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      This Will Not Pass review: Trump-Biden blockbuster is dire reading for Democrats

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      This Will Not Pass review: Trump-Biden blockbuster is dire reading for Democrats Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns have made waves with tapes of Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans – but the president’s party has more to fear from what they revealThis Will Not Pass is a blockbuster. Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns deliver 473 pages of essential reading. The two New York Times reporters depict an enraged Republican party, besotted by and beholden to Donald Trump. They portray a Democratic party led by Joe Biden as, in equal measure, inept and out of touch.The Right review: conservatism, Trump, regret and wishful thinkingRead moreMartin and Burns make their case with breezy prose, interviews and plenty of receipts. After Kevin McCarthy denied having talked smack about Trump and the January 6 insurrection, Martin appeared on MSNBC with tapes to show the House Republican leader lied.In Burns and Martin’s pages, Trump attributes McCarthy’s cravenness to an “inferiority complex”. The would-be speaker’s spinelessness and obsequiousness are recurring themes, along with the Democrats’ political vertigo.On election day 2020, the country simply sought to restore a modicum of normalcy. Nothing else. Even as Biden racked up a 7m-vote plurality, Republicans gained 16 House seats. There was no mandate. Think checks, balances and plenty of fear.Biden owes his job to suburban moms and dads, not the woke. As the liberal Brookings Institution put it in a post-election report, “Biden’s victory came from the suburbs”.Said differently, the label of socialism, the reality of rising crime, a clamor for open borders and demands for defunding the police almost cost Democrats the presidency. As a senator, Biden knew culture mattered. Whether his party has internalized any lessons, though, is doubtful.On election day 2021, the party lost the Virginia governor’s mansion. Republican attacks over critical race theory and Covid-driven school closures and Democrats’ wariness over parental involvement in education did them in. This year, the midterms offer few encouraging signs.This Will Not Pass portrays Biden as dedicated to his belief his presidency ought to be transformational. In competition with the legacy of Barack Obama, he yearns for comparison to FDR.“I am confident that Barack is not happy with the coverage of this administration as more transformative than his,” Biden reportedly told one adviser.Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, is more blunt: “Obama is jealous of Biden.”Then again, Hunter Biden is not the Obamas’ son. Michelle and Barack can’t be too jealous.A telephone conversation between Biden and Abigail Spanberger, a moderate congresswoman from Virginia, captures the president’s self-perception. “This is President Roosevelt,” he begins, following up by thanking Spanberger for her sense of humor.She replies: “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Mr President.”Spanberger represents a swing district, is a former member of the intelligence community and was a driving force in both Trump impeachments.This Will Not Pass also amplifies the disdain senior Democrats hold for the “Squad”, those members of the Democratic left wing who cluster round Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Martin and Burns quote Steve Ricchetti, a Biden counselor: “The problem with the left … is that they don’t understand that they lost.”Cedric Richmond, a senior Biden adviser and former dean of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), is less diplomatic. He describes the squad as “fucking idiots”. Richmond also takes exception to AOC pushing back at the vice-president, Kamala Harris, for telling undocumented migrants “do not come.”“AOC’s hit on Kamala was despicable,” Richmond says. “What it did for me is show a clear misunderstanding of what’s going on in the world.”Meanwhile, Cori Bush, a Squad member, has picked a fight with the CBC and led the charge against domestic terror legislation.Burns and Martin deliver vivid portraits of DC suck-ups and screw-ups. They capture Lindsey Graham, the oleaginous senior senator from South Carolina, in all his self-abasing glory.During the authors’ interview with Trump, Graham called the former president. After initially declining to pick up, Trump answered. “Hello, Lindsey.” He then placed Graham on speaker, without letting him know reporters were seated nearby.Groveling began instantly. Graham praised the power of Trump’s endorsements and the potency of his golf game. Stormy Daniels would not have been impressed. The senator, Burns and Martin write, sounded like “nothing more than an actor in a diet-fad commercial who tells his credulous viewer that he had been skeptical of the glorious product – until he tried it”.This Will Not Pass also attempts to do justice to Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona senator and “former Green party activist who reinvented herself as Fortune 500-loving moderate”. In addition to helping block Biden’s domestic agenda, Sinema has a knack for performative behavior and close ties to Republicans.Like Sarah Palin, she is fond of her own physique. The senator “boasted knowingly to colleagues and aides that her cleavage had an extraordinary persuasive effect on the uptight men of the GOP”.Palin is running to represent Alaska in Congress. Truly, we are blessed.Subtitled Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, Burns and Martin’s book closes with a meditation on the state of US democracy. The authors are anxious. Trump has not left the stage. Republican leadership has bent the knee. Mitch McConnell wants to be Senate majority leader again. He knows what the base is thinking and saying. Marjorie Taylor Greene is far from a one-person minority.Martin and Burns quote Malcolm Turnbull, a former prime minister of Australia: “You know that great line that you hear all the time: ‘This is not us. This is not America.’ You know what? It is, actually.”The Republicans are ahead on the generic ballot, poised to regain House and Senate. Biden’s favorability is under water. Pitted against Trump, he struggles to stay even. His handling of Russia’s war on Ukraine has not moved the needle.Inflation dominates the concerns of most Americans. For the first time in two years, the economy contracts. It is a long time to November 2024. Things can always get worse.
      This Will Not Pass is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksUS politicsJoe BidenBiden administrationDonald TrumpUS elections 2024reviewsReuse this content More

