On January 2, 2025, President Joe Biden highlighted the confirmation of 235 federal judges during his presidency, a landmark achievement that narrowly surpassed the 234 lifetime judicial appointments made under President-elect Donald Trump in his first term. Among Biden’s confirmations was one Supreme Court justice, marking the culmination of a determined effort by Democrats to shape the judiciary in the final months of his term.
In his remarks, President Biden framed the milestone as a safeguard for democracy and a counterbalance to recent judicial decisions, including the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. “Together, these judges are going to hear cases on issues, ruling on everything from whether Americans can cast their ballot, literally how they can cast their ballot, when it will be counted, to whether workers can unionize and make a living wage for their families,” Biden said. He also highlighted environmental priorities, adding, “whether their children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.”
Flanked by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, Biden reflected on the intense push to confirm his nominees. He praised their shared commitment to diversifying the federal bench, with two-thirds of his appointees being women or people of color. “When I ran for president, I made a promise that I’d have a bench that looks like America and taps into the full talents of this nation,” Biden said. “And I’m proud we’ve kept our commitment.”
Despite the celebratory tone, Biden acknowledged challenges faced during his term, as federal courts blocked several key policy initiatives, including student debt relief programs, immigration reforms, and stricter air pollution regulations. Most recently, a federal appeals court struck down his administration’s net neutrality rules, a signature tech policy. The president’s remarks underscored how the judiciary has become a battleground for polarizing policy disputes, further eroding public confidence in judicial impartiality.
This erosion of trust has been exacerbated by “judge shopping,” where lawsuits are filed in districts perceived to favor particular causes. Polls show public faith in the neutrality of US courts has plummeted, a concern echoed by Chief Justice John Roberts in his year-end report, which also addressed the rise in threats against federal judges. Meanwhile, President-elect Trump, who campaigned on criticisms of the legal system, frequently attacked judges who ruled against him, fueling partisan perceptions of the judiciary.
The urgency to confirm President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees stemmed from a desire to avoid leaving vacancies for Republicans to fill under the incoming administration. The Democratic push mirrored a similar scenario in 2017 when Trump inherited over 100 vacancies after Republicans blocked President Obama’s appointments. Biden’s confirmations now represent over a quarter of the federal bench, setting a new standard for diversity and ensuring a lasting legacy as he concludes his term.
Voters’ approval of President Joe Bidenremains deep in negative territory and 70 percent of voters say the country is on the wrong track, both results that bode ill for Democrats as Election Day approaches. Fifty-five percent of registered voters said they disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president, and just 42 percent said they approve in the last POLITICO-Morning Consult poll conducted in advance of the midterm election.
Voters often treat midterm elections as a referendum on the president and his party, which suggests that support for Democrats is on the wane, and many polling averages indicate that voters are more inclined to vote for Republicans as a result. The POLITICO-Morning Consult poll is an outlier on this question, showing support for Democratic congressional candidates at 48 percent, five points above support for Republican candidates. The poll continued to show economic issues at top of mind for voters, with 78 percent saying both the economy and inflation will play a “major role” in how they cast their ballots. By contrast, 61 percent of voters said crime would play a major role in their voting decisions this year and 57 percent said the same about abortion access.
Concerns about political violence appear to be increasing among the electorate, with more than two-thirds of voters telling pollsters they believe political violence has increased in the last year. A majority said they believe politicians, social media and the news media are to blame. A full 80 percent of Americans said they were concerned about political violence in the US, a fear that is shared across gender, age, race, and political ideologies. Eighty-seven percent of Democrats reported concerns about political violence, which is defined as an act of violence to achieve a political end, followed by 76 percent of Republicans and independents, respectively. While most voters said they do not believe the risk of political violence is increasing in their own states or local communities, 65 percent responded that they believe it has increased nationally. That majority includes more than 60 percent of Democrats, Republicans, and independents.
The poll was conducted about one week after an assault on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by an armed intruder, and most voters in the poll said they believed that the attack was an act of political violence. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they considered the attack either definitely or probably an act of political violence, while 21 percent said it definitely or probably was not a political attack. There was a strong partisan divide between voters who considered the attack to be political in nature and those who do not: Sixty percent of Democrats said it was political while only 23 percent of Republicans agreed. Independents were closer to Republicans on this question, with 36 percent considering it an act of political violence.
Eighty-three percent of voters place the blame for political violence on the perpetrators themselves, but three-quarters of voters found fault with social media platforms, which have also faced scrutiny from members of Congress for their roles in helping people organize violent attacks and promote violent ideas. Sixty-nine percent also blamed the news media, including 76 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats. And 55 percent of voters found television hosts and political commentators responsible for political violence, with blame falling equally on conservative and liberal TV personalities. Former President Donald Trump was also found responsible for increased political violence by 57 percent of voters. Eighty-two percent of people who voted for Biden in 2020 blamed Trump as did 31 percent of his own 2020 voters.
President Joe Biden escalated his partisan rhetoric on January 19 during his first news conference in 10 months, laying the blame for his stalled agenda at the feet of Republicans and suggesting on the eve of his first anniversary that he has been surprised by their intransigence. “I honest to God don’t know what they’re for,” Biden said at one point during his nearly two-hour exchange with reporters. “What is their agenda?” He said the Republican Party is thoroughly cowed by former president Donald Trump. “Did you ever think that one man out of office could intimidate an entire party where they’re unwilling to take any vote?” Biden asked.
The shift intensified a harsher tone that President Joe Biden has taken this year toward Republicans, starting with an address commemorating the January 6 Capitol assault and continuing in Georgia last week with a blistering address suggesting that those who do not support the current voting rights bills will be remembered in history alongside such notorious racists as Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Confederacy. The sharp critique represents a major shift from Biden’s message during the presidential campaign when he said that Republicans would have an “epiphany” and that partisan gridlock would ease if he took office. And it signals a shift from an inaugural year focused on congressional action to a hard-fought election year with control of Congress at stake.
President Joe Biden also offered unvarnished thoughts about Russia’s intentions toward Ukraine, suggesting that President Vladimir Putin would probably invade the country. He suggested the US response would be different if Moscow launches a “minor incursion” vs. a massive ground invasion, causing a furor that quickly prompted the White House to clarify that he was distinguishing a military and non-military assault. The President also made news by confirming rumors that he plans to break up his roughly $2 trillion social welfare and climate legislation, called the Build Back Better package, into smaller bills.
The roughly two-hour exchange was much longer than expected or typical for a presidential news conference, and President Joe Biden called on far more reporters than he usually does. He joked about staying there for hours and even suggested that the journalists keep their questions short so he could answer more of them. Biden gave the news conference in a moment when his polls are falling and he faces a nation that is exhausted by a lingering pandemic and economic uncertainty.
A recent Gallup poll showed that just 40 percent of Americans approve of the job that President Joe Biden is doing, while 56 percent disapproved. That’s the lowest rating for any recent president at their one-year mark, aside from Trump, whose rating was a few points lower. He noted several times that the country is not where he had hoped and expected it to be. When asked if he’s done a good job unifying Americans he gave a nuanced answer. “The answer is, based on some of the stuff we’ve got done, I’d say yes,” Biden said. “But it’s not nearly unified as it should be. Biden telegraphed that he will spend more time traveling the country and talking to voters and less time embroiled in prolonged negotiations with Congress. “The public doesn’t want me to be the president-senator,” said Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate before becoming Barack Obama’s vice president. “They want me to be the president and let senators be senators.”
The President’s January 19 news conference took on greater significance than usual because it came on the eve of the anniversary of his first full year in office and also a moment when many of Joe Biden’s plans face turbulence. In what appeared to be a carefully calculated message, he repeatedly excoriated Republicans, accusing them of having no goal except opposing him, no leader except Trump, and no agenda at all. “I did not anticipate that there would be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was to make sure Biden didn’t get anything done,” he said. “What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they are for.”
The House vote followed a day of wrangling over how to enact the two planks of the party’s agenda. The push-and-pull exemplified party leaders’ months-long struggle to get progressives and centrists, who have differing visions of the government’s role in the economy, behind the same bills. Democrats entered the day planning to pass both the infrastructure legislation and the party’s larger $1.75 trillion social safety net and climate package. A demand from a handful of centrists to see a Congressional Budget Office estimate of the social spending plan’s budgetary effects delayed its approval. Progressives sought assurances the holdouts would support the bigger proposal if they voted for the infrastructure bill. After hours of talks, and a call by President joe Biden into a progressive caucus meeting urging lawmakers to back the infrastructure bill, the party’s liberal wing got assurances from centrists that they would support the larger package.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said the group reached a deal to back the infrastructure plan in exchange for a commitment to take up the safety-net bill “no later than the week of November 15.” A group of five centrists separately issued a statement saying they would back the Build Back Better legislation pending a CBO score that assuages their concerns about long-term budget deficits.
In a statement after the House vote, President Joe Biden said the legislation would “create millions of jobs, turn the climate crisis into an opportunity, and put us on a path to win the economic competition for the 21st Century.” He also noted that the procedural vote on the second Democratic bill will “allow for passage of my Build Back Better Act in the House of Representatives the week of November 15th.” The bills together make up the core of President Biden’s domestic agenda. Democrats see the plans as complementary pieces designed to boost the economy, jolt the job market, provide a layer of insurance to working families and curb climate change.
President Joe Biden and Democrats have looked for a signature achievement they can point to on the 2022 midterm campaign trail as the president’s approval ratings flag. President Biden will welcome the developments, as House passage of the bill followed a strong October jobs report and approval of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine for 5-to-11-year-olds in the US. While President Biden could sign the infrastructure bill soon, the safety net and climate package will likely take weeks longer. The House will have to wait for a CBO score. The Senate may pass a different version of the plan, which would require another House vote. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has set a Thanksgiving target to pass the larger Democratic bill.
Despite much bipartisan support, many Democrats considered the infrastructure bill inadequate because it did not address issues including child care, pre-K education, Medicare expansion, and the enhanced child tax credit. Those policies, priorities for President Joe Biden and top Democrats, made it into the House version of the social safety net bill. Democratic leaders tied the proposals together in an effort to keep centrists and progressives on board with both plans. A thorny legislative process has unfolded for months as Democrats try to get disparate groups with varied visions of the federal government’s role in the economy to back both packages.
The Senate gave overwhelming bipartisan approval on August 11 to a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to rebuild the nation’s deteriorating roads and bridges and fund new climate resilience and broadband initiatives, delivering a key component of President Joe Biden’s agenda. The vote, 69 to 30, was uncommonly bipartisan. The yes votes included Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and 18 others from his party who shrugged off increasingly shrill efforts by former President Donald Trump to derail it. “This historic investment in infrastructure is what I believe you, the American people, want, what you’ve been asking for for a long, long time,” President Biden said from the White House as he thanked Republicans for showing “a lot of courage.” Senator McConnell, who publicly declared that his priority was stopping the Biden agenda, said in a statement that “I was proud to support today’s historic bipartisan infrastructure deal and prove that both sides of the political aisle can still come together around common-sense solutions.” The measure faces a potentially rocky and time-consuming path in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a majority of the nearly 100-member Progressive Caucus have said they will not vote on it unless and until the Senate passes a separate, even more ambitious $3.5 trillion social policy bill this fall. That could put the infrastructure bill on hold for weeks, if not months.
The recently passed infrastructure bill is one of the largest passed by the Senate in recent years. It would be the largest infusion of federal investment into infrastructure projects in more than a decade, touching nearly every facet of the American economy and fortifying the nation’s response to the warming of the planet. Funding for the modernization of the nation’s power grid would reach record levels, as would projects to manage climate risks. Hundreds of billions of dollars would go to repairing and replacing aging public works projects. With $550 billion in new federal spending, the measure would provide $65 billion to expand high-speed internet access; $110 billion for roads, bridges, and other projects; $25 billion for airports; and the most funding for Amtrak since the passenger rail service was founded in 1971. It would also renew and revamp existing infrastructure and transportation programs set to expire at the end of September.
Its success, painstakingly negotiated largely by a group of Republican and Democratic Senators in consultation with White House officials, is a vindication of President Joe Biden’s belief that a bipartisan compromise was possible on a priority that has long been shared by both parties, even at a moment of deep political division. “This is what it looks like when elected leaders take a step toward healing our country’s divisions rather than feeding those very divisions,” Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), a key negotiator, said before the bill’s passage. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), said that “everyone involved in this effort can be proud of what this body is achieving today — the Senate is doing its job.”
With a bipartisan victory pocketed, Democrats turned immediately to a more partisan venture, a second social policy package that would fulfill the remainder of their spending priorities. The Senate’s $3.5 trillion social policy budget, which is expected to pass along party lines later in the week, will allow Senate committees to draft legislation packed with policies to address climate change, health, education, and paid family and medical leave, and pass it over the threat of a filibuster. It will also include tax increases and is expected to generate unanimous Republican opposition. “Despite this long road we’ve taken, we have finally, finally reached the finish line,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). But, directing his comments to colleagues eager to take up unaddressed priorities, he added, “We are moving on to a second track, which will make a generational transformation.”
The Senate vote capped a grueling, months-long negotiation between the Biden administration and Senators in both parties over the scope and size of an infrastructure bill. After an abbreviated effort to work with Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), on a plan that could win backing from Republican leaders, President Joe Biden turned his focus to a group of 10 moderate Republicans and Democrats who had helped strike the compromise that paved the way for a postelection pandemic relief package in December. The Senators and top White House officials spent weeks debating how to structure and finance the legislation over late-night meals, virtual meetings, and phone calls. Even after the group triumphantly announced an outline in June, it took a month to translate that framework into legislation. Along the way, the effort appeared on the brink of collapse, after it failed a test vote in the Senate and former President Donald Trump sniped at it from the sidelines, trying to persuade Republicans that they would pay a steep political price for supporting it.
