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Voters wait in line to cast their ballots during early voting in Carmel, Indiana, in 2020. | Michael Conroy/AP Photo

HOOSIER HOPEFULS A mayoral primary in the otherwise politically sleepy, tony Indianapolis suburb of Carmel suddenly hit the big time this week.

Some of the biggest names in national politics including former Vice President Mike Pence and former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain took an interest in this city of 100,000, situated in one of the fastest growing and most educated counties in the nation.

Over the years, this suburb of lush and well-kept lawns, McMansions, and gated communities navigated by golf carts has become the place Republican vice presidents go to retire. Pence who moved back to Carmel after his vice presidency, joining Dan Quayle who also briefly resided here in the 1990s after his own public service ended voted here in Indianas municipal elections Tuesday, which included the first open mayoral contest in three decades (Republican Jim Brainard, first elected in 1995, announced his retirement last year).

Klain, the Hoosier native who still has family ties to the northern Indianapolis suburb situated in reddish Hamilton County, has been closely watching the race, too. He is in talks with Democratic nominee Miles Nelson about campaigning for him (Klains recently passed mother, Sarann Horwitz Klain, was the former vice chair of the Hamilton County Democratic Party.)

Im all in for Miles Nelson, Klain told me recently, before tweeting about Nelsons win Tuesday evening.

Tuesdays electoral results show in miniature the national Republicans weakening grip on the suburbs. Come November, the race will also be a key post-midterms bellwether for both parties. Democrats made big gains in suburbs nationally in 2018 and 2020.

Nowhere else is that more apparent than Carmel. Slowly, this city has become more diverse and seen an influx of younger, more moderate voters who flock here for its award-winning school system, public art, affordability and culture (its home to a $126 million concert hall drawing national acts like the singer and songwriter Jason Isbell, and boasts more than 138 roundabouts, more than any other city in the U.S.). Students of the public school system speak 65 languages from 55 countries. Though many of its communities are gated, its not been walled-off from social change: Black Lives Matter marches snaked down the Monon Trail in Carmel amid $1 million townhouses and an upscale steakhouse in the summer of 2020.

Young voters from around the country are moving to Carmel, and you know what? Theyre bringing their politics, too, Nelson told me today, just a few days after winning his partys nomination.

Tuesdays electoral results in the Democratic and Republican mayoral primaries saw more than 82 percent of the Republican voters over 50 years old, according to preliminary analysis of voter data by Peter Hanscom, former Sen. Joe Donnellys (D-Ind.) campaign manager and the current Democratic 5th district vice chair.

Thats a gigantic problem for them in the general, Hanscom said. The families with kids dont seem to be on their side.

Donnelly was the first Democrat to win Carmel in his unsuccessful 2018 Senate campaign. A year later, Nelson became the citys first Democratic elected official as a city councilman. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump, who just four years earlier held a packed rally at the concert hall where I saw Isbell perform. And in 2022, Democratic Secretary of State Destiny Wells won here, too.

Our community in particular is much more international than it ever was, said Nelsons Republican challenger, Sue Finkam. With that comes people that dont vote and vote on all different aspects along the spectrum.

Now, the Indiana Democratic Party is eyeing Carmel as a potential pickup this November. Mike Schmuhl, Pete Buttigiegs former campaign manager and the state party chairman, is targeting this suburb in hopes of flipping it blue.

The city has changed a lot, Schmuhl said over lunch today at Fat Dans Chicago Deli in Carmel. This used to be a rock-ribbed, Republican, conservative area but the Republican Party has changed a lot, too. So what you have up in Carmel is a lot of development, a lot of families, educated voters, hard working people, and the Democratic Partys values appeal to those people.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [emailprotected]. Or contact tonights author at [emailprotected] or on Twitter at @adamwren.

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Biden names Neera Tanden as his domestic policy adviser: President Joe Biden announced today that Neera Tanden will serve as the next head of his domestic policy council. Tanden, a longtime prominent Democratic operative, will replace Susan Rice, who plans to leave the administration later this month. Tanden has spent the last year-and-a-half as senior adviser and staff secretary in the White House, after her initial nomination to run the Office of Management and Budget faltered in the face of Senate opposition.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is leaving, White House says: Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who guided Bidens response to the Covid-19 pandemic from his first day in office, is leaving her post, the White House announced today. Her announcement comes days before the Biden administration plans to end the public health emergency in place since early 2020, and at a time when Covid fears have receded and life mostly returned to a pre-pandemic normal.

