by tyler | Oct 11, 2023 | CNN, politics
President Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled new efforts to crack down on junk fees while announcing $2 billion in savings and $140 million in consumer refunds from previous crackdowns on junk fees from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“Folks are tired of being taken advantage of and played for suckers,” Biden said during remarks in the Rose Garden.
“Unfair fees known as junk fees – those hidden charges that companies sneak into your bill to make you pay more because they can. Simply because they can. Charges that are taking real money out of the pockets of American families. These junk fees can add hundreds of dollars weighing down family budgets, making it harder to pay family bills. These junk fees may not matter to the wealthy, but they sure matter to working folks in homes like the one I grew up in,” he added, arguing that the moves will give Americans “breathing room.”
The Federal Trade Commission unveiled a proposed rule that the Biden administration says would ban businesses from charging hidden or misleading fees and require companies to show full prices upfront, preventing event ticketing companies, hotels and lodging companies, apartment and car rental agencies, and more from levying surprise or unexpected service charges.
“If this proposed rule is finalized as proposed, the FTC would have the power to impose financial penalties on companies that don’t disclose their full upfront price and secure refunds for customers who have been defrauded by companies charging hidden fees,” he said.
According to an official, the proposed junk fee rule would not limit what sellers can charge, but would require that vendors, including ticket sellers, disclose final costs upfront.
“We want companies competing on price, not on their ability to hide prices from consumers,” the official said. “So what our rule would do is require upfront pricing, so that consumers can look for the ticket seller with the best deal and an honest business and have a fair chance to compete.”
The official, speaking before the announcement, noted that while it’s already illegal for companies to hide fees on the back-end of sales, the administration stands prepared to bring enforcement action against companies charging excessive fees, so “firms should not wait for a rule to be finalized, they should act now to ensure they’re in compliance.”
In addition, the CFPB will take steps to prohibit large banks and credit unions from charging consumers for basic services like checking bank account balances, obtaining a payoff amount for a loan, or getting account information needed for applications.
A proposed rule from CFPB would also require banking institutions to allow consumers to securely send transaction data to other companies, making it easier for customers to switch providers to “ensure financial companies compete based on service quality and up-front pricing, deterring junk fees.”
Biden also noted that the CFPB “is banning bank fees and credit unions from charging fees for basic service like checking your account balance, retrieving old bank records, or looking up your balance on a loan,” calling those fees “outrageous.”
“These fees are now illegal,” Biden said, adding that there are “tens of billions of dollars in other junk fees across the economy” and he’s directed his teams to crack down there, as well.
This story has been updated with remarks from President Joe Biden.
by tyler | Oct 11, 2023 | CNN, politics
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday said that he would not dine with White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes as former President Donald Trump did last year, but avoided directly criticizing his GOP rival for doing so.
When asked how he feels about Republicans associating with Fuentes, DeSantis told CNN’s John Berman, “I reject all conspiracy theories of that nature. I think that we just have so much garbage in our society right now.”
Pressed again on whether he thinks Republicans should be eating with Fuentes, DeSantis said, “I would not do that.”
Last year, Trump hosted Fuentes, a White nationalist with well-known antisemitic views, at his Mar-a-Lago estate along with rapper Kanye West, just a week after he launched his latest White House bid. He was criticized for the dinner, including by soon-to-be 2024 Republican rivals Mike Pence and Asa Hutchinson. Trump later denied knowing who Fuentes was when he came to Mar-a-Lago.
On Wednesday, DeSantis condemned a statement by Fuentes over the weekend saying Israel’s intelligence failure is “a little suspicious in light of how the Likud government will benefit politically from this crisis.”
“That is totally outrageous,” DeSantis told Berman. “This garbage out there you hear things people are saying that the babies really somehow weren’t killed, that this is all just manufactured. I understand, there’s conspiracy theories that can go on, but we’ve got to put that garbage aside, and we’ve got to stand with Israel.”
“We have to condemn the antisemitism that has motivated these attacks and that has motivated attacks around the world,” DeSantis added.
DeSantis also indicated that he would support a clean aid bill for Israel in the wake of Hamas’ surprise attack over the weekend and Israel’s ensuing war declaration, rather than tying it to other issues, such as Ukraine aid or border security, as some Republicans and Democrats have suggested.