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      'Brutality of the most depraved sort': Pentagon spokesperson on Russian invasion of Ukraine – video

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      Pentagon spokesperson, John Kirby, spoke about Russian president, Vladimir Putin’s, ‘depravity’ and ‘brutality’ in carrying out the invasion of Ukraine. Kirby stated that the US had underestimated the level of ‘violence and cruelty’ that Russian forces would undertake, and described it as ‘brutality of the coldest and most depraved sort’

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      Pentagon spokesperson fights tears describing Putin's 'depraved' invasion of Ukraine – video

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      Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby fought back tears and said it was ‘difficult to look at some of the images’ of Vladimir Putin’s ‘cruel’ and ‘depraved’ invasion of Ukraine.
      Kirby stated that the US had underestimated the level of ‘violence and cruelty’ that Russian forces would undertake, and described it as ‘brutality of the coldest and most depraved sort’

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      The Right review: conservatism, Trump, regret and wishful thinking

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      The Right review: conservatism, Trump, regret and wishful thinkingMatthew Continetti’s history of 100 years of the American right is ambitious, impressive and worrying America’s tribes frequently clash but they rarely intersect. Over the past 60 years, the Democratic party has morphed into an upstairs-downstairs coalition, graduate-degree holders tethered to an urban core and religious “nones”. Meanwhile, Republicans have grown more rural, southern, evangelical and working class.Overcoming Trumpery review: recipes for reform Republicans will never allow Read moreWithin the GOP, Donald Trump has supplanted the legacies of Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln. According to Matthew Continetti, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, being a conservative in 2022 is less about advocating limited government and more about culture wars, owning the libs and denouncing globalization.Subtitled The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism, Continetti’s third book examines a century of intellectual and political battles. He seeks to explain how Trumpism became the dominant force within the Republican party. In large measure, he succeeds.The Right is readable and relatable, well-written and engaging. The author’s command of facts is impressive. For decades, he has lived around and within the conservative ecosystem.Continetti chronicles the tumult of 1960s, the emergence of Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” and the migration of blue-collar ethnic Catholics to what was once the home of the white Protestant establishment. He also looks back, at the pre-New Deal Republican party and at conservatism after the civil war.Continetti is sensitive to the currents that swirl in and around this country and its people. He laments that in the 21st century blood, soil and grievance have overtaken the conservative orthodoxies of free markets, personal autonomy and communal virtue. He is discomforted by how contemporary conservatism acquired a performative edge.On the page, his dismay is muted but present. He wistfully recalls the collapse of the Weekly Standard, where he worked for Bill Kristol, his future father-in-law. George W Bush’s war in Iraq was one thing that helped do-in the magazine.Similarly, the Republican establishment’s call for immigration reform left many Americans feeling unwanted and threatened. The US immigrant population hovers near a record high, almost 14%. More than 44 million people living here were born elsewhere. Even before the pandemic, the fertility rate hit a record low. The populist impulse is not going to disappear.Trump’s inaugural address, replete with images of “American carnage”, is illustrative of the new conservative normal. Continetti quotes