Biden hails ‘most significant legislation to tackle climate crisis’ after Manchin says yes – as it happened

We’re closing the politics blog now on a rollercoaster Thursday for President Joe Biden. The day began with depressing economic news that the US was technically in a recession, but was brightened considerably by a bipartisan vote in the House that sends the $280bn Chips Act to his desk.

And then there was the unexpected development that Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, blamed for single handedly blocking the majority of Biden’s first term agenda on the climate emergency and the economy, had reversed his position.

The Inflation Reduction Act Manchin negotiated with Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is, Biden said, “the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis.”

Thanks for joining us today. Before you go, please have a read of my colleague David Smith’s report on the reconciliation bill here.

Here’s what else we followed today:

• Former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin has spoken with the House panel investigating Donald Trump’s January 6 insurrection, and the committee is negotiating to obtain testimony from other members of the former president’s cabinet, the Associated Press reported.
• Politico reported that the House panel and the justice department’s criminal inquiry had struck an testimony-sharing deal on witness transcripts and other evidence. The report came as Trump’s former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney spoke with the panel virtually.
• Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping spoke for more than two hours by phone, in what was reported to have been a sometimes testy conversation including a discussion of Nancy Pelosi’s controversial upcoming trip to Taiwan.
• At least 43 abortion clinics in 11 states have closed since the supreme court eliminated federal protections for the procedure last month, and seven states no longer have any providers, a study published Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute revealed. Prior to the ruling ending Roe v Wade protections, the 11 states had a total of 71 clinics providing abortion care, the report says.
• The Miami Herald reported that a state operation touted last month by Republican governor Ron DeSantis as a successful law enforcement action to “keep illegals out of Florida” ended up arresting mostly legal residents. Of 22 arrests in a three-day sweep from 7 to 9 June, the “vast majority” were not related to immigration, the Herald said.

While chief of staff to Donald Trump, the retired general John Kelly “shoved” Ivanka Trump in a White House hallway, Jared Kushner writes in his forthcoming memoir.

The detail from Breaking History, which will be published in August, was reported by the Washington Post.

Kushner, the Post said, writes that he and his wife saw Kelly as “consistently duplicitous”.

“One day he had just marched out of a contentious meeting in the Oval Office. Ivanka was walking down the main hallway in the West Wing when she passed him. Unaware of his heated state of mind, she said, ‘Hello, chief.’ Kelly shoved her out of the way and stormed by. She wasn’t hurt, and didn’t make a big deal about the altercation, but in his rage Kelly had shown his true character.”

Kushner writes that Kelly offered a “meek” apology about an hour later.

Kelly told the Post: “I don’t recall anything like you describe. It is inconceivable that I would EVER shove a woman. Inconceivable. Never happen. Would never intentionally do something like that. Also, don’t remember ever apologising to her for something I didn’t do. I’d remember that.”

A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump said her husband’s description was accurate, the Post said.

The Post also said Kushner writes that Kelly gave his wife “compliments to her face that she knew were insincere.

“Then the four-star general would call her staff to his office and berate and intimidate them over trivial procedural issues that his rigid system often created. He would frequently refer to her initiatives like paid family leave and the child tax credit as ‘Ivanka’s pet projects.’”

Read the full story:

Barack Obama’s presidential portrait will be unveiled at the White House in a September ceremony hosted by his former vice-president Joe Biden, the Associated Press reports.

Portraits of the former president and first lady Michelle Obama will be presented in the East Room on 7 September, according to Obama’s office.

It will mark the first time the former first lady has returned to the White House since her husband left office in January 2017. Barack Obama went back in April to mark the 12th anniversary of his signature health care law.

The House of Representative has delivered a big win for Joe Biden, passing the $280bn Chips and Science Act that includes $52bn to boost the production of semiconductors.

The bill cleared the Senate 64-33 in a bipartisan vote yesterday, the president urging the House to get the bill to his desk as soon as possible to help ease a shortage in semiconductors he said is holding back US defense, healthcare and vehicle manufacturing industries.

Biden received the news of the bill’s House passage, 243-187 in a strong bipartisan vote, during a virtual round table with business leaders at the White House this afternoon.

