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      Joe Biden has come out fighting. But he’ll need more than grit to defeat Trump now | Jonathan Freedland

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      The president of the United States delivered his annual address to Congress on Thursday night – except what Americans and an increasingly nervous world wanted to assess was less the state of the union than the state of Joe Biden. I don’t mean politically, I mean physically.In the week that confirmed the November election will be a rematch of the 2020 contest – the current president against the former one – Biden needed to prove he was not the doddering, even senile figure of Donald Trump’s rhetoric and a thousand social media memes. In 68 combative minutes, he cleared that bar. He ad-libbed, he took on Republican hecklers and, often at high volume, jabbed at his opponent. The result: a performance that pundits described as “feisty” and “scrappy”, free of senior moments, and which prompted even Fox News to muse that Biden seemed “jacked-up” – which, from the network that likes to depict the president as a walking corpse, was a compliment.Projecting vigour was essential because the mountain Biden has to climb over the next eight months is getting steeper. For one thing, this week established that Trump is not only the certain nominee of his party – crushing his last remaining challenger, Nikki Haley, in all but one of the Super Tuesday primary contests and forcing her out of the race – he is in total control of it. Republicans in Congress are supine before him, whether it’s outgoing Senate leader Mitch McConnell endorsing him this week – even though Trump has repeatedly insulted McConnell’s Taiwan-born wife in nakedly racist terms and the two men have not spoken in three years – or the Republican refusal to pass a border deal they’d agreed with Democrats, because Trump wants the issue of immigration to remain unaddressed so that he can attack Biden for failing to address it come November. Some had hoped a primary season against Republican opponents would batter and bruise Trump, weakening him ahead of the presidential election. It has not worked out that way.Though that was not the only Democratic fantasy to be dented, if not dashed, this week. Many have hoped Trump’s undoing will come in the courts, where he faces a staggering 91 criminal charges. Indeed, judges in Colorado (and two other states) had removed Trump from the ballot, citing the constitution’s disqualification of anyone involved in insurrection, in Trump’s case the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021. But on Monday, the supreme court ruled unanimously against Colorado, ensuring Trump’s place on the ballot in all 50 states.View image in fullscreenThe previous week, the same supreme court, now dominated by the right thanks to three Trump appointments, issued a timetable that effectively slows down the most potent of the cases against the former president: the charge that he sought to subvert the 2020 election. That makes it much less likely that there will be a conviction this side of polling day, a realisation that hits Democrats hard. For years, they’ve longed for this or that judicial authority to solve America’s Trump problem: special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation into collusion between Trump and Moscow played that role for a while. Time and again, the dream evaporates. Democrats now face the awkward reality that, if they are to defeat Trump, they will surely have to do it the way they did it in 2020: with votes.And that task is looking ever harder. It’s not just the headline figures from national polls in which Trump is often ahead, or even Trump’s lead in the battleground states. It’s the change afoot in key voting groups that were crucial to Biden’s victory in the last election. Trump is gaining ground among Black and Hispanic voters, regularly picking up 20% to 25% of the former. To be sure, Biden is still ahead – but not by the massive margins he once enjoyed and which he needs to offset Trump’s advantage with white voters.Perhaps most alarming for Democrats is the defection of the young. Biden won voters under 30 by 25 points in 2020, now it’s neck and neck. A big part of that is the president’s support for Israel, with the appalling images coming out of Gaza outraging younger Americans especially. Mindful of them, and the disaffected Arab-American voters who could tip the balance in the critical swing state of Michigan, Biden announced a plan to create a floating pier off the Gazan coast, enabling maritime shipments of aid. Given that it will take weeks to build, and Gazans are desperate for food right now, and given too that there is obviously a simpler, swifter way to get aid in – by exerting full US pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding he stops the delays – the Democrats’ progressive wing is unlikely to be placated. Taking all these developments together, it is not too strong to say the Biden coalition is fracturing.Many watching from afar are dumbfounded that Americans could be prepared once again, and despite everything, to make Donald Trump their president. How can that be? Surely they remember what it was like last time? To which the answer seems to be: actually, they don’t. This week, the New York Times wondered if Americans suffer from “collective amnesia” when it comes to Trump, pointing to polling data that suggests the years 2017 to 2021 have fallen into the memory hole. It’s partly that Trump’s outrages came so often, they created a kind of numbness: people became inured. And it’s partly that, thanks to a US media polarised on tribally partisan lines, there is no agreed, collective memory of what happened during those four turbulent years, even on 6 January. Add to that the inflation and border pressures of the Biden years and, as Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican consultant and convenor of focus groups, puts it: “They know what they don’t like about Biden, and they have forgotten what they don’t like about Trump.”How can Biden hope to scale the daunting peak that confronts him? Plenty say the answer is a two-pronged message, “democracy and Dobbs”: focus on Trump’s dictatorial aspirations and his role in appointing the supreme court, whose decision, known as Dobbs, ended the constitutional right to an abortion. But there’s good evidence that that formula, which paid dividends in 2022’s midterm elections, is no longer enough, especially among the young.Biden needs to do more. He can’t urge Americans to be grateful for what he’s achieved these last three years: they’re not feeling better off and, besides, voters are rarely grateful. Nor can he rely on memories of Trump, because those are fading. The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein is surely right when he says Biden has to let go of the past and focus on the future, framing the coming contest as “a choice between what he and Trump would do over the next four years in the White House”. Biden’s speech on Thursday nodded to that, vowing to defend social security and Medicare, while Trump eyes up a juicy tax cut for his super-rich pals – and casting himself as a decent man up against a would-be dictator.It was a good start but, my word, it is a marathon climb that lies ahead. Joe Biden has lived a long life, punctuated by the severest challenges, but the one he faces now could hardly be tougher. And yet he cannot afford to fail. The world depends on it.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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      Biden’s State of the Union: raucous, strident and insistently optimistic | Moira Donegan

