Biden tells Buffalo shooting mourners: ‘Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail’ – as it happened

We’re closing our live blog now, but it’s far from the end of our political coverage for the day. It’s primary day in several states, with prominent Republican Senate and governor candidates in Pennsylvania notably going head to head.

Please watch for my colleague Lauren Gambino’s coverage later, including TV doctor Mehmet Oz’s bid to advance his chase for a Senate seat and North Carolina extremist Madison Cawthorn’s efforts to hold on to his in the House of Representatives.

The day was otherwise dominated by Joe Biden’s visit to grieve with the families of victims and survivors of the weekend’s massacre of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo.

“Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail,” Biden said, calling white supremacy “a poison” that had no place in America.

Here’s what else we followed:

• Buffalo mayor Byron Brown said he saw Biden’s “sense of resolve” to get something done about gun reforms following the grocery store massacre.
• Republicans in Wisconsin who submitted to Congress false ballots stating Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state are facing a $2.4m lawsuit.
• The food and drug administration approved a Covid-19 booster shot for children aged five to 11.
• The FBI opened a federal hate crime investigation into a shooting at an Asian-American owned hair salon in Dallas that wounded three women.
• Black students in Georgia who say they were blocked from protesting a rule that allowed Confederate flags on clothing but not Black Lives Matter materials are suing their school district.

Donald Trump has received a savage Twitter smackdown from George Conway, a constant bête noire of the former president as co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and husband to his former adviser Kellyanne Conway.

The Tuesday afternoon insult likening Trump to a caged monkey throwing feces came as part of a chain that began with news the 6 January committee was not expecting to call him as a witness in public hearings this spring.

Lawyer Elizabeth de la Vega decided it was not something she wanted to see:

And Conway followed up with this:

Thousands of ballots from several counties in today’s Pennsylvania primary election might not be able to be read “for several days”, the Associated Press reports, because of a printing error.

Officials in Lancaster county, the state’s sixth most populous, said the problem involved at least 21,000 mailed ballots, only a third of which were scanning properly.

The glitch will force election workers to redo ballots that can’t be read by the machine, a laborious process expected to take several days, the AP says. Officials in the Republican-controlled county pledged that all the ballots will be counted eventually.

“Citizens deserve to have accurate results from elections and they deserve to have them on election night, not days later,” Josh Parsons, Republican vice chair of the county board of commissioners said at a news conference.

“But because of this, we’re not going to have final election results from these mail ballots for probably several days”.

John Fetterman, frontrunner in today’s Democratic senate primary in Pennsylvania, is undergoing what campaign staff say is “a standard procedure” to install a heart pacemaker.

The state’s lieutenant governor announced on Sunday he had suffered a minor stroke two days previously, but said he was recovering and his campaign “isn’t slowing down one bit”.

“John Fetterman is about to undergo a standard procedure to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator. It should be a short procedure that will help protect his heart and address the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation (A-fib), by regulating his heart rate and rhythm,” the statement from his campaign said.

Fetterman tweeted that he used “an emergency absentee ballot” to cast his vote today (presumably for himself) from his bed in Penn Medicine Lancaster general hospital.

Buffalo’s mayor Byron Brown has just been talking about Joe Biden’s visit to his city today, and what he sees as the president’s “sense of resolve” to get something done about gun reforms following the grocery store massacre.

Brown told reporters that the president and first lady Jill Biden spent considerable private time with the families of the 10 killed by an alleged white supremacist, which he said he thought strengthened Biden’s “commitment to try to bring change”:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As it relates to gun control in this country change has been very elusive. There are those in Washington who have put the needs and the desires of the gun manufacturers ahead of the lives of Americans. That has to stop.

The president talked about gun control. He talked about his concern for the families here. There was talk about what could be done to end these mass shootings.

The president seemed very moved by what he saw here in this community. And I really felt a strong sense of resolve and commitment in the president to try to bring change as it relates to these kinds of situations.

I saw him steel himself during this visit to get something done. I felt it, I think it’s powerful, and I think it’s real.

