Closing summary
Republican senator Tim Scott threw his hat into the ring with a speech in South Carolina where he promised to pursue a more compassionate form of conservatism, while advocating for hardline border security policies and downplaying the effects of racial inequality on American society. The GOP’s presidential field is crowded and set to become more packed on Wednesday when Ron DeSantis makes his campaign official, but can anyone defeat the final boss of Republican politicians, Donald Trump? We’ll see.
Here’s what else has happened today:
Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy will meet at 5.30pm to (hopefully) resolve the debt ceiling standoff.
The NAACP issued a travel advisory for Florida over policies DeSantis has pursued as governor, and which he will likely try to sell voters on in his presidential campaign.
Mandatory water cuts were avoided in the west after the Biden administration and several states agreed to a deal regarding management of the Colorado river.
Trump and fellow South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham both wished Scott well on his presidential bid.
Speaking of Trump, federal prosecutors have evidence that he was warned he could not hold onto classified documents, the Guardian has confirmed.
We’re 10 days away from 1 June, the estimated date when the US government, fresh out of cash and prohibited by the legal debt ceiling from borrowing more money, will default on its obligations for the first time in history.
Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy are in the midst of negotiations over a deal to raise the limit, likely in exchange for spending cuts or the enactment of conservative priorities that the GOP has demanded. But it’s coming awfully close to the deadline, particularly since it takes several days for Congress to consider and vote on legislation, and there’s no telling who might object to whatever deal the Democratic president reaches with the Republican speaker of House.
The Associated Press took a look at what might happen if Washington does the unthinkable and actually defaults, and reached a grim verdict:
The repercussions of a first-ever default on the federal debt would quickly reverberate around the world. Orders for Chinese factories that sell electronics to the United States could dry up. Swiss investors who own U.S. Treasurys would suffer losses. Sri Lankan companies could no longer deploy dollars as an alternative to their own dodgy currency.
“No corner of the global economy will be spared” if the U.S. government defaulted and the crisis weren’t resolved quickly, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
Zandi and two colleagues at Moody’s have concluded that even if the debt limit were breached for no more than week, the U.S. economy would weaken so much, so fast, as to wipe out roughly1.5 million jobs.
And if a government default were to last much longer — well into the summer — the consequences would be far more dire, Zandi and his colleagues found in their analysis: U.S. economic growth would sink, 7.8 million American jobs would vanish, borrowing rates would jump, the unemployment rate would soar from the current 3.4% to 8% and a stock-market plunge would erase $10 trillion in household wealth.
Biden and McCarthy are set for a 5.30pm meeting at the White House for further talks on a debt limit agreement.
In major news for western US states grappling with drought, the Guardian’s Oliver Milman reports that the Biden administration has agreed to a deal that will see them use less water from the Colorado river and ward off the prospect of mandatory water cuts:
A deal has been struck by Joe Biden’s administration for California, Arizona and Nevada to take less water from the drought-stricken Colorado River, in a bid to prevent the river dwindling further and imperiling the water supplies for millions of people and vast swaths of agricultural land in the US west.
The agreement, announced on Monday, will involve the three states, water districts, Native American tribes and farm operators cutting about 13% of the total water use in the lower Colorado basin, a historic reduction that will probably trigger significant water restrictions on the region’s residents and farmland.
In all, 3m acre-feet of water is expected to be conserved over the next three years – an acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, or enough water to cover an acre of land, about the size of a football field, one foot deep. A single acre-foot is enough to sustain two average California households for a year.
Of these savings, 2.3m acre-feet will be compensated by the federal government, with $1.2bn going to cities, tribes and water districts. The rest of the savings will be voluntary, uncompensated ones to be worked out between the states.
The agreement averts, for now, the prospect of the Biden administration imposing unilateral water cuts upon the seven states – California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – that rely upon the river, a prospect that has loomed since last summer when the waterway’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, hit perilously low levels.
In the run-up to the presidential campaign announcement he’s expected to make on Wednesday, Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis has overseen an effort by the state government to restrict what students can learn about race and diversity. That has prompted one of the country’s best-known civil rights groups to issue an unusual warning against visiting the state, the Guardian’s Gloria Oladipo reports:
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has issued a travel advisory for the state of Florida, calling the state “actively hostile” to minorities as Florida’s conservative government limits diversity efforts in schools.