“When we have more people on both sides of the aisle who want to do things in a partisan way, as opposed to figuring out how we can work together, I don’t think that’s in the best interests of the country,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), one of the key negotiators, said in an interview. “It was really important for the continued relationships within the Senate that are so important to getting things dome. Negotiators were particularly bedeviled by the question of how to pay for their plan. Republicans declared that they would not support any legislation that raised taxes and rejected a proposal to beef up IRS enforcement against tax cheats, and Democrats ruled out raising user fees for drivers.
Democrats and President Joe Biden, who had initially proposed a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, made significant concessions. The package includes far less funding than they had wanted for lead pipe replacement, transit, and clean energy projects, among others. To finance what remained, analysts said the government would most likely have to borrow heavily. On August 5, the Congressional Budget Office said the legislation would add $256 billion to the deficit over 10 years, contradicting the claims of its authors that their bill would be fully paid for. That is nearly half of the new spending in the legislation, which includes a patchwork of measures purported to raise revenue to pay for it, including repurposing unspent pandemic relief funds, more tightly regulating cryptocurrency and delaying carrying out a Trump-era rule that would change the way drug companies can offer discounts to health plans for Medicare patients.
The infrastructure bill also carries major policy changes. It amounts to a tacit, bipartisan acknowledgment that the country is ill-prepared for a worsening climate. Billions of dollars would be invested in projects to protect homes from weather calamities, move vulnerable communities out of harm’s way and support new approaches to countering climate change. It also includes $73 billion to update the nation’s electricity grid so it can carry more renewable energy, $7.5 billion to construct electric vehicle charging stations, $17.5 billion for clean buses and ferries, and $15 billion for removing lead pipes. The agreement targets critical resources toward underserved communities, although not as much as President Joe Biden had requested. It would direct $1 billion over five years, slightly more than half of it in new federal funding, to a program to help reconnect communities divided by highway construction, as well as millions of dollars to help improve access to running water in tribal and Alaska Native communities.
The infrastructure bill also includes money to restore lakes across the country, $66 billion in new funding for Amtrak, and more funding for programs intended to provide safe commutes for pedestrians. It also creates a $350 million pilot program for projects that reduce collisions between vehicles and wildlife. The bill dedicates an increasing amount each year for grants to clean up drinking water by removing lead-contaminated pipes and making other infrastructure upgrades. The legislation reserves at least $25 million per year for “small and disadvantaged communities.” In the days before the measure passed, senators engaged in a last-ditch attempt to allow some exemptions to strict tax regulations on cryptocurrency brokers that had been included in the original bill, after pushback from senators in both parties. But without agreement on other amendments, negotiators ultimately failed to secure unanimous consent to make those changes.
Despite the fact that the infrastructure bill passed the Senate by a decent margin, legislation faces a tricky path in the House, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she will not take it up until the Senate clears the reconciliation bill. The House has also passed its own infrastructure bill, which includes more money for climate change mitigation and nearly $5.7 billion to pay for 1,473 home district projects, or earmarks, that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee vetted. A handful of moderate Democrats have urged House Speaker Pelosi to avoid delaying a stand-alone vote on the bipartisan agreement. But leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in a letter to Pelosi, warned that a majority of its 96 members confirmed they would withhold their support for the legislation until the second, far more expansive package cleared the reconciliation process in the Senate.
President Joe Biden unveiled a more than $2 trillion infrastructure package on March 31 as his administration shifts its focus to bolstering the post-pandemic economy. The plan President Biden outlined includes roughly $2 trillion in spending over eight years and would raise the corporate tax rate to 28% to fund it. Speaking at a union hall in Pittsburgh, the President called it a vision to create “the strongest, most resilient, innovative economy in the world” — and millions of “good-paying jobs” along the way. The White House said the tax hike, combined with measures designed to stop offshoring of profits, would fund the infrastructure plan within 15 years.
The announcement kicks off President Joe Biden’s second major initiative after the passage of a $1.9 trillion Coronavirus relief plan earlier this month. In the new move, the administration aims to approve a first proposal designed to create jobs, revamp US infrastructure, and fight climate change before it turns toward a second plan to improve education and expand paid leave and health-care coverage. President Biden said he will unveil the second part of his recovery package “in a few weeks.” “These are investments we have to make,” Biden said of revamping US infrastructure. “We can afford to make them. To put it another way, we can’t afford not to.”
While Democrats narrowly control both chambers of Congress (with ultra-conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia being the deciding vote), the party faces challenges in passing the infrastructure plan. The Republican Party broadly supports efforts to rebuild roads, bridges, and airports and expand broadband access, but Republicans oppose tax hikes as part of the process. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said that he is “not likely” to support the proposal because of the tax increases. McConnell’s Democratic counterpart, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, touted the bill as a means to create jobs while promoting clean energy and transportation. In a statement issued on March 31, he said, “I look forward to working with President Biden to pass a big, bold plan that will drive America forward for decades to come.”
President Joe Biden responded to criticism of proposed tax hikes, saying he would not increase the burden on anyone making less than $400,000 per year. He said he did not aim to punish the wealthy. “This is not to target those who’ve made it. Not to seek retribution,” President Biden said. “This is about opening opportunities for everybody else.” Among the administration’s goals, it aims to revamp 20,000 miles of roads and highways and repair 10,000 bridges. The proposal calls to build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers by 2030 and replace 50,000 diesel public transit vehicles. The administration hopes to build or rehabilitate 500,000 homes for low- and middle-income Americans and replace all lead pipes in drinking-water systems. The plan also aims to deliver universal, affordable broadband service.
President Joe Biden plans to fund the spending by raising the corporate tax rate to 28%. Republicans slashed the tax to 21% from 35% as part of their 2017 tax law. President Biden also wants to boost the global minimum tax for multinational corporations and ensure they pay at least 21% in taxes in any country. The White House aims to discourage firms from listing tax havens as their address and writing off expenses related to offshoring, among other reforms. Biden hopes the package will create manufacturing jobs and rescue failing American infrastructure as the country tries to emerge from the shadow of the Coronavirus pandemic. He and congressional Democrats also plan to combat climate change and start a transition to cleaner energy sources.
President Joe Biden has said he hopes to win Republican support for an infrastructure bill. If Democrats cannot get 10 Republican senators on board, they will have to pass the bill through budget reconciliation, which would not require any Republicans to back the plan in a chamber split 50-50 by party. Biden said he would hear out GOP ideas on infrastructure. “We’ll have a good-faith negotiation with any Republican who wants to help get this done,” Biden said on March 31. “But we have to get it done.”
President Joe Biden moved to help children fleeing violence in Central America on March 10 even as he grappled with a surge of migrants at the US southern border that is taxing resources and exposing him to bipartisan criticism. White House border coordinator Roberta Jacobson told reporters the Biden administration is restarting the Central American Minors (CAM) program for children, which between 2014 and 2017 allowed children fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to apply in their home countries to settle in the US. Then-President Donald Trump ended the program in 2017. It had allowed children under 21 years old with parents lawfully living in the US to apply for a refugee resettlement interview as a way to avoid making the dangerous journey by themselves to the US.
The move was the latest step taken by President Joe Biden as he tries to create a more humane situation along the border with Mexico. Mixed messaging by the Biden Administration, however, is leading to criticism from Republicans that he is encouraging migrants to make the dangerous journey to try to reach sanctuary in the US. “The Biden border crisis is real and is only going to get worse,” Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas said at a news conference held by House Republicans on March 10. At the same time, Democrats complain that President Biden is not moving fast enough to release children from Border Patrol custody.
US officials are urging people not to try to cross the border, warning they will be sent back. President Joe Biden has not reversed a Trump-era public health rule that allows border agents to expel most border crossers quickly but is not applying the policy to unaccompanied minors. “The border is not open,” said Roberta Jacobson, switching to Spanish on several occasions during a White House briefing to stress the point. The phrase was repeated in a call with reporters on March 10 by Troy Miller, the senior official performing duties as the commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. Miller said agents on the U.S.-Mexico border encountered 100,441 migrants attempting to enter the country illegally in February, confirming the highest monthly total since a major border surge in mid-2019. Miller said more than 19,000 of those encounters were families, close to 9,500 were unaccompanied minors, and the remainder adults. Border officials said they also count repeat crossers in their numbers.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said members of President Joe Biden’s immigration team briefed him on a border visit they had and that they discussed how to speed up the processing of migrant children. A State Department representative said in a statement that the administration is set to resume processing CAM applications, starting with children whose cases were suspended under Trump and then opening up to new applicants. The department plans to reach out to parents starting as soon as March 15, the representative said. To date, the program has reunified almost 5,000 children with their parents.
The US House of Representatives gave final approval on March 10 to one of the most significant economic stimulus measures in American history, a sweeping $1.9 trillion Coronavirus relief bill that gives President Joe Biden his first significant victory in office. The measure provides $400 billion for $1,400 direct payments to most Americans, $350 billion in aid to state and local governments, an expansion of the child tax credit, and increased funding for vaccine distribution. Forecasters expect it to supercharge the US economic recovery. “Help is here,” President Biden wrote in a tweet after the vote. The White House said he plans to sign the bill on March 12.
— President Biden Archived (@POTUS46Archive) March 10, 2021
Approval by a 220-211 vote in the Democratic-controlled chamber came with zero Republican support after weeks of partisan debate and wrangling in Congress. Democrats described the legislation as a critical response to a pandemic that has killed more than 500,000 people and thrown millions out of work. “This is a historic day. It is the beginning of the end of the great COVID depression,” Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) said. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement that passage of the legislation was a pivotal day for the US economy and would speed its recovery. But Republicans said the measure was too costly and was packed with wasteful progressive priorities. They said the worst phase of the largest public health crisis in a century has largely passed and the economy is headed toward a rebound.“It’s the wrong plan at the wrong time for so many wrong reasons,” Republican Representative Jason Smith said.
Despite unanimous Republican opposition to the measure, Democrats predicted that Republicans would tout the benefits of the bill to constituents, despite their lock-step opposition in the House and Senate. Indeed, Republican Senator Roger Wicker wrote on Twitter: “This funding will ensure small businesses can survive the pandemic by helping to adapt their operations and keep their employees on the payroll.” Democrats were eager to get the final bill to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature before current enhanced federal unemployment benefits expire.
Although many Republicans supported Coronavirus relief under former President Donald Trump’s administration, no Republican lawmakers voted for the bill in the House or Senate. But the bill is popular with the public. A Reuters/Ipsos national opinion poll, conducted March 8-9, showed that 70% of Americans support the plan, including majorities of Democrats and Republicans. Among Republicans, five out of ten say they support the plan, while nine out of ten Democrats supported it. The legislation could have high stakes for both parties. If it succeeds in giving the economy a major boost, the plan could improve Democrats’ political fortunes as they attempt to hold their slim majorities in Congress in the 2022 midterm elections. Only one House Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, voted against the package, saying its high borrowing costs endangered the recovery.
The Coronavirus relief bill passed by the Senate in a marathon weekend session removed a $15-per-hour federal minimum wage increase by 2025; tightened the eligibility for $1,400 direct payments, capping them at those earning below $80,000, cut the unemployment insurance payment to $300 per week from the House’s $400 and targeted some of the state and local government aid to smaller communities. States that voted for Donald Trump in the November election are due to get a larger amount of education and child-care aid per resident than those that backed Joe Biden, according to estimates from two congressional committees. Residents of Republican-leaning states, which tend to have lower household incomes, also are likely to get larger stimulus checks and tax breaks as well, according to an independent research group. The massive spending push is seen as a major driver, coupled with a quickening pace of Coronavirus vaccinations and a slowing infection rate, in a brightening outlook for the economy. Morgan Stanley this week pegged 2021 economic output growth at 8.1%. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted US growth would top 6% this year, up from an estimate of around 3% three months ago.
With the Coronavirus relief bill now completed, attention turns to President Joe Biden’s next round of major legislation, including massive infrastructure investments, immigration reforms, and climate change initiatives. While conservatives bridled at the $1.9 trillion cost of the Coronavirus relief bill, it could be possible to get Republican buy-in on immigration and climate change legislation in the Senate, said Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University. But getting enough Republican support for Democratic initiatives to propel them to passage will be a challenge and “anything that gets 60 votes in the Senate is likely to be a problem with progressive Democrats in the House,” Sracic added.
The US Supreme Court on February 22 brought a formal end to eight lingering disputes pursued by former President Donald Trump and his allies related to the Presidential election including a Republican challenge to the extension of Pennsylvania’s deadline to receive mail-in ballots. The justices turned away appeals by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania and Republican members of the state legislature of a ruling by Pennsylvania’s top court ordering officials to count mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and received up to three days later. Three of the nine-member court’s six conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, dissented from the decision not to hear the Pennsylvania case.
Former President Donald Trump made false claims that the Presidential election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud and irregularities. From the day after the Presidential election until the middle of December, Trump’s legal team filed some 40 election-related lawsuits challenging the results in seven states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico). The Supreme Court ruled these disputes as invalid on December 11 in 1 7-2 decision, with even Trump’s own Supreme Court appointees ruling against him.
