Joe Biden

News, Analysis and Opinion from POLITICO

  1. 2024 Elections

    Ro Khanna: Biden ‘should and will get out’ to campuses where protests are happening

    Biden has condemned the protests, saying there isn’t a right “to cause chaos.”

    As the fallout from pro-Palestinian protests at colleges and universities bleeds into the 2024 presidential election, one of President Joe Biden’s key campaign surrogates urged him to visit the campuses.

    “I think the president should and will get out there on campuses,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Sunday during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

    Khanna is crisscrossing the country stumping for Biden, most recently hitting a handful of college campuses in Wisconsin to take the temperature of young voters there — some of whom have soured on the president due to his policy positions on the war in Gaza.

    Biden last week condemned the protests, saying that while there is a right to protests, there isn’t a right “to cause chaos.” And “No,” he said, the protests won’t make him reconsider any of policies on the fighting in the Middle East.

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  2. 2024 Elections

    'There's vote-buying going on at a scale like we have never seen before'

    Gov. Doug Burgum cited President Joe Biden's efforts to forgive some student loan debt.

    Updated

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum on Sunday supported the election integrity allegations made by former President Donald Trump, claiming on CNN: "I think it's clear that there's vote-buying going on at a scale like we have never seen before."

    Burgum, who is considered to be a possible Trump vice-presidential pick, was responding on "State of the Union" to questions about statements made by the presumptive GOP presidential nominee during a weekend donor retreat in Florida.

    Trump, never shy about alleging uncorroborated malfeasance by Democrats, said his rivals use "welfare" as an enticement to get people to vote for them. "Don’t underestimate welfare. They get welfare to vote, and then they cheat on top of that — they cheat," Trump said in his remarks on Saturday.

    Burgum didn't endorse the idea that everyone receiving public assistance is being bribed to vote ("I don't think that's the intention that he meant when he said that") but then circled back to the idea of vote-buying, citing President Joe Biden's efforts to partially forgive some student loan debt.

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  3. 2024 Elections

    Kristi Noem keeps up the defense amid messy memoir rollout

    She went back into "No Going Back" to revise some questionable material.

    South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem spent Sunday morning trying to redirect questions about her forthcoming memoir to its main themes, rather than explain why she had to go back and revise the much-discussed “No Going Back.”

    The book, which Noem described Sunday as a “how-to guide” for people who want to make their voices heard, first came under fire after a grisly excerpt about an incident in which Noem shot and killed her 14-month-old wirehair pointer, Cricket, for misbehaving sparked backlash across the board.

    Later, it emerged in a report from the Dakota Scout that the memoir also included an unlikely — and seemingly inaccurate — anecdote about the time Noem met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while serving as a back-bencher in Congress. On Sunday, Noem acknowledged that the book had to be corrected before its imminent release, but declined to say that she never met the North Korean leader.

    “I'm not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders. I'm just not going to do that. This anecdote shouldn't have been in the book and as soon as it was brought to my attention I made sure that that was adjusted,” Noem said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” The book is due to be released Tuesday.

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  4. National

    Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden's biggest donors

    Some of the most outspoken groups against Biden and Israel get funding from foundations attached to some of the biggest names in Democratic circles.

    Updated

    President Joe Biden has been dogged for months by pro-Palestinian protesters calling him "Genocide Joe" — but some of the groups behind the demonstrations receive financial backing from philanthropists pushing hard for his reelection.

    The donors include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker, according to a POLITICO analysis.

    Two of the organizers supporting the protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic megadonor George Soros and was previously supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It in turn supports numerous small nonprofits that work for social change.

    Soros declined to comment. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has previously funded the Tides Foundation and other groups, said it no longer has active grants to Tides. It also does not support Jewish Voice for Peace or IfNotNow.

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  5. Exclusive

    US greenlights $60M in military assistance to Haiti amid rampant gang violence

    The move is seen as an apparent attempt to go around Republican oversight efforts.

    The Biden administration has approved a $60 million military aid package to help Haiti quell violent gangs wreaking havoc in the country, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

    The package, the second the U.S. has approved for the Haiti crisis this year, includes mostly small arms but also some armored vehicles. The notification lists at least 80 Humvees, 35 MaxxPro infantry carriers, sniper rifles, riot control gear, firearms, ammunition and surveillance drones.

    The move would send weapons and equipment to the Haitian National Police as well as to nations supporting the multinational security mission to help quell the violence in Haiti: Kenya, Jamaica and the Bahamas among others, the memorandum of jurisdiction for the drawdown reads.

