“It’s entirely normal for a president to be briefed on reporters who will be asking questions at a press conference and issues we expect they might ask about,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing on Thursday. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo
The White House said on Thursday that it was “entirely normal” for a president to be briefed about the journalists who would ask questions at news conferences, a day after President Joe Biden was seen holding a paper with what appeared to be a reporter’s question.
“It’s entirely normal for a president to be briefed on reporters who will be asking questions at a press conference and issues we expect they might ask about,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing on Thursday.
The comments come after Biden was seen on Wednesday holding a note card titled “question 1″ regarding a Los Angeles Times reporter’s information during a joint news conference with President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“This tank story is not satisfactory,” he added. “The decision’s been made, OK. Then let’s get ready to execute it and cut through whatever the red tape is.”
The independent, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, said there is a “bipartisan concern” over the time frame, warning that not sending the tanks soon could prove to be “a tragic mistake.”
“Our country has thousands of main battle tanks,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said earlier in the hearing. “It would seem like it’s not that hard to find 31 and get them there.”
Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill had long pressed President Joe Biden to send Kyiv U.S.-made main battle tanks, a move the administration finally agreed to in January. On Thursday, during a hearing with U.S. European Command’s Gen. Christopher Cavoli, and U.S. Transportation Command’s Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, senators were animated about why the administration can’t get them there much sooner.
The initial January announcement said the U.S. would provide M1A2 tanks, which would need to be overhauled in a process that could take as long as two years. But the Pentagon said in March the military would pull out some of its older M1A1 Abrams that need less refurbishment and would arrive by the fall.
A separate tranche of tanks is set to arrive in Germany next month for Ukrainian troops to begin training.
The Army and defense contractor General Dynamics are working on the tanks slated to be sent this year, which have been pulled from Army depots to send to Ukraine this spring and summer.
The armor on the tank’s turret and the optical sights are not eligible for export, so they need to be swapped out before they are sent overseas, something that can happen within weeks.
The work is being done at the Army’s facility at Lima, Ohio. The line has been exceptionally busy in recent months, with tanks for Poland and Taiwan — along with other allies — going through the upgrade process side-by-side.
The Polish order in particular is a rush job, with Warsaw slated to begin receiving its 116 M1A1 tanks that it ordered in January by this spring.
While the timeline for the Ukraine-bound tanks has been sped up, the autumn delivery schedule still didn’t sit well with senators.
Cotton accused the Biden administration of dragging its feet on following through on the January decision to provide the Abrams, which it had initially resisted but announced in tandem with a decision by Germany to send its own Leopard 2 tanks.
“I think the main reason for that is [also] the main reason why we didn’t even agree to supply the tanks for a year, which is that President Biden didn’t want to supply them,” Cotton said. “And again, I think we could supply them faster than eight or nine months if there was the political will.”
Cavoli, quizzed by Cotton about when tanks will arrive beyond those that will be used for training Ukrainians, said military planners were moving to speed up the process.
“The dates are moving right now,” Cavoli said. “We’re trying to accelerate it as much as we can.”
Another GOP senator, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, pressed Cavoli and Van Ovost on whether the nearly three dozen Abrams tanks had been identified, if they were located in the U.S. or in Europe and how quickly they could be delivered once ready. Van Ovost, who oversees the movement of military equipment and personnel around the globe, said her command has “multiple avenues to deliver Abrams tanks by air or by sea” and could do so quickly once given orders to transport tanks.
Rounds argued the holdup amounts to “a policy decision that [the administration is] not prepared to deliver 31 Abrams tanks at this time.”
“The bottom line is, if we needed those tanks, it shouldn’t take eight months for the United States Army to be able to access 31 Abrams tanks,” Rounds said. “If we needed them tomorrow, we’d get them very very quickly.”
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Canada and Spain have agreed to accept referrals from the processing centers, officials said.
News of the centers comes just two weeks before a seismic shake-up in border policy, the lifting of Title 42. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will announce details at a joint press conference Thursday morning at the State Department. The White House will also release a fact sheet about the regional processing centers and other efforts to prepare for the May 11 end of Title 42, the Trump-era border policy that has been used more than 2 million times to expel asylum-seeking migrants on public health grounds.
The processing centers are just one piece of the administration’s multi-pronged response as the White House tries to strike a balance of deterrence with creating additional legal pathways. Officials also announced the expansion of the family reunification parole program to include Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Colombia, a program previously only available to Cubans and Haitians.
“[It’s] a significant plan that is really at a level of ambition and scale that has never been done before,” a senior administration official told reporters. “However, there is far more that we could do if we had the cooperation of Congress. They have really tied our hands, and so we really do appeal to Congress to work with us.”
The White House has been intensely planning for the end of Title 42 since before the New Year, weighing a patchwork of policy solutions. May, already the historically busiest month for migration, is expected to bring one of the greatest policy challenges yet for the White House. And the timing falls at a challenging political moment for President Joe Biden, who just launched his 2024 reelection campaign.
