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      Harris is reaching Democrats where Biden isn’t – on abortion and Gaza

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      Standing on the arch of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Kamala Harris said she felt compelled to begin her remarks by addressing the deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act,” the vice-president said, then stated: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.” Loud, sustained applause followed, before she added, after a pause: “For at least six weeks.”The remarks, the White House was quick to note, echoed Joe Biden’s comments to a reporter days earlier and they reflected the administration’s current efforts to broker a temporary break in Israel’s offensive, to allow for the release of hostages and for desperately needed humanitarian aid to enter the besieged territory. Yet many Americans furious with Biden for his alliance with Israel heard from Harris what they felt has been lacking from the president.There was an urgency to her speech – delivered in the footsteps of civil rights marchers who were trampled, tear-gassed and beaten with whips and billy clubs as they attempted to cross the bridge – that resonated. The setting seemed to acknowledge the youth movement furious with the president that views Palestinian rights as an extension of the racial justice movement. She pointedly criticized Israel for restricting the flow of aid into Gaza and expressed compassion for the Palestinian civilians living amid the rubble on the brink of famine.As the 2024 general election contest begins, Harris has emerged as an emissary to the Democratic voters who have soured on Biden since propelling him to the White House in 2020. Over the last several months, she has embarked on a full-scale national tour to highlight the threats to reproductive rights posed by a second Donald Trump administration – an issue that Biden has been criticized for shying away from. Now, as Harris adopts a more forceful tone on Gaza, she is also becoming a leading voice on Middle East diplomacy.Both issues are poised to play a significant, if not decisive, role in the November general election. Polling shows an erosion of support among core Democratic constituencies amid widespread disillusionment with the economy, concern over Biden’s age and fury on the left at the administration’s handling of the war in Gaza.For Democrats, reminding voters about the threat Republicans still pose to abortion rights may be the best way to energize young people while winning over independents and suburban women. Outrage over Roe was credited with halting the promised “red wave” of Republican victories in the 2022 midterms; abortion-related ballot referendums have also repeatedly triumphed even in traditionally red states like Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.But Harris has her work cut out for her. Like Biden, Harris has been viewed unfavorably throughout much of her tenure.Antonio Arellano, a spokesperson for NextGen, a national youth-focused nonpartisan voter registration and education program, called the 59-year-old Harris a “liaison” between the administration and the parts of the Democratic base that were critical to Biden’s 2020 victory but hold reservations about him now. With her college campus tour and her reproductive rights tour, he said, Harris has helped elevate issues that are top of mind for young progressives and multiracial voters.“She brings an energy of vigor and excitement to the election that I think young people can really gravitate to when perhaps enthusiasm lacks elsewhere,” Arellano said.Harris leapt into the US abortion wars within a day of the leak of the US supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade.At a May 2022 speech at a conference for Emilys List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, Harris gave a fiery speech where she repeatedly asked: “How dare they?”“How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body?” Harris asked. “How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?”Harris had spent the first several months of her vice-presidency frustrated by headlines about her apparent lack of direction, staff departures and unforced errors. Allies and experts have long seen sexism and racism in the public scrutiny of Harris, who is the first woman and the first woman of color to hold nationally elected office. The criticism seemed particularly unfair, they said, given that vice-presidents are historically overlooked.“I’m not saying that there shouldn’t have been any attention paid to management, especially when you see high-profile kinds of departures and hires,” said Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory College. “But I think that there’s still also the question of whether or not people have paid more attention to her, and also whether or not the public has had a more visceral reaction to her because of her race and gender.”But when it came to the fight over reproductive rights, Harris’s gender, race and age and experience as a prosecutor combined to give her the edge of authenticity that Biden lacks on an issue that is increasingly critical to voters. Many of the 16 states that have enacted near-total post-Roe abortion bans do not have exceptions for rape or incest, a state of affairs that Harris has called “immoral”.“As a woman on the ticket and the first woman VP and a woman of color, and then secondly, as an AG, she is strongest when her profile is fighting and prosecuting the case. People really like her in that mode,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic Party strategist and a lead pollster on the 2020 Biden campaign. “She’s so comfortable saying the word ‘abortion’. She’s so comfortable leaning in and speaking to the repercussions.”Emilys List, which first endorsed Harris 20 years ago when she was elected as San Francisco’s district attorney, has previously committed to spending more than $10m on bolstering Harris in the 2024 elections, according to reporting from Politico; Jessica Mackler, the new president of Emilys List, said that nothing about their plan to support Harris has changed. “Supporting the vice-president is a huge part of our electoral priorities,” Mackler said.Compared to his running mate, Biden’s recent record on abortion is far more spotty. A devout Catholic, Biden has said that he is “not big” on abortion and, in Thursday’s State of the Union address, spoke at length about the procedure without ever referring to it by name. Instead, he talked of the importance of “reproductive freedom” and promised to “restore Roe v Wade as the law of the land”.When it comes to the Israel-Gaza war, Harris has begun to take a more visible role, and it appears that here, too, she may be pushing just beyond Biden’s comfort zone. NBC News reported that the National Security Council toned down parts of Harris’s Selma speech that were “harsher” on Israel. The vice-president’s office denied that her speech had been watered down.On the Monday after her remarks, Harris met with Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet who had traveled to Washington against the wishes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As she walked into the meeting, Harris denied that there was any daylight between her and the president on the conflict.“The president and I have been aligned and consistent from the very beginning,” she said.Many anti-war activists said Harris’s remarks on Gaza were too little, too late. Yet others saw it as a sign of progress – that their pressure campaign was having an impact. Nearly 100,000 Democrats in Michigan voted uncommitted in the primary, which was held just days before her remarks.