In a Saturday press release, the civil rights organization better known as the NAACP said the travel warning comes as Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, “attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools”.
“Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color,” the advisory said.
While much of Monday’s political focus has been on the expanded field of 2024 Republican presidential candidates, Texas’s US senator Ted Cruz has drawn unflattering headlines from some quarters for announcing an investigation into the maker of Bud Light as his state is gripped by major crises.
Cruz, along with fellow Republican US senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, on Wednesday sent a letter to the beer industry’s regulatory body questioning whether Anheuser-Busch violated guidelines “prohibiting marketing to underage individuals” when transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in April posted a video of herself on Instagram holding a custom Bud Light can with her face on it.
Rightwing media outlets and consumers reacted to Mulvaney’s video by calling for a boycott of Bud Light, which reported a 23% drop in sales for the final week of April as compared to the same period during the previous year, according to CBS News.
Meanwhile, as Business Insider noted, Cruz’s home state has experienced five of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in recent US history but has offered little in the way of solutions to that. He’s also hardly weighed in as Covid asylum limits known as Title 42 recently expired, giving way to new, arguably tougher immigration policies.
The rush to the US-Mexico border in Texas and other parts which preceded the expiration of Title 42 has brought extraordinary pressure to immigration officials, and politicos on both sides of the aisle have so far mostly just bused migrants to different cities rather than devise substantial solutions.
“Beer marketing, however – thanks to Cruz – has all the attention of the state’s top leaders” on Capitol Hill, as Insider put it.
Of Cruz’s latest culture war entry, Vanity Fair added: “No, he doesn’t have anything better to do.”
Updated
Tim Scott was announcing his presidential campaign on Monday, when a technical glitch left the 57-year-old senator in silence.
“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb. And that is why I am announcing today that I am running for president of the United States of America,” Scott told a cheering crowd at Charleston Southern University in his home state of South Carolina. “Our nation, our values, and our people are strong, but our president is weak,” he added.
At that point, the sound cut out. Here’s that moment, if you missed it earlier today:
Ten things you need to know about Tim Scott
Now that Tim Scott has announced his run for the presidency, my colleague Nick Robins-Early has pulled together 10 things you need to know about the newest Republican hopeful.
He writes:
Scott is a 57-year-old senator from South Carolina
Scott grew up in South Carolina, attending a Baptist university and owning an insurance company before becoming involved in politics. He entered politics in the mid-1990s as a Charleston, South Carolina, city council member before running for Congress.
Scott was first elected to Congress in 2010
Scott staked his political claim amid a wave of conservative opposition to Barack Obama’s presidency. As a member of the hardline conservative Tea Party movement, he was endorsed at the time by the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and became a rising star of the party. After two years as a congressman, he was chosen in 2012 to replace the Republican senator Jim DeMint and appointed to the Senate.
Scott is the sole Black Republican senator
Scott is the only Black Republican senator, and was the first Black Republican elected to the US House of Representatives from South Carolina in over a hundred years. He has previously talked about his unique role as a Black Republican and the discrimination he has faced from authorities, but has claimed that liberals use race as a way to divide voters. He faced heated criticism from Black activists in 2021 after declaring “America is not a racist country” in response to a speech from President Joe Biden that condemned racism following a white supremacist mass shooting.
Here’s the full explainer:
Updated
Politicos and voters of South Carolina who support both US senator Tim Scott and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley have been handed a dilemma now that they have both declared their candidacies for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
As the Associated Press pointed out Monday, Scott and Haley have a lengthy history and were even allies earlier in their careers. Both were members of South Carolina’s state House. And in 2012, while she was serving as governor of South Carolina, Haley appointed Scott to a state Senate seat in 2012.
Scott, who is the US Senate’s only Black Republican and formally launched his presidential campaign Monday, told the AP that he doesn’t consider the situation a dilemma and expressed his belief that he and Haley would remain friends despite their competing interests.
Meanwhile, the AP said Haley declined to comment when asked about Scott.
Others in the Republican field who have already declared include Donald Trump – who appointed Haley to her UN role during his presidency – as well as former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and Woke, Inc author Vivek Ramaswamy. Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis is widely expected to formally announce his presidential campaign in the coming days.
