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      Congress returns with only days left to avert federal government shutdown

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      With just five days left to avert a federal shutdown, the House and the Senate return on Tuesday to resume their tense budget negotiations in the hope of cobbling together a last-minute agreement to keep the government open.The House will take action on four appropriations bills, which would address longer-term government funding needs but would not specifically help avoid a shutdown on 1 October.The four bills include further funding cuts demanded by the hard-right House members who have refused to back a stopgap spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, that would prevent a shutdown. Because of House Republicans’ narrow majority, McCarthy can only afford to lose a handful of votes within the conference, and hard-right members have capitalized on that dynamic to push for policy concessions in the spending negotiations.The House is expected to take a procedural vote on those four bills on Tuesday. If that vote is successful, the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, will likely attempt to use the victory as leverage with the hard-right members of his conference to convince them to back a continuing resolution.But it remains unclear whether those four appropriations bills can win enough support to clear the procedural vote, given that one of the holdout Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has said she will not back the spending package because it includes funding for Ukraine.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday on Capitol Hill, McCarthy was asked whether it would be possible to take up a continuing resolution if the appropriations bills fail to advance.“I never give up,” McCarthy said. “I’ve got a lot of things I can try.”Even if House Republicans can pass their spending package, the proposal will be dead on arrival in the Senate, where the Democrats who hold the majority have roundly rejected additional funding cuts.While the House remains at odds, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, is taking matters into his own hands by attempting to advance a shell bill that could serve as a legislative vehicle for a continuing resolution. The Senate plans to hold an initial vote on that bill on Tuesday evening.“As I have said for months, we must work in a bipartisan fashion to keep our government open, avoid a shutdown and avoid inflicting unnecessary pain on the American people,” Schumer said last week. “This action will give the Senate the option to do just that.”As the House standoff stretches on, the White House has accused Republicans of playing politics at the expense of the American people. In a video shared to X, formerly known as Twitter, Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that a shutdown could force US service members to go without pay as they remain on duty.“I’m prepared to do my part, but the Republicans in the House of Representatives refuse. They refuse to stand up to the extremists in their party. So now everyone in America could be forced to pay the price,” Biden said. “Funding the government is one of the most basic responsibilities of the Congress. It’s time for these Republicans in the House to start doing their job – doing the job America elected them to do. So let’s get it done.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Republicans simultaneously face pressure from the leader of their party, Donald Trump, to hold the line in the budget talks – even if that means risking a shutdown.Trump wrote in a post shared on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Sunday: “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!”McCarthy could attempt to pass a continuing resolution with Democratic support, but such a choice would face immediate backlash from hard-right Republicans, who have threatened to oust the speaker if he opts for that bipartisan strategy.One source familiar with the thinking of more moderate House Republicans argued that only a bipartisan proposal can ultimately pass both chambers of Congress, criticizing hard-right members for seeking “to burn the place down”.“These are not serious people,” the source said. “They believe anything that Biden wants is bad, but the margins are so thin that their votes count.”Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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      Biden joins picket line to tell UAW strikers: ‘You deserve a significant raise’

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      Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to appear on a picket line on Tuesday, joining a protest outside a Michigan car plant in solidarity with striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, which is locked in an escalating dispute with America’s three biggest carmakers.The UAW president, Shawn Fain, was the first to greet Biden after he arrived in Michigan on Air Force One, and he joined him in the presidential limousine for a ride to the picket line.“The fact of the matter is you guys – the UAW – you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before. You made a lot of sacrifices, gave up a lot. The companies were in trouble. Now they are doing incredibly well and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too,” Biden said, addressing the cheering crowd through a bullhorn.“You deserve a significant raise and other benefits. Let’s get back what we lost,” said Biden.“Today, the enemy isn’t some foreign company miles away. It’s right here in our own area – it’s corporate greed,” Fain said as Biden, wearing a UAW baseball cap with the words “Union Yes” on the side, looked on. Biden later put his arm around one of the red T-shirt-wearing UAW strikers.“And the weapon we produce to fight that enemy is the liberators, the true liberators – it’s the working-class people,” Fain added.Standing on the picket line Larry Hearn, a 61-year-old UAW committee member, called Biden’s a “monumental and history-making” visit.“We’re out here on the frontline taking the brunt for everybody, losing money,” Hearn said. “The support feels good. We don’t need him to get in our business and secure us a contract, but his support is enough, it hits home with people.”Biden bills himself as the most pro-union president in history. No other sitting president has joined a picket line, according to Nelson Lichtenstein, a longtime labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara.“This is genuinely new – I don’t think it’s ever happened before, a president on a picket line,” Lichtenstein told the Guardian. “Candidates do it frequently and prominent senators, but not a president.”The US president’s visit comes a day before Donald Trump, his expected Republican opponent in next year’s poll, visits Detroit – the historic centre of the US car industry – to address workers in different industries in his own pitch for the strikers’ support.Trump, who won Michigan with the help of union members’ support in his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton before losing it four years later in his defeat to Biden, is not expected to visit a picket line.“Crooked Joe Biden, who is killing the United Autoworkers with his WEAK stance on China and his ridiculous insistence on All Electric Cars, every one of which will be made in China, saw that I was going to Michigan this week (Wednesday!), so the Fascists in the White House just announced he would go there tomorrow,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website this week.Biden voiced support for the strike by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis workers, which was entering its 12th day on Tuesday, when it started on 15 September and had announced he was dispatching his labour secretary, Julie Su, and Gene Sperling, a senior White House adviser, to help the union reach a settlement with company bosses.That plan was withdrawn after criticism from Fain, who has also flatly rejected Trump’s efforts at wooing the support of union members.Trump, who won significant union support in 2016 and needs to regain it if he is to prevail next year, has said workers are being betrayed by their leadership and also by Biden’s environmentally friendly policy of encouraging the three American car giants to convert to making electric vehicles.The UAW has withheld an endorsement of Biden so far, but union leadership has been critical of Trump, who has sought to capitalize on the strike and siphon support from the majority Democratic unions. Trump visits a non-union shop tomorrow, which was not lost on those outside the Wayne plant.“As long as Biden is going to come here then do something to help working people when he returns to Washington, then he is welcome,” said Walter Robinson, a 57-year-old quality inspector. “He is going to have to do that if he wants our endorsement. I think he will.” More

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      It’s fantastic that Biden is joining the UAW picket line. But he should go further | Robert Reich

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      Kudos to Joe Biden for joining the United Auto Workers picket line on Tuesday. He’s the first president to join a picket line in living memory.But he shouldn’t stop there.He should criticize the CEOs of America’s big corporations who are now raking in more than 350 times what the average American worker is earning. Blast corporations that are monopolizing their industries. Condemn firms that are using their profits to buy back shares of stock, polluting the planet with carbon emissions and polluting our democracy with big money.He wouldn’t be the first Democratic president to do this.On the eve of the 1936 election, President Franklin D Roosevelt warned America that business and financial monopolies and war profiteers had begun to consider the US government
      as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob … Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.
      The US is again in a populist age, when a vast army of Americans have been shafted by big corporations, Wall Street and a government corrupted by monied interests.The biggest change over the last three decades – the change lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of the working middle class – has nothing to do with identity politics, “woke”-ism, immigration, critical race theory, transgender kids or any other current Republican bogeymen.It has directly to do with a huge upward shift in the distribution of income and wealth.Although total wealth is much greater now than it was four decades ago, the distribution of that wealth is far more unequal. The bottom 50% hasn’t budged. Wealth at the top has exploded.Meanwhile, a declining share of the nation’s wealth has been going to workers, and an exponentially rising share to CEOs and big investors.This change didn’t happen because of so-called “neutral market forces”. It happened because of policy decisions made over the last four decades. For example:To open the American economy wide to imports from China. To deregulate Wall Street and allow it to make bets with other people’s money.To dramatically cut taxes on big corporations and the rich. To let corporations bash unions and fire workers who try to organize.To encourage activist investors and private equity companies to take over “underperforming” companies and then promptly fire workers and sell off assets.To allow big corporations to become far larger, monopolizing entire industries.To allow pharmaceutical companies to extend their patents and jack up the prices of critical drugs. To allow oil companies access to federal lands and to benefit from special tax write-offs.To bail out the biggest banks but not homeowners who get caught in the downdrafts. To privatize higher education and force students to take out massive loans.To encourage corporations to buy back their shares of stock rather than reinvest profits.These policy decisions didn’t just happen, either. They were pushed by wealthy elites on Wall Street and in C-suites who made mammoth donations to politicians on both sides of the aisle – mostly but not exclusively Republican – to ensure that their wishes would be honored.To Biden’s credit, he and most Democratic lawmakers in Congress have pushed for policies that will make the nation more equitable, such as childcare and eldercare subsidies, student-loan forgiveness and negotiated drug prices. Kudos.But Biden seems reluctant to blame CEOs, Wall Street moguls and the super-rich for what’s happened.Yet they are to blame, as are their lackeys in Washington.They have turned their growing wealth into increasing political power to change the rules of the game in ways that further enlarge their wealth and power, while neglecting and exploiting the bottom half.Biden should condemn them, as did FDR. He should name the CEOs, leaders of finance, heads of pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, internet moguls and “activist” investors who have profited at the expense of the rest of the US.He should unambiguously be on the side of workers in their struggle for better pay and working conditions.He should attack corporate welfare – the special tax loopholes, bank bailouts, unconditional subsidies, loan guarantees and no-bid contracts that have lined the pockets of the wealthy, paid for by the rest of us.Let Republicans criticize corporate “wokeness”. Biden should campaign against corporate greed.Let Republicans obsess about critical race theory, immigration and sex. Biden should campaign against how obscenely unfair and unequal the US has become.It’s good that Biden’s joining the UAW picket line. But if he and other Democrats don’t tell the economic truth about what’s happened and place the blame squarely where it’s deserved, the lies of Republicans will fill the void.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Poll showing Trump up 10 points over Biden for 2024 election criticized

