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      With immigration tied to Ukraine, Biden will upset one set of Democrats in 2024

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      Joe Biden has been left with only bad and worse options in his flagging campaign to send more aid to Ukraine amid its war with Russia and has now found that its fate is tied to one of the thorniest issues in US politics: immigration.In addition to the implications for Ukraine’s fate in its fight against invasion, it could be a serious hit for Biden in a crucial election year. Biden’s progressive base is already in uproar over his unwavering support for Israel in its war in Gaza, and if he is forced to adopt a hardline immigration policy, then that faction will probably be even more angered.Yet, despite the White House’s warnings that the US is “out of money and nearly out of time” to assist Kyiv, Congress failed to approve another aid package before the end of the year as Republicans tied approving any deal to immigration policy changes.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, kept the chamber in session for another week to try to reach a deal with Republicans on a supplemental funding bill, but he acknowledged on Tuesday that the negotiations would stretch into 2024.“As negotiators work through remaining issues, it is our hope that their efforts will allow the Senate to take swift action on the national security supplemental early in the new year,” Schumer said in a joint statement with the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.But the negotiations hinge on Republicans’ efforts to substantially overhaul the US immigration system. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, say they will not approve more funding for Ukraine without significant concessions on border security.Specifically, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has insisted that a supplemental funding bill must reflect the policies outlined in HR2, the Secure the Border Act. That bill, which passed the House with only Republican votes in May, called for severely restricting asylum eligibility, restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall and limiting migrants’ parole options.The bill is a non-starter for many Democrats, and Biden has made clear that Republicans should not expect to have all of their demands met.“This has to be a negotiation,” Biden said in a speech earlier this month. “Republicans think they can get everything they want without any bipartisan compromise. That’s not the answer.”But Biden also noted that he was willing and ready to make “significant compromises on the border” to get a funding package through Congress, and his secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has been actively engaged in the Senate negotiations this month.“I support real solutions at the border,” Biden said in his speech. “I’ve made it clear that we need Congress to make changes to fix what is a broken immigration system.”That language has alarmed immigrant rights groups, who fear that the president they helped get elected may choose to “sacrifice vulnerable people” for the sake of continuing aid to Ukraine.“We call on congressional champions to stand up and do the right thing,” Kica Matos, the president of the National Immigration Law Center, said earlier this month. “Senate Democrats must reject these extreme anti-immigrant proposals, and instead work toward sensible solutions that live up to our legal and moral commitments to welcome those seeking safety.”Many Democrats on Capitol Hill are listening to that message. Last week, Senator Alex Padilla, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, and congresswoman Nanette Barragán, the Democratic chair of the Congressional Hispanic caucus, issued a joint statement expressing alarm over Republicans’ proposals.“We are deeply concerned that the President would consider advancing Trump-era immigration policies that Democrats fought so hard against – and that he himself campaigned against – in exchange for aid to our allies that Republicans already support,” the two lawmakers said. “Caving to demands for these permanent damaging policy changes as a ‘price to be paid’ for an unrelated one-time spending package would set a dangerous precedent.”Speaking to the NPR affiliate KQED on Wednesday, Barragán went as far as to suggest she would vote against any supplemental funding bill that reflects Republicans’ immigration agenda.“Will I have to vote against a package that has Ukraine dollars because of these draconian immigration policy changes? Yes,” Barragán said. “But again, this is why we shouldn’t be linking them together. I completely support Ukraine aid.”Meanwhile, Biden is also facing pressure from the more conservative wing of his party to pursue a more severe approach to managing the southern border, as a record-setting number of people attempt to enter the US. Americans are taking note of the situation at the border; a Pew Research Center poll conducted in June found that 47% of Americans consider illegal immigration to be a very big problem in the country, up from 38% last year.“We are facing a turning point in history – a sold-out southern border that is facing an unprecedented number of migrants flowing through every day and two of our most important allies are fighting for their lives to protect their democracies,” Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, said on Wednesday. “The reality is that we need major, structural reforms to dramatically limit the number of illegal crossings at our southern border and regain operational control.”Whatever strategy Biden chooses to pursue in the immigration negotiations appears destined to alienate at least one wing of his party. It’s shaping up to be a rather dour January for the president. More