Proud Boys juror says groups deleted messages weighed on jury: Andre Mundell, one of the 12 jurors who decided the four-month trial on Thursday, told Vice News that he was convinced that the Proud Boys leaders including former national chair Enrique Tarrio had committed seditious conspiracy in part because of the lengths the group took to hide its activities, deleting key messages. The Proud Boys didnt want everybody to know the plan, because then I guess it would have gotten out. And they didnt want it to get out, Mundell said in the interview, noting that the thousands of messages they reviewed extracted from the phones of Tarrio and his co-defendants were peppered with blank slots where exchanges had been deleted.

Magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll leaves Manhattan Federal Court after her civil trial against former President Donald Trump rests. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

IN THEIR OWN WORDS E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump rested their cases late Thursday in the civil trial in which Carroll accused Trump of raping her decades ago. She is suing him in Manhattan federal court for battery over the alleged rape, and for defamation over social media comments Trump made last year accusing Carroll of promoting a hoax. He maintains the alleged incident never happened. While Trumps lawyers didnt call any witnesses, Carrolls team called nearly a dozen over the course of seven days. Read what they said here.

SUBPOENA SEASON Federal prosecutors who are investigating former President Donald Trumps handling of classified documents are now issuing a wave of new subpoenas, developing a picture of why and how Trump took documents to Mar-a-Lago that werent supposed to be there.

The New York Times reports that prosecutors now have the cooperation of someone who worked for Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

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END OF AN ERA COVID-19 is no longer an international public health emergency, the World Health Organization decided today, marking a major turning point in the global response to the crisis that has killed nearly 7 million people and caused some 65 million cases of long COVID, writes Ashleigh Furlong.

The removal of the highest alert level from the global health body comes more than three years since the declaration was first made on January 30, 2020, as COVID-19 spread beyond China and public health officials around the globe became increasingly panicked at what they were witnessing. At that time, the official death toll was just 171. Now, the WHO estimates over 6.9 million deaths.

DRUNK ON POWER On Dec. 31, 1999, while the rest of the world was fixated on Y2K, ailing Russian President Boris Yeltsin tearfully concluded his annual New Years address by announcing he was stepping down as president, appointing Vladimir Putin, his little-known prime minister, in his stead. In the months that followed, Putin stood for election in his own right, winning the presidency handily, writes Mark Lawrence Schrad.

One day before his formal inauguration, on May 6, 2000, Putin signed a directive that would begin the reconsolidation of Russias top revenue-generating industries. But Putins first target wasnt oil or natural gas, or diamonds or gold or nickel. It was vodka.

On that date, Putin created a new company called Rosspirtprom an acronym for Russian Spirits Industry to seize control of the means of vodka production. It was a move that not only helped Putin amass enormous wealth over the coming two decades, but was a critical first step in cementing his grip on the Russian economy and the Russian people, who would help line his pockets while his vodka helped ruin their health.

Read the saga of how Putin amassed so much power in the industry and what hes doing with it now here.

253,000

The number of jobs the U.S. added in April, a robust number thats evidence of a labor market that still shows surprising strength despite rising interest rates, chronically high inflation and a banking crisis that could weaken the economy. The unemployment rate ticked down to 3.4 percent, matching a 54-year low.

ITS OVER With the shuttering of Vice News Tonight and reports that the company is circling bankruptcy along with the recent end of BuzzFeed News there have been all kinds of recriminations about the era in media when those two platforms appeared to be the future, with sky-high valuations from Wall Street and willing buyers across the more traditional media landscape. One of the most interesting comes from Aris Roussinos a former war correspondent on the front lines for Vice in UnHerd. Roussinos speaks to his experiences in the field, what it was like to work for the company and where it all went wrong.

On this date in 1985: President Ronald Reagan speaks during ceremonies at the site of the former Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp in West Germany. Reagan was on a state visit to honor victims of World War II and the Holocaust and attend ceremonies commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. | AP Photo

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Republicans wrestle with their suburban problem - POLITICO - POLITICO

Sixty years ago this week, Project CC for Confrontationwas in full swing in Birmingham, Alabama.