“They’re feeling the pressure, and we want them to feel that pressure,” said Khalid Omar, who organized on behalf of the “uncommitted” campaign in Minnesota. “We want them to know that this is unacceptable.”Biden and Harris’s first joint campaign event of 2024, a rally in Virginia, was meant to focus on reproductive rights – but it was instead derailed by anger over the conflict in Gaza. After Harris and a Texas woman who had been denied an abortion spoke about the importance of defending the procedure, Biden took the stage. He was almost immediately interrupted by a protester who yelled: “Genocide Joe, how many kids have you killed in Gaza? … Palestine is a feminist issue!”That protester was removed from the auditorium. Another soon cried out: “Israel kills two mothers every hour!”Observers of Harris’s vice-presidency say the recent attention is recognition of the work she has been doing for months – both on domestic and foreign policy issues.“To the extent that she has found her voice, it’s because people are finally listening,” said Donna Brazile, a Harris ally and veteran Democratic strategist who teaches women’s and gender studies at Georgetown University.Last month, Biden dispatched Harris again, this time to the Munich Security Conference, where her mission was to reassure American allies rattled by Trump’s attacks on Nato. There she met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and with Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, hours after news broke of her husband’s death in an arctic penal camp.Less than a week later, she was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a stop on her reproductive rights tour. While there, she made a surprise stop at the city’s first Black woman-owned vinyl record shop and purchased a Miles Davis album from the owner, who was thrilled by the visit.When the Tennessee legislature expelled two Black lawmakers, the White House sent Harris to Nashville, where she joined them in delivering an impassioned plea for gun control. In December, she traveled to Dubai for a UN climate summit, where she juggled wartime diplomacy – delivering at the time the sharpest commentary of any administration official on Israel’s war in Gaza – with climate policy.“Her vice-presidency has been significant both in terms of her spokesperson role and in terms of a number of significant and highly visible diplomatic assignments that President Biden has given her,” said Joel Goldstein, a historian of the US vice-presidency.There is, however, another reason why scrutiny of Harris may be intensifying: her running mate’s age.If he wins a second term, Biden would turn 86 before leaving office. A New York Times and Siena College survey found that 73% of registered voters believe Biden is “just too old” to be an effective president. The poll was conducted more than two weeks after a special counsel described him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties in advancing age.”“The age of both Biden and Trump will focus more attention on the vice-presidential candidates,” Goldstein said.Republicans have sought to leverage concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health against Harris, casting her as an unsteady lieutenant ill-prepared to assume the presidency. In the weeks before dropping out of the Republican presidential primary, Nikki Haley argued that if Trump were to win the party’s nomination, he would lose to Biden, who would be unable to finish a second term, leading to a Harris presidency. The prospect, Haley said, “should send a chill up everyone’s spine”.But Harris is leaning in to her leading role. After the State of the Union, she headed west to Arizona, the next stop on her reproductive rights tour. On Saturday she was scheduled to campaign with Latino organizers in battleground state Nevada.To those who doubt whether the vice-president could step into the presidency, she is blunt.“I’m ready, if necessary,” Harris told NBC News on Friday. “But it’s not going to be necessary.”Rachel Leingang contributed to this report from Minneapolis More

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      RNC: Trump coup complete with loyalist as chair and daughter-in-law as co-chair

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      The Republican National Committee voted on Friday to install Donald Trump’s handpicked leadership team, completing his takeover of the national party as the former president closes in on a third straight presidential nomination.Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican who has echoed Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, was elected as the party’s national chair in a vote Friday morning in Houston.Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair.Trump’s team is promising not to use the RNC to pay his mounting personal legal bills. But Trump and his lieutenants will have firm control of the party’s political and fundraising machinery with limited, if any, internal pushback.“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J Trump, as the 47th president of the United States,” Whatley told RNC members in a speech after being elected.Whatley will carry the top title, replacing the longtime chair Ronna McDaniel after she fell out of favor with key figures in the former president’s Make America Great Again movement. But he will be surrounded by people closer to Trump.Lara Trump is expected to focus largely on fundraising and media appearances, which she emphasized shortly after being voted in, taking time in her inaugural speech to hold up a check for $100,000 that she said had been contributed that day to the party. When asked by a reporter later, she declined to say who wrote the check.The functional head of the RNC will be Chris LaCivita, who will assume the committee’s chief of staff role while maintaining his job as one of the Trump campaign’s top two advisers.McDaniel had been handpicked by Trump to lead the committee seven years ago but was forced out after Trump’s Maga movement increasingly blamed her for losses over the last few years.While she got a standing ovation after her goodbye, the new leadership appeared to eagerly embrace the change. Lara Trump, accompanied by her husband, Eric Trump, was greeted like a celebrity, with members lining up to take photos with her.With Trump’s blessing, LaCivita is promising to enact sweeping changes and staffing moves at every level of the RNC to ensure it runs seamlessly as an extension of the Trump campaign.In an interview on Thursday, LaCivita sought to tamp down concerns from some RNC members that the already cash-strapped committee would help pay Trump’s legal bills. Trump faces four criminal indictments and a total of 91 counts as well as a $355m civil fraud judgment, which he is appealing. His affiliated Save America political action committee has spent $76m over the last two years on lawyers.People speculating about the RNC paying for legal bills, LaCivita said, do so “purely on the basis of trying to hurt donors”. Trump’s legal bills are being covered largely by Save America, which is a separate political entity.The new leadership team is expected to more fully embrace Trump’s focus on voter fraud and his debunked claims about the election he lost to Joe Biden. Multiple court cases and Trump’s own justice department failed to reveal any evidence of significant voting irregularities.Whatley, an attorney, has largely avoided using Trump’s characterization of Biden’s victory and said in one 2021 interview that Biden “absolutely” had been legitimately elected and had won the majority of the electoral college votes. But he said in another interview in the weeks after the 2020 election that there had been “massive fraud”. He has also made focusing on “election integrity” a top priority for his state party in the years since. More

