Joe Biden

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump neck and neck in new poll – live

      by

      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the presidential race, according to a new Reuters and Ipsos poll.The poll, which was completed on Sunday, showed that the vice-president was supported by 43% of registered voters while the former president was supported by 42%.Last week, a Reuters and Ipsos poll showed that Harris was leading by 44% to Trump’s 42%.Reuters and Ipsos’s latest poll was conducted among 1,025 adults, including 876 registered voters, from 26 to 28 July.Kamala Harris will announce her vice-presidential pick as early as Monday before embarking on a multi-state battleground tour with her new running mate later in the week, two sources familiar with the planning said on Tuesday, Reuters reports.The high-stakes decision on who will run with the current vice-president as the wingman on her presidential ticket has taken center stage since she became the Democratic frontrunner for the 5 November election.Kamala Harris is expected to announce who will be her running mate in her campaign for president as early as Monday, the Reuters news wire is reporting this evening, as an exclusive, citing sources but as yet giving no more detail.This echoes what Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, said yesterday, that Harris would choose and announce “in the next six, seven days”, as we blogged earlier.But anything that echoes or strengthens that prediction is fascinating, so we’ll watch closely.Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in this election, after Joe Biden withdrew from his re-election campaign nine days ago and anointed Harris as his chosen successor at the top of the ticket.At this rate, she can expect to be officially voted in as the nominee at the party’s national convention next month, in Chicago.Kamala Harris will not attend the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference in Chicago, according to a source familiar with her schedule, citing logistical challenges getting to Chicago days after launching her campaign.The vice-president is heading to Houston this week to attend the funeral of the late Texas congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee as well as conducting a rapid search for her running mate.The source said Harris’s campaign offered to participate in a virtual fireside chat, or to host an in-person fireside chat with Harris at a later date, but the request was denied. The source said Harris’s team will continue to work toward a possible solution with the NABJ board.On the sidelines of the centrist WelcomeFest in Washington DC, Will Rollins, the Democratic nominee in a competitive California House district, said Republicans would have a “tricky” time trying to paint Kamala Harris as “dangerously liberal”.“Somebody who goes into law enforcement is not a leftwing ideologue,” said Rollins, a former prosecutor. Already he said she was having a positive impact on down-ballot races. His campaign alone raised a six-figure sum in the 48 hours after her ascent, he said.Rollins noted that when Harris came up in California politics, she was criticized by activists as too conservative, despite the image Republicans are portraying of her as far-left.“She in fact was branded as much too conservative for San Francisco. So I think as voters actually learned more about her actual record it’s going to work well for us,” he said.To underline the point, Rollins said he first met Harris when she was the state’s attorney general at an event with the then Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom he worked for at the time.“That kind of proves or disproves their attempt to paint her as an extremist. Here you have this Democratic statewide attorney general, who was working with a Republican governor in California at the time,” he said. “I actually think that’s one of the more underreported parts of her background, what she was able to do across party lines.”He also weighed in on who Harris might choose as her running mate. His choice was for fellow millennial, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who he called an “incredible communicator”.Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the presidential race, according to a new Reuters and Ipsos poll.The poll, which was completed on Sunday, showed that the vice-president was supported by 43% of registered voters while the former president was supported by 42%.Last week, a Reuters and Ipsos poll showed that Harris was leading by 44% to Trump’s 42%.Reuters and Ipsos’s latest poll was conducted among 1,025 adults, including 876 registered voters, from 26 to 28 July.The departure of Paul Dans as the leader of Project 2025 could indicate the project’s work is winding down or at least will not be taking such a public role in the lead-up to the November election, though the policy ideas outlined in its extensive conservative roadmap remain public.Dans, a Donald Trump loyalist, worked in personnel-related roles in the first Trump administration, including as chief of staff at the office of personnel management.Although Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage Foundation, claimed the change was always intended and followed a set timeline, the move underscores the unpopularity of Project 2025 for Trump, who has for weeks attempted to distance himself from it.Earlier this month, Trump claimed to “know nothing about Project 2025” and have “no idea who is behind it”. The disavowal from Trump came after Roberts said:
      We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be.
      At a recent rally in Michigan, Trump quipped about the project: “I don’t know what the hell it is” and “they’re seriously extreme.” But the project includes many former Trump administration officials and its aims often align with Trump’s policy ideas, albeit with far more detail.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said he has “total confidence” in Kamala Harris’s running mate choice.Asked whether he would support Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator, as Harris’s running mate, Schumer said:
      I have total confidence that Vice President Harris will choose a great vice-presidential candidate.
      Asked whether he was concerned about the prospect of a special election in Arizona, CNN reports that Schumer replied:
      I have complete faith in Vice President Harris’ choice.
      Not even a day after audio of JD Vance telling donors that Kamala Harris was a threat and a “sucker punch” was leaked to the Washington Post, Vance continued to make headlines on Tuesday, as a previously unseen video of Vance was published by the Harris 2024 campaign.In the video, Vance can be seen telling an interviewer that not having “kids in your life” makes “people more sociopathic” and makes the US a little bit “less mentally stable”.This comes as Vance continues to face backlash over comments he made in 2021 that recently resurfaced where he criticized the vice-president and other Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”.On Monday evening, Donald Trump sat down with Laura Ingraham of Fox News and defended Vance’s comments, telling the host that his vice-presidential candidate was simply trying to show how much he values family life.Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, made headlines again on Monday evening, after an audio recording of Vance speaking privately to donors on Saturday about Kamala Harris was leaked to the Washington Post.Vance reporedtly told donors that Harris was a threat and “a bit of a political sucker punch” to the Trump Vance campaign.Vance also reportedly said:
      The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.
      The comments contradict Donald Trump’s own statements on Harris since Biden withdrew from the race, as he has told reporters that he did not think switching out Biden for Harris “would make much difference”, adding: “I would define her in a very similar [way] that I define him.”Even Vance himself has told reporters that there was in effect no difference in running against Biden versus Harris.The Trump campaign has responded to the news of Project 2025 director Paul Dans’ departure. In a statement, it said:
      President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way.
      Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.
      The work of Project 2025 will continue despite its director, Paul Dans, stepping down from his role, Politico reported, citing a source.The report adds that the source said “the goal of Project 2025 was always to have their work done by the time of the Republican National Convention which ended in late July”.Here’s more on the news that Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, has stepped down from his role at the Heritage Foundation.Kevin Roberts, the president of the conservative thinktank, has confirmed that Dans is leaving his post.Dans “built the project from scratch and bravely led this endeavor over the past two years” but is now “moving up to the front where the fight remains”, Roberts said in a statement.
      Under Paul Dans’ leadership, Project 2025 has completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people.
      Dans informed staff at the thinktank this week of his decision to step down, the Wall Street Journal reported. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden calls for supreme court changes and decries Trump immunity ruling

