Will the Freedom Caucus Destroy the U.S. Economy?

The United States could default on its debt within a month, all because of concessions Kevin McCarthy made to the House Freedom Caucus to become speaker.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Congress Monday that the government could run out of money to pay its bills as soon as June 1, earlier than initially anticipated, unless the debt ceiling is raised or suspended.

While Yellen acknowledged it’s “impossible” to say exactly when federal funds will run out, “given the current projections, it is imperative that Congress act as soon as possible to increase or suspend the debt limit in a way that provides longer-term certainty that the government will continue to make its payments,” she said in a letter.

Democrats and Republicans are locked in a protracted battle over the debt limit, which the GOP has indicated it’s willing to hold hostage in order to reduce government spending. The government already hit the debt ceiling in January, and Yellen has repeatedly warned of the disastrous consequences should the U.S. default on its debt. “It’s simply a recipe for economic and financial catastrophe to think we can pay some of our bills and not all of them,” she told the Senate Finance Committee in mid-March.

House Republicans passed a bill last week that would raise the debt limit into next year, but only after drawn-out in-party negotiations. The measure is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President Joe Biden has already promised to veto it if it does. The bill includes several radical measures put forward by members of the House Freedom Caucus, such as food stamp and Medicaid work requirements, reduced funding for the IRS and climate change initiatives, and an end to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

Caucus members were some of the most vocal critics of McCarthy’s debt ceiling bill over the past few weeks. The far-right wing of the House Republicans also was primarily responsible for forcing all of us to sit through seemingly endless rounds of votes for House speaker in January.

McCarthy may have ultimately won the gavel, but only after he made multiple concessions to the House Freedom Caucus that essentially gave them all the power. These include the ability to boot him from the speakership—for instance, if he starts making debt limit deals with Democrats that they don’t like.

Democrats are refusing to compromise on the debt ceiling, and if the battle goes on much longer, the U.S. could be in serious trouble. It’s time for Congress to get a move on, but it’s unclear what McCarthy will do next.

On Monday, a judge temporarily blocked Missouri’s unprecedented ban on gender-affirming care for people of all ages, warning that the rule would cause significant harm if it were to go into effect.

Missouri state Attorney General Andrew Bailey drew widespread condemnation when he introduced an emergency rule in mid-April that would ban lifesaving gender-affirming care for minors and adults. The measure, which would be the first in the United States to ban health care for transgender adults, was set to go into effect on April 27.

The rule would require people to wait three years before they can begin receiving gender-affirming care. They would also have to attend therapy for 18 months before qualifying for health care.

In her ruling, Judge Ellen Ribaudo wrote that the people suing to block the rule would “be subjected to immediate and irreparable loss, damage or injury if the Attorney General is permitted to enforce the Emergency Rule.”

What’s more, “its broad, sweeping provisions were implemented without further fact-finding or evidence,” she said.

Bailey’s rule is stayed until May 11, when Ribaudo scheduled a hearing for the lawsuit, unless she extends her order.

“Today’s ruling marks a win for transgender Missourians over an unprecedented attempt by the Attorney General to unilaterally legislate and harm their right to self-expression, bodily autonomy, and access to lifesaving health care,” Gillian Wilcox, deputy director of litigation for the ACLU of Missouri, said in a statement.

Critics argued that Bailey vastly overstepped his position by implementing the rule instead of letting a bill move through the state legislature. “We don’t allow attorneys general to legislate, and we don’t allow them to play doctor,” Tony Rothert, an ACLU attorney, said at a hearing last Wednesday.

Bailey and many other Republicans backing bans on trans health care have argued that the various restrictions are to protect children. In reality, gender-affirming care decreases the amount of depression and anxiety that trans and nonbinary teenagers feel, and it makes them less likely to consider suicide.

Bailey also doesn’t really have a leg to stand on, considering his measure would have targeted adults too. “He’s essentially attacking the entire trans community at this point,” Robert Fischer, spokesman for the LGBTQ rights group PROMO, told the AP when the emergency rule was first announced. “It’s no longer just about children.”

Tucker Carlson thought that Fox Nation’s website “sucks” and that people don’t even watch it anyway.

In newly leaked footage, the since-ousted right-wing media figurehead is seen complaining about Fox’s subscription service during a phone conversation with an unknown figure, as they appeared to be discussing Carlson’s forthcoming interview with alleged rapist and sex-trafficker Andrew Tate. Tate has been banned from several online platforms while amassing notoriety as a crypto-peddler and proud, self-proclaimed sexist and misogynist.

“I don’t want to be a slave to Fox Nation, which I don’t think that people watch anyway,” Carlson said. “We’re gonna—because, you know, I’m like a representative of the American media now, speaking to an exile in Romania and welcoming him back into the brotherhood of journalists,” Carlson continued, apparently eager to welcome the alleged sexual criminal back into his “brotherhood.”

The phone conversation also included the two interlocutors going back and forth on whether the dress code of the interview could be toned down, to accommodate the “panicking” Tate who perhaps didn’t want to dress how he might in a courtroom, for instance.

Carlson initially resisted the request, as he wanted the interview to look more official, and not “like bro talk,” since it would air on “the nighttime show.”

“Yeah, but the majority of it, like, if we go, like, 45 minutes, it’s going to be for Fox Nation,” the caller on the other end responded.

“But nobody’s going to watch it on Fox Nation. Nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks,” Carlson retorted. “So I’d really like to just put the—dump the whole thing on YouTube,” he continued.

Carlson seems to have lost out on the fashion debate; Media Matters notes that in the subsequent interview Carlson warmly welcomed a T-shirt-clad Tate as Carlson toned himself down by wearing a sweater. Carlson, while rumored to have been fired perhaps for his insubordination to executives, was on his best behavior following his marching orders and encouraging viewers to “watch the full Andrew Tate interview on Fox Nation right after this show.”

