President Joe Biden won a landslide victory in South Carolina’s Democratic primary Saturday, where voters sent a clear message that they are ready for Biden to pivot to the November election.

As of 12:00 a.m. ET, Sunday, Biden had won 96.2% of ballots cast, with 97% of the total votes tallied.

The other two Democrats on the ballot, House Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., and self-help author and 2020 Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson each won around 2% of ballots.

The win injects fresh momentum into Biden’s reelection campaign, and it offers a compelling rebuttal to the narrative that Democratic voters are ambivalent — or worse — about their party’s standard bearer.

“In 2020, it was the voters of South Carolina who proved the pundits wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and set us on the path to winning the Presidency,” Biden said in a statement following Saturday’s results.

“Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the Presidency again — and making Donald Trump a loser — again.”

Biden will be awarded all 55 of the state’s Democratic delegates, NBC News projects, as neither Williamson nor Phillips broke the 15% threshold for being awarded any delegates. 

Biden’s overwhelming margin of victory left no question about who Democratic voters want to be on the ballot in November. 

But it came amid reports of lower than expected turnout, potentially a sign of weakened enthusiasm for Biden among Democrats. 

In 2020, approximately 16% of the state’s 3.3 million registered voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary. On Saturday, that number dropped to roughly 4% of voters.

In particular, polls have shown Biden’s support lagging among Black voters, a core Democratic party bloc that was key to his 2020 win. 

Black voters account for a majority of the Democratic electorate in South Carolina, so his victory there Saturday could help to ease some of those concerns. 

Biden’s campaign has also been under pressure to show momentum, a real challenge this year given that Democrats’ official primary season kicked off late. 

In Iowa, the Democratic party decided not to cast any ballots at their caucuses, denying Biden the chance to win there. 

In New Hampshire, Biden’s name was not on the formal ballot, but he won the contest as a write-in candidate with 64% of the vote.

Republicans will vote in their party primary on Feb. 24, where former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will attempt to pull off an upset in her home state, against former President Donald Trump.

The GOP primary is expected to garner much higher turnout and more attention than Saturday’s vote.

Unlike the Republican battle, the Democratic primary has, so far, been notable for its civility.

“Congratulations, Mr. President, on a good old fashioned whooping,” Phillips wrote on X.

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders Friday canceled a planned two-week recess as a government shutdown appeared more likely after they failed to pass a short-term spending bill with fewer than two days left to avoid the shutdown.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif, informed the GOP caucus of the canceled break at a closed-door meeting after more than 20 Republicans embarrassed him by voting with Democrats to defeat the bill.

Republicans who joined Democrats voting against the measure included several of McCarthy’s most outspoken antagonists, Rep. Matt Gaetz, of Florida; Reps. Andy Biggs and Eli Crane, of Arizona, and other hardline conservatives.

Even if the bill had passed, it was doomed to failure in the Senate, where Democrats hold majority control.

The government is scheduled to shut down at 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday if a funding bill is not approved by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

The Senate already advanced a bipartisan bill by a wide margin that would fund the government through Nov. 17.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Friday blasted McCarthy for trying to placate conservatives in his caucus, rather than working with Democrats and moderates on a bill that could pass the Senate.

“Coddling the hard right is as futile as trying to nail jello to a wall, and the harder the speaker tries, the bigger mess he makes,” Schumer said. “And that mess is going to hurt the American people the most.”

“I hope the speaker snaps out of the vice grip he’s put himself in and stops succumbing to the 30 or so extremists who are running the show in the House,” Schumer said. “Mr. Speaker, time has almost run out.”

House Republican leaders advised members that there would be votes Saturday.

It was unclear what they would be voting on.

But on Friday evening, McCarthy suggested that his conference might be willing to back a bipartisan bill to fund the government, as long as it did not contain additional emergency funding for Ukraine — a key White House demand with broad support in the Senate.

“I think if we had a clean [funding bill] without Ukraine on it, we could probably be able to move that through,” McCarthy told reporters as he left the closed door conference meeting.

Several hours later, McCarthy walked back his apparent willingness to move the Senate bill.

“After meeting with House Republicans this evening, it’s clear the misguided Senate bill has no path forward and is dead on arrival,” he said around 9:30 p.m. ET. “The House will continue to work around the clock to keep government open and prioritize the needs of the American people.”

Nonetheless, the notice to members to be ready for Saturday votes had raised hopes among both moderate Republicans and Democrats that McCarthy might agree to hold a vote on a version of the Senate bill to fund the government. Such a bill which would almost certainly pass with broad support from moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans.

As the clock neared midnight Friday, with just 24 hours remaining before a shutdown, it was difficult to envision what McCarthy could do that would both fund the government and satisfy the conservative critics in his restive caucus,

The White House condemned House Republicans for engaging in fiscal brinksmanship.