      by

      Joe Biden, in a Monday address calling for sweeping reforms of the US supreme court, said the recent decision granting some immunity to presidents from criminal prosecution makes them a king before the law.Speaking in Austin at the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Biden said a president was no longer restrained by the law and that this was “a fundamentally flawed [and] dangerous principle”.The decision in Trump v United States, which gives broad immunity from later prosecution for a president exercising his authority in his official capacity, is one of several recent court rulings – from the gutting of the Voting Rights Act to casting down Roe v Wade as the precedent on abortion rights – that stands in stark contrast to the era 50 years ago in which civil rights legislation passed, Biden said.“The extreme opinions that the supreme court has handed down have undermined long established civil rights principles and protections,” Biden said, invoking the specter of Project 2025 as a looming threat.“They’re planning another onslaught attacking civil rights in America,” he said.“For example, Project 2025 calls for aggressively attacking diversity, equity and inclusion all across all aspects of American life. This extreme Maga movement even proposes to end birthright citizenship. This is how far they’ve come.”Biden said he is proposing a new constitutional amendment that explicitly applies the criminal code to presidents. The conduct of Donald Trump demands legislative changes, he said.“No other former president has asked for this kind of immunity and none should have been given it,” Biden said. “The president must be accountable to the law … We are a nation of laws, not kings and dictators.”A constitutional amendment requires two-thirds of both the US House and Senate to agree to it, followed by the government of three-quarters of the states.Biden also said that the scandals involving supreme court justices have caused public opinion to question the court’s fairness and independence and impeded its mission.He said: “The supreme court’s current code of conduct is weak and even more frighteningly voluntary.”Biden called for a binding code of conduct for the supreme court and term limits for justices, noting that the United States was the only western democracy that gives lifetime appointments to its high court.The term limiting proposal would create staggered 18-year terms for justices, beginning with the next justice to leave the court.The idea for term limits and a binding code of ethics for the court is not new but has perhaps become more urgent. Biden’s proposal closely resembles legislation first proposed by Georgia representative Hank Johnson, the ranking Democrat on the House judiciary committee and the likely banner carrier for legislative movement on this issue if he regains the committee chairmanship in a Democratic House.Johnson’s Term Act would apply term limits to existing supreme court justices, giving each president appointments in the first and third year of their administration.“Right now, three justices have already served in excess of 18 years,” Johnson said. “And so, those judges would be replaced over a six-year period.”Johnson described term limiting legislation as “important foundational, structural change that will prevent the court from becoming the kind of court that this one is; one that, because of tenure, has become unaccountable, arrogant, and destructive to our democracy.”Johnson also has proposed the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, legislation binding supreme court judges ethically.But what if the court rules that this legislation itself is unconstitutional?“There would be nothing that would stop them from ruling it unconstitutional,” Johnson said. “But if we get to that point, we could have we would say goodbye to the rule of law in this country.”Johnson likened the prospect to the reaction of President Andrew Jackson rejecting a supreme court ruling on Native American removals in Georgia nearly two centuries ago, with a federal government effectively ignoring the court. Ruling “something that’s clearly constitutional was unconstitutional would really be the end of our democracy, because there would no longer be respect for the rule of law”, he said. More

    • 250 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      US elections live: Biden takes the stage to talk about supreme court reform in speech marking Civil Rights Act anniversary

      by

      Joe Biden is expected to announce three proposed reforms to the US supreme court.In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, the president called for three primary changes to the high court.