George W Bush: “That was some weird shit.” Nonetheless, on 20 January 2017, Trump struck a nerve.Continetti is mindful of broader trends, and the havoc assortative marriage has brought to society and politics. On that point, he gives Charles Murray his due. Continetti is pessimistic. Marriage predicated upon educational attainment has helped concentrate intellectual capital and financial advantage within a narrow caste.Twenty years ago, David Brooks, once Continetti’s colleague, described an idyllic urban existence, Bobos in Paradise. Those who can’t get in, however, face life in purgatory. The meritocracy got what it clamored for, only to discover it wasn’t loved by those it left behind.Continetti seemingly attempts to downplay similarities between Trump’s Maga movement and the hard-right in Europe. He omits all reference to Nigel Farage in Britain and Marine le Pen in France. Farage led Britain to Brexit and made a cameo appearance in Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the US. Le Pen twice forced Emmanuel Macron into a run-off for president.On the other hand, Continetti does capture how part of the US right adores Vladimir Putin: his authoritarianism, his unbridled nationalism, his disdain for classic liberalism.“Putin held the same allure for the national populist right that Che Guevara held for the cold war left,” Continetti writes. “No wonder President Trump was a fan of the Russian autocrat.”Continetti also says conservatism “anchored to Trump the man will face insurmountable obstacles in attaining policy coherence, government competence, and intellectual credibility”. Here, he stands on shaky ground.In 2016, Trump assembled a winning coalition and beat Hillary Clinton. In power, he loaded the federal judiciary. Whether Jeb Bush could have replicated such success is doubtful. As for intellectual credibility, in 2008 Kristol, Continetti’s mentor, helped pluck Sarah Palin from obscurity. And we all know where that led.In 2009, Continetti himself wrote The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star. He now says “attacks on Palin” caused him “to rally to her defense”. Intellectual slumming, more like it. Palin was unfit for the top job. She resigned as Alaska governor 18 months before her term expired.Continetti also argues that conservatism needs once again to embrace the Declaration of Independence, the constitution and the Bill of Rights.“One cannot be an American patriot without reverence for the nation’s enabling documents,” he says.January 6 demonstrates otherwise. Conservatism’s commitment to democracy and the constitution appears situational. Members of the conservative establishment provided intellectual sinew for America’s Caesar. It wasn’t just about Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and folks dressed as Vikings.The Presidency of Donald Trump review: the first draft of historyRead moreJohn Eastman, a former clerk to Clarence Thomas; Ted Cruz, a former clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist; Mike Lee, son of Rex Lee, Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general. Together with Ginni Thomas, the justice’s wife, they played outsized roles around the Capitol attack. Fifteen months later, Eastman is in legal jeopardy, Cruz is under growing suspicion and Lee looks like a weasel. Ms Thomas merits our scorn.The reckoning Continetti hopes for may never arrive. Gas prices surge. Crime rises. Together, they portend a Republican midterm landslide. Such realities ushered in Reagan’s 1980 landslide over Jimmy Carter.A one-term Biden presidency looms. A second Trump term is a real possibility. The latest revelations surrounding Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell teach us that inconvenient truths are quickly discarded. In politics, a win is a win.
      The Right is published in the US by Basic Books
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      India Must Contain Afghanistan-Pakistan to Survive

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      ‘Democrats can’t catch a break’: election maps setback spells midterms trouble