“What I would just simply do, is you want to help Israel, let’s just do it and don’t try to leverage other things, but that’s how Congress operates, I’ll let them do that,” DeSantis said. “This is an hour that calls for strong support.”
“Congress has been in disarray. They haven’t been producing and I think they need to get their act together,” DeSantis added.
Weighing in on President Joe Biden’s speech – in which the Democrat condemned “pure, unadulterated evil” in the Middle East – DeSantis said, “I think that those words were appreciated.” But he continued to characterize the president as “missing in action” over the weekend. At the same time, he called for “unanimity” across the political aisle in support of Israel.
“Let’s have unanimity between both parties all across this country, that we’re going to stand with Israel, not just today, not just tomorrow, but in the weeks and months ahead,” DeSantis said.
Asked how he would bring home Americans being held hostage by Hamas, DeSantis said, “We would use all available resources to rescue Americans. This is our job and our duty as the president of the United States, and we would do that, and we would work very closely with the Israelis to get that job done.”
DeSantis also called on Biden to “reverse” his policies at the southern border to protect against potential threats.
“We are vulnerable when you have all these military-age men coming in. Do you think that our enemies have not been looking at that weakness?” he said. “We know people from Russia have come, we know China and other parts of the Middle East. That is not good for the security of this country.”
In a Tuesday interview on “The Howie Carr Show,” DeSantis said Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan were both good guys, but he indicated he would likely support Jordan for House speaker if he were still in Congress.
DeSantis told Berman, however, it’s less about the speaker and more about who can deliver results.
“I like both guys. I’m friends with both of them. I voted for Jim in the past. You know, when I’m back there and my former days, but here’s the thing: The important thing is to end the chaos and start delivering results,” DeSantis said.
“If Jim can do that, great. If Steve can do that, great. But they need to get their act together because people are watching,” he said.
by tyler | Oct 11, 2023 | CNN, politics
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise has risen through the ranks of leadership during his time in Congress. Next, the Louisiana Republican hopes to be elected House speaker.
In the position of House majority leader, Scalise has served as the second-highest-ranking House Republican after Kevin McCarthy. Now House Republicans have selected him as the nominee for speaker after McCarthy was pushed out of the top leadership role in a historic vote.
McCarthy’s ouster and decision not to run again for speaker stunned House Republicans and threatens to intensify bitter divisions within the conference. While Scalise won the nomination over Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan on Wednesday in a 113 to 99 vote, it remains unclear if the caucus will be able to coalesce around a successor and meet the 217-vote threshold to secure the speaker’s gavel.
Jordan had gained a key endorsement from former President Donald Trump on Friday.
Scalise and Jordan both supported objections to electoral college results when Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s presidential win on January 6, 2021, the same day a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol seeking to overturn the election.
Scalise is a prominent figure in the House GOP conference and has long been seen as either a potential successor, or rival, to McCarthy. Before he became majority leader, Scalise served as House GOP whip, a role focused on vote counting and ensuring support for key party priorities. The majority leader, his current role, oversees the House floor and schedules legislation for votes.
The Louisiana Republican is no stranger to adversity – which he alluded to in announcing his bid for speaker.
A shooting in 2017 left him seriously wounded, with a grueling, monthslong recovery process. Scalise was shot by a gunman who opened fire as congressional Republicans were practicing for an annual charity baseball game.
In August, Scalise announced that he had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which he described as “a very treatable blood cancer.” In September, Scalise told reporters that in response to treatment, his cancer “has dropped dramatically.”
In a letter to colleagues asking for their support in the speaker’s race, Scalise referenced the shooting as well as “new challenges.”
“I firmly believe this conference is a family. When I was shot in 2017, it was members of this conference who saved my life on that field,” he said.
“I love this country, and I believe we were sent here to come together and solve the immense challenges we face. As I face new challenges, I feel even more strongly about that today.”
Scalise was elected to Congress in 2008 and represents Louisiana’s First Congressional District. He previously served in the Louisiana state legislature and holds a degree in computer science.