      Eighteen-year term limits

      A binding code of ethics

      A new constitutional amendment that would virtually reverse a supreme court decision in July granting former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office
      Biden’s speech comes on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Hello, I’m Abené Clayton running the blog from Los Angeles. We’ll bring you the latest news and reaction.Biden just completed his speech and reaffirmed his proposed changes to the supreme court.One of his proposed changes is to reverse the recent immunity decision poses, which he says gives the president room to “violate our oath, flout our laws, and face no consequences”.On the issue of term limits, Biden argued that an 18-year cap would make the timing of nominations less “arbitrary” and limit the ability of the president to influence the makeup of the body.He is also seeking a new code of conduct that will replace the current one that is optional for justices. This new edict would require justices to disclose gifts, recuse themselves from cases that they or their spouses have an interest in, and “refrain from public political activity”, Biden said.Joe Biden is calling out supreme court decisions that he says have eroded civil rights.They include the 2013 Shelby County decision that gutted civil rights, the 2022 decision that overturned Roe v Wade, and most recently a decision that gives presidents broad immunity. These actions, Biden said, fly in the face of the notion that “there are no kings in America … No one is above the law.”“Extremism is undermining the public confidence in the court’s decisions,” Biden added.At the top of his speech Joe Biden emphasized his admiration for Lyndon B Johnson and reiterated the promises made by his signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.The president told the audience:
      In a great society no one should be left behind … It’s time for us to come to see that every American gets a decent break and a fair chance to make good.
      Joe Biden is now on the stage, he was introduced by Andrew Young, a former congressman and ambassador to the United Nations. Biden walked out to the song Glory, performed by John Legend and Common for the 2015 film Selma.The live stream is here.We are still waiting for Joe Biden to take the stage. Less than an hour ago, he arrived in Austin and was greeted by several local and state lawmakers.Currently, Mark Updegrove, the president and CEO of the Lyndon B Johnson Foundation, the group hosting the Civil Rights Act commemoration event, is giving a speech about the organization’s history and legacy.Watch the live stream here.As we await the arrival of Joe Biden on the stage, here are some of the images being sent to us on the newswires of the president arriving in Austin earlier today.He was met by Democratic state representatives Sheryl Cole and Donna Howard before heading to the LBJ library.There was music from the concert choir of Huston-Tillotson University, followed by the actor Bryan Cranston reading an excerpt from the 1964 Civil Rights Act.The event marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act is being held at the Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) library in Austin, Texas.It began with a short film showing previous presidents’ remarks on civil rights, including Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.Joe Biden is expected to announce three proposed reforms to the US supreme court.In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, the president called for three primary changes to the high court.

