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      Israeli PM Netanyahu ‘obstacle to peace’ in Gaza, says US Senate majority leader – video

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      The Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said Benjamin Netanyahu has emerged as a ‘major obstacle to peace’ in Gaza, in a further sign of growing tensions between the US and its ally Israel. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US, accused Netanyahu of bowing to pressure from ‘extremists’ in his cabinet and appealed to Israel to ‘change course’, warning that the US would be prepared to use its leverage to shape Israeli policy if it failed to do so More

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      Biden’s ‘bear-hugging’ of Netanyahu a strategic mistake, key Democrat says

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      Joe Biden has committed a “strategic mistake” by “bear-hugging” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as he prosecutes war with Hamas, a leading congressional progressive Democrat and Biden campaign surrogate said.“The bear-hugging of Netanyahu has been a strategic mistake,” Ro Khanna said, accusing the Israeli leader of conducting “a callous war” in Gaza, in defiance of the United States.Speaking to One Decision, a podcast co-hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove, a former British intelligence chief, Khanna, from California, also called Netanyahu “insufferably arrogant”, for acting as if he is “somehow an equal” to Biden.But his comments about Biden’s mistakes may land with a thud at the White House.Liz Landers, a One Decision guest host, asked Khanna about a recent trip to Michigan to meet leaders of the state’s large Arab American community.“What did they tell you about the Biden administration’s policy with Israel?” Landers asked.“They were opposed,” Khanna said, adding: “I’ve been a longtime supporter of the US-Israel relationship. I’ve been in Congress eight years and my record reflects that I unequivocally condemned the brutal Hamas attack [on Israel] on 7 October, the rapes, the murders. I’ve called Hamas a terrorist organisation, which obviously they are.“They committed a terrorist act on 7 October, but the bear-hugging of Netanyahu has been a strategic mistake. Netanyahu has conducted a callous war in defiance of the United States.“I did not support a ceasefire for the first six weeks. I thought [Israel] would go and get the people responsible [for the 7 October attacks]. But they started bombing refugee camps, bombing hospitals, defying the United States and not letting aid in.”Biden, Khanna said, needed to set out “clear consequences for Netanyahu” if Israel does not change course.“He needs to say, ‘I’m for Israel, but I’m not for this extreme rightwing government.’ And that means if [Netanyahu] defies the United States, not allowing aid, or going into Rafah” – which Biden has said must not happen but Netanyahu has said will – “[then] no more weapons transfers … unconditionally.“It means not protecting [Netanyahu] from the entire international community at the United Nations, it means recognising a Palestinian state. And those are the things I think some of the Arab American community want.”Asked about a looming clash over Rafah, Khanna highlighted Netanyahu’s behaviour, refusing to heed Biden’s warning that the attack would represent a “red line”.“What I disagree with and sort of the media narrative on this [is that] Netanyahu and Biden, somehow they’re equals,” Khanna said.“They’re not. We’re the greatest superpower in the world. We’re giving Netanyahu weapons. He needs to be deferential with respect to the American president, whoever that is. And I find it insufferably arrogant for him to act as if he’s somehow an equal to the American president. And that’s just going to rub people the wrong way.“So if he defies the American secretary of defense, the American president, then we should stop the arms shipments now. We can stop the offensive arms shipments … I voted for defensive funding and we need to continue to protect Israel against an invasion from Hezbollah or Iran. But we certainly shouldn’t be giving Netanyahu the offensive weapons to go kill more people in Gaza when he’s acting in defiance to the president of the United States.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You can act as an equal if you’re not begging for weapons at the same time.”Biden’s Israel policy has also had an effect in domestic politics, protest votes in Democratic primaries sounding a warning for the presidential election to come. Landers asked Khanna if Biden could lose his re-election fight against Donald Trump because of such protests as seen in Michigan, where about 100,000 voted “uncommitted”.Khanna said: “I think the president’s gonna win. I mean, he won Michigan [by] almost 150,000 votes.”But he said anger with Biden was spreading “probably beyond the Muslim or Arab American community. It’s more young people, voters of colour, the broader Democratic coalition.“And I think if this war continues, particularly if it’s continuing when we head to the Democratic convention in Chicago, then it creates a problem for us with the coalition that Barack Obama built, which was young people, progressives, voters of colour, that really turned out.”Khanna said there was potential for the convention, in mid-August, to generate unwelcome echoes of chaos in Chicago in 1968, the year of an election won by the Republican Richard Nixon amid protests against the Vietnam war.“I still believe the president will win, but this should be a warning sign that there are large parts of our base that are unhappy,” Khanna said.“My hope is that the president, I believe, has changed tone and changed course. He’s now using the word ‘ceasefire’. He’s saying that weapons will not be indefinitely transferred to Netanyahu. So my hope is this pressure is going to work on getting a ceasefire and release of the hostages” held by Hamas. More

