President Joe Biden isunder scrutiny from key Democratic supporters amidst a pivotal phase in his re-election campaign. Some prominent donors are voicing concerns publicly, indicating they may withhold financial support unless the party considers replacing Biden as its candidate.
This comes after a challenging debate performance last week, which has intensified calls for Biden, aged 81, to consider stepping aside.
As he prepares for crucial events including a primetime TV interview and a rally in Wisconsin on Friday, Biden faces mounting pressure to address doubts about his candidacy raised by instances of faltering during the debate.
While he admitted that he “screwed up” that night, he has vowed to stay on as his party’s standard-bearer taking on Donald Trump in the November presidential election.
Scrutiny on his public appearances has markedly increased since the debate.
In a White House speech to military families on Thursday to mark 4 July Independence Day, he stumbled over his words when referring to Trump as “one of our colleagues, the former president”.
And in an interview with WURD radio in Philadelphia, he lost his thread and appeared to say he was proud to be the first black woman to serve with a black president.
Donors have been weighing their options. Abigail Disney, an heiress to the Disney family fortune, told business news channel CNBC that she did not believe Mr Biden could win against Trump.
She said her intent to pull support was rooted in “realism, not disrespect”. “Biden is a good man and has served his country admirably, but the stakes are far too high.” The consequences of defeat in November “will be genuinely dire”, she added.
She joined a select group of wealthy donors who are actively voicing their concerns. Philanthropist Gideon Stein recently disclosed to the New York Times that his family has opted to withhold $3.5 million from various nonprofit and political entities engaged in the presidential campaign unless there is a change in Mr. Biden’s candidacy.
Meanwhile, Hollywood producer Damon Lindelof, known for his substantial donations to Democratic causes this election cycle, penned an impassioned essay in Deadline. In it, he called on fellow donors to join him in pausing their financial contributions until there is a shift in leadership.
Adding to the chorus, Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel, sibling to Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, emphasized during a recent conference in Colorado the strategic importance of withholding financial support to compelMr. Biden’s exit from the race, according to a report in the Financial Times published on Thursday.
“The lifeblood to a campaign is money, and maybe the only way . . . is if the money starts drying up,” he said, according to the newspaper.
President Joe Biden has criticized a recent Supreme Court ruling that granted former President Donald Trump partial immunity from criminal prosecution, calling it a “dangerous precedent.”
Biden argued that the decision undermines the “rule of law” and does a disservice to Americans.
Trump, on the other hand, celebrated the court’s ruling as a significant victory for democracy. The justices determined that while a president is immune for “official acts,” they are not immune for “unofficial acts,” sending the case back to a trial judge.
This ruling is expected to further delay Trump’s criminal case related to allegations of attempting to undermine the 2020 election results, which handed victory to Biden.
The trial judge now needs to identify which actions Trump took in his capacity as president, a process that could span several months. It is unlikely that any trial will commence before the presidential election in November.
In a televised statement late on Monday, President Biden said: “This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America. Each of us is equal before the law. No one, no one is above the law. Not even the president of the United States.
“Today’s [court] decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president may do. “The man who sent that mob to the US Capitol is facing potential criminal conviction for what happened that day.
The American people deserve to have an answer in the courts before the upcoming election.”
Mr Biden was referring to Trump being on trial for his alleged role in stirring up the riot.
“Now, because of today’s [court] decision, that is highly, highly unlikely,” Mr Biden said.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision, a trial judge now faces the task of distinguishing between actions taken by Donald Trump in his capacity as president and those undertaken in a private capacity.
This determination process is expected to be lengthy and may delay any potential trial until after the November 5 election. Trump hailed the ruling as a significant victory, describing it as a “big win” on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The Supreme Court’s ruling grants partial immunity to all former presidents from criminal prosecution, specifying that acts performed as part of official presidential duties enjoy total immunity. However, acts considered “unofficial,” conducted in a private capacity, are not covered by this immunity.
The lower court judge tasked with Trump’s case will now need to assess which specific behaviors of the former president are pertinent to the criminal prosecution.
This case involves allegations that Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election result by pressuring officials at the Department of Justice (DoJ) to initiate investigations into voter fraud, despite lacking substantiated evidence.
The three liberal justices on the Supreme Court strongly dissented from Monday’s decision. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said: “The president is now a king above the law.” Democratic Congresswomen Judy Chu said the fallout from the court’s decision would be far-reaching.
“If a president says in any official capacity that they want to do something that we would consider to be improper and criminal, he could be immune from the actions that he takes,” she said.
he recent six-three Supreme Court ruling is expected to significantly postpone any potential trial involving Donald Trump until well after the November election, if it proceeds at all.
This ruling also affects other ongoing criminal cases against Trump, including those concerning classified documents found at his Florida residence and allegations in Georgia related to efforts to overturn his narrow election loss in the state.
According to CBS,Trump’s legal team is pursuingefforts to overturn his May conviction in New York, where he faces charges of falsifying business records linked to an alleged encounter with adult-film star Stormy Daniels.
The team has reportedly referenced the Supreme Court’s decision in a letter to the judge handling the case, although the contents of the letter have not been publicly disclosed.
The New York Times initially reported on these developments, noting that Trump currently faces four separate legal challenges.
President Joe Biden has introduced a new policy aimed at shielding hundreds of thousands of undocumented spouses of US citizens from deportation, according to officials in his administration.
Immigration has emerged as a significant challenge for Mr. Biden in this election year, prompting him to issue a broad executive order aimed at reducing the influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border.
Under the new policy, undocumented spouses who have lived in the US for at least 10 years will be permitted to work legally.
The White House estimates that more than 500,000 spouses will benefit from this initiative.
Addressing a gathering at the White House on Tuesday, President Biden emphasised that this measure aims to make the US immigration system fairer and more just, benefiting immigrants, married couples, and all Americans.
Recent polls indicate that immigration remains a top concern for many voters leading up to the presidential election in November.
The White House also expects the new policy to extend benefits to approximately 50,000 young individuals under the age of 21, whose parents are married to American citizens.
This move represents the most significant relief effort for undocumented migrants already residing in the US since the Obama administration introduced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) in 2012.
“The action I’m announcing today will go into effect later this summer,” Mr Biden said at the White House.
“The steps I’m taking today are overwhelmingly supported by the American people, despite what the other team says,” he added, a reference to Republicans.
The White House announcement coincided with the 12th anniversary of Daca, which protected over 530,000 migrants brought to the US as children – known as Dreamers – from deportation.
Senior administration officials stated on Monday that undocumented spouses of US citizens would qualify if they had resided in the country for 10 years and were married as of June 17.
Those eligible will have three years to apply for permanent residency and can obtain a three-year work permit.
On average, the White House estimates that eligible individuals have been in the US for 23 years, with a majority born in Mexico.
They will be granted “parole in place,” allowing them to stay in the US while their status is adjusted.
NumbersUSA, an organisation advocating for stricter immigration controls, criticised the new policy as “unconscionable.”
The organisation’s chief executive, James Massa, said in a statement: “Rather than stopping the worst border crisis in history, President Biden has overreached his executive authority to use an unconstitutional process, circumventing voters and their elected representatives in Congress, to send a message that amnesty is available to those who enter illegally into the United States.”
Alex Cuic, an immigration lawyer and professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, told the BBC that while the action affected a “narrow group”, it marked a “start” for a segment of the US immigrant population that historically would face complications normalising their status in the country, even when eligible.
“A good majority of them [would have] to leave the country in order to come back lawfully,” he said. “It’s like they physically enter the US, but their immigration ‘soul’ doesn’t come with them.”
By permitting beneficiaries to parole in place, Mr. Cuic emphasised that officials are eliminating the necessity to separate families when one spouse must leave the country to apply for lawful permanent residence.
A senior administration official indicated on Monday that the application process is expected to open by the end of the summer.
The White House is also preparing to streamline and expedite the visa process for highly skilled undocumented immigrants who have obtained degrees from US universities or received job offers in their fields, including Dreamers.
Mr. Biden’s announcement follows his recent issuance of a comprehensive executive action allowing US officials to swiftly deport migrants entering the US illegally without processing their asylum claims.
The White House clarified that this action will occur once a daily capacity threshold is reached and the border becomes “overwhelmed.”
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the Biden administration, arguing that the action violates US immigration law.
During the announcement, Mr. Biden urged those who find the measure “too stringent” to “exercise patience.”
“[In] the weeks ahead, I will speak about how we can make our immigration system more fair and just,” he said.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at theAmerican Immigration Council,said that while the two announcements “don’t intersect with each other at all,” the more recent action may help the administration “get some positive headlines after the pushback” they received over the border announcement.
“The Biden administration has been receiving a lot of flak from people saying that their focus has all been on new arrivals, when there are so many long-term undocumented immigrants stuck trying to navigate our complicated immigration system,” he added.
“I think the actions you’ve seen the president take over the last few weeks really go towards addressing both those concerns,” Mr Reichlin-Melnick added.
But on Tuesday morning, Mr. Biden said, “I do blame Iran because they are giving weapons to the people who did it. ”
The attack happened at night on a US military base called Tower 22 in northeastern Jordan.
Around 350 US soldiers are located at the base. Their main goal is to help the coalition in fighting against the Islamic State. This information comes from US Central Command.
The enemy’s drone attacked when an American drone was coming back to base after a mission.
Officials say the base’s automatic air defense system was turned off to avoid shooting down the US drone.
However, because of that, the troops who were still in their beds were not given a warning.
Lately, some groups from Iran have been attacking US bases in the Middle East.
Navarro was found guilty in September for not following a subpoena from a House committee that was looking into claims of trying to change the 2020 election results.
Federal prosecutors said he picked Trump over the law. They said he should get a “harsh punishment”.
Navarro, who is 74 years old, could have gone to prison for up to one year for each of the two charges of disobeying the court.
In a letter last month, prosecutors said that Navarro, “like the people who rioted at the Capitol, cared more about politics than the country, and refused to help Congress investigate. ”
But he did not give any of the asked for emails or papers or show up to answer questions in front of the Democratic-led group.
He was proven to be guilty by the 12 people on the jury after they talked about it for four hours. This happened after a trial in Washington DC that lasted two days.
Navarro’s lawyers have asked the judge to change his guilty verdict. They say he was not part of the group that attacked the government building, and should only have to do six months of probation.
His lawyers asked for a new trial because they said the jurors left the courthouse and saw protestors while they were making their decision.
However, Judge Amit Mehta refused to grant a new trial request last week.
In his book from 2021, called In Trump Time, Navarro said he was the person who came up with a plan to question the 2020 election results. He believed there was a lot of cheating in the voting process.
Navarro named this plan the Green Bay Sweep, referencing a play in American football.
The House committee said Navarro’s claims of a lot of ballot cheating were proven to be untrue by state and local officials.
When the committee asked Navarro, he said that Mr. Trump told him to use executive privilege. This is a rule that lets some White House messages be kept secret.
The judge said there was no proof that Mr. Trump asked for it, or that he could use his power to let Navarro ignore the committee’s orders.
His situation is similar to another Trump associate who was found guilty of disobeying the 6 January committee.
Steve Bannon, who used to work for Donald Trump’s election campaign, was found guilty of not obeying a legal order from the House committee in July 2022.
Bannon was given a four-month jail sentence, but he is still out of jail while his lawyers appeal the decision.
The US is planning to call the Houthi rebels in Yemen “global terrorists” again, according to senior officials in the Biden administration.
Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, will agree to the move while there are ongoing attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea by a group supported by Iran.
US banks will have to stop Houthi money and Houthi people can’t come into the US.
It undoes Mr. Blinken’s decision in 2021 to take the Houthis off the list.
In the last days of the Trump administration, officials called the Houthis as global terrorists and a foreign terrorist organization.
They did it even though the UN and aid groups said it could make the hunger crisis in Yemen much worse.
But in 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden took office, the new Secretary Blinken changed the decision because of the urgent humanitarian crisis.
Before announcing on Wednesday, officials said they decided to reinstate the SDGT label but not the FTO label to keep aid going into Yemen.
“We made the right decision to cancel,” said one government official, explaining that it was done because of a very serious humanitarian crisis in the country and to make sure that US policies were not stopping civilians from getting urgent help.
However, they agreed that the Houthis’ continuous attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, with dozens of missiles being fired, are not acceptable.
The new SDGT title will start in 30 days. It means that people and companies in the US can’t help the Houthis.
However, officials want to make it clear that there will be exceptions in the new rules to make sure that aid can still get to Yemen, a country that has been extremely damaged by almost ten years of fighting.
“We know that the situation in Yemen is very serious and we are trying to make sure that these sanctions do not hurt the people of Yemen too much,” one official said. They also mentioned that they are working on creating special exceptions and permissions for certain situations.
The Houthis started attacking trade ships in November because they wanted to retaliate against Israel’s military operation in Gaza. Ever since then, the group has carried out many attacks on commercial ships traveling through the Red Sea, which is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world.
In reply, the US and UK bombed many Houthi targets on January 11th. The strikes started because the Houthi forces didn’t stop their attacks, despite being warned to do so. Australia, Bahrain, the Netherlands and Canada supported the strikes.
The Biden administration said the new label does not mean they think the air attacks will stop the Houthi attacks.
“We think these sanctions are part of a bigger plan to stop the Houthis from carrying out terror attacks,” said one government official. “Our sanctions are not meant to be looked at by themselves, but as part of a bigger plan. ”
After the strikes last week, the Houthis said that the US and UK will soon understand that the action was a big mistake in their history.
“America and Britain messed up by starting the war in Yemen because they didn’t learn from their past experiences,” said the group’s leader Mohammed al-Bukhaiti on social media.
Yemen has been badly damaged by a civil war that got worse in 2015. The Houthis took over big areas in the west of the country from the government that most countries approve of. Then, a group of countries with Saudi Arabia in charge stepped in to try to bring back the government’s control.
The fighting has caused more than 160,000 people to die and created a very bad situation where 21 million people need help.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came in second place in Iowa’s caucuses, beating former UN ambassador Nikki Haley who came in third. The contest was mostly focused on Donald Trump.
Mr DeSantis worked very hard to win in the state, but he ended up far behind the former president.
With almost all the votes counted, Mr. Trump has 51% of the votes, Mr. DeSantis has 21%, and Ms. Haley has 19%.
Iowa was the first state where Republican voters chose who they want to be president.
The reason their election is called a caucus is because people have to go in person to a specific place at a certain time to vote.
The person chosen by the party will compete against President Joe Biden in the November election.
At a party in Des Moines, Mr. Trump said it was a great night and encouraged Americans to work together to solve the world’s problems.
He said he will close the border to stop people coming in and called Joe Biden the worst president.
Registered Republicans in Iowa went out in very cold weather to vote at various locations like churches, schools, gyjsonyms, and community centers on Monday evening.
Donald Trump was expected to win in Iowa, and Glenn Jacobs, a former WWE wrestler who supports Trump, had also predicted that Trump would win.
He talked to the BBC before people started voting in Des Moines. He said that the country was going in the wrong direction because of the border crisis and US involvement in the Middle East.
At a high school in Davenport, in the eastern part of the state, a Trump supporter named Brian Romer gave a passionate speech to his fellow Republicans in support of the former president.
“He said that what is happening in this country is similar to what happens in communist countries,” when talking about Mr. Trump’s criminal accusations. “We no longer live in a country where we have freedom. ”
Both DeSantis and Ms. Haley, who used to be governor of South Carolina and US ambassador to the UN under President Trump, said on Monday night that they have a lot of political support.
“They threw a lot of things at us,” Mr. The media didn’t support us. They wrote about our death several months ago.
“Even though there were challenges, we managed to secure our ticket out of Iowa. ”
Kyle Brock gathered people to support Mr. DeSantis at Grant Ragan Elementary School in Waukee, which is a town near Des Moines. He said it was time for Republicans to stop supporting Mr.
“I admire the Florida governor’s honesty, how he presents himself, and what he has accomplished in Florida,” he said.
Mr DeSantis spent a lot of time and money in Iowa, visiting all 99 counties and trying to get support from the state’s important group of evangelical voters. The Florida governor might have a harder time in New Hampshire, which is a more moderate state, when they have their primary next week.
Ms Haley has a small chance of beating Mr Trump in the state, and she says she is gaining momentum.
However, her third-place result was seen as a letdown for a candidate who was expected to do much better in the caucuses.
Hallie Still-Caris went to a meeting at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines and said that Ms. Haley has the best chance of winning in November.
“I see the other people running for President in the Republican party and President Biden,” she said, “and I think she can win the election. ” We need less fighting and less confusion.
Biotech businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said he was stopping his run for president because he was not doing well in the race. He supported Mr.
Mr Biden said on X that it looks like he will be running against Mr. Trump again
“But let me tell you, this election was always going to be us against the extreme Maga Republicans,” the president from the Democratic party said. “It was true yesterday and it will still be true tomorrow. “
They said his prostate cancer was treated early and worked well. They also said his chances of getting better are really good and he doesn’t need any more treatment.