The case brought by Pennsylvania Republicans concerned 9,428 ballots out of 6.9 million cast in the state. The Supreme Court previously rejected a Republican request to block the lower court ruling allowing the ballots to be counted. In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the Supreme Court should resolve whether non-legislators, including elections officials and courts, have any power to set election rules. Thomas said it was fortunate that the state high court’s ruling did not involve enough ballots to affect the election’s outcome.
Reparations have been used in other circumstances to offset large moral and economic debt, paid to Japanese Americans interned during World War Two, to families of Holocaust survivors, and to Blacks in post-apartheid South Africa. But the US has never made much headway in discussions of whether or how to compensate African Americans for more than 200 years of slavery and help make up for racial inequality. HR-40, a bill to fund the study of “slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies” has been floated in Congress for more than 30 years, but never taken up for a full vote. Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee reintroduced it in January. Fellow Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen, who chairs the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, told a hearing on February 17 it was fitting to consider HR-40 at a time when the country is reckoning with police violence against African Americans and a pandemic that has disproportionately affected African Americans.
President Biden told the Washington Post last year that “we must acknowledge that there can be no realization of the American dream without grappling with the original sin of slavery, and the centuries-long campaign of violence, fear, and trauma wrought upon Black people in this country.” But like nearly all of the Democratic presidential candidates at the time, he did not embrace the idea of specific payments to enslaved people’s descendants, instead promising “major actions to address systemic racism” and further study. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted last June following the death in police custody in Minneapolis of George Floyd, an African-American man, found clear divisions along partisan and racial lines, with only one in 10 white respondents supporting the idea and half of African American respondents endorsing it.
Calls have been growing from some politicians, academics, and economists for such payments to be made to an estimated 40 million African Americans. Any federal reparations program could cost trillions of dollars, they estimate. Supporters say such payments would act as an acknowledgment of the value of the forced, unpaid labor that supported the economy of Southern US states until the Civil War ended slavery in 1865, the broken promise of land grants after the Civil War, and the burden of the century and a half of legal and de facto segregation that followed.
President Joe Biden expressed optimism on February 16 that most US schools would be open by late spring and vowed to continue accelerating the country’s Coronavirus vaccination program, as he sought to elevate his agenda now the drama of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is over. In a wide-ranging televised town hall that touched on the pandemic, economic relief, China-US relations, and race and policing, Biden also aimed to build public support for his $1.9 trillion Coronavirus relief plan, which is awaiting congressional action. “Now’s the time to go big,” he said during a CNN prime-time broadcast, as he fielded questions from voters at the landmark Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “If we pass this bill alone, we’ll create 7 million jobs this year.”
After a parent and a teacher asked how President Joe Biden planned to ensure that schools could open safely amid the pandemic, the Democratic president said he anticipated that “most” elementary and middle schools would have in-person classes five days a week by the end of his first 100 days in office. He also said he believes teachers should be moved closer to the front of the line for inoculation. “I think that we should be vaccinating teachers – we should move them up in the hierarchy,” Biden said, although he noted that states, not the federal government, have the authority to decide how to prioritize vaccinations. Biden said he expected everyone who wanted a vaccine would be able to get one by July when his administration will have secured enough shots to inoculate all Americans. But he also warned that the recovery from the pandemic that has killed more than 485,000 people in the United States would still take many months and urged people to wear masks, maintain social distance, and wash hands for the foreseeable future.
The February 16 visit, as well as a trip scheduled for February 18 that will take President Joe Biden to a Michigan vaccine manufacturing site, offered the President an opportunity to tout the importance of a new relief bill even as Republicans remain largely opposed to its massive price tag. President Biden wants Congress to pass the legislation in the coming weeks in order to get $1,400 stimulus checks out to Americans and bolster unemployment payments. Some aspects of the bill, including Biden’s push to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, may have a difficult time gaining enough support to pass. After a small business owner raised concerns at the town hall address, Biden suggested he might be willing to consider a more gradual phase-in.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded “action, not words” from the US if it wants to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and several other world powers, challenging President Joe Biden to take the first step toward a thaw. Iran has set a deadline of next week for President Biden to begin reversing sanctions imposed by his predecessor Donald Trump, or it will take its biggest step yet to breach the deal, banning short-notice inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog. “We have heard many nice words and promises which in practice have been broken and opposite actions have been taken,” Khamenei said in a televised speech. “Words and promises are no good. This time (we want) only action from the other side, and we will also act.”
President Joe Biden aims to restore the pact under which Iran agreed to curbs on its disputed uranium enrichment program in return for the lifting of sanctions, a major achievement of the Obama administration that former President Donald Trump scrapped in 2018, calling the deal one-sided in Iran’s favor and reimposing a wide range of sanctions. Iran and the US are at odds over who should make the first step to revive the accord. Iran says the US must first lift Trump’s sanctions while the US says that Iran must first return to compliance with the deal, which it began violating after Trump launched his “maximum pressure” campaign. Highlighting the urgency of a diplomatic solution to the standoff, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had a rare phone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in which she urged Tehran to take steps ensuring its return to full compliance. “It is now time for positive signals that create trust and increase the chances of a diplomatic solution,” Merkel told Rouhani.
Iran has accelerated its breaches of the deal’s restrictions in recent months, culminating in an announcement that it will end snap inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency on February 23. Such inspections, which can range anywhere beyond Iran’s declared nuclear sites, are mandated under the IAEA’s “Additional Protocol” that Iran agreed to honor under the deal. It signed up to the Protocol in 2003 but has not ratified it. US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a press briefing that the US was aware of Iran’s plan to cease snap inspections. “As we and partners have underscored, Iran should reverse these steps and refrain from taking others that would impact the IAEA assurances,” Price said, adding: “The path for diplomacy remains open.”
An IAEA report on February 10 said Iran had informed the IAEA of plans to install more of its advanced IR-2m centrifuges at its main underground enrichment plant at Natanz, in a further move apparently meant to pile pressure on Washington. The IAEA reported on February 1 that Iran had brought a second cascade, or cluster, of IR-2m machines online at Natanz, and was installing two more. The 2015 deal says Iran can only enrich with far less efficient, first-generation IR-1 centrifuges. Iran recently began enriching uranium to 20% fissile purity at another site, Fordow, well above its previous level of 4.5% and the deal’s 3.67% limit, though still well before the 90% that is weapons-grade. Iran had enriched to 20% before the deal. Refining uranium to high levels of fissile purity is a potential pathway to nuclear bombs, though Iran has long said its enrichment program is for peaceful energy purposes only. European parties to the deal, which have called on Tehran not to halt snap inspections, will discuss the issue with the United States on February 11, the French Foreign Ministry said.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani played down the importance of the snap inspections, saying that ending them would not be a “significant step”, as Iran would still comply with obligations under a so-called Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA. “We will end the implementation of the Additional Protocol on February 23 and what will be implemented will be based on the safeguards,” Rouhani said at a televised cabinet meeting. “The Additional Protocol is a step beyond safeguards.” Iran’s envoy to the IAEA said on February 10 that the agency’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, would visit Iran on February 13 to discuss the country’s plan to scale back cooperation with inspectors next week.
A CNN poll released on October 6 found Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump by 16 points, his most comprehensive lead of the election cycle. Biden leads Trump 57 to 41 percent in the survey conducted after the first presidential debate and partially after the President’s Coronavirus diagnosis. The survey also found likely voters supporting Biden by wide margins on several issues. Voters prefer the former Vice President on Supreme Court nominations, 57 to 41 percent. Biden also leads on health care, 59 to 39 percent, and on the Coronavirus pandemic, 59 to 38 percent. Biden’s lead is 62 to 36 percent on racial inequality, and he leads on crime and public safety at 55 to 43 percent. The two are statistically tied on the economy, with 50 percent preferring Biden versus 48 percent preferring Trump.
The survey also finds Joe Biden leading on whom respondents consider honest and trustworthy, 58 to 33 percent. He also leads on the question of which candidate “cares about people like you,” 58 to 38 percent, and on who has a clear plan to solve the country’s problems, 55 to 39 percent. While most surveys show Biden leading Trump among women, the CNN poll shows him beating President Donald Trump among women by a 2 to 1 margin, at 66 to 32 percent. This is an increase from a September poll that put his lead at 20 percentage points. The former vice president’s lead among people of color has also widened, from 28 points in September to 42 points in October. Fifty-seven percent of respondents who watched last week’s debate said Biden did the better job, compared to 26 percent who chose Trump and 14 percent who said neither.
Overall, this most recent polling should be a major sign of concern for the Trump campaign. Since assuming office in 2017, President Donald Trump has done little to expand his shrinking base of support. His mishandling of the Coronavirus pandemic, racial unrest, and the economy has only served to reduce his public support to record-low levels. Assuming that these polling trends continue, it is likely that Joe Biden will win the 2020 Presidential election with a historic margin of victory.
President Donald Trump declined on September 23 to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the Presidential election to Democratic rival Joe Biden and said he expected the election battle to end up before the Supreme Court. “We’re going to have to see what happens,” President Trump told reporters at the White House when asked whether he would commit to transferring power. Trump, who substantially trails Biden in national opinion polls, has repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, asserting without evidence that mail-in voting would lead to fraud and a “rigged” outcome. “The ballots are a disaster,” Trump said. Democrats have encouraged voting by mail as a way to cast ballots safely during the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of Americans, including much of the military, have cast absentee ballots by mail for years without problems. In 2016, Trump also raised questions about whether he would accept the results of the election. He went on to win the presidency.
Overall, the reaction to President Donald Trump’s comments was met with scorn by members of both political parties. Joe Biden, while speaking to reporters in Delaware, said Trump’s comments on the transition of power were “irrational.” His campaign said it was prepared for any “shenanigans” from Trump, and reiterated comments from July that “the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.” Mitt Romney, a rare Trump critic among Republican senators, said on Twitter that “Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power; without that, there is Belarus. Any suggestion that a president might not respect this Constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable.” Additionally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, two of President Trump’s staunchest congressional allies, denounced the President’s statements and underscored that there will be a peaceful transfer of power assuming that President Trump loses re-election.
Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power; without that, there is Belarus. Any suggestion that a president might not respect this Constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable.
Despite the overwhelmingly negative reaction to President Donald Trump’s comments, they were generally brushed aside by some of President Trump’s political allies. For example, Senator Mike Braun (R-IN), a strong Trump supporter, said that the topic is “preposterous” and no one should focus on the President’s equivocation. “He stokes the fire sometimes,” Braun said. “If you took it seriously it would be alarming. And I don’t think that that’s the case.” Additionally, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), attempted to shift the argument and claimed that Joe Biden will do the same if he loses to Trump. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer chastised Senate Republicans for their response to the president, arguing “this is not a partisan issue” and that “democracy is at stake.”
President Donald Trump, who is moving quickly to nominate a successor to liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said that he thinks the election “will end up in the Supreme Court and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices.” A Senate confirmation vote before the election would seal a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, potentially spelling trouble for Democrats should it be called on to decide any legal dispute over the results of the election. “This scam that the Democrats are pulling, it’s a scam, the scam will be before the United States Supreme Court, and I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation,” President Trump said. Only one US presidential election, the 2000 contest between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, has had its outcome determined by the Supreme Court.
Overall, President Donald Trump openly floating the idea of ignoring the results of the Presidential election and instead opting to stay in power despite the results may spell the end of democratic governance in the US. For example, a hallmark of any Democratic political system is the peaceful transfer of power. Without assurances for peaceful transitions of power, a democratic system will likely become unstable and ultimately collapse into dictatorship. Additionally, there are some parallels between President Donald Trump’s actions over the course of his Presidency and the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany during the early 1930s. For example, both Trump and Hitler demonized the press, sought to create common enemies to distract their people from their power grabs and failed policies, and promoted nationalism and militarism as a way to “make their countries great again.” It is imperative for the American people to make their voices heard at the ballot box to prevent America from inadvertently sliding into fascism and autocracy, as was the case in Germany during the early 1930s.
Former Vice President Joe Bidenaccepted the Democratic presidential nomination on August 20, beginning a general-election challenge to President Donald Trump that Democrats cast this week as a rescue mission for a country equally besieged by a crippling pandemic and a White House defined by incompetence, racism, and abuse of power. Speaking before a row of flags in his home state of Delaware, Biden urged Americans to have faith that they could “overcome this season of darkness,” and pledged that he would seek to bridge the country’s political divisions in ways President Trump had not. “The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long — too much anger, too much fear, too much division,” Biden said. “Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness.” Biden’s appearance was an emphatic closing argument in a four-day virtual convention in which Democrats presented a broad coalition of women, young people, and racial minorities while going to unusual lengths to welcome Republicans and independent voters seeking relief from the tumult of the Trump era. The former Vice President alluded to that outreach, saying that while he is a Democratic candidate, he will be “an American president.” And in implicit contrast with Trump, Biden said he would “work hard for those who didn’t support me.” “This is not a partisan moment,” he said. “This must be an American moment.”
The Democratic Party has offered Joe Biden, less as a traditional partisan standard-bearer than as a comforting national healer, capable of restoring normalcy and calm to the US and returning its federal government to working order. He has campaigned as an apostle of personal decency and political conciliation, and as a transitional figure who would take on some of the worst American crises, not just the coronavirus outbreak but also economic inequality, climate change, and gun violence, before handing off power to another generation. That rising generation, defined by its diversity and in many cases by its liberalism, was again in evidence on August 20, as it has been throughout the week, most notably with the introduction on August 19 of Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to appear on a major party’s presidential ticket.
