Biden says Israel, Lebanon agree to ceasefire designed to be permanent end to fighting
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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a deal brokered by the U.S. “to end the devastating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.”
“This has been the deadliest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in decades,” Biden said in remarks from the Rose Garden.
Biden said the agreement reached will go into effect early Wednesday.
“At 4 a.m. tomorrow local time, the fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border will end. Will end,” Biden said. “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr — the first openly trans lawmaker in the state — has won her bid for reelection to the Montana House of Representatives after she was censured and barred from the House floor for almost two years. Her win allows Zephyr to take to the House floor for debate once more.
Zephyr’s censure stemmed from her pleas on the House floor against a gender-affirming care ban for transgender youth.
“If you are denying gender-affirming care and forcing a trans child to go through puberty, that is tantamount to torture, and this body should be ashamed,” Zephyr said in the April 18, 2023 debate. “If you vote yes on this bill, I hope the next time you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”
She later elaborated on the comments in an April 2023 interview with ABC News, arguing that gender-affirming support and care improves the mental health of trans children, who face higher rates of discrimination and bullying.
“I have lost friends to suicide this year,” Zephyr said. “I’ve had families call me when there have been … suicide attempts by trans youth, including one trans teenager who attempted to take her life watching one of these hearings on legislation targeting the transgender community.”
Republican lawmakers responded to her comments on the House floor by refusing to allow her to speak or comment on the House floor, she said. Some legislators, including House Speaker Matt Regier, argued she had broken House rules of decorum.
Demonstrators in support of Zephyr interrupted House business several days later to protest her silencing, and she showed her support by holding up her mic.
“Let her speak,” protesters chanted.
House Republicans voted to censure her in response, representing just over the two-thirds needed to bar her from the House floor.
“All representatives are free to participate in House debate while following the House rules. The choice to not follow House rules is one that Representative Zephyr has made,” said Regier in a statement to reporters following the censure. “The only person silencing Representative Zephyr is Representative Zephyr.”
Several of her colleagues argued that Zephyr was inciting “violence” and showing “flagrant disregard for the safety and well-being” of those at the House, according to one statement from the Montana Freedom Caucus.
Zephyr argued the real violence is the negative impact gender-affirming care bans may have on transgender youth.
The day after her censure, Zephyr could be found seated in the public area of the state capitol building, voting and participating with her laptop as close to the House floor as she was allowed.
“The people sent me here to do the work, and much of that work is on the House floor,” she told ABC News at the time. “I need to be as close as possible, so I can have the conversations with legislators and make sure that I can, at least in some way, make sure the voice of my constituents can be discussed.”
Zephyr filed a lawsuit against the state, Regier and Sergeant at Arms for the Montana House of Representatives Bradley Murfitt in an attempt to reinstate her legislative privileges and duties. The lawsuit was dismissed.
“The recent actions violate my 1st amendment rights, as well as the rights of my 11,000 constituents to representation,” Zephyr said in a tweet Monday. “Montana’s State House is the people’s House, not Speaker Regier’s, and I’m determined to defend the right of the people to have their voices heard.”
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s office, which represented the state against the lawsuit, denounced the effort as “political activism masquerading as a lawsuit.”
“The ACLU is trying to use the courts to interfere with the legislature as it carries out its constitutional duties on behalf of Montanans,” said Emily Flower, Knudsen’s press secretary. “Any relief granted by the court would be a gross violation of the separation of powers.”
(WASHINGTON) Former President Donald Trump has drawn scrutiny in recent weeks for an escalation of rhetoric threatening political opponents with retribution if he’s elected to a second term. The comments have triggered alarm from some officials who served with him the first time around, such as former Chief of Staff John Kelly.
Earlier this month, Trump described Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi each as “an enemy from within.”
“These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at ‘Shifty Schiff’ and some of the others, yeah, they are, to me, the enemy from within,” Trump told Fox News on Oct. 20.
While Trump’s comments prompted a renewed focus on the issue of democracy, a Gallup poll earlier this month showed that the economy still ranks as the top issue of concern for voters.
However, a strong separation between issues of democracy and the economy is misguided, some academics who study the tie between political systems and economic performance told ABC News.