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      Biden slightly behind Trump but voters’ views of economy improve, poll shows

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      Joe Biden officially begins his general election campaign with a slight polling deficit against Donald Trump, and no indications that his forceful State of the Union address has provided much of a boost with voters, according to a public opinion survey released on Wednesday.But the newly released USA Today/Suffolk University poll also shows views of the economy have hit their highest level of Biden’s presidency, a sign that voters may be starting to agree with the president that his policies helped the country recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.Biden and Trump on Tuesday clinched the final delegates they needed to win the Democratic and Republican nominations, respectively, with primary victories in Washington state, Mississippi and Georgia. They will be officially named the nominees at their party’s conventions over the summer, but by all indications, Americans are not looking forward to the first rematch between presidential candidates in almost seven decades.Polls have repeatedly shown both men are unpopular with voters, but the USA Today/Suffolk University survey finds Trump has a slight advantage over Biden nationally, with 40% of voters preferring him over the president’s 38%.And while unfavorability ratings for both men are 55%, the poll finds Republicans are more fired up about a second Trump presidency than Democrats are for another four years of Biden. Forty-three per cent of Republicans say they are “excited” about Trump’s nomination, versus 22% of Democrats about Biden.Biden’s approval ratings have been underwater for more than two and a half years, and the dip roughly coincided with the intensification of inflation that accompanied the economy’s bounceback from the mass layoffs and business closures caused by Covid-19.While the White House has tried to redirect voters’ attention to the strong labor market, ebbing rate of price growth and the potential offered by Biden’s legislative accomplishment, views of the economy specifically have remained negative.But the USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows that voters are becoming less pessimistic. A third of registered voters believe the economy is recovering, the highest share saying that since Biden took office, the survey says.“This data point is particularly important to track. If the trend continues, more voters could connect the economic recovery to President Biden, especially if the economy continues to dominate other issues as we get closer to November,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats were also cheered by Biden’s performance at the annual State of the Union address last week. The president laid into Trump in a passionate speech that, for some of his allies, quieted fears about the 81-year-old Biden being too old to campaign effectively.But it didn’t do much to move the needle among the poll’s respondents. While a majority watched the speech, they were nearly evenly split on whether it improved or worsened their views of Biden, and 39% said it made no difference at all. More

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      My feeling about this presidential election? Nauseous optimism | Robert Reich