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      Biden says it’s ‘self-evident’ that Trump is an insurrectionist

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      Joe Biden has said it is “self-evident” that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist in his first public comments since Colorado’s supreme court removed the former president from the state’s 2024 ballot.The president was speaking before boarding Air Force One to an afternoon engagement in Milwaukee, and said he would not comment on the legal premise cited by the Colorado panel for its majority decision, or the likely intervention of the US supreme court.“Whether the 14th amendment applies or not, we’ll let the court make that decision,” the president said.But he was more forthright when asked directly if he thought Trump was an insurrectionist.“I think it’s self-evident … he certainly supported an insurrection. There’s no question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on it, about everything,” he said.Biden has mostly remained silent about the legal troubles that Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, is facing.The president has long been critical of Trump’s conduct surrounding the events of 6 January 2021, when the outgoing president incited a mob of his supporters to overrun the US Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.Trump was, Biden said at the time, “singularly responsible” for the violence of the deadly riot, in which several people lost their lives, including law enforcement officers and protestors.Among Trump’s legal cases is one in Washington DC, in which he has pleaded not guilty to four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The supreme court is poised to soon hear an appeal that could affect the trial.Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, backed Biden’s comments during a lunchtime appearance on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The big picture, no matter if Donald Trump ends up being on the ballot or off the ballot, is the extent of how dangerous he is to American democracy,” she said.“He tried to steal the presidency from the American people. He incited an insurrection with folks ramming into the US Capitol, some of whom had plans to hang the vice-president, and then he did not stop there. He spent months trying to undermine the peaceful process, the peaceful transfer of the presidency.” More

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      Banned in Colorado? Bring it on – in the twisted logic of Donald Trump, disqualification is no bad thing at all | Emma Brockes

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      Ten days out from the end of the year, and who could have foreseen the latest Trump plot twist? On Wednesday morning, Americans woke to absorb the fallout from the previous day’s news that Colorado – of all places – had ruled via its supreme court to ban Donald Trump from the ballot in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. There are many sober things to say about this, but in the first instance let’s give way to an unseemly squeal. How completely thrilling!Colorado leans Democrat – both its senators are blue – but it’s a western state with large conservative enclaves that is not exactly Massachusetts or Vermont. The decision by the state’s top justices is unprecedented in US electoral history. According to their ruling, Trump is in breach of section 3 of the 14th amendment, the so-called “insurrectionist ban”, in light of his behaviour during the 6 January storming of the Capitol.“President Trump did not merely incite the insurrection,” the judges said in a statement. “Even when the siege on the Capitol was fully under way, he continued to support it by repeatedly demanding that Vice-President [Mike] Pence refuse to perform his constitutional duty and by calling senators to persuade them to stop the counting of electoral votes. These actions constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection.”Well, it could hardly be less ambiguous. The 14th amendment, adopted in the wake of the civil war to obstruct Confederate lawmakers from returning to Congress, has never been implemented in a presidential race and, of course, Trump’s lawyers immediately challenged it. The ban will swiftly go up to the US supreme court for judgment, until which time Trump’s candidacy in Colorado will remain legitimate.Given the conservative super-majority of the US’s highest court, we have to assume that Colorado’s challenge will be unsuccessful. It might also be assumed that, catching on, other states will follow Colorado’s lead and vote similarly to exclude Trump from the primaries. Apart from childish delight, what, then, might this week’s events achieve?The wider backdrop isn’t encouraging, and glancing at the polls this week is a quick way to shunt the smirk from your face. In a survey commissioned by the New York Times on Tuesday, US voters were found to be largely unhappy with President Biden’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which he scored a 57% disapproval rating. Given how divided Democrats are over fighting in the Middle East, that figure isn’t surprising. What, to use the technical term, blows your mind is that in the same poll, 46% of voters expressed the opinion that Trump would be making a better job of it than Biden, with only 38% more inclined to trust the president. Overall, Trump leads Biden by two points in the election race, a slender margin but, given the 91 felony counts currently pending against Trump, a hugely depressing one.Trump doesn’t need Colorado to win. In the 2020 election, he lost the state by 13 percentage points. And there is a good chance that, following the Alice in Wonderland logic that seems to determine Trump’s fortunes, the ruling in Colorado might actually help him. The narrative Trump has crafted for himself of being a Zorro-type outsider pursued by deep state special interests is as absurd as it is apparently compelling to large numbers of his supporters. At a rally in Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday night, Trump avoided the subject of Colorado’s decision, which came in just before he stepped out on stage. That won’t hold. By the end of the evening, an email sent out by his campaign team had already referred to the ban as a “tyrannical ruling”.And so we find ourselves in the perfect catch-22. The greater Trump’s transgressions and the more severe the censure from his detractors, the more entrenched his popularity with Republican voters appears to grow. It may not win him the presidency next November – there are too many variables around undecided voters in the middle – but it seems increasingly likely that it will ensure he beats his Republican rivals to get on the ballot.A four-count indictment for election interference, brought by special counsel Jack Smith and covering Trump’s actions in the run-up to 6 January, is set to be heard in the District of Columbia in March. Countless other civil and criminal suits work their way through the system. And now his viability as a candidate will probably go before the supreme court. It’s like a grim parlour game, with the same question going round and round: what will it take to make any of this stick?
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Joe Biden hails Sandra Day O’Connor as ‘American pioneer’ in eulogy

