Politico

When an image showing what looked to be a bombing at the Pentagon started to spread online last week, the stock market dipped momentarily. Kayla Tausche, who covers the White House for CNBC, quickly started fact checking. Popping into Lower Press — the cluster of desks and offices behind the briefing room where many press aides work — she found principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton and asked about the reports.

“There was initially confusion about where it was coming from (I said ‘RT-style unconfirmed viral accounts’) and then exasperation,” Tausche told West Wing Playbook.

Dalton moved quickly, connecting with the Pentagon and National Security Council before telling Tausche there did not appear to have been a bombing. Once additional tweets suggested the phony image had been generated by artificial intelligence, Tausche followed up with Dalton to apologize for the diversion.

“She said, with visible frustration, that she is dealing with these types of inquiries on a daily basis, with greater and greater frequency,” Tausche added.

The White House press shop has found itself on one of the many front lines of the AI battles. Aides there, who collectively handle hundreds of media inquiries a day, have already been briefed by experts on the potential national security risks posed by images and videos that have been altered using AI, according to an administration official.

Outside the press shop, the White House has scaled up its efforts to assess and manage AI’s risks, impressing on AI companies during meetings on campus that it’s their responsibility to ensure their products are safe. It updated the strategic plan for AI research and development for the first time in four years and last week launched a process to work toward developing an AI bill of rights.

“Everyone is trying very hard to be sensitive, to issue these warnings but without predicting what could happen, and that’s because they don’t know,” said Kara Swisher, a prominent tech-focused journalist. “Most people, if they’re being honest, would tell you they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The administration’s knockdown of reports of the Pentagon bombing — backed by a tweet from Arlington, Va., first responders — was part of a swift debunking that helped the market recover after the S&P fell 0.3 percent, a momentary loss of some $500 billion in value.

But days later, another AI-generated deep fake popped up in the form of a video showing a purported Microsoft Teams call between anti-Russia activist Bill Browder and former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko arguing for the easing of sanctions against Russian oligarchs. Both fakes were easy enough to spot for those familiar with AI. But as the technology develops and improves, AI-generated text, audio and video could quickly become indistinguishable from that produced by human beings.

On Tuesday, prominent industry officials, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, issued a succinct but jarring statement aimed at seizing the attention of global leaders: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement said.

When asked about the statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say if the president shares the belief that AI, if mismanaged, could lead to extinction. She only acknowledged that AI is “one of the most powerful technologies that we see currently in our time” and that the administration takes risk mitigation seriously.

There are various proposals floating for regulating AI — and Big Tech more broadly — on Capitol Hill, including legislation released earlier this month by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) to create a new federal agency to oversee the technology.

“We remain concerned about an uptick in deepfake videos and manipulated images spreading on social media platforms,” said White House assistant press secretary Robyn Patterson. “As the technology for creating fake videos and images improves, it’s important for the media and the public to be aware of this trend, which we expect to grow, if not exponentially.”

While there are huge potential upsides with AI that are already triggering a global arms race to harness and capitalize on the technology, the unanticipated bumps could be severe, especially amid the coming presidential election.

“It’s not that one piece of content is going to be devastating; it’s the collective, scaled approach to inauthenticity that’s the problem. People can do this at scale now,” said Sarah Kreps, a professor at Cornell University’s Brooks School Tech Policy Institute and one of three AI researchers invited to speak to Biden’s new working group on the matter within the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. “It can look like massive numbers of citizens are supporting a particular issue when they’re not.”

In a country where sectarian partisanship has already given rise to misinformation and the spread of conspiracy theories, AI may only deepen the public’s growing mistrust of facts. “It just creates this ecosystem of distrust in a democracy where trust is such a foundational pillar,” said Kreps.

A former Fox News reporter is fighting in court to scuttle a subpoena demanding that she reveal the source behind a series of stories that aired confidential details of a counterintelligence probe into a Chinese American scientist.

That scientist, Yanping Chen, is suing the FBI for damages, claiming that the leaked information was part of a campaign to damage her after federal prosecutors ended their six-year investigation of her without bringing charges. Chen, who operated a graduate education program based in Arlington, Virginia, also subpoenaed Fox and Catherine Herridge, now of CBS — to force her to disclose the source of several 2017 stories.

Notably, Fox News and Herridge are being represented by Patrick Philbin, a former top lawyer from Donald Trump’s White House. Philbin, who decried media leaks during Trump’s first impeachment trial, appeared in court Tuesday to help Herridge fend off the effort to expose her source.

The FBI initially suspected that Chen had lied on immigration forms about her work on the Chinese space program, and she was the subject of two search warrants and seizures of her devices. But she was informed in 2016 that she would not be charged with any wrongdoing.

Within a year, Herridge was reporting on key aspects of the probe, as well as on the divisions within the government about the decision not to charge Chen. Chen says the reports were followed by a sharp drop in enrollment and funding for her graduate program.

Herridge’s reporting included “snippets of her immigration forms, a summary of an FBI interview with her daughter, and personal photographs of her and her husband,” according to U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper.

