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      Why the Ukrainian war is also a domestic political issue for Biden

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      Why the Ukrainian war is also a domestic political issue for BidenThe Democratic party is encouraging president to be more forward-leaning as he broadened US objectives in the conflict The visit of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Kyiv at the head of a congressional delegation this week was a reminder that in Washington the Ukraine war is not just an issue of national security but is an increasingly important domestic political issue too.In his approach to the conflict, Joe Biden, has the wind at his back in terms of US public opinion and Democratic party sentiment which is encouraging him to be ever more forward-leaning.In a new poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News, 37% of Americans questioned said his administration was not doing enough to support the Ukrainians, fractionally more than the 36% who said he was doing the right amount. Only 14% suggested he was doing too much.Late last month, the administration broadened US objectives in the conflict, to not just support Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity but also to weaken Russia, with the aim of preventing a repeat of Moscow’s aggression against other countries.Pentagon chief’s Russia remarks show shift in US’s declared aims in UkraineRead moreA European diplomat suggested that one of the factors behind that shift was impatience in the higher levels of the party with the administration’s posture.“It’s fundamentally about trying to get on the front foot in this crisis. There’s a lot of domestic criticism of the administration for being so passive,” the official said.“The Hill [Congress] are cross and a lot of the big Democratic donors think it’s not being as forthright as America should be … Biden thinks he’s treading a careful path between intervention in its broader sense and keeping the focus on domestic concerns – and some Democrats are starting to think that balance isn’t right.”Senator Chris Coons, a senior figure in Democratic foreign policy circles, has criticised Biden for taking direct military intervention off the table as an option. On the other side of the party, there has been little pushback from the progressive wing, which is normally sceptical about sending large quantities of military hardware into foreign conflicts.And for once in Washington, the Republicans are pushing in the same direction.“This is one of the few areas where Democrats and Republicans are reasonably well united and that makes it pretty easy for a president to move in that direction. He’s not making enemies,” said Larry Sabato, politics professor at the University of Virginia.“The umbrella over all of this is the moral issue and the powerful video of Ukrainians being slaughtered and dislocated,” John Zogby, a pollster and political consultant, said. “Americans are moved by that and overwhelmingly support the Ukrainian people.”It is nonetheless a political wedge issue. Support is more uniform among Democrats than Republicans. Donald Trump transferred his personal admiration for Vladimir Putin to at least some of his followers and the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, who has consistently raised pro-Moscow talking points on his show.Democratic support is deepened by the important role of Ukrainian-Americans, thought to represent about 1 million people (Zogby thinks that is an underestimate) and who are influential on the party’s ethnic coordinating council. They have all the more sway because they are concentrated in swing states.“You’ve got a decent number of Ukrainians in Ohio, and you have a Senate race in Ohio. There are Ukrainians in Pennsylvania and you have a Senate race in Pennsylvania,” said Wendy Schiller, political science professor at Brown University.In Wisconsin, Democrats have been running ads against the incumbent Senator Ron Johnson, focusing on his 2018 visit to Moscow.“It’s not an accident that Nancy Pelosi went to Ukraine,” Schiller said. “To have the speaker go, it says this is going to be an issue that the national party is going to take into the midterm elections.”With state-level and national politics, moral outrage among the public and Biden’s own foreign policy instincts, all pointing in the same direction, the administration has sharply raised its stake in the Ukraine conflict, asking Congress for an extraordinary $33bn in military, economic and humanitarian support for Kyiv.Public support, however, dies away dramatically when it comes to the question of sending US troops. Only 21% asked in this week’s poll backed such direct intervention, and concern about Ukraine escalating into a nuclear conflict is significantly higher among Democrats than Republicans.Biden, who has made extricating the US from “forever wars” his signature foreign policy, has repeatedly said he will not send US troops into Ukraine, and has cancelled routine missile tests to reduce any risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation between the two nuclear superpowers.“Boots on the ground may very well be a very different story,” Zogby said. “I don’t think world war three polls very well.”TopicsUS foreign policyJoe BidenUS politicsUkraineRussiaEuropeanalysisReuse this content More

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      ‘Do something, Democrats’: party struggles to rise to abortion challenge

