Category Archives: Joe Biden

US to unveil major Russia sanctions in wake of Alexei Navalny death

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Joe Biden declines to give details but says sanctions will coincide with second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

The US will announce a major package of sanctions against Russia on Friday prompted by the death of political opposition leader Alexei Navalny but also devised as retaliation for the two-year war Vladimir Putin initiated against Ukraine, Joe Biden said on Tuesday.

The US president spoke to reporters on the south lawn of the White House as he headed for a campaign fundraising trip to California, starting with a flight to Los Angeles.

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US could send long-range missiles to Ukraine if funding passes – report

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White House prepared to send weapons that could strike inside Crimea if Congress approves $60bn aid package

Joe Biden’s White House is prepared to send long-range tactical missiles to Ukraine if Congress approves a new funding package, according to a US media report on Monday.

Citing two unnamed officials, NBC News said that the administration was willing to send a variant of the missiles – known as Atacms (army tactical missile systems) – if a new $60bn aid package approved by the Senate, but held up for now by congressional Republicans, becomes law.

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Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tells fellow Democrats: reject Biden in primary

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Michigan representative tells state voters to pick ‘uncommitted’ option over White House support for Israel’s strikes on Gaza

The progressive US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has called on her fellow Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s presidential primary election – at the expense of the party’s incumbent, Joe Biden – in late February.

Appearing in a video posted to X on Saturday by Listen to Michigan, a political campaign to encourage the state’s voters to vote “uncommitted” in the 27 February primary, Tlaib justified her stark display of displeasure with Biden by alluding to Israel’s military strikes on Gaza, which local authorities say have killed nearly 29,000 Palestinians since last October.

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Ronald Reagan’s daughter says he would be ‘appalled’ by current political tenor

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‘He didn’t understand lack of civility. He didn’t understand attacking another person,’ says Patti Davis of former US president

The daughter of former president Ronald Reagan has hit out at contemporary White House politics, saying she thinks her late father would be “appalled” by the personal tenor of current political discourse.

“I think he’d be appalled … it was just more civilized,” Patti Davis told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “He didn’t understand lack of civility. He didn’t understand attacking another person. … He didn’t understand cruelty. And that’s what we’re dealing with now.

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Biden visits scene of 2023 Ohio rail disaster – a year too late, critics say

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President pledged to get cleanup job done and pushed for protective measures as protesters held ‘anti-Biden’ rally

Joe Biden on Friday surveyed the federal cleanup in East Palestine, Ohio, more than a year after an explosive fire from a derailed train carrying hazardous chemicals – and the president saw up close the lingering hostility from victims still angry that he waited so long to visit.

The White House has said Biden was waiting for the right moment to visit. The mayor invited him.

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Biden threatened ‘consequences’ over Navalny, but he has few options

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Sanctions already imposed on Russia over Ukraine have not deterred the Kremlin. Will unconventional approaches work?

When Joe Biden met Vladimir Putin in 2021, the leaders staring at each other across the library of a Geneva lakeside villa, the US president warned there would be “devastating consequences” for Moscow if Alexei Navalny died in Russian custody.

Biden was reminded of those words on Friday following Navalny’s sudden, mysterious death in a Russian penal colony, and his response was to point out that the warning had been delivered three years ago and that, in the intervening time, Putin had “faced a hell of a lot of consequences”.

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Donald Trump banned from running businesses in New York for three years – live

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Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay more than $350m in fines and barred him from running New York businesses for three years

Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’ father took the stand now, testifying about threats she faced at the home he lived in with her in 2019 and 2020, before she moved to a new place after people outside her house called her slurs and threatened her there.

John Floyd, Willis’ dad, was asked about her romantic relationships and how often he saw people she had dated, including special prosecutor Nathan Wade. He said he hadn’t met Wade until 2023, and a previous boyfriend he saw often in earlier years was a disc jockey. (Previous testimony from a former friend of Willis claimed the two started dating much earlier than they’d claimed.)

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Biden ‘privately defiant’ over chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, book says

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The Internationalists details how the president was determined to leave a country in which 2,324 US troops were killed since 2001

Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new book reportedly says, even as the chaos and carnage that unfolded continues to be investigated in Congress.

“No one offered to resign” over the withdrawal, writes Alexander Ward, a Politico reporter, “in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy.”

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FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens’ role in Ukraine business

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Alexander Smirnov falsely said executives linked to energy firm Burisma paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors say

An FBI informant has been charged with lying to his handler about ties between Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company.

Alexander Smirnov falsely told FBI agents in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors said on Thursday.

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House Republicans will hold hearing with Robert Hur over Biden report

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Hur investigated president’s mishandling of classified papers after his vice-presidency and raised questions about his ‘poor memory’

House Republicans will hold a public hearing next month with special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents after his vice-presidency, as the White House counsel reportedly wrote to the attorney general attacking Hur’s commentary on the US president’s memory as a violation of federal policy.

The House judiciary committee, chaired by rightwing Republican Jim Jordan, will hear testimony from Hur on 12 March, two unnamed people familiar with the plans told the Associated Press on Thursday. The White House declined to comment on the plans.

