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      Biden and Harris celebrate landmark deal to lower medication prices

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Thursday cast themselves as the champions of American seniors in a David-and-Goliath fight against big pharmaceutical companies, at a joint event touting a landmark deal to lower the cost of prescription drugs.“We finally beat big pharma,” the US president declared, sharing the stage with his vice-president for the first time since he abandoned his re-election bid in late July and Harris replaced him as the Democratic nominee.The event, which came after a morning announcement about new lower drug prices for beneficiaries of Medicare, a government health insurance plan for seniors, was an opportunity to persuade voters that their administration has helped ease costs after years of high inflation. Healthcare, particularly the high cost of prescription drugs, is a top concern for US voters. Biden had held a slight lead over Donald Trump for his platform throughout the year before he dropped out of the race.Harris spoke first, calling Biden “our extraordinary president”, as the crowd, packed into the gymnasium at Prince George’s Community College, rose to its feet to applaud the president. “Thank you, Joe,” they chanted in appreciation of – according to several attendees – his record and his decision to step aside and pass the torch to Harris.Biden called Harris an “incredible partner” and said she would “make one hell of a president”.“We finally addressed the longstanding issue that for years was one of the biggest challenges on this subject, which was that Medicare was prohibited by law from negotiating lower drug prices, and those costs then got passed on to our seniors,” Harris said. “But not any more.”The 10 drugs subject to negotiations, among them widely used blood thinners and diabetes medications, are expected to save $6bn for Medicare, which is a major government health insurance program covering Americans older than 65, and those with certain disabilities, the administration said. Seniors should save $1.5bn directly in out-of-pocket costs.The negotiated prices, which take effect in 2026, were authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act, that Biden emphasized passed without a single Republican vote. The vice-president cast the tie-breaking vote in her role as president of the Senate.“We pay way too much for prescription drugs in America,” the health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, said.Before Biden and Harris spoke, administration officials and Maryland politicians celebrated the deal while thrilling the crowd with discreet references to Harris’s candidacy.“President’s a good title for her,” the retiring Maryland senator Ben Cardin winked in his remarks, crediting Harris for helping to pass the Democrats’ sweeping health and climate change bill.Biden, who simultaneously touted his record in office and played pass-the-torch, warned that if given a second term, Trump – who the president mocked as “the guy we’re running against, what’s his name? Donald Dump?” – would repeal Medicare’s authority to negotiate drug prices. He named the sweeping conservative policy agenda, Project 2025, that Trump has sought to distance himself from.“Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is: beat the hell out of them,” Biden said, drawing loud applause.Republican lawmakers have been highly critical of the Biden administration’s move, arguing that government-negotiated drug prices will stifle innovation and result in fewer lifesaving drugs being brought to market.In a joint statement, House Republicans accused Biden of “price-fixing”.“Make no mistake, price fixing has failed in every sector and in every country where it has ever been tried,” the statement by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Republican leadership team said. “The Biden-Harris administration says it wants to lower prices for families, but their prescription drug price fixing scheme has accomplished just two things: driving up health care costs and crushing American innovation in medicine.”View image in fullscreenThe double act attracted a raucous audience, with hundreds of people waiting in the summer heat to glimpse the president’s final act and the vice-president’s ascent.“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long, long time,” Biden said, noting that the first time he introduced legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices was as a freshman senator shortly after he was elected, in 1972.“For the longest time I was too damn young because I was only 29 when I got elected,” he said. “Now I’m too damn old.”The negotiated prices, which take effect in 2026, are expected to save billions of dollars for the taxpayer-funded Medicare program. But they will lead to direct out-of-pocket savings for only a subset of the millions of older Americans who take the drugs subject to negotiations. Healthcare costs in the US have been rising for several decades, and Americans spend upwards of $13,000 a year on medical services and medications.The law already caps out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 a month for Medicare patients. It also calls for a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug spending.Earlier this week, Harris and Biden participated in a Situation Room meeting to discuss the situation in the Middle East. They also appeared together on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews to welcome home US citizens wrongfully detained in Russia.On the campaign trail, the economy and cost of living remain top issues for voters, as Democrats seek to convince them that the president’s economic policies have had an impact on their pocketbooks. Democrats cheered news on Wednesday of easing inflation. Consumer prices rose 2.9% July, falling below 3% for the first time since 2021, new government data showed. But Americans continue to be squeezed by the high cost of rent and groceries.On Friday, Harris will travel to North Carolina to deliver an economic policy speech, during which her campaign said she would call for a federal ban on price gouging on groceries. Though Trump had held an advantage on the economy over Biden, recent polling suggests Harris has erased much of his early lead.Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, introduced Biden and Harris, referring to them as the 46th and 47th president of the United States, which prompted chants of “48” – a promising sign for the charismatic Democratic rising star.Linda Hunt, 80, said she rarely attended political events, but came to witness history.“I came to pay him respect – that’s primary but I also wanted to see and hear her in person,” she said. “It was historical.” More

