Category Archives: Joe Biden

Republicans block bill on right to travel across state lines for abortions – as it happened

Posted on by

Republican senator claims Democrats’ proposal would encourage ‘abortion tourism’

Republican-led states are moving swiftly to ban abortion outright or retaliate against patients seeking the care and the doctors providing it to them. But the message of a new Morning Consult/Politico poll of voters gauging support for these policies might be: not so fast.

The survey found that of 13 state-level proposals, only two weren’t opposed by a majority of voters. Banning all abortions without exception is the most disliked, with 73 percent opposing it, while criminalizing abortion seekers and people who travel out of state for care both came in with 70-percent disapproval. Proposals to fine or criminalize abortion providers also polled poorly, as did the idea to allow people to sue anyone involved in abortions.

Continue reading...

Democratic voters say Biden could be doing a lot more for the climate crisis

Posted on by

A Pew survey found more Americans favor stricter environmental laws and regulations – even at an economic cost

More than 80% of Democrats think the government is not doing enough to tackle the climate crisis, according to a large nationwide survey that found younger voters across both parties are most frustrated with the pace of political action on green issues.

Overall, Americans are largely split along party lines in how they view Joe Biden’s record on pressing climate and environmental challenges like clean water and air quality, according to the Pew Research Center survey of more than 10,000 adults.

Continue reading...

Biden, on Middle East tour, is battered by inflation and low approval ratings at home

Posted on by

The sobering numbers, caused by high energy prices, will be top of the agenda as president visits the Middle East

Another searing inflation report yesterday underscored the deep challenges facing Democrats ahead of this year’s critical midterm elections, with widespread pessimism about the state of the US economy and Joe Biden’s stewardship of it.

Inflation soared 9.1% in June compared with the previous year, a new 40-year high. The rising cost of gas, fuel and rent squeezes American households and puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates further.

Continue reading...

Biden in Israel as poll shows support for re-election bid at new low – as it happened

Posted on by

Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed an executive order preventing women who travel to Michigan for an abortion from being extradited to other states where seeking the procedure is illegal.

Here’s how she described the order, which also protects abortion providers in the state from extradition:

I will stand up for all women, even if their local and statewide leaders refuse to. Michigan must remain a place where a person’s basic rights are preserved. In this existential moment for fundamental rights, it is incumbent on every elected official who believes that health—not politics—should guide medical decisions to take bold action.

Continue reading...

Biden commits to Israel’s security as he embarks on Middle East tour

Posted on by

After the visit a communique titled the ‘Jerusalem Declaration’ will reaffirm Israel’s right to defend itself

Joe Biden has said that the US is committed to Israel’s security on arriving in Tel Aviv for the first leg of a three-day visit to the Middle East, a trip focused on deepening the majority Jewish state’s ties with the Arab world as the region faces a common foe in Iran.

The US leader was greeted by the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog and caretaker prime minister, Yair Lapid on Air Force One’s arrival at Ben Gurion airport on Wednesday afternoon. He opted for fist-bumping rather than shaking hands with Israeli officials during the red carpet welcome, over what the White House said was concern over rising Covid cases.

Continue reading...

Joe Biden arrives in Middle East at time of rapid change

Posted on by

Analysis: Israel has transformed itself from regional pariah to ally to many Arab states

Joe Biden has made clear that the Middle East is not a priority for his administration: Ukraine, China and the US midterm elections are all more pressing issues. Still, when Air Force One touches down in Tel Aviv for his first visit to the region as president on Wednesday afternoon, Biden will be faced with a rapidly changing – and still unstable – part of the world.

Biden’s main goal is to convince Saudi Arabia of the need to increase global oil supplies to ease the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the fact that he flies directly to Jeddah after two days in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories speaks to a significant shift: Israel’s transformation from regional pariah to ally for many Arab states.

Continue reading...

Biden administration announces new strategy to tackle Covid subvariant

Posted on by

White House says BA.5 is responsible for majority of new infections in the US amid reports of plan for second booster shots for adults

Joe Biden’s administration has announced a new strategy to tackle the highly contagious BA.5 coronavirus subvariant amid reports that the government was developing a plan to make second booster shots available to all US adults.