Chen sued the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security in 2018 seeking damages, an admission of wrongdoing from the government and prosecutions of any violations of the Privacy Act that may apply to her case. But after dozens of depositions failed to unmask the potential leaker, Chen turned her sights to Fox News and Herridge, which Chen’s attorneys say is a last resort.

The lawsuit has steadily advanced for five years despite generating little attention. Yet it represents the collision of a wide range of Washington interests and issues, carrying implications for how journalists’ First Amendment protections are balanced against the need to prevent leaks of sensitive government information that implicates privacy rights. Cooper noted in court Tuesday that while Congress passed the Privacy Act almost five decades ago, lawmakers have “not seen fit to pass a reporters’ shield law.”

“For better or worse,” the judge added.

Philbin, who works in the Washington office of the firm helmed by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, sought to conduct Tuesday’s proceedings under seal, a nod to the voluminous details about the case that have been redacted from public view and the potential implications for the FBI’s counterintelligence operations. But Cooper declined, at first, to close the hearing to the public, instead urging Philbin to make broader legal arguments without delving into the sensitive details of the case. Cooper later sealed the hearing to permit the parties to delve into the sensitive details of the case.

During the public portion of the hearing, Philbin contended that Chen had failed to pursue all possible leads about the source of the leak before turning to a subpoena for Herridge. Chen’s inquiry centers around the existence of a PowerPoint document that contained details of the FBI’s probe that later wound up on Fox. Philbin said that while Chen narrowed down potential sources of the leak who “possessed” the PowerPoint to a handful of officials, she omitted a much larger number of people who had “access” to the file. That includes a counterintelligence “squad” of eight to 12 people who worked in an office where the PowerPoint was stored on a CD, he said.

Philbin’s comments prompted Justice Department senior litigation counsel Carol Federighi to interject, warning that he appeared to be veering into subjects meant to be kept from public view. Federighi intervened a second time when Philbin began to describe some binders that included pictures similar to information contained in the PowerPoint.

While journalists have won considerable protection in state courts and enjoy near-immunity from subpoenas by prosecutors in federal criminal cases due to DOJ regulations adopted by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Privacy Act lawsuits remain treacherous for members of the press.

In 2008, a judge handling a Privacy Act lawsuit brought by former government scientist Steven Hatfill ordered former USA Today reporter Toni Locy to pay escalating fines of up to $5,000 a day and attorneys’ fees for defying an order to identify her sources for stories about a federal investigation into Hatfill’s potential ties to deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.

Locy said she could not recall which sources provided specific information about Hatfill, but a judge rejected that.

While Locy’s appeal of that contempt order was pending, the U.S. government settled with Hatfill for $5.8 million, mooting the contempt fight.

Shortly after the settlement, the Justice Department informed Hatfill’s attorneys that investigators had ultimately concluded that Hatfill was not involved in the anthrax mailings.

Chen’s effort to seek damages comes just three months after the Biden administration shut down a China-focused anti-espionage program, known as the China Initiative, claiming it had created a false perception about Chinese Americans and U.S. residents from China.

Philbin has been a figure of intense interest in recent years for his presence in the White House during the crucial chaotic weeks at the end of Trump’s term, when Trump attempted to subvert the 2020 election and rebuffed calls to calm his supporters for hours as violence raged at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Philbin has interviewed twice with prosecutors now working for special counsel Jack Smith. But he’s also been seen entering the federal courthouse for various civil matters that he and his firm are involved in.

Philbin had a harsh assessment about media leaks during Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial on charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress over allegations that he pressured Ukraine’s president to launch a criminal probe of Joe Biden. At the time, Philbin assailed congressional Democrats for what he said was animus toward Trump, exemplified by leaks from closed-door depositions.

“The testimony that took place was selectively leaked to a compliant media to establish a false narrative about the president. If that sort of conduct had occurred in a real grand jury, that would have been a criminal violation.”

President Joe Biden on Sunday hailed the bipartisan deal he struck with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the debt ceiling, saying it’s ready to move forward for congressional approval, but he also pushed back against criticism that he made too many concessions in the process.

Speaking from the White House Roosevelt Room, Biden acknowledged that neither side got everything it wanted out of the deal, but he insisted “I did not negotiate on the debt ceiling” with Republicans.

“You want to try to make it look like I made some compromise on the debt ceiling — I didn’t. I made a compromise on the budget,” he told reporters.

Biden said Republicans wanted to pass a debt ceiling on condition of a budget “with all these cuts in it.”

“I said ‘I’m not going to do that. You pass the debt ceiling, period,’” he said, and then he’d negotiate separately on the budget.

The White House and Republican congressional leaders reached a tentative deal late Saturday evening, that was being finalized on Sunday, to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, narrowly averting a default just days before the projected June 5 deadline.

Asked whether he thought it was time to get rid of the debt ceiling, Biden said that doing so would “cause more controversy” but did not rule it out as a future option.

“I am exploring the idea that we would, at a later date — a year or two from now — decide whether or not the 14th Amendment, how that actually would impact whether or not you need to do the debt limit every year,” Biden said.