“People interested in making a large investment will be less likely to do it unless they can curry favor with the president himself,” Thomas Pepinsky, a professor of government and public policy at Cornell University, told ABC News. “There will be some who stand to benefit but the average American will lose.”
If Trump makes good on his threats to crack down on political adversaries, media outlets and some government agencies, he risks spooking investors, saddling businesses with uncertainty and driving away workers, experts said. That in turn could diminish economic growth, increase the likelihood of an economic downturn and harm the finances of everyday people, they added.
The impact may prove to be minimal in the short term but could grow substantially over time, some experts said, while also acknowledging the difficulty of predicting to what extent existing checks and balances might constrain Trump.
“If Trump suddenly threatens the rule of law, you won’t have an immediate recession,” Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of the book “Why Nations Fail,” told ABC News.
“But you get a huge amount of uncertainty and that has economic implications,” Acemoglu added. “If companies favored by Trump can expect to get a special deal and others can’t compete, that’s a slippery slope.”
Stephen Moore, an economic advisor to Trump, rebuked the notion that democracy would weaken during a second Trump term. Instead, he added, the economy would perform well, just as it did over Trump’s first term.
“I’d be much more prone to look at his track record in office than speculation about how he might undermine democracy,” Moore told ABC News. “We had a booming economy.”
“If Trump wins, I think the markets will react in a very, very positive way,” Moore added.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the Trump campaign shared a statement from a representative of the Republican National Committee (RNC).
“Kamala is a continuation of Biden’s failed economic policies, and they’ve left our economy in shambles. Kamala Harris broke America’s economy, our national security, and world peace, but President Trump will fix it through his America first policies,” RNC spokesperson Anna Kelly told ABC News.
Trump has threatened to use the Department of Justice to prosecute political opponents, including Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris “should be impeached and prosecuted,” Trump said at a rally last month. He also has suggested rescinding the licenses of media outlets that he dislikes.
Trump continues to make false claims in denying the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and has repeatedly attempted to sow doubt regarding the validity of the impending one, should he lose.
The potential erosion of government and civic institutions under a Trump presidency could cause investors to second-guess whether they want to do business in the U.S., the experts said. Trump has hinted at taking away some of the independence of the Federal Reserve, which could introduce further uncertainty surrounding the nation’s interest rates. Meanwhile, the experts added, Trump may treat more favorably companies that stay in good standing with his administration, putting other entities at a disadvantage even if they’re more competitive.
“It would simply create a huge amount of uncertainty about which rules apply and who they apply to,” Steven Hahn, a professor of history at New York University and author of “Illiberal America: A History,” told ABC News. “It would just have enormous consequences for the economic life of the country.”
Uncertain U.S. politics have already negatively affected the nation’s financial foundation, according to some financial measures. Last year, the rating agency Fitch Ratings downgraded U.S. credit for the second time in the nation’s history, citing the ballooning U.S. debt load and a weakening of governance, as well as the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as factors in their decision.
After studying more than 50 populist leaders going back to 1900, German researchers Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch found that after a populist leader took office, a nation’s economy grew at a 10% slower pace over the ensuing 15 years than it would have otherwise, according to an article published in the American Economic Review in December.
A separate study in 2019 found that democratization boosted a nation’s gross domestic product by about 20% over the long run, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University, among others.
“The evidence is pretty clear,” Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow in governance studies at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, told ABC News. “Democracy is pretty good for an economy, and authoritarian regimes do worse than they otherwise would.”
There are exceptions, however. India, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, has seen its ranking in the global Democracy Index fall since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014. The Chinese economy grew rapidly over the past three decades under authoritarian rule, though that economic expansion has slowed in recent years.
“Sometimes undemocratic countries have had amazing growth, but those examples are rare,” Williamson said.
What’s unknown, of course, is whether Trump, if elected, would implement his proposed agenda. Also unknown is to what extent such actions could or would be resisted by others, including Congress, the courts and other institutions.
“Even if Republicans win Congress, they won’t have 60 votes in the Senate,” Moore, the economic advisor to Trump, said, pointing to the threshold of support necessary to overcome a Senate filibuster.
