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      Biden hopes abortion will keep him in the White House. But has he done enough to protect rights?

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      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has made a big bet that outrage over abortion will keep the president in the White House come November.Over the last several days, the Biden administration has unleashed a blitz of ads and events to spotlight the devastation wrought by the overturning of Roe v Wade. Biden met with a reproductive health task force, while his vice-president, Kamala Harris – who he has entrusted to lead this effort – embarked on a national tour to talk about abortion. They even devoted their first joint campaign stop of 2024 to the issue. From the podium, Biden promised to sign any bill that would codify Roe’s protections into law and to fight back efforts by Congress to diminish abortion access.“Donald Trump and Maga Republicans, including the speaker of the House, are hellbent on going even further,” Biden said, a reference to the hard-right Republican speaker, Mike Johnson. “As long as I have power of the presidency, if Congress were to pass a national abortion ban, I would veto it.”Congress is unlikely to ban or protect abortion anytime soon. Not only is Congress largely frozen – it passed just 27 bills last year – but both political parties seem wary of tackling national legislation around a third-rail topic like abortion.Now that Roe is gone, the question of if and how to regulate abortion access is largely up to state governments to answer. But the executive branch of the US government still maintains several powers to protect abortion access – and undermine it.What has Biden done to protect abortion access?The Biden administration’s ability to enforce remaining federal laws that touch on abortion is perhaps its greatest weapon in the fight over the procedure. Shortly after Roe’s demise, the Biden administration announced that it believed a 1986 federal law that protects people’s access to emergency care at hospitals also applies to emergency abortions. The administration later sued Idaho, arguing that the state’s near-total abortion ban flew in the face of that law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala).That case has now made its way to the US supreme court. The supreme court justices are also set to hear arguments in a case involving the availability of a major abortion pill – a case in which the Biden administration is, once again, arguing in favor of abortion access.“Being a check on the supreme court is pretty significant,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California Davis school of law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. The US supreme court is dominated 6-3 by conservatives. “If the supreme court says that you can or should enforce rules against abortion providers, I don’t think a Biden administration is going to do that.”Since Roe fell, anti-abortion activists have also begun to argue that the federal government could enforce a de facto national abortion ban through the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-obscenity law that bans the mailing of abortion-related materials.However, the Biden administration has issued guidance declaring that they do not believe the Comstock Act can or should be used to enforce a national abortion ban. According to the Biden administration, as long as someone does not intend to break the law when they mail abortion-related materials, they are not violating the Comstock Act.What more could Biden be doing?The answer depends on who you ask. Abortion rights advocates have long been dissatisfied with Biden’s approach to the procedure; Biden has supported Roe’s protections but also said that, as a Catholic, he is personally not “big on abortion”. During his campaign and the first several months of his presidency, he seemed wary of even saying the word “abortion”, leading reproductive justice advocates to launch a website devoted to answering the question “Did Biden Say Abortion Yet?” (He has now said it multiple times.)The Biden administration has pursued several cases under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or Face Act, a federal law that penalizes people for threatening, obstructing, or injuring someone who is trying to access a reproductive health clinic, or for vandalizing a clinic. But abortion providers have long complained that the law is not being enforced enough.Abortion rights supporters have also proposed a litany of other, experimental ways to protect abortion access, such as by leasing federal land to abortion providers or advocating for the repeal of the Comstock Act. Biden could also loosen regulations around abortion pills, although Ziegler cautioned that such actions run the risk of politicizing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to a dangerous degree. Abortion rights advocates have also said that the Biden administration could take steps to lessen the impact of the Helms Amendment, a decades-old law that has been used to block the use of federal funding to pay for abortions. Advocates have accused Biden of inappropriately over-enforcing the Helms Amendment, to the point that the US Agency for International Development in 2021 cancelled a conference session on the provision of safe telemedicine abortion.However, in Ziegler’s view, the threat of the supreme court tamps down on Biden’s ability to innovate. Rather than pursuing novel, national ways to protect abortion access and run the risk of litigation, the administration may want to stay out of federal court entirely.“I think Biden has been really cautious,” Ziegler said. “But I do also think that had he not been as cautious, it could have ended up the same or worse anyway, just because the supreme court is so conservative.”What could Donald Trump do to further restrict abortion?If Trump wins the presidency in November 2024, he may reverse course on many of the Biden administration’s decisions around how and if to enforce federal abortion law. He could try to implement the Comstock Act to ban abortion in some form, including in states that haven’t passed bans. He could also decrease Face Act prosecutions, or tighten regulations on mifepristone.Unlike Biden, he likely wouldn’t worry about politicizing the FDA, Ziegler said. “There’s a lot of asymmetry that hurts Democrats, but also Democrats do value some of these institutional separations that Republicans don’t.”Trump’s first four years in the White House also offer a blueprint for how he may further dismantle access to both abortion and contraception if he returns to power.Since the 1980s, whenever a Republican becomes president, he has implemented what is known as “the Mexico City policy” or the “global gag rule”, as abortion rights supporters call it. This policy typically blocks foreign NGOs that receive US family planning funding from providing abortion-related services or even advocating for increased access to the procedure. (Historically, whenever a Democrat replaces a Republican as president, he has rescinded the Mexico City policy.)Trump, however, turbocharged the Mexico City policy during his presidency. Rather than stripping funding only from family planning assistance, in 2017 his administration expanded it to apply to all US global health assistance. Rather than impacting $600m worth of funding, by 2018 it impacted $12bn, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.As president, Trump also implemented a “domestic gag rule”, which blocked members of Title X, the nation’s largest family planning program, from even referring people for abortions. Rather than comply with this rule, a quarter of Title X-funded health centers simply left the program. Six states were left with zero Title X providers, who offer low-cost access to family planning services like birth control.If Trump wins in 2024, he will likely reinstate this rule, said Robin Summers, vice-president and senior counsel for the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. And that’s just the beginning of Summers thinks he might do.“I think it only gets worse,” Summers said.Trump could, Summers suggested, legally label certain forms of hormonal birth control – such as IUDS – as abortifacients, suggesting that they cause abortions. (Medical experts widely believe that they do not.) The US supreme court has previously supported a similar move. In a 2014 decision, issued when the court’s makeup was far less conservative, the justices ruled that a corporation did not have to cover certain forms of birth control for employees because the corporation’s religious owners believed them to be abortifacients.“The bottom line here is that advocates sounded the alarm for years that Roe was at significant risk of being overturned. And we were dismissed by many as catastrophizing the whole thing,” Summers said. “And look where we are.” More

