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House to Vote on Hurricane Relief, Debt Extension

House set to cast vote on hurricane aid and debt ceiling bill. CNN: "The House is set to vote on a package of bills Friday that has support from unlikely bedfellows -- President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats -- but the proposal faces sharp resistance from conservatives. On Thursday, the Senate passed legislation that pairs hurricane relief aid with a three-month increase in the debt ceiling and a spending measure to keep the government open for the same amount of time. The House vote is scheduled for approximately 12:30 p.m. Friday, a senior House GOP leadership aide told CNN. Trump, in a surprising move, signed onto the package Wednesday, siding with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, who proposed bundling the bills together but only with a three-month extension for the debt ceiling, essentially punting the issue until December. Republican leaders had sought a debt limit increase for as long as 18 months."

An End to Debt Cieling?

The beginning of the end of the debt ceiling. The Atlantic: "President Trump is poised to release the hostage that so bedeviled his predecessor. In a White House meeting with congressional leaders on Wednesday, he asked Republican and Democratic leaders why Congress needed to vote on the issue at all. The topic came up as Trump was agreeing to a proposal from Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to lift the debt limit for three months as part of a deal in which Congress would also approve aid for states devastated by Hurricane Harvey and a continuing resolution to keep the government open through the fall. At the meeting, Schumer seized on Trump’s question and floated the idea of eliminating the debt ceiling altogether, according to a person briefed on the discussion. Schumer and Pelosi resolved to talk through the possibility with their respective caucuses with an eye toward a final agreement in December, when Congress will next have to confront the debt limit and federal spending. 'There are a lot of good reasons to do that,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, acknowledging that the era of debt-ceiling drama could be nearing an end."

DeVos Scraps Campus Sexual Assault Policy

DeVos to scrap Obama-era school sexual assault policy. Politico: "Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Thursday that she will rescind an Obama-era schools directive on sexual assault and develop a replacement that she said would do a better job of balancing the rights of victims and the accused. 'The truth is that the system established by the prior administration has failed too many students,' DeVos said during a half-hour speech at George Mason University where she took no questions. 'Survivors, victims of a lack of due process and campus administrators have all told me that the current approach does a disservice to everyone involved.' But the announcement drew strong objections from womens' groups, victims advocates and leading Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who said the changes were a step in the wrong direction. 'Any change that weakens Title IX protections will be devastating,' wrote Biden, who drove the Obama administration's efforts to crack down on campus sexual assault."

Cardinal Denounces Bannon's Claims Over Church Support of DACA

Cardinal Dolan rips into Bannon for 'insulting' remarks about Catholic Church and immigrants. Politico: "Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s assertion that Roman Catholic bishops 'need illegal immigrants' is so 'preposterous,' 'insulting' and 'ridiculous' that it doesn’t merit a response, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said Thursday... Bannon told CBS’ Charlie Rose that the Catholic church and bishops 'have been terrible about' undocumented immigrants. He suggested they were unable 'to come to grips with the problems in the church' because they rely on undocumented immigrants to fill the churches and have an economic interest in 'unlimited illegal immigration.'"

Ivanka Trump Supports Rollback of EEOC Pay Equity Initiative

Ivanka Trump abandons support of pay transparency initiative. NYT: "In a statement last week, Ms. Trump endorsed the decision to abandon an Obama-era initiative, set to go into effect next spring, requiring federal contractors and companies above a certain size to report salary data. 'Ultimately,' Ms. Trump explained, 'while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results.' You’d think that a passionate anti-wage-gap crusader like Ms. Trump would relish a broad, ever-expanding data set illuminating her pet issue so that she could go after it with laser focus, but no. She is even more devoted than that. She hates the gender wage gap so much, she can’t even stand to know anything about it."

More from OurFuture.org:

Betsy DeVos’s Silence On DACA Speaks Volumes About Her Education Values. Jeff Bryant: "U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos proclaims her agenda is to 'focus everything about education on individual students,' but if she really cared about the welfare of students, she would speak out about what her boss President Trump is doing to hundreds of thousands of undocumented students whose fate he has cast to the wind by ordering an end to the Obama-era program shielding young undocumented immigrants from deportation."

Donald Trump Jr. Just Admitted He Committed a Crime. Miles Mogulescu: "Memo to Donald Trump, Jr. from counsel: A bungled crime is still a crime. If you don’t believe me, ask tens of thousands of inmates living behind bars. Planning a crime and failing to successfully pull it off can still be a crime. And Don just admitted it, on Capital Hill, to members and staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a copy of his prepared testimony obtained by The Washington Post."

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