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      Joe Biden hailed Sandra Day O’Connor as an “American pioneer” who embodied principle over politics in his eulogy at the Washington funeral of the US supreme court’s first female justice.The president praised O’Connor for breaking down barriers in the legal and political worlds, transcending political divisions and weighing ordinary people in her decision-making in pointed remarks that contrasted sharply with his words about the current supreme court.“She was especially conscious of the law’s real impact on people’s lives,” he said. “One need not agree with all her decisions in order to recognize that her principles were deeply held and of the highest order and that her desire for civility was genuine.“O’Connor knew that “no person is an island” and that Americans – “rugged individualists, adventurers and entrepreneurs” – were inextricably linked, he said at the service in Washington National Cathedral.“And for America to thrive, Americans must see themselves not as enemies, but as partners in the great work of deciding our collective destiny,” Biden said.Tributes to O’Connor, who died on 1 December aged 93, were also delivered by chief justice John Roberts and O’Connor’s son Jay O’Connor.Sandra Day O’Connor died in Phoenix, Arizona, of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.A centrist on the court who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1981, O’Connor served until her retirement in 2006.She created a critical alliance in 1992 to affirm the central holding in Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide. She also was a crucial vote in 2003 to uphold campus affirmative action policies that were used to increase the number of underrepresented minority students at American colleges.The supreme court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority, overturned the Roe ruling in 2022 and in June struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education, effectively prohibiting affirmative action.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden has said the current supreme court has done more to “unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history” but has rejected calls to expand it.Chief justice Roberts called her a “strong, influential and iconic jurist”.Jay O’Connor spoke of his mother as an indefatigable woman with “unearthly energy” who kept working long after she hung up her judicial robes.“We thank you, we love you, we will never, ever forget you.” More

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      Biden officials decry Trump’s anti-migrant xenophobia – yet quietly copy his stance| Moustafa Bayoumi

