Joe Biden will use his visit to Europe this week to “rally the world’s democracies” in a reset of US foreign policy after four turbulent years under Donald Trump – all while threats to American democracy, stoked by Trump, proliferate at home.
Related: After Trump: Biden set to outline US policy to Johnson, Putin and more
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That’s all from me today. Here’s a rundown of the day’s biggest stories:
At least 10 US states have siphoned millions of dollars from federal block grants, meant to provide aid to their neediest families, to pay for the operations of ideological anti-abortion clinics.
These overwhelmingly Republican-led states used money from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (Tanf), better known as welfare or direct cash aid, to fund the activities of anti-abortion clinics associated with the evangelical right. The clinics work to dissuade women from obtaining abortions.
Continue reading...First 25m doses will be disbursed across Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa
Joe Biden has outlined how the US plans to share 80m Covid-19 vaccine doses with other countries, saying the first 25m doses will be disbursed across Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.
After months of mounting pressure from the international community, the Biden administration said last month that it intended to send the 80m doses of US-approved coronavirus vaccines overseas by the end of June, but did not outline which continents or countries would benefit until now.
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Jen Psaki said she did not consider Monday to be the deadline for reaching a bipartisan deal on an infrastructure bill.
The White House press secretary said Joe Biden will “continue to have conversations with Democrats and Republicans about what the path forward may look like”.
As Jen Psaki briefs the press, Joe and Jill Biden are enjoying a bike ride in Rehoboth Beach, where they are celebrating the first lady’s 70th birthday.
The president gave a wave to reporters as he rode past them:
President Biden and @FLOTUS bike along a trail in Rehoboth Beach to celebrate her birthday pic.twitter.com/wpm33Y0JIY
Continue reading...EU directive on Joe Biden’s proposal for 15% tax rate on multinationals would require unanimous support
Cyprus could veto the EU’s adoption of Joe Biden’s proposal of a global minimum corporate tax rate, the country’s finance minister has suggested.
A White House proposal of a 15% tax rate for multinationals applied to profits in all jurisdictions is expected to be endorsed in principle by finance ministers of the world’s seven largest economies, the G7, at an upcoming meeting in Cornwall.
Continue reading...President dangles promise of a ‘summer of freedom’ to reluctant Americans and lays out plan to achieve Fourth of July target
Joe Biden has announced a national “month of action” to try to get at least 70% of Americans vaccinated against coronavirus before the Fourth of July holiday.
Touting the progress already made, and dangling the promise of a “summer of freedom” from Covid-19 to those reluctant to get a shot, the US president urged citizens, especially those under 40, to play a role in the “wartime effort” to defeat the virus.
Continue reading...Joe Biden has announced a national “month of action” to try to get at least 70% of Americans vaccinated against coronavirus before the Fourth of July holiday.
The president said the vaccines would allow the public to enjoy "a summer of freedom" where they could safely gather with loved ones without fear of the virus
Joe Biden on Tuesday became the first sitting US president to visit the site in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where hundreds of Black Americans were massacred by a white mob in 1921, as he marked the country’s legacy of racial violence.
Biden oversaw a moment of silence for the victims after meeting with three people who lived in the district during the massacre: Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis and Lessie Benningfield Randle.
Now between the ages of 101 and 107, the survivors who met Biden asked Congress for ‘justice’ this year and are parties to a lawsuit against state and local officials seeking several remedies for the massacre, including a victim compensation fund
EU forecast to reap extra €50bn per year with UK expected to gain €200m from BP alone
A proposal to be tabled by the US president, Joe Biden, at the upcoming G7 meeting for a 15% global corporate tax rate could reap the EU €50bn (£43bn) a year, and earn the UK nearly €200m extra alone from the British multinational BP, according to research.
Should the tax rate be set higher at 25%, the lowest current rate within the seven largest world economies, the EU would earn nearly €170bn extra a year – more than 50% of current corporate tax revenue and 12% of total health spending in the bloc.
Continue reading...Joe Biden warned in a speech commemorating the US's war dead on Memorial Day that American democracy was 'in peril' and called for empathy among his fellow citizens.
Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, the president, joined by the first lady, Jill Biden, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband, paid tribute to America’s war dead
Continue reading...Talks continue on a compromise over infrastructure but GOP intransigeance on a Capitol riot commission does not bode well
It’s become a familiar process in the Joe Biden era.
Biden and Democrats say they will work with Republicans. Republicans say they want a seat at the negotiating table. Then the prospect of Democrats going alone begins to hover over the negotiations.
Continue reading...President’s budget proposal seeks to end Hyde amendment that limits insurance coverage of terminations for nearly 8m women
For the first time in nearly 30 years, a US president has released a budget that doesn’t ban federal funding for abortion.
