Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy speaks during a press conference after the House approved the debt ceiling deal he negotiated with the White House, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, May 31, 2023.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, dismissed by critics as weak and beholden to the right flank of his party, appears to have emerged from the first major test of his leadership victorious, if not unscathed. 

As the clock began ticking down toward a potential default on the nation’s record-high debt, he strengthened his hand in negotiations with President Joe Biden by unexpectedly passing – with a united GOP front – a symbolic, partisan bill to cut spending and roll back some Biden initiatives. Last night, after several weeks of high-stakes wrangling, he presided over a bipartisan deal that passed the House with 72% support and strong majorities from both parties – highly unusual for major bills in this era of polarized politics.

If the bill also clears the Senate quickly, it would avoid default on the $31 trillion national debt – anticipated to occur as soon as Monday – and trim an estimated $1.5 trillion in spending over the next decade, though a second round of “adjustments” reportedly could reduce the total cuts to $1 trillion.

While some far-right members expressed displeasure with the end result, others prominently backed the bill, and Mr. McCarthy expressed confidence that his position was not in any immediate peril. Throughout the crisis, the speaker also gave some clues about his willingness and ability to work with Democrats going forward. 

“I think we saw reason prevail,” says Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, speaking of the broadly bipartisan support. Although many Democrats criticized Mr. McCarthy and his party for acting as “hostage takers” in the debt limit negotiations, Mr. Phillips, a member of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, says he thinks the process may actually have strengthened the speaker’s relationships with President Biden and Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “Even if it’s a baby step, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”

Jose Luis Magana/AP

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, along with other Republican members of the House, speaks at a news conference after the House passed the debt ceiling bill at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 31, 2023.

“Speaker McCarthy and myself continue to have open, honest, consistent communication,” Mr. Jeffries told the Monitor in a hallway interview. “That’s been the case from the beginning of this Congress, and I expect that it will continue.”

Mr. McCarthy, the son of a firefighter, from Bakersfield, California, rose to prominence in state politics and then Congress with what longtime allies say is a knack for team building and an understanding of what lawmakers need to deliver to their constituents. Though not as eloquent as some of his predecessors, nor as much of a policy wonk, he has surprised many in Washington with his ability – so far – to hold together a fractious Republican Party.

Last night, he got all but one of the 150 GOP votes he had promised to deliver – about two-thirds of his caucus.

He’ll have to contend with the other third once the dust settles. Members of the Freedom Caucus and others are frustrated that he wasn’t able to make more of a dent in deficit spending, which has driven the debt to levels that exceed America’s total annual economic output for the first time since World War II. Many slammed the deal as essentially a spending freeze in exchange for allowing the president to incur another $4 trillion in debt over the next two years.

Democrats, for their part, bemoaned the bill’s new work requirements for government benefit programs. Still, it preserved a number of key Biden policy achievements – including green tax credits, such as for Teslas, which Republicans had sought to axe.

The GOP debt limit bill that Mr. McCarthy first shepherded through the House would have cut the deficit by $4.8 trillion in exchange for raising the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion. All but four Republicans supported that bill – the passage of which essentially forced the president to negotiate with Mr. McCarthy, after he had initially demanded a “clean” debt limit hike with no strings attached. 

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas listens to testimony during a House Committee on Rules hearing about whether to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, May 30, 2023. He voted against the debt bill.

GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas credits the speaker, whom he refers to as a friend, for being “relentlessly positive” and working to pull everyone together. But as the contours of the deal Mr. McCarthy was hammering out with Mr. Biden became clearer, Representative Roy says he conveyed to GOP negotiators that there were likely to be a lot of “no” votes on the right. 

In the end, 71 Republicans, including Mr. Roy, voted against the deal; in fact, 16 more Democrats supported it than Republicans, which conservatives pointed to as proof that it was a bad bill. 

“For five months, we were kicking butt and it was working. And I feel like that went off the rails this week,” says Mr. Roy, declining to go into private conversations, or whether he and other conservative members were given a heads-up before the deal was announced. 

