US Politics

‘A national scandal’: how US climate funding could make water pollution worse The Inflation Reduction Act was hailed for its climate funding – but some are concerned several provisions will worsen a growing environmental disasterThe $369bn Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was applauded by a chorus of US organizations and activists enthusiastic about the generous funding earmarked for projects designed to mitigate climate change and improve environmental health.But some researchers and activists are raising concerns that several provisions of the new law will actually worsen a growing environmental disaster in the nation’s heartland by increasing the tide of farm-related pollution washing into waterways and groundwater.US dairy policies drive small farms to ‘get big or get out’ as monopolies get rich Read moreThe sweeping new statute, which includes more than $140bn in incentives designed to promote renewable fuels and cleaner electricity generation, could slash greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. But in its efforts to promote climate-friendly agriculture, it also promotes corn-fed ethanol refineries and manure-based energy production that could unintentionally supercharge fertilizer and fecal contamination.“It’s going to end up in the water,” Rebecca Ohrtman, a water quality specialist from Iowa, said of the contaminants from crop production and what are commonly called “confined animal feeding operations” (CAFOs). Ohrtman spent much of her career as a water protection coordinator with the state of Iowa. “I can’t believe they’re going to provide all this funding with no strings attached.”The Great Lakes and midwest regions face nothing short of a water quality emergency, say those on the frontlines. Farming-related contaminants have already fouled thousands of drinking water wells from Minnesota to Missouri, and virtually every waterway in Iowa is degraded with little regulation to rein in the pollutants.“It’s already a national emergency and a national scandal,” said Emma Schmit, a senior organizer in the Midwest for Food and Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group. “When we test our waterways, the main pollutants are E coli and nitrates and phosphorus from agriculture. These are pathogens and contaminants that can cause serious issues for people. We’re about to give large corporate farms carte blanche to make it worse.”A threat to clean waterHow can legislation billed as an environmental protection statute risk being a primary threat to clean water? The answer is that there could be seemingly unintended consequences of investments to reduce greenhouse gases and replace fossil fuels with cleaner options.There are two particular farm-related provisions in the IRA that won’t put more food on the table, but will nevertheless impact water quality in the midwest. One will incentivize producing more ethanol, a renewable fuel, from corn. Another will move to limit emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, by processing manure generated by massive livestock and poultry farms. Wastes from these could end up polluting waterways.The incentive for more corn production is particularly worrisome as farmers typically make heavy use of nitrogen fertilizers when growing corn, said Chris Jones, a research engineer and water quality specialist at the University of Iowa.“Anytime we incentivize production of a nutrient-hungry crop, you’re going to get nutrient pollution,” Jones said. “Corn loses a lot of nutrients to the environment. We know that for a certainty. We’re incentivizing further production. We’re going to get more pollution. You don’t need to be a genius to know that.”Corn is the most heavily fertilized row crop in America, accounting for 11bn lb of commercial nitrogen fertilizer applied to farmland annually, with nine of the 11bn lb applied in the midwest, according to the USDA. State and federal research shows that up to 70% of applied nitrogen runs off the land and into streams, rivers and groundwater.Agricultural nutrient pollution is the primary reason that the Clean Water Act has not come close to meeting its “fishable and swimmable” goal for US surface waters. Because of waivers written into the Clean Water Act, which last year marked its 50th anniversary, nutrient runoff from arable farms and smaller livestock operations are completely unregulated. (Large livestock operators, meanwhile, are given broad discretion by states for managing and spreading manure.)Boosting corn acreage, to create more ethanol, is one of the Biden administration’s goals. It wants to increase ethanol production from 15bn gallons in 2022 to 21bn gallons this year, and 23bn gallons by 2025, principally to meet the administration’s national energy strategy for ethanol to be a primary feedstock for producing “sustainable” fuel for airlines.Though the $1.01 a gallon tax credit provided in the new law is a win for corn and ethanol producers, the administration’s plan for ethanol is a big problem for water. Corn farmers already apply more than 4bn lb of nitrogen fertilizer to produce the current national supply of ethanol. Based on this usage rate, refining five billion more gallons of ethanol could lead to 1.5bn more pounds of fertilizer being applied to fields in corn-growing states. That would exacerbate the water quality issues plaguing the region.