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      Kamala Harris kicks off abortion rights tour on 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade

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      Kamala Harris kicked off her much-vaunted abortion rights nationwide tour in Wisconsin on Monday as Joe Biden convened a meeting of his taskforce on reproductive healthcare access, in a tag-team effort to double down on what is likely to be a key campaign issue this year.The vice-president chose the 51st anniversary of the Roe v Wade ruling to begin the Reproductive Freedoms Tour, announced in December, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, which the president won in the 2020 presidential election by just over 20,000 votes.Roe v Wade, the supreme court decision that enshrined the federal right to abortion, was overturned in June 2022 after then president Donald Trump nominated three conservative justices to the nation’s highest court.The decision was a major blow to supporters of reproductive rights, but since the ruling seven states – including the conservative strongholds of Kentucky, Kansas and Montana – have held ballot referendums where voters chose to protect abortion rights. The issue also appeared to hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.Wisconsin is a notable starting point for Harris’s reproductive freedoms tour. Last year, abortion rights propelled a Democratic victory in a critical election for the state supreme court.In the first of many similar scheduled events, Harris is expected to announce support for increased access to abortion and contraceptives through the new emergency care law, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala).She will also denounce Trump, the runaway frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, for his hand in overturning the federally protected right to abortion.“Proud that women across our nation are suffering?” Harris will say, according to excerpts from her speech obtained by the Associated Press. “Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? That doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for patients? That young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?”The following day, Harris will be joined by Biden for another abortion-focused event, along with their spouses, Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff.Biden’s re-election campaign also rolled out a new campaign ad Sunday, titled Forced, which aims to tie Donald Trump directly to the abortion issue.In Dobbs v Jackson, the 2022 supreme court case that overturned Roe, a Mississippi law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with certain medical exceptions was upheld, negating the constitutional right to abortion and overruling the precedent set by Roe more than half a century ago.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement on the 51st anniversary of Roe V Wade, Biden said: “Fifty-one years ago today, the Supreme Court recognized a woman’s constitutional right to make deeply personal decisions with her doctor – free from the interference of politicians. Then, a year and a half ago, the Court made the extreme decision to overturn Roe and take away a constitutional right.“As a result, tens of millions of women now live in states with extreme and dangerous abortion bans. Because of Republican elected officials, women’s health and lives are at risk.”When announcing her tour in December, Harris said: “Extremists across our country continue to wage a full-on attack against hard-won, hard-fought freedoms as they push their radical policies – from banning abortion in all 50 states and criminalizing doctors, to forcing women to travel out of state in order to get the care they need.“I will continue to fight for our fundamental freedoms while bringing together those throughout America who agree that every woman should have the right to make decisions about her own body – not the government.” More