“The first real bill that cuts spending” in 10 years

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, as the bill is titled, rescinds unspent COVID-19 relief funds as well as money allocated for the Internal Revenue Service; requires federal agencies to offset certain new spending with equivalent cuts – often shorthanded as “pay as you go,” or PayGo – through the end of 2024; and ends the suspension on student loan payments. It also expands work requirements for able-bodied recipients of food benefits (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and it includes energy permitting reforms and a green light to finish a major pipeline in West Virginia, a pet project of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. 

As both sides tried to sell the deal to their own members, different factions sought to claim victory and minimize the achievements of others. 

Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, whom Mr. McCarthy deputized to lead negotiations with the White House, calls the speaker “the best strategist that we’ve had in modern history” – thinking five, six, seven steps ahead. He adds that the speaker empowered his negotiators to work out a deal and together they succeeded despite controlling only one of the three power centers in Washington. 

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Louisiana GOP Rep. Garret Graves, flanked by House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, of New York, and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, speaks at a news conference after the House passed the debt ceiling bill at the Capitol in Washington, May 31, 2023.

“When we ran into a roadblock, the speaker was very quick to pick up the phone to call the president,” he adds. 

Fellow negotiator Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina told reporters the speaker “has always been underestimated.”

When asked whether that was true, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was quick to disagree. “I don’t think so,” she said with a smile, describing Mr. McCarthy’s last-minute promises and gestures as evidence of weak leadership. “I think I estimated him.”

While it’s clear that Mr. McCarthy did not get nearly as much as his party laid out in its April bill, supporters say it includes significant accomplishments.

Among them: an agreement to automatically cut all discretionary spending by 1% if the House and Senate do not pass all 12 appropriations bills by the end of the year. That appropriations process, which is the traditional way Congress decides on a budget, has largely broken down, often resulting in a rushed “omnibus” maneuver. When appropriations bills get rolled into one gigantic spending bill, it avoids government shutdowns but is too opaque a tool to meaningfully shape budgets. Or Congress simply authorizes the government to continue to spend at last year’s budget levels, which prevents any new cuts.

The 1% cuts are known as a sequester, which “is to Democrats what garlic is to vampires,” quipped Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger, who characterized that spending reform as a major concession by President Biden and congressional Democrats. 

That measure was key to winning over GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, an MIT-trained engineer-turned-Kentucky homesteader who wears an electronic debt counter on the breast pocket of his suit.

As part of the negotiations that eventually helped Mr. McCarthy win the speakership on the 15th round of voting last January, Mr. Massie was given a place on the all-important Committee on Rules. His 11th-hour support for yesterday’s debt ceiling bill proved crucial to staving off a Freedom Caucus rebellion that could have prevented the legislation from even reaching the House floor.

In a phone interview, Mr. Massie says some of his GOP colleagues may have had higher expectations about how much of their April bill would make it into the final deal. But as someone who has long been pushing for greater fiscal responsibility – and was one of the few Republicans to do so under former President Donald Trump – he had a more realistic sense of what was possible.

“Maybe I’m jaded – I’ve been there for more than 10 years,” he said, adding that this is the first time he’s seen Republicans secure meaningful spending cuts. “We’ve been conditioned to gain nothing, ever, on the debt limit bill.”

But other Republicans cast doubt on Mr. McCarthy’s touting of the bill as “bending the curve” of discretionary spending.

“This is an irresponsible bill,” said Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, pointing out that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office assessed that despite the GOP getting the work requirements they sought, the bill would actually increase spending on benefits because it expanded eligibility – an assessment Mr. McCarthy’s team said was inaccurate. 

She also belittled the bill’s IRS cuts, a key GOP demand amid concerns that the effort to step up auditing would hurt middle-class Americans and small-business owners. “Page 53, line 11: We’re cutting $1.4 billion of the IRS,” she said. “That’s one and a half percent of the new 87,000 IRS agents.”

“I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in the way that this went down,” said Ms. Mace, who voted no. 

McCarthy promises a bipartisan commission to address debt

Most GOP critics have refrained from discussing whether they would call for a vote to remove Mr. McCarthy – something a single member could initiate, a condition Mr. McCarthy agreed to when trying to secure the speakership. But now that the debt limit vote is behind them, they could press the issue.

