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      Biden says in rare print interview he’ll beat Trump but polls say otherwise

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      In a rare print interview, Joe Biden addressed fears over his chances of victory in the coming US presidential election and said he was “the only one who has ever beat” his likely Republican challenger, Donald Trump, adding: “And I’ll beat him again.”But the president was voicing a conviction at odds with most polling, in which clear majorities think that at 81 he is too old for a second term and narrow majorities put Trump ahead in a general election match-up.Biden was in conversation with Evan Osnos of the New Yorker, whose short biography of Biden was published in 2020, the year the former senator and vice-president secured the Democratic nomination at his third attempt and then beat Trump.Osnos wrote: “Now, having reached the apex of power, [Biden] gives off a conviction that borders on serenity – a bit too much serenity for Democrats who wonder if he can still beat the man with whom his legacy will be forever entwined.“Given the doubts, I asked, wasn’t it a risk to say, ‘I’m the one to do it’?“He shook his head and said: ‘No. I’m the only one who has ever beat him. And I’ll beat him again.’”Poised to secure the Republican nomination after the Super Tuesday primaries this week, Trump is only three and a half years Biden’s junior. But even amid public slips and gaffes every bit as glaring as those by Biden, fewer Americans think Trump is too old to return to office.Trump also faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, arising from his conduct in business, on the campaign trail and in office.Of 91 criminal charges, 17 concern election subversion, 40 arise from Trump’s retention of classified information and 34 are related to hush-money payments to an adult film star who claimed an affair.Trump also faces multimillion-dollar civil fines, over his business affairs and a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”. Attempts to keep him off the ballot for inciting the January 6 insurrection, by supporters of his lie about electoral fraud in his defeat by Biden, failed on Monday with the rejection by the US supreme court of a case in Colorado.Osnos noted that regardless of such unprecedented challenges for a (near-certain) presidential challenger, “by the usual measures” on which incumbents are judged – falling violent crime, unemployment below 4%, record stock-market highs – “Biden should be cruising to re-election”.And yet, even amid warnings from pundits that conventional polling means little so far out from election day, Trump is generally ahead.This weekend, a rash of polls made bad reading for Biden, though some said the same for Trump.
      The New York Times and Siena College put Trump up 48%-43% and said Democrats were split on whether Biden should be their nominee, with young voters, likely to disapprove of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, expressing particular doubt.
      CBS News and YouGov said most voters favoured Trump on the economy, regardless of such conditions as outlined by Osnos and also Trump’s record, thanks to Covid-19, of leaving office 2.9m jobs down and with unemployment at 6.3%.
      Fox News put Trump up two points in a general election match-up and ahead with voters on the economy and immigration, the latter issue one on which he recently forced congressional Republicans to tank a hardline bipartisan deal.
      The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said 60% of respondents were “not very or not at all confident in Biden’s mental capability to serve effectively as president”, up from about 50% in January 2022. Nearly 60% said the same of Trump.
      Biden became a senator in 1973 and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008. He was vice-president to Barack Obama between 2009 and 2017 before securing the presidential nomination in 2020 with a campaign built on the threat he said Trump posed to American democracy itself.Such messaging has been central to Biden’s re-election bid but David Axelrod, formerly chief strategist to Obama and a prominent Biden critic, told Osnos: “I’m pretty certain in Scranton [Pennsylvania, Biden’s home town] they’re not sitting around their dinner table talking about democracy every night.”“The Republican message is: the world’s out of control and Biden’s not in command. That’s the entire message – Trump, the strongman, is the solution. I think you have to be thinking about how you counter that, and how you deal with fears about Biden’s condition.”Calls for Biden to step aside for a younger candidate have been rejected by the White House and most progressive pundits. In conversation with Osnos, Biden remained resolute.For the president, Osnos wrote, “the offense of the contested election [in 2020] was clearly personal. Trump had not just tried to steal the presidency – he had tried to steal it from him.”Biden said: “I’d ask a rhetorical question. If you thought you were best positioned to beat someone who, if they won, would change the nature of America, what would you do?’ More

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      How Gaza activists in Minnesota are pushing the US wave of ‘uncommitted’ votes