“We’re putting more and more pressure on the productivity of agriculture to produce more corn, more livestock for our fuel,” said John Ikerd, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri. “It’s also producing more pollution. Any other industry that creates this amount of pollution and represented this level of risk to public health would be heavily regulated.”Congress didn’t add any additional safeguards for water in the Inflation Reduction Act.LivestockThe law’s effect on large cattle and other livestock feeding operations also is worrisome.The country’s large livestock operations, primarily centered in the midwest, produce hundreds of billions of gallons of untreated liquid manure and tens of millions of tons of solid manure that are spread over farmland with scant oversight. Manure contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and dangerous pathogens that can also run off and contaminate waters across the region.In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified phosphorus and nitrogen discharges from US farmland as “the single greatest challenge to our nation’s water quality”.For millions of Americans in the heartland already contending with dirty water, the new law risks making the country’s most severe surface and groundwater pollution worse, according to water quality experts.This is because another feature of the IRA is a flurry of tax incentives to generate renewable energy from biodigesters – large tanks where bacteria and heat help convert organic waste to methane.The American Biogas Council, an industry trade group, counts 2,300 biodigesters in operation in the US. With tax credits in the new climate law, the council estimates 15,000 more could be installed, including nearly 8,600 on large dairy, hog, and poultry farms. The methane produced could be used by electricity producers in rural regions.But biodigesters don’t reduce the volume of waste. The same amount of liquid and solid manure that goes into biodigesters is returned as “digestate” The liquid waste contains more concentrated forms of phosphorus and nitrogen and is used as fertilizer on farmland close to where it was produced and where it will drain into waters in the Midwest.The incentives are sure to lead to more biodigesters. The American Biogas Council, an industry trade group, counts 2,300 biodigesters in operation in the US. With tax credits in the new climate law, the council envisions that 15,000 more will be installed, including nearly 8,600 on large dairy, hog and poultry farms.Even though digesters provide livestock farmers with a new source of revenue, the Biogas Council asserts that the extra cash will not lead to an expansion of intensive animal farming operations and more manure.“That would mean that farms are buying cows to produce manure to put into the biogas system,” said Patrick Serfass, the council’s executive director. “I guarantee you that no one is doing that.”But limited real world evidence suggests that biodigesters are a powerful incentive to increase the number of animals – and the amount of manure – at industrialized livestock operations.Last year, after Iowa enacted a new law that encouraged livestock operations to install biodigesters, five of the nine dairies awarded construction permits said they would also increase the size of their herds. The USDA did not respond to questions raised about the effects of the new statute on water pollution. Corn and livestock industry executives did not respond to interview requests.‘Conservation’ programsIn approving the Inflation Reduction Act, neither the Biden administration nor Congress wholly ignored the risk to water. The law enables the USDA to fund its $19.5bn climate smart program, a portion of which is devoted to “managing nutrients”.The law also provides $18bn for decades-old “conservation” programs. “The Inflation Reduction Act provides major incentives for a broad range of different practices and strategies for managing nutrients, guarding water quality and keeping carbon in the soil,” US senator Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate agriculture committee, said. “There are a lot of strategies that work but there are not enough farmers participating because there hasn’t been enough money to fund all the requests.”Indeed, the climate smart program includes $300 million for organic and sustainable farm practices, the largest investment ever made by the federal government for environmentally sensitive crop and livestock production. But while that $300 million has been allotted to dozens of growers, as well as other research and planning projects, these farms ultimately account for just a few thousand acres of the more than 100 million acres of cropland in the Corn Belt and Great Lakes states.Most of the USDA “climate smart” and conservation programs support existing voluntary “best management practices” that include not plowing before planting, raising cover crops, and planting buffer strips to soak up excess nutrients. But best management practices, initially designed to control soil erosion, have been largely ineffective at reducing phosphorus in streams in the Great Lakes states.In fact, installing best management practices to impede discharges from fields can make conditions worse. Two years ago, during the annual meeting of researchers studying Lake Erie’s harmful algal blooms, Deanna Osmond, a crop and soil scientist at North Carolina State University, reported that the most popular best management practices thought to curb runoff actually increased nutrient concentrations that cause harmful blooms.For instance, buffer strips planted on field edges increased the amount of phosphorus draining into ditches and streams. The same thing occurred with planting cover crops. “Conservation practices have potential tradeoffs,” Osmond said. “We have to acknowledge these tradeoffs.”These best management practices, moreover, have never been especially popular with corn growers and livestock producers in the nine-state corn belt from the Dakotas to Missouri. Just 2.2m of Iowa’s 30m acres of farmland, for example, were planted with cover crops, according to the most recent analysis by the state agriculture department.“We’ve got an industrial agriculture system that’s regulated as if it were still scattered, independent, diversified small family farms,” said Ikerd, the agricultural economist. “It’s not. Industrial agriculture focuses on production and profitability. Not public health. Not conservation. Not the environment.”
This report, co-published with the New Lede and Circle of Blue, was made possible by an investigative reporting fellowship awarded by the Alicia Patterson Foundation
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The US president Joe Biden delivered his second State of the Union address with a message of optimism, declaring – as is customary – that “the state of the union is strong”. With newly elected Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy and Democrat vice-president Kamala Harris sat behind him, Biden launched what commentators described as his bid to win the 2024 presidential election.

