House of Representatives begin debate on debt ceiling bill The House of Representatives has started its debate ahead of the chamber’s final vote on the debt ceiling bill. We will be bringing you all the latest details. Interim Summary It is 6pm in Washington DC where House lawmakers are set to vote a final round on the debt ceiling bill tonight. Here is where things stand: The House is now in recess subject to the call of the chair. The House will reconvene again at 7:15pm for one hour of debate that will be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats before voting on the bill. Donald Trump was captured on tape acknowledging that he kept a classified Pentagon document regarding a potential attack on Iran, CNN reports. According to report, federal prosecutors obtained the recording which was made during a meeting in summer 2021 at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that Trump made comments that suggested that he would like to share the information but that he was aware of his post-presidency limitations surrounding classified records. House speaker Kevin McCarthy has announced that he is putting together a commission to look into budget cuts in entitlement programs. In an interview with Fox News, McCarthy said: “I’m going to announce a commission coming forward from the speaker from…both sides of the aisle. We only got to look at 11% of the budget to find these cuts. We have to look at the entire budget.” A new poll, released a week after Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign announcement, shows Donald Trump with a narrowing lead. The Florida governor shouldn’t get too excited, though: Morning Consult puts the former president up by 34 points, 56%-22% and notes that though “Trump’s lead has shrunk … by 10 points … since mid-May, much of that dip came before DeSantis officially began his bid.” At a rally in Iowa yesterday, the Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis used as his walkout music a song long used for the same purpose by Hulk Hogan, one of the most famous names in wrestling. DeSantis’s recent memoir is called The Courage to be Free. At 44 the Florida governor is a member of Gen X whose childhood coincided with Hogan’s heyday as a star of World Wrestling Entertainment. Mike Pence is expected to launch his 2024 presidential bid within the next two weeks, The Messenger reports. The outlet reports that Pence is scheduled to headline a CNN town hall, in Des Moines, Iowa (a crucial early-voting state) on June 7. Four Republicans familiar with the matter told The Messenger that Pence’s team have begun ramping up their outreach two weeks ago and have told supporters that his presidential campaign launch is imminent and is set to take place in mid-June. The debt ceiling bill will become law, Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Wednesday ahead of a final House vote later today on the bill which if passed, will move next into Senate. “It’s going to become law,” McCarthy told reporters, Reuters reports. New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said that she plans to vote against the debt limit bill. “My red line has already been surpassed … I mean, where do we start? [No] clean debt ceiling. Work requirements. Cuts to programs. I would never – I would never – vote for that,” said Ocasio-Cortez. Republican representative Andy Biggs said that he is “concerned” about Kevin McCarthy’s speakership amid his dissatisfaction with the tentative bill. In a tweet on Wednesday, Biggs wrote: “I’m concerned about the trajectory of Speaker McCarthy’s term. The McCarthy-Biden debt ceiling deal represents a new coalition where Speaker McCarthy will go to Democrats more than his own party. That’s concerning to me and should be concerning to the GOP conference.” Speaking with Fox News, McCarthy his concern, saying, that he is worried about the “trajectory of the term because does this represent a new coalition and a new trajectory where the speaker is going to go to the Democrats more and more to try to put forward what he thinks his agenda ought to be? That’s really concerning to me and I think it should be concerning to members of our conference.” Transport secretary Pete Buttigieg has weighed in on the debate surrounding the debt ceiling deal, saying that "no one’s going to get everything they want when you have a negotiation like this.” During an interview with NBC host Chuck Todd on Meet The Press, Todd asked Buttigieg what responsibility he believes Democrats have to pass the bill for president Joe Biden. Buttigieg replied: “Obviously, we all would have loved to see a clean bill that separated the budget conversation from the default conversation but also we’re in a moment of divided government where no one side, no one party is going to get everything that they want… No one’s going to get everything they want when you have a negotiation like this, but this is one that we believe in that we think is the right way forward that also allows us to move on to the next conversation, putting the terrible and unacceptable specter default behind us.” When asked whether Congress and the Biden administration are “mainstreaming” using debt ceiling as a budget negotiation tool, Buttigieg replied: “Obviously, we didn’t ask for this situation that some of the more extreme voices in the House GOP put this country into … most reasonable people could agree, the best way to handle the budget negotiations is through the regular order process that the law and the Constitution set out.” Donald Trump has promised to strip away birthright US citizenship if he gets elected into office again. In a video posted onto social media yesterday, Trump said if he becomes president, he will sign an executive order that will make sure children of undocumented migrants “will not receive automatic US citizenship.” He added that his order "will “choke off a major incentive for continued illegal immigration, deter more migrants from coming and encourage many of the aliens Joe Biden has unlawfully let into our country to go.” Trump’s reiteration of birthright removal comes 125 years after the supreme court settled the issue. During his first presidential run he condemned the right by inaccurately saying, “We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States ... with all of those benefits. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end,” as over 30 countries currently offer birthright citizenship. House in recess subject to the call of the chair The House is now in recess subject to the call of the chair. The House will reconvene again at 7:15pm for one hour of debate that will be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats before voting on the bill. The special counsel investigating former president Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results is looking into Trump’s firing of a cybersecurity official whose office called the election “the most secure in American history,” according to the New York Times. Reuters reports: The US special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat is examining his firing of a cybersecurity official whose office said the vote was secure, the New York Times said. Jack Smith, who is also investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents, has subpoenaed former Trump White House staffers as well as Christopher Krebs, who oversaw the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) under Trump, the Times said, citing unnamed sources. Trump fired Krebs in November 2020, days after Cisa issued a statement calling the 3 November election “the most secure in American history”, as the then-president made his unsupported accusations that the vote was rigged. Cisa, part of the Department of Homeland Security, works to protect US elections. Krebs told associates at the time he expected to be fired. Representatives for Smith declined to comment on the Times report. Representatives for Krebs and Trump could not be reached for comment. The debt ceiling bill has passed the first procedural hurdle in the House, with 52 Democrats bailing out the Republican lawmakers. In addition to 52 Democrats voting yes for the rule governing debate in the chamber, 189 Republicans voted yes. Voting no were 158 Democrats and 29 Republicans. One more hour of debate is left before the final voting round commences later tonight. Trump remarks on classified document reportedly caught on tape Donald Trump was captured on tape acknowledging that he kept a classified Pentagon document regarding a potential attack on Iran, CNN reports. According to report, federal prosecutors obtained the recording which was made during a meeting in summer 2021 at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that Trump made comments that suggested that he would like to share the information but that he was aware of his post-presidency limitations surrounding classified records. The report also cited sources saying that the meeting attendees did not have security clearance. Attendees included two people working on the autobiography of Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, in addition to former Trump aides including communications specialist Margo Martin. According to sources, the recording is an “important” piece of evidence in a potential case against Trump over his handling over classified documents following his presidency. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell echoed similar sentiments alongside Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, saying that he will support the debt ceiling bill once it reaches the Senate chamber. “House Republicans’ unity gave them the upper hand, they used it to secure a much needed step in the right direction. When this agreement reaches the Senate, I’ll be proud to support it without delay,” said McConnell. Texas governor Greg Abbott has declared John Scott as the state’s temporary attorney general following the state House’s vote to impeach Republican attorney general Ken Paxton. The decision to impeach Paxton comes as a result of years of allegations including corruption, bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust. According to the Texas Tribune, investigators testified at the state House general investigating committee, saying that they believed Paxton wrongly used official funds and abused his authority to assist a friend and financial backer. In response to the impeachment, Paxton said it was an attempt to “overthrow the will of the people and disenfranchise the voters of our state” and that the charges are based on “hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims,” the Associated Press reports. Meanwhile, Abbott, who has largely been silent during the whole ordeal, said in a statement, “John Scott has the background and experience needed to step in as a short-term interim Attorney General during the time the Attorney General has been suspended from duty,” the Associated Press added. New York Republican representative Marcus Molinaro hailed the tentative bill, calling it “an agreement [that] will move this nation forward.” “The Fiscal Responsibility Act takes important action, not at all to punish our most vulnerable. In fact, it takes real steps to ensure those most vulnerable among us are protected and served and have access to the support that they deserve, and by the way, find their way to work. This bill hold states like New York and others accountable for waving restrictions, expanding access, not to help the most vulnerable, but to bloat and to grow and to increase state government. Because of action states have taken, the most vulnerable are left to fend for themselves… States like New York increased their infrastructure, their government and leveraged federal taxpayer dollars, not to benefit those who need the help the most but to benefit state government. And this bill starts a very important step of holding states accountable… We have an opportunity here to make a measurable difference in the lives of those who struggle the most. And this is an effort to ensure that that happens.” Texas Republican representative Chip Roy lashed out against Democrats over the tentative bill during the House debate, saying: “I don’t wanna hear a whole hell of a lot about what we’re doing to devastate American families with rampant inflation, because we keep spending money we don’t have. To my colleagues on this side of the aisle, my beef isn’t that I don’t understand the struggle with the negotiators against that kind of reasoning. My beef is that you cut a deal that shouldn’t have been cut...” House of Representatives begin debate on debt ceiling bill The House of Representatives has started its debate ahead of the chamber’s final vote on the debt ceiling bill. We will be bringing you all the latest details.