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      Dozens of families turned up to a Minneapolis park on Sunday to hear why they should cast an “uncommitted” protest vote in Tuesday’s presidential primary and how that could affect the Israel-Gaza war.Kids played on the playground or made signs to support Palestine while their caregivers listened as organizers shared an “easy action”: show up at your local polling place on Tuesday, ask for a Democratic ballot and check the box that says “uncommitted”.Minnesota organizers, inspired by the strong turnout for an uncommitted vote in Michigan, quickly put together a coalition to get out the word that Minnesota voters should follow Michigan’s example.In Michigan, Democrats set a goal to get 10,000 uncommitted votes; more than 100,000 people instead voted uncommitted, a message to Joe Biden that Democratic voters demand his action on Palestine. The Israel-Gaza war serves as a key liability for the US president in his re-election bid, and his positions on the issue have turned some Democrats away from him during what is shaping up to be a close race with Donald Trump.After Michigan’s success, organizers in other progressive states that have uncommitted options on their ballots have started working on local efforts to keep the pressure on Biden for a ceasefire. Minnesota, a Super Tuesday state, has a few factors that give it potential for a good turnout for the uncommitted vote: high voter turnout overall, a progressive history, a large Muslim community. Minnesota’s campaign could further buoy the movement and boost the protest vote in other states, organizers hope.“We vote in Minnesota. Number one in the country for turnout,” said Jaylani Hussein, a co-chair of the Abandon Biden campaign in Minnesota. “And when it comes to minorities and immigrants, we also have historically high, record turnout.”At the Minneapolis park, Amanda Purcell of MN Families for Palestine led the audience in a chant: “Gaza kids! Our kids!” The organization has worked for months to reach out to elected officials to support a ceasefire by using small actions that people with kids can easily do.“We’re really starting to feel the momentum here,” Purcell said. “And we’re hoping that what we do here will just continue to push the wave of uncommitted across the United States.”Supporters passed out a flyer with a QR code where people could fill out a form to pledge to vote uncommitted, which calls on those pledging their support to also send the form to three other families to share the message.Over the past week, Minnesota activists have called and texted voters to push out the “uncommitted” message. They’ve gone to mosques around the state to share the idea, targeting Minnesota’s Muslim population. They’ve held rallies. They’ve reached out to college students, families, people who’ve attended protests in the past.Groups around Minnesota have protested and worked to move their local members of Congress on Palestine. They’ve shown up on Democratic governor Tim Walz’s lawn, calling on him to get the state to divest from Israel. The progressive state with a history of grassroots organizing saw existing groups work together to quickly stand up an uncommitted campaign.Some Democratic voters in the state had seen what happened in Michigan and already planned to vote uncommitted, said Asma Mohammed, one of the organizers behind Vote Uncommitted MN. To others, supporters explained the idea of “uncommitted” being a protest vote. Some voters had shared that they’d felt there was no reason to show up for the presidential primary because their voices weren’t being heard in a contest dominated by a sitting president; “uncommitted” gives them an option to send a message, Mohammed said.Mohammed is against a Trump presidency, as are, she says, the rest of the organizers. But there is real disapproval and discontent with Democrats and Biden among the communities who want to see a ceasefire. People are “really angry”, and she hopes the primary vote for uncommitted helps Biden understand that he and the party are losing longtime Democrats, perhaps permanently, because of this.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m hoping that President Biden listens, because I don’t want to have to organize my community out of becoming Republicans or just sitting at home,” Mohammed said. “And it’s not just my community.”Minnesota’s campaign doesn’t have a number goal like Michigan did. Instead, organizers want to keep Michigan’s first step going in Minnesota, then help people in other states stand up their own efforts. But, most importantly, they want Biden to act. And they believe the only way they can get him to listen now is through their votes.A win for the uncommitted campaign would be a permanent ceasefire, Mohammed said.“We don’t want any more empty claims,” she said. “Another win for us is that this will embolden some of our members of Congress and Senate to take action because there are a lot of them who have not been on the right side of this either, who have taken votes that have angered the community and have really been hurting their chances at re-election.”The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor party (DFL), the state’s Democratic party, has said it expects Biden to easily win the state. (Another Minnesotan, congressman Dean Phillips, is running for president and on the state’s presidential primary ballots, though his campaign has been virtually non-existent in the state in the lead-up to Super Tuesday.) The party’s chair, Ken Martin, has sought to remind voters of the contrast between Biden and Trump.After Minnesota’s vote on Tuesday, organizers here plan to share what they learn from the rapid move for an uncommitted campaign with other states. Already, Washington state has an uncommitted campaign underway that received an endorsement from the state’s United Food and Commercial Workers, its largest labor union.“This is a national movement,” Mohammed said. “It doesn’t stop with Michigan. It doesn’t stop with Minnesota. All of us have to be all in to get the attention of the president.” More

