Democrats reach deal to pass major climate bill after Sinema says yes – US politics live

Republicans are on the defensive in Congress after Democrats coalesced around the Inflation Reduction Act and announced plans to begin voting on the marquee spending measure over the weekend.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have a plan to try to stop it. Senators will get to offer amendments to the bill and CNN reports Republicans Lindsey Graham and John Thune have signaled they want to make that process, known as “vote-a-rama” as painful for Democrats as possible:

Sam Levine

The justice department and Donald Trump’s lawyers have started talking amid an ongoing criminal probe into the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, CNN reports.

The negotiations deal with issues of executive privilege and whether Trump’s conversations while president can be kept from federal investigators, according to the broadcaster.

Here’s more from CNN:

At this stage, the conversations are focused mostly on whether any communications that witnesses from the Trump West Wing had with the former President can be kept from a federal criminal grand jury under Trump’s claims of executive privilege, the people said.

The Justice Department has been anticipating a court fight with Trump over executive privilege. The issue has arisen as grand jury subpoenas have been issued to two former White House counsel’s office officials and to former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief counsel and chief of staff.

Trump’s legal defense team has warned him that indictments are possible, sources tell CNN.

Some members of Trump’s legal team have discussed his potential defense strategies on at least two occasions in recent months, according to two sources familiar with the matter, as they brace for new developments in the Justice Department probe and a separate investigation by Georgia officials into his potentially criminal meddling in the state’s 2020 election results. Rolling Stonepreviously reported that Trump had been briefed.

Trump has grilled his attorneys on whether they actually believe he will face formal charges, sources said. Yet the former President has expressed a heavy dose of skepticism that he will be indicted, one of the sources familiar with the matter said.

Another source close to the former President told CNN that Trump also has posed questions about a potential indictment to members of his inner circle, some of whom believe the President is concerned about the possibility of federal charges.

The January 6 attack is the subject of public congressional hearings that have shown a spotlight on the events before, during and after the insurrection. But the justice department has quietly been conducting its own criminal investigation into what happened that day, creating speculation that Trump himself could face charges:

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has put out a statement of condolence for the two people killed by lightning near the White House:

We are saddened by the tragic loss of life after the lightning strike in Lafayette Park. Our hearts are with the families who lost loved ones, and we are praying for those still fighting for their lives.

Two dead after lightning strike near White House

Jobs report shows ‘significant progress’ for American workers: Biden

There are a few different lessons to be taken from the July jobs report, which showed the US economy adding a robust 528,000 positions last month and the unemployment rate edging to 3.5 percent, where it was before Covid-19.

The first is that the economy is most likely not in a recession, despite negative growth in the past two quarters. In the words of University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers, employment doesn’t increase like this when the economy is contracting:

But that doesn’t mean the report was unabashed good news. In fact, it contained a worrying sign that inflation, already at record levels, is continuing to rise. The data showed workers’ average hourly earning increasing, a sign that employees are demanding higher salaries to cope with the rising costs they bear, creating the kind of dynamic that can keep the price increases going for longer.

What that means is that the Federal Reserve will likely opt for more aggressive interest rate hikes to make lending more expensive and quell consumer demand – but that risks causing a recession. Here’s how Jason Furman, a former top economist to Democratic president Barack Obama, puts it:

But as Wolfers acknowledges, there’s still reason to celebrate this report:

For the past week, just about everybody in Washington politics has been asking the same question: will Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema vote for her party’s plan to fight climate change and lower health care costs?

The Arizona lawmaker is known for her opposition to changing the tax code, as the bill – known was the Inflation Reduction Act – does to fund its programs. In the end, she did demand changes to how the legislation is paid for, but they weren’t especially big.

With her support, Democrats have all 50 votes they need to get the bill through the evenly divided Senate. There’s not much Republicans themselves can do to stop them, so, instead, they’re hoping that Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough intervenes. The Democrats hope to pass the legislation via the reconciliation procedure, which requires only a simple majority of votes, but there are only certain types of changes to the law they can make that way. MacDonough is to decide whether they followed proper procedure, and as Politico reports, Republicans hope she’ll strike certain provisions from the bill – which could upend the delicate compromise Democrats have forged among themselves, and jeopardize the bill entirely.

Democrats reach deal to pass major plan to fight climate change