a choice to make soon. He can put the compromise bill or package on the floor and pass it with Democratic votes under suspension of the rules, a move that could cost him his job. He can pass another stopgap bill to avert a shutdown. Or Johnson can allow the government to shut down, which also may cost him his job.

Joe Biden convened the meeting of Congress’s leaders at the White House, but according to Punchbowl, he could be the main beneficiary if the government actually shut down:

Sagging in the polls with his political future murky as ever, Biden would be the clear winner of a funding lapse. Biden is trying to make the case that Republicans, with former President Donald Trump as their likely nominee, can’t govern. A shutdown would help that case.

Rightwing House Freedom Caucus decries government funding negotiations

As is always the case, just because Congress’s leaders reach a deal doesn’t mean all of their lawmakers will support it – a fact that may be particularly important in the House of Representatives, which the GOP controls by just two seats.

There is no indication that Republican speaker Mike Johnson sees a government shutdown as advantageous, but should a deal be agreed, he may run into trouble with his party’s most conservative members. On X, Chip Roy, a Texas lawmaker and member of the rightwing House Freedom Caucus, accused Johnson’s team of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” for aggressive government spending cuts that Democrats, who control the Senate, would probably never agree to.

It’s unclear at this point how much of a problem Roy and his counterparts’ opposition could pose, since government funding bills are typically compromises that attract votes from both parties. Here’s the start of Roy’s lengthy thread of objections:

Biden to meet with congressional leaders as government shutdown looms once again

Good morning, US politics blog readers. We find ourselves at a familiar place: a government shutdown is looming, and a Congress riven with divisions over how to spend Washington’s money is struggling to pass legislation to head it off. This time is a little different from the many similar instances that came before, in that it would be a partial government shutdown, with the legislation funding departments including agriculture, transportation and veteran affairs expiring on Friday, while the deadline for the rest is 8 March. But that hasn’t changed the fact that a shutdown of any length or breadth is something Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress apparently don’t want to see happen, and this morning, Joe Biden is getting personally involved. He has invited Congress’s leaders – Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, the Senate’s Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer and Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell – to the White House to see if they can’t sort it out. They meet at 11.30am ET.

Here’s what else is going on today:

  • Michigan voters are casting ballots in their state’s primary. It’ll probably be another romp for Donald Trump, who on Saturday evening crushed former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley on her home turf. Perhaps the bigger question is how many people in the state with a large Arab-American population will vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary in protest of Biden’s support for Israel.

  • Julie Su, Biden’s beleaguered appointee to head the labor department, will testify before the Senate health and education committee at 12.30pm. She’s in the role in an acting capacity, since there’s not yet enough support in the Senate for her confirmation.

  • White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre meets the press at 2pm, and may elaborate on how Biden’s meeting with congressional leaders went.

Updated

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