African American ministers involved in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had invited Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders and groups to come to the predominately working-class Birmingham to organize and lead peaceful demonstrations.

In 1963, Birmingham was arguably Americas most segregated city

In 1963, Birmingham and had no Black police officers, firefighters, bus drivers, bank tellers or even store clerks. Whites Only signs were not only common but legally mandated. Blacks made less than half the income of whites and their unemployment rate was two-and-a-half times higher than their white counterparts.

Bombings, particularly of Black churches and businesses, occurred frequently and were rarely investigated. Only 10% of voting-age Blacks were registered to vote. As had been the case for virtually the entirety of American history, whites took for granted Black subservience and their second-class status reinforced by segregation.

Whites labeled the civil rights protestors as troublemakers who lacked what they considered proper civility and decorum. Other outsiders who came to Birmingham from all areas of the country to join the struggle, were branded and marginalized, relegated as agitators or worse, communists, and un-American who didnt understand our southern way of life or our culture.

Even mildly sympathetic white clergy, considered the protests ill-timed and urged moderation and counseled encouraged quiet conciliation by their fellow Black ministers and followers. As King remarked from his jail cell in Birmingham (hed been arrested for defying an injunction barring the demonstrations), We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

In Birmingham the civil rights organizers used strategies that had proved successful in other communities: Boycotts of businesses, sit-ins at lunch counters, non-violent marches and respectful demonstrations at government buildings. The protests had been going on for months with even school-age children joining the marches; the city and county jails were nearing capacity.

On May 2 alone, the Birmingham police arrested 959 black children, the youngest age 6, the oldest, 18. As the oppressor sought to stifle the movement toward equality, business in downtown Birmingham went stagnant.

By early May, some racial moderates in city government were willing to consider meaningful negotiation and substantive changes.

But, then enter Theophilus Eugene Bull Connor into the fray and his heavy-handed tactics and his ignorance of the impending direction change of American history.

Connor was the long-time Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety overseeing the police and fire departments. He had a well-deserved proudly-earned reputation as a brutal, rock-ribbed, unreformed, full-throated, defender of white supremacist. Hed gained national notoriety in 1961 when he allowed local Ku Klux Klansmen, wielding lead pipes and brass knuckles, to pummel black and white college students who were riding interstate busses through the deep South. Some were part of the Freedom Riders, and after they arrived at the Birmingham bus terminal, Connors Birmingham police looked on passively during the 15-minute bloodbath.

King and the other southern ministers hoped that Connor would, true to his word, utilize massive arrests, brutal tactics, and generally overreact to the peaceful protests occurring in downtown Birmingham.They couldnt have scripted it any better, particularly after northern media had swarmed into town.

When it looked like it couldnt get any worse, all hell broke loose.

As still more demonstrators joined the marches, Connors forces unleashed German Shepherd police dogs on high-school students.

Their crime?

Marching peacefully.

The next several days he had his fire department blast high school students with high-pressure fire hoses.

Their crime?

Peacefully walking one block in downtown Birmingham.

The newsreel footage and photos that resulted are iconic and are now seared now into the American consciousness. The Soviet press had a public relations field day, gleefully reprinting the images in their state-sponsored newspaper, Pravda.

Meanwhile, the Kennedy administration looked on, understandably aghast; the protests, but particularly the overreaction by Connors thugs, were forcing the moderate Kennedys (younger brother Robert at the time was JFKs Attorney General) to take a much more progressive and active stand on civil rights than they had previously or had wanted to.

In early June, JFK addressed the nation, announcing that he planned to introduce sweeping legislation to the Congress later in the year, legislation that would eventually become the landmark Civil Rights Act.

In late summer, King gave his monumental I Have a Dream Speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a speech watched (and rewatched) by millions. As Kennedy remarked to an aide, The Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. Hes helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.

Which brings us to current Montana politics and the Republican expulsion of Zooey Zephyr last week after her indecorous speech and the subsequent peaceful protests in the House gallery. The image of Zephyr holding one hand on her heart and a silenced microphone in the other on the floor of the Montana House of Representative may or may not become as iconic as the photos Bull Connors photo of high-pressure water hoses blasting peaceful protestors in downtown Birmingham. But history will claim it as an inflection point for the LGBTQ movement.

