“We’ll be working on it all weekend,” Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues told the News Service after Wednesday’s sessions had adjourned. “There are no holidays with us,” he added.

Rodrigues and other top Democrats have been unable to agree on an annual bill that’s supposed to just wrap up fiscal loose ends for the previous fiscal year.  Items not tethered to fiscal 2023, like requirements for the Healey administration’s handling of the migrant shelter crisis, and a proposed port zoning carveout for a soccer stadium on the Mystic River, are among the areas that are tripping up negotiators.

Rodrigues, the Senate’s lead negotiator on the bill, said the six-member conference committee appointed last week had “been in regular communications” and that the bill was held up by “normal disagreements.”

“We turned around a bill in six days that it took them six weeks to do, so that should show how serious we are to get this done,” the Westport Democrat said as he walked out of the chamber.

Gov. Maura Healey filed the closeout budget on Sept. 13. The House used that bill as its legislative vehicle to move a controversial package of gun law reforms in October before passing its version of the budget on Nov. 8. The Senate approved its redraft on Nov. 14.

After waiting so long to put bills up for votes, Democrats couldn’t find common ground before the Nov. 15 end of formal sessions for 2023 and have boxed themselves into a position of trying to get unanimous support on a compromise bill after Republicans in both branches voted against the two bills that are on the negotiating table.

Rodrigues would not say Wednesday whether the six-member committee had even met, and he refused to discuss specifics of the House-Senate disagreements. Under the Legislature’s operating rules (Joint Rule 1A), “[a]ll meetings” of conference committees “shall be open to the public” until the panel votes to go behind closed doors.

Meantime, the Senate budget chief said, he has been negotiating with fellow committee members. He talked with Republican Sen. Patrick O’Connor, another conferee, in the Senate Chamber before presiding over Wednesday’s session.

House Minority Leader Bradley Jones Jr. said he had “no idea” about the status of negotiations and was unsure whether the conference committee had met yet.

Asked about his expectations for next Monday, when the House holds its next session, Jones told the News Service: “Monday is like a lifetime away.”

“So right now, I would say, happy Thanksgiving everybody, try to enjoy the holiday and hopefully we will have an opportunity to have some progress made,” the North Reading Republican said Wednesday morning. “Ideally from the Republican perspective, the inability to achieve a resolution to this point would hopefully have the leadership say, well maybe there’s a couple of ideas on the Republican side that we didn’t incorporate that we could incorporate to make sure there’s no issues getting it to move forward.”

Jones was among the 26 lawmakers who signed a bipartisan letter Monday spearheaded by Sen. Walter Timilty calling on the conference committee to swiftly release portions of the supplemental budget that are supported by both the House and Senate. That includes funding for disaster relief, the collectively bargained raises for state workers, and programs tied to education, health care, environmental protection, and public safety.

The letter, which says legislative action on those matters is “critical,” was signed by 10 senators, nine of them Democrats; and 17 representatives including eight Democratic House members.

“Where there is mutual agreement, conferees can release items from the bills — in part, to fund essential services and virtual accounts, and we hope this can be done as soon as practicable,” they wrote. “We believe that these items are all essential to the well-being of our Commonwealth.”

Jones and Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr also wrote to state Comptroller William McNamara on Monday, asking the financial officer about “both the actual and potential implications any continued delays will have on the Commonwealth’s financial outlook and bond rating.”

The closeout budget must be finalized before McNamara’s office can complete a key annual filing, known as the Statutory Basis Financial Report (SBFR). Under state law, the comptroller must submit the SBFR by Oct. 31 — more than three weeks ago.

“Urgency” and “concerns” that McNamara voiced earlier this month “are graver now,” he wrote in his response to Jones and Tarr.

McNamara also offered a “personal” note on how the Legislature’s annual tardiness in closing the books impacts his own workflow, forecasting a potentially “untenable position” for himself in the future.

“Given my sincere respect for prerogatives of elected officials to consider and debate the complex matters of budgeting, I have not emphasized this individual concern in years when the SBFR was delivered within several days of the due date. However, in the present instance, even if there were favorable movement at this point, the total delay will now be several weeks. If the delay were to continue, so that I am at risk of being in violation of state law for more than two months and into the coming calendar year, I would view that as an untenable position,” the former Fidelity Investments executive wrote.

Healey opted to keep McNamara, a 2020 appointee of Gov. Charlie Baker, in his comptroller post earlier this year, and lauded his “professional, collaborative leadership to support our state’s financial health.”

Senate Democrats plan in the new year to unveil and debate a bill they want to put on Gov. Maura Healey’s desk this term, and the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on firearms bills that have been idling all year.

The committee, chaired by Rep. Carlos Gonzalez of Springfield and Sen. Walter Timilty of Milton, plans to gather in Gardner Auditorium to accept testimony on 56 gun-related bills.

House and Senate Democrats spent months this year at odds over whether to involve the Public Safety Committee in the review of a bill authored by Judiciary Committee Co-chair Rep. Michael Day of Stoneham, a top deputy to Speaker Ron Mariano.

The House ultimately circumvented the joint committee process and approved Day’s controversial legislation 120-38 in October. That bill cleared the House the day after a single, lengthy hearing on it hosted only by representatives without any senators present.

Senators have also been assembling an omnibus bill behind the scenes. Senate President Karen Spilka wants to approve a gun reform law this session, and Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem has been meeting with colleagues and interest groups.

Federal prosecutors announced a 28-count indictment against the Fitchburg resident alleging that after he departed the Massachusetts Senate in 2021, he collected $30,120 in pandemic unemployment benefits while also working as a paid consultant for a New Hampshire automotive parts company.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy’s office also alleged that Tran, 48, failed to disclose more than $50,000 he earned from consulting for the company — which prosecutors did not identify — on his 2021 federal tax return as well as rental income he collected from tenants of a Fitchburg property.

“Dean Tran was once elected to serve taxpayers, but today we arrested him for allegedly cheating them out of tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent unemployment benefits that were meant to be a lifeline for those struggling for survival as a result of the pandemic,” Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division, said in a statement. “This former state senator allegedly made the conscious decision to repeatedly lie about his employment status and underreport his rental property income so he could get a tax break. The FBI and our partners are working hard every day to shut down such fraud schemes and protect the public from being fleeced.”

An attorney who previously represented Tran did not immediately return a call Friday morning seeking a response to the latest indictment.

Tran, who in September was indicted by a Suffolk County grand jury on two counts of violating state ethics laws and in 2022 was indicted on charges related to the theft of a firearm from an elderly woman, now also faces 25 counts of wire fraud and three counts of filing false tax returns in a federal case, according to Levy’s office. He is due to appear in federal court in Boston at 1:30 p.m., officials said.

Federal prosecutors allege in the indictment that Tran submitted an online application for state unemployment insurance benefits on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day after his Senate tenure ended — but that his application was denied by the state because legislators are not eligible for the benefits under state law.

He accepted a consulting position with the automotive parts company on March 14, 2021, and the very next day applied for unemployment benefits through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program retroactive to Jan. 9, 2021, allegedly checking a box “stating that he was unemployed, partially unemployed or unable or unavailable to work.” His application was accepted March 16, 2021.

In April, the Massachusetts Division of Unemployment Assistance denied Tran’s PUA claim due to an issue related to “employment substantiation” and stopped PUA payments to him. Tran appealed the decision and submitted what the feds called a “sham employment offer letter” backdated to December 29, 2020, purporting to be from the CEO of a New Hampshire-based company that produces and distributes Asian foods. The letter allegedly offered Tran a job and a $120,000 annual salary.

During an appeal hearing in May 2021, Tran allegedly made misleading statements and concealed the fact that he had been working for and being paid by the auto parts company. In June 2021, the state reversed its decision and declared Tran eligible for PUA benefits “beginning the week ending January 2, 2021, and indefinitely thereafter, if otherwise eligible.”

His PUA benefits were terminated after the week ending Sept. 4, 2021 and Tran became a W-2 employee of the auto parts company on Sept. 20, 2021, according to the indictment.

“If TRAN had become a W-2 employee of the Automotive Parts Company prior to September 2021, however, TRAN’s wages would have been reported to the state and, thus, the DUA would have disqualified TRAN from receiving PUA benefits. By remaining as a consultant for the Automotive Parts Company until early September 2021, TRAN was able to conceal his employment from the DUA while he simultaneously collected both pay from the Automotive Parts Company and PUA benefits,” the indictment says.

From March through December 2021, the feds allege, Tran collected $43,925 in PUA benefits while also being paid $82,602 by the auto parts company.

The feds also alleged Friday that Tran reported $14,100 in gross rental income on his 2020 tax return, but actually collected $27,544 in rental income that year. In 2021, prosecutors allege, he deposited $30,855 worth of rent payments into a bank account of his but reported only $15,600 in gross rental income. And in 2022, the indictment claims, Tran took in $31,200 from his rental properties but reported just $15,600 in gross rental income. He also allegedly did not report any of the $54,720 in income that he earned as a consultant for the auto parts company in 2021.

The federal charges unveiled Friday add to Tran’s legal troubles. He was indicted by then-Attorney General Maura Healey in July 2022 on charges that he stole a Colt .45 gun from an elderly constituent and then misled the investigation into the incident. And in September, Attorney General Andrea Campbell announced that Tran had been indicted for allegedly using “members of his Senate staff to campaign for him while those staff members were on state time, state payroll, and purportedly working for the Legislature” during campaigns in 2018 and 2020.

The Massachusetts Senate sanctioned Tran in 2020 after the Senate Ethics Committee found his office staff had been performing campaign work with public resources during business hours. He denied the charges. He was removed from his position as assistant minority whip and banned from interacting with his staff except through official emails.

Tran narrowly lost his 2020 reelection bid to Sen. John Cronin, a Democrat. Last year, he ran for Congress against U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan and garnered more than 88,500 votes in his loss.

After keeping sessions open for roughly 13 hours over the course of the day while top Democrats traded proposals via email and phone, the House and Senate abruptly pivoted after midnight to naming a conference committee to embark on more formal negotiations.

Ways and Means Committee Chairs Aaron Michlewitz and Michael Rodrigues told reporters — in separate press huddles — that they were unable to find agreement to resolve differences in the House and Senate versions of a $2.8 billion spending bill.

“We weren’t close enough to try to see it through tonight. Obviously, over the last couple of years, we’ve had some late nights here, and I think at those points in time, we felt we could really get something done and so we really wanted to see it through,” Michlewitz said. “But I think at the point where we are at, both us and our Senate counterparts felt it was time to pack it up for tonight and try to see if we can talk tomorrow.”

Rodrigues said he was “very disappointed” in the outcome.

“Our goal was to get it done tonight, but we just weren’t able to,” he said.

While Democrats got tripped up on their differences, both the House and Senate bills would steer $250 million toward the shelter system while also scheduling the state primary on Sept. 3, 2024, funding collectively bargained raises for state employees, and clearing the way for contract renegotiations on a hydropower transmission project that is key to Massachusetts’ clean energy goals.

The failure to complete a deal means Democrats will need to steer a final bill through the choppy waters of informal sessions. Legislative rules set Wednesday as the final day for formal sessions until Jan. 3, and for the next seven weeks, any single lawmaker’s objection can delay a bill’s passage. Also, spending bills like the supplemental budget die on Jan. 2, 2024, the final day of the first “annual session” in the 2023-2024 lawmaking term. If lawmakers cannot achieve a deal by then, the entire process would need to restart from square one.

Republicans in both chambers opposed the spending bills over concerns about the state’s response to the emergency shelter crisis fueled in large part by migrant arrivals, and it’s unclear if they would use their newfound leverage to prevent a final version from reaching Gov. Maura Healey’s desk.

“I’m confident, at least in the Senate, that we’ll be able to secure the votes to pass the bill once we get it through the conference,” Rodrigues said. “I can’t speak for the House.”

House and Senate Democrats both agree on fulfilling a request Healey made more than two months ago to inject $250 million more toward emergency shelters, which already received $325 million in the state’s annual budget, amid a period of unprecedented demand. But they are split on whether to dictate how the new money must be used.

The House plan would set more specific requirements on shelter spending, and it would also order the Healey administration to stand up at least one overflow site within 30 days for families unable to access shelter. If officials failed to do so, they would be ordered to lift a capacity limit Healey imposed on the system, citing a lack of providers, space or funding to continue expanding.

Senators did not support that prescriptive approach and instead have said they want to continue to give the administration leeway to decide how to manage the crisis.

“We just want to prevent people from sleeping in the streets or sleeping in airports or sleeping in our train stations or emergency rooms,” Michlewitz said. “… Our plan in particular sets an agenda, sets a course, of making sure that those that are above the cap at least have a place to temporarily stay while they’re going through the waitlist process.”

Anti-homelessness advocates lamented the Legislature’s inaction, warning that families currently on the administration-imposed waitlist — most recently estimated at nearly two dozen — “don’t have a place to stay.”

“We’re really in unchartered territory. For 40 years, Massachusetts has had a right to shelter, has guaranteed shelter placement for every eligible family, so this is the first time that we’re seeing the state impose a waiting list and talk about establishing a cap on how long families can stay in shelter,” said Kelly Turley, associate director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. “It’s really unknown what’s next for families experiencing homelessness and families who right now in Massachusetts are facing eviction, facing housing instability.”

Turley said although she sees “room for compromise” between the branches in how the $250 million should be used, she believes lawmakers need to embrace the House’s plan to order the launch of overflow sites.

The lack of a deal prevents the state from closing its books on fiscal year 2023, which ended June 30, and leaves in limbo billions of dollars in spending.

The so-called closeout supplemental budget also includes hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver on collectively bargained raises to state employees, schedules the 2024 state primary elections for Sept. 3, 2024, and includes language to allow Avangrid to renegotiate contracts with energy distribution companies for parts of a transmission project linking hydroelectric power generated in Quebec to the regional grid. That project, which could become a source of clean energy for Massachusetts, had been upended by a ballot question in Maine and lengthy delays before a legal resolution.

The Legislature operates on a two-year session and the thousands of bills filed for consideration earlier this year remain in play through 2024, although the House and Senate are now expected to hold only light, twice-weekly informal sessions through December.

Lawmakers and Healey agreed to a major tax relief law this year and significant spending increases backed up by a new stream of revenue from the income surtax on wealthier households that voters approved in 2022. Action on scores of other pressing issues, including clean energy, transportation woes, and the housing affordability crisis, will have to wait until next year.

The joint committees assigned to review bills have until Feb. 7, 2024 to make recommendations. The last stretch of formal sessions in 2024, culminating at the end of July, features the most extensive legislating, but also overlaps with the extreme amount of time and effort attached to the annual state budget.

While the unsuccessful negotiations were happening, the House churned through amendments to legislation aimed at boosting the long-term care industry workforce and subjecting the industry to new oversight, regulation and steeper penalties for violations.

Specifically, the House bill gives state public health regulators new tools to ensure that nursing homes are meeting their responsibilities, including the potential to newly limit, suspend or revoke home licenses for cause and to appoint temporary managers. Under the bill, licensure suitability standards would also change to include a more comprehensive review of the background and legal record of applicants.

The bill also sets a two-year term for licenses, requires annual inspections and a 90-day “notice of intent to acquire” to be processed in the event of a transfer, and requires new state rules governing the development of small house nursing homes limited to no more than 14 individuals per unit.

To give nursing homes a hand up, the bill requires the state to establish workforce training programs and career ladder training to lift certified nurse assistants, home health aides, homemakers aspiring to become licensed practical nurses, and supervisory and leadership training. Homes would also be able to take advantage of no-interest or forgivable loans to offset certain capital costs and fund capital improvements.

House Elder Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Tom Stanley of Waltham recalled his father’s experience in long-term care and described constituents calling to say they couldn’t secure nursing home placements due to staffing shortages, or that their loved one needed a new placement due to a sudden home closure.

The bill pairs workforce development with efforts to target “bad actors” in the sector through accountability, transparency and oversight measures, Stanley said, citing abrupt home closures, patient abuse and diminished care as among the issues that are in need of immediate legislative solutions.

The Senate also held a marathon session Wednesday, working on its latest version of a prescription drug access bill.

While they haven’t been able to entice the House to join them, senators voted 39-0 just before 10:45 p.m. on their third legislative attempt in as many sessions to rein in prices that Bay Staters pay for prescription drugs and subject pharmaceutical companies to greater regulatory scrutiny.

The bill would require pharmacy benefit managers to be licensed, empower the Center for Health Information and Analysis to more closely examine prescription drugs, give the Health Policy Commission new tools to control high prices, and create a fund to help cover costs for lower-income patients.

The latest version newly features a provision capping out-of-pocket costs for some widely used medications that treat chronic illnesses at $25 for name-brand versions and at $0 for generic alternatives.

Senators embraced several changes during the amendment process, including one from Sen. Mark Montigny of New Bedford calling for a study of restricting certain marketing practices by pharmaceutical representatives.

The bill drew a mixed review from the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, which represents insurance carriers. President Lora Pellegrini said insurers believe the reforms will “finally hold drugmakers to the same transparency and accountability standards required for health plans and providers.”

“However, we are deeply disappointed that the bill includes provisions that will eliminate important cost-saving health plan tools, increase pharmaceutical spending, and decrease oversight of network pharmacies,” she added in a statement. “We believe provisions added to the bill will increase prescription drug spending that will translate into higher premiums for employers and consumers.”

The accord, announced without details in a two-sentence statement Thursday evening, could bring to end a debate that began nearly two years ago in an effort to put a dent in the state’s high cost of living and make Massachusetts more competitive for residents and businesses.

In July, legislators broke for a summer recess without a deal on tax relief, instead allotting $581 million to cover tax relief impacts in fiscal year 2024. The final package’s value could exceed $1 billion in the out years, or come in lower depending on which relief measures are swept into the consensus bill.

Competing House and Senate tax relief bills died in 2022 when the Legislature was blindsided as surging revenue collections required the state to give back about $3 billion in tax collections under a decades-old voter law. The huge rebates prompted Democrats to pull back their targeted tax relief plans.

In November, voters adopted a Constitutional amendment put on the ballot by Democrats that raises taxes by more than $1 billion on people and households with incomes above $1 million per year, monies that legislators quickly set about appropriating to make investments in public education and transportation.

This year, the House and Senate revisited their targeted tax relief bills, with Healey picking up the push from former Gov. Charlie Baker.

Competing bills again went into a six-person House-Senate conference committee. That panel was appointed in June, and has been negotiating in secret.

Just after 6 p.m. Thursday, the “agreement in principle” was announced in a statement issued by House Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka, along with two of the six conferees – House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz and Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues.

“In an effort to provide meaningful financial relief to the Commonwealth’s residents and businesses, we are thrilled to announce that an agreement has been reached in principle that reconciles the differences between the House and Senate tax relief packages. We look forward to filing and taking up the conference report next week, which responsibly implements our shared goal of making Massachusetts more affordable, equitable, and competitive,” the statement said.

In a statement just after 9 p.m., Gov. Healey said, “As I’ve said from day one, tax relief is essential for making Massachusetts more affordable, competitive and equitable. I’m pleased that the Legislature has taken this step and look forward to delivering urgently needed tax relief to Massachusetts residents and businesses.” 

The House tax relief package would cost the state $654 million initially and eventually rise to $1.1 billion. It calls for stepping down the short-term capital gains tax rate from 12 percent to 5 percent, and and making a change designed to make Massachusetts more attractive to multi-state companies, which are subject to a three-factor apportionment based on location, payroll, and receipts to determine how much income is taxable in Massachusetts.