As for the Democrats, Joe Biden has announced that he will campaign for a second term in the Oval Office after defeating Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Biden’s declared Democratic challengers so far include self-help author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr.
The day so far
Republican senator Tim Scott threw his hat into the ring with a speech in South Carolina where he promised to pursue a more compassionate form of conservatism, while advocating for hardline border security policies and downplaying the effects of racial inequality on American society. The GOP’s presidential field is crowded and set to become more packed on Wednesday when Ron DeSantis makes his campaign official, but can anyone defeat the final boss of Republican politicians, Donald Trump? We’ll see.
Here’s what else has happened today:
Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy will meet at 5.30pm to (hopefully) resolve the debt ceiling standoff, which, by all indications, remains ongoing.
Trump and fellow South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham both wished Scott well on his presidential bid.
Speaking of Trump, federal prosecutors have evidence that he was warned he could not hold onto classified documents, the Guardian has confirmed.
And here’s what Donald Trump has to say about Tim Scott throwing his hat into the presidential ring:
Good luck to Senator Tim Scott in entering the Republican Presidential Primary Race. It is rapidly loading up with lots of people, and Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally unelectable. I got Opportunity Zones done with Tim, a big deal that has been highly successful. Good luck Tim!
For those unfamiliar with Trump’s latest batch of zingers: Ron DeSanctimonious is the ex-president’s erstwhile ally Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is expected to announce his presidential campaign on Wednesday.
Senator Tim Scott is now the second South Carolinian vying for the Republican presidential nomination, after former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley.
The state’s other senator, Republican Lindsey Graham, has already made public his endorsement of Donald Trump. He nonetheless reserved kind words for Scott in a statement released after his campaign’s official kick off:
Congratulations to my good friend Senator Tim Scott on his announcement that he is running for President of the United States.
Tim makes South Carolina proud, and he is one of the most talented and hard-working public servants I’ve ever known.
He will have an optimistic vision for the future of conservatism and America, and I know he will acquit himself well.
The anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America welcomed Senator Tim Scott’s formal entry into the 2024 Republican presidential primary today.
“We are encouraged by his commitment to sign the strongest achievable protections for life should he be elected president,” said the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser. “We welcome Scott and all presidential contenders further outlining their pro-life vision and policy platform.”
Scott has vowed to sign “the most conservative, pro-life legislation” that could pass Congress if he becomes president, but he has refused to specify his preferred time frame for a potential federal abortion ban.
When asked about his preferred cut-off point for banning the procedure, Scott told NBC News last month: “I’m not going to talk about six or five or seven or 10 [weeks].”
Dannenfelser said today, “The pro-life movement is seeking a national defender of life who will boldly advocate a minimum national standard to protect unborn children at least by 15 weeks when they can feel pain, and who will work tirelessly to build consensus and gather the votes necessary in Congress.”
In his presidential campaign announcement speech, Tim Scott recounted his upbringing from poverty, discounted the impact of racial inequality on Americans’ lives and restated conservative policy goals, from cutting taxes to building a wall along the US border with Mexico.
As he wrapped up his address, he vowed to promote on the campaign trail a friendlier form of conservatism.
“This can’t be another presidential campaign. We don’t have time for that. We need a president who persuades not just our friends and our base,” he said. “We have to have a compassion for people who don’t agree with us.”
He closed with these words: “I am living proof that God and a good family and the United States of America can do all things, if we believe. Will you believe it with me?”
In the months to come, we’ll find out if Republican voters share his faith.
Scott makes it official: 'I'm running for president of the United States of America'
Tim Scott has said the magic words.
“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every single rung of the ladder that helped me climb and that’s why I’m announcing today I’m running for president of the United States of America,” the senator said to applause and cheers in his kick-off speech in North Charleston, South Carolina.
He began the speech by recounting his upbringing from poverty and downplaying the impacts of racial disparities in the economy, saying “I’m living proof that America is the land of opportunity and not a land of oppression.”
When it comes to policy, the senator is outlining familiar conservative priorities.
“On my first day as commander in chief, the strongest nation on earth will stop retreating from our southern border,” he said.