On Friday, Joe Biden released his full budget proposal for fiscal year 2022, and in keeping with his campaign promise on abortion access, Biden did not include the Hyde amendment, an annual budget rider that bans federal Medicaid money from being used for almost all abortions. (There are exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or that would threaten the pregnant person’s life.)
Continue reading...Analysis: one of America’s two major parties now falls outside the democratic mainstream but are Democrats taking the existential threat seriously?
The question now is not so much whether the Republican party can be saved any time in the foreseeable future. It is what Joe Biden and the Democrats should do when faced with a party determined to subvert democracy through any means necessary, including violence.
On Friday Republicans in the Senate torpedoed an effort to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the deadly insurrection by Donald Trump’s supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January, deploying the procedural move known as the filibuster to stop it even being debated.
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Democratic Senator Bob Casey signaled this morning that it may be time to move on from negotiating with Republicans and instead pass an infrastructure bill using reconciliation, allowing Democrats to circumvent the Senate filibuster.
Asked whether it was time to focus on setting up a reconciliation pathway for the infrastructure bill, Casey told CNN anchor Jim Sciutto, “I think we’re getting to that point, Jim. It’s an old expression, fish or cut bait.”
Me: “IS IT TIME TO MOVE ON TO RECONCILIATION (on infrastructure)?”@SenBobCasey: “I THINK WE'RE GETTING TO THAT POINT, JIM. IT'S AN OLD EXPRESSION, FISH OR CUT BAIT” pic.twitter.com/T0HLUKygrL
The Guardian’s Sam Levine and Daniel Strauss report:
After six months of aggressive Republican efforts to restrict voting access, Democrats are facing new questions about how they will actually pass voting rights reforms through Congress.
Related: ‘A ticking timebomb’: Democrats’ push for voting rights law faces tortuous path
Continue reading...To China’s fury, Joe Biden has ordered a review of rival theories about lab leaks and animal hosts
President Joe Biden has ordered US intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day review of what is known about the origins of Covid-19 and whether it could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. So what does this mean for the lab leak theory?
Continue reading...Parents of Raman Pratasevich fear for his life, as mother of girlfriend Sofia Sapega says she was not involved in politics
The parents of Raman Pratasevich have pleaded for international help to free the Belarusian journalist as US president Joe Biden said sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko’s regime were “in play”, without revealing further details.
From their new home in Poland, Natalia Pratasevich, the blogger’s mother, told Agence France-Presse: “I’m asking, I’m begging, I’m calling on the whole international community to save him.
Continue reading...Floyd’s brother describes Biden as a ‘genuine guy’ but urged him to pass a law ‘to protect people of color’ at White House meeting
“Say his name,” said seven-year-old Gianna Floyd. In bright sunshine outside the west wing of the White House, family members and lawyers raised their fists and said her father’s name in chorus: “George Floyd!”
They were marking exactly one year since the police murder of Floyd, an African American man, in Minneapolis shook America with months of nationwide protests against racial injustice and demands for police reform.
Continue reading...The family of George Floyd spoke to reporters after meeting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Tuesday to commemorate the anniversary of his murder. They addressed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which they called for Congress to pass. Philonise Floyd said: ‘If you can make federal laws to protect the [national] bird, which is the bald eagle, you can make federal laws to protect people of colour’
With the Tokyo Olympics just weeks away, the US State Department has issued a “Level 4” warning against traveling to Japan, that’s now struggling through another surge in Covid cases.
A new wrinkle two months before Olympics. US State Department advises travelers not to visit Japan. https://t.co/Hrnfkwzayz
A Tokyo medical organization has joined calls to cancel Japan’s Olympic games this summer, citing a surge in #COVID19 cases in the country.
“Japan will bear the maximum responsibility” for deaths caused by the games, it said.
Just 3.5% of people in Japan have been vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/TGZBVRZXmy
The Trump Administration, which forced families to separate at the border, also made migrant parents leave without their children according to a new Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report.
The agency watchdog found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) knowingly deported parents who had asked to be allowed to take their children back, the Associated Press reports.
That contradicted assertions by senior DHS officials that parents were choosing to leave their children in the U.S. to stay with family or for other reasons while they were deported in 2017 and 2018 as the administration sought to enforce a hard-line approach to immigration enforcement.
The findings, issued by Trump-appointed Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, provide new insight into a policy that became a significant political crisis for the previous administration and a continuing challenge for the current one, which is working to reunite children who remain separated even now.
Continue reading...Joe Biden’s administration increases pressure on government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed to end human rights abuses
Senior Ethiopian officials may face restrictions on their travel to the US, as Washington increases pressure on the government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed amid growing global concern about atrocities and famine caused by conflict in the northern region of Tigray.
Though visa restrictions are likely to target only a small number of individuals, the move signals President Joe Biden’s administration is shifting to a more direct strategy to force Ahmed to end continuing human rights abuses in Tigray and allow free flow of much-needed humanitarian aid.
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