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      I feel a nauseous optimism about the presidential election.I chose the word nauseous over cautious because my stomach is churning at the very possibility Trump could get a second term. But I don’t believe that will happen. The progressive forces in America are overtaking the regressive.I’m not paying attention to polls. It’s way too early to worry about them. Most of the public hasn’t even focused on the upcoming election.Biden gave a powerful State of the Union address – feisty, bold, energetic and upbeat. He was combative – taking on Trump with gusto, even besting Republican hecklers like Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m convinced he’s equipped to win re-election.The broad American public is starting to see just how weird Maga Republicans really are. Republicans comprise only 28% of voting Americans. More than 40% of voters consider themselves independent, unaffiliated with either party. Most of these independents don’t want the unhinged running the government.During the State of the Union, Americans saw Republicans heckle and boo Biden and then sit on their hands when Biden declared that “No child should go hungry in this country.” Hello?And the official Republican response to Biden’s speech by the Alabama senator Katie Britt was, to say the least, bizarre. Delivered from her kitchen, her rebuttal vacillated from wholesome to horrific.The centerpiece of her attack on Biden’s border policies was a story about a 12-year-old Mexican girl who was sexually trafficked and raped multiple times a day at the hands of cartels before escaping. But the girl was not, in fact, trafficked across the US border; she never sought asylum in America; and her terrifying experience occurred when George W Bush was in the White House.Britt’s oddball performance baffled even fellow rightwingers. “What the hell am I watching right now?” a Trump adviser asked Rolling Stone. “One of our biggest disasters ever,” a Republican strategist told the Daily Beast.The Republican party is so out of touch with American values that it’s putting up outspoken bigots for major offices.Case in point: Mark Robinson, who won the Republican nomination for governor of North Carolina last Tuesday night, has hurled hateful remarks at everyone from Michelle Obama to the survivors of the Parkland school shooting. He’s called homosexuality and transgenderism “filth” and formerly said he wants to outlaw all abortions. He’s also ridiculed the #MeToo movement, women generally and the climate crisis.Oh, and he has a history of Holocaust denialism and antisemitic remarks. He’s suggested that 9/11 was an “inside job”, that Hollywood and the music industry are run by Satan, and that the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros orchestrated the Boko Haram kidnappings of schoolgirls in 2014. (Robinson denies he is antisemitic, and has said that some of his claims were “poorly phrased”.)Robinson is hardly the only rather out-there Republican nominee, but he typifies the grotesque values of Maga leaders, including those of the Republican party’s likely presidential candidate.Of course, the reason these bigots and haters are fighting so hard to defeat us is they know progressives are the future of America.Neither their filibusters, nor their gerrymanders, nor their attempts at voter suppression can stop our rise – nor can their absurd “great replacement theory” or their supreme court majority.I’ve been at this game for almost three-quarters of a century. It’s a long game, and America still has a long way to go. But apart from Trump fanatics, the nation is in many ways better and stronger now than it has ever been – more inclusive, tolerant, diverse, accepting, dynamic. And it will be far better and stronger years from now, because we are rising.Sure, we must do better at organizing, mobilizing and energizing. We need elected lawmakers, along with judges and supreme court justices, who reflect our beliefs and values. The Democratic party must be bolder at countering the power of big corporations and big money, and more aggressive in recruiting and supporting a new generation of progressive leaders in electoral politics.All of us must become a pro-democracy movement – with all the passion and tenacity that movements require.Even so, I see a new progressive era dawning in America and I don’t believe Trump Republicans can hold back the tide.For one thing, I see the strongest support for unions since the 1960s. Last year, at least 457,000 workers participated in a record 315 strikes in the US – and won most with contracts providing higher wages and better benefits.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOver the past 18 months, graduate student-teachers and research assistants at Berkeley, MIT and Caltech have voted overwhelmingly to unionize. The United Auto Workers has scored signal victories for autoworkers, as has the Teamsters for UPS workers. Hell, even Dartmouth College’s men’s basketball team has voted to unionize.Microsoft just agreed not to oppose unionization efforts. Starbucks – which has spent the last two and a half years employing union-busting attorneys and refusing to bargain with any of the roughly 400 outlets that have voted to go union – has just agreed to do the same.Here’s the bottom line: the majority of Americans view today’s record-breaking inequalities of income and wealth as dangerous. They believe government has no business forcing women to give birth or telling consenting adults how to conduct the most intimate aspects of their lives.They want to limit access to guns. They see the climate crisis as an existential threat to the nation and the world. They want to act against systemic racism. They don’t want innocent civilians killed, whether on our streets or in Gaza. They don’t want to give Putin a free hand. They want to protect American democracy from authoritarianism.The giant millennial generation – a larger cohort than the boomers – is the most progressive cohort in recent history. They’ve faced an inequitable economic system, a runaway climate crisis, and the herculean costs of trying to have a family – including everything from unaffordable childcare to wildly unaffordable housing. They’re demanding a more equitable and sustainable society because they desperately need one.Young women have become significantly more progressive over the past decade (even if young men have remained largely unchanged). They’re more likely than ever to support LGBTQ+ rights, gay or lesbian couples as parents, men staying home with children and women serving in the military. And more likely to loathe Donald Trump and any politician who emulates him.Over the next two decades, young women will be moving into positions of greater power and leadership. They now compose a remarkable 60% of college undergraduates.Meanwhile, the United States is projected to become a majority-minority nation within around two decades.This is not to say that just because someone is a person of color means that they believe in all the progressive values I mention above, of course. Yet overall, people of color are deeply concerned about the nation’s widening inequalities. They’re committed to social justice. They want to act against systemic racism, and they want to protect American democracy.Unsurprisingly, these trends have ignited a backlash – especially among Americans who are older, whiter, straighter, without college degrees, and male. These Americans have become susceptible to an authoritarian strongman peddling conspiracy theories and stoking hatred.Trump Republicans want us to be discouraged. They want us to despair. That’s part of their strategy. They figure that if we’re pessimistic enough, we won’t even fight – and they’ll win everything.But I believe their backlash is doomed. The Republican party has become a regressive cesspool, headed by increasingly unmoored people who are utterly out of touch with the dominant and emerging values of America. And most Americans are catching on.I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna. We’re in the fight of our lives. It will demand a great deal of our energy, our time, and our courage. But this fight is critical and noble. It will set the course for America and the world for decades. And it is winnable.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Special counsel says he was doing his job when he criticized Biden’s memory