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      Joe Biden has come out fighting. But he’ll need more than grit to defeat Trump now | Jonathan Freedland

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      The president of the United States delivered his annual address to Congress on Thursday night – except what Americans and an increasingly nervous world wanted to assess was less the state of the union than the state of Joe Biden. I don’t mean politically, I mean physically.In the week that confirmed the November election will be a rematch of the 2020 contest – the current president against the former one – Biden needed to prove he was not the doddering, even senile figure of Donald Trump’s rhetoric and a thousand social media memes. In 68 combative minutes, he cleared that bar. He ad-libbed, he took on Republican hecklers and, often at high volume, jabbed at his opponent. The result: a performance that pundits described as “feisty” and “scrappy”, free of senior moments, and which prompted even Fox News to muse that Biden seemed “jacked-up” – which, from the network that likes to depict the president as a walking corpse, was a compliment.Projecting vigour was essential because the mountain Biden has to climb over the next eight months is getting steeper. For one thing, this week established that Trump is not only the certain nominee of his party – crushing his last remaining challenger, Nikki Haley, in all but one of the Super Tuesday primary contests and forcing her out of the race – he is in total control of it. Republicans in Congress are supine before him, whether it’s outgoing Senate leader Mitch McConnell endorsing him this week – even though Trump has repeatedly insulted McConnell’s Taiwan-born wife in nakedly racist terms and the two men have not spoken in three years – or the Republican refusal to pass a border deal they’d agreed with Democrats, because Trump wants the issue of immigration to remain unaddressed so that he can attack Biden for failing to address it come November. Some had hoped a primary season against Republican opponents would batter and bruise Trump, weakening him ahead of the presidential election. It has not worked out that way.Though that was not the only Democratic fantasy to be dented, if not dashed, this week. Many have hoped Trump’s undoing will come in the courts, where he faces a staggering 91 criminal charges. Indeed, judges in Colorado (and two other states) had removed Trump from the ballot, citing the constitution’s disqualification of anyone involved in insurrection, in Trump’s case the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021. But on Monday, the supreme court ruled unanimously against Colorado, ensuring Trump’s place on the ballot in all 50 states.View image in fullscreenThe previous week, the same supreme court, now dominated by the right thanks to three Trump appointments, issued a timetable that effectively slows down the most potent of the cases against the former president: the charge that he sought to subvert the 2020 election. That makes it much less likely that there will be a conviction this side of polling day, a realisation that hits Democrats hard. For years, they’ve longed for this or that judicial authority to solve America’s Trump problem: special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation into collusion between Trump and Moscow played that role for a while. Time and again, the dream evaporates. Democrats now face the awkward reality that, if they are to defeat Trump, they will surely have to do it the way they did it in 2020: with votes.And that task is looking ever harder. It’s not just the headline figures from national polls in which Trump is often ahead, or even Trump’s lead in the battleground states. It’s the change afoot in key voting groups that were crucial to Biden’s victory in the last election. Trump is gaining ground among Black and Hispanic voters, regularly picking up 20% to 25% of the former. To be sure, Biden is still ahead – but not by the massive margins he once enjoyed and which he needs to offset Trump’s advantage with white voters.Perhaps most alarming for Democrats is the defection of the young. Biden won voters under 30 by 25 points in 2020, now it’s neck and neck. A big part of that is the president’s support for Israel, with the appalling images coming out of Gaza outraging younger Americans especially. Mindful of them, and the disaffected Arab-American voters who could tip the balance in the critical swing state of Michigan, Biden announced a plan to create a floating pier off the Gazan coast, enabling maritime shipments of aid. Given that it will take weeks to build, and Gazans are desperate for food right now, and given too that there is obviously a simpler, swifter way to get aid in – by exerting full US pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding he stops the delays – the Democrats’ progressive wing is unlikely to be placated. Taking all these developments together, it is not too strong to say the Biden coalition is fracturing.Many watching from afar are dumbfounded that Americans could be prepared once again, and despite everything, to make Donald Trump their president. How can that be? Surely they remember what it was like last time? To which the answer seems to be: actually, they don’t. This week, the New York Times wondered if Americans suffer from “collective amnesia” when it comes to Trump, pointing to polling data that suggests the years 2017 to 2021 have fallen into the memory hole. It’s partly that Trump’s outrages came so often, they created a kind of numbness: people became inured. And it’s partly that, thanks to a US media polarised on tribally partisan lines, there is no agreed, collective memory of what happened during those four turbulent years, even on 6 January. Add to that the inflation and border pressures of the Biden years and, as Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican consultant and convenor of focus groups, puts it: “They know what they don’t like about Biden, and they have forgotten what they don’t like about Trump.”How can Biden hope to scale the daunting peak that confronts him? Plenty say the answer is a two-pronged message, “democracy and Dobbs”: focus on Trump’s dictatorial aspirations and his role in appointing the supreme court, whose decision, known as Dobbs, ended the constitutional right to an abortion. But there’s good evidence that that formula, which paid dividends in 2022’s midterm elections, is no longer enough, especially among the young.Biden needs to do more. He can’t urge Americans to be grateful for what he’s achieved these last three years: they’re not feeling better off and, besides, voters are rarely grateful. Nor can he rely on memories of Trump, because those are fading. The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein is surely right when he says Biden has to let go of the past and focus on the future, framing the coming contest as “a choice between what he and Trump would do over the next four years in the White House”. Biden’s speech on Thursday nodded to that, vowing to defend social security and Medicare, while Trump eyes up a juicy tax cut for his super-rich pals – and casting himself as a decent man up against a would-be dictator.It was a good start but, my word, it is a marathon climb that lies ahead. Joe Biden has lived a long life, punctuated by the severest challenges, but the one he faces now could hardly be tougher. And yet he cannot afford to fail. The world depends on it.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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      Biden’s State of the Union: raucous, strident and insistently optimistic | Moira Donegan

