Happy 2024! Here are the main events that occurred in Politics this week:
1. President Biden Condemns Trump as Dire Threat to Democracy in a Blistering Speech
President Joe Biden on January 5 delivered a ferocious condemnation of former President Donald Trump, his likely 2024 opponent, warning in searing language that the former President had directed an insurrection and would aim to undo the nation’s bedrock democracy if he returned to power. On the eve of the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by former President Trump’s supporters, President Biden framed the coming election as a choice between a candidate devoted to upholding America’s centuries-old ideals and a chaos agent willing to discard them for his benefit. “There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do,” Biden warned in a speech at a community college not far from Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, where George Washington commanded troops during the Revolutionary War. Exhorting supporters to prepare to vote this fall, he said: “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question is: Who are we?”
2. Biden Administration Sues Texas Over State’s Controversial Immigration Law
The Biden administration on January 3 filed a lawsuit against Texas over its controversial immigration law that gives local law enforcement in Texas the authority to arrest migrants, arguing the state “cannot run its own immigration system.” The move comes after the Justice Department threatened last week to sue Texas if it did not back down from the measure. It marks the second legal action against the state this week, as President Joe Biden and Texas Governor Greg Abbott spar over the handling of the US-Mexico border. In December, Abbott, a Trump-aligned Republican, signed into law Senate Bill 4, which also gives judges the ability to issue orders to remove people from the United States. The White House has slammed the law – which is slated to take effect in March – as “incredibly extreme.”
3. Former President Donald Trump Appeals Colorado ‘Insurrection Clause’ Ruling to Supreme Court
Former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on January 3 to allow him to stay on the presidential primary ballot in Colorado, saying a state ruling banning him was unconstitutional, unfair, and based on a January 6 insurrection that his appeal said did not happen. The court filing, dominated by technical and procedural challenges to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling last month, does not ask the high court to weigh in on whether the former president indeed participated in an insurrection. The state’s highest court concluded that Trump indeed engaged in the January 6 insurrection effort and thus was banned from running under an obscure, Civil War-era clause in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment banning such a person from holding office.
4. 95 People Killed In Terrorist Attack In Iran
At least 95 people were killed and scores injured on January 3 in two blasts that struck the central Iranian city of Kerman, where thousands of mourners had gathered to commemorate Qasem Soleimani on the fourth anniversary of his assassination in a US drone strike in Iraq in 2020. Bahram Eynollahi, Iran’s health minister, was quoted by Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) as saying 95 people were killed and 211 were injured. An earlier toll provided by officials, of 103 killed, was lowered because names were repeated on a list of victims, he said. The deputy governor of Kerman, the slain general’s hometown, said the incident was a “terrorist attack,” according to IRNA. The explosions occurred about a half-mile from Soleimani’s burial place, on the road to the graveyard, and roughly 20 minutes apart, the agency reported. Before the blasts, the state-run live broadcast had shown tens of thousands of mourners filling the street, moving calmly in a procession. After the attack, it broadcast video of people running frantically and men wearing emergency medical technician uniforms surging into the crowd. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