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      Robert Hur, the justice department special counsel assigned to report on Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, told Congress he was just doing his job when he shook up the US election campaign by criticizing the president’s apparent inability to recall certain events.In his report released in February, Hur, a Republican former US attorney under Donald Trump, recommended Biden not be charged for possessing classified documents. But he infuriated the president’s Democratic allies by making repeated references to Biden’s age and memory as one reason for not indicting him, saying jurors would see him “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.“My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information willfully,” Hur said in his opening remarks to the House judiciary committee. “I could not make that determination without assessing the president’s state of mind. For that reason, I had to consider the president’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial.”He defended his comments about Biden’s recollections, saying: “I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly. I explained to the attorney general my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do.”Republicans are also unhappy with Hur’s finding that Biden should not be charged, arguing it was evidence of double standards at the justice department. A different special counsel, Jack Smith, has indicted Donald Trump for allegedly taking government secrets with him after leaving the White House and, unlike Biden, conspiring to keep them out of the hands of investigators. The justice department also decided last year not to bring charges against Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, after classified documents were found at his home.Both men were appointed by Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, but operate independently, while justice department policy also prohibits the indictment of sitting presidents.The judiciary committee’s chair, Trump ally Jim Jordan, sought to focus public attention on Hur’s conclusion that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency”.“Mr Hur produced a 345-page report, but in the end, it boils down to a few key facts. Joe Biden kept classified information. Joe Biden failed to properly secure classified information. And Joe Biden shared classified information with people he wasn’t supposed to,” Jordan said as the hearing began.Jerrold Nadler, the committee’s top Democrat, focused on how the special counsel cleared the president, and noted his cooperation with the investigation.“The Hur report represents the complete and total exoneration of President Biden,” Nadler said.“And how does that record contrast with President Trump, the documents he retained and the criminal charges pending against him in Florida?” Nadler continued, recounting the details of the former president’s alleged hoarding of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort.Trump is facing charges “not because of some vast conspiracy, not because the so-called deep state was out to get him, but because former president Trump was fundamentally incapable of taking advantage of even one of the many, many chances he was given to avoid those charges”, Nadler said.Hur made clear later on that he does not consider his report to be an “exoneration” of the president, saying “that is not a word that I used”.A transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden, which lasted for hours over several days, was released shortly before the hearing began, and shows the president fumbled occasionally with the sequence of events and certain dates, but otherwise was sharp throughout, and also corrected Hur and others when they made errors.The Democratic congressman Adam Schiff seized on Hur’s insistence that he did not “disparage” Biden, saying he did just that by including details of the president’s ability to recalls details in his report.“You chose a general pejorative reference to the president. You understood when you made that decision, didn’t you Mr Hur, that you would ignite a political firestorm with that language, didn’t you?” Schiff asked.“Congressman, politics played no part whatsoever in my investigative steps,” Hur replied, saying he followed justice department policy in writing his report. More