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      Majority of voters think Biden is too old to be effective president, new poll says

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      A majority of voters in the US believe Joe Biden is just too old to be an effective president, according to a new poll by the New York Times and Siena College.According to the poll’s results, 73% of all registered voters believe Biden is too old to be effective, in turn revealing spreading concerns about the 81-year-old president’s mental competency.Among those who voted for Biden in 2020, 61% believe Biden’s age will make him an ineffective president for a second term, with 26% indicating that they strongly agree and 35% indicating that they somewhat agree.The results of the wide-ranging poll, which were first released Friday, are the latest blow to Biden’s election campaign which has faced a barrage of criticism centered around Biden’s age and widespread voters’ fears about his ability to be president.At 81, Biden is the oldest president ever to seek re-election, though his likely challenger, Donald Trump, is only four years younger. However, in much recent polling Biden is usually trailing to Trump and he also faces high disapproval ratings.In response to whether Biden’s age is such a problem that he is not capable of handling the job of president, 45% of total registered voters agreed in the latest New York Times/Siena study. Among those that voted for Biden four years ago, 19% said they agreed with the statement.Meanwhile, across all registered voters, 26% expressed that while Biden’s age makes him ineffective, he is still able to handle the job of president well enough. Among those that voted for him in 2020, 41% agreed with the statement.In comparison to Biden, 42% of all registered voters believe Trump is just too old to be an effective president. Among those that voted for Trump in 2020, 5% indicated that they strongly agree while 9% said they somewhat agree.Across all registered voters, 21% believe that the 77-year-old former president’s age makes him ineffective but he is still able to handle the job well enough while only 19% said they believe Trump’s age is such a problem that he is not capable of handling the job.In response to the latest poll, Biden’s campaign communication manager Michael Tyler said that polling “consistently overestimates” Donald Trump while underestimating Biden, Politico reported.“Polling continues to be at odds with how Americans vote, and consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden,” Tyler told the outlet.Tyler added: “Whether it’s in special elections or in the presidential primaries, actual voter behavior tells us a lot more than any poll does and it tells a very clear story: Joe Biden and Democrats continue to outperform while Donald Trump and the party he leads are weak, cash-strapped, and deeply divided. Our campaign is ignoring the noise and running a strong campaign to win – just like we did in 2020.”The new poll comes on the heels of a Bloomberg News and Morning Consult study released last month which found Biden lagging behind Trump in key swing states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to that poll, 82% of voters in key swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin believe that Biden is too old.The poll also found a majority of voters, including 28% of those who plan to vote for him in November, expressing the belief that Trump is dangerous, particularly as Trump ramps up his extremist attacks amid his growing legal battles and attempts to secure the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.In a chilling speech delivered at CPAC last weekend, Trump vowed his “ultimate and absolute revenge” and declared himself a “proud political dissident”, promising “judgment day” for his political opponents.Despite the rise in Trump’s extremism, concerns appear to still largely surround Biden’s age and efficacy. A separate poll conducted by Gallup last month found that Biden’s approval rating was at 38%, marking a three-percentage point drop from January, while 59% of surveyed adults indicated disapproval towards the president.Amid growing concerns surrounding Biden’s age and mental competency, special counsel Robert Hur called the president an “elderly man with a poor memory” in a 388-page report released last month on Biden’s retention of classified material.In response, Biden defended his memory in a fiery speech in which he adamantly said, “My memory is fine.” More

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      Trump confuses Obama for Biden again at Virginia rally speech