The program leading up to Joe Biden’s address included speakers such as Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Asian-American military veteran; Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, one of the country’s most prominent African-American mayors; and Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay major presidential candidate. All are younger than Biden by a quarter-century or more. Buttigieg hailed Biden’s leadership on the issue of same-sex marriage in the not-distant past as a sign of how much progress Democrats could quickly make toward building “an America where everyone belongs.” Senator Duckworth, a former helicopter pilot who lost her legs in the Iraq war, used her remarks to denounce President Donald Trump’s leadership of the military and singled out for scorn his administration’s tear-gassing of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., in June. “Donald Trump doesn’t deserve to call himself commander in chief for another four minutes, let alone another four years,” said Duckworth, whom Biden considered seriously for his running mate.
The task that faced Joe Biden on August 20, and that looms over him for the next 10 weeks, was assuring Americans that he had both the grit and the vision first to topple President Donald Trump and then to deliver on a governing agenda that would materially improve their lives. Biden has laid out an ambitious suite of plans for next year, should Democrats win power, but in the daily din of public health emergencies and Presidential outbursts, it is not clear how many voters are familiar with them. Democrats have promised to redraw the country’s energy economy to fight climate change and to build new protections for Americans’ voting rights. Biden promised to strengthen labor unions and to ensure that “the wealthiest people and the biggest corporations in this country paid their fair share” in taxes, even as he emphasized that he would not seek to “punish anyone.” Every night of the convention featured front-and-center vows to take on racism in the economy and criminal justice system, and to empower the generation of women whose political mobilization has reshaped the Democratic Party into a powerful anti-Trump coalition.
Joe Biden enters the general election with a clear upper hand against President Donald Trump, leading him by wide margins in most national polls and appearing to hold a clear advantage in crucial swing states. Biden’s electoral strength is derived mainly from the president’s deep unpopularity. And swing voters this year appear far more comfortable with Biden than they were with several of his 2020 primary rivals, or with the Democratic Party’s previous nominee, Hillary Clinton. Yet Biden’s advisers have cautioned that they expect the polls to tighten in the fall, and there is widespread anxiety among Democrats about the possibility that the pandemic may complicate the process of voting in ways that will disadvantage minority voters and others in their urban political base. Up to this point, Biden has taken a less-is-more approach to his campaign against President Donald Trump, converting his candidacy into a largely virtual affair and holding only sparse and infrequent public events. And so far that approach has seemed to work for him, much as this week’s stripped-down, long-distance party gathering has appeared to do. While television ratings have been down since the 2016 conventions, the Democratic events have still garnered robust viewership, and the party has avoided any significant technical glitches or eruptions of internal strife.
Here are the main events that occurred in Politics this week:
1. 2020 Election: Joe Biden Selects Kamala Harris As Running Mate
Democratic nominee Joe Biden selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate this week.
Joe Biden has selected California senator Kamala Harris as his Vice-Presidential running mate, a historic choice he believes will bolster his chances of beating Donald Trump in an election year shaped by the Coronavirus pandemic and a national reckoning on race. Senator Harris, Biden’s one-time presidential rival and a barrier-breaking former prosecutor, is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India and is the first African-American woman and the first Asian-American to be nominated for a major party’s presidential ticket. “I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked Kamala Harris – a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants – as my running mate,” Biden wrote on Twitter. In a tweet, Harris said she was “honored” to join Biden on the Democratic ticket and pledged to “do what it takes to make him our Commander-in-Chief”. Biden announced his selection in a text and email message to supporters. His campaign said the two would hold their first event together on August 12, in Biden’s home town of Wilmington, Delaware.
I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris — a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate.
2. President Donald Trump Signs Four Executive Orders Providing Economic Relief Amid Coronavirus Pandemic
Amid a breakdown in congressional negotiations, President Donald Trump signed several executive orders this week providing economic relief amid the Coronavirus pandemic.
At his Bedminster, New Jersey golf resort on August 8, President Donald Trumpsigned four executive actions to provide economic relief amid the coronavirus pandemic. The actions amount to a stopgap measure, after failing to secure an agreement with Congress. The three memorandums and one executive order called for extending some enhanced unemployment benefits, taking steps to stop evictions, continuing the suspension of student loan repayments, and deferring payroll taxes. President Trump promised that funds would be “rapidly distributed” to Americans in need, although it remains unclear whether the president has the authority to do certain steps unilaterally, without congressional approval. In any case, legal challenges are expected, which could delay any disbursement of funds.
3. July Jobs Numbers Reveal Mixed Economic Outlook
The July jobs report, which was released this week, revealed a still weakened US economy reeling with the Coronavirus pandemic and an uneven recovery.
The US economy added another 1.8 million jobs in July, a sharp slowdown from June and a small step for an economy that is still down almost 13 million jobs since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. It was the third straight month of improvement after the spring lockdown that decimated the labor market, and the July job gain exceeded economists’ expectations. Even so, it was far fewer than the 4.8 million jobs added in June. The unemployment rate fell to 10.2%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported August 9 but remains above the recent highs of 10% that were recorded in November of 1982 and October of 2009.
4. 2020 Election: NAACP Announces Initiative to Boost African-American Voter Turnout in Key Swing States
The NAACP this week annoucned a major voter registration initiative ahead of the 2020 Presidential election.
The NAACP, the largest US civil rights organization, is launching a drive ahead of November’s presidential election to boost African-American voter turnout in six key states, it said on August 12. The initiative aims to enlist the services of about 200,000 “high-propensity” African-American voters, or people who turned out to vote in a high number of recent local, state and presidential elections. Those voters, in turn, will seek to mobilize so-called “low-frequency” African-American voters, people who were registered to vote, but who had not voted in the most recent election cycle or several election cycles, in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all competitive states in the 2020 Presidential election that recently saw Joe Biden leading in the polls. The goal is to increase African-American turnout by more than 5% compared to 2016. That year, African-American voter turnout declined to its lowest level since 1996, according to the Pew Research Center. “We’ve seen the outcome of when we have a drop in voter activity in the Black community,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. “We have racism germinating from the White House,” he said, stressing the urgency of getting African American voters to the polls.
Senate Republicans this week unveiled a $1 trillion Coronavirus economic stimulus package.
Senate Republicans on July 27 proposed a $1 trillion coronavirus aid package hammered out with the Trump administration, paving the way for talks with Democrats on how to help Americans as expanded unemployment benefits for millions of workers expire this week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called the proposal a “tailored and targeted” plan focused on getting children back to school and employees back to work and protecting corporations from lawsuits while slashing the expiring supplemental unemployment benefits of $600 a week by two-thirds. The plan sparked immediate opposition from both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats decried it as too limited compared to their $3 trillion proposal that passed the House of Representatives in May, while some Republicans called it too expensive.
2. 2020 Election: Joe Biden Announces That He Is Close To Naming His Running-Mate
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden announced that he is close to naming his Vice Presidential choice and will likely unveil his choice in a week.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said on July 28 he will choose his Vice Presidential running mate next week. The former Vice President’s comment came during a news conference after a speech in Wilmington, Delaware. Asked by CNN whether he will meet in person with finalists for the role, Biden said, “We’ll see.” Biden has said he will choose a female running mate, and has faced pressure within the party to choose a woman of color. His campaign’s vetting process has played out amid the Coronavirus pandemic, making meetings that could allow Biden to better get to know those being considered more difficult. Noting that news crews were stationed outside his home in Delaware, Biden joked that he is “going to try to figure out how to trick you all so I can meet with them in person.” “I don’t think it matters, actually,” he said.
3. Trump Administration Rolls Back Fair Housing Provision Intended On Combatting Racial Segregation In Housing
Trump Administration this week rolled back a fair housing provision intended tp combatting racial segregation in housing.
The Trump administration moved on July 23 to eliminate an Obama-era program intended to combat racial segregation in suburban housing, saying it amounted to federal overreach into local communities. The rule, introduced in 2015, requires cities and towns to identify patterns of discrimination, implement corrective plans, and report results. The administration’s decision to complete a process of rescinding it culminates a yearslong campaign to gut the rule by conservative critics and members of the administration who claimed it overburdened communities with complicated regulations. A new rule, which removes the Obama administration’s requirements for localities, will become effective 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register.
4. US Senate Introduces Legislation To Curb Big Tech’s Ad Business Activities
US Senator Josh Hawley this week introduced legislation to curb big tech’s ad business activities.
On July 28 Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a major critic of the big tech industry, introduced legislation that would penalize large tech companies that sell or show targeted advertisements by threatening a legal immunity enjoyed by the industry, the latest onslaught on Big Tech’s business practices. The bill, titled “Behavioral Advertising Decisions Are Downgrading Services (Bad Ads) Act,” aims to crack down on invasive data gathering by large technology companies such as Facebook and Google that target users based on their behavioral insights. It does so by threatening Section 230, part of the Communications Decency Act, that shields online businesses from lawsuits over content posted by users. The legal shield has recently come under scrutiny from both Democrat and Republican lawmakers concerned about online content moderation decisions by technology companies. On July 28, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI)and Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD) will hold a hearing to examine the role of Section 230. The senators recently introduced legislation to reform the federal law.
In May, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that seeks new regulatory oversight of tech firms’ content moderation decisions, and he backed legislation to scrap or weaken Section 230 in an attempt to regulate social media platforms. “Big Tech’s manipulative advertising regime comes with a massive hidden price tag for consumers while providing almost no return to anyone but themselves,” said Hawley, an outspoken critic of tech companies and a prominent Trump ally. “From privacy violations to harming children to suppression of speech, the ramifications are very real.” His recent legislation to ban federal employees from using Chinese social media app TikTok on their government-issued phones was passed unanimously by the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and will be taken up by the US Senate for a vote.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said on July 28 he will choose his Vice Presidential running mate next week. The former Vice President’s comment came during a news conference after a speech in Wilmington, Delaware. Asked by CNN whether he will meet in person with finalists for the role, Biden said, “We’ll see.” Biden has said he will choose a female running mate, and has faced pressure within the party to choose a woman of color. His campaign’s vetting process has played out amid the Coronavirus pandemic, making meetings that could allow Biden to better get to know those being considered more difficult. Noting that news crews were stationed outside his home in Delaware, Biden joked that he is “going to try to figure out how to trick you all so I can meet with them in person.” “I don’t think it matters, actually,” he said.
President Donald Trump on July 14 signed legislation and an executive order that he said will hold China accountable for its oppressive actions against the people of Hong Kong, then quickly shifted his speech in the Rose Garden into a campaign rally-style broadside against Democratic rival Joe Biden. The legislation and order are part of the Trump administration’s offensive against China for what he calls unfair treatment by the rising Asian superpower, which hid details about the human-to-human transition of the Coronavirus. The almost daily administration broadsides against China come as Trump is defending his response to the virus, despite a surge in Coronavirus cases, in the US and as he works to portray Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as weak on China. “So Joe Biden and President Obama freely allowed China to pillage our factories, plunder our communities and steal our most precious secrets,” Trump said, adding, “I’ve stopped it largely.” Trump added: “As vice president, Biden was a leading advocate of the Paris Climate accord, which was unbelievably expensive to our country. It would have crushed American manufacturers while allowing China to pollute the atmosphere with impunity, yet one more gift from Biden to the Chinese Communist Party.”
During his address, President Donald Trump Trump did not limit his criticism of Joe Biden to China. He delivered broadside after broadside against Biden on issues from energy to the economy, education, to immigration. Aides have pushed the president to go more negative on Biden, whom President Trump has largely spared from attacks, save for the “Sleepy Joe” nickname. Trump has gone after Biden far less aggressively than he did against his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump, once more, talked up his own tough approach to Beijing, though he spent the early weeks of the pandemic praising Chinese President Xi Jinping, in hopes of securing a new trade deal. But since the two nations signed phase one of the trade deal, the talks have stalled with virtually no hope of restarting before the November election.
The legislation President Donald Trump signed into law targets police units that have cracked down on Hong Kong protesters as well as Chinese Communist Party officials responsible for imposing a new, strict national security law widely seen as chipping away at Hong Kong’s autonomy. The mandatory sanctions are also required to be imposed on banks that conduct business with the officials. Lawmakers from both parties have urged President Trump to take strong action in response to China’s new national security law that erodes the “one country, two systems” framework under which the UK handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997. Hong Kong is considered a special administrative region within China and has its own governing and economic systems. “This law gives my administration powerful new tools to hold responsible the individuals and the entities involved in extinguishing Hong Kong’s freedom,” Trump said. “Their freedom has been taken away. Their rights have been taken away, and with it goes Hong Kong in my opinion because it will no longer be able to compete with free markets. A lot of people will be leaving Hong Kong, I suspect.”
Hundreds of officials who worked for former Republican President George W. Bush as a July 1 are set to endorse Democratic Presidential nominee, Joe Biden, people involved in the effort said, the latest Republican-led group coming out to oppose the re-election of Donald Trump. The officials, who include Cabinet secretaries and other senior members of the Bush administration, have formed a political action committee, 43 Alumni for Biden, to support former Vice President Joe Biden as opposed to President Donald Trump. The Super PAC will launch on July 1 with a website and Facebook page, they said. It plans to release “testimonial videos” praising Biden from high-profile Republicans and will hold get-out-the-vote efforts in the most competitive states.