In 2014, Scalise faced intense blowback for having given a speech in 2002 to a White supremacist group founded by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. Scalise apologized and said in a statement that speaking to the group “was a mistake I regret, and I emphatically oppose the divisive racial and religious views groups like these hold.”
by tyler | Oct 11, 2023 | CNN, politics
House Republicans voted behind closed doors to select Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana as their nominee for speaker, but it’s unclear if he can lock down the votes needed to win the gavel following Kevin McCarthy’s abrupt ouster.
The final vote tally for the nomination was 113 for Scalise, who currently serves as House majority leader, and 99 for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan – which means Scalise fell below the threshold needed to win the speakership in a full vote on the House floor. That requires a majority of the chamber, which is currently 217 votes.
The House could hold a speaker vote as early as Wednesday afternoon.
The outcome of the nomination vote is a blow to former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who has made a name for himself as a staunch Trump ally.
Until a speaker is elected, the House remains effectively paralyzed following McCarthy’s ouster, an unprecedented situation that has taken on new urgency amid Israel’s war against Hamas. Raising the stakes further, the longer it takes Republicans to elect a new speaker, the less time lawmakers will have to try to avert a government shutdown with a funding deadline looming in mid-November.
A key question now is whether Republicans will coalesce around Scalise in a House floor vote for the speakership. In January, it took 15 rounds of voting for McCarthy to secure the gavel – and as of now, Scalise is short of the votes he needs to win.
Following the vote to elect Scalise as the nominee, several House Republicans were uncertain if they could elect a speaker quickly, given the sharp divide between supporters of Scalise and Jordan.
“It looks like Steve Scalise is our speaker designee … and I hope we can unify as a party and put a speaker in the chair,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs committee.
“We need a speaker in the chair. We’re in dangerous times right now, we’re in three major global conflicts, potentially, and we cannot afford to not have a speaker in the chair,” he added.
Earlier on Wednesday, Republicans rejected a proposal to raise the threshold required to select a GOP speaker nominee – a proposal that was aimed at preventing a messy public fight on the House floor.
The rules change would have raised the threshold to select a speaker nominee from a majority of the GOP conference – or 111 votes – to 217 votes, a majority of the full House, the number required to win the speaker’s gavel when the entire chamber holds its vote.
The speaker’s race is poised to set off a scramble to fill other spots in GOP leadership. Oklahoma GOP Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma announced on Wednesday that he will run for the position of majority leader.
Scalise has risen through the ranks of leadership during his time in Congress. In the position of House majority leader, Scalise has served as the second-highest-ranking House Republican after McCarthy, prior to the the historic vote to oust the speaker.
Scalise is a prominent figure in the House GOP conference and has long been seen as either a potential successor, or rival, to McCarthy. Before he became majority leader, Scalise served as House GOP whip, a role focused on vote counting and ensuring support for key party priorities. The majority leader, his current role, oversees the House floor and schedules legislation for votes.
The Louisiana Republican is no stranger to adversity.
A shooting in 2017 left him seriously wounded, with a grueling, monthslong recovery process. Scalise was shot by a gunman who opened fire as congressional Republicans were practicing for an annual charity baseball game.
In August, Scalise announced that he had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which he described as “a very treatable blood cancer.” In September, Scalise told reporters that in response to treatment, his cancer “has dropped dramatically.”
This story and headline have updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Oct 11, 2023 | CNN, politics
The Supreme Court’s conservatives expressed doubt at oral arguments Wednesday that South Carolina GOP lawmakers engaged in impermissible racial gerrymandering when they redrew congressional lines for a House seat to benefit Republicans.
The case is one of several racial and political gerrymandering-related lawsuits that could impact which party controls the House after next year’s congressional elections.
The district at issue was reworked in 2020 to benefit the GOP and current incumbent, Rep. Nancy Mace – one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as House speaker last week.
The South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and a Black voter named Taiwan Scott say the use of race dominated the decision-making process and that the state worked to intentionally dilute the power of Black voters. A federal court agreed, referring to the revised map as “bleaching.”
Several of the conservative justices on Wednesday suggested that map drawers had taken politics into consideration, not race.
