Joe Biden

News, Analysis and Opinion from POLITICO

  1. 2024 Elections

    Trump has lots to say about everything — except the Baltimore bridge collapse

    It’s the latest major event the former president has steered clear of.

    In the two-plus days since the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, former President Donald Trump has had a lot to say about everything but.

    He posted to Truth Social at least three times about the social media company’s IPO and his wealth jumping over $6 billion. He posted about the New York judge who could rule to take some of his property. And, among other news of the day, he posted a specious New York Post story about the comedian Jon Stewart allegedly overvaluing his New York home.

    But Trump’s only response to the bridge — a major news story blanketing cable news — has been to share a clip of Sean Hannity criticizing President Joe Biden for not saying enough about what Hannity called “the tragic bridge collapse that took place in Baltimore.”

    Trump has ignored or hesitated to engage substantively with major news events in favor of narrow grievances and random rants. Most notably, last month, he went 72 hours following the death of Alexei Navalny before making his first comments about the death of the Russian opposition leader.

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  2. White House

    Biden campaign to bring in massive $25M haul at star-packed fundraiser

    The money is more than the president’s team raised in all of February.

    President Joe Biden will shatter fundraising records with a star-studded event on Thursday, with his campaign saying that it will bring in $25 million for an event featuring former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and late-night host Stephen Colbert.

    The one-night extravaganza will all but certainly increase Biden’s sizable financial advantage over former President Donald Trump, who raised about $20 million in all of February. And it will serve as a vivid reminder that the president has ample resources at his disposal as he tries to claw his way up from a small but persistent polling deficit in the general election.

    The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee have $97.5 million in cash, more than double the $44.8 million in the bank for Trump and the Republican National Committee.

    As Biden has socked away money, Trump has been forced to spend significant cash on a number of legal battles. The Biden campaign, for its part, has begun to unload its war chest in TV and digital ads, with a $30 million effort this spring designed to boost Biden’s record and attack Trump.

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  3. Exclusive

    Biden expands window to try and keep millions more low-income Americans insured

    The end of a Covid-era Medicaid protection has created an acute problem for the president in the leadup to November.

    President Joe Biden is widening a critical window for low-income Americans to join Obamacare, in a move aimed at reinforcing a central element of his reelection bid: That he presided over a historic expansion of health care coverage.

    Tens of millions of people eliminated from Medicaid would now have until Nov. 30 to sign up for new coverage under a plan to be announced Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services and first shared with POLITICO — an extension from the July 31 deadline initially set for the special enrollment period.

    The new timeline will apply to all those seeking coverage through HealthCare.gov, with officials encouraging state-run insurance marketplaces to adopt the change as well.

    The move aims to minimize the number of people losing health insurance coverage in the run-up to the November election as a result of a nationwide purge of state Medicaid rolls. The mass disenrollments are happening for the first time since the pandemic, prompted by the expiration last April of a Covid-era policy meant to prevent vulnerable people from losing coverage amid the health crisis.

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  4. Legal

    Hunter Biden’s bid to dismiss tax case meets judge’s skepticism

    A federal judge pressed a lawyer for the president's son about the claim that the tax charges represent a selective prosecution.

    LOS ANGELES — Hunter Biden’s effort to dismiss the federal tax charges against him got a chilly reception in court on Wednesday, as a federal judge sounded skeptical that the president’s son was a victim of a politically motivated prosecution.

    The president’s son was not present in the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, as his defense attorneys, led by Abbe Lowell, put forth a variety of arguments to gut or shut down the case entirely.

    “There is nothing regular about how this case was initiated [and] investigated,” Lowell said, making an overarching argument that Biden has been unfairly targeted by special counsel David Weiss.

    But Judge Mark Scarsi, a district judge in California’s Central district, continually pressed Lowell for firmer proof that Biden was subject to selective, vindictive prosecution.

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  5. Legal

    John Eastman, architect of Trump’s 2020 election plot, should be disbarred, judge rules

    "The most severe available professional sanction is warranted to protect the public," Judge Yvette Roland wrote.

    Updated

    A California judge on Wednesday recommended the disbarment of John Eastman, calling to revoke the law license of one of former President Donald Trump’s top allies in his failed last-ditch gambit to subvert the 2020 election.

    Judge Yvette Roland, who presided over months of testimony and argument about the basis of Eastman’s fringe legal theories, ruled that the veteran conservative attorney violated ethics rules — and even potentially criminal law — when he advanced Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results based on weak or discredited claims of fraud.

    Eastman plans to appeal Roland’s decision to a panel of judges, an interim step before the matter reaches the state Supreme Court. But while his appeal is pending, the ruling forces his law license into “inactive” status, meaning he can no longer practice law in California.

    “Given the serious and extensive nature of Eastman’s unethical actions, the most severe available professional sanction is warranted to protect the public and preserve the public confidence in the legal system,” Roland ruled.

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  6. Israel-Hamas War

    The limits of Biden’s one-on-one diplomacy with Netanyahu

    Biden prefers a personal touch to diplomacy, but changing circumstances in Gaza and Israel might lead to a shifting course.