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      Like a budget, a State of the Union speech is a moral document: it reflects a president’s values and priorities, distilling his own view of his administration for the American people. On Thursday night, Joe Biden made his moral case for re-election: he views America as a besieged but worthy global leader, one whose tradition of democracy deserves to be defended and rebuilt. Referring to his opponent Donald Trump only as “my predecessor”, Biden repeatedly contrasted his own vision of a more equitable and prosperous nation with the Republican agenda. The point was to offer Americans an optimistic and inclusive vision – and to remind them of the cynicism, sadism and depravity of the Trump worldview, which threatens to undermine women’s freedoms, make interracial democracy impossible, and use the machinery of government for little else but to further Republicans own self regard and greed.The 90-minute speech was raucous, strident and insistently optimistic; it appeared designed to demonstrate Biden’s vitality, and to launch in earnest a presidential campaign that has previously been somewhat tepid and sluggish. “I’m here to wake up the Congress,” Biden said as he began, declaring the nation to be in “an unprecedented moment”. Maybe he was there to wake up his own campaign, too.Biden opened his speech outlining the three major issues which his campaign sees as the greatest emergencies: the foreign threat to Democracy, as represented by Vladimir Putin and Trump’s threat to Nato; the decline of democracy at home, as represented by January 6 and Republican lies about the 2020 election (“You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden bellowed; an early applause line); and reproductive rights.It was the first time that Biden gave abortion pride of place in the speech, reflecting his campaign’s belated awareness, in the wake of the 2022 midterms, of the issue’s salience. The attention he paid to the issue reflected his ambivalence toward abortion and hostility toward the feminist case for it. The section began not with a question of abortion, but with IVF: an Alabama court’s decision to grant frozen embryos the status of legal persons, thus briefly banning the treatment in the state, seems to have opened a new avenue in the post-Dobbs debate that is more comfortable for Biden.He moved on to telling the story of Kate Cox, a Texas mother who was forced to flee the state for an abortion after the ban in place there put her at risk for catastrophic health complications. Republicans, he noted, were planning to impose a national ban on reproductive freedom. “My God,” he said, “What other freedoms would they take away?”It was not what reproductive rights advocates were hoping for: the speech made no mention of women’s right to abortion as a matter of equality and dignity, casting “reproductive rights”, as Biden exclusively referred to them, as matters of bare health and dutiful family building. Still, Biden is not making these more robust endorsements of women’s reproductive freedoms because he does not think he has to: his campaign is betting that voters are galvanized enough by the issue that half measures will deliver their votes.They might be right. Indeed, Biden’s pitch to Americans on Thursday night often seemed to have female voters in mind. His proposed tax increases for corporations and the wealthiest strata of Americans were pitched not as mere fairness, but as a means to generate investment in care infrastructure – childcare, paid family leave and eldercare – the neglect of which has led to a nationwide crisis of overburdened and economically straightjacketed women.Roe, too, was framed as an invitation for women to not just vote their interests but avenge their citizenship. “Those bragging about overturning Roe v Wade have no idea about the power of women,” said Biden, referring to a now famous line in Samuel Alito’s majority opinion on Dobbs saying that “women are not without political or electoral power”. “They’re about to find out just how powerful women are.”The main thrust of Biden’s speech was meant to flout his economic accomplishments, to reshape the popular story of the American economy – one where consumers are hampered by inflation and nobody can buy a house – into a story of a remarkable post-pandemic recovery. He flouted the growth of small businesses and the low unemployment rate; he tipped his hat to the economic “soft landing” engineered by Jerome Powell, which has kept the US out of a long-predicted recession. He made a mild dig at the media as he tried to rewrite their own story: “The American people are writing the greatest comeback story ever told.”The speech was strong; every position taken was not. Biden fell apart when he tried to talk about the border, touting his own sadistically cruel bill by way of bragging that Donald Trump had scared all the Republicans out of voting for it. His indifference to the human lives of migrants was at times chilling: he referred offhandedly to “illegals”, and engaged in a bizarre and unnecessary bit of theater with Marjorie Taylor Greene, decked out in garish Maga gear, who yelled at Biden about a woman murdered by an undocumented immigrant.He stumbled, too, when he spoke of Israel’s war on Gaza, dwelling in lurid detail on Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October and only offhandedly acknowledging that more than 30,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel in the past five months. The issue has proved an albatross for Biden, who is hemorrhaging support among young voters and voters of color over his support for Israel’s war. As he spoke about Gaza, Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, wept. But this, too, may be an issue on which Biden relies on the horror of his alternative: his campaign seems to be betting that these voters will return to Biden in spite of his stance on Gaza, because Trump, who spoke recently of a desire to “finish the problem” in Palestine, is so much worse.Democrats had reason to be nervous about Biden’s performance ahead of the speech. The past few weeks of the news cycle have been dominated by internal Democratic fears about Biden’s age, a worry that seems to stand in for all sorts of other, perhaps more pertinent, worries about his ability to hold together his massive and internally fractious coalition. But to the extent to which the claims of concern over Biden’s age were sincere, he seemed determined to put them to rest: he contrasted his own presidency with that of Donald Trump’s on every issue except his age.“I know I don’t look it,” Biden said towards the end of his speech, “but I’ve been around a while” – a joke reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s famous quip, “I refuse to exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” “It is not how old we are,” Biden said. “It’s the age of our ideas. It’s a line that seems certain to be repeated throughout the campaign, as the Democrats seek to make the presidential election less a referendum on Biden’s age than on Donald Trump’s intolerable proposed future.Indeed Biden did seem energized, enthused. His gait was stiffer than last year and his stutter persists, but he came alive, oddly enough, when he was being heckled. He retorted gamely and happily when Republicans screamed at him from the audience; he appeared most comfortable, most confident, when he was being yelled at. “Turning setback into comeback – that’s what America does,” he said at one point in his speech. He was talking about the post-Covid economy. But he could have been talking about his re-election bid.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      State of the Union address 2024: Donald Trump labels Joe Biden’s speech ‘angry, polarizing and hate-filled’ – US politics live

