Biden touts efforts to boost electric vehicles at Detroit auto show – as it happened

President Joe Biden struck a triumphant note in a Detroit speech where he promoted his administration’s efforts to revitalize manufacturing and get Americans behind the wheel of electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the January 6 committee has signaled it will resume public hearings later this month, and potentially share more of its evidence with justice department investigators looking into the attack on the Capitol.

Here’s what else happened today:

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed optimism that Democrats would gain, not lose, seats in the chamber in the November midterms, despite widespread expectations that voters will elevate the Republicans into the majority.

• Donald Trump disavowed his former vice-president Mike Pence, saying he would not choose him as a running mate again, according to a soon-to-be-published book obtained by The Guardian.

• FBI agents paid a visit to prominent Trump ally and pillow mogul Mike Lindell, seizing his cellphone and questioning him in a fast food restaurant’s drive-thru lane.

• Biden called Britain’s King Charles III and expressed condolences over the death of the queen. It remains unclear if the president will meet Charles III or new prime minister Liz Truss when he heads to London for the queen’s funeral.

• Florida’s Republican senator Marco Rubio co-sponsored a bill to ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks, in what could help his Democratic challenger Val Demings as she looks to energize pro-abortion sentiment among voters.

Amtrak has begun canceling long-distance routes ahead of a possible rail strike that could begin within days, Axios reports.

Unions and freight rail companies are negotiating furiously to prevent the strike, which would be the first in three decades and worsen supply chains that have been plagued by delays and manpower and equipment shortages over the past two years as the United States has bounced back from the pandemic.

“While we are hopeful that parties will reach a resolution, Amtrak has now begun phased adjustments to our service in preparation for a possible freight rail service interruption later this week,” Amtrak said, according to Axios.

“Such an interruption could significantly impact intercity passenger rail service, as Amtrak operates almost all of our 21,000 route miles outside the Northeast Corridor (NEC) on track owned, maintained, and dispatched by freight railroads. These initial adjustments include canceling all Long Distance trains and could be followed by impacts to most State-Supported routes.”

The negotiations between the railroad companies and 12 unions are complex and have drawn in the Biden administration. Here’s the latest from the Associated Press:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Members of one union rejected a tentative deal with the largest U.S. freight railroads Wednesday while three other unions remained at the bargaining table just days ahead of a strike deadline, threatening to intensify snarls in the nation’s supply chain that have contributed to rising prices.

About 4,900 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 19 voted to reject the tentative agreement negotiated by IAM leadership with the railroads, the union said Wednesday. But the IAM agreed to delay any strike by its members until Sept. 29 to allow more time for negotiations and to allow other unions to vote.

Railroads are trying to reach an agreement with all their other unions to avert a strike before Friday’s deadline. The unions aren’t allowed to strike before Friday under the federal law that governs railroad contract talks.

Government officials and a variety of businesses are bracing for the possibility of a nationwide rail strike that would paralyze shipments of everything from crude and clothing to cars, a potential calamity for businesses that have struggled for more than two years due to COVID-19 related supply chain breakdowns.

Joe Biden’s inclination for optimism was on full display in Detroit, but he was outdone today by his Democratic colleague House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who insisted in an interview with Punchbowl News that the party was poised to gain – not lose – seats in the chamber in the midterms.

“Yes, indeed,” she told Punchbowl when they asked if she thought the party’s majority would grow in the November 8 election.

Let’s unpack the many reasons that statement appears improbably. First of all, it’s a reflection of how much the political climate is thought to have shifted in the Democrats’ favor over the past few months. Declining gas prices, the supreme court’s overturning of national abortion access and Biden’s legislative wins are all believed to have energized Democratic voters, while on their part, Republicans have chosen some weaker nominees for key races.

But history is against Pelosi. As The Guardian’s Joan E Greve has reported, the party holding the White House has only gained seats in the House in two midterms, and Pelosi personally experienced the ruinous 2010 election that saw Democrats lose 63 seats in the lower chamber and end her speakership for eight years. She may well be poised to endure that again – poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight gives the GOP a very good shot at returning to the majority next year in the House, though the Senate may be harder to conquer. Nonetheless, analysts generally believe that the political developments over the past few months are meaningful for Democrats, and while Republicans may win the House, their gains won’t be enormous, and certainly not comparable to 2010.