The group is the latest of many Republican organizations opposing President Donald Trump’s re-election, yet another sign that his radical policies relating to race, foreign policy, and the norms of governance have alienated many Republicans. “We know what is normal and what is abnormal, and what we are seeing is highly abnormal. The president is a danger,” said Jennifer Millikin, one of the 43 Alumni organizers, who worked on Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and later in the General Services Administration. The other two members who spoke to Reuters are Karen Kirksey and Kristopher Purcell. Purcell worked as a communication official in the Bush White House. Kirksey was on the Bush 2000 campaign, and later in the Agriculture and Labor Departments. Millikin said the group was not yet ready to name all its members or its donors. It has to provide a list of initial donors to the Federal Election Commission by October.
Former President George W. Bush, who is still admired by many moderate Republicans and has seen his overall legacy improve dramatically over the past few years, won praise for saying the death of George Floyd reflected a “shocking failure”, and urged that protesters be heard. Earlier, Bush released a video calling for Americans to unite in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic. Despite policy differences with Biden, “hundreds” of former Bush officials believe the Democrat has the integrity to meet America’s challenges, the 43 Alumni members said. “This November, we are choosing country over party,” said Kristopher Purcell. “We believe that a Biden administration will adhere to the rule of law… and restore dignity and integrity to the White House.” “We really have had overwhelming support for our efforts,” Karen Kirksey said.
43 Alumni for Biden is backing the former Vice president as President Donald Trump’s support slips in the polls. Last month, a group of Republican operatives launched “Right Side PAC,” that, according to the group’s founder Matt Borges, will work to turn “that group of Republicans who feels that President Trump is an existential threat to the country and this party.”A group called Republican Voters Against Trump launched a $10 million ad campaign in May targeting Republican-leaning voters in top swing states to encourage them to support Biden. And a group of “Never Trump” Republicans formed the Lincoln Project in late 2019 and have run negative ads that have drawn the ire of Trump.
State-backed hackers from China have targeted staffers working on the US presidential campaign of Democrat Joe Biden, a senior Google security official said on June 4. The same official said Iranian hackers had recently targeted email accounts belonging to Republican President Donald Trump’s campaign staff. The announcement, made on Twitter by the head of Google’s Threat Analysis Group, Shane Huntley, is the latest indication of the digital spying routinely aimed at top politicians. Huntley said there was “no sign of compromise” of either campaign. Iranian attempts to break into Trump campaign officials’ emails have been documented before. Last year, Microsoft announced that a group often nicknamed Charming Kitten had tried to break into email accounts belonging to an unnamed US presidential campaign, which sources identified as Trump’s. Google declined to offer details beyond Huntley’s tweets, but the unusually public attribution is a sign of how sensitive Americans have become to digital espionage efforts aimed at political campaigns. “We sent the targeted users our standard government-backed attack warning and we referred this information to federal law enforcement,” a Google representative said.
Hacking to interfere in elections has become a concern for governments, especially since US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia ran a hacking and propaganda operation to disrupt the American democratic process in 2016 to help then-candidate Donald Trump become president. Among the targets was digital infrastructure used by the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Russian government has denied any meddling. Attempts by foreign adversaries to break into presidential campaigns are commonplace but the unusually public attribution offered by Google is a sign of how sensitive Americans have become to digital espionage efforts aimed at candidates. “We are aware of reports from Google that a foreign actor has made unsuccessful attempts to access the personal email accounts of campaign staff,” a Biden campaign spokesman said. “We have known from the beginning of our campaign that we would be subject to such attacks and we are prepared for them.” The Trump campaign, the Chinese Embassy in Washington, and the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Charming Kitten, the group identified by Google as being responsible for the targeting of the Trump campaign, has also recently hit the headlines over other exploits, including the targeting of the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences Inc. Earlier this year, Reuters tied the group to attempts to impersonate high-profile media figures and journalists. John Hultquist, senior director of intelligence analysis with US cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc., described the two hacking groups as “espionage actors” and said they were likely attempting to collect intelligence rather than steal material to leak online.
The American economy defied forecasts for a Depression-style surge in Unemployment this week, signaling the economy is picking up faster than anticipated from the coronavirus-inflicted recession amid reopenings and government stimulus. A broad gauge of payrolls rose by 2.5 million in May, trouncing forecasts for a sharp decline following a 20.7 million decrease during the prior month that was the largest in records back to 1939, according to Labor Department data released on June 5. The figures were so astonishing that President Donald Trump held a news conference, where he called the numbers “outstanding” and predicted further improvement before he is up for re-election in November. While the overall picture improved, there remain several underlying issues facing the economy. For example, 21 million Americans remain unemployed with a jobless rate higher than any other time since 1939, indicating a full recovery remains far off with many likely to suffer for some time. And the return to work is uneven, with unemployment ticking up among African Americans to 16.8%, matching the highest since 1984, even as unemployment rates declined among white and Hispanic Americans. That comes amid nationwide protests over police mistreatment of African-Americans, which have drawn renewed attention to race-based inequality.
The latest figures may give a boost to President Donald Trump, who has siginficantly fallen behind Democratic challenger Joe Biden in polls amid dissatisfaction with his response to the pandemic and the death of George Floyd. The numbers could also reduce pressure on policy for another round of fiscal support, with Democrats and Republicans at odds over the timing and scope of new measures following record aid approved by Congress. “The only thing that can stop us is bad policy, like raising taxes and the Green New Deal,” President Trump said on June 5. He also said that he will ask Congress to pass more economic stimulus, including a payroll tax cut.
One caution noted by the US Labor Department is that the unemployment rate “would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” so 16.3% if data were reported correctly, according to the agency’s statement. That refers to workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to other reasons, rather than unemployed on temporary layoff. The broader U-6, or underemployment rate, which includes those who have not searched for a job recently or want full-time employment, fell only slightly to 21.2% in May from 22.8%, which is its highest rate since 1982. In February, it was 7%, with the main unemployment rate at a half-century low of 3.5%.
Here are the main events that occurred in Politics this week:
1.President Trump Threatens To Deploy Military In Response To Protests Against Police Brutality, Systemic Racism in the US
To the surprise of few, President Donald Trump this week threatened to use the military to crack down on the ongoing series of protests in the US against police brutality and systemic racism.
As the nation prepared for another series of violent protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, President Donald Trump on June 1 threatened to deploy the military if states and cities failed to quell the demonstrations. “I am mobilizing all federal and local resources, civilian and military, to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans,” President Trump said during a hastily arranged address at the White House. “Today I have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets. Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming presence until the violence is quelled,” Trump said. “If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” said the president. Trump stopped short of invoking the Insurrection Act, an archaic law from 1807 that would allow Trump to deploy active-duty U.S. troops to respond to protests in cities across the country. “During his address, Trump said he was taking “swift and decisive action to protect our great capital, Washington DC,” adding, “What happened in this city last night was a total disgrace.” “As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults, and the wanton destruction of property.”
2. Senate Republicans Block Measure Condemning President Trump’s Response To Anti-Racism Protesters
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this week block a measure condemning President Trump’s response to anti-racism protesters
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blocked a resolution proposed by Senate Democrats that would have censured President Trump’s response to protesters in Washington, D.C., on June 1, when federal law enforcement officers forcefully removed demonstrators from a park across from the White House. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), introduced the resolution on June 2, saying on the Senate floor that the removal of the protesters was “appalling” and “an abuse of presidential power.” Schumer attempted to pass the measure by unanimous consent, which does not require a vote by the whole Senate but can be blocked by any member. McConnell objected, accusing Democrats of pulling a political stunt in the middle of the crisis sparked by the death of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer pinned his knee to his neck.
3. Presumptive Democratic Nominee Joe Biden Denounces President Trump For His Response To US Protests Over Racism & Police Brutality
In powerful remarks earlier this week, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden denounced President Trump for his racial policies and called for an end to police brutality and institutional racism in the US.
Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden on June 2 blasted President Donald Trump’s response to US protests over racism and police misconduct, vowing to try to heal the country’s racial divide and not “fan the flames of hate.” Speaking in Philadelphia, a city rocked by sometimes violent demonstrations in recent days, the former Vice President sought to draw a vivid contrast between himself and President Trump, whom he will face in the general election. Biden, who served eight years as Vice President under Barack Obama, the first African-American US President, cast himself as the candidate who best understands the longstanding pain and grief in the country’s African-American communities. He said the killing of George Floyd, the African-American man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police last week, was a “wake-up call” for the nation that must force it to address the stain of systemic racism.“We can’t leave this moment thinking we can once again turn away and do nothing,” Biden said. “We can’t.” He accused Trump of turning the nation into “a battlefield riven by old resentments and fresh fears.” “Is this who we want to be?” he asked. “Is this what we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren? Fear, anger, finger-pointing, rather than the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety, self-absorption, selfishness?” Biden pledged he would “not traffic in fear or division.”
4. Trump Administration Announces Intentions To Declare Antifa A Terrorist Organization
President Donald Trump this week announced that his administration is considering the left-wing group Antifa a terrorist organization.
President Donald Trump tweeted on May 31 that the US will designate Antifa as a terrorist organization, even though the US government has no existing legal authority to label a wholly domestic group in the manner it currently designates foreign terrorist organizations. Current and former government officials say it would be unconstitutional for the US government to proscribe First Amendment-protected activity inside the US based on its ideology. US law allows terrorist designations for foreign groups since belonging to those groups does not enjoy the same protections. Antifa (short for anti-fascists), describes a broad group of people whose political beliefs lean toward the left-wing of the political spectrum, but do not conform with the Democratic Party platform. Antifa positions can be hard to define, but many members support anti-imperialist viewpoints and policies and protest the amassing of wealth by corporations and elites. Some employ radical or militant tactics to get out their messages. An additional problem with Trump’s is that groups who identify as Antifa are amorphous and lack a centralized leadership structure, though some local activists are highly organized, according to federal law enforcement officials. That has made it difficult for US law enforcement to deal with violence from members of groups that label themselves as Antifa.
The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.
Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden on June 2 blasted President Donald Trump’s response to US protests over racism and police misconduct, vowing to try to heal the country’s racial divide and not “fan the flames of hate.” Speaking in Philadelphia, a city rocked by sometimes violent demonstrations in recent days, the former Vice President sought to draw a vivid contrast between himself and President Trump, whom he will face in the general election. Biden, who served eight years as Vice President under Barack Obama, the first African-American US President, cast himself as the candidate who best understands the longstanding pain and grief in the country’s African-American communities. He said the killing of George Floyd, the African-American man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police last week, was a “wake-up call” for the nation that must force it to address the stain of systemic racism.“We can’t leave this moment thinking we can once again turn away and do nothing,” Biden said. “We can’t.” He accused Trump of turning the nation into “a battlefield riven by old resentments and fresh fears.” “Is this who we want to be?” he asked. “Is this what we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren? Fear, anger, finger-pointing, rather than the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety, self-absorption, selfishness?” Biden pledged he would “not traffic in fear or division.”
Joe Biden’s speech on June 2 at Philadelphia’s City Hall marked the first time he has left his home state of Delaware to campaign in person since mid-March when the outbreak of the Coronavirus forced him to halt in-person campaigning indefinitely. While Biden had made public appearances in Delaware in recent days and convened a virtual conference of big-city mayors on June 1, his most recent speech suggested he may soon begin to again move about the country as states slowly re-open. Biden formally launched his White House bid in Philadelphia last year, and it is also where his campaign headquarters, currently empty because of the pandemic, is located. The city was also the birthplace of the US Constitution, which Biden cited in his speech as support of the right to peacefully protest. “Our freedom to speak is the cherished knowledge that lives inside every American,” he said.
Here are the main events that occurred in Politics this week:
1. President Trump Threatens To Shut Down Social Media Sources Critical Of His Policies
President Donald Trump this week threatened to shut down social media so
President Donald Trump on May 27 threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies for stifling conservative voices, a day after Twitter attached a warning to some of his tweets prompting readers to fact check the president’s claims. Without offering evidence, President Trump accused such platforms of bias, tweeting: “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down before we can ever allow this to happen.” Trump, a heavy user of Twitter with more than 80 million followers, added: “Clean up your act, NOW!!!! Trump’s threat to shut down platforms such as Twitter and Facebook was his strongest yet within a broader conservative backlash against Big Tech.
2. Former Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein To Testify In Senate Regarding Trump-Russia Probe
Amid increasing questions regarding the connection between President Donald Trump and the Russian government, former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein has agreed to testify before the Senate next week to shed some new light on the matter.
A key figure behind the US investigation into links between Russia and President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign will testify next week before a Republican-led Senate committee examining the origins of the probe, the panel said on May 27. Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed former Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2017, will testify on June 3 as part of a Senate Judiciary Committee examination of an FBI probe of Trump campaign officials code-named “Crossfire Hurricane,” which led to the Mueller investigation. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of President Trump’s strongest congressional allies, said Rosenstein would offer “new revelations” about federal surveillance practices.
3. US Congress Passes Bill Authorizing President Trump To Place Sanctions On China Regarding Human Rights Abuses Committed Against Uighur Muslims
The House of Representatives this week approved legislation authorizing President Donald Trump to place sanctions on the Chinese government in response to China’s escalating human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslims
The House of Representatives on May 27 passed legislation calling on President Donald Trump’s administration to impose sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for the oppression of the country’s Uighur Muslim minority. The tally was 413 in favor, and just one opposed. Since the legislation has passed the Senate, approval sent the bill to the White House where congressional aides said they expected President Trump would sign it into law. The vote was historic, the first use of a new system allowing proxy voting because of the coronavirus pandemic.