Biden used his 70-minute address to talk up the achievements of his first two years in office, hailing America’s falling inflation and rapidly growing job market – described by one report as “shockingly strong”. In front of a divided Congress, after the GOP won control of the House in last year’s midterms, he laid out his legislative and policy objectives. But the mantra for the evening was: “Let’s finish the job” – a phrase he used a dozen times in his speech.

It is the first time that Biden has had an opportunity to drive this message home to a national audience.

“As I stand here tonight,” he said, “we have created a record 12 million new jobs – more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.”

Although inflation remains stubbornly high, Biden has spent a great deal of time advertising the success of his bipartisan infrastructure bill around the country. This occasion was no different, stating that his administration had “funded over 20,000 projects across America” to build “the best infrastructure in the world”.

Biden began his speech by congratulating McCarthy on his election to speaker – “Mr Speaker, I look forward to working together” – before repeatedly stressing the need to reach across the political divide, citing that in the previous two years he had signed “over 300 acts” into law that were bipartisan in nature.

“We have to see each other not as enemies, but as fellow Americans,” Biden told the assembled crowd.

He called on Republicans to address the issue of the debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on its debt obligations, something that treasury secretary Janet Yellen has called a potential “economic and financial catastrophe”.

Criticising “some” Republicans who he said “want to sunset Medicare and social security every five years”, Biden pledged to prevent them from doing this, and then – in a nod to the bipartisan style he had adopted – ad-libbed that he knew the majority of the GOP agreed with him.

Calling for a higher rate of taxes for major US corporations, Biden said: “The tax system is simply unfair” – much to the delight of progressives in his own party.

And with the parents of Tyre Nichols – who died recently after being pulled over and apparently beaten by traffic police in Memphis, Tennessee, in an incident caught on video camera – watching from the gallery, Biden called for police reform and a ban on assault weapons. “We have an obligation to make all people safe,” he said.

But in the Republican-controlled House, many of his more progressive demands are likely to fall on deaf ears. While acknowledging this, Biden stressed that if conservatives think they can pass any legislation during this Congress that makes abortion illegal, “I will veto it.” He called on Congress to codify reproductive rights.

Eyes on 2024

As had been widely predicted, Biden’s speech was clearly the unofficial launchpad for his bid for a second term in office. It would be no surprise to see “Let’s finish the job!” as the tagline for his 2024 campaign.

But despite this speech, several things stand against him being returned to the White House in 2024.

Man with a plan: Biden’s 70-minute speech highlighted his administration’s achievments and called on Congress and the American people to ‘finish the job’.
EPA-EFE/Jim Lo Sclazo

Firstly, the majority of Americans feel that, despite their president’s assertion,the state of the union is not to be celebrated. Recent polls reveal that the public are yet to be convinced by Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine, the economy, and even his ability to unite the nation.

His handling of the recent spy balloon saga has also led to severe criticism for doing “too little, too late”. A poll taken on February 5 showed that 62% of Americans would be “angry” or “dissatisfied” if he were elected again.

One of the biggest issues remains his age. Should Biden be successful in the 2024 election, he will be 82 when he begins his second term – the oldest US president to be elected to office. Another recent poll revealed that only 28% rate him positively on “having the necessary mental and physical health to be president”.

But while his age may be against him, time might be on Biden’s side. By November 2024, the economy could well be in recovery. Inflation fell in December for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, and the administration hopes this trend will continue over the next 18 months.

Brian Deese, Biden’s chief economic adviser, told reporters this week that he felt that as far as the administration’s major economic bills were concerned, “2023 is the year in which the most significant impact will begin to occur”.

And while Biden’s polls are not the best, they are certainly better than the Republicans’. Polls reveal that Americans currently have little confidence that Republican leaders would fare much better.

The road to the White House is a marathon not a sprint, but Biden has clearly put himself into the race. His first steps on that journey will take place in Wisconsin on Wednesday, where he won narrowly in 2020. He is expected to confirm his re-election bid at a rally there to discuss his economic plan, before heading to Florida the following day to talk about Medicare and social security. More

Twitter probably fumbled the Hunter Biden story. But don’t expect a sane investigationMargaret SullivanWhy I’m not hopeful that the Republican-led House investigation will stay grounded in reality You can’t get Americans to agree on much these days – not on gas stoves, not on Chinese spy balloons, not on the books allowed in school libraries.But one thing they apparently can bond over is whether the Republicans in the House of Representatives are likely to spend the next two years responsibly serving as the loyal opposition to President Biden and the Democrats who control the Senate.Checks, balances and all that good stuff.The consensus: fat chance.Most Americans, in an NBC poll, think Republicans will spend too much time on investigations; a CNN poll showed three out of four respondents agreeing that House Republicans haven’t been paying enough attention to things that matter; a Pew Research poll finds two-thirds of Americans are concerned that they will focus too much on investigating the Biden administration.In other words, the public has seen enough grandstanding to know exactly what’s coming.“The GOP’s investigations are going to be drawn from a grab bag of rightwing grievances,” as Hayes Brown, an MSNBC editor, recently predicted.Things kick off in earnest on Wednesday morning with the House oversight committee taking up how Twitter handled a controversial New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, back in the fall of 2020.Will this committee stay grounded in reality as members explore legitimate questions?I’m not hopeful, especially after hearing committee chairman James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, speculating on Fox News a few days ago about the Chinese spy balloon. Comer suggested that the balloon might be loaded with bioweapons, and then went full Trump: “Did that balloon take off from Wuhan?”Comer is the same guy who suggested back in December, again preaching to the Fox News faithful, that the Brittney Griner prisoner swap may had some tie to Hunter Biden. (Well, yes, of course, because in the Republican conspiracy world, everything must have that same diabolical connection.)Then there’s the oversight committee’s Republican membership, which includes Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Not exactly a Mount Rushmore of governmental statesmanship.Get out your tin-foil hats and, while you’re at it, your earplugs.It’s too bad, because Congress’s oversight role is a crucial one.What’s more, the way Twitter handled the New York Post story really was dubious, as Jack Dorsey, then the CEO, has acknowledged.The Murdoch-owned paper reported in the fall of 2020 that it had received a copy of a hard drive of a laptop that Hunter Biden had left many months before at a Delaware repair shop and never retrieved, and that it included emails that showed attempted influence peddling by then vice-president Joe Biden’s wayward son.For several days, Twitter blocked users from sharing links to the story.To be sure, skepticism and caution were in order. Was there reason to wonder whether such a laptop even belonged to Hunter Biden? Was there reason on Twitter’s part to fear that the whole thing was part of a Russian disinformation campaign and thus to be wary of spreading it weeks before a presidential election?Again, legitimate questions.“We want to make sure that our national security is not compromised” is Comer’s explanation for bringing the former Twitter executives in for a grilling. (They are the former chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, former deputy general counsel James Baker, and former global head of trust and safety Yoel Roth.)Dorsey himself later called his company’s decision to block the story without communicating the reasons “unacceptable”.Major news organizations, meanwhile – considering the dubious source and unable to verify the facts in real time – held the New York Post’s article at arm’s length, while not entirely ignoring it.One reason for caution: as the Washington Post wrote in an October 2020 analysis, the article repeated the debunked claim, spread by then president Trump, that Joe Biden, vice-president at the time of the alleged influence peddling, had pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor at his son’s behest.But the media’s hesitancy to play up the story brought howls of partisan censorship from the right – especially because the presidential election was right around the corner.Speaking to the National Press Club recently, committee chairman Comer talked a good game about how he wants to lead his committee with transparency and bipartisanship, hewing closely to the mission of rooting out government fraud and mismanagement. He unveiled a long list of targets to investigate, from prescription drug pricing to the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and of course, the inappropriate involvements of family members, which never seemed to trouble Republicans about the Trump clan.Comer claimed the high ground: “I want [it] to be a substantive committee.”I would love to believe that. But since what’s past is prologue, I will not be holding my breath.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
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Joe Biden gave a forceful defence of his presidency in his second State of the Union address, delivered at the midpoint of his first term and just weeks after the Republicans retook control of the House. Some key moments included being heckled while accusing some Republicans of wanting to do away with popular government healthcare and retirement programs, announcing he would sign and executive order to aid in for police reform, a call to ban assault rifles, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the countries relationship with China.