Some experts also acknowledged that the economy performed fairly well under Trump during his first term, despite his administration taking steps that those experts perceived as testing democratic norms.
“Trump’s first term was chaotic, disorganized and bad for some institutions, but I fear his second term would be worse,” Acemoglu said.
In theory, the market itself could act as a check on Trump’s plans, experts said. A negative market response helped unseat then-UK Prime Minister Liz Truss In 2022.
Fiscal plans put forward by Truss caused the nation’s currency to plummet in value while bond yields spiked. Within weeks of her taking office, and amid heated criticism from both her opponents and members of her own party, Truss resigned.
A dramatic market reaction could limit Trump’s plans, but he could instead prioritize the consolidation of power, in turn diminishing the impact of a financial response, Pepinsky said.
“For most politicians, they change course if the market signals to them that something won’t work,” Pepinsky added. “Trump isn’t a normal politician.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate on Tuesday failed for a second time to advance an in vitro fertilization (IVF) protection bill by a vote of 51-44.
The legislation needed 60 votes to advance. Republican Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted in favor of the bill along with all Democrats.
The legislation was largely dismissed by Republicans as a political stunt meant to drum up support for vulnerable Democrats.
“Republicans support IVF. Full stop. No question about that,” Republican Whip John Thune said during a news conference shortly before the vote. “This is not an attempt to make law. This is not an attempt to get an outcome or to legislate. This is simply an attempt by Democrats to try to create a political issue where there isn’t one.”
Collins and Murkowski voted for Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth’s Right to IVF Act when it failed to advance in June. But as reproductive rights continue to be a flashpoint in the upcoming election, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer dared Republicans to block the bill again.
“If the Senate votes no today and strikes IVF protections down yet again, it will be further proof that Project 2025 is alive and well,” Schumer said on the Senate floor earlier Tuesday. “Remember Donald Trump’s Project 2025 is tied to the Heritage Foundation, one of the most important and extreme conservative think tanks in the country, and earlier this year, they came out fiercely against today’s bill protecting IVF.”
The vote came after Trump on the campaign trail reaffirmed his support for IVF.
During a town hall in August, Trump said he and his team had been exploring ways to help those wanting in vitro fertilization.
“I’ve been looking at it, and what we’re going to do is for people that are using IVF, which is fertilization … the government is going to pay for it, or we’re going to get — we’ll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that,” Trump said then.
Then, during his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump said he has “been a leader on IVF.”
In response, Schumer said he’d again bring the bill to the floor for a vote to give Republicans another chance to support it. It would need 60 votes to advance.
“We have seen the Republican Party’s nominee for president claim to be “a leader in fertilization” and come out in support of expanding access to IVF by requiring insurance companies to cover IVF treatment — a key provision included in the Right to IVF Act,” Schumer wrote in a letter to his colleagues on Sunday. “So, we are going to give our Republican colleagues another chance to show the American people where they stand.”
“So to my Republican colleagues today, you get a second chance to either stand with families struggling with infertility or stand with Project 2025, which aims to make reproductive freedoms extinct,” Schumer said.
The Right to IVF Act combines several Democratic bills. It establishes a nationwide right for access to IVF, expands fertility treatments for veterans, and seeks to increase affordability for fertility care.
Efforts to advance this bill accelerated over the summer after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos are children, which temporarily upended IVF access in the state.
But Republicans, who say they support IVF and note it is not currently illegal to access it in any state, criticized the bill before the vote in June, calling it a political stunt and opposing the legislation as being an overreach.
Before the vote, Republicans attempted to unanimously pass a separate piece of IVF legislation. That bill, sponsored by Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would have prohibited states from receiving Medicare funding if they banned access to IVF.
Their bill was blocked from advancing by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who said the GOP offer was inadequate.
“I have been perfectly clear about the glaring issue with this Republican bill,” Murray said on the Senate floor. “The cold hard reality is that this Republican bill does nothing to meaningfully protect IVF from the biggest threats from lawmakers and anti-abortion extremists all over this country. It would still allow states to regulate IVF out of existence.”