The efforts to expand legal pathways and expedite processing will be paired with deterrence measures — in an effort to build upon the humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, which officials tout as a success story in bringing border numbers down. The program for these groups will continue, officials said, including the expulsion to Mexico of those who try to enter the U.S. unlawfully.
In place of Title 42, officials also plan to rely on a new rule that will bar some migrants from applying for asylum in the U.S. if they cross the border illegally or fail to first apply for safe harbor in another country. The administration has been working to finalize and implement the rule — a version of a Trump-era policy often called the “transit ban” — before May 11.
The administration will also expand expedited removal processes under Title 8, officials said Thursday, which would allow the government to remove from the country anyone unable to establish a legal basis — such as an approved asylum claim.
“With this shift from Title 42 to Title 8, it does not mean that the border is open,” a senior administration official said Thursday. “Returning to regular order under Title 8 means that we will once again be able to impose significant consequences on those who fail to avail themselves of the many legal pathways that we have announced today and that already exist.”
The Biden administration has 24,000 agents and officers at the border and is hiring an additional 300 border patrol agents this year. They’re also prepping Custom and Border Protection facilities to include spaces for interviews with asylum officers, immigration judges and for counsel purposes.
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And it was a hard-fought victory, at that. The conference had been in talks over the bill for months, yet McCarthy was still negotiating with on-the-fence members shortly before the vote. Still, GOP lawmakers cheered the bill’s passage, hoping it will give them some leverage to force leading Democrats to back down from assertions they would not negotiate at all over the debt limit.
“I think everybody is focused on solving this problem and finally getting the president … to come to the table,” said Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), adding that Republicans want to give McCarthy the “opportunity to go and negotiate with the president.”
Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Ken Buck (Colo.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.) were the Republicans who opposed the bill, along with all Democrats.
It’s still far from clear that the House GOP plan will change the calculus either at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue or across the Capitol with Senate Democrats. Both have stressed for months, along with their less influential House colleagues, that they want a “clean” debt ceiling increase, with no spending cuts attached.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer lambasted McCarthy ahead of the vote on Wednesday, accusing him of having “capitulated to the hard right once again” as he worked to lock down the votes to pass the debt plan.
“It’s a bill that might as well be called the Default On America Act. Because that’s exactly what it is — DOA, dead on arrival,” Schumer said.
The House Republican bill combines across-the-board spending cuts with other conservative proposals, including stricter rules for social safety net programs and energy production incentives. But after vowing for days that they wouldn’t open the bill for negotiations, worried it would create a tidal wave of demands, Republican leadership cut a middle-of-the-night deal to try to win over two critical holdout groups: Midwesterners and conservatives.
For Midwestern members, GOP leadership agreed to kill changes to incentives structures for renewable diesel, second generation biofuel, carbon dioxide sequestration and biodiesel. For conservatives, they beefed up the work requirements and sped up the implementation timeline. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who flipped to backing the bill on Wednesday, also said McCarthy committed to working on balancing the budget in a conversation with her.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) acknowledged that his conservative members weren’t sold on all the bill’s provisions but argued that passing the proposal was crucial to keeping Republicans at the table.
“It is not perfect. It’s a step in the right direction. We’ve got to be in the arena and stay on offense,” Perry said.
The next phase won’t get any easier for Republicans, though, who barely scraped by this time on a 217-215 vote. McCarthy eventually needs to cut a deal with Biden and Senate Democrats that somehow would also win over both the centrist and conservative factions of his conference.
”It’s gonna have to be a conservative package if it’s going to win the support of the Republican conference, but I don’t think it serves anyone’s interest by talking about red lines right now,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), the chair of the business-oriented Main Street Caucus.
Driving the debt-limit talks is still relatively new for House Republicans, who largely left it up to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to negotiate agreements on the debt ceiling during the first two years of the Biden administration. Those deals sparked fierce pushback not only from House Republicans but also Senate conservatives.
And Republican senators are warning they aren’t preparing to step into the breach again, at least not yet. Plus, it’s far from clear that a Senate GOP negotiated deal would even find favor in the more raucous House GOP conference.
The House bill “forces the administration to come to the table,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said Wednesday. “The pressure really ought to be on the White House.”
Sarah Ferris and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
But voters will be the ultimate decider about whether he’s too old for office, he added. His answer marks his first public comments on the 2024 race after Tuesday’s launch — and his first addressing the obstacles hovering over his reelection bid.
“I respect them taking a hard look at it. I’ve taken a hard look at it as well — I took a hard look at it before I decided to run,” Biden said. “I feel good. And I feel excited about the prospects, and I think we’re on the verge of really turning the corner in a way we haven’t in a long time.”
Biden also said he has seen the poll numbers and is in a similar position to past presidents running for reelection.