Biden’s State of the Union address: key takeaways
Feisty Biden offers bipartisan vision while still triggering Republicans
Opinion: Biden’s State of the Union unofficially kicked off his re-election campaign More

Wednesday briefing: Five key takeaways from Biden’s rowdy State of the UnionIn today’s newsletter: US president uses unity message to attack his opponents – and set up bid for a second term

Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition
Good morning. “Finish the job,” Joe Biden said nearly a dozen times in a speech to a joint session of Congress in Washington DC a few hours ago. His combative State of the Union address was designed around both halves of that equation: persuading Americans that he has achieved a lot so far, and asking them to agree that he should keep going – with a nudge towards the idea that the Republicans are getting in the way.Biden is a pretty confusing political figure at the moment: on a downward trajectory in the polls, with even most members of his own party not wanting him to stand for re-election – but with better-than-expected midterm results in his favour, and a chaotic and extreme opposition who many voters like even less.Last night, Biden made a case to blue-collar voters that sounded awfully like a pitch for a second term. And he repeatedly drew contrasts with his Republican opponents, who heckled throughout even as their leader shushed them. Today’s newsletter, with Guardian US political reporters David Smith and Lauren Gambino, takes you through all of it. Here are the headlines.Five big stories
Turkey-Syria earthquake | Anger has mounted in Turkey over what was described as a slow and inadequate response by authorities to the earthquake that also hit neighbouring Syria, as the death toll passed 8,000 and chances of finding survivors narrowed.
Crime | The death of Epsom College headteacher Emma Pattison, her daughter and her husband is being treated as a homicide, Surrey police have confirmed. Detectives, who have recovered a firearm, are examining the possibility George Pattison killed his wife and daughter before killing himself.
UK politics | Rishi Sunak appointed trade minister Greg Hands to replace Nadhim Zahawi as Conservative party chair in a mini-reshuffle to stamp his authority on his fractured party. As part of a sweeping Whitehall restructure that created four new government departments, Grant Shapps takes over the new department for energy security and net zero.
Police | Former Metropolitan police officer and serial rapist David Carrick has been sentenced to life in prison and must serve a minimum term of 32 years, before he can be considered for release. At Southwark crown court, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said Carrick had taken “monstrous advantage” of his position as a police officer to coerce and control women.
Climate | David Nixon, a 36-year-old care worker and Insulate Britain activist, has been jailed for eight weeks for contempt of court after disregarding a judge’s order to not to mention the climate crisis as his motivation during his trial for taking part in a road-blocking protest.
In depth: ‘A soft launch for Biden’s 2024 campaign’At last year’s State of the Union, shortly after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Joe Biden had Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic then-speaker of the House of Representatives, standing behind him leading bipartisan applause.This time around, things looked different. Instead of Pelosi, there was Kevin McCarthy, a Republican. Biden was repeatedly booed. And the midterm defeat in the House, although narrower than expected, significantly constrains his power.He still talked about unity: “If we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress.” In reality, “most of Biden’s policy initiatives are not going to pass,” Lauren Gambino said. “Republicans are more focused on investigations into him, his family, the administration.” Paradoxically, though, that may help him make unity a dividing line.“This was a good night for Joe Biden,” said David Smith. “It was a soft launch for his 2024 campaign, and a speech that some are describing as the best of his presidency.”Here are five key takeaways.1. Biden led with an argument that his policies are helping blue-collar voters“As I stand here tonight, we have created a record 12 million new jobs,” Biden said, “more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.” That was one of many appeals to voters who are worried about the economy, like boasts about taking on inflation, a call to “reward work, not wealth” with a new tax on billionaires’ investments, and a protectionist call to “buy American”.NBC News said that he spent 17 minutes speaking on the economy, infrastructure, and taxes – and those were the dominant threads in the speech. He called it a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America”.“He spent a lot of time talking about initiatives he’s already passed,” Lauren said. “Poll after poll shows that people don’t feel he’s achieved very much, despite having done a lot legislatively. He’s going to spend the next two years trying to convince Americans that those policies will make a difference in their lives.”2. He talked less about foreign policy, abortion, and the climate crisisBiden’s preferred emphasis was evidenced as much in what he left out as what he put in. “These speeches are often checklists,” Lauren noted. “But there wasn’t a ton of time on Ukraine, and there was no mention of the Chinese spy balloon except to talk tough and say if China ever threatens us we’ll respond as we did.”The Ukraine section came at the back end of his speech, and was relatively brief; abortion rights and the overturning of Roe v Wade were the subject of just four sentences, the climate crisis about the same. That reinforced the sense that this was a speech intensely focused on pocketbook issues on which many swing voters will make up their minds.3. He made an emotional appeal for change in policingIn another long section of the speech, Biden quoted RowVaughn Wells (above), the mother of Tyre Nichols, a Black man killed last month in Memphis by police officers who now face murder charges: “Something good must come of this.”He invited Wells and Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells, who were in the gallery, to stand as he told the audience: “What happened to Tyre in Memphis happens too often. We have to do better.” In a rare section heard in something like silence, he noted that like the other white people in the room, he had never had to have “the talk” with his children about what to do if stopped by the police.It