Category Archives: Biden administration

Biden wary of history repeating as he braves Republican criticism of Iran swap

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The failure to free US hostages seized at the US embassy in Tehran over 40 years ago consigned one Democratic president to a single term

For all the widespread fear of a second Donald Trump presidency, the Biden White House could be forgiven for being more preoccupied by the spectre of Jimmy Carter and the baleful images of his last year in office.

Carter was the last Democratic president to serve only a first term, brought low by the searing drama of the Tehran embassy siege, when Iranian revolutionaries had overrun the US diplomatic compound and held 52 American personnel captive for more than a year, heaping international humiliation on a military superpower when the cold war was still at its height.

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US and Iran expected to complete $6bn prisoner swap deal

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Conservationist Morad Tahbaz among prisoners to be swapped in deal involving unfreezing of Iranian oil money

The US and Iran are expected to pull off a controversial prisoner swap on Monday involving the unfreezing by the Biden administration of $6bn (£4.8bn) of Iranian oil money held in South Korea since 2018.

Tehran and Washington are due to swap five prisoners each, including the conservationist Morad Tahbaz, a British-American citizen.

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Auto workers strike after contract talks with US car giants fail

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United Auto Workers union unable to agree deal with Ford, GM and Stellantis, who have seen profits and executive pay soar

Auto workers have launched a series of strikes after their union failed to reach agreement with the US’s three largest manufacturers over a new contract, kicking off the most ambitious industrial labor action in decades.

The deadline for talks between Ford, General Motors, Stellantis and the United Auto Workers (UAW) expired at midnight on Thursday, with the sides still far apart on the union’s new contract priorities.

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US federal judge rules revised Daca policy illegal and halts new applications

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District judge Andrew Hanen’s ruling expected to be appealed, leaving supreme court to rule on program’s fate for the third time

A federal judge on Wednesday declared illegal a revised version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the US as children.

US district judge Andrew Hanen agreed with Texas and eight other states suing to stop the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program. The judge’s ruling was ultimately expected to be appealed to the US supreme court, sending the program’s fate before the high court for a third time.

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Biden renews effort to woo India’s Modi in talks before G20 summit

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Meeting in Delhi overshadowed by press freedom questions as US journalists kept away

Joe Biden took fresh steps on Friday to lure India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, into an alliance designed to contain China, at a bilateral meeting in Delhi where the pair struck a series of commercial and defence deals covering remote-controlled aircraft, semiconductors and quantum computing.

However, the question of press freedom also dominated the agenda on the eve of the full G20 summit as journalists were blocked from covering the event. Before the bilateral at the prime minister’s residence, the US press corps, used to being given privileged access to the president, were told to remain outside in a van, out of eyesight of the two leaders.

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Biden privately admitted feeling ‘tired’ amid concerns about his age, book says

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Franklin Foer, author of The Last Politician, also says experience and calming presence make US president ‘a man for his age’

Amid relentless debate about whether at 80 Joe Biden is too old to be president or to complete an effective second term, an eagerly awaited book on his time in the White House reports that Biden has privately admitted to feeling “tired”, even as it describes his vast political experience as a vital asset.

“His advanced years were a hindrance, depriving him of the energy to cast a robust public presence or the ability to easily conjure a name,” Franklin Foer writes in The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband criticises US-Iran prisoners release deal

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Two US residents, one of whom is on death row, are being unfairly excluded, says Richard Ratcliffe

Two US residents, one in fear of execution, are being unfairly excluded from an imminent deal between US-Iran to release prisoners, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has claimed.

Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife was freed after five years in a Tehran prison
in 2022, said there was no legal reason why the two residents were not included in a deal to release five US citizens in return for the unfreezing of $6bn (£4.8bn) of Iranian assets in South Korea. It is also expected that four Iranians will be released from US jails.

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Biden launches ‘most affordable ever’ student loan repayment plan

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Announcement comes two months after supreme court struck down Biden’s original debt forgiveness plan

Federal student loan borrowers can expect “the most affordable student loan plan ever”, Biden said in a video address on Tuesday announcing significant changes to the debt from higher education held by over an eighth of the country.

The announcement comes nearly two months after the US supreme court struck down Biden’s original student debt forgiveness plan that would have forgiven $20,000 of federal student debt for borrowers who were Pell grant recipients and up to $10,000 of debt for other borrowers.

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Joe Biden says US, Japan and South Korea ‘doubling down’ on joint defense against security threats – as it happened

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US president, Yoon Suk Yeol and Fumio Kishida meet as they agree to take trilateral defence cooperation to ‘unprecedented levels’

A standalone summit bringing together the leaders of Japan and South Korea would have been almost unthinkable just over a year ago, when the north-east Asian neighbours were embroiled in disputes over their bitter wartime legacy.

Bilateral ties were at a low point before the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, took office in May 2022, due to compensation claims by Koreans over Japan’s use of forced labour during its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, and the longstanding controversy over Korean women who were coerced into working in Japanese military brothels.

It is a historic event, and it sets the conditions for a more peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific, and a stronger and more secure United States of America.

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US ‘concerned’ over reports of Russia-North Korea nuclear cooperation

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National security adviser Jake Sullivan makes comments as US, Japan and South Korea agree to new security pledge

The United States is “concerned” about the national security implications of North Korea and Russia reportedly cooperating on nuclear missile technology, the Biden administration said, as the US welcomed the leaders of Japan and South Korea to Camp David on Friday for an unprecedented trilateral summit.

The US, Japan and South Korea agreed to a new security pledge committing the three countries to consult with each other in the event of a security crisis or threat in the Pacific, according to the Biden administration.