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      Kamala Harris warns US freedom is under ‘profound threat’ in MLK Jr day speech

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      Kamala Harris issued a plea to Black voters on Martin Luther King Jr Day to join with Democrats to win the 2024 election and to stave off what she said were threats to US democracy posed by Republicans who look set to overwhelmingly back Donald Trump at their first state nomination contest today in Iowa.The US vice-president, the headliner at the NAACP’s annual King Day at the Dome event in Columbia, South Carolina, said that freedom in the country is under “profound threat”, and cited the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, long lines for voting, Republican-backed book bans and the prevalence of gun violence.“Freedom is never truly won. You earn it and win it in every generation,” she said, quoting King’s late widow, Coretta Scott King, and urging voters to “roll up our sleeves”. “We were born for a time such as this,” she said.Protesters were awaiting Harris at the venue, some waving Palestinian flags – the latest sign of dissent from typically Democratic-leaning voters that the Biden administration’s staunch backing of Israel in its attack on Gaza is angering some core supporters.South Carolina, home to a hugely influential Black voting bloc in the Democratic presidential primary, will hold its contest on 3 February. But there are signs that economic anxiety and policy disappointments are also stressing Black support: an Economist/YouGov survey recently found that only 67% of Black US adults had a favorable view of Biden.In her address, Harris said: “Today we are witnessing a full on attack on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms.” Speaking in the state once governed by Nikki Haley, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, she passed comment on Haley’s recent gaffe when she failed to cite slavery as a cause of the civil war.“They even tried to erase, overlook and rewrite the ugly parts of our past,” Harris said, hours after the Biden-Harris re-election campaign said it had raised almost $100m in the last quarter of 2023 for election spending.Earlier Monday, the Guardian quoted a former top aide to Harris during her 2020 nomination campaign, from The Truce, a soon-to-be published critique of her political skills.“A lot of us, at least folks that I was friends with on the campaign, all realised that: ‘Yeah, this person should not be president of the United States”, the aide remarked to authors Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen, adding that her nomination campaign was “rotten from the start”.The authors wrote that the problems Harris experienced with staff morale in 2020 had continued throughout her time as vice-president.“Harris saw heavy staff turnover, with aides describing a toxic climate riven with factionalism and mismanagement. One source who worked for the vice-president declined to go on record or even discuss matters anonymously, due to the heated atmosphere around the office,” the authors wrote. “It was, they said: ‘Game of Thrones’.”Biden meanwhile marked the holiday by volunteering for Philabundance, a hunger relief group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The US president loaded packages with fresh fruit and milk on to a conveyer belt in a warehouse.In a radio interview with Black civil rights advocate the Rev Al Sharpton on SiriusXM, Biden said Trump was a motivating factor in his decision to seek re-election, saying: “Trump is just saying things that are off the wall.”Reuters contributed reporting More