    The latest package brings the total contribution from U.S. stockpiles for the Haiti crisis to $70 million, after the Biden administration approved a $10 million package earlier this year. The cap for this authority is $75 million and expires at the end of the fiscal year.

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  6. Q&A

    ‘The Republicans Are Being Total Hypocrites’

    Rep. Jerry Nadler hits back against GOP efforts to weaponize antisemitism.

    Chaos at Columbia University; a fierce debate over antisemitism in Congress; and a major push for a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.

    Perhaps no one is more familiar with the swirl of contentious and intersecting events that consumed this week than Rep. Jerry Nadler.

    Nadler has represented a big piece of Manhattan since 1992 and is one of the longest-serving Jewish members of the House. He’s a Columbia University alumnus, having been on campus in 1968 when police cleared Hamilton Hall of anti-Vietnam war protesters. He’s also a close observer of the Middle East and the politics of Israel in the U.S., and he’s a longtime champion of civil liberties as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

    Nadler sat down for an interview on this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive soon after the House passed the “Antisemitism Awareness Act.” Surprising some people, Nadler had led the opposition to the bill amid fears it would endanger free speech on campus. It passed 320-91, but that was many more “no” votes than he expected.

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  7. White House

    Biden hoped for a big economic story to tell. Now, he's going small.

    The president is getting more micro in his economic sales pitch as the landscape loses its luster.

    President Joe Biden began the year confident that his lengthy war on inflation was nearing a desired end.

    But it hasn’t yet materialized. And it's forcing Biden to adjust what he and his team thought would be a winning economic message for them this election season.

    Biden has begun adopting a more surgical approach when talking about the economy, highlighting specific areas where the administration has made strides in easing costs for some voters, regardless of the broader conditions affecting the electorate as a whole.

    He used several days in late March and early April to focus on policy accomplishments in health care, where his team believes he holds a critical advantage over Donald Trump. He’s traveled to labor strongholds to tout local infrastructure projects and semiconductor investments. He’s delivered single-issue remarks on taxes and child care, and starred in campaign videos with individual people benefiting from his policies.

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  8. 2024 Elections

    Biden’s allies move to sink RFK Jr.

    The effort reflects a level of concern among Democrats about Kennedy — but also an opportunity they see to wound Donald Trump.

    The coalition of Democratic groups that pressured No Labels out of the 2024 contest is now turning its sights on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    Billboards funded by the Democratic National Committee have begun popping up outside Kennedy’s events. Trackers paid for by American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC, are following him with cameras. And another super PAC, founded exclusively to take on third-party threats, is message-testing ads on Kennedy in coordination with Future Forward, the flagship pro-Biden super PAC.

    It’s a widespread effort among Democratic donors and strategists to neutralize Kennedy’s third-party threat to President Joe Biden’s reelection.

    And Biden’s allies are now considering going even further, with a coalition of major Democratic groups privately discussing running a negative ad campaign against Kennedy.

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  9. White House

    Why Biden finally decided to speak out on college protest violence

    The president had asked his team to get a speech ready… just in case. And then, UCLA happened.

    On Wednesday morning, after the last protesters had been cleared from Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, President Joe Biden told a group of senior aides that he wanted them to begin writing up initial remarks about the wave of campus demonstrations roiling the country.

    He wanted to have something ready to go, just in case it was needed. By Wednesday evening, Biden was working through the text to put his own touches on it. But he was unsure if a speech would need to be delivered, according to two administration officials familiar with his process who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

    Then pandemonium broke out at UCLA.

    By Thursday morning, Biden, having seen the violent clashes from that campus on cable news, made his decision: He would give the address.

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  10. Foreign Affairs

    Japanese embassy on Biden calling the country 'xenophobic': 'It is unfortunate'

    The embassy also said it raised concerns with administration officials.

    The Japanese Embassy on Friday issued a slight rebuke of President Joe Biden for referring to Japan as “xenophobic,” saying it raised concerns with administration officials over the remarks.

    “It is unfortunate that some of the comments were not based on an accurate understanding of Japan’s policies,” the embassy said in a statement to POLITICO. “We have raised this point to the U.S. government and explained Japan’s positions and policies once again.”

    During a campaign fundraiser on Wednesday, Biden grouped Japan — a close U.S. ally —with several other countries that he said were struggling economically because of their immigration policies.

    “Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India?” Biden said during his speech. “Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants.”

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  11. Foreign Affairs

    José Andrés is taking on Biden on Israel policy

    Andrés has seen his political influence surge over the past decade.