      Eighteen-year term limits

      A binding code of ethics

      A new constitutional amendment that would virtually reverse a supreme court decision in July granting former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office
      Biden’s speech comes on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Hello, I’m Abené Clayton running the blog from Los Angeles. We’ll bring you the latest news and reaction.A trial looming in a lawsuit challenging North Dakota’s abortion ban was canceled Monday as the judge in the case, state district judge Bruce Romanick, weighs whether to throw out the lawsuit. It was not immediately clear why the trial was canceled.The notice comes nearly a week after the state and plaintiffs, who include the formerly sole abortion clinic in North Dakota, made their pitches to the judge as to why he should dismiss the two-year-old case, or continue to trial, the Associated Press reports. The trial was due to begin late August.North Dakota outlaws abortion as a felony crime for people who perform the procedure, but with exceptions to prevent the mother’s death or a “serious health risk” to her, as well as for cases of rape or incest within the first six weeks.The plaintiffs, which include the Red River Women’s Clinic and doctors trained in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine, alleged the abortion ban violates the state constitution because it is unconstitutionally vague about its exceptions for doctors and that its health exception is too narrow. They wanted the trial to proceed.Kamala Harris highlighted endorsements from mayors of border towns in swing state Arizona today as she looks to blunt the impact of Republican criticism of her handling of illegal border crossings.Harris’s campaign for president said she was backed by the mayors of Bisbee, Nogales, Somerton, and San Luis, as well as by Yuma county supervisors Martin Porchas and Tony Reyes, the Associated Press reports.Republicans say Harris did not do enough as US vice-president to clamp down on illegal immigration.
      I trust her to meet the needs of border cities and towns without taking advantage of us for her own political gain, like her opponent,” the Somerton mayor, Gerardo Anaya, said in a statement. Somerton is a city of about 14,000 people in the state’s southwestern corner.
      As vice-president, Harris was tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders. The Biden administration wanted to develop and put in place a long-term strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries.Border arrests have fallen from record highs last December.Read my colleague Lauren Gambino’s piece on Harris’s record on immigration policy, here.The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, whose state borders Iowa, has also extended a welcome to Iowa residents who are in need of reproductive healthcare, as Iowa’s strict six-week abortion ban took effect on Monday.Walz, in a post to X, wrote:
      In Minnesota, we take care of our neighbors. It’s just what we do. As our neighbors in Iowa are stripped of their fundamental rights, my message is clear: Your reproductive freedom will remain protected in Minnesota.
      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, have announced the seven Republicans and six Democrats who will sit on the taskforce to investigate the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.The Republican chair of the panel will be the congressman Mike Kelly, who represents the Pennsylvania town of Butler where the shooting took place.The Democratic ranking member will be the Colorado congressman Jason Crow, who sits on the House intelligence and foreign affairs committee.Johnson, in a statement posted to X, said he and Jeffries “have the utmost confidence in this group of steady, highly qualified, and capable Members of Congress”.The Iowa ban, which takes effect today, permits abortions past six weeks in cases of rape or incest, or in medical emergencies.Fourteen other states, including much of the midwest, enacted near-total bans on abortion since the US supreme court overturned Roe.Three other states – Georgia, South Carolina and Florida – have banned abortion past about six weeks of pregnancy.Roe’s demise led to surge in support for abortion rights, even in red states. Sixty-one per cent of Iowans, including 70% of women, say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll found last year.A six-week abortion ban went into effect in Iowa on Monday, cutting off access to the procedure before many women know they are pregnant.The Republican-dominated Iowa state legislature passed the ban last year, but a lengthy court battle initially stopped it from taking effect. Last month, the Iowa supreme court ruled that the ban could be enforced, leading a lower-court judge to order the ban to take effect at 8am local time.Leah Vanden Bosch, development and outreach director of the Iowa Abortion Access Fund, said in a statement:
      The upholding of this abortion ban in Iowa is an absolute devastation and violation of human rights, depriving Iowans of their bodily autonomy. We know a ban will not stop the need for abortions.
      Up until Sunday, abortion had been legal in Iowa up to roughly 22 weeks of pregnancy. Now, abortion clinics in the state have indicated that they will continue offering the procedure to the legal limit.The closest options for Iowans who want abortions after six weeks of pregnancy will probably be Minnesota and Illinois, Democratic-run states that border Iowa and that have become abortion havens since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022.The Iowa ban permits abortions past six weeks in cases of rape or incest, or in medical emergencies.Two Democratic state governors who are being considered by Kamala Harris’s campaign as her potential running mate, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and JB Pritzker of Illinois, have criticized the strict six-week abortion ban that went into effect in Iowa today.Shapiro directly blamed Donald Trump for the Iowa law, and urged voters not to re-elect the Republican former president.Pritzker, whose state borders Iowa, welcomed Iowa residents to visit Illinois if the new law blocks their access to “whatever care they need”. He added:
      Please know – as you work to maneuver around this dangerous and unjust law – we are here for you.
      Questions continued to mount about the political transformation of Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, after the release of emails from a former friend in which Vance called Trump a “morally reprehensible human being” and said: “I hate the police.”The messages between Vance and Sofia Nelson, who sent them to the New York Times, were largely dated between 2014 and 2017. In one, Vance sent Nelson a section of Hillbilly Elegy, his bestseller about his Appalachian boyhood. Vance wrote:
      Here’s an excerpt from my book. I send this to you not just to brag, but because I’m sure if you read it you’ll notice reference to ‘an extremely progressive lesbian’. I recognise now that this may not accurately reflect how you think of yourself, and for that I am really sorry. I hope you’re not offended, but if you are, I’m sorry! Love you, JD.
      Read the full story here: JD Vance calls Trump ‘morally reprehensible’ in resurfaced emails More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Former chief of staff says Democrats’ efforts to push out Biden were ‘nasty’