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      Donald Trump confused Barack Obama for Joe Biden at a rally in Virginia on Saturday, triggering further questions about the age of the likely Republican presidential nominee who has made a string of such gaffes.It also comes at a time of similar concerns about the Biden. At 77 and 81 respectively, Trump and Biden are the oldest people to run for the presidency in US history.“Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word. You heard that. Nuclear. He’s starting to talk nuclear weapons today,” said Trump, on Saturday night in Richmond.The crowd reportedly went silent as the Trump referenced Obama, who left office more than seven years ago. It’s the third time Trump has made the blunder in the past six months.The former US president’s other gaffes include confusing his Republican rival Nikki Haley with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.Haley, 52, who has defied Trump and several primary defeats to continue in the race for the Republican nomination, has tried to frame herself as the younger, healthier option – referring to Trump and Biden as Grumpy Old Men in her campaign ads.Trump’s mistake came the day after Biden, twice confused Ukraine and Gaza as he announced that the US would airdrop humanitarian supplies to Palestinians in Gaza who are dying of starvation due to the Israeli bombardment and blockades.“In the coming days, we’re going to join with our friends in Jordan and others who are providing airdrops of additional food and supplies into Ukraine,” Biden said on Friday. The US will “seek to open up other avenues into Ukraine, including possibly a marine corridor”, he added.A White House official later clarified that Biden meant Gaza – not Ukraine. The gaffe had been changed in the transcript of his remarks.Questions about Biden’s age have intensified in recent months.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe latest lapse came days after was declared “fit for duty” at his annual health check. White House physician Dr Kevin O’Connor said Biden “fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations”.A new New York Times/Siena College poll found that 73% of registered voters polled believe Biden is too old to be an effective president, including 61% of those who voted for him in 2020. Voters seem less bothered about Trump, who is just four years younger, with 42% of those polled saying he “just too old” to be an effective president.While criticisms of the age issue on both sides are laced with political spin, age-related cognitive decline is real.As a person gets older, changes occur in all parts of the body including the brain. According to the National Institute on Aging (NIA) certain parts of the brain shrink, including those important to learning and other complex mental activities; communication between neurons may be less effective; and blood flow in the brain may decrease.Healthy older adults can however learn new skills, form new memories, improve vocabulary and language skills. The NIA is conducting research on so-called cognitive super-agers, the minority of octogenarians and nonagenarians whose memories are comparable to people 20 to 30 years younger. More

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      Joe Biden’s disapproval rating reaches new high, according to new poll

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      Strong voter disapproval of Joe Biden’s job performance has reached 47% – the highest negative polling number at any point in his presidency, according to a survey published on Saturday.The Siena College-conducted poll, commissioned by the New York Times, showed that Biden currently lags behind likely Republican candidate Donald Trump 43% to 48% in registered voters nationally.The survey found that just one in four voters (24%) think the country is moving in the right direction – a key question in the run-up to a national election – and more than twice as many voters said that Biden’s policies had personally hurt them than those who said they had helped.Of the two-thirds of the country that feels the nation is headed in the wrong direction, the poll found that 63% said they would vote for Trump.Conducted at the end of February, these results come as the Biden re-election campaign attempts to change the narrative on voter concerns about the Democrat candidate’s age and mental acuity and his handling of foreign policy and the economy. A majority of voters think the economy is in poor condition, the polling showed.The survey is only the latest to reveal the depths of voter dissatisfaction with the president. Last week, a Bloomberg News poll found Biden trailing Trump in several critical states, including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin.In the Bloomberg survey, a large share of the respondents voiced concerns with Biden’s age and a significant percentage said Trump was dangerous, and suggested the number of “double haters”, as pollsters call voters who approve of neither candidate, is significant.Those findings were broadly repeated in Saturday’s Times poll. Biden’s approval rating came in at 38%, with Trump faring better with a 44% favorable rating.Nineteen per cent of voters said they disapproved of both men, but among them Biden is slightly less hated, with a spread of 7% between Biden (38%) and Trump (45%). That spread, according to the Times, is significant: the candidate less disliked by “double haters” has won the last two presidential elections.Those findings may bolster what Democrat and Republican pollsters drew from recent primary voting.In South Carolina last week, the number of primary voters who backed Republican contender Nikki Haley but said they would never vote for Trump is perceived to represent the margin that will ensure Trump’s defeat to Biden in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the New York Times poll provides an array of red warning lights for the Biden campaign, including signals that the Democratic party coalition of female, Black and Latino voters is fraying.Among working-class, non-university-educated voters of color, Biden is only narrowly leading, 47% to Trump’s 41%, the poll found. Four years ago, Biden held a 50-point lead.Last week, Trump suggested that his legal problems has won him support among Black voters.“I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing,” he told the Black Conservative Federation gala in South Carolina. “A lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.” More

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      Biden calls for compromise while Trump goes full red meat at US-Mexico border