He embraced the conservative demand to deploy the military against drug traffickers, and vowed to restart construction of the border wall pioneered by Donald Trump.
“When I am president, the drug cartels using Chinese labs and Mexican factories to kill Americans will cease to exist. I will freeze their assets, I will build the wall and I will allow the world’s greatest military to fight these terrorists. Because that’s exactly what they are.”
Updated
Tim Scott may be the lone Black Republican in the Senate, but his message to Republican voters downplays the impact of racial inequality in America.
“For those of you who wonder if America is a racist country, take a look at how people come together,” Scott said. “We are not defined by the color of our skin. We are defined by the content of our character.”
Updated
Tim Scott is on stage now announcing his presidential bid.
“America is the greatest nation on God’s green earth,” the senator began. “And our greatness doesn’t come from politicians, doesn’t come from the government. It comes from we, the people.”
“And when I think about the greatness of America, I have to start with my favorite American,” Scott said, before inviting his mother up. “Thank you for your hard work and your dedication. Thank you for believing in me when no one else did.”
Updated
The senate’s number-two Republican John Thune just gave an introductory speech at Tim Scott’s campaign kick-off event in South Carolina, where he called him “the real deal” who would “make a great president of the United States.”
Bloomberg reports that Scott has picked up support from another high-profile, and deep-pocketed, ally: Larry Ellison, CEO of tech juggernaut Oracle:
SCOOP: Oracle Corp. chair and co-founder Larry Ellison, will be in attendance at South Carolina Senator Tim Scott’s formal campaign launch today in North Charleston, SC.
— Christian Hall (@christianjhall) May 22, 2023
Tim Scott to kick off presidential campaign with South Carolina speech
Republican senator Tim Scott will in a few minutes officially kick off his presidential campaign with a speech in North Charleston, South Carolina, making him the latest entrant to the increasingly crowded Republican field.
A senator since 2013, Scott is the only Black Republican in the chamber, and will be the second South Carolinian in the presidential race, after former UN ambassador Nikki Haley.
He will probably not be alone in announcing his bid for the White House this week. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is expected to kick off his presidential campaign with a speech on Wednesday.
Updated
Punchbowl News tracked down Kevin McCarthy as he made his way through the Capitol, but the speaker gave no indication that a deal with Joe Biden and the Democrats was near:
MCCARTHY is in the Capitol. He didn't sound terribly positive about the status of the debt limit negotiations.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 22, 2023
"It's very hard to get them off that spending spree that they're addicted to," McCarthy said of Democrats.
Biden and McCarthy to meet on debt ceiling at 5.30pm
Joe Biden will meet with Republican speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy in the Oval Office at 5.30pm eastern time, the White House has announced.
The goal will be to reach a deal to increase the debt ceiling before 1 June, when the US government may run out of money and default on its obligations for the first time in history. McCarthy and the GOP have demanded spending cuts in exchange for this votes to raise the limit, a prospect that Biden has resisted.
The president cut short his trip to Asia last week over the impasse, and returned to Washington yesterday from Japan in order to ensure a deal is done before the end of the month.
Updated
If Donald Trump is so dominant in the polls, why are Tim Scott and other Republicans jumping into the race to challenge him? Partly because election day is more than a year away, and things could change. Partly because running for president is what many politicians aspire to do. And surely because, though they won’t say it, the former president appears to be in a lot of trouble – perhaps enough to eventually derail his campaign. Here’s the latest from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell on the investigation into his alleged possession of classified documents:
Federal prosecutors have evidence Donald Trump was put on notice that he could not retain any classified documents after he was subpoenaed for their return last year, as they examine whether the subsequent failure to fully comply with the subpoena was a deliberate act of obstruction by the former president.
The previously unreported warning conveyed to Trump by his lawyer Evan Corcoran could be significant in the criminal investigation surrounding Trump’s handling of classified materials given it shows he knew about his subpoena obligations.
Last June, Corcoran found roughly 40 classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and told the justice department that no further materials remained at the property. That was later shown to be untrue, after the FBI later returned with a warrant and seized 101 additional classified documents.