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      Divided Washington state to choose Biden or Trump: ‘Everything seems a mess right now’

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      Had he heard it, Joe Biden would surely have been delighted by Bianca Siegl’s comment – and the fact she barely paused before making it.“Of course I will be voting on Tuesday,” says the 47-year-old, speaking at a farmers’ market in Seattle’s University district. “If Trump were to get elected, it would be incredibly dangerous for the world and for my family.”After Nikki Haley suspended her campaign following disappointing results on Super Tuesday and the US president made an unusually partisan and pugnacious State of the Union address, America is in general election campaign mode. While polls show up to 70% of people do not want to see a rematch between Biden and Donald Trump it appears that is set to happen. As the campaigns step up their efforts, Washington state holds its presidential primary on Tuesday. Selections for local legislators and federal lawmakers get made in the summer, so Tuesday is solely a choice for voters to show their preference between the 77-year-old former president and the 81-year-old incumbent.Tina Sutter is also backing Biden. The 46-year-old registered nurse says she tends not to get involved in politics as it does not make a “lot of difference”. Things are complicated by the fact her parents support Trump, and she “cannot speak to them about politics”. She is not voting on Tuesday, but will definitely do so in November.“Trump is terrifying and everybody needs to make sure we don’t go through that again,” she says. Her policy priorities are reproductive rights, social justice and the environment, all areas in which she believes Trump would move the nation backwards.Washington state’s heartland is famous for its fruit farms and being the nation’s largest producer of apples, so cities such as Seattle and Tacoma are known for markets where city residents are hours away selecting from apples such as Cosmic Crisp, Fuji and other less common varieties. Eastern and central Washington are more conservative than the west – the state’s two GOP-held congressional districts, the fifth and the fourth are in the east – and the markets can be a rare coming together of people who live on either side of the Cascade Mountains. At the same time, politics per se tends to be avoided.In 2020, exit polls showed more than 90% of Black women voted for Biden. But a 63-year-old stall holder who asks to be identified as Marylynn P says she is not prepared to say who she is voting for.“Everything seems a mess right now,” she says. “But there seemed to be [less undocumented immigration and] people pouring into our cities under Trump.”Trump certainly has his supporters, and they tend to be very committed indeed.Loren Culp, a former police chief, was backed by him in 2022 to oust the Republican congressman Dan Newhouse, one of 10 GOP “traitors” in the House who voted to impeach Trump over January 6. (While Newhouse held his seat, another Washington member of Congress who voted against Trump, Jaime Herrera Beutler, lost hers albeit to a Democrat, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who saw off a Trump-backed military veteran, Joe Kent.)Speaking from Goldendale in the south of the state, Culp says he is convinced Trump will win a second term.Biden rarely campaigns in Washington; the last Republican president to win the state was Ronald Reagan, but he comes for private fundraising events and to tap into the wealth of liberal-leaning tech-rich millionaires.In 2020, Biden beat Trump here 58 to 39, and a poll posted recently by the website FiveThirtyEight puts Biden leading Trump 54 to 38.Yet Biden may not have things entirely without a bump. As in Michigan and Minnesota, where 100,000 and 45,000 people respectively voted as “uncommitted”, activists in Washington are looking to send a similar protest message over the administration’s support for Israel’s military operation in Gaza that has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians.Most Washington voters cast ballots by mail once they are sent out in late February. The first release of results in the state typically skews more conservative than the electorate as a whole, then moves farther to the left over time as more results from later mail returns and same-day voting comes in.Rami Al-Kabra, the deputy mayor of the city of Bothell and an organizer for the uncommitted group, says “enough is enough”.“We need to do more than just calling and protesting in the streets. As Americans, the most precious tool we have is our right to vote.”Al-Kabra, who believes he is the only elected Palestinian American official in the state, added: “And in Washington, we have this uncommitted delegates option to leverage this.”Professor James Long, a political scientist at the University of Washington, says he will be watching how many vote “uncommitted”. Though he suspects some of those “uncommitted voters” will “return home” in November, there could be a number on Tuesday who want to express dissatisfaction.“We don’t have as large a pro-Gaza, or pro-Palestinian, cause as in Michigan, but we have a lot of people on the left,” he adds.While the Guardian spoke to several Democrats who said they would prefer a younger candidate than Biden, nobody said they had thought about picking “uncommitted”.Many said they felt the election of 2024 was too important to do anything that might weaken Biden’s chances.Roger Tucker, 68, a retired architect who was browsing the stands with his wife, Becky, 65, a former university administrator, said: “If Trump is in office for another four years, he’s going to be more powerful than before and less worried that people are going to push back on him.” More