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      Like a budget, a State of the Union speech is a moral document: it reflects a president’s values and priorities, distilling his own view of his administration for the American people. On Thursday night, Joe Biden made his moral case for re-election: he views America as a besieged but worthy global leader, one whose tradition of democracy deserves to be defended and rebuilt. Referring to his opponent Donald Trump only as “my predecessor”, Biden repeatedly contrasted his own vision of a more equitable and prosperous nation with the Republican agenda. The point was to offer Americans an optimistic and inclusive vision – and to remind them of the cynicism, sadism and depravity of the Trump worldview, which threatens to undermine women’s freedoms, make interracial democracy impossible, and use the machinery of government for little else but to further Republicans own self regard and greed.The 90-minute speech was raucous, strident and insistently optimistic; it appeared designed to demonstrate Biden’s vitality, and to launch in earnest a presidential campaign that has previously been somewhat tepid and sluggish. “I’m here to wake up the Congress,” Biden said as he began, declaring the nation to be in “an unprecedented moment”. Maybe he was there to wake up his own campaign, too.Biden opened his speech outlining the three major issues which his campaign sees as the greatest emergencies: the foreign threat to Democracy, as represented by Vladimir Putin and Trump’s threat to Nato; the decline of democracy at home, as represented by January 6 and Republican lies about the 2020 election (“You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden bellowed; an early applause line); and reproductive rights.It was the first time that Biden gave abortion pride of place in the speech, reflecting his campaign’s belated awareness, in the wake of the 2022 midterms, of the issue’s salience. The attention he paid to the issue reflected his ambivalence toward abortion and hostility toward the feminist case for it. The section began not with a question of abortion, but with IVF: an Alabama court’s decision to grant frozen embryos the status of legal persons, thus briefly banning the treatment in the state, seems to have opened a new avenue in the post-Dobbs debate that is more comfortable for Biden.He moved on to telling the story of Kate Cox, a Texas mother who was forced to flee the state for an abortion after the ban in place there put her at risk for catastrophic health complications. Republicans, he noted, were planning to impose a national ban on reproductive freedom. “My God,” he said, “What other freedoms would they take away?”It was not what reproductive rights advocates were hoping for: the speech made no mention of women’s right to abortion as a matter of equality and dignity, casting “reproductive rights”, as Biden exclusively referred to them, as matters of bare health and dutiful family building. Still, Biden is not making these more robust endorsements of women’s reproductive freedoms because he does not think he has to: his campaign is betting that voters are galvanized enough by the issue that half measures will deliver their votes.They might be right. Indeed, Biden’s pitch to Americans on Thursday night often seemed to have female voters in mind. His proposed tax increases for corporations and the wealthiest strata of Americans were pitched not as mere fairness, but as a means to generate investment in care infrastructure – childcare, paid family leave and eldercare – the neglect of which has led to a nationwide crisis of overburdened and economically straightjacketed women.Roe, too, was framed as an invitation for women to not just vote their interests but avenge their citizenship. “Those bragging about overturning Roe v Wade have no idea about the power of women,” said Biden, referring to a now famous line in Samuel Alito’s majority opinion on Dobbs saying that “women are not without political or electoral power”. “They’re about to find out just how powerful women are.”The main thrust of Biden’s speech was meant to flout his economic accomplishments, to reshape the popular story of the American economy – one where consumers are hampered by inflation and nobody can buy a house – into a story of a remarkable post-pandemic recovery. He flouted the growth of small businesses and the low unemployment rate; he tipped his hat to the economic “soft landing” engineered by Jerome Powell, which has kept the US out of a long-predicted recession. He made a mild dig at the media as he tried to rewrite their own story: “The American people are writing the greatest comeback story ever told.”The speech was strong; every position taken was not. Biden fell apart when he tried to talk about the border, touting his own sadistically cruel bill by way of bragging that Donald Trump had scared all the Republicans out of voting for it. His indifference to the human lives of migrants was at times chilling: he referred offhandedly to “illegals”, and engaged in a bizarre and unnecessary bit of theater with Marjorie Taylor Greene, decked out in garish Maga gear, who yelled at Biden about a woman murdered by an undocumented immigrant.He stumbled, too, when he spoke of Israel’s war on Gaza, dwelling in lurid detail on Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October and only offhandedly acknowledging that more than 30,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel in the past five months. The issue has proved an albatross for Biden, who is hemorrhaging support among young voters and voters of color over his support for Israel’s war. As he spoke about Gaza, Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, wept. But this, too, may be an issue on which Biden relies on the horror of his alternative: his campaign seems to be betting that these voters will return to Biden in spite of his stance on Gaza, because Trump, who spoke recently of a desire to “finish the problem” in Palestine, is so much worse.Democrats had reason to be nervous about Biden’s performance ahead of the speech. The past few weeks of the news cycle have been dominated by internal Democratic fears about Biden’s age, a worry that seems to stand in for all sorts of other, perhaps more pertinent, worries about his ability to hold together his massive and internally fractious coalition. But to the extent to which the claims of concern over Biden’s age were sincere, he seemed determined to put them to rest: he contrasted his own presidency with that of Donald Trump’s on every issue except his age.“I know I don’t look it,” Biden said towards the end of his speech, “but I’ve been around a while” – a joke reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s famous quip, “I refuse to exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” “It is not how old we are,” Biden said. “It’s the age of our ideas. It’s a line that seems certain to be repeated throughout the campaign, as the Democrats seek to make the presidential election less a referendum on Biden’s age than on Donald Trump’s intolerable proposed future.Indeed Biden did seem energized, enthused. His gait was stiffer than last year and his stutter persists, but he came alive, oddly enough, when he was being heckled. He retorted gamely and happily when Republicans screamed at him from the audience; he appeared most comfortable, most confident, when he was being yelled at. “Turning setback into comeback – that’s what America does,” he said at one point in his speech. He was talking about the post-Covid economy. But he could have been talking about his re-election bid.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Joe Biden came out swinging at his State of the Union address – will it be enough?