The defense secretary is an important person in the US military and is right under the president in the chain of command.
In December, Mr. Austin had a small surgery to treat his prostate cancer. He went back to the hospital on New Year’s Day because the procedure had caused problems.
High-ranking military officials and the White House did not find out that Mr. Austin was very sick until three days after he was readmitted.
The fact that it was kept secret raised worries about security and transparency. As a result, three investigations have been started to look into how his health crisis was managed.
President Joe Biden said he still trusts his secretary to lead, but he wishes the secretary had been more honest about how sick he was.
Mr Austin said sorry for not telling people the right information.
He continued to work in his job while he was getting better. Last week, Mr. Austin gave permission for many attacks on Houthi fighters in Yemen from his hospital bed in the Red Sea.
On Monday, he said thank you to the doctors and nurses who took care of him.
“Now, as I keep getting better and working from home, I really want to get better soon and go back to the Pentagon,” he said.
The Pentagon said he can use secure communication to work from home.
The US government wants to execute a white man who killed 10 people in a racist shooting in 2022.
The US government, under President Biden, approved the death penalty for the shooter because of the impact on the victims.
Last year, 20-year-old Payton Gendron was given a life sentence in prison for the shooting in Buffalo, New York.
Gendron confessed to killing people that day because of their race.
The justice department explained why they think the death penalty should be used in a court paper on Friday. President Joe Biden does not want to give the death penalty. This is different from the government before him.
The agency said in court that Gendron deserved the sentence because he purposely targeted the victims based on their race when he shot at a grocery store on May 14, 2022.
Ten black people were killed in a shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo. The people who were hurt were between 32 and 86 years old. They included eight people who were shopping at the grocery store, a security guard at the store, and a church deacon who drove people to the store.
The person who shot people that day had planned it and wanted to hurt Black people because he didn’t like them.
Merrick Garland, the person in charge of the justice department in the US, stopped federal executions for a while in 2021. He wants to check the procedures first. This document says that the review is finished.
New York state doesn’t have the death penalty, but the shooter is being charged with hate crime and gun charges in a different federal case. In those federal cases, the government can ask for the death penalty.
Even though New York doesn’t use the death penalty, Governor Kathy Hochul supports that choice.
“This follows the rules set by the Department of Justice for what is considered a crime eligible for the death penalty,” Ms. Hochul said at a press meeting on Friday.
The lawyers representing the victims and their families in the shooting case are glad that the Department of Justice wants to seek the death penalty.
The lawyers said that the decision made by the Department of Justice today will help the victims and their families feel some relief and a sense of closure. “They have been asking for fair treatment for almost two years, and today they are getting closer to it. ”
The person who shot people was 18 years old. They drove more than 320km to a mostly black area and then attacked.
He says he is a fascist and believes in white supremacy in a long document he wrote before the shooting. He admitted to committing murder and terrorism in 2022.
At his punishment, the judge told the shooter that his hateful and evil ideas have no place in our society.
Judge Susan Eagan from Erie County said that there will be no compassion, no tolerance, and no opportunities for a second chance for you. “You will never be a free man and see the sun again. “
In his first speech to get elected in 2024, President Joe Biden said that he thinks Donald Trump could be a big problem for American democracy.
Mr Biden said that the most important question right now is whether democracy is still very important to America.
“He said that’s what the 2024 election is all about. ”
Mr Trump said the speech was filled with scary lies and called Mr. Biden a danger to democracy.
The former president said at a rally in Iowa that Biden has a consistent history of being weak, not able to do his job well, being dishonest and not succeeding.
Mr Biden’s speech talked about something he has been talking about a lot in recent years.
This time, he clearly connected the US Capitol attack on 6 January 2021 to support his argument.
That day, people who support Mr Trump went into Congress and used violence to try to stop the lawmakers from officially saying that Mr Biden won the election. This happened just a few weeks before Mr Biden was supposed to start as president.
Mr Trump keeps saying the wrong thing that he won the 2020 election, even though it’s not true.
The ex-president has tried to change how people see the attack on January 6th, calling it a “beautiful day. ” He has praised the people who were involved as “patriots” and “political prisoners” and said he would forgive them if he becomes president again.
Mr Biden said that Mr Trump is trying to twist history and kept criticizing Mr Trump by name.
Mr Biden said that the mob with Trump was not a peaceful protest, it was a violent attack. “They were rebels, not loyal citizens. ” They did not want to protect the Constitution, they wanted to ruin the Constitution.
“He calls people who disagree with him vermin. ” He said that Americans’ blood is being poisoned, using the same language as Nazi Germany.
The Trump campaign did not answer a request for comment right away.
Jason Miller, a top adviser for Donald Trump’s election campaign, said that Mr. Biden is not focusing on important topics for the 2024 election.
Mr Miller said that instead of helping the people hurt by Biden’s economic policies or the weak border, Biden wants to use the government against his main political opponent.
Mr Biden keeps talking about protecting democracy many times.
In 2020, he ran for office promising to make America normal again. Before the 2022 midterms, Mr. Biden said the election was very important for our country.
On Friday, Mr Biden chose Valley Forge, Pennsylvania as the location to talk about important themes related to the American Revolutionary War.
The music added to the mood as Mr. Biden walked to the stage. They played a song from Hamilton, a musical about the Founding Fathers, on the speakers.
After trying for a year to make Mr. Biden look better in the polls by talking about his economic plans, his campaign is now focusing on democracy and pointing out the big differences between him and Mr.
Mr Biden has used this strategy before and it has worked well.
Democrats did better than expected in the 2022 midterms by defeating Republican opponents who supported Trump and doubted the fairness of US elections.
Ashley Etienne, who used to work for Biden’s campaign, said that this issue is really important to Democratic supporters.
Ms Etienne said that democracy is really important to who we are as people. “But it works and helps you win. ” It’s a message that says we won. And it helped bring together a large group of voters.
Mr Biden’s friends in the Democratic party were happy that he chose to emphasize the importance of democratic values.
“I’m happy the president is speaking out today to support democracy, freedom, and to show that Trump is a threat to all of that,” said Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who is a member of the Democratic Party, to reporters.
New polls show that Americans’ opinions about the January 6 attack are very different depending on their political party. Republicans are now less likely to think it was a violent attack compared to three years ago. One out of four Americans think the FBI, not Mr. Trump’s supporters, caused the riot, according to a poll by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland.
The highest court in the United States will decide if Donald Trump can run for president. This is an important and historic case.
The judges decided to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal because Colorado wouldn’t let him be on the 2024 ballot there.
The court will decide the case in February and the decision will affect the whole country.
Lawsuits in many states are trying to remove Mr. Trump from his position. They say he was part of a riot at the US Capitol three years ago.
The legal problems depend on whether a constitutional amendment from the Civil War time means Mr. Trump can’t run for president.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal after 27 state attorneys general asked them to reject Colorado’s decision.
They say that taking Mr. Trump off the ballot would cause a lot of problems.
“The submission says that it is causing confusion in the upcoming election. ”
Moreover, it disrupts the specific duties of the Congress, the States, and the courts.
The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution says that people who have rebelled against the government can’t hold federal office. However, the former president’s lawyers say this rule doesn’t apply to the president.
His lawyers say that if the Colorado Supreme Court decision is followed, it would unlawfully prevent many voters in Colorado from voting and could also be used as an example to prevent many more voters across the country from voting.
Mr Trump is fighting against a decision made by voting officials in Maine to take his name off the ballot.
After the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday, Colorado’s Secretary of State Jena Griswold confirmed that the state’s ballots for the next presidential primary elections have been approved and that Mr. Trump’s name will be on them.
The votes in each state will decide which people can run for president in the November election.
Colorado is scheduled for the start of March, shortly after the Supreme Court makes a decision on Mr.
Ms Griswold said that the Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear the case, and because of this, Donald Trump will be listed as a candidate on the ballot.
Last month, the Colorado high court made a decision with 4 judges in favor and 3 against. It’s the first time in US history that the 14th Amendment has been used to reject a candidate from running for president.
This is the first time the Supreme Court will think about what the clause means.
Mr Trump is the top Republican candidate to compete against President Joe Biden, who is a Democrat, in the upcoming November election.
Courts in Minnesota and Michigan have rejected attempts to remove Mr. Trump from his position. Other cases in Oregon are waiting for a decision.
The US Supreme Court mainly has conservative judges, and three of them were chosen by Mr. Trump when he was president.
However, they mostly decided he lost his lawsuits against Mr. Biden in the 2020 election.
The court will hear the case quickly and will have a debate about it on 8 February.
Mr Trump’s lawyers have to submit their first written arguments by January 18th.
The people who want Mr. Trump to be disqualified have to give their reasons by January 31st.
The top US court getting involved reminds people of the 2000 election between George Bush and Al Gore, which also went to the Supreme Court.
The court with mostly conservative judges stopped the vote recount in Florida, which helped Mr. Bush win the election.
Professor Cart Tobias from the University of Richmond says that the “very fast” process was expected and needed because there are more and more cases being filed in different states across the country.
With the state primary elections coming up soon, election officials in many states need to get ready and plan for smooth voting processes on short notice.
Cases at the Supreme Court usually take between four and 12 months, which is much longer than the few weeks currently set for justices.
The court will probably make a decision before the Super Tuesday election in March, when Colorado and other states will choose who they want to run for president.
On the day of the riot at the US Capitol, people who support Mr. Trump went into Congress while the lawmakers were officially declaring Mr. Biden as the winner of the election.
On that day, the former president spoke at a gathering outside the White House. He said things that were not true about the election and told the crowd to “fight like hell”, but also to walk “peacefully” to the Capitol.
People who disagree with Mr. Trump say he shouldn’t be allowed to be president because of what he did during the riot and because he tried to change the election result in states that he lost.
Mr Trump is being tried in federal court and state court in Georgia for trying to change the 2020 election result. But he has not been charged with inciting a riot in either case.
Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, says that Republicans are trying to harm him in order to make his father look bad as President.
He said that if he died, it would be really hard for his father to handle. He told this to musician Moby in a podcast that aired on Friday.
The first part of the broadcast was recorded before Mr. Biden was accused of nine serious tax crimes on Thursday.
Republicans say that the president and his son are using their influence to benefit themselves.
The White House said the congressional investigation into the president is just a fishing expedition and not serious.
Hunter Biden, who used to have a problem with crack cocaine, was talking to his friend Moby from his house in Malibu, California. They met while they were both getting help for using drugs and alcohol.
“They are trying to do something wrong or illegal. ” “They are trying to ruin the president’s term in a careful and sensible way,” he said on Moby Pod.
“They want to kill me because they know it will hurt my father a lot. They also want to ruin my presidency by making me start using drugs again,” he said.
He said it’s not about him. He thinks these people are very sad and sick. They have probably experienced traumas in their lives, and now they want to hurt others.
He said that conservative news outlets were bothering him.
Mr Biden said he will stay clean and sober because he doesn’t want people to use him as an example of why people in recovery can’t be trusted.
On Thursday, the government in California accused Hunter Biden of not paying taxes for four years and spending lots of money on drugs and escorts.
He is also being investigated for possibly lying about using drugs when he applied for a gun.
President Biden went to Las Vegas, Nevada for a campaign event. His press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was asked about the new charges for Hunter while they were on Air Force One.
Olena Zelenska said that Ukrainians could die if western countries don’t keep giving them money.
The wife of Ukraine’s president talked to a reporter on Sunday after US Republican senators stopped an important aid bill.
It would have given Ukraine more than $60 billion in help.
She said that if the world gets tired, they will just let us die after the Russian missile attack.
The White House says it’s running out of money to help Ukraine, but the Republican party is stopping a deal to provide more aid.
They want to make a deal with President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress about money for border security in exchange for their help.
President Biden said that if we don’t help Ukraine, it would be good for President Putin. He warned that people who don’t support freedom will be judged badly by history.
Almost two years after Russia invaded Ukraine without permission, the first lady is very worried about the slow process of getting money for help.
In a special interview airing on Sunday, Olena Zelenska told the media that the decrease in help is very dangerous for her country.
She said, “We really need help. ” In other words, we can’t afford to get tired of this situation, because if we do, we will die.
“If the world gets too tired, it will just let us die. ”
The first lady said, “It makes us very sad to see that people may not want to help as much as before. ”
“It is very important to us. ” So, it really hurts to see that.
The UK is asking politicians in Washington DC to make a deal for Ukraine.
This week, UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron visited Washington and said that the US is very important in supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
He told the US not to give Mr Putin a “Christmas present” by stopping the billions of dollars of money needed to keep fighting against Russian forces.
There is no doubt that other countries are now thinking differently about Ukraine.
In Washington DC, strong support cannot be promised, but the main issues of the conflict have not changed.
A country in Eastern Europe is still fighting against Russian forces after they invaded illegally.
Ukraine’s military stopped another country from taking over in February 2022 and this surprised everyone.
Many Western countries were surprised by the strong support they received in return.
However, Ukraine needs support and help from other countries to continue on the same path.
The first lady’s warnings are meant to make it very clear.
Federal lawyers have accused Hunter Biden of not paying his taxes. This is the second time he has been charged with a crime. Hunter Biden is the son of the US president.
He is accused of trying to avoid paying $1. 4 million in federal taxes from 2016 to 2019, according to the nine charges.
Three serious crimes and six lesser crimes are not filing or paying taxes, giving false information on a tax return and avoiding paying taxes that are owed.
Mr Biden, who is 53 years old, was accused of breaking gun laws in September in Delaware.
On Thursday night, his lawyer said the new charges are caused by politics.
President Joe Biden is not named in the charges, and the White House has not said anything about it yet.
Congressional Republicans are focusing on Hunter Biden’s business deals as they investigate President Biden for possible impeachment. President Biden is running for re-election next year.
If Hunter Biden is found guilty in the tax case, he could be sent to prison for as long as 17 years.
Since 2019, Special Counsel David Weiss from the US Department of Justice has been looking into a Yale-educated lawyer who used to be addicted to crack cocaine.
In a legal document in California, it is said that he used his money for things like drugs, expensive hotels and cars, and clothes instead of paying his taxes.
The president’s son got more than $7 million in total income between 2016 and 2020. But he didn’t pay his taxes on time for those years, even though he had the money to do so.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said that if Hunter’s last name was not Biden, he would not have been charged in Delaware and California.
Hunter Biden gave back all the money he owed in taxes and fines in 2020. He got a loan from his lawyer to help him do it.
The indictment includes a chart that shows how Hunter Biden used his money.
From 2016 to 2019, he spent more than $188,000 on “adult entertainment” and over $683,000 on “payments to different women”, as stated in the charges.
Prosecutors claim that Hunter Biden made a lot of money and spent it freely in 2018.
The charge says he earned a lot of money from a company he started with a big Chinese company, the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and someone from Romania.
The indictment says that as he made more money, he spent more on a luxurious lifestyle.
In 2018, the person being accused spent a lot of money, including taking out lots of cash, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to women, and spending $151,000 on clothes.
That year, Hunter Biden told his ex-wife he couldn’t pay alimony because he didn’t have enough money.
He stayed at expensive hotels, spent $10,000 to join a sex club, and said that $1,248 airline tickets for a dancer were a business cost, according to the charges.
The prosecutors say that he had enough money to pay some or all of his taxes on time, but he decided not to.
He supposedly took personal expenses and said they were for his business. For example, he rented a Lamborghini when he first got to California in 2018 until his Porsche arrived.
Earlier this year, Hunter Biden was supposed to admit to breaking tax rules in a deal with the people in charge of making sure the law is followed.
But the agreement didn’t work out because a judge thought it was strange. Congressional Republicans criticized it as a favorable deal.
This summer, two people who exposed wrongdoing at the IRS told Congress that they think Hunter Biden should have been accused of more serious tax crimes. They said they think he got off easy because he’s the president’s son.
Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler said the indictment on Thursday is a complete vindication for them.
In September, he was charged by the government for having a gun while using drugs and lying about it on a form. He said he did not do it.
The House of Representatives Oversight Committee is looking into whether President Biden did something wrong with his son.
Congressional Republicans say they found bank statements that prove Joe Biden lied about getting money from his son’s business. But the White House says the whole investigation is based on lies.
Despite a significant Republican dissent, the US House of Representatives has passed a short-term financing package in an attempt to prevent the government shutdown that is scheduled to occur on Friday.
By 336 votes to 95, the bill was approved, marking the first significant test for newly appointed House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Up until mid-January, it maintains government agencies operating at their existing expenditure levels.
Before the end of the week, the Senate is anticipated to pass the interim legislation.
Before government financing ends on November 17, President Joe Biden must sign it into law. If he doesn’t, thousands of federal employees might be temporarily laid off without pay as early as next week, and numerous government functions would be abruptly terminated.
A two-thirds majority was needed for the vote to pass. Ninety-three Republicans voted against the bill on Tuesday night.
The conservative House Freedom Caucus criticised the plan, in part because it did not contain the drastic expenditure cuts they desired.