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      At a campaign rally in New Hampshire last Saturday, the former president Donald Trump repeated a claim he made back in September: immigrants coming to the United States, he said, are “poisoning the blood of our country”. The phrase is particularly disturbing as it evokes Nazi language about blood and nation.The last time Trump uttered this “poisoning the blood of our country” phrase, criticism from historians and civil libertarians was swift. This time, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign saw an opportunity and pounced. “Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler,” a Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that “Trump is not shying away from his promise to lock up millions of people in detention camps.”Yes, that’s true, but while Trump’s rhetoric and promises are odious and must be rejected, the Biden campaign is also talking out of both sides of its mouth.First, to Trump. By now, only a visitor from another planet (who would certainly be locked up by Trump for illegal entry) would be surprised by the ex-president’s rhetoric. Trump’s jingoistic ability to sow fear of foreigners and hatred of others is a large part of his rightwing populist appeal. Over the weekend, Trump also claimed that “drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country”. He said the United States was facing something “like a military invasion” from would-be immigrants and asylum seekers and promised to implement “the largest deportation operation in American history”.Even the cadence of his speech is reminiscent of a reel highlighting the Greatest Worst Things Trump Ever Said. Remember what he said about Mexico in 2015? “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”Today, even the “good people” are gone. Now, Trump describes those crossing the border this way: “They come from prisons. They come from mental institutions and insane asylums. Many are terrorists.” (It’s a 2024 remix!) He also makes a point to say: “They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, from Asia,” as if we should be afraid of Latinos, Africans and Asians, leaving me to wonder whom we shouldn’t be afraid of. I’m not really wondering. The answer is as plain as vanilla.But far more troubling than Trump’s putrid but predictable xenophobia is hearing the Biden campaign trumpet how morally opposed it is to Trump’s border policies at precisely the same time that the White House is negotiating with Republicans to adopt immigration policies that look suspiciously and horribly Trump-like. There is a word for such a stance: hypocrisy.The reason for the negotiations is no secret. The Biden administration has been seeking to send US military assistance to both Ukraine and Israel, but the funding bills have stalled in Congress. To vote for the money, Republicans are demanding the administration overhaul its immigration policy to align more closely with theirs, and – disturbingly – the Democrats seem poised to do so.Put another way, the Democrats are ready sell out immigration for foreign policy, even though the impact on immigration could be substantial and long-lasting, while Democratic foreign policy goals are both unclear and increasingly unpopular.Joe Biden entered office with an immigration reform agenda, one that sought to reverse many of the inhuman positions of his predecessor, such as the family separation policy that the Trump administration cruelly deployed. Biden didn’t always succeed, but the aspiration was clear. Early on in his term, he proposed the US Citizenship Act of 2021, which would have offered a path to citizenship for undocumented people, brought Dreamers – undocumented people brought to the United States as children – immigration relief, set up refugee processing centers in Central America and funded more immigration judges, among other things.It never passed.Instead of convincing the other side of the aisle of the need for immigration reform, the Biden administration has slowly given up on reform over the years. It’s been happening piecemeal for a while now (such as Biden funding the construction of 20 miles of Trump’s border wall), but reports of the latest negotiations read like a major capitulation to the Republican worldview.The Biden administration is reportedly discussing rolling back its historical commitments to asylum seekers in exchange for aid to Ukraine and Israel and inducting a new system to apprehend undocumented immigrants already in the country. Being discussed is expanding “expedited removal” of migrants at the border without a hearing, significantly raising the criteria for asylum, making permanent pandemic-era border restrictions (like the public health provision known as Title 42) and mandating immigration detention for some immigrants who are awaiting a court date.“A return to Trump-era policies is not the fix,” is how Alex Padilla, a Democratic senator from California, has responded. Padilla is the first Latino chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety. “In fact, it will make the problem worse,” he said. “Mass detention, gutting our asylum system, Title 42 on steroids. It is unconscionable.”Trump’s racist comments about “poisoning the blood of the nation” are typical of Trump’s bigotry, but Biden’s immigration approach reads more like a betrayal. Biden’s willingness to trade away American traditions of asylum protection and meaningful immigration reform for an Israeli military campaign on Gaza that is widely acknowledged – even by Biden himself – as unacceptably dangerous to civilian life, having killed upwards of 20,000 people, makes Biden’s calculation here seem not only cynical but disastrous, both for Gaza’s civilians and for Biden’s prospects for re-election. (Meanwhile, why wouldn’t Israel’s leaders continue to ignore Biden’s pleas to limit their military assault? Ignoring Biden makes him look weak, as they too would almost certainly prefer a Trump presidency.)The Biden administration wants to have it both ways. Biden officials want to believe they can criticize Trump’s positions but adopt positions close to Trump’s when it’s expedient. To answer this fundamental contradiction, they seem to be throwing their weight behind the appeal of a “lesser of two evils” argument for Democratic voters.What they don’t seem to realize, or want to acknowledge, is that every time someone asks you to choose between a lesser of two evils, they’re still asking you to choose evil. And that’s a choice some voters simply aren’t willing to make.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Joe Biden plans to ban logging in US old-growth forests in 2025