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      Would it be a withered old man or a human dynamo? Would it be a rambling, gaffe-prone politician or an inspiring leader touched with fire? Would it be Geriatric Joe or Dark Brandon?Within the first few minutes of Thursday’s State of the Union address in Washington, millions of Americans had their answer. Joe Biden, 81, had brought the fight.The US president was feisty, fired up and possibly highly caffeinated. For over 68 minutes he shouted for America, let rip at Donald Trump and found artful ways to address concerns over his age. The more that Republicans heckled him and screamed “Liar!”, the more he fed off their energy and turned it against them.Indeed, for the second year running, Biden’s State of the Union address became more akin to Britain’s House of Commons – combative, electric, rowdy. Past American presidents could get away with reading from a teleprompter. Biden, supposedly old and sleepy, has made the event interactive and turns out to be looser with ad libs and quicker on his feet than any of them.Rarely has the State of the Union address doubled as a medical exam before a global audience, more about stamina than statistics, more about pep-in-your-step than policy.Biden hit the ground running with the topics likely to be his central pitch for November’s election. He accused Trump and Republicans of trying to rewrite history about the January 6 insurrection. “My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about January 6. I will not do that. You can’t love your country only when you win.”You had us at hello. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, shook his head and rolled his eyes.Biden also went after Trump for his comments inviting the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to invade Nato nations if they did not spend more on defence. “My predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, ‘Do whatever the hell you want.’ That’s a quote. A former president actually said that – bowing down to a Russian leader. I think it’s outrageous, it’s dangerous and it’s unacceptable.”Biden tackled reproductive rights, pledging to “restore Roe v Wade as the law of the land again” if Democrats regain control of Congress. There were rousing cheers from Democrats. Biden added that anyone “bragging about overturning Roe v Wade had no clue about the power of women, but they found out reproductive freedom was on the ballot. We won in 2020 and 2022 and we’ll win again in 2024.”Later some Republicans jeered as Biden said the bipartisan border bill would have included the “toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen”. He relished the challenge, shooting back: “Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh? That conservatives got together and said was a good bill? I’ll be darned … You’re saying no. Look at the facts. I know you know how to read.”Drawing another contrast with Trump, Biden also commented: “I will not demonise immigrants saying they are poison in the blood of our country.” (He did, however, make a reference to “an illegal”, attracting the ire of progressives in Congress.)Still, amid all the bantering and euphoria, there was Gaza. Biden’s motorcade took a different route from the White House to the US Capitol after protesters blocked part of Pennsylvania Avenue. Inside the House of Representatives chamber, some members wore keffiyehs, the black-and-white checkered scarves that have symbolised solidarity with Palestinians. Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush held up signs calling for a ceasefire.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden announced that the US military will build a port on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast to receive humanitarian assistance by sea. But he called on the Israelis to do more to alleviate the suffering even as they try to eliminate Hamas. “To Israel, I say this humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.”He spoke with compassion about the plight of Palestinians but did not urge a “permanent ceasefire” policy shift that demonstrators crave – that threat to his re-election remains.Thursday’s audience included George Santos, expelled from Congress, and a man wearing Trump’s mug shot emblazoned on his shirt. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene sported a red “Make America great again” cap and a “Say her name” shirt referring to Laken Riley, a student murdered last month, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant.Biden stumbled over a few words but on big occasions like this tends to benefit from the soft bigotry of low expectations on the age question. First elected to the Senate in 1972, he took aim at Trump again: “Now some other people my age see a different story: an American story of resentment, revenge and retribution. That’s not me.”It was a far cry from Trump’s bleak, subdued victory speech at Mar-a-Lago on Super Tuesday. When it was over, glum Republicans bolted for the door while Democrats mobbed Biden as if he had just won the Super Bowl. “No one’s gonna call you cognitively impaired now,” Congressman Jerry Nadler told him. Biden quipped: “I kinda wish sometimes I was cognitively impaired.” Another congressman said: “You had the Irish fire tonight!” But will we love you tomorrow? 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      Haley finally bows out as Trump and Biden prepare for rematch – podcast

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      Pundits saw it as one of the least exciting Super Tuesdays in American history. Nevertheless, it gave us some answers. Nikki Haley, who surprised everyone by beating Trump in the Vermont primary election decided it wasn’t enough to keep her in the race, and on Wednesday, she dropped out.