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      ‘This person should not be president’: Kamala Harris takes hits in book on Biden

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      Considering Kamala Harris’s fitness to take over from Joe Biden should the need arise, a top aide to the former California senator’s 2020 campaign said: “This person should not be president of the United States.”The withering assessment, given after Harris was picked for vice-president in 2020, is reported in The Truce: Progressives, Centrists and the Future of the Democratic Party, by the reporters Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen. The book will be published in the US on 24 January 2024. The Guardian obtained a copy.Harris ran for president in 2020, but withdrew a month before the first vote. Her campaign, Walker and Luppen quote the unnamed aide as saying, was “rotten from the start.“A lot of us, at least folks that I was friends with on the campaign, all realised that: ‘Yeah, this person should not be president of the United States.”Another unnamed aide, identified as a “senior staffer”, is quoted as saying Harris’s backstory, as the child of Indian and Jamaican immigrants who became the first woman and woman of colour to be vice-president, is “a lot of the reason people support her.“But you’ve got to back that up with: ‘What are you going to do?’”In fact, Harris made a strong start to the Democratic primary in 2019, landing memorable blows on Biden in the first debate when she brought up the veteran senator and former vice-president’s historic opposition to “busing”, a way of compelling racial integration in public schools.“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools,” Harris said, onstage in Miami, “and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me.”But Harris failed to capitalise with policy proposals or further profitable attacks and though Biden forgave her, overruling reported opposition among aides and from his wife to pick Harris as his running mate, reports of tension and Harris’s frustrations as vice-president have been a feature of their time in power.The White House has repeatedly denied such reports concerning Biden and Harris’s working relationship and alleged dysfunction in Harris’s office.Biden and Harris are set to form the Democratic ticket again this year.Polling, however, shows widespread concern that at 81, Biden is too old to properly prosecute a potentially historic campaign, with Donald Trump seemingly set to be the Republican nominee once more.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolling also shows low approval numbers for Harris. Republicans, particularly Trump’s closest challenger, Nikki Haley, have made the prospect of her taking power a central campaign theme.Walker and Luppen report speculation that Harris could line up a 2028 bid on a ticket with Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary who won the Iowa caucuses in 2020.A former Buttigieg staffer is quoted as saying Harris has established “a personal relationship with Pete in a way that she doesn’t with other people”.But alleged people problems, familiar from reports about Harris’s campaign and her time as vice-president, also surface in Walker and Luppen’s book.“The problems Harris and her team had experienced on her campaign had persisted during her time as vice-president,” the authors write.“Harris saw heavy staff turnover, with aides describing a toxic climate riven with factionalism and mismanagement. One source who worked for the vice-president declined to go on record or even discuss matters anonymously, due to the heated atmosphere around the office.“They refused to characterise the experience of working for Harris, apart from offering a three-word assessment. It was, they said: ‘Game of Thrones’.” More

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      Biden to jump-start 2024 campaign by highlighting sharp contrast with Trump