The agreement lifts the debt ceiling and holds spending flat through the 2024 presidential election, while allowing non-defense spending to increase by 1 percent in 2025. The deal also imposes new work requirements on TANF and SNAP assistance programs, clawbacks billions of dollars in unspent Covid relief funds, pairs down Biden’s plan to dramatically expand the IRS and codifies the administration’s plan to restart federal student loan payments at the end of the summer.

Negotiators worked through the night to finalize the legislative text of the deal and were expected to share it with lawmakers Sunday evening.

Although Biden and McCarthy projected confidence on Sunday that the bill would clear the House, the agreement is facing objections on both sides of the aisle. Conservatives were quick to criticize the agreement for not cutting spending more aggressively, while progressive Democrats have expressed some concerns about work requirements and other spending priorities.

Asked Sunday about criticism from Hill Democrats who said the deal would mean some low-income Americans could go hungry, Biden called that a “ridiculous assertion.” He also said he did not regret starting negotiations with Republicans sooner.

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” he said.

Top White House aides spent much of Sunday calling Democratic lawmakers to shore up support for the bill. Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, National Economic Council Deputy Director Aviva Aron-Dine and senior adviser on climate John Podesta virtually briefed House Democrats on the agreement on Sunday evening, while counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti, senior adviser and infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu and National Economic Council director Lael Brainard also called lawmakers individually throughout the day.

Some House conservatives spent Sunday morning lining up against a deal that one called “insanity.” Some progressives are privately grumbling at their party’s lack of wins.

Yet as lawmakers parsed through the deal between President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, it was becoming clear that most of the griping is coming from precisely where everyone expected — the margins.

Unless either party runs into major trouble with the unveiling of final text later Sunday, McCarthy and his counterpart, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, will likely have the votes to pass the bill this week, according to more than a half-dozen lawmakers and aides from both parties. It would be a surprisingly low-drama end to months of high-stakes theatrics between McCarthy and Biden — one in which both can claim victory after avoiding fiscal calamity.

At the moment, that’s still an “if.” Negotiators won’t release full details of their plan until Sunday afternoon, after a final call between McCarthy and Biden — sending lawmakers and aides searching for problem spots in between their Memorial Day parades and picnics.

If an issue does emerge in either party, Republicans and Democrats agree it could dramatically alter their whipping operations. Those efforts have been going well so far — especially for Republicans, with conservative leader Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) offering early praise for the deal.

Even as a half dozen House Freedom Caucus members took to Twitter to thrash the McCarthy-Biden compromise, none have publicly signaled they are ready to seek revenge, despite talk in conservative circles whether one of their own would ultimately move to oust the speaker. McCarthy and his allies had privately worried that conservative angst could trigger a vote of no confidence — one of the lingering threats from his speakership fight — but for now, there’s no sign of that brewing.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a Freedom Caucus member who was among the 20 Republicans who opposed McCarthy during the start of the year, declined to say whether employing the so-called motion to vacate is on the table.

“Not saying what I would rule in or out until I see the text,” Norman said in a message to POLITICO on Sunday, while stating he is likely a strong “no” if the agreement in principle he’s heard is reflected in legislative language. “Bottom line; I need to see what’s in WRITING.”

While McCarthy walked his GOP members through some details on Saturday evening, the White House didn’t brief the Democratic caucus until 5 p.m. Sunday. Jeffries also told his members in a “Dear Colleague” letter on Sunday that the full Democratic caucus would also meet in person prior to voting on the deal.

During the Sunday briefing, Democratic lawmakers asked Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, National Economic Council Deputy Director Aviva Aron-Dine and White House senior adviser John Podesta about policy points in the debt agreement, according to four people familiar with the situation.

They’re set to get six more briefings on the legislation over the next two days, with two briefings each on TANF and SNAP, budget caps and permitting. With the assumption bill text would be released Sunday, lawmakers were told to prepare to return to Washington with votes on the debt package as early as Wednesday and suspension votes on Tuesday.

The call wasn’t without some turbulence for the briefers, with Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) venting some frustration at the White House’s communication on the debt limit during the briefing, the people said.

In the meantime, Biden officials have been working the phones as they look to lock down votes, with the bill expected to reach the floor Wednesday. White House senior advisor Mitch Landrieu phoned a handful of Democrats, including Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), on Sunday morning. Podesta is also making calls, as well as White House counselor Steve Ricchetti and congressional liaison Louisa Terrell, according to another House Democrat.

“If all this turns out to be true, then it’s a good deal and I’ll be happy to vote for it,” Wild told POLITICO about the emerging details of the deal. While she said she is refraining from a decision until text is released, she said it was important that Biden had protected programs like Social Security, Medicare and his own legislative priorities.

It “avoided catastrophic default,” she said, and “we can move forward with sensible budget discussions.”

The strongest support so far has come mostly from the centrist New Democrat coalition, whose chair Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) said in a Sunday statement they were reviewing the agreement but were “encouraged” by the deal and were “confident that President Biden and White House negotiators have delivered a viable, bipartisan solution to end this crisis.”

“We want to be clear — our Members are committed to upholding the full faith and credit of the United States,” she said. “We must act responsibly to ensure that we prevent the catastrophic consequences of default and protect the needs of the most vulnerable in our society.”

