Five things to know about where debt ceiling talks stand

Published

2 years ago

May 16, 2023

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Less than two weeks stand between Congress and a fast-approaching deadline from the Treasury Department forecasting the earliest the nation could risk a federal default.

Negotiations between the White House and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have picked up in recent days, but McCarthy told reporters this week that he thinks both parties are still “far apart” in reaching a compromise to keep the nation from defaulting on its debt.

“I think we’ve got to have a deal done by this weekend to be able to have a timeline to be able to pass it,” McCarthy said on Monday.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the country could run out of money to pay its debt as early as June 1, an estimate she reaffirmed on Monday.

Here are five things to know about the ongoing battle. McCarthy, Biden set to meet again this week

President Biden last week sat down with McCarthy, along with other congressional leaders, in the pair’s first talks on the debt ceiling since February. The Speaker said afterward that the meeting produced little movement, but that discussions would continue between staff in the days ahead before principal leaders are set to meet again.

However, he also said of the White House on Monday that it “seems like they want a default more than a deal,” underscoring the challenges both sides face in this critical stretch.

Debt ceiling talks had long been at a standstill as Republicans drew red lines against raising the debt limit without significant fiscal reforms while the White House refused to come to the bargaining table, insisting instead on a “clean” bill to raise the debt limit while pushing for bipartisan spending talks to be carried out separately.

Biden is set to meet again with leaders on Tuesday. Areas for potential compromise emerge

As discussions continue at the staff level, details have emerged about where compromise could be found.

In a pen-and-pad discussion with reporters last week, prominent House Republicans said they see new limits on federal spending, reclaiming unobligated coronavirus funding, permitting reform and changes to work requirements for public assistance programs among the top areas ripe for bipartisan agreement.

The areas were included in a package House Republicans passed last month that paired an increase in the debt limit with a host of partisan proposals to cut spending. No Democrat voted for the bill.

Some moderate Democrats have also signaled openness to changes like clawing back some coronavirus funds or even potential changes to the student loan policies implemented under the Biden administration in recent weeks.

Biden said last week that rescinding some unspent COVID-19 funding is “on the table.”

And, asked over the weekend about work requirements, the president responded, “I voted for tougher aid programs that’s in the law now, but for Medicaid, it’s a different story. And so I’m waiting to hear what their exact proposal is.”

But there is still plenty of resistance to other proposals Republicans have offered to cut spending. Democrats talking backup plans

As both sides look to put pressure on the other over the threat of a default, Democrats have talked up the prospect of potential backup plans to bypass working with McCarthy on the debt limit.

There’s been a lot of chatter in recent days around using the 14th Amendment, which says the public debt “shall not be questioned,” to potentially allow the president to issue debt. However, the idea has sparked serious legal questions and concerns from lawmakers who think it too risky.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has also said the move could lead to a “constitutional crisis,” while warning against Washington reaching “the point where we need to consider whether the president can go on issuing debt.”

Democrats have additionally looked at using a procedure known as a discharge petition in a bid to allow the party to force a vote on a bill to raise the debt limit in the lower chamber, despite opposition from the Speaker. But that plan would also require support from at least five rebel Republicans for success, and House GOP leaders are adamant the conference is largely unified in tying any increase to the debt ceiling with cuts to spending. Time is running short

Members on both sides are hopeful Congress can put a bow on the debt ceiling matter before June 1, the earliest the Treasury warns the nation risks defaulting on its debt, setting off a high-stakes race against the clock.

While there’s another meeting on the calendar between Biden and congressional leaders this week, the president is soon scheduled to head for Asia later this week for the Group of Seven (G7) summit. He also has trips to Papua New Guinea and Australia on the calendar before the end of the month.

Lawmakers are also short on legislative time, prompting questions around the fate of Memorial Day recess in the upper chamber as tensions escalate around the debt limit.

McCarthy, meanwhile, told reporters he believed leaders need to agree on a framework by this weekend to avert default.

