The House of Representatives voted 314-117 to pass the bipartisan debt ceiling bill on Wednesday night. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) plans to push the bill through the Senate as is in a vote slated for Friday.

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• Some senators said they want to propose amendments to the bill, which aims to suspend the debt ceiling limit for two years.
• Any amendments would bring the bill back to the House for another vote, potentially pushing the U.S. closer to the brink of an unprecedented debt default on June 5.
• Schumer said he would seek to block calls for amendments that could "almost guarantee default."
• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell encouraged other Senate Republicans to back the debt ceiling bill. 

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• Several right-wing House members said they may try to oust House Majority Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from his leadership position for pushing through a debt ceiling bill that did not secure the deep spending cuts they sought.

The Justice Department has reportedly obtained an audio tape in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges keeping classified documents after leaving the White House. The July 2021 recording, in which Trump purportedly speaks about keeping a classified military memo about a potential attack in Iran, contradicts Trump's claims that he declassified all materials he kept after leaving the White House.

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• The Justice Department is investigating if Trump violated the Espionage Act by taking classified documents from the White House and keeping them in his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
• During the recording, which has not been made public, Trump reportedly said the memo in question should have been declassified before he left office.
• He allegedly said he wanted to share information from the document but could not declassify it since he had already left the White House. 
• The recording was made while Trump was speaking to two people who were producing an autobiography by former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. 

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• Trump, who is the leading GOP candidate for the 2024 presidential election, is involved in a number of civil lawsuits and criminal investigations.
• New York prosecutors indicted Trump over hush payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
• Investigators in Georgia are determining if Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.

Federal data show that roughly 3.66 million babies were born in the U.S. last year, about 15% below the peak U.S. birthrate seen in 2007. The number of births in 2022 was roughly the same as in 2021, fitting with a trend of declining U.S. birth numbers over the past 15 years.

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• There were only 385,000 more births than deaths last year.
• After peaking in 2021 due to the pandemic, the number of deaths decreased slightly in 2022, to 3.276 million.
• The total fertility rate was 1.665 in 2022, below the 2.1 children-per-woman "replacement rate" needed for a population to maintain current levels without accounting for immigration.
  • 2007, when the fertility rate hit 2.12, was the only year in the last half-century in which the U.S. fertility rate was above the replacement level.

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• Birthrates fell for women aged 15-19 and 20-24 last year, fitting with a long-term trend of declining birth rates for young U.S. women.
• They rose slightly for women aged 25-29, while increases in the birth rate were primarily seen among women aged 35-44. 
• Hispanic mothers accounted for a record 25.5% of U.S. births last year.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a $5.8M settlement with Amazon over allegations that workers at its Ring doorbell company spied on customers. Amazon also agreed to pay $25M to settle claims that it failed to delete Alexa recordings of children in a timely manner.

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• The FTC said that Amazon allowed Ring employees to have unrestricted access to customers' video data.
• According to the agency, a former Ring employee viewed videos made by at least 81 female customers in 2017.
• A year later, a Ring employee gave a customer's recordings to the customer's ex-husband without their consent, the FTC said.
• Ring has since changed its policies so that its employees can only view customers' videos with their explicit consent.
• As part of the settlement, Ring will tell customers how much access it and its contractors have to their personal data. 

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• The FTC is investigating if Amazon's $1.7B acquisition of Roomba-maker iRobot, which was announced last August, will have anti-competitive effects in the smart home technology industry.

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• Invest in Ripple, innovating global finance with over 300 connected financial institutions across 40 countries.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced the Meta Quest 3 VR headset on Thursday. The virtual reality headset will be priced starting at $499.
• Asset manager Vanguard Group was fined by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) for sending out statements with inaccurate projected yield and income information to more than eight million customers between 2019 and 2021. Finra said that a technical glitch caused Vanguard to send out the incorrect information and only ordered the firm to pay an $800,000 fine.
• The Earth Commission, an international consortium of scientists, published a new study in Nature arguing that human-caused climate change and pollution have pushed Earth into "the danger zone." The report calls for humanity to set up a "safety fence" to avoid passing key thresholds of environmental destruction and contamination.
• The Japanese government announced new measures to boost birth rates, including 3.5 trillion yen (~$25B) every year in financial aid to parents.
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