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      It might be seen as the first US presidential debate of 2024. Two candidates and two lecterns but 300 miles – and a political universe – apart.Joe Biden and Donald Trump spent Thursday at the US-Mexico border, a vivid display of how central the immigration issue has become to the election campaign. Since it is far from certain whether official presidential debates will happen this year, the duelling visits might be as close as it gets.And it was as clarifying about the choice facing voters as any verbal clash on the debate stage. Biden came to push legislation and appeal to the head. Trump came to push fear and appeal to the gut. It is sure to be a close-run thing.That they were at the border at all represented a win for Republicans, who have forced Democrats to play on their territory as the debate over immigration in Washington shifts further to the right.Border crossings have been at or close to record highs since Biden took office in January 2021, though they have dropped so far this year, a trend that officials attribute to increased Mexican enforcement and seasonal trends. Democrats have become increasingly eager to embrace restrictions as they are confronted by migrants sleeping in police stations and airplane hangars.Where the presidents went on Thursday, and who went with them, told its own story. Biden headed to the Rio Grande Valley city of Brownsville which, for nine years, was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. He was accompanied by the homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Republicans earlier this month narrowly voted to impeach over his handling of the border.Trump, who has echoed Adolf Hitler by arguing that immigrants entering the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country”, travelled to Eagle Pass in the corridor currently witnessing the highest number of crossings – though they have fallen in recent months.The former president was joined by Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who deployed thousands of national guard troops and laid concertina wire and river buoys to deter illegal immigration through a programme called Operation Lone Star – sparking legal and political standoffs with the White House.It was also Abbott who vowed to “take the border to President Biden” by busing thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities, a move of diabolical genius that nationalised an issue which has, polls show, overtaken inflation as voters’ number one concern.In public remarks, Trump went full red meat, appealing to racist instincts in ways that offered a sobering reminder of the stakes of the election. “This is a Joe Biden invasion,” he said, insisting that “men of a certain age” were coming from countries including China, Iran, Yemen, DR Congo and Syria. “They look like warriors to me.”The former president – who favours travel bans and “ideological screening” for migrants – plucked assertions out of the air: “It could be 15 million, it could be 18 million by the time he gets out of office … A very big population coming in from jails in the Congo … We have languages coming into our country that nobody even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages.”View image in fullscreenTrump went on to describe the alleged crimes of illegal immigrants and claimed that Biden has “the blood of countless innocent victims” on his hands. It is safe to assume that, at this summer’s Republican national convention, a series of gratuitous and lurid stories will be told along with a parade of victims’ families.Biden, who has been on the defensive on the issue in recent months, had a very different objective. He wanted to shame congressional Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan effort to toughen immigration policies after Trump told them not to pass it and give Biden a policy victory.“Join me – or I’ll join you – in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill,” he said, attempting to turn the tables on Trump. “We can do it together. It’s the toughest most efficient, most effective border security bill the country has ever seen. So instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done?”That’ll be the day. But in truth any president would have struggled with this escalating crisis. Congress has been paralysed on the issue for decades. Trump left vital agencies in disarray. Climate change, war and unrest in other nations, along with cartels that see migration as a cash cow, have conjured a perfect storm for Trump’s nativist-populist message to frame the conversation.Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice-president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, says: “It seems most people are hearing about the issue of immigration from Republicans rather than from Democrats. That means you are allowing your opponents to define what your position is and that would be political malpractice for any candidate or elected leader.”Last week a Marquette Law School Poll national survey found 53% of voters say Trump is better on immigration and border security, while only 25% favour Biden on the issue. And for the first time a majority (53%) said they support building a wall along the entire southern border – a promise that Trump has been making since he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015.The dynamic leaves Biden caught between trying to please the right while not alienating the left. Republicans and Maga media are demanding draconian measures and pushing emotional buttons by highlighting cases such as the arrest of Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.Biden duly embraced immigration policies that he ran against as a candidate in 2020 such as restricting asylum laws and promising to “shut down the border” if given new authority. But such measures were condemned by progressives and could put his own coalition at risk in a crucial election year.De Castro adds: “If you go back to the early 2000s, there was similarly a lack of alignment on this issue. It took work to get there, but then, for many years, Democrats were seen as aligned as the party that believed in legal immigration and a path to legality for immigrants here and smart enforcement. In some ways they have lost their voice on this, and they need to recoup that.”If Biden and Trump do share a debate stage later this year, America can only hope for a substantial debate on immigration policy. But the four-year electoral cycle and soundbite age are the enemy of the long-term reform that is sorely needed. This knottiest of political problems goes way beyond America’s borders.Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a group focused on young voters, says: “Any immigration plan actually has to address the root causes. People are coming out of deep economic need and also fleeing very violent situations. Until you address that it doesn’t matter what kind of barriers they try and create physically at the border to make it more difficult. If they want real solutions, they have to address that.” More