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      ‘Do something, Democrats’: party struggles to rise to abortion challenge Despite controlling the White House and Congress, Democrats seem powerless to fight the assault on Roe v Wade but hope it will energise midterm votersVisibly shaking with fury and brandishing megaphones and posters, thousands of women defending reproductive rights in America thronged below the marbled columns of the US supreme court to protest against what appears to be the imminent demise of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling recognizing abortion as a constitutional right.“Do something, Democrats,” the crowd chanted at one point.Tell us: how has Roe v Wade made a difference to your life?Read moreIn the hours that followed, Democrats, who currently control the House, the Senate and the White House, echoed their outrage and vowed a response.The urgency follows a leak late on Monday evening of a draft opinion from the court that a majority of the nine judges on the bench – all conservative-leaning appointees of Republican presidents – support not just more restrictions on abortion services but the overturning of the landmark Roe ruling that guarantees the right to abortion when final opinions are issued in June.“I am furious – furious that Republicans could be this cruel, that the supreme court could be this heartless, that in legislatures across the country, extreme Republicans are ready for their trigger bans to go into effect,” Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington and a longtime advocate of women’s reproductive rights, said.Speaking from the steps of the US Capitol, she was referring to states that have legislative bans on abortion prepared and waiting to be “triggered” into effect as soon as Roe is overturned. “It is craven and we won’t stand for it,” she said. “I’m not going to sit quietly and neither should any of you.”Yet, infuriatingly for the pro-choice voters who helped elect Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress, the party finds itself largely powerless at present, without a legislative path forward to protect abortion rights in the likely event the court reverses its decision in Roe.Biden said it would be a “radical decision” by the court and called on Congress to act to enshrine the rights afforded by Roe into federal law via legislation.And Vice-President Kamala Harris, speaking to attendees at a gala hosted by Emily’s List, which works to elect Democrats who support abortion rights, railed that a ruling overturning Roe would be a “direct assault on freedom” in America.Barring swift legislative action, nearly half of US states are likely to ban abortion or severely restrict access to the procedure.But the reality of Democrats’ thin congressional majorities is that they don’t have enough support in the evenly divided US Senate to codify abortion protections, nor do they have the votes to eliminate the so-called filibuster rule, thus allowing legislation to pass with a simple majority.Biden has resisted pressure from progressives to use his bully pulpit to call for eliminating the filibuster, following recent demands to do so to pass voting rights legislation. And on Tuesday, he said he was “not prepared” to do so to protect reproductive rights.Nevertheless, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, vowed to forge ahead with a vote on current legislation that is stalled in Congress but, if it could be passed would enshrine a woman’s right to end her pregnancy.But the measure, a version of which passed the Democratic-controlled House last year, was already rejected once this year, when it fell far short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. It didn’t even win the support of all 50 Democrats, so even if the filibuster were scrapped the bill, called the Women’s Health Protection Act, would not have passed in the Senate.Senator Joe Manchin, an anti-abortion Democrat from West Virginia, voted with Republicans to block consideration of the bill. The bill also failed to attract the support of two pro-choice Senate Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who have introduced separate legislation that they say would codify Roe.Yet Schumer argued that it was important to put every senator on the record.“A vote on this legislation is no longer an abstract exercise. This is as urgent and real as it gets,” he said. The leaked draft decision, written by the conservative justice Samuel Alito, would shift the question of whether abortion should be legal to the individual states.The effect would dramatically alter the US landscape almost overnight, with restrictions and bans going into effect across much of the south and midwest while abortion would remain legal in many north-eastern and western states.Emboldened by the supreme court’s conservative super-majority, Republican legislatures have enacted a flurry of new abortion laws as conservative activists begin to lay the groundwork for a nationwide ban.On Tuesday, as the country reeled from the revelation that the supreme court was likely to dismantle Roe, Oklahoma’s Republican governor signed into law a bill that would ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a copycat version of a Texas law enacted last year.Meanwhile, liberal states have moved to safeguard abortion protections. Last week, Connecticut lawmakers approved a bill that would protect abortion providers in the state. And states like California and New York have vowed to be a “sanctuary” for people seeking reproductive care from places where the procedure is banned.With few options, Democrats have implored Americans shocked and angered by the seemingly impending loss of abortion rights to vote in the midterm elections. Majorities of Americans say they want abortion to remain legal in some or most cases. Few say they want the court to overturn Roe.But Democrats face steep headwinds in November, weighed down by Biden’s low approval ratings, rising inflation and a sour national mood.The Republican reaction to the news that the nation’s highest court was prepared to strike down Roe was relatively subdued. In the Senate, lawmakers were far more focused on the source of the leaked document than the decision, which is the culmination of a decades-long drive by the conservative movement to overturn Roe.The response suggested that there may be some concern that Republicans are worried about provoking a political backlash among more moderate and independent voters who broadly support a constitutional right to abortion.“There’s an answer,” the Illinois senator Dick Durbin, the majority whip, said at a press conference. “The answer is in November.”But many Democrats and activists believe November is too late for millions of women in states where abortion will banned almost immediately. They want the party – from the president on down – to throw every ounce of their political capital at finding a legislative solution.“People elected Democrats precisely so we could lead in perilous moments like these- to codify Roe, hold corruption accountable, & have a President who uses his legal authority to break through Congressional gridlock on items from student debt to climate,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat from New York, wrote on Twitter. “It’s high time we do it.”TopicsDemocratsAbortionUS politicsJoe BidenUS SenateUS CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Biden warns LGBTQ+ children could be next target of Republican ‘Maga crowd’