    Celebrity chef and humanitarian activist José Andrés has been loudly criticizing the Biden administration’s approach in Gaza. But in defiance of Washington convention, he’s doing it while continuing to work for President Joe Biden.

    And unusually for Biden circles, where loyalty is prized and public dissent highly discouraged, the White House hasn’t sidelined the D.C.-based chef — or criticized him publicly, even as he takes aim at one of Biden’s most politically sensitive foreign policies.

    This week, Andrés — who co-chairs the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition — launched a public broadside against the Israeli government and the Biden administration’s ongoing support of it, despite what he alleged are continued violations of humanitarian laws.

    In a new Washington Post op-ed and a series of posts to his more than 1 million X followers, Andrés called out the president and senior administration officials by name, pleading with them “to hold the Netanyahu government true to its commitments on humanitarian aid,” and reiterating his calls for a cease-fire in Gaza. The chef also harshly criticized the Israeli military for failing to protect humanitarian workers in Gaza, even after the IDF’s April 1 airstrikes killed seven workers from his aid organization, World Central Kitchen. The organization restarted its food aid operations in Gaza on Monday, Andrés announced.

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  12. CULTURE CLUB

    Why Late Night Shows Won’t Roast Joe Biden

    Late night hosts have excoriated presidents for decades, but Joe Biden has largely escaped their rapier wit. What gives?

    In late March, 5,000 Democratic luminaries packed into a star-studded Radio City Music Hall fundraiser featuring President Joe Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. From the fat cat attendees to the guests of honor, the sold-out spectacle was rife with comedic opportunity. But there was little skewering to be found on late night television that evening or afterwards.

    One reason: The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert, one of the most famous comedians in the world and a self-styled hero of the ongoing resistance against former President Donald Trump, served as the event’s moderator.

    Colbert’s ultra-friendly exchanges with Biden, Obama and Clinton as emcee of the largest Democratic fundraiser ever — it raised a whopping $26 million for Biden’s reelection effort — were emblematic of a new era in late night comedy. It’s more proudly partisan. More one-sided. More cautious in its targets. And it’s generally soft on Biden.

    By any metric, Biden is a rich vein of material for late night or sketch comics. He arrived in the White House with a hard-earned reputation as a gaffe machine. The oldest president ever, he was first elected to the Senate during the era of eight-track tapes and rotary telephones. Since his ascendancy to the White House, he has fairly consistently stumbled over his own words, mixed up the names of world leaders and countries and even physically stumbled on stage himself, tripping and falling at a U.S. Air Force graduation. His speaking style can be jarring: He can sound something like an old-timey preacher, delivering surprising anecdotes while vacillating between a yell and a whisper.

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  13. Energy

    Biden’s final EV tax credit rules please automakers, anger China hawks

    The rules leave only around 20 percent of EV models eligible for the federal incentive.

    The Biden administration finalized guardrails for its electric vehicle tax credit on Friday that keep President Joe Biden’s EV adoption goals in sight but are likely to draw challenges from critics on both sides of the aisle who say he is illegally opening the door for Chinese imports.

    The rules offer some reprieve for automakers on the most severe restrictions on Chinese minerals, acknowledging that fledgling American battery suppliers will need years — or possibly decades — to catch up to their Chinese competitors.

    The regulations nonetheless have left only around 20 percent of electric models qualifying for the lucrative incentive. That is unlikely to change with the final rules, as they continue to bar vehicles with a majority of their battery minerals sourced from abroad or relying on suppliers with even loose links to the Chinese government.

    The Biden administration says its efforts to crack down on foreign suppliers are already paying dividends, as shown by the billions of dollars companies are investing in the United States to manufacture electric cars and the minerals that power them.

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  14. Playbook Deep Dive

    Rep. Jerry Nadler opposed the House antisemitism bill. Here's why.

    Nadler, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, explains how concerns about free speech and civil liberties led to his opposition to H.R. 6090.

    Rep. Jerry Nadler, who has represented a big piece of Manhattan since 1992, is one of the longest-serving Jewish members of the House.

    He’s also a Columbia University alum — he was on campus in 1968 when police cleared Hamilton Hall of anti-Vietnam war protesters.

    He is a close observer of the Middle East and the politics of Israel in the U.S. And he’s the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, where he’s long seen himself as a champion of civil liberties.

    All of this background helped put Nadler at the center of a swirl of events this week as pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia were ejected from Hamilton Hall, as President Joe Biden made his first public remarks about campus protests, as a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel seemed tantalizingly close and as the House passed, by an overwhelming majority of 320 to 91, the Antisemitism Awareness Act — a bill against which Nadler led the opposition.