      by

      Senior Democrats’ successful efforts to push Joe Biden out of the presidential race were “unfortunate, nasty and public” and did the president a “disservice”, Biden’s former White House chief of staff said – even as the new nominee, Kamala Harris, continued to fundraise strongly, campaign vigorously and show signs of catching Donald Trump in polling.“I was disappointed that people in the party called for [Biden] to leave the race, and I thought they got out of control,” Ron Klain said.“I thought it was unfortunate, nasty and public, and shouldn’t have been … I thought they were doing him a disservice, but I think he handled it incredibly graciously and came up with a plan that is going to work for us in 2024.”The podcast host Kara Swisher released her conversation with Klain on Monday, a little over a week after Biden made history by saying he would relinquish power.Now 81, Biden was long subject to doubts about his fitness for office, but calls to quit accelerated after the first presidential debate in late June, during which Biden appeared frail and confused and failed to check Trump’s lies.Klain left the White House last year but helped Biden prepare to debate.He said: “I thought the debate was an opportunity for the president to put some of these questions [about his age and fitness] to rest, but obviously [it] did not go well that night and that is what it is. And so we took a gamble and the gamble didn’t work.“I thought it was a reasonable chance to take. I thought the president, as he showed in the days after the debate, was fully capable of making his case forcefully on the stump, fully capable of answering unscripted questions, as he did at his press conference [during a Nato summit in Washington]. I thought we would see that on debate night and we just didn’t, of course.”Klain said Biden had been “very kind” and “took responsibility in our conversations and said he’d had a bad night, and told me not to feel bad about it. I think … he just was off.”Few Democrats agreed. Amid sympathy for Trump after an assassination attempt, and with polling showing Biden in trouble in key states, calls for the president to stand aside surged, supported by party grandees including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, who Biden served as vice-president.Eventually, Klain said, Biden “made a decision that he couldn’t keep the party unified” but also decided “to point the direction forward, and he pointed very clearly towards Vice-President Harris.“And so I think that was a wise decision, and I think he’s executed it extremely well. You see the vice-president emerging in very short order as the consensus nominee of our party with strong backing … I think that’s great.“… So I don’t really love how we got here, but I think we’re in a good place. We’re going to move forward. We’re going to win this year.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden calls for supreme court reforms including 18-year justice term limits

      by

      Joe Biden has called for a series of reforms to the US supreme court, including the introduction of term limits for justices and a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.In an op-ed published on Monday morning, the president said justices should be limited to a maximum of 18 years’ service on the court rather than the current lifetime appointment, and also said ethics rules should be strengthened to regulate justices’ behavior.The call for reform comes after the supreme court ruled in early July that former presidents have some degree of immunity from prosecution, a decision that served as a major victory for Donald Trump amid his legal travails.“This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Biden wrote.“I served as a US senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today.“I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers. What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”Biden called for a “no one is above the law” amendment to the constitution, which would make clear that no president is entitled to immunity from prosecution by virtue of having served in the White House. Biden also said justices’ terms should be limited to 18 years, under a system where a new justice would be appointed to the supreme court by the serving president every two years.The president also called for stricter, enforceable rules on conduct which would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial interest.Last week Justice Elena Kagan called for the court to strengthen the ethics code it introduced in 2023 by adding a way to enforce it. That code was introduced after a spate of scandals involving rightwing justices on the court: Clarence Thomas was found to have accepted vacations and travel from a Republican mega-donor, while Samuel Alito flew on a private jet owned by an influential billionaire on the way to a fishing trip.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLegislation would be required to impose term limits and an ethics code on the Supreme Court, but it is unlikely to pass the current divided Congress.The constitutional amendment on presidential immunity would be even more difficult to enact, requiring two-thirds support from both chambers of Congress or a convention called by two-thirds of the states, and then ratification by 38 of the 50 state legislatures.Reuters contributed to this report More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Good for Joe’: Scranton residents back Biden’s decision to quit race