Additionally, President Joe Biden’s request for more than $100 billion (£80 billion) in funding—including for Israel and Ukraine—is not included in the plan.
However, House Democrats took Mr. Johnson’s side, arguing that the government must continue to run.
The Democratic leadership declared that it will back the resolution in a statement issued prior to the vote, citing its “devoid of harmful cuts and free of extreme right-wing policy riders”.
The vote was the new Republican House Speaker, Mr. Johnson,’s first significant leadership test.
His atypical two-tiered plan funds some agencies of the government until a deadline in January, such as the Department of Transportation, Veterans Affairs, and the Food and Drug Administration, while funding other agencies through early February.
The purpose of the interim measure is to allow legislators more time to write longer-term budget laws.
Mr Johnson’s proceeding determination may be a so-called “clean” charge with no investing cuts, approach arrangements or other strings joined.
The Speaker’s choice to supersede the correct flank of his party and pass a subsidizing charge with Law based back is the exceptionally same strategy that driven to the expulsion of his forerunner, Kevin McCarthy, in October.
“We’re not surrendering,” Mr Johnson said after a closed-door assembly of House Republicans on Tuesday morning, as he referred to their thin 221-213 larger part, “but you’ve got to select battles you’ll win.”
The new House Speaker is three weeks into the work, but the discontent from the ultra-conservatives in his party on Tuesday indicated his political special first night might be short-lived.
Texas congressman Chip Roy, an powerful preservationist, told columnists the House Opportunity Meeting was “attempting to donate the speaker a small beauty”, but contended that “today’s a botch, right out of the entryway”.
The Republican party has experienced a riotous two months after eight right-wing Republicans voted to remove Mr McCarthy.
Pressures flared some time recently the vote on Tuesday, when right-wing congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee denounced Mr McCarthy of “elbowing” him within the back whereas he stood within the lobbies of Congress.
The occurrence driven another Republican official, Matt Gaetz, to record an morals complaint.
HunterBiden, President Joe Biden‘s only surviving son, is encountering more and more difficulties that don’t seem to be disappearing.
In July, the 53-year-old seemed like he was going to solve his tax and gun problems and not go to jail with the help of a deal with prosecutors.
However, the agreement fell apart during the legal process, and the person leading the investigation into Hunter‘s alleged illegal activities stated that he would bring charges against Hunter for possessing a gun.
In September, congressional Republicans started investigating the elder Mr Biden. They are looking into claims that his son may have used his influence for personal gain.
His personal problems, like alcohol and drug addiction, as well as troubles in his relationships, have become known by the public.
What else do we know about Hunter Biden.
A childhood steeped in tragedy
Hunter Biden was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1970. His parents are Joe Biden and his first wife Neilia. He got his first name from his mother’s family name.
He was just two years old in December 1972 when his father had just become a US Senator. Unfortunately, their family car was hit by a truck not long after.
A terrible accident happened that caused his mother and baby sister Naomi to die. He got hurt with a broken skull, and his older brother Beau broke his leg.
Mr Biden’s elderly father, who was not in the car at the time, took his official promise to serve as president while standing next to their hospital bed.
Later, Hunter went to Georgetown University and Yale Law School. He completed his studies in 1996.
He joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps after getting his two degrees. This is a Catholic group that helps communities that are often overlooked.
There, he met his first wife, Kathleen Buhle, who was a lawyer, and they got married in 1993. They have three kids – Naomi, Finnegan, and Maisy – but they separated in 2017.
The ‘darkness’ of addiction
His dad doesn’t drink, but Hunter started drinking when he was a teenager and admits that he used cocaine when he was in college. He has been in and out of a rehabilitation program.
In 2013, he joined the US Navy Reserves and took an oath in a special ceremony at the White House while his father, who was the vice-president at that time, was present.
However, on his first day at the naval base, he was found positive for using cocaine and was sent away. He later expressed feeling ashamed about it.
The New Yorker reported that after his older brother, Beau, died from brain cancer in 2015, he started drinking a lot. He would often only go out of the house to buy vodka.
“His daughter Naomi once said on Twitter that he and Beau were very close. ” One heart, one soul, and one mind means that everyone is united and thinks alike.
During their bitter divorce, Ms Buhle claimed that Hunter spent a lot of money on things like drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for other women, instead of using the money to pay necessary bills for the family.
Last year, she finally spoke about how their 24-year marriage fell apart. On Good Morning America, she said, “He was dealing with a very serious drug addiction. It was really sad and hurtful because the person I married wasn’t like that. ”
In his book Beautiful Things, which was written in 2021, Hunter admits that his cheating was the main reason their marriage ended.
In 2019, a DNA test confirmed that he is the biological and legal father of a child born to Lunden Alexis Roberts, who works as a dancer in Arkansas.
Hunter said in his book that he didn’t remember meeting Ms Roberts, but he agreed to pay child support after they resolved a legal case about their child.
It seems that none of the Bidens have ever met a little girl named Navy Roberts, who is now four years old. But because the media was pressuring him, President Biden had to admit that he now has another grandchild.
Before Hunter had fully separated from Ms. Buhle, he started a romantic relationship with Hallie Biden, who happens to be his brother’s widow.
For nearly two years, they connected through their mutual and “very specific sadness” from their loss, he shared with the New Yorker.
In 2019, there were reports that they broke up peacefully, shortly after his father started running for president again.
But just a few weeks later, Hunter got married to a filmmaker from South Africa named Melissa Cohen. They fell in love very quickly, within six days. They have a boy.
In 2019, he spoke about his battle with addiction and mentioned that it cannot be completely eliminated. You find a way to handle it.
Hunter, along with his dad Joe and his brother Beau, enthusiastically greets the people who are showing their support while Barack Obama becomes the president.
In the book Beautiful Things, he says that he is alive because his family loves him. He talks about a situation where his father hugged him tightly and said that he didn’t know how else to help him. I am very frightened. Please give me instructions on what to do.
Hunter has started painting as a way to feel better and get away from bad situations and people.
But the Biden White House is facing a problem with ethics due to the high prices, up to $500,000, that his artwork is being sold for.
President Biden has supported his son on many occasions, especially during a debate in 2020 where he stood up for him.
After Mr Trump had a problem with his child’s difficulties, an emotional Joe Biden replied: “My son – like many others – had a drug issue. ” He repaired it and spent time on it, and I am happy about my son.
Mixing family and business
After finishing his studies at Yale, Hunter got a job at MBNA America, a bank company based in Delaware. It was later bought by Bank of America.
Joe Biden had a very close relationship with a big bank in Delaware. This bank was one of the largest employers in Delaware and also gave a lot of money to his political campaigns. Because of this, people started calling him “the senator from MBNA” in a negative way.
Joe, who wanted to help MBNA, pushed for a law to make it easier for people and businesses to declare bankruptcy while Hunter got a promotion to executive vice-president.
In the early 2000s, Hunter started working as a lobbyist in Washington while still getting paid for giving advice to the bank.
According to Politico Magazine, it was noticed that he got clients who had similar interests to his father’s committee assignments and legislative priorities.
According to him, the relationship between the father and the son was such that they would not talk to each other about their lobbying jobs.
President Biden has also said that this is still true in regards to more recent claims of wrongdoing. Hunter and his sister Ashley greet people happily as they arrive at their dad’s important event where he becomes the president.
In 2006, when Joe Biden was going to become the chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, Hunter and one of their family members made a bad decision to buy a hedge fund group.
They continued working at Paradigm Global Advisors during Joe Biden’s campaign for president in 2008 and his appointment as vice-president to President Barack Obama.
During this period, the fund had associations with multiple people accused of fraud, including a Texas financier who was found guilty of operating a large-scale Ponzi scheme, which is a type of financial fraud.
The Bidens said they did nothing wrong and were not accused of any crimes. In 2010, they closed the fund and gave back the money to the people who invested in it.
China and Ukraine are two countries.
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about Hunter’s business overseas when his father was vice-president.
In 2013, he became a founding board member at BHR, a Chinese investment firm. At first, he didn’t get paid for this role, but later on, he ended up owning 10% of the company’s ownership.
The company was started in Shanghai a short time after Hunter went on a trip to China with his dad, who was the vice-president at the time. He met with the CEO of BHR, but they only had a short meeting over coffee, according to Hunter.
After his dad stopped working in 2017, Hunter worked together with a rich Chinese businessman named Ye Jianming on a project to extract natural gas in Louisiana.
The agreement fell apart because Ye got arrested by the Chinese government for corruption and then disappeared.
Hunter Biden’s actions in Ukraine have caused even more disagreement, especially since his father was in charge of the United States’ relationship with Ukraine during the Obama administration.
In 2014, he started working for a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings. He received a salary of $1. 2 million (£943,000) per year.
As part of a campaign to fight against corrupt actions, Vice-President Biden was trying to remove the country’s highest-ranking prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
In 2016, Parliament took away Mr. Shokin’s position, but some people say that he was actually fired because he was investigating Burisma.
Republicans say that both Joe and Hunter Biden got $5 million from Burisma executives to fire Mr.
A person who used to work with Hunter said that Joe was sometimes on speakerphone when Hunter was talking to different people.
Accusations of corruption were the main focus of President Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, and the beginning investigation into President Biden.
In the 2020 presidential campaign, a laptop left behind by Hunter at a Delaware repair shop became a big deal because of the sketchy things on its hard drive.
The Biden team claimed it was a false attack planned by Russia, but now US media has verified the hard drive and the FBI has taken possession of it.
Studying what is inside has shown evidence that Hunter made lots of money from his jobs in China and Ukraine. It also shows proof that he often went on wild adventures while under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
As the president begins his campaign for re-election, the negative consequences of his son’s legal troubles, business involvements, and media-focused lifestyle are causing problems.
The US has given permission for banks to move $6bn of Iranian money that was blocked in South Korea to Qatar. This is important because it will allow five Americans who are being held by Iran to be released.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed Congress that the money would only help Iran to some extent since it could solely be utilized for trade related to humanitarian aid.
He also said that five Iranians who were being held in the US will be released as part of the agreement to exchange prisoners.
Republicans disapproved of the transfer.
A senator said that President Joe Biden paid a large sum of money to a country that supports terrorism.
Recently, US officials reported that four people who are both American and Iranian citizens were removed from Evin prison in Tehran and placed under house arrest.
A lawyer identified three prisoners as Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi, and Morad Tahbaz. Morad Tahbaz is also a citizen of Britain. The fourth person was not recognized, and the fifth person was also not recognized because they were already being kept at home by authorities.
Who are the people with citizenship in two countries that are currently imprisoned in Iran.
It is thought that since 2018, many many billions of dollars that Iran is owed for its oil and other exports have been put on hold in bank accounts worldwide. This happened when former President Donald Trump decided to stop following an agreement regarding Iran’s nuclear program and put sanctions back in place.
The US has given permission for some banks in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East to move $6 billion from South Korea to Qatar’s central bank without facing any punishment.
MrBlinken said in a letter to Congress on Monday that it is important to move money from limited Iranian accounts in South Korea to accounts in Qatar for humanitarian trade. This is necessary for the release of US citizens.
Last month, he said that Qatar had promised to make sure the money given to Iran would only be used for helping people and would be carefully monitored and regulated. He also mentioned that Iran would not be able to directly access the funds, and the US would closely monitor the situation.
The Republican leader of the House Foreign Affairs Committee criticized the Biden administration for going ahead with what he referred to as a “hostage deal” worth $6 billion, despite their promises.
Rep Michael McCaul said that the Americans being held in Iran are innocent and they should be released right away without any conditions.
I am worried about the government’s choice to not punish Iran and let them have $6 billion. Iran is a country that supports terrorism. This decision could encourage other countries that don’t like America to take more people hostage in the future.
Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House, said that the waiver was just a normal part of a sensitive and ongoing process.
Nasser Kanani, a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry, said he was hopeful that the prisoner exchange would happen very soon.
During an FBI operation on Wednesday, a man who had made violent threats against President Joe Biden and other authorities online was shot and killed.
Just hours before President Biden was scheduled to visit the state, agents were seeking to serve Craig Robertson with an arrest warrant at his house in Utah.
According to a federal complaint, Robertson threatened President Biden and a prosecutor who was investigating possible criminal charges against Donald Trump on Facebook.
The FBI refused to provide more information.
The raid took place in Provo, which is located around 40 miles (65 km) south of Salt Lake City, at around 06:15 local time.
Robertson posted threats to kill Mr. Biden and Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney overseeing an investigation into a hush-money payment by Mr. Trump to an adult film star, as well as images of guns on Facebook, according to a criminal complaint.
Other messages, according to the complaint, were directed at New York Attorney General Letitia James and US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
On Facebook, Robertson wrote: “I hear Biden is coming to Utah. cleaning the M24 sniper rifle of dust and digging out my old ghillie suit.
On two of Robertson’s Facebook accounts, there were dozens of other violent posts and images of weapons.
According to the complaint, Robertson was observed by federal officials in March after making a threat against Mr. Bragg on the Mr. Trump-owned social media site Truth Social. The business informed the National Threat Operations Centre of the FBI.
When FBI officers contacted the suspect later, he described the posting as a “dream” and declared, “We’re done here! Don’t return without a warrant!”
Later posts by Robertson mentioned his run-together with the agents, featured images of him dressed in sniper-style camouflage, and repeatedly threatened government officials.
Even on Tuesday, when he posted, the messages persisted: “Perhaps Utah will become famous this week as the place a sniper took out Biden the Marxist.”
On Thursday, Mr. Biden will pay his first visit to Utah as president, stopping up at a veterans hospital and attending a fundraiser in Park City.
The NATO meeting held this week in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, served as an essential reminder that the struggle for communications during a war is just as crucial as anything taking place on the ground.
The meeting met its objectives and was a success.
The major objectives in Vilnius were to bolster support for Ukraine and come to an agreement that would allow Sweden to join the security alliance, which Turkey had previously rejected.
Both of those objectives were accomplished, and the agreement on Sweden’s membership was a key step in that direction. Officials at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, however, have voiced some displeasure about the media’s heavy emphasis on the particular and contentious topic of Ukraine’s membership in the alliance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing for a clear path to join NATO for some time. He wanted more than just a restatement of the existing, vague expression of support for Kyiv’s membership of the bloc, arguing instead for a clear timetable to accession.
Western officials and diplomats, however, hoped that the issue would not be the focus of this week’s summit. Zelensky’s maximalist position was understood to be a way to ratchet up the pressure, but they say he would have known that the summit would not have been the moment he got his way.
That hope turned out to be misplaced.
On Sunday, US President Joe Biden gave a newsmaking interview to CNN in which he said Ukraine could not be admitted to NATO while war was raging on its territory.
Nothing he said was particularly controversial, nor did it depart from the prevailing view in NATO. Most allies agree that Ukraine is not in a position to join while it is under invasion.
There are many reasons for this, but the most important is that membership would immediately give Ukraine the right to invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty – which would force the rest of the alliance to join Ukraine in the war against Russia.
But the timing of Biden’s comments, on the eve of the summit, and his position as leader of the most powerful NATO state, meant that the question of Ukrainian membership was front and center as the alliance convened.
It didn’t help matters that Zelensky sent a blistering tweet criticizing NATO as “absurd” for not offering a clearer path to membership in its joint communique on Tuesday.
Nor did it help when British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace commented that Ukraine should be more grateful for the support it has already received.
All of which created room for speculation about NATO’s unity, and allowed its adversaries to call the summit a failure.
One example: Sputnik, the Russian state-owned news agency, was able to publish a story headlined “NATO Summit Exposes Fractures in Alliance Over Support for Ukraine.” The article contains a quote from an analyst stating that “the decision by the USA to quietly pull the plug on the Ukrainians is only natural and certainly not ‘absurd.’ The game is up.”
Given the millions of dollars the US and its allies have provided to Ukraine since the start of the war and the commitment to send even more money and arms, this is a dubious claim. But Biden’s comments, combined with Zelensky’s public anger, provided space for the claim to be made.
“There were two major communications missteps ahead of Vilnius,” Brett Bruen, a former US diplomat who worked for the Obama administration, told CNN. “The first was the announcement of the US sending cluster munitions when other allies won’t. It created an unnecessary delineation between America and the others. The second was even raising the question of Ukraine’s immediate membership, which was never on the cards, but came to dominate the meeting.”
Officials at NATO HQ were frustrated at how the narrative played out. “In short, the summit was a success,” a senior NATO official told CNN. But the official said that Biden’s comments were “not helpful” at a time when the bloc is in a “comms war” with Russia.
A Western diplomat told CNN that NATO desperately needs to “fix and double down on a communication strategy to explain all the good things we are doing.”
The fear of this diplomat, and of others who spoke with CNN, is that NATO “cannot win the communication war on membership that Russia wants to turn this into. There isn’t anything feasibly more we could have done on Ukraine’s membership at this time.”
This might feel like nitpicking over things that are trivial while a nation is under invasion. But Russia has historically been better than the West at spinning events to fit a narrative. These information wars are not just for the benefit of Russian audiences at home, but for people who live in NATO territories who might be susceptible to misinformation.