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      Ailing in opinion polls, Joe Biden will aim to jump-start his re-election campaign in the coming week with events designed to symbolise the fight for democracy and racial justice against Donald Trump.The Biden-Harris campaign announced the plans in a conference call with reporters that mentioned Trump by name 28 times in just 24 minutes, a sign of its determination to draw a sharp contrast between the US president and his likely Republican challenger.On Saturday Biden will deliver a major address laying out the stakes of the election at Valley Forge, near Philadelphia, the site of a 1777-1778 winter encampment of the Continental Army led by George Washington during the American revolutionary war.It was at Valley Forge that a disorganised alliance of colonial militias was transformed into a cohesive coalition united in the battle for democracy, the Biden-Harris campaign told reporters, noting that Washington became president but then relinquished power.“There the president will make the case directly that democracy and freedom – two powerful ideas that united the 13 colonies and that generations throughout our nation’s history have fought and died for a stone’s throw from where he’ll be Saturday – remain central to the fight we’re in today,” said the principal deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks.Then, on Monday, Biden will speak at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, where in 2015 nine African American worshippers were killed by a white supremacist while they were praying at the end of Bible study.Fulks described it as “a historic venue that embodies the stakes of our nation at this moment because whether it is white supremacists descending on the historic American city or Charlottesville, the assault on our nation’s capital on January 6 or white supremacists murdering churchgoers at Mother Emanuel nearly nine years ago, America is worried about the rise in political violence and determined to stand against it”.The vice-president, Kamala Harris, will also travel to South Carolina on Saturday to address the 7th Episcopal District AME church Women’s Missionary Society annual retreat and, later this month, launch a “reproductive freedoms tour” in Wisconsin, highlighting the “chaos and cruelty” unleashed by the overturning of the constitutional right to abortion.Speaking from the campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, Fulks told reporters: “You can expect the entirety of our campaign to be out in full force later this month on the anniversary of Roe v Wade, making crystal clear to every American to that the freedom for women to make their own healthcare decisions is on the ballot this November.”But the conference call made no mention of Biden’s leadership during the war in Ukraine, where Congress now threatens to cut off funding, nor the war in Gaza, which has been the most divisive foreign policy issue of his presidency. The campaign team also avoided the subject of Biden’s age – at 81 he is the oldest president in American history.The call did dwell on the January 6 insurrection, however, underlining how the Biden campaign is intent on making the election less a referendum on his presidency than a choice between the incumbent and Trump, who has been twice impeached and indicted in four separate cases and is facing 91 criminal counts.Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the campaign manager, said: “When Joe Biden ran for president four years ago, he said, ‘We are in the battle for the soul of America’ and as we look towards November 2024, we still are. The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Biden enters the new year with the lowest approval rating of any modern-day president seeking re-election. Voters have expressed concerns over crime, immigration and inflation, which hit 40-year highs in 2022. Branding exercises such as “Bidenomics” appear to have fallen flat.Polls show the president losing support among voters of colour in particular. On Monday a USA Today and Suffolk University survey showed Trump on 39% support among Latino voters, ahead of Biden on 34%, a dramatic reversal from 2020 when Biden enjoyed 65% support from Latino voters.Fulks said voters of color have most at stake in the election and denied that there is cause for panic. “Our campaign has been putting in the work to do everything we need to do to communicate with communities of color next fall to make sure that they turn out,” he said, noting that the campaign has made the “biggest and earliest ever investment for a re-election campaign into constituency media”.He added: “We started by doing early organizing efforts targeting the voters that make up the Biden-Harris coalition and that sends a clear signal that we’re not going to wait and parachute into these communities at the last minute and ask them for their vote. We’re going to earn their vote.“We know that we have to communicate to these constituencies about what this administration has done; we have to communicate with these constituencies about the dangers that the other side poses; and we’re going to do both.” More

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      Jimmy Carter, Biden and Clintons pay tribute at Rosalynn Carter memorial