Senate Democrats pushed through a $586 million package with some similarities to the House’s plan — increasing the rent cap deduction from $3,000 to $4,000, doubling the senior circuit breaker tax credit cap and increasing the earned income tax credit to 40 percent of the federal credit.

In addition to the Senate not adopting the single sales factor reform or the capital gains tax cut, the branches also differ over the size of the increase in the child and dependent tax credit. The House is seeking to raise the credit from $180 to $310 per dependent this fiscal year, and bump it up each year until it reaches $614 by fiscal 2027. The Senate bill would increase the credit to $310 per child with no future incremental increases.

The Senate also adopted proposals to increase the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit annual authorization from $40 million to $60 million, extend the brownfields tax credit until 2028, increase Title V septic credits and dairy tax credits, and double lead paint abatement credits and the statewide cap on apprenticeship tax credits. Representatives didn’t include any of these smaller reform policies in their plan.

Over the last 24 hours, Trump has increasingly been informing those close to him that he has made his decision, and will not be on the debate stage next week.

The timing for the Carlson interview has yet to be determined, the sources said, but it is expected to air around the same time as the debate. The New York Times first reported the details of the Carlson interview.

CNN previously reported that Trump was not expected to participate in the debate and that his campaign had engaged in conversations with Carlson about a potential interview as counterprogramming for the event.

Trump’s advisers continue to add the caveat, however, that the former president could ultimately change his mind and decide at the 11th hour that he wants to attend the debate.

Trump has both publicly and privately feuded with Fox News, as has Carlson, who left the network earlier this year after the network settled a monster defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems.

The former president has privately and publicly floated skipping either one or both of the first two Republican presidential primary debates, given his lead in the polls. The second presidential debate is scheduled for September at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.

Wednesday’s primary debate is the first of the 2024 cycle. It will come just over a week after the former president was indicted for a fourth time, this time for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Negotiations between his lawyers and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office over the details of his surrender are expected to continue into next week, CNN previously reported. He faces an August 25 deadline to surrender.

The Legislature on Monday approved a $56.2 billion state budget for fiscal year 2024, but broke for August — a typical vacation month without much legislative action — without leaving any indication on when they will deliver the tax cuts they and Healey have promised.

“What’s missing right now from the conversation – but we know it is coming – is the recognition that our job isn’t done until we pass tax relief,” Healey said Wednesday on WBUR. “We need tax relief to make our state more affordable for families and business; we need tax relief to make our state more competitive for employers. And it’s really important, and I do look forward to working with the Legislature to make that happen.”

Asked her target timeline for reaching a tax relief accord, Healey told the News Service, “as quickly as possible.”

“I want us to get to work on that right away,” she said.

The Democrats who are privately negotiating the bills have suggested they’ve been working hard to get to a final deal and want a consensus bill soon, but they have also been promoting the importance of tax relief for well over a year without delivering on it.

The final budget sets aside $581 million for anticipated “tax relief initiatives” in fiscal 2024, which began July 1, but negotiators have shed no light on where they are on more expansive tax relief proposals that could push the package’s value past $1 billion in the long run.

Though Healey campaigned on providing tax relief for residents and businesses, she has been wary about publicly pressuring lawmakers to work faster.

During an unrelated event in Boston on Wednesday morning, the governor did bring up tax relief when asked about when she’ll sign the budget.

“I’ve got a few days, the team and I, to review [the budget] … we’ll work that through over the course of the next week. And then I’m anxious to work on a tax package, both to make our state more competitive and less of an outlier,” she said.

When the governor introduced her first annual spending plan in March, she rolled out the budget alongside her tax plan with a flurry of media appearances where she promised the cuts would help low- and middle-income families and make Massachusetts businesses more competitive. Since then, there’s been much public debate about the role tax policy and other factors play in decisions that people and businesses make about moving into or out of Massachusetts.

Healey’s plans feature a new, streamlined credit for parents and caregivers, which would give taxpayers $600 per year for each dependent including children younger than 13, disabled adults and seniors. She wants to double the senior circuit breaker credit, increase the cap on rent deduction, and favors changes to triple the threshold at which the estate tax kicks in and slash the short-term capital gains tax rate from 12 percent to 5 percent.

The House and Senate this year overwhelmingly passed their own versions (H 3770 and S 2406) of Healey’s plan. A conference committee led by Sen. Michael Rodrigues of Westport and Rep. Aaron Michlewitz of Boston closed its deliberations to the public and has been unable to agree on a consensus bill over the past six weeks. The same two lawmakers last year led talks on a similar targeted tax relief bills that ended without resolution.

“We want to be attracting people to our great state and also make life more affordable for our residents,” Healey said during the Monday morning event. “So that tax package is really important and something that I’m anxious to get to work on.”

Healey, who must take action on the budget by Thursday, Aug. 10, told the News Service she doesn’t expect to sign the massive spending bill by this weekend, as the administration “still has a lot of work we’ve got to do.”

“At first glance, I’m really pleased to see that so many of our proposals, and really hallmark proposals, that we put forward are in there,” she said on WBUR. “This includes MassReconnect, which is workforce development to bring people back into the workforce through free community college, child care grants, universal schools meals, early college and also 1 percent of the budget going for the very first time to climate, to energy and the environment. So a lot of good stuff in there – we have a job to do now to go through that in a more fine way and make some decisions.”

The governor, who had several back-to-back trips this summer and moved from Cambridge to Arlington over the past few days, said on the radio she doesn’t intend to take a vacation since “this is a big week with budget.”

The record $56.2 billion fiscal 2024 budget that the House and Senate sent to the governor’s desk Monday will drive education, transportation and health care investments, and House and Senate Democrats used an array of tactics to come up with the pool of money needed to make fiscal ends meet.

The budget (H 4040) cleared the Senate unanimously and the House 156-2, winning support from all but two House Republicans.

Gov. Maura Healey will have ten days to review the month-late annual spending bill, and on Monday signed a second, $6 billion interim budget to keep state government running while she considers budget amendments and vetoes.

The proposed spending represents a 6.6 percent, or $3.5 billion increase from the $52.7 billion annual budget former Gov. Charlie Baker signed on July 28, 2022. Spending has increased 18 percent in two years, from a $47.6 billion state budget in fiscal 2022. If signed in full, Healey’s first state budget will represent a 47.5 percent, or $18.1 billion, increase from the first budget Baker signed in fiscal year 2016, a $38.1 billion spending plan.

When lawmakers started negotiations in June, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation (MTF) said the maximum proposed spending from both House and Senate budgets would exceed available revenues by about $500 million, forecasting a need to rein in some outlays.

The final budget closes that gap using $205 million from a transitional escrow fund and roughly $200 million from projected reversions of unspent state appropriations, and by selecting the lower proposed spending in multiple line items.

With revenue growth slowing down, budget negotiators also opted to pull $192 million from a behavioral health trust fund created in December 2021, and drew $225 million from an early education trust fund that lawmakers put about $490 million into last year, according to the MTF.

MTF President Doug Howgate said his group always tracks the use of one-time revenues, but noted that the budget also forecasts a deposit of more than $700 million into the state’s rainy day fund.

“The behavioral health trust fund and early education trust fund, that was money set aside to support future investments in those areas,” Howgate said. “The thing we’re paying attention to is the new use of escrow funds and remaining [American Rescue Plan Act] funds … We want to make sure those resources continue to be available to help buttress economic downturns.”

The bill includes major wins for education and immigration advocates, including funding for universal free school meals, clearance for students without legal immigration status to qualify for lower public higher education tuition rates and state financial aid if they attended a Massachusetts high school or got a GED in the state, and a commitment to allow everyone over 25 to attend community college for free.

House Democrats failed to persuade senators to authorize online Lottery sales, which representatives included in their version of the budget bill, which they say would have generated $200 million for early education and care grants.

Another glaring omission was never actually in the budget, but was a piece of companion legislation — tax relief that was promised over 18 months ago. Healey originally sold the budget and her tax cut plan as a package deal, though she filed them as two separate bills. Both chambers followed suit, since the tax relief may eventually have as much as a $1 billion impact on the budget.

But the bill lawmakers passed on Monday only has a $580 million placeholder, as it moves forward without its “companion.” Tax cut talks are continuing.

Lawmakers had a new $1 billion pot of money at their disposal for spending, available for the first time this year after voters in November passed a new 4 percent surtax on household income above $1 million per year.

Of that, the compromise bill sends $523 million toward education initiatives and $477 million for transportation.

This includes $50 million for grants to help repair public school facilities and provide them a clean energy infrastructure, $100 million for capital improvements for public schools, $50 million for higher education capital projects, $25 million for scholarships, $40 million in mixed early education initiatives, $84 million in expanded financial aid and a portion of the $172 million needed to provide free school meals to public school students.

The spending makes Massachusetts the seventh state in the country to make the free lunch program permanent, after it gained popularity during the pandemic when the federal government covered the cost of students’ meals.

Almost half of the surtax transportation spending will go toward the MBTA, including $70 million for station repairs, $50 million for bridges maintenance, $30 million for track and power repairs and $20 million for safety and workforce needs. Local road and bridge funding will get a $100 million boost, $90 million for the regional transportation authorities, $50 million for highway bridge repairs and $5 million for water transportation.

Lawmakers also included $5 million to study means-tested fares for the MBTA.

In dozens of line items, negotiators boosted outlays beyond the spending levels that either branch authorized.

The line item for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services and MassHealth might be the most significant example. The House had approved $126.87 million, the Senate voted for $134.88 million and the conference committee’s budget includes $141.99 million for the account.

The Department of Public Health benefited from the conferees’ largesse in a few of its accounts: the negotiators bumped the agency’s administrative account to more than $23.99 million, about $850,000 more than either branch voted on; DPH’s community health centers account got $1 million more than either branch approved with a total of $7.075 million; substance addiction treatment was increased to $219.49 million, beyond the $209 million the House approved and the $214.27 million the Senate voted on; and the $26.07 million in the conference budget for school-based health programs is more than $3 million more than what senators okayed and more than $7 million more than what the House approved.

The conference committee even boosted accounts in some situations where the House and Senate budgets included the exact same dollar amounts. Both branches approved a $25 million transfer to the Mass. Clean Energy Center, but the conference committee budget calls for a $30 million transfer. Similarly, both branches included $2,888,473 for a toxics use retained revenue account but the conferees bumped the amount up to about $4.03 million.

The joint rules that govern conference committee behavior state that “matters on which there exists no disagreement between the branches shall not be disturbed by the committee on conference.”

“This has been a drawn out and complicated conference report to negotiate to say the least, whether it was implementing the first year of the billion dollar fair share revenue or being confronted with a number of the federal COVID-era programs that Washington is no longer paying for or if it was a leveling off of state revenues. This has been a challenging budget to get over the finish line,” Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, who leads the House Ways and Means Committee and chaired the conference committee who negotiated the compromise bill, said on the House floor Monday.

Michlewitz also said that using one-time state funds to pay for an ongoing existing program, the popular Commonwealth Cares for Children grants to pay for early education and care, is “not always fiscally prudent” but was “the most viable option” this fiscal year.

The House had hoped to authorize online Lottery sales to contribute $200 million to the $475 million program. The iLottery authorization was unpopular in the Senate and didn’t make it into the final budget. The bill will fund the C3 grants through a combination of general fund and surplus state revenue, Michlewitz said.

“As we continue to work towards making early child care more affordable and accessible to all, it is our continued belief that this program needs a dedicated revenue source to remain viable,” he said.

The compromise fiscal year 2024 annual state budget approved by the Legislature on Monday revives “Chapter 257” protections. Anti-homelessness advocates say the protections are a key strategy to keep Bay Staters in their homes while landlord groups say tenants have exploited the program.

Language in the conference committee report filed Sunday night effectively mirrors the previous program, which lawmakers kept in place for much of the COVID-19 emergency before allowing it to expire on March 31.

“This program has been wildly successful and effective in keeping people in their homes and has helped avert the tsunami of evictions in the commonwealth that many have been concerned about since the 2020 pandemic started,” Rep. Aaron Michlewitz said Monday before the House approved the budget accord.

If the measure again becomes law, courts would be required to grant a stay in cases where a landlord is seeking to evict a tenant for failing to pay rent, the tenant did not pay due to a financial hardship, and the tenant has an application waiting review for relief money that could cover the back rent.

“It’s a very important tool for tenants and landlords who can resolve a case with rental assistance,” said Andrea Park, director of community driven advocacy at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. “It’s obviously not everything we need to do to ensure people are not being displaced, but it’s something that was in place for several years and people had really come to rely on it, so we’re really grateful it was restored.”

The budget measure drew sharp criticism from Greater Boston Real Estate Board CEO Greg Vasil.

Vasil said his group supported Chapter 257 early in the COVID-19 emergency “because we were in a different place as a society.” They then backed allowing it to expire in March because, Vasil said, “rampant abuse by a number of tenants” began to take place as relief dollars dwindled.

Some tenants, Vasil said, filed new applications for aid to avoid eviction even after being denied relief dollars on multiple previous occasions.

“We’re starting to see [landlord] members that have had tenants like this that are starting to get into some financial troubles because they were owed literally tens of thousands of dollars in rent and [tenants] just continue to exist in the property and there’s nothing we can do about it,” Vasil said.

The final accord does not include Senate-approved language requiring applications for rental aid to be in “good faith” for a court to pause an eviction case.

Most state rental aid flows through the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) program, and Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless Associate Director Kelly Turley said those applications can take “a long time” to complete and get processed.

Between when the temporary law took effect in late 2020 and the final report issued in November 2022, courts granted more than 9,000 continuances pausing an eviction case while the tenant involved awaited review of a rental aid application. Turley said she expects the total number of affected cases to be closer to 10,000 given that the law remained in effect through March.

Tenant advocates said there aren’t clear data highlighting what happened when Chapter 257 expired in the spring, but anecdotally, they said uncertainty has escalated.

“We’ve seen a lot of confusion on the part of both tenants and property owners around the status of their applications as well as fear that there won’t be enough time to have their rental assistance applications processed before an eviction is finalized,” Turley said.

“On the ground, we’ve heard from a lot of people, tenants and advocates and legal aid as well, asking when is this going to be reinstated,” Park added. “It’s really, really critically needed.”

The budget includes $190 million for RAFT, which Michlewitz described as “historically high.”

For part of the COVID-19 pandemic, households could receive a maximum RAFT benefit of $10,000, but that decreased to $7,000 on July 1 under a change previously approved in the fiscal 2023 state budget.

The new FY24 budget accord also embraced an expansion to the HomeBASE program designed to support families in the emergency shelter assistance system, which is facing a record level of demand amid an influx of migrants.

It would increase the maximum benefits from $20,000 over two years to $30,000 over two years, plus allow families to renew beyond the two-year period, according to Turley.

HomeBASE funds can be used to pay security deposits, utilities, furniture, travel and many other costs that pose obstacles for families trying to overcome homelessness.

McConnell approached the podium for his weekly press conference and began speaking about the annual defense bill on the floor, which he said was proceeding with “good bipartisan cooperation.” But he then appeared to lose his train of thought, trailing off with a drawn-out “uh.”

The Kentucky senator then appeared to freeze up and stared vacantly for around 20 seconds before his colleagues in Republican leadership, who were standing behind him and could not see his face, grabbed his elbows and asked if he wanted to go back to his office.

He did not answer, but slowly walked back to his office with an aide and Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a former orthopedic surgeon who is the No. 3 Republican in the Senate. After sitting down in his office for several minutes, McConnell later returned to the press conference and answered questions from the press.

McConnell, 81, was out of the Senate for almost six weeks earlier this year after falling and hitting his head after a dinner event at a hotel. He was hospitalized for several days, and his office later said he suffered a concussion and fractured a rib. His speech has sounded more halting in recent weeks, prompting questions among some of his colleagues about his health.

When he returned to answer questions, McConnell said he was “fine.” Asked if he is still able to do his job, he said, “Yeah.”

McConnell’s office declined to say whether he was seen by a doctor after the episode.

After the press conference, Barrasso told reporters he “wanted to make sure everything was fine” and walked McConnell down the hall to his office.

Barrasso said he has been concerned since McConnell was injured earlier this year, “and I continue to be concerned.”

But asked about his particular concerns, Barrasso said: “I said I was concerned when he fell and hit his head a number of months ago and was hospitalized. And I think he’s made a remarkable recovery, he’s doing a great job leading our conference and was able to answer every question the press asked him today.”

Walking out of his office Wednesday evening, McConnell again told reporters he was fine. He said President Joe Biden had called him.

“The president called to check up on me, and I told him I got sandbagged,” McConnell joked, referencing a quote from Biden in June after he tripped over a sandbag and fell while onstage at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation.

First elected to the Senate in 1984, McConnell became the longest-serving Senate party leader in history in January. He was easily reelected to his leadership post that same month, despite a challenge from Florida Sen. Rick Scott.

Still, several Republicans, including No. 2 Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Barrasso, are seen as waiting in the wings to someday replace him.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who is also seen as a potential candidate to succeed McConnell, told reporters after the episode, “I support Senator McConnell as long as he wants to serve as leader.”

McConnell had polio in his early childhood and he has long acknowledged some difficulty as an adult in climbing stairs. In addition to his fall in March, he also tripped and fell four years ago at his home in Kentucky, causing a shoulder fracture that required surgery.

The Republican leader is one of several senators who have been absent due to health issues this year. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, 90, was out of the Senate for more than two months as she recovered from a bout of shingles. And Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., 53, took leave for several weeks to get treatment for clinical depression.

Healey in June proposed the pardons, which had earned the support of the Parole Board before Gov. Charlie Baker left office in January, when she also announced that she is planning to reform the clemency process to make it fairer, more timely and minimize racial disparities.

The Governor’s Council, which reviews and approves the governor’s clemency recommendations and judicial nominations, voted unanimously in favor of all seven pardons.

“I think our next seven items are pretty exciting for all of us,” Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, who chairs the Governor’s Council, said to councilors ahead of the pardon votes on Wednesday. “The opportunity to move forward with affirming pardons proposed by the administration — an administration that in its first year of office, this is the first time in any recent memory that an administration has moved forward with pardons.”

The pardons are aimed at people convicted on a variety of charges, one dating back more than half a century: Edem Amet, who was convicted in 1995 on drug charges; Xavier Delvalle, who was convicted in 2006 on breaking and entering and larceny charges; Glendon King, who was convicted in 1992 on drug charges; John Latter, who was convicted of arson in 1966; Deborah Pickard, who was convicted on several charges between 1982 and 1987; Gerald Waloewandja, who was convicted of drug charges in 2003; and Terrance Williams, who was convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in 1984.

All seven pardons were recommended by the Parole Board during Baker’s tenure, but Baker did not act on them before he left office in January, according to a Healey administration official.

“I just want to thank you and the governor,” Councilor Marilyn Petitto Devaney told Driscoll during Wednesday’s meeting. “I tried to hard to get the former governor to bring these forward, and you’ve started off so early with this, that we’re going to have a wonderful administration and I look forward to more pardons.”

Other councilors echoed Devaney’s statements, saying they looked forward to approving more pardons, which forgive offenses, and commutations, which reduce sentences.

When Healey recommended the pardons in June, she said some of the individuals on the list face “barriers and uncertainties” in their lives today as a result of their criminal records.

Latter, who was convicted about 57 years ago, is unable to obtain a nursing license in Florida because of his record, while Williams has been denied a position at a private security company six times due to his conviction, according to Healey’s office.

Williams — who had long wanted to become a police officer — joked in June that he is “too old for the academy” but said he’s “not too old to help our community out.” He called the process of securing a pardon recommendation a “long journey.”