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      A new Washington Post-ABC poll showing Joe Biden trailing his presidential predecessor Donald Trump by 10 percentage points was excoriated by leading political pollster Larry Sabato.Noting that the pollsters themselves cautioned that their survey was an outlier, Sabato – the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia – called the decision to release it “ridiculous”.“Ignore the Washington Post–ABC poll,” Sabato wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “How could you even publish a poll so absurd on its face? Will be a lingering embarrassment for you.” He added: “Just plain embarrassing – for them.”The New York Times’ chief political analyst Nate Cohn also criticized the poll that said Trump was ahead of Biden in the 2024 White House race.Referring to a Post-ABC poll in May that found Trump was up seven percentage points on Biden, which was similarly inconsistent with most polling, Cohn wrote on X: “It’s really really hard to release outlying poll results, so you’ve got to give credit to ABC/Post here, but I do have a fairly major quibble with ABC/Post here: if you release consecutive ‘outlying’ poll results … you don’t get to dismiss your results.“If it happens twice in a row in the same race, it’s clear that this is the result of some element of your approach, and you either need to decide you’re good with it and defend it or you need to go home.”The Washington Post acknowledged its survey was not in line with most polling, which generally finds that the Democratic incumbent Biden and the former Republican president Trump would be in a close, competitive race if they faced each other in the 2024 election.The Post wrote in its analysis: “The … poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat.“The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggests it is probably an outlier.”Despite the criticisms, at least one person stood by the poll results, with host Martha Raddatz saying on Sunday’s ABC This Week: “Whatever caveats, whether that is an outlier, that’s a tough one to spin.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn response to Raddatz, former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile said on the show: “It’s a tough one to spin, Martha, but I don’t believe Democrats should be sitting in a panic room.”Brazile went on to urge Democrats to “get out there, make your case to the American people”, who she said are angry due to rising living costs.Raddatz replied: “They are talking to the American people … and yet it is those pocketbook issues. The message may be out there, but they’re not feeling it.”Trump does hold commanding leads in national and key state polls regarding the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He enjoys that advantage despite facing more than 90 criminal charges across four separate indictments charging him with attempted subversion of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden, retention of classified information after his presidency and hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. More

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      Rust Belt Union Blues: how Trump wooed workers away from the Democrats

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      Consider the following social science experiment: go into a unionized steel mill parking lot in western Pennsylvania, look at the bumper stickers and track the political messages. Given the longstanding bond between unions and the Democratic party, you might predict widespread support for Democratic candidates. Yet when the then Harvard undergraduate Lainey Newman conducted such unconventional field research during the Covid pandemic, encouraged by her faculty mentor Theda Skocpol, results indicated otherwise. There was a QAnon sticker here, a Back the Blue flag there. But one name proliferated: Donald Trump.It all supported a surprising claim: industrial union members in the shrunken manufacturing hubs of the US are abandoning their historic loyalty to the Democrats for the Republican party.“The most interesting point, how telling it is, is that those stickers were out in the open,” Newman says. “Everyone in the community knew. It was not something people hide.“It would not have been something old-timers would have been OK with, frankly. They stood up against … voting for Republicans, that type of thing.”Newman documented this political shift and the complex reasons for it in her senior thesis, with Skocpol as her advisor. Now the recent graduate and the veteran professor have teamed up to turn the project into a book: Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party.The book comes out as organized labor is returning to the headlines, whether through the United Auto Workers strike at the big three US carmakers or through the battle to buy a former industrial powerhouse, US Steel. In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump is again wooing union voters. On the 3 September edition of ABC’s This Week, the Manhattan Institute president, Reihan Salam, noted that Trump “was trying to appeal to UAW members to talk about, for example, this effort to transition away from combustion engine vehicles”.Newman reflects: “It is relatively well-known [that] union members aren’t voting for Democrats like they used to. What we say is that for a very long time, Democrats did take unions for granted. They didn’t reinvest in the relationship with labor that would have been necessary to maintain some of the alliances and trust between rank-and-file labor and the Democrats.”Once, the bond was as strong as the steel worked by union hands across western Pennsylvania, especially in Pittsburgh, known to some as “The City That Built America”. Retirees repeatedly mentioned this in interviews with Newman and Skocpol. An 81-year-old explained longtime hostility to the Republican party in unionized steel mills and coal mines: “They figure that there was not a Republican in the world who took care of a working guy.” A union newsletter, one of many the authors examined, urged readers to “Vote Straight ‘D’ This November”. Even in the 1980 presidential election, which Ronald Reagan won decisively, union-heavy counties in Pennsylvania were a good predictor of votes for the incumbent Democrat, Jimmy Carter.The subsequent sea change is summed up in one of Newman and Skocpol’s chapter titles, From Union Blue to Trump Red. In 2016, the connection between Pennsylvania union voters and Democratic support all but evaporated as Trump flipped the normally Democratic state en route to victory. His showing that year set a new bar for support for a GOP presidential candidate among rank-and-file union members, bettering Reagan’s standard, with such members often defying leadership to back Trump.