Twenty years from now (or less), when that her dramatic r monumental photograph appears in American history textbooks, most students will look at it with a sense of, Wow, I really cant believe they would have done that. What were they thinking? Im glad were way beyond that now.

The LGBTQ movement should thank God for the Montana Speaker of the House, Matt Reiger and the lockstep Montana GOP he commands.

Their actions will do ve done more for LGBTQ rights in this country than they could have ever could have imagined.

Keith Edgerton is a professor of history at Montana State University-Billings

Read more here:
Thank you, Montana Republicans, for altering the course of history ... - Daily Montanan

Its a drumbeat these days in the party of Big MAGA: Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is something to be despised, defeated and destroyed. In the past couple of weeks, Virginias most powerful Republicans have joined the parade by pandering in a legislative election year to the GOPs white, anti-DEI base.

First, the states chief diversity officer, Martin D. Brown, told a gathering of faculty and staff at Virginia Military Institute a school riven recently by allegations of racism, sexism and resistance to diversity and inclusion that diversity is the wrong mission and is dead.

The comments, as first reported by The Washington Post, are stunning considering that Brown is specifically tasked under a 2020 law to advance diverse, equitable and inclusive policies throughout state government.

Imagine the superintendent of the Virginia State police telling motorists, Feel free to disregard the speed limit, were not going to stop you! Brown and Youngkin, who hired Brown in November, have a legal duty to faithfully execute Virginias laws. Brown conceded as much.

Were not going to bring that cow up anymore. Its dead. It was mandated by the General Assembly, but this governor has a different philosophy of civil discourse, civility, treating living the golden rule, right? the Post, citing a recording of the event last month, quoted Brown as saying.

Brown may not like the work hes paid to do. If he and the governor can bring a majority in both chambers of the General Assembly around to their point of view, the law can be changed through the due process of representative democracy. Thats one of the things Novembers election is about.

Until that happens, Youngkin could (and should) command Brown to do the work of the commonwealths chief diversity officer rather than undermining it. Or he could fire him, as many have implored him to do. Among them is Youngkins predecessor, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, Americas first elected Black governor and a Democrat who had previously been a vocal supporter of Youngkins.

Youngkin, instead, is siding with Brown and traveling the state articulating his consistent position against DEI programs, saying he supports equal opportunity but not equal outcomes.

Asked for elaboration, Youngkins press secretary, Macaulay Porter, referred to remarks the governor made in a streamed interview with the Milken Institute shortly after Browns comments at VMI. (Go to the 14:50 mark.)

These concepts five, seven, 10 years ago were laudable. It was about creating inclusive environments where people felt like they had access and could be engaged. It was about making sure that we understood that diversity of thought, which comes from diversity of life experience, results in better outcomes, and all the academic data points to this. What weve seen, of course, is that this has gone in a very, very excessive area where all of a sudden, the idea that we should compromise excellence, we should compromise merit, in pursuit of a goal for equal outcomes is the real challenge. And we see it manifested in real decisions, he said.

Then last week, the Republican leaders of Virginias House of Delegates picked up the baton.

Speaker Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, and Majority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, asked the General Assemblys investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, to study how non-instructional administrative staff, particularly Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) positions, contribute to rising costs of college education in Virginia. The development was first reported Friday by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

One such report stated that approximately 1,100 in-state students could receive a full-tuition scholarship for the amount spent on DEI salaries, Gilbert and Kilgore wrote to JLARC executive director Hal Greer. They were citing a Virginia Association of Scholars report titled Should Virginians Pay for University Diversity Leftism? Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Leftist Ideology at Virginia Universities.

The Republican Party has become a refuge for seething white antipathy toward anything that calls out the wrongs done for hundreds of years to generations of African Americans and other Americans of color.

The modern GOP has been clear in its unambiguous appeal to aggrieved and frightened white, straight men for a long time. But until recently, the party not all Republicans, but a significant and noisy element avoided making it as harshly clear as it has since 2020. At times, it plays out like a contest to see who among them can most forcefully plant a flag in a pre-1954 Jim Crow America and drag the rest of the country back there.