“We really need to look at people who are out there just like me, who just made a mistake years ago who just want that opportunity to come back to society,” Williams said. “I never gave up.”

King is a U.S. Army veteran who has worked for the Boston Fire Department for more than two decades. He told reporters that the pardon would lift a weight from his shoulders and also allow him to exercise his Second Amendment firearms rights.

“For a gentleman that’s got a good head on his shoulders to be labeled a convicted felon for years is not a good thing,” King said. “I’ve done everything by the book, everything right. I just want to get rid of that label.”

Healey’s office has said she is the first governor to issue pardons during her first year in office since former Gov. Bill Weld did so in 1991.

Despite the initial flurry, the Parole Board announced Monday that it will not continue advancing any pardon requests to Healey’s desk until the governor finishes a promised review of the clemency process.

“In the Governor’s first announcement of executive clemency, she indicated that the Administration is currently working to modernize the state’s clemency guidelines to center fairness and racial and gender equity,” Timothy McGuirk of the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security told the News Service. “That process requires meaningful engagement with a broad range of stakeholders before issuing new guidelines later this year. To ensure current and future petitioners participate in a clemency process guided by the new framework, the Parole Board, functioning as Advisory Board of Pardons, will not schedule new clemency hearings until the update is complete.”

Massachusetts State Police said the building was evacuated and nearly all surrounding streets on Beacon Hill were closed as crews responded to what appeared to be an electrical fire that broke out around 2:15 p.m. in a sub-basement at the capitol building.

In an update Tuesday evening, Superintendent of the State House Tammy Kraus said the building will be closed “Out of an abundance of caution while details of today’s fire continue to be investigated.”

“We’re grateful for the efforts of the Boston Fire Department, Mass State Police and DCR Rangers to ensure the safety of all officials, staff and visitors and are working diligently to reopen the building as quickly and safely as possible,” Kraus said.

Smoke was largely not visible outside the State House on Tuesday. Inside, though, state police spokesperson David Procopio said there were smoky conditions in parts of the building. As of 3 p.m., Procopio said firefighters were waiting for utility workers to cut power “before they make entry to extinguish the fire.”

Multiple Boston fire engines could be seen parked around the structure as authorities responded. Speaking with reporters, Boston Fire Department Commissioner Paul Burke said wires to a transformer caught fire, requiring utility crews to isolate the line and shut off power.

According to a staffer who spoke with 7NEWS, the afternoon evacuation was the second of the day after fire alarms went off earlier in the morning.

Personnel returned to the building after learning the first incident was an apparent false alarm, leading to some initially ignoring the second set of alarms.

“We had one earlier today and it was a fake alarm, so we were wondering if it was the same thing,” said staffer Adam Basile.

“It hard sometimes, when you’ve had a false alarm earlier in the day, folks think twice,” said state Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr. “They shouldn’t, but they take that extra minute to think ‘Is this real?’ They all need to be treated as real.”

Authorities said no injuries were reported and everyone was accounted for following the second evacuation.

Gov. Maura Healey was in the State House when the fire broke out. Like others, she was able to get out of the building safely.

Healey later addressed the situation in a Tweet, saying she is “grateful for the swift and coordinated action” from the Boston Fire Department, the Massachusetts State Police and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation rangers.

“Thank you for quickly evacuating the building and keeping officials, staff, and visitors safe,” Healey said.

Tarr also thanked first responders for their response.

“It’s not only serious because of public safety,” he said. “It’s serious because this is an historic building that has historic context.”

Officials said the fire posed problems for air quality inside the State House, with tests showing high levels of carbon monoxide.

As the emergency response continued, crews were at one point using fans to vent the building.

“They have readings,” Burke said. “An average reading of carbon monoxide might be 10, 11 parts per million. This was in the thousands, so it was not sustainable for a human.”

“It was a difficult fire to mitigate, so getting the smoke out of there and isolating the transformer feeds took a while,” Burke separately said. “But it’s done now. Everybody is safe.”

Roads in the area had reopened as of around 6:20 p.m., according to Procopio.

“This is a decision that my wife and I decided to do because we live in complicated times and we need common sense,” Hurd, who was an undercover CIA officer before entering politics, said on CBS.

“There are a number of generational defining challenges that we’re faced with in the United States of America – everything from the Chinese government trying to surpass us as the global superpower, the fact that inflation is persistent at a time when technologies like artificial intelligence is going to upend every single industry, and our kids, their scores in math, science and reading are the lowest they’ve ever been in this century,” the former congressman said.

“These are the issues we should be talking about. And to be frank, I’m pissed that we’re not talking about these things,” Hurd added.

Hurd has been outspoken in his criticism of Trump following the former president’s indictment on federal charges over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges. 

“Too many of these candidates in this race are afraid of Donald Trump,” Hurd said of the GOP primary field.

Besides Trump, Republican presidential contenders also include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and conservative talk radio host Larry Elder.

Hurd said that, if elected to the White House, he would not pardon Trump should the former president be convicted, adding that he thought it was “insane” that other candidates were open to the idea.

Ramaswamy has committed to pardoning Trump if he’s elected president. Haley, Suarez and Elder have also suggested they would be inclined to do so.

Hurd said Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents “spits in the face of the thousands of men and women who every single day and every single night put themselves in harm’s way in order to keep us safe. And so to me that’s unacceptable.”

Hurd was a rare Republican critic of Trump during his time in Congress from 2015 to 2021. Representing a swing district in Texas that covered the largest stretch of the US-Mexico border of any congressional seat, he opposed Trump’s border wall and argued it was less effective than other forms of border security.

Hurd was one of four House Republicans in 2019 to vote in support of a resolution condemning Trump’s racist tweets targeting four Democratic congresswomen of color. He also authored a New York Times op-ed in 2018 arguing that Trump was being manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite his outspoken criticism, Hurd said in 2019 that he would vote for Trump the following year were he to be the GOP nominee.

Hurd had been fueling speculation about a potential presidential run with trips to early-voting primary states in recent months. Hurd was in New Hampshire last week and told local station WMUR 9 he was evaluating whether his candidacy would have a path to the GOP nomination. In January, he spoke at the annual meeting of the New Hampshire Republican Party – the same event where Trump kicked off his 2024 campaigning. Hurd also visited Iowa for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s spring event that included several other 2024 GOP hopefuls.

Hurd was the only Black Republican in the House when he announced in 2019 that he would not seek reelection and instead pursue opportunities outside government to “solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security.” Hurd served in the CIA for almost a decade before coming to Congress. As a congressman, he served on the House Intelligence Committee, which is charged with oversight of the US intelligence community.

Hurd first ran for Congress in 2010, losing to Quico Canseco in a runoff for the GOP nomination. Four years later, Hurd defeated Canseco, by then a former congressman, in another primary runoff before narrowly unseating Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego in the general election. He was narrowly reelected in 2016 and 2018, defeating Gallego and Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, respectively.

Healey almost entirely cleared the deck of pardon recommendations the Parole Board sent her predecessor, and her team promoted her as the first governor in decades to pursue pardons this early in their term.

The round of pardons might come to represent only an opening volley. Healey said at a State House press conference she would wield her executive clemency power “whenever justice requires it,” and she outlined plans to kick off an overhaul of the guidelines governing the pardon and commutation process.

The forthcoming analysis will look at how to review applications for clemency in a fairer, more timely manner while minimizing racial disparities and other inequities, Healey said. She added that she wants advances in “the science of brain development and how people’s judgment can improve through early adulthood” to factor into clemency decisions.

“Clemency is a fundamental, important right of our justice system. It provides an opportunity to help soften the harshest edges of the system,” Healey said. “And today, we have a much better understanding of where those harsh edges are and what we need to do to address them.”

Clemency actions, which include both pardons that forgive past offenses and commutations that reduce sentences, have grown rarer in recent decades. According to Healey’s office, former Gov. Michael Dukakis recommended 119 pardons and 16 commutations in 1975, the first year of his first stint, and then 49 pardons and four commutations in 1983, when he kicked off a second stretch in the corner office.

Healey, who served as attorney general for eight years before winning the governorship, cited her experience leading the civil rights division as a factor behind her interest in the pardons.

“To me, it’s just the right thing to do,” she said. “We know through time, through so much study, of the systemic inequities and disparities that exist. We also, though, have an opportunity to do something about those disparities.”

Other than her broad summary, Healey provided few details about how she wanted to change executive clemency guidelines, most recently issued by former Gov. Charlie Baker in February 2020.

Asked to elaborate on what her new standards would be, Healey replied, “I can’t say yet, honestly. That’s what the process is now going forward — having a thoughtful, considered look at the current guidelines and figuring out what, if anything, we want to modify or change.”

An administration official said all seven pardons Healey announced Thursday had been recommended by the Parole Board during the Baker administration, but Baker did not act on them before he left office in January.

One additional Parole Board recommendation for a pardon remains under review, the official said.

“We felt very comfortable moving forward with these [seven] recommendations based on the current guidelines,” Healey said.

The pardons must win approval from the Governor’s Council, which is scheduled to meet next on June 28, before they take effect.

Healey’s pardons are aimed at people convicted on a variety of charges, one dating back more than half a century: Edem Amet, who was convicted in 1995 on drug charges; Xavier Delvalle, who was convicted in 2006 on breaking and entering and larceny charges; Glendon King, who was convicted in 1992 on drug charges; John Latter, who was convicted of arson in 1966; Deborah Pickard, who was convicted on several charges between 1982 and 1987; Gerald Waloewandja, who was convicted of drug charges in 2003; and Terrance Williams, who was convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in 1984.

Some of the individuals on the list face “barriers and uncertainties” in their lives today as a result of their criminal records, despite accepting responsibility and repaying their debts to society, Healey said.

Latter, who was convicted about 57 years ago, is unable to obtain a nursing license in Florida because of his record, while Williams has been denied a position at a private security company six times due to his conviction, according to Healey’s office.

Williams — who had long wanted to become a police officer — joked Thursday that he is “too old for the academy” but said he’s “not too old to help our community out.” He called the process of securing a pardon recommendation a “long journey.”

“We really need to look at people who are out there just like me, who just made a mistake years ago who just want that opportunity to come back to society,” Williams said. “I never gave up.”

King is a U.S. Army veteran who has worked for the Boston Fire Department for more than two decades. He told reporters the pardon would lift a weight from his shoulders and also allow him to exercise his Second Amendment firearms rights.

“For a gentleman that’s got a good head on his shoulders to be labeled a convicted felon for years is not a good thing,” King said. “I’ve done everything by the book, everything right. I just want to get rid of that label.”

Healey’s office said the pardon recommendations mark the first time a governor has proposed pardons during their first elected year in three decades. Baker waited until his final year in office to recommend commutations and did not roll out pardons until he had only a few months in office remaining.

Former Govs. Deval Patrick, Mitt Romney and Jane Swift did not issue any pardons in their first years — thought Swift in 2002 proposed seven pardons about a year and a half after she took office — according to Healey’s office.

Former Gov. Paul Cellucci recommended four pardons and one commutation in 1997, when he was serving as acting governor following the resignation of Gov. Bill Weld, Healey’s office said. Cellucci was then elected to a full term in 1998.

Healey’s office said Weld in 1991 recommended one pardon in his first year, the last time a governor has done that at that point in their first elected term.

Testing is just one component on how state lawmakers want to tackle this issue. The State Senate also set aside $300,000 to go toward prevention and testing, including test kits to give to bars.

Last fall, Ilana Katz went to a concert to watch her friend perform when the night took a terrifying turn. 

“I took two, maybe three tiny sips of the drink. I felt extremely drunk, and then I collapsed on the floor like a ragdoll like that,” she said.

She believes someone spiked her drink, and while friends and even strangers quickly came to her aid, the venue, she said, did not. The bar eventually was sanctioned for failing to rending aid to her that night, which resulted in a one-day suspension of their liquor license.

“If someone is in distress then you take care of them,” Katz said. “I could have died.”

Her husband rushed her to the emergency room, where staffers told them there wasn’t much they could do.

“He said, ‘take her blood,’ (and) they said we don’t do that unless the policy at the time was unless you’ve been sexually assaulted,” Katz said. “They will not take your blood and test it for these date rape drugs.”

Now, state lawmakers are working to change that. Earlier this year, Senator Paul Feeney from Foxborough filed a bill to create a testing protocol and standard of care for victims of date rape drug, regardless of whether sexual assault was involved. Katz is one of the victim advocates who helped craft the legislation. 

“It’s been very challenging but I’m glad to speak up. I just want things to be safer for all of us,” Katz said.

The bill would also establish a task force to track confirmed drugging cases and make recommendations for prevention. This week, Feeney secured $150,000 in the Senate to purchase and distribute drink test kits to bars across the Commonwealth. The House still needs to green light the funding.

Katz said it took enormous effort, but she was able to get a urine test through police, which she said ultimately showed several date rape drugs in her system. 

While she doesn’t blame the bar, she is asking for more awareness and accountability from bar owners.

“If someone is in distress you help them this is not rocket science and it’s not difficult,” 

One focus of the budget is higher education.

The Senate budget would let all Massachusetts students, regardless of immigration status, qualify for in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities — as long as they attended a high school in the state for at least three years, and graduated or obtained a GED.

“Massachusetts will be competitive so long as people from all over the world can come here to fulfill their dreams,” Democratic Senate President Karen Spilka said.

The budget would also create a free community college program for nursing students.

One item which failed to be included in the final Senate plan is a proposal to allow online sales of lottery tickets. The budget plan approved by the Massachusetts House would allow the online lottery games.

Healey has also signaled support for the move, citing competition for gambling dollars from online sports betting companies, like Boston-based DraftKings.

The issue will now be hashed out by a six-member House and Senate conference committee charged with drafting a final budget proposal.

Like the Massachusetts House, the Senate’s budget plan would split the anticipated $1 billion in added revenue from the state’s new “millionaire’s tax” between education and transportation initiatives.

Of the $500 million dedicated to transportation, the Senate plan would include $190 million for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority — and another $100 million for roads and bridges.

Unlike the House budget, the Senate decided against including money for universal free school meals in their budget plan. Senate leaders say they hope to take up the issue in a separate supplemental budget.

Both House and Senate budget proposals would funnel money into the state’s “rainy day” fund. The account currently has about $7.1 billion. Both budget plans would bring the total to just over $9 billion.

The House approved its $56.2 billion state budget plan in April. Healey unveiled her budget plan earlier in the year.

The budget debate comes as April tax revenues plummeted more than $2.1 billion below collections from last April and more than $1.4 billion below predictions for the month.

Healey has downplayed the gloomy numbers, saying the state remains in a strong financial position.

The House last month also approved a separate $654 million tax relief package.

The bill is aimed at helping older adults, renters, businesses and wealthier homeowners while rewriting the law that sent about $3 billion back to taxpayers last year.

The House measure would also raise the state’s estate tax threshold from $1 million to $2 million. Healey, who released her own $742 million tax relief package in February, would eliminate the tax for estates valued up to $3 million.

Spilka said the Senate plans to take up the details of its own $575 million tax relief proposal after the budget.

A final compromise budget, approved by both chambers, must be in place by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Lawmakers unanimously approved adding the redrafted Sen. Paul Feeney amendment (568) to their fiscal 2024 budget.

The measure would direct $300,000 to the Department of Public Health to bulk purchase the testing kits and distribute them to nightlife establishments, study and recommend strategies to address the rising incidence of drink-spiking, and launch a public awareness campaign about the issue.

During a speech on the Senate floor, Feeney told the story of a constituent who was turned away from a Boston hospital after she was drugged at a house party. Hospital staff told her they would not test her for drugs unless she was reporting a rape or sexual assault.

While some hospitals will do this testing, the senator said, others won’t, preventing many victims from getting the care they need.

“They shouldn’t have to play hospital roulette and guess which provider is going to test them for being involuntarily drugged at a nightclub,” Feeney said.

In addition, without testing for the drugs, it is more difficult to file a police report as there is very little concrete evidence of the incident, the Foxborough Democrat said.

He added that drink-spiking is almost always a crime followed by another crime, whether it be burglary, rape, assault or murder.

“Massachusetts has allowed a patchwork response to this and we have not caught up as a commonwealth to what’s actually happening out there,” Feeney said.

Cumberland Farms and Market Basket, for example, could be eligible for an unlimited number of so-called food store licenses for wine and malt beverages under the Rep. Daniel Cahill bill (H 253) — unlike package stores and other retailers subject to stricter alcohol license caps under existing state law, warned Robert Mellion, executive director and general counsel at the Massachusetts Package Stores Association.

“H 253 is a blueprint for a ballot question. Here we go again,” Mellion told members of the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure on Monday afternoon.

Package stores can have only nine licenses, but Cumberland Farms could theoretically control 206 licenses at all of its Massachusetts locations, he said.

“I don’t think that’s essentially fair,” said Mellion, who helped write Question 3, which voters defeated last November. It would have gradually increased the number of total alcohol licenses that retailers could own or control from nine to 18, while also decreasing the limit on “all-alcohol” licenses.

About 45 percent of voters supported Question 3, with 55 percent voting to reject it.

Local licensing authorities would decide how many food store licenses are issued, under Cahill’s bill. Nearby retailers that face heightened competition from businesses with food stores licenses would be eligible for small business support grants, according to the bill, which was sent to study last session.

Matthew Durand, senior counsel at Cumberland Farms, said the legislation reflects changing customer demands and can provide a financial lifeline for small food retailers operating on “razor-thin margins.” Cumberland Farms had pushed for a ballot question to remove the state’s license cap but then dropped its plan during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It allows us to evolve and remain competitive by selling the beer and wine that our customers clearly want to buy from us, and that they can often purchase from competitors already,” Durand testified. “We have to keep adapting to the future, as we should have to in a competitive market.”

The market won’t be flooded with new licenses, Durand said, as he highlighted guardrails in the bill that would slowly ramp up the number of available food store licenses in relation to existing licenses for package stores.

Wine and malt beverage displays could not exceed 35 percent of selling area space at businesses with food stores licenses. The bill also requires licensees to adopt an age verification and employee training policy to ensure alcohol isn’t sold to minors.

Durand, responding to a question from Sen. Walter Timilty, couldn’t immediately pinpoint the economic impact of creating the new licenses.

“It would be a very case-by-case assessment,” Durand said, signaling he’ll follow up with more information. “But it would be important. It’s a traffic driver for people who want to pick up a loaf of bread and a six-pack, or some burgers and a bottle of wine.”

The bill is “controversial” — and this category of legislation is a “minefield,” said Peter Brennan, executive director of the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association. But Brennan argued it’s also “commonsense legislation” that will allow stores to diversify their product offerings and tackle the scarcity of liquor licenses in Massachusetts.

“We’re not trying to compete with liquor stores with this new license. People go to a convenience store for certain products; we aim to satisfy every need the customer has at that moment,” said Brennan. He noted people who are hosting parties will still go to their neighborhood package stores — not to convenience stores — for “massive” quantities of beer and wine, among other spirits.

Yet the bill could spark monopoly-like conditions, Mellion also testified. Food store licensees could garner enough buying power to coerce wholesalers into giving them cheaper prices, he said.

“It literally will change the dynamics in the state, turning us into a chainstore-state,” Mellion told the News Service.

The forum, which was publicly announced last week, was expected to be notable because it would be bringing together a network and a candidate who have long sparred with each other. But the stakes raised considerably Tuesday after jurors in New York found Trump had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, though it rejected her claim that he raped her. The jury awarded her $5 million in damages.