“There’s definitely a percentage of our population that falls for this kind of disinformation,” David van Weel, NATO’s assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges, told CNN in an interview last month.
Western leaders are keenly aware of the power of messaging during a war. NATO officials privately wished that the key delegations in Vilnius – whether they had traveled from Washington or Kyiv – had remembered that lesson this week.
You presumably already know that US Vice President Joe Biden has been in Europe for the past several days, unless you’ve been living on a different planet.
Although a vital NATO summit in Lithuania was the major objective of the trip, the president began the week with a quick stop in London to strengthen the US-UK “special relationship.”
It was a high-stakes diplomatic visit that took place days after the contentious decision to deliver cluster munitions to Ukraine by the American commander in chief, a move that the UK vehemently opposes as a signatory to a prohibition on the weapon.
First, he met with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak before climbing aboard Marine One for a short flight to Windsor to meet King Charles III. It was their first in-person chat since Charles was crowned in May. But there appeared to be no hurt feelings over Biden’s non-attendance at the coronation, with the King warmly welcoming his guest with a guard of honor.
This wasn’t a full-on formal state visit, which usually lasts several days and is full of pageantry, diplomatic sit-downs and a glittering Buckingham Palace banquet. Instead, the catch-up was billed as a ceremonial state welcome.
The display of military personnel – formed of the Prince of Wales’ Company of the Welsh Guards on this occasion – was “designed to show the ultimate respect to the United States, our greatest ally, and used troops with some of the closest links to the King who are also preparing to deploy to the US to train alongside US forces in a matter of weeks,” according to the British Army.
National anthems were performed, followed by the two heads of state inspecting the troops. At several points, Biden placed his hand on the King’s back, in a tactile display of their close rapport. The gesture was later described to us by a royal source as being a “wonderful symbol of warmth and affection.”
As is often the case when a president comes to town, some observers scrutinized Biden’s moves for a potential breach of regal etiquette. But the royal source told CNN that the King is “entirely comfortable with that kind of contact” and that “contrary to some reports that is in fact the correct protocol.”
Afterward, the two had tea together before they viewed a Royal Collection exhibition of items relating to the US. On the face of it, the encounter seemed entirely similar to those conducted by the late Queen Elizabeth II. However, there was some deviation you may have missed.
Ahead of the meeting, it was revealed what the monarch and president would be discussing on Monday: climate change – a subject important to both men. It was a move that Charles’ late mother never allowed. The Queen, always regimented and steadfast in her duties, never revealed what she discussed with the 12 presidents she met during her reign. The few insights we’ve had have come from former presidents and tended to reveal how she made them feel welcomed or their impressions of her given her lengthy reign, rather than the specifics of their meetings.
Another departure from the Queen’s approach to presidential meetings was that a concurrent event took place at Windsor Castle, which the pair later joined in the castle’s Green Drawing Room. High-profile private sector stakeholders had been brought together for a Climate Finance Mobilisation Forum aimed at bolstering “commitments to climate action within emerging markets and developing economies.”
UK Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps heralded the King’s “many decades” of sounding the alarm around climate change and told Biden he was “enormously pleased” by the climate provisions in the US Inflation Reduction Act passed last August. He noted there would be “a couple of billion dollars’ worth of pledges” coming out of the meeting, adding that the group planned to turn their discussion into “real, tangible outcomes.”
Neither the King nor Biden spoke on camera while media were allowed in the room. Among the group of top financiers and philanthropists was Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry. He spoke to us for a few minutes afterward and called Monday’s engagement “time well spent” and praised the King’s “convening power” on a critical issue.
The attendees “agreed that we need to accelerate the deployment of capital, money, investment in the new energy economy.” The president, Kerry said, was particularly interested in a part of the discussion focused on “what could be done in the insurance industry to be able to provide insurance for certain types of investments.”
Some critics had questioned whether the King had overstepped by wading into policy. Kerry wouldn’t be drawn on the subject but said there had been a “great discussion” and characterized it as more of a “briefing” for the King, who, he said, “didn’t take part in the meeting” itself.
The British sovereign, Kerry said, “does have extraordinary convening power.”
“He obviously has great respect for people that are pushing an issue he’s cared about for all of his life,” said Kerry.
This week, the Chinese military has increased its activities in the area of Taiwan, flying scores of warplanes over the Taiwan Strait’s middle line and into the main areas of the island’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ).
Analysts claim that while the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) activities has a number of ramifications, none of them are good for Taiwan or the stability across the Taiwan Strait.
38 PLA aircraft were spotted in the area of the island in the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday, 33 in the same period on Thursday, and 30 in the same period on Friday, according to data from Taiwan’s Defence Ministry.
Over those 72 hours, 73 PLA aircraft either crossed the strait’s median line – an informal demarcation point that Beijing does not recognize but until recently largely respected – or entered the southeastern or southwestern parts of the island’s ADIZ.
China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its territory despite never having controlled it, and has spent decades trying to isolate it diplomatically. Beijing has not ruled out using force to take control of the island.
The PLA aircraft detected this week included fighter jets, H-6 bombers, anti-submarine warning aircraft and reconnaissance drones, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.
The ministry said it tasked combat air patrol warplanes, naval vessels and land-based missile defense to monitor the PLA aircraft, along with nine Chinese warships that were present around the island.
Their response underscores the problem that increased PLA activity poses to Taiwan, said Carl Schuster, a Hawaii-based analyst and former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.
When Taiwan’s military responds to PLA operations, it taxes the island’s systems and equipment.
“Constant use creates a maintenance headache that reduces readiness until (spare) parts are delivered and installed,” he said. “Also, air frames and hulls require inspection and refurbishment as certain age and stress times are reached.”
He also says surges in PLA activity are aimed at wearing down the mental ability of Taiwan’s people to resist a potentialtakeoverby Beijing.
“Beijing hopes Taipei will just accept unification as inevitable and allow Chinese forces in without resistance. They are trying to diminish if not destroy the Taiwan population’s will to resist,” he said.
But even if that tactic does not work, the continued presence of large numbers of PLA warplanes and ships around Taiwan can lull the island’s defenders – both the Taiwanese military and any potential external reinforcements – into complacency, he said.
Under the Taiwan Relations Act, Washington has agreed to give Taiwan the ability to defend itself, largely through weapons sales, although President Joe Biden has said repeatedly that US troops would defend the island in the event of a Chinese invasion.
Either way, with US equipment or even fighting troops, it may become too late for Washington to come to Taipei’s rescue if large amounts of PLA planes and ships are already on station around the island.
“The longer the delay in reacting to PLA buildups, the less time available to match or counter that buildup. The US margin of advantage is too slim to achieve success if its forces move too late,” Schuster said.
From the PLA’s perspective, sustained drills are a necessary part of readiness to execute any move on Taiwan, the former US Navy captain said.
“PLA forces need constant training since such skills are perishable and exercises offer both training in those skills and opportunities to rehearse and examine some aspects of war plans,” he said.
“Military operations are complex, like American football. The plays and drives require constant practice and rehearsal to be conducted effectively,” Schuster added.
China last held three days of intensive military drills around Taiwan in April, exercises the PLA said “comprehensively tested joint combat capabilities of its integrated military forces under actual combat situation.”
“Forces in the command is ready for combat at all times, and will resolutely destroy any type of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist or foreign interference attempts,” a PLA statement after the April drills said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
As for this week’s drills, a report in the state-run Global Times said they “aim to safeguard national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.”
“Such drills are becoming more combat-oriented and more intensive in order to deter and prepare for interferences from external forces,” the report said, citing Chinese experts.
Meanwhile, the activity in and around the Taiwan Strait in the past few days hasn’t been limited to the PLA.
A US Navy P-8A reconnaissance jet transited the strait on Thursday, according to a statement from the US 7th Fleet in Japan.
“The aircraft’s transit of the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military flies, sails and operates anywhere international law allows,” the statement said.
On its English-language website, the PLA accused the US military of hyping the situation, and a spokesperson for the Eastern Theater Command said PLA troops tracked and monitored the US plane.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told CNN Thursday that he doesn’t see confrontation between the US and China involving Taiwan as “imminent” or “unavoidable.”
“But having said that it’s my job to make sure that we have to continue to maintain a credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific,” he said. “The most credible deterrent is a combat capable force and that’s what we have today.”
In sharp contrast to the ‘good guy’ persona he presents to the public, President Joe Biden reportedly frequently yells obscenities at his aides.
Don’t fking bullsht me! and “God dammit, how the fk don’t you know this!” are just a few of Biden’s exclamations. and, as current and former aides told Axios on Monday, “Get the f*k out of here!”
Whether they are senior or junior staff, “no one is safe,” an administration official told the news organisation.
Biden has ‘such a quick-trigger temper’ when behind closed doors that some aides have brought a colleague to meet with him to try to avoid being scolded alone, according to Axios.
President Joe Biden reportedly yells admonitions at his aides behind closed doors (Picture: AP)
The president’s temper reportedly takes the form of angry interrogations of his aides, instead of erratic tantrums.
Biden engages in what some staff refer to as ‘stump the chump’ or ‘stump the dummy’, in which he grills them on matters they obviously do not know the answers to, Axios reported.
Some aides apparently consider getting yelled at by Biden as an initiation ceremony and believe that the president does not respect them if he doesn’t do so.
Chris Whipple, the author of The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House published in January, wrote that ‘there’s no question that the Biden temper is for real’ though ‘it may not be as volcanic as (former President) Bill Clinton’s’.
Whipple’s book quotes ex-White House press secretary Jen Psaki saying: ‘I said to (Biden) multiple times, “I’ll know we have a really good, trusting relationship when you yell at me the first time.”‘
But some administration officials have defended Biden as being a strong, policy-minded executive.
‘If there is something that’s not in the brief, he’s going to find it,’ Biden’s longtime chief of staff Teed Kaufman told Axios.
‘It’s not to embarrass people, it’s because he wants to get to the right decision. Most people who have worked for him like the fact that he challenges them and gets them to a better decision.’
Some aides have reportedly called ‘speaking Biden’ a skill involving maneuvering his moodiness and anticipating what he will request.
Still, other aides ‘think the president would be better off occasionally displaying his temper in public as a way to assuage voter concerns that the 80-year-old president is disengaged and too old for the office’, Axios wrote.
The White House did not comment on the report.
Biden’s reported behavior in private goes against the cool and casual persona he conveys wearing Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses and openly admitting his love for ice cream.
The 46th president is not the only commander-in-chief who has been said to have a temper.
Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump allegedly lunged at a Secret Service agent who refused to take him to the US Capitol on January 6 due to the insurrection and screamed, ‘I’m the f**king President. Take me up to the Capitol now.’
As tests revealed the material found in the White House to be cocaine, President Joe Biden grinned and shrugged off inquiries.
On Wednesday, reporters questioned Biden in the Oval Office about the cocaine that had been found three days earlier and had caused a brief evacuation.
The Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson was seated across from the US president, who grinned broadly and ignored the questioning.
Biden remained silent as a Secret Service spokesman told CNN that lab testing of the white substance came back positive for cocaine. Field testing had already shown that the substance was cocaine, but it was then sent for more evaluation.
The substance was spotted by the ground floor entrance to the West Wing, where staff-led tours of the White House enter, usually on the weekends, a source told CNN. It is near where visitors must leave their cell phones. Sources have also said that the substance was in a small, zipped baggie.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday said that White House tours recently took place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Asked if it was possible that a visitor left the cocaine, she said: ‘It is where visitors to the West Wing come through. I’m not going to speculate on who it was.’
Jean-Pierre said that Biden was briefed on ‘everything we know so far’ around the incident.
‘We have confidence that they will get to the bottom of this,’ she said.
Biden ignored questions on the matter on Tuesday, Independence Day, as well. Instead, the president invited his son Hunter Biden, who has acknowledged he used to be addicted to crack cocaine, to stand with him on a White House balcony to watch Fourth of July celebrations. They were accompanied by family members including First Lady Jill Biden, Hunter’s three-year-old son Beau and his wife Melissa.
On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump joined other conservatives in claiming without evidence that the president and Hunter are linked to the substance.
‘Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden?’ wrote Trump on his Truth Social platform.
Trump then used the incident as an example of what he considers unfair treatment and coverage of himself compared to Biden.
‘But watch, the Fake News Media will soon start saying that the amount found was “very small,” & it wasn’t really COCAINE, but rather common ground up Aspirin, & the story will vanish.’
On Monday, President Joe Biden (left) made his first remarks regarding the Wagner Group’s uprising against Russia. On Monday, President Joe Biden (left) made his first remarks regarding the Wagner Group’s uprising against Russia. (Images via Rex/Reuters)
In his initial remarks following the march on Moscow, US President Joe Biden claimed that the US and its allies had “nothing” to do with the Wagner uprising against Russia.
On Monday, Biden addressed the weekend coup attempt by the Wagner Group, which saw it capture control of a significant Russian city and briefly advance on Moscow.
‘They agreed with me that we had to make sure we gave (Russian President Vladimir) Putin no excuse – let me emphasize, we gave Putin no excuse – to blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO’.
Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin leaves the headquarters of the Southern Military District amid the group’s pullout from the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on Saturday (Picture: Reuters)
Biden added: ‘We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.’
The mercenary group revolted on Friday, with its found Yevgeny Prigozhin saying he intended to punish defence minister Sergei Shoigu and army chief Valery Gerasimov for launching rockets at his troops. The uprising was the biggest threat to Putin in more than two decades.
After a day of conflict, Prigozhin agreed to exile in Belarus.
Still, Biden said the ‘ultimate outcome’ of the insurrection remains to be seen.
‘I directed my national security team to monitor closely and report to me hour by hour,’ he said. ‘I instructed them to prepare for a range of scenarios.’
Putin called the Wagner rebellion ‘treason’. In an unscheduled national address on Monday, the Russian president reiterated his offer of amnesty to insurrectionists but not to Prigozhin.
Biden on remained silent over the weekend on the uprising. The US president spoke with European allies by phone on Saturday and then traveled to Camp David along with his national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
US intelligence officials gathered detailed information of Prigozhin’s plans leading up to the rebellion including how he planned to advance, sources told CNN on Monday. That intelligence was reportedly only shared with some allies, including British officials, and not to NATO.
— The Independent Ghana (@independent_gh) June 2, 2023
He had been standing for about an hour and a half to shake hands with each of the 921 graduating cadets.
Footage shows Mr Biden appearing to point at one of two sandbags used to prop up his teleprompter as he was helped up by an Air Force official and two members of his Secret Service detail.
He was seen walking back to his seat unassisted and later jogging back to his motorcade when the ceremony ended.
“There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt wrote on Twitter. “He’s fine.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Mr Biden had boarded the plane flashing “a big smile”, although one reporter noted that he did not take questions before the flight.
President Joe Biden slammed Donald Trump in particular for claiming credit for ‘destroying’ the Roe v. Wade ruling, which upheld abortion rights nationwide.
On Wednesday morning, Biden uploaded a screenshot of a Trump post on Truth Social and highlighted in red, “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade.”
That is as plain as it gets, I think. In the afternoon, Biden tweeted, “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are to blame for killing Roe v. Wade.”
‘And if you vote for them, they’ll go even further.’
Trump boasted about using his power as president to appoint Supreme Court justices who voted to end the 1973 landmark decision. Roe v Wade
‘After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the “shock” of everyone,’ wrote Trump. ‘And for the first time put the Pro Life movement in a strong negotiating position over the Radicals that are willing to kill babies even into their 9th month, and beyond.’
Trump also claimed credit for more than a dozen states passing laws limiting abortion since the high court overturned Roe v Wade in June.
‘Without me there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to,’ Trump wrote.
Biden underlined part of that sentence in his post.
It was one of Biden’s more direct attacks on Trump and his supporters on social media.
Last week after Trump’s unruly CNN town hall in which he repeated his election fraud lies and called moderator Kaitlan Collins ‘a nasty person’, Biden offered himself as an alternative.
‘It’s simple, folks. Do you want four more years of that?’ tweeted Biden. ‘If you don’t, pitch in to our campaign.’
And in early May, Biden mocked House Republicans for failing to spell out specific protections for veterans programs in legislation they passed, by sharing a flow chart.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden met with the CEOs of some of the largest AI firms, including Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google, and emphasised the need for them to make sure their technologies are secure before they are used.
The term “generative artificial intelligence” has gained popularity this year as a result of the enormous public interest in apps like ChatGPT, which has prompted businesses to introduce similar products in the hopes that they will alter the nature of work.
Millions of users have begun testing such tools, which supporters say can make medical diagnoses, write screenplays, create legal briefs and debug software, leading to growing concern about how the technology could lead to privacy violations, skew employment decisions, and power scams and misinformation campaigns.
Mr Biden, who has used ChatGPT and experimented with it, told the officials they must mitigate the current and potential risks AI poses to individuals, society and national security, the White House said.