Not all Democrats are as content. Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are privately arguing that Biden could have gotten more. Many others are concerned about the lack of details so far — particularly on issues such as work requirements for food assistance programs and energy permitting, as they face steep pressure from environmental groups on the latter.

There’s also worry whether the deal will apply to Congress’ “pay as you go” rule — which requires new spending to be offset — to executive actions. That would mean presidential actions like student loan forgiveness could require a huge offset. One Democrat warned such restrictions “could be disastrous.”

White House officials, though, have told some Democrats that the Office of Management and Budget would have the power to waive that rule — potentially neutralizing the concerns, according to multiple people familiar with those discussions..

Besides the policy details, many Democrats are eager to see their party work on a stronger sales pitch, particularly after McCarthy and his GOP negotiators have repeatedly stood in front of news cameras pushing their own talking points multiple times a day for weeks.

Many Democrats want Biden to take a stronger public role in selling the deal, questioning why he left Washington for Camp David this weekend. “Why the hell isn’t he here?” one House Democrat, granted anonymity to speak about growing internal frustrations, said fellow members are asking.

Overall, though, many Democrats said it could’ve been worse. Several Democratic lawmakers and aides predicted that at least 80 of their members would back the deal, with some believing that number could go above 100 — depending on the final details and messaging strategy.

McCarthy took an optimistic tone on Sunday despite pushback from some on his right. He said on “Fox News Sunday” that 95 percent of his conference backs the deal, an assertion Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) disputed.

Either way, there are promising signs for the speaker.

Jordan’s praise during a private House GOP phone call on Saturday night was a clear win for McCarthy and his allies. The Ohio lawmaker was upbeat about the deal’s work requirements and spending provisions. That view was also echoed by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Both men, however, said they wanted to see the text before promising their full support, according to people on the call.

Jordan and Davidson are a welcome — and somewhat surprising — signal to rank-and-file Republicans who largely believed the right flank of the party was never going to support a compromise bill.

Others warned of stiff opposition to come. Russ Vought, a former Trump official who works closely with the House Freedom Caucus, said that conservatives on the House Rules Committee should try to block the deal from coming to the House floor — a move that would give more leverage to Democrats. It’s unclear whether Roy, Norman as well as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) will oppose the rule, but Roy retweeted Vought’s calls for them to sandbag it.

Separately, in response to a Twitter user calling for him to stop the deal from passing the House, Roy replied: ”We are going to try.”

Jordain Carney, Caitlin Emma and Michael Stratford contributed to this report. 

Republican congressional leaders and the White House are sprinting to finalize the text of their two-year bipartisan budget deal as they race to sell their parties on the details before an expected vote in the House this week.

Negotiators and staff worked through the night on the legislative text of the agreement, set to be released this afternoon, which would lift the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling through the 2024 election and limit federal spending for the same amount of time. The House is expected to vote Wednesday after members have had 72 hours to review the legislation, teeing up passage in the lower chamber just days before the U.S. could breach its borrowing cap.

Asked about the already simmering discontent among conservatives for the bipartisan deal, Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Sunday that “over 95 percent” of the Republican conference is “overwhelmingly excited about what they see.”

“This is a good strong bill that a majority of Republicans will vote for,” the California Republican told reporters during a briefing outside of his office.

McCarthy and President Joe Biden are set to talk early Sunday afternoon, after which bill text will be released, according to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. McCarthy said he also plans to brief Senate Republicans on Sunday. At 5 p.m., administration officials will brief House Democrats.

The two-year budget accord comes eight days before Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the U.S. will likely run out of cash to pay its bills. Congressional leaders must now embark on a monumental whipping effort to sell their parties on the deal ahead of the June 5 deadline.

Biden will likely need a substantial number of Democrats to back the bill. Several conservatives are decrying the deal as a betrayal of the Republican debt package passed by the House last month.

Both sides were busy selling the framework of the deal on Sunday, putting their spin on its provisions ahead of the text release.

The budget agreement would hike the debt limit through January 2025, teeing up another potential standoff over the nation’s borrowing cap in the months after the presidential election. The deal would keep non-defense funding roughly flat for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 and slightly increase funding for those programs by 1 percent in 2025, a source familiar with the framework said.

McCarthy and his allies contend that non-defense funding would be much closer to the fiscal 2022 levels Republicans had originally sought for the coming fiscal year, however. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a lead GOP negotiator, said funding for domestic programs would be set at $704 billion for the coming fiscal year, not including funding for veterans, which will see an increase, McHenry said.

Republicans initially demanded $130 billion in cuts to government funding in fiscal 2024, in addition to a decade of strict budget caps. The budget bargain struck by Biden and McCarthy would limit spending for two years, then set non-enforceable funding targets after 2025, according to a source familiar with the deal.

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), another top Republican negotiator, and McHenry argued that the budget accord includes six years of enforceable funding limits, however. That includes two years of caps that will constrain funding for the remainder of the 118th Congress and four years of additional restraints that could be undone by future spending agreements.

“For us to draw them down and actually have spending restraints year over year, and within a Congress, is truly transformational and different than what we’ve experienced in recent years in Congress,” McHenry said.