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      A tribute service for Rosalynn Carter took place on Tuesday, as politicians and public figures gathered to celebrate the former first lady’s life following her death last Sunday.Former president Jimmy Carter, 99, attended the tribute for his late wife of 77 years, traveling from his hospice care at home to the Glenn Memorial church in Atlanta. His attendance marks a rare public appearance for the former president, who has been in home hospice care for 10 months.A funeral motorcade left for Glenn Memorial around noon, with the tribute beginning shortly after 1.30pm ET and ending after 3pm.Military guards transported Rosalynn’s casket from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, where the former first lady was in repose, to make the trip to Glenn Memorial church.Tributes to Rosalynn were delivered by the journalist Judy Woodruff, longtime aide and friend Kathryn Cade and Rosalynn’s children and grandchildren.Jason, Rosalynn’s grandson, spoke about his grandmother’s commitment to advocating for better mental health care.“Her advocacy for mental health was a 50-year climb that is as remarkable as any other and has been mentioned already,” Jason said during the tribute, adding that Rosalynn “decided in 1970 to tackle the anxious and stigma associated with mental illness”.“That effort changed lives and it saved lives, including in my own family,” Jason added, referring to Rosalynn’s advocacy.Rosalynn’s children, Amy and James, also spoke at the tribute. James, who goes by “Chip”, called Rosalynn the glue that held the Carter family together through turbulent times.Chip added that his mother was influential in him into rehab treatment for a substance use disorder.“She saved my life,” Chip said at the tribute.Amy spoke about the enduring relationship between Jimmy and Rosalynn, sharing a love letter he had written to Rosalynn while he was serving in the navy.“My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I had been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are,”he wrote in the letter, recited by Amy.“Their partnership and love story was a defining feature of her life. Because he is unable to speak to you today, I’m going to share some of his words about loving and missing,” Amy said.Rosalynn’s other grandchildren and great-grandchildren read selections of the Bible during the tribute.Every living former first lady attended Tuesday’s invitation-only service. Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and the second gentleman, Douglas Emhoff, also attended, but did not give remarks.Other guests included the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, the Atlanta mayor, Andre Dickens, and other Georgia politicians.Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W Bush were invited to Tuesday’s tribute, the Associated Press reported, but did not attend.Public tributes for Rosalynn began on Monday, as her family planned three memorials to honor the former first lady.Hundreds of supporters paid their respects on Monday at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum .Besides Tuesday’s tribute, there will be a funeral on Wednesday for family and invited friends in Plains, Georgia, where the Carters lived.The former first lady died last week at 96 at her Georgia home. She was diagnosed with dementia in May and died shortly after entering hospice care alongside her husband.“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” Jimmy Carter said in a statement released last week by the Carter Center. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”Rosalynn is widely regarded for her commitment to public service and her work as an advocate for mental health.During her tenure as first lady, Rosalynn addressed the World Health Organization, arguing that mental health was a component of physical health and that health, more broadly, was a human right.Rosalynn and her husband also supported several humanitarian causes, including Habitat for Humanity. More

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      Nancy Pelosi: Biden thinks Harris is best running mate ‘and that’s what matters’

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      Nancy Pelosi seemed to offer a less-than-ringing endorsement when asked if Kamala Harris was the best running mate for Joe Biden next year, saying: “He thinks so, and that’s what matters.”But the former US House speaker also had praise for the vice-president, telling CNN: “And, by the way, she’s very politically astute. I don’t think people give her enough credit. She’s … consistent with the president’s values and the rest.”As Biden knows after eight years under Barack Obama, the vice-presidency has never been easy to fill. Harris may or may not agree with John Nance Garner’s famous observation, that the job he did for Franklin D Roosevelt wasn’t worth “a pitcher of warm piss”, but she has experienced familiar trials.Speculation over her performance and possible replacement has been constant. In a deeply sourced new book about the Biden White House, the author Franklin Foer describes Harris’s struggles to define her role.Nor does Harris enjoy favourable polling. Her approval rating – like Biden’s – has long been stuck at around 40%.Biden is the oldest president ever elected and will turn 82 shortly after the 2024 election. In that light, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has been prominent among Republicans targeting Harris on the campaign trail. The prospect of a Harris presidency should “send a chill up every American’s spine”, Haley recently told Fox News.Pelosi, however, spoke glowingly of her fellow Californian’s political skills.“People shouldn’t underestimate what Kamala Harris brings to the table,” she told CNN. “People don’t understand. She’s politically astute. Why would she be vice-president if she were not? But when she was running for attorney general in California [in 2010], she had 6% in the polls … and she politically astutely made her case about why she would be good, did her politics, and became attorney general.”Harris became a US senator in 2016, then mounted a presidential campaign in 2020, showing strongly at Biden’s expense on the debate stage but dropping out before the first vote. Biden mended bridges and named Harris his running mate.“She’s the vice-president of the United States,” Pelosi said. “People say to me, ‘Well, why isn’t she doing this or that?’ I say: ‘Because she’s the vice-president.’ That’s the job description. You don’t do that much. You know, you’re a source of strength, inspiration, intellectual resource. I think she’s represented our country very well at home and abroad.”On Thursday morning, Pelosi told MSNBC: “The Biden-Harris team is our team. We’re very proud of it. And we’re all going to work very hard to make sure that they are re-elected.”Biden and Harris seem set to face a rematch with Donald Trump, if not with Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, who is challenging for the Republican nomination (and who on Wednesday said Biden advised him to “stay close to the president and build that relationship” after he and Trump won in 2016).skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPence’s stint as Trump’s vice-president ended with the January 6 riot, when Trump supporters sought Pence at the Capitol, chanting that he should be hanged.On Wednesday, Pence said that showed his stint as vice-president “didn’t end the way I wanted it to”.Pelosi told CNN Trump’s attempt to overturn the last election meant “nothing less is at stake than our democracy … you hear that in the country. You hear that globally. And we have to remove all doubt that our democracy is strong.”Last Sunday, Harris was asked if she was ready to step up as president.“Yes, I am, if necessary,” she told CBS. “But Joe Biden is going to be fine. And let me tell you something: I work with Joe Biden every day.” More