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      ‘Democrats can’t catch a break’: election maps setback spells midterms troubleNew York ruling that 26 congressional districts were illegally distorted deals major blow to party’s quest to retain House New York’s highest court on Wednesday dealt national Democrats a major setback in their quest to keep control of the US House, when it struck down the state’s 26 congressional districts because they were illegally distorted in favor of Democrats.New York is critical for Democrats in the decennial process of redrawing congressional districts. The state’s 26 seats offer the party one of the richest opportunities to use mapmaking power to their advantage. Democrats currently have a 19-8 advantage in the congressional delegation, but drew a map that gives them three additional seats, increasing their advantage to 22-4 (New York is losing a congressional seat because of population loss). It would give the party 85% of the congressional seats in a state Joe Biden won with about 61% of the vote.Democrats saw that advantage as a necessary effort to counter aggressive Republican efforts to distort district lines to add Republican-friendly seats in places like Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Georgia. “For Democrats, a maximal gerrymander in New York was almost a prerequisite to any chances of holding the House,” said Dave Wasserman, a redistricting expert at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.Over the past few months, observers have noted that the redistricting process appeared to be going unexpectedly well for Democrats, who were buoyed by a mix of court rulings striking down Republican gerrymandered districts and anti-gerrymandering reforms. Some predicted that redistricting would end in a “partisan wash” or potentially even a balanced US House.Now, that looks increasingly unlikely.“A couple of months ago redistricting looked like a silver lining in an otherwise bleak election cycle for Democrats. Today, it looks like just another Republican bonus,” he said. “Democrats can’t catch a break.”Overall, Republicans are poised to pick up between four and five in the House this year, according to FiveThirtyEight. Republicans need to flip five Democratic-held seats to take control of the House.The ruling in New York, which could cost Democrats three seats, comes just after Florida governor Ron DeSantis successfully pushed an aggressively gerrymandered map that adds four additional GOP seats. The Florida map is already being challenged in state court – voting and civic action groups say the Florida plan obviously violates language in the state constitution prohibiting partisan gerrymandering. But Florida Republicans have firm control of the state supreme court, making any legal challenge an uphill battle.Meanwhile, the New York ruling is one of several redistricting decisions this year that underscore the increasingly important role state courts are playing in policing partisan gerrymandering. Last month, a court in Maryland struck down the state’s congressional map, also as being too gerrymandered in favor of Democrats. State courts in North Carolina, Kansas and Ohio have all struck down congressional districts as too distorted in favor of the GOP (the Ohio court let a revised map stand for 2022 even though voting rights groups said they were still too biased).Overall, Republicans have been able to get away with gerrymandering far more districts than Democrats have.Shorter 2022 redistricting: it’s permissible to brazenly gerrymander in some states (mostly red), but not others (mostly blue). As long as that’s true, you’re not going to end up with a “fair” or “equitable” national House map.— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) April 27, 2022
      States on track for GOP gerrymanders: AL, AR, FL, GA, IN, KY, LA, OH, OK, SC, TN, TX, UT (152 districts)States on track for Dem gerrymanders: IL, MD, MA, NV, NM, OR, RI (49 districts)— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) April 27, 2022
      “The fact that Maryland and New York were struck down and Florida, Ron DeSantis went into attack mode totally wipes away what Democrats had hoped.”There still is a little bit of uncertainty about what the partisan breakdown of New York’s congressional delegation will ultimately look like. The court of appeals appointed a special master to draw the districts by mid May and moved the state’s primary from June until August. Democrats may also appeal the ruling to the US supreme court, which has suggested in recent cases that courts cannot make changes to maps when an election is near.Even though Republicans have gerrymandered districts much more aggressively in recent years, the New York ruling also offered an embarrassing rebuke for Democrats, who have led national efforts to rein in severe partisan gerrymandering. The four justice majority said state Democrats had ignored a 2014 constitutional amendment, approved by voters, that adopted anti-gerrymandering language and put a bipartisan commission in charge of the process. Democrats drew the districts after the bipartisan commission failed to produce a plan.Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, who wrote the majority opinion for the court of appeals, rejected the idea that lawmakers could essentially come up with their own plan if the commission failed. Doing so, she wrote, would make the commission “nothing more than ‘window dressing’ masquerading as meaningful reform”.TopicsDemocratsThe fight to voteUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack panel set to issue letters to Kevin McCarthy and other key Republicans