“What I keep hearing about is that I’m between 42 and 46 percent favorable rating. But everybody running for reelection in this time has been in the same position. There’s nothing new about that. You’re making it sound like Biden’s really underwater,” he said.
The president then touted specific legislative accomplishments and economic growth.
“And the reason I’m running again is there’s a job to finish.”
Of the three presidents who failed to win a second term in recent decades, two had approval ratings roughly equal to Biden’s. But former Presidents Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan also hovered around Biden’s numbers, and both were reelected.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
When the U.S. president on Tuesday announced that he would seek reelection in 2024, attention quickly turned to his advanced age.
If elected, Joe Biden would be 82 on inauguration day in 2025, and 86 on leaving the White House in January 2029.
POLITICO took a look around the globe and back through history to meet some other elected world leaders who continued well into their octogenarian years, at a time when most people have settled for their dressing gown and slippers, some light gardening, and complaining about young people.
Here are seven of the oldest — and yes, they’re all men.
Paul Biya
President of Cameroon Paul Biya | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The world’s oldest serving leader, Cameroon’s president has been in power since 1982, winning his (latest) reelection at the age of 85 with a North Korea-esque 71.28 percent of the vote.
Spanning more than four decades and seven consecutive terms — in 2008, a constitutional reform lifted term limits — Biya’s largely undisputed reign has not come without controversy.
His opponents have regularly accused him of election fraud, claiming he successfully built a state apparatus designed to keep him in power.
Notorious for his lavish trips to a plush palace on the banks of Lake Geneva, which he’s visited more than 50 times, Biya keeps stretching the limits of retirement. Although he has not formally announced a bid for the next presidential elections in 2025, his party has called on him to run again in spite of his declining health.
Last February, celebrations were organized throughout the country for the president’s 90th birthday. According to the government, young people spontaneously came out on the streets to show their love for Biya.
Konrad Adenauer
Former Chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer | Keystone/Getty Images
West Germany’s iconic first chancellor was elected for his inaugural term at the tender age of 73, but competed and won a third and final term at the age of 85.
In his 14-year chancellorship (1949-1963), Adenauer shaped Germany’s postwar years with a strong focus on integrating the young democracy into the West. Big milestones such as the integration of Germany into the European Economic Community and joining the NATO alliance just a few years after World War II happened under his leadership.
If his nickname “der Alte” (“the old man”) is one day bestowed upon Biden, the U.S. president would share it with a true friend of America.
Ali Khamenei
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei | AFP via Getty Images
84-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last word on all strategic issues in Iran, and his rule has been marked by murderous brutality against opponents.
That violence has only escalated in recent years, with mass arrests and the imposition of the death penalty against those protesting his dictatorial rule. A mere middle-ranking cleric in the 1980s, few expected Khamenei to succeed Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran’s supreme leader, and he took the top job in hurried, constitutionally dubious circumstances in 1989.
A pipe-smoker and player of the tar, a traditional stringed instrument, he was president during the attritional Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and survived a bomb attack against him in 1981 that crippled his arm.
Thankfully for Khamenei, he doesn’t have the stress of facing elections to wear him down.
Robert Mugabe
President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe | Michael Nagle/Getty Images
You’ve heard the saying “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely” — well, here’s a classic case study.
Robert Mugabe’s political career reached soaring heights before crashing to depressing lows, during his nearly four decades ruling over Zimbabwe. He came to power as a champion of the anti-colonial struggle, but his rule descended into authoritarianism — while he oversaw the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy and society.
Though Mugabe’s final election win was marred by allegations of vote-rigging and intimidation, the longtime leader chalked up a thumping, landslide victory in 2013, aged 89.
He was finally, permanently, removed as leader well into his nineties, during a coup d’etat in 2017. He died two years later.
Giorgio Napolitano
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano | Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images
The former Italian president took his largely symbolic role to new heights when, aged 86, he successfully steered the country through a perilous transition of power in 2011 — closing that particular chapter of Silvio Berlusconi’s story.
Operating mostly behind the scenes, Napolitano saw five PMs come and go during his eight-and-a-half years in office, at a time when Italian politics were rife with instability (but hey, what’s new?).
Reelected against his will in 2013 at 87 — he had wanted to step down, but gave in after a visit from party leaders desperate to put Italy’s political landscape back on an even keel — Napolitano won the nickname “Re Giorgio” (King George) for his statesmanship.
When he resigned two years later, he said: “Here [in the presidential palace], it’s all very beautiful, but it’s a bit like jail. At home, I’ll be ok, I can go out for a walk.”
Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
“It has been a very good day,” Javier Solana, the then European Union foreign policy chief, exclaimed when Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in 2005.
As a tireless advocate of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Abbas has enjoyed strong backing from the international community.
But three EU policy chiefs later and with lasting peace no closer, Abbas is still in power, despite most polls showing that Palestinians want him to step aside.