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      Trump attacks Biden immigration policies in Texas speech as both visit US-Mexico border – live

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      Donald Trump has begun delivering remarks during his visit to the US-Mexico border. He begins by commending the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on his efforts at the border.Trump moves on to say that the US is being “overrun” by “Biden migrant crime”, which he claims is a “new form of vicious violation” to the country.He accuses Biden of being the most incompetent president the US has ever had, and of transporting “entire columns of fighting-aged men” who “look like warriors” to the US.Trump’s comments are the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seems to be going beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead are going into the territory of outright extremism or racism.Joe Biden is now delivering remarks in Brownsville in South Texas.Biden begins by speaking about the devastating wildfires in the Texas Panhandle that has crossed into Oklahoma. He says he stands with everyone affected by these wildfires. “When disaster strikes, there’s no red state or blue state,” he says.He then moves on to his visit to the US-Mexico border. He says he has been briefed from officials from the border patrol, immigration enforcement and asylum officers, who he says are all doing “incredible work under really tough conditions”. They desperately need more resources, he says.Trump also speaks about the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was out on her morning run at the University of Georgia when authorities say a stranger dragged her into a secluded area and killed her.A Venezuelan man, identified as Jose Antonio Ibarra, has been arrested for the death of Riley. Ibarra is an immigrant who entered the US illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.Trump has blamed Joe Biden and his border policies for the Augusta University student’s fatal beating.Donald Trump has begun delivering remarks during his visit to the US-Mexico border. He begins by commending the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on his efforts at the border.Trump moves on to say that the US is being “overrun” by “Biden migrant crime”, which he claims is a “new form of vicious violation” to the country.He accuses Biden of being the most incompetent president the US has ever had, and of transporting “entire columns of fighting-aged men” who “look like warriors” to the US.Trump’s comments are the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seems to be going beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead are going into the territory of outright extremism or racism.Donald Trump has been meeting with officials from the national guard and the department of public safety as he tours Eagle Pass alongside Texas governor Greg Abbott.The lower house of Alabama’s legislature has passed a law to protect providers of in vitro fertilization care, the Montgomery Advertiser reports, after the state supreme court earlier this month ruled embryos used in the procedure were “children”.The court’s decisions raised the possibility that practices providing the care, which is typically used by people who struggle to have children, could face civil suits or criminal prosecution. The bill, backed by the legislature’s Republican majority, would prevent that by protecting providers from those consequences.Here’s more, from the Advertiser:
      The Alabama state House passed overwhelmingly passed legislation Thursday granting civil and criminal immunity to in vitro fertilization patients and medical professionals.
      The bill passed by a vote of 94-6.
      Filed by Terri Collins, R-Morgan County, HB237 reaffirms Attorney General Steve Marshall’s statement that the state has ‘no intention of using the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision as a basis for prosecuting IVF families or providers.’
      ‘This would at least keep the clinics open and the families moving forward,’ Collins said.
      The state Supreme Court in February ruled that frozen embryos are legally protected as children, a controversial decision that thrust the state into the national spotlight. The ruling has been condemned by both Democrats and Republicans.
      In the wake of the court’s ruling, multiple clinics that offer IVF care in the state halted all appointments indefinitely, including Alabama Fertility and the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System.
      In Brownsville, Joe Biden is meeting with members of the border patrol on what looks to be the banks of the Rio Grande, which forms the border between Texas and Mexico:Joe Biden has arrived in Brownsville, Texas, before his meetings with federal officials and a speech about border security.According to the White House, he’s expected to meet with officers from US customs and border protection, immigration and customs enforcement and other federal agencies. He will deliver remarks at 4.30pm ET, where he will likely press Congress to act on a border security compromise that Republicans are presently blocking.Donald Trump has arrived in Texas, where he’ll be visiting the border with Mexico in the town of Eagle Pass:Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, will probably outline hard-line measures he would take to stop people from entering the country without permission, if elected. Such crossings have surged since Joe Biden took office, for a variety of reasons. Here’s more about that:The House of Representatives has just approved a measure that will push back government funding deadlines and ward off a shutdown that would have begun after Friday:It’s now up to the Senate to approve the bill, and Congress will then shift to considering full-year appropriations bills. Here’s more on that:Donald Trump’s latest ballot headache is in Illinois, where a judge ordered his name removed yesterday on 14th amendment grounds. The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports that he is appealing the ruling:Donald Trump has appealed a decision from an Illinois state judge who decided he should be removed from that state’s ballot because of the 14th amendment, an ongoing issue for Trump in the courts.Tracie Porter, the Cook county circuit judge, made the decision on Wednesday, reversing the previous decision by the Illinois state board of elections, which said Trump could stay on the ballot. The order was put on hold pending an appeal from Trump, which came swiftly on Thursday.The Illinois decision came after the Colorado supreme court ruled similarly, saying Trump couldn’t hold office again because he had participated in an insurrection while an officer of the United States. Another decision in Maine, by the state’s secretary of state, decided