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      Google says Iranian group tried to hack Trump and Harris campaigns

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      Google said on Wednesday that an Iranian group linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard has tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris since May.The tech company’s threat intelligence arm said the group was still actively targeting people associated with Biden, Trump and Harris, who replaced the US president as the Democratic candidate last month when he dropped out. It said those targeted included current and former government officials, as well as presidential campaign affiliates.The new report from Google’s Threat Analysis Group affirms and expands on a Microsoft report released on Friday that revealed a suspected Iranian cyber intrusion in this year’s US presidential election. It sheds light on how foreign adversaries are ramping up their efforts to disrupt the election, which is less than three months away.Google’s report said its threat researchers detected and disrupted a “small but steady cadence” of the Iranian attackers using email credential phishing, a type of cyberattack in which the attacker poses as a trusted sender to try to get an email recipient to share their login details. John Hultquist, chief analyst for the company’s threat intelligence arm, said the company sends suspected targets of these attacks a Gmail popup that warns them that a government-backed attacker might be trying to steal their password.The report said Google observed the group gaining access to one high-profile political consultant’s personal Gmail account. Google reported the incident to the FBI in July. Microsoft’s Friday report shared similar information, noting that the email account of a former senior adviser to a presidential campaign had been compromised and weaponized to send a phishing email to a high-ranking campaign official.The group is familiar to Google’s threat intelligence arm and other researchers, and this is not the first time it has tried to interfere in US elections, Hultquist said. The report noted that the same Iranian group targeted both the Biden and Trump campaigns with phishing attacks during the 2020 cycle, as early as June of that year.The group also has been prolific in other cyber espionage activity, particularly in the Middle East, the report said. In recent months, as the Israel-Hamas war has aggravated tensions in the region, that activity has included email phishing campaigns targeted at Israeli diplomats, academics, non-governmental organizations and military affiliates.Trump’s campaign said on Saturday that it had been hacked and that sensitive internal documents had been stolen and distributed. It declared that Iranian actors were to blame.The same day, Politico revealed it had received leaked internal Trump campaign documents by email, though it was not clear whether the leaked documents were related to the suspected Iranian cyber activity. The Washington Post and the New York Times also received the documents.While the Trump campaign has not provided specific evidence linking Iran to the hack, both Trump and his longtime friend and former adviser Roger Stone have said they were contacted by Microsoft related to suspected cyber intrusions. Stone’s email was compromised by hackers targeting Trump’s campaign, a person familiar with the matter said.Google and Microsoft would not identify the people targeted in the Iranian intrusion attempts or confirm that Stone was among them. Google did confirm that the Iranian group in its report, which it calls APT42, was the same as the one in Microsoft’s research. Microsoft refers to the group as Mint Sandstorm.Harris’s campaign has declined to say whether it has identified any state-based intrusion attempts, but has said it vigilantly monitors cyber threats and is not aware of any security breaches of its systems.The FBI on Monday confirmed that it was investigating the intrusion into the Trump campaign. Two people familiar with the matter said the FBI was also investigating attempts to gain access to the Biden-Harris campaign.The reports of Iranian hacking come as US intelligence officials have warned of persistent and mounting efforts from both Russia and Iran to influence the US election through online activity. Beyond these hacking incidents, groups linked to the countries have used fake news websites and social media accounts to churn out content that appears intended to sway voters’ opinions.While neither Microsoft nor Google specified Iran’s intentions in the US presidential race, officials have previously hinted that Iran particularly opposes Trump. They have also expressed alarm about Tehran’s efforts to seek retaliation for a 2020 strike on an Iranian general that was ordered by Trump.Iran’s mission to the United Nations, when asked about the claim of the Trump campaign, denied being involved.“We do not accord any credence to such reports,” the mission told the Associated Press. “The Iranian government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election.”The mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday about Google’s report. More

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      Can Kamala Harris win over disenchanted Latino voters?