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      Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday announced a new proposal aimed at banning logging in old-growth forests, a move meant to protect millions of trees that play a key role in fighting the climate crisis.The proposal comes from an executive order signed by the president on Earth Day in 2022 that directed the US Forest Service and the land management bureau to conduct an inventory of old-growth and mature forest groves as well as to develop policies that protect them.“We think this will allow us to respond effectively and strategically to the biggest threats that face old growth,” the US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, told the Washington Post. “At the end of the day, it will protect not just the forests but also the culture and heritage connected to the forests.”The US Forest Service oversees 193m acres of forests and grasslands, 144m of which are forests. In its inventory conducted after Biden’s executive order, the agency found that the vast majority of forests it oversees, about 80%, are either old-growth or mature forests. It found more than 32m acres of old-growth forests and 80m acres of mature forests on federal land.The land management bureau defines old-growth forests as those with trees that are in later stages of stand development, which typically means at least 120 years of growth, depending on species. The giant sequoias in California, for example, are old-growth trees. Mature forests, meanwhile, have trees that are in the development stage immediately before old growth.Advocates for years have been pushing the Biden administration to explicitly ban logging in old-growth and mature forests. Trees that are in their old-growth stage are able to store more carbon than younger trees, making them a natural solution to fighting the climate crisis.In 2022, shortly before Biden announced his executive order, a group of more than 130 scientists wrote a letter to Biden advocating a ban on logging in old-growth forests.“Older forests provide the most above-ground carbon storage potential on Earth, with mature forests and larger trees driving most accumulation of forest carbon in the critical next few decades,” the letter read. “Left vulnerable to logging, though, they cannot fulfill these vital functions.”The ban will come into effect in early 2025, allowing time for the forest service to finalize rules that will protect old-growth forests from logging. Because it comes under an executive order, its existence depends on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, making advocates worried about the protections’ vulnerability to the country’s political climate.But federal agencies have also been under pressure from the timber industry, which argues that logging creates economic activity and helps to fight wildfires. The proposal focuses on most old-growth forests, leaving mature forests still vulnerable to logging, which is a middle ground between environmentalists and the timber industry.Chris Wood, the president of Trout Unlimited and a former official with the US Forest Service, told the Associated Press the policy “is a step in the right direction”.“This is the first time the Forest Service has said its national policy will be to protect old growth,” Wood said.Other advocates are emphasizing that this is just Biden’s first step toward fulfilling his executive order.“Protecting our old-growth trees from logging is an important first step to ensure these giants continue to store vast amounts of carbon, but other older forests also need protection,” Randi Spivak, public lands policy director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a press release. “To fulfill President Biden’s executive order and address the magnitude of the climate crisis, the Forest Service also needs to protect our mature forests, which if allowed to grow will become the old growth of tomorrow.” More