Biden earlier highlighted the Chips Act as a central plank of his agenda to boost American industry, as he also hailed the newly announced $739bn Inflation Reduction Act.

In a statement, the president said the Chips Act “will make cars cheaper, appliances cheaper, and computers cheaper. It will lower the costs of every day goods. And, it will create high-paying manufacturing jobs across the country and strengthen US leadership in the industries of the future at the same time.”

Republicans had threatened to whip members against voting for the Chips Act after they were angered by last night’s announcement of the reconciliation bill, brokered in a deal between Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and previously reluctant West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.

Read my colleague David Smith’s report on the proposed new legislation here:

It’s a double helping of Joe Biden today, the president just delivering remarks on the economy at an afternoon White House roundtable of business leaders.

Once again, the president is downplaying the suggestion, bolstered by this morning’s dismal GDP figures, that the US is in a recession:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}There’ll be a lot of chatter today on Wall Street and among pundits about whether we are in a recession. But if you’re looking at our job market, consumer spending business investment, we see signs of economic progress in the second quarter as well.

And yesterday, Fed chairman [Jerome] Powell made it clear that he doesn’t think the US economy is currently in a recession. He said, quote, there are too many areas of economics where the economy is performing too well.

For the second time today, following his address earlier this afternoon on the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden listed positive factors, including job creation, low unemployment and foreign investment in US industry.

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I applaud by the bipartisan effort to get the Chips Act to my desk, which would advance our nation’s competitiveness and technological edge by boosting our domestic semiconductor production and manufacturing.

Another thing Congress should do is to pass the Inflation Reduction Act to lower prescription drug costs, reduce the deficit, help ease inflationary pressures and ensure 13m Americans can continue to save an average of $800 per year on health care premiums.

Both of these bills are going to help the economy continue to grow, bring down inflation and make sure we aren’t giving up on all the significant progress we made in the last year.

Former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin has spoken with the House panel investigating Donald Trump’s January 6 insurrection, and the committee is negotiating to obtain testimony from other members of the former president’s cabinet, the Associated Press reports.

The panel is looking into the days following the deadly Capitol riot and discussions between senior officials over whether to try to remove the then-president from office.

The negotiations come as the committee was interviewing Trump’s former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, on Thursday. The former South Carolina congressman was special envoy for Northern Ireland on January 6 2022, a post he resigned immediately after the riot.

The AP says Mnuchin’s interview, and the negotiations with others, were confirmed by three people familiar with the committee’s work, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The agency says the committee asked Mnuchin about discussions among cabinet secretaries to possibly invoke the constitutional process in the 25th Amendment to remove Trump after the attack on the Capitol, according to one of the people, and is in talks to interview former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

The panel has already interviewed former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, former labor secretary Eugene Scalia and former acting defense secretary Christopher Miller as it focuses on Trump and what he was doing in the days before, during and after the riot.

We’ve written plenty about the Inflation Reduction Act today, and heard that Joe Biden believes it’s “the most significant bill to tackle the climate crisis in history”.

So what’s actually in it?

My colleague Oliver Milman has this handy explainer to what made it into the package. And what didn’t:

We now have the White House readout of Joe Biden’s two hour conversation with China’s President Xi Jinping this morning:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The call was a part of the Biden administration’s efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication between the US and PRC [People’s Republic of China] and responsibly manage our differences and work together where our interests align.

The two presidents discussed a range of issues important to the bilateral relationship and other regional and global issues, and tasked their teams to continue following up on today’s conversation, in particular to address climate change and health security.

It seems they also touched on Nancy Pelosi’s controversial upcoming trip to Taiwan, which has angered Chinese leaders. The White House readout said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}On Taiwan, President Biden underscored that the United States policy has not changed and that the United States strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

The Chinese take, according to the Associated Press, was equally defiant.

The news agency quoted an account of the call by China’s ministry of foreign affairs.

“Those who play with fire will perish by it. It is hoped that the US will be clear-eyed about this,” it said.

“President Xi underscored that to approach and define China-US relations in terms of strategic competition and view China as the primary rival and the most serious long-term challenge would be misperceiving China-US relations and misreading China’s development, and would mislead the people of the two countries and the international community.”