      by

      The Central Scranton Expressway, the road which leads into Scranton from the I-81 highway, was renamed in 2021 as the President Joseph R Biden Jr Expressway.The road drops down into the center of Scranton, the Pennsylvania city where the president was born, where it meets up with Biden Street – renamed in the same 2021 city council vote.There is no indication yet that Scranton, a former coal and manufacturing hub home to about 80,000 people, intends to change its name to Bidenton, but the message here is clear: this is Joe Biden country.“​​Let me start off with: we’re very proud of Joe Biden. We love Joe Biden. The fact that he’s a local guy, and all that,” said James Ferguson, 81.Ferguson was sitting with his brother, John Ferguson, 77, on a bench on Biden Street on Thursday afternoon. It was a blow for both when the president, who moved to Delaware from Scranton aged seven but who speaks often of his Scranton upbringing, decided to drop out of the race in mid-July, but the fondness for Biden remains.“I think Joe Biden showed the character that he is. He is a very good man, and he put the country first. It’s not how good he is, or whether he is smart or not. It was perception. The perception was bad for Joe, and he knew it and he dropped out. Good for Joe,” the elder Ferguson said.But with Trump leading Biden in the polls and posing an existential threat to the US, there is an acceptance that Biden had to go.“We can’t afford to lose this election, I think. So yeah, we were disappointed. We voted for him, we would vote for him again. But I think this is better for the party, better for the country,” John Ferguson said.“He’s a realist. I think he finally was convinced that he couldn’t take the risk. We’ve got to stop Trump from winning. We can’t let Trump get in. That is a terrible man. He’s an insult to the human race, that man.”Biden dropped out on Sunday, bringing to an end a painful, weeks-long pressure campaign that began with a dreadful debate performance and saw an ever-increasing number of Democratic politicians call for him to resign.Behind the scenes senior party figures, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, had also made the case to Biden that he couldn’t win, despite the president comfortably – albeit in the face of very little opposition – clinching the Democratic primary earlier this year.“His age was a concern for a lot of voters and he was slipping in the polls. And I was very worried about that. So I mean, I’m thankful of all he’s done, I think he’s done good work, and I think he did the honorable thing that really should be valued,” said Angela Miller, a civil engineer.“I never wanted him to run again. He never said he was going to, do you know what I mean? From the beginning he said he was going to be a transitional president. I felt like he kind of went back on that.”Biden narrowly won Pennsylvania in 2020, defeating Trump by 80,000 votes. He comfortably won Lackawanna county, the north-east Pennsylvania district where Scranton is based, but not everyone in the city is an admirer.View image in fullscreen“He wasn’t really on the ball I don’t think. It was kind of like having the senile grandpa in the White House office,” said Phil Fleming, 61, as he watching his friend unpack a guitar at a bandshell in downtown Scranton.Fleming had the opposite geographic journey to Biden. He grew up in Delaware, where Biden moved with his family aged 10, and then moved to the Scranton area later in life. But Fleming has no particular affection for the president.“I always said Joe would do for the country what he did for Delaware: nothing,” he said.Biden endorsed Kamala Harris for president within minutes of pulling out of the race on Sunday. Harris has since all but secured the Democratic nomination, and if she wins in November she would become the country’s first woman president.“I’m excited about it. I think it would be awesome to have a female run the country, to see what she could bring and try to unite the country a little bit more,” said Kelly, 34.Kelly, who asked not to use her last name, was walking her dog through the Green Ridge area of Scranton, where Biden’s three-storey childhood home is now marked by a small plaque.“It’s definitely a cool thing to say that the President of the United States grew up in your neighborhood, you can’t really say that too often. So it’s a little fun fact that we have here,” she said.Few cities can claim to have a president on their books – Quincy, in Massachusetts, can lay claim to two: father and son duo John Adams and John Quincy Adams. For Scranton, Biden may no longer be in the race, but he will remain a presence.“I think he really put all his heart and soul into this country, and I just feel like maybe now it’s time to step out, and let the next generation come in and serve the same way he did,” Kelly said. More