Chief Justice John Roberts said those challenging the map had “no direct” evidence that race had predominated in the decisionmaking process. He said that there were no “odd-shaped” districts drawn and that there existed a “wealth of political data” that would justify the chosen boundaries. He said the challengers had only presented “circumstantial evidence” and suggested the court would be “breaking new ground” in its voting jurisprudence if it were to side with them.
Justice Samuel Alito repeatedly suggested that a lower court had made serious legal error in invalidating the map by relying upon erroneous expert testimony. He said the Supreme Court could not “rubber-stamp” the district court’s finding and he noted that the individual charged with drawing the maps had years of experience and had worked for both Democrats and Republicans.
Alito contended that there was “nothing suspicious” if a map drawer is aware of race as long as it is not a predominant factor when drawing lines.
Justice Neil Gorsuch said there was “no evidence ” that the legislature could have achieved its “partisan tile in any other way.”
For their part, the liberals on the court suggested that the Republican-controlled South Carolina Legislature adopted the maps by considering race as a predominant factor, in violation of the equal protection clause of the US Constitution.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that Republicans were launching “pot shots” at the experts who claimed the maps could only be explained by race. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that the challengers are not required to produce a “smoking gun” to prove their point.
The dispute comes as the justices this year ordered Alabama to redraw its congressional map to account for the states’ 27% Black voting population. That decision, penned by Roberts, came as a welcome relief to liberals who feared that the court was poised to make it harder for minorities to challenge maps under Section 2 of the historic Voting Rights Act. A federal court approved a new map last week that significantly boosts the Black population in a second district, which could lead to the pickup of a Democratic seat next year.
The South Carolina case raises different questions rooted in the Constitution concerning when a state crosses the line between permissible partisan goals and illegal racial discrimination.
The state chapter of the NAACP and Scott are challenging the state’s 1st Congressional District, located along the southeastern coast and anchored in Charleston County. Although the district consistently elected Republicans from 1980 to 2016, in 2018 a Democrat was elected in a political upset.
Two years later a Republican candidate, Mace, regained the seat in a close race. When the state House and Senate began considering congressional reapportionment in 2021, the Republican majorities sought to create a stronger GOP tilt in the district, one of seven in the state. A new map could make the seat more competitive.
After an eight-day trial featuring 42 witnesses and 652 exhibits, a three-judge district court panel in January held that District 1 amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because race was the predominant factor in the district’s reapportionment plan.
“To achieve a target of 17% African American population,” the court said, “Charleston County was racially gerrymandered and over 30,000 African Americans were removed from their home district.” The court referred at one point to the “bleaching” of Black voters out of the Charleston County portion of the district.
“State legislators are free to consider a broad array of factors in the design of a legislative district, including partisanship, but they may not use race as a predominant factor and may not use partisanship as a proxy for race,” the court concluded.
South Carolina Republicans, led by state Senate President Thomas Alexander, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that the maps had not been drawn impermissibly based on race, but instead with politics in mind.
The person who devised the map testified in federal court that he was instructed to make the district “more Republican leaning,” but that he did not consider race while drawing the lines. He did, however, acknowledge that he examined racial data after drafting each version and that the Black voting-age population of the district was viewed during the drafting process.
“If left uncorrected, the panel’s holding would place States in an impossible bind by exposing them to potential racial gerrymandering liability whenever they decline to make majority-white, modestly-majority Republican districts majority-Democratic,” argued John Gore, a lawyer for the Republicans.
Mace filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the high court in support of the Republicans, charging that the lower court “ignored one of the most important traditional districting principles – the preservation of the core of existing districts.”
Joined by other GOP members of Congress from South Carolina, Mace argued that constituent services, voter education and the seniority of long-serving members of the House are “vital interests” and that the lower court was “bent on destroying the legislatures’ duly enacted and carefully negotiated map.”
Lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund told the justices in court papers that the state impermissibly used race as a predominant factor when drawing the district.
“Using race as the predominant means to sort voters is unconstitutional even if done for partisan goals,” they argued.
