An upbeat President Joe Biden says a deal to resolve the government’s debt ceiling crisis seems “very close." He spoke late Friday, shortly after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pushed the deadline for a potentially catastrophic default  back to June 5, an announcement that at first seemed likely to drag negotiations between the White House and Republicans into another frustrating week. House Republicans led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy spent the day negotiating by phone and computers with the White House. Biden said he would know by midnight whether there was a deal in the offing.

Memorial Day is supposed to be about mourning the nation’s fallen service members. But it’s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of retail discounts. Memorial Day has long been a source of contention and contradiction, from its shifting origin stories to today’s mattress sales. Auto club AAA forecasts that this holiday weekend could be “one for the record books, especially at airports.” More than 42 million Americans are projected to travel 50 miles or more. Compared to last year, 2.7 million more people will travel for the unofficial start of summer. And that's despite inflation.

Former special counsel John Durham is scheduled to testify before a House committee next month about his recently completed report on the FBI’s investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Durham is due to appear on June 20 in a closed-door session with the House intelligence committee and will testify publicly the following day before the House Judiciary Committee. That's according to a person who discussed the dates on the condition of anonymity because they had not been publicly announced. Durham was appointed in 2019 by then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate possible government mistakes and misconduct in the investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.