List of All Articles with Tag 'us politics'

Progressives are beginning a new offensive on Capitol Hill: Taking on America’s staggering $88bn in medical debt. Headed up by the Bernie Sanders spinoff group Our Revolution, advocates around the country are gathering horror stories of instances where necessary procedures were blocked by insurance companies or, perhaps worse, approved with stipulations such as “out of network” classifications that can quickly (and often do) lead to lifesaving treatment becoming a financial death sentence. The group hosted a town hall led by executive director Joseph Geevhargese on Monday, where a number of Americans shared their own personal versions of ruin at the hands of medical debt collectors and hospital bills. Between 10 per cent and half of adult Americans are thought to carry medical debt in some form, with estimates widely varrying thanks to the complexities of tracking paid-off debts. Elizabeth McLaughlin, one woman who shared her account with participants of the town hall event on Monday, spoke about how treatment she received in 2017 has led to her taking on tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt as she placed utility bills and other basic needs like groceries on lines of credit rather than face medical debt collectors. “I pass it from one [card] to another, and in the meantime I’m just grateful that I’m employed, and insured, and I can keep making the payments,” she explained. Another woman, Kristin Noreen, explained that she even filed for bankruptcy, only for her debt to immediately begin climbing into the thousands again thanks to tax obligations and other costs. Her treatment bills rose past $1m dollars after she was struck by a car on her bicycle and suffered grievous injuries, including the amputation of her hand, and now she explains that she has little chance of ever climbing out of her personal debt trap — even after her insurance paid for all but $60,000 of the treatment cost, and $50,000 of the remaining debt was handled by a charitable donation. The remaining $10,000 was still more than enough, coupled with the cost of years of therapy she says is “barely” covered by her Affordable Care Act plan, to leave her in financial desolation. “I’m back up to $10,000 on credit cards and as of last month, I have another $3,000 in debt to the IRS for prioritising my care over my estimated taxes. I’ve been denied disability and I work part-time from home as much as I’m able to,” she explained, while noting that if her pay increases from her part-time work, she is legally required to pay it towards Affordable Care Act subsidies rather than her own debt. Mr Sanders, along with a colleague in the House, Ro Khanna, reportedly plan to introduce legislation in the coming weeks aimed at addressing the issue — along with a nationwide campaign aimed at pressuring vulnerable lawmakers to get on board. Among the legislation’s priorities will be halting “predatory” debt collection practices and going after price gouging in medical billing. And while the demands in their upcoming legislation are small in comparison to Mr Sanders’s long-held desire to overhaul America’s for-profit healthcare system into a single-payer system aimed at affordability and access, the efforts by progressives to highlight the tragic cases of Americans consumed by medical debt likely aid in the left’s work to popularise the idea of major reforms and changes to the structure of America’s health system. Mr Sanders called for the elimination of all medical debt in the spring of 2022 after three leading credit agencies announced that they would no longer track paid-off medical debts when calculating credit ratings for Americans. “‘Medical debt’ and ‘Medical bankruptcy’ are two phrases that should not exist in the United States of America,” the senator said at the time. “Removing 70 percent of past-due medical debt from credit reports is a step in the right direction, and much more needs to be done. We must cancel all medical debt.” Read More Deal or default? Biden, GOP must decide what's on the table Black voters backing Biden, but not with 2020 enthusiasm House Republicans pressure Biden as they vote to raise debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday’s meeting between him, other Congressional leaders and President Joe Biden had produced no forward progress on an agreement to stave off what economists say would be a catastrophic default on America’s sovereign debt. Mr McCarty, who has kept the House in recess for the last two weeks and for a majority of the days since he and Mr Biden last met on 1 February, told reporters outside the White House that Mr Biden and both Republican and Democratic leaders had merely reiterated the positions they held when the House Speaker and the President met 97 days before. “Nothing has changed since then ... everybody in this meeting reiterated the positions they were at. I didn't see any new movement,” he said. The California Republican’s last meeting came just a few weeks after he eked out enough votes to claim the Speaker’s gavel with support from extremist and white nationalist members of the House Republican Conference, many of whom demanded that he use the need to lift the government’s century-old statutory debt ceiling as leverage to force Mr Biden to roll back much of the legislative record he and Democrats accomplished over the prior two years. Since that February meeting, the White House and the House of Representatives have remained far apart on what is needed before legislation allowing the US to resume issuing new debt instruments can reach Mr Biden’s desk for his signature. For his part, the president’s view has remained consistent since the beginning of the year. Mr Biden has repeatedly said that Congress should pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase and negotiate on spending cuts desired for next fiscal year when Congress begins work on a budget. Mr McCarthy characterised Mr Biden’s insistence that the Congress lift the debt ceiling on its’ own and address the spending cuts Republicans covet during the regular budgeting process as intransigent even though Republicans have not introduced a budget proposal for the next fiscal year. He also accused Senate Majority Leader Check Schumer of trying to stymie negotiations so Congress would be left without a choice but to pass the “clean” debt ceiling increase desired by Democrats and Mr Biden. “Chuck's whole idea before was to take us to the brink and someone's going to have to break right. I don't want to play politics with this. I think this is too important,” said the Speaker, who suggested the only reason Mr Biden had called a meeting was because the GOP-led House had passed a bill to raise the debt limit while enacting drastic cuts to government programmes favoured by Democrats. That legislation, which passed the House with a bare majority of GOP votes last month, would provide just a year’s worth of relief coupled with spending provisions that slash non-defence spending by as much as 20 per cent. Among the programmes on the chopping block: President Joe Biden’s student debt relief initiative, as well as funding for new IRS personnel. The plan would also add new work requirements for adults on Medicaid, cap the growth of the federal government, and impose 2022 limits on discretionary spending. The White House said in response to the bill’s passage that Republicans were attempting to “strip away health care services for veterans, cut access to Meals on Wheels, eliminate health care coverage for millions of Americans and ship manufacturing jobs overseas”. While the House-passed bill is unlikely to go anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, thus far Mr McConnell and Senate Republicans have backed up Mr McCarthy’s demand for Mr Biden to sign off on GOP-endorsed austerity measures in exchange for Republican votes to allow the US to continue paying its’ debts. Prominent GOP figures frequently claim that raising the statutory debt limit to enable the US to continue meeting financial obligations — a practice that was once routine under presidents of both parties and met no objections when it was done under Mr Biden’s predecessor — is akin to authorising new spending. That claim, however, is not how the debt limit works. Raising the debt limit does not increase or decrease the amount of money that is spent on programmes that have already been authorised by Congress and have had funds allocated to them in appropriations legislation. Experts say a failure to raise the debt limit would force the government to default on its debt and precipitate a worldwide financial crisis. The last time the US flirted with that disastrous outcome was 2011, when Republicans controlled the House and Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House. Mr Biden, then the vice president under Barack Obama, led the negotiations with congressional leaders that headed off a default, but not before the US had its credit rating decreased for the first time in history. That 2011 dispute ended with Republicans suffering a drop in their approval ratings and facing accusations of endangering the US economy for political reasons. It also came along with an unprecedented downgrade in America’s credit rating. Those same charges are being raised again now by the White House and the president’s allies in Congress, who are holding firm on Mr Biden’s call for a clean debt limit boost. Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that unless Congress acts, the US will by 1 June cease having the legal ability to issue debt instruments that allow the government to pay for spending already authorized and incurred. Despite attempts by reporters to get Mr McCarthy to guarantee that the US would not default, the House Speaker repeatedly refused to make such a promise.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking steps to once again send migrants to Democratic-led cities as an affront to the Biden administration's immigration policies, joining other Republican governors who have bussed people north.