His solution for political survival: No presidential elections have been held in the Palestinian Territories since that historic ballot in 2005, with the Palestinian leadership blaming either Israel or the prospect of rising Hamas influence for the postponement of elections.
While Abbas seems to have found a solution for political survival, the physical survival of the 87-year-old chain smoker is now being called into question.
William Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone | Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Queen Victoria reportedly described Gladstone as a “half-mad firebrand” — and you’d have to be to chase a fourth term as prime minister aged 82.
At that point Gladstone had already outlived Britain’s life expectancy at the time by decades.
During his career, Gladstone expanded the vote for men — but failed to pass a system of home rule in Ireland, and he was slammed for alleged inaction to help British soldiers who were slaughtered in the Siege of Khartoum.
Gladstone was Britain’s oldest-ever prime minister when he eventually stepped down at 84 — and no one has beaten that record since. Similarly, no one has served more than his four (nonconsecutive) terms.
But should the Tories remain addicted to chaos, who’d bet against Boris Johnson starting his fifth stint as PM in 2049?
Ali Walker and Christian Oliver contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
“It’s one of the great hesitations people have, and it’s not just chronological age, it’s the perceived age, the performance,” said Dave Carney, a longtime Republican consultant who hasn’t decided whom to support in 2024.
Both Biden and Trump battled questions of their physical and mental acuity while in office with each insisting that their performance underscored their capacity to handle the rigors of the job. The 2024 election, likewise, will provide a window through which to judge them.
But an actual full-on campaign won’t start for quite some time. Trump, who faces a crowded Republican primary field, has begun holding campaign events and the occasional rally. And Biden, who faces no real intra-party challenge, has begun raising money and will have one-off political events, but his aides have signaled he won’t begin barnstorming until next year.
When the campaign does actually begin in earnest, both sides pledge it will not be an exercise in tapioca, “Murder, She Wrote” reruns, and early bedtimes.
Despite an age gap of only three years, the chatter around age looms larger for Biden, who moves noticeably slower than a few years ago. Members of his inner circle know the toll the job takes on any president, and they have seen him grow more easily tired.
If elected, he would be 86 at the end of his second term, nearly a decade older than the U.S. male life expectancy. Poll after poll shows that voters — including Democrats who approve of the job he has done — are not sure they want him to run again, with most citing his age as their top concern.
But Biden’s allies and most Democrats believe he is very much still up for the job. Biden has received clean bills of health from his doctors, and his advisers believe the 2020 race made clear that voters have grown more comfortable with older people in positions of power, whether in politics or business. “His age is not a surprise,” one adviser said recently.
For Biden’s team, age can often be reframed as wisdom. They argue he has been a steady hand during difficult times. And they tout an enviable legislative scorecard — including wins on infrastructure, guns and climate change. They also believe that the threat posed by Trump to the nation’s democracy will turn out voters, even if some of them have reservations about Biden.
“I love what the president says himself. He has a line where he says, ‘Just watch me,’” said Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), one of the campaign co-chairs. “Just watching what has happened just in the first two years, and then knowing what his plan is, as we move forward, we know that he is more than capable.”
But aides acknowledge that Biden’s final campaign will be more rigorous than the one he ran in 2020. That year, candidates were sidelined for months by the pandemic, with Biden setting up shop in his Delaware home to host virtual events, allowing him to largely avoid unscripted moments and the gaffes for which he is famous. This time, Biden will need to hit the road, though some of the travel grind is offset by having Air Force One at his disposal.
Aides are mindful of the schedule’s toll on Biden. He has few early morning events, allowing him to sleep in and exercise before starting most days. Breaks are built into his schedule, and down days are often incorporated after travel.
“Whether it was in Kiev, barnstorming the country highlighting the manufacturing jobs he’s bringing back, averting international crises in the wee hours of the morning like he did in Bali, or putting Republicans on defense over Social Security in the State of the Union, the American people and the world see his qualified leadership,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, senior White House adviser, said in a statement. “And younger aides have to push themselves to keep up with that pace.”
White House aides also point out that other presidents took down days after foreign travel and that Biden has kept a busier travel schedule so far this year than Obama did in 2011, the equivalent year of his presidency.
Trump, meanwhile, has previously tried to make Biden’s age an issue, with his nickname of “Sleepy Joe” and unsubtle assertions that the incumbent has lost a step. He has circulated memes of the president losing his balance walking into Air Force One and has called Biden “cognitively impaired” in rally speeches.
But those charges didn’t work in 2020 and Trump himself faces questions about his own age and fitness for the job. More recently, Trump has tried to distinguish between age and mental acuity, saying in interviews that he has friends in their 80s and 90s, like 93-year-old Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, who are “100 percent.”
