• United Auto Workers head Shawn Fain said the group won’t endorse President Biden, as it did in 2020, unless its concerns over the impact of transitioning to electric vehicles on workers are addressed.
  
  

• Attorneys general of New York and California are investigating the NFL regarding former female employees’ allegations of employment discrimination and a hostile work environment.

   

• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says the Senate panel he chairs will mark up a bill next month to raise the national minimum wage to $17 an hour.

At a Senate Budget Committee hearing, Democratic senators criticized and Republican senators defended the House GOP’s debt limit proposal. 

“Senate Republicans have largely ceded the issue to the House GOP and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), but the two sides traded jabs over the proposal for hours Thursday,” The Hill’s Aris Folley recapped.

The debate revolves around whether to tie a debt limit increase to spending cuts (as Republicans want) or to reserve spending debate for the budget process (as Democrats want).

Some key quotes:

• Ranking Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) said, “It seems to me that the Republicans have taken the right approach in this effort because we do care about working Americans.”
  
  
• Sen. Pat Murray (D-Wash.) remarked: “What House Republicans have voted for is one massive gift to the Chinese government. Because — guess what? Our competitors are not debating whether to pay their debts or wreck their economy.”

Read more about the hearing here

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said the latest ProPublica report on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas‘s ties with Republican donor Harlan Crow confirmed that their relationship “is not in the best interest of the justice or the Court.”

The most recent report says Crow paid for Thomas’s great-nephew’s private school tuition and follows reports about luxury trips and a real estate sale Thomas didn’t disclose. After ProPublica’s first report, Thomas said he was advised he did not have to report the trips on financial disclosures.

The Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday on Supreme Court ethics. Some lawmakers have called for the high court to create a code of conduct, while some Republicans on the panel said Democrats were attacking conservatives on the court for political reasons.

Read more about the report, including a response from Crow’s office, here.

The Hill’s Brad Dress looks at how tech workers “are pivoting back to the defense sector, or joining it for the first time, amid mass layoffs across the tech industry.”

The Hill’s Laura Kelly reports on the dilemma civilians face amid war in Sudan between two military commanders and their camps.

“While the U.S., in close coordination with partner countries in Africa, the Gulf and the United Nations, have helped broker temporary cease-fires between [Gen. Abdel Fattah] al-Burhan and [Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo] Hemedti, fighting and violence continue — raising the danger for civilians seeking to flee,” Kelly wrote. Read more here

“Those predicting a soft economic landing may be in for a rude awakening” — Vivekanand Jayakumar, an associate professor of economics at the University of Tampa. (Read here)

“The Supreme Court’s next target: social media” — Clay Calvert, J.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus at the University of Florida who held a joint appointment as a professor of law at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law and a Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communication in the College of Journalism and Communications.  (Read here)