Category Archives: Joe Biden

Biden administration announces new strategy to tackle Covid subvariant

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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.

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

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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”.

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Biden defends Saudi Arabia trip that aims to reset ties

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Joe Biden to sign executive order protecting access to abortion

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Gun violence rattles US amid Independence Day celebrations – latest updates

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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:

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Environmentalists condemn Biden administration’s offshore drilling plan

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Giuliani associate Lev Parnas handed 20 months in prison for campaign finance fraud – as it happened

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• It was a mixed Tuesday for Donald Trump-backed candidates in Republican primary elections around the country. Colorado voters largely rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, although Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, won her bid for relection.

• In Illinois, Mary Miller, who had been criticized after she declared the Supreme Court’s abortion decision as a “victory for white life” – a spokesman said she had mixed up her words – won in after she was backed by Trump. Darren Bailey, who was also endorsed by Trump, won the Republican gubernatorial primary in the state.

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Israel delays travel restrictions on West Bank in apparent gesture to Joe Biden

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New rules limiting ability of foreigners to enter occupied territory are postponed before US president’s Middle East visit

Israel has delayed the implementation of strict rules limiting the ability of foreigners to enter and stay in the occupied West Bank, in what is believed to be a gesture to Joe Biden before the US president’s visit to the Middle East next month.

A statement from the high court on Wednesday said the new rules would be shelved until early September, as a decision had not yet been made regarding objections to the proposed policy.

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Jan 6 committee hearings: Cheney describes possible witness tampering after ex-aide’s testimony – as it happened

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The Guardian’s Ashifa Kassam and Ramon Antonio Vargas report:

Fifty suspected migrants were found dead and at least a dozen others were hospitalized after being found inside an abandoned tractor-trailer rig on Monday on a remote back road in south-west San Antonio, officials have said.

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US supreme court rules in favor of high school football coach over on-field prayers – as it happened

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Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that football coach Joseph Kennedy had a right to publicly pray after games because he was not requiring others to participate in the practice.

“Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks,” Gorsuch wrote.

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Iran and US ready to restart talks on nuclear deal

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EU foreign affairs chief says stalemate broken after meeting with Iranian foreign minister in Tehran

Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, has said talks will restart on the Iran nuclear deal, averting a complete collapse in the agreement which could spark a nuclear arms race across the Middle East.

After a meeting with the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in Tehran, Borrell said he had broken the stalemate which had led to talks on the revival of the nuclear deal being stalled since March. Borrell gave no detail about the exact date of the resumption of talks or the precise format, but said the process had the agreement of Iran and the US. He also met Iran’s national security chief Ali Shamkhani.

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‘Lives will be saved’: Biden signs most sweeping gun control law in decades

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Bipartisan deal ‘doesn’t do everything I want’, president says, but will toughen background checks and facilitate ‘red flag’ laws

Joe Biden on Saturday signed the most sweeping gun violence bill in decades, a bipartisan compromise that seemed unimaginable until a recent series of mass shootings, including the massacre of 19 students and two teachers at a Texas elementary school.

“Lives will be saved,” the president said at the White House. Citing the families of shooting victims, the president said, “Their message to us was to do something. Well today, we did.”

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