The meeting included a ‘frank and constructive discussion’ on the need for companies to be more transparent with policymakers about their AI systems, the importance of evaluating the safety of such products, and the need to protect them from malicious attacks, the White House added.
Thursday’s two-hour meeting which began included Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft Corp’s Satya Nadella, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. Vice president Kamala Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan were also present.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai (Picture: Mateusz Wlodarczyk/Getty Images)
Ms Harris said in a statement that the technology has the potential to improve lives but could pose safety, privacy and civil rights concerns. She told the chief executives they have a ‘legal responsibility’ to ensure the safety of their artificial intelligence products, and that the administration is open to advancing new regulations and supporting new legislation on artificial intelligence.
In response to a question about whether companies are on the same page on regulations, Altman told reporters after the meeting ‘we’re surprisingly on the same page on what needs to happen’.
The administration also announced a $140million investment from the National Science Foundation to launch seven new AI research institutes, and said the White House’s office of management and budget would release policy guidance on the use of AI by the federal government.
Leading AI developers, including Anthropic, Google, Hugging Face, NVIDIA Corp, OpenAI, and Stability AI, will participate in a public evaluation of their AI systems.
Shortly after Biden announced his reelection bid, the Republican National Committee produced a video featuring a dystopian future during a second Biden term, which was built entirely with AI imagery.
Such political ads are expected to become more common as AI technology proliferates.
US regulators have fallen short of the tough approach European governments have taken on tech regulation and in crafting strong rules on deepfakes and misinformation.
‘We don’t see this as a race,’ a senior administration official said, adding that the administration is working closely with the US-EU trade and technology council on the issue.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 54, announced on Friday that she will leave her position as the head of the main public health organisation in the nation. On June 30, she will vacate the position.
In an email to the CDC, Walensky stated, “I took on this role with the goal of leaving behind the dark days of the pandemic and moving the CDC – and public health – into a much better and more trusted place.”
Walensky emailed staff shortly after President Joe Biden addressed her resignation.
‘She marshaled our finest scientists and public health experts to turn the tide on the urgent crises we’ve faced,’ stated Biden.
‘Dr Walensky leaves CDC a stronger institution, better positioned to confront health threats and protect Americans.’
Earlier on Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the coronavirus is no longer considered a global emergency. The declaration came more than three years after millions of people were killed worldwide and widespread lockdowns hurt economies.
‘It’s with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,’ stated WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. ‘That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat.’
Still, Tedros warned that new coronavirus variants could emerge and that the world is out of the emergency phase, but there have been a rise in cases in Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East.
Walensky in her resignation letter added: ‘The end of the Covid public health emergency marks a tremendous transition for our country, for public health, and in my tenure as CDC Director.’
She served just over two years as CDC director, during which the agency was entangled in various controversies.
In January, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) flagged severe deficiencies in how the CDC was being run and called for an overhaul.
‘The big picture here is, we all see the need for a reset of the agency,’ CSIS member and former CDC Director Julie Gerberding, told CNN at the time.
It was not immediately known who will take over the CDC director position.
After the president of South Korea entertained US President Joe Biden with a karaoke performance of the song on Thursday, American singer-songwriter Don McLean joked that he was going to sing his iconic “American Pie” with the South Korean leader.
The two leaders got together on Wednesday at the White House state dinner, a glitzy event that attracted celebrities including Angelina Jolie and snowboarder Chloe Kim, who won an Olympic gold medal.
Following the audience’s enjoyment of a number of musical performances, Biden related a tale about how his sons would sing McLean’s 1971 hit song “American Pie” while en route to school.
“We know this is one of your favorite songs,” he told Yoon, who drew cheers from the crowd as he launched into the classic lyrics.
Yoon received a standing ovationfor his efforts beforeBiden presented him with a guitar signed by McLean.
The legendary singer later told CNN that he had big plans for the South Korean leader.
“I intend to go over to South Korea next year and sing it with the president, so that’s probably going to be another news story,” McLean joked on Thursday. “He wanted me at the White House to sing the song, but I’m in Australia right now on tour.”
McLean also spoke about the lasting legacy of the song, which at 8 minutes and 37 seconds held the record for the longest song to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart, until Taylor Swift re-released her hit “All Too Well” in 2021.
Of “American Pie,” McLean said: “It has a melody which is something that is pretty hard to find these days, and that’s just the opening part of the song – I mean, the song is eight and a half minutes, and it’s a rock and roll song.”
“I get a kick out of the fact that the song is still alive,” he added. “Musicians are dealing with a thing called alchemy, we deal in magic, and some of the things that we do fall on their face, and others if we’re very fortunate are magical and live forever.”
Wednesday’s events mark just the second state visit of the Biden presidency (Biden hosted French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte in December 2022).
At the Wednesday bilateral meeting, the two leaders announced a key new agreement to deter North Korean aggression, including a new US commitment to deploy a nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea for the first time since the early 1980s.
Yoon also addressed Congress in a speech on Thursday, slamming North Korea over its human rights violations and condemning the war in Ukraine.
The end of whichever administration begins the aggressive action would be the result of a North Korean nuclear attack, according to President Joe Biden.
During a joint press appearance with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at the White House, Biden issued a stern warning to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
Biden declared on Wednesday afternoon that any nuclear strike by North Korea against the United States, its friends, or partners would be unacceptable and lead to the overthrow of the relevant regime.
Biden’s notice came as he and Yoon announced the Washington Declaration, an agreement aimed at deterring nuclear aggression from North Korea.
‘What the declaration means is we’re going to make every effort to consult with our allies when it’s appropriate if any action is so called for,’ Biden said from the Rose Garden.
The alliance means the US will defend South Korea, which is what Yoon had hoped for.
‘Sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula does not happen automatically,’ said Yoon.
‘Our two leaders have decided to significantly strengthen extended deterrence of our two countries against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats so that we can achieve peace through the superiority of overwhelming forces and not a false peace based on the goodwill of the other side.’
Biden called the new alliance with South Korea ‘ironclad’.
‘The alliance formed in war and has flourished in peace,’ he said.
‘Our mutual defense treaty is ironclad and that includes our commitment to extend a deterrence – and that includes the nuclear threat, the nuclear deterrent.’
Biden cited North Korea’s ‘increased threats and the blatant violation of US sanctions’ in highlighting the important timing of the alliance.
The agreement comes amid heightened tensions on the peninsula, especially over the past year. North Korea has launched about 100 missiles since the beginning of 2022. Meanwhile, North Korea sees joint military drills between the US and South Korea as a threat.
On Friday, President Joe Biden unveiled new initiatives for environmental justice, including an executive order that, according to the White House, will make environmental justice a primary goal of government agencies.
At a White House Rose Garden signing ceremony just before Earth Day, Biden promised that “under this order, environmental justice will become the responsibility of every single federal agency – I mean, every single federal agency.”
“Every federal agency must consider the effects of environmental health on communities and work to mitigate those adverse effects,” he stated. The goal of the entire government will be environmental justice, and this goal will be integrated into how we operate with municipal, state, tribal, and territory governments.
The executive order, which will still be up to agencies to implement, will create a new Office of Environmental Justice inside the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Friday’s move comes as as many environmental justice groups have been frustrated at the administration’s recent approval of a major Alaska oil project. CNN also reported Friday that the Biden administration is planning to roll out aggressive new rules to regulate planet-warming pollution from natural gas power plants – a move that could face fierce legal challenges.
Friday’s move also took place as Biden is preparing to announce his reelection bid as soon as next week, CNN reported Thursday. During his last presidential campaign, he worked hard to court environmental justice activist groups.
Biden’s new order directs agencies to work more closely with impacted communities and improve “gaps” in scientific data to try to better tackle the impacts of pollution on people’s health, a White House official said. If toxic substances were released from a federal facility in the future, the order requires federal agencies to notify nearby communities.
The order comes a few years after Biden announced his signature “Justice40” initiative, vowing to direct 40% of federal climate and clean funding from new legislation to disadvantaged communities. On Friday, three additional agencies – the Department of Commerce, the National Science Foundation and NASA – will also join the initiative.
Biden also took a swipe at Republicans in his speech, contrasting his action on environmental justice with the GOP’s policies.
During his remarks on Friday, the president detailed how he’s spent much of his tenure in office surveying damage from extreme weather events, calling the threat of climate change “an existential threat to our nation” and criticizing congressional Republicans for attempting to block his legislative priorities focused on climate.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, recently unveiled provisions in his debt limit proposal that would overturn clean energy tax credits passed in the Inflation Reduction Act last year. The proposal also includes HR 1 – the GOP’s version of an energy permitting bill.
Republicans, Biden argued, would “rather threaten to default on the US economy, or get rid of some $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies … than getting rid of $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies to an oil industry that made $200 billion last year.”
“Imagine seeing all this happen – the wildfires, the storms, the floods – and doing nothing about it,” he continued. “Imagine taking all these clean energy jobs away from working class folks all across America. Imagine turning your back on all those moms and dads living in towns poisoned by pollution and telling them, ‘Sorry, you’re on your own.’ We can’t let that happen.”
President Joe Biden‘s advisers are working quickly to finish personnel and operational elements of his reelection campaign before what is predicted to be a tough 19-month battle to persuade the public of his accomplishments and his potential to serve deep into his 80s.
After spending the previous weekend at Camp David, according to people with knowledge of the issue, Biden returned to the White House late on Sunday to thoroughly test-run the campaign and personnel preparations, including any decisions that still required his final approval.
But even as officials made final edits to an announcement video likely to be released Tuesday, marking four years since Biden declared himself a candidate in the 2020 presidential election, the challenges of the upcoming contest were coming into sharper view.
An NBC News poll released Sunday found just 26% of Americans think Biden should run for a second term as president, while 70% say he should not. Among Democrats, 51% say Biden should not run for a second term. That mirrors the findings of other recent polls showing tepid support for a Biden reelection bid, including an AP-NORC poll released Friday and CNN polling released earlier this month.
In the NBC poll, nearly half of those who oppose a Biden run say that his age is a major reason for that view.
Advisers are confident those numbers will mean little in the long run. Republicans – and former President Donald Trump’s candidacy in particular – have “a pretty good track record of bringing our people back home – and out to vote,” one senior Democratic official close to the White House said.
Biden’s advisers also believe his age represents decades of experience, which they say has driven legislative wins delivering tangible economic dividends across the country.
“He is a steady hand, when you look at what’s out there right now with Donald Trump and what we’re hearing again. People don’t want that chaos back again,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, when asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about Biden’s age on “State of the Union.”
Still, at 80, Biden’s age is certain to act as a central issue in the coming campaign, a fact even many of his Democratic allies privately acknowledge.
News that Biden had decided to launch his reelection campaign this week came as a surprise to a slew of Democratic officials who had been led to believe in recent weeks that Biden was more likely to wait until the summer to announce his bid.
For weeks, Biden advisers and others close to the White House had insisted the president felt no pressure to announce this spring and was keen to allow an increasingly contentious Republican primary to play out without being in the mix as an official candidate.
But other factors also weighed on Biden’s advisers. A messy debt ceiling fight, anticipated this summer, would not be the ideal time to announce a reelection campaign. The president will travel abroad next month for summits in Japan and Australia, and he plans to travel overseas again in July for a NATO summit in Lithuania, squeezing the calendar.
And high-dollar fundraising tends to be slower during the summer months, which could affect Democratic officials’ desire to deliver a strong first quarter haul for the reelection campaign.
Advisers continued to caution that last-minute changes were possible. And while Biden has finished taping a video declaring his candidacy and outlining his argument for a second term, according to people familiar with the matter, aides warned the timing of its release could shift.
As planning for the reelection launch came into public view in recent days, the number of candidates for campaign manager rapidly narrowed from more than a half-dozen to one name.
Biden is poised to name Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a senior White House adviser, to oversee the campaign, two senior Democratic advisers told CNN on Sunday. The choice of campaign chief was among the many outstanding decisions Biden and his team were making as they prepare for the potentially imminent announcement.
Rodriguez, a senior adviser to the president and director of the White House’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, has seen her star rise in Biden’s White House.
Biden elevated Rodriguez to the role of senior adviser last summer, adding her to the small circle of his senior-most aides.
While Rodriguez will formally manage the campaign, the effort will also be largely guided from the West Wing, where top aides Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti will also play central roles.
Rodriguez, the granddaughter of labor icon Cesar Chavez, has been a longtime Democratic adviser who is close to Biden.
CBS News was first to report the expected decision.
Biden’s final weekend before the expected announcement served as a window into the balancing act to come as he and his top national security officials navigated the complexity of a potentially perilous evacuation of government personnel from the US embassy in war-ravaged Sudan.
Biden has maintained privately that his primary focus is on carrying the duties of the job he was elected to do in 2020.
He gave the order on Saturday to deploy roughly 100 US special operations troops to secure and complete the evacuation of US personnel in Sudan. The operation was successful and no US military and diplomatic personnel were harmed in the roughly hour-long process.
It served as a real-time demonstration of how the next 19 months may unfold for the incumbent running for the White House, where there are no shortage of crises that can turn a message or campaign on its head seemingly overnight.
It also provided a window into another Biden reality, people familiar with the matter said. He will have the ultimate say in the direction of things, even if that say takes longer than some in the party would prefer. That drove some on Biden’s team to warn allies that the Tuesday announcement wasn’t locked in until Biden gave the green light.
The video had been filmed, they noted, and close advisers had accelerated their communications with party officials and donors in the lead up to the announcement. But Biden wasn’t pleased by leaks – and still had much to mull over and discuss about the shape of his nascent campaign over the course of the weekend.
According to two senior Democratic advisors, President Joe Biden is prepared to appoint Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a senior White House adviser, to lead his reelection campaign. This will pave the way for his announcement that he will run for reelection as early as this week.
Although Rodriguez will officially be in charge of the campaign, Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon, and Steve Ricchetti will also play key roles in its management from the West Wing.
Rodriguez, a longstanding Democratic advisor who is close to Biden, is the granddaughter of labor legend Cesar Chavez.
All US diplomats and their families have been evacuated, according to a second statement from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and operations at the US Embassy in Khartoum have been “temporarily suspended.”
A group of just over 100 special operations forces were involved in the extraction. The operation was led by US Africa Command and conducted in close coordination with the State Department, said Lloyd Austin, the US secretary of defense.
The decision to evacuate the American personnel comes after a week of heavy fighting between rival military factions – the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF – which has left hundreds dead and thousands wounded.
Blinken said the “widespread fighting … posed an unacceptable risk to our Embassy personnel,” noting that “suspending operations at one of our embassies is always a difficult decision, but the safety of our personnel is my first responsibility.”
Undersecretary of State for Management John Bass said Saturday that temporarily closing the embassy was “the only really feasible option for us in this case.”
“As a result of the intensity of the conflict, and the challenges that our diplomatic personnel were experiencing in conducting basic operations and the uncertainty about the availability of key supplies like fuel and food going forward, we reluctantly decided it was time to suspend operations,” he told reporters on a briefing call.
Fewer than 100 people were evacuated from the US Embassy, including “a small number of diplomatic professionals from other countries,” Bass said.
“We do not have any US government personnel remaining in Khartoum at this time,” Bass said, but there are still “a substantial number of our local staff supporting the embassy in a caretaker status.”
The planning for the evacuation was “anything but haphazard,” said Lt. Gen. D.A. Sims, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
US special operations forces spent less than an hour on the ground in Sudan during the evacuation, he said. Troops took off from Djibouti at 9 a.m. EST, landing in Ethiopia to refuel before heading to Khartoum.
“The evacuation was conducted in one movement via rotary wing. The operation was fast and clean with service members spending less than an hour on the ground in Khartoum,” Sims said. “As we speak, the evacuees are safe and secure.”
A State Department spokesperson confirmed Sunday that the department has “notified the US citizen community via consular channels about the organization of two convoys facilitated by Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates.”
The message told Americans that they would be traveling at their own risk.
The message sent to US citizens in Sudan comes as a top State Department official had said Saturday that the US government does not “foresee coordinating a US government evacuation for our fellow citizens in Sudan at this time or in the coming days.”
A senior Pentagon official had said that “in the coming days, we will continue to work with the State Department to help American citizens who may want to leave Sudan.”
“One of those ways is to potentially make the overland routes out of Sudan potentially more viable,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict Chris Maier said on a call with reporters.
Maier said that the Department of Defense “is at present considering action that may include use of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to be able to observe routes and detect threats.”
“Secondly, the employment of naval assets outside the port of Sudan to potentially help Americans who arrive at the port, and third, the establishment at the US Africa Command in Stuttgart deconfliction cell focused particularly on the overland route,” he said.
Biden said that he was “receiving regular reports from my team on their ongoing work to assist Americans in Sudan, to the extent possible.” Blinken said the US government “will continue to assist Americans in Sudan in planning for their own safety and provide regular updates to US citizens in the area.”
On Friday, State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said it had been in touch with “several hundred American citizens who we understand to be in Sudan” to discuss “security precautions and other measures that they can take on their own.”