to keep Trump off the ballot there as well, though that is now on hold.The Colorado decision went before the US supreme court in February, which has yet to rule on the case, though the justices expressed a load of skepticism of the claims that Trump shouldn’t be allowed to run again.Expect Joe Biden and Donald Trump to outline very different visions for dealing with undocumented migration when they appear on Texas’s border with Mexico today, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:Joe Biden and his all-but-certain Republican challenger, Donald Trump, will make dueling visits to Texas border towns on Thursday, a rare overlap that sets the stage for an election season clash over immigration.In Brownsville, along the Rio Grande, Biden is expected to hammer Republicans for blocking a bipartisan border security deal after Trump expressed his vocal opposition to the measure. Hundreds of miles north-west, Trump will deliver remarks from a state park in Eagle Pass, which has become the epicenter of a showdown between the Biden administration and the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.Hours before the president and former president arrived on the 2,000-mile stretch of border, a federal judge sided with the Biden administration and blocked a new Texas law that would give police power to arrest people suspected of entering the US unlawfully.Trump, who Republicans appear poised to choose as their nominee for a third consecutive time, has once again made immigration a centerpiece of his presidential campaign by describing the United States under Biden as overrun by undocumented immigrants who “poisoning the blood of our country”, rhetoric that echoes white supremacists and Adolf Hitler. While in Texas, the former president is expected to lay out his plans for an immigration crackdown far beyond what he attempted in his first term.Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both will appear on Texas’s border with Mexico later today to discuss their approaches to handling undocumented immigrants. They are visiting border crossings in cities experiencing starkly different situations, and the president is expected to press Republicans to support a bipartisan proposal that would tighten immigration policy in exchange for approving military aid to Ukraine and Israel. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Texas blocked a law that would have allowed police to detain people who enter the state illegally, the latest skirmish in an ongoing fight between the Biden administration and Republicans who control Austin.Here’s what else is going on:
      Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, appeared before a House committee and acknowledged mistakes in how he had handled his hospitalization.
      Biden’s campaign will reach out to backers of a protest-vote effort in Michigan’s Democratic primary aimed at signaling discontent with the president’s support for Israel.
      Brian Fitzpatrick, a centrist House Republican, will try to force the chamber’s leaders to hold a vote on Ukraine aid and border security legislation.
      A federal judge has blocked a law enacted by Texas’s Republican-dominated government that would have allowed state police to arrest people who are suspected of entering from Mexico without authorization, the Associated Press reports.Here’s more:
      The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge David Ezra pauses a law that was set to take effect March 5 and came as President Joe Biden and his likely Republican challenger in November, Donald Trump, were visiting Texas’ southern border to discuss immigration. Texas officials are expected to appeal.
      Opponents have called the Texas measure the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law that opponents rebuked as a “Show Me Your Papers” bill. The U.S. Supreme Court partially struck down the Arizona law, but some Texas Republican leaders, who often refer to the migrant influx as an “invasion,” want that ruling to get a second look.
      Ezra cited the Constitution’s supremacy clause and U.S. Supreme Court decisions as factors that contributed to his ruling. He said the Texas law would conflict with federal immigration law, and the nation’s foreign relations and treaty obligations.
      Allowing Texas to “permanently supersede federal directives” due to a so-called invasion would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority — a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War,” the judge wrote.
      Citing the Supreme Court’s decision on the Arizona law, Ezra wrote that the Texas law was preempted, and he struck down state officials’ claims that large numbers of illegal border crossings constituted an “invasion.”
      The lawsuit is among several legal battles between Texas and Biden’s administration over how far the state can go to try to prevent migrants from crossing the border.
      The measure would allow state law enforcement officers to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. Once in custody, they could agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the country or face a misdemeanor charge for entering the U.S. illegally. Migrants who don’t leave after being ordered to do so could be arrested again and charged with a more serious felony.
      After a write-in campaign in protest of Joe Biden’s support for Israel managed to win about 13% of the vote in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday, a top official on the president’s campaign said this morning that they’d be reaching out to the organizers.But the comments on NPR by Mitch Landrieu, the Biden re-election campaign’s co-chair, did not go over well with one of the groups involved in the effort, which did not prevent the president from winning the swing state’s Democratic primary overwhelmingly.Asked to respond to the “uncommitted” votes, here’s what Landrieu had to say:
      We’re going to continue to talk to them. We’re going to continue to listen to what it is that they have to say. When you’re the commander in chief and when, in fact, you are representing the United States’ interests, there are no issues that are easy. And this is obviously a very painful issue for them and for lots of other folks in the United States of America. We’re going to continue to talk to them and then ask them to think about the choices and what the consequences are about electing somebody who wants to have a Muslim ban, electing somebody who is going to be much, much worse than the difficult circumstances that we have right now. The president is going to reach out, we’re going to continue to listen, and he’s going to continue to work with them as we find an answer to this very difficult problem.
      Here’s what Listen to Michigan, one of the groups supporting the write-in campaign, had to say about that: More