Trump kept up a more robust campaign schedule than Biden did in 2020. While Biden has worked and traveled — he journeyed to Ireland this month and is set for summits in Japan and Australia next month — Trump has been based at his resort in Palm Beach and has made frequent trips to early voting states. On Thursday, he heads to New Hampshire.
“President Trump continues to dominate in poll after poll, both in the primary and general elections. There is no other candidate in history who has the energy and stamina President Trump has, and he will out-work and out-pace Joe Biden to Save America,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Aides to Trump argue that the former president stays busy politicking from his clubs where he films policy videos, works the phones, and hosts fundraising events. And while he isn’t known to have the healthiest diet, Trump does keep active. In the morning he often zips around in his golf cart and plays nine holes before heading to his Mar-a-Lago office, where he’ll meet with advisers, lawmakers and candidates seeking his support, and he’s often out late into the evening socializing with club members and playing DJ for guests on the private patio.
As the campaign heats up, aides to Trump say he will keep a busy travel schedule and continue to criss-cross the country via his private plane to events and unannounced stops where he can show off his retail politics skills. They believe the campaign schedule alone will be an effective contrast with Biden — a chance to portray Trump as sharper than Biden in speeches and interviews.
“We really don’t have to say much,” said an adviser to Trump. “The contrast in energy and stamina will be demonstrated — and is being demonstrated right now — and that’s a contrast that will play itself out on the campaign trail.” Both Trump and his team have pointed to Biden’s presidential announcement, which came in the form of a short video instead of an event, as an example.
“Trump is older, too, but he doesn’t act as old as President Biden, he comes across as more vigorous and having more energy and that helps him avoid the same kinds of conversations,” said Carney. “And everyone else is going to talk about how we need a new generation, or some cliche along these lines for the rest of the campaign.”
Both Biden and Trump do face pressure from within their party to cede the way for younger lawmakers to take over. The president had framed himself as a bridge to the Democratic Party’s next generation. And GOP presidential hopefuls like Vivek Ramaswamy, 37, and Nikki Haley, 51, have framed their candidacies as a needed refresh for the party.
Haley has even proposed mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75. Trump then went even further, saying that anyone running for office should face not only a mental competency test but a physical test as well.
Biden’s entrance into the race all but ensures that conversations that may have otherwise been considered taboo or even downright ageist will now become a centerpiece of a presidential campaign. Indeed, we may already have passed that point. During an interview Monday with Newsmax, Trump even darkly predicted Biden would not make it to the general election.
“It was hard to believe four years ago, but he was in the basement … it seems to me somewhere along the line something will happen,” Trump said.
Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Here’s our verdict, using the following scale: Kept his promise, in progress, stalled, broke his promise.
Combating Covid-19
GRADE: KEPT HIS PROMISE
What Biden pledged: “When I’m elected your president, I’m going to act, and I’m going to act on day one. Folks, we’re going to act to get this Covid under control. … I’m never going to raise the white flag and surrender. We’re going to beat this virus. We’re going to get it under control, I promise you.”
What he’s done: Biden rolled out a far-reaching plan to rein in the pandemic on his first day in office, prioritizing efforts to mass-vaccinate the country and spark a rapid economic recovery that saw significant initial success.
The administration suffered multiple setbacks in the following months — notably misjudging both Covid’s ability to evolve and Americans’ willingness to keep up the fight against a deadly virus. But Biden did manage to blunt the pandemic threat through multiple rounds of shots and treatments that have allowed most people to return to their pre-pandemic lives.
The White House is now poised to end the Covid national emergency in May, in what amounts to the symbolic end of the Covid crisis. Deaths from the virus are now down to their lowest point since the early days of the pandemic. Still, Biden’s inability to stamp out Covid more completely means he will face the ongoing threat of a resurgence.
Rebuilding the economy
GRADE: Kept HIS PROMISE
What Biden pledged: “We’re going to invest in infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing, and so much more. We’ll create millions of good paying American jobs and get the job market back in the path to full employment.”
What he’s done: Biden presided over a swift economic recovery buoyed by bills he championed allocating billions of dollars in Covid aid, as well as major investments in manufacturing and infrastructure projects.
Three years after Covid shuttered much of the country, the unemployment rate is near 50-year lows, the economy has added tens of millions of jobs and wages are rising on average.
But high inflation through much of 2022 overshadowed those gains for many, denting Biden’s economic record and miring the administration for a time in debates over whether its stimulus efforts were too aggressive. The White House has since emphasized various cost-cutting initiatives aimed at balancing out rising prices, most notably winning reductions in certain prescription drug costs. The pace of inflation is now cooling, though not enough yet to fully alleviate concerns.
Ending gun violence
GRADE: STALLED
What Biden pledged: “No one needs an AR-15. … I promise you, I will get these weapons of war off the street again and out of our communities.”
What he’s done: Biden oversaw passage of the most comprehensive gun safety legislation in nearly three decades. The only problem: It fell well short of taking the kinds of decisive actions that he pledged to deliver on the campaign trail.
