In a much awaited decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this morning that the admissions practices at both Harvard University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill are unconstitutional because of how race is in their decisions.
The entirety of the ruling is available here.
Examples of initial analyses of the ruling are available here, here, and here.
After turning back approximately a dozen amendments during the floor debate last night, the Senate adopted by a 63 to 36 vote the debt limit bill, clearing it for the President’s signature later today. The Treasury Department had been warning that the nation would lose its ability to pay all of its bills next Monday. The House cleared the bill earlier this week.
While the fight over the debt limit has become much more partisan and political recently, this year’s fight represents the closest the nation has come to actually defaulting on its debts.
After much back-and-forth and a final round of negotiations last weekend, the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) came to an agreement on a debt ceiling package earlier this week. Yesterday evening, the House passed the legislation in a bipartisan manner, by a vote of 314 – 117. The Senate must now take it up.
While its details are still being digested, the package contains the following provisions, among others:
The legislation also includes a package of recissions, the details of which are still being assessed. We will share additional information about them as they come to light.
Not surprisingly, there was drama in the House before the floor vote, as some members of the hard-right wing of the House Republicans blasted the deal. There were questions about whether, procedurally, McCarthy had enough support to even bring the bill to the floor.
As noted above, the bill now goes to the Senate, where both Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) urged support for it among their colleagues.
The House of Representatives is still making history today, failing to elect a Speaker after a fifth round of voting, which concluded just a few minutes ago. The last time the voting for Speaker among the House Members went beyond the first ballot was a hundred years ago. The level of opposition to Kevin McCarthy of California among the House Republicans actually grew between the first and the fifth votes.
As expected, the new 118th House of Representatives gathered earlier today to elect the new Speaker. Before the new Members gathered to vote, all of Washington knew that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who was the Minority Leader in the 117th Congress, was going to have a difficult time garnering enough support from the most hard-core rightwing of the House Republican caucus. The first vote for Speaker demonstrated exactly how difficult a path McCarthy faces.
With 218 voted needed to become Speaker, McCarthy received even fewer votes that many of his supporters had predicted: he received 203 votes, with 19 House Republicans opposing his Speakership. In fact, the new Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York received more votes for Speaker, with a total of 212. For the first time in 100 years, the vote for Speaker is now headed to a second ballot.