Here’s what Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel had to say about Biden’s visit to Detroit, which she described as a stop on his “failure tour”:

“Whether it’s handing out tax credits for luxury electric vehicles or bailing out the wealthy’s debts, Biden and Democrats are leaving hardworking Americans behind. Democrats will be driven out of office in November because they put their left-wing special interests ahead of Americans struggling to fill grocery carts and gas tanks.”

“American manufacturing is back, Detroit is back, America is back,” Biden declared at the conclusion of his speech in Detroit, where he touted the benefits of legislation passed to repair infrastructure and promote electric vehicles.

The speech at the Detroit Auto Show hit familiar talking points for the president as he attempts to convince voters to re-elect Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections and preserve their majorities in Congress. Among these were his recent legislative successes, including the $1 trillion measure Democrats and some Republicans in Congress approved last year to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure. In his speech, he announced that he had authorized funding from that law for 35 states to build electric vehicle charging stations.

Beyond being the center of the auto industry, Michigan is among the more crucial states to Biden’s political fortunes. It’s a perennial swing state that Biden narrowly won in the 2020 election, and its Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer will also be on the ballot in November as she stands for second term against Republican challenger Tudor Dixon.

Biden appeared at the show along with the governor, and spent much of his speech shouting out other Michigan Democrats, while closing on a note of triumph. “Folks, we’re proving it’s never, ever, ever a good bet to bet against the American people, never never, never. You just gotta remember who we are.”

In the ongoing legal wrangling over documents seized by the government from Mar-a-Lago, The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports that the justice department is sounding the alarm over an order preventing them from reviewing the materials.

Donald Trump’s lawyers are causing “irreparable harm” to the government and public by delaying the investigation into his hoarding of highly classified documents at his Florida mansion, the US Department of Justice said.

The claim came in a strongly worded court filing urging a district judge, Aileen Cannon, to reconsider her ruling last week granting Trump’s request for an independent “special master” in the case.

The Department of Justice argued that the order stops it continuing its review of thousands of documents, some reportedly containing details of a foreign power’s nuclear secrets, seized during an FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach last month.

Self-confessed “car guy” Joe Biden is about to take the podium at the Detroit motor show to tell Americans why they should be buying electric vehicles.

The president, who owns a vintage Corvette, has set what the White House calls “a bold goal” for electric vehicles to make up 50% of all vehicles sold in the US by 2030.

Biden is in Detroit touting the Inflation Reduction Act, the marquee spending bill he signed last month that includes incentives for buying electric vehicles, as part of a larger strategy to lower America’s carbon emissions.

While we await Biden’s words, here’s the White House factsheet, which says that since Biden took office last year, companies have invested nearly $85bn in manufacturing electric vehicles, batteries, and EV chargers in the US.

The number of electric vehicles sold in that time has almost tripled, the handout claims.

But there are concerns that his plans to build a nationwide network of charging stations will leave behind disadvantaged and lower income areas and communities of color.

Read more:

Call it a magical mystery tour… migrants being sent on buses from Texas to New York by the lone star state’s governor Greg Abbott in protest at Joe Biden’s immigration policies are being moved on to Florida.

That’s according to Fox 5 New York, which interviewed the city’s commissioner of immigration Manuel Castro on its Good Day New York show on Wednesday.

Castro says many of those arriving from Texas don’t want to be there, and have ties elsewhere:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Many want to go to places like Florida, where the largest community of Venezuelans live.

We’re helping them get to their actual final destination. We’re doing our best.

The move probably isn’t going to go down too well with Florida’s hardline Republican governor and frequent Biden critic Ron DeSantis, who likes what he sees coming out of Texas and has been mulling his own plan to bus undocumented Cuban migrants from Florida to Washington DC.

“All states and all cities have a role to play here, not just New York and Chicago and other places,” Castro told Fox 5.

Joe Biden plans to nominate career diplomat Lynne Tracy, who is currently serving in Armenia, as the next US ambassador to Russia, CNN says.

Tracy has experience of Moscow, having served there as deputy ambassador from 2014 to 2017. She would be the first woman in the role, the network said.

The Biden administration hopes to get her in place swiftly to replace John Sullivan, who stepped down earlier this month.

But the timing of her arrival and official nomination will depend on Russia agreeing to accept her as ambassador at a time of huge tension between Washington and Moscow as the war in Ukraine continues.

Typically, the host country will approve the name of an ambassador pick before they are officially nominated through a process called agrément. The US has already given Tracy’s name to the Russians to begin that process, two sources told CNN.