“This is the most conservative spending package in my service in Congress, and this is my tenth term,” he said.

The deal would also cap military funding at Biden’s budget request, at $886 billion, about a 3.5 percent increase. Veterans’ medical care would also match the president’s request, at $121 billion in fiscal 2024.

The Pentagon spending level isn’t sitting well with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Republican appropriator who sits on the Senate defense spending panel.

“I know you can’t get [an agreement that’s] perfect. But what I will not do is adopt the Biden defense budget and call it a success,” Graham said on Fox News Sunday. “Kevin said that the defense is fully funded. If we adopt the Biden defense budget, it increases defense spending below inflation.”

There were rumblings of a revolt against the agreement by House Freedom Caucus members shortly after it was released on Saturday night. While conservatives likely can’t kill the agreement on their own, they can make McCarthy’s life miserable depending on how far they take their displeasure.

“No one claiming to be a conservative could justify a YES vote,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) tweeted Saturday night.

Conservative lawmakers, however, didn’t all come out in opposition. Ohio GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Warren Davidson, both Freedom Caucus members, liked what they saw of the deal.

The White House will likely struggle to sell Democrats on new work requirements for SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, and federal aid through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. In a win for the administration, the budget agreement includes no new work requirements for Medicaid, preserves clean energy tax incentives included in Democrats’ signature climate law last year and won’t touch Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for tens of millions of Americans.

The deal does, however, codify Biden’s plan to end the ongoing freeze on monthly student loan payments and interest at the end of the summer, while clawing back a portion of Democrats’ new IRS funding and yanking back billions of dollars in unspent Covid relief.

Jordain Carney and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report. 

The debt ceiling deal that President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy struck late Saturday is a true meet-you-halfway compromise between the stark ultimatums the leaders have issued for months.

A far cry from the “clean” increase Biden had sought for the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing cap, the bipartisan agreement is also much less punchy than the sweeping package House Republicans passed last month as they demanded drastic spending cuts, major changes to energy permitting rules and an end to many of Biden’s signature accomplishments, including student loan forgiveness and pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act.

While the details are still fuzzy, with the text due to be released sometime Sunday, the agreement is undoubtedly the most monumental debt limit compromise the two parties have struck in more than a decade. If party leaders can whip enough support to clear the deal through both chambers in the coming days, it would largely freeze non-defense discretionary funding in the fiscal year that kicks off in October, revive the threat of across-the-board cuts and impose the most substantive restrictions in decades on the country’s leading anti-hunger program.

Here are the six main pieces of the agreement, according to people with direct knowledge of the deal:

Work requirements

The deal would tighten restrictions for the SNAP food assistance program, as well as emergency cash aid known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

New time limits would be phased in for people without children up to age 54 to receive food assistance through SNAP if they do not complete certain work requirements. Under current law, those time limits only apply to people up to 49 years old. Those expanded limits will sunset in 2030.

Democrats secured some exemptions for homeless people and veterans. But the move will still enrage a wide swath of congressional Democrats, especially key progressives who pleaded with White House officials in recent days to reject any concessions for aid programs.

Republicans also pushed to include new work requirements on Medicaid, but the White House made clear early on it would not negotiate any changes to that program.

Energy permitting

The deal also appears to offer no major advances in one policy issue where both Democrats and Republicans have hoped to find agreement: speeding up the process of issuing federal permits for energy projects.

GOP lawmakers — joined by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — had sought faster approvals for oil and gas pipelines and other fossil fuel projects. Meanwhile, many Democrats want to hasten the process for approving clean-energy infrastructure, including the power lines that would be needed to ferry vast amounts of wind and solar power across the country to meet Biden’s climate goals.

In the end, the timeline for avoiding a default on the national debt appeared to be too tight to allow the parties to work out a grand bargain on permitting, an issue some lawmakers still hope Congress can take up this year.

Instead, the deal produced only minimal changes to the current permitting process, according to one person familiar with the provisions, who spoke on condition of anonymity late Saturday. The agreement includes adding “process efficiencies” to the decades-old law governing federal environmental reviews of projects, and calls for designating just one lead federal agency to review a particular permit.

But in a big win for Democrats, the deal keeps intact the hundreds of billions of clean energy funding in Democrats’ trademark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, that Republicans had sought to repeal.

Covid aid clawbacks

The deal would take back billions of dollars in unspent Covid relief funds Congress has doled out since 2020, impacting a wide range of current and future health efforts. Democrats recently warned that the cuts would hit vulnerable populations particularly hard, including veterans and tribal members, and undercut efforts to prepare for future pandemics.

Federal health officials are sounding the alarm about the impact the cuts are likely to have on state and local health departments’ work on HIV, other STDs and new viral outbreaks, such as mpox.

Democrats also highlighted the cuts would delay the replenishment of the Strategic National Stockpile, heightening the possibility, should a new pandemic emerge, of a repeat of the early days of Covid when masks, swabs, ventilators, medication and other crucial supplies had to be rationed. But the White House claims the deal would protect critical funding to prepare for future pandemics and Covid surges.