      Despite President Biden and Donald Trump winning easily in most states so far, there is a growing trend that neither camp can ignore – they’re both incredibly unpopular.
      So who should Americans who are dismayed at the choice they’ve been left turn to now? How will both Biden and Trump learn from their first contest four years ago? And what else did we learn from the other primary contests that created headlines on Tuesday?
      Jonathan Freedland speaks to conservative columnist Charlie Sykes about who Americans should turn to now that it’s likely Biden v Trump in November

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      State of the Union address as it happened: Biden spars with Republicans and announces aid pier for Gaza

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      In his third, and potentially last, State of the Union address, Joe Biden eschewed tradition and delivered a barrage of attacks on Donald Trump – who he only referred to as “my predecessor”. It was a sign of how Biden believes Trump’s potential return to the White House poses an existential risk to American democracy, and perhaps also his awareness that he has a lot of support to rebuild to win a second term in November. While Democrats leapt to their feet for Biden’s promises to protect social security, cut child poverty and overhaul the country’s infrastructure, some found the president’s use of the word “illegal” objectionable. Meanwhile, Alabama’s Republican senator Katie Britt delivered the party’s rebuttal, asking: “Are you better off now than you were three years ago?”Here are the highlights:
      The 81-year-old president directly addressed his age, saying “I’ve been told I’m too old” while arguing he is still up for the job.
      Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing nemesis, got unusually close to Biden, then heckled him during the speech over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
      Six supreme court justices were present at the speech, only for Biden to criticize them directly for overturning Roe v Wade.
      Protesters upset over Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza blocked a road leading to the Capitol ahead of the speech.
      George Santos was in the House chamber for the speech, reportedly to hang out with the people who removed him from office.
      Several Democratic House lawmakers have criticized Joe Biden for describing the undocumented migrant suspected of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley as an “illegal”.Biden made the remark during his State of the Union address, while being heckled by rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blamed the president’s border security policies for Riley’s murder. Biden held up a pin with Riley’s name on it, and called her “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal”.Democrats took issue with that terminology, including Illinois’s Chuy Garcia:Ilhan Omar of Minnesota:And Delia Ramirez of Illinois:“Just ask yourself, are you better off now than you were three years ago?” Katie Britt asks in the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.Expect that to be a theme of GOP campaigns nationwide, including Donald Trump’s.More, from Britt:
      Look, we all recall when presidents faced national security threats with strength and resolve. That seems like ancient history right now. Our commander-in-chief is not in command. The free world deserves better than a doddering and diminished leader. America deserves leaders who recognize that secure borders, stable prices, safe streets and a strong defense are actually the cornerstones of a great nation.
      Alabama senator Katie Britt is delivering the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, and responded to his comments on Laken Riley.“Tonight, President Biden finally said her name, but he refused to take responsibility for his own actions,” said Britt.“Mr President, enough is enough. Innocent Americans are dying and you only have yourself to blame. Fulfill your oath of office, reverse your policies, end this crisis and stop the suffering.”One of the most striking moments of the night happened when Joe Biden addressed the topic of immigration – which polls show is a major weakness of his going into the November contest against Donald Trump.As he spoke, the president was heckled by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing antagonist. Greene demanded he say the name of Laken Riley, who is suspected to have been murdered by an undocumented migrant.Biden, who usually wants nothing to do with Greene, took her up on the offer. Here’s what happened:During Joe Biden’s speech, there were several rowdy heckles from Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. Then came an unexpected yell from the public balcony, directly opposite from where I am sitting in the press gallery.A man wearing dark suit, blue shirt and yellow tie cupped his hands and shouted: “Remember Abbey Gate! United States Marines.” Abbey Gate, outside Kabul’s airport, is where 13 US service members were killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan two years ago.His point made, the man voluntarily left before security yanked him out. Biden did not seem thrown off by the interruption as he carried on speaking. But the episode was a reminder that his approval rating has never quite recovered from the chaos in Kabul.Joe Biden rarely discusses his age, but did so directly as he closed his State of the Union address.“I’ve been told I’m too old,” he said, continuing:
      Whether young or old … I’ve always known what endures. I’ve known our north star, the very idea of Americans, that we’re all created equal, deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea. We’ve never walked away from it either. And I won’t walk away from it now.