The State Department does not keep official counts of US citizens in foreign countries and Americans are not required to register when they go abroad. Officials told staffers Wednesday that there could be an estimated 16,000 American citizens in Sudan, most of whom are dual nationals.
Following the evacuation and the suspension of operations at the embassy, the State Department updated its travel advisory for Sudan, saying that due to the current security situation, “The US government cannot provide routine or emergency consular services to US citizens in Sudan.” Its travel advisory remains at Level 4: Do Not Travel.
US officials stressed that they would continue their efforts to bring an end to the violence, which Biden called “unconscionable,” and work to extend the ceasefire that both sides agreed to for the Eid al-Fitr holiday. Despite the professed commitments to that ceasefire, fighting has continued.
“We remind both belligerents of their obligations under international humanitarian law, including obligations related to the protection of civilians,” Blinken said.
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee told reporters Saturday that the US is “in close contact with Sudan’s military and civilian leaders to see if we can help them identify a path to extend and expand the Eid al-Fitr ceasefire to reach a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
Phee praised the efforts of international partners, particularly Ethiopia, for their roles in the success of the US evacuation.
“Late last night, Secretary Blinken consulted with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who offered Ethiopia’s full support for the overflight and refueling capabilities that were critical to the operation’s success,” she said.
The aircraft used in the evacuation refueled in Ethiopia, which borders Sudan, during the mission.
In his statement, Biden thanked Djibouti, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, saying they “were critical to the success of our operation.”
The SAF said in a statement earlier Saturday that its leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had “agreed to provide the necessary assistance” to facilitate the safe evacuation of foreign citizens from the country in response to “calls from a number of heads of states.”
The RSF said in a statement posted overnight Khartoum time that they had coordinated with the US on the evacuation. Bass, the undersecretary for management, said “that was not the case.”
“They cooperated to the extent that they did not fire on our service members in the course of the operation,” he said. “I would submit that’s as much in their self-interest as anything else.”
A man has been accused of shooting a teenager who rang the wrong doorbell while picking up his younger brothers in the US state of Missouri.
According to prosecutors, Andrew Lester, 84, has been charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal conduct.
Ralph Yarl, 16, who is black, was allegedly shot once in the head and once in the arm last Thursday night by Mr. Lester, a white man. The young man lived.
A prosecution claimed that there was a “racial component” to the shooting.
Mr Lester has not been charged with a hate crime, and charging documents do not describe the alleged racial bias.
At a press conference on Monday, Clay County Prosecutor Zachary Thompson said: “My message to the community is that, in Clay County, we enforce the laws and we follow the laws.
“That doesn’t matter where you come from, what you look like or how much money you have.”
Image caption, Suspect Andrew Lester, 84
Police initially detained Mr Lester for questioning and let him go, sparking protests throughout the city on Sunday.
On Monday, protesters gathered outside the suspect’s home chanting “black lives are under attack” and “stand up, fight back”, online video shows. Mr Lester’s home has also reportedly been vandalised.
Personal injury lawyer Benjamin Crump, who is representing the Yarl family, said: “You can’t just shoot people without having justification when somebody comes knocking on your door – and knocking on your door is not justification.”
Ralph’s family said the teen had been trying to pick up his younger twin brothers from a friend’s house at around 22:00 local time on 13 April when he knocked on Mr Lester’s door.
Family members say the boy mistakenly went to 115th Street instead of 115th Terrace and rang the bell twice. After being shot, he went to three nearby homes before someone helped him, they said.
No words were exchanged before the homeowner opened fire with a .32 revolver, prosecutors said.
But another attorney for the family, Lee Merritt, told NBC News: “He heard rustling around going on in the house and then finally the door was open.
“And he was confronted by a man who told him, ‘Don’t come back around here,’ and then he immediately fired his weapon.”
According to local reports, Mr Lester told police that he believed someone was breaking into his home and fired two shots through his door. A witness also told the local news station that he heard Ralph “screaming that he had been shot”.
On Monday, prosecutors said Missouri citizens have the right to use force if they “reasonably” fear that they are in danger. They declined to elaborate further on the specifics of this case. Media caption,
Watch: ‘No-one should shoot through a door’
Ralph was released from hospital on Sunday and was at home recovering from his injuries, family members said.
The boy’s father, Paul Yarl, told the Kansas City Star the charges were “such a relief”.
“I’m happy. This is what we’ve been looking for. It’s here.”
According to the family’s lawyers, President Joe Biden called the Yarls on Monday and spoke with them for 20 minutes.
He told reporters that Mr Biden had offered his prayers and invited them to the White House once the teenager has recovered.
Celebrities including Viola Davis, Justin Timberlake, Halle Berry and Kerry Washington – as well as Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes – condemned the shooting.
A GoFundMe account set up to pay for Ralph’s medical recovery has raised over $2.1m (£1.7m) as of Monday.
In a separate incident on Saturday, a 20-year-old woman in New York state was shot after the vehicle she was in mistakenly drove into the wrong driveway.
Friends drove Kaylin Gillis away from the scene and attempted to call for help in a nearby town, but she was was later pronounced dead by paramedics.
The White House has stated that President Joe Biden is not “anti-British” after he delivered a significant address in Northern Ireland.
The 46th President spoke in front of a small audience at Ulster University and called for the restoration of power-sharing in Stormont.
In his very brief 20-minute speech, he said that peace had “changed” Northern Ireland and discussed the effects of Brexit as well as new business prospects.
After accusations that he was “anti-British,” the President had met with UK relations three times in as many months.
Mr Biden, who is proud of his Irish ancestry has recently been heavily criticised by senior DUP figures.
MP Sammy Wilson claimed the president ‘has got a record of being pro-Republican, anti-Unionist, anti-British’ while former first minister Baroness Foster has suggested he ‘hates the UK’.
But the suggestion he was anti-British was rejected by Amanda Sloat, senior director for Europe at the US National Security Council.
Biden expresses hope that NI Assembly will be restored
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The PM said he had a good discussion with The President at his hotel (Picture: Simon Walker / No 10 Downing Street)
She said: ‘It’s simply untrue – the fact that the president is going to be engaging for the third time in three months, and then again next month and then again in June, with the Prime Minister of the UK shows how close our co-operation is with the UK.
‘And before that, the president had numerous calls and meeting with prime minister Johnson, and prime minister Truss as well.’
Ms Sloat went on: ‘President Biden obviously is a very proud Irish-American, he is proud of those Irish roots, but he is also a strong supporter of our bilateral partnership with the UK, and not only on a bilateral basis within Nato, the G7, on the UN Security Council, and we truly are working in lockstep with the British Government on all of the pressing global challenges that our countries are facing.’
In his speech, Mr Biden went on to speak about Brexit and new economic opportunities for Northern Ireland.
There was also a huge cheer for Belfast barista turned Hollywood star James Martin who got a shout-out from the President.
Metro’s cartoon of the day reflecting on the President’s visit to Ireland (Picture: Metro.co.uk / Guy Venables)The President took time to take selfies with students in Ulster (Picture: REUTERS)
Over coffee this morning the President said he was ‘here to listen’ on the anniversary of the historic peace-making agreement.
He began his speech by recalling when he came to Belfast in 1991 and ‘you couldn’t have a glass building in the neighbourhood’ where Ulster University now stands due to the Troubles.
He said: ‘Things are changing’ and thanked his hosts for the welcome to Belfast, adding that it was wonderful to meet the different party leaders from Northern Ireland.
He added that ‘Dividends of peace are all around us’ and went on to discuss the signing of the landmark Good Friday Agreement 25 years ago this week.
He told the audience there were no guarantees that they’d be able to deliver the progress that we now see today.
President Biden said ‘peace was not inevitable’ as he spoke at Ulster University (Picture: Ulster University)
The President added that ‘Peace was not inevitable’ adding that it took people coming together all across Northern Ireland to make it work.
He said the future of Northern Ireland was ‘America’s future’ as he hailed the economic opportunities for the region.
‘Your history is our history, but even more important your future is America’s future.
‘Today’s Belfast is the beating heart of Northern Ireland and is poised to drive unprecedented economic opportunity and investment, from communities across the UK, across Ireland, across the United States.
‘The simple truth is that peace and economic opportunity go together.’
‘The 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland’s gross domestic product has literally doubled.’
The president said that figure would only improve if ‘things continue to move in the right direction’.
He added: ‘There are scores of major American corporations wanting to come here, wanting to invest. Many have already made homes in Northern Ireland.’
Speaking about a return to power-sharing Biden said that an ‘effective devolved government that reflects the people of Northern Ireland, and is accountable to them, that works to find ways to face hard problems together will grow greater opportunities for the region’.
He added: ‘I hope the Assembly and the Executive will soon be restored’ along with opportunities to facilitate relationships between the north and south, he says.
‘That’s a decision for you to make, not for me to make.
‘Northern Ireland will not go back, pray God.’
Earlier today as part of his visit he met with Prime Minister who said the UK’s relationship with the US is ‘in great shape’, describing them as ‘very close partners and allies.’
The PM and President Biden looked out over Belfast (Picture: Simon Walker / No 10 Downing Street)
He said he had a ‘very good discussion’ with the President.
Mr Sunak said they discussed economic investment in Northern Ireland as well as foreign policy issues.
He said: ‘That comes on the back of a meeting I had with him last month in the US, I’m seeing him again next month at the G7 and then I’m going to Washington in June; we’re very close partners and allies, we co-operate on a range of things, whether that’s supporting Ukraine or economic security.
‘I think actually the relationship is in great shape, and the President and I have lots that we’re working on together.’
The US president’s son Hunter Biden and sister Valerie Biden Owens are accompanying him for the four-day trip, which will include visits in Ireland linked to his family history.
After he leaves Belfast on Wednesday, Mr Biden will cross the border to attend engagements in Co Louth.
The president has traced his ancestral roots to the area and he will tour Carlingford Castle in the county before spending the night in Dublin.
He is then expected to visit Irish president Michael D Higgins on Thursday.
The White House said Mr Biden will take part in a tree-planting ceremony and the ringing of the Peace Bell at the president’s official residence, Aras an Uachtarain.
Following that ceremony, he will meet again with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, whom Mr Biden recently hosted for St Patrick’s Day.
Mr Biden will address the Irish parliament and attend a banquet dinner at Dublin Castle on Thursday evening.
The US president’s trip will conclude with a visit to Co Mayo, where he has also connected with distant cousins, on Friday.
He will tour the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Knock and visit the North Mayo Heritage and Genealogical Centre’s family history research unit.
Mr Biden will then make a public speech at St Muredach’s Cathedral in Ballina – the president’s great-great-great grandfather Edward Blewitt sold 27,000 bricks to the cathedral in 1827, which helped him to afford to buy tickets for himself and his family to sail to America decades later in 1851.
The abrupt crisis that erupted just over a week ago still poses a serious political risk, as seen by another significant industry intervention to support a bank on Thursday. This intervention was carried out under the administration’s direction rather than by the government. Additionally, it placed the administration on a more precarious limb that might break if the bank crisis worsened.
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Truist, some of the nation’s most formidable banks, joined forces to support First Republic Bank in a $30 billion cash infusion designed to calm market jitters, prevent a chain reaction of additional bank failures, and show that the sector still has a strong foundation.
This occurred days after the White House guaranteed deposits in Silicon Valley Bank, which failed last week, and Signature Bank, which regulators closed down, using the Deposit Insurance Fund, a $100 billion facility supported by premiums banks pay to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The picture here is of the banking industry saving itself – and not of the government bailing out rich bankers whose recklessness put the savings, prosperity and peace of mind of Americans at risk.
It’s a narrative that the president badly needs to stick.
Even so, the administration’s repeated assurances that no taxpayer cash was involved – necessitated by public fury over bailouts after the 2008 Great Recession banking crisis – do set up some potential political vulnerability. While there is no suggestion yet that isolated banking upheaval could mushroom into a major systemic meltdown, any future use of public funds could hand Republicans, who are already inaccurately blasting administration moves as a “bailout,” an opening to lambast Biden.
The events of this week show how the administration is on a knife-edge over the banking crisis – large aspects of which it has no capacity to control. This daunting reality was stressed on Wednesday when problems overwhelmed Credit Suisse, a huge global player whose existing problems were catalyzed into a crisis by the turbulence in the US. It required emergency loan offers by authorities in Berne to stave off a failure that would have had global reverberations.
The situation is so politically dicey for Biden because the most prudent political move in some senses would be to allow small banks like SVB and Signature Bank to fail. Biden has based his entire political mythology on lifting up working- and middle-class Americans, despite long serving as senator for the US finance industry haven of Delaware.
But presidents face multiple and often competing demands on their attention and political capital. Any hesitation about propping up SVB last weekend might have unleashed a chain of consequences that tipped the entire sector into a crisis that would have required a far greater government intervention – and potentially taxpayer-funded bailouts. This would have had disastrous consequences for Biden’s reputation for economic stewardship and the likely reelection campaign that must, to succeed, sketch a case for an American bounce back after the worst pandemic in a century, high inflation and political turmoil.
The roller-coaster ride in the banking sector this week is all taking place in the ominous shadow of the 2008 economic crisis, which is informing a strategy that is based, above all else, on a mantra of no bailouts.
The situations in 2008 and 2023 are not the same. In the former case, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression was triggered by mountains of subprime mortgages piled up by lax lending practices and easy credit that saddled banks with trillions of dollars in almost worthless loans. The problems last week at SVB, and a subsequent bank run, were caused by managers who invested in government bonds whose prices fell because of the Fed raising interest rates to combat high inflation. In most cases, the assets backing up the bank’s actual business were sound. There is a clear distinction here between the government bailing out bankers and banks in 2008 and what is effectively a federal insurance fund securing depositors now.
Such nuance, however, is lost outside the finance industry. Banking calamities are hard to explain to the public, at least by political leaders who lack the genius for distilling an existential moment into a national rallying the way that President Franklin Roosevelt did during the 1933 banking crisis.
Politics – Biden’s secondary problem after preventing a banking meltdown – rarely reward complexity. Presidential primary campaigns, for instance, profit from simplicity and soundbites and often use fear to trigger momentum. So even a false perception that a president is handing out the cash of taxpayers who are struggling to make ends meet can be political gold.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tried yet again in a high-stakes hearing on Thursday to explain what’s happening now – and why it’s not what happened in the past. Her delicate task was to reassure Americans that the banking system is safe thanks to the administration’s efforts without inviting comparisons to 2008.
“Shareholders and debt holders are not being protected by the government. Importantly, no taxpayer money is being used or put at risk with this action,” Yellen told the Senate Finance Committee.
Her reassurances, however, will not prevent the administration’s critics from seeking to portray the government actions as tantamount to the dreaded “b” word – bailout.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, for instance, argued this week that “Joe Biden is pretending this isn’t a bailout,” and misleadingly posited that if the Deposit Insurance Fund were to run dry, all bank customers would be on the hook. And she falsely claimed that depositors at healthy banks were being forced to subsidize SVB mismanagement. But unlike Biden, the former South Carolina governor is in the enviable position of being able to criticize without having responsibility.
Another Republican potential candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, twisted the situation to claim that the banks’ “woke” preoccupation with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives had caused the industry to plummet. The conceit advanced the DeSantis strategy of weaponizing a culture war to please conservative base activists. And while it didn’t correctly diagnose the current banking problems, his theory will be solidified in the minds of many Republican voters because of the power of conservative media.
Biden intimately understands the political risks he faces here. As vice president in the Obama administration, he was inside the somber meetings that made fateful decisions about government bailouts after a new president inherited the worst financial crisis in more than 70 years.
Bailouts to banks helped save the US economy but nevertheless stoked a political backlash that nurtured the Tea Party movement, which wiped out House Democrats in the 2010 midterms. It also sowed a festering sense of resentment that was a fertile incubator for ex-President Donald Trump’s economic populism and backlash politics.
Barack Obama wrote in his autobiography, “A Promised Land,” that while Americans early in his term were frustrated with the glacial recovery from the 2008 crisis, “The bank bailout sent them over the edge.”
“Across the political spectrum, voters considered the bank bailouts a scam that had allowed the barons of finance to emerge from the crisis relatively unscathed,” Obama wrote.
Biden’s political future may depend on avoiding such voter fury.
People with knowledge of the situation claim that Saudi Arabia is relying on the United States for security assurances and assistance with its civilian nuclear program in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel, setting up a crucial decision that could change the Middle East’s political landscape.
The conversations are ongoing, and it was unclear exactly how any agreement might be structured if it ever materializes.
Several members of Congress, who have urged the Biden administration to downgrade Washington’s ties with Riyadh, would undoubtedly be adamantly opposed to increasing security guarantees for Saudi Arabia.
Still, President Joe Biden has placed importance on normalizing ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as has Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who believe better relations between the two nations could help increase security in the Middle East. Israel and Saudi Arabia have been cultivating unofficial ties for several years, though remain without official diplomatic relations.
“The better the relations between Israel and their Arab neighbors, the better for everybody,” Biden said Friday at the end of a speech about the economy.