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      Biden warns LGBTQ+ children could be next target of Republican ‘Maga crowd’President warns of new attacks by Trump-dominated political party after supreme court ruling draft leak on abortion Joe Biden has warned of new attacks on civil rights as the supreme court prepares to strike down the right to abortion, telling reporters at the White House that LGBTQ+ children could be the next targets of a Trump-dominated Republican party he called “this Maga crowd” and “the most extreme political organisation … in recent American history”.Contraception could come under fire next if Roe v Wade is overturnedRead more“What happens,” the president asked, if “a state changes the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit under the way the decision is written?”Biden’s remarks, at the end of a brief session on deficit reduction, referred to a leaked draft of a ruling by Justice Samuel Alito. One of six conservatives on the supreme court, Alito was writing on a Mississippi case which aims to overturn both Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which guaranteed the right to abortion, and Casey v Planned Parenthood from 1992, which buttressed it.The Mississippi case is expected to be resolved in June. The leak of the draft ruling to Politico, which reported that four other conservatives on the nine-justice court supported it, caused a storm of controversy and anger.In a statement and remarks on Tuesday, Biden condemned Alito’s reasoning and intentions and called for legislation to codify Roe into law.But the president has faced criticism within his own party for seeming reluctant to contemplate reform such legislation would require, namely abolishing the Senate filibuster, the rule that requires 60 votes for most bills to pass.A lifelong Catholic who nonetheless supports a woman’s right to choose, Biden has been eclipsed as a strong voice against the attack on abortion rights by high-profile Democratic women including the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who spoke angrily outside the court on Tuesday, and the vice-president, Kamala Harris.Harris’s struggles as vice-president have been widely reported but on Tuesday night, speaking to the Emily’s List advocacy group in Washington, she seemed to hit her stride.The former prosecutor and California senator said: “Those Republican leaders who are trying to weaponise the use of the law against women. Well, we say, ‘How dare they?’“How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body? How dare they? How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?’”She asked: “Which party wants to expand our rights? And which party wants to restrict them? It has never been more clear. Which party wants to lead us forward? And which party wants to push us back? You know, some Republican leaders, they want to take us back to a time before Roe v Wade.”At the White House on Wednesday, Biden took brief questions. He was asked about sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine and about “the next step on abortion once this case gets settled”.“As I said when this hit, as I was getting on the plane to go down to Alabama, this is about a lot more than abortion,” he said. “I hadn’t read the whole opinion at that time.”The 79-year-old president then gave a lengthy, somewhat rambling answer about “the debate with Robert Bork”. Bork was nominated to the supreme court by Ronald Reagan in 1987. Biden was then chair of the Senate judiciary committee. The nomination failed.US supreme court justices on abortion – what they’ve said and how they’ve votedRead moreAt the White House, Biden said Bork “believed the only reason you had any inherent rights was because the government gave them to you”, a stance with which Biden said he disagreed.Biden also said Bork had opposed Griswold v Connecticut, the 1965 case which established the right to contraception – a right many on the left fear may be left open to rightwing attack once Roe, another case concerning privacy, has been overturned.In her speech the previous night, Harris said: “At its core, Roe recognises the fundamental right to privacy. Think about that for a minute. When the right to privacy is attacked, anyone in our country may face a future where the government can interfere in their personal decisions. Not just women. Anyone.”The vice-president also said: “Let us fight for our country and for the principles upon which it was founded, and let us fight with everything we have got.”TopicsLGBT rightsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsAbortionUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden condemns efforts of extremist ‘Maga crowd’ to overturn Roe v Wade abortion protections – as it happened