4. 2020 Election: Joe Biden Leads President Trump By Six Points In Latest Poll
New [olling released this week shows former Vice President Joe Biden with a continued lead over President Donald Trump.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s lead over President Donald Trump has fallen by three points over the last week, according to new polling data. The latest survey by Reuters and Ipsos found that Biden led Trump by six points among registered voters, with 45% backing him and 39% favoring Trump. The former Vice President also had a four-point lead among Independent voters. A third of the group (33%) said they would back Biden, while 29% said the same of Trump. When the same poll was published last week, the presumptive Democratic nominee had a nine-point lead on the president, with 47% of polled voters saying they would back Biden as only 38% opted for Trump. The former Vice President also had a stronger eight-point lead among Independent voters polled last week.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s lead over President Donald Trump has fallen by three points over the last week, according to new polling data. The latest survey by Reuters and Ipsos found that Biden led Trump by six points among registered voters, with 45% backing him and 39% favoring Trump. The former Vice President also had a four-point lead among Independent voters. A third of the group (33%) said they would back Biden, while 29% said the same of Trump. When the same poll was published last week, the presumptive Democratic nominee had a nine-point lead on the president, with 47% of polled voters saying they would back Biden as only 38% opted for Trump. The former Vice President also had a stronger eight-point lead among Independent voters polled last week.
Despite the fact that he lost some ground compared to last week, former Vice President Joe Biden is polling well in the twelve battleground states in the 2020 campaign. For example Joe Biden is polling well ahead of President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona. Additionally, Biden is polling narrowly ahead of Trump in the battleground states of Texas, Georgia, and Utah. Assuming that his lead continues to remain, is likely that former Vice President Joe Biden will win the 2020 election with a substantial electoral college margin and solid popular vote margin.
In their latest survey on the 2020 election, Ipsos pollsters also found that President Donald Trump’s Coronavirus approval rating remained steady this week as the US death toll in the growing Coronavirus pandemic topped 100,000 on May 27. 41% of polled US adults said they approved of the President’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, down by just a single point on last week. 53% told Ipsos they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the outbreak, giving the commander-in-chief a net disapproval rating of 12%. When the same poll was conducted the week before, the President’s net coronavirus disapproval rating was at 10%. President Trump’s rating on healthcare reform will make harder reading for the President and his team, with just 38% of polled Americans approving of his handling of the issue and 52% disapproving. However, the President recorded net approval ratings on the economy and employment, despite almost 40 million Americans filing initial jobless claims since March.
Here are the main events that occurred in Politics this week
1.US Unemployment Rate Hits Highest Level In 80 Years
The Labor Department announced this week that the unemployment rate in the US has hit its highest level since 1939 amid measures to limit the spread of the Coronavirus.
As the Coronavirus spread accelerated in March, President Donald Trump and a number of state and local leaders put forth restrictions that led businesses to suddenly shut down and shed millions of workers. Many businesses and households also canceled all travel plans. Analysts warn it could take as long as five years to return to the 3.5% unemployment rate the nation recorded in February, in part because it is unclear what the post-pandemic economy will look like, even if scientists make progress on a vaccine. President Trump, though, claimed in a Fox News interview that there would be a quick rebound. “Those jobs will all be back, and they’ll be back very soon,” Trump said. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s expected opponent in November’s presidential election, said that the jobs report illustrated “an economic disaster” that was “made worse” in part by a slow and uneven response to the crisis earlier this year.
The stark employment data could create even more urgency for a number of governors who are debating when to reopen parts of their state economies. Many are weighing the health risks and the economic toll, a harrowing choice, analysts say. Some hope that reopening quickly will get people back to work, but it will be difficult with many businesses operating at partial capacity and parents wrestling with child-care challenges. The sudden economic contraction has already forced millions of Americans to turn to food banks, seek government aid for the first time,or stop paying rent and other bills. As they go without paychecks for weeks, some have also lost health insurance and even put their homes up for sale. There is a growing concern that the damage will be permanent as people fall out of the middle class and young people struggle to launch careers. “The impact on women and youth is particularly shocking and disproportionate,” said Lisa Cook, a professor at Michigan State University and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama. “Those who grew up during the Great Depression were hesitant to spend for the rest of their lives.”
Job losses began in the hospitality sector, which shed 7.7 million jobs in April, but other industries were also heavily affected. Retail lost 2.1 million jobs, and manufacturing shed 1.3 million jobs. White-collar and government jobs that typically prove resilient during downturns were also slashed, with companies shedding 2.1 million jobs and state and local governments losing nearly a million. More state and local government jobs could be cut in the coming weeks as officials deal with severe budget shortfalls. April’s unemployment rate was horrific by any standard, yet economists say it underestimates the extent of the pain. The Labor Department said the unemployment rate would have been about 20 percent if workers who said they were absent from work for “other reasons” had been classified as unemployed or furloughed. The official figure also does not count millions of workers who left the labor force entirely and the 5 million who were forced to scale back to part time.
There is a growing consensus that the economy is not going to bounce back quickly, as President Donald Trump wants, even as more businesses reopen this month. Many restaurants, gyms, and other businesses will be able to operate only at limited capacities, and customers, fearful of venturing out, are proving to be slow to return. And many businesses will not survive. All of this means the economy is going to need far fewer workers for months, or possibly years, to come. “It’s not like turning a light switch and everything goes back to where it was in February,” Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said in an interview. “We depopulated everything quickly. Repopulating it will take a lot longer.” Mester said the best cure for the economy at this point is probably more virus testing, monitoring, and investment in a COVID-19 treatment. Without those measures, people are unlikely to go out and spend again, even if stores and restaurants reopen. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty about the second half of the year,” Mester said. “Consumer confidence has been really, really bad since mid-March.”
2. 2020 Election Polling: Joe Biden Leads Donald Trump Nationwide
2020 Election polling released this week shows former Vice President Joe Biden with a clear lead over President Donald Trump.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden‘s lead over President Donald Trump now stands at five points, but Trump has an edge in the critical battleground states that could decide the electoral college, according to a new CNN poll. In the new poll, 51% of registered voters nationwide back Biden, while 46% say they prefer Trump, while in the battlegrounds, 52% favor Trump and 45% Biden. Partisans are deeply entrenched in their corners, with 95% of Democrats behind Biden and the same share of Republicans behind Trump. The two are close among independents (50% back Trump, 46% Biden, not a large enough difference to be considered a lead), but Biden’s edge currently rests on the larger share of voters who identify as Democrats. The former Vice President continues to hold healthy leads among women (55% Biden to 41% Trump) and African-Americans (69% Biden to 26% Trump). The two run more closely among men (50% Trump to 46% Biden) and Trump holds a clear edge among whites (55% Trump to 43% Biden). Surprisingly, the poll suggests Biden outpaces Trump among voters over age 45 by a 6-point margin, while the two are near even among those under age 45 (49% Biden to 46% Trump).
Though other recent polling has shown some signs of concern for Joe Biden among younger voters and strength among older ones, few have pegged the race as this close among younger voters. The results suggest that younger voters in the battleground states are tilted in favor of President Donald Trump, a stark change from the last CNN poll in which battleground voters were analyzed in March, even as other demographic groups shifted to a smaller degree. Given the small sample size in that subset of voters, it is difficult to determine with certainty whether the movement is significant or a fluke of random sampling. Nationally, Biden holds a lead over Trump among voters age 65 and older, a group that has been tilted Republican in recent presidential elections.
President Donald Trump’s biggest advantage over Joe Biden in the poll comes on his handling of the economy. Most voters, 54%, say they trust the President to better handle the nation’s economy, while 42% say they prefer Biden. An earlier release from the same CNN poll found the public’s ratings of the economy at their worst level since 2013, as a growing share said the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus outbreak could be permanent. But Biden does have the advantage as more trusted to handle the response to the coronavirus outbreak (51% Biden to 45% Trump) and health care (54% Biden to 42% Trump). Voters divide over which of the two has the stamina and sharpness to be President (49% say Trump, 46% Biden), a frequent attack Donald Trump levels against the former Vice President. But Biden outpaces Trump across five other tested attributes. His advantage is the largest on which candidate would unite the country and not divide it (55% say Biden would, 38% Trump), followed by being honest and trustworthy (53% choose Biden, 38% Trump). Biden is seen as caring more about people like you (54% Biden vs. 42% Trump), better able to manage the government effectively (52% Biden to 45% Trump) and more trusted in a crisis (51% Biden to 45% Trump).
The recent CNN polling shows that a majority of Americans say they have an unfavorable view of President Donald Trump (55%) while fewer feel negative about Joe Biden (46%). Among the 14% of registered voters who say they have a negative impression of both Trump and Biden, the former Vice President is the clear favorite in the presidential race: 71% say they would vote for Biden, 19% for Trump. Congressman Justin Amash (I-MI), who announced he is exploring a run for the presidency on the Libertarian ticket, is unknown to 80% of Americans and is viewed more unfavorably (13%) than favorably (8%). As Biden’s campaign moves closer to the selection of a Vice Presidential running mate, 38% of Democratic voters say choosing a candidate who brings racial and ethnic diversity to the Democratic ticket is one of the top two traits they would like to see in Biden’s choice, 34% name executive experience as a top-two trait, 32% say bringing ideological balance to the ticket is one of their top two criteria, and 31% say representing the future of the Democratic Party is that important. Proven appeal to swing voters and the legislative experience was a top tier concern for about a quarter of voters.
3. House Democrats Unveil $3 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package
Amid Republican opposition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a $3 trillion Coronavirus relief package this week.
House Democrats on May 12 unveiled a $3 trillion Coronavirus relief measure, an ambitious package with aid for struggling states and another round of direct payments to Americans that Republicans instantly dismissed as an exorbitantly priced and overreaching response to the Coronavirus crisis. The proposal, which spanned 1,815 pages, would add a fifth installment to an already sweeping assistance effort from the federal government, although its cost totaled more than the four previous measures combined. And unlike those packages, which were the product of intense bipartisan negotiations among lawmakers and administration officials who agreed generally on the need for rapid and robust action, the House bill represents an opening gambit in what is likely to be a bracing fight over what is needed to counter the public health and economic tolls of the pandemic. The new proposal includes nearly $1 trillion for state, local and tribal governments and territories, an extension of unemployment benefits, and another round of $1,200 direct payments to American families. The measure would also provide a $25 billion bailout for the Postal Service, which the beleaguered agency has called a critical lifeline, but President Trump has opposed, and $3.6 billion to bolster election security.
“There are those who said, ‘Let’s just pause,’ ” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, invoking a word used by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has said lawmakers should “push the pause button” on further coronavirus aid. “The families who are suffering know that hunger doesn’t take a pause. The rent doesn’t take a pause. The bills don’t take a pause. The hardship of losing a job or tragically losing a loved one doesn’t take a pause.” Senate Republicans immediately rejected the measure. But the House will return to session on May 15 to approve it, Democratic leaders said, along with historic changes to the chamber’s rules that will allow lawmakers for the first time to vote without being physically present in the Capitol.
The measure from House Democrats underscored the gulf between the two parties over how to respond to the coronavirus crisis. Economists and policy experts warn that the government’s relief efforts to date, as unparalleled and far-reaching as they have been, have barely sustained individuals and companies affected by the pandemic, and that abandoning them could result in a deep and protracted recession. But Republicans and the White House have begun to argue that a new round of relief should wait, and Senate Majority Leder Mitch McConnell has said any such aid must be paired with a measure to give companies sweeping protections from a wide range of potential lawsuits as they try to reopen during the pandemic. President Donald Trump and White House officials have also indicated they want any further economic aid legislation to contain tax cuts, although they have yet to agree on which ones to pursue. Democrats are headed in the other direction, as Nancy Pelosi suggested in a letter this week in which she encouraged her colleagues to “think big” about additional federal aid.
Even before Democrats presented their proposal on May 12, top Senate Republicans were voicing vehement opposition, urging restraint in doling out another substantial round of taxpayer dollars as the federal government and banks scramble to distribute the funds from the $2.2 trillion stimulus law enacted in March. And with the US recording its largest monthly deficit in history last month, some Republicans have begun to balk at the prospect of another multitrillion-dollar package, calling for more limited relief. Some Republicans, however, are exploring the possibility of broadening the terms of the stimulus law as an alternative to doling out more funds, but still supporting state and local governments. A small group of Republican senators met with President Donald Trump and top administration officials to discuss giving more flexibility in spending previously allocated funds. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), a close congressional ally of President Donald Trump, said in a statement that he had requested the meeting to discuss his proposal, which would eliminate guardrails set on the $150 billion in the stimulus law, but prohibit the use of the aid for shoring up pension programs. “This is not something designed to deal with reality, but designed to deal with aspirations,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said of the Democrats’ proposal, adding that he would begin discussions with them once Republicans and the White House agreed on how to proceed. “We’re going to insist on doing narrowly targeted legislation
In the legislation unveiled on May 12, Democrats included provisions intended to provide more protections for essential workers. The bill would also provide for $75 billion in mortgage relief and $100 billion for rental assistance. It would substantially expand eligibility and increase the value of some tax credits targeted to the poorest Americans, like the earned-income tax credit. The bill would temporarily suspend a limit on the deduction of state and local taxes from federal income taxes, a move that would disproportionately benefit high-income taxpayers in high-tax areas, and which Democrats have pushed for since the limit was imposed by President Donald Trump’s signature 2017 tax overhaul. The bill also proposes rolling back a widely-criticized tax break for the wealthy included in the stimulus package. That provision permits married couples making at least $500,000 a year to use losses in their business to wipe out their tax bills from gains in the stock market.