While the civil trial verdict carries no criminal penalties, it nonetheless revives attention on the myriad investigations facing Trump, who was indicted in New York in March for hush money payments made to women who had accused him of sexual encounters. Trump is also facing investigations in Georgia and Washington over his alleged interference in the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents and potential obstruction of justice.

It also returns focus to questions over Trump’s treatment of women over the years, raising the stakes for an event at which he will be forced to respond to tough questioning from host Kaitlan Collins and the audience. Carroll is one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment over the years, allegations Trump has denied.

Trump historically has not reacted well when pressed on stage about his behavior toward women, most notably during the first Republican presidential debate of 2015, when he sparred with then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly. He later said she had “blood coming out of her wherever” when she was questioning him.

Trump has a much more contentious relationship with CNN than he had with Fox at the time. Trump has called the network “fake news” and has sparred personally with Collins. She was once barred from a Rose Garden event after Trump’s team got upset with her shouted questions at an earlier Oval Office availability.

Nonetheless, Trump’s team saw the invitation from CNN as an opportunity to connect with a broader swath of voters than those who usually tune into the conservative outlets he favors.

“President Trump has been battle-tested and is a proven winner. He doesn’t shy away from anything and faces them head on,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung.

The appearance will also serve as yet another contrast with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seen as a top rival to Trump for the GOP presidential nomination and is expected to launch his campaign in the coming weeks. DeSantis has taken a sheltered media approach, largely eschewing questions from the mainstream press while embracing Fox News, which was once a loyal Trump cheerleader but which Trump now frequently denigrates.

In response, Trump’s team has turned to new channels, including popular conservative podcasts and made-for-social-media videos that often rack up hundreds of thousands of views. His team has also been inviting reporters from a variety of outlets to ride aboard his plane and has been arranging unadvertised stops at local restaurants and other venues to show him interacting with cheering supporters, in contrast to the less charismatic DeSantis.

It remains unclear how or whether Tuesday’s verdict will have any impact on the race. Trump’s indictment in New York only seemed to improve his standing in the GOP primary, and his top rivals largely avoided commenting Tuesday night, with a couple of exceptions.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a vocal Trump critic, called the accusations “another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.” Tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy came to his defense and said he doubted a case would have even been brought if the defendant had been someone other than Trump.

Even before Tuesday’s verdict, the CNN town hall — the first major television event of the 2024 presidential campaign — had raised suspicion from both sides of the political divide.

Democrats questioned whether a man who continues to spread lies about his 2020 election loss — lies that sparked a deadly insurrection —- should be given a primetime airtime platform. Conservatives wondered why Trump would appear on — and potentially give a ratings bump to — a network that he has continually disparaged as “fake news.”

A Trump adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said CNN executives had made a compelling pitch to the former president during talks.

The adviser also noted that Trump found success in 2016 by stepping outside Republicans’ traditional comfort zone.

The former president plugged his appearance in a statement posted before Tuesday’s verdict, saying CNN was “rightfully desperate” to get a ratings bump from him.

“They made me a deal I couldn’t refuse!!!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Could be the beginning of a New & Vibrant CNN, with no more Fake News, or it could turn into a disaster for all, including me. Let’s see what happens? Wednesday Night at 8:00!!!”

Afterward, he said he wouldn’t drop his reelection bid and defied calls to resign.

Santos’ 13-count federal indictment was a reckoning for a web of fraud and deceit that prosecutors say overlapped with the New York Republican’s fantastical public image as a wealthy businessman — a fictional biography that began to unravel after he won election last fall.

Santos, 34, was released on $500,000 bond following his arraignment, about five hours after turning himself in to face charges of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements to Congress. He surrendered his passport and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

“This is the beginning of the ability for me to address and defend myself,” a cheerfully combative Santos told reporters swarming him outside a Long Island federal courthouse. He said he’s been cooperating with the investigation and vowed to fight the prosecution, which he labeled a “witch hunt.”

His lawyer, Joseph Murray, was more circumspect, saying: “Any time the federal government comes after you it’s a serious case. We have to take this serious.”

Santos said he planned to return to Washington, where the indictment is amplifying doubts about the freshman’s ability to serve. House Republican leaders are taking a wait-and-see approach, saying Santos is innocent until proven guilty. Others are reiterating previous calls for Santos to step aside.

“I think we’re seeing that the wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind fine,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who confronted Santos on the House floor at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in February.

Asked about Santos on Wednesday, Biden said, “I’m not commenting,” adding that anything he said would be construed by some interfering in the investigation. Asked if Congress should expel Santos, Biden said, “That’s for Congress to decide.”

Among the allegations, prosecutors say Santos created a company and then induced supporters to donate to it under the false pretense that the money would be used to support his campaign. Instead, they say, he used the money for personal expenses, including designer clothes and credit card and car payments.

Santos also is accused of lying about his finances on congressional disclosure forms and obtaining unemployment benefits while he was making $120,000 as regional director of an investment firm that the government shut down in 2021 over allegations that it was a Ponzi scheme.

The indictment “seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said. “Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself.”

Santos didn’t directly address the specifics of the charges to reporters, but when asked why he received unemployment benefits while employed, Santos cited a job change and confusion during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Santos, sporting his usual crewneck sweater, blazer and khakis, said little during the arraignment, which lasted about 15 minutes. Reporters spilled from the gallery to the jury box, joined by a handful of constituents.

“He should be thrown out of Congress and put in prison,” declared Jeff Herzberg, a Long Island resident who spent hours waiting to see Santos’ arraignment. “I hope that day comes soon.”

Santos was elected to Congress last fall after a campaign built partly on falsehoods. He told people he was a wealthy Wall Street dealmaker with a substantial real estate portfolio who had been a star volleyball player in college, among other things.

In reality, Santos didn’t work at the big financial firms he said employed him, didn’t go to college and struggled financially before entering politics. He claimed he fueled his run largely with self-made riches earned from brokering deals on expensive toys for wealthy clients, but the indictment alleges those boasts were also exaggerated.

In a House financial disclosure form, Santos reported making $750,000 a year from a family company, the Devolder Organization, but the charges unsealed Wednesday allege that Santos never received that sum, nor the $1 million and $5 million in dividends he listed as coming from the firm.

Santos has described the Devolder Organization as a broker for sales of luxury items like yachts and aircraft. The business was incorporated in Florida shortly after Santos stopped working for Harbor City Capital, the company accused by federal authorities of operating an illegal Ponzi scheme.

In November 2021, Santos formed Redstone Strategies, a Florida company that federal prosecutors say he used to dupe donors into financing his lifestyle. According to the indictment, Santos told an associate to solicit contributions to the company and gave the person contact information for potential donors.

Emails to prospective donors falsely claimed the company was formed “exclusively” to aid Santos’ election bid and that there would be no limits on how much they could contribute, the indictment said. Santos falsely claimed the money would be spent on television ads and other campaign expenses, it said.

But a month before his election, Santos transferred about $74,000 from the company to bank accounts he maintained, the indictment said. He also transferred money to some of his associates, it said.

Santos’ legal troubles date to his late teens, when he was investigated in Brazil for allegedly using stolen checks to buy clothes — a case that authorities say they’ve since reopened.

In 2017, Santos was charged with theft in Pennsylvania for allegedly using thousands of dollars in bogus checks to buy puppies from breeders. That case was dismissed after Santos claimed his checkbook was stolen and someone else took the dogs.

Federal authorities have separately been looking into complaints about Santos’ fundraising for a group that purported to help abused pets. A New Jersey veteran accused Santos of failing to deliver $3,000 he raised to help his dog get needed surgery.

Joined by Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe in Cambridge, Gov. Maura Healey celebrated the state receiving $3 million from the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program, funded through the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Healey called it “unprecedented funding” to allow Massachusetts to make “climate-smart investments from the Berkshires to the Cape.”

“We’re forging a new path in our energy and environmental leadership, and we’re taking a truly whole-of-government approach, which is also what the Biden-Harris administration is doing,” Healey said at a press conference Tuesday. “We plan to create working groups across our Cabinet and beyond to address economy-wide decarbonization.”

States are receiving the $3 million grants and being tasking with creating strategies to reduce air pollution and to spur economic, health and social benefits, especially in low-income communities, among other goals, according to the EPA.

As they iron out a climate plan, Massachusetts officials will rely on environmental justice forums as they interact with Black, brown and low-income communities, Healey said. Outreach will also extend to regional planning agencies, cities with more than 100,000 residents and organizations like the Massachusetts Municipal Association, according to the EPA.

Massachusetts isn’t “reinventing the wheel entirely” with its climate plan, Healey said, as the state highlights existing initiatives like the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness program meant to bolster resiliency planning in cities and towns.

McCabe said she’s confident Massachusetts will be one of the “leading states” in the grant program, which paves the way for $4.6 billion in competitive funding that the EPA will launch later this year. The pot of money will help states deliver on investments outlined in their climate plans, including clean energy infrastructure and agricultural programs, that would have been unaffordable without the federal aid, McCabe said.

“We’re going to do our best to compete as hard as we can,” Healey said, telling McCabe that “if given the chance, you will see a great return on investment.”

House Republicans want to attach spending reductions to a debt ceiling increase and have passed a debt limit plan that does just that. But Biden and congressional Democrats have insisted on passing a clean increase on the debt limit before addressing a framework for spending.

After the meeting, Biden told reporters that White House and congressional leadership staff will meet daily before Friday’s top-level meeting.

The president said he “made it clear” during the meeting “that default is not an option,” adding that he’s “absolutely certain” the US can avoid defaulting on its obligations because an “overwhelming number of members of … Congress know it would be a disaster.”

“Look, over these last few days and weeks … there’s a lot of politics, posturing and gamesmanship that’s going to continue for a while. But I am squarely focused on what matters and we’re getting to work,” Biden said in the Roosevelt Room. “As I’ve said all along, let’s discuss what we need to cut, what we need to protect, what new revenue we can raise and how to lower the deficit to put our fiscal house in order. But in the meantime, we need to take the threat of default off the table.”

While leaders in the meeting indicated it wasn’t discussed in the Oval Office, president told reporters that he is considering whether to invoke the 14th Amendment to declare the debt limit unconstitutional after Washington resolves the current debt limit issue. He suggested that litigation may take too long to make a difference in current negotiations.

“I’ll be very blunt with you. When we get by this, I’m thinking about taking a look at, months down the road, to see what the court would say about whether or not it does work,” Biden added.

The president also said he doesn’t think his aides have studied minting a trillion-dollar coin to avoid another debt crisis.

He said it’s “possible” but “not likely” that he’ll skip his upcoming foreign travel if the debt ceiling is not raised by the time he is due to leave in late May — just before the US could start to default on June 1.

Although expectations for the meeting were low, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters that he didn’t see any new movement since his last meeting with the president to discuss the matter in February.

“I would hope that he’d be willing to negotiate for the next two weeks so we could actually solve this problem and not take America on the brink,” McCarthy said outside the West Wing following the meeting.

The California Republican said he asked the president for areas where he’d engage on spending reductions, but “he wouldn’t give me any.”

Speaking alongside McCarthy, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to assuage fears of a default, stating that “the United States is not going to default. It never has and it never will. However, elections have consequences. We now have divided government. We didn’t have a divided government last year.”

However, McCarthy would not offer concrete assurances about preventing default.

“I’m speaker of the House,” he said. “I’m not the leader of the Senate. I’m not the president … I’ve done everything in my power to make sure it will not default. We have passed a bill that raised the debt limit. Now, I haven’t seen that in the Senate.”

“So,” the speaker continued, “I don’t know.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also told reporters outside the White House that McCarthy was the only leader in the meeting who would not take default off the table.

Responding to McCarthy’s reluctance to take default off the table, Biden told reporters, “I don’t know what he thinks. … I think he knows better. I think he knows that default would be disastrous.”

Jeffries said that the meeting attendees are organizing their respective teams “to have a discussion about a path forward around the budget and the appropriations process, and everyone agreed.”

“That’s progress,” he added.

Officials had indicated Biden’s goal for the meeting was to move spending negotiations onto a separate track, removing the threat of default while giving Republicans assurances he will engage in good-faith negotiations about federal spending.

Tuesday’s meeting — comprised of the four congressional leaders as well as a handful of congressional and White House aides — marked the first in-person, top-level discussions on the matter at the White House in months.

Biden had not formally held a meeting with McCarthy since February, when the two last discussed the debt ceiling at the White House.

McCarthy has signaled opposition to a short-term debt limit lift, but Biden has said the only thing he’s ruling out is default. The speaker also said that Congress will need deal in principle to lift debt limit by next week.

Heading into Tuesday’s meeting, McCarthy had more leverage than many expected him to have and House Republicans remain largely behind him.

“There isn’t a single bright line or ‘must have’ that I am married to,” South Dakota GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson, a key McCarthy ally, told CNN. “The totality of the deal has to make real and substantial change to how our country spends and borrows. There are lots of different ways to get there.”

Many House Republicans believe the speaker has built trust within their ranks over the last several months — a testament, they say, to a leader who barely clinched the speakership after a historic 15 rounds of voting.

A source close to McCarthy said the speaker — after months of listening sessions and meetings — feels comfortable with where his conference’s hard lines and negotiable provisions lie. He’s spent the last several days touching base with Republican members across the ideological spectrum and speaking with Louisiana GOP Rep. Garret Graves, who he selected to take lead as a policy adviser on this issue.

Asked what would be a victory in negotiations with the White House, North Dakota Republican Rep. Kelly Armstrong said, “Kevin getting us the best deal he can after the White House engages in good faith negotiations.”

“I recognize what I want and what can get 60 votes in the Senate may not be the same,” he added.

McConnell — known as a Senate deal maker with stronger ties to Biden than McCarthy — has signaled that he won’t come to rescue Democrats in negotiations.

“The solution to this problem lies with two people, the president United States, who can sign a bill and deliver the members of his party to vote for it, and the Speaker of the House,” McConnell told reporters after Tuesday’s meeting. “There is no sentiment in the Senate — certainly not 60 votes — for a clean debt ceiling. So there must be an agreement and the sooner the president and the speaker can reach an agreement, the sooner we can solve the problem.”

In the Senate, all but six Senate Republicans have vowed to oppose raising the debt ceiling “without substantive spending and budget reforms,” backing McCarthy’s position.

The US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress in January. That forced the Treasury Department to begin taking extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills. And Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently warned that the US could default on its obligations as soon as June 1 if Congress doesn’t address the debt limit.

A breach of the US debt ceiling risks sparking a 2008-style economic catastrophe that wipes out millions of jobs and sets America back for generations, Moody’s Analytics has warned. The impact could include delayed Social Security payments, late paychecks for federal employees and veterans and a direct hit to Americans’ investments.

“No matter how much we are prepared, I don’t think we are going to be prepared enough,” John Martin, deputy director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless in El Paso, Texas, told CNN on Sunday, days before the lifting of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allowed the government to quickly turn away certain migrants at the border, originally with the aim of stopping the spread of Covid-19.

“I wanted to emphasize more so than anything else at this point — this is a national issue,” Martin said. “We in El Paso, along with many other communities along the southern border, just happened to be at the front doorstep.”

While first implemented under the Trump administration as a response to the pandemic, Title 42 has been kept in place by the courts and used by the Biden administration to deal with migrants at the border.

That will change Thursday, when the public health emergency — and Title 42 along with it — is set to lapse amid unprecedented mass migration in the Western Hemisphere.

“This is an international issue,” Father Rafael Garcia, a priest who runs a shelter at an El Paso church whose surrounding streets have become a camp for hundreds of migrants. “And we’re just like the neck of the bottle, or funnel.”

US Customs and Border Protection has already seen an uptick in migrants crossing the border with Mexico, with more than 8,000 daily encounters, according to a Homeland Security official — a number that officials predict could reach 10,000 once Title 42 is lifted. There are around 25,000 migrants in custody, the official said, straining processing facilities that are already over capacity.

“I think that there is no question that this is going to be extremely challenging,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday in Brownsville, Texas, during a visit to the Rio Grande Valley. “I do not want to understate the severity of the challenge that we expect to encounter.”

But federal officials have long been preparing for the end of Title 42, Mayorkas stressed, saying the government was ready.

“We have a plan.”

Still, in a news conference Monday morning, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott likened the expiration of Title 42 as the laying out of a welcome mat to migrants across the world, signaling to them America’s borders are wide open.

“It will lead to an incredible amount of people coming across the border illegally,” Abbott said, adding the administration’s policies would “cause a catastrophic disaster.”

Migrant arrivals bringing border cities to the brink, advocates say

Some communities are already dealing with an influx of migrants.

Brownsville began seeing a spike about a week and a half ago, according to Sergio Cordova, a founder of the non-profit organization Team Brownsville.

The organization has been receiving about 1,000 migrants a day at its center, Cordova said. And while many quickly move on to their next destinations, dozens have slept on the streets over the last week.

Brownsville is also where a driver plowed into a group of people Sunday outside a shelter housing migrants, killing eight, including several immigrants. It was unclear whether the crash was intentional.

El Paso, which declared a state of emergency ahead of Title 42’s expiration, has about 2,300 migrants living on the streets around two shelters downtown, officials said last Thursday, describing the population as one of mixed legal status, with some who turned themselves in to US immigration authorities and others who crossed the border illegally.

That’s in addition to an estimated 330 migrants staying inside the shelters.

A survey of 258 migrants by one shelter determined about 41% were processed by US immigration authorities, while 59% had illegally entered the country, according to Martin, who told CNN there were some 950 people camped outside in his center’s alley.

“We’re still able to feed them but in all honesty, that’s not sustainable operation at this point,” he said, adding the center has moved to serving two meals instead of three, something only possible with the American Red Cross and a local food bank, El Pasoans Fighting Hunger.

More could be on the way: El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser estimated up to 15,000 migrants are in or traveling to Ciudad Juarez, on Mexico’s side of the border, waiting for Title 42 to lift.

Tijuana, across the border from nearby San Diego, has about 6,000 migrants waiting in shelters and homes across the city, according to Enrique Lucero, the city’s director of migrant affairs.

A growing number of migrants are jumping the border fence and swimming across the border, Lucero said. But the shelters’ numbers don’t drop because more migrants arrive each day, and some are of nationalities he’s never seen there before, hailing from places like Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

“We are at the brink of a humanitarian crisis,” Lucero said, adding shelters are already beyond capacity.

New York City mulls solutions

The impact of Title 42’s expiration could be felt far beyond the border — particularly in cities that have in recent months become the targets for Republican governors and officials in Southern states sending buses of migrants elsewhere.

That’s become a full-blown crisis for New York City. About 58,300 asylum seekers have arrived and been processed through the city’s shelter system over nearly a year, with more than 36,100 currently in the city’s care as of the end of April, according to City Hall.

Mayor Eric Adams has been vocal in his calls for more aid, saying the migrant arrivals in his city and others in the Northeast should be handled by the federal government. The financial burden, he said recently, is also taking a toll on the city, which on Friday was awarded $30.5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in humanitarian aid — a fraction of the $350 million the city asked for.

On Friday, the mayor announced the city would send willing migrants to neighboring New York communities, providing up to four months of shelter to single men seeking asylum already in the city’s care.

That plan was not well-received by officials from Rockland County, which would host some of those migrants. The county, about 25 miles north of New York’s northern boundary, declared a state of emergency Saturday saying it “is not capable of receiving and sustaining” the migrants New York wants to send there.

The state of emergency prohibits other municipalities from sending migrants, Rockland County Executive Ed Day said in a statement.