A major story happening today is the ongoing negotiations over the debt ceiling, which must be raised by about 1 June in order to prevent a potentially devastating default by the US government. Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy are supposed to meet at some point today to make progress on an agreement, though the timing of that rendezvous has not yet been announced. Here’s the latest from Reuters on the talks:
US president Joe Biden and House Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy have held a “productive” phone call on the continued impasse over the debt ceiling and promised to meet on Monday after Biden returned to Washington.
McCarthy, speaking to reporters after the call, said there were positive discussions on solving the crisis and that staff-level talks were set to resume later on Sunday.
Asked if he was more hopeful after talking to the president, McCarthy said: “Our teams are talking today and we’re … meeting tomorrow. That’s better than it was earlier. So, yes.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have some thoughts about Tim Scott.
Here’s the statement Democratic National Committee chair Jamie Harrison put out this morning, ahead of the 11 am eastern time kick off of his presidential campaign:
Tim Scott wants to govern from the ‘far, conservative right’ as a proud member of the Tea Party, and his extreme record proves it. Even before he refused to name a policy difference with Trump, Scott was a fierce advocate of the MAGA agenda – supporting national abortion bans and championing plans to end Medicare and Social Security as we know them. As an ‘architect’ of Trump’s tax law, Scott gifted corporations billions and has been a longtime champion of rolling back regulations on big banks.
There’s no question that special interests are celebrating as Tim Scott throws his hat into the 2024 race for the MAGA base.
How Tim Scott plans to take on Donald Trump
The task for any Republican candidate not named Donald Trump this year is simple: try to convince the GOP rank-and-file to choose you over the ex-president.
The problem is that Trump tops just about every poll looking at the GOP primary field these days, and usually with a mammoth gap. But Tim Scott plans to do his best, and a Republican adviser strategist told Politico more about his path to overtaking Trump.
“Their demeanors, their messages, their life stories are just so diametrically different,” the adviser said, and Scott will likely highlight that distinction when he speaks in North Charleston, South Carolina to kick off his campaign.
Scott has also received a boost from his colleagues in the Senate. Politico has confirmed that the second-ranking GOP lawmaker in the chamber, John Thune, will endorse his candidacy.
While today is his official campaign launch, Scott has been touring the country for a few weeks now, particularly early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire. The Guardian’s Joan E Greve spent time among the crowds who greeted him in the Granite State for this look at what his pitch is to Republican voters:
About 45 minutes into his New Hampshire town hall, Tim Scott said he needed to reveal a secret to the Republican voters who had gathered to hear from the presidential hopeful.
“Listen, this might surprise some of y’all,” Scott told attendees with subtle laughter in his voice. He paused briefly: “I’m Black.”
The line was met with loud laughter from the mostly white crowd, and it underscored the unique role that Scott faces in the Republican presidential primary ahead of the 2024 election. The 57-year-old senator of South Carolina and erstwhile Donald Trump ally, who filed paperwork on Friday to declare his presidential candidacy ahead of a formal launch event on Monday, hopes to become the first Black politician to win his party’s nomination and go on to defeat Joe Biden in the general election next November.
Republican ranks deepen as Tim Scott enters 2024 race
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today at 11 am eastern time, South Carolina’s senator Tim Scott will officially announce his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. He joins an increasingly crowded field of challengers to Joe Biden that already includes former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and Arkansas’s ex-governor Asa Hutchinson, and will soon see the arrival for Florida governor Ron DeSantis. But when it comes to the Republican field, the question today remains the same as it has for months, if not years: can anyone unseat Donald Trump from his post as the most popular man in the GOP? Polls consistently show the former president at the front of the pack, with DeSantis a distant second and Scott in the single digits. The senator is the GOP’s only Black lawmaker in the chamber, and with his slogan “Faith in America” appears ready to adopt a more optimistic tone compared to Trump’s fear-and-grievance driven campaign. We’ll see if it’s enough to break through the field.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Joe Biden will at some point today sit down with Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy to once again try to find agreement on raising the debt ceiling, as the 1 June default deadline grows alarmingly near.
Speaking of senators, Delaware Democrat Tom Carper will this morning announce if he will run for another term, but even if he steps aside, the seat is considered safe territory for Biden’s party.
Kamala Harris is continuing her trip to California, where she’ll meet with the leaders of tech firms to talk about semiconductors and the Biden administration’s efforts to spur more domestic manufacturing of the vital component.