“Bring it,” said Mr. McCarthy last night when asked about the possibility, according to Punchbowl News. If such a vote were to occur, Democrats could theoretically join with a small group of far-right Republicans looking to oust the speaker, but they may be reluctant to do so given the possibility of ending up with a more hardline replacement. 

Mr. McCarthy also vowed last night to appoint a bipartisan commission to address how to tackle the debt, which will continue to grow under this new deal. That’s an idea that was proposed by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, which threw its weight behind yesterday’s bill. 

“I hope that that’s established,” says Representative Phillips, who called for building on yesterday’s deal by matching revenue increases with more “efficient” spending. “This is a beginning, not an end.”

A national holiday, free concerts, air shows, bagpipers, world leaders, a shuttered capital – the wedding of Jordan’s Crown Prince Hussein on Thursday was not your typical royal wedding.

More than nuptials with a who’s who of VIP guests, these public celebrations, according to Jordan’s royal palace, were “the big event.” They’re the introduction to Jordan’s next king.

“Today we are rejoicing for our future,” says Mohammed Sawaya, one of thousands of citizens on Amman’s streets waiting for the royal procession to pass after today’s wedding ceremony. Nearby, his car sports a giant decal of the crown prince and his bride.

“Prince Hussein is our age, he understands youth issues, he can navigate the world, and he is going to lead us into the future,” Mr. Sawaya says. More than half of Jordanians are under the age of 30.

Raad Adayleh/AP

Jordanians wave the national flags in anticipation of the royal motorcade in Amman, just ahead of the royal wedding.

The wedding of the crown prince to Rajwa Alseif, a Saudi architect and cousin of the Saudi ruling family, was a break from tradition in Jordan where, unlike the United Kingdom, royal weddings have long been low-key affairs.

They were the largest celebrations the country has seen in two decades. The weeklong festivities kicked off on Monday with free concerts and dabkeh line dances at companies and university campuses, and in village squares.

Scarlet banners and electronic billboards dotted across the capital bear the words “celebrating Hussein,” “the royal wedding,” and, simply, “we rejoice.” Even McDonald’s put up a three-story banner with the crown prince’s image, announcing that the burger chain was “rejoicing in Hussein.”

On Thursday, schools and businesses shuttered, and one-third of the capital’s streets closed to mark the occasion. In a country whose stability has long been tied to its royal family, the point was clear: “The main message of these celebrations is the presentation of the future king of Jordan,” says Amer Al Sabaileh, a Jordanian geopolitical analyst. 

Although King Abdullah II has declared no intention of stepping aside, his 28-year-old son, Crown Prince Hussein, has been increasingly assuming official royal duties.

Taylor Luck

Brothers Mohamed (left) and Omar Abu Eid hold Saudi and Jordanian flags at a rally marking the royal wedding near the royal palace in Amman. The marriage of Prince Hussein to Rajwa Alseif, a Saudi, is seen by Jordanians as a tying of bonds between the two nations.

He’s deputized for his father abroad by addressing the U.N. General Assembly, attending Arab League summits, and being received along with the king by President Joe Biden at the White House in April. Yet, until this week, the heir-in-waiting had not yet stepped into the limelight at home.

In Jordan, the crown prince, a Georgetown graduate, is best known for his Crown Prince Foundation, a nonprofit that runs youth empowerment and employability skills initiatives. 

Along with the national holiday, this week Crown Prince Hussein was given his own royal flag and emblem, a sign Mr. Sabaileh says means he could soon become a “crown prince with a wider portfolio and involvement in day-to-day affairs,” and perhaps “a de facto king of Jordan.”  

Thursday was a rare moment of joy for the traditionally stable and steadfast monarchy, a stalwart U.S. ally that has faced geopolitical and internal tumult over the past five years.

King Abdullah resisted pressure by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Trump administration to support a controversial peace plan that would have failed to guarantee Palestinian statehood and would have stripped away Palestinian refugees’ right of return.

Courtesy of Royal Hashemite Court

Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah and Rajwa Alseif tie the knot in an Islamic marriage ceremony with dozens of dignitaries, including first lady Jill Biden, in attendance at the Zahran Palace in central Amman.