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      US politics liveUS politicsBiden condemns efforts of extremist ‘Maga crowd’ to overturn Roe v Wade abortion protections – as it happened
      Biden: ‘This Maga crowd is really the most extreme political organization that exists in American history’
      How soon could states outlaw abortions if Roe v Wade is overturned?
      Protesters swarm outside US supreme court
      Contraception could come under fire next
      California pledges to protect abortion rights
      What the justices have said and how they’ve voted on abortion
       Updated 1h agoRichard LuscombeWed 4 May 2022 16.09 EDTFirst published on Wed 4 May 2022 09.34 EDT Show key events onlyLive feedShow key events onlyFrom More

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      Trump still won’t shut up. He’s doing Democrats running for office a huge favor | Robert Reich

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      Trump still won’t shut up. He’s doing Democrats running for office a huge favorRobert ReichTrump is framing the midterms as a referendum on his continuing influence over the Republican party – even as polls show most voters want him to go away The beginning of May before midterm elections marks the start of primary season and six months of fall campaigning. The conventional view this year is that Democrats will be clobbered in November. Why? Because midterms are usually referendums on a president’s performance, and Biden’s approval ratings are in the cellar.But the conventional view could be wrong because it doesn’t account for the Democrat’s secret sauce, which gives them a fighting chance of keeping one or both chambers: Trump.According to recent polls, Trump’s popularity continues to sink. He is liked by only 38% of Americans and disliked by 46%. (12% are neutral.) And this isn’t your normal “sort of like, sort of dislike” polling. Feelings are intense, as they’ve always been about Trump. Among voters 45 to 64 years old – a group Trump won in 2020, 50% to 49%, according to exit polls – just 39% now view him favorably and 57%, unfavorably. Among voters 65 and older (52% of whom voted for him in 2020 to Biden’s 47) only 44% now see him favorably and more than half (54%) unfavorably. Perhaps most importantly, independents hold him in even lower regard. Just 26% view him favorably; 68% unfavorably.‘JP, right?’ Donald Trump appears to forget name of candidate he endorsedRead moreRepublican lawmakers had hoped – and assumed – Trump would have faded from the scene by now, allowing them to engage in full-throttled attacks on Democrats in the lead-up to the midterms. No such luck. In fact, Trump’s visibility is growing daily.The media is framing this month’s big Republican primaries as all about Trump – which is exactly as Trump wants them framed. But this framing is disastrous for Republicans. The Republican Ohio primary, for example, became a giant proxy battle over who was the Trumpiest candidate. The candidates outdid each other trying to imitate him – railing against undocumented immigrants, coastal elites, “socialism”, and “wokeness”, all the while regurgitating the Big Lie that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election.Whether Trump’s endorsements pay off in wins for his chosen primary candidates is beside the point. By making these races all about him, Trump and the media are casting the midterms as a whole as a referendum on Trump’s continuing power and influence. This is exactly what the Democrats need.June’s televised hearings of the House January 6 committee will likely show in detail how Trump and his White House orchestrated the attack on the US Capitol, and rekindle memories of Trump’s threat to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless Ukrainian president Zelensky came up with dirt on Biden. But the real significance of the hearings won’t show up in Trump’s approval ratings. It will be in the heightened reminders of Trump’s reign in Washington, as well as Trump’s closeness to Putin. The result is an almost certain shift in marginal voters’ preferences toward the Democrats in November.The leaked decision by the supreme court to uphold Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks and reverse Roe v Wade – courtesy of Trump’s three Court nominees – will green-light other Republican states to enact similar or even tighter bans, and spur Republicans in Congress to push for national legislation to bar abortions across the country. Republicans believe this will ignite their base, but it’s more likely to ignite a firestorm among the vast majority of Americans who believe abortion should be legal. Score more Democratic votes.There is also the possibility of criminal trials over Trump’s business and electoral frauds – such as his brazen attempt to change the Georgia vote tally – whose significance will be less about whether Trump is found guilty than additional reminders, in the months before the midterms, of Trump’s brazen lawlessness.Meanwhile, Trump will treat America to more rallies, interviews and barnstorming to convince voters the 2020 election was stolen from him, along with incessant demands that Republican candidates reiterate his Big Lie. More help to Democrats.Somewhere along the line, and also before the midterms, Elon Musk is likely to allow Trump back on Twitter. The move will be bad for America – fueling more racism, xenophobia and division. But it will serve as another memento of how dangerously incendiary Trump and Trumpism continue to be.Accompanying all of this will be the ongoing antics of Trump’s whacky surrogates – Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Steve Bannon, Madison Cawthorn, Trump Junior, et al – who mimic Trump’s bravado, bigotry, divisiveness, and disdain for the law. All are walking billboards for Trumpism’s heinous impact on American life. All will push wavering voters toward Democrats in November.I’m not suggesting Democrats seeking election or re-election center their campaigns around Trump. To the contrary, Democrats need to show voters their continuing commitment to improving voters’ lives. Between now and November, Democrats should enact laws to help Americans afford childcare, cut the costs of prescription drugs, and stop oil companies from price gouging, for example.But Democrats can also count on Americans’ reawakened awareness of the hatefulness and chaos Trump and his Republican enablers have unleashed. And it’s this combination – Democrats scoring some additional victories for average Americans, and Trump and others doing everything possible to recollect his viciousness – that could well reverse conventional wisdom about midterms, and keep Democrats in control.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new 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
      TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2024US midterm elections 2022Joe BidencommentReuse this content More