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      Former President Donald Trump, during Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, sent a steady stream of messages blasting Biden on Truth Social.“He looks so angry when hes talking, which is a trait of people who know they are ‘losing it,’” Trump wrote. “The anger and shouting is not helpful to bringing our Country back together!”He added: “This was an angry, polarizing, and hate-filled Speech. He barely mentioned Immigration, or the Worst Border in the History of the World.“He will never fix Immigration, nor does he want to. He wants our Country to be flooded with Migrants. Crime will raise to levels never seen before, and it is happening very quickly!”Would it be a withered old man or a human dynamo? Would it be a rambling, gaffe-prone politician or an inspiring leader touched with fire? Would it be Geriatric Joe or Dark Brandon?Within the first few minutes of Thursday’s State of the Union address in Washington, millions of Americans had their answer. Joe Biden, 81, had brought the fight. But will it be enough?Read our US Politics Sketch here:U.S. Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, who delivered Republicans’ formal response to Biden, attacked him over immigration and the economy.The true, unvarnished State of our Union begins and ends with this: Our families are hurting. Our country can do better, she said.At 42, Britt is the youngest Republican woman ever to serve in the Senate and she attacked Biden over his age, telling viewers: “What we saw was the performance of a permanent politician who has actually been in office for longer than I’ve been alive.”The first-term Alabama senator was speaking on the heels of her state’s supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are ‘children’.Former President Donald Trump, during Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, sent a steady stream of messages blasting Biden on Truth Social.“He looks so angry when hes talking, which is a trait of people who know they are ‘losing it,’” Trump wrote. “The anger and shouting is not helpful to bringing our Country back together!”He added: “This was an angry, polarizing, and hate-filled Speech. He barely mentioned Immigration, or the Worst Border in the History of the World.“He will never fix Immigration, nor does he want to. He wants our Country to be flooded with Migrants. Crime will raise to levels never seen before, and it is happening very quickly!”As he spoke, the president was heckled by far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. She demanded he say the name of Laken Riley, who is suspected to have been killed by an undocumented migrant.Biden, who usually wants nothing to do with Greene, took her up on the offer. Biden acknowledged Riley – and then, in a reference to efforts to reduce gun violence, referred to greater numbers of people killed in incidents unrelated to migrants in the country.President Joe Biden accused Donald Trump of trying to “bury the truth about January 6” in a fiery State of the Union speech.The Democrat leader accused Trump and Republicans of trying to rewrite history about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by the former president’s supporters seeking to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.“My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about January 6. I will not do that,” Biden said, a signal that he will emphasize the issue during his re-election campaign. “You can’t love your country only when you win.”Here are other key moments from Biden’s speech:
      He opened by declaring democracy under threat at home and abroad and criticizing Trump, who he did not mention by name, for inviting Putin to invade NATO nations if they did not spend more on defense.
      The president said efforts to restrict abortion were an “assault on freedom”, and he derided the supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade, with members of that court seated just feet away.
      Biden knocked Republicans for seeking to roll back healthcare provisions under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and driving up deficits, and jibed them for taking money from legislation they had opposed.
      He proposed new measures to lower housing costs, including a $10,000 (£7,807) tax credit for first-time homebuyers while boasting of U.S economic progress under his tenure.
      In a nod to Republican attacks over his age, Biden mentioned he was born during the second world war, but defended his vision for the country as fresh. “You can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.”
      Good morning, I will be bringing you all the most important US politics news as it happens today. More

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      Haley finally bows out as Trump and Biden prepare for rematch – podcast

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      Pundits saw it as one of the least exciting Super Tuesdays in American history. Nevertheless, it gave us some answers. Nikki Haley, who surprised everyone by beating Trump in the Vermont primary election decided it wasn’t enough to keep her in the race, and on Wednesday, she dropped out.
      Despite President Biden and Donald Trump winning easily in most states so far, there is a growing trend that neither camp can ignore – they’re both incredibly unpopular.
      So who should Americans who are dismayed at the choice they’ve been left turn to now? How will both Biden and Trump learn from their first contest four years ago? And what else did we learn from the other primary contests that created headlines on Tuesday?
      Jonathan Freedland speaks to conservative columnist Charlie Sykes about who Americans should turn to now that it’s likely Biden v Trump in November

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      State of the Union address as it happened: Biden spars with Republicans and announces aid pier for Gaza

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      In his third, and potentially last, State of the Union address, Joe Biden eschewed tradition and delivered a barrage of attacks on Donald Trump – who he only referred to as “my predecessor”. It was a sign of how Biden believes Trump’s potential return to the White House poses an existential risk to American democracy, and perhaps also his awareness that he has a lot of support to rebuild to win a second term in November. While Democrats leapt to their feet for Biden’s promises to protect social security, cut child poverty and overhaul the country’s infrastructure, some found the president’s use of the word “illegal” objectionable. Meanwhile, Alabama’s Republican senator Katie Britt delivered the party’s rebuttal, asking: “Are you better off now than you were three years ago?”Here are the highlights:
      The 81-year-old president directly addressed his age, saying “I’ve been told I’m too old” while arguing he is still up for the job.
      Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing nemesis, got unusually close to Biden, then heckled him during the speech over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
      Six supreme court justices were present at the speech, only for Biden to criticize them directly for overturning Roe v Wade.
      Protesters upset over Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza blocked a road leading to the Capitol ahead of the speech.
      George Santos was in the House chamber for the speech, reportedly to hang out with the people who removed him from office.
      Several Democratic House lawmakers have criticized Joe Biden for describing the undocumented migrant suspected of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley as an “illegal”.Biden made the remark during his State of the Union address, while being heckled by rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blamed the president’s border security policies for Riley’s murder. Biden held up a pin with Riley’s name on it, and called her “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal”.Democrats took issue with that terminology, including Illinois’s Chuy Garcia:Ilhan Omar of Minnesota:And Delia Ramirez of Illinois:“Just ask yourself, are you better off now than you were three years ago?” Katie Britt asks in the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.Expect that to be a theme of GOP campaigns nationwide, including Donald Trump’s.More, from Britt:
      Look, we all recall when presidents faced national security threats with strength and resolve. That seems like ancient history right now. Our commander-in-chief is not in command. The free world deserves better than a doddering and diminished leader. America deserves leaders who recognize that secure borders, stable prices, safe streets and a strong defense are actually the cornerstones of a great nation.
      Alabama senator Katie Britt is delivering the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, and responded to his comments on Laken Riley.“Tonight, President Biden finally said her name, but he refused to take responsibility for his own actions,” said Britt.“Mr President, enough is enough. Innocent Americans are dying and you only have yourself to blame. Fulfill your oath of office, reverse your policies, end this crisis and stop the suffering.”One of the most striking moments of the night happened when Joe Biden addressed the topic of immigration – which polls show is a major weakness of his going into the November contest against Donald Trump.As he spoke, the president was heckled by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing antagonist. Greene demanded he say the name of Laken Riley, who is suspected to have been murdered by an undocumented migrant.Biden, who usually wants nothing to do with Greene, took her up on the offer. Here’s what happened:During Joe Biden’s speech, there were several rowdy heckles from Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. Then came an unexpected yell from the public balcony, directly opposite from where I am sitting in the press gallery.A man wearing dark suit, blue shirt and yellow tie cupped his hands and shouted: “Remember Abbey Gate! United States Marines.” Abbey Gate, outside Kabul’s airport, is where 13 US service members were killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan two years ago.His point made, the man voluntarily left before security yanked him out. Biden did not seem thrown off by the interruption as he carried on speaking. But the episode was a reminder that his approval rating has never quite recovered from the chaos in Kabul.Joe Biden rarely discusses his age, but did so directly as he closed his State of the Union address.“I’ve been told I’m too old,” he said, continuing:
      Whether young or old … I’ve always known what endures. I’ve known our north star, the very idea of Americans, that we’re all created equal, deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea. We’ve never walked away from it either. And I won’t walk away from it now.
      “I know it may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” said the 81-year-old president, the oldest to ever hold the job.“You get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever,” Biden continued. “I know the American story. Again and again, I’ve seen the contrast between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation, between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future.”Biden appears to be wrapping up, in high spirits.“Let me close with this,” he said, to sardonic applause.“I know you don’t want to hear any more, Lindsey. But I gotta say a few more things,” Biden said. He was presumably talking to South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham.As Joe Biden discussed the war in Gaza, two progressive House Democrats sitting in the audience staged a minor protest.Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush remained sitting and held up signs that read: “Lasting ceasefire now.” More

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      State of the Union guest list shows reproductive rights in spotlight after Alabama IVF bill signed into law – live

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      Becerra’s comments come ahead of Joe Biden addressing the nation in the State of the Union on Thursday night. Although the White House has not released the speech, a large number of Democratic guests suggest reproductive rights may feature heavily.Among the guests of high-ranking Democrats are Elizabeth Carr, the first person in the US to be born via IVF; Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who nearly died of septic shock when she was denied a medically necessary abortion; and Kate Cox, who had to flee Texas for an abortion after she learned her fetus had a fatal chromosomal condition.More guests include reproductive endocrinologists, an Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim, and leaders of reproductive rights groups.Becerra’s comments emphasizing the importance of reproductive rights, Democrats’ guest list for the State of the Union and a recent administration officials’ trips to states with abortion restrictions are the most recent evidence of Democrat’s election bet: that when Republicans married the motivated minority of voters who support the anti-abortion movement, they also divorced themselves from the broader American public, broad margins of whom support IVF, contraception and legal abortion.My colleague Chris Stein will be covering Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this evening on our dedicated live blog. In the meantime, here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      LaTorya Beasley, an Alabama mother who saw a second round of IVF canceled after the state supreme court ruled that embryos were children, and Kate Cox, the Texas mother forced to travel outside her state for an abortion, are among those set to attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight, as guests of the first lady, Jill Biden.
      Joe Biden will announce in the State of the Union speech that US forces will build a temporary port on the Gaza shoreline in the next few weeks to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale.
      Biden welcomed Sweden into Nato in a statement after the country officially became the 32nd member of the western military alliance. The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, will be attending the State of the Union address tonight.
      Katie Boyd Britt, a first-term 42-year-old Republican senator from Alabama, will deliver the GOP’s official response to Biden’s State of the Union address tonight – a move likely designed to highlight the big age gap between the two.