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      The abrupt substitution of Kamala Harris for Joe Biden as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee has energized two of the party’s bedrock bases of support – pro-choice women and African Americans – along with millions of young voters who felt dismay at the Hobson’s choice posed by two old white guys in the presidential contest.But the country’s estimated 36 million eligible Latino voters could be another story.Their importance in presidential races has been steadily growing over the past 50 years, and Latinos are projected to represent nearly 15% of eligible voters nationwide by November.Historically, Latinos have ranked among the Democratic party’s most reliable sources of votes, in about the same league as Black and Jewish voters. But the party’s once commanding advantage has been shrinking. Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump among Latinos nationwide in 2016 by a factor of 81% to 16%, yet four years later the former president upped his share to one out of every four votes cast by Latinos.A slew of prominent Latino politicians and trade unionists have endorsed the vice-president since the president’s withdrawal from the race on 21 July. They include some progressive Democrats who had condemned the terse message Harris had for would-be Latin American immigrants to the United States during a 2021 press conference in Guatemala City: “Do not come.”But it remains unclear whether Latino voters overall will give Harris a big boost in her bid to defeat Trump. For starters, they are diverse in national origin as well as the circumstances and histories of their communities’ immigration.Most southern California Chicanos reflect their state’s liberal tendencies and have little in common ideologically with the majority of Miami’s right-leaning Cuban Americans. Phoenix-based pollster Mike Noble notes that Latino voters whose roots go back to Colombia, Venezuela and other South American countries have been gravitating towards the Republican party over the past four years.Latinos are not yet digging deep into their pockets to support Harris. Two Zoom fundraising calls with Black women and men held on consecutive nights right after Biden bowed out brought in a total of $2.8m. Similar Zoom calls with Latinas and Latinos for Kamala on 24 and 31 July, respectively, posted a combined net haul of $188,000.Axios Latino has been tracking US Latinos’ views of Harris in conjunction with Noticias Telemundo and the Ipsos market research and public opinion firm since the first year of the Biden administration. By the end of 2021, Axios Latino found that 48% of Latinos had a favorable opinion of Harris – but that figure had slumped to 39% by last March. A different survey of Latinos in 10 states found that sentiment persisted in Arizona and Nevada even days after Biden’s fateful debate performance in late June.But a more recent survey of 800 Latino voters living in seven swing states brought Harris and the Democrats some very welcome news. Carried out by the pollster Gary Segura on behalf of the Washington-based Somos Political Action Committee in the immediate aftermath of Biden’s bombshell announcement, the survey gave Harris an impressive 18-percentage-point lead over Trump and surprisingly high favorability ratings among Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada, which have the highest percentage of eligible Latino voters among those swing states.In a separate poll by Equis Research released Wednesday, Harris is still a few points short of Biden’s support from Latino voters in the 2020 election, but is still leading Trump by 19 points among registered Latino voters in the seven most competitive states.Harris and her newly selected running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, addressed rallies in Phoenix and Las Vegas late last week, and a new 30-second TV spot aimed at Latino voters has started airing in both English and Spanish.“Throughout her career, she’s always worked to earn the support of Latino voters and has made core issues like healthcare, childcare and fighting gun violence her focus,” said the campaign’s Hispanic media director, Maca Casado. “Vice-President Harris’s campaign knows Latinos’ political power, and we won’t take their votes for granted.”In Harris’s performance at the polls among Latinos in her native California, she garnered a majority of the Latino vote in both of her successful campaigns for the office of state attorney general, in 2010 and 2014.But Latinos are not expected to play a decisive role in the Golden state or any of the other three states where they are most numerous. Both California and New York are widely considered to be a lock for Democrats, and the same is true of Texas and Florida for Republicans.That leaves Arizona and Nevada, and the outlook for Democrats remains cloudy.CNN exit polling in November 2020 showed Biden beating Trump handily among Arizona Latino voters by a 27-percentage-point margin, thanks in part to folks like Matthew Sotelo. The 37-year-old leader of a non-profit community organization in Phoenix is a registered Democrat who thinks that Biden has done a “solid” job as president. But Sotelo senses a welcome change in the political climate since Harris became the party’s standard bearer.