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      ‘2024 is not a repeat of 2020’: how the Biden campaign hopes to energize Black voters

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      Entering the 2024 campaign season, Joe Biden faces a slew of challenges, including economic uncertainties, foreign policy tensions and healthcare reform. Most notable, however, comes from the critical engine that delivered 2020 key victories in swing states: the African American voting bloc.Recent polls show a historic low of 37% in Biden’s overall approval ratings, while others highlight underlying factors, such as the alarming decline in Black voter support, from 86% in January 2021 to 60% now, the lowest of his presidency.Many Black Americans feel the Democratic party has ignored their concerns and reneged on promises. There’s a perception that the party is taking African Americans for granted as well as growing cynicism with the lack of progress on issues such as affordable housing, healthcare costs and student loan debt. More specific policies, like the recent decision to halt the ban on menthol cigarettes, which disproportionately affect Black smokers, have further raised concerns.But members of Biden’s campaign say definitive conclusions from early polls are premature, adding they have a comprehensive strategy to address growing apprehensions.“The DNC hasn’t let up on engaging and mobilizing Black voters,” said the Democratic National Committee chair, Jaime Harrison. “This isn’t something I take lightly. I know what it feels like to have our community taken for granted and only have folks show up for us when they need our vote on election day.”He traced the party’s commitment to investing more heavily in organizing, persuading and activating Black voters ahead of the 2022 midterm election cycle to their plan to double down on those efforts in 2024. Harrison said he’s met with Black voters across the country in the past year, “listened to what matters to them most and shared with them the successes of the administration for Black Americans”, including an investment of more than $7.3bn in HBCUs, lowering prescription drug prices for seniors, the drop in child poverty and executive action on criminal justice reform.The DNC’s deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, acknowledged that messaging is one of their primary challenges going into 2024, which could be contributing to the disconnect currently reflected in polls.“For those voters that we know a lot of these policies impact, we have to communicate ways in which they can get these benefits,” he said. “Like all this funding for capital, all the student loan forgiveness – not everybody knows how to tap into that.“African American voters know that a lot is at stake, and I think, similar to other audiences of color and young voters, it’s our job to communicate to them what’s at stake. And if we do that successfully, and also from a place of respect in our messaging and how we do it, I think that these voters will turn out and vote for Joe Biden.”The DNC has infused $4.8m on off-year advertising costs, with a total ad buy, to date, of $45.6m, including funding from groups such as the Biden Victory Fund ($4.8m).Fulks said they will also focus heavily on college campuses, including HBCUs, and traditional media outreach such as online engagement, television appearances, drivetime radio features, tapping influential figures such as Roland Martin, Steve Harvey and DL Hughley.Sean Foreman, a political scientist at Florida’s Barry University, emphasized the critical role messaging plays and said Democrats need to be forcefully working to retain, or in some cases, restore, traditional support from Black voters, making sure everyday families are aware of the bread-and-butter issues the administration has tackled.“In 2020, Biden may have been Democrats’ best bet to beat Trump, but 2024 is not a repeat of 2020,” he said. “His administration needs to make a better case to the public about their successes. They should make the Infrastructure Act and the Chips Act, and their role in supporting the unions help tell the story about how they are helping people close to home.”The civil rights historian Katherine Mellen Charron, who lectures on southern history and democracy at North Carolina State University, sees it as more of an age-related challenge.“The change between 2020 and now also falls along generational lines,” she said. “Elders from the movement years of the late 20th century went along with [the South Carolina’s congressman Jim] Clyburn’s endorsement [of Biden] and its logic: ‘He knows us.’ Younger people and activists don’t have that same historical relationship with the Democratic party.”In response to such scrutiny, DNC’s political director, Brencia Berry, said the Biden administration will use a second term to continue their agenda. Berry said the first step to countering the polls is “talking to Black voters well before we ask for their vote and building relationships with folks on the ground”.This involves setting the stakes for this election by contrasting the Biden-Harris agenda with how far backward Republicans want to take Black Americans if they win – such as how Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump for example plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris made it clear that Black voters are a priority when they made South Carolina the first state on the presidential primary calendar,” Berry added about their critical decision given the state’s significant Black population. “We have an opportunity to spend the earliest part of the election year engaging Black voters in states like South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan.”Jamil Scott, a political behavior researcher and Georgetown University government professor, called Biden’s re-election bid “complicated … It’s always tough when the president makes legislative promises because these only come to fruition if the legislative branch is on board with his agenda.”But the political scientist Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey of Georgia State University plainly said the promises from Biden’s 2020 campaign were not kept for the electorate. She pointed to the administration’s failure to decriminalize marijuana, take significant action on voters’ rights, and not “substantively address police reform. [Biden] continues to speak out on police misconduct but has not done anything to reform the police, including an inability to eliminate cash bail, which disproportionately impacts lower-income people.”The DNC conceded that such issues need to be clearly addressed on the campaign trail and said they will tackle any misinterpretations in their efforts.“What you’re going to see from us [is] boots on the ground coming out in the new year,” Fulks said, “being in front of these voters and relaying [our message]. I think that a part of it is that voters of color want to feel like they are deeply involved in a campaign. They don’t want to feel like they’re being told that they’re given handouts. These are hardworking Americans who sent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House.”Foreman believes that while 2024 isn’t “a make or break moment for African American support for the Democratic party,” a weak showing with critical blocs, including younger voters, could sway the party’s direction.He also recognized the calls for Biden not to seek re-election from within the party. Last month, David Axelrod, a former Obama advisor, questioned Biden’s candidacy in light of another poll showing Trump leading in five key states. “If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic party,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”Biden dropping out, Foreman said, could do the party some good because “a different, younger candidate could help mobilize new voters”.“But when it comes down to it, if Biden is the nominee, then the job will be for all Democrats – African American and otherwise – to get out in the various local communities and work hard to motivate people to vote.” More

