Judge pauses South Carolina abortion ban; emerging debt ceiling agreement ‘has fewer cuts than expected’ – as it happened

Talks are ongoing over reaching a debt ceiling deal, amid reports that negotiators for Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy are nearing an agreement that would cut some government spending while preserving many of the White House’s priorities. Meanwhile, the GOP-led push to tighten abortion access was dealt a setback in South Carolina, where a judge temporarily halted a newly passed ban on procedures past the sixth week of pregnancy until the state supreme court can review it.

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Here is what else happened today:

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• Officials in Ron DeSantis’s administration have asked lobbyists for contributions to his newly announced presidential campaign, raising ethical and potentially legal questions.

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• Texas lawmakers could as soon as today oust the state’s attorney general over an array of misconduct.

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• In Iowa, Republican governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill curtailing children’s access to information about gender and sexuality in schools.

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• No matter how the debt limit standoff is resolved, the United States is on a worrying financial path, a government report concludes.

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• North Dakota’s governor Doug Burgum is poised to jump into the presidential race.

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We are awaiting news of a debt ceiling deal, amid reports that negotiators for Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy are nearing an agreement that would cut some government spending while preserving many of the White House’s priorities. Meanwhile, the GOP-led push to tighten abortion access was dealt a setback in South Carolina, where a judge temporarily halted a newly passed ban on procedures past the sixth week of pregnancy until the state supreme court can review it.

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Here is what else has happened today:

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• Officials in Ron DeSantis’s administration have asked lobbyists for contributions to his newly announced presidential campaign, raising ethical and potentially legal questions.

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• Texas lawmakers could as soon as today oust the state’s attorney general over an array of misconduct.

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• No matter how the debt limit standoff is resolved, the United States is on a worrying financial path, a government report concludes.

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A judge has blocked a South Carolina law enacted this week that bans most abortions past the six-week mark, a point at which most women are not yet aware they are pregnant, the Associated Press reports.

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The ruling by judge Clifton Newman is the latest complication conservative state lawmakers have faced as they move to cut off abortion access following the supreme court’s decision last year overturning Roe v Wade and allowing states to restrict the procedure entirely. Newman ordered the law put on hold until the state supreme court can review it, in a ruling that came 24 hours after the law was signed by governor Henry McMaster, the AP reports.

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The state now reverts to a previous law that bans abortions at about the 20-week mark.

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Officials working for Ron DeSantis’s administration in Florida have been asking lobbyists for contributions to the governor’s just-announced presidential campaign, a breach of political norms and potentially the state’s laws, NBC News reports.

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Campaign staff typically handle fundraising outreach, but the texts from people who work in the governor’s office have raised eyebrows from lobbyists, particularly those who are advocating for projects that would be funded by the state’s budget, which DeSantis has yet to approve.

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“What the f— am I supposed to do?” an unnamed lobbyist told NBC. “I have a lot of business in front of the DeSantis administration.”

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“It is walking a very close line to what is ethical and possibly legal. It is state employees leveraging their official position to ask people whose livelihood depend on access to state government for money,” another lobbyist said.

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While the report says the fundraising tactic is unorthodox at best, it’s unclear if it is illegal. That would depend on whether the officials who sent the text messages asking for donations were using state-owned phones or were doing so while located on state property. NBC quotes an election law attorney as saying that no matter how they did it, it comes off as unsavory.

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“At a minimum, even if they are sitting in their home at 9 p.m. using their personal phone and contacting lobbyists that they somehow magically met in their personal capacity and not through their role in the governor’s office, it still smells yucky,” the lawyer said.

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The deal Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy’s negotiators are closing in on would satisfy the GOP’s demand that government spending be reduced, but by less than initially proposed, the Washington Post and New York Times report.

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Spending on defense and veterans programs would be allowed to rise, while expenditures on every other aspect of government would be cut under the deal – but replaced by money removed from funding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and other government offices, according to the reports. That would be a much less drastic outcome than the bill Republicans passed last month that would have put government spending back at where it was in the 2022 fiscal year, and rescinded $80bn apportioned to the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act to help improve its services and crack down on tax cheats.

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If the new deal holds, it looks to be typical of the sorts of compromises Democrats and Republicans in Washington reach. McCarthy could claim he forced the president to cut spending, while Biden could tell his allies he protected his signature legislative accomplishments.

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Good morning, US politics blog readers. It looks like negotiators for Joe Biden and Republican speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy are getting close to agreeing on an outline of a deal to raise the debt ceiling through the 2024 in exchange for cutting some government spending, according to reports that emerged yesterday. That’ll quell fears that the standoff could lead to the US government defaulting on its debt for the first time in history sometime around 1 June, and likely wreck the economy. But McCarthy and Biden are only two men – powerful men yes, but there are 100 senators and 435 House representatives who must decide whether to vote for whatever deal they agree to or not. Expect to hear plenty from them as the agreement is fleshed out.

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Here’s what else is happening today:

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• Unable to borrow any money, the US government’s cash balance dipped to $49.5bn on Wednesday – less than 24 billionaires, Bloomberg reports.

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• The House and Senate are holding only brief sessions today, but House lawmakers are on 24-hour notice to come back to Washington during the Memorial Day holiday weekend to vote on the debt limit deal.

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• Biden welcomes NCAA champions the Louisiana State University Tigers women’s basketball team to the White House at 2pm eastern time, and NCAA men’s basketball champions the University of Connecticut Huskies at 5pm.

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Talks are ongoing over reaching a debt ceiling deal, amid reports that negotiators for Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy are nearing an agreement that would cut some government spending while preserving many of the White House’s priorities. Meanwhile, the GOP-led push to tighten abortion access was dealt a setback in South Carolina, where a judge temporarily halted a newly passed ban on procedures past the sixth week of pregnancy until the state supreme court can review it.

Here is what else happened today:

• Officials in Ron DeSantis’s administration have asked lobbyists for contributions to his newly announced presidential campaign, raising ethical and potentially legal questions.

• Texas lawmakers could as soon as today oust the state’s attorney general over an array of misconduct.

• In Iowa, Republican governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill curtailing children’s access to information about gender and sexuality in schools.

• No matter how the debt limit standoff is resolved, the United States is on a worrying financial path, a government report concludes.

• North Dakota’s governor Doug Burgum is poised to jump into the presidential race.

The Republican presidential field will gain a new entrant early next month, when North Dakota governor Doug Burgum announces his campaign for president, the Washington Post reports.

Burgum does not have much of a national profile, and it’s unclear how he will differentiate himself from the race’s frontrunner Donald Trump and his strongest challenger, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Burgum has signed a law banning almost all abortions in the reliably-Republican state, and another cracking down on transgender rights.

Despite his pursuit of rightwing policies typical of Republican governors nationwide, Burgum complained to the editorial board of North Dakota newspaper the Forum that many Americans feel alienated from the political process. “There’s definitely a yearning for some alternatives right now,” he said.

Just what is keeping the debt ceiling negotiators from finding a deal? Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy said earlier today that overall government spending was the biggest point of contention.

But CNN reports that Garret Graves, the Louisiana congressman who is McCarthy’s lead negotiators with Joe Biden’s deputies, said the GOP is insisting on stricter work requirements for government aid programs: