On History: In the end it was the Democrats who provided the votes to pass Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s compromise on budget and debt, with more Democrats voting in favor than Republicans.

  Attempting to whip up the vote, McCarthy had said, “Everybody has a right to their own opinion, but on history, I’d want to be here with this bill today.” He also was obviously trying to put a shine on his image. 

  The bill would suspend the $31.4 trillion federal borrowing limit until January 2025, and cut federal spending by $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

  With 218 votes needed to win, only 149 republicans voted with McCarthy and 165 Democrats. The vote was 314 to 117. Forty-six Democrats voted “No” and 71 Republicans. 

  The bill now goes to the Senate.

Not Secret: Federal prosecutors have obtained a recording of Donald Trump in 2021 talking about a sensitive military document he had kept after leaving the White House, the NY Times reports according to two sources.

  The recording evidently reveals that Trump knew the document was secret, undermining his claim that he had already declassified documents he had taken with him to his Florida home, in some cases, “just by thinking about it.” The issue is whether Trump obstructed efforts by federal officials to retrieve documents he took with him after leaving office and whether he violated laws governing the handling of classified material.

  The Times reports that the tape was made during a meeting  Trump held in July 2021 with people helping his former chief of staff Mark Meadows write a memoir of his 10 months in the White House. The meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, NJ, where he spends summers.

  Until now, the focus of the documents investigation has been largely on material Trump kept with him at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, rather than in New Jersey.

  In New York, in further efforts to delay and sidetrack criminal proceedings against the former president, lawyers for Trump are asking the judge in his Manhattan criminal case to step aside, citing ties between the judge’s family and Democratic causes.

Contempt: The Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee says he will seek to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress for Wray’s refusal to hand over a document containing unsubstantiated allegations about President Biden and his family.

  Wray has offered to allow representatives to see the document in a secure location, but won’t let them actually have it, citing concerns about confidential sources. 

  “We have been clear that anything short of producing these documents to the House Oversight Committee is not in compliance with the subpoena,” Rep. James Comer said in a statement. “If the FBI fails to hand over the FD-1023 form as required by the subpoena, the House Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings.”

  The FBI issued a statement saying that Wray gave Comer “an opportunity to review information responsive to the subpoena in a secure manner.”

The War Room: Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv was attacked again today with a volley of 10 Russian ballistic missiles. Three people were killed despite Ukrainian clams that all 10 missiles were shot down.

  Yesterday the Biden administration approved another $300 million in military assistance to Ukraine, including air-defense weapons, artillery shells, bullets, and weapons to be launched from unmanned aircraft. This brings the total of assistance  to more than $38.3 billion, 

Inaction: Scot Peterson, the former school resource officer accused of doing nothing to protect the kids during the 2018 school massacre in Parkland, Florida, is about to go on trial on charges of criminal neglect.

  Peterson never even entered the school while a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County. Peterson was immediately fired and labelled “The Coward of Broward.”

  Peterson, 60, has said that the echo of gunfire made it impossible to know where the shooting was coming from.

The Spin Rack:  Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah announced that he plans to resign from Congress, citing his wife’s health. He sits on the House Intelligence and House Appropriations Committees. — Danny Masterson, 47, an actor who appeared on “That ’70s Show,” has been found guilty of rapes committed in the early 2000s. He faces up to 30 years in prison. — The operator of a limousine company that owned the stretch limo which crashed killing 20 people in Schoharie, NY back in 2018, has been sentenced to 5-15 years in prison. Nauman Hussain, 33, was convicted of manslaughter for failing to properly maintain the limo on which the brakes failed on a steep hill west of Albany, NY. — Canada will now require health warnings printed on every individual cigarette, messages like “Cigarettes cause cancer” and “Poison in every puff”. — Two-time Grand Slam tennis champion Garbiñe Muguruza is engaged to a man who asked for a selfie with her two years ago. In making the announcement on Instagram she said, “You had me at ‘Hello.’”

Below the Fold: Actor Al Pacino at age 83 is expecting his fourth child, this one with 29-year-old girlfriend Noor Alfallah, who used to date Mick Jagger, 79. So, yeah, Mick was too young for her.

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