The former treasurer of rapper Kanye West’s unsuccessful but still legally extant 2020 presidential campaign resigned on Monday, accusing right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannpopolus of committing potential campaign finance violations while working on the rapper’s White House bid last year. Patrick Krason, the campaign’s former treasurer, alleged in a pair of letters to the Federal Election Commission that Mr Yiannopoulos “submitted falsified invoices for expenditures that would be deemed unlawful” and committed a “potentially serious criminal transaction,” according to the documents, which were obtained by Politico. While working for the West campaign, Mr Yiannopoulos was paid nearly $10,000 in November for the “domain transfer” of a potential Kanye 2024 website, a purchase which he made using a credit card belonging to the campaign of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, in whose office Mr Yiannopoulos previously served as an intern, according to federal election filings reviewed by The Daily Beast. The Greene campaign reported an expenditure on a web hosting site the same day worth $7,020, according to the filings. Mr Yiannopoulos has denied any wrongdoing on behalf of either campaign, telling The Daily Beast a “junior staffer” working for him used the wrong credit card to make the purchase. “The truth is a junior staffer made an error with the stored credit cards on a third-party vendor GoDaddy account, picking the one ending 2032 instead of 2002,” he said in a statement to the outlet. “The accident was quickly rectified and the correct card charged. I have apologized privately to Marjorie for the mixup.” The Independent has contacted Rep Greene’s office for comment. In November, West said he had plans to run for president in 2024, though he hasn’t formally filed paperwork declaring his candidacy. The rapper has been largely quiet since the end of 2022, in which he made a series of highly antisemitic remarks and was dropped by major partners like Adidas. Mr Yiannopoulos was previously fired from the West campaign following the rapper’s infamous Mar-a-Lago dinner with Donald Trump and a Holocaust denier, but was rehired last week to serve as the campaign’s political director. Last month, a documentary filmmaker who had previously worked with West said the rapper and fashion designer wasn’t showing very much interest in his previously announced 2024 campaign for president. “I just want to be left alone,” the filmmaker reported the rapper as saying. Read More Adidas breakup with rapper Ye, lost Yeezy sales hit earnings Kim Kardashian tearfully discusses her silence throughout Kanye West’s ‘lies’ in new Kardashians trailer Milo Yiannopoulos fired from Kanye campaign