“The energy is different, and despite what the polls say about Harris being in a dead heat with Trump, the momentum is swinging to her side,” says the Arizona-born Mexican American.During Harris’s abortive run for the presidency in 2019, Sotelo did have some reservations about her track record as a prosecutor in San Francisco who sought prison terms for people arrested for possession of small amounts of controlled substances. But he sees her as an open-minded politician.“Do I think she has done a perfect job [on the border]? Absolutely not,” says Sotelo. “But I understand there has been an opportunity for Harris to grow as a leader, and she’ll continue to learn and grow.”One seasoned Latino pollster warns that Republicans have made major inroads in Arizona. “The Democrats have been losing ground there, and a lot of it has to do with the border,” says Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida International University professor of political science who oversaw last month’s poll of Latino voters in 10 states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFelix Garcia concurs. Born in the Mexican state of Sonora and a resident of Phoenix since 2000, the 42-year-old business consultant has spent his entire life on either side of the US-Mexican border.“We have so many people from different countries on the border every day, and Kamala has never tried to fix the situation on the border,” says the registered Republican, who describes himself as a moderate in the mold of the late Arizona senator John McCain.Garcia’s issues with Harris do not end with immigration. “We have so many problems with the Biden administration – inflation, Ukraine, Russia, Israel – and she is part of this administration,” he says.During a campaign rally in Arizona last Friday, Harris drew attention to the years she served as California’s attorney general. “I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and human traffickers,” she declared. “I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”Mike Noble, a former consultant and manager of Republican legislative campaigns in Arizona, found that many Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada are focused on pocketbook issues like inflation and housing affordability. Those anxieties are not likely to favor Harris.“She’s done a little better in places like the midwest and Pennsylvania, but in the sun belt, Harris is basically starting off in the same position as Biden was,” he says.The ascent of Harris has left David Navarro unmoved. The 27-year-old native of Las Vegas is a registered Democrat who supported Bernie Sanders’ presidential bids in 2016 and 2020 and voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. But he says he is done with both major political parties and will vote for Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein in the fall.“I don’t support their views or any of their policies towards Israel and Gaza, and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are doing anything to address the causes of inflation, which are corporations and their price increases,” says the systems engineer whose father immigrated from El Salvador. “They don’t value us as Americans, and I don’t want a presidential candidate who is run by the major donors who are billionaires and the corporations.”A scholar from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) cautions that many Latinos in that state, like millions of Americans across the country regardless of their race or ethnicity, do not know all that much about Harris at this juncture beyond her name and current job title.“People know Biden and Trump, but when it comes to Harris, she has a lot more opportunity to shape the narrative, introduce herself and recalibrate things,” says Rebecca Gill, UNLV associate professor of political science. “She has the potential to move her numbers more than Trump or Biden.”In a volatile election cycle already punctuated by an assassination attempt, a debate debacle of historic dimensions, and the nomination of the first Black female presidential candidate of a major political party, Latino voters could spring surprises of their own even in swing states with relatively small Latino populations.“The Hispanic vote is large enough in virtually every state in the US that it could make the difference between winning and losing, including Pennsylvania and Georgia,” notes Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster who specializes in tracking voting trends in the Latino community.“It’s the very reason why so many people are hyper-focused on the Hispanic vote.” More