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Experts fear US carbon capture plan is ‘fig leaf’ to protect fossil fuel industry

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Critics concerned energy department decision on fledgling technology will undermine efforts to phase out fossil fuels

The US energy department has announced it is awarding up to $1.2bn to two projects to directly remove carbon dioxide from the air, a fledgling technology that some climate experts worry will distract and undermine efforts to phase out fossil fuels.

The process, known as direct air capture, does not yet exist on a meaningful scale, and the move was being seen as the US government taking a big bet coming after July was confirmed as the hottest month ever recorded on its surface.

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White House asks Congress for additional $24bn in Ukraine aid

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US has so far given Ukraine more than $113bn in aid since Russia invaded in February 2021

The White House is asking Congress for an additional $24bn in Ukraine aid “and other international needs” such as countering China, including $13.1bn for defense, senior administration officials revealed on Thursday.

The US has so far given Ukraine more than $113bn in aid since Russia invaded in February 2021. The extra funds for defense would push the total amount of US military aid to Ukraine to around $60bn. The US is still Ukraine’s biggest funder in its defense against Russia.

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Biden bans range of US high tech investments in China citing national security risk

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The order – to be implemented next year – restricts investments in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum tech and AI

Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order that will narrowly prohibit certain US investments in sensitive technology in China and require government notification of funding in other tech sectors.

The long-awaited order authorises the US treasury secretary to prohibit or restrict certain US investments in Chinese entities in three sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and certain artificial intelligence systems.

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‘Cop City’: civil rights groups urge US to investigate surveillance of protesters

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ACLU and NAACP among organizations condemning homeland security department over ‘domestic violent extremist’ label

Prominent civil rights and civil liberties organizations have called on the US homeland security department to investigate the agency’s intelligence-gathering on protesters against ‘Cop City’, the police and fire department training center planned for a forest south-east of Atlanta.

The organizations draw attention to the dozens of environmental protesters arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in a letter to the department director, Alejandro Mayorkas. The charges have caused outrage among many observers who accuse Georgia law enforcement of a heavy-handed crackdown on the protest movement.

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Surprise US credit rating downgrade draws White House ire

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Fitch changed the country’s rating from AAA to AA+, citing fiscal deterioration and down-to-the wire debt ceiling negotiations

Rating agency Fitch downgraded the US government’s top credit rating on Tuesday, a move that drew an angry response from the White House and surprised investors.

Fitch downgraded the United States to AA+ from AAA, citing fiscal deterioration over the next three years and repeated down-the-wire debt ceiling negotiations that threaten the government’s ability to pay its bills. It is the second major rating agency after Standard & Poor’s to strip the US of its triple-A rating.

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‘Not acceptable’: Texas lawmaker speaks on reports of inhumane border tactics

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Tony Gonzales said governor Greg Abbott is ‘doing everything he can’ at the US-Mexico border despite justice department backlash

A Texas Republican representative, Tony Gonzales, has called the current tactics used to deter migrants at the US-Mexico border “not acceptable” and urged the Biden administration and Congress to focus more heavily on legal immigration.

In an interview with CBS’s Face The Nation on Sunday, Gonzales, whose 23rd district in Texas includes 800 miles of the US-Mexico border, said that the border crisis “has been anything but humane” and called recent reports of Texas troopers allegedly pushing small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande “not acceptable”.

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UK will not supply cluster munitions to Ukraine, says Sunak

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Prime minister rules out following controversial US move but says he will urge allies to increase other aid

Rishi Sunak has ruled out supplying Ukraine with cluster bombs, saying the UK will not follow the Biden administration’s controversial move and will instead press countries to boost their aid to Kyiv “in other ways”.

On Friday, Joe Biden defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to send widely banned cluster munitions to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government. Human rights groups criticised the White House and there was unease among some Democrats, with one calling it “unnecessary and a terrible mistake”.

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Biden says sending cluster bombs to Ukraine was ‘difficult decision’ – as it happened

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President tells CNN he took the recommendation for controversial weapons because Ukraine is ‘running out of ammunition’

The US added 209,000 new jobs in June as hiring slowed amid signs that the economy is cooling.

The rise was the weakest gain since December 2020, lower than the 240,000 jobs economists had expected and lower than the 309,000 jobs added in May. But the increase was also the 30th consecutive month of jobs gains, and the unemployment rate ticked down to the historically low rate of 3.6%.

This alarming development requires the Committee to assess White House security practices and determine whose failures led to an evacuation of the building and finding of the illegal substance.

The presence of illegal drugs in the White House is unacceptable and a shameful moment in the White House’s history.

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Secret US-Russia talks over Ukraine ‘not sanctioned by Biden administration’

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Washington denies authorising former officials’ meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov

Joe Biden’s administration did not sanction or support secret meetings that former top US national security officials held with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and other Russians on potential talks to end the Ukraine war, the White House and state department have said.

America’s NBC News network reported that the former officials met Lavrov in New York in April, joined by Richard Haass, a former US diplomat and outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank in Washington, and two former White House aides, Charles Kupchan and Thomas Graham.

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The US banned a brain harming pesticide on food. Why has it slowed a global ban?

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Farmers can’t use chlorpyrifos on food because it damages children’s brains but an EPA official questions restrictions under global treaty

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden announced that his administration planned to scrutinize a Trump-era decision to allow the continued use of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that can damage children’s brains. And with great fanfare, the Environmental Protection Agency went on to ban the use of the chemical on food.

“Ending the use of chlorpyrifos on food will help to ensure children, farmworkers, and all people are protected from the potentially dangerous consequences of this pesticide,” the head of the EPA, Michael Regan, said in his announcement of the decision in August 2021. “EPA will follow the science and put health and safety first.”

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