All the while, both sides have been steadfast in rejecting a short-term extension to the debt limit to buy Congress more time. Some on both sides toughen their stances

Members on both sides aren’t expecting the final deal to look much like the proposals some have dug in their heels on in recent weeks. The Memo: Nonexistent ‘border surge’ scrambles immigration politics Michigan boy fends off alleged kidnapper by shooting him with a slingshot

Reports have surfaced that negotiators are considering a two-year deal that would involve proposals aimed at limiting spending while also raising the debt limit. But Republicans are pushing for a shorter extension, as the party presses for another debt fight ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Congressional Democrats have also come out strongly against spending caps as talks heat up, posing a potential hurdle to both sides as negotiators pursue a bipartisan deal. Many also still insist that budget conversations be handled in a two-track process, separating possible cuts from the debt ceiling.

“I’m not open to any policy concessions in the context of the debt limit. We just have to do the responsible thing and prevent everyone’s mortgages from going up,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said last week.

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I felt I had to go back to help Gaza’s hospitals, says British plastic surgeon

Published

2 hours ago

June 19, 2025

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I felt I had to go back to help Gaza's hospitals, says British plastic surgeon

Dr Victoria Rose is a consultant plastic surgeon who worked in Gaza hospitals for two separate periods last year. This is her first-hand story of the war in Gaza.

The word “dire” does not adequately describe the situation in Gaza’s hospitals.

On a daily basis when I was working there, I had a list of at least 10 patients, and 60% of them were under the age of 15.

These were tiny children with life-threatening burns and limbs blown off, often losing significant family members in the attacks and left to cope with their life-changing injuries alone.

I first joined the charity IDEALS, which helps medical professionals during crises, in Gaza in 2019. I returned last year, working with orthopaedic surgeons.

I felt compelled to go back after becoming aware that a plastic surgeon from Gaza who trained with me in London had been inundated with complex trauma cases since the war broke out in October 2023.

Our aim was to deliver essential surgical equipment and assist our colleagues with the increasing trauma workload they faced. But as the war progressed, it became apparent that we had a third objective: to bear witness.

I worked at the European Gaza Hospital in March 2024 and then returned in August of that year for a month, working at Nasser Hospital.

The transformation of the landscape during these two visits was staggering. The streets were unrecognisable, just pile after pile of dust and rubble. Such a scale of destruction could only be justified if every single building in Gaza was part of Hamas’s infrastructure.

In February 2024, we were denied entry by COGAT – part of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) controlling activities in the occupied territories – which, regrettably, has become a standard outcome for 50% of foreign doctors attempting to gain access. However, we managed to regain access in May.

This mission was intended to last four weeks at the European Gaza Hospital. However, due to its bombing on the day we arrived and its subsequent decommissioning by the IDF, we were redirected to Nasser for three and a half weeks.

The population had now been relentlessly displaced, bombed in their tents, deprived of water and sanitation, and ultimately starved. I remember thinking it couldn’t get any worse – and then they cut the internet.

We ploughed on without essential equipment such as painkillers and antibiotics, patching the patients up, knowing that they were likely to be bombed again.

When we left the hospital we went into the red zone – an area of active fighting that needed to be evacuated.

This meant that nothing could enter without the journey being “deconflicted” by the IDF. Minimal journeys have thus far been deconflicted. Patients struggle to gain entry, and staff cannot leave, as equipment continues to be depleted.

Nasser is the only hospital in the south equipped with a CT scanner, a blood bank, ICU capabilities and an oxygen generator.

I work with two orthopaedic surgeons who run the IDEALS charity. They have been travelling to Gaza since 2009.

IDEALS started the lower limb reconstruction programme in 2013, visiting Gaza every other month and bringing four orthopaedic surgeons back to the UK for short periods of training.

In 2021, I arranged for a plastic surgeon from Gaza to come to London to train with me. He was an incredible trainee and returned to Gaza in February 2023 to take up the post of chief of plastic surgery at Shifa Hospital.

Shortly after the war broke out, I felt compelled to help him.

All eyes are now on Israel’s next move.

Gaza: Doctors On The Frontline will air on Sky News at 9pm on 19 June

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Israel’s block on international journalists in Gaza should not be allowed to stand

Published

2 hours ago

June 19, 2025

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Israel's block on international journalists in Gaza should not be allowed to stand

On Sky News this week we’re showing a film about Israel’s war in Gaza which has now been going on for more than 620 days.

It is a chastening watch.

Swathes of Gaza’s medical infrastructure have been razed, many of the territory’s buildings have been destroyed, and tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, maimed and left hungry and malnourished in a war fought mainly from the air with heavy ordinance dropped on crowded civilian areas.