IRS cuts

A portion of the $80 billion in funding Democrats pushed through for the IRS last year would be clawed back. That pot of money is supposed to help the agency super-charge its ability to go after wealthy tax cheats, modernize its IT systems and improve customer service.

Republicans have been on a tear against the funding for months, saying it would primarily be used to go after average taxpayers, despite the Biden administration’s vow not to increase usual audit rates for those making less than $400,000.

While the administration fought to wall off the money, the cut is expected to be relatively small compared with what the GOP had pushed for all year. House Republicans used their first vote after taking over the chamber this year to call for rescinding more than $70 billion of the funding, while leaving some money intact for taxpayer service improvements.

The debt-limit agreement probably won’t please either side, though Republican lawmakers have more reason to be disgruntled than Democrats since the funding isn’t being eliminated.

Spending caps

For Republicans, the two-year budget accord is a far cry from the $130 billion in spending cuts the party first sought for the coming fiscal year and fails to limit spending for a decade as many in GOP lawmakers wanted.

Instead, it would keep non-defense funding largely flat for the fiscal year that begins in October, at about $637 billion. Defense funding would be capped at Biden’s budget request, at $886 billion, about a 3.5 percent increase. Veterans’ medical care would also match the president’s request, at $121 billion in fiscal 2024.

Non-defense spending would increase by 1 percent in 2025, followed by years of non-enforceable funding targets. Congress would have to pass all 12 of the annual funding bills by the end of January or face a stopgap funding patch that cuts spending by 1 percent across the board.

The deal is a much less favorable outcome for Democrats than the two-year budget deal cemented in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In a victory for House Democrats at the time, both sides agreed to provide a bigger funding boost for domestic programs than for the military.

Student loans

Conservatives had been trying to use the debt ceiling to force the White House to retreat on Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for tens of millions of Americans. The deal reached Saturday would leave that program unchanged, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

But the agreement does codify into law the Biden administration’s plan to end the ongoing freeze on monthly student loan payments and interest at the end of the summer, according to a source familiar with negotiations. The Education Department had previously been preparing to restart payments after the start of September.

GOP lawmakers have been pressing the administration to resume collecting student loan payments, blasting the roughly $5 billion cost each month of keeping nearly all federal student loans paused.

The debt ceiling bill passed by Republicans last month would have permanently curtailed the Education Department’s authority to freeze student payments. But the deal would not go that far, protecting the agency’s ability to pause payments in the event of future emergencies, according to a person familiar with the negotiations, who also said the administration’s plan to expand income-driven repayment would be protected.

Even though the White House staved off any rollbacks of its student debt relief in the deal, the future of the program remains uncertain. The Supreme Court is preparing to decide in the coming weeks whether to allow Biden to move ahead with canceling the debt.

Michael Stratford, Toby Eckert and Alice Miranda Ollstein contributed to reporting.

White House and congressional GOP negotiators have reached an agreement in principle to avert a debt default, according to two people familiar with the deal. Now they have to get it to President Joe Biden’s desk in time.

Hill leaders will now race to draft and pass the deal as quickly as possible — through both the House and Senate — ahead of the June 5 deadline. And both Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy still have to sell their respective parties on the agreement, navigating fraught votes in both chambers.

In addition to lifting the $31.4 trillion borrowing cap through the 2024 presidential election, the deal in principle would keep non-defense spending roughly flat for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, according to a person familiar with the negotiations, falling far short of the $130 billion in cuts at fiscal 2022 levels that Republicans had originally demanded.

Non-defense spending would increase by 1 percent in 2025, followed by years of non-enforceable funding targets, according to the person familiar. Republicans had initially pushed for a decade of strict funding limits.

In a win for Biden, defense spending would be set at the level proposed in his budget for the coming fiscal year, representing a modest 3.5 percent increase over current funding levels — less than what many Republican defense hawks would’ve liked to see for the Pentagon in order to keep pace with inflation.

The agreement includes new policy changes to the TANF and SNAP programs, including time limits on people up to age 54, according to a source familiar with the negotiations who was not authorized to share details publicly. The deal would include new work requirements in TANF for cash assistance recipients but a modified version of the House-passed bill. The changes are likely to be unpopular with House Democrats.

But it imposes no new work requirements for Medicaid, a win for the White House.

In other key wins for the White House, the agreement protects the environmental provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act, including clean energy funding. It also doesn’t touch Biden’s student debt relief plan.

Republicans are expected to need a sizable number of Democrats to help them clear the bill through the House amid early signs that conservative members of the Freedom Caucus are unlikely to support a deal that is significantly different than a bill the House passed last month.

But the deal in principle still marks the first major piece of legislation negotiated between the McCarthy-led House GOP and the Biden administration since Republicans took over the majority in January.

Biden and McCarthy spoke on the phone just hours before the deal was announced in an attempt to resolve final sticking points, including a GOP push to include work requirements on social safety net programs. And the agreement followed days of closely watched negotiations between Reps. Garret Graves (R-La.), Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), OMB Director Shalanda Young and Steve Ricchetti, a trusted Biden counselor.