Brown also paid tribute to police officers and fire fighters who responded to Saturday’s shooting, and credited Aaron Salter, the former police officer and Tops market security guard who lost his life in a firefight with the killer, for saving lives:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If not for the heroic actions of… Aaron Salter engaging the shooter and exchanging gunfire with the shooter that ultimately took his life, more people would probably have gotten killed inside the store.

The US Congress held its first open briefing on UFOs in more than 50 years on Tuesday, but those seeking explanations for the numerous military sightings of unexplained objects were left disappointed, as defense officials appeared to hold their juiciest information for closed door hearings.

During a 90-minute briefing in Washington a highlight was the release of two new videos showing unidentified aerial phenomena, although one of them was immediately debunked by Scott Bray, the deputy director of navy intelligence.

The hearing, the first of its nature since 1966, came after a bumper year for UFO enthusiasts. In 2021, US intelligence released a landmark report which found 144 reports of unidentified aerial phenomenon, only one of which could be explained.

The report followed US navy pilots publicly discussing their encounters with UAPs, with one retired lieutenant claiming he saw objects in the sky above the east coast “every day for at least a couple years”.

On Tuesday Bray sought to defend the government’s investigation of UAPs – following accusations that the Pentagon is not taking the issue seriously enough – but also showed members of an intelligence subcommittee videos of airborne objects.

One video, filmed during daylight, showed an object appearing to whiz past a military jet. The fleeting appearance of the object – it appeared on screen for less than a second – showed the difficulty in gathering data on some UAPs, Bray said.

Another clip, recorded at night from a military plane at some time in 2019, showed triangle shapes appearing to hover in the sky. Bray then played another video that captured the same phenomena, but followed it up with a mundane explanation: the objects were drones, rendered triangular in shape and other-worldly in motion because of a quirk in the way video was captured through night-vision equipment.

The debunking did little to counter accusations – including one leveled by Andre Carson, the committee chair – that the Pentagon has little interest in investigating the inexplicable.

Read more:

The US has taken control of Afghanistan’s embassy in Washington DC, and consulates in New York and Beverly Hills, California, the state department has said.

It moved to secure the properties Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, after determining Afghanistan “formally ceased conducting diplomatic and consular activities in the United States” at noon yesterday.

In reality, there have been no formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Kabul since the Taliban assumed power after the chaotic US withdrawal last summer. The US does not recognize the Taliban as a legitime government.

An official notice will be published in the federal register on Wednesday stating that the department had assumed responsibility for “protection and preservation” of the properties the AP said.

Nobody will be allowed to enter the buildings without state department official, it said.

The day has been dominated so far by Joe Biden’s visit to grieve with the families of victims and survivors of the weekend’s massacre of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo.

The president and first lady Jill Biden met with the families, then he delivered a powerful address in which he called out the racial hatred behind the killings, and urged Americans to unite in the fight against “hateful and perverse ideology”.

“Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail,” Biden said, calling white supremacy “a poison” that had no place in America.

Elsewhere:

• Republicans in Wisconsin who submitted to Congress false ballots stating Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state are facing a $2.4m lawsuit.
• The food and drug administration approved a Covid-19 booster shot for children aged five to 11.
• The FBI opened a federal hate crime investigation into a shooting at an Asian-American owned hair salon in Dallas that wounded three women.
• Black students in Georgia who say they were blocked from protesting a rule that allowed Confederate flags on clothing but not Black Lives Matter materials are suing their school district.

Republicans in Wisconsin who attempted to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, by submitting false electoral ballots to Congress declaring Donald Trump the winner, are facing a lawsuit.

The legal action in Dane county circuit court says the decision by a Republican slate of electors to send the ballots saying Trump had won was “as legally baseless as it was repugnant to democracy”, the Associated Press says.

Biden won the state, and its 10 electoral college votes, by almost 21,000 votes.

The lawsuit, filed by three Democratic voters, names 10 Republicans and two attorneys it says were responsible and seeks up to $2.4m in damages, as well as disqualifying the Republicans from serving as electors in the future.

“It’s essential to have accountability and to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Jeffrey Mandell, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the AP.

“We have heard in the more than a year since the fraudulent electors met the excuse that what they did was not wrong, it was totally fine. We want a court to make clear that is not true”.