“We’re doing everything we can to plead, beg, shame House Republicans to do the right thing,” Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters.

She scoffed at McCarthy’s suggestion that he would refuse his own paycheck during a shutdown.

“That is theater,” Young said.

“The guy who picks up the trash in my office won’t get a paycheck. That’s real.”

The White House said Biden would stay “in dialogue with Congress” over the coming days, but insisted the core elements of any spending bill had been agreed to as part of the debt ceiling deal earlier this year.

Across Washington on Friday, government agencies prepared their employees and the public for the effects of a shutdown.

The Smithsonian Institution said it would use existing funds from last year to keep its museums and the National Zoo open for at least the next week.

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a House-approved bill late Thursday to raise the debt ceiling and cap government spending for two years, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk .

He is expected to sign it Friday, just three days before the U.S. risked its first-ever sovereign debt default.

“No one gets everything they want in a negotiation, but make no mistake: This bipartisan agreement is a big win for our economy and the American people,” Biden said in a statement after the vote.

The compromise debt ceiling bill passed the Senate by a 63-36 margin, enough support from Democrats and Republicans to overcome the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster.

The vote was the final chapter in a remarkable day of deal making and rapid-fire voting in the Senate, a body that typically requires days, not hours, to deliberate over and amend House bills.

On Thursday night, the chamber voted down 11 proposed amendments to the Fiscal Responsibility Act passed by the House, before ultimately voting to pass the bill itself.

The driving force behind the turbo votes was simple: The Treasury Department’s June 5 deadline for raising or suspending the debt ceiling was just four days away.

Secretary Janet Yellen has said she believed the government will most likely be unable to meet its debt obligation after Monday, unless Congress votes to raise the debt limit.

Following the Senate vote, Yellen praised the bill, saying it “protects the full faith and credit of the United States and preserves our financial leadership, which is critical to our economic growth and stability.”

The bill that passed Thursday was the result of a compromise deal negotiated by delegates for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Biden. It handed conservatives several ideological policy victories in exchange for their votes to raise the debt ceiling beyond next year’s presidential election and into 2025.

The bill moved through the House in less than 72 hours, and passed Wednesday night with a resounding majority, 314-117. The vote breakdown surprised House leadership on both sides: In the end, more House Democrats voted for the bill than Republicans.

In the Senate, the final vote was similarly bipartisan, but it was not an easy lift.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spent much of the day Thursday hammering out an agreement with a group of Senate Republicans who demanded that he pledge to support a supplemental defense funding bill before they would agree to fast-track the debt ceiling bill.

The current House debt ceiling bill provided $886 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2024, an increase of 3% year over year. That figure increased to $895 billion in 2025, an increase of 1%.

But GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called this “woefully inadequate” Thursday, arguing that a 1% increase did not keep pace with inflation, so in practical terms, it was actually a decrease in military funding. The solution came in the form of a rare joint statement from Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., which was read on the floor.

“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries and respond to ongoing and growing national security threats,” Schumer read. “Nor does this debt ceiling limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds and respond to various national issues, such as disaster relief, combating the fentanyl crisis or other issues of national importance,” said Schumer.

The message was unmistakable: Regardless of what the bill said, the Senate would continue to spend money above and beyond that to fund what its members believed was important.

With the debt ceiling crisis averted, Congress now turns its eyes to a summer of appropriations, haggling over how to spend their capped sums of money next year.

This is a developing story, please check back for updates.

WASHINGTON — Federal bank regulators are not considering any plans to insure all U.S. bank deposits, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday.

Several banking groups and consumer advocates have called for some kind of a universal deposit guarantee after the government refunded most of the uninsured deposits at two banks that collapsed earlier this month, California-based Silicon Valley Bank and New York-based Signature Bank.

“I have not considered or discussed anything having to do with blanket insurance or guarantees of all deposits,” Yellen told senators during a hearing on Capitol Hill to consider the Treasury Department’s 2024 budget request.

The comments helped to fuel a decline in the stock market, and a drop in regional bank shares.

The deposit guarantees for SVB and Signature set off a fierce debate in Washington over whether big banks that had taken excessive risks were getting a special bailout, while smaller banks were being forced to confront a rush of withdrawals — triggered by public fears about the big banks — without any special help.

“I’m very troubled,” said Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins. “It seems to me, by guaranteeing all of the deposits [at SVB] that you’re creating a situation where they are immune from losses … in a way that puts the well managed community bank at a competitive disadvantage. So I guess my question to you is, how is this fair?”

Yellen said that at the time, regulators weren’t thinking about giving one bank an advantage over any other bank. At the time, they were thinking about “the implications for the broader banking system because of the contagion potential,” she said.