But Hill leaders and the White House still have major political hurdles to overcome. The grind of the legislative process could push Congress up against the June 5 deadline, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned the country will run out of money to pay its bills.

House GOP leaders have pledged to give their members a full 72 hours to review a bill. They’ve bent that rule this year already, but Republicans have vowed they won’t try to truncate the time on any debt limit legislation. Even leadership allies believe doing so would threaten GOP support for the deal.

GOP leadership will brief the conference at 9:30 p.m. on the contours of the agreement by phone late Saturday night, preceding what will likely be a major whipping operation. Though the House left on Thursday for a Memorial Day break, members were warned they might have to return to Washington with 24 hours’ notice.

The bipartisan deal is expected to test McCarthy’s hold on his right flank, including members of the House Freedom Caucus.

Republicans have largely remained unified since they passed their own debt proposal earlier this month, but the bipartisan deal is already sparking criticism from a right-flank that McCarthy has worked to appease in the lead-up to and since becoming speaker.

As negotiators worked Saturday to finalize the deal, GOP Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) huddled in McCarthy’s office. Emmer, speaking to reporters, had a message for the conference’s right flank: Don’t believe what you are hearing about a potential deal until you talk to us.

“Our job is to make sure that members are well aware that there is no agreement. … We’re constantly in touch with our members letting them know that what is being reported, you should not accept. There is no agreement,” Emmer said.

In the final hours of the negotiations, members of the House Freedom Caucus were circulating a graphic comparing provisions of the House GOP debt bill with what they expected to be in a deal cut with the “swamp.”

“We could negotiate a ‘deal’ like this with a Democrat House majority. This would essentially be what they wanted,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said Saturday before a deal was announced.

McCarthy needs to get a majority of his own conference to support the deal, something he predicted Saturday that he wouldn’t “have any problem” doing. But given the all-but-certain conservative rebellion, he’s also going to need votes from House Democrats, who have vocally urged Biden to not bend to GOP demands in order to clinch an agreement.

And as he faced outside pressure from House Democrats, Biden has also sought to portray himself as willing to go to bat for his party’s priorities. Asked Friday about concerns that he could give too much away to Republicans on work requirements, Biden clapped back: “I don’t bow to anybody.”

Even once it clears the House, the bill still needs to go through the Senate, where it is expected to take days to get to a final vote unless all 100 senators agree to speed things up. But a fast-track appears unlikely after Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) vowed that he would “use every procedural tool at my disposal to impede a debt-ceiling deal that doesn’t contain substantial spending and budgetary reforms.”

It seemed, for a moment, as if there was a potential thaw in an intractable debt ceiling fight. Speaking to reporters from an ornate hall on Wednesday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Republicans were ready to give Democrats key concessions.

And then, he revealed what the concessions were: caps on spending and new work requirements for social safety programs.

McCarthy was referencing proposed cuts that a solitary senator, Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), had once proposed, and a work requirement reform that then-Sen. Joe Biden voted for in the ’90s. His “concessions” were, in reality, modern Republican demands. And his framing otherwise was a direct taunt of Democrats who steadfastly oppose both measures.

The jab privately gnawed at administration officials. But when pressed to respond to McCarthy, the White House demurred. Speaking hours later, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said merely that preventing default “is not a concession. It’s their job. Period.”

The decision not to engage McCarthy’s spin was a purposeful tactic for an administration that has chosen, as a media strategy, restraint.

Administration officials say they want to give Biden room to negotiate and insist they will be rewarded for it, as the public regards them as the adults in the room. They argue they don’t need to run to the microphone before and after each negotiating session, as Republicans have frequently done, and instead, only do so at strategic moments.

But the void left by the White House this week — Biden spoke very briefly before Monday’s meeting with McCarthy and made fleeting remarks Thursday — has frustrated Capitol Hill Democrats who believe Biden’s team is allowing Republicans to define the debt ceiling debate on their terms.

“It’s time to bring the president off the bench, or bring somebody off the bench. No one’s responding to anything. Kevin’s consistently on message,” said one House Democrat, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “We have the Oval Office. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Several Democrats on Thursday called for Biden to deliver a national address on the state of the debt talks this week, amid widespread worry the White House has not done enough to emphasize the stakes of a default.

“The scale of the cuts is staggering, which really the public knows very little about,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democratic appropriator, said of the GOP’s demands. “The president should be out there.”

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) also called for a shift in the administration’s strategy, fretting that McCarthy has been allowed to shape public perception of the standoff in “very dishonest ways.” “I do think it’s important that the president speak on this,” she said.

Later Thursday, Biden did address the debt limit fight in remarks that clocked in under three minutes and were delivered just before he named a new chair of the Joint Chiefs. He chastised Republicans for backing “huge cuts” in the number of teachers and police officers and policies that would increase wait times for Social Security claims.

The comments were far from the extensive retort to Republicans’ claims that Democrats crave and seemed unlikely to calm the growing belief from within his own party that he could and should be doing more.

“They need to use the power of the presidency. I don’t buy this argument that [public silence] helps the negotiation,” said Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford (D-Nev.). “I need the American people to know that Democrats are here fighting, working, prepared to reach an agreement to avoid a default and only the White House, the president, can explain that in this moment.”