On Monday, the executive of neighboring Orange County also declared a state of emergency, ordering that asylum seekers and migrants would not be allowed to stay in hotels, motels or other short-term rental facilities in the county.

An internal briefing memo obtained by CNN lists New York City’s other possible “solutions” for a surge, including tents in Central Park, a retrofitted airplane hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport and temporary tiny homes, which would be built. The memo notes the city is anticipating 800 migrants will arrive in the city each day after Title 42 lifts.

Three officials in Adams’ administration confirmed the authenticity of the planning document to CNN.

Fabien Levy, Adams’ spokesperson, declined to comment on the specific proposals outlined in the document but told CNN, “While we do not discuss internal deliberations, we’ve been clear that the burden of caring for asylum seekers shouldn’t fall on any one city alone.”

Government ‘surging resources,’ DHS secretary says

The Biden administration has worked to discourage migrants from simply crossing the border, stressing the legal pathways for their entry to the US.

That includes regional processing centers the administration said last month it was setting up in Colombia and Guatemala, which are frequently transited by migrants on their way to the US-Mexico border. The government has pledged to increase the number of refugees allowed into the US and is pushing applicants to use those regional centers.

“The idea is, of course, that people will not continue their journey over land,” a senior administration official recently told CNN. “The whole idea of regional processing centers is to give people a lawful, safe, regular way to enter the United States.”

When Title 42 lifts, US officials will return to using the decades-old Title 8, under which migrants will face more severe consequences for crossing the border unlawfully, such as being barred from entering the US for at least five years. Asylum seekers who cross the border without first applying for asylum will be removed under that Title 8 authority.

Under this approach, if they attempt to cross again, they can face criminal prosecution, and the DHS promised these migrants will be removed from the US quickly and efficiently.

“Individuals who access the lawful pathways that we deliver for them will be able to come to the United States in a safe and orderly way,” Mayorkas said during a news conference in Brownsville, urging migrants not to listen to smugglers who he said were providing them misinformation.

Those who arrive “irregularly,” he said, “will be presumed, absence some limited exceptions, to be ineligible for asylum.”

In the meantime, the government is “surging resources” to “effect a greater number of removals every week,” Mayorkas said, also touting Border Patrol processing facilities like the one he visited in Brownsville, which he said had been set up within 72 hours.

The Biden administration has also deployed to the border 1,500 active-duty troops, who will join approximately 2,500 National Guard members, for 90 days, sources familiar with the planning told CNN. They will serve not in a law enforcement capacity, the sources said, but in administrative roles to free up DHS resources so US Customs and Border Protection can operate more freely in the field.

“Fundamentally we are working within a broken immigration system that for decades has been in dire need of reform,” Mayorkas said.

Abbott on Monday said his state was deploying a new National Guard unit to “hot spots along the border to intercept, to repel and to turn back migrants who are trying to enter Texas illegally.” Additionally, Abbott hoped the Legislature would pass laws later this month to give Teas more “tools” to secure the border, including making it a felony to illegally enter the state from Mexico.

The charges against Santos, filed in the Eastern District of New York, remain under seal.

The people could not publicly discuss specific details of the case until it is unsealed and spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity. The unsealing would happen when Santos appears in court, which could come as soon as Wednesday.

Reached on Tuesday, Santos said, “This is news to me.”

“You’re the first to call me about this,” he said in a brief phone interview.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. The charges were first reported by CNN.

The New York Republican has admitted to lying about having Jewish ancestry, a Wall Street background, college degrees and a history as a star volleyball player. Serious questions about his finances also surfaced — including the source of what he claimed was a quickly amassed fortune despite recent financial problems, including evictions and owing thousands of dollars in back rent.

Santos has resisted calls to resign and recently announced he was running for reelection. He said his lies about his life story, which included telling people he had jobs at several global financial firms and a lavish real estate portfolio, were harmless embellishments of his resume.

Pressure on him to quit, though, has been intense. Reporters and members of the public hounded him. He was mocked on social media and late-night television. Fellow New York Republicans demanded he resign, saying he had betrayed voters and his own party with his lies.

Nassau County prosecutors and the New York attorney general’s office had previously said they were looking into possible violations of the law.

Besides questions about his life story, Santos’ campaign spending stoked scrutiny because of unusual payments for travel, lodging and other items.

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center lodged a complaint with the Federal Election Commission and urged regulators to investigate Santos. The “mountain of lies” Santos propagated during the campaign about his life story and qualifications, the center said, should prompt the commission to “thoroughly investigate what appear to be equally brazen lies about how his campaign raised and spent money.”

In his filings with the FEC, Santos initially said he loaned his campaign and related political action committees more than $750,000 — money he claimed came from a family company.

Yet, the wealth necessary to make those loans seems to have emerged from nowhere. In a financial disclosure statement filed with the clerk of the U.S. House in 2020, Santos said he had no assets and an annual income of $55,000.

His company, the Devolder Organization, wasn’t incorporated until spring 2021. Yet last September, Santos filed another financial disclosure form reporting that this new company, incorporated in Florida, had paid him a $750,000 salary in each of the last two years, plus another $1 million to $5 million in dividends. In one interview, Santos described the Devolder Organization as a business that helped rich people buy things like yachts and aircraft.

Court records indicate Santos was the subject of three eviction proceedings in Queens between 2014 and 2017 because of unpaid rent.

Some Republicans, including those in his district, have sharply castigated Santos for his dishonesty. The Nassau County Republican Committee, which had supported his candidacy, said it would not support Santos for reelection.

Santos lost his first race for Congress in 2020 but ran again in 2022 and won in a district that is in the suburbs of Long Island and a sliver of Queens.

A local newspaper, the North Shore Leader, had raised issues about Santos’ background before the election but it was not until a few weeks after the election that the depth of his duplicity became public.

The New York Times reported that companies where Santos claimed to have worked, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, had no record of him having been an employee. Baruch College, where Santos claimed to have gotten a degree in finance and economics, said he hadn’t been a student.

Beyond his resume, Santos invented a life story that has also come under question, including claims that his grandparents “fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.”

During his campaign, he referred to himself as “a proud American Jew.”

Confronted with questions about that story, Santos, a Roman Catholic, said he never intended to claim Jewish heritage.

The Times also uncovered records in Brazil that show Santos, when he was 19, was the subject of a criminal investigation there in 2008 over allegations he used stolen checks to buy items at a clothing shop in the city of Niteroi, which is near Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian authorities said they have reopened the case.

The verdict was split: Jurors rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped, finding Trump responsible for a lesser degree of sexual abuse. The judgment adds to Trump’s legal woes and offers vindication to Carroll, whose allegations had been mocked and dismissed by Trump for years.

She nodded as the verdict was announced in a New York City federal courtroom only three hours after deliberations had begun, then hugged supporters and smiled through tears. As the courtroom cleared, Carroll could be heard laughing and crying.

Jurors also found Trump liable for defaming Carroll over her allegations. Trump did not attend the civil trial and was absent when the verdict was read.

Trump immediately lashed out on his social media site, claiming that he does not know Carroll and referring to the verdict as “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.” He promised to appeal.

Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, shook hands with Carroll and hugged her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, after the verdict was announced. Outside the courthouse, he told reporters the jury’s rejection of the rape claim while finding Trump responsible for sexual abuse was “perplexing” and “strange.”

“Part of me was obviously very happy that Donald Trump was not branded a rapist,” he said.

He defended Trump’s absence, citing the trial’s “circus atmosphere.” He said having Trump there “would be more of a circus.”

Tacopina added: “What more can you say other than ‘I didn’t do it’?”

In a written statement, Kaplan said the verdict proved nobody is above the law, “not even the president of the United States.”

Carroll, in her own statement, said she sued Trump to “clear my name and to get my life back. Today, the world finally knows the truth. This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”

It was unclear what, if any, implications the verdict would have on Trump’s third presidential bid. He’s in a commanding position among GOP contenders and has faced few political consequences in the wake of previous controversies, ranging from the vulgar “Access Hollywood” tape to his New York criminal indictment.

His GOP rivals were mostly silent after the verdict, a sign of their reluctance to cross Trump supporters who are critical to winning the presidential nomination. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, one of the few vocal Trump critics in the race, said the verdict was “another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.”

Carroll was one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. She went public in a 2019 memoir with her allegation that the Republican raped her in the dressing room of a posh Manhattan department store.

Trump, 76, denied it, saying he never encountered Carroll at the store and did not know her. He has called her a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to sell a memoir.

Carroll, 79, sought unspecified damages, plus a retraction of what she said were Trump’s defamatory denials of her claims.

The trial revisited the lightning-rod topic of Trump’s conduct toward women.

Carroll gave multiple days of frank, occasionally emotional testimony, buttressed by two friends who testified that she reported the alleged attack to them soon afterward.

Jurors also heard from Jessica Leeds, a former stockbroker who testified that Trump abruptly groped her against her will on an airline flight in the 1970s, and from Natasha Stoynoff, a writer who said Trump forcibly kissed her against her will while she was interviewing him for a 2005 article.

The six-man, three-woman jury also saw the well-known 2005 “Access Hollywood” hot-mic recording of Trump talking about kissing and grabbing women without asking.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll, Leeds and Stoynoff have done.

The verdict comes as Trump faces an accelerating swirl of legal risks.

He’s fighting a New York criminal case related to hush money payments made to a porn actor. The state attorney general has sued him, his family and his business over alleged financial wrongdoing.

Trump is also contending with investigations into his possible mishandling of classified documents, his actions after the 2020 election and his activities during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump denies wrongdoing in all of those matters.

Carroll, who penned an Elle magazine advice column for 27 years, has also written for magazines and “Saturday Night Live.” She and Trump were in social circles that overlapped at a 1987 party, where a photo documented them and their then-spouses interacting. Trump has said he doesn’t remember it.

According to Carroll, she ended up in a dressing room with Trump after they ran into each other at Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified Thursday evening in spring 1996.

They took an impromptu jaunt to the lingerie department so he could search for a women’s gift and soon were teasing each other about trying on a skimpy bodysuit, Carroll testified. To her, it seemed like comedy, something like her 1986 “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which a man admires himself in a mirror.

But then, she said, Trump slammed the door, pinned her against a wall, planted his mouth on hers, yanked her tights down and raped her as she tried to break away. Carroll said she ultimately pushed him off with her knee and immediately left the store.

“I always think back to why I walked in there to get myself in that situation,” she testified, her voice breaking, “but I’m proud to say I did get out.”

She never called police or noted it in her diary. Carroll said she kept silent for fear Trump would retaliate, out of shame and because she worried that people would see her as somewhat responsible for being attacked.

The jury awarded Carroll $2 million for Trump’s sexual abuse and $20,000 in punitive damages. For defamation, jurors awarded $1 million for Trump’s October statement, another $1.7 million for harm to Carroll’s reputation and $280,000 in punitive damages.

Tacopina told jurors Carroll invented her claims after hearing about a 2012 “Law and Order” episode in which a woman is raped in the dressing room of the lingerie section of a Bergdorf Goodman store.

Carroll “cannot produce any objective evidence to back up her claim because it didn’t happen,” he told jurors. He accused her of “advancing a false claim of rape for money, for political reasons and for status.”

In questioning Carroll, he sought to cast doubt on her description of fighting off the far heavier Trump without dropping her handbag or ripping her tights, and without anyone around to hear or see them in the lingerie section.

The lawyer pressed her about — by her own account — not screaming, looking for help while fleeing the store or seeking out medical attention, security video or police.

Carroll reproached him.

“I’m telling you he raped me, whether I screamed or not,” she said.

There’s no possibility of Trump being charged with attacking Carroll, as the legal time limit has long since passed.

For similar reasons, she initially filed her civil case as a defamation lawsuit, saying Trump’s derogatory denials had subjected her to hatred, shredded her reputation and harmed her career.

Then, starting last fall, New York state gave people a chance to sue over sexual assault allegations that would otherwise be too old. Carroll was one of the first to file.

Sen. Ed Markey is joining forces with the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. The senator finished training Monday on how to administer Narcan, which can reverse an opioid overdose.

Markey says that, with the proper training, anyone can help save someone’s life.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control, bystanders were present for more than one in three opioid overdose deaths,” Markey said. “If one of those bystanders is trained and has Narcan on hand, it could be the difference between life and death.”

Markey says $450,000 in new federal funding will be used to promote access to supportive services. He says lawmakers are also reintroducing a bill to prevent drug shipments from being smuggled into the United States.

“Right now in Massachusetts, residents living in urban and diverse communities are being forced to pay substantially more than their suburban counterparts for auto insurance,” said Sen. Pavel Payano, who filed a bill (S 703) that would change the rating formula to give no more than 75 percent weight to a person’s local area and 25 percent weight to a statewide average, aimed at tempering the rates in urban areas.

Payano based the formula off of Connecticut’s insurance rating territory policy. A 2006 report from the Connecticut Legislature’s research office said “the less weight given to territorial experience, the lower auto insurance rates are in urban areas, but with a related increase in rates in all other areas of the state.”

Testifying on the bill before the Joint Committee on Financial Services on Monday, Payano said data from the Merit Rating Board showed that communities with the highest percentage of people of color paid on average 90 percent more than drivers in less diverse cities and towns.

“These gaps persisted with both experienced and safe drivers. Experienced drivers in BIPOC communities paid 95 percent more, and experienced drivers with excellent records still paid 80 percent more than those living in majority white communities,” he said. “The disparities were so pronounced that this report found that experienced drivers with excellent records in urban communities were paying 12 percent more than drivers in less diverse communities who had a recent history of at-fault accidents or violations. These prices are not equitable or fair.”

The lawmaker cited a study done in Connecticut that he said showed the 75/25 ratio led to declines in premiums of as much as 10.6 percent in the city of Hartford, compared to prices when insurance companies weighted rates completely based on local ZIP codes as Massachusetts law currently allows. The study showed that premiums in suburban and less diverse cities and towns rose no more than 3.4 percent as a result of the shift, Payano said.

Payano’s bill is not the only legislation aiming to change insurance premium criteria. A Rep. Gerard Cassidy of Brockton bill (H 969) seeks to ensure that no insurance company can refuse to issue or renew insurance based on ZIP code, geographical area or where a driver garages their vehicle.

Outside Boston, Brockton had the highest car insurance rates in the state in 2020, with the average annual premium for Brockton drivers about $900 more than neighboring East Bridgewater, The Brockton Enterprise reported.

“By making insurance more affordable in the state’s lowest income communities it will reduce the number of uninsured drivers on the road, and it will create savings for all drivers,” Michael DeLong of the Consumer Federation of America said to the committee Monday.

But Christopher Stark, executive director of the Mass Insurance Federation, said territory is one of the “most well-established and widely used rating variables” for insurance companies.

“There’s a lot to balance in that from roadway safety and infrastructure investment in some of these areas, but when claims and exposures in certain areas are higher, the rates for those individuals are also going to be higher,” he said. “If there’s good drivers in some of these neighborhoods, that is one of the reasons why we should be more open in our underwriting criteria and less restrictive.”

Massachusetts is one of four states, along with Michigan, California and Hawaii, that broadly bans using gender, credit score and level of education when determining insurance rates, according to quote-comparison website The Zebra’s 2022 state of insurance report.

The report also shows that Massachusetts ranks 33rd on a most-expensive to least-expensive listing of auto insurance in the 50 states, with an average annual rate of $1,346 in 2022.

Frank O’Brien, vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, also argued that Massachusetts does not allow rating factors that are used “pretty much everywhere else” to determine premiums.

“Urban communities tend to have higher claims. It’s a function of congestion. If you are in an urban community, it tends to be more crowded. And when you have more congestion, people hit each other and hit things more often than they do in areas that are less urban,” ” O’Brien said. “Passage of this bill would result in non-urban communities subsidizing urban communities in the commonwealth. If that’s something that you want to do from a public policy point of view, of course, it’s just not something that is actuarially significant.”

After Stark’s testimony, Rep. Steven Owens challenged his statements.

“So, it’s the Insurance Federation’s position then that it is actually morally sound and good business practice to discriminate against BIPOC communities, is what I’m hearing,” Owens asked Stark.

“It is not to discriminate against BIPOC communities,” Stark replied.

“When an airline causes a flight cancellation or delay, passengers should not foot the bill,” Buttigieg said in a statement. “This rule would, for the first time in US history, propose to require airlines to compensate passengers and cover expenses such as meals, hotels, and rebooking in cases where the airline has caused a cancellation or significant delay.”

Biden and Buttigieg will also announce that the department is launching an expanded Airline Customer Service Dashboard at FlightRights.gov, which shows which airlines “offer cash compensation, provide travel credits or vouchers, or award frequent flyer miles and cover the costs for other amenities,” according to the official.

No airlines currently provide cash compensation for preventable cancellations or delays, just one airline company guarantees frequent flyer miles, and two provide travel credits and vouchers, according to the official. Mandates for such compensation policies already exist in Canada and the European Union, the official added.

The proposed rule would also establish what constitutes a “controllable cancellation or delay.”

The proposal from the Biden administration comes as Buttigieg fends off criticism over a chain of flight cancellations at the end of last year and beginning of this year, as well as what Buttigieg himself has called an “uptick in serious close calls” between planes landing and taking off.

Amid last summer’s flight cancellations, Buttigieg called CEOs of the 10 largest airline companies and pressed them on stress testing their schedule and improving customer service. He put pressure on the CEOs in a letter, saying he would publish charts showing which airlines guaranteed which forms of compensation for canceled or delayed flights. Seven of those airlines — including Southwest — changed their policies before they were posted, and two followed suit soon after.

Ten airlines now guarantee meals, with nine guaranteeing hotel accommodations, when a delay or cancellation is the airlines, fault, according to the DOT.

Carroll, a former magazine columnist, alleges Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the spring of 1996 and then defamed her when he denied her claim, said she wasn’t his type and suggested she made up the story to boost sales of her book. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

Attorneys for Carroll and Trump rested their respective cases last Thursday. Carroll’s legal team put on 11 witnesses in her case including the writer herself over seven trial days. Trump did not put on a defense and ultimately opted not to testify.

District Judge Lewis Kaplan gave Trump a window to change his mind about testifying over the weekend, giving him a Sunday evening deadline to petition the court to reopen Trump’s defense case for the sole purpose of allowing the former president to testify.

“He has a right to testify which has been waived but if he has second thoughts, I’ll at least consider it and maybe we’ll see what happens,” Kaplan told the attorneys.

The judge said in court Thursday evening that he ordered the precautionary measure in light of Trump’s public comments also made Thursday.

Trump, who has not appeared in the courtroom at any point during the trial, told reporters in Ireland on Thursday he’ll “probably attend” the trial.

“I have to go back for a woman that made a false accusation about me, and I have a judge who is extremely hostile,” Trump said while golfing in Doonbeg, Ireland.

No such motion was made by the deadline Sunday and his attorneys confirmed he will not attend the trial.

Kaplan is expected to instruct and charge the jury to begin deliberations on Tuesday.

“I know he wants to set up a process in which spending priorities and levels are discussed and negotiated but these negotiations should not take place with a gun, really, to the head of the American people,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday on ‘ABC This Week.’

While congressional Republicans want to tie any debt ceiling hike to spending and budget cuts, the administration has said the two issues are separate.

Yellen and her No. 2, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, both painted a stark picture of “economic chaos” if the debt ceiling isn’t lifted and confirmed that the latest Treasury data still indicates the US could default as soon as June 1st.