The gun safety law passed in June 2022 made only limited improvements to background checks and did nothing to restrict access to assault weapons. And despite Biden’s promise to ban those weapons in the aftermath of several mass shootings over the last year, he’s made no progress toward convincing Congress to act.
The White House in the interim has issued a range of executive orders aimed at reducing gun violence, but even Biden himself recently admitted he’s effectively powerless on the issue, saying he’s “gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns.”
Restoring U.S. leadership abroad
GRADE: Kept HIS PROMISE
What Biden pledged: “As president, I will ensure that democracy is once again the watchword of U.S. foreign policy, not to launch some moral crusade, but because it’s in our enlightened self-interest. We have to restore our ability to rally the free world so we can once more make a stand upon new fields of action together to face new challenges.”
What he’s done: The Biden administration angered its allies and hurt its global credibility by botching the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which the Taliban reconquered in 2021. Barely six months later, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden formed a global coalition that has held together through more than a year of fighting, providing Ukraine with the aid necessary to defend its territory far more effectively than originally expected.
That alliance has shown signs of shakiness at times, but has never cracked, winning Biden praise both at home and abroad for rebuilding America’s reputation as a diplomatic force.
Yet that’s a job that will only grow more challenging as the war drags on and with no clear consensus on an endgame in sight. Biden must also repair the damage done by an embarrassing leak of classified documents that illustrated spying efforts on a handful of allies and concerns about the state of the war in Ukraine.
Strengthening voting rights
Grade: stalled
What Biden pledged: “One thing the Senate and the president can do right away is pass the bill to restore the Voting Rights Act. … If they don’t, I’ve been saying all along, it’s one of the first things I’ll do as president if elected. We can’t let the fundamental right to vote be denied.”
What he’s done: Biden’s attempts to muster momentum for legislation strengthening voting rights fell flat, even after he backed abolishing the filibuster to pass it.
The president later signed the Electoral Count Act, which clarified the counting and certification process for electoral votes, but the administration has made little major headway on an issue that Biden made a central element of his 2020 campaign.
Judging by Biden’s reelection announcement video, voting rights will play a prominent role in his 2024 run as well. But there’s little apparent ability to do much in the interim that would help make good on his initial pledge.
Protecting access to abortion
Grade: In progress
What Biden pledged: “We’re in a situation where I would codify Roe v. Wade as defined by Casey. It should be the law, and there’s no reason why, if the Supreme Court makes the judgment that everybody’s worried about with these appeals going to the Supreme Court, that in exchange, I would codify Roe v. Wade and Casey.”
What he’s done: The Supreme Court ended up making the judgment that Democrats were worried about, striking down the constitutional right to abortion. But though Biden has advocated codifying Roe v. Wade since then, he doesn’t have the votes to do it.
The White House has instead done as much as it believes it can do on its own, including unraveling Trump-era restrictions on family planning funding and taking steps to protect access to medication abortion and help women travel across state borders to obtain the procedure. It’s also defending against other lawsuits aimed at further restricting access to reproductive health.
But those threats are ongoing, and will continue to test Biden’s desire to balance safeguarding abortion access with his reluctance to take more drastic steps pushed by activists that he worries could further draw the administration into a protracted legal battle.
Expanding health care
Grade: KEPT his promise
What Biden pledged: “I’ll not only restore Obamacare, I’ll build on it. … I’m going to increase subsidies to lower your premiums, deductibles, out-of-pocket expenses, out-of-pocket spending, surprise billing. I’m going to lower prescription drugs by 60 percent, and that’s the truth.”
What he’s done: Biden followed through on multiple health care promises with the passage of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, expanding Obamacare subsidies and placing new restrictions on pharmaceutical prices.
Those provisions fell somewhat short of what Biden aspired to — placing an expiration date on the subsidy expansion and limiting a cap on insulin prices to only certain patients. But the IRA did also accomplish a longtime Democratic priority: Empowering Medicare to negotiate the cost of certain drugs.
Biden must still ensure those policies are effectively implemented. But taken together, they’re expected to make coverage more affordable and accessible for millions of people.
Overhauling immigration policies
GRADE: Broke his promise
What Biden pledged: “We’re going to restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers, and those fleeing violence and persecution.”
What he’s done: In an approach that’s dismayed Democrats and immigration advocates, Biden maintained the strict Trump-era border policy known as Title 42 that has allowed the government to quickly expel migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The administration now plans to lift Title 42 next month, though there are few signs that Biden will significantly loosen his approach to immigration. A new policy rolled out earlier this year would largely prohibit migrants from applying for asylum at the southern border.
And though Biden rolled back some of former President Donald Trump’s most stringent immigration policies, his administration’s approach grew more restrictive after record numbers of migrants began arriving at the border. Biden has encouraged Congress to negotiate more comprehensive legislation to overhaul the immigration system, but there has been no progress toward accomplishing that.