“It’s a myth that it all happened suddenly with Reagan,” says Skocpol. “Not really – it took longer.”‘In Union There Is Strength’To understand these changes, Newman and Skocpol examined larger transformations at work across the Rust Belt, especially in western Pennsylvania. It helped that they have Rust Belt backgrounds: Newman grew up in Pittsburgh, where she returned to research the book, while Skocpol was raised in the former industrial city of Wyandotte, Michigan, located south of Detroit.Once, as they now relate, unions wove themselves into community life. Union halls hosted events from weddings to retirement parties. Members showcased their pride through union memorabilia, some of which is displayed in the book, including samples from Skocpol’s 3,000-item collection. Among her favorites: a glass worker’s badge featuring images of drinking vessels and the motto “In Union There Is Strength”.That strength eventually dissipated, including with the implosion of the steel industry in western Pennsylvania in the 1970s and 80s. (According to one interviewee, the resulting population shift explains why there are so many Pittsburgh Steelers fans across the US.) In formerly thriving communities, cinemas and shoe stores closed down, as did union halls. The cover of Skocpol and Newman’s book depicts a line of shuttered storefronts in Braddock, Pennsylvania, the steel town whose former mayor, the Democrat John Fetterman, is now a US senator.Not all union members left western Pennsylvania. As the book explains, those continuing in employment did so in changed conditions. Steelworkers battled each other for dwindling jobs, capital held ever more power and Pittsburgh itself changed. The Steel City sought to reinvent itself through healthcare and higher education, steelworkers wondering where they stood.Blue-collar workers found a more receptive climate among conservative social organizations that filled the vacuum left by retreating unions: gun clubs that benefited from a strong hunting tradition and megachurches that replaced closed local churches. The region even became a center of activity for the Tea Party movement, in opposition to Barack Obama, a phenomenon Skocpol has researched on the national level.In 2016, although Trump and Hillary Clinton made a nearly equal number of visits to western Pennsylvania, they differed in where they went and what they said. Clinton headed to Pittsburgh. Trump toured struggling factory towns, to the south and west. In one, Monessen, he pledged to make American steel great again – a campaign position, the authors note, unuttered for decades and in stark contrast with Clinton’s anti-coal stance. As president, Trump arguably followed through, with a 2018 tariff on aluminum and steel imports. The book cites experts who opposed the move for various reasons, from harm to the economy to worsened relations with China.The authors say their book is not meant to criticize unions or the Democratic party. Democrats, they say, are taking positive steps in response to union members’ rightward shift.“We didn’t have time to research at length all the new kinds of initiatives that have been taken in a state like Wisconsin, like Georgia,” says Skocpol. “They have learned some of the lessons, are trying to create year-round, socially-embedded presences.”In 2020, Joe Biden made multiple visits to western Pennsylvania and ended up narrowly winning Erie county, which had been trending red. As president, he has sought to have the federal government purchase more US-made products, while launching renewable energy initiatives through union labor. Skocpol says Trump’s more ambitious promises, including an across-the-board 10% tariff, propose an unrealistic bridge to a bygone era.“Will Trump promise to do all these things?” asks Skocpol. “Of course he will. Will he actually do them more effectively if he becomes president again? God help us all.”
      Rust Belt Union Blues is published in the US by Columbia University Press More

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      Biden and Harris unveil first federal gun violence prevention office, citing 100 people shot and killed daily – live

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      From 2h agoBiden urged that “it’s time to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines”, and for Congress to do more.He said the new federal Office of Gun Violence will be overseen by Kamala Harris, who has been “on the frontlines” her entire career as a prosecutor and as a attorney general.Listing the four primarily responsibilities of the newly formed office, he said none of those steps would alone “solve the entirety of the gun violence epidemic”. “Together, they will save lives,” he said.
      I never thought even remotely say this in my whole career: guns are the number one killer of children in America. Guns are the number one killer of children in America.
      In 2023, more than 500 mass shootings have taken place and “well over 30,000” deaths as a result of gun violence, he said, describing it as “totally unacceptable”.Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      The Republican-led House all but disappeared for the long weekend after abruptly wrapping up its work on Thursday when the embattled speaker, Kevin McCarthy, failed to advance a stopgap government spending bill.
      The White House planned to begin telling federal agencies to prepare for a shutdown. If Congress does not pass a spending bill before 1 October, the lapse in funding is expected to force hundreds of thousands of federal workers to go without pay and bring a halt to some crucial government services.
      The historic US autoworkers’ strike as the United Auto Workers president, Shawn Fain, called on 38 additional plants across 20 states to join the strike. During a livestream update, Fain announced the additional strikes at automaker plants as contract negotiations with the big three automakers remain far apart on economic issues. He invited Joe Biden to the picket line.