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Putin says he prefers Biden to Trump and mocks Tucker Carlson’s questions

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Russian president says Biden is ‘more predictable’, in remarks likely to be attempt to make mischief in US election

Vladimir Putin has said he would prefer a Joe Biden presidency to a Donald Trump one and mocked the former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson for a “lack of sharp questions” during their interview at the Kremlin last week.

Asked by a Russian state journalist on Wednesday to choose between Biden and Trump, Putin said without hesitation that the current US president was “more experienced, predictable, an old-school politician”, but added: “We will work with any US president who the American people have confidence in.”

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New York special election: Tom Suozzi wins seat vacated by George Santos in boost for Biden

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The contest between Democrat Suozzi and little-known Republican Mazi Pilip was seen as a bellwether for November’s presidential election

Democrat Tom Suozzi won the New York congressional seat vacated by the disgraced Republican George Santos on Tuesday night, in a boost for Joe Biden ahead of the presidential election.

The victory narrows the slim Republican majority in the House and gives Democrats a much-needed win in New York City’s Long Island suburbs, where Republican candidates have shown strength in recent elections.

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US House impeaches Biden homeland security secretary in historic vote

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Alejandro Mayorkas, rebuked by Republicans who voted against key immigration bill, first to face such punishment in over 150 years

The US House of Representatives has voted to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, on explicitly political charges related to conditions at the southern border as Republicans attempt to capitalize on the issue in an election year.

The evening roll call proved tight, with speaker Mike Johnson’s threadbare Republican majority and in the face of staunch Democratic opposition to impeaching Mayorkas, the first cabinet secretary facing charges in nearly 150 years.

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Rand Paul filibusters over Senate’s $95bn foreign aid package – as it happened

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Kentucky senator who opposes the aid package has indicated he will use every tool at his disposal to delay the final vote

The House majority leader, Republican Steve Scalise of Louisiana, will return to Capitol Hill tomorrow after undergoing cancer treatment in recent weeks.

The House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana, welcomed Scalise back with a tweet noting that the majority leader was now in remission.

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Lloyd Austin to resume Pentagon duties one day after admission to hospital

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US defense secretary underwent non-surgical procedures for bladder issue and ‘cancer prognosis remains excellent’

The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, is expected to “resume his normal duties” on Tuesday, a day after he was admitted to a hospital for what the Pentagon described as an “emergent bladder issue”.

A statement issued by the Pentagon said Austin, 70, had undergone non-surgical procedures under general anesthesia to address the bladder issue. “We anticipate a successful recovery and will closely monitor him overnight,” the statement read.

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Biden must do more to free Israeli-held US grandmother, rights group says

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Council for American-Islamic Relations calls for release of Samaher Esmail and other Palestinian Americans seized by IDF

An influential Arab-American group sought to increase pressure on Monday on the Joe Biden White House to use its influence with Israel to help free a US-Palestinian grandmother detained by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank.

Samaher Esmail’s family also alleges that she has been beaten and denied access to medical attention.

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Biden joins international calls for Israel to halt planned Rafah offensive

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Politicians say Palestinians sheltering in the southern city in Gaza have nowhere else to go

Joe Biden has added his voice to growing international calls for Israel to drop plans for an all-out military assault on the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, after a ferocious hostage rescue operation that killed dozens of Palestinians.

Speaking after talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House on Monday, the US president said: “A major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support of more than 1 million people sheltering there.

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Biden warns Netanyahu against Rafah operation without ‘credible’ safety plan

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UN officials and Biden have said an offensive in city, where about 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering, would lead to a ‘bloodbath’

In a call Sunday with Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden told the Israeli prime minister that Israel should not launch a military operation in Rafah “without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there”.

The call between the US president and Netanyahu was the first between the two leaders since Biden on Thursday used the phrase “over the top” to describe Israel’s military strikes in Gaza in response to the 7 October attack by Hamas.

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Haley hopes to boost election bid with attacks on Trump’s and Biden’s ages

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Candidate’s ailing campaign will use mobile billboard in her home state to highlight her opponents’ many verbal gaffes

Nikki Haley’s Republican presidential nomination campaign in South Carolina is set to parade a mobile billboard drawing attention to rival Donald Trump’s age on Saturday, as ageing and mental acuity issues continue to dominate the US’s political discourse.

The stunt, which was scheduled to pass through Myrtle Beach, comes as Trump begins campaigning in Haley’s home state ahead of its primary on 24 February. It is scheduled to make stops outside a rally for the former president, according to the Hill, and show both Trump as well as Democratic incumbent Joe Biden appearing to fall into moments of confusion during public remarks.

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AI firm considers banning creation of political images for 2024 elections

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Midjourney’s CEO David Holz says company close to ‘hammering’ images of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and others ‘for next 12 months’

The groundbreaking artificial intelligence image-generating company Midjourney is considering banning people from using its software to make political images of Joe Biden and Donald Trump as part of an effort to avoid being used to distract from or misinform about the 2024 US presidential election.

“I don’t know how much I care about political speech for the next year for our platform,” Midjourney’s CEO, David Holz, said last week, adding that the company is close to “hammering” – or banning – political images, including those of the leading presidential candidates, “for the next 12 months”.

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