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      Tim Walz agrees to vice-presidential debate against JD Vance on 1 October

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      Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris’s running mate, said he would be willing to debate JD Vance, Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, on 1 October.Walz, in a post to Twitter/X, was responding to a CBS News statement that said it had invited both vice-presidential candidates to participate in a debate in New York City.CBS said it had presented both campaigns with four dates as options: 17 September, 24 September, 1 October and 8 October.“See you on October 1, JD,” Walz wrote.A statement from the Harris campaign said: “Harris for President has accepted CBS’ invitation to a Vice Presidential Candidate Debate on October 1. Governor Walz looks forward to debating JD Vance – if he shows up.” Vance has not said whether he would accept the date.Walz last week said he “can’t wait to debate the guy — that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up”, in a reference to the baseless but much-shared claim that Vance admitted to having sex with a couch in his memoir.In May, the Biden campaign said the vice-president – then Joe Biden’s running mate – would be willing to debate the eventual Republican vice-presidential nominee on either 23 July or 13 August.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt the time, the president had not yet stepped aside from the race and endorsed Harris to succeed him as the Democratic candidate for president in this election, and JD Vance had not been announced as Trump’s running mate.Vance’s campaign then declined to commit to a vice-presidential debate before the Democratic national convention on 19 August.Harris and Trump have agreed to participate in their first debate on 10 September, hosted by ABC News.The network said the debate will be moderated by David Muir, the World News Tonight anchor and managing editor, and Linsey Davis, the ABC News Live Prime anchor. More