In Tennessee, the states Republican-led House of Representatives undertook the self-defeating act of expelling two Black members who, along with a white colleague, disrupted House proceedings to protest the states liberal gun rights laws after six people were shot dead at a private school a few miles from the state Capitol. The white representative survived her expulsion attempt by one vote, something she attributed to her skin color.

Republican-ruled states, especially in the South, have effectively canceled any public school history curricula that provide a frank accounting of their states and the nations shameful history of slavery and the institutionalized discrimination that endured long after Appomattox Court House and the 13th Amendment.

In Texas, Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott provided a telling insight about his regard for the others recently when he referred to five members of a Honduran family, including women and children, allegedly slain by a neighbor with an assault-style rifle last week as illegal aliens. The governors mouthpieces have since attempted damage control, but his callous tweet endures in infamy.

Diversity initiatives exist because injustice indisputably existed and continues. Those initiatives, like all government endeavors, are imperfect, but where abuses exist, address them legislatively, if necessary.

But defying existing law and taking a sledgehammer to DEI to leverage white grievance in an election year is reprehensible and risks leaving the party that brought about the emancipation of enslaved Americans mired on the wrong side of modern history.

Continued here:
By trying to demolish DEI initiatives, Va. Republicans dig in on ... - Virginia Mercury

Abortion

As states continue to bring in tighter restrictions on abortion, internal divisions within the GOP are starting to show

In one state, Republican women filibustered to block a near-total abortion ban introduced by their own party. In another, the Republican co-sponsor of a six-week abortion ban subsequently tanked his own bill. On the federal level, a Republican congresswoman warns that the GOPs abortion stance could mean losing huge in 2024.

As states continue to bring in tighter restrictions on abortion following the fall of Roe v Wade, internal divisions within the Republican party on the issue are starting to show.

Divisions became most apparent last week in the deep red states of South Carolina and Nebraska, where Republicans roundly rejected further attempts to curtail abortion rights last week.

In South Carolina on Thursday, all five female senators three of them Republican led a filibuster that ultimately blocked a bill which would have banned abortion from conception with very few exceptions.

That was the third time a near-total ban on abortion has failed in the Republican-dominated senate in South Carolina since Roe was overturned last summer.

We told them, Dont take us down this path again for the third time in six months you will regret it. And so we made them regret it, said state senator Sandy Senn, who spoke at length on the senate floor on Thursday, of the male Republican senators continually pushing abortion restrictions in her state including in an earlier attempt this year to make abortion a crime punishable by the death penalty. Abortions remain legal until 22 weeks in the state, which has become a safe haven for abortion in a region with increasingly limited options.

With nothing having changed since the last two times the senators brought the bill, Senn said her Republican counterparts knew another abortion ban had no hopes of passing. But with an election looming in 2024, she believes they are keen to flaunt their anti-abortion positions.

He was just trying to flex his Republican credentials, she said of Shane Massey, the senate leader, who voted in favor of the bill. He wants people to know, I want a strict ban, I want no abortion. Im going to try it for the third time and lose, but its not my fault that we lost its these Republicans who voted against me.

In Nebraska, an attempt to bring a six-week abortion ban failed by a single vote in the majority Republican chamber. Merv Riepe, a Republican senator who had initially co-sponsored the bill chose to withhold his vote on Thursday, becoming an unlikely player in the bills demise, having voted in its favor as recently as two weeks prior.

But Riepe had raised hesitations about the bill back in March, telling local press that six weeks might not be enough time for a person to realize they are pregnant and get an abortion.

He did propose an amendment to the bill on Thursday, proposing a ban on abortion after 12 weeks, but other Republican legislators rejected it, saying they had already compromised enough.

Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist based in Arizona, said that these increasingly visible tensions may speak to a difficulty that Republicans are having trying to balancing different wings of the party.

There is a tension between the base of the Republican party and moderate Republicans. The hardcore base wants outright bans on abortion. But the broader electorate, and certainly a substantial amount of right-leaning independents and moderate Republicans, want to keep abortion legal but rare, said Marson.

Those tensions are certainly becoming clear on the national stage, with growing numbers of Republicans sounding the alarm that the party should not lean too far right on abortion, especially since last years midterms showed a string of victories for abortion rights that seem to suggest the partys stance on the issue is out of sync with the general public.