      Byron Donalds, a Republican Florida congressman being floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump, suggested he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he was vice president.
      No Labels, the third-party presidential movement, will reportedly to announce on Friday that it will move forward with a presidential bid in the November election.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign described a new ad from a pro-Trump Super Pac questioning whether Biden can “even survive til 2029” as “a sick and deranged stunt”.
      Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland who is running for Senate, has said he would not vote for Donald Trump in the November election.
      Daniel Rodimer, a former pro wrestler who won a prominent endorsement from Donald Trump while unsuccessfully running for Congress in Nevada, surrendered to authorities on Wednesday on an arrest warrant for murder.
      Republican Florida congressman Byron Donalds became the latest vice-presidential contender to refuse to commit to certifying election results.Donalds, at an Axios event, suggested he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he was vice president. He also did not clarify if he would have certified the 2020 election results.Donalds is one of the names being floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump. When asked if he would certify the 2028 results as vice president, he replied:
      If you have state officials who are violating the election law in their states … then no, I would not.
      Asked if he agreed with former vice-president Mike Pence’s move to certify the results, Donalds said: “You can only ask that question of Mike Pence.”Republicans have chosen Katie Boyd Britt, a first-term senator from Alabama, to deliver the party’s official response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight – a move likely designed to highlight the big age gap between the two.Britt, 42, is one of nine women in the Senate Republican conference and the youngest female Republican elected to the Senate.In a statement announcing her speech, she said it was time for the next generation of American politicians “to step up”. She added:
      The Republican Party is the party of hardworking parents and families, and I’m looking forward to putting this critical perspective front and center.
      Senate Republicans say she will offer a split screen of sorts when she delivers the party’s rebuttal to the State of the Union address by Biden, 81.“She’s young, female and full of energy – opposite of everything Joe Biden is,” senator Markwayne Mullin told the Hill. “The contrast between the two, it’s so different.”The third-party presidential movement No Labels is expected to announce it will move forward with a presidential bid in the November election, according to multiple reports.About 800 No Labels delegates are expected to meet virtually in a private meeting and vote on Friday in favor of launching a presidential campaign for this fall’s election, sources told AP and Reuters.The group will not name its presidential and vice presidential picks on Friday, but instead it is expected to roll out a formal selection process late next week for potential candidates who would be selected in the coming weeks, the people said.The House passed a bill that would require federal authorities to detain any migrant charged with theft or burglary, named after a Georgia nursing student police have said was killed by a man who entered the US illegally.The measure, called the Laken Riley Act, requires immigrations and customs enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants accused by local authorities of theft, burglary, larceny or shoplifting.The bill would also allow states and individuals to sue the federal government for crimes committed by immigrants who enter the country illegally.The bill was named after 22-year-old Laken Riley, who was killed on the campus of the University of Georgia while on a morning run last month. Riley’s death has become a rallying point for Donald Trump, after authorities arrested a Venezuelan man who entered the US illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.The House approved the legislation hours before Joe Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union address. Republicans have seized on Riley’s death to hammer the Biden administration’s border policies.“Republicans will not stand for the release of dangerous criminals into our communities, and that’s exactly what the Biden administration has done,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News.
      Laken is just one of the tragic examples of innocent American citizens who have lost their lives, been brutally and violently attacked by illegal criminals who are roaming our streets.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has responded to a new ad from a pro-Trump Super Pac questioning Biden’s ability to serve a second term in a new TV ad and whether the president can “even survive til 2029.”The ad, by Make America Great Again Inc, shows a clip from Biden’s press conference after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.During the briefing, Biden spoke about comments by Donald Trump about letting Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato allies. Pausing for dramatic effect, Biden then says he should clear his mind “and not say what I’m really thinking.”In the Maga Inc ad, a narrator says: “We can all see Joe Biden’s weakness. If Biden wins, can he even survive to 2029. The real question is, can we?”Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa told NBC News that the ad is “a sick and deranged stunt from a broke and struggling campaign”, adding:
      Trump tried this strategy four years ago and got his ass kicked by Joe Biden – he should tune in tonight alongside tens of millions of Americans to see why President Biden will beat him again this November.
      A former congressional candidate backed by Donald Trump has been arrested for murder. The Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:A former pro wrestler who won a prominent endorsement from Donald Trump while unsuccessfully running for Congress in Nevada surrendered to authorities on Wednesday on an arrest warrant for murder.Daniel Rodimer, 45, was booked in connection with the slaying of 47-year-old Christopher Tapp, who was reportedly beaten to death in Resorts World Las Vegas on 29 October.Rodimer met Tapp – who was once charged with murder himself – “through the classic car and racing circuit”, according to the local television news station KLAS, which reviewed police documents.Investigators allege that Rodimer fatally attacked Tapp after he offered Rodimer’s stepdaughter cocaine during a hotel room party.Initially, authorities believed Tapp’s death stemmed from a drug overdose and a fall, after an autopsy found evidence of blunt trauma and cocaine use. But detectives later determined Tapp had been in a fight inside the hotel room where he was found injured. He died later at a hospital.For the full story, click here:Here is a video of Maryland’s former Republican governor Larry Hogan – who we reported about earlier – saying that he will not vote for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump:Hogan, who recently stepped down from his third-party movement No Labels, said: “I think we’ll hopefully have some ability to vote for someone that these people actually want to vote for rather than just voting against.”In a tweet on Thursday, Joe Biden urged Americans to tune into his State of the Union address in which he plans to address “how far we’ve come in building the economy from the middle out and the bottom up …”He went on to add that he plans to address “the work we have left to lower costs and protect our freedoms against MAGA attacks”.An Alabama mother who saw a second round of IVF canceled after the state supreme court ruled that embryos were children will attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday, as guests of the first lady, Jill Biden.LaTorya Beasley of Birmingham, Alabama, is among the first lady’s 20 invited guests who “personify issues or themes to be addressed by the president in his speech,” the White House said in a statement.Beasley and her husband had their first child, via IVF, in 2022. They were trying to have another child through IVF but Beasley’s embryo transfer was suddenly canceled because of the Alabama court decision.Also on the guest list is Kate Cox, the Texas mother forced to travel outside her state for an abortion. The White House said the cases of Beasley and Cox, showed “how the overturning of Roe v Wade has disrupted access to reproductive healthcare for women and families across the country”. In a statement, the White House said:
      Stories like Kate’s and LaTorya’s should never happen in America. But Republican elected officials want to impose this reality on women nationwide.