      Joe Biden pledged to fight for gun safety laws while unveiling a new White House office of gun violence prevention. Kamala Harris will oversee the office. “On this issue, we do not have a moment to spare nor a life to spare,” she said in remarks on Friday.
      Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, and his wife have been charged with bribery offenses in connection with accepting gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz, among other gifts, in exchange for protecting three businessmen and influencing the government of Egypt.
      The conservative justice Clarence Thomas has attended at least two donor events organized by the Koch network, the ultra-right political organization founded by the libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which has brought multiple cases before the supreme court, according to a new report.
      The third Republican presidential primary debate will be held on 8 November in Miami. Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner of the party’s race, skipped the first debate and recently announced he’ll also forego the second.
      Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced he is leaving the Democratic party and becoming a Republican.
      That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the US politics live blog today. Have a good weekend.The third Republican presidential primary debate will be held on 8 November in Miami.The date, first reported by CNN, is more than a month after the second debate which is scheduled to take place on 27 September at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. The first took place on 23 August in Milwaukee.Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner of the party’s race, skipped the first debate and recently announced he’ll also forego the second.Maxwell Frost, the 26-year-old congressman from Florida, described Joe Biden as “one of the fiercest champions of gun violence protection” as he stood beside the president and vice president at the Rose Garden.Frost said that as the first member of Gen Z to be voted into Congress last year, he is often asked what got him involved in politics and his answer is:
      I didn’t want to get shot in school. I was 15 years old when a shooter walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 20 children and six teachers. Like millions of kids, I went to school the next day with anxiety and fear that my life would be taken, my friends’ lives would be taken, and my family’s lives would be taken by senseless gun violence.
      He said that he had served as the national organizing director for March for Our Lives before being elected to Congress, and that he learned the “brutal truth” that the time people pay the most attention is usually “coupled with carnage and death”.
      Not today. Today the country sees us here, at the White House, with a president who is taking action.
      Biden said that for every member of Congress who refuses to act on gun violence, we will “need to elect new members of Congress”.
      There comes a point where our voices are so loud, our determination is so clear, that we can longer be stopped. We’re reaching that point. We’ve reached that point today, in my view, where the safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot.
      He said the “deadly and traumatic price” of inaction on gun control “can no longer be the lives of our children and the people of our country”.Biden urged that “it’s time to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines”, and for Congress to do more.He said the new federal Office of Gun Violence will be overseen by Kamala Harris, who has been “on the frontlines” her entire career as a prosecutor and as a attorney general.Listing the four primarily responsibilities of the newly formed office, he said none of those steps would alone “solve the entirety of the gun violence epidemic”. “Together, they will save lives,” he said.
      I never thought even remotely say this in my whole career: guns are the number one killer of children in America. Guns are the number one killer of children in America.
      In 2023, more than 500 mass shootings have taken place and “well over 30,000” deaths as a result of gun violence, he said, describing it as “totally unacceptable”.Joe Biden, who was introduced by Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, announced the creation of the first ever federal office of gun violence prevention and said he was “determined to send a clear message about how important this issue is to me and to the country”.He said that after every mass shooting, he has heard the same message all over the country: “Please do something. Do something to prevent a tragedy.” He said his administration has been working “relentlessly to do something”.He said that last year, he signed into law the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which he descried as “the most significant gun safety law” and an “important first step”.
      For the first time in three decades, we came together to overcome the relentless opposition from a gun lobby, gun manufacturers and so many politicians opposing common sense gun legislation.
      “We’re not stopping here,” Biden added.Harris said she “owed” it to the parents and children she has comforted who has been traumatized by losing a family member to gun violence.
      On this issue, we do not have a moment to spare nor a life to spare.
      The vice president said the administration will “use the full power of the federal government” to “strengthen the coalition of survivors, and advocates, and students, and teachers, and elected leaders, to save lives and fight for the rights of all people to be safe from fear”.Kamala Harris, speaking at the Rose Garden, said Americans “should be able to shop in a grocery store, walk down the street, or sit peacefully in a classroom” and be safe from gun violence.The US has been “torn apart by the fear and trauma that results from gun violence”, the vice president said, standing besides Joe Biden and Florida congressman Maxwell Frost.
      In our country today, one in five people has lost a family member to gun violence. Across our nation every day, about 120 Americans are killed by a gun.
      The impact of gun violence is not equal across all communities, she said.
      Black Americans are 10 times more likely to be victims of gun violence and homicide. Latino Americans twice as likely.
      Harris said that, as a former courtroom prosecutor, she had seen “with my own eyes what a bullet does to the human body”.
      We cannot normalise any of this. These are not simply statistics. These are our children.