In a fact sheet published on Tuesday the White House said BA.5, a subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant, is already responsible for the majority of new Covid-19 cases in the US.

Continue reading...

Shireen Abu Aqleh: family of killed journalist demand meeting with Biden

Posted on by

Letter to president expresses ‘sense of betrayal’ for shielding Israel from accountability for her death ahead of his visit to Jerusalem

The family of Shireen Abu Aqleh, the renowned Palestinian-American journalist killed during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank, is demanding a meeting with President Biden during his visit to Jerusalem this week after accusing his administration of shielding Israel from accountability for her death.

Abu Aqleh’s brother, Anton, wrote to Biden on Friday expressing his family’s “grief, outrage and sense of betrayal” after the US state department concluded that Israeli forces were “likely responsible” for shooting the Al Jazeera reporter in the head in the West Bank city of Jenin in May but “found no reason to believe that this was intentional”.

Continue reading...

Biden defends Saudi Arabia trip that aims to reset ties

Posted on by

President says he aims to reorient relations and meet with the crown prince, who he previously denounced as a pariah

Joe Biden on Saturday defended his decision to travel to Saudi Arabia saying human rights would be on his agenda as he gave a preview of a trip on which he aims to reset ties with the crown prince, who he previously denounced as a pariah.

The American president will hold bilateral talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and his leadership team, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his visit to the Middle East next week.

Continue reading...

At least 15 killed in rocket strike on apartment building in eastern Ukraine

Posted on by

More than 24 people thought to be trapped in rubble of five-storey block in town of Chasiv Yar

At least 15 people have died and dozens were injured after a series of rockets fired by Russian forces hit a five-storey apartment building in the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine, as Moscow was accused of raising “true hell” in Donbas, stepping up the assault on the city of Sloviansk.

Earlier in the morning, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, said on Telegram that more than 24 people could be trapped under the rubble of the apartment block, as rescue operations were still under way.

Continue reading...

Biden in crisis mode as specter of one-term Carter haunts White House

Posted on by

President urged to act more forcefully to deal with rising inflation, gun violence and dire supreme court rulings

At an Independence Day barbecue, crises cascading around him, Joe Biden declared that he had “never been more optimistic about America than I am today”.

Of course there were challenges, grave ones, the US president told the military families assembled on the south lawn of the White House. And the nation had a troubling history of taking “giant steps forward” and then a “few steps backwards”, he acknowledged.

Continue reading...

Biden signs executive order to protect US abortion access and urges Americans to ‘vote, vote, vote’ – as it happened

Posted on by

It’s official; Biden has formally signed an executive order protecting access to abortion and other reproductive healthcare services.

Here is a previous post detailing what is in the executive order.

Continue reading...

Joe Biden to sign executive order protecting access to abortion

Posted on by

Move by president signals start of White House fightback after supreme court struck down Roe v Wade

Joe Biden is to sign an executive order offering protections to millions of American women denied the constitutional right to an abortion.

The move signals the start of a White House fightback after the supreme court last month struck down Roe v Wade, its landmark ruling that for half a century had legalised abortion nationwide.

Continue reading...

Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone agrees to testify to January 6 panel – as it happened

Posted on by

Lawyer was subpoenaed last month by the House committee investigating the 2021 assault on the Capitol

A feud appears to be brewing between Biden and the top Democrats in Kentucky, including its governor Andy Beshear.

It began last week when the Courier-Journal reported that Biden intended to nominate an anti-abortion judge to a federal district court, in an apparent deal with Mitch McConnell, the state’s Republican senator who leads the party in Congress’s upper chamber. Now, the Courier-Journal has managed to obtain emails between the White House and Beshear’s office that elaborate on the deal, which the Biden administration has declined to talk about.

The governor’s office also turned over a follow-up email from a White House official sent June 29 — five hours before The Courier Journal first broke the story on the pending nomination of attorney Chad Meredith — clarifying that the original email was “pre-decisional and privileged information.”

White House aide Kathleen M. Marshall, a former lieutenant governor in Nevada who joined the White House in August as senior adviser to governors in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, sent the June 23 email that stated: “To be nominated tomorrow: … Stephen Chad Meredith: candidate for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.”