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      Kamala Harris says she’s prepared to serve as president ‘if necessary’

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      Kamala Harris on Sunday declared herself ready to assume the presidency if it ever behooved her to do so – but she also made it a point to dismiss opponents’ political attacks that Joe Biden is too old to seek out a second term in the Oval Office.Asked on CBS’s Face the Nation whether she was prepared to serve as commander-in-chief in case Biden became unable to carry out his duties, Harris said: “Yes, I am, if necessary.”“But Joe Biden is going to be fine,” Harris said. “And let me tell you something: I work with Joe Biden every day.”Harris, who would become the first woman to serve as US president if Biden could not complete an elected term, went on to tell Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan that it would not be a novel experience for her to make history in such a fashion.She alluded to how she was the first woman elected as district attorney of San Francisco and as attorney general of California. As a US senator for California, “I represented one in eight Americans,” before becoming the country’s first ever female vice-president.“Listen, this is not new,” Harris said. “There’s nothing new about that.”Harris’s defense of her qualifications and of Biden’s vitality come as Republicans attack the incumbent 80-year-old Democratic president’s age. If he wins another term during the 2024 election, Biden – already the oldest president ever – would be 86 upon leaving office.Public opinion polling shows that more than two-thirds of the American public think Biden is too old to effectively serve a second term. And, seizing on those findings, Republicans have sought to portray the prospect of Harris being one heartbeat away from the presidency as a scary prospect.“I pray every night for Joe Biden’s good health – not only because he’s our president, but because of who our vice-president is,” Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie said on a clip played by Brennan on Sunday.Brennan played another clip in which Christie’s fellow Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis insulted Harris as Biden’s “impeachment insurance”.“People know if she were president – Katy, bar the door,” DeSantis said on the clip, invoking an American colloquialism meaning that there’s trouble incoming. “As bad as Biden did, it would get worse.”Both Christie and DeSantis substantially trail the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination: Biden’s White House predecessor, Donald Trump. Trump maintains his polling edge over his Republican competition despite facing 91 pending criminal charges across four separate indictments for his 2020 election subversion, his retention of classified documents after his defeat to Biden forced him out of the Oval Office and hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Harris on Sunday parried the Republican verbal volleys against the Biden administration by referring to lower crime rates, falling inflation and relatively quieter times at the US-Mexico border more than halfway through the Democratic incumbents’ third year in office.“They feel the need to attack because they’re scared that we will win based on the merit of the work that Joe Biden and I, and our administration, has done,” Harris said.In her interview with Brennan, Harris also said that Congress needed to strive to restore the federal abortion rights which had been established by Roe v Wade but then repealed last year by the US supreme court’s conservatives. Most Americans believe abortion should be legal to some degree, particularly in the first trimester of pregnancy, according to polling.Harris dismissed Republican claims that Democrats support abortion up until birth as “ridiculous” and a “mischaracterization”. More