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who has been away from the Senate since February while recovering from shingles, will return to Washington on Tuesday, according to a spokesperson.

A Manhattan federal jury found that Donald Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awarded her $5 million for battery and defamation.

A large share of independents don’t support President Joe Biden across multiple polls as he launches his 2024 re-election campaign. Interactive Polls tweeted out four surveys that showed Mr Biden has a net negative 29 per cent approval rating. A survey from The Washington Post and ABC News showed that in a rematch against former president Donald Trump, 42 per cent of independents said they would back Mr Trump compared with 34 per cent who said they would support Mr Biden. In addition, 30 per cent of independents approve of the job Mr Biden is doing compared to 60 per cent who disapprove. By comparison, Mr Biden beat Mr Trump with the group by nine points in 2020, according to the Pew Research Centre. Mr Biden also lags in other polls among independent voters. A The Economist/YouGov poll found that 33 per cent of independent voters approve of Mr Biden. Meanwhile, a Civiqs poll found that 29 per cent of independent voters approve of him compared to 58 per cent who disapprove of Mr Biden. An Investors Business Daily/TIPP found that 27 per cent of independent voters approve of Mr Biden’s job performance while 63 per cent disapprove. The numbers come as Mr Biden announced his re-election campaign last month, aiming to create a contrast between himself and Mr Trump as well as “MAGA Republicans” who want to restrict abortion and ban books. But Mr Biden faces significant headwinds as he faces re-election. The Post/ABC poll found that 44 per cent of people polled said they would vote for Mr Trump and only 38 per cent said they would vote for Mr Biden. Similarly, 42 per cent said they would vote for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis while 37 per cent said they would back Mr Biden. Read More Biden trails Trump in brutal new poll Two days, three attacks, 18 dead: Texas reels from weekend of horror

A federal jury in New York has begun deliberations in E. Jean Carroll's civil battery and defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump.

The jury in E Jean Carroll’s civil rape trial against Donald Trump will soon decide whether or not the former president raped and defamed the magazine columnist. Both sides delivered closing arguments in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday, with Ms Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan using Mr Trump’s own words – “grab ’em by the pussy” – against him. “In a real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself,” she said. Mr Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina countered that while his comments in the infamous Access Hollywood tape are “rude” and “gross”, he claimed “that doesn’t make Ms Carroll’s unbelievable story believable”. Judge Lewis Kaplan is instructing the jury before they will begin deliberations in the case. Ms Carroll has claimed that Mr Trump raped her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s. In other legal troubles, the judge in Mr Trump’s hush money case issued a gag order on Monday banning him from posting information about the evidence and witnesses on social media. Read More Who is Natasha Stoynoff? The journalist whose testimony could help bring down Trump Soccer executive and celebrity attorney: Who is Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina? Trump rape case explained: How a chance department store meeting led to a court case decades later Who is E Jean Carroll? The writer and TV host taking on Donald Trump What are the allegations in E Jean Carroll’s rape case against Donald Trump?

The FBI announced Tuesday that it has disrupted a network of hacked computers that Russian spies have used for years to steal sensitive information from at least 50 countries, including NATO governments.

The US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides will depart from his post in August, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked Harlan Crow, the GOP megadonor and friend of Clarence Thomas whose gifts to the Supreme Court justice have prompted fresh criticism about the ethical standards of the nation's highest court, for more information about the expenditures.