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      Biden and Trump to visit US-Mexico border as immigration plays key role in election

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      Joe Biden and his all-but certain Republican challenger, Donald Trump, will make dueling visits to Texas border towns on Thursday, a rare overlap that sets the stage for an election season clash over immigration.In Brownsville, along the Rio Grande, Biden is expected to hammer Republicans for blocking a bipartisan border security deal after Trump expressed his vocal opposition to the measure. Hundreds of miles north-west, Trump will deliver remarks from a state park in Eagle Pass, which has become the epicenter of a showdown between the Biden administration and the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.Hours before the president and former president arrived on the 2,000-mile stretch of border, a federal judge sided with the Biden administration and blocked a new Texas law that would give police power to arrest migrants suspected of entering the US unlawfully.Trump, who Republicans appear poised to choose as their nominee for a third consecutive time, has once again made immigration a centerpiece of his presidential campaign by describing the United States under Biden as overrun by undocumented immigrants who are “poisoning the blood of our country”, rhetoric that echoes white supremacists and Adolf Hitler. While in Texas, the former president is expected to lay out his plans for an immigration crackdown far beyond what he attempted in his first term.Immigration has become one of Biden’s most acute political vulnerabilities ahead of the 2024 election.Since Biden took office, a record number of migrants have crossed the southern border, driven by war, political upheaval, gang violence and climate change among other factors. Though the number of crossings dropped dramatically in January, according to border patrol data, there were record highs in December.Voters across the political spectrum have expressed growing concern over the situation at the border, and few, as little as 18% according to a survey by the Pew Research center, are pleased with the administration’s handling of it.In the survey, respondents most frequently cited “economic costs and burdens associated with the migration surge or concerns about security” as their top concerns related to migration.At the same time, a rise in immigration last year powered population growth and boosted the US economy.The White House threw its support behind a Senate effort to strike a compromise deal on the border, even endorsing an overhaul of the nation’s asylum system that immigration advocates and progressives denounced as Trump-like. But the deal fell apart amid Trump’s desire not to hand a political win to Biden on a key issue for his campaign. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said the bill would be dead on arrival.Biden vowed to remind voters of Trump’s interference.Republicans, led by Trump, have blamed Biden. In Congress, they have sought to punish his administration by impeaching the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, over alleged offenses that even conservative legal scholars said were related to matters of policy, not malfeasance. The Democratic-controlled Senate has signaled its intent to quickly dispatch the charges.In January, the Texas national guard seized control of Eagle Pass’s Shelby Park, in effect blocking federal border patrol agents from the 47-acre area. As part of Abbott’s border crackdown, they erected razor wire and closed access to the park. Amid the standoff, a mother and her two young children drowned in a nearby part of the Rio Grande. Texas authorities and the border patrol blamed each other for the tragedy.The supreme court temporarily allowed border patrol agents to remove the wire fence erected by Texas authorities. More