Tackling climate change
GRADE: Kept his promise
What Biden pledged: “My time table for results is my first four years as president, the jobs that we’ll create, the investments we’ll make, and the irreversible steps we’ll take to mitigate and adapt to the climate change and put our nation on the road to net zero emissions no later than 2050.”
What he’s done: Biden is following through on his climate goals largely through a range of investments in the IRA designed to accelerate the nation’s transition toward clean energy.
Experts project the legislation could help cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by up to 42 percent by the end of the decade, compared to 2005 levels. Further regulatory changes that the administration plans to impose could help Biden meet his pledge of cutting total emissions in half by 2030. Biden also took unilateral steps requiring the federal government to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
But those are long-term projects, and will require the administration to implement all the new policies — and do it fast enough for them to have the necessary environmental impact to meet Biden’s timeline. There are also lingering questions over how the White House will juggle its climate ambitions with ongoing fossil fuel projects, after Biden broke a commitment to halt drilling on federal lands, most notably by approving the Willow oil and gas project in Alaska.
Expanding child and elder care access
Grade: Stalled
What Biden pledged: “My childcare plan is straightforward, straightforward. Every 3- and 4-year-old child will get access to free high quality preschool like students have here. And low- and middle-income families won’t spend more than 7 percent of their income on childcare for children under the age of five.”
What he’s done: The president’s vast plan to expand the “care economy” was cast aside during negotiations over the IRA and has yet to recover. Once a centerpiece of his vision for rebuilding the post-2020 economy, lawmakers axed policies to build out access to child-care and long-term care over concerns it would be too costly.
And despite Biden’s continued support for revisiting those efforts, there’s been no significant renewed push yet to get those policies through a divided Congress. Instead, Biden recently signed a series of executive orders directing federal agencies to try to make care more accessible.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The president’s long-awaited announcement on Tuesday allows Biden to begin fundraising for what will be an expensive campaign. But his April launch also gave the green light for Democratic groups like Priorities USA to jumpstart 2024 efforts backing the president.
“It is essential to remind voters of what’s at stake in 2024, and to do so online. Issues such as abortion access, protecting our climate, curbing gun control, making health care more affordable and making our economy work for every American will be the centerpieces of this campaign,” said Danielle Butterfield, the group’s executive director.
Founded in 2011, Priorities USA is among the Democratic Party’s largest political action committees. But it won’t be the only one supporting Biden, or the main one for that. Future Forward, which already has been running TV ads, will likely be Biden’s primary outside spending apparatus, though American Bridge and others are also expected to have a share in the campaign’s portfolio.
There was also some uncertainty about the role Biden-allied Building Back Together might play after the 2022 election. But instead of paid media campaigns, BBT will focus on coordinating among Democratic groups to highlight the Biden administration’s efforts to implement the president’s agenda.
Priorities’ ad, titled “Our Strength, Our Champion,” focuses on the Biden administration’s accomplishments and echoes the tone of Biden’s announcement video — with imagery of Jan. 6 and Biden’s leading GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another expected 2024 GOP candidate, make appearances as well. The ad will stream in English and Spanish.
The ad then runs through a list of Biden’s accomplishments, noting that he has “worked across the aisle,” “protected marriage equality,” “took historic climate action,” and “lowered health care costs.”
In the final seconds of the video, with Biden’s voice playing in the background, “Joe Biden is fighting with us. Let’s finish the job together” flashed across the screen.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Unlike the U.S., which is queasy about prosecuting any former president no matter how awful they are, South Korea is a global leader among wealthy democracies in putting its former presidents in jail. Excluding Yoon, South Korea has had eight presidents since 1980; four of them were imprisoned. Yoon, a former prosecutor, was personally involved in the cases against two of them from his own party.
In 2016, Yoon was the head of investigation under special prosecutor Park Young-soo — the South Korean equivalent to Special Counsel Jack Smith — and their work ultimately led to the impeachment and removal of then-president Park Geun-hye. The politics of Yoon, who is now the country’s top conservative, were not clear at the time, nor did it matter. He captivated the nation with his take-no-prisoners approach to the investigation. The criminal prosecution of Park, based largely on the facts that Yoon investigated, led to a 20-year sentence. The succeeding president Moon Jae-in and his liberal administration rewarded Yoon by appointing him as the powerful Seoul Central District Prosecutor. Then in 2018, Yoon’s office indicted another former president, Lee Myung-bak, who served before Park from 2008 to 2013, for bribery and embezzlement. Lee was convicted and sentenced to a 17-year prison term.