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  15. White House

    Biden condemns campus protest violence: No ‘right to cause chaos’

    The president rejected the idea that the National Guard should be called in to quell some of the demonstrations at campuses across the country.

    Updated

    President Joe Biden on Thursday condemned pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses that have turned violent or resulted in property destruction, emphasizing that Americans only have the right to protest as long as it remains peaceful.

    "There is a right to protest," Biden said, in his most extensive remarks since the campus protest movement began. "But there is not a right to cause chaos."

    The president, however, rejected the idea that the National Guard should be called in to quell some of the demonstrations at campuses across the country. And he rejected the suggestion that the protest movement might persuade him to change course in the Middle East, where Biden has remained largely supportive of Israel's war in Gaza.

    Biden's remarks came more than two weeks since the pro-Palestinian student protests began. The movement has grown and intensified in the days since then, spreading to more than 100 campuses as students erected encampments and issued demands for colleges to divest from their ties to Israel. In several cases, college administrators have responded by calling in law enforcement to disperse the protesters, leading to intense confrontations and even arrests.

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  16. Foreign Affairs

    After Ukraine funding win, Biden shifts his messaging strategy

    Foreign policy hands want the administration to keep pressing the case for supporting Ukraine. But election considerations are creeping in, fast.

    President Joe Biden scored a massive foreign policy win with the passage of a foreign aid bill last week that included $60 billion for Ukraine.

    But now, having cleared that hurdle, his team is poised to make America’s ongoing commitment to the Ukraine war less of a public focus, as it addresses an electorate preoccupied with economic concerns.

    The cause of democracy will remain a central component of Biden’s reelection campaign — as a unifying thread to discuss everything from Ukraine and Donald Trump to abortion, gun safety and education — so White House and campaign aides said they do not foresee a relentless public relations push to bolster support for the war in Ukraine in the months ahead.

    Biden gave remarks after the aid bill passed and national security adviser Jake Sullivan went to the White House briefing room, too. But, one senior administration official added, “now that the supplemental passed Congress, it’s naturally less of a salient issue.”Yet failing to focus the country on why America’s continued backing of Ukraine matters — how it remains an existential concern for countries far beyond Eastern Europe — runs real risks, foreign policy experts warn. It could further erode domestic support for the war itself, all but close the door on any additional funding, and complicate a key component of Biden’s own presidential legacy: maintaining America’s longstanding role as the central pillar of the global democratic order.

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  17. Florida

    Harris and Biden both blame Trump on abortion. How they do it is very different.

    The president and the vice president each gave a speech on abortion rights in Florida in the last eight days. They brought a contrast in style and delivery.

    JACKSONVILLE, Florida — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had the same basic message about Florida’s six-week abortion ban that started Wednesday: It’s Donald Trump’s fault.

    But that’s where the similarities between the two ended when it came to stumping on abortion in the adopted home state of their Republican rival.

    During his speech in Tampa last week, Biden used the word “abortion” twice. Harris used it 15 times on Wednesday in Jacksonville, sometimes coupled with the “Trump abortion bans” phrase she coined as she crisscrossed the country speaking out about the issue.

    Biden, before turning to abortion rights, detoured into other topics important to Floridians, including Medicare and Social Security, and then talked about how he wanted to make community college free. Harris, meanwhile, devoted the entirety of her speech in Florida to abortion.

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  18. 2024 Elections

    Trump, free from court, finds ‘a little fun on the campaign trail’

    The former president took care not to disparage witnesses after being found in contempt of court.

    WAUKESHA, Wisconsin — At his first rallies since the start of his criminal trial, Donald Trump acknowledged the event that’s now consuming his spring and pulling him, most days, away from the campaign trail.

    Addressing crowds in Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday, Trump called the New York judge in his case “crooked,” “corrupt” and “totally conflicted.” He called the trial “fake,” “bullshit” and part of a “kangaroo court,” while taking care not to disparage witnesses in the proceedings after being found in contempt of court on Tuesday for having done so recently.

    But for the former president, who is expected to be tied up in court through at least the end of the month, his rallies Wednesday largely served as an escape from his judicial reality. In both states, Trump spoke for well over an hour. He talked about closing the border, suggested that pro-Palestinan college protesters are paid actors, decried electric cars and a “plunging” economy under President Joe Biden and discussed whether Chris Christie is a “fat pig.”

    “It's called having a little fun on the campaign trail in Wisconsin,” Trump said during his first rally of the day.

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