Former U.S. head of state and presidential candidate Donald Trump stoked the ire of U.S. lawmakers and international leaders, after remarking he would not protect NATO countries from Russian attacks if they lag on their membership payments.

Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday, Trump said that, as president, he warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a member country that didn’t meet its defense spending guidelines.

Trump, who has a long history of criticizing the transatlantic military alliance, recounted a time when an unspecified president of a NATO member challenged him on his threat not to defend them from a potential Russian invasion if they failed to meet NATO’s target of spending at least 2% of their budget on the military.

“You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent … No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills,” Trump said.

The U.S. has historically had the largest number of military personnel out of all NATO countries, counting 1.35 million troops in 2023, according to Statista.

Trump has been accused of entertaining close ties with Russia during his first presidential mandate. The Kremlin declined to address Trump’s remarks.

“I am still [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s press secretary, but not Trump’s,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to Reuters.

Top Western officials, as well as both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, sharply criticized Trump’s comments. U.S. President Joe Biden, who has also declared intentions to run for a second presidential mandate, described Trump’s remarks as “appalling and dangerous.”

“Sadly, they are also predictable coming from a man who is promising to rule as a dictator like the ones he praises on day one if he returns to the oval office,” Biden said Sunday in a statement.

Trump is vying to clinch Republican backing for his presidential bid at the polls later this year, facing off former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

In an interview with CBS, Haley said Sunday that “the last thing we ever want to do is side with Russia.”

She added that the NATO alliance “allows us to prevent war.”

Former Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie also criticized Trump’s comments, saying in an interview with NBC News on Sunday that “this is why I’ve been saying for a long time that he’s unfit to be president of the United States.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO stands “ready and able” to defend all allies and any attack would be met with a “united and forceful” response.

“Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk,” Stoltenberg said in a statement.

“I expect that regardless of who wins the presidential election the US will remain a strong and committed NATO Ally,” he added.

NATO’s 31 members, which include the U.S., Canada, France, Italy, Turkey and the U.K., agreed in July last year to spend at least 2% of their gross domestic product on defense, firming up a previous goal.

A report released by NATO last year showed only 11 of the then-30 member alliance were spending 2% of GDP or more on defense. The defense spending target is not a requirement and many countries have sought to ramp up their military spending since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

NATO’s so-called Article 5 mutual defense clause means that an attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against all allies.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Monday that NATO cannot be an “a la carte” military alliance dependent on the impulses of the U.S. political leadership.

“NATO cannot be an ‘a la carte’ military alliance … depending on the humor of the president of the U.S.,” Borrell said when asked to respond to Trump’s comments, Reuters reported.

Germany’s Foreign Office on Sunday posted “One for all and all for one” on its English language X social media account, supported by the hashtag “#StrongerTogether.”

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said Sunday via X that NATO’s motto of “‘one for all, all for one’ is a concrete commitment.”

“Undermining the credibility of allied countries means weakening the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization. No election campaign is an excuse for playing with the security of the Alliance,” he added.

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 — President Joe Biden on Friday evening gave his first address from the Oval Office to discuss a bill to lift the debt ceiling while capping federal spending, calling it a “critical” agreement. He signed the bill into law on Saturday.

“No one got everything they wanted but the American people got what they needed. We averted an economic crisis and an economic collapse,” Biden said.

The compromise debt ceiling bill passed the Senate by a 63-36 margin Thursday evening, winning enough support from both parties to overcome the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster. On Wednesday, it moved through the House after about 72 hours, passing 314-117.

The agreement comes with little time to spare: The Treasury Department estimated the federal government would run out of money on June 5 had the debt ceiling not been lifted.

“This is vital,” Biden said. “Essential to all the progress we’ve made in the last few years is keeping the full faith and credit of the United States and passing a budget that continues to grow our economy and reflects our values as a nation.”

Without the agreement, federal obligations such as Social Security, Medicare and military paychecks would have gone unsent. And failure to lift the debt ceiling would have roiled global financial markets and sparked job losses in the U.S.

The bill comes after weeks of intense negotiations between Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the White House. The final deal 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.

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.