US Politics

William Barr’s Trump book: self-serving narratives and tricky truths ignoredThe two-time attorney general portrays himself as a bulwark against his former boss – but his accounts are highly selective In his new book, Donald Trump’s former attorney general William Barr complains that in the US, the “most educated and influential people are more attached to self-serving narratives than to factual truth”. Barr book reveals Trump’s secret to a ‘good tweet’: ‘just the right amount of crazy’Read moreBut in his own narrative of his tumultuous time as Trump’s top lawyer, Barr regularly omits inconvenient truths or includes self-serving versions of events previously reported with his evident input.Barr was only the second US attorney general to fill the role twice, working for George HW Bush from 1991 to 1993, then succeeding Jeff Sessions in 2019. His memoir, One Damn Thing After Another, will be published on 8 March. Excerpts have been reported by US news outlets. The Guardian obtained a copy.As widely reported, Barr defends himself from accusations that he was too close to Trump and acted to shield him over the Russia investigation and Robert Mueller’s final report on election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.He defends his decision to say Trump did not seek to obstruct justice during Mueller’s work, despite Mueller laying out 10 possible instances of such potentially criminal conduct.Barr also defends his decision to seek to dismiss charges against Michael Flynn and to lessen the sentence handed to Roger Stone, Trump allies convicted as a result of the Russia investigation.On other controversies, Barr’s accounts are often highly selective or noticeably incomplete.In June 2020, Barr was engulfed in controversy over the removal of Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney in the southern district of New York.Berman was investigating Trump’s business and allies including Rudy Giuliani. He was also supervising a case involving a Turkish bank which the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, pressured Trump to drop.Shortly after John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser, said Trump promised Erdoğan he would get rid of leaders in the southern district, Barr announced Berman was stepping down. When Berman said he would not quit, he was fired.The incident prompted calls for Barr to resign, including from the New York City Bar Association.In his book, Barr praises the “quality and experience of the group of US attorneys I inherited” and says he told them “to go full speed ahead on the department’s existing priorities”. He also says he regrets not installing an aide, Ed O’Callaghan, “into his dream job – US attorney in the southern district of New York”.But he does not mention Berman and how or why he fired him.Barr also defends his decision to restart federal executions after 17 years, which lead to 13 state killings in the final six months of Trump’s presidency. Barr describes, with apparent relish, the crimes of many of those killed.He does not mention Lisa Montgomery, the first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years, whose lawyers argued she had brain damage from beatings as a child and suffered from psychosis and other mental conditions, having been sexually abused.Trump, the death penalty and its links with America’s racist history – podcastRead moreBarr also outlines why he thinks Trump lost the election and should not run again.His former boss’s volcanic anger is repeatedly described. Detailing Trump’s fury during protests against racial injustice outside the White House in June 2020 – after confirming that Trump was once hustled to a protective bunker, which Trump denied – Barr writes: “The president lost his composure.“Glaring around the semi-circle of officials in front of his desk, he swept his index finger around the semi-circle, pointing at all of us. ‘You’re all losers!’ he yelled, his face reddening … ‘You’re losers!’ he yelled again, tiny flecks of spit arcing to his desktop. ‘Fucking losers!’ It was a tantrum.”After that tantrum, peaceful protesters were violently cleared from Lafayette Square before Trump walked to a historic church to stage a photoshoot holding a Bible. Barr and other senior aides made the walk too.It was widely reported that Barr ordered the clearance. In his book, Barr says Trump told him to “take the lead” in dealing with the protesters. But he echoes an official report in saying the clearance was already planned by police.Barr portrays himself and other aides obstructing or defying Trump’s demands, including pressure to investigate Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, and the contents of a laptop obtained by Giuliani.“I cut him off again,” Barr writes, “raising my voice. ‘Dammit, Mr President! I can’t talk about that, and I am not going to!’“He was silent for a moment, then quickly got off the line.”Barr also gives space to his falling out with Trump over the president’s lie about electoral fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden – a rupture which happened after Barr controversially ordered the Department of Justice to investigate electoral fraud claims, a decision he now defends.A tempestuous meeting between Trump and Barr on 1 December 2021, at which the attorney general told the president no widespread fraud existed, has been widely reported. Such accounts do not say Barr attempted to resign. In his memoir, he says he did and that Trump accepted but was talked around.In his account of a meeting on 14 December 2020 at which he did resign, Barr says Trump first gave him a report which the president claimed contained “absolute proof that the Dominion machines were rigged [and] I won the election and will have a second term”.The House oversight committee released the report in June 2021, detailing how Trump sent it to Barr’s replacement, Jeffrey Rosen, shortly after Barr left his resignation meeting.But accounts of that meeting in books by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa (Peril) and Jonathan Karl (Betrayal), heavily informed by Barr, do not say Trump gave Barr the report and that Barr, in his own words, said he would look into it.William Barr uses new book to outline case against Trump White House runRead moreThe report was produced by Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), which Barr says “described itself as a cybersecurity firm in Texas”, and purported to deal with events in Antrim county, Michigan, a Republican area where a clerking error appeared to give Biden victory before a Trump win was confirmed.The report, Barr writes, concluded that voting machines were “intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results”.Barr calls the report “amateurish” and “sensational” and its conclusion “an ipse dixit, a bald claim without even the pretense of supporting evidence”.Dominion Voting Systems, the company which made the machines, has sued Trump allies including Giuliani, Mike Lindell and Fox News, seeking billions in damages.Trump has not commented on Barr’s book. But he has previously called his attorney general – who many saw as a ruthless “hatchet man”, determined to do the president’s bidding – “afraid, weak and frankly … pathetic”.TopicsBooksWilliam BarrDonald TrumpUS politicsTrump administrationRepublicansPolitics booksanalysisReuse this content More

Trump participated in potential crimes to overturn 2020 election, Capitol attack panel claimsIn a major filing, the House committee says it believes the former president was obstructing Congress and defrauding the US The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack said in a major filing on Wednesday that it believed that Donald Trump violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing Congress and defrauding the United States.The revelations came as part of a filing that intended to force John Eastman, Trump’s former lawyer, to turn over thousands of emails and records since his participation in potential crimes destroyed his arguments for attorney-client privilege protections.Six of Donald Trump’s lawyers subpoenaed by Capitol attack panelRead moreThe House counsel Douglas Letter said in the 61-page filing that the select committee had a basis for concluding Trump violated the law by obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and defrauded the United States by interfering with lawful government functions.The former president knew he had not won enough electoral college votes to win the 2020 election, yet nevertheless sought to have the then vice-president, Mike Pence, to manipulate the results in his favor, the filing said about Trump’s obstruction.Had the effort to pressure Pence into returning Trump to power succeeded, the certification of Joe Biden’s win would have been impeded. “There is no genuine question that the president and plaintiff attempted to accomplish this specific illegal result,” the filing said.The select committee said in the court submission that it believed Trump defrauded the United States by interfering in the certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results.House investigators also said there was evidence to suggest that the conspiracy to defraud extended to the Capitol attack, arguing it was plausible to argue Trump entered a conspiracy with the rioters to disrupt Biden’s certification on 6 January.The Guardian first broke the news earlier this year that the select committee was investigating whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy that connected the “political elements” of his scheme to return himself to office with the violence perpetrated by far-right militias.Letter also said in the filing that the select committee believed Trump and his associates appeared to have violated the law by engaging in common law fraud as they sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The select committee’s findings came as part of a 16-part court submission to persuade a federal judge to force Eastman, a central figure in Trump’s scheme to return himself to office, to at least allow the panel to confidentially review his records. Eastman helped lead a team of lawyers at a Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington DC, which Trump called from the White House the night before the Capitol attack to discuss ways to stop Biden’s certification from taking place, the Guardian has reported.He has so far turned over about 8,000 pages of emails and documents from 4-7 January to the panel, but has withheld an additional 11,000 documents on the basis that they are protected by attorney-client privilege or constitute confidential attorney work product.The panel also said in the filing that Eastman’s attorney-client privilege claims were undercut by his inability to show he had been formally retained as Trump’s lawyer. An “engagement letter” that Eastman produced last week was unsigned.Through Letter’s submission, the select committee added Eastman could not claim to assert attorney-client privilege over emails he sent on his Chapman university email server, and those messages were not protected by the attorney work product protection.House investigators said the evidence against Trump – and Eastman’s role in counselling Trump to engage in potentially criminal activity – meant that Eastman’s claims of attorney-client privilege were destroyed by the so-called “crime-fraud exception”, among other arguments.“The attorney-client privilege does not shield participants in a crime from an investigation into a crime,” select committee member Jamie Raskin told the Guardian. “If it did, then all you would have to do to rob a bank is bring a lawyer with you and be asking for advice.”The select committee said that in the first instance, it simply wanted to examine Eastman’s records “in camera” – a process that takes place when a reasonable person would agree a review of the materials may help establish whether the crime-fraud exception applies.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

Judge blocks Texas from investigating parents of transgender teenAmy Clark Meachum has issued an order blocking governor Greg Abbott’s directive examining gender-affirming care as child abuse A Texas judge on Wednesday blocked the state from investigating the parents of a transgender teenager over gender-confirmation treatments, but stopped short of preventing the state from looking into other reports about children receiving similar care.District Judge Amy Clark Meachum issued a temporary order halting the investigation by the Department of Family and Protective Services into the parents of the 16-year-old girl. The parents sued over the investigation and Republican governor Greg Abbott’s order last week that officials look into reports of such treatments as abuse.‘When a child tells you who they are, believe them’: the psychologist taking on Texas’ anti-trans policiesRead moreClark set a 11 March hearing on whether to issue a broader temporary order blocking enforcement of Abbott’s directive.The lawsuit marked the first report of parents being investigated following Abbott’s directive and an earlier nonbinding legal opinion by Republican attorney general Ken Paxton labeling certain gender-confirmation treatments as “child abuse”.Meachum issued the order hours after attorneys for the state and for the parents appeared via Zoom in a brief hearing.Paul Castillo with Lambda Legal, which joined the American Civil Liberties Union to file the suit, told Meachum that allowing the order to be enforced would cause “irreparable” harm to the teen’s parents and other families.The groups also represent a clinical psychologist who has said the order will force her to choose between reporting her clients to the state or facing the loss of her license and other penalties.Ryan Kercher, an attorney with Paxton’s office, told Meachum that the governor’s order and the earlier opinion don’t require the state to investigate every transgender child receiving gender-confirmation care.Abbott’s directive and the attorney general’s opinion go against the nation’s largest medical groups, including the American Medical Association, which have opposed Republican-backed restrictions filed in statehouses nationwide.Arkansas last year became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender confirming treatments for minors, and Tennessee approved a similar measure. A judge blocked Arkansas’ law, and the state is appealing.The Texas lawsuit does not identify the family by name. The suit said the mother works for DFPS on the review of reports of abuse and neglect. The day of Abbott’s order, she asked her supervisor how it would affect the agency’s policy, according to the lawsuit.The mother was placed on leave because she has a transgender daughter and the following day was informed her family would be investigated in accordance with the governor’s directive, the suit said.DFPS said Tuesday that it had received three reports since Abbott’s order and Paxton’s opinion, but would not say whether any resulted in investigations. At Wednesday’s hearing, Castillo said he was aware of at least two other families being investigated.TopicsTexasLGBT rightsGreg AbbottUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Ron DeSantis suggests France would ‘fold’ if it was invaded by RussiaThe 2024 presidential nominee contender also angrily chastised students on stage with him for wearing masks as ‘Covid theatre’

Ukraine crisis – live news
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has said France would not put up a fight if Russia invaded, as it did in Ukraine.White House unveils new Covid strategy including ‘test to treat’ plan – liveRead more“A lot of other places around the world, they just fold the minute there’s any type of adversity,” DeSantis told reporters at a press event at South Florida University in Tampa on Wednesday.“I mean can you imagine if he [Vladimir Putin] went into France? Would they do anything to put up a fight? Probably not.”The governor also began the event by angrily attacking students present on the stage with him for wearing masks against Covid-19. “You do not have to wear those masks,” DeSantis said, pointing a finger.“I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything and we’ve gotta stop with this Covid theatre. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”Federal authorities have relaxed mask guidance in much of the US but the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 950,000 – and more than 70,000 in Florida alone.Anyone French who saw DeSantis’s remark might remember the bad jokes (“cheese-eating surrender monkeys”) and Orwellian doublespeak (french fries renamed “freedom fries”) that followed Jacques Chirac’s refusal to back the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.Amid much online mockery of DeSantis’s remarks, Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter, tweeted: “He went to Yale.”DeSantis also went to Harvard, to study law. Before entering politics, he was a Jag or US navy lawyer in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay. He regularly polls second in surveys of likely contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, behind Donald Trump.On Wednesday, after dissing the whole of France, he had praise for Ukrainians fighting the Russian invasion.“And so those folks are stepping up,” he said, “but it’s, there’s a lot of problems I think between now and then and I think unfortunately it’s going to end up very, very ugly over the next weeks and months.”He also offered his view of Putin’s psyche, the evils of communism and whether the US should develop its own energy resources, at the expense of federal lands and efforts to fight the climate crisis, in order to lessen reliance on Russia.“Look at what’s going on and someone like Vladimir Putin,” he said. “You know, I analogise him to basically an authoritarian gas station attendant.“You look at their country, it’s a hollowed-out country but for the energy. And yes they have legacy nuclear weapons, which makes them much more dangerous than if they didn’t have those.“And so [Putin is] being fueled because America is not serious about energy independence. Right now Europe is not serious at all. So Europe is funding this guy. So he has the ability now to go in and flex muscle.”DeSantis also said Republicans under Trump “funded a lot of weapons for Ukraine … that has helped them put up a fight”.He did not mention that Trump’s first impeachment trial was for seeking dirt on his political rivals by withholding military aid – to Ukraine.TopicsRon DeSantisUS politicsRepublicansFloridaUkraineFrancenewsReuse this content More

The rise and fall of US enemies and allies in State of the Union speeches – a visual guide Joe Biden’s State of the Union address showed an old enemy re-entering US consciousnessJoe Biden’s speech on Tuesday mentioned Russia 18 times – more than any other State of the Union Address since the tradition started in 1790.Biden condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the first 11 minutes of his speech, painting the war as a global ideological fight. “In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security,” he said.Among presidents who mentioned Russia or the Soviet Union in their State of the Union addresses, Biden already ranks in the top 10 after just two speeches.Bar chart of the number of times US presidents have mentioned Russia or the Soviet Union in their state of the union addressesSince the beginning of State of the Union speeches, presidents have used the opportunity to shift America’s consciousness on to its allies and enemies.The first few presidents in the early 19th century talked often about America’s fraught relationship with European powers. In the early 20th century, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt focused on China after the Boxer Rebellion, an uprising against foreign influence. And in more recent decades, particularly after the 9/11 attacks, presidents’ focus has been on Middle Eastern countries.A series of line charts showing the countries presidents mentioned the most during their state of the union over timeIn the past two decades, presidents have generally preferred to start their speeches by focusing inward – talking about economic struggles, growing political polarisation and bringing troops back to the US.But growing threats from Russia and China have shifted America’s gaze back outward.The last time a president focused largely on foreign matters was the speech after the 9/11 attacks and the American invasion of Afghanistan. George W Bush started his 2002 speech saying: “As we gather tonight, our nation is at war; our economy is in recession; and the civilised world faces unprecedented dangers.”But the last time a president used a large chunk of his speech to condemn Russia or the Soviet Union was more than 40 years ago. In 1981, Jimmy Carter mentioned the Soviet Union 62 times, largely in response to its “illegal invasion” of Afghanistan. It was the most any president talked about Russia or the Soviet Union.Line chart showing mentions of Russia and Soviet Union in state of the union addresses over timeMuch like previous presidents, Biden didn’t talk about foreign affairs in a vacuum. Rather, he used the opportunity to talk about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the broader context of how he views America’s role in the larger arc of global geopolitics.He ended the Russia section of his speech by saying: “Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he will never gain the hearts and souls of the Ukrainian people. He will never extinguish their love of freedom. He will never weaken the resolve of the free world.”TopicsJoe BidenRussiaState of the Union addressEuropeUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Texas primaries: Greg Abbott to face Beto O’Rourke in governor’s raceTrump’s endorsement wasn’t enough to prevent incumbent Ken Paxton from being forced into runoff for state attorney general Republican governor Greg Abbott will face Democrat Beto O’Rourke after voters in Texas opened what could be a lengthy, bruising primary season poised to reshape political power from state capitals to Washington.Both easily won their party’s nomination for governor on Tuesday.The GOP primary for state attorney general was more competitive. Donald Trump’s endorsement wasn’t enough to prevent incumbent Ken Paxton from being forced into a May runoff. He’ll face Texas land commissioner George P Bush, the nephew of one president and grandson of another, after neither captured a majority of the votes cast. While Paxton won more votes than Bush on Tuesday, his failure to win outright could raise questions about the power of Trump’s endorsement as he seeks to reshape the party in his image in other primaries later this year.Abbott is now in a commanding position as he seeks a third term, beginning his run with more than $50m and campaigning on a strongly conservative agenda in America’s largest Republican state.That leaves O’Rourke facing an uphill effort to recapture the momentum of his 2018 Senate campaign, when he nearly ousted Ted Cruz.“This group of people, and then some, are going to make me the first Democrat to be governor of the state of Texas since 1994,” O’Rourke told supporters in Fort Worth, where in 2018 he flipped Texas’ largest red county. “This is on us. This is on all of us.”Abbott said, “Republicans sent a message.”“They want to keep Texas on the extraordinary path of opportunity that we have provided over the past eight years,” his campaign said in a statement.Democrats faced challenges of their own. Nine-term US representative Henry Cuellar was trying to avoid becoming the first Democratic member of Congress to lose a primary this year. He will instead head into a runoff against progressive Jessica Cisneros.The primary season, which picks up speed in the summer, determines which candidates from each party advance to the fall campaign. The midterms will ultimately serve as a referendum on the first half of Joe Biden’s administration, which has been dominated by a pandemic that has proven unpredictable, along with rising inflation and a series of foreign policy crises. The GOP, meanwhile, is grappling with its future as many candidates seeking to emerge from primaries, including a sizable number in Texas, tie themselves to Trump and his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.Tuesday marked the state’s first election under its tighter new voting laws that, among other changes muscled through by the GOP-controlled legislature, require mail ballots to include identification – a mandate that counties blamed for thousands of rejected mail ballots even before election day. More than 10,000 mail ballots around Houston alone were flagged for not complying.Technical issues also caused problems in Texas’ largest county: paper jams and paper tears in voting machines would take a couple days to work through while counting continues, said Isabel Longoria, Harris county’s elections administrator.Several voting sites around Houston were also short-staffed, she said, causing tensions in some locations.Associated Press contributed to this storyTopicsTexasGreg AbbottBeto O’RourkeUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

Biden’s State of the Union address: a perfect summation of his presidencyMoira DoneganThe US president has good intentions, with only halting, sporadic, uncreative, and trepidatious efforts to actually enact them There’s always something a bit grim about the State of the Union. A setpiece of American political theater, the annual speech by the president to a joint session of Congress is choreographed to eliminate any chance of accidental sincerity. The president speaks in carefully calibrated spin; every word sounds like it has been focus-grouped. Members of the opposition party make a show of their animosity, vamping for the cameras with either staid, dignified displeasure or ravenous hatred, depending on where they are running for re-election. No one’s mind is changed and little new information is delivered. By its nature, the speech is meant to describe the status quo. It is not meant to change it.State of the Union: Joe Biden pledges to make Putin pay for Ukraine invasionRead moreThis year, President Biden had a particularly grim task. After months and months of negotiations with Senator Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, proved fruitless, his sweeping economic agenda, the Build Back Better Plan, appears to be dead. The two voting rights bills that would have helped secure the franchise for Black Americans and protect the integrity of future elections were killed when Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, declined to support an exemption to the filibuster, meaning that the erosion of voting rights in Republican-controlled states is likely to advance unchallenged. Many economic indicators are strong, but with inflation running rampant, this means little to working families, who see their paychecks covering less and less of what they need. This spring, the US supreme court will hand down opinions that will drastically reshape American government and American lives, including the case from Mississippi, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, that will overturn Roe v Wade. The midterms are coming, and in Europe, a pointless and brutal war of self-aggrandizement has been launched by an erratic and mendacious dictator with a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons.Perhaps it was to be expected, then, that Biden’s speech was wide-ranging in tone, frenziedly ambitious in its agenda, and light on specifics. He opened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, condemning the murderous ambitions of Vladimir Putin and praising the courage of the unexpectedly resilient Ukrainian military and civilian volunteer forces to rapturous applause. The Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, was in attendance as a guest of the first lady, and she received the night’s first standing ovation, her hand placed over her heart from her balcony seat, as lawmakers below fluttered her country’s blue and yellow flag. Homages to the Ukrainian struggle were everywhere in the House chamber, with a number of women lawmakers dressed in blue and yellow ensembles, men and women alike wearing stickers of the Ukrainian flag on their lapels, and others fielding subtler signals of solidarity: when the camera lingered on Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, she had a cloth sunflower, the Ukrainian national symbol, pinned to her collar.Biden boasted of the devastating impact of western economic sanctions on the Russian economy, reaffirmed his support for Nato, and vowed to deploy the justice department to seize yachts belonging to Putin’s friends. Promisingly, it seems as if concerns over growing Russian aggression might spark a renewed interest in energy independence that could help the US and Europe break their addiction to Russian oil and gas. Speaking of the recent return of significant numbers of American troops to Central Europe for the first time in years, Biden reaffirmed his commitment to preventing a direct military confrontation with Russia, and emphasized that the troops would be there not to attack the Russians, but to protect Nato allies. One suspects that Putin will not appreciate the distinction.When Biden moved on to domestic policy, the crowd quickly became divided. As he touted his American Rescue Plan, last year’s Covid relief package, boos erupted from the Republican side when Biden noted that the 2017 Republican tax cuts had primarily benefitted the very rich. It was a theme he maintained as he turned to his bipartisan infrastructure law, the $1tn legislative achievement that provides funds for the maintenance and repair of the nation’s physical infrastructure – roads, bridges, airports, commuter trains, and internet. Biden touted a series of shovel-ready projects he claims will go into effect this year and emphasized the bill’s ability to encourage the return of the American manufacturing sector.Domestic manufacturing was largely his prescription for fighting inflation, too. Biden introduced his broader economic agenda with a call to make more stuff in the US, and to use the federal government’s purchasing power to support those American-made goods. This segue led into a litany of briefly visited agenda items, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices; cutting the cost of childcare for working class families so that more women could return to the paid workforce; establishing a 15% minimum corporate tax rate; and supporting the labor-strengthening Pro Act.Many of these proposals seemed less like Biden was putting forward achievable goals for the next year of his presidency and more like he was shifting through the wreckage of his disastrous Build Back Better negotiations with Manchin, searching for some workable leftovers. Most of the items he proposed had already been presented to Congress; none of them had been able to get through the obstructionism of the Republican party and the Manchin-Sinema block. These things would substantially improve the lives of Americans, but it was clear he had no plan for how to implement any of them.This was true especially for abortion rights. Though reproductive choice advocates had long urged Biden to say the word “abortion” in public – he has never done so as president – he referred tonight only offhandedly to the importance of reproductive rights. There was no mention of the fact that Roe v Wade has been nullified in the state of Texas for six months, as of Tuesday. There was no mention of the fact that the Reproductive Health Act, an attempt to legislatively secure the federal right to an abortion, failed in the Senate this week. There was no mention of the fact that of the five supreme court justices present at the speech, three of them – John Roberts, Brett Kavanagh, and Amy Coney Barrett – will vote to eliminate that right in a few short months. “We have to protect a woman’s right to choose,” said Biden, not offering any ideas as to just how that right might be protected. The camera cut momentarily to Amy Coney Barrett, who pursed her lips as thin as paper.In this way, the speech was a perfect summation of Biden’s presidency: good intentions, with only halting, sporadic, uncreative, and trepidatious pursuit of actually enacting them. Unlike his predecessor, Biden tends to stay on script, but the State of the Union speech featured several ad libs – a product, some suspected, of the multiple revisions the speech was subjected to at the last minute, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine placed new demands on the broadcast. The last of these was probably the most apropos: “Go get him,” Biden told the nation. Him who? Get him how? It didn’t make sense, but so little of this does.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
TopicsJoe BidenOpinionUS politicsAbortionUS economyUS domestic policyUS foreign policyUkrainecommentReuse this content More