      My colleague David Smith is at the Rose Garden event and has tweeted this picture of Biden and Harris emerging from the White House:Tennessee state representative Justin Jones has been spotted heading to the Rose Garden ahead of Joe Biden’s speech announcing the formation of the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, according to a White House pool report.Jones is one of the “Tennessee Three”, along with Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson, who was expelled earlier this year for his role in a pro-gun control protest inside the Tennessee Capitol.Throughout his presidency, Joe Biden has used executive actions to regulate homemade firearms – known as ghost guns – in the same way as traditional firearms, and to clarify who counts as a gun seller and thus is required by law to conduct background checks.Last year he also signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that, among other things, tightens background checks and bolsters mental health programs.Biden has advocated for re-instating the national assault weapons ban and expanding background checks since he was vice-president. A historic increase in gun homicides in 2020 pushed community-based violence prevention further up the administration’s agenda.Joe Biden is expected to announce the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention during a Rose Garden event at 2.45pm Eastern time.The office will be overseen by the office of the vice president, Kamala Harris, who will also be speaking at the event.In a statement released on Thursday, Biden said:
      In the absence of that sorely-needed action, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention along with the rest of my Administration will continue to do everything it can to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities, and our country apart.
      The White House just skirted around a question from the press about whether Joe Biden believes the New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez should resign.The senator, who has an influential position as chair of the US Senate committee on foreign relations, was indicted earlier today on bribery charges.“I’m going to be really careful here and not comment because it is an active matter,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.Jean-Pierre said the matter was the US Senate’s to deal with and that “discussions are happening” there about the “next steps.”Congresswoman Lucy McBath is addressing the press in the west wing at the daily briefing, which today is headlining on the new national gun violence prevention office. The new project will be officially launched just under an hour from now.Georgia representative McBath told how her young son was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2012 and she was “robbed of every dream that a mother holds,” she said, and noted that she would never see her son graduate high school, go to college or get married.“Every single day, over 100 people are shot and killed in the United States. Gun violence has no boundaries,” she said, whether people become victims in suburbs, cities or rural areas.McBath will join Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the rose garden shortly for the formal launch of the new office to prevent gun violence.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris plan to speak in the rose garden at the White House in about an hour on the creation of the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, to be led by the US vice president.In a few moments, the White House press briefing will begin, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accompanied at the podium by Georgia representative Lucy McBath, who campaigns on gun safety. She lost her son to gun violence.This is what she posted yesterday:Joe Biden has told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the US will provide a small number of long-range missiles to help in Ukraine’s fight against Russia, three US officials and a congressional official told NBC News on Friday.The officials did not confirm when the missiles would be delivered and remain anonymous as they have not been authorised to speak on the subject publicly.A congressional official told NBC News that there was still a debate about the type of missile that would be sent and how many would be delivered to Ukraine.The news comes after the White House rejected Zelenskiy’s request for Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to be sent to Ukraine as part of a new military aid package to bolster the country’s counteroffensive.For all the developments in the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion and related geopolitics, follow our Ukraine live blog here.Zelenskiy was given the red carpet treatment at the White House yesterday, after two days in New York at the United Nations General Assembly. Before visiting Biden he was on Capitol Hill meeting with US Senators. More

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      What happens to Ukraine if Biden loses in 2024? – podcast

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      Both Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, and Joe Biden, the US president, reiterated their calls for unity against Russia this week at the UN general assembly in New York. In Washington DC, however, Republicans and Democrats in the House hold very different views on the war – how to help, who to help, and which allies they should team up with to try and bring an end to it all. Jonathan Freedland speaks to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker to talk through a question many in Europe are trying to work out: what happens if Biden loses in 2024?

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      White House says Republicans ‘playing games with people’s lives’ as shutdown odds increase – as it happened

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      From 3h agoWhite House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attacked rightwing Republicans who were preventing Congress from passing government spending measures today, saying the group was “marching us toward a reckless and damaging government shutdown”.“Extreme House Republicans can’t even get an agreement among themselves to keep the government running or to fund the military,” Jean-Pierre said. “They keep demanding more extreme policies as a condition to do their job and keep the government open from a fact-free impeachment that their own members – their own members – say isn’t supported by the evidence, to severe cuts to food safety, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, education, law enforcement and much more.”She continued:
      The solution is very, very simple: extreme House Republicans need to stop playing political games with people’s lives – there’s so much at stake here. They should abide by the bipartisan deal we made in May, which two-thirds … of House Republicans voted for. A deal is a deal. House Republicans need to do their job, keep the government open and work with us to deliver … for the American people.
      Jean-Pierre declined to say if the government has figured out what services it will be able to continue providing if funding runs out after 30 September, but added: “The best plan is for there to not be a shutdown.”The chaos continued in the House, where an ongoing revolt by far-right Republicans against speaker Kevin McCarthy stopped the advancement of a defense department spending bill for the second time this week. It’s a bad sign for a separate attempt to pass a measure to keep the federal government funded past 30 September, which is also being held up the rightwing insurgents. By the afternoon, GOP leadership told lawmakers they could head home for the week, apparently concluding an agreement to resolve the legislative logjam was a long way off. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the Capitol and the White House to call for more aid to help his country fend off the Russian invasion.Here’s what else happened today:
      The White House accused Republicans of “playing political games with people’s lives”.