      “I know it may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” said the 81-year-old president, the oldest to ever hold the job.“You get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever,” Biden continued. “I know the American story. Again and again, I’ve seen the contrast between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation, between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future.”Biden appears to be wrapping up, in high spirits.“Let me close with this,” he said, to sardonic applause.“I know you don’t want to hear any more, Lindsey. But I gotta say a few more things,” Biden said. He was presumably talking to South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham.As Joe Biden discussed the war in Gaza, two progressive House Democrats sitting in the audience staged a minor protest.Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush remained sitting and held up signs that read: “Lasting ceasefire now.” More

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      State of the Union guest list shows reproductive rights in spotlight after Alabama IVF bill signed into law – live

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      Becerra’s comments come ahead of Joe Biden addressing the nation in the State of the Union on Thursday night. Although the White House has not released the speech, a large number of Democratic guests suggest reproductive rights may feature heavily.Among the guests of high-ranking Democrats are Elizabeth Carr, the first person in the US to be born via IVF; Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who nearly died of septic shock when she was denied a medically necessary abortion; and Kate Cox, who had to flee Texas for an abortion after she learned her fetus had a fatal chromosomal condition.More guests include reproductive endocrinologists, an Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim, and leaders of reproductive rights groups.Becerra’s comments emphasizing the importance of reproductive rights, Democrats’ guest list for the State of the Union and a recent administration officials’ trips to states with abortion restrictions are the most recent evidence of Democrat’s election bet: that when Republicans married the motivated minority of voters who support the anti-abortion movement, they also divorced themselves from the broader American public, broad margins of whom support IVF, contraception and legal abortion.My colleague Chris Stein will be covering Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this evening on our dedicated live blog. In the meantime, here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      LaTorya Beasley, an Alabama mother who saw a second round of IVF canceled after the state supreme court ruled that embryos were children, and Kate Cox, the Texas mother forced to travel outside her state for an abortion, are among those set to attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight, as guests of the first lady, Jill Biden.
      Joe Biden will announce in the State of the Union speech that US forces will build a temporary port on the Gaza shoreline in the next few weeks to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale.
      Biden welcomed Sweden into Nato in a statement after the country officially became the 32nd member of the western military alliance. The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, will be attending the State of the Union address tonight.
      Katie Boyd Britt, a first-term 42-year-old Republican senator from Alabama, will deliver the GOP’s official response to Biden’s State of the Union address tonight – a move likely designed to highlight the big age gap between the two.
      Byron Donalds, a Republican Florida congressman being floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump, suggested he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he was vice president.
      No Labels, the third-party presidential movement, will reportedly to announce on Friday that it will move forward with a presidential bid in the November election.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign described a new ad from a pro-Trump Super Pac questioning whether Biden can “even survive til 2029” as “a sick and deranged stunt”.
      Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland who is running for Senate, has said he would not vote for Donald Trump in the November election.
      Daniel Rodimer, a former pro wrestler who won a prominent endorsement from Donald Trump while unsuccessfully running for Congress in Nevada, surrendered to authorities on Wednesday on an arrest warrant for murder.
      Republican Florida congressman Byron Donalds became the latest vice-presidential contender to refuse to commit to certifying election results.Donalds, at an Axios event, suggested he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he was vice president. He also did not clarify if he would have certified the 2020 election results.Donalds is one of the names being floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump. When asked if he would certify the 2028 results as vice president, he replied:
      If you have state officials who are violating the election law in their states … then no, I would not.
      Asked if he agreed with former vice-president Mike Pence’s move to certify the results, Donalds said: “You can only ask that question of Mike Pence.”Republicans have chosen Katie Boyd Britt, a first-term senator from Alabama, to deliver the party’s official response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight – a move likely designed to highlight the big age gap between the two.Britt, 42, is one of nine women in the Senate Republican conference and the youngest female Republican elected to the Senate.In a statement announcing her speech, she said it was time for the next generation of American politicians “to step up”. She added:
      The Republican Party is the party of hardworking parents and families, and I’m looking forward to putting this critical perspective front and center.
      Senate Republicans say she will offer a split screen of sorts when she delivers the party’s rebuttal to the State of the Union address by Biden, 81.“She’s young, female and full of energy – opposite of everything Joe Biden is,” senator Markwayne Mullin told the Hill. “The contrast between the two, it’s so different.”The third-party presidential movement No Labels is expected to announce it will move forward with a presidential bid in the November election, according to multiple reports.About 800 No Labels delegates are expected to meet virtually in a private meeting and vote on Friday in favor of launching a presidential campaign for this fall’s election, sources told AP and Reuters.The group will not name its presidential and vice presidential picks on Friday, but instead it is expected to roll out a formal selection process late next week for potential candidates who would be selected in the coming weeks, the people said.The House passed a bill that would require federal authorities to detain any migrant charged with theft or burglary, named after a Georgia nursing student police have said was killed by a man who entered the US illegally.The measure, called the Laken Riley Act, requires immigrations and customs enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants accused by local authorities of theft, burglary, larceny or shoplifting.The bill would also allow states and individuals to sue the federal government for crimes committed by immigrants who enter the country illegally.The bill was named after 22-year-old Laken Riley, who was killed on the campus of the University of Georgia while on a morning run last month. Riley’s death has become a rallying point for Donald Trump, after authorities arrested a Venezuelan man who entered the US illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.The House approved the legislation hours before Joe Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union address. Republicans have seized on Riley’s death to hammer the Biden administration’s border policies.“Republicans will not stand for the release of dangerous criminals into our communities, and that’s exactly what the Biden administration has done,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News.