And Jordan’s monarch is two years removed from an alleged coup attempt by his half-brother, former Crown Prince Hamzah, in a “sedition” case that officials claim was orchestrated by foreign powers to replace King Abdullah.

International dignitaries, royalty, and regional leaders were in attendance today for the soft launch of a future monarch, including first lady Jill Biden; Prince William and his wife, Kate; Kuwaiti Crown Prince Mishal Al Sabah; and Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid. 

The nationwide celebrations were a message to Jordanians as well as neighbors, allies, and foes: The future is secure, and that future is Crown Prince Hussein. 

“Having the international community present was a way to close the chapter of the recent disputes and put very clear that this crown prince is the coming king,” says Mr. Sabaileh, the analyst.

In a press release, Jordan’s Hashemite Royal Court described the wedding as a “touchstone in the country’s century-long story” providing “the Jordanian people with an opportunity to come together around a joyous occasion ... and look to the future of their country with pride.”

Courtesy of Royal Hashemite Court

Crown Prince Hussein officially announced his engagement to Rajwa Alseif in August 2020.

The wedding “lays the foundation for the next generation of the Royal Family and the perpetuation of the Jordanian Hashemite line,” which traces its roots back to the Prophet Muhammad, the statement added.

It also sealed a match of political expediency.

Through her mother, Ms. Alseif is a first cousin twice removed from Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and a second cousin to the ruling Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

There is hope among some officials and Jordanians that marital ties between the future king and the Saudi royal family will preserve the kingdom’s place in a region increasingly dominated by rising Saudi leadership and waning American influence.

Watching the wedding on giant screens near the royal palace, Jordanian brothers Mohammed Abu Eid and Omar Abu Eid stand side by side wrapped in Jordanian and Saudi flags.

“We Jordanians and Saudis are relatives now,” Mohammed says. “Our future is together.”

Long before LeBron James donned the purple and gold en route to an NBA title and the league’s all-time scoring record, he was introduced to the world in green and gold.

The unprecedented hype that surrounded Mr. James in high school – and the bond with his teammates in Akron, Ohio, during his formative years – is chronicled in the movie “Shooting Stars.”

The film, streaming on Peacock starting June 2, is inspired by a coming-of-age memoir written by Mr. James and co-author Buzz Bissinger of “Friday Night Lights” fame. The look back at the trials and triumphs of the young player and his teammates is particularly compelling given recent news that Mr. James may be considering retirement.

“I got a lot to think about,” he said after his Los Angeles Lakers were recently eliminated in the Western Conference Finals by the Denver Nuggets. “Just personally, with me moving forward with the game of basketball, I got a lot to think about.”

Mr. James, perhaps not ironically, channeled Jay-Z on Instagram with another retirement hint earlier this week. “I’m supposed to be #1 on everybody list, we’ll see what happens when I no longer exist,” the basketball icon quoted on his Instagram story, a callback to Jay-Z’s “The Black Album,” which the rapper suggested at the time would be his last. He has since released five albums, and Mr. James has long suggested that he wants to continue long enough to play with his namesake son, “Bronny.” 

The retirement hints are the musings of a man with a “championship or bust” mentality. It’s a commentary that reflects the high stakes with which Mr. James continues to approach the game. This recent movie about his life shows us that those stakes were present long before his professional career.

In what the memoir’s summary describes as “challenges all too typical of inner city America,” Mr. James had moved with his mother, Gloria, more than a dozen times by the time he turned 10. That sense of instability was also present in the life of his teammate, Willie McGee, who left his parents in Chicago to be raised by his older brother.

Universal Pictures

"Shooting Stars" tells the story of a group of high school basketball players in Akron, Ohio, including LeBron James (Marquis “Mookie” Cook). Mr. James was a No. 1 NBA draft pick right out of high school.

The biopic does not handle those circumstances with kid gloves. Within the first few minutes of the movie, the actors depicting the young Mr. James, Mr. McGee, and the other members of the “Fab Five” fire off curse words. Those obscenities don’t define the boys, nor their upbringing. They would eventually find a father figure in Dru Joyce, whose son, “Lil’ Dru,” plays a prominent role in the movie and on the team. The biopic does a good job of centering the players beyond their most famous standout. It is at its best when the risks the young people took are most apparent – from the younger Joyce’s successful pitch to coach Keith Dambrot to have the group play together, to Mr. James’ toeing the line between prep star and professional.