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      Trump addresses North Carolina rally after Vance claims Harris has been ‘acting president’ under Biden – live

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      Trump says that if he is re-elected, he will sign an executive order on his first day back in the Oval Office to direct “every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat inflation and to bring consumer prices rapidly down”.As the New York Times points out, Trump has so far not outlined a plan on how to tackle inflation and bring prices down, other than to boost oil and gas production in the US. It adds:
      The country is already currently producing significantly more crude oil today than it did under the Trump administration.
      Hours before his rally speech,, the latest inflation figures also showed the US annual inflation rate dipped below 3% in July for the first time since 2021.Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have agreed to participate in one debate on 10 September, hosted by ABC News.ABC News confirmed in a statement last week it will “host qualifying presidential candidates to debate on September 10 on ABC. Vice-President Harris and former President Trump have both confirmed they will attend the ABC debate.”The network said the debate will be moderated by World News Tonight anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis.In May, the Biden campaign said Kamala Harris – then Joe Biden’s running mate – would be willing to debate the eventual Republican vice-presidential nominee on either 23 July or 13 August.At the time, Biden had not yet stepped aside from the race and JD Vance had not been announced as Donald Trump’s running mate.After Vance was named as Trump’s running mate, his campaign declined to commit to a vice-presidential debate before the Democratic national convention on 19 August.The Trump Vance campaign has not yet agreed to the 1 October debate hosted by CBS News in New York.A Harris Walz campaign spokesperson said the Democratic vice presidential presumptive nominee “looks forward to debating JD Vance — if he shows up.”Walz last week said he “can’t wait to debate the guy — that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up,” in a reference to the baseless, but much-shared claim, that Vance admitted to having sex with a couch in his memoir.Tim Walz, Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris’s running mate, said he would be willing to debate JD Vance, Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, on 1 October.Walz, in a post to X, was responding to a CBS News statement that said it had invited both vice-presidential candidates to participate in a debate in New York City.CBS said it had presented both campaigns with four dates as options: 17 September, 24 September, 1 October and 8 October.“See you on October 1, JD,” Walz wrote.A statement from the Harris campaign said:
      Harris for President has accepted CBS’ invitation to a Vice Presidential Candidate Debate on October 1. Governor Walz looks forward to debating JD Vance – if he shows up.
      Vance has not said whether he would accept the date.Trump says the US will “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels to “bring energy prices down”.Trump has vowed to accelerate oil and gas production, already at record levels, in the US, however, repeating the mantra “drill, baby, drill” at rallies.Trump aims to undo Joe Biden’s policies aimed at lowering carbon emissions, which he has called “insane”, and has directly sought $1bn in campaign donations from oil and gas executives in order to fulfill this agenda as president.But as NBC News’s Sahil Kapur notes, under Biden’s tenure, the US has continued to produce and export the most crude oil out of any country:Trump notes that Kamala Harris previously opposed fracking, and claims that she will ban fracking if she is elected in the November election.Harris “will absolutely ban fracking”, Trump says.Harris had previously, as a candidate for the 2020 presidential nomination, vowed to ban fracking, as well as back a Green New Deal, a progressive resolution to shift the US to 100% renewable energy, and new government dietary guidelines to encourage people to reduce their meat eating.But her campaign has said she will not seek to ban fracking if she becomes president. Since becoming vice-president, Harris has followed the Biden administration approach that allows fracking, although the Environmental Protection Agency has drawn up rules to limit the emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that often escapes during fracking.Trump says that if he is re-elected, he will sign an executive order on his first day back in the Oval Office to direct “every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat inflation and to bring consumer prices rapidly down”.As the New York Times points out, Trump has so far not outlined a plan on how to tackle inflation and bring prices down, other than to boost oil and gas production in the US. It adds:
      The country is already currently producing significantly more crude oil today than it did under the Trump administration.
      Hours before his rally speech,, the latest inflation figures also showed the US annual inflation rate dipped below 3% in July for the first time since 2021.Trump says his interview with Elon Musk “was one of the most successful shows ever done”.The interview on Twitter/X, which is owned by Musk and began more than 40 minutes late, was plagued by technical issues that initially prevented many users from watching the conversation.Here’s a review of that interview by our Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith:Trump says the US was respected before but that now “we’re disrespected all over the world.”He says the Russian president Vladimir Putin, Chinese president Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un all respected the US. Now “we’re being laughed at,” he says.Trump says that as president, he “passed the largest tax cuts in history, the largest regulation cuts in history”.In reality, Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was not the largest tax cut in US history and workers barely benefited from them. More