      McCarthy blamed “individuals that just want to burn the whole place down” for the ongoing paralysis in the House.
      Rupert Murdoch will step down as chairman of Fox and News Corp, with his son Lachlan Murdoch taking his place, an earthquake in the world of conservative media.
      The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said the GOP is “in the midst of a civil war”.
      The Senate confirmed Randy George as army chief of staff, but Republican Tommy Tuberville’s blockade of about 300 other positions in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion access policy continues.
      Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is now at the White House for a meeting with Joe Biden, where additional US military aid to fight off the Russian invasion is on the agenda:For the latest updates from the meeting, follow our liveblog:Congress isn’t the only Washington institution grappling with dysfunction. The Guardian’s David Smith reports on a new documentary that explores the increasingly intense relationship between the supreme court’s decisions and the American public:When Dawn Porter studied law at Georgetown University in Washington, she would pass the US supreme court every day. “You walk by the marble columns, the frontage which has inspirational words, and you believe that,” she recalls. “You think because of this court Black people integrated schools, because of this court women have the right to choose, because of this court, because of this court, because of this court.”Its profound role in American life is chronicled in Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court, Porter’s four-part documentary series that traces the people, decisions and confirmation battles that have helped the court’s relationship with politics turn from a respectful dance into a toxic marriage.Porter, 57, an Emmy award winner who maintains her bar licence, remembers first year common law classes when she studied the court’s landmark decisions. “Like most lawyers I have a great admiration for not only what the court can do but its role in shaping American opinion as well as American society,” she says via Zoom from New York, a poster for her film John Lewis: Good Trouble behind her.“If there’s a criticism of the court in this series, it comes from a place of longing, a place of saying we can’t afford for this court to lose the respect of the American people. There’s going to be decisions over time that people disagree with. That’s not unusual. What’s unusual is how cases are getting to the court, how they’re ignoring precedent and the procedures by which the decisions are getting made. That’s where I would love people to focus.”House Republican leadership has officially called off votes for the rest of the week, Democratic whip Katherine Clark announced.However, they’ve left the door open to a surprise breakthrough in negotiations over spending bills. “The Rules Committee remains on standby. Members will be given ample notice to return to Washington DC in the event a vote is called tomorrow or over the weekend,” the notice reads.The media world continues to digest the news earlier today, when it was announced that Rupert Murdoch would step down as chair of both News Corp and Fox – the company behind the conservative Fox News network. Here’s the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe with a look at the significance of Murdoch’s decision:Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp – ending a seven-decade run as one of the world’s most transformative and controversial media moguls.In a note to staff first reported in the Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal, he wrote: “For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles.”Murdoch, 92, will become chairman emeritus of the two corporations, the company said in a release.Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s eldest son, now seems to be his successor. In the note Murdoch called Lachlan a “passionate, principled leader” who can take the companies into the future.“On behalf of the Fox and News Corp boards of directors, leadership teams, and all the shareholders who have benefited from his hard work, I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career,” said Lachlan Murdoch, 52, in a statement.“We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination, and the enduring legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted,” he said.The handover comes at a time of uncertainty in a media landscape that Murdoch dominated for so long. Fox is in a competition for eyeballs with much larger and better resourced broadcasters, at a time when Americans are swapping cable television for streamed entertainment, while News Corp, owner of the Times and the Sun newspapers in the UK, is battling for revenues as print sales fall away and advertising migrates to the big social media platforms.After this morning’s fiasco in the House that saw a handful of far-right Republicans successfully block the party’s own defense spending bill, lawmakers have been told not to expect any further votes in the chamber this week, according to media reports:That lawmakers are being told they can go home is a sign of just how deadlocked the chamber is despite a 30 September deadline to approve new government funding or cause a shutdown.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attacked rightwing Republicans who were preventing Congress from passing government spending measures today, saying the group was “marching us toward a reckless and damaging government shutdown”.“Extreme House Republicans can’t even get an agreement among themselves to keep the government running or to fund the military,” Jean-Pierre said. “They keep demanding more extreme policies as a condition to do their job and keep the government open from a fact-free impeachment that their own members – their own members – say isn’t supported by the evidence, to severe cuts to food safety, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, education, law enforcement and much more.”She continued:
      The solution is very, very simple: extreme House Republicans need to stop playing political games with people’s lives – there’s so much at stake here. They should abide by the bipartisan deal we made in May, which two-thirds … of House Republicans voted for. A deal is a deal. House Republicans need to do their job, keep the government open and work with us to deliver … for the American people.