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      Biden budget plan details his vision: tax breaks for families and lower deficit

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      Joe Biden took another swipe at Donald Trump on Monday as the president revealed his $7.3tn budget proposal for 2025 that offers tax breaks for families, lower healthcare costs, a smaller federal deficit and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.Biden made the remarks in an afternoon appearance in Goffstown, on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire. Referring to the former president as “my predecessor”, as he did repeatedly during last week’s fiery State of the Union speech, Biden slammed Trump for “making $2tn in tax cuts” during his single term, and “expanding the federal deficit”.“I’m not anti-corporation. I’m a capitalist man. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes,” he said. “A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great.”Unlikely to pass the House and Senate to become law, the proposal for fiscal 2025 is an election-year blueprint about what the future could hold if Biden and enough of his fellow Democrats win in November. The president and his aides previewed parts of his budget going into last week’s State of the Union address, with plans to provide the fine print on Monday.If the Biden budget became law, deficits could be pruned $3tn over a decade. Parents could get an increased child tax credit. Homebuyers could get a tax credit worth $9,600. Corporate taxes would jump upward, while billionaires would be charged a minimum tax of 25%.Biden also wants Medicare to have the ability to negotiate prices on 500 prescription drugs, which could save $200bn over 10 years.The president also called on Congress to apply his $2,000 cap on drug costs and $35 insulin to everyone, not just people who have Medicare. He is also seeking to make permanent some protections in the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire next year.All of this is a chance for Biden to try to define the race on his preferred terms, just as the all-but-certain Republican nominee, Trump, wants to rally voters around his agenda.Trump, for his part, would like to increase tariffs and pump out gushers of oil. He called for a “second phase” of tax cuts as parts of his 2017 overhaul of the income tax code would expire after 2025. The Republican has also said he would slash government regulations. He has also pledged to pay down the national debt, though it is unclear how without him detailing severe spending cuts.“We’re going to do things that nobody thought was possible,” Trump said after his wins in last week’s Super Tuesday nomination contests.The Republican US presidential candidate, speaking in an interview on CNBC, also called for action on popular US entitlement programs, including cuts, and indicated he was not likely to curb use of cryptocurrencies.Asked about concerns over increased political polarization on the nation’s financial stability, Trump said he was concerned about Fitch’s 2023 downgrade but dismissed the credit rating downgrade’s ties to the January 6 riot at the Capitol.Trump’s comments are his first extended remarks on his economic plans since he became the party’s likely nominee following last week’s “Super Tuesday” primary elections, setting up a rematch with President Joe Biden in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis tariff plan has spurred talk of inflation, and US treasury secretary Janet Yellen has said it would raise costs for American consumers.“I think taxes could be cut, I think other things could happen to more than adjust that. But I’m a big believer in tariffs,” Trump told CNBC, saying they help American industries when they are “being taken advantage of” by China and other nations.“Beyond the economics, it gives you power in dealing with other countries,” he said, adding that he was not concerned about any possible retaliatory tariffs if he were to regain the White House.Asked about Medicare, Social Security and Medicare programs and the nation’s spending and deficits, Trump told CNBC: “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management.”House Republicans on Thursday voted their own budget resolution for the next fiscal year out of committee, saying it would trim deficits by $14tn over 10 years. But their measure would depend on rosy economic forecasts and sharp spending cuts, reducing $8.7tn in Medicare and Medicaid expenditures. Biden has pledged to stop any cuts to Medicare.“The House’s budget blueprint reflects the values of hard-working Americans who know that in tough economic times, you don’t spend what you don’t have – our federal government must do the same,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, said in a statement.Meanwhile, Congress is still working on a budget for the current fiscal year. On Saturday, Biden signed into law a $460bn package to avoid a shutdown of several federal agencies, but lawmakers are only about halfway through addressing spending for this fiscal year. More