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      Joe Biden signals he has no interest in signing US-UK trade agreement

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      Ministers have given up on signing a trade agreement with the US before the next election, after the Biden administration signalled it had no interest in agreeing one.British officials had been hoping to agree a “foundational trade partnership” before both countries head to the polls in the next 12 months, having already decided not to pursue a full-blown free trade agreement.However, sources briefed on the talks say they are no longer taking place, thanks to reluctance among senior Democrats to open US markets to more foreign-made goods. The story was first revealed by Politico.A British government spokesperson said: “The UK and US are rapidly expanding cooperation on a range of vital economic and trade issues building on the Atlantic declaration announced earlier this year.” Multiple sources, however, confirmed the foundational trade partnership was no longer on the table.Vote Leave campaigners said giving the UK the freedom to sign bilateral trade agreements with other countries would be one of the biggest benefits of Brexit, with a US trade deal often held up as the biggest prize of all.Talks over a free trade agreement stalled early on, however, thanks in part to resistance from Democratic members of Congress and concerns in the UK about opening up UK markets to chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-injected beef.Earlier this year, the Guardian saw documents outlining how Washington and London could instead coordinate over a partnership covering digital trade, labour protections and agriculture. The deal would not have included lower barriers for service companies, meaning it fell short of a fully fledged free trade deal, but could have paved the way for one in the future.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSources say the deal was always likely to prove difficult to finalise, in part because the US still wanted greater access for their agricultural products. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said at a food security summit earlier this year that he would not allow either chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-injected beef into the UK.It also became clear in recent weeks that the Biden administration had no interest in signing any kind of a deal before the election, given how Donald Trump had weaponised international trade agreements during his first run for president.A spokesperson for Ron Wyden, the Democratic chair of the Senate finance committee, told Politico: “It is Senator Wyden’s view that the United States and United Kingdom should not make announcements until a deal that benefits Americans is achievable.” More