At least 43 abortion clinics in 11 states have closed since the supreme court eliminated federal protections for the procedure last month, and seven states no longer have any providers, a study published Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute has found.

Prior to the ruling ending Roe v Wade protections on 24 June, the 11 states had a total of 71 clinics providing abortion care, the report says.

As of 24 July, there were only 28 clinics still offering abortions, all located in the four states with six-week bans. Across these 11 states, the number of clinics offering abortions dropped by 43 in just one month.

The seven states no longer offering any abortion provision are Alabama (previously 5 clinics), Arkansas (2), Mississippi (1), Missouri (1), Oklahoma (5), South Dakota (1) and Texas (23 ).

“Obtaining an abortion was already difficult in many states even before the supreme court overturned Roe,” Rachel Jones, Guttmacher’s principal research scientist, said.

“These clinic closures resulting from state-level bans will further deepen inequities in access to care based on race, gender, income, age or immigration status since long travel distances to reach a clinic in another state will be a barrier for many people.”

Joe Biden thanked Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, for their “extraordinary effort” in negotiating the reconciliation bill.

It had looked like Manchin had killed hope of any of the president’s signature policy goals on the climate emergency or the economy passing when he withdrew from talks on Build Back Better earlier this year.

The West Virginia senator, however, insisted earlier today he “never walked away” and was always open to renewed discussions, on parts of the package at least, which were finally concluded on Wednesday after weeks of secret meetings with Schumer and his staff.

Biden said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I know can sometimes seem like nothing gets done in Washington. I know it never crossed any of your minds. But the work of the government can be slow and frustrating and sometimes even infuriating.

Then the hard work of hours and days and months from people who refuse to give up pays off.

History has been made. Lives have changed with this legislation. We’re facing up to some of our biggest problems. And we’re taking a giant step forward as a nation.

Biden closed his address with remarks on data that came out this morning showing the economy had shrunk for a second successive quarter, and that the US was technically in a recession.

He listed low unemployment, overseas investment in US manufacturing and yesterday’s passing by the Senate of the Chips Act boosting semiconductor production among a number of reasons why he believes the US economy is strong.

“That doesn’t sound like a recession to me,” Biden said.

Joe Biden hailed the Inflation Reduction Act as “the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis” in a White House address welcoming the wide-ranging legislative package.

The president outlined the benefits to Americans during his remarks, which followed the surprise announcement of a deal last night between Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and holdout West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This bill will be the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis and improve our energy security right away, and give us a tool to meet the climate goals… we’ve agreed to by cutting emissions and accelerating clean energy. It’s a huge step forward.

This bill will reduce inflationary pressures on the economy. It will cut your cost of living and reduce inflation, it lowers the deficit and strengthens our economy for the long run as well.

This bill has won the support of climate leaders like former vice-president Al Gore, who said the bill is, quote, long overdue and a necessary step to ensure the United States takes decisive action on the climate crisis that helps our economy and provides leadership for the world.

Climate activists have broadly welcomed the bill which, if passed by Congress, would give Biden a massive victory ahead of November’s midterms. Inflation at 40-year highs and soaring prices in supermarkets and at gas pumps have contributed to the president’s low approval ratings.

It also follows months of stalling on Biden’s agenda, specifically by Manchin, who didn’t like the cost of $1.8tn Build Back Better spending package featuring measures like extended child tax credit.

Biden acknowledged:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This bill is far from perfect. I know the bill doesn’t include everything that I’ve been pushing for since I got to office. For example, I’m going to keep fighting to bring down the cost of things for working families and middle class families by providing for things like affordable childcare, affordable elder care, the cost of preschool, housing, helping students with the cost of college, closing the health care coverage gap…

My message to Congress is this. This is the strongest bill you can pass to lower inflation, cut the deficit, reduce health care costs, tackle the climate crisis and promote energy security, all the time while reducing the burdens facing working class and middle class families.

So pass it. Pass it for the American people. Pass it for America.

Joe Biden is about to deliver a hastily arranged address about the Inflation Reduction Act, the White House says.

You can watch the president’s remarks here.