Biden stands by Putin’s removal comment but insists he won’t change policy
After controversial nomination hearings, in which Republican senators questioned her about critical race theory and her track record in convicting child sex offenders, Ketanji Brown Jackson has found a key supporter in Maine Senator Susan Collins, who as Republican announced she will vote to confirm Joe Biden’s first Supreme Court nominee.
The news all but guarantees Ms Jackson’s confirmation. She has already secured the support of West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, who was thought to be the most likely of his party’s 50 senators to withhold his support.
Meanwhile, Mr Biden has unveiled his 2023 budget proposal. He calls for lower government deficits, more money for law enforcement, and more funding for education, public health, and housing. It includes a proposal for a minimum tax on the super-rich that could hit Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos by $50 billion and $35 billion, respectively.
And more than a century after such legislation was introduced, President Joe Biden signed legislation into law making lynching a federal hate crime and condemning “outright terror to enforce the lie that not everyone in America belongs, not everyone is equal is created.”
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ICYMI: Biden signs law making lynching a federal hate crime
Joe Biden yesterday signed legislation making lynching a federal hate crime, a measure that has been waiting to become law for more than a century.
Named for Emmett Till, the black teenager whose brutal murder in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement, the bill received just seven no votes in the House of Representatives and passed unanimously in the Senate.
“From the bullets in the back of Ahmaud Arbery, to countless acts of violence, countless victims known and unknown … Racial hatred is not an old problem, it’s an ongoing problem,” Biden said at the signing ceremony. “Hate never goes away. It’s just hiding, it’s hiding under the rocks. With little oxygen, it comes out roaring and screaming. What stops it is all of us, not a few.”
Andrew Naughtie30. March 2022 13:39
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Susan Collins will vote for Ketanji Brown Jackson
In a development that almost ensures Joe Biden’s first Supreme Court nominee will be confirmed, Maine Republican Susan Collins has announced she will vote for Ketanji Brown Jackson if the vote to bench her goes in Senate takes place.
Ms Brown Jackson has already secured the support of Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator thought most likely to withhold his support.
Eric Garcia has the news:
Andrew Naughtie30. March 2022 13:17
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Analysis: How Joe Biden can close the police funding gap
Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year earmarks more than $3 billion for law enforcement, delivering on the President’s promise in the State of the Union to fund the police, not disappoint them. The move raises the prospect of a serious clash with the Democratic Party’s vocal and organized “defund” wing, but as Eric Garcia writes, the gulf may not be unbridgeable.
Andrew Naughtie30. March 2022 12:45
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ICYMI: Russia “didn’t take Kyiv,” Ukraine’s capital was “key target,” Pentagon says
Russian forces have failed in their mission to encircle and capture Kyiv, leading to Moscow’s announcement that military action around the Ukrainian capital would be scaled back, the US Defense Department said on Tuesday.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, during his remarks at a daily news conference, made it clear that Russian forces were being deployed and agreed with a reporter’s claim that the Russian military had suffered a “defeat” on the outskirts of Kyiv.
“I already said that in my opening speech. They failed to take Kyiv,” Mr Kirby told reporters.
Andrew Naughtie30. March 2022 12:15
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Was Biden’s Putin slip really a mistake?
John T. Bennett of Roll Call – later of The Independent – writes that it was the White House, not Joe Biden, who messed up the president’s speech in Poland this weekend, particularly by trying to confuse his statement To “push back” Vladimir Putin. “cannot stay in power”.
The White House had two choices: make the statement it did — which sounded naïve about the regional power dynamic — or stand by the boss and explain that he is calling for a Russian Spring, akin to the Arab Spring that several uncompromising leaders have supplanted power over the past decade.
This White House has once again chosen confusion. Rather than let Joe Joe be, his staff turned a powerful moment into a faux pas…
The President has twice explained what might have been a true Biden doctrine, once vaguely, then more clearly. Instead of making his boldest statement yet in his declared fight against authoritarianism, Team Biden has managed to construct a kaleidoscope of confusion.
Andrew Naughtie30. March 2022 11:45
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Biden’s Covid-19 approval relatively healthy – in a global comparison
Joe Biden’s overall approval ratings might not be in great shape these days, but in other ways he appears to be doing relatively well. According to a Morning Consult poll, the president enjoys more support than many of his counterparts in other countries when dealing with the Covid-19 crisis.
He’s doing better than the front-runners in Brazil, Britain, Australia and Spain, and even France’s Emmanuel Macron – although he’s well behind India’s Narendra Modi and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
However, his rating of 41 percent agree to 50 percent disagree is obviously not very good in an absolute sense – and that it compares well globally says a lot about how governments have been harmed by the pandemic.
Andrew Naughtie30. March 2022 11:09
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Al Sharpton on anti-lynching legislation
Speaking on MSNBC last night, veteran civil rights activist Al Sharpton opened up on the importance of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which Joe Biden signed into law yesterday.
“I spoke to the president and the vice president after the signing,” he said, “and to think that we’re getting that signature right now … to think that to make lynching a federal crime, we’d have to come by 2022, it.” is a bittersweet day.”
Andrew Naughtie30. March 2022 10:27
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Trump dominates the GOP field, leading Biden and Harris in the poll for the 2024 matchup
Former President Donald Trump would win the 2024 election if it were held today, according to a new poll published in The Hill this week.
The 45th president, widely accused of spreading false claims about the last presidential election that led to a riot in the US Capitol, slightly leads Joe Biden in a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Monday. Mr Trump would have the support of 47 percent of voters, while 41 percent would support Mr Biden. The gap between the two was well within the 12-point range that represents the current proportion of undecided voters.
Read John Bowden’s full report
Shweta Sharma30. March 2022 09:30
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The US issues a new travel advisory for Russia, saying Americans could be targeted
The US State Department has issued a new travel advisory warning all its citizens against traveling to Russia, saying Americans could be “harassed” by government security officials in the country.
This could include “detention and the arbitrary enforcement of local laws,” the ministry said, adding that there is also a risk that Americans’ mobility would be affected by “limited flights to and from Russia.”
Read the full report by Namita Singh
Shweta Sharma30. March 2022 08:45
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Account of two former US officials helping to investigate Trump ally Clark
Two former senior US Justice Department officials are supporting an ethics investigation by a Washington legal body into their former colleague Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who is alleged to have tried to overturn his 2020 election loss, two sources told Reuters.
Jeffrey Rosen, who served as acting attorney general, and Richard Donoghue, his former acting deputy, have given interviews to the District of Columbia Disciplinary Board in recent days, they said.
The office, which investigates possible wrongdoing by Washington attorneys, is investigating whether Mr Clark violated ethics rules that prohibit attorneys from engaging in “dishonesty, fraud, deception or misrepresentation” when he asked the two officers to write a letter with to send false information.
Shweta Sharma30. March 2022 07:46