It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.

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Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your inbox.

SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE DEBT CEILING
By Lisa Desjardins,@LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent

We sit again on a train heading closer to a financial cliff.

As the debt ceiling deadline looms ([link removed]) , the negotiation stress at times has overshadowed some of the bigger issues involved. There are many questions about the ongoing negotiations and the debt ceiling itself. We thought it a good time to ask you for yours.

Do you have questions about the debt limit, or what is happening around these talks? Maybe what this means for our future?

Please send your questions to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) . Your questions can help guide our coverage, and we can answer a few of them next week.

Today, we want to take on two big ones.

What happens if the U.S. defaults? We made a brief video explainer that you can watch here ([link removed]) .
* In short: A U.S. default would be unprecedented, and no one can say with certainty what it would mean.
* But there is wide agreement that it would have significant effects throughout American society and across global financial markets, with the government having to decide between paying its lenders and paying for its programs, including the salaries of the military and other workers, as well as for benefits like Social Security.
* The bottom line. By some estimates, a default would cause serious job losses ([link removed]) and could tip the country into a recession ([link removed]) .

What happens now?
* It is not clear. The calendar is moving quickly. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen continues to say we could hit the debt ceiling deadline as soon as June 1 ([link removed]) .
* Lawmakers say Tuesday’s resumed talks were “productive.” Coming out of today’s meeting at the White House, both House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had vaguely positive things to say.
* But. The two sides are still “very far apart,” ([link removed]) McCarthy acknowledged. "Nothing has been resolved in this negotiation,” he told reporters ([link removed]) . “The only thing that has changed is that we finally have a format that has proven to work in years past. Now, all the years in the past, they had more time to negotiate.”
* What we know: Republicans are pushing for cutting federal spending ([link removed]) , making it easier to get permits for large projects, tightening work requirements for certain federal assistance programs like SNAP, and rolling back some unspent COVID relief money.
* The White House response. A statement released by the White House shortly after Tuesday’s meeting said that President Joe Biden made it clear that both parties “must come together to prevent default.” The statement also said Biden will return to the U.S. on Sunday, after his scheduled visit to the G7 summit in Hiroshima, to focus on the continuing debt ceiling talks.
* Time is running out. Leaders know they need to raise the debt ceiling in the coming weeks.
* Options now? Either a lightning-fast large deal makes it through Congress, a short-term deal rises to buy everyone time, or the nation could in fact crash into the debt ceiling.

The NewsHour's Kenichi Serino ([link removed]) contributed to this week's newsletter.

More on politics from our coverage:
* Watch: Special counsel John Durham's report of the FBI’s probe into possible ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia was released to the public Monday ([link removed]) .
* One Big Question: Did we learn anything new? Washington Post reporter Devlin Barrett, who’s been following the developments, discusses what the reports says ([link removed]) .
* A Closer Look: The wait for government disability services can last years. Some states are trying to change that ([link removed]) .
* Perspectives: Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s “The Joy of Politics” invites readers into her personal life. ([link removed])

THE WATERGATE HEARINGS, 50 YEARS LATER

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Watch the video in the player above.

By Dan Cooney, @IAmDanCooney ([link removed])
Social Media Producer/Coordinator

This week marks 50 years since the first public hearings of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, also known as the Senate Watergate hearings ([link removed]) .

It also marked the start of a public television "experiment," as the late Jim Lehrer put it: gavel-to-gavel coverage ([link removed]) of the hearings, rebroadcast each evening.

"We shall see cross-examination of men who were once among the most powerful in the land, as the select committee tries to answer the ultimate question: How high did the scandals reach, and was President Nixon himself involved?" Robert MacNeil told viewers ([link removed]) at the start of coverage on May 17, 1973.

The committee's work brought several historic moments, namely:
* John Dean, the former White House counsel, recounted ([link removed]) that he told Nixon he had "a cancer growing on the presidency and if the cancer was not removed, the president himself would be killed by it."
* White House aide Alexander Butterfield revealed ([link removed]) the existence of a taping system in the Oval Office that recorded conversations between Nixon and other high-level officials.

The historic Senate hearings would eventually lead to the resignation of an American president a year later. Watergate "showed the government of the United States at its absolute worst, and then it showed it at its absolute best," Lehrer told the NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown during a 2013 conversation ([link removed]) .

The coverage of the Watergate hearings elicited positive feedback for public broadcasting in an era before C-SPAN. MacNeil and Lehrer went on to create a nightly broadcast that you know today as the PBS NewsHour.
Learn more about the Watergate scandal ahead of the hearings’ 50th anniversary on Wednesday:
* Read: The complete Watergate timeline ([link removed]) . (It took longer than you realize.)
* Watch: Judy Woodruff's 2022 conversation ([link removed]) with Garrett Graff about his book, "Watergate: A New History," a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist ([link removed]) .
* From the Archives: The full gavel-to-gavel coverage of the hearings – 51 days’ worth – can be experienced here ([link removed]) , courtesy of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Cybele Mayes-Osterman, @CybeleMO ([link removed])
Associate Editorial Producer

Kentucky and Pennsylvania are holding primary elections on Tuesday ([link removed]) that could offer a preview of voter sentiment ahead of the 2024 elections. On Monday, the NewsHour looked at the run-up to both races ([link removed]) .

In Kentucky, Republican voters will head to the polls to nominate a candidate that will face off against incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in November. Kentucky is also where we’ll focus on trivia this week.

One of Kentucky’s former governors, Albert Benjamin “Happy” Chandler, went on to serve as the second commissioner of Major League Baseball. In 1947, he effectively integrated the league after approving the contract of this Black player to join the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Our question: What was the name of the player?

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: At a 1990 gathering to hash out a budget-deal, then-Republican Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole brought a gift offering for President George H.W. Bush. What was that gift?

The answer: A baseball bat ([link removed]) . It was labeled “The Big Budget Stick,” the Washington Post reported at the time.

In what may be a HTD first, we have the same two trivia winners two weeks in a row. Congratulations to Darci Jayne and Barry Weinstein!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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