Republican electors who have spoken publicly have argued they weren’t trying to change the Wisconsin result but attempting to “preserve legal options” if a court ruled in favor of Trump.

Wisconsin was among a number of heavily contested swing states that Biden won to deny Trump a second term in office.

The twice-impeached Trump has since expounded the big lie that the election was fraudulent and victory was stolen from him, and incited the 6 January Capitol riot by his supporters to try to cling on to power.

Numerous conservative groups pushing the big lie are facing legal actions is several states, the Guardian reported last week.

Read more:

A tweet from the president in Buffalo urges the nation “to find purpose to live a life worthy of those we lost. We must resolve that from tragedy will come hope and light and life”.

An emotional Joe Biden, who received several bursts of applause during his Buffalo address, closed with a powerful call for Americans to come together to defeat what he said was a “hateful minority”:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re the most multiracial, most dynamic nation in the history of the world. Now’s the time for the people of all races, from every background, to speak up as a majority in America and reject white supremacy.

These actions we’ve seen in these hate filled attacks represent the views of a hateful minority. We can’t allow them to distort America. We can’t allow them to destroy the soul of the nation.

And he widened his comments to include the divisiveness of the current political climate:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I travel the world all the time. Heads of state in other countries ask me, ‘What’s going on? What in God’s name happened on January 6th? What happened in Buffalo?’

We have to refuse to live in a country where black people going about weekly grocery shopping can be gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause.

We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.

You must all enlist in this great cause of America. This is work that requires all of us, presidents and politicians, commentators, citizens, none of us can stay on the sidelines.

We have to resolve that here in Buffalo, that from this tragedy, will come hope, in light, in life. It has to. And not on our watch… the sacred cause of America will never bow, never break, never bend. The America we love will endure.

May the souls of the fallen rest in peace and rise in glory.

The president said Americans had a duty to call out the hatred and racial bigotry behind the massacre in Buffalo, and countless other mass shootings. Then he turned to gun laws, and a call for Congress to pick up the baton:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The venom of the haters and their weapons of war… the violence in the words and deeds that stalk our streets, our stores, our schools. This venom, this violence, cannot be the story of our time. We cannot allow that to happen.

Look, I’m not naive. I know tragedy will come again. It cannot be forever overcome. It cannot be fully understood either.

But there are certain things we can do. We can keep assault weapons off our streets. We’ve done it before. We passed pass the crime bill last time and violence went down. Shootings went down.

You can’t prevent people from being radicalized to violence but we can address the relentless exploitation of the internet to recruit and mobilize terrorism. We just need to have the courage to do that, to stand up.

Biden went on the address the peril he said the US is in, if urgent action is not taken:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The American experiment and democracy is in a danger like it hasn’t been in my lifetime. It’s in a danger this hour.

Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America but who don’t understand America.

To confront the ideology of hate requires caring about all people, not making distinctions.

Joe Biden attacked the “hateful and perverse ideology” behind the Buffalo massacre as he and first lady Jill Biden visited the city and paid tribute to the victims.

In an emotional but powerful address to mourners, officials and first responders, the president called on Americans to “enlist” in the fight against racial hatred:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In America, evil will not win. I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word.

What happened here is simple and straightforward terrorism, domestic terrorism, violence inflicted in the service of hate, and a vicious thirst for power.

The media, and politics, the internet, have radicalized angry and lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by other people who don’t look like them.

I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.

Biden condemned years of racially-based attacks across the country.

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas and Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta, this week in Dallas, Texas. Now in Buffalo… Buffalo, New York…

White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison running through our body politic that’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. No more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can, that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America.

Joe Biden has just begun his remarks at the scene of the mass shooting in Buffalo that claimed 10 lives on Saturday.

“We’ve come to grieve with you,” the president said, after being introduced by first lady Jill Biden.

“The feeling like there’s a black hole in your chest, you’re suffocating, you’re unable to breath. The anger, and the pain, the depth of a loss that’s so profound”.

Biden is naming the victims one by one, and telling his audience a little about them.

He is expected to move on shortly to a call for Congress to tighten gun laws.