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WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. Congress expressed frustration with President Joe Biden's willingness to engage with Republicans demanding tougher work requirements for food aid recipients as part of any deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling.

They have stopped short of threatening to block such moves, as talks on lifting the federal government's $31.4 trillion borrowing limit shifted into a bilateral format between Democrat Biden, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy and their staffs.

If Biden and McCarthy reach a deal, possibly as soon as Sunday, Congress could struggle to get enough votes for passage ahead of a June , when the Treasury Department has warned the government may be unable to pay all its bills.

Some hardline Republicans may push back against any increase in the debt ceiling, while some progressive Democrats voiced opposition to the work limits after spending months calling for a "clean" hike without conditions.

Liberal Democrats, including Senator Raphael Warnock and Representative Ro Khanna, put Biden on notice that they do not support more stringent requirements to existing law.

Khanna, asked whether revisions would prompt him to vote to torpedo a deal, said: "It would be a strong consideration."

Republicans have called for saving $120 billion by expanding work requirements to qualify for food aid, monetary help for poor families and other assistance. Biden on Wednesday reiterated his opposition to imposing new requirements the Medicaid program for low-income Americans.

He added that there could be a "few" changes in current law but none "of any consequence."

Those assurances did not soothe Democrats, as negotiations kicked into high gear over spending and the urgent need to raise the borrowing limit.

Warnock accused Republicans of "using poor people as pawns" in negotiations, saying their proposal "presupposes that poor people are in some way morally deficient. People want to work. And some people can't."

Warnock is a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee which, writes the farm bill that funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps.

A Republican bill that passed the House in late April would place more work demands for SNAP on adults without disabilities or dependents up to age 56, instead of the current cutoff of 49.

Massachusetts's Jim McGovern, a House Democrat known for his anti-hunger work, said: "I will not support anything that screws poor people -- period."

The Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee describes the steps as "common-sense work requirements to help lift families out of poverty and revitalize the American workforce."

"Why wouldn't he want to help people get out of poverty?" McCarthy told reporters.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson said expanded work requirements for SNAP would be especially harmful to those "experiencing homelessness or people affected by local economic conditions like the closure of a major local employer."

The USDA estimates an additional 1 million low-income older adults would be subject to SNAP time limits and, as a result, could lose vital food benefits.

Eric Mitchell, executive director of the nonprofit Alliance to End Hunger, called such requirements "punitive and ineffective" against people who face obstacles to employment or community service.

Reporting by Richard Cowan and Leah Douglas; Editing by Scott Malone and Aurora Ellis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Thomson Reuters

Washington-based award-winning journalist covering agriculture and energy including competition, regulation, federal agencies, corporate consolidation, environment and climate, racial discrimination and labour, previously at the Food and Environment Reporting Network.

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Democrats warn Biden against toughening aid for the poor - Reuters

"Clearly, many Black voters understand in 2018 and 2020 they delivered Congress and the White House to Democrats," he added. "They're looking for a return on their investment, but they just don't see one."

Biden tried to convince some members of that community on Saturday that he has done things that benefit them and that he hears their concerns. Your generation will not be ignored, will not be shunned, will not be silenced, he said during a commencement address at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

The president used one phrase several times during one part of his remarks "because of you" to drive home to students at the historically Black research university that he again needs their support in 2024.

"With your voices and votes, I was able to fill my commitment to put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court of the United States of America," he said. "Because of you, more Black women have been appointed to the federal appellate courts than under every other president in American history combined.

And, by the way, I mean it. I mean it. Because of you. Because of you. You turned out. You spoke up. You knew. You showed up, and the votes counted," Biden added. "You feel the promise and the peril of climate change. Because of you, we're making the biggest investment ever in the history of the world in climate change. Don't ever think your voice doesn't matter."

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Gun violence, white supremacy and the economy: What Black voters ... - Roll Call

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NEXSTAR) Following another round of deadly mass shootings, Democrats and advocates are demanding that Congress move forward with gun control legislation.

But if they want to pass anything soon, theyll have to find a way to get Republicans on board too.

On Thursday, lawmakers and advocates rallied to talk about next steps.

College student Jakoby Mitchell, a gun violence survivor, was among those who spoke at the event.

This has to stop. We have to take action, Mitchell said.

Congresswoman Lucy McBath says its crucial for lawmakers to keep pushing for reform. For her, the cause is personal because she lost her son in a shooting.

Its common sense solutions that save lives, McBath said. Its background checks. Its red flag laws. Its banning assault weapons.

Senator Raphael Warnock says hes frustrated lawmakers havent done more.

What trauma are we visiting upon our children when we tell them that the best we can to is to tell them how to hide?Warnock said.

Congress did pass bipartisan gun safety measures last year, but now some Republicans are reluctant to go further.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito voted for last years package. However, now, she doesnt think Congress should focus on more firearm regulations.

The guns are being used by people who are not allowed to have guns and shouldnt have them in the first place. And so we need to address that challenge, I think, before we move further, Capito said.

Senator Josh Hawley thinks the real solution to preventing gun violence is increasing penalties for gun crimes.

There is no substitute for getting tough on criminals and those who attempt to commit crimes and sending the message its not going to be tolerated, Hawley said.

But Congressman Maxwell Frost says Democrats will keep fighting for gun reform.

All communities are devastated by gun violence and I believe that it is a policy failure that we lose 100 lives a day, Frost said.

If we center the people rather than the politics, we have a chance of getting it done, Warnock added.