While we’re on the subject of November’s midterm elections, Martin Pengelly has this look at how Democrats got the matchup they wanted – an extremist, Trump-supporting election denier – as their Republican opponent for a New Hampshire Senate seat:

A far-right Republican who backs Donald Trump’s election fraud lie and has vowed to decertify results in 2024 will be the GOP candidate for US Senate in New Hampshire.

Don Bolduc, a retired special forces general who has said he suffered from PTSD and a traumatic brain injury, edged out Chuck Morse, the state senate president, to face the incumbent Democrat, Maggie Hassan, in November.

Most if not all forecasters called the race for Bolduc before Morse conceded.

The primary was the last in a series that have seen Republicans select candidates aligned with Trump, causing some to fear damage to their chances of winning the Senate in November.

Bolduc, 61, has echoed Trump’s lie about election fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden. He has also questioned whether the FBI should be abolished following its search of Trump’s Florida estate, which turned up a cache of classified documents.

Though Bolduc has courted Trump, he has not won an endorsement. Trump did call Bolduc a “strong guy”.

Last October, Bolduc spoke to the New Yorker. He said he thought his “values and principles as an American, and the constitution, which I served for 33-plus years in the military, was safe with President Trump”, and that Trump’s appeal stemmed from the (notoriously reading-averse) former president’s reading and understanding of the constitution.

He also said “there was a tremendous amount of fraud” in 2020, adding: “I very much believe it and I think it exists, and I think it happens and it’s been happening for a long time in this country. When you try to steal the presidency, a lot of people are going to go, ‘OK, wait a minute. What the hell’s going on here?’”

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Florida Republican Marco Rubio has emerged as a co-sponsor of Lindsey Graham’s nationwide 15-week abortion ban bill, providing Democratic hopeful Val Demings new ammunition as she challenges for his Senate seat in November.

Rubio’s campaign has not said why he’s signed on to the controversial and extreme bill, which has confused and angered many congressional Republicans. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell says he’s sure his members would prefer to leave the issue to the states.

But Rubio’s overall position on abortion is clear. Talking to a Christian group in south Florida earlier this month, he said an unborn child’s rights outweighed those of the mother and that, in an apparent contradiction to his position on the Graham bill, “The state legislatures will decide [the] law.”

“I would rather be right and lose an election than [be] wrong,” he said, according to ABC10 Miami.

He may get his wish, at least the losing the election part, if Demings has her way. The former Orlando police chief and US congresswoman is a vocal pro-choice advocate and has slammed Rubio’s position.

“It’s outrageous to mandate what a woman can and can’t do with their bodies,” she says in a televised campaign message.

“I know something about fighting crime, Senator Rubio. Rape is a crime. Incest is a crime. Abortion is not.”

Polling by RealClearPolitics gives Rubio, a former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, a narrow lead over Demings.

President Joe Biden is set to proclaim his administration’s efforts to boost the electric car business with a speech at the Detroit Auto Show set for 1:45 pm eastern time. Meanwhile, the January 6 committee has signaled it will resume public hearings later this month, and potentially share more of its evidence with justice department investigators looking into the attack on the Capitol.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Donald Trump disavowed his former vice-president Mike Pence, saying he would not choose him as a running mate again, according to a soon-to-be-published book obtained by The Guardian.

• FBI agents paid a visit to prominent Trump ally and pillow mogul Mike Lindell, seizing his cellphone and questioning him in a fast food restaurant’s drive-thru lane.

• Biden called Britain’s King Charles III and expressed condolences over the death of the queen. It remains unclear if the president will meet Charles III or new prime minister Liz Truss when he heads to London for the queen’s funeral.

Let’s check in with Joe Biden, who has arrived at the Detroit Auto Show.

He’s set to deliver “remarks highlighting the electric vehicle manufacturing boom in America” at 1:45 pm eastern time according to the White House, but is first getting a look at the latest models from America’s automakers.

Biden is a vintage Chevrolet Corvette owner, and CNN caught him behind the wheel of the latest model:

Here he is checking out Ford’s new electric offerings:

Why does Biden care so much about electric cars? In part because the Inflation Reduction Act, as the marquee spending bill he signed last month is known, includes incentives to try to get more Americans to buy the vehicles, as part of a larger strategy to lower America’s carbon emissions. The other reason is that Biden is a “car guy”, as he likes to describe himself.