Israel has already secured diplomatic agreements with other Arab nations, including Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The Abraham Accords were a signature achievement of the Trump administration and Biden has vowed to build upon them, particularly as Iran’s nuclear program advances.
A spokesman for the US National Security Council declined to confirm Saudi Arabia was seeking security guarantees from the US, which were reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
Instead, John Kirby, the strategic communications coordinator at the NSC, pointed to accomplishments Biden secured when he visited Israel and Saudi Arabia over the summer.
“The President’s trip to the region accomplished a lot,” said Kirby, citing an agreement on contested Red Sea islands and a recent announcement by Oman it would allow Israeli overflights.
“We’re going to keep that diplomacy going,” he said.
The State Department did not reply to a request for comment. The Israeli Embassy in Washington had no comment.
The consequences of a US-brokered agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia could be widespread. It would throw into doubt the future of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which has seen renewed violence in recent weeks under Israel’s right-wing government.
US officials also believe normalizing relations would provide heft to a regional counterweight against Iran, which has advanced its nuclear enrichment over the last year.
Last year, Biden promised Saudi Arabia would suffer “consequences” after the Saudi-led OPEC+ oil cartel unexpectedly announced it would cut production, though the Biden administration has no plans to take proactive steps to punish – let alone significantly reorient its posture toward – the oil-rich Middle East kingdom.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced that they had agreed to reestablish diplomatic ties after seven years of hostility, in a deal between regional archrivals that could have wide-ranging implications for the Middle East.
Riyadh and Tehran plan to reopen their embassies in an agreement mediated by China, a joint statement by Saudi Arabia and Iran said on Friday.
Kirby said Saudi officials had kept the White House informed on the talks as they progressed. But he downplayed Beijing’s role in brokering the agreement, saying the roadmap to reestablishing ties also included talks in Iraq and Oman.
‘Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess that they created and the trauma that they inflicted on this community and impacted Beaver County residents,’ EPA Administrator Michael Regan said.
‘This is common sense. This is their mess. They should clean it up,’ President Joe Biden said in a statement posted on Twitter shortly after the EPA’s announcement.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announces the order compelling Norfolk Southern to pay for the derailment cleanup (Picture: AP)
US orders Norfolk Southern to clean up polluted Ohio derailment site
In addition to the EPA, the federal government has deployed assets from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to help tackle the crisis.
Regan said the EPA will legally force the company to ‘clean up all contamination in soil and water, and safely transport that contamination to the appropriate locations to ensure that residents are not impacted further – from the debris and chemicals you see in the waterways to the soil in and around the crash site.’
He also said the EPA will offer their own cleaning services residents and businesses within the blast radius to provide ‘an additional layer of reassurance’ to residents. These services will also be paid for by Norfolk Southern.
‘If the company fails to complete any action ordered by EPA, the agency will immediately step in, conduct the work ourselves, and then force Norfolk Southern to pay triple in cost,’ Regan said. ‘In no way shape or form will Norfolk Southern get off the hook for the mess that they created.’
HEPACO workers place booms in a stream in East Palestine (Picture: AP)
In response, Norfolk Southern said they would ‘thoroughly and safely’ conduct cleanup efforts in East Palestine.
‘From day one, I’ve made the commitment that Norfolk Southern is going to remediate the site, we’re going to do continuous long-term air and water monitoring, we’re going to help the residents of this community recover, and we’re going to invest in the long-term health of this community. And we’re going to make Norfolk Southern a safer railroad,’ Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw said.
However, representatives from the company have so far failed to show up at scheduled town hall events to answer questions directly from East Palestine residents.
Norfolk Southern backed out of the event last minute, citing unspecified ‘physical threats’ against the rail operator’s employees.
Norfolk Southern will be required to clean all toxic chemicals out of local water sources in East Palestine (Picture: REUTERS)
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro also derided the company’s ‘corporate greed and incompetence,’ saying they made the decision to ignite toxic chemicals outside of the unified command set up by Ohio and Pennsylvania governments.
‘They gave us inaccurate information and conflicting modeling data, and they refused to explore or articulate alternative courses of action when we were dealing with the derailment in the early days,’ Shapiro said.
Criminal investigations into Norfolk Southern’s conduct have been launched by both the Ohio and Pennsylvania attorneys general.
President Biden also said the US Department of Transportation would work to review safety regulations, but he also said the Trump administration ‘limited our ability to implement and strengthen rail safety measures.’
‘Rail companies have spent millions of dollars to oppose common-sense safety regulations,’ Biden said. ‘And it’s worked. This is more than a train derailment or a toxic waste spill – it’s years of opposition to safety measures coming home to roost.’
In a statement, Norfolk Southern said they would ‘learn from this terrible accident and work with regulators and elected officials to improve railroad safety.’
President Joe Biden is pleading with demonstrators in Tennessee to keep their demonstrations peaceful as authorities prepare to release video of an arrest that resulted in the death of a motorist.
Tyre Nichols, 29, was severely beaten, according to bodycam video of the encounter that will be released on Friday, according to the family’s attorneys.
After Mr. Nichols passed away a few days after a traffic stop on January 7, five now-fired police officers are being charged with murder.
Police in Memphis have increased patrols amid reports that the city is on edge.
“I’m sickened by what I saw,” Tennessee Bureau of Investigation director David Rausch said on Thursday after reviewing the footage, describing the officers’ actions as “absolutely appalling”.
Image caption,From left: Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Jr, Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith and Tadarrius Bean
Mr Nichols, a black man, was stopped by five police officers, who are also black, on his way home after taking photos of a sunset at a local park, an attorney for the family said.
Officials say he was suspected of reckless driving.
A first confrontation occurred as Mr Nichols attempted to flee on foot when officers approached his car, the local authorities said.
They said a second confrontation happened when officers tried to arrest him.
Mr Nichols later complained of shortness of breath and was taken to hospital, police said, where he was listed in a critical condition.
A lawyer for Mr Nichols’ family said the bodycam footage showed Mr Nichols being pepper-sprayed, struck with a stun gun, restrained and kicked.
He likened the incident to the notorious footage of Los Angeles police officers beating black motorist Rodney King more than 30 years ago.
All five of the officers face charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.
Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith were booked into jail on Thursday. They all joined the Memphis Police Department in the last six years, and were fired last week.
‘Failing of basic humanity’
President Biden released a statement on Thursday appealing for calm as authorities prepare to release the footage on Friday evening, local time.
“I join Tyre’s family in calling for peaceful protest,” he said. “Outrage is understandable, but violence is never acceptable.”
The city’s police chief, Cerelyn Davis, the first black woman in that role in Memphis, also called for calm amid what she said was a “failing of basic humanity toward another individual.”
“He was a human piñata,” lawyer Antonio Romanucci said of its contents. “It was an unadulterated, unabashed, non-stop beating of this young boy for three minutes.”
In a news conference on Thursday, lawyers for two of the ex-officers said their clients planned to fight the charges.
“No-one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” said a lawyer for one of the men.
Officials said Mr Nichols “succumbed to his injuries” on 10 January, but provided no further details. An official cause of death has not yet been disclosed.
His family say he will be remembered as a “good kid” who enjoyed photography and skateboarding.
The father-of-one, who worked at the parcel delivery company FedEx, had Crohn’s disease and suffered severe weight loss, relatives say.
Reverend Al Sharpton, a US civil rights leader, told the BBC the alleged crime was particularly painful because of the officers’ race.
“We fought to put blacks on the police force,” he said. “For them to act in such a brutal way is more egregious than I can tell you.”
Watch: Emotional testimony by residents over deadly traffic stop
“I do not believe these five black police officers would have done this had he been a young white man,” he added.
California-based trial lawyer Adanté Pointer said instances of black men being killed by black officers rarely make the news.
“This case exemplifies that it is not simply a white versus black issue, but instead that this is a power dynamic that plays itself out no matter the race of the police officers,” he told the BBC.
The officers involved are members of a special team known as Scorpion – short for “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods”.
The unit, which was created to police high-crime areas, is now under review, along with all of the city’s specialised units, according to the city’s police chief.
Recently, a University of Ghana student visited the White House and met with President Joe Biden.
Sekou Berthe was captured in a photo with Biden at the Oval Office at the American presidency.
In the photos, Berthe, clad in traditional African attire, shakes his host, with both men beaming with smiles.
The photos were shared by the University of Ghana’s International Programmes Office on Twitter.
The caption of the tweet identified Berthe as a “PhD student” of the university, adding that he had “recently presented his credentials to H.E. Joseph Biden Jr., President of the United States of America, as part of efforts to strengthen cooperation between the two countries.”
Sekou Berthe is a Malian diplomat and the country’s ambassador to the United States.
See the tweet below:
H.E. Sekou Berthe, Ambassador of Mali to the U.S.A and PhD student @univofgh, recently presented his credentials to H.E. Joseph Biden Jr., President of the United States of America, as part of efforts to strengthen cooperation between the two countries. #UGIS75@leciadugpic.twitter.com/bSDqkCczRr— UG International Programmes Office (@UofGhanaGlobal) January 23, 2023
Much has been written about the changing role of the United States as a global power. President Joe Biden and his administration have made repeated statements about reclaiming the US position as leader of the “free world” and promoter of democracy. This has come amid growing authoritarian trends across the globe, in part due to the increased influence of countries like Russia and China.
But one facet of American foreign policy and grand strategy seems to remain unaffected by this renewed effort to promote democracy: the US approach towards the Arab world.
The Biden administration seems to be just as lukewarm about democracy in the region as its predecessors. Although it has emphasised the importance of democracy to its foreign policy, it has essentially refused to hold human rights violators in the Middle East accountable – even when this affects American citizens.
Moreover, on the question of Palestine, another issue of importance to Arab nations which is directly related to democracy, the Biden administration has not changed track either. It continues to back the Israeli government, its occupation and apartheid, and its regional policies which undermine local democratic movements. Worse still, despite being critical of the Trump administration, Biden appears to be an enthusiastic supporter of its disastrous concessions to Israel.
The US embassy in Jerusalem remains and will continue to expand on stolen Palestinian land. The statements of “deep concern” over each new display of Israeli fascism at this point do nothing more than evoke expected derision. Most importantly, the US continues to push for an expansion of the Abraham Accords, despite the fact that it is perfectly clear they are nothing more than an authoritarian alliance.
The Middle Eastern exception to the American democracy-promotion strategy remains, and there seems to be little appetite among American decision-makers to apply the same ideas of sustainable global order to this troubled region.
This does not go unnoticed in the Arab world itself. Rulers now fully understand the limitations of heavily relying on their partnership with the US. In Washington, there was much consternation and rending of garments when Saudi Arabia demonstrated alignment with China on a variety of policy issues. Israeli politicians have also expressed their interest in better relations with Moscow, in spite of American kowtowing on the issue of Palestine.
Citizens of the region are also aware of the failed American strategy and blatant hypocrisy. They do not believe that the US is a bulwark against authoritarian forces. That much is apparent from the results of the eighth Arab Opinion Index conducted by the Arab Center Washington DC in 14 Arab countries.
According to the survey report, released earlier this month, the percentage of Arabs who think democracy is the best system of governance for their countries has grown from 67 percent in 2011 to 72 percent in 2022. But that does not mean that they see a role for the US in helping the region achieve democratic development.
Some 78 percent consider the US the biggest source of threat and instability in the region. By contrast, 57 percent think of Iran in these terms and 57 percent of Russia. This is despite the Iranian-backed crackdown on the Tishreen Revolution in Iraq in 2019-20 and its destabilising role across the region and the Russian bombardment of civilians in Syria over the past seven years.
American policymakers should consider what these numbers imply. The US’s reputation is so bad and so synonymous with hypocrisy that Arab respondents view actors like Iran and Russia as less threatening. But what is worse, perhaps, is how these views have become cemented across generations of Arab citizens.
Those who witnessed or participated in the Arab Spring have internalised disappointment with the American position, which was pro-democracy in rhetoric only and in reality, was supportive of authoritarianism.
Now a new generation of Arabs, who have demonstrated their own capacity for political mobilisation, is adopting the same views. The US has maintained policies that are hostile to pro-democracy forces in the region, whether in supporting regimes that facilitate repression transnationally or backing Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.
The Arab world continues to be rife with conflict, Arab regimes are largely failing to provide basic services and guarantee rights, and Arab citizens understandably see no benefit to American leadership on the world stage. Such widespread attitudes may not only undermine American interests in the region, but also pose a risk to the broader international system.
As American legitimacy deteriorates, this leaves a vacuum for other powers – such as Russia and China – to advance their interests and their anti-democracy ideologies, both in the Arab world and across the globe. Moreover, the prospect of democracy becomes less attractive to nations when the primary advocate for such an idea worldwide, the US, is seen as hypocritical. And as democracy recedes, this bodes poorly for the level of violence, conflict, and instability we will see in the future.
The last 12 years of authoritarian diffusion, refugees, and sectarian conflict should have taught us that instability in the Arab world can reverberate across the globe. But the American establishment has continued to wash its hands clean of its role in the Middle East while trying to stabilise it on shaky premises – by enabling authoritarian regimes and practices and maintaining the status quo in the region’s worsening conflicts.
The results of the Arab Opinion Index should be a red flag for Washington: There must be no Middle Eastern exception to US policies on global security and prosperity.
DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author’s, and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana
Going into ‘Three Amigos’ summit, the US, Canada, and Mexico will also pledge new cooperation on migration, climate change, and drugs, the White House says.
The White House has announced a series of pledges made withMexico and Canada ahead of the “Three Amigos” summit, and cooperation on bolstering the supply of semiconductors, a market currently dominated by Asia, topped the list.
The announcement on Tuesday came hours before US President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were to meet for the 10th North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City. It also included a new agreement on addressing climate change, an updated strategy for dealing with drug smuggling and modest new measures aimed at stemming the region’s worsening migrant crisis.
Hours before Tuesday’s summit, Biden met one-on-one with Trudeau. On Monday, Biden and Lopez Obrador held talks, in which they discussed strengthening economic ties, fighting the illegal drug trade and reducing migration, the White House said.
“This is a relationship which is a fraternal relationship of friendship between our two peoples,” Lopez Obrador said ahead of the meeting on Monday, striking a warm tone despite the left-wing leader’s generally cool approach to Mexico’s northern neighbours since taking office in 2018.
After hailing Biden as a “humanistic president, a visionary president”, Lopez Obrador called on him to “turn away from this abandonment, this disdain and this forgetfulness for Latin America and the Caribbean”. He added that Biden holds the key to greater “economic, social integration” and a wider pivot away from a regional reliance on Asian manufacturing.
Biden, meanwhile, said the duo would address “strengthening our supply chains” while stressing the need to combat fentanyl smuggling, which has fuelled an addiction crisis in the US, and an increase in migrants and asylum seekers crossing the US-Mexico boder. Both are politically fraught issues in the US.
In turn, the US leader also pointed to the billions of dollars that Washington spends in foreign aid around the world, saying that “unfortunately, our responsibility just doesn’t end in the Western Hemisphere.”
In joint statements before their bilateral meeting, Trudeau and Biden also said the North American leaders will also focus on efforts to stabilise crisis-hit Haiti during the meeting.
“As we talk about issues, whether it’s Haiti, whether it’s some of the challenges in South America, whether we talk about critical minerals and energy, and how we’re going to move forward to create those efficient and resilient supply chains that we need, there’s a lot that we’re going to be able to do together,” Trudeau said.
Pledges on semiconductors, drug smuggling, migration
Among the early joint pledges announced by the White House on Tuesday was an agreement to hold a “first-ever trilateral semiconductor forum”, aimed at strengthening investment in the semiconductor supply chain.
Semiconductors are used in nearly all forms of modern technology and computing. The strategically significant industry has emerged as a top economic and security priority for all three countries due to supply-chain shortages in recent years that have stoked concerns of an over-reliance on Asia.
The three countries also pledged to adopt an “updated strategic framework” to address threats posed by illegal drug trafficking, including, among other measures, “increased information sharing” on the chemicals used to make fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.
On migration, the trio announced only modest pledges aimed at building on previous development agreements and increasing the availability of information for migrants and asylum seekers.
Those agreements were made after Lopez Obrador signalled on Monday that he was open to considering accepting more migrants and asylum seekers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela who are expelled by the US. It now takes in 30,000 a month under a previous agreement with the Biden administration. US officials later said no increase had been agreed to.
Human rights groups have criticised the US policy for expelling asylum seekers who attempt to cross the border without offering them the opportunity to seek protection and instead sending them to an unfamiliar country. In return, under the Biden administration policy, 30,000 people per month from those four nations are eligible to work legally in the US for two years, granted they have sponsorship, pass background checks and take an airline flight to the country.
On climate change, the trio committed to reducing methane emissions from solid waste and wastewater by at least 15 percent from 2020 levels by 2030, the White House said.
The North American Leaders Summit is the second to be held since Biden took office in 2021 and resumed the gatherings, which were discontinued for four years under former President Donald Trump.