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Democrats, advocates demand action on gun control - WLNS

The Catalist report does offer some warning signs for the party, particularly a drop in turnout among Black voters. But it mostly suggests that close, high-turnout elections continue to be the norm since Donald Trumps election in 2016. Both sides are highly activated to participate in both presidential elections and years in between. That means we could be headed to another year of record or near-record voter turnout in 2024, even if both candidates wind up being unpopular.

High turnout was especially evident in the most competitive races, Catalist found. Democrats defiance of a so-called red wave came because Democrats managed to win the lions share of competitive races for Senate, governor and House.

How did they do it, and what does it mean for 2024 and beyond? Here are five takeaways from the Catalist report:

We already know that Democrats overperformed in 2022: They won five of the six Senate races POLITICO rated as toss ups going into Election Day, along with four of five governors races and 20 of 26 House races.

Strategists and analysts have settled on a number of explanations for the results, particularly an examination of candidate quality issues dogging Republican Senate candidates like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia.

But the Catalist report offers a new reason from the voter files: higher turnout. Turnout was between 5 and 8 percent above 2018 levels in four of the six Senate races POLITICO classified as toss ups Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and around 2018 levels in the other two: Georgia and Wisconsin.

Turnout in states without competitive races was 8 percent lower than in highly contested states.

The Catalist report stresses that high turnout doesnt always benefit Democratic candidates, though high turnout seems to have helped them in elections last year.

We may remain in a high turnout era, but voters perceptions of how competitive and salient an election is can change dramatically, the report says.

Americans under 30 made up one-in-10 voters, down slightly from 12 percent in 2018. But branching out to the Millennial and Gen-Z generations, they made up 26 percent of the electorate, up from 23 percent four years earlier.

Whats also notable about young voters is that despite the historical penalty typically paid by the party in power Democrats actually increased their vote share among those under 30, winning 65 percent of them, up from 62 percent in 2020, according to Catalist modeling of voter-file data.

Combined with 2018, its the first time Democrats have exceeded 60 percent among young voters in two consecutive midterms. The Catalist report suggests that young voters may be uniquely turned off by Trumps version of the Republican Party, in an inverse of how voters who came of age during Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagans administrations tended to remain Democrats and Republicans, respectively, throughout their lives.

Nationally, women voters in 2022 shifted slightly to Republicans by about 2 points, about half the margin of the shift among men, 4 points.

A woman votes in the 2022 midterm election on Election Day at a polling location on the Michigan State University campus on Nov. 8, 2022.|Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

But in the most competitive races, Democrats increased their vote share among women by 2 points and 4 points among women without a college degree the Catalist report shows.

It is plausible that Democrats were successful in convincing this segment of voters that choice was on the ballot, leading to marginal gains that secured important wins, the report says.

For much of the past two decades, the phenomenon that has best explained our politics has been the realignment of white voters along educational lines. Trump accelerated the movement of less-educated voters to the GOP, but it was already well under way when George W. Bush and Barack Obama were on the ballot.

But Catalists findings are a bit counterintuitive. They found that Democratic candidates in competitive races won 40 percent of white voters without a college degree, up from 36 percent in 2020. By contrast, Democrats share of white college graduates in those contests dipped from 53 percent in 2020 to 51 percent in 2022.

This was a somewhat surprising result given both the prominent role education polarization has had in recent elections and the lack of such a trend in other data sources, such as the exit poll, the report says, citing precinct election result data showing Democratic candidates in 2022 outperforming Bidens 2020 vote in places with higher numbers of non-college white voters.

Black voters remain the most loyal members of Democrats coalition, but there are signs of fraying. Democratic candidates won 88 percent of Black voters in 2022, down from 91 percent in 2020. Some of the biggest slides came among younger Black voters, a group thats less likely to approve of Bidens job performance than other Democratic-friendly cohorts.

And Black voters made up 10 percent of the midterm electorate, down from 12 percent in the 2020 presidential election.

There were some bright spots for Democrats: Democrats ran stronger among Black voters in Georgia and North Carolina, states where top-of-the-ticket Democratic candidates were African Americans.

The report also finds consistent support for Democrats among Latino voters, who represent a smaller share of the electorate, about 8 percent. Catalist estimates that Democrats won 62 percent of Latino voters in 2022, unchanged from 2020.

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That Gen Z midterm boost for Democrats might be real - POLITICO

While 19 states have passed legislation banning or restricting abortion since the Dobbs ruling, other efforts have fallen short. Voters in Kansas last year rejected a proposed amendment that would have said there is no right to abortion under the state constitution, while in Michigan, voters approved an amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion.

Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, citing the number of Michigan State University students who registered and voted on Election Day, has credited the Michigan referendum with helping her to win what was expected to be a tight race by more than 5 percentage points.

"One thing we've learned since Dobbs is that abortion is not a partisan issue," said Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who specializes in reproductive rights. "Abortion rights are pretty popular even among Republicans, but what tends to happen in states like Ohio is that Republicans tend to win broadly because people don't vote just on that issue. Theres the gerrymandering plus this mismatch between what individual Republican voters think about reproductive choice and how the Republican politicians vote when they get in office.

You might expect some type of compromise position to arise in some of these states, Hill said. I think that some of the Supreme Court justices imagined that was the world we'd end up in and its been just the opposite, especially in red states, where politics has pulled those legislatures toward more and more extreme abortion bans.

Anit-abortion groups aligned with Republicans, such as the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, have argued that Republicans shouldnt shy away from advocating for their position on abortion. The group is advocating for all Republican presidential candidates to support limiting abortion to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy and to advocate for that standard nationwide.

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A year after Dobbs leak, Democrats still see abortion driving 2024 ... - Roll Call