“If we were to default on our debt it would have a terrible impact on interest rates, and interest rates are the key thing to everybody to buy a home, to buy a car, for companies to invest,” Adeyemo said Sunday on MSNBC, warning that the current climate of uncertainty is already having an impact on the economy as businesses plan for potential catastrophe instead of future investments.

“We’re already going to start seeing the impacts on the economy of the fact that Congress hasn’t taken this off the table,” Adeyemo said.

White House economists and independent analysts have warned that the current brinksmanship and a potential future default could have a ruinous impact on the US economy, plunging the stock market and wiping out millions of jobs.

“If they fail to do it, we will have an economic and financial catastrophe that will be of our own making and there is no action that President Biden and the US treasury can take to prevent that catastrophe,” Yellen said, adding when pressed by ABC that there are “no good options” to take if Congress doesn’t act.

Her comments come as some have speculated about the possibility of President Biden invoking the 14th Amendment, or taking other extreme action, if the debt ceiling is not raised in time. “I haven’t gotten there yet,” Biden said in an interview Friday night when asked about such a move.

While a theoretical workaround, experts have also said the President unilaterally issuing debt without a ceiling increase would prompt a constitutional crisis and create severe uncertainty leading to an economic and financial crisis regardless. Previous administrations have deemed such a move as unworkable.

“There is no way to protect our financial system and our economy other than Congress doing its job and raising the debt ceiling,” Yellen said.

Adeyemo also tamped down the feasibility of using the 14th Amendment when asked about it Sunday, saying the “the only way” to “guarantee” that the US can pay its bills is to raise the debt ceiling.

Washington on the clock

Biden, whose White House has said that it will accept only a clean proposal to raise the debt limit, is set to sit down with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, and other congressional leaders on Tuesday to discuss the debt ceiling.

House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry expressed “modest pessimism” Sunday at the prospect of a debt deal coming together.

The North Carolina Republican suggested on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the ultimate compromise to raise the debt limit would look “a lot like the bill we passed out of the House,” adding that “at this stage of the game, the one key ingredient I don’t have is what the administration would come to terms with.”

That bill, which would raise the nation’s $31. 4 trillion borrowing limit by an additional $1.5 trillion and slash federal spending, is unlikely to be taken up by the Democratic-led Senate. But the measure is primarily aimed at boosting Republicans’ efforts to negotiate with Democrats.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York called the GOP proposal a “ransom note” on Sunday, labeling it the “Default on America Act.”

“Either Republicans want us to accept these dramatic cuts or accept a catastrophic default on our nation’s debt. That is what is the unreasonable position and hopefully in a few days Republicans will come to their senses and do what’s right by the American people,” Jeffries said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, meanwhile, said Republicans and the White House must explore options for raising the debt ceiling because neither position has the votes to pass.

“The reality is the bill that Kevin (McCarthy) and his colleagues passed through the House is not going to be the solution. The votes do not exist in the United States Senate to pass that. But what the president is offering is not a realistic solution either. There’s not going to be just a simple clean debt limit. The votes don’t exist for that,” Sinema told CBS on Sunday.

She said the two sides need to negotiate a solution that will “protect the full faith and credit of the United States of America.”

“We put together our budget and our tax relief package — we did so knowing that there was likely to be some drop in revenue. We’ve seen a drop. And you know, I just want folks to know we’ve accounted for that. And it remains the case that our tax relief package that we propose we stand by, we think it’s really important,” she told four reporters who were able to ask her a few questions after a State House event Friday afternoon.

Massachusetts collected $4.782 billion in taxes in April, a drop of $2.163 billion or 31.2 percent from the same month a year earlier and $1.435 billion or 23.1 percent below the most recent monthly benchmark projection, the Department of Revenue announced Wednesday.

Despite collecting $703 million less than budget chiefs forecast Massachusetts would have hauled in at this point, Healey said on Friday that the number is “not unexpected” and that “we know a little bit about what happened in April,” citing a dip in receipts from capital gains and pass-through-entities.

“It’s not to say it’s not an insignificant number, but again, it’s accounted for in next year’s budget proposal and in the tax relief package,” she said.

Healey’s comments closely echo what her budget chief, Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz, said in a statement on Wednesday.

April’s revenue swing is causing a reexamination of the affordability of pending spending measures and tax relief proposals, and may force Healey’s team to come up with a creative package to balance the state budget over the last eight weeks of fiscal 2023.

The governor ran on a campaign of promising tax relief, and singled the issue out during her election night victory speech and inaugural address.

“We’ll make Massachusetts more competitive and affordable so that people will come here, stay here, and grow their businesses here. We’ll cut taxes, fix road and bridges, invest in education and job training, and we’ll take on the climate crisis and create great clean energy jobs,” she said on election night. At her inauguration, “This will mean real relief for the people who need it most. I want to work, let’s get it done.”

Healey’s tax package combines relief for caregivers, renters and seniors with substantial estate and capital gains tax reforms long sought by business leaders. Its costs are estimated at nearly $1 billion per year. It would give taxpayers $600 per year for each dependent including children younger than 13, disabled adults and seniors. The plan would also effectively triple the threshold at which the estate tax kicks in from $1 million to $3 million and slash the short-term capital gains tax rate from 12 percent to 5 percent.

Even as some in the state are questioning whether tax relief is still feasible, Healey insisted the policy is “absolutely essential.”

“The April numbers bear further analysis obviously, there was an impact there in terms of some revenue around capital gains and some other things so that will bear more analysis. And I’m sure discussions will continue through the Legislature about actual impact for this fiscal year — but what’s important is that we’re talking about our next budget, for next year. We’re talking about a tax relief package that is absolutely essential to lowering the cost of living, making life more affordable for people in Massachusetts, and also making Massachusetts more competitive so that we’re able to keep our residents here,” she said.

Senate Democrats plan to roll out and then approve their own budget bill this month, and have avoided committing to a timeline for a tax relief debate.

Moran, who ran uncontested and with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s endorsement, won the 9th Suffolk District seat with 1,751 votes — or nearly 86 percent of all ballots cast — according to unofficial election results on the city’s website.

A South End resident and housing advocate, Moran ran to replace Jon Santiago, who resigned in February to become secretary of the Executive Office of Veterans’ Services.

“I like to say I became an ‘accidental activist’ but deep down, it’s always been in my heart to serve and I look forward to being your champion on Beacon Hill,” Moran said in his victory speech, as he vowed to focus on the housing crisis, mental health and the addiction “epidemic,” reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ rights and the “growing economic gap” among Bay Staters.

Amparo “Chary” Ortiz, assistant director of Academic Partnership at Boston University’s School of Public Health, garnered 277 votes in the primary, but suspended her campaign last month due to “personal and family matters” and later endorsed Moran for the post.

In the 10th Suffolk District, MacGregor, of West Roxbury, secured 3,098 votes in Boston — or about 46 percent of all ballots. Robert Orthman, of Roslindale, netted 2,303 votes, with Celia Segel, of Jamaica Plain, trailing behind at 1,392 votes.

MacGregor, former chief of staff to former Boston City Councilor Matt O’Malley, is poised to succeed Rep. Edward Coppinger, who resigned in February to join the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.

The district includes parts of Brookline. MacGregor’s priorities include mental health, early education and child care, housing and home ownership, the environment and climate change. The general election, representing a formality for Moran and MacGregor, is on Tuesday, May 30.

There are 160,000 jobs in human services but a declining working age population and increased service needs mean some of the state’s most vulnerable residents have less access to these services, the report says.

A sample of human services providers surveyed in October and November of 2022 reported that of their more than 13,000 full-time, part-time and per diem client-facing positions, the vacancy rate was 27 percent. In the Human Services Providers Charitable Foundation report released Wednesday, the foundation estimated there was at least a 20 percent vacancy rate across the sector.

Employers across industries are struggling with workforce shortages, but the foundation report highlights the human services sector, pointing out that even before the COVID-19 pandemic workers were leaving the industry for higher-paying jobs elsewhere.

After a decade of steady growth, human services employment declined by 10 percent between 2016 and 2020, it says. At the same time, establishments offering these services grew by about 10 percent, creating an even wider gap of providers to those in need of care.

Human services workers represent 5 percent of all Massachusetts employment and there is high demand for these services, which span from mental health and substance abuse treatment and child, disabled and elderly care services, to running community food, housing, emergency and other relief services, the report says. The direct service workforce is expected to grow by 22 percent to over 180,000 workers by 2030, with annual vacancies topping 23,000 people.

“This sector has demonstrated time and again that the residents of the Commonwealth expect more, and there is a critical need for human services workers in Massachusetts,” foundation board chair Sandra McCroom and president and CEO Michael Weekes wrote.

The foundation found the median income of human service workers is about $15,000 under the state median, at $34,273. One in six workers earn less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level and the industry has significantly more women and people of color than the state average, with 80 percent of workers identifying as women and 36 percent as people of color.

The report adds that many low-paid human services workers are moving to other industries such as education and state agencies.

“The Commonwealth’s purchasing system and its Legislature must radically infuse additional capital to fairly reimburse providers with rates supporting adequate funding to compensate workers and ensure the safety net is intact,” McCroom and Weekes said.

Several bills filed this session would increase pay for staff who work in health and human services.

A Sen. Cindy Friedman and Rep. Kay Khan bill would increase human services workers’ payment to a “livable wage” (S 84 / H 191), and Reps. Jeffrey Roy and Smitty Pignatelli and Sen. Sal DiDomenico (S 77 / H 214) would establish a student loan repayment program for human service workers, intended to encourage individuals to enter the field and maintain employment in programs.

The omnibus “nursing home bill” (H 648 / S 279) would increase pay for staff who work in nursing homes and long-term care facilities to a “living wage.” It would also establish an extended care career ladder grant program for nurses’ aides, home health aides, homemakers and other entry-level workers in long-term care, create a grant program for nursing facility supervisory and leadership training, and establish a tuition reimbursement program for certified nursing assistant training.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday issued a stark warning that the US government could run out of money to pay its obligations as soon as June 1 unless Congress raises its borrowing authority. Failure to do so could trigger a domestic and international financial catastrophe.

Yellen wrote to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that unless Congress acted, it would cause “severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position, and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests.” Experts have warned of a potential crisis on the scale of the 2008 financial meltdown, with the threat of benefits not being paid to veterans and senior citizens, and halts to military funding and vital government programs.

Her letter swiftly turned what has for weeks been a theoretical threat of a default sometime this summer into a real-time nightmare with a flashing deadline, leaving little time for McCarthy and Biden to find a way to save the economy.

McCarthy has accepted an invitation to meet with the president on May 9 about the debt ceiling, according to a source familiar, setting the stage for the high-stakes moment.

Biden on Monday invited congressional leaders to the White House next week for talks on the crisis. The political futures of both the Democratic president and Republican speaker may depend on winning the showdown, and it is unclear whether there is room for a compromise that could satisfy each of them.

Yellen’s letter may also go some way to sparking alarm on Wall Street about the situation after a period in which investors appeared sanguine that the perennially dysfunctional Congress would likely step back from the precipice at the last minute.

The gulf between the parties remains massive. Republicans want Biden to make huge concessions on spending that would fundamentally reshape his legacy. They are using the debt ceiling crisis and the possibility of a financial catastrophe to try to get the spending cuts they hope could define their time in the majority.

There is nothing wrong with Republicans using power won in a democratic election to fight for what they say they and their voters want — reductions to what they see as bloated federal spending and efforts to slow the growth of the national debt, which currently stands at more than $31 trillion. But the question they face is whether it is appropriate to use the prospect of fiscal Armageddon to advance a partisan goal.

The president is refusing to cave into their demands. He insists Congress must pass a “clean” bill to raise the government’s borrowing limit — a power only Congress has. He says he is willing to discuss spending — but only in the context of the yearly budget — a process the House GOP has barely started.

The coming debt crisis represents the most acute moment yet in a period of divided government that will show whether Washington is able to overcome the country’s political estrangement. The most sobering reality is that if the US tumbles off the debt cliff, it will be a self-inflicted disaster that would shatter America’s reputation as a haven of financial stability that is critical in cementing Washington’s global leadership.

Why the debt ceiling needs to be raised

The debt ceiling needs to be raised because the government takes in less money in revenue than it spends. It is able to borrow money at excellent rates because it has a reputation of always paying its bills. Democrats point out that government borrowing authority needs to be raised since Congress is obligated to pay for spending that it has already approved. They also cite the fact that Republicans had no trouble doing so when former President Donald Trump was in office.

With the moment of disaster approaching, the most worrying thing is that each side seems to believe that the prospect of the unthinkable will eventually force the other to blink to avoid being saddled with the blame. But there’s no evidence yet either can or will.

“This is not the way to do things, to hold the entire economy hostage to your political agenda,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday. “It’s juvenile. It’s irresponsible. It’s essentially political arson.”

But South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” that “the president and the Senate ought to come to the table and work together with Republicans and make some decisions about how we move forward and take on spending and the debt.”

McCarthy heads a radical and tiny House majority that is cast in the disruptive image of Trump. A Republican wish-list bill, which raised the debt ceiling for a year in return for measures like expanding work requirements for Medicaid and cuts to climate change spending, squeezed through the House last week by the narrowest margin possible. Even if Biden were willing to negotiate, there’s no guarantee McCarthy could pass any compromise that did not involve the president’s utter capitulation. And if the California Republican tried to pass a less confrontational bill to shield the economy with the support of some Democrats, he could be ousted by his conference.

Biden faces equally existential questions. Given that he is dealing with a Republican House that seems bent on an extreme path, he is likely to face calls in the coming days to show that he is the “adult in the room” and to make concessions in order to shield millions of Americans from harm. But in doing so, he’d show weakness that would compromise his presidency and encourage Republicans to wield the nightmare scenario of a debt default again down the road. He may also demoralize Democratic voters he needs to support the reelection bid he launched last week.

The looming political battle

The administration’s logic is that if hostage takers get concessions, they will demand more.

Much will depend on whether Democrats in Congress stand firm behind the president amid growing concern about the political impact of the crisis. It also remains to be seen whether more moderate Republicans critical to the party defending its majority in 2024 begin to demand their own concessions and for McCarthy to stand up to hardliners.

And ultimately, given that only Congress — and not the president — has the power to raise the debt ceiling, the fate of the country may rest on whether McCarthy is willing to risk his career and speakership to avert the worst consequences of this game of Russian roulette with the economy. Given that it took him 15 rounds of voting to win the speakership in January, which required multiple concessions to his party’s most extreme members, that seems unlikely.

So is there any hope that catastrophe can be avoided?

“I will take a bit of positive news out of this — they are talking, at least we have got that part going. For the last several months, they weren’t even doing that,” Jim Bianco, a financial analyst and president of Bianco Research, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. But Bianco also warned that things are already not going well in an economy that did not need the shock of a debt default.

The worry is that the May 9 meeting with Biden and McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will only entrench divides.

The White House stressed on Monday that the meeting would focus on the need for a “clean” bill to raise the debt ceiling — signaling no shift toward McCarthy’s position. The speaker reinforced his stand during a trip to Israel that he used to goad the president.

“House Republicans did their job and passed a responsible bill that raises the debt ceiling, avoids default, and tackles reckless spending,” he said in a statement on Monday. “Meanwhile, President Biden has refused to do his job — threatening to bumble our nation into its first ever default — and the clock is ticking.”

This is the kind of pre-game positioning expected ahead of a tough negotiation and is similar to that which preceded a deal that narrowly averted a debt default in 2011 between then-House Speaker John Boehner and then-President Barack Obama. But even though fiscal disaster was averted that time, the US did lose the top-level credit rating awarded by ratings agency S&P, which raised US borrowing costs for years afterward. More than a decade on, the bitterness between the parties is deeper and the GOP has marched far to the right, making the possibility of a compromise even more questionable. Some members of the GOP House majority — in which McCarthy can only lose four votes and still pass a bill — have said they will never vote to raise the debt ceiling.

In more normal circumstances, it would be possible to see a way out of the situation. In a classic Washington fudge, Biden could agree to curbs on spending in a budget negotiated with Republican leaders in the House that could then get through the Senate. Republican House members could argue that they had beaten Biden as cover for passing a “clean” bill raising the debt ceiling. The president could allow McCarthy that symbolic victory in return for getting new government borrowing authority that would spare the country and the world the impact of a debt default.

But such an outcome would require trust between the parties, a functioning relationship between McCarthy and Biden, courageous leadership and a willingness from lawmakers in both parties to cast tough votes that could come back to haunt them in primary races. None of these qualities appear in ready supply in Washington in an age of increasing polarization.

The debt ceiling will have to be raised eventually. But it’s growing increasingly hard to see how it could happen without some of the consequences of a default playing out to show both sides the severity of the political costs that subsequent misery could cause Americans.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune told reporters that Monday’s developments only underscored the need for Biden and McCarthy to get to work.

“Time’s a-wasting,” the South Dakota Republican said.

The two leaders met Wednesday at the White House state dinner, a glamorous affair attended by stars like Angelina Jolie and Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Chloe Kim.

After watching several musical performances, Biden told the crowd a story about how his sons would sing McLean’s 1971 hit “American Pie” when driving to school.

“We know this is one of your favorite songs,” he told Yoon, who drew cheers from the crowd as he launched into the classic lyrics.

Yoon received a standing ovation for his efforts before Biden presented him with a guitar signed by McLean.

The legendary singer later told CNN that he had big plans for the South Korean leader.

“I intend to go over to South Korea next year and sing it with the president, so that’s probably going to be another news story,” McLean joked on Thursday. “He wanted me at the White House to sing the song, but I’m in Australia right now on tour.”

McLean also spoke about the lasting legacy of the song, which at 8 minutes and 37 seconds held the record for the longest song to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart, until Taylor Swift re-released her hit “All Too Well” in 2021.

Of “American Pie,” McLean said: “It has a melody which is something that is pretty hard to find these days, and that’s just the opening part of the song — I mean, the song is eight and a half minutes, and it’s a rock and roll song.”

“I get a kick out of the fact that the song is still alive,” he added. “Musicians are dealing with a thing called alchemy, we deal in magic, and some of the things that we do fall on their face, and others if we’re very fortunate are magical and live forever.”

Wednesday’s events mark just the second state visit of the Biden presidency (Biden hosted French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte in December 2022).

At the Wednesday bilateral meeting, the two leaders announced a key new agreement to deter North Korean aggression, including a new US commitment to deploy a nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea for the first time since the early 1980s.

Yoon also addressed Congress in a speech on Thursday, slamming North Korea over its human rights violations and condemning the war in Ukraine.

Under the disciplinary measure approved on a 68-32 vote Wednesday, Zephyr — the 34-year-old Democrat from Missoula who last year became the first openly transgender woman elected to Montana’s legislature — will be allowed to retain her seat and cast votes remotely. But she will not be able to participate in debates. The session is scheduled to end next week.

“We have a week and a half left of the session, and we’ll be covering important topics — housing bills, the state’s budget — and every bill that goes forward for the remainder of this session, there will be 11,000 Montanans whose representative is missing, whose voices cannot be heard on those bills,” Zephyr told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront” later Wednesday.

The move by Montana Republicans comes just weeks after two Democratic lawmakers in Tennessee were expelled over their protests on the House floor demanding action to address gun violence after a mass shooting at a Nashville school. It’s the latest example of a Republican-dominated state legislature restricting who can be heard — and what can be said — about policy debates that minority Democrats in the state view as matters of life and death.

Montana House Majority Leader Sue Vinton, the Republican who sponsored the resolution, said on the House floor Wednesday that Zephyr had “encouraged the continuation of the disruption of this body, placing legislators, staff and even our pages at the risk of harm.”