After the 2021 meeting in Washington, DC, the leaders hailed their reinvigorated partnership.
Still, relations have continued to chafe in some areas, notably over Mexico’s decision to give control of the country’s energy market to cash-strapped state energy companies, which Ottawa and Washington say undermines the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade deal. Mexico and Canada have also voiced concerns over Biden administration policies that encourage the use of domestic manufacturers for public infrastructure projects.
Biden is the first US president to travel to Mexico since former President Barack Obama made the trip in 2014.
As attacks mount, advocates say the government must do more to combat hate speech and gun crimes.
Following a spate of recent attacks in the United Stateson LGBTQ communities, advocates say the government must do more to protect vulnerable citizens.
A man opened fire at a gay and lesbian nightclub in Colorado late last month, killing five people and injuring at least 17 others. The suspect is accused of hate crimes, murder, and assault.
During a year in which President Joe Biden has warned of rising violence against LGBTQ communities, right-wing protesters have increasingly targeted drag shows.
Days after the Colorado shooting, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin highlighting the risk of terrorism against LGBTQ citizens and other marginalised groups, noting that “lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat”.
But while this acknowledgement is a step in the right direction, rights groups say, it is not enough.
“We are living in a time where there is this rising threat of violence from extreme far-right group across the spectrum of marginalised communities. It’s frightening, but it’s not surprising, unfortunately,” Laurel Powell, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group, told Al Jazeera.
“The world we live in today is not one where you can easily divide online and the ‘real world’ … It doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and is being driven by very loud and animated extremist individuals who are stoking this hate online – and it, unfortunately, has real-world consequences.”
Social media companies and other internet platforms must do more to provide a space free from harassment, she said, while the plague of gun violence in the US also needs to be addressed.
“The epidemic of hate against the LGBTQ+ community can’t be separated from the fight against gun violence,” Powell said. “They’re inextricably linked.”
“The scary thing is how it has continued to increase in being more overtly violent,” Tonya Agnew, a spokesperson for the New York-based Family Equality group, which advocates for LGBTQ issues, told Al Jazeera.
“After Club Q [the Colorado shooting], it was just so scary,” she added, noting that the presence of gun-toting protesters outside local drag events marks an alarming trend. “Having armed protesters standing outside because someone happens to be wearing a lot of makeup and a fabulous outfit and reading to children, they find that offensive. So, it’s really just a scary time.”
The animus of protesters has been reflected in hundreds of legislative proposals introduced around the country this year in an effort to restrict the rights of those in LGBTQ communities. This only serves to embolden people who harbour bigoted beliefs, Agnew said.
The recent midterm elections, however, offer some reason for hope, Powell said, “The people who went all-in with their anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, for the most part, didn’t win. That message did not resonate with people,” she said.
“We know the vast majority of Americans are in favour of marriage equality. We know that the vast majority of Americans, when asked the question, ‘Do you believe that it’s a parent’s right to give their children the healthcare they need?’ – of course, they agree with that.”
Ashton Rose, a non-binary college student in Minnesota, said the Department of Homeland Security’s bulletin only matters to the extent that it is followed by legislative action.
“Are we going to start talking about reforming gun legislation? Are we going to start being more critical of casual hate speech in the media? Are we going to start supporting families?” Rose asked.
“This is part of the straight [person] silence thing. It shouldn’t be our job to have to stop people from killing us … The responsibility shouldn’t fall entirely on us,” they said. “And yet, it often feels like it does. It’s not enough for allies to be like, ‘Oh I’m here for you and support you.’
“People need to be using the power they have when they can, because we can’t do it all.”
African leaders are making their way to Washington ahead of President Joe Biden’s US-Africa summit.
According to organisers, the three-day summit, which begins on Tuesday, will aim to demonstrate President Biden’s administration’s commitment to the continent.
The summit has been invited to 49 heads of state, including African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat.
Mali, Guinea, Sudan, and Burkina Faso were not invited because they are suspended by the African Union. Eritrea was also left out.
Some African leaders have been tweeting about their departure to the summit:
We’ve left for the #USA to participate in the #USAfricaLeadersSummit22 to be hosted by @POTUS@JoeBiden.
While there we’ll hold bilateral talks with fellow Heads of State and Corporate leaders to showcase #Zambia. 🇿🇲 🇺🇸
Despite the public bonhomie during the French president’s US visit last week, they don’t see eye to eye on China.
The world is not divided between “democracies and autocracies”. Washington’s approach to China is dangerously confrontational. The Ukraine conflict is about getting Russia to the negotiating table. Unilateral sanctions are not legitimate. The United States is instigating a trade war against Europe. NATO should stop opposing European defence.
To say that France doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the US on most topics would be a serious understatement. Yet, during last week’s high-profile state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to “his friend Joe” in Washington, both partners put on a great act, giving the impression they were living in the land of milk and honey.
President Biden should be credited for pulling out all the stops. He arranged for “his friend Emmanuel” to have the first state visit of his presidency, a distinctive honour for France. Amidst much pomp and regalia, we were carefully treated to long displays of chumminess between the two leaders, including effusive backslapping and a friendly dinner outing in DC with their spouses.
At a joint press conference, Biden even seemed to have made efforts to curb his notorious propensity for droning on out of consideration for Macron’s time in the limelight.
There were also a couple of meatier morsels for French diplomats to go home with as proof that they had held the line of being “allied but non-aligned” with the US, and that they had pushed Washington in the right direction. Biden stated that he would be ready to meet with Vladimir Putin to end the Ukraine conflict, a reversal of his earlier position and a nod to Macron’s efforts to keep diplomatic channels open with Russia’s leader. Since then, the White House has signalled that the conditions were “just not at a point” for such a meeting to take place yet.
The US president promised to look at what he called “glitches” in his signature multi-billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which significantly hurts the European electric vehicle industry through “buy American” restrictions and massive state subsidies to US companies. A day earlier, the French president had denounced the package as “super aggressive” and posing the risk of nothing less than “fragmenting the West”.
Their joint communiqué painstakingly listed the two countries’ shared positions on everything from Ukraine and the security of Europe to Iran, the Middle East, climate change, “the importance of African voices in multilateral fora” and a commitment to strengthening the global financial architecture.
But there was one notable omission: How to deal with China, which Biden has identified as the biggest threat to US interests and security.
“China represents the most consequential challenge to the global order and the United States must win the economic arms race with the superpower if it hopes to retain its global influence,” the current US National Security Strategy states. If that’s indeed the case, surely it should figure in a statement meant to demonstrate the closeness between Washington and Paris?
Except, the approaches of the two countries couldn’t be further apart.
While the joint communiqué does mention “China’s challenge to the rules-based international order”, it only states that the two countries have pledged to “coordinate their concerns” – an indirect acknowledgement that they are currently anything but coordinated. This shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Paris has always been highly suspicious of the Biden doctrine that defines the present era fundamentally as “a contest between democracies and autocracies”. Viewed from France, this black-and-white framework is seen as overly ideological, geopolitically inapplicable and transparently self-serving. “A lot of people would like to see that there are two orders in this world,” Macron stated during a trip to the G20 in Indonesia last November. “This is a huge mistake, even for both the US and China. We need a single global order.”
It is no secret that France and several other European countries have been less than enthralled by what they perceive as Washington’s overly aggressive stance towards China, including the escalatory rhetoric about a possible conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
It’s not that France has any illusions about the inescapability of the rivalry between the world’s two biggest economies, or about China’s hegemonist moves in the Indo-Pacific in recent years. But Paris believes that differences should be managed within the existing multilateral framework, and aimed at lowering, not heightening, tensions.
At the G20 summit, the French president stressed that China had clearly distanced itself from Russia over time and could play an important mediating role in the Ukraine conflict. He also stressed that Beijing was committed to the existing world order and that President Xi Jinping shared his commitment to the United Nations – a transparent rebuke to the US position that systematically casts Beijing as a revisionist power intent on displacing the West.
The following day in Bangkok, Macron’s comments were even more pointed: “We are in the jungle and we have two big elephants, trying to become more and more nervous,” he told the audience. “If they become very nervous and start a war, it will be a big problem for the rest of the jungle.”
France has long been a proponent of a multipolar order in which big powers balance each other and agree to play by common rules. This suits both its traditional Gallic diffidence towards US hegemony and France’s self-perception as a “middle power with global influence”, according to the famous expression coined by Hubert Védrine, a former foreign minister. “We don’t believe in hegemony, we don’t believe in confrontation, we believe in stability,” Macron had told his Asian audience last month.
To Washington’s ears, it may have sounded self-serving, but the reality is that for most of the world, this is a much preferable alternative to a new cold war between two economic and military hegemons.
The public show of bonhomie between Biden and Macron can’t hide those deeper tensions. Their teams have hailed the French president’s visit to Washington as a success. But in terms of addressing the biggest risk factor in international relations – the possibility of escalation between the US and China – the results were of a far more modest kind: the big nothing burger.
DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author’s, and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana
The decision by the US Department of Justice to investigate the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqla has been described as a “mistake” by Israel.
Outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz stated that he informed US officials that Israel would not cooperate.
The Department of Justice and the FBI declined to comment, but Abu Aqla’s family praised the “significant step toward accountability.”
During an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank in May, the Al Jazeera correspondent was shot in the head.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) concluded that one of its soldiers probably killed her, but called her death unintentional and ruled out a criminal inquiry.
Shireen Abu Aqla, who was 51, arrived in Jenin refugee camp on 11 May to report on an Israeli army raid which had seen gun battles break out between soldiers and Palestinian militants.
She was wearing a helmet and blue flak jacket marked with the word “press” when she was killed while walking along a road with other journalists, one of whom was also shot and wounded.
Journalists, bystanders and Palestinian officials said the gunfire came from Israeli troops stationed about 200m (656ft) away – allegations which was later backed by investigations by the UN Human Rights Office and multiple media organisations.
The US state department said in July that the US Security Co-ordinator (USSC) for Israel and the Palestinian Authority had concluded that “gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for the death”. He also found that there was “no reason to believe that this was intentional”.
The IDF initially said that it was not possible to know who killed Abu Aqla. But in September asenior official told journalists that there was a high probability that she was shot “by mistake by an IDF soldier, and of course he didn’t identify her as a journalist”.
Abu Aqla’s family heavily criticised both the USSC’s and the IDF’s findings and demanded that the US carry out an independent FBI investigation into the killing of a US citizen. Their call also received the support by dozens of members of the US Congress, including more than 20 Democratic senators.
On Monday, Israel’s Channel 14 TV and US website Axios reported that the US Department of Justice had recently notified the Israeli justice ministry that the FBI had opened an investigation.
Axios said the probe could lead to a US request to investigate the soldiers who were involved in the operation in Jenin, and that Israel would almost certainly reject it.
The probe is also likely to create further tension President Joe Biden’s administration and Israel’s incoming government, which will be led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The decision taken by the US justice department to conduct an investigation into the tragic passing of Shireen Abu Aqla is a mistake,” said Mr Gantz in a statement.
“The IDF has conducted a professional, independent investigation, which was presented to American officials with whom the details were shared.
He added: “I have delivered a message to US representatives that we stand by the IDF’s soldiers, that we will not co-operate with an external investigation, and will not enable intervention to internal investigations.”
Abu Aqla’s family said in a statement on Tuesday that they were “encouraged by the news”.
“We hope that the United States will use all of the investigativetools at its disposal to get answers about Shireen’s killing and hold those who are responsible for this atrocity accountable.
“We call on all parties with any evidence to respond to investigatory requests from the US States and not stand in the way of justice.”
The family also expressed hope that the FBI investigation would be “truly independent, credible, and thorough, following the evidence where it leads, up and down the chain of command”.
Russiamay have delayed announcing its withdrawal from Kherson in order to sway the outcome of the midterm elections in favour of Republicans, according to sources familiar with US intelligence.
Republicans failed to achieve the hoped-for “red wave,” and Democrats retained control ofthe US Senate after holding seats in key swing states Arizona and Nevada.
According to the most recent NBC News projection, Republicans will win 220 House seats to the Democrats’ 215.
That means the Republicans would still take control but with much less authority than the 40+ gains anticipated by some pollsters.
Now, sources have suggested that Russia delayed its Kherson withdrawal announcement in part to stop the Democrats from a political lead.
One source said the US elections were a “pre-planned condition” when it came to Russia’s acknowledgement that it was not succeeding in the Kherson region.
Meanwhile another source told CNN: “Even though there is still robust bipartisan agreement on Ukraine, the party that has been much more vocally supportive is the Democratic Party, and particularly the Biden administration.”
In Washington last week, President Joe Biden also appeared to notice the timing of Russia’s announcement as he described how Russia’s decision to leave Kherson was “evidence” they had “some real problems”.
He said: “I find it interesting that they waited until after the [US midterm] election to make that judgement.”
Michelle Obama said she struggled with a “crushing sense of hopelessness” after the 2020 presidential election that was brought on by the death and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, a summer of political and racial unrest and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“I was in a low place,” she said. Then she got an idea.
“Everyone was searching for some answers of how to cope. And for some reason they were asking me, ‘What do you do?’ I had to start thinking about that,” the former first lady told People magazine in an interview pegged to Tuesday’s release of her second book, “The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times.” She is set to open a six-city book tour in Washington on that day.
In the book, former President Barack Obama’s wife, who is one of the world’s most famous women, tells how she steadies herself during these anxious times and how she works at overcoming her lifelong fear of change and doubts about herself.
“Over the 58 years that I’ve lived, I can look back and I can say, ‘This is how I deal with fear. These are the things I say to myself when I need to pick myself up. This is how I stay visible in a world that doesn’t necessarily see a tall Black woman,’” she said. “This is how I stay armored up when I’m attacked. The book is that offering.”
“I think people learn not through edict, but through stories,” she said. People posted a report on the interview on its website on Thursday, and it will appear in the magazine’s Nov. 21 issue, available nationwide on Friday.
Mrs. Obama, the mother of Sasha and Malia Obama, opens up in the book about everything from how awkward it is to make new friends to her experiences with racism, marriage, parenting and even menopause.
She also writes about leaning on a “kitchen table” of close girlfriends, led by her 85-year-old mother, Marian Robinson. The group includes Kathleen Buhle, a hiking and yoga pal who is the ex-wife of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and the mother of Maisy Biden, Sasha Obama’s best friend.
In 2018, Mrs. Obama released her best-selling memoir, “Becoming,” and embarked on a U.S. and international book tour to promote it. The book has sold more than 17 million copies worldwide, surpassing the sales of any memoir by a previous first lady or modern president, including her husband.
In her new book, the former first lady describes looking in the mirror and only seeing her flaws, and how she practices being kind to herself.
She said she also copes by indulging in what her husband calls “lowbrow TV.”
“You name it, I watch it,” she said, naming HGTV, anything on the Food Channel and dating shows like “Married at First Sight” among her viewing choices.
The former first lady described herself as an informed citizen who reads the newspaper, gets briefs, sits with her husband every night and knows what’s happening in the world.
But she said that “when I’m by myself, I need to be able to turn my head off and think about wallpaper.”
The launch isthe latest in a record year of missile tests by North Korea, and it comes as the results of the US midterm elections are announced.
North Korea has launched a ballistic missile toward the sea off the country’s east coast, the first launch since last week’s barrage of missile launches and heavy artillery fire that saw more than 30 missiles land in the seas off the Korean peninsula, according to South Korea’s military.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea said Wednesday that it detected the launch of a short-range ballistic missile from an area in or around North Korea’s Sukchon in South Pyongan Province at around 3:31 p.m. local time (06:30 GMT).
Fired towards the East Sea, which is also known as the Sea of Japan, the missile’s “flight distance was detected at about 290 kilometres (180 miles), an altitude of about 30 kilometres, and a speed of about Mach 6”, South Korea’s military reported.
Japan’s Kyodo news agency, citing a Japanese government source, said the missile landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from the country’s coastline.
Japan’s Coast Guard also tracked the missile and said it appeared to have fallen into the sea minutes after the launch was first reported.
The launch is the latest in a record year of missile tests by Pyongyang, including an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week, and comes at a time of growing concern that North Korea could be preparing for its first test detonation of a nuclear device since 2017.
The missile launch also comes as the United States – South Korea’s main military ally – counted votes in the country’s midterm elections, which will determine whether US President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party maintains control of the House of Representative and the Senate or loses one or both to the Republican Party.
Earlier on Wednesday, South Korea said it had identified debris from an earlier North Korean missile launch as part of a Soviet-era SA-5 surface-to-air missile.
A South Korean Navy ship used an underwater probe to recover the missile, which was the first time a North Korean ballistic missile had landed near South Korean waters.
North Korea’s military said the launches were simulated attacks on South Korea and the United States, criticising their exercises as an “dangerous, aggressive war drill.”
The SA-5 is an air defence missile originally designed by the Soviet Union, where it was designated the S-200, to shoot down strategic bombers and other high-altitude targets.
The missile was exported around the world, and is still in service in at least a dozen countries, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