Mr. Shapiro, the sitting attorney general, will roll out the endorsements of 10 Republicans on Wednesday as part of a continued effort to label his candidacy a reach-across-the-aisle aficionado who will unify the parties to get things done.

The list includes two former U.S. representatives, Charlie Dent and Jim Greenwood; former state House Speaker Denny O’Brien; former Lt. Gov. and longtime state Sen. Robert Jubelirer; and former state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman.

Continue reading...

Global dismay as supreme court ruling leaves Biden’s climate policy in tatters

Posted on by

Biden’s election was billed as heralding a ‘climate presidency’ but congressional and judicial roadblocks mean he has little to show

Joe Biden’s election triggered a global surge in optimism that the climate crisis would, finally, be decisively confronted. But the US supreme court’s decision last week to curtail America’s ability to cut planet-heating emissions has proved the latest blow to a faltering effort by Biden on climate that is now in danger of becoming largely moribund.

The supreme court’s ruling that the US government could not use its existing powers to phase out coal-fired power generation without “clear congressional authorization” quickly ricocheted around the world among those now accustomed to looking on in dismay at America’s seemingly endless stumbles in addressing global heating.

Continue reading...

Gun violence rattles US amid Independence Day celebrations – latest updates

Posted on by

Suspect pre-planned Highland park attack and wore ‘women’s clothing’, police say

A new poll from Monmouth University has found that President Joe Biden remains unpopular, but for Democrats, that’s not its most troubling finding. The Biden administration has hoped that the supreme court’s recent rulings curtailing abortion access and expanding concealed weapons possession would fire up Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, but the poll instead shows that voters’ biggest issue remains the nation’s high rate of inflation - a trend that Biden has had little success in reversing.

First the bad news about Biden’s approval rating, which Monmouth reports actually worsened last month:

Continue reading...

Environmentalists condemn Biden administration’s offshore drilling plan

Posted on by

Policy would ban new ocean drilling but allow up to 11 lease sales in Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s south coast

Joe Biden’s administration on Friday unveiled a five-year offshore oil and gas drilling development plan that blocks all new drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans within US territorial waters while allowing some lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s south coast.

The plan, which has not been finalized, could allow up to 11 lease sales but gives the interior department the right to make none. It comes two days after the US supreme court curbed the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to respond to the climate crisis.

Continue reading...

Biden urged to do more to defend abortion rights: ‘This is a five-alarm fire’

Posted on by

Furious Americans have taken to the streets, but many Democrats believe Biden has failed to capture the urgency and anger

High above America’s capital, pro-choice activists scaled a construction crane, inching across its latticed steel arm, to affix a banner with a message for the president to see. It read: “BIDEN PROTECT ABORTION.”

In the days since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, legions of furious Americans have taken to the streets to protest a decision that was once unimaginable. But as a new reality takes shape, many are demanding the president and Democratic leaders do more to defend reproductive rights.

Continue reading...

Biden calls court’s Roe ruling ‘tragic reversal’ during meeting with Democratic governors – as it happened

Posted on by

Speaking first, New York governor Kathy Hochul, said her state is acting quickly to shore up women’s reproductive rights in its constitution and protect access to contraception and other rights.

“This is frightening time for women all across our nation, a lot of fear and anxiety out there,” she said.

Continue reading...

Supreme court decisions: court deals blow on climate but Biden wins immigration case – live

Posted on by

In its second and final decision of the day, the Supreme Court on Thursday said Biden can terminate a controversial Trump-era immigration policy, known as Remain in Mexico. The ruling affirms a president’s broad power to set the nation’s immigration policy.

The ruling concludes the most consequential supreme court term in recent memory.

The case, which was backed by a host of other Republican-led states including Texas and Kentucky, was highly unusual in that it was based upon the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era strategy to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants that never came into effect. The Biden administration sought to have the case dismissed as baseless given the plan was dropped and has not been resurrected.

Not only was this case about a regulation that does not exist, that never took effect, and which would have imposed obligations on the energy sector that it would have met regardless. It also involves two legal doctrines that are not mentioned in the constitution, and that most scholars agree have no basis in any federal statute.

Continue reading...