Category Archives: Joe Biden

‘I’m not walking anything back’: Biden defends comment that Putin can’t stay in power – US politics as it happened

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The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack is expected to discuss Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, tonight, before it officially considers holding in criminal contempt of Congress two of Donald Trump’s most senior White House advisers, Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro.

The move to initiate contempt proceedings against the two Trump aides amounts to a biting rebuke of their refusal to cooperate with the inquiry, as the panel deploys its most punitive measures to reaffirm the consequences of noncompliance.

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Biden targets America’s wealthiest with proposed minimum tax on billionaires

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Tax on households over $100m aims to ensure wealthiest Americans no longer pay lower rate than teachers and firefighters

Joe Biden proposed a new tax on America’s richest households when he unveiled his latest budget on Monday.

The Biden administration wants to impose a 20% minimum tax on households worth more than $100m. The proposal would raise more than $360bn over the next decade and “would make sure that the wealthiest Americans no longer pay a tax rate lower than teachers and firefighters”, according to a factsheet released by the White House.

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‘I make no apologies’: Biden stands by ‘Putin cannot remain in power’ remark

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President says he was not calling for regime change but was expressing personal ‘moral outrage’ over Russia’s invasion

Joe Biden on Monday defended the unscripted remarks he made at the end of an important speech in Poland at the weekend, in which he said that Russian president Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”, which had prompted hurried efforts by other senior figures in the administration to play down the comment in the face of international criticism.

The US president, when questioned on Sunday after attending church following his return to the White House, denied that he was seeking “regime change” as a new policy.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: Don’t push us into a corner, Kremlin warns; Zelenskiy tells world leaders ‘fear makes you an accomplice’

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Billionaire lost his sight for several hours, according a source with direct knowledge of the incident; Ukraine president saying his people are ‘paying with their lives’ if sanctions don’t work

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has released its latest intelligence report, claiming there has been “no significant change” to Russian forces dispositions in Ukraine over the past 24 hours.

The report, released at 6am GMT, reads:

In the last 24 hours there has been no significant change to Russian forces’ dispositions in occupied Ukraine.

Ongoing logistical shortages have been compounded by a continued lack of momentum and morale amongst the Russian military, and aggressive fighting by the Ukrainians.

This poses a very serious risk of damaging the insulation structures built over the station’s fourth unit after its 1986 explosion.

Such damage will inevitably lead to the entry into the atmosphere of a significant amount of radioactive dust and contaminate not only Ukraine but also other European countries.”

Russian occupiers transport tens of tons of rockets, shells and mortar ammunition every day. Hundreds of tons of ammunition are being stored in the neighbouring city of Pripyat Chernobyl, which is also a short distance from the nuclear power plant.”

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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 33 of the Russian invasion

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Russia and Ukraine to hold fresh talks; Ukrainian military claims Russian troops withdrawn from around Kyiv after heavy losses

The Kremlin has said peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may get under way in Turkey on Tuesday, adding that it is important the discussions are held face-to-face despite scant progress in negotiations so far.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, used a video interview with independent Russian media outlets to signal his willingness to discuss having Ukraine adopt a “neutral status”, and also make compromises about the status of the eastern Donbas region, in order to secure a peace agreement with Russia. But he said he was not willing to discuss Ukrainian demilitarisation, and that Ukrainians would need to vote in a referendum to approve their country adopting a neutral status.

Russia’s foreign affairs minister, Sergei Lavrov, appears to have ruled out any direct meetings between Vladimir Putin and Zelenskiy, saying it would be counterproductive at this point.

The southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe and must be evacuated, its mayor has warned. Vadym Boichenko said about 160,000 civilians were trapped in the city without power.

Ukraine has no plans to open humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from besieged cities on Monday because of intelligence reports warning of possible Russian “provocations” along the routes, the deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said.

The Ukrainian military claimed in its latest operational report that Russia had withdrawn troops that were surrounding Kyiv after significant losses.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence released its latest intelligence report, claiming there had been “no significant change” to Russian forces’ dispositions in Ukraine over the past 24 hours.

The US president has denied he is calling for regime change in Russia, after saying during a visit to Poland that Putin “cannot remain in power”. When asked by a reporter if he wanted to see the Russian president removed from office, Joe Biden said “no”.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Russian investigators would look into a video circulating on social media that purported to show Ukrainian forces mistreating captured Russian soldiers. He also said Biden’s comments that Putin could not remain in power were a cause for concern.

Schools in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, will reopen today via remote learning online.

The UK government’s Cabinet Office has issued a procurement policy note for public sector organisations holding contracts with Russian or Belarusian suppliers, urging them to investigate where they can cancel contracts.

The UK education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, said he had no doubt that Russia had carried out war crimes in Ukraine.

