This morning's top headlines: Wednesday, May 10

President Joe Biden is blasting Republican demands for federal spending cuts as “devastating." He made his case in a campaign-style speech to voters in Valhalla, New York, on Wednesday. At the same time, lawmakers met in Washington to try to find a path forward to lifting the government’s borrowing limit and avoiding a potentially catastrophic default as soon as June 1. The president showed an increased willingness to discuss possible deficit savings, yet he said that any talks should occur without the risk of the federal government being unable to pay its bills.

President Joe Biden predicts the U.S.-Mexico border will be “chaotic for a while” when pandemic-related restrictions end. He spoke Tuesday as 550 active-duty troops began arriving at the border and migrants weighed whether or when to cross. The restrictions have been in place since 2020, and allowed U.S. officials to quickly return migrants over the border. They are ending later this week and the U.S. is putting into place a set of new policies that will clamp down on illegal crossings while offering migrants a legal path to the United States if they apply online through a government app, have a sponsor and pass background checks.

Former President Donald Trump dug in on his lies about the 2020 election during a tense CNN town hall. He also downplayed the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, and repeatedly insulted the woman whom a civil jury this week found him liable of sexually abusing and defaming. During the contentious back-and-forth Wednesday night in early-voting New Hampshire, Trump also refused to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war against Russian aggression and said the U.S. “might as well” default on its debt obligation, despite the potential devastating economic consequences. The former president was cheered on and applauded by an audience of Republican and unaffiliated voters.

The publisher of British tabloid the Daily Mirror has acknowledged and apologized for unlawfully gathering information about Prince Harry in its reporting, and said he's due compensation. The admission was made Wednesday in court filings outlining Mirror Group Newspapers' defense in one of Harry's three phone-hacking lawsuits. The admission of snooping concerned a 2004 article headlined “Sex on the beach with Harry.” The disclosure may only give the Duke of Sussex a tiny victory since the story in question isn't one of the nearly 150 that Harry alleges resulted from skulduggery. The seven-week trial that opened in London on Wednesday is Harry’s biggest test yet in his legal battle against the British media.

Palestinian militants have fired hundreds of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, while Israel is pressing ahead with a series of airstrikes that have killed 23 Palestinians, including three senior militants and at least 10 civilians. A state-run Egyptian TV station announced Wednesday that Egypt, a frequent mediator between the sides, had brokered a cease-fire. But the fighting only intensified and neither side showed any sign of backing down. It was the heaviest fighting between the sides in months. But in signs that both sides were trying to show restraint, Israel avoided attacks on the ruling Hamas militant group, targeting only the smaller and more militant Islamic Jihad faction. Hamas also appeared to stay on the sidelines.

Consumer prices in the United States rose again in April, and measures of underlying inflation stayed high, a sign that further declines in inflation are likely to be slow and bumpy. Prices increased 0.4% from March to April, up from a 0.1% rise from February to March. Compared with a year earlier, prices climbed 4.9%, down slightly from March’s year-over-year increase. The April data provided some evidence of cooling inflation, a sign that sent stock prices higher in morning trading. Grocery prices fell for a second straight month. And the cost of many services, including airline fares and hotel rooms, plunged.

House Republicans have detailed what they say are concerning new findings about President Joe Biden’s family and their finances. The GOP has been facing growing pressure to show progress in their investigations. Republicans say the smoking gun is recently obtained financial records connected to the president’s son Hunter Biden, brother James Biden and a growing number of associates who allegedly received millions of dollars in payments from foreign entities in China and Romania. Investigators have relied on more than 150 suspicious activity reports as a roadmap to follow what they call the Bidens’ complicated financial money trail. The White House on Wednesday dismissed the whole investigation as “yet another political stunt.”

Louisiana lawmakers have advanced their own “Don’t Say Gay” bill The legislation passed Tuesday in the House 67-28. It now advances to the GOP-dominated Senate. The bill would broadly ban K-12 public school staff from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in school and during extracurricular activities “in a manner that deviates from state content standards or curricula developed or approved by the public school governing authority.” The bill would also require teachers to use a student’s name and pronouns that align with their sex assigned at birth. At least 30 proposals similar to Florida’s so-called “Don't Say Gay” law have been filed in 16 states since March.

There were no dedicated corrections officers watching the housing unit at a Philadelphia prison where two inmates escaped Sunday night, and there were no armed perimeter guards when they made it through a fence surrounding the prison yard, a correctional officers union official told The Associated Press Tuesday. Authorities are still searching for two inmates — one accused of killing four people — who were gone from a Philadelphia prison for nearly 19 hours before officials knew they were missing. Prison officials say several headcounts conducted Sunday and Monday reportedly showed that all prisoners were accounted for.