Some of the most liberal members of the Democratic caucus, however, balked at the proposal, arguing that it fell short of what was needed to salvage the American economy and support vulnerable populations. The Congressional Progressive Caucus urged its members to officially inform party leaders that they were undecided on the measure, effectively threatening to block it. They also called for the vote to be delayed by a week, and for a meeting of all Democrats to discuss the legislation. “In no circumstance are we ready to vote on this on Friday,” Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in an interview that “We need a full caucus conversation, an open dialogue, and we need to figure out how to address the crisis with a solution that matches its scale.” Congresswoman Jayapal has called for the federal government to guarantee business payrolls, extend emergency health coverage for the uninsured and tie relief funding for states to requirements that they follow guidelines from health experts as they begin to reopen. She said she grew frustrated when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi informed Democrats on a conference call that a payroll guarantee program would not be included in the proposal.
4. In A Major Defeat For Civil Liberty Advocates, Senate Rejects Proposal Limiting Federal Law Enforcement Officials From Obtaining Internet Search History Data Without A Warrant
The Senate this week rejected a proposal by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) to limit federal law enforcement officials from obtaining internet search history data without a warrant.
The Senate came one vote short on May 12 of approving a proposal to prevent federal law enforcement from obtaining internet browsing information or search history without seeking a warrant. The bipartisan amendment won a solid majority of the Senate but just shy of the 60 votes needed for adoption. The 59-37 vote to allow such warrantless searches split both parties, with Republicans and Democrats voting for and against. The amendment’s authors, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana, have long opposed the expansion and renewal of surveillance laws that the government uses to track and fight terrorists. They say the laws can infringe on people’s rights. “Should law-abiding Americans have to worry about their government looking over their shoulders from the moment they wake up in the morning and turn on their computers to when they go to bed at night?” Wyden asked. “I believe the answer is no. But that’s exactly what the government has the power to do without our amendment.”
The amendment vote came as the Senate considered the renewal of three surveillance provisions that expired in March before Congress left due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The legislation is a bipartisan, House-passed compromise that has the backing of President Donald Trump, Attorney General William Barr, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It would renew the authorities and impose new restrictions to try and appease civil liberties advocates. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), encouraged senators to vote against Wyden and Daines’ amendment, saying the legislation was already a “delicate balance.” He warned changing it could mean the underlying provisions won’t be renewed. “We cannot let the perfect become the enemy of the good when key authorities are currently sitting expired and unusable,” McConnell said on the Senate floor before the vote. The House passed the compromise legislation shortly before the chamber left town two months ago, but McConnell could not find enough support to approve the measure in the Senate, and instead passed a simple extension of the surveillance laws. The close outcome on the Wyden and Daines amendment indicates that a majority of the Senate would like to see the House legislation changed to better protect civil liberties.
Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank, said it was striking that the amendment failed by only one vote and said the vote total would have been “inconceivable” five years ago. “It suggests a sea change in attitudes” following revelations in problems with how the FBI has used its secret surveillance powers, Sanchez said. “It goes to the sort of collapse in trust in the intelligence community to deploy these authorities in a restrained way.” The Senate did adopt an amendment by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont that would boost third-party oversight to protect individuals in some surveillance cases. If the Senate passes the legislation with that amendment intact, the bill would then have to go back to the House for approval instead of to the president’s desk for signature. A third amendment by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a Republican who is a longtime skeptic of surveillance programs, is expected to be considered before a final vote. Paul’s amendment would require the government to go to a traditional federal court, instead of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to get a warrant to eavesdrop on an American.
Bernie Sanders rebounded late in the evening in delegate-rich Western states: He was quickly declared the winner in Colorado and Utah after polls closed there, and he also claimed the largest delegate lode of the primary race, California. Sanders also easily carried his home state of Vermont. Yet Joe Biden’s sweep of states across the South and the Midwest showed he had the makings of a formidable coalition that could propel him through the primaries. As he did in South Carolina, Biden rolled to victory in several states with the support of large majorities of African-Americans. And he also performed well with a demographic that was crucial to the party’s success in the 2018 midterm elections: college-educated white voters. “We were told, well, when you got to Super Tuesday, it’d be over,” a triumphant Biden said at a celebration in Los Angeles. “Well, it may be over for the other guy!” After a trying stretch in February, even Biden appeared surprised at the extent of his success. “I’m here to report we are very much alive!’’ he said. “And make no mistake about it, this campaign will send Donald Trump packing.”
For his part, Bernie Sanders continued to show strength with the voters who have made up his political base: Latinos, liberals and those under age 40. But he struggled to expand his appeal with older voters and African-Americans. The results also called into question Sanders’s decision to spend valuable time over the past week campaigning in both Minnesota and Massachusetts, two states where he had hoped to embarrass rivals on their home turf. The gambit proved badly flawed, as it was Joe Biden who pulled off upset wins in both states, with the help of a last-minute endorsement from Senator Amy Klobuchar that upended the race in Minnesota.
2. President Donald Trump Announces Support For Economic Stimulus Package To Assist Business, Individuals Hurt By Coronavirus
Amid increasing criticism over his response to the Coronavirus outbreak and handling of the slowing economy, President Donald Trump announced his support for an economic stimulus package this week.
President Donald Trump’s decision to push for a stimulus package represented a departure for the administration, which has insisted that the fundamentals of the economy are solid and that the coronavirus would cause only a short-term blip in growth. But the coronavirus threat continues to rattle financial markets. American stocks collapsed on March 9, with the Dow Jones industrial average plummeting by more than 2,000 points for its worst day since 2008 after a free fall in oil prices and a growing number of coronavirus cases. Total coronavirus cases around the globe surpassed 111,000, with confirmed US cases exceeding 600. The worldwide death toll approached 4,000 and rose to 26 in the US
On March 6, President Donald Trump signed an $8.3 billion package of emergency funding to help treat and slow the spread of the virus. The package includes funding for research and development of vaccines as well as money for prevention, preparedness, and response. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who appeared alongside President Trump at the news conference, said the US has “the most resilient economy in the world.” But, “there are parts of the economy that are going to be impacted, especially workers that need to be at home, hard-working people who are at home under quarantine and are taking care of their family,” he said. “We’ll be working on a program to address that.”
At the congressional level Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a strong ally of President Donald Trump, also has begun exploring the possibility of a stimulus package. “While we continue to assess the economic impacts, Senator Grassley is exploring the possibility of targeted tax relief measures that could provide a timely and effective response to the coronavirus,” said Grassley’s spokesman, Michael Zona. “Several options within the committee’s jurisdiction are being considered as we learn more about the effects on specific industries and the overall economy.” Some economists are recommending broader steps Congress can take in the short term to aid those immediately affected by the virus, such as defraying the health care costs of those infected and reducing the Social Security payroll tax for all workers.
3. The US Begins Withdrawing Troops From Afghanistan
The US military began withdrawing from Afghanistan this week after signing a tentative peace agreement with the Taliban two weeks ago.
US troops have started to leave Afghanistan for the initial troop withdrawal required in the US-Taliban agreement, a spokesman for US Forces in Afghanistan announced on March 9, amid political chaos in the country that threatens the deal. The US will cut the number of forces in the country to 8,600, according to a statement by US Forces Afghanistan spokesman Colonel Sonny Leggett. “In accordance with the US-Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Joint Declaration and the US-Taliban Agreement, US Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) has begun its conditions-based reduction of forces to 8,600 over 135 days,” Leggett said in the statement quoted by. “USFOR-A maintains all the military means and authorities to accomplish our objectives -including conducting counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda and ISIS-K and providing support to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces,” he added. “USFOR-A is on track to meet directed force levels while retaining the necessary capabilities. The pullout came as Afghanistan’s rival leaders were each sworn in as president in separate ceremonies on March 9, creating a complication for the US as it figures out how to move forward on the agreement, signed late last month, and end the 18-year war. The sharpening dispute between President Ashraf Ghani, who was declared the winner of last September’s election, and his rival Abdullah Abdullah, who charged fraud in the vote along with the elections complaints commission, threatens to wreck the next key steps and even risks devolving into new violence.
The US has not tied the withdrawal to political stability in Afghanistan or any specific outcome from the all-Afghan peace talks. Instead, it depends on the Taliban meeting its commitment to preventing “any group or individual, including al-Qaeda, from using the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the US and its allies.” Under the peace agreement, the US troop withdrawal had to begin within 10 days after the deal was signed on February 29. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on March 2 that he had already approved the start of the withdrawal, which would then be coordinated by military commanders in Afghanistan. The US official said that the troops leaving now had been scheduled to depart, but they will not be replaced. Esper has said General Scott Miller, the US commander in Afghanistan, will pause the withdrawal and assess conditions once the troop level goes down to 8,600. The long-term plan is for the US to remove all troops within 14 months if security conditions are met. The agreement with the Taliban followed a seven-day “reduction in violence” period that, from the Trump administration’s viewpoint, was meant to test the Taliban’s seriousness about moving towards a final peace agreement.
4. U.N. Announces Sharp Increase In Iran’s Uranium Stockpile In Violation Of The JCPOA
The UN this week announced that Iran has dramatically increased its uranium production in the wake of the Trump Administration’s decision to abandon the JCPOA and reimpose sanctions on the Iranian economy.
Iran is dramatically ramping up production of enriched uranium in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed on March 4 while also criticizing the Iranian government for blocking access to possible nuclear-related sites. Inspectors from the IAEA reported a near-tripling of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium just since November of 2019, with total holdings more than three times the 300-kilogram limit set by the nuclear accord. Iran also substantially increased the number of machines it is using to enrich uranium, the agency said, allowing it to make more of the nuclear fuel faster. The confidential report provided to member states is the first since Iran announced it would no longer adhere to any of the nuclear pact’s restrictions on uranium fuel production, in a protest of the Trump administration’s decision to walk away from the deal. Iran has declined to formally pull out of the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in which it had to sharply curtail its nuclear activities and submit to intrusive inspections in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
Inspectors confirmed that Iran now possesses more than 1,020 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, up from 372 kilograms in the fall, although the IAEA found no evidence that Iran is taking specific steps toward nuclear weapons production. Independent analysts said the bigger stockpile and faster enrichment rate has substantially decreased Iran’s theoretical “breakout” time, the span needed for acquiring enough weapons-grade material for a single nuclear bomb. When the Iranian nuclear was fully implemented in 2015, US officials said that Iran would need about a year to reach the “breakout” point if it chose to make a bomb. Based on the new figures, one Iran analyst calculated that the window has been reduced to about 3½ months. Iran’s enriched uranium soared to “levels not expected just a few weeks ago,” said the analyst, David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington nonprofit specializing in nuclear weapons research.
The IAEA reports are certain to rekindle debate over President Donald Trump’s decision to walk away from the accord, which the Trump administration says failed to address long-term concerns over Iran’s nuclear intentions. Critics of the deal pointed to Iran’s lack of cooperation with IAEA inspectors as evidence that Iran cannot be trusted. “The problem is not breakout at known facilities; it is sneakout at clandestine facilities through advanced centrifuges permitted by JCPOA,” Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in a Twitter posting, using the acronym for the nuclear deal. Other experts said the report highlighted the administration’s folly in torpedoing a deal that was demonstrably working, without having a viable alternative plan for keeping Iran’s nuclear activities in check. “The bottom line: Iran is closer to being able to build a bomb now than under JCPOA and the previous administration, and we are less capable of addressing that danger,” said Jon Wolfsthal, the senior director for arms control on the Obama White House’s National Security Council, in an email.
In a last-minute bid to unite the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, Senator Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg on March 2 threw their support behind former Vice President Joe Biden, giving him an extraordinary boost ahead of the Super Tuesday primaries that promised to test his strength against the liberal front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders. Even by the standards of the tumultuous 2020 campaign, the dual endorsement from Klobuchar and Buttigieg, and their joint appearances with Biden at campaign events in Dallas on March 2, was remarkable. Rarely, if ever, have opponents joined forces so dramatically, as Klobuchar and Buttigieg went from campaigning at full tilt in the South Carolina primary on Saturday to joining on a political rescue mission for a former competitor, Joe Biden, whom they had once regarded as a spent force.
Amy Klobuchar, who sought to appeal to the same moderate voters as Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, and focused her campaign on calling the Democratic Party’s attention to Midwestern states like her native Minnesota, withdrew from the race after intensive conversations with her aides following Biden’s thumping victory in South Carolina. Rather than delivering a traditional concession speech, Klobuchar told associates she wanted to leverage her exit to help Biden and headed directly for the joint rally. Before a roaring crowd in Dallas, she hailed her former rival as a candidate who could “bring our country together” and restore “decency and dignity” to the presidency. Pete Buttigieg, for his part, endorsed Biden at a pre-rally stop, saying that Biden would “restore the soul” of the nation as president. And Biden offered Buttigieg the highest compliment in his personal vocabulary, several times likening the young politician to his own son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.
For the three moderates, as well as for Bernie Sanders and other remaining candidates, the crucial question hanging over the fast-moving events was whether any of it would make a difference in Tuesday’s primaries across 15 states and territories, including the critical battlegrounds of California and Texas. Millions of voters are expected to go to the polls, but many states have had early voting underway; more than 2.3 million Democratic and independent ballots have already been processed in California. Bernie Sanders has significant head starts in many of the Super Tuesday states and beyond: His popularity has risen in recent weeks, and so has Democratic voters’ estimation of his electability in a race with President Donald Trump. The Vermont senator has a muscular national grass-roots organization, backed by the most fearsome online fund-raising machine in Democratic politics, one that collected more than $46 million last month, far outdistancing every other candidate in the race.