Yoon’s central role in these (ex-)presidential prosecutions turned him into a political star despite his total lack of charisma. A career prosecutor with no prior electoral experience, Yoon may be the worst public speaker that South Korean politics has ever seen. During his presidential campaign, Yoon’s tendency to speak in run-on sentences that swerved wildly into eyebrow-raising statements — such as praising South Korea’s former dictators as “good at growing the economy” or advocating for a 120-hour work week and relaxing food safety laws so that “poor people can choose to eat substandard food” — earned him the nickname “a Gaffe a Day.” (Yet another parallel with Biden, one might add.)
Nevertheless, his public image as a principled prosecutor standing against the highest power was enough to carry him through a razor-thin presidential election victory in March 2022. Biden may not be a prosecutor himself, but Yoon’s tactics could provide Biden the same kind of political power if applied subtly by his allies. Perhaps during the state dinner at the White House, Biden might lean into Yoon’s ear to whisper: How do I capture some of that magic and take advantage of these investigations?
First, Yoon might answer, leverage the allure of the rule of law. South Koreans are deeply cynical people with low trust in government — much like the politically polarized voters of the U.S. But that cynicism, in fact, is a by-product of a strong desire to see a fair application of law that punishes even the most powerful. One of Yoon’s shining moments was early in the Park Geun-hye administration in 2013, when he led the team that investigated the Lee administration’s use of its spy agency to help elect Park in the presidential election. When conservative legislators criticized him, Yoon declared: “My loyalty is not to a person.” Even to a cynical audience, such high-minded appeals to the rule of law can resonate.
Second, make sure to get the media on your side. In a high-profile political trial, a classic prosecutor’s tactic is to make well-timed leaks to journalists, making the defendant face a parallel trial before the public in addition to the one in the courtroom. Despite being a poor public speaker, Yoon could exert significant public influence because of his mastery of this tactic.
So far, Biden remains tight-lipped on the indictment of Trump, a wise move that allows the president to seem above the fray. All fine and good, but Biden and his staff could also privately communicate with journalists to create a media circus, as Yoon did. Technically under South Korean law, it is a criminal offense for a prosecutor to disclose information gained from an investigation prior to an indictment. As a prosecutor, Yoon flagrantly disregarded this prohibition. Yoon was well known for constantly working the phone with journalists and had been spotted meeting with owners of major newspapers. News reports speculated he gave the media access to inside information in exchange for his favored narrative and self-promotion.
Third, and most important: Always look out for number one, and never forget the fact that you are doing this for your own advancement. Yoon would not have become the president if he simply rested on his laurels after prosecuting the two ex-presidents. Following Lee’s imprisonment, Moon sought to dramatically curtail the investigative power of prosecutors, in a move his opponents criticized as an attempt to cover his own behind. If Yoon had acquiesced, he would simply be remembered as a famed former prosecutor who ended his career as one of Seoul’s many law firm partners.
Instead, Yoon staged a full-scale revolt. In order to protect the power of his office, he turned against his boss, Justice Minister Cho Kuk, a star liberal politician who was tasked with the prosecution reform that could threaten Yoon’s power as prosecutor. Claiming corruption, Yoon targeted Cho with attacks even more wide-ranging and vicious than any of his previous investigations. It was a stunning about-face, as if Attorney General Merrick Garland suddenly went all-in on investigating Hunter Biden in an overt pursuit of power and popularity. Yoon’s investigation team carried out more than a hundred raids that included Cho’s house, workplace, his mother’s home, his brother’s home, his wife’s workplace and his children’s schools.
Tipped off in advance, a throng of journalists swarmed each raid location, shoving a camera and microphone at anyone who would come out. In an infamous episode, no less than a dozen journalists blocked the motor scooter of a delivery worker coming out of Cho’s residence, desperately asking what the Justice Minister’s family had ordered. Thousands of news reports raised allegations that Cho was forming a secret political slush fund based on his investment in a private equity fund, even though all these raids failed to uncover any evidence of corruption. Yoon then pivoted to alleging that Cho’s wife forged documents for their daughter’s college admission, and won a four-year sentence against the Justice Minister’s wife. In the end, the prosecutors could not indict Cho or his family on corruption charges, but no matter — unable to withstand the onslaught, Cho resigned from his post, with his political life all but finished.
Yoon’s attack on Cho made him an unlikely hero for South Korea’s conservatives, which suited Yoon just fine. For a career prosecutor with little political conviction other than Nietzschean will to power, the conservative People Power Party, weakened by the imprisonment of two of its former presidents, became an ideal target for his hostile takeover. With their party in shambles, most South Korean conservatives were ready to welcome any credible champion. The PPP’s old guard, the fans of Park who considered Yoon their archenemy, could offer little resistance. His rise to the top made one lesson clear: Mastering the art of prosecuting political rivals is the most powerful tool an ambitious politician can yield.
In the end, just five years after South Korean conservatives suffered the embarrassing meltdown that was Park’s impeachment, they recaptured the presidency with Yoon. Imagine, Yoon might tell Biden, what you could do for Democrats in the wake of a Trump prosecution.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