      Joe Biden has welcomed Sweden into Nato in a statement after the country officially became the 32nd member of the western military alliance.Stockholm’s ratification process was finally completed in Washington on Thursday, as Sweden and Hungary – the last country to ratify Sweden’s membership – submitted the necessary documents after a drawn-out process that has taken nearly two years.The ratification marked the end of a 20-month-long wait that started in May 2022 when it submitted its application to join alongside Finland, prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February that year.In a statement, Biden said he was “honored” to welcome Sweden as Nato’s newest ally, and that the alliance was “stronger than ever” with its addition. He added:
      Today, we once more reaffirm that our shared democratic values – and our willingness to stand up for them – is what makes Nato the greatest military alliance in the history of the world. It is what draws nations to our cause. It is what underpins our unity. And together with our newest Ally Sweden – NATO will continue to stand for freedom and democracy for generations to come.
      The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, will be attending Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as a guest of the first lady, the White House has confirmed.Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland who is running for Senate, has said he would not vote for Donald Trump in the November election.Hogan, at an Axios event, said he will vote for neither Trump nor Joe Biden and would instead seek out a third-party candidate. He said:
      I’m like 70% of the rest of people in America who do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president, and I’m hoping that there potentially is another alternative.
      He added that he didn’t know yet who that candidate will be. Hogan, one of the most outspoken and only Trump critics in the Republican party, last year said he would support the party’s nominee for president, but at the time said he did not think Trump would be that candidate.Joe Biden will announce in the State of the Union speech that US forces will build a temporary port on the Gaza shoreline in the next few weeks to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale.“We are not waiting on the Israelis. This is a moment for American leadership,” a senior US official said on Thursday, reflecting growing frustration of what is seen in Washington as Israeli obstruction of road deliveries on a substantial scale.The port will be built by US military engineers operating from ships off the Gaza coast, who will not need to step ashore, US officials said. The aid deliveries will be shipped from the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, which will become the main relief hub. The official said:
      Tonight, the president will announce in his State of the Union address that he has directed the US military to undertake an emergency mission to establish a port in Gaza, working in partnership with like minded countries and humanitarian partners. This port, the main feature of which is a temporary pier, will provide the capacity for hundreds of additional truckloads of assistance each day.
      Biden will also announce the opening of a new land crossing into the occupied and devastated coastal strip. Biden has been fiercely criticised within his own party for the failure to open up Gaza to humanitarian aid, with a famine looming and 30,000 Palestinians dead already since the start of war on 7 October.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight will highlight Democratic successes and show the chaos in the House Republican party in stark relief.During his floor remarks reported by CNN, Schumer said Biden will make it clear that “after so much adversity, America’s economy is growing, inflation is slowing, and Democrats’ agenda is delivering.” He said:
      The difference between the parties will be as clear as night and day. Democrats are focused on lowering costs, creating jobs, putting money in people’s pockets. But the hard right, which too often runs the Republican party in the House and now increasingly in the Senate, is consumed by chaos, bullying, and attacking things like women’s freedom of choice.
      Meanwhile, the Republican front-runner for president, Donald Trump, has “made it abundantly clear that he’s not running to make people’s lives better, but rather on airing his personal political grievances,” Schumer added.Joe Biden will deliver the final State of the Union address of his presidential term this evening, giving him an opportunity to tout his accomplishments and pitch his re-election campaign as he prepares for a rematch against Donald Trump in November.Previewing Biden’s State of the Union speech, his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said his remarks would focus on the president’s vision for the nation’s future and his legislative accomplishments.“You’re going to hear the president address how democracy is under attack, how freedoms are certainly under attack,” including women’s reproductive rights and voting rights, Jean-Pierre told MSNBC.Biden’s speech will also highlight his agenda for a potential second term, the White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told NPR. Those include “lowering costs, continuing to make people’s lives better by investing in childcare, eldercare, paid family and medical leave, continued progress on student debt”, he said, adding:
      The president is also going to call for restoring Roe v. Wade and giving women freedom over their healthcare. And he’ll talk about protecting, not taking away, freedoms in other areas, as well as voting rights.
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, reportedly pleaded with his party to show “decorum” on Thursday, when Joe Biden comes to the chamber to deliver his State of the Union address.“Decorum is the order of the day,” Johnson said, according to an unnamed Republican who attended a closed-door event on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and was quoted by the Hill.The same site said another unnamed member of Congress said Johnson asked his party to “carry ourselves with good decorum”. A third Republican was quoted as saying:
      He said, ‘Let’s have the appropriate decorum. We don’t need to be shrill, you know, we got to avoid that. We need to base things upon policy, upon facts, upon reality of situations.
      Last year’s State of the Union saw outbursts from Republicans and responses from Biden that made headlines, most awarding the president the win. Kevin McCarthy, then speaker, also asked his Republican members not to breach decorum. But in a sign of his limited authority, months before he became the first speaker ejected by his own party, such pleas fell on deaf ears. More