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans want to grill Harris for her immigration record – but what is it?

      by

      This week, the House passed a Republican-led resolution condemning Kamala Harris for her role in the Biden administration’s handling of immigration, part of a ramped-up effort to portray the presumptive Democratic nominee as dangerously lax on border security.Following Joe Biden’s decision to bow out of the presidential race, Donald Trump has also unleashed a barrage of fresh attacks on the US vice-president’s record on immigration, a politically volatile issue expected to play a central role in the November presidential election.“She was the border czar, but she never went to the border,” Trump said, repeating two falsehoods in a single attack line during a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday.As vice-president, Harris was handed a daunting mission at the onset of her term: to address the “root causes” of migration from the northern-triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. But at no point was she put in charge of border policy. That is the responsibility of the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, who was with Harris when she visited the border in June 2021, three months after she was given the assignment.Instead, Harris’s mandate, as laid out by the president, was to meet with government officials and private-sector partners to tackle enduring problems in the region, such as poverty, violence and a lack of economic opportunity, that drive people to migrate from their home countries to the United States, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a senior adviser of immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.“It was a diplomatic and development focus,” she said, “not a border focus.”The distinction has not stopped Republicans from misleadingly branding Harris as the nation’s “border czar” and blaming her for the sharp upticks in migration under the Biden administration. In a statement on Thursday, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, accused the vice-president of having done “nothing to address the worsening crisis at the border”.“The result of her inaction has been record high illegal crossings, overwhelmed communities and an evisceration of the rule of law,” he said.Republicans are pouring tens of millions of dollars into ads hammering that connection while highlighting past comments in which Harris had expressed an openness to certain progressive-leaning proposals, such as reimagining Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and decriminalizing border crossings.Democrats’ tolerance for such immigration policies, however, has receded greatly since then, as migration levels climbed and it became a top issue for voters. For the first time in decades, a majority of Americans say there should be less immigration, according to a Gallup survey.As encounters at the border reached record levels last year, Harris endorsed a bipartisan border security package opposed by many immigration rights advocates that would have dramatically limited the number of people allowed to claim asylum at the US-Mexico border while bolstering funding for asylum and border patrol officials and for combatting fentanyl smuggling. But congressional Republicans abandoned the proposal after Trump urged them not to hand Biden an election-year political victory.With Congress refusing to act, Biden issued an executive order in June that temporarily suspended asylum between ports of entry.While the number of border crossings between legal ports of entry had already fallen from a record high of 250,000 in December, due in part to increased enforcement by Mexico, it plunged further in the months since Biden’s clampdown took effect.In June, border patrol made 83,536 arrests, the lowest tally since Biden took office in January 2021.Early on in her career, as the district attorney of San Francisco, Harris quickly established herself as a vocal supporter of immigrant rights, publicly denouncing legislation that would have criminalized providing assistance to undocumented immigrants.But in 2008, she broke with immigrant rights advocates and supported a policy proposed by then mayor Gavin Newsom to notify federal immigration authorities if an undocumented juvenile was arrested in suspicion of a felony, regardless of whether they were actually convicted of a crime, according to the Sacramento Bee. (Later, as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, Harris’s campaign told CNN that the policy “could have been applied more fairly”.)As California’s attorney general, Harris also worked to ensure state agencies assisted undocumented immigrants applying for U visas, a form of immigration relief designated for victims of certain crimes.In the Senate, after Harris was elected in 2016, she became a leading advocate for Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, and an outspoken critic of Trump-era border policies. In her maiden speech as a US senator, Harris assailed Trump’s policies targeting immigrants. “I know what a crime looks like, and I will tell you: an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal,” she said, a refrain Republicans have resurfaced to use against her.Many immigration advocates recall her sharp questioning of Trump officials during a senate hearing on the administration’s policy of separating children from their parents as a form of immigration deterrence.As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris unveiled a plan to shield millions of undocumented people from deportation through the use of deferred actions programs and to make it easier for Dreamers to apply for green cards. The Biden administration recently announced a series of similar executive moves.But as the administration’s chief liaison to the three northern-triangle countries, progress can be hard to measure, analysts say.“She was given something that is not a quick fix and it’s arguable whether or not you can make substantial change in only one presidential term,” said Cardinal Brown, citing the endemic nature of some of the issues.Harris’s efforts to improve economic opportunity in the region have generated $5.2bn in private-sector commitments since May 2021, the White House said. Apprehensions of people from those countries crossing the US-Mexico border fell considerably between the 2021 and 2023 fiscal years, even as migration from across the hemisphere surged.At the same time, the narrow strategy, focusing solely on Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, was not reactive to the “paradigm shift” taking place at the southern border, Cardinal Brown said. Now people are fleeing crises all over the world, with a growing number of arrivals coming from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti.Harris also struggled to overcome early stumbles. During her first trip to Guatemala, the vice-president delivered a speech in which she memorably told people considering migrating north: “Do not come. Do not come.” The statement, which was instantly turned into a meme, was widely panned by immigration advocates who saw it as dismissive of the harsh conditions that cause people to flee – the very issues she was tasked with improving.While in Guatemala, Harris sat for an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, who pressed her on why she hadn’t yet visited the US-Mexico border.“I’ve never been to Europe,” a frustrated Harris responded. “I don’t understand the point you’re making.”Republicans again seized on the exchange to accuse her of ignoring an issue that is front-of-mind for many Americans. Harris visited the border shortly after, but her approval ratings sank and didn’t recover.Yet despite conservatives’ yearslong effort to tie the vice-president to the Biden administration’s challenges at the border, new public opinion research found that immigration was not one of the top issues voters associated with Harris – at least not yet.“Republicans are really enthusiastically trying to tie her to that, but the voters don’t,” said Evan Roth Smith, lead pollster for the Democratic research group Blueprint, which conducted the survey.While immigration was a clear potential vulnerability for Harris, as it is for most Democratic candidates, Roth Smith said she came to the issue with considerably less baggage than Biden had.“We’re not at some catastrophic level of doubt around her record on immigration,” he said. “Trump just has a trust advantage because he hasn’t shut up about immigration for eight years.”Many immigration advocates, meanwhile, see hope in Harris, the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, who was elected to public office in a border state with a large undocumented population.Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, called Harris a “champion for Dreamers” and other undocumented people living in the United States.Cárdenas was confident Harris will draw a sharp contrast with Trump, who has pledged to “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history”, removing “millions of illegal migrants”. But she urged the vice-president to go further by articulating a vision to expand legal pathways to citizenship – policies Harris has advocated for throughout her political career.“Falling back into an enforcement-only focus would actually be detrimental to her and would impact people that are enthusiastic about her now,” Cárdenas said, adding: “I don’t think she can avoid this issue. She’s going to have to outline it, and my hope is that because she knows it well that she’s going to be a forceful voice and advocate for positive change.” More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Kamala Harris makes history as whirlwind week upends US election