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      Ceasefire talks are on their last legs, and Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame | Mohamad Bazzi

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      Joe Biden is making a last-ditch effort to salvage the Gaza ceasefire agreement he has been pushing for months. The US president, along with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, have called on Israeli and Hamas negotiators to resume indirect talks on Thursday to hammer out an agreement. But Biden and his administration won’t name and shame the biggest obstacle to reaching a deal: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. For months, Netanyahu has tried to block an agreement by backtracking and adding new conditions, prompting Israeli security officials to accuse him of sabotaging the negotiations to stay in power.Since a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed on 1 December, Biden has invested nearly all of his administration’s efforts into resurrecting a ceasefire. But Biden refuses to impose any cost on Netanyahu for his obstinacy and prolonging the conflict. Since Israel launched its brutal war on Gaza 10 months ago, Biden has failed to use the two most effective levers of power at his disposal: withholding billions of dollars in US weapons shipments, and denying Israel political cover at the United Nations security council and other international bodies.Even as US officials privately leak that Biden is angry at Netanyahu for lying to him about wanting to secure a ceasefire, the Biden administration continues to send massive new transfers of weapons to Israel. On Tuesday, the state department approved $20bn in new arms sales, which include dozens of F-15 fighter jets, tactical vehicles and missiles, as well as tens of thousands of explosive mortar and tank cartridges.This is one of the largest weapons transfers to Israel in US history – and it will be mostly funded by American taxpayers. The biggest part of the deal is nearly $19bn for up to 50 new warplanes, which won’t be delivered for at least five years. But the thousands of rounds of ordnance could be shipped sooner. Washington is, by far, the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, providing $3.8bn in military aid a year. In April, after intense lobbying by Biden, Congress approved an additional $14bn in military assistance to Israel, which will fund the latest purchases approved this week.With this level of Israeli dependence on US military aid, Biden should have significant leverage over Netanyahu. Instead, Biden is clinging to a failed policy of trying to exert behind-the-scenes influence on the Israeli prime minister and his extremist allies. Netanyahu has consistently defied and humiliated Biden – and yet the US president won’t call out Netanyahu for obstructing a ceasefire agreement that would lead to the release of more than 100 hostages still being held by Hamas after its 7 October attacks on Israel.Biden outlined the parameters of a deal in late May, when he spoke at the White House to publicly endorse a three-phase Israeli plan to end the war. By essentially adopting Israel’s proposal, Biden hoped to break a months-long deadlock in negotiations that were mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar. For months, the Biden administration blamed Hamas for refusing to accept a truce – and rarely mentioned Netanyahu’s intransigence. In early July, the Biden administration called Hamas’s response to the US proposal a “breakthrough”, raising hopes that a deal was imminent.But as talks dragged on, Netanyahu ordered Israeli negotiators to add five new conditions to the outlines of a proposal that Israel had accepted in late May and which formed the basis for Biden’s plan. In a letter sent to mediators in late July, Israel demanded that it maintain military control of Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, an area known as the Philadelphi Corridor, which had been a major point of contention during earlier rounds of negotiations.Netanyahu’s attempts at blocking the ceasefire agreement infuriated members of Israel’s security establishment, and they began leaking details of recent high-level security meetings to show the prime minister’s obstinacy and his lack of interest in the fate of the remaining hostages. On 2 August, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on a tense meeting between Netanyahu and his security chiefs days earlier, which devolved into a shouting match as multiple officials accused the premier of torpedoing any ceasefire deal with his latest demands. Netanyahu reportedly accused his top security officials of being “soft” and poor negotiators.The prime minister is trying to prolong the Gaza war to avoid early elections, which his Likud party is likely to lose, and multiple investigations into his government’s security failures leading up to the October attacks. If he’s forced out of power, Netanyahu would also face a long-delayed corruption and bribery trial stemming from an earlier stint as premier. Despite Netanyahu’s interest in clinging to power and criticism of his negotiating tactics by Israeli security officials, the Biden administration has gone out of its way to avoid blaming Netanyahu for obstructing a ceasefire.Israel has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, as the Israeli military continues to block aid deliveries. Researchers fear the death toll could eventually reach 186,000 – due to “indirect casualties” of war, such as food shortages, a widespread cholera epidemic and the destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure.With the US and other western allies continuing to provide the weapons that sustain Israel’s war machine, Netanyahu has had little incentive to stop the bloodshed. Instead, he has escalated the conflict in recent weeks, risking a wider regional war that could involve Israel and the US against Iran and its network of allied militias in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.Late last month, two assassinations in Beirut and Tehran revived fears that the Gaza war could spiral into a regional conflagration. On 30 July, an Israeli airstrike on southern Beirut killed a senior commander in Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia supported by Iran that has been fighting a low-level conflict with Israel since October. The next day, an explosion in Tehran killed the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. While Israel did not claim responsibility for that assassination, it’s widely assumed to be behind the attack that humiliated the Iranian leadership, which was hosting Haniyeh and dozens of other foreign officials for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. Iran vowed to retaliate for Haniyeh’s killing on its soil, and US and western officials have been scrambling to avoid an escalating series of attacks and reprisals.A ceasefire is the only way to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and to ensure that the conflict won’t expand into a regional war that could entangle Iran and the US. But since Netanyahu has not faced the loss of US support or other consequences for his belligerence, he has little incentive to agree to a truce or to refrain from attacks that destabilize the region.Already, there are signs that Biden’s ceasefire summit on Thursday will end in yet another deadlock: Hamas has not committed to participating in the talks, while a member of Israel’s negotiating team told Israeli media that there was no point in traveling to the summit unless Netanyahu expands the team’s mandate. In other words, Netanyahu can continue to obstruct the negotiations – and pay no price for it.So far, the Israeli prime minister has gotten everything he’s wanted by prolonging the war and escaping blame from the Biden administration for stalling a ceasefire deal. After the administration approved $20bn in new arms deals this week, Biden is signaling that he will continue sending weapons to Israel no matter what Netanyahu does.It doesn’t have to be this way: since Biden dropped out of the US presidential race last month, he no longer risks paying a political cost for restraining Netanyahu and Israel. The president can finally stand up to Netanyahu – and salvage a ceasefire plan that ends 10 months of American complicity.