This footage—which may have been leaked by Fox itself—is now just one more clip within a larger reel of Carlson’s past behavior while at the network. Last week, The New York Times reported on footage in which Carlson is heard discussing his “postmenopausal fans” and whether they will approve of how he looks; in another, Carlson is overheard describing a woman whom he finds “yummy.”

Folks, the kids are, yet again, alright.

Iowa high school student Clementine Springsteen got up onstage during an academic honors ceremony, posed smiling next to Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, and bellowed to the audience: “Trans rights are human rights!” In March, Reynolds signed bills banning gender-affirming care for people under the age of 18 and restricting what bathrooms transgender students can use.

Springsteen’s proclamation came during a ceremony for this year’s Iowa Governor’s Scholars, an honor bestowed on the state’s top academic performing senior students. Springsteen, of Davenport West High School, was one of 423 honorees from across the state’s 453 high schools.

Other students were seen sporting T-shirts that read “I read banned books” and “Public money for public schools.”

The display brought color to the notion that Republicans are demographically cooked, so to speak. In 2020, young voters played a fairly significant role in delivering the White House to Joe Biden—partially in excitement at the progressive agenda he initially promised, partially in outright rejection of the Republican Party’s increasingly reactionary and out-of-touch main line on abortion, the environment, civil and human rights, and guns, among other things.

The pattern has only ossified since then; two years later, Republicans set for a red tsunami, if not at least a red wave, got a ripple instead. The result gave rise to the notion that Democrats benefit when running (and delivering) on agendas that show the harmony, not mutual exclusion, of so-called “social” and “pocketbook” issues. They’re helped all the more by the contrast of Republicans insisting on both polarizing people in the realm of social issues and doing little to pad the pocketbooks of anyone who isn’t a millionaire.

And the punches keep coming, especially since the conservative Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade. All six states with abortion on the ballot in 2022 voted to affirm abortion rights. In Wisconsin, a Trump-to-Biden state, voters just flipped the state Supreme Court to liberal control for the first time in 15 years, as they considered looming challenges surrounding abortion rights and the state’s absurdly gerrymandered districts.

Last week, both Nebraska and South Carolina narrowly shut down abortion bans; a small handful of Republicans dissented, probably in recognition of how damaging the bans are electorally, let alone on people’s actual lives.

And the pattern is just as potent on guns. In Tennessee, after the school shooting that left three children and three adults dead, thousands of people, young and old, have taken to the streets demanding action. The new mobilization has stirred up new scrutiny that has since revealed more of Tennessee Republicans’ long-standing corruption, beyond expelling Black members protesting gun violence.

Newly endowed Democratic-trifecta Michigan, where Trump won in 2016, has passed a slate of progressive bills, from repealing anti-union right-to-work laws to enacting gun-related public safety measures, including universal background checks.

It’s no wonder that millennials and members of Generation Z are breaking decades-long American tradition, becoming the first generations not, in fact, to grow more conservative as they age. It’s also no wonder Republicans have only escalated their attacks on democracy, instead of actually trying to meet voters where they are. Expelling members demanding action on gun violence; punishing transgender members for the act of advocating for the people they are trying to attack; explicitly saying they can only win by suppressing the votes of young people—all this after a U.S. president himself stirred up a riot at the Capitol to try to overturn the results of an election.

The more Republicans come to terms with how deeply unwinnable their agenda is, the more they will try to win through other means anyhow—which only negatively polarizes people even more against them. It’s a death-spiraling self-perpetuation. A fearful outcome might be the continuing demise of democracy. But with more and more people being activated, mobilized, and even radicalized—from high schoolers in Iowa and parents in Tennessee to workers in Michigan and abortion voters everywhere—the conservative agenda (and desperate efforts to impose it on us by any means necessary) might fizzle out, the same way 2022’s red wave did.

The ACLU announced Monday it is suing on behalf of Montana’s first and only transgender representative, whom state Republicans censured last week after she slammed their anti-trans legislation.

The Montana House of Representatives voted along party lines Wednesday to censure Representative Zooey Zephyr. She will be barred from entering the House chamber and forced to vote remotely on bills, effectively silencing her for the rest of the legislative session.

Since being censured, Zephyr has set up office on the bench just outside the House chamber. She slammed the motion against her as a “disturbing and terrifying affront to democracy.”

“House leadership explicitly and directly targeted me and my district because I dared to give voice to the values and needs of transgender people like myself,” she said in a statement with the ACLU of Montana. “By doing so, they’ve denied me my own rights under the Constitution and, more importantly, the rights of my constituents to just representation in their own government.”

Republicans did not allow Zephyr to speak on the House floor for almost two weeks, after she spoke out against a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. She warned that taking away health care would increase suicide among trans and nonbinary kids. “I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” she said at the time.

Things came to a head last Monday after a protest broke out in the gallery following the Republican majority’s decision to continue to bar Zephyr from speaking on the floor. The House GOP has tried to cast Zephyr’s actions as disruptive, referring to her initial comments as inappropriate and disrespectful—misgendering her in the process—and accusing her of trying to start an insurrection. They then set the vote to ultimately censure her.

The ACLU has now entered the scene, following a weekend in which nearly 1,000 Montanans rallied in Missoula to express support for the representative.

“Representative Zephyr was elected by the people of her district after running on the very principles she is now being punished for defending,” Alex Rate, legal director of the ACLU of Montana, said in the statement Monday. “In his craven pursuit to deny transgender youth and their families the health care they need, [House] Speaker Regier has unfairly, unjustly, and unconstitutionally silenced those voters.”