As news emerged of the shift of centrist support toward Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders projected confidence and defiance, dismissing it as a phenomenon of “establishment politicians” supporting one another. On Twitter, Sanders posted a video criticizing Biden for having supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, linking him to unpopular Republicans like former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney. Additionally, Sanders assailed Biden’s record on the Iraq war and Social Security. “It is no surprise they do not want me to become president,‘’ Sanders said, referring to his moderate opponents.
I do not believe we will defeat Donald Trump with a candidate like Joe Biden who supported the Iraq War. pic.twitter.com/8tII7O3Mal
Here are the main events that occurred in Politics this week:
1. Former Vice President Joe Biden Wins South Carolina Democratic Primary
Former Vice President Joe Biden this week won a resounding victory in the South Carolina Democratic Primary, cementing himself as one of the new front-runners for the Democratic nomination.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s resounding victory in the South Carolina primary was a major win for a politician who has been in public life for nearly 50 years, and his first primary victory in his three presidential runs. Cheers went up at a Biden election-night rally in Columbia when MSNBC called the race, Biden cast the win as the first of many number of dominoes that will now fall his way, noting that some were counting him out just days ago. “Now, thanks to all of you — the heart of the Democratic Party — we just won and we won big . . . and we are very much alive,” Biden said in a victory speech that was pointed directly at Sanders. “We have the option of winning big or losing big. That’s our choice,” Biden told a raucous crowd in Columbia. “We have to beat Donald Trump and the Republican Party, but here’s the deal: We can’t become like them. . . . We can’t have a never-ending war.” The Biden campaign hopes to use Saturday’s win to consolidate support from many of his rivals, hoping that several drop out, which one of them, businessman Tom Steyer, did shortly after the polls closed. “Honestly, I can’t see a path where I can win the presidency,” Steyer said in announcing his decision. Biden also plans a series of high-profile endorsements over the coming days. Congressman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA) and former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe announced shortly after Biden’s win that they were backing the former vice president. Nearly half of South Carolina voters said Congressman James Clyburn’s (D-SC) final-week endorsement of Biden was an important factor in their vote, according to exit poll results from Edison Research.
Bernie Sanders, speaking at a February 28 rally in Virginia sought to put the results in perspective, ticking off his previous strong performances in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. “But you cannot win ’em all . . . and tonight we did not win in South Carolina,” Sanders said. “And that will not be the only defeat. There are a lot of states in this country, and nobody wins them all.” After congratulating Biden, he proclaimed, “And now we enter Super Tuesday — and Virginia!” For all the candidates but Sanders, a further winnowing of the field is crucial to winning the nomination. Sanders is broadly expected to come out of Super Tuesday with a substantial delegate lead in the race, anchored in his huge polling advantage in California. Under party rules, such leads can be difficult to overcome as the race moves on.
With most precincts reporting, Joe Biden was poised to win about half the vote, giving him a symbolic victory over Bernie Sanders, who did not win more than 34% of the vote in any of the first three states. Under party rules, nominees need to secure more than 50 percent of delegates to win the nomination at the convention in Milwaukee. But the continued viability of so many candidates has increased the likelihood that no candidate will be able to secure such a victory with initially pledged delegates alone, setting up the potential for either a brokered convention or a pre-convention horse-trading of delegates by the candidates. Complicating the hunt for the nomination is former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars advertising his candidacy to the Super Tuesday states, after deciding not to compete in the first four contests. Although his rise in polls had slowed since his first debate performance, Bloomberg still appears positioned to win delegates in many early states, as he continues to swamp his rivals in spending. His advisers vowed Saturday night that Bloomberg will stay in the race at least through Super Tuesday when he will appear on the ballot for the first time. They cited internal campaign data showing that if Bloomberg dropped out it would strengthen Sanders, whose left-leaning policies the former mayor abhors “Mike Bloomberg has not been on the ballot yet,” said Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey. “Our campaign is focused on organizing Democrats and building infrastructure in states all around the country.”
After Saturday’s outcome became clear, President Donald Trump tweeted, “Sleepy Joe Biden’s victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary should be the end of Mini Mike Bloomberg’s Joke of a campaign.” Biden’s support among black voters, who made up most of the electorate in South Carolina, appeared ready to lift a campaign that has struggled to find its footing for more than a year. Biden, a national polling leader in 2019, finished in fourth place in Iowa, fifth place in New Hampshire and second place in Nevada. African American voters have been a crucial part of the Democratic Party Coalition since the New Deal era, and Biden, along with other Sanders critics, have argued that it will be hard for the Democratic nominee to defeat Trump if he does not have enthusiastic support from the black community. Sanders has replied that he alone among the Democratic contenders has shown the ability to electrify voters and draw big crowds from a broad portion of the electorate.
Sleepy Joe Biden’s victory in the South Carolina Democrat Primary should be the end of Mini Mike Bloomberg’s Joke of a campaign. After the worst debate performance in the history of presidential debates, Mini Mike now has Biden split up his very few voters, taking many away!
2. In A Bid To Unite Democratic Party, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar Drop Out, Endorse Joe Biden’s Candidacy
In a bid to unite the Democratic Party against President Donald Trump, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar drop out of the Democratic Primary, endorse Former Vice President Joe Biden.
In a last-minute bid to unite the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, Senator Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg on March 2 threw their support behind former Vice President Joe Biden, giving him an extraordinary boost ahead of the Super Tuesday primaries that promised to test his strength against the liberal front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders. Even by the standards of the tumultuous 2020 campaign, the dual endorsement from Klobuchar and Buttigieg, and their joint appearances with Biden at campaign events in Dallas on March 2, was remarkable. Rarely, if ever, have opponents joined forces so dramatically, as Klobuchar and Buttigieg went from campaigning at full tilt in the South Carolina primary on Saturday to joining on a political rescue mission for a former competitor, Joe Biden, whom they had once regarded as a spent force.
Amy Klobuchar, who sought to appeal to the same moderate voters as Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, and focused her campaign on calling the Democratic Party’s attention to Midwestern states like her native Minnesota, withdrew from the race after intensive conversations with her aides following Biden’s thumping victory in South Carolina. Rather than delivering a traditional concession speech, Klobuchar told associates she wanted to leverage her exit to help Biden and headed directly for the joint rally. Before a roaring crowd in Dallas, she hailed her former rival as a candidate who could “bring our country together” and restore “decency and dignity” to the presidency. Pete Buttigieg, for his part, endorsed Biden at a pre-rally stop, saying that Biden would “restore the soul” of the nation as president. And Biden offered Buttigieg the highest compliment in his personal vocabulary, several times likening the young politician to his own son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.
For the three moderates, as well as for Bernie Sanders and other remaining candidates, the crucial question hanging over the fast-moving events was whether any of it would make a difference in Tuesday’s primaries across 15 states and territories, including the critical battlegrounds of California and Texas. Millions of voters are expected to go to the polls, but many states have had early voting underway; more than 2.3 million Democratic and independent ballots have already been processed in California. Bernie Sanders has significant head starts in many of the Super Tuesday states and beyond: His popularity has risen in recent weeks, and so has Democratic voters’ estimation of his electability in a race with President Donald Trump. The Vermont senator has a muscular national grass-roots organization, backed by the most fearsome online fund-raising machine in Democratic politics, one that collected more than $46 million last month, far outdistancing every other candidate in the race.
As news emerged of the shift of centrist support toward Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders projected confidence and defiance, dismissing it as a phenomenon of “establishment politicians” supporting one another. On Twitter, Sanders posted a video criticizing Biden for having supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, linking him to unpopular Republicans like former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney. Additionally, Sanders assailed Biden’s record on the Iraq war and Social Security. “It is no surprise they do not want me to become president,‘’ Sanders said, referring to his moderate opponents.
I do not believe we will defeat Donald Trump with a candidate like Joe Biden who supported the Iraq War. pic.twitter.com/8tII7O3Mal
3. Trump Administration Orders Four Chinese News Outlets in The US to Reduce Staffs
In a major escalation of the ongoing tensions between China and the US, the Trump administration on March 2 ordered four Chinese news outlets operating in the US to reduce the number of Chinese nationals working on their staffs by more than a third
In a major escalation of the ongoing tensions between China and the US, the Trump administration on March 2 ordered four Chinese news outlets operating in the US to reduce the number of Chinese nationals working on their staffs by more than a third. The action comes on the heels of a State Department decision on February 18 requiring five Chinese news organizations considered organs of the government to register as foreign missions and provide the names of employees. China responded by expelling three Beijing-based Wall Street Journal reporters, condemning as “racist” an essay that ran in the news outlet’s opinion section criticizing China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. American officials said that by March 13, the Chinese news outlets can have no more than 100 Chinese citizens on staff, down from 160 currently employed by the five outlets. The officials said it was an effort to bring “reciprocity” to the US-China relationship and to encourage the ruling Chinese Communist Party to show a greater commitment to a free press. “As we have done in other areas of the US-China relationship, we seek to establish a long-overdue level playing field,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. “It is our hope that this action will spur Beijing to adopt a more fair and reciprocal approach to US and other foreign press in China. We urge the Chinese government to immediately uphold its international commitments to respect freedom of expression, including for members of the press.”
In announcing the move, senior Trump administration officials cited the disappearance of citizen journalists chronicling the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan. In a report by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, called “Control, Halt, Delete,” 8 in 10 correspondents said they had encountered interference, harassment or violence while arriving and described the environment for journalists as deteriorating. “We’re witnessing an assault on free speech inside of China that goes even beyond what it was a decade ago,” said an administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity under administration rules for briefing reporters. Other officials sought to distinguish the US action from China’s expulsion of nine foreign reporters since 2013 when Xi Jinping ascended to power. The expulsions were usually attributed to the government’s unhappiness with news coverage. American officials said it will be up to the designated outlets to determine which employees to cut and said there will be no restrictions placed on their content or choice of what to cover. But they said they are considering imposing duration limits on Chinese nationals working for the outlets, similar to those used by China on foreign correspondents. The officials pointedly refused to refer to the affected employees as journalists, calling it an insult to free and independent reporters who are not working for “propaganda outlets.”
Every year, hundreds of Chinese citizens are granted visas allowing them to report in the US, though it was not immediately clear how many are currently working as reporters. The move against employees of China’s government-controlled media comes amid an escalating series of critical statements by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the Chinese government. He has repeatedly criticized the government’s maltreatment and detention of Muslim Uighurs, warned US allies of risks associated with technology from the Chinese company Huawei and castigated China’s expanding economic influence in developing countries. Pompeo has said China is intent on international domination, and during a January visit to London, he called the Chinese Communist Party “the central threat of our times.” Now, as the world braces for the spreading coronavirus that originated in China, the Trump Administration has taken the battle to the journalistic arena.
4. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wins Third Israeli Election Held Since 2019
During the third election held in the country since last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing coalition won another victory, setting the stage for a coalition government to be formed.
As counting gets underway in Israel’s unprecedented third election in 11 months, initial exit polls projected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party as the winners. But even if the final results bear out these projections from Israel’s three main news channels, Netanyahu will still need to find partners to form a coalition government with a majority in the 120-seat parliament. Just after polling stations closed across Israel, the Israeli TV stations flashed the result of their individual exit polls, all showing Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party ahead of former military chief, Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White Party. Exit polls in Israel, as elsewhere, come with a disclaimer. Sometimes they prove to be extremely prescient, while other times they are woefully wide of the mark. Even so, politicians and voters alike still take them seriously and watch them closely. With almost one-quarter of the votes counted, all three main TV stations are projecting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party will finish between three and five seats ahead of its main rival, the Blue and White party of Benny Gantz. But all three channels continue to project that a bloc made up of Likud plus Netanyahu’s preferred coalition partners, the hardline right-wing Yamina, along with the two religious parties, would win 59 seats, which is two seats short of an overall majority.
Israel’s third election in less than a year reflects a political system in deadlock. Following the last poll in September of 2019, both Netanyahu and Gantz were given the chance to try to form a government but neither man was successful in building a coalition with a 61-seat majority. Gantz refused point-blank to sit in a government with Netanyahu due to the charges against the prime minister, while Netanyahu refused to go second in any rotating prime ministership with Gantz. This third campaign saw barbs traded between the two leaders and the release of several secret recordings aimed at damaging both the main campaigns, though particularly that of Blue and White. Casting his vote Monday, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin castigated the country’s politicians. “We don’t deserve another awful and grubby election campaign like the one that ends today, and we don’t deserve this never-ending instability. We deserve a government that works for us.” As the exit polls suggest, the two largest parties are likely to be Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’s Blue and White.
Another issue during the campaign was the Trump administration’s “Deal of the Century.” The US president delivered his “Peace to Prosperity” plan at the end of January 2020, with Benjamin Netanyahu standing next to him at the White House. The proposal effectively gives US approval to Israeli annexation of all Jewish settlements in the West Bank, along with the Jordan Valley. Netanyahu has embraced the plan and has talked about a “window of opportunity” to deliver on it, widely seen as meaning before the US presidential election in November. For his part, Gantz also welcomed the plan but said annexation should happen with international coordination. Perhaps the biggest immediate electoral effect of the Trump plan has been to motivate Israel’s Arab community to vote. The Kan News exit poll projects the Joint Arab List, an alliance of the four main Arab parties, on track to win 15 seats. List leader Ayman Odeh hailed it as the best result ever for Arab parties in Israeli elections.