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      Buttigieg defends Biden’s age: ‘What matters is the age of a leader’s ideas’

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      Top Democrats came to Joe Biden’s defense on Sunday, emphasizing the president’s viability for re-election amid his colleagues’ worries that voters see him as too old – concerns compounded by Donald Trump’s lead over him in recent polls.On ABC This Week, host George Stephanopoulos pointedly asked Biden’s transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg: “How can an 81-year-old incumbent be the candidate of change? It’s so critical in presidential elections.”Buttigieg replied that Biden’s administration had focused on “issues that matter most to newer generations”, including addressing the climate crisis, supporting LGBTQ+ rights and pushing to restore the federal abortion rights that Roe v Wade had established before the conservative-dominated US supreme court eliminated them in 2022.“What matters most is the age of a leaders’ ideas,” Buttigieg said.Buttigieg’s comments came as voters’ views on Biden’s age continue being a growing liability for his re-election campaign. A recent ABC/Ipsos poll found that 86% of Americans thought him too old to serve another term. Sixty-two percent thought the same about Trump, who is 77 – and 59% of voters think both are too old.Those numbers prompted Biden’s camp to kick off a $30m ad campaign in swing states with a spot directly addressing the president’s age. “Look, I’m not a young guy,” he says in the spot. “But I understand how to get things done for the American people.”Georgia’s Democratic US senator Raphael Warnock also defended Biden’s chances in the swing state despite signs that many voters there have turned away from him, saying, “It’s still early in this election season.”Warnock’s comments on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union referred to a Fox News poll showing Trump leading by eight percentage points in Georgia. The poll also showed that a quarter of Black voters there now favor the former president.“I can tell you, as somebody whose name has been on the ballot five times in three years, I know a little something about Georgia voters,” Warnock said. “We’ve seen both of these men serve in the White House. Their choice is clearly Joe Biden and Georgians get it right for Joe Biden, just as they got it right for me.”CNN host Jake Tapper suggested third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr could be a spoiler after he claims to have gathered enough signatures to get on the ballot in Georgia in November. Tapper said Biden defeated Trump in Georgia in 2020 by fewer than 12,000 votes. But Warnock argued there was still time for Biden to secure the state again.The Democratic House leader, Hakeem Jeffries, also addressed Black voters’ seemingly fading support of Biden. During Jeffries’s appearance on Face The Nation, host Margaret Brennan noted that Biden’s support among Black voters had fallen from 90% in 2020 to 76%.Nonetheless, Jeffries said Black voters would understand that Biden “has delivered over and over and over again on issues of concern”, including by helping bring on the lowest Black unemployment rate in decades as well as making historic investments in Black colleges and universities.“I’m confident at the end of the day … the overwhelming majority of African Americans, Caribbean Americans, Black voters throughout the country, will support president Biden,” Jeffries said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBrennan separately asked Senator Bernie Sanders whether he could good “in good conscience” ask fellow progressives who oppose Israel’s ongoing military strikes in Gaza to support the president.The US has provided billions of dollars in financial aid to Israel’s military as Biden has exalted the country’s right to defend itself after the 7 October attack by Hamas that reportedly killed more than 1,200 Israelis. But the president has condemned the humanitarian crisis set off by Israel’s subsequent military strikes in Gaza, which have reportedly killed more than 30,000.Sanders said the US “cannot be complicit in this mass slaughter” and called on Biden to withhold funds from Israel’s military if the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, continued exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But Sanders said voters must pick Biden if they favored protecting the climate, preserving bodily autonomy and eliminating income inequality.“So you’re asking voters to put [Gaza] aside?” Brennan said.Sanders responded: “Not put this aside – but fight continuously to change Biden’s policy on Gaza.” More