Recent weeks have also seen a number of Republican presidential hopefuls trying to walk back the partys stance on abortion. Last week, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley asked the party for a humanizing, not demonizing conversation on abortion. Donald Trump has indicated he thinks a federal abortion ban touted by Senator Lindsey Graham last year a losing proposal for 2024.

Following a supreme court decision to keep access to a crucial drug in medication abortions widely available for the time being, the Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace said told ABC she agreed with the ruling.

I want us to find some middle ground, Mace said. I represent a very purple district As Republicans, we need to read the room on this issue, because the vast majority of folks are not in the extremes, she said.

Mace criticized a recent decision by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, to sign a six-week abortion ban in his own state a bill she said he signed in the dead of the night.

We are going to lose huge if we continue down this path of extremities [People] want exceptions for rape and incest, they want women to have access to birth control. These are very commonsense positions that we can take and still be pro-life, Mace said.

Senns own decision to join the filibuster in South Carolina, she said, was about principle but she added that the politics are also compelling.

As far as in my state, 53% of the Republican voters agree with me. And in my district, 70% agree with me, she said.

I dont want any woman to have an abortion. I hope she doesnt have to, but Im not going to judge her. And she has to have a meaningful opportunity to make her decision, she said.

Senn supports a ban after 12 weeks, with exceptions for people who have been raped, victims of incest, or whose life is threatened by a pregnancy and said she continues to be shocked by fellow Republican who disagree with that stance.

The baby is not even a baby at that point. In my state, 19 lawmakers in our house of representatives signed on to a bill that would make a woman guilty of murder if she had an abortion at any stage, she said, referring to a recent bill. I just wish we had more people in the middle, with common sense on all issues. And on this issue, why not have some mercy? she asks.

Marson, the strategist, believes the mixed messaging from the party could end in catastrophe for Republicans in 2024 if they dont heed those calls.

We dont have to guess what will happen. Just a little over six months ago, we saw what the issue of abortion does to the electorate it pushes them to Democrats, he said.

Weve seen states like Kansas, one of the more conservative states in the country, reject abortion bans. A six-week ban that doesnt allow for exception of rape and incest and life of the mother thats a campaign-ender for a Republican, he said.

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Republicans reject abortion bans as campaign-enders in warning to party - The Guardian

House Republicans narrowly passed a bill late last month that would temporarily suspend or raise the federal debt limit while significantly reducing caps on discretionary spending for the next 10 years. The legislation does not identify which discretionary programs would or would not see future spending cuts under the proposal.

However, some Democrats have claimed that the bill would lead to deep cuts in several areas, including health benefits for military veterans.

It makes a series of deeply devastating and unpopular cuts to things like veterans health benefits, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on May 2, adding that the Department of Veterans Affairs would be gutted.

But some GOP lawmakers have called such Democratic claims a lie and argued that congressional Republicans do not intend to scale back spending on services for veterans.

Joe Biden and the Democrats are yet again shamelessly lying to the American people, Rep. Elise Stefanik, the chair of the House Republican Conference, wrote in a May 1 tweet. There are absolutely NO cuts to veterans benefits, or the VA in the Limit, Save, and Grow Act.

Its true that the bill does not mention spending cuts for veterans, but it does not exempt them either. The specific cuts would be determined later, during the appropriations process if the House-passed bill became law, which is unlikely to happen.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the bill is dead on arrival in the Senate, which is controlled by the Democratic caucus. The White House also opposes the bill and has said President Joe Biden would not sign it even if it reached his desk.

Here well explain why Democrats claim that the legislation is a threat to veterans, as well as why Republicans claim that those opposing the bill are simply using fear tactics.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen informed Congress in a May 1 letter that the U.S. could default on its $31.4 trillion debt as soon as June 1, if Republicans and Democrats fail to reach an agreement to lift the debt limit before that time.

On April 26, House Republicans passed their proposal the Limit, Save, Grow Act by a vote of 217 to 215. It would extend the borrowing limit through March 31, 2024, or until the debt increases by $1.5 trillion, whichever comes first.