Biden is set to be even further out of sight this weekend when he leaves Friday for Camp David, and then travels to Delaware. Told Biden was planning to leave Washington for the weekend, one House Democrat expressed disbelief.

“Please tell me that’s not true,” said the lawmaker, who was granted anonymity for fear of angering the White House. “You’re going to see a caucus that’s so pissed if he’s stupid enough to do that.”

Biden’s aides have largely ignored the chorus of those calling for him to be more public. His minimal presence has been purposeful, according to an administration official granted anonymity to discuss strategy.

The White House believes the president’s bully pulpit should be used strategically — that oversaturating the airwaves could lead to contradictory messaging, and that silence conveys reasonableness and calm, the official said. Throughout the talks, administration officials have throttled their public presence based on how negotiations are going. They sometimes rely on Hill Democrats to use the sharpest cudgel, allowing Biden to remain above the fray.

In coordination with the White House, House Democrats have responded to some of the details spilled by McCarthy and his deputies: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Tuesday that Biden had floated to Republicans his proposal to freeze spending at 2023 levels. And Rep. Pramala Jayapal (D-Wash.) went before cameras to note that Republicans had rejected White House proposals to end fossil fuel subsidies, close the carried interest tax loophole, expand drug negotiations in Medicare and enact corporate tax hikes.

The administration has thrown tougher punches off camera. On Sunday, administration officials circulated a memo accusing Republicans of holding “hostage” their own constituents “who don’t have $100,000 to spend on chapstick,” a reference to a Republican auction on McCarthy’s used lip balm.

Longtime Biden aides brush aside any critique of the president’s public-facing message, stressing that the sole mission is to strike a deal that averts economic collapse.

The administration’s approach carries echoes of its playbook in prior high-stakes negotiations, such as the no-comment policy it took toward Manchin amid a monthslong effort to win the senator’s support for the Inflation Reduction Act.

But congressional Democrats worry this time is different. It isn’t just an intraparty squabble, but a showdown with Republicans, many of whom are likely to refuse any compromise.

“The American people need to understand just what’s at stake, and I’m not sure that for the broad public that case has been made,” said Rep. Joseph Morelle (D-N.Y.), adding he couldn’t identify any White House surrogates on the issue. “Other than the press secretary, I really have not.”

In private, Biden allies have been blunter, cringing over Jean-Pierre’s reliance on recycled talking points and questioning her reluctance — or inability — to engage on the substance of the talks. (On Wednesday, Jean-Pierre mispronounced former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s last name as “munchkin,” a moment immediately amplified by the Republican National Committee.)

Others noted that there are fewer go-to surrogates in the White House on economic issues, following the departure earlier this year of former chief of staff Ron Klain and former National Economic Council Brian Deese. Economic adviser Jared Bernstein, another frequent television presence, has curtailed his appearances as he awaits Senate confirmation to run the Council of Economic Advisers. Whereas Klain was a frequent presence on Twitter, his successor, Jeff Zients, only sporadically uses the platform — often where political reporters congregate — to engage on the debt ceiling fight.

With the exception of a single press call last week, new NEC chief Lael Brainard has also largely kept out of public view.

“The whole apparatus is not pushing back,” said one Biden ally who has fielded complaints from a range of congressional Democrats over the last week. “Our side is just flat-footed.”

A person familiar with the White House’s strategy said that Zients’ and others’ involvement in the delicate negotiations precludes them from doing interviews, and that the administration has been strategic in “picking the right moments to speak out.”

Biden officials more broadly countered that Republicans’ messaging stumbles over the past few days had undermined their case better than the president ever could. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Wednesday called Democrats the “hostage” in the debt ceiling fight — a quote the White House press office and Hill Democrats raced to amplify. The next day, the administration seized on RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel’s comment that the debt crisis “bodes very well” for the GOP, with White House spokesperson Andrew Bates blasting her remarks as “appalling and revealing.”

Within the White House, aides have also downplayed McCarthy’s accessibility as providing little value outside of filling reporters’ notebooks, questioning what’s to be gained by giving play-by-play on typical negotiation ups and downs outside of further undermining Americans’ trust in government.

Yet recent polling shows that the public would blame Biden and Republicans in equal measure if the country defaults. A majority of Americans also support the idea of spending cuts as part of a compromise deal — a data point that’s bolstered the GOP and deepened Democratic concerns the party has failed to fully explain the stakes.

Biden officials also have bristled at the media coverage of the standoff, complaining that outlets are failing to convey the seriousness of the crisis or fact-check Republicans on their claims. White House reporters tracking the talks acknowledged that some of those criticisms were fair — but said the White House has done little to aid their case. Officials have closely guarded details of the talks, in contrast to McCarthy’s approach of making his negotiators widely available.

Some Democrats acknowledged they could do only so much. Delauro publicly begged reporters to provide the pushback that has yet to more fully come from the White House.

“Help us,” she told a group of reporters on Thursday. “I don’t want you to feel that you’re being co-opted, but you have a responsibility as well.”

Sarah Ferris, Lauren Egan and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.