    In multiple calls and meetings since Oct. 7, the Netanyahu government told their American counterparts they would open humanitarian aid routes into Gaza — but that they would do so solely because Washington asked.

    “We’re going to say the Americans requested it,” one senior Israeli official said this year, as relayed by a senior Biden administration official.

    President Joe Biden has been leveraging his decades-long familiarity with Benjamin Netanyahu to move the Israeli leader, who faced his own domestic pressure to appear hawkish, in directions he didn’t necessarily want. In this case, to pry crossings open and boost the amount of food, water and medicine available to Palestinians in Gaza.

    “Their talks are very candid,” said the senior official, like others granted anonymity to detail a sensitive relationship. “They skip past the diplomatic formalities and go right into the substance and work things out on the calls all the time.”

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  7. Transportation

    Buttigieg: Force of cargo ship that destroyed Baltimore bridge was ‘unimaginable’

    “What we saw yesterday was just unimaginable in terms of the proportion of that ship,” Buttigieg said.

    Updated

    Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday morning that the force of the cargo ship that rammed into and destroyed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was “unimaginable.”

    “It is difficult to overstate the level of physical force that hit this bridge all at once,” Buttigieg said during an interview on ABC News. He also added, “This is a vessel that was about 100,000 tons carrying its load, so 200 million pounds went into this bridge all at once, which is why you had that almost instant catastrophic result.”

    The bridge collapsed in the early hours of Tuesday morning after an approximately 985-foot-long container ship lost power and slammed into one of the bridge's supports. Six members of a construction crew who were working on the bridge at the time are missing and presumed dead, according to a senior executive of the company that employed the construction workers, and one worker was hospitalized.

    “What we saw yesterday was just unimaginable in terms of the proportion of that ship, the size of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, going directly into the key support beam of that bridge,” Buttigieg said.

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  8. Energy

    The ‘all of the above’ energy success that’s causing Biden headaches

    The U.S. is producing record amounts of oil, natural gas and renewables, but it turns out not many people really want an "all of the above" energy economy.

    President Joe Biden is presiding over a historic boom in U.S. energy production, with oil, natural gas and renewable power all setting records that would have seemed unfathomable two decades ago.

    And almost no one is happy about it.

    Republicans are angry about the hundreds of billions of dollars Biden is pouring into incentives for green energy, and his decision to place a temporary cap on the explosive growth of U.S. natural gas exports.

    Climate-minded Democrats and environmental advocates, meanwhile, say Biden's approvals of pipelines and other fossil fuel projects violate his pledges to take on climate change — with some warning he’s demoralizing the young voters he needs to win reelection.

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  9. 2024 Elections

    Biden opens the door to revisiting the early days of the pandemic

    The campaign has searched for ways to puncture the sense of nostalgia for the Trump era.

    Ever since President Joe Biden declared his reelection run nearly a year ago, he has largely avoided talking about the coronavirus pandemic.

    That’s changing now.

    Biden has repeatedly invoked the darkest days of the pandemic in a series of recent speeches, recalling the panic that took hold in early 2020 as schools shuttered, stocks cratered and hospitals became overwhelmed.

    "First responders were literally risking their lives. Nurses were in garbage bags as garments because they couldn't get any other help," he said during a fundraiser Tuesday in North Carolina, repeating a sentiment he's expressed at three other events in the last week. "Loved ones were dying all alone and we couldn't even say goodbye to them."

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  10. Defense

    Israel has agreed to provide ‘security bubble’ for Gaza pier project

    Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have raised concerns about protecting U.S. personnel helping in the humanitarian aid effort.

    Israel has agreed to provide security for the temporary pier the U.S. military is planning to build in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid to civilians on the brink of famine, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the plans.

    Under the plans being discussed, which have not yet been finalized, the Israel Defense Forces would establish a “security bubble” to protect the U.S. personnel building the pier as well as the individuals involved in offloading and distributing the aid, said one of the officials, both of whom were granted anonymity to speak about sensitive discussions.

    The IDF would also be responsible for physically securing the pier to the beach, the officials said.

    The U.S. is still in the planning stages and nothing has been finalized, the officials stressed. Another partner country may also be involved in providing some security, depending on where in Gaza the pier is ultimately built, they said.

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  11. Exclusive

    TikTok's troubles just got worse: The FTC could sue them, too

    A privacy case against TikTok would add fuel to the bipartisan chorus of criticism directed at the company over its ties to China.

    Updated

    The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating TikTok over allegedly faulty privacy and data security practices, and could decide in the coming weeks to bring a lawsuit or settlement, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

    The commission is weighing allegations that TikTok, and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, deceived its users by denying that individuals in China had access to their data, and also violated a children’s privacy law, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential matter.

    The agency, in partnership with the Justice Department, could either file a lawsuit or settle with the company, though a settlement has yet to be reached, the people said.