was not a radical appeal: while he demanded that police departments do more to hold officers accountable, he was also careful to note that “police officers put their lives on the line every day, and we ask them to do too much”. But it felt like a sharper message than he gave in 2022, when he said that “the answer is not to defund the police, it’s to fund the police”.4. He was repeatedly heckled by Republicans – but leaned inThere was a time when a single Republican congressman shouting “You lie!” at Barack Obama was deemed, as the Guardian put it in 2009, “an extraordinary breach of political protocol”. That looked pretty quaint last night, when an unruly Republican caucus became so caught up in jeering and shouting that McCarthy had to try – in vain – to shush them.At one point, far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (who actually brought a balloon with her?) called Biden a liar as many of her colleagues booed his assertion that some Republicans have proposed cutting social security and medicare programmes (which is, in fact, true, but exaggerated as a real threat).If anything, though, Biden appeared to relish the confrontation – getting into a spontaneous back-and-forth which he then presented as consensus.“So folks, as we all apparently agree, social security and Medicare is off the books now,” he said. “They’re not to be touched? All right. We’ve got unanimity!” You can watch the exchange here.“That was very unusual,” David said. “It felt like Biden had won the bout, and done so in a very down-to-earth, human way, not crowing or getting into poisonous arguments as Trump would.”Again, using unity as a dividing line felt like a precursor to what we might see over the rest of Biden’s term. As he said to McCarthy, with obvious enjoyment: “Mr Speaker, I don’t want to ruin your reputation, but I look forward to working with you.”5. He seems intent on running againskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOnly 22% of voters, and 37% of Democrats, say they want the 80-year-old president to seek a second term – well down on where those figures stood before the midterms. But it appears increasingly clear that despite his age, he fully intends to run again, and believes he is the best placed candidate to beat Donald Trump, should he win the Republican nomination.There were plenty of features of last night’s speech that seemed to point in that direction. And while there’s often a sense in Biden’s speeches that you’re waiting to hear him falter, last night’s 72-minute address was energetic, combative and largely howler-free.“It will quell the discontent within the Democratic party,” David said. “After this, it’s looking more unlikely than ever that we will see a serious challenger.”What else we’ve been reading
The natural next step for our collectively dwindling attention spans was, of course, the hyper-short date. Elle Hunt surveys a new study that suggests the average person can only manage 51 minutes of a date that is not going well. Hunt writes that on some occasions you might want to give the date a bit longer, to remind yourself to be “open to possibility, to being surprised and potentially swept off your feet”. Nimo
Don’t ask why Rich Pelley spent the day as Mr Blobby (above) – although it’s actually pretty interesting that there appears to be a spate of costumes on sale online that claim to be Noel’s House Party originals. Just enjoy his account of life as a “giant novelty condom”, and the Blobby experts he met along the way. Archie
Recycling is one of those things that we all wish we were better at (or maybe I’m projecting). Emma Beddington’s piece on how to get wise when it comes to taking out your rubbish is informative and extremely helpful. Nimo
There’s an amazing piece on the Afghan Analysts Network made up of five interviews with members of the Taliban about how they’ve found life in Kabul. From traffic troubles to complaints about colleagues corrupted by visits to hookah bars, it’s full of remarkable, granular insights. Archie
I absolutely loved this list of the best and worst TV endings of all time by Guardian staff – I’m still confused and upset by Sex and the City, and it ended in 2004. Nimo
SportFootball | Non-league Wrexham’s FA Cup run was ended in a fourth-round replay by Sheffield United, who scored twice in injury time to win 3-1. There was controversy after the game when United’s Billy Sharp (above) accused Wrexham of being “disrespectful”. Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson said: “My message to Billy is: you’re better than that.”Cricket | Yorkshire has reached an agreement with the ECB after admitting to four charges of bringing the game into disrepute. As a result, it will no longer have to take part in the Cricket Discipline Commission hearings into allegations of racism and discrimination at the club. The news comes as former bowling coach Richard Pyrah joined the list of charged individuals who have pulled out of the proceedings.Football | As Manchester City reel from 101 charges of breaking Premier League financial rules, Jamie Jackson writes that the question for Pep Guardiola – who has said he would leave the club if he was lied to about its affairs – may now be: “Is this your last chance to win the Champions League with City?”The front pagesThe Guardian front-page splash is “‘Monstrous’: rapist ex-Met officer jailed for life after years of attacks”. The Telegraph says “Met rapist’s ‘lenient’ sentence to be reviewed”. The Metro calls David Carrick and his crimes “A scar on our police” and says “Met rapist gets 30 years”. The Financial Times has “Sunak breaks up business department to sharpen focus on energy and science”.