That explanation has not been enough to satisfy small and mid-sized banks, however.

“If policymakers decide to provide unlimited deposit insurance to some institutions, they cannot leave others out—certainly not the community banks that have, as always, operated on a safe and sound basis,” Rebeca Rainey, CEO of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said in a recent statement.

While Yellen ruled out universal blanket deposit guarantees, she appeared to be open to other potential ways to help smaller banks offer additional insurance to large deposits.

One idea volunteered by Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin was to create a system where depositors who needed to keep cash in excess of the $250,000 FDIC limit could pay slightly higher bank fees, akin to an insurance premium, in order to secure a higher level of FDIC insurance.

“Shouldn’t I be able to buy or pay a little higher bank fee, to get protection … with a cap maybe at $10 million?” Manchin said to Yellen near the end of her testimony. “We’ve been talking … some senators have been talking back and forth … and I don’t think we should [craft legislation] without you all involved, showing us how to structure that.”

“I think this is very worthwhile, for you and your colleagues to be discussing what’s appropriate here,” Yellen replied. “And we would be more than willing to work with you to think this through.”

She added: “For the moment, we’re trying to stabilize the situation using the tools at our disposal.”

These efforts are starting to bear fruit, Yellen told a bankers group Tuesday. She said that “aggregate deposit outflows from regional banks have stabilized.”

But while the trends are moving in the right direction, the amount of money banks borrowed in the week ending March 15 from the Fed’s discount window set a new record at $153 billion, according to the Fed’s weekly report, a sum that suggests the banking sector is not quite stable yet.

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sought to reassure markets and lawmakers on Thursday that the federal government is committed to protecting U.S. bank deposits following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank over the weekend.

“Our banking system remains sound and Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” Yellen said in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee.

Under questioning, however, Yellen admitted that not all depositors will be protected over the FDIC insurance limits of $250,000 per account as they did for customers of the two failed banks.

Yellen has been at the center of emergency federal efforts this past week to recover deposits for account holders at two failed banks, the California-based SVB and the crypto-heavy Signature Bank, based in New York.

A majority of SVB’s customers were small tech companies, venture capital firms and entrepreneurs who used the bank for day-to-day cash management to run their businesses. Those customers had $175 billion on deposit with tens of millions in individual accounts. That left SVB with one of the highest shares of uninsured deposits in the country when it collapsed, with 94% of its deposits landing above the FDIC’s $250,000 insurance limit, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data from 2022.

U.S. bank regulators announced a plan Sunday to fully insure all deposits at the two failed banks, including those above the $250,000 limit covered by traditional FDIC insurance. The additional protection will be paid for out of a special fund made up of fees levied on all FDIC-insured institutions.

In addition, the Federal Reserve loosened its borrowing guidelines for banks seeking short-term funding through its so-called discount window. It also set up a separate unlimited facility to offer one-year loans under looser terms than usual to shore up troubled banks facing a surge in cash withdrawals. Both programs are being paid for through industry fees, not by taxpayers, the Biden administration has emphasized.

“This will help financial institutions meet the needs of all of their depositors,” Yellen said. “This week’s actions demonstrate our resolute commitment to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe.”

Democrats and Republicans in Congress have largely supported the emergency actions taken in the past week. But with markets recovering somewhat, lawmakers Thursday questioned Yellen about whether backstops for big banks will become a new norm, and what that could mean for community lenders.

“I’m concerned about the precedent of guaranteeing all deposits and the market expectation moving forward,” Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the committee’s ranking member, said in his opening remarks.

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma pressed Yellen about how widely the uninsured deposit backstops will apply across the banking industry.

“Will the deposits in every community bank in Oklahoma, regardless of their size, be fully insured now?” asked Lankford. “Will they get the same treatment that SVB just got, or Signature Bank just got?”

Yellen acknowledged they would not.

Uninsured deposits, she said, would only be covered in the event that a “failure to protect uninsured depositors would create systemic risk and significant economic and financial consequences.”

Lankford said the impact of this standard would be that small banks would be less appealing to depositors with more than $250,000, the current FDIC insurance threshold.

“I’m concerned you’re … encouraging anyone who has a large deposit at a community bank to say, ‘We’re not going to make you whole, but if you go to one of our preferred banks, we will make you whole.'”

“That’s certainly not something that we’re encouraging,” Yellen replied.

Members of Congress are currently weighing a number of legislative proposals intended to prevent the next Silicon Valley Bank-type failure.

One of these is an increase in the $250,000 FDIC insurance limit, which several senior Democratic lawmakers have called for in the wake of SVB’s collapse.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, Congress raised the FDIC limit from $100,000 to $250,000, and approved a plan under which big banks contribute more to the insurance fund than smaller lenders.