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      Biden ‘not prepared’ to support ending Senate filibuster to pass abortion rights law – live

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      US politics liveRoe v WadeBiden ‘not prepared’ to support ending Senate filibuster to pass abortion rights law – live
      Full story: US shaken to its core by supreme court draft
      Chief justice orders inquiry into leak of draft ruling
      ’It will be chaos’: 26 states will ban abortion if ruling stands
      Abortion to become key fight in US midterm elections
      LIVE Updated 25m agoKari Paul (now), Richard Luscombe and Alexandra Topping (earlier)Tue 3 May 2022 17.28 EDTFirst published on Tue 3 May 2022 06.14 EDT0Show key events onlyLive feedShow key events onlyFrom More

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      'A radical decision': Biden condemns leaked US supreme court opinion on Roe v Wade – video

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      President Joe Biden on Tuesday blasted the ‘radical’ draft opinion suggesting the supreme court may be be poised to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade case that legalised abortion nationwide, saying it would threaten ‘a whole range of rights’ if it holds. Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, Biden said he hoped the draft would not be finalised by justices, contending it reflects a ‘fundamental shift in American jurisprudence’ that threatens other rights such as privacy and marriage

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      Grand jury chosen to help determine whether Trump interfered in Georgia’s 2020 elections – as it happened

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      US politics liveUS politicsGrand jury chosen to help determine whether Trump interfered in Georgia’s 2020 elections – as it happened
      Panel will look into the former president’s attempts to influence the outcome of the election in the state
      US lawmakers head home after Kyiv, Warsaw discussions
      Capitol attack committee requests cooperation from key Republicans
      Russia-Ukraine war – latest updates
      Sign up to receive First Thing – our daily briefing by email
       Updated 1h agoRichard LuscombeMon 2 May 2022 16.11 EDTFirst published on Mon 2 May 2022 09.28 EDT Show key events onlyLive feedShow key events onlyFrom More