“Race to find survivors” – that’s the i leading on the Turkey and Syrian earthquake. “Life and death under the ruins” – the Times shows a baby born in the earthquake rubble, the rest of whose family died. “Born in earthquake hell,” says the Daily Mirror, above a picture of the baby’s rescue – its lead story though is about “BP’s spoils of war” as the oil company stands accused of profiting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The top story in the Daily Express is “Distressed call … then school head and daughter shot dead”, about the Epsom College killings. “Now even God could be going gender neutral” – the Daily Mail on how the Church of England might stop “referring to the almighty as ‘He’”. “Fawlty Towers returns” – Basil is coming back, 44 years on, says the Sun.Today in FocusWhy are more people in the UK turning to private healthcare?The NHS turns 75 this year, but as waiting lists for appointments grow, increasing numbers of patients are looking elsewhere for healthcare. Denis Campbell reportsCartoon of the day | Martin RowsonThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badThe early days of motherhood proved tricky for Freya Bennett. A long labour and an emergency C-section left her in shock and she found herself grieving her baby-free life. A growing sense of disconnection from the outside world spurred Bennett on to sign up for a parenting group that changed her first year of motherhood.It was in this group that she met Kristen. In the following weeks and months, the two saw each other everyday, babies in tow, sharing their life stories and commiserating over sleepless nights and the other challenges of new parenthood. Their daughters have become like sisters to one another, and even after Kristen’s maternity leave ended and their daily dates were replaced by organised catch-ups, Bennett found a version of sisterhood for herself that proved to be extremely important to her as a new mum.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
Quick crossword
Cryptic crossword
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Ex-Twitter execs to testify in Congress on handling of Hunter Biden laptop reportingCompany temporarily restricted New York Post article in 2020 about contents of the abandoned computer of Joe Biden’s son Former senior staff at Twitter will testify on Wednesday before the House oversight committee about the social media platform’s handling of reporting on Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.The hearing has set the stage for the agenda of a newly Republican-controlled House, underscoring its intention to home in on longstanding and unsubstantiated allegations that big tech has an anti-conservative bias.Republican targeting Hunter Biden says: ‘I don’t target individuals’Read moreThe recently departed Twitter employees set to testify include Vijaya Gadde, the social network’s former chief legal officer, former deputy general counsel James Baker and former head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth.The hearing will center on a question that has long dogged Republicans – why Twitter decided to temporarily restrict the sharing of a story about Hunter Biden in the New York Post, released in October 2020. The Post said it had received a copy of a laptop hard drive from Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved. Twitter initially blocked people from sharing links to the article for several days, citing concerns over misinformation and spreading a report based on potentially hacked materials.“Americans deserve answers about this attack on the first amendment and why big tech and the Swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit,” said the Republican committee chairman James Comer. “Accountability is coming.”At the time, the article was greeted with skepticism due to questions about the laptop’s origins, including Giuliani’s involvement. Twitter initially said the article had been blocked in keeping with its “hacked materials” policy, which restricted the sharing of unlawfully accessed materials. While it explicitly allowed “reporting on a hack, or sharing press coverage of hacking”, it blocked stories that included “personal and private information – like email addresses and phone numbers”. The platform amended these rules following the Biden controversy.Months later, Twitter’s then CEO, Jack Dorsey, called the company’s communications around the Post article “not great”. He added that blocking the article’s URL with “zero context” around why it was blocked was “unacceptable”.Elon Musk, who purchased the company last year, has since shared a series of internal records showing how the company initially blocked the story from being shared, citing pressure from the Biden administration, among other factors. Republican theories that Democrats are colluding with big tech to suppress conservative speech have become a hot button issue in Washington, with Congress members using various tech hearings to grill executives. But experts say claims of anti-conservative bias have been disproven by independent researchers.“What we’ve seen time and again is that companies are deplatforming people who are spreading racism and conspiracy theories in violation of the company’s rule,” said Jessica J González, co-chief executive officer of the civil rights group Free Press.“The fact that those people are disproportionately Republicans has nothing to do with it,” she added. “This is about right or wrong, not left or right.”Musk’s decision to release information about the laptop story comes after he allowed the return of high-profile figures banned for spreading misinformation and engaging in hate speech, including the former president. The executive has shared and engaged with conspiracy theories on his personal account.The White House has sought to discredit the Republican investigation into Hunter Biden, calling them “divorced-from-reality political stunts”. Nonetheless, Republicans now hold subpoena power in the House, giving them the authority to compel testimony and conduct an aggressive investigation.Online advocacy groups and big tech watchdogs have said the focus on alleged anti-conservative bias from social media firms has served as a distraction from legitimate concerns, delaying the chance for useful legislation to address issues like misinformation, antitrust concerns and online hate speech.“The fact that this is the very first tech hearing of this Congress says something,” González said. “There are real problems facing people across the political spectrum because of big tech, and lack of regulation. But instead we are getting a big waste of time, and a political stunt. The focus of Congress ought to be serving the people who elected them to office.”The Associated Press contributed to this articleTopicsHouse of RepresentativesTwitterHunter BidenRepublicansUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Biden’s State of the Union unofficially kicked off his re-election campaign Moira DoneganThe president touted many of his greatest achievements. But there are some areas he still needs to work on It was President Biden’s first address to Congress since Republicans won control of the House, and unofficially, it was the start of his 2024 re-election campaign. Biden faced a newly adversarial audience at his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, a group of empowered Republicans clustered on the right side of the House chamber, each one eager to perform outrage for the cameras.The speech, a strictly choreographed bit of political theater, was as much a competition of affective performance between the president and his Republican rivals as it was a set of policy proposals. Mostly, Biden won. The Republicans heckled and booed. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon conspiracist from Florida, bellowed at Biden in a big, fluffy fur coat, like Cruella De Vil; Kevin McCarthy, newly elected speaker after a long and humiliating Republican leadership contest, sulked pointedly in a chair behind the president. But Biden countered their flustered outrage with a cool, almost irreverent indifference.Only once did he seem to lose control of the room, at a moment in his remarks on the debt ceiling where he accused the Republicans, accurately, of holding the national economy hostage in order to secure unpopular cuts to social security and Medicare. The Republicans booed and jeered mightily at this accusation; they would do no such thing, they implied. Flustered, Biden needed a moment to collect himself. But then he turned their denial into a bargaining chip. So were they saying that they would take social security and Medicare off the table in the coming debt ceiling negotiations? There was jeering, cheers – the Republicans seemed divided and confused. It was that rarest of events in a State of the Union speech: an exchange that could, conceivably, actually affect policy.But for the most part, Biden’s speech was a tour of his economic achievements, a sort of pep-rally review of everything he had accomplished in his first two years in office, while his party controlled Congress. He touted better-than-expected jobs numbers and historically low unemployment; he touted his legislation that fosters competition with China in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips, and he announced a new rule requiring all federal construction projects to use American-made materials.He bragged about a deal to cap insulin prices for Medicare patients, and called on Congress to make the cap universal. He bragged about his Inflation Reduction Act, and its climate investments in clean energy and natural disaster preparedness. The president tried to thread a delicate needle, arguing both that he had been tremendously successful and effective, and also that there was still more to be done. The refrain of the speech, repeated every few paragraphs like a prayer, distilled his case for re-election in the anodyne, pithy language of a bumper sticker: “Let’s get the job done.”Repeatedly, Biden spoke not just of the surprisingly robust economy, but of the kind of lives Americans aspire to achieve within it. The theme was job creation, but to Biden’s credit, he distinguished that not just any jobs will do; working people, he claimed, needed jobs with dignity.Biden is not an eloquent speaker, and he lacks the penchant for soaring rhetoric and moral aspiration that defined the speeches of his one-time boss, Barack Obama. But on this point he made himself clear in unusually moving terms.He spoke of his father, who told him that work was not just about money, but about self-respect. He highlighted a union construction worker who was in the audience as his guest, a woman who had worked for decades in a job that gave her a living wage and personal esteem. Work has become undignified for many Americans, pushed as the working class has been into service sector jobs that surveil workers, demand obsequiousness from them, damage their bodies, and don’t pay enough to live on. These people’s malaise and resentment, their sense that the future has been stolen from them, has shaped American political life for years now, and it was rare to see a politician of such great mainstream success dignifying these people with a sense of empathy and equality, appealing not to their most base angers but to their highest aspirations. “Jobs are coming back,” Biden said. “Pride is coming back.” This president is not a great speech giver, but to some of us, this sounded like poetry.The economy is Biden’s preferred ground, and the area in which he can most reasonably claim success. But Biden spoke at great length about his past accomplishments from his first two years in office in part because he is unlikely to achieve much else for the rest of his first term. The Republican-controlled House has already initiated a flurry of investigations against the president; their conspiracy-mongering and jockeying for attention is likely to consume much of the next two years.And even the president’s past accomplishments can look meagre when you consider what he promised. Noticeably absent from Biden’s speech were any mentions of the universal childcare and pre-K plans that had been a cornerstone of his domestic agenda at the outset of his term – plans that were scuttled by opponents, and de-prioritized by the administration, in favor of more macho, politically palatable public infrastructure goods, like roads and bridges.And there were elephants in the room. Several US supreme court justices were in attendance, including Jackson, Kagan, Roberts and, bizarrely, retired-but-still-alive Justices Anthony Kennedy and Steven Breyer. Their robed appearance lent a morbid futility to all Biden’s talk of his domestic agenda, as if the justices were a bunch of grim reapers: they served as a reminder that, no matter what Biden tries to do, the unelected, unaccountable Court at One First Street will strike down anything they do not like.Indeed, that court’s most memorable and impactful action, the elimination of the abortion right in last month’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, barely merited a mention in Biden’s speech. In the now almost eight months since the ruling, countless women have been endangered and insulted, their organs made not their own. Many have been placed in danger of death or disfigurement because of the Republican party’s fantasies about their bodies; all of them have suffered the harm of being made into second-class citizens, their lives and their health commandeered from them, as if they were not adults.It was the outrage over this decision that delivered the Democratic party their unexpected and unearned good performance in the midterms. Biden devoted three sentences to it; his tirade against “junk fees” got 19. Biden was clearly launching his re-election campaign with the State of the Union. If he wishes to win it, he might want to pay more attention to women voters.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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Feisty Biden offers bipartisan vision while still triggering Republicans The president hailed successes and even got the GOP cheering for entitlement programs in what looked like an unofficial re-election campaign launchNo cascade of lies. No speaker of the House of Representatives ripping up the speech of a recently impeached president. Almost no face masks or Covid restrictions or sad empty seats in the public gallery.Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in Washington was basically normal. If someone had built a time machine in 2010 and travelled forward to 2023, they would have felt in pretty familiar territory. It’s been quite a while since you could say that.Biden’s State of the Union address: key takeawaysRead moreHere was a president midway through his first term, confidently touting achievements and sounding positive about the future. Biden, slayer of Chinese spy balloons, was in a feisty mood, wearing his 80 years lightly and doing enough to silence doubters within his own party about an imminent re-election campaign (“Mr President, that was awesome!” was the raw reaction of Jamaal Bowman, a member of the leftwing “Squad”).Here, also, was a president seeking to strike bipartisan notes. He began by congratulating Kevin McCarthy, the new speaker of the House of Representatives, giving Republicans an excuse to roar in support of their own (and quipping, “Speaker, I don’t want to ruin your reputation but I look forward to working with you”). Then he did the same for the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, giving Democrats the same liberty.Biden went on to name-check Republican Mitch McConnell (“Where are you Mitch?”) and Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. It was a Bill Clinton-esque touch of charm designed to leave everyone feeling happy.It’s easy to forget now that, after failed runs for president in 1988 and 2008, and after Barack Obama was less than encouraging in 2016, Biden’s political career seemed all washed up. He has said he was motivated to run again in 2020 to heal the soul of a nation traumatised by his predecessor, Donald Trump. He came to office facing interlocking climate, coronavirus, economic and racial justice crises.Two years later, Biden is, suddenly and unexpectedly, a historically consequential president. This was his “We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” speech, making the case that the worst is over, order is being restored and he is making America sane again. He reflected: “Two years ago, our economy was reeling. As I stand here tonight, we have created a record 12m new jobs, more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.“Two years ago, Covid had shut down our businesses, closed our schools and robbed us of so much. Today, Covid no longer controls our lives. And two years ago, our democracy faced its greatest threat since the civil war. Today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken.”This was Biden’s first State of the Union address to a divided Congress, following midterm elections in which Republicans gained a slender majority in the House. It was therefore McCarthy, not Nancy Pelosi, sitting him behind him alongside Vice-President Kamala Harris on the dais.But Biden came bearing an olive branch, noting that he has signed more than 300 bipartisan laws since becoming president. “To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress,” he said.When he announced new standards to require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America, there were bipartisan cheers. When he spoke of an America that can still do big things, citing the Republican president George W Bush’s Pepfar effort against HIV/Aids, there was bipartisan clapping for activist and musician Bono in the public gallery. And when he acknowledged guest Paul Pelosi, husband of former speaker Nancy Pelosi, recovering from a vicious hammer attack, again there was bipartisan applause.He thanked Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure law. He then teased: “And to my Republican friends who voted against it but still ask to fund projects in their districts, don’t worry. I promised to be the president for all Americans. We’ll fund your projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking.”Elise Stefanik, a leading Republican who has already endorsed Trump for president in 2024, sat stony-faced at that. Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, could not prevent a smile dancing across his lips.In such moments the rancor and division of the past eight years did not, for once, seem an inescapable death spiral. But you did not have to look hard for reminders. Sitting on the end of a row, wearing an orange tie and live-tweeting on his phone, was George Santos, the con artist who personifies the Republicans’ current divorce from truth.And of course there were skirmishes, especially over the looming standoff over raising the debt ceiling. Biden said: “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and social security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s the majority.”Uproar. McCarthy shook his head as many Republicans shouted “No!”.Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, dressed in an elaborate white fur that would make Norma Desmond blush, yelled: “You lie! You lie! Liar!” Biden ad-libbed: “Anybody who doubts it, contact my office, I’ll give you a copy of the proposal.” He was too polite to name names, he added, and as the heckles died down, he said: “As we all apparently agree, social security and Medicare are apparently off the books now … We’ve got unanimity!”Somehow he had tricked Republicans into joining Democrats in standing and applauding entitlements. Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, tweeted: “Joe Biden sparring with the crowd and winning wasn’t something I expected.”Despite the interruptions, Biden never lost control, blending sorrow for the parents of Tyre Nichols in the balcony with anger as he demanded change. “Let’s do what we know in our hearts we need to do. Let’s come together and finish the job on police reform. Do something.”As he so often does, the president described this as “an inflection point” in American history. There’s no denying that. Russia is reportedly gearing up for a massive new offensive in Ukraine. Trump is back on the campaign trail like a horror movie villain who refuses to be vanquished. Biden’s own future is in question as opinion polls suggest that even a majority of his own party do not want him to run again.But Biden also loves to say it’s never been a good bet to bet against America. It’s also never been a good bet to bet against Joe Biden. His still unofficial campaign for the White House in 2024 is off to a strong start.TopicsUS newsThe US politics sketchState of the Union addressJoe BidenUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More