      Laken is just one of the tragic examples of innocent American citizens who have lost their lives, been brutally and violently attacked by illegal criminals who are roaming our streets.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has responded to a new ad from a pro-Trump Super Pac questioning Biden’s ability to serve a second term in a new TV ad and whether the president can “even survive til 2029.”The ad, by Make America Great Again Inc, shows a clip from Biden’s press conference after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.During the briefing, Biden spoke about comments by Donald Trump about letting Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato allies. Pausing for dramatic effect, Biden then says he should clear his mind “and not say what I’m really thinking.”In the Maga Inc ad, a narrator says: “We can all see Joe Biden’s weakness. If Biden wins, can he even survive to 2029. The real question is, can we?”Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa told NBC News that the ad is “a sick and deranged stunt from a broke and struggling campaign”, adding:
      Trump tried this strategy four years ago and got his ass kicked by Joe Biden – he should tune in tonight alongside tens of millions of Americans to see why President Biden will beat him again this November.
      A former congressional candidate backed by Donald Trump has been arrested for murder. The Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:A former pro wrestler who won a prominent endorsement from Donald Trump while unsuccessfully running for Congress in Nevada surrendered to authorities on Wednesday on an arrest warrant for murder.Daniel Rodimer, 45, was booked in connection with the slaying of 47-year-old Christopher Tapp, who was reportedly beaten to death in Resorts World Las Vegas on 29 October.Rodimer met Tapp – who was once charged with murder himself – “through the classic car and racing circuit”, according to the local television news station KLAS, which reviewed police documents.Investigators allege that Rodimer fatally attacked Tapp after he offered Rodimer’s stepdaughter cocaine during a hotel room party.Initially, authorities believed Tapp’s death stemmed from a drug overdose and a fall, after an autopsy found evidence of blunt trauma and cocaine use. But detectives later determined Tapp had been in a fight inside the hotel room where he was found injured. He died later at a hospital.For the full story, click here:Here is a video of Maryland’s former Republican governor Larry Hogan – who we reported about earlier – saying that he will not vote for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump:Hogan, who recently stepped down from his third-party movement No Labels, said: “I think we’ll hopefully have some ability to vote for someone that these people actually want to vote for rather than just voting against.”In a tweet on Thursday, Joe Biden urged Americans to tune into his State of the Union address in which he plans to address “how far we’ve come in building the economy from the middle out and the bottom up …”He went on to add that he plans to address “the work we have left to lower costs and protect our freedoms against MAGA attacks”.An Alabama mother who saw a second round of IVF canceled after the state supreme court ruled that embryos were children will attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday, as guests of the first lady, Jill Biden.LaTorya Beasley of Birmingham, Alabama, is among the first lady’s 20 invited guests who “personify issues or themes to be addressed by the president in his speech,” the White House said in a statement.Beasley and her husband had their first child, via IVF, in 2022. They were trying to have another child through IVF but Beasley’s embryo transfer was suddenly canceled because of the Alabama court decision.Also on the guest list is Kate Cox, the Texas mother forced to travel outside her state for an abortion. The White House said the cases of Beasley and Cox, showed “how the overturning of Roe v Wade has disrupted access to reproductive healthcare for women and families across the country”. In a statement, the White House said:
      Stories like Kate’s and LaTorya’s should never happen in America. But Republican elected officials want to impose this reality on women nationwide.
      Joe Biden has welcomed Sweden into Nato in a statement after the country officially became the 32nd member of the western military alliance.Stockholm’s ratification process was finally completed in Washington on Thursday, as Sweden and Hungary – the last country to ratify Sweden’s membership – submitted the necessary documents after a drawn-out process that has taken nearly two years.The ratification marked the end of a 20-month-long wait that started in May 2022 when it submitted its application to join alongside Finland, prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February that year.In a statement, Biden said he was “honored” to welcome Sweden as Nato’s newest ally, and that the alliance was “stronger than ever” with its addition. He added:
      Today, we once more reaffirm that our shared democratic values – and our willingness to stand up for them – is what makes Nato the greatest military alliance in the history of the world. It is what draws nations to our cause. It is what underpins our unity. And together with our newest Ally Sweden – NATO will continue to stand for freedom and democracy for generations to come.
      The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, will be attending Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as a guest of the first lady, the White House has confirmed.Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland who is running for Senate, has said he would not vote for Donald Trump in the November election.Hogan, at an Axios event, said he will vote for neither Trump nor Joe Biden and would instead seek out a third-party candidate. He said:
      I’m like 70% of the rest of people in America who do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president, and I’m hoping that there potentially is another alternative.