They said the lower court made clear that the state “intentionally exiled more than 30,000 Black Charlestonians from CD1 predominately because of their race.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Oct 11, 2023 | CNN, politics
Concern is growing within the Pentagon over the potential need to stretch its increasingly scarce ammunition stockpiles to support Ukraine and Israel in two separate wars, according to multiple US defense officials.
At the moment Ukraine and Israel require different weapons: Ukraine wants massive amounts of artillery ammunition while Israel has requested precision guided aerial munitions and Iron Dome interceptors.
But if Israel launches a ground incursion into Gaza, the Israeli military will create a new and entirely unexpected demand for 155mm artillery ammunition and other weapons at a time when the US and its allies and partners have been stretched thin from more than 18 months of fighting in Ukraine.
Israel has its own capable industrial base and produces many of its own advanced weapons, but a prolonged ground campaign could drain the country’s stockpiles, officials said. The Pentagon’s Joint Staff and Transportation Command have been working around the clock since Hamas launched its war on Israel last weekend to identify extra stores of munitions around the world and how to move them to Israel quickly, officials said.
On Monday, a senior defense official said the Pentagon is contacting US arms manufacturers to speed up existing Israeli orders for military equipment that may have been considered less urgent just days ago. For months, the US has been working to expand its own defense industrial base to supply Ukraine and replenish US and western stockpiles, but those efforts are still ongoing.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin defended the ability of the US to support both Ukraine and Israel, as the US announced another $200 million in security assistance for Kyiv, including artillery ammunition.
“We can do both and we will do both,” said Austin on Tuesday at a press conference in Brussels, when asked whether the US can support both Israel and Ukraine militarily. “We’re going to do what’s necessary to help our allies and partners, and we’re going to also do what’s necessary to make sure that we maintain the capability to protect our interests and defend our country.”
Israel front and center at Ukraine meeting
The possibility of a ground invasion and the demands it may place on the US industrial base come as Austin and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown are in Belgium for a meeting of the contact group, an organization of about 50 countries, including Israel, that has come together to supply Ukraine.
The sudden ferocity of fighting in Gaza will put Israel front and center at the meeting, officials said, with one describing it as “the most important contact group we’ve ever had.”
In 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urgently requested ammunition for tanks and other equipment as Israel’s last ground incursion into Gaza dragged on. The request was immediately approved by former President Barack Obama, and the equipment was pulled from US reserve stockpiles in Israel.
That stockpile is not as robust as it once was, however. The US moved hundreds of thousands of munitions out of its reserves in Israel earlier this year as the US and its allies were searching the world for ammunition to provide to Ukraine, prompting concerns among Defense Department officials and crystallizing the challenges the US faces as it grapples with two wars abroad, according to a source familiar with discussions.
Ukraine is using thousands of artillery shells as it tries to retake territory occupied by Russia – far more than Israel would use in a ground incursion into Gaza – but US and western stockpiles have been diminished by the need to supply Ukraine. Netanyahu vowed to carry out a “prolonged” campaign against Gaza, one that could put extant US stockpiles under more pressure than they already face.
Defense officials are also anxious about the dysfunction in Congress and whether lawmakers will approve additional funding for US support to Israel and Ukraine.
“One thing that is really important in terms of the munitions in particular and our ability to support both potentially the Israelis and the Ukrainians simultaneously is additional funding from Congress to be able to increase our capacity, in terms of our capacity to expand production and then to also pay for the munitions themselves,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters on Monday.
A senior defense official said on Monday that the US is “surging support” to Israel, including air defense and munitions, and is working with the US defense industry to expedite the shipment of pending Israeli orders for military equipment.
The official said that the administration currently has the resources, authorities and funding it needs to continue its support for Israel, but said officials need Congress to ensure that additional funds will be available to respond to crises and contingencies as and when they arise.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Wednesday that “we’re certainly running out of runway” to support both Ukraine and Israel with the current appropriations.
“The sooner that there’s a speaker of the house, obviously, the more comfortable we’ll all be in terms of being able to support Israel and Ukraine right now,” Kirby told reporters. “Because of existing appropriations and existing authorities, we’ve been okay. But that’s not going to last forever. I think in the immediate term, right now, we can continue to support – with the authorities in the appropriations we have – Israel and Ukraine. But you know, we’re certainly running out of runway.”
