Closing summary
After weeks of uncertainty and tension, reports indicate that Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is nearing a deal with Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for cutting some government spending. But both the GOP-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate have to approve whatever compromise emerges in order to prevent a US government default that could happen as soon 1 June. At the Treasury, they’re not taking any chances – the Wall Street Journal reports that officials have dusted off a plan in case the limit is not lifted in time.
Here’s what else happened today:
Ron DeSantis is trying to make the most of yesterday’s campaign announcement on Twitter, which was marred by the site’s prevalent technical glitches.
The supreme court’s conservatives weakened environmental protections concerning waterways in a case brought over a couple’s attempt to build a lakeside house in Idaho.
Donald Trump had classified materials lying around at Mar-a-Lago and sometimes showed them to people, the Washington Post reported.
Centrist Democrats are annoyed that McCarthy has allowed House lawmakers to head home for the Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt standoff first.
Kamala Harris paid tribute to rock’n’roll star Tina Turner, who died yesterday, aged 83.
Earlier today, most of the supreme court’s conservative justices banded together to weaken environmental protections on America’s waterways in a case stemming from a couple’s attempt to build a lakeside house in Idaho, the Guardian’s Oliver Milman reports:
The scope of a landmark law to protect America’s waterways has been shrunk by the US supreme court, which has sided with an Idaho couple who have waged a long-running legal battle to build a house on wetlands near one of the state’s largest lakes.
In a ruling passed down on Thursday, the conservative-dominated court decided that the federal government was wrong to use the Clean Water Act, a key 50-year-old piece of legislation to prevent pollution seeping into rivers, streams and lakes, to prevent the couple building over the wetland beside Priest Lake in Idaho.
The justice’ decision in effect overhauls the definition of whether wetlands are considered “navigable waters” under the act and are therefore federally protected.
Michael Regan, the administrator of the EPA, said he was disappointed by a ruling that “erodes longstanding clean water protections”, adding that the agency would consider its next steps in protecting American waterways.