    TikTok has been under fire for years from national-security hawks in Washington, who worry that the popular app is giving Chinese authorities access to Americans’ personal data. A settlement would allow the embattled social media company to resolve a long pending legal matter, but it would only add fuel to critics who argue that TikTok’s ties to ByteDance are a critical threat to national security.

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  12. Transportation

    Biden: We will do all it takes to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge

    He said he plans to visit the disaster site and stressed that there was no indication that there was intentionality behind the devastating collapse.

    Updated

    President Joe Biden on Tuesday vowed that the federal government would provide all the resources Baltimore needed to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge after it collapsed in the early hours of the morning. He said he plans to visit the disaster site and stressed that there was no indication that there was intentionality behind the devastating collapse.

    “We’re going to send all the federal resources they need as we respond to this emergency. I mean all the federal resources — we’re going to rebuild that port together,” Biden said in the Roosevelt Room, before departing the White House for a trip to North Carolina.

    “Everything so far indicates that this was a terrible accident,” he added. “At this time, we have no other indication, no other reason to believe there's any intentional act here.”

    A container ship crashed into the bridge early Tuesday morning, causing the structure to crumble in a matter of seconds. The collision sent several vehicles traveling on Interstate 695 into the water, spurring a search for survivors in the Patapsco River and the closure of the Port of Baltimore.

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  13. 2024 Elections

    MAGA candidates tanked the midterms. Biden thinks they could again.

    Democrats are hoping to re-run a strategy that got them through the midterms.

    When President Joe Biden takes the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Tuesday, Attorney General Josh Stein will dutifully serve as a warm-up act. Come November, Stein will be playing a more central role.

    That’s because the 57-year-old Democratic gubernatorial nominee, unlike the president, is ahead in polls in the state. He’s also running against a highly controversial GOP nominee, Mark Robinson. Among political operatives in North Carolina, the expectation is that if Stein performs well, it could help Biden flip a state that’s been painfully elusive for Democrats.

    Should that happen, it would amount to an inversion of the traditional dynamic, where down-ballot candidates historically draft off the popularity of candidates for the White House.

    Even some Republicans sense the chances.

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  14. Foreign Affairs

    The data is clear: Israel-Hamas war hurt Ukraine in DC

    Biden dialed back his Ukraine rhetoric after the Israel-Hamas war started, according to a POLITICO analysis.

    President Joe Biden shifted his public remarks away from the war in Ukraine and toward the Israel-Hamas war in the final months of 2023 — giving less airtime to Kyiv at a critical moment in the war, according to a POLITICO analysis of speeches and statements.

    Mentions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing conflict there picked up again at the start of 2024 amid an intensifying debate about American military assistance.

    While it makes sense that Biden paid different attention to each conflict as they unfolded, the findings offer new insight into how his administration has chosen to balance its approach to multiple conflicts abroad that continue to animate voters in a major election year and test the White House’s foreign policy abilities.

    The analysis looked at mentions of each war by both Biden and congressional leaders over the two years since the Ukraine war broke out. The data interpreted the number of mentions rather than the content of the public statements.

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  15. White House

    Harris finds herself, often, a half step further than Biden on Israel

    The administration says there’s no daylight between her and the president’s Israel stances.

    When Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for a television interview over the weekend, she took a step no other administration official had done so far: She did not rule out “consequences” for Israel if it launched a full-scale invasion of Rafah in its war against Hamas.

    It was the latest in a series of blunt remarks from Harris criticizing Israel's military campaign. And she has consistently gone further than President Joe Biden by at least half a step.

    At the end of last year, she said Israel had a right to defend itself but criticized its methods in the aftermath of Oct. 7. In Selma this month, she called the humanitarian situation in the region a “catastrophe.” And in the interview this weekend, she didn’t dismiss a possible backlash as the administration continues to warn Israel against a major invasion of Rafah.

    The West Wing has supported Harris’ willingness to nudge out slightly ahead of Biden, who spent decades as one of the Senate’s foremost supporters of Israel and has been loath to appear like he is turning his back on the country even amid his growing disdain for its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, two administration officials not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions said Harris’ remarks have created more space for Biden to slowly — and privately — offer his own rebukes of Netanyahu and his conduct of the war.

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  16. Exclusive

    DOJ looked at transactions linked to Jim Biden as part of criminal investigation

    His lawyer said the president’s brother is not under investigation in Florida or Pennsylvania cases.

    Federal investigators in South Florida recently probed transactions linked to Jim Biden as part of a criminal investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter. The investigation remains open, according to one of them.

    Meanwhile, Justice Department officials prosecuting an ongoing Medicare fraud case in Pennsylvania were seeking information about the activities of President Joe Biden’s brother as recently as last year, according to a third person familiar with that case. All three were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

    The revelations add to the potential legal minefield surrounding the first family at a time when House Republicans are pursuing an impeachment inquiry aimed at the Biden family’s business dealings and Hunter Biden faces federal tax charges in California and gun charges in Delaware.

    Both investigations have scrutinized a troubled hospital chain, Americore, that Jim Biden worked with in the years after President Joe Biden left the Obama administration.

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