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UK distances itself from Biden saying Putin ‘cannot remain in power’

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Nadhim Zahawi said it was for the Russian people to decide Vladimir Putin’s future

A UK cabinet minister distanced the government from Joe Biden’s call that Russia’s Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” amid criticism that the comment could bolster the Kremlin.

Though no government figure has been overtly critical of the comments – unlike the French president, Emmanuel Macron – Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, said it was “for the Russian people to decide how they are governed” after the unscripted remark from Biden at a speech in Poland on Saturday, which the White House later said was not a call for regime change.

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Biden to announce tax on billionaires in 2023 budget plan – report

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President’s ‘tax on richest 700 Americans’ may face opposition from conservative Democrats

Joe Biden is set to announce a tax aimed at US billionaires as part of his 2023 budget plans on Monday in a move that will likely delight many progressives in his party but could meet opposition from conservative Democrats who have already stymied his domestic agenda.

The Washington Post, citing five sources and an internal administration document, said the “billionaire minimum income tax” plan would establish a 20% minimum tax rate on all American households worth more than $100m.

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Biden summons history in sweeping call for renewed alliance of democracies

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President seeks to re-establish US as a leader in global affairs after years of Trump-led disengagement

In a speech in Poland on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden indicated his intent to re-position the US as a leader in global affairs after four years of disengagement during the Trump administration.

It is not a task many thought Biden would so firmly take on when he took office in 2021. Initially, Biden focused on healing domestic wounds following four chaotic years of the Trump administration and the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Vladimir Putin ‘cannot remain in power’ Joe Biden says in Warsaw speech

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US president casts Ukraine war as continuation of long struggle for democracy against Russian brute force

Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”, US president Joe Biden said in Warsaw on Saturday in a speech addressing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, a White House official said soon after the speech that Biden was not calling for regime change in Russia.

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Russia’s invasion crystallises divide between west and rest of world

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Ukraine crisis is uniting democracies in Europe and Pacific but complicating relationships with China, India and Gulf states

“Decide who you are with” Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the European council, pointing to a choice that is becoming increasingly hard to avoid, as the sheer violence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine crystallises the division of the world into two camps.

The camp that stands with Russians is becoming easier to define with every passing day of the war. The colour-coded scoreboard at the UN general assembly in recent weeks, recording the votes on resolutions deploring the attack and calling for a ceasefire, could not have been clearer.

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Joe Biden visits Poland in show of support for eastern European nations

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US president to meet Polish counterpart as tour bolstering European efforts against Russian invasion continues

Joe Biden is due to give a “significant speech” on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Saturday after arriving in Warsaw, where he will meet with the Polish president, Andrzej Duda.

Biden and Duda are expected to discuss Warsaw’s wish for more US troops bolstering Nato’s eastern flank, as well as the idea of an international peacekeeping mission proposed by the leader of Poland’s ruling party, Jarosław Kaczyński. US diplomats have voiced scepticism about the idea, which Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has criticised as “very reckless”.

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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 31 of the invasion

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Ukraine’s president again calls on Russia to negotiate while Emmanuel Macron is trying assemble a coalition to evacuate civilians from Mariupol

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, has again urged Russia to negotiate an end to war, but also asserted that Ukraine would not agree to give up any of its territory to achieve peace.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is trying to assemble an international coalition to evacuate civilians from Mariupol. Macron said France was working with Turkey and Greece on the “humanitarian operation … I will have a new discussion with President Vladimir Putin within the next 48 to 72 hours to work out the details and secure the modalities,” he said.

The US president, Joe Biden, has visited the Polish town of Rzeszów, about an hour’s drive from the Ukrainian border, in a show of support for eastern European states that are seeing Russian aggression wreak havoc in their neighbourhood.

Authorities in Mariupol have said as many as 300 people were killed in a Russian bombing of a theatre last week, putting a death toll for the first time on the deadliest single attack since Moscow launched its invasion.

Western officials have said they believe a Russian commander was run over by mutinous forces during the fighting in Ukraine, in a sign of what they described as the “morale challenges” faced by the invading forces.

Vladimir Putin has accused the west of discriminating against Russian culture, comparing the treatment of Russian cultural figures to that of the “cancelled” Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

The Russian president on Friday signed into law a bill introducing jail terms of up to 15 years for publishing what the Kremlin deems “fake” information about any of Russia’s actions abroad.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday that the first phase of its military operation was “generally” complete, and it would focus on the “liberation” of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. US officials were cautious about whether this meant the Kremlin was scaling back its overall objectives amid a haphazard war campaign.

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Biden in Poland for meetings on Ukraine refugee crisis – US politics as it happened

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Joe Manchin is back in the headlines with an apparent offer to revive Democrats’ climate and social spending plans – aims he had a lot to do with thwarting in December.

