The news media spent a lot of time reporting on how much progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans didn’t like the debt ceiling deal. But centrists had enough votes to pass it in the House.
The deal would raise the ceiling for two years, cap some federal spending and impose new work requirements on certain federal benefits. It still needs the blessing of Congress.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, left, meets with President Joe Biden to discuss the debt limit in the White House on May 22, 2023.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Brinkmanship means coming to the edge of potential default on the US debt ceiling. Are lawmakers negotiating the debt limit representing the wishes and interests of their voters?
While blue, Democratic states are becoming bluer, red, Republican-leaning states are becoming more conservative.
Matt Champlin
The Treasury has been taking extraordinary measures to delay a default, but these measures could fail as early as June 1.
Guthrie questioned whether politicians really cared about the public interest – such as the welfare of these veterans demonstrating in front of Congress in 1932.
Senate Historical Office
If Democrats embrace and deploy the Constitution leading up to the 2024 election, it will enable them to offer a confident message based on the hallowed principles of America’s founding charter.
Demonstrators who support banning books gather during a protest outside of the Henry Ford Centennial Library in Dearborn, Mich., on Sept. 25, 2022.
Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images
Only three presidents in the last 50 years have announced their re-election campaigns with similarly low approval ratings. But Biden could face an even more unpopular opponent in 2024.
There’s a more sophisticated way to understand how Americans divide themselves politically.
Torsten Asmus/ iStock / Getty Images Plus
We often talk about the American political landscape as if it were a line – Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right. Two political scientists say that view doesn’t reflect reality.
Acts of secession are happening across the U.S.
Vector Illustration/Getty Images
Secession talk evokes fears of a second Civil War. But one scholar says secession is already happening in the US under a variety of guises.
Reinstituted rules in the U.S. House of Representatives allow members to fire federal staffers and cut programs.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
House Republicans have adopted a rule used periodically over the past 150 years that allows lawmakers to speed up and streamline votes to dismantle federal programs and fire federal employees.
Evan Vucci/ AP Photo/AAP, Piotr Nowak/EPA/AAP, Al Drago/EPA/AAP, The Conversation
Biden can seem like a relic from a different age. But he also represents tradition, a form of politics that is not trapped in constant, partisan trench warfare on every issue.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has announced that she will not seek reelection in 2024.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Most Americans know Dianne Feinstein as a US senator. But for voters in San Francisco, she will forever be remembered as the woman who stepped in at a tragic and traumatic moment to lead the city.
Pennsylvania’s independent voters helped elect Democrat John Fetterman, seen here, over the GOP contender for the U.S. Senate seat, Mehmet Oz.
Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Pollsters, pundits and politicians all get it wrong when it comes to independent voters, who have become a crucial – and sometimes decisive – group in American politics.
Rioters break windows and breach the Capitol building in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
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Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations at the United States Studies Centre and in the Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney