Democrats

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden expected to announce 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday

      by

      Joe Biden is expected to announce his 2024 re-election campaign as early as Tuesday, possibly setting the stage for an extraordinary rematch with Donald Trump.A Tuesday launch would come exactly four years after Biden announced his 2020 presidential bid, in which he warned that the “soul” of the nation was at stake after four tumultuous years under Trump.More than two years into his own presidency, Biden has struggled to heal political and cultural divisions he believes are tearing American society. But he has racked up a list of legacy defining legislative accomplishments while working to restore US leadership on the world stage.Following Democrats’ better-than-expected performance in the November midterms, Biden has been open about his intention to seek a second term. For months, the question was not if he would run, but when and how he would announce.Just before leaving Ireland earlier this month, Biden declared that the ancestral journey had reinforced a “sense of optimism” about what he might accomplish. He told reporters the “calculus” on a second term had been completed and he planned to run. An announcement, he said, would come “relatively soon”.Asked again on Monday, Biden replied: “I told you I’m planning on running. I’ll let you know real soon.”Partial to symmetry and nostalgia, Biden appears to have signed off on a plan to announce his 2024 campaign with a video outlining his vision, as he did in 2019. The president is scheduled to speak at the North America’s Building Trades Unions’ US Legislative Conference in Washington on Tuesday, an echo of his first campaign event in 2019, when he spoke at a union hall in Pittsburgh.Much has changed. The pandemic that reshaped US life for nearly three years has receded, due in large part to the mass vaccination campaign the Biden administration oversaw. Decades-high inflation is abating, though economic uncertainty lingers. A loss of federal abortion protections and threats to democratic institutions have fueled Democrats in key battleground elections.“Part of the case President Biden will make to the public after he announces his reelection campaign is that he needs more time to do more and build on the things he has done during his first term,” Biden’s former press secretary, Jen Psaki, said on her MSNBC show on Sunday. “That’s the message: ‘Let me finish the job I started.’”Biden’s team is touting the historically productive start to his term, which included a pandemic-relief package that temporarily halved child poverty; a generational investment in infrastructure; rare action to reform gun laws; a wide-ranging effort to combat climate crisis; lower healthcare costs; and efforts to boost US competitiveness and arrest inflation, leading to an unexpectedly successful midterm election season.With Republicans in control of the House and major legislative action unlikely, Biden has focused the second half of his term on selling these policies to the public. Visits to Japan and Australia next month will bring an opportunity to emphasize efforts to rally the world in defense of Ukraine and against the growing influence of China.But Biden will also have to contend with voter disapproval of his handling of the economy and Republican attacks on immigration.Perhaps most urgently, Biden must decide how to engage with House Republicans in a debt limit standoff. The speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has proposed dramatic spending cuts, including to Biden’s landmark climate and healthcare bill, in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling and avoiding default. Accusing Republicans of holding the economy hostage in order to cut social programs, the White House has repeatedly called on Congress to keep negotiations over the debt ceiling separate from debate about fiscal restraint.Biden is dogged by low approval ratings and concerns about his age. Already the oldest president in American history at 80, he would be 86 by the end of a second term. Polling has consistently shown that most Americans, including a majority of Democrats, do not want him to seek re-election. That lack of enthusiasm is especially prevalent among young voters, who were skeptical of Biden in 2020 but ultimately turned out in high numbers to help him beat Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe has also tangled with progressives who accuse him of returning to his moderate roots on crime, immigration and climate. Yet the desire to keep Trump or a Trumpian alternative out of the White House remains strong among Democrats and independents. Most Democrats say they will back Biden if he is their nominee.While Biden is not expected to face any major challenge for the nomination, the field of Republican contenders remains unsettled. Trump leads the pack.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is expected to jump into the race, offering a combative alternative to Trump, who faces legal challenges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his handling of classified documents, payments to a porn star, a rape allegation and his business affairs.Biden is also confronting a legal inquiry into his handling of classified documents as vice-president and before that as a Delaware senator.Biden ran unsuccessfully for president twice before 2020. To defeat Trump, he mobilized a coalition of young people, women and voters of color while persuading independents soured on his opponent.Biden presented himself as a bridge to the next generation of leaders. But with his mind now made up about a second term, and little agreement over who might succeed him if he did step aside, he appears best placed to be the party’s standard-bearer in 2024.“Running for the president the first time is aspirational. You can make all sorts of big bold promises,” Psaki said. “Running for reelection is when you actually get your report card from the American people.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      AOC: ‘Better for country’ if Dominion had secured Fox News apology

      by

      Dominion Voting Systems would have better served the US public had it refused to settle its $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News until the network agreed to apologise on air for spreading Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.“What would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that,” the New York congresswoman said.Dominion and Fox this week reached a $787.5m settlement, shortly before trial was scheduled to begin in a Delaware court.Legal filings laid out how in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s election win and the run-up to the January 6 attack on Congress, Fox News hosts repeated claims they knew to be untrue, as executives feared viewers would desert the network for rightwing competitors One America News and Newsmax.Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media mogul and Fox News owner, was among witnesses due to testify.Fox faces other legal challenges but its avoidance of an apology to Dominion caused widespread comment, with some late-night hosts moved to construct their own on-air mea culpas.Ocasio-Cortez, popularly known as AOC, acknowledged Dominion was not beholden to public opinion.“This was a corporation suing another corporation for material damages,” she told the former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC host, on Sunday. “Their job is to go in and get the most money that they can. And I think that they did that. They are not lawyers for the American public.”The congresswoman continued: “I think what is best for the country, what would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that. But that is not their role.“And so for us, I think this really raises much larger questions. Very often, I believe that we leave to the courts to solve issues that politics is really supposed to solve, that our legislating is supposed to solve.“We have very real issues with what is permissible on air. And we saw that with January 6. And we saw that in the lead-up to January 6, and how we navigate questions not just of freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence.”Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 Capitol attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the attack. Acquitted by Senate Republicans, he is the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked if media platforms should be held accountable for incitement, Ocasio-Cortez said: “When it comes to broadcast television, like Fox News, these are subject to federal law, federal regulation, in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t.“And when you look at what [the primetime host] Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that I think we have to be willing to contend with.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Supreme court justices think selves exempt from rules, top Democrat says

      by

      Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee leading a push for supreme court ethics reform, accused the top court of being a panel of “nine justices [who] believe they are exempt from the basic standards of disclosure”.His claim came amid growing criticism of the conservative justice Clarence Thomas, whose judicial record is under scrutiny after he became embroiled in scandal over taking undeclared gifts from a Republican mega-donor.The last US Congress considered a bill demanding the inclusion of the supreme court in existing judicial conference regulations but it did not clear the Senate and the chief justice, John Roberts, has been mostly silent on the issue.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Durbin said he hoped Roberts would take advantage of an invitation to testify before the judiciary committee on 2 May, to explain how he intended to handle ethics reform.“This is John Roberts’s court,” the Illinois Democrat said. “We are dealing with a situation where history will remember it as such. He is an articulate, well-schooled man when it comes to presenting his point of view. I’m sure he’ll do well before the committee.“But history is going to judge the Roberts court by his decision as to reform, and I think this is an invitation for him to present it to the American people.”Asked why he didn’t ask Thomas to appear, Durbin said: “I know what would happen to that invitation. It would be ignored. It is far better from my point of view to have the chief justice here.”Durbin’s statement that he thought all nine justices considered themselves above ethics standards came when he was asked what a code of conduct might look like.“[It] would look an awful lot like the code that applies to the rest of federal government and other judges, and basically would have timely disclosures of transactions like this purchase of the justice’s mother’s home,” he said, referring to Thomas’s failure to declare the sale to the mega-donor Harlan Crow.“It would also give standards for recusal so that if there’s going to be conflict before the court and recusal, it’d be explained publicly, and investigations of questions that are raised. It’s the same across the board code of conduct, ethics laws, applied to the court.“Why this supreme court, these nine justices, believe they are exempt from the basic standards of disclosure, I cannot explain.”Durbin’s invitation to Roberts did not mention Thomas, referring instead to “a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally”.The court’s “decade-long failure” to address those problems has “contributed to a crisis of public confidence”, Durbin wrote.He said the 2 May hearing would focus on “the ethical rules that govern the justices of the supreme court and potential reforms to those rules”, noting that the “scope of your testimony can be limited to these subjects, and that you would not be expected to answer questions from senators regarding any other matters”. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Limit access to US secret documents, Democrat says in response to leaks

      by

      Too many people have access to the US government’s closest secrets and a central entity should oversee the classification process, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee said on Sunday, addressing leaks of documents in an online chat group.A US air national guardsman was charged on 14 April with leaking classified documents on the Discord platform.It is believed to be the most serious US security breach since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2010.On Sunday, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia, told ABC’s This Week that “once we get to that highest level of classification, we maybe have too many folks taking a look at them, over 4 million people with clearances”.The senator’s powerful position gives weight to his recommendations as Joe Biden’s administration examines the handling of intelligence and looks for ways to clamp down on future leaks.The US has numerous intelligence-gathering entities and Warner said the situation needed to be dealt with.“We need somebody fully in charge of the whole classification process and I think for those classified documents there ought to be a smaller universe,” he said.As an example, Warner said the National Security Agency has suffered leaks in the past – notably including the disclosures by Edward Snowden in 2013 – and internal controls now limit the copying of documents.The Pentagon has called the latest leak a “deliberate, criminal act”.Warner also said that not everyone handling a document needs to see the whole document and that just seeing the header could be enough. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Democratic states stockpile abortion pills as legal fight for access looms

      by

      Despite a reprieve by the US supreme court, a growing number of Democratic states are stockpiling abortion pills as the legal fight for access to the abortion drug mifepristone is set to continue.On Friday, the supreme court decided to temporarily block a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the availability of mifepristone, an FDA-approved abortion medication.Nevertheless, as the case continues to wind through America’s court system and remains challenged by anti-abortion groups, more Democratic states are now stockpiling abortion pills amid an unpredictable legal battle.Earlier this month, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction that suspended the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, calling it a drug that is used to “kill the unborn human”.Swiftly after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Democratic states have been stockpiling abortion pills including mifepristone as well as misoprostol, the second drug in the abortion regimen which can also be used on its own, although less effectively.At the Massachusetts governor Maura Healey’s request, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has purchased approximately 15,000 doses of mifepristone. The stockpile is expected to offer “sufficient coverage” in the state for over a year.“Mifepristone has been used safely for more than 20 years and is the gold standard. Here in Massachusetts, we are not going to let one extremist judge in Texas turn back the clock on this proven medication and restrict access to care in our state,” Healey said last week.Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of New York and California both announced plans to stockpile misoprostol in attempts to safeguard their states’ abortion access.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that New York will be purchasing misoprostol in order to stockpile 150,000 doses, a five-year supply.Hochul also pledged that if mifepristone is removed from the market, New York will commit up to an additional $20m to providers to support other abortion methods.In a similar move, governor Gavin Newsom of California announced last week that the state has secured an emergency stockpile of up to 2m misoprostol pills“We will not cave to extremists who are trying to outlaw these critical abortion services. Medication abortion remains legal in California,” Newsom said, adding that California has shared the negotiated terms of its misoprostol purchase agreement to assist other states in securing the pill at low cost.Since then, additional Democratic states have followed suit.The governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, recently announced a partnership with the University of Maryland’s medical system to purchase a “substantial amount of mifepristone”.“This purchase is another example of our administration’s commitment to ensure Maryland remains a safe haven for abortion access and quality reproductive health care,” said Moore, who also released $3.5m in previously withheld funding for the state’s abortion care clinical training program.On Thursday, Oregon made a similar announcement, with its governor Tina Kotek revealing the state has secured a three-year supply of mifepristone, regardless of the supreme court’s ruling on the pill.“Here in Oregon, I will make sure that patients are able to access the medication they need and providers are able to provide that medication without unnecessary, politically motivated interference and intimidation,” Kotek said.With Democratic states rushing to stock up on abortion pills, the tumultuous legal fight for abortion access is far from over. In the last nine months, 13 states have banned abortion. With anti-abortion groups fighting for increased pill restrictions nationwide, even states that have legalized the procedure may become affected.Following the supreme court’s decision to temporarily block mifepristone restrictions, the next stage of the litigious battle over the drug will take place in the fifth circuit, with oral arguments scheduled for 17 May. The case will then likely return back to the supreme court.In a statement to the New York Times, Erik Baptist, a senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization representing a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors, pledged to continue fighting against abortion care.“The FDA must answer for the damage it has caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by failing to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is and unlawfully removing every meaningful safeguard, even allowing for mail-order abortions,” he said about the 23-year-old FDA-approved drug.Meanwhile, the Joe Biden administration and civil rights organizations promised to continue fighting for reproductive rights.“I’ll continue to fight attacks on women’s health. The American people must also continue to use their vote as their voice and elect a Congress that will restore the protections of Roe v Wade,” Biden tweeted shortly after the supreme court issued its decision.The American Civil Liberties Union echoed similar sentiments, with Jennifer Dalven, ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project director saying: “Make no mistake, we aren’t out of the woods by any means … And as this baseless lawsuit shows, extremists will use every trick in the book to try to ban abortion nationwide.”Dalven added: “But if our opponents think we will allow them to continue to pursue their extreme goals without fierce backlash, they are sorely mistaken.” More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Rightwing extremists defeated by Democrats in US school board elections

      by

      Scores of rightwing extremists were defeated in school board elections in April, in a victory for the left in the US and what Democrats hope could prove to be a playbook for running against Republicans in the year ahead.In Illinois, Democrats said more than 70% of the school board candidates it had endorsed won their races, often defeating the kind of anti-LGBTQ+ culture warrior candidates who have taken control of school boards across the country.Republican-backed candidates in Wisconsin also fared poorly. Moms for Liberty, a rightwing group linked to wealthy Republican donors which has been behind book-banning campaigns in the US, said only eight of its endorsed candidates won election to school boards, and other conservative groups also reported disappointing performances.The results come as education and free speech organizations have warned of a new surge in book bans in public schools in America. Over the past two years conservatives in states around the US have removed hundreds of books from school classrooms and libraries. The targeted books have largely been texts which address race and LGBTQ+ issues, or are written by people of color or LGBTQ+ authors.“Fortunately, the voters saw through the hidden extremists who were running for school board – across the [Chicago] suburbs especially,” JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, said after the results came in.“Really, the extremists got trounced yesterday.”Pritzker added: “I’m glad that those folks were shown up and, frankly, tossed out.”The Democratic party of Illinois spent $300,000 on races in Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reported, endorsing dozens of candidates. The party said 84 of 117 candidates it had recommended won their races.Teachers unions, including the Illinois Education Association, endorsed candidates in school board elections around the state. The IEA backed candidates in about 100 races, and around 90% of those candidates won, said Kathi Griffin, the organization’s president.“I would hope that the tide is turning, to make sure that people who want to have those [school board] positions because they want to do good for our kids, continue [to get elected],” Griffin said.“I think that oftentimes these fringe candidates are funded with dark money. That dark money comes from outside our state.”The results were disappointing for conservative groups, who had pumped money into races.The 1776 Project, a political action committee which received funding from Richard Uihlein, a billionaire GOP donor, said only a third of the 63 candidates it had backed in Illinois and Wisconsin had won their races. Politico first reported on the lackluster performances.Union-endorsed candidates won two-thirds of their school board races in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, although Republican-supported candidates performed better in rural areas.Ben Hardin, executive director of the Democratic party of Illinois, said “values were on the line in these races”.“We knew this work wouldn’t be easy, especially given the organized movement from the far right to disguise their true agenda, but we’re grateful that voters saw through the falsehoods and turned out to support credible community advocates,” he said.“I’m proud that Illinoisans once again voted for fairness, equity and inclusion in our state.”With other states holding school board elections later this year – and a critical presidential election in 2024 – the successes offered some hope for Democrats.At the local level, at least, Griffin said the results “showed the value of having relationships within the community”.“When you have teachers who are part of the community, who have relationships with parents, with other community members who engage in community activities and support that community, there’s a level of trust that is built and that has happened across our state,” she said. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden may announce 2024 presidential campaign next week – report

      by

      The US president Joe Biden and his team may announce his re-election campaign by video next week, according to a source familiar with the matter on Thursday.An announcement on Tuesday by Biden, 80, would coincide with the anniversary of his 2020 campaign launch four years earlier, the source said, asking not to be identified.Biden aides have ramped up planning for the long-expected launch of the president’s bid for a second, four-year term in 2024. Last week, Biden said he would launch his campaign “relatively soon”.He has long said he intends to run again but the lack of a formal announcement had seeded doubt among supporters about whether one of the oldest world leaders would or should commit to another four-year term. He would be 86 at the end of a second term.In recent weeks, Biden has laid out the likely themes of a re-election bid in political speeches, secured a doctor’s note that he is “fit for duty”, told Democrats to re-order the party’s primary calendar in a manner favoring his nomination and picked Chicago as the city where he would ostensibly formally become the nominee next year. More