      by

      The telephone line was a little fuzzy, and the voice on the end gravelly from several days of Covid isolation. Yet the poignancy of the message, and the moment itself, could not have been clearer: “I’m watching you, kid. I love you,” the speaker said.Joe Biden’s warmhearted call to his vice-president, Kamala Harris, at the Democratic party’s campaign headquarters in Delaware on Monday marked a generational shift in US politics, a symbolic passing of the torch from parent to progeny.In terms of the 2024 presidential election race it was also a defining moment. Harris, a former prosecutor, state attorney general, California senator, and for three and a half years the 81-year-old Biden’s White House understudy, was appearing for the first time as her party’s preferred new candidate, less than 24 hours after her boss’s stunning announcement that he would not seek a second term of office sent a seismic shock across the country.There followed what by any metric could be called a whirlwind week on the campaign trail in an extraordinary month in American history already notable for the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, the Republican party’s candidate for the 5 November election.By Wednesday, Harris was addressing an historically Black sorority in Indianapolis as the Democratic presumptive nominee, having secured the support of enough delegates at the party’s national convention in Chicago next month to clinch the nomination.It was the same day as Biden gave an emotional, nationally televised address from the White House explaining his decision to step aside “in defense of democracy”.“I revere this office, but I love my country more,” he said, urging the country to stand behind Harris.One by one, other heavyweight Democratic figures had stepped up to endorse her, culminating on Friday with the outsized backing of Barack Obama. The former speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, all 23 of the party’s state governors, and elected officials from the most junior Congress members to Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, respectively the House minority leader and Senate majority leader, also gave their approval.“We are not playing around,” Harris told supporters at the sorority gathering in Indiana on Wednesday.View image in fullscreen“There is so much at stake in this moment. Our nation, as it always has, is counting on you to energize, to organize, and to mobilize; to register folks to vote, to get them to the polls; and to continue to fight for the future our nation and her people deserve.“We know when we organize, mountains move. When we mobilize, nations change. And when we vote, we make history.”It was a rousing speech from a politician who only three days previously was still in a supporting role, despite weeks of swirling speculation about Biden’s future following his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June.But things moved swiftly once the president’s decision to step aside was announced on Sunday afternoon. The Biden campaign apparatus, and election war chest of almost $100m (£77.6m), became the property of a new entity called Harris for President (Republicans have vowed to challenge the funds transfer in court).And staff hastily drew up a new travel schedule for the vice-president, which saw her crisscrossing the country, including the Wilmington, Delaware, appearance on Monday, at which she acknowledged the “rollercoaster” of the previous 24 hours.On Tuesday, she was rallying in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with the campaign message: “We’re not going back” to the “chaos” of the Trump years.View image in fullscreenOn Wednesday, to Black women in Indianapolis, Indiana, she said: “We face a choice between two different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, the other focused on the past.”On Thursday, she told teachers in Houston, Texas: “In our vision, we see a place where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead.”Also on Thursday came her first meeting with a foreign leader – Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – in her own right as a presidential candidate, not in a joint summit as vice-president. In a White House statement issued in her name, not Biden’s, Harris condemned violence at Wednesday’s anti-Netanyahu protest in Washington DC and the burning of the US flag.In forceful public remarks following the meeting , she also went further than Biden ever had to criticize civilian suffering in Gaza. “I will not be silent,” she said.“Israel has a right to defend itself … [but] we cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering.”Activities behind the scenes, meanwhile, progressed every bit as quickly as Harris’s front-of-house appearances.Fundraising operations cranked up, pulling in an all-time record $81m for any 24-hour period in presidential campaign history, a windfall for the newly branded Harris Victory Fund that surpassed $130m, mostly from small or first-time donors, by Thursday night.Seizing on enthusiasm from younger voters that polling found was conspicuously absent for Biden, or the 78-year-old Trump, Harris’s team also released to social media its first campaign video. Beyoncé’s 2016 hit Freedom, the unofficial anthem of Harris for President, provided the soundtrack for a message countering what it says was Trump’s “chaos, fear and hate” vision for the country.View image in fullscreenHarris has enormous appeal with generation Z, noted by backing from numerous youth organizations, including March for Our Lives, the student activist group formed in the aftermath of the 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.There could have been no better illustration than the declaration on X/Twitter by the British singer Charli xcx that “kamala IS brat”. Viewed by more than 53 million people, the simple message encapsulating a pop culture lifestyle delighted the younger generation and confounded their elders in equal measure. “You just got to go listen to that Charli xcx album and then you’ll understand it,” Florida’s Maxwell Frost, the first gen Z member of Congress, told CNN.“Whether it’s coconut trees or talking about brat or whatever, the message is getting across to tens of millions of young people across the entire country, and across the entire world, and that’s really inspiring.”Wrongfooted by Biden’s abrupt exit, and alarmed by polls showing Harris gaining ground or even surpassing Trump in popularity, the former president’s campaign scrambled to find attack lines for their new opponent.At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday, Trump tested insults including calling Harris a “radical left lunatic” and “the most incompetent and far-left vice-president in American history”. Republican party acolytes have also been busy with racist attacks, accusing Harris, who has Black and Asian heritage, of being “a DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] hire” or “unqualified” for the presidency.View image in fullscreenExperts warn to expect an all-out attack of misogyny and racism on Harris as the election approaches.This week, however, while Harris’s fledgling campaign took its first steps, it was sharpening its own knives. Framing the upcoming campaign as “the prosecutor versus the felon”, it took swipes at Trump’s 34 felony convictions on fraud charges, and in a searing missive on Thursday mocked the former president’s rambling anti-Harris diatribe on a rightwing news channel by issuing a “statement on a 78-year-old criminal’s Fox News appearance”. The gloves are off.Now, with the first full, buoyant week of Harris’s presidential challenge about to be in the history books, the question is whether the initial enthusiasm and momentum can be maintained through the gruelling 101 days left until the election.Harris and her team are confident it can. Contradicting the statement by the liberal British politician Joseph Chamberlain more than a century ago that “in politics, there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight”, they have their sights set not only on November’s election, but the eight years beyond it. More