“Freedom in this body involves obedience to all the rules of this body, including the rules of decorum,” she said.

Zephyr, who was given five minutes to address the chamber ahead of the vote, said Republicans who hold a supermajority in Montana’s House and Senate were using decorum as a “tool of oppression” and said his restrictions on her speech and of protesters supporting her were a “nail in the coffin of democracy.”

But, she added, “you cannot kill democracy that easily.”

Regier has refused to recognize Zephyr to speak on the House floor since last week.

The clash started when, in a floor speech opposing a measure that would prohibit gender-affirming care for minors, Zephyr said Republicans who backed that proposal would have “blood on your hands.” Studies have consistently found alarmingly high rates of suicide among transgender teens.

Regier, backed by a Republican supermajority, ruled that Zephyr’s comments violated House rules. Until Wednesday’s debate of the resolution to discipline Zephyr, he had refused to recognize her to speak until she apologized.

Pro-Zephyr activists packed into Montana’s House gallery on Monday. When Zephyr stood and held her microphone in an attempt to be recognized, the crowd erupted into chants of “let her speak!” Seven protesters were arrested.

Republican leaders canceled Tuesday’s scheduled House floor session, and announced late Tuesday night that they would consider “disciplinary action” against Zephyr on Wednesday over her role in Monday’s protests.

Zephyr defended her actions Wednesday and described the protests as peaceful.

“This was a bill that was one of many targeting the LGBTQ community in Montana. This legislature has systematically attacked that community. We have seen bills targeting our art forms, our books, our history and our health care,” Zephyr said. “And I rose up in defense of my community that day, speaking to harms that these bills bring and that I have first-hand experience knowing about. I have friends that have taken their lives because of these bills.”

She said she heard from a family whose transgender teenager attempted suicide while watching a legislative committee debate one such bill.

“When I rose up and said there is blood on your hands, I was not being hyperbolic. I was speaking to the real consequences of the votes that we as legislators take in this body,” she said.

“And when the speaker asks me to apologize on behalf of decorum, what he is really asking me to do is be silent when my community is facing bills that get us killed. He’s asking me to be complicit in this legislature’s eradication of our community, and I refuse to do so and I will always refuse to do so.”

Regier allowed three members of each party to debate the motion ahead of Wednesday’s vote.

Rep. David Bedey, a Republican, said Zephyr should have left the House floor or helped try to calm the crowd of protesters on Monday.

“Spirited debate and the free expression of ideas cannot flourish in an atmosphere of turmoil and instability,” Bedey said. “What is at stake is the expectation that any member of this body, whoever that might be, has a duty to strive to maintain decorum so that the people’s work, the work of all Montanans, can be accomplished.”

House Minority Leader Kim Abbott, the top-ranking Democrat, said she had told Regier that “there are other paths that we could take.”

“Just because you can do it doesn’t mean it’s the right choice,” she said.

The proposed legislation by a bipartisan group of US senators aims to address what policymakers, mental health advocates and critics of tech platforms say is a mental health crisis fueled by social media.

Under the bill, known as the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, social media platforms would be barred from letting kids below the age of 13 create accounts or interact with other users, though children would still be permitted to view content without logging into an account, according to draft text of the legislation.

Tech platforms covered by the legislation would also have to obtain a parent or guardian’s consent before creating new accounts for users under the age of 18. The companies would be banned from using teens’ personal information to target them with content or advertising, though they could still provide limited targeted recommendations to teens by relying on other contextual cues.

It’s the latest step by lawmakers to develop age limitations for tech platforms after similar bills became law this year in states such as Arkansas and Utah. But the legislation could also trigger a broader debate, and possible future court challenges, raising questions about the privacy and constitutional rights of young Americans.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz, an architect of the federal bill, said Congress urgently needs to protect kids from social media harms.

“Social media companies have stumbled onto a stubborn, devastating fact,” Schatz said. “The way to get kids to linger on the platforms and to maximize profit is to upset them — to make them outraged, to make them agitated, to make them scared, to make them vulnerable, to make them feel helpless, anxious [and] despondent.”

Most major social media companies already bar kids younger than 13 from their platforms, the result of a federal children’s privacy law known as COPPA. But enforcing the restriction has been a challenge.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a leading Republican co-sponsor, said existing ways of ensuring kids are not underage online are too easily circumvented. The two senators were joined by Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt.

In what could be one of the most far-reaching changes to the technology landscape, the bill seeks to create a government-run age verification program that can certify users’ ages or parental status based on identification they upload to the government system or to a third-party verifier.

Under the bill, that program would be a pilot project administered by the Department of Commerce, and participation and use of the federally managed age verifier would be voluntary. But it would represent a potentially vast expansion of the government’s role in regulating websites where age verification is a requirement.

Tech companies could still develop their own in-house age verification technology or hire third party companies to perform the verification, lawmakers said.

Violations of the proposed law could mean millions of dollars in Federal Trade Commission fines for social media companies. But it would not apply to a long list of tech products including email services, teleconferencing providers, payments companies, video game storefronts, digital newsletter platforms, cloud storage services, travel websites and online reference guides such as Wikipedia or user review sites such as Yelp.

Wednesday’s legislation could be viewed as competing with another, separate bill being developed by Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn. That legislation, known as the Kids’ Online Safety Act, will be reintroduced in the Senate “very shortly,” Blumenthal said, expressing concerns about the Schatz-Cotton bill.

“I welcome additional ideas,” Blumenthal said. But, he added, “I have some concerns about an age identification system that would create a national database with personal information about kids in the hands of Big Tech, potentially leading to misuse or exploitation. I have other concerns about a bill that would put accountability on parents rather than on Big Tech, as our legislation does.”

A new set of concerns

In response to the bill, Design it For Us, a youth coalition pushing for changes to social media in the face of mental health concerns, said lawmakers should focus on shaping the basic product design of social media platforms, rather than imposing after-the-fact usage limitations.

“We believe that any legislation addressing harm on social media should put the onus on companies to make their platforms safer, instead of preventing kids and teens from being on platforms at all,” said Zamaan Qureshi, a co-chair of the group.

Opponents of the type of proposals outlined Wednesday have also said restrictions on teens threaten their constitutional rights. For example, the tech industry and digital rights advocates have said Utah’s legislation requiring age verification and parental consent would infringe on the First Amendment rights of young Americans to access information and chill the speech rights of all Americans.

“Requiring that all users in Utah tie their accounts to their age, and ultimately, their identity, will lead to fewer people expressing themselves, or seeking information online,” wrote the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights organization, last month. “In addition, there are tens of millions of U.S. residents without a form of government-issued identification. Those in Utah would likely be age-gated offline.”

The Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents companies including Google and Facebook-parent Meta, has said age verification rules will require consumers to expose even more of their personal information to tech companies or third parties.

“That data collection creates extra privacy and security risks for everyone,” CCIA wrote in a letter to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox last month. “This mandated data collection would include collecting highly sensitive personal information about children, including collecting and storing their geolocation to ensure they do not reside outside of the state when confirming that they are of age to be using these services.”

On Wednesday, however, Cotton dismissed the privacy concerns, calling it not a “serious argument” when identity or age verification is used by government agencies and online gambling sites. He also said the bill will actually reduce the amount of personal information tech platforms effectively can collect by blocking the ability of kids under 13 to access their sites.

“If a child is, say, too young to sign a contract or too young to open a bank account in the real world, they’re too young to sign terms of service agreements and use social media in the digital world,” Cotton told reporters.

Schatz added that the bill has not been presented to social media platforms for feedback, but predicted that in short order the industry will be deploying “an army of lobbyists” to fight it.

“The tech industry is going to come at this bill, and every other kids’ online safety bill, with everything it’s got,” Schatz said. “But the burden of proof is on those who want to protect the status quo, because the status quo is making a whole generation of users mentally ill.”

“This visit is about reaffirming all that unites our two nations. It’s about a commitment to bear one another’s concerns and listen to each other’s dreams. It allows us to overcome every difficulty with great determination. That allows us to move further and faster in space, cyber, technology and all areas that matter most to our future,” Biden said in remarks at the beginning of the dinner.

Biden wrapped his short speech with a toast: “To our partnership, to our people, to possibilities, and to the of the Republic of Korea and the United States will create together. May we do it together for another 170 years.”

But Biden wasn’t the only leader who took the mic. Following a round of musical performances, his South Korean counterpart joined him on stage to give his own — a karaoke rendition of Don McLean’s “American Pie” — which received a standing ovation from the crowd.

The US president and the first lady, who wore a mauve, long sheath evening gown by Reem Acra, had welcomed guests to a White House adorned with a photo-ready hand-painted silk screen with Korean and American symbolism — a magpie, a tiger and a hibiscus for South Korea, a bald eagle, bison, and roses for the US.

Angelina Jolie and her son Maddox Jolie-Pitt, home design stars Chip and Joanna Gaines (who did not have any tips for the White House), Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman, and Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Chloe Kim were some of the noteworthy guests attending Wednesday’s fete.

Samantha Cohen, the daughter of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen and friend to the president’s granddaughter Naomi Biden from their time at University of Pennsylvania, was also in attendance.

The elaborate dinner is the result of weeks of careful diplomatic preparations, with each detail meticulously planned by a team of White House chefs, social staff, and protocol experts. Ties between the countries were front and center in the décor and on the menu, with guests dining under towering cherry blossom branches on food prepared by Korean American celebrity chef Edward Lee. The menu included crab cakes with a gochujang vinaigrette, braised beef short ribs, and a deconstructed banana split with lemon bar ice cream and a doenjang caramel.

Top Biden officials arrived decked out in their formal wear for the occasion, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his wife, cabinet secretary Evan Ryan; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who was followed closely by what appeared to be the “nuclear football”; US Trade Representative Katherine Tai; US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield; Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines; and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who offered a twirl in her gown. Other key Biden advisers Bruce Reed, Steve Ricchetti, Jen O’Malley Dillon, and Liz Sherwood-Randall were also in attendance.

Only one GOP official was spotted at the dinner: Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who told reporters he would “absolutely” support House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt limit bill and that it is “time for the White House to negotiate.” He didn’t answer a question on whether he’d bring it up Wednesday night.

Other state and local officials were on hand, including Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Wilmington Mayor Michael Purzycki, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, plus Democratic lawmakers including Reps. Ami Bera, Judy Chu, and Ted Lieu and Sen. Mazie Hirono in a traditional hanbok dress.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who is a co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign, told reporters she was “very honored” to serve in that capacity and found out when the president personally called her “earlier in the week and asked.”

There were also key family members in attendance, including Biden’s brother Frank Biden, second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s brother Andrew Emhoff, and Vice President Kamala Harris’ niece Meena Harris.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer arrived to the black-tie event in a suit. “This is as tux-y as I get,” he said, shrugging.

That’s because tax receipts are running much weaker than expected so far this season. The Treasury Department is counting on that infusion of funds, along with several “extraordinary measures,” to continue paying the federal government’s bills in full and on time until lawmakers raise or suspend the debt ceiling.

An accelerated timetable would mean that President Joe Biden and House Republican lawmakers would have to quickly ramp up their debt ceiling discussions in order to avoid a default that would send the US economy and global financial markets into a tailspin. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is trying to get his legislation to increase the borrowing cap through the chamber this week to jump start talks with the White House.

When the US hit its debt ceiling in January, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen informed Congress that cash on hand and “extraordinary measures” should last at least until early June. A variety of forecasters estimated that the so-called X-date, when the US would default, would arrive over the summer or in the early fall.

Yellen is expected to update her projection in the near future as the department gets a clearer picture of how much it collected in tax revenue for 2022 and the first quarter of this year.

But analysts are warning that it doesn’t look good. While tax receipts were always expected to be below 2021’s robust levels, they are even weaker than forecast — down around 35% so far.

That is prompting Goldman Sachs analysts to now say that an early June deadline looks “nearly as likely” as the late July deadline that they project. It noted in a Friday report, however, that Treasury has only received around 56% of the expected tax collections.

Moody’s Analytics economists had forecast the X-date would arrive in August, but they now say that it could come as soon as early June.

And Wells Fargo analysts now believe there is a “small tail risk” that Treasury could hit the X-date in early June, though they say the most probable scenario is still early August. The government will owe about $65 billion in monthly Medicare payments to health and drug plans, as well as a large share of pay for active-duty military, veterans, civil service and military retirees and others at the start of August. About $25 billion in Social Security benefits is paid out a few days later.

If tax collections are enough to keep Treasury’s coffers flush through early June, then it’s likely the government won’t default until much later in the summer. The agency will get another injection of funds from second quarter estimated tax payments, which are due June 15, and from extraordinary measures that become available at the end of the month.

Concerns grow

The financial markets are starting to get worried that Congress and the White House won’t come to an agreement. Investors are demanding historically high yields for US Treasury notes that mature in July. If the US defaults, bondholders may not be repaid the money they’re owed on time.

Also, the spreads on US five-year credit default swaps are widening, reflecting investors’ mounting concern. Credit default swaps provide bondholders with a guarantee that they’ll receive the money they’re owed if the bond issuer defaults. It becomes more expensive to buy a credit default swap when the chances of a default rise.

McCarthy’s plan would raise the national debt limit by $1.5 trillion in exchange for an array of cuts across domestic programs, including returning discretionary, non-defense funding to fiscal 2022 levels while aiming to limit the growth in spending to 1% per year.

It also would block Biden’s plan to grant student loan forgiveness, repeal green energy tax credits and kill new Internal Revenue Service funding enacted as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The measure would impose new work requirements on certain Medicaid recipients and tighten the work mandate on certain people who receive food stamps. The plan would also expedite new oil drilling projects while rescinding funding enacted to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The package has no chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate, and Biden has already said he would veto it.

But if it did become law, it would hurt the economy in the near term, according to Moody’s Analytics. It would stunt economic growth and increase the unemployment rate in 2024 compared to a so-called clean debt limit increase that does not include significant fiscal policy changes, which the Democrats want. Under McCarthy’s plan, employment would be 780,000 jobs lower by the end of 2024

The hearing was led by Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Chair of the Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight Subcommittee, and Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), the Subcommittee’s Ranking Member.

Titled “Lessons Learned: 10 Years Since the Boston Marathon Bombings,” the hearing featured comments from former Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis, former Deputy FEMA Administrator and Chief of Boston Emergency Medical Services Rich Serino, and former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Kerry Sleeper – all of whom held these positions at the time of the 2013 bombings.

Davis said technology helped lead police to the bombers and technology has improved since then. However, he warned some cities are backing away from technology that could save lives,

“There are some jurisdictions in Massachusetts that, at the local level, have stopped police from using things like facial recognition technology or access to camera technology,” Davis said.

“I understand the concerns about privacy in those situations, but we must remember as a government that the police are the security team for the poor people in our cities,” he added. “It’s scary to think that a political body has eliminated the use of an effective tool to solve crime at the local level.”

Davis and other speakers also warned that COVID-19 has cut down on face-to-face meetings between officials that provided valuable collaborations before the bombings and since. They said Zoom meetings just won’t cut it these days and long run leaders need to go back to getting together in person to establish ties that will pay off when emergencies happen.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday in a trial over former advice columnist’s E. Jean Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her nearly three decades ago in a department store dressing room. He denies it.

The trial is in a federal civil court, meaning that no matter the outcome, Trump isn’t in danger of going to jail. He isn’t required to be in court, either, and his lawyers have indicated he most likely won’t testify.

But the trial, which comes as Trump is again running for president, still has the potential to be politically damaging for the Republican. The jury is poised to hear a reprisal of stories of sexual misconduct that rocked his 2016 presidential campaign, allegations he claimed were falsehoods spun up to try to stop him from winning.

The trial also comes a month after he pleaded not guilty in an unrelated criminal case surrounding payments made to bury accounts of alleged extramarital sex.

Carroll is expected to testify about a chance encounter with Trump in late 1995 or early 1996 that she says turned violent.

She says that after running into the future president at Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman, he invited her to shop with him for a woman’s lingerie gift before they teased one another to try on a garment. Carroll says they ended up alone together in a store dressing room, where Trump pushed her against a wall and raped before she fought him off and fled.

Since Carroll first made her accusations in a 2019 memoir, Trump has vehemently denied that a rape ever occurred or that he even knew Carroll, a longtime columnist for Elle magazine.

Trump has labeled Carroll a “nut job” and “mentally sick.” He claimed she fabricated the rape claim to boost sales of her book.

“She’s not my type,” he has said repeatedly, although during sworn questioning in October, he also misidentified her in a photograph as his ex-wife Marla Maples.

Jurors are also expected to hear from two other women who say they were sexually assaulted by Trump.

Jessica Leeds is set to testify that Trump tried to put his hand up her skirt on a 1979 flight on which the two were assigned neighboring seats. Natasha Stoynoff, a former People magazine staff writer, will testify that Trump pinned her against a wall and forcibly kissed her at his Florida mansion when she went there in 2005 to interview Trump and his then-pregnant wife Melania Trump.

Jurors will also see the infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump is heard making misogynistic remarks about women, including an assertion that celebrities can grab, even sexually, women without asking.

Carroll’s allegations normally would be too old to bring to court. But in November, New York state enacted a law allowing for suits over decades-old sexual abuse claims.

The trial will also include a defamation claim that Carroll brought against Trump over disparaging remarks he made about her in response to the rape allegations.

The jurors’ names will be withheld from both the public and the lawyers, to protect them against possible harassment.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who will preside over the trial, rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers that jurors be told that the ex-president wanted to spare the city the disruption his presence might cause.

Kaplan noted that Trump has a New Hampshire campaign event scheduled for Thursday, the third day of the trial.

“If the Secret Service can protect him at that event, certainly the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the City of New York can see to his security in this very secure federal courthouse,” Kaplan wrote in an order.

Trump could still decide to attend the trial and testify. If he does not, the jury might be shown excerpts from his deposition, which was recorded on video.

On Monday, Kaplan instructed lawyers on both sides not to say anything in front of prospective jurors Tuesday about who is paying legal fees.

Earlier this month, the judge let Trump’s lawyers question Carroll for an extra hour after it was revealed that her lawyers had received funding from American Future Republic, an organization funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. In earlier questioning, Carroll said the lawyers were relying solely on contingency fees.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll, Leeds and Stoynoff have done.

In a video released early Tuesday, Biden framed next year’s contest as a fight against Republican extremism, implicitly arguing he needed more time to fully realize his vow to restore the nation’s character.

“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are,” he said in the video, which opened with images of the January 6, 2021, insurrection and abortion rights activists protesting at the US Supreme Court.

“The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer,” Biden says in voiceover narration. “I know what I want the answer to be and I think you do too. This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for reelection.”

Biden’s official declaration ends any lingering doubts about his intentions, and begins a contest that could evolve into a rematch with his 2020 rival, former President Donald Trump. He enters the race with a significant legislative record but low approval ratings, a conundrum his advisers have so far been unable to solve. Already the oldest president in history, he also confronts persistent questions about his age.

The launch comes four years to the day Biden made his 2020 bid official. That race became a mission to restore the country’s character and prevent Trump from achieving a second term.

Biden’s fourth and final presidential campaign will rest on similar themes. Just as he did in 2020, Biden is making an appeal to the nation’s ideals, particularly with the specter of Trump’s return.

His announcement video warns against “MAGA extremists” who he says are “dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love.”

“Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedoms. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights,” he says. “And this is our moment.”

But Biden’s campaign will also ride on promoting the achievements made during the first two years of his presidency — and an argument he needs more time to “finish the job.”

“I know we can,” he says.