The Washington Post cites two sources in saying the West Virginia senator, who holds outsized power as a centrist swing vote in the 50-50 chamber, “wants the bill to take an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to energy policy … and that it’s still possible to reach a deal that includes billions of dollars’ worth of provisions to tackle climate change, cut prescription drug costs and update the tax code.

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US plan to provide 15bn cubic meters of natural gas to EU alarms climate groups

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The deal is intended to decrease reliance on Russia but will entrench reliance on fossil fuels, environmentalists say

A major deal that will see the US ramp up its supply of gas to Europe in an attempt to shift away from Russian fossil fuel imports risks “disaster” for the climate crisis, environmental groups have warned.

Under the agreement, unveiled on Friday, the US will provide an extra 15bn cubic meters of liquified natural gas (LNG) to the European Union this year. This represents about a tenth of the gas the EU now gets from Russia, which provides 40% of the bloc’s total gas supply.

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UK sanctions 65 more individuals and entities – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, for the latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war, visit our new live blog

Russia is running out of precision guided munitions and it is more likely to rely on so-called dumb bombs and artillery, a senior Pentagon official said on Thursday, Reuters reports.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl speculated that he did not believe President Vladimir Putin wanted to have an all out conflict with Nato.

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Mitch McConnell says he will not support Ketanji Brown Jackson nomination – as it happened

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The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the new sanctions on members of the Russian Duma would punish lawmakers who have “supported the Kremlin’s violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

“President Putin’s war continues to inflict horror and widespread suffering on the people of Ukraine,” Blinken said in a statement.

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Joe Biden arrives in Europe in effort to keep pressure on Russia

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US president will take part in an emergency Nato summit, G7 summit and European Council meeting

Joe Biden has arrived in Europe for a four-day trip with the aim of keeping up pressure on Russia in the face of sanctions fatigue and splits over energy sanctions among US allies.

It will also, to some extent, be a lap of honour for the US president’s success so far in keeping allies and partners together in confronting Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Madeleine Albright, first female US secretary of state, dies at 84 – as it happened

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In a sign of life slowly returning to normal, public tours of the US Capitol will resume on Monday in a limited capacity for the first time since March 2020, when the building closed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

We are pleased to announce that on Monday, March 28, 2022, public tours of the Capitol will resume with a limited number of member-led, staff-led tours, and school groups,” sergeant-at-arms William Walker and attending physician Brian Monahan wrote in a memo to lawmakers and Capitol staff.

“Since March 2020, the US Capitol, and the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC) has been closed to tours. The decision to reinstate limited tours has been made in coordination with Congressional Leadership, the US Capitol Police Board, the Attending Physician, Capitol Visitor Services, and the US Capitol Police. We appreciate your continued patience and cooperation as we work together to resume public tours of the Capitol for the American people in a way that protects the health and safety of visitors and institutional staff alike.”

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Russia-Ukraine war latest news: Nato puts Russian death toll ‘as high as 15,000’, as US says occupiers on the defensive outside Kyiv – live

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Latest updates: death told could be as high as entire 1o-year Afghanistan campaign of 1980s; while the US says Ukraine has pushed Russian forces outside of Kyiv back

Russian troops continue to advance on key cities across Ukraine.

The latest conviction of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Tuesday reflects the Russian government’s intensified crackdown on dissent and free expression, Human Rights Watch has said.

This verdict is apparently intended not only to silence Navalny but to serve as a warning to Russian civil society and anyone who dares to stand up to the Kremlin’s policies.”

The cases against Navalny are part of the Kremlin’s grim landscape of repression against Russia’s civil society and peaceful dissent, which has drastically intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin seems determined to isolate Russian society from the outside world to cut Russians off from uncomfortable facts, including about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So it’s hardly surprising that Russian authorities are doubling down on smearing and silencing Navalny and others who can tell people not to believe the Kremlin’s lies and that the world is watching.”

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Ketanji Brown Jackson says Roe v Wade ‘the settled law of the supreme court’ – as it happened

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Asked about her views of the second amendment’s right to bear arms, Jackson said that the supreme court had already established it as a “fundamental right.”

“There is precedent in the supreme court related to various rights that the court has recognized as fundamental,” she told Grassley. She added: “The court has said that the 14th amendment substantive due process clause does support some fundamental rights, but only things that are implicit in the ordered concept of liberty or deeply rooted in the history and traditions of this country, the kinds of rights that relate to personal individual autonomy.”

In that speech, I talked about my my parents growing up in Florida, attended and had to attend racially-segregated schools because by law when they were young, white children and black children were not allowed to go to school together.

And my reality, when I was born in 1970 and went to school in Miami, Florida was completely different. I went to a diverse public junior high school, high school elementary school. And the fact that we had come that far was to me a testament to the hope and the promise of this country, the greatness of America that in one generation – one generation – we could go from racially-segregated schools in Florida to have me sitting here as the first Floridian ever to be nominated to the supreme court of the United States. So yes, senator, that is my belief.

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