      He added that he didn’t know yet who that candidate will be. Hogan, one of the most outspoken and only Trump critics in the Republican party, last year said he would support the party’s nominee for president, but at the time said he did not think Trump would be that candidate.Joe Biden will announce in the State of the Union speech that US forces will build a temporary port on the Gaza shoreline in the next few weeks to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale.“We are not waiting on the Israelis. This is a moment for American leadership,” a senior US official said on Thursday, reflecting growing frustration of what is seen in Washington as Israeli obstruction of road deliveries on a substantial scale.The port will be built by US military engineers operating from ships off the Gaza coast, who will not need to step ashore, US officials said. The aid deliveries will be shipped from the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, which will become the main relief hub. The official said:
      Tonight, the president will announce in his State of the Union address that he has directed the US military to undertake an emergency mission to establish a port in Gaza, working in partnership with like minded countries and humanitarian partners. This port, the main feature of which is a temporary pier, will provide the capacity for hundreds of additional truckloads of assistance each day.
      Biden will also announce the opening of a new land crossing into the occupied and devastated coastal strip. Biden has been fiercely criticised within his own party for the failure to open up Gaza to humanitarian aid, with a famine looming and 30,000 Palestinians dead already since the start of war on 7 October.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight will highlight Democratic successes and show the chaos in the House Republican party in stark relief.During his floor remarks reported by CNN, Schumer said Biden will make it clear that “after so much adversity, America’s economy is growing, inflation is slowing, and Democrats’ agenda is delivering.” He said:
      The difference between the parties will be as clear as night and day. Democrats are focused on lowering costs, creating jobs, putting money in people’s pockets. But the hard right, which too often runs the Republican party in the House and now increasingly in the Senate, is consumed by chaos, bullying, and attacking things like women’s freedom of choice.
      Meanwhile, the Republican front-runner for president, Donald Trump, has “made it abundantly clear that he’s not running to make people’s lives better, but rather on airing his personal political grievances,” Schumer added.Joe Biden will deliver the final State of the Union address of his presidential term this evening, giving him an opportunity to tout his accomplishments and pitch his re-election campaign as he prepares for a rematch against Donald Trump in November.Previewing Biden’s State of the Union speech, his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said his remarks would focus on the president’s vision for the nation’s future and his legislative accomplishments.“You’re going to hear the president address how democracy is under attack, how freedoms are certainly under attack,” including women’s reproductive rights and voting rights, Jean-Pierre told MSNBC.Biden’s speech will also highlight his agenda for a potential second term, the White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told NPR. Those include “lowering costs, continuing to make people’s lives better by investing in childcare, eldercare, paid family and medical leave, continued progress on student debt”, he said, adding:
      The president is also going to call for restoring Roe v. Wade and giving women freedom over their healthcare. And he’ll talk about protecting, not taking away, freedoms in other areas, as well as voting rights.
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, reportedly pleaded with his party to show “decorum” on Thursday, when Joe Biden comes to the chamber to deliver his State of the Union address.“Decorum is the order of the day,” Johnson said, according to an unnamed Republican who attended a closed-door event on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and was quoted by the Hill.The same site said another unnamed member of Congress said Johnson asked his party to “carry ourselves with good decorum”. A third Republican was quoted as saying:
      He said, ‘Let’s have the appropriate decorum. We don’t need to be shrill, you know, we got to avoid that. We need to base things upon policy, upon facts, upon reality of situations.
      Last year’s State of the Union saw outbursts from Republicans and responses from Biden that made headlines, most awarding the president the win. Kevin McCarthy, then speaker, also asked his Republican members not to breach decorum. But in a sign of his limited authority, months before he became the first speaker ejected by his own party, such pleas fell on deaf ears. More

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      Put yourself in the shoes of a Donald Trump voter – and understand what drives his success | Simon Jenkins

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      Donald Trump is certain to be the Republican candidate in this year’s election for US president. He is also currently favourite to win. To most readers of the Guardian, I am sure this prospect is appalling, as it is to most Britons. The nation to which they gave birth and language, that has been their friend and protector down the ages, seems to be going mad.Britons who know the US are amazed that, however reluctantly, enough of its voters might again choose Trump to rule over them after the experience of 2017 to 2021. Who are these Americans? How can they be so blind to his faults, with the law hounding him, gossip ridiculing him and commentators pouring scorn and derision on his every word?The answer is that the Americans who support Trump are not those whom most Britons know. They are elderly and rural: they are often, but by no means solely, working class and/or non-graduates. But, above all, they love Trump because they, too, are hostile to the Americans that he purports to hate.These hated Americans – the language of Trump’s rallies is visceral – mostly live in big cities down the east and west coasts. They favour federal government, identity politics, social liberalism and free trade. They are led by a college-educated, liberal establishment. Of course, these are generalisations – but that is what Trump trades in.His claim is that over the past two decades this establishment has corrupted the nation’s identity and bruised its essence. Using the rhetoric of a mafia boss, he declares he will smash these enemies of America. He will stop Mexicans crossing the border, with guns if need be. He will execute drug dealers, protect American families from gender politics, leave idiot Europeans to their petty wars and end Biden’s crazy foreign interventions.Trump is the braggart of every bar-room brawl. Most democratic leaders come to power with their rough edges softened through climbing the ladder of party politics. Not so Trump. The only experience he brought to the White House was that of New York’s property jungle, a world of