The Republican National Committee immediately rolled out an attack ad against Biden, unveiling what it called an “AI-generated look into the country’s possible future if Joe Biden is re-elected.” The dystopian video intermixes “news” of Biden’s reelection in 2024 with faux reports of high crime, international turmoil, rampant illegal immigration and financial calamity.

Little enthusiasm for another Biden run amid concerns about his age

No major Democratic challengers are expected to emerge, and Biden is likely to enjoy an easy path to his party’s nomination. Only two challengers are in the race: author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Still, at 80, Biden is the nation’s oldest president. Polls have consistently reflected concern about his age even among Democrats.

Most Americans — and even a majority of Democrats — in recent surveys have shown little enthusiasm for another Biden run.

A series of upcoming challenges, from the ongoing war in Ukraine to a still-uncertain economy, could provide hurdles to Biden’s reelection. And now that power in Washington is divided, the GOP-controlled House has largely dashed hopes for major legislative accomplishments in the two years ahead of the 2024 vote.

The president’s tenure in office so far has been marked by key triumphs for his colossal policy agenda, including successfully pushing forward and compromising on a broad set of legacy-making, high pricetag priorities with Congress that addressed funding for the Covid-19 pandemic, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, bolstering domestic semiconductor chip production, and addressing climate change. And under Biden’s watch, the US has attempted to undo Trump’s legacy of diplomacy operating through a nationalist lens, returning to global agreements and reinforcing partnerships with allies who had been jilted by his predecessor.

But broader national challenges — sometimes outside of federal control — along with admitted administration fumbles have also acted as a magnet for GOP criticism and contributed to low national approval ratings throughout Biden’s time in office.

There was the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Struggles on border policy. Fluctuations in energy prices. Missteps with longstanding allies. Supply chain issues and shortages for everyday items and essentials like Covid-19 tests, baby formula and certain medications. Ongoing legal challenges to policies Biden’s implemented through executive authority, like student debt forgiveness. And investigations into his family, which have accelerated under the House GOP majority. And, of course, the pervasive inflation woes impacting global markets and Americans’ spending power.

In the coming months, Biden is also facing pressure to negotiate with Republican lawmakers to raise the national borrowing limit to avoid catastrophic default, a prospect that’s already caused anxiety amid an uncertain economic recovery.

In midterm elections last November, Biden’s party was able to defy historical trends by picking up a seat in the US Senate and avert a dramatic red wave in the House of Representatives. Long a self-identified centrist, Biden has mostly won over progressive Democrats through massive climate investments and steps to relieve student debt. But concerns — including from those among his party — remain over his ability to compel enough voters to stay on board for another term.

Standing up a campaign

Biden’s first public remarks since launching the reelection bid happened at a building trade union members conference in Washington just hours after his campaign video went public. Speaking to a familiar union crowd, he reaffirmed his allegiance to the key group of supporters.

“I’m here because there’s no better place to talk about the progress we’ve made together, and wouldn’t have made without you,” Biden said, underscoring that “there’s more work to do.”

While the president did not explicitly acknowledge his reelection bid, the audience did — chanting “Four more years!” while Biden was speaking.

The Washington beltway event may be indicative of what’s to come for the Biden reelection campaign strategy. The president’s campaign launch is not expected prompt a sudden change in his day-to-day schedule as commander in chief, according to advisers. Instead, it has come amid a busy week of engagements, a signal of Biden’s approach toward balancing his day job with the job of being a candidate.

“He’s just gonna keep doing his schedule,” one Biden adviser told CNN.

First lady Jill Biden, who is expected to be an active campaigner for her spouse, kept to her normal Tuesday schedule and returned to teach at Northern Virginia Community College hours after the president’s announcement video launched.

“Just like four years ago—I’m off to teach and Joe’s launched his (re-election) campaign! Let’s finish the job!” she tweeted.

The launch and the lack of any immediate campaign rallies mirror then-President Barack Obama’s reelection launch. Like Obama, Biden’s video announcement will set off a mad-dash of fundraising and build-out of the reelection infrastructure Biden hopes will win him a second term. But it won’t put Biden on the campaign trail in the near future.

Obama held his first reelection campaign rally in May 2012, 13 months after announcing his bid for a second term.

The wait for a Biden reelection rally could be just as long.

As of now, Biden advisers said the president does not intend to hold any reelection campaign rallies until Republicans have a presumptive nominee and the general election begins in earnest.

Biden does intend to leverage the power of the incumbency and the bully pulpit that comes with it. While he will forego rallies, he will continue to leverage official White House events and travel outside of Washington to tout his accomplishments, draw a contrast with Republicans and get out his reelection message.

What Biden could begin soon is a heavier schedule of fundraising. Democratic officials have laid tentative plans for Biden to begin an active fundraising schedule this summer. And he is expected to meet some major donors to his previous campaign in Washington this week.

Efforts to stand up the campaign intensified in the days ahead of his announcement.

On Tuesday, he named Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a senior White House official, as his campaign manager, and Quentin Fulks, who ran Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s successful 2022 race, as his deputy campaign manager.

While Rodriguez will formally manage the campaign, the effort will also be largely guided from the West Wing, where top aides Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti will also play central roles.

He also named a slate of campaign co-chairs, including Reps. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Veronica Escobar of Texas; Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois; DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The operation is expected to be headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, where Biden spends most weekends.

Biden had long said he planned to run again in 2024, but he had also underscored frequently that he’s a respecter of fate and that he’d have to confer with his family before deciding to throw his hat into the ring.

He told CNN’s Jake Tapper in October that he planned to process whether to run for reelection after the midterm elections.

Biden’s top advisers revealed last fall that they had been making plans to build out a 2024 run. And Vice President Kamala Harris has consistently said she expects to be Biden’s runningmate if he runs for reelection.

Taking on election denialism

Biden, a career politician with decades of experience in Washington, entered his first presidential term in 2021 in the shadow of an insurrection and pervasive election denialism that has trailed him through his time in office. His 2020 presidential campaign was built on a belief that the election was a battle for the soul of the nation following four years under Trump.

And it’s a theme he’s repeatedly tapped into throughout his time in office, going so far as to deliver an urgent rebuke of Trump and those aligned with his attempts to undermine democracy ahead of the 2022 midterms, essentially arguing that the elections were a referendum on election denialism.

Coming out of a once-in-a-generation pandemic and taking office days after a history-making act of public upheaval and violence in Washington, Biden faces two unique challenges coming into the 2024 campaign.

First, the former congressional lawmaker elected to office as the sixth youngest US senator in history will be the first incumbent octogenarian to ask the American public to reappoint him to a term that would end when he’s 86 years old.

CNN reported in August that a campaign is a heavy lift for which not everyone in the family was initially on board. But Jill Biden told CNN during an interview in February she was “all for it.”

In October, the president maintained that voters concerned about his age should see his record of accomplishments since taking office.

“Well, they’re concerned about whether or not I can get anything done. Look what I’ve gotten done,” Biden told Tapper. “Name me a president in recent history that’s gotten done as much as I have in their first two years.”

Biden will also face the unique prospect of possibly facing a former president as his potential challenger.

Trump, who has been indicted on business fraud charges in New York and remains under investigation for his actions as president, would have to defy historical odds to retake the presidency. The only US president to lose a presidential election and then regain the White House four years later was Grover Cleveland. And so far, some Republicans have been tepid about Trump’s presidential bid, especially after how poorly Trump-backed candidates did in key races in last fall’s midterms. Yet at this stage, Trump remains the clear Republican frontrunner, leading his rivals by double digits.

Biden has said he believes he can beat Trump again, but his bid does not allay recent fears from fellow Democrats uncertain about how he’ll fare against a different Republican leading the ticket.

Some top Democrats have privately told CNN they worry this could lead to a more difficult 2024 campaign against a younger, fresher Republican.

The three Democrats — Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson — were each subject to an ouster vote by Tennessee Republican lawmakers earlier this month over their protest on the state House floor to advocate for gun control, where they used a bullhorn to address those in the room.

Their act of protest and rare expulsions from the body’s Republican supermajority came days after a mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school that left six people dead, including three 9-year-old students.

Republicans accused the trio of “knowingly and intentionally” bringing “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives” without being recognized to speak, CNN affiliate WSMV reported.

Jones and Pearson, who are Black, were forced out of the GOP-controlled legislature. Johnson, who is White, was not expelled. The expelled representatives called the expulsions undemocratic and racist.

Jones and Pearson were each sent back to the Tennessee House on an interim basis after local boards in their constituencies voted to reappoint them.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, the lawmakers — dubbed the “Tennessee Three” — told CNN’s Abby Phillip that they plan to ask Biden to declare a public health emergency on gun violence.

“I think that we need an emergency response because we’re facing a crisis situation … we need the help from our national leaders because we’re in a state where the only action that our colleagues took in response to the mass shooting in Nashville was to expel the two youngest Black lawmakers and then to pass a law to protect gun manufacturers,” Jones told CNN.

It’s a big ask for Biden, who’s previously said he’s exhausted all the avenues at his disposal as president to stop gun violence.

Biden, whose party no longer controls both chambers of Congress, has urged members on Capitol Hill to act. But after the Nashville shooting, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Washington were quick to concede that Congress was unlikely to move on substantive gun control efforts.

The President has taken more than 20 executive actions on guns since taking office, including regulating the use of “ghost guns” and sales of stabilizing braces that effectively turn pistols into rifles. He also signed a bipartisan bill in 2022 which expands background checks and provides federal funding for so-called red flag laws — although it failed to ban any weapons and fell far short of what Biden and his party had advocated for.

The Tennessee trio all spoke to Biden during the expulsion vote earlier this month. In that conversation, Biden “thanked them for their leadership in seeking to ban assault weapons,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said after the conversation.

The lawmakers also thanked Biden for his “leadership on gun safety,” Jean-Pierre added.

In a statement earlier this month, Biden called the expulsions “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.”

“Rather than debating the merits of the issue, these Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence, and expel duly-elected representatives of the people of Tennessee,” he said.

Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Nashville earlier this month to advocate for stricter gun control measures and also privately met with Jones, Pearson and Johnson.

Rice’s final day will be May 26, the official said. NBC News first reported her upcoming departure.

Biden offered effusive praise for Rice in a statement Monday, writing there “is no one more capable, and more determined to get important things done for the American people than Susan Rice.”

“As the only person to serve as both National Security Advisor and Domestic Policy Advisor, Susan’s record of public service makes history,” Biden said. “But what sets her apart as a leader and colleague is the seriousness with which she takes her role and the urgency and tenacity she brings, her bias towards action and results, and the integrity, humility and humor with which she does this work. I thank Susan for her service, her counsel and her friendship. I will miss her.”

In a tweet Monday, Rice said she was “deeply grateful” to Biden for the opportunity.

“I love the team @DPC and in the @WhiteHouse,” she wrote. “There are no more dedicated public servants. I am so proud of all we have been able to accomplish together for the American people.”

Rice joined the administration as a veteran foreign policy official, previously serving as ambassador to the United Nations and as national security advisor under former President Barack Obama

As domestic policy adviser, Rice oversaw a broad portfolio, leading administration efforts to lower drug prices, curb gun violence, protect trans youth and craft a response to the repeal of Title 42, a Trump-era pandemic immigration restriction.

Rice was also considered as a possible running mate for Biden’s campaign in 2020 and for secretary of state but ultimately was named domestic policy adviser, sparing her what many feared would be a bruising Senate confirmation hearing.

Republicans would’ve likely used the opportunity to seize on the US response to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that led to the deaths of four Americans. She was also the target of attacks from Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, that she led the charge in “unmasking” — revealing the identities of Americans who were communicating with foreign officials under surveillance by the US intelligence community — senior Trump campaign officials.

Lavi, who begins his new role on May 8, has 40 years of experience in transportation safety and operations, including as a subject matter expert and technical writer to the MBTA Safety Review Panel in 2019. He was previously Executive Vice President and Chief Safety Officer for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) and Senior Director for Operations in the Office of System Safety of New York City Transit.

The MassDOT Chief Safety Officer is a new position created by Healey. In this role, Lavin will report directly to the secretary of transportation and MBTA general manager and serve as the primary representative for overall safety issues relating to transportation.

“Pat Lavin is a dedicated public transportation expert who shares our administration’s commitment to improving safety and reliability across our transportation system, including the MBTA,” Healey said in a statement. “We created this position to ensure we had a senior official coordinating efforts across all modes of transportation and driving strategies across the system to improve safety for riders and workers. I’m confident he will work closely with Secretary Fiandaca and General Manager Eng to deliver the service that the people of Massachusetts deserve.” 

Since May 2019, Lavin has served as Director of Operations Safety and Investigations at K & J Safety and Security Consulting Services, where he has been responsible for performing risk-based operational safety assessments, developing agency specific incident investigation procedures, and assisting transit agencies in addressing the FTA’s safety advisories and directives.  

In addition, Lavin managed the creation of training plans and hazard analysis for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) operations, the New York State Public Transportation Board, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA), the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA), Honolulu Rapid Transportation (HART), and the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA).  

Lavin is certified by the Federal Department of Transportation’s Public Transportation Safety Certification Training Program and Transit Safety and Security Program. He is also certified by the World Safety Organization as a Safety and Security Director.

Lithium-ion batteries, found in many popular consumer products like e-scooters and smartphones, have been under scrutiny amid increasing reports of explosive fires triggered by the batteries, which use flammable materials.

Support in New York for more safeguards comes after at least seven people were injured when a lithium-ion battery-powered scooter exploded in the Bronx early last month. The incident followed a Manhattan apartment building fire in November that injured at least 38 people and was blamed on a lithium-ion battery connected to a micromobility device.

The “Setting Consumer Standards for Lithium-Ion Batteries Act,” introduced in the US House of Representatives in late March, sets federal safety standards for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries used to power electric scooters and e-bikes and sets guidelines to protect consumers against the risk of fires caused by such batteries, according to the bill.

“Without federal legislation, and so many of these batteries come from across state lines or made overseas or made in China, we will not have a complete and strong solution,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said at a news conference Sunday afternoon.

Fellow New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand agreed, saying, “We cannot allow for faulty or improperly manufactured batteries to keep causing these dangerous, deadly fires.”

New York City has seen 63 fires and 5 deaths caused by lithium-ion batteries this year alone, Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said during the news conference.

The new lithium-ion battery safety bill was announced last month by Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-NY, who said the legislation would save lives and protect property.

Torres said the latest fire is another reminder “of the escalating threat lithium-ion batteries poses to the public’s safety,” according to a news release.

Two lithium-ion battery related deaths were reported two weeks ago in Queens, where an e-bike caught fire in a vestibule of a building and flames exploded to an upper level, blocking the exit, officials said.

New York City Fire Department Chief Fire Marshal Dan Flynn said the incident in Queens was the 59th lithium-ion battery related fire the agency had battled, according to an Instagram post from the FDNY.

The fire department advised residents to buy UL-certified devices, keep devices at room temperature and keep them away from direct sunlight, among other tips.

Senator Ed Markey and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley are set to announce the reintroduction of legislation to offer fare-free public transportation on Monday.

Markey and Pressley first introduced the legislation in 2020 and have filed the bill multiple times, but it failed to make its way through congress.

Boston Mayor Wu and LivableStreets Alliance Executive Director Stacy Thompson will join the lawmakers for a news conference at Ruggles Station at 1 p.m.

The people spoke on condition of anonymity because Rodriguez’s appointment has not been finalized and Biden has yet to formally launch his reelection campaign. CBS News was first to report that Biden has decided to pick Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, a longtime Democratic party activist, also worked in former President Barack Obama’s White House. She’s the granddaughter of labor leader Cesar Chavez and labor activist Helen Fabela Chávez.

Growing up in California she was active in campaigns, picket lines, boycotts, marches and union meetings.

She has served as Biden’s director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs since the beginning of his presidency and added the senior adviser role last June.

Rodriguez also has deep ties to Vice President Kamala Harris. She served on Harris’ Senate staff and on Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign as national political director and traveling chief of staff. She went on to be hired by Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign as a deputy campaign manager and senior adviser for Latino outreach.

Biden is expected to formally announce his 2024 reelection campaign as soon as this week, according to three people briefed on the discussions.

The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said they were not aware that a final decision on timing had been made, but that Biden had been eyeing Tuesday, April 25, four years to the day since the Democrat entered the 2020 race. The upcoming announcement is expected to be in the form of a video released to supporters.

Biden, 80, has repeatedly said he intends to run for a second term but advisers say he has felt little need to jump into campaigning because he faces no significant opposition to his party’s nomination.

“Despite serious risks of retaliation, my client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a non-partisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle,” Mark Lytle, an attorney for the IRS whistleblower, said in a letter to a handful of Democrats and Republicans leading committees in the House and Senate.

The letter, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, describes the IRS agent as “overseeing the ongoing and sensitive investigation of a high-profile, controversial subject,” which a source familiar with the matter confirmed was Hunter Biden.

A spokeswoman for Hunter Biden’s legal team declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for the IRS.

The special agent also claims to have information that contradicts Attorney General Merrick Garland’s sworn testimony before Congress on the investigation, the source familiar with the matter tells CNN.

A lawyer for the agent alluded to this information in the letter sent to Congress saying one of his client’s protected disclosures “contradicts sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee.”

Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March, Garland said, “I have pledged not to interfere with that investigation, and I have carried through on my pledge.”

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating President Joe Biden’s son since at least 2018 and have weighed bringing charges against him for tax crimes and a false statement. So far no charges have been filed. GOP lawmakers in the House, meantime, have launched probes into the Biden family finances as well as the so-called “weaponization” of federal government agencies.

According to the letter, the IRS agent can provide information that contradicts sworn testimony before Congress from a high-ranking political appointee, information about “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case” and “examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.”

Some of the disclosures would contain taxpayer and tax return information, according to the letter.

The handling of the case has been the subject of internal wrangling, CNN has reported.

Some IRS and FBI investigators and Justice Department prosecutors have been at odds about the strength of the case during internal meetings last year. Some Justice officials have raised qualms about whether the evidence is strong enough, while some agents have expressed their belief they have enough evidence to bring charges.

A final decision rests with US attorney for Delaware David Weiss, a Trump appointee who was kept on to oversee the case. Investigators widely anticipated a decision on charges to come in December after last year’s midterm election. But the investigation remains ongoing. A spokeswoman for Weiss declined to comment.

The president has said he won’t interfere in the Justice Department’s independence.

Kennedy is seeking the Democratic nomination next year. Before he spoke, there were old family pictures on display showing his father, the late Senator Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 when he ran for president.

“We need to bring this party back to the party of FDR, of JFK, of RFK and Martin Luther King and those values,” Kennedy said on Wednesday. 

Kennedy thanked cousin Anthony Shriver, his brother Douglas and his sister Courtney, among other Kennedys in attendance. 

He acknowledged, though, that many in his family disagree with him on many issues and have spoken in support of President Joe Biden running for a second term. 

“They are entitled to their beliefs and I respect their opinions on them and I love them back,” Kennedy said. 

Kennedy spoke for one hour and 48 minutes against corporate control of politics and COVID-19 lockdowns. 

He also questioned vaccines and America’s role in the war in Ukraine. 

“This is what happens when you censor somebody for 18 years,” he said.

Kennedy continued, saying he will lead a return to civility and promising to fight against political polarization. 

“I am going to take back this country with your help, the help of all the homeless Republicans, and Democrats and Independents,” he said. “You are Americans first.”

Kennedy lamented the fact that many Americans don’t trust their political leaders or the press. He also said he hopes to concentrate on the values Americans share, rather than the issues that divide them.