      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University. He is also a non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) More

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      Hunter Biden sought US government help for Ukrainian company Burisma

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      Hunter Biden lobbied the US government for help in securing a lucrative energy contract in Italy while his father Joe Biden was vice-president, newly released documents show.A tranche of previously undisclosed documents now made public under a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request reveals that the president’s son wrote to the then US ambassador to Rome, John Phillips, in 2016 seeking assistance on behalf of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, of which he was a board member.The request was revealed in documents issued by the US state department following a protracted effort by the New York Times seeking their release that lasted more than three years.While there is no evidence that the government met Hunter’s request for help or that his father knew of it, the revelation is likely to fuel Republican claims that Joe Biden’s political position was used to help his son’s business activities.The revelations come as Hunter Biden prepares to stand trial in California next month on charges of tax evasion on his income from Burisma and other foreign businesses.They follow his conviction in June on charges of illegal gun ownership during a time when he was using crack cocaine.Republicans have sought for years to tar Joe Biden with his son’s business activities, alleging that they reveal evidence of family corruption in a fruitless impeachment effort against the president last year.Even before the latest release, James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee, which has spearheaded the congressional investigation into Hunter Biden’s business affairs, called the affair “the biggest political corruption scandal of our history’s lifetime”, in remarks last week to the rightwing channel, Newsmax.The pursuit of Biden has lost much of its political sting since his withdrawal from the presidential race last month, after weeks of pressure from fellow Democrats following a disastrous debate performance.The New York Times reported that the decision to release the documents containing the latest revelations was taken weeks before Biden stepped aside in favour of the vice-president, Kamala Harris, meaning that it was unlikely that the documents had been deliberately withheld until they had become less politically damaging. The White House signed off on the release a week before the president announced his withdrawal, the paper reported.The state department has a track record of being slow to release records in response to requests. The Times said it had challenged the thoroughness of previous releases because they failed to include files stored in a laptop that Hunter Biden had left at a computer repair shop in Delaware.Hunter’s letter to the ambassador – the contents of which were entirely redacted – appeared intended to help secure a meeting with the head of the regional government in Tuscany in furtherance of a geothermal energy project for which Burisma was seeking regulatory approval for in the Italian region.It elicited a cautious response from US officials at the embassy and there is no evidence that a meeting ever took place as a result.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I want to be careful about promising too much,” a US commerce department official based in the embassy wrote in response.“This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, U.S.G. [United States government] should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the D.O.C. [Department of Commerce] Advocacy Center.”Enrico Rossi, the president of the Tuscan regional government at the time, told the New York Times that he never met Hunter Biden and had no recollection of the US embassy contacting about the Burisma project.A White House spokesman said Joe Biden was not aware of his son’s letter to the ambassador at the time.Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, called his client’s outreach to the ambassador a “proper request”.“No meeting occurred, no project materialised, no request for anything in the US was ever sought and only an introduction in Italy was requested,” Lowell said in a statement. More

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      ‘She makes us proud’: Harris raises over $12m in California as Pelosi welcomes her home

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      Kamala Harris returned home to the San Francisco Bay area for a Sunday fundraiser that drew top California Democrats and captured more than $12m for the conclusion of a swing state tour by the vice-president and her running mate, Tim Walz.Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and California governor Gavin Newsom attended the event in San Francisco at the Fairmont Hotel, where nearly 700 people had purchased tickets that cost at least $3,300 and as much as $500,000.“This is a good day when we welcome Kamala Harris back home to California,” Pelosi said of the former US senator, attorney general and district attorney from the state.“She makes us all so proud. She brings us so much joy. She gives us so much hope,” Pelosi said at the fundraiser. She went on to describe Harris as a person of “great strength” and someone who is “politically very astute”.Harris and Walz, the Minnesota governor, have just finished a tour of multiple political swing states, packing rallies with thousands of people and building on the momentum that has propelled her since she took over at the top of the Democratic ticket.Pelosi, the longtime lawmaker and Washington power broker, is credited with helping usher Joe Biden out of the presidential race.The president, 81, stepped aside last month after a poor debate performance against Donald Trump sparked turmoil within the Democratic party and concerns that he could not beat the former president nor complete a second four-year term.Pelosi’s comments in a television interview suggesting that Biden had not yet decided whether to step aside were viewed as giving an opening to worried Democratic lawmakers to urge him to leave even as Biden said he was staying.Pelosi has praised Biden’s achievements while criticizing his former campaign. On Sunday she connected Harris, 59, to the accomplishments of Biden’s administration.“She knows the issues. She knows the strategy. She has gotten an enormous amount done working with Joe Biden,” Pelosi said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris acknowledged the enthusiasm but cautioned against getting caught up in it.“We can take nothing for granted in this critical moment,” she said, after thanking Pelosi for her friendship and support. “There is so much about the future of our country that has relied on leaders like Nancy Pelosi that have the grit, the determination, the brilliance to know what’s possible and to make it so,” Harris said.“The energy is undeniable,” Harris said of her campaign. “Yes, the crowds are large.”Her campaign hauled in $36m in the 24 hours following Walz’s selection as running mate and raised $310m in July, according to a campaign spokesperson.Harris, making her own case against Trump, said that if Trump got back into office, he would sign a national ban on abortion into law and warned that California would not be immune. Trump has sought to distance himself from Republican efforts to ban abortion, saying it should be up to individual states.Harris noted that some states’ laws don’t include exceptions for rape and incest, and said it’s “immoral”. “When this issue has been on the ballot, the American people have voted for freedom,” Harris said. More