rivalry, double-dealing and revenge; his favourite motto is the phrase he used in January towards his now fallen rival Nikki Haley: “I don’t get too angry, I get even.”A large amount of the abuse that Trump attracts from his critics disappointingly relies on raw snobbery. It comprises attacks on his dress, his manners, his vulgar houses and his coarse turn of phrase – and echoes the remarks of English toffs on the arrival of the first Labour government in Downing Street. They do him no harm in the eyes of his fans. Early comparisons with Mussolini played to his self-image as a warrior taking on an entrenched elite.See it through their eyes: the US did not collapse into dictatorship under Trump. Enemies were not arrested nor hostile media shut down. Since leaving office, though, his own enemies have not stopped trying to convict and imprison him, even as the trials merely aid his cause. Colorado’s attempt to stop him running for office was as legally wrongheaded as it was counterproductive.The US economy did well under Trump, better than Britain’s. He made a genuine if futile attempt to find peace in Korea. Vladimir Putin, with whom his relations remain obscure, did not invade Ukraine while he was in the White House. His recent demand that Nato and Europe reassess both their strategy and their forces was hardly unreasonable, if poorly expressed. His fixation with immigration is hardly confined to the American continent.That is why Trump’s enemies would do well to look to the causes of their own unpopularity. Democracy gives no quarter. It is one person, one vote, and its believers cannot complain when the arithmetic goes against them. Trump complains that the US ruling class and its media – apart from the bits he controls – are governed by new ideologies based on gender and race. He claims they want to ban conservatism from campuses, “defund” the police and flood the country with Mexican labour and Chinese goods. There is just enough truth in these accusations to have his supporters cheering him on.A prominent US senator recently assured a private gathering in London that Americans would never return Trump to the White House. It was inconceivable. Those declaring for him were just “just trying to give us a fright”.I can only hope he is right. With the present state of things in the world, the erratic Trump should never be in a position to lead what is still, tenuously, the free world. But those who oppose him should study what makes him so popular in the eyes of most Americans – and makes them less so.
      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist More

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      Taylor Swift can teach us all a lesson in how democracy works | Margaret Sullivan

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      If you’re any kind of a Taylor Swift fan, you’ve seen the footage of the pop star arguing with her father. The subject is politics. Or, more specifically, whether Taylor should express herself publicly on political issues and candidates, in this case in defense of women’s reproductive rights.Dad makes the case against it. In protective mode, he wants his daughter to stay in her lane: music. It’s not good for her safety or her career or her mental health to go prancing through this minefield of controversy, alienating people and drawing abusers along the way. One of her managers agrees – does she really want to see only half as many people at her next show?Taylor is, at times, in tears. Speaking out about her core beliefs is simply something she feels a moral obligation to do, she tells her father. And, of course, she does just that – in fact, eventually, she went so far as to endorse Joe Biden for president in 2020. (It must have worked; he did win, after all, despite what certain ex-presidents would have you believe.)Swift spoke out again this week when she urged her fans to take some basic democratic action.“I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent you into power,” Swift said on her Instagram story on Super Tuesday. “If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.”In this case, she wasn’t pushing for a specific candidate – merely telling her millions of followers to be engaged citizens. It wasn’t just “vote” – it was “make a plan to vote”. Swift was specific: she told people to check the locations and hours of their polling places, in her state of Tennessee and beyond.For November, “make a plan to vote” means getting registered, something that Swift has urged before, and which has resulted in voting registration spikes in the tens of thousands. The Biden campaign, of course, hopes that she’ll go further eventually and endorse him again.But even this basic message is important. And simple though it is, it made some people angry. Why can’t she shut up and just be an entertainer, they seemed to think? The Guardian reported one response posted on social media: “WOW: Taylor Swift has officially begun interfering in the 2024 election. She tells her young female fans to vote the candidate that ‘most represents you into power’.”Horrors! Representative government at work! There’s a strong “stay in your lane” vibe from that and other negative responses.I admire Swift for using her vast influence for something important. And she serves as a good role model for the rest of us. We may not have her mass numbers of followers – no one does – but we can all play a role in sustaining American democracy, which is looking rather fragile right now.Last year, when I interviewed scholars, authors and commentators on my podcast, American Crisis, I asked each of them for a pro-democracy “call to action” for both the media and for citizens. They had plenty of pointed advice for the media – like prioritizing journalism’s public service mission instead of focusing on polls, the horserace and chasing clicks. And they were in general agreement about what regular people – non-celebrities – can do.“We face a really existential choice about the type of country we want to have and how we want to be governed,” the author Garrett Graff warned. He added that he had been shocked at how radically and quickly the guardrails of democracy have crumbled in recent years and how “cynically” the news media has played along for the sake of profit.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSo, Graff counseled, citizens need to be intensely focused on the stakes – the consequences – of the coming presidential election and down-ballot elections as well. And to act accordingly.As Ruth Ben-Ghiat told me, staying well-informed is crucial. An expert in authoritarian leaders and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, she knows how important it is that citizens resist the temptation to tune out and throw up our hands. Taking advantage of a passive electorate is one way that strongmen manage to gain power.Democracy, by its nature, requires participation. You have to give a damn. That can mean donating to a campaign, volunteering as a poll worker, helping people to register or to get to a voting location. And make your own plan to vote; then carry it out.Being an engaged, vocal citizen isn’t the easiest thing to do, as Taylor Swift’s father tried to tell her.But she went ahead anyway. And so should we all.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More