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      Capitol attack panel set to issue letters to Kevin McCarthy and other key RepublicansMarjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert among those poised to receive letters requesting voluntary cooperation, sources say The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to issue letters requesting voluntary cooperation from House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and around a dozen other Republican members of Congress, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The panel intends to issue a letter to McCarthy – the top House Republican – and is considering further letters to Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, as well as some Republican senators, the sources said.Biden asks Congress for $33bn Ukraine aid packageRead moreCongressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the select committee, is expected to authorize the list of Republican members of Congress caught up in the investigation potentially as soon as this week. The letters may come either this week or next week, the sources said.The scope and subjects of the letters are not yet finalized, and the sources cautioned that the members of Congress approached for cooperation may still change. On Thursday, Thompson said only that he would send letters to McCarthy and other Republicans.But the select committee’s move to seek cooperation from some of Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders on Capitol Hill – and for some members like McCarthy, Jordan and Perry, the second such request – marks a new gear for the inquiry as it reaches its final stages.The new letters are being discussed internally as a final chance for cooperation before the select committee considers ways to compel their assistance, the sources said: once reluctant to pursue subpoenas against members of Congress, the mood on panel is changing.The panel has a renewed interest in McCarthy’s cooperation after new reporting this week showed he had told the Republican leadership days after January 6 that Trump admitted to him at least partial responsibility for the Capitol attack, the sources said.The select committee is particularly focused on whether Trump might have indicated to McCarthy why he believed he was culpable for the Capitol attack, the sources said, and whether the former president knew he may have acted unlawfully on January 6.Thompson is also considering letters to Greene and Perry and other Republicans who played an outsize role in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and pressed the White House about Trump declaring martial law to stay in office, the sources said.The select committee wants to learn more information from members of Congress who were in constant text-messages communication with Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, described by one of the sources as “those in the text message traffic”.A spokesman for the select committee declined to comment.Greene messaged Meadows on 17 January, according to one of more than 2,000 texts Meadows turned over to the investigation and obtained by CNN, that some members of Congress were calling for Trump to impose martial law to remain in power.“In our private chat with only Members several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call Marshall [sic] law,” Greene said in the text. “I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next.”Meadows did not appear to respond to Greene’s text. But the messages Trump’s top White House aide was receiving shows the extraordinary ideas swirling around Trump after he and his operatives were unable to stop the certification of Biden’s election win on January 6.The newly-released text messages also show Perry, now the chairman of the ultra-conservative House freedom caucus, lobbying Meadows to replace the justice department leadership with Jeffrey Clark, a DoJ official sympathetic to Trump’s effort to undo the 2020 election.Greene and Clark were among the leading Republicans determined to overturn Trump’s defeat to Biden, according to the text messages – as well as testimony provided to House investigators by Cassidy Hutchinson, a Trump White House aide who worked for Meadows.The select committee appears to believe the time is right to request voluntary cooperation from the members, the sources said, capitalizing on the public outrage surrounding McCarthy’s remarks and the texts sent by the Republican members of Congress.Thompson on Thursday confirmed to reporters that he would certainly issue a second letter to McCarthy to appear before House investigators, as well as to Jordan and Perry, but declined to name other targets or how he would proceed if the requests were rejected.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden asks Congress for $33bn Ukraine aid package

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      Biden asks Congress for $33bn Ukraine aid packagePresident’s request includes over $20bn in military aid, $8.5bn in economic aid to Kyiv and $3bn in humanitarian relief