      Jean-Pierre declined to say if the government has figured out what services it will be able to continue providing if funding runs out after 30 September, but added: “The best plan is for there to not be a shutdown.”For an insight into how House Republicans are feeling after failing to take up the defense spending bill, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman shared some messages he received:Given that the defense spending bill is usually one of the least contentious spending measures in the House, the second failed vote spelled major trouble for the spending talks.If no agreement is reached on a series of funding bills, the federal government will shutter on 30 September. In the event of a shutdown, starting 1 October, hundreds of thousands of federal workers would likely go without pay and key healthcare and other public programs would be affected.There are several unknowns still hanging over House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s effort, which, as the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has pointed out, could be politically damaging to the party.The first is whether hard-right members of the House Freedom Caucus – who have capitalized on McCarthy’s narrow majority – will eventually abandon their blockade as the shutdown deadline approaches.The second is if whatever bill Republicans do pass will include the Ukraine aid and disaster relief funding the Democratic-led Senate is demanding. Without Senate agreement, any measure cannot be enacted.The House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was dealt his second humiliating defeat of the week on Thursday, when his conference again failed to approve a procedural motion as members continued to clash over government spending levels with just days left to avert a federal shutdown.A proposal to take up House Republicans’ defense spending bill failed in a vote of 216 to 212, with five hard-right members joining Democrats in opposing the motion. The vote marked the second time this week that the motion had failed, after members of the House Freedom Caucus first blocked the bill on Tuesday.The defeat was interpreted as a dismal sign for House Republicans’ prospects of approving a separate stopgap spending bill before government funding runs out at the end of the month.McCarthy had projected optimism heading into the Thursday vote, saying he and his allies had made substantial progress in their talks with the holdout Republicans on Wednesday. But five members of the House Freedom Caucus – Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Eli Crane of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – still opposed the procedural motion on Thursday.The Senate voted to confirm Gen Randy George to be army chief of staff, a key vote that follows a months-long hold by Republican senator Tommy Tuberville on more than 300 military promotions.Senators confirmed George by a 96-1 vote, with only Republican senator Mike Lee voting against him.The vote comes a day after the Senate cleared Gen Charles “CQ” Brown to become the next chair of the joint chiefs of staff. The Senate is expected to confirm Gen Eric Smith to lead the Marine Corps later today.The confirmations come as tensions have continued to rise over Tuberville’s decision to single-handedly hold up military appointments as part of his opposition to abortion being provided in the armed forces.As a result of Tuberville’s block on Senate-confirmed promotions, more than 300 senior roles are being filled in an acting capacity. Military officials have bemoaned the effects of Tuberville’s blocks on officers’ families and finances.Even the position of chair of the joint chief of staff stands to be affected, when the current occupant, Gen Mark Milley, steps down at the end of this month.The chaos continues in the House, where an ongoing revolt by far-right Republicans against speaker Kevin McCarthy stopped the advancement of a defense department spending bill for the second time this week. It’s a bad sign for a separate attempt to pass a measure to keep the federal government funded past 30 September, which is also being held up the rightwing insurgents. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the Capitol to call for more aid to help his country fend off the Russian invasion.Here’s what else is happening today:
      McCarthy blamed “individuals that just want to burn the whole place down” for the ongoing paralysis in the House.
      Rupert Murdoch will step down as chairman of Fox and News Corp, with his son Lachlan Murdoch taking his place, an earthquake in the world of conservative media.
      The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said the GOP is “in the midst of a civil war”.
      Never one to keep quiet, Donald Trump weighed in yesterday on the spending battle in the House, and what he had to say was unlikely to reassure speaker Kevin McCarthy.The former president has many devotees among House Republicans, including McCarthy himself, who hasn’t yet endorsed him but has often been obliging to his demands. But where Trump’s influence can be seen the most is among the hard-right lawmakers who are currently paralyzing business in the chamber by blocking the advancement of a defense spending bill and holding up passage of a measure to keep the government funded beyond 30 September.In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump called on House Republicans to “defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots”, a reference to special counsel Jack Smith’s two criminal prosecutions of the former president for trying to overturn the 2020 election and hiding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.But whatever passes the House must also be approved by the Democratic-led Senate, and there’s no chance they’d sign on to a measure specifically written to protect Trump.And here’s video of an admittedly frustrated Kevin McCarthy explaining why he can’t get his lawmakers to even begin debate on legislation the House passes each year:In comments to Fox News, the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, sounded frustrated about the trouble he’s had advancing an annual defense spending bill:At a press conference, the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, blamed a revolt by “extreme Maga Republicans” for paralyzing the chamber and threatening a government shutdown.“We need the extreme Maga Republicans to get their act together in the civil war that’s happening on the Republican side of the aisle,” Jeffries said.He continued:
      House Republicans continue to be in the midst of a civil war. It’s a civil war that is hurting the ability of the Congress to do the business of the American people and to solve problems on behalf of everyday Americans.
      And what’s happening is that House Republicans continue to be held captive by the most extreme elements of their conference, and it’s hurting the American people. And this is a serious matter. We are less than eight days away from the government shutting down.
      A vote in the Republican-led House to advance an annual defense department funding bill failed for the second time this week, after rightwing lawmakers joined with Democrats to oppose its passage:It’s an ominous sign for the separate effort to fund the government beyond 30 September, since both rightwing Republicans and Democrats oppose a motion to prevent a shutdown proposed by House speaker Kevin McCarthy. More