These extraordinary eyewitness accounts are not brought to our screens by experienced international war correspondents – they are barred from entering Gaza – but by two British medics whose mission was to save lives not to report on the horrors of war.

That visiting surgeons Victoria Rose and Tom Potokar felt compelled to do just that, speaks not only to the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, but to the swingeing restrictions imposed on reporting what is happening there.

In the history of modern warfare, the presence of journalists on the battlefield has been essential in holding the combatants to account and ensuring that war crimes and atrocities are uncovered and prevented.

And Israel stands accused of egregious crimes in Gaza.

Since it launched its war there in response to the Hamas terror attacks of October 7th 2023, in which around 1,200 Israelis and other nationals were murdered and a further 250 taken hostage, more than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed according to the Gazan health authorities. Many of the dead have been women and children.

Earlier this month, former US State Department official Matt Miller told the Sky News Trump100 podcast that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza. Ex-UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths went further, telling Sky News presenter Yalda Hakim that Israel is responsible for genocide there.

It’s an accusation supported by Ireland, Spain, and South Africa which is pursuing Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice – the UN’s highest court.

Israel rejects the case against it, claiming that many of the dead are Hamas fighters who have been hiding in tunnels under the hospitals that it has the right to attack in self-defence.

Israeli officials and diplomats deny that its military targets women and children and react with outrage to the suggestion that it is responsible for ethnic cleansing or genocide – accusations of crimes against humanity that are taken as particularly loaded given the dark resonance they have for the Jewish people.

But Israel’s confidence in the integrity of its wartime conduct is not matched by a willingness to allow international journalists into Gaza to witness what is going on there for themselves.

Military-organised ’embeds’ fall well short of independent journalism

For the course of its longest war, no reporters have been permitted entry to Gaza other than on organised and controlled ’embeds’ of a few hours alongside Israeli soldiers.

These managed opportunities fall well short of independent journalism, for which Sky News and other global news organisations must rely on trusted and heroic local reporting teams who lack the support and infrastructure to provide a complete picture of what is going on.

And these Palestinian journalists have paid a heavy price for their work; according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 185 of them have been killed during the war and 86 imprisoned.

The Foreign Press Association, which represents the interests of international journalists operating in Israel, has been petitioning its High Court of Justice to lift the ban on reporting independently from Gaza.

So far, that legal action has been unsuccessful and last month the court again postponed a hearing in the case without reason or setting a new date.

Israeli officials push back on the need and suitability of allowing journalists to operate independently in Gaza. They say that their military’s priority is the rescue of the remaining hostages and the fight against Hamas and that the safety of reporters could not be ensured.

But journalists from Sky News and fellow news organisations have operated in Gaza in previous conflicts, providing details of their location and movements to the Israel Defence Forces.

‘We accept the risks’

Moreover, we have decades of experience of covering conflict zones and our reporters are highly trained at doing so. The risks are real, for sure. But they’re risks that we accept. It’s what we do.

The ongoing denial of access to Gaza feels much less about the safety of journalists and more about preventing proper scrutiny and accountability of the desperate situation there.

The barring of international journalists is accompanied by the active delegitimisation of what reporting on the war has been possible which is often shamefully labelled as anti-Semitic and compared to the darkest periods in Jewish history.

All together this constitutes a war on truth that is at odds with Israel’s proud and oft-repeated claim to be the Middle East’s only democracy and it should not be allowed to stand.

Gaza: Doctors On The Frontline will air on Sky News at 9pm on 19 June

World

US President Donald Trump says he ‘may or may not’ strike Iran as Israel’s air war continues

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2 hours ago

June 19, 2025

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US President Donald Trump says he 'may or may not' strike Iran as Israel's air war continues

US President Donald Trump says he has yet to decide whether the US will join Israel militarily in its campaign against Iran.

Asked whether the US was getting closer to striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, Mr Trump said: “I may do it. I may not do it.”

Speaking outside the White House on Wednesday, he added: “Nobody knows what I’m going to do…Iran’s got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate.

“And I said, ‘why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction?'”

Mr Trump said Iran had reached out to W ashington, a claim Tehran denied, with Iran’s mission to the UN responding: “No Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran would not surrender and warned “any US military intervention will undoubtedly cause irreparable damage” to US-Iranian relations.