In exchange, starting in fiscal year 2024, the bill would cap discretionary budget authority at about $1.47 trillion similar to fiscal year 2022 levels and then restrict future growth in spending to 1% per year for a decade. (Discretionary spending refers to spending that is authorized in annual appropriations legislation and is separate from mandatory spending for programs such as Medicare and Social Security.)

According to summaries of the GOP bill, it also would repeal certain renewable and clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, block Bidens executive actions canceling student loan debt, reclaim some of the unspent COVID-19 funding, rescind funds designated for the Internal Revenue Service, as well as create new work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries and expand work requirements for those enrolled in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would reduce budget deficits by a total of about $4.8 trillion through 2033, compared with CBOs baseline projections under current law. Nearly $3.2 trillion of that amount would come from savings in discretionary spending, the nonpartisan budget analysts said.

The White House budget office has said that if Defense Department funding is exempted from the discretionary spending cuts, as Republicans have indicated, the GOP bill would initially require a 22% cut to funding for all other discretionary programs, assuming the cuts are applied across the board.

The legislation proposed by Congressional Republicans would set the FY2024 topline at $1.471 trillion, equal to the FY 2022 level, says an April 20 blog post written by Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Under the assumption that funding for defense in FY 2024 will at least match the baseline level of $885 billion, non-defense funding would total $586 billion, which is 22 percent lower than the currently enacted level of $756 billion.

Among other things, those cuts would undermine medical care for veterans, leading to 30 million fewer veteran outpatient visits, and 81,000 jobs lost across the Veterans Health Administration, Youngs blog post said.

An April 30 tweet from Bidens presidential Twitter account similarly claimed that 217 House Republicans Voted to Undermine Veterans Health Care, and other Democratic lawmakers, like Sen. Chris Coons, claimed that the GOP bill would cut veterans health care.

Veterans groups also have raised concerns about the potential impact of the legislation, and the Department of Veterans Affairs has warned that discretionary spending cuts could affect additional benefits for veterans not just health care.

In responding to these comments, Republicans have said they would not reduce funding for defense or veterans.

On ABCs This Week on April 30, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who was interviewed after Coons, disagreed with the claim about cuts to services for veterans.

We talk about protecting veterans, Scalise said. Weve heard this lie over and over again. The speaker himself has said were protecting veterans. My boss, the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, is a veteran himself. The only person talking about cutting veterans benefits is Joe Biden. And Ill tell you, as the majority leader, I will not bring a bill to the floor of the House, even if President Biden wants it, I will not bring a bill that cuts our veterans.

In an April 21 statement released before the vote on the GOP bill, Rep. Mike Bost, the veterans committee chairman whom Scalise mentioned, said Democrats had spread false claims about House Republicans trying to cut veterans benefits.

This commonsense bill will grow the economy and save American taxpayers money, all while protecting veterans benefits, Social Security, and Medicare, he said. Republicans have always prioritized veterans in our spending to ensure veterans have access to the care, benefits, and services they have earned, and as the Chairman of this Committee, that is my number one priority. Anyone who questions our commitment to the men and women who have served should find new talking points.

In an email to FactCheck.org, Chad Gilmartin, deputy spokesman for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, said, Democrats should point to where in the bill it says any of the claims that they make.

As we said, the text of the bill does not specify which parts of the discretionary budget would be cut but it also does not say which parts would be shielded from future cuts, which is a point the White House made to us.

Congressional Republicans could have protected veterans medical care in the bill but they chose not to which is why 24 veterans organizations opposed this bill, a White House spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

We would note that the bill also does not state that defense spending will be spared. However, Democrats seemingly have accepted Republican assurances that it would be, while now dismissing similar assurances that funding for veterans also would not be cut.

But if Republicans were to exclude defense and veterans health care from cuts, as they say they would do, that means other discretionary programs would have to be cut by larger percentages.

If they protect both defense and veterans health care from cuts, then all other non-defense discretionary programs would have to be cut 33 percent in 2024 and 59 percent in 2025, the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated in an April 24 analysis.

Discretionary funding also pays for programs for homeland security, transportation, education, housing, social services and more.

Ultimately, specific spending cuts, or exemptions from those cuts, would be addressed during the regular appropriations process if the GOP bill somehow became law.

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Republicans Push Back on Democratic Claims of Veterans' Health ... - FactCheck.org