It’s hard to imagine now that his career as a basketball player might have ever been in question, but when Mr. James was ruled ineligible to play after he accepted two jerseys that cost less than $1,000, it cast a shadow over that surety.

At the time, the jerseys and his mother’s purchase of a $50,000 Hummer were filed under the umbrella of “scandal.” While society still struggles with the earning potential and negotiating power of college athletes, much less top-flight high school players, it is fitting that “name, image, likeness” valuations of Mr. James’ son, “Bronny,” are in the millions of dollars.

Yet the senior LeBron was “The Chosen One.” Sports Illustrated gave him that name and the front cover, along with the burden of being Michael Jordan’s “Air Apparent.” Where that comparison devastated a host of young up-and-coming players, Mr. James has thrived under that pressure.

“Shooting Stars” is a celebration of basketball savvy and the essence of sports: team. No modern-day player exemplifies the notion of team more than Mr. James. No one man could have beaten the odds when it came to poverty, or instability, or unrealistic expectations. Mr. James not only has risen to the top of his profession, but also has placed his children in the space to be basketball savants.

Whether he chooses to retire this offseason or not, the past two decades of his very public upbringing and ascension have been remarkable. Mr. James and his colleagues took a deliberate approach to basketball that assured that their success was more than just a game of chance, but one of certainty.

It is fitting that wherever Mr. James slipped on a jersey – whether in Akron, Cleveland, Miami, or Los Angeles – there has always been a hint of gold.

Ken Makin is the host of the “Makin’ a Difference” podcast. 

AP

Two guests take a selfie in front of sculptures in the courtyard of the Sursock Museum during an opening event for the iconic venue in Beirut, Lebanon, May 26. The museum has reopened to the public, three years after a deadly explosion in the nearby Beirut port reduced many of its treasured paintings and collections to ashes.

Lebanon’s economic crisis is one of the world’s worst since the mid-19th century. Poverty has reached historic highs. The country has been without a leader since October. Yet its people have now taken a step toward reviving Lebanon’s place as a cultural and intellectual hub in the Middle East.

Last Friday, curators in Beirut reopened the Sursock Museum, one of the most important archives of contemporary and modernist art in the Arab world. The restoration of the museum, severely damaged nearly three years ago by a massive chemical explosion in the Mediterranean port city, asserts the dignity of a region that for much of human history was shaped more by the vibrancy of ideas than by persistent conflict.

“It’s a beautiful moment of healing,” Karina El Helou, the museum’s director, told Le Monde. “It’s a symbol ... of the survival of cultural life” – proof, she said, “that culture is essential when everything else is going wrong.”

As a tool for liberation, art is getting plenty of work these days. The pro-democracy movement in Iran has stirred debate about using art centers as places for dialogue. The same is true in Sudan where a civil war has provoked a popular backlash. “Sudanese artists have been at the forefront of [their country’s] freedom movement,” observed French rappers and writers in tribute to Tunisian and Sudanese filmmakers at the Cannes Film Festival last month.

The Beirut museum’s revival points to a unifying aspect of art – its beauty and honest messaging cannot be suppressed. Long before the Sursock reopened, Lebanon’s National Symphony Orchestra found ways to play on through the pandemic and constant power outages.

Art also binds people across generations and cultures. The Café Yafa in Israel, for example, is a Palestinian-owned bookstore that welcomes dialogue among Jewish and Arab patrons.

Restoring the museum’s edifice and treasures required French artists skilled in stained glass as well as Lebanese wood carvers well studied in Venetian and Ottoman architecture. The project was financed by foreign agencies and private donors and coordinated through the U.N. agency for science and culture. All those involved have a shared stake in the project. The art in the Sursock reflects the diversity and commonality of values rooted in ancient civilizations from Greece to Rome, from Iraq to Sudan.

In 2011, the world witnessed the Arab Spring with its youthful protesters demanding civic equality and honest governance. While most of their aspirations were ignored, they endure in many aesthetic spaces, from bookstores to museums. The light of right ideas only finds new expressions.