      Russia-Ukraine war – latest updates
      Joe Biden has called for a giant $33bn package of military and economic aid to Ukraine, more than doubling the level of US assistance to date, in an emphatic rejection of Russian threats of reprisals and escalation.A few hours after Biden spoke, Kyiv was shaken by two powerful cruise missile strikes, while the UN secretary general, António Guterres, was visiting the Ukraine capital following a meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.A senior Ukrainian presidential aide, Mykhailo Podolyak, called the attack a “postcard from Moscow” and asked why Russia still had a seat on the UN security council.Biden asked Congress to give immediate approval for spending that would include over $20bn in military aid, involving everything from heavy artillery and armoured vehicles to greater intelligence sharing, cyber warfare tools and many more anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.Biden also requested $8.5bn in economic aid to Kyiv and $3bn in humanitarian relief, as well as funds to help increase US production of food crops and strategic minerals to offset the impact of the war in Ukraine on global supplies.The total of $33bn is more than twice the last supplemental request approved by Congress in March and dwarfs the entire defence budget of Ukraine and of many other countries. The US president said it was aimed at helping Ukraine repel the renewed Russian offensives in the east and south of the country, but also to transition to assuring the nation’s longer-term security needs.On the same day, Congress agreed to update the 1941 lend-lease legislation with which Franklin D Roosevelt sought to help Britain and other allies fight Nazi Germany. The updated law is intended to make it easier for the US to provide military equipment to Ukraine.It comes in the face of Russian warnings that increased western weapons supplies to Ukraine would endanger European security, that western intervention could bring instant Russian reprisals and raise the risk of nuclear conflict.Making the case for western aid, Biden argued that on the contrary, if Putin was not stopped in Ukraine he would continue to threaten global peace and stability.The president framed the request principally in terms of defending Ukraine, and did not explicitly repeat the declaration earlier this week by his defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, that one of US aims in Ukraine was to weaken Russia to stop it attacking other countries.“Despite the disturbing rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin, the facts are plain for everybody to see. We’re not attacking Russia. We’re helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression,” Biden said. But he added the cost involved was “a small price to pay to punish Russia and aggression, to lessen the risk of future conflicts”.“Throughout our history, we’ve learned that when dictators do not pay the price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and engage in more aggression,” he said. “The threats to America and the world keep rising. We can’t let this happen.”The new military assistance the congressional funding will finance will include:
      More artillery and armored vehicles, as well as anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft systems.
      Help to build up Ukraine’s cyber warfare capabilities.
      More intelligence sharing.
      Support to increase Ukraine’s ability to produce munitions and strategic minerals.
      Assistance in clearing landmines and other explosives and in Ukraine’s defence against chemical, biological and dirty bomb attacks.
      A further buildup in the US military presence on Nato’s eastern flank.
      The Kremlin’s official spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, warned on Thursday that an increased western supply of heavy weapons to Kyiv would endanger European security.“The tendency to pump weapons, including heavy weapons, into Ukraine, these are the actions that threaten the security of the continent, provoke instability,” Peskov said.The day before, Vladimir Putin had threatened a “lightning fast” response to western intervention in Ukraine, adding: “We have all the weapons we need for this.” His foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has accused the US and its allies of fighting a proxy war in Ukraine and warned of the rising danger of a nuclear conflict.Biden rejected the accusation he was fighting a proxy war, describing the claim as part of the Kremlin’s domestic propaganda to explain the inability of Russian forces to achieve their goals.“I think it’s more of a reflection, not of the truth, but of their failure,” the president said. He added: “No one should be making idle comments about the use of nuclear weapons.”The package of proposals the administration is sending to Congress also includes measures to strengthen the hand of the justice department in pursuing Kremlin-aligned oligarchs seizing their assets and using the proceeds to support the Ukraine war effort.UN secretary general describes war in Ukraine as ‘absurdity’ in 21st centuryRead moreBiden said the measures would allow for “expanded and expedited measures for investigating, prosecuting, and forfeiting assets of Russian oligarchs to be used for the benefit of Ukraine”.“We’re going to seize their yachts and luxury homes and other ill-begotten gains of Putin’s kleptocracy,” he added. The president made his announcement as the UN secretary general was visiting Ukraine, where he described the war as “an absurdity” in the 21st century.Guterres was touring Borodianka on Thursday, where Russian forces are accused of massacring civilians before their withdrawal, on his first visit to Ukraine since the start of the invasion on 24 February, before talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.01:23In nearby Bucha, where dozens of civilian bodies, some with their hands tied, were discovered this month, Guterres backed an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in Ukraine. “I appeal to the Russian Federation to accept, to cooperate with the ICC,” he said.The humanitarian impact of the Russian invasion has been devastating. The UN refugee agency UNHCR said nearly 5.4 million Ukrainians had fled their country since the attack began, with more than 55,000 leaving in the past 24 hours. While the outflow has slowed significantly since March, it forecast that the conflict in Ukraine could produce 8.3 million refugees by the end of the year.Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, warned the west on Thursday to stop encouraging Ukraine to strike at targets inside Russian territory, saying it was “trying our patience”. Multiple targets, including fuel and ammunition depots, have been hit in Russian provinces bordering Ukraine in recent days.“Such aggression against Russia cannot remain without an answer,” Zakharova said. “We would like Kyiv and western capitals to take seriously the statement that further provocation prompting Ukraine to strike against Russian facilities will be met with a harsh response from Russia.”Podolyak, the Ukrainian presidential aide, defended the country’s right to strike inside Russia, saying: “Ukraine will defend itself in any way, including strikes on the warehouses and bases of the killers in Russia. The world recognises this right.”Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, on Thursday also repeated the UK’s assertion that it was “legitimate under international law” for Ukrainian forces to target Russian logistics infrastructure, but he said such attacks were unlikely to use British weapons.The US on Thursday accused Russia of planning fake independence votes to justify its conquest of Ukrainian territory, saying the Kremlin might attempt “sham referenda” in southern and eastern areas it had captured using “a well-worn playbook that steals from history’s darkest chapters” and must “never be recognised as legitimate”.TopicsUS foreign policyJoe BidenUkraineRussiaUS CongressUS politicsEuropenewsReuse this content More