Joe Biden

News, Analysis and Opinion from POLITICO

  1. Legal

    Biden will blast Supreme Court as ‘not normal’ as he endorses term limits, binding ethics rules

    The proposal is a momentous shift for the president, who has long resisted calls to overhaul the Supreme Court.

    After slow-walking proposals to modify the Supreme Court for most of his presidency, President Joe Biden will call for major changes to the court on Monday, endorsing term limits for justices and an enforceable code of ethics.

    The changes are needed to restore Americans’ faith in the high court, Biden is expected to argue in remarks at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. POLITICO reported on Friday that Biden was set to endorse the proposals.

    Biden’s call comes after another controversial term in which the court’s 6-3 conservative majority continued to flex its power, most notably in a decision that significantly weakened the federal criminal case against former President Donald Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. And scandals involving two members of the conservative bloc have amplified scrutiny of the court’s ethics practices.

    Biden will also push for a constitutional amendment making clear that presidents are not immune from federal prosecution — a response to the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling, in the Trump case, that presidents enjoy some immune from prosecution for “official acts” during their time in office.

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  2. Biden's Billions

    Trump vs. Biden’s historic climate agenda

    President Joe Biden may no longer be on the 2024 ballot — but his legacy is. And former President Donald Trump would have multiple tools to thwart his ambitions on energy, infrastructure and climate change.

    Donald Trump is vowing to dismantle the heart of Joe Biden’s governing legacy — the effort to spend more than $1 trillion on a pro-climate reshaping of the American economy.

    He may soon get his chance.

    Trump’s power would not be unfettered even if he defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in November. But he would have multiple potential avenues to block, rewrite or slow-walk large parts of Biden’s $1.6 trillion in climate, energy and infrastructure initiatives, Republican officials and government spending experts tell POLITICO — in some cases, limited only by how aggressively he chooses to attack them. The results could be one of the most lasting consequences of the November election, with implications for everything from hundreds of planned electric car, battery and renewable energy factories to hopes for slowing the Earth’s warming.

    Trump has been vague about which parts of Biden’s programs he would seek to throttle or alter — but not about his hostility to the climate agenda.

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  3. 2024 Elections

    100 days out, Dems are feeling something unusual: Optimism

    At Vice President Kamala Harris’ first big-dollar fundraiser and across the Sunday shows, Democrats were suddenly energized about a presidential race that brought them nothing but misery over the last month.

    PITTSFIELD, Massachusetts — Democrats are focused on what can be, unburdened by what has been.

    Sunday marks the start of the final 100 day sprint until Election Day. But it also marked one week since President Joe Biden withdrew and handed the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris. And Democrats from across the country were giddy to talk about the suddenly transformed race for the White House.

    It’s a dramatic turn for Democrats, who have spent the last month panicking over Biden’s candidacy and ability to beat former President Donald Trump. A disastrous debate led to weeks of party infighting, with dozens of Democratic lawmakers calling on the president to withdraw from the race amid fears that Biden at the top of the ticket would not only hand Trump a second term, but cost the party control in Congress and state governments.

    "There's a burst of energy out here,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a possible running mate for Harris, said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning. “Joe Biden, we've heard it, delivered across the board on so many issues, but there's a new burst of energy. I was at a labor rally yesterday and I've not seen anything like this for 15 years.”

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  4. 2024 Elections

    Buttigieg says voters have transferred their concerns about age to Trump

    “How could anybody not watch the stuff he’s saying, the rambling on the trail, and not be just a little bit concerned?” he said.

    Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Sunday that with incumbent Joe Biden out of the presidential race, concerns about acuity have shifted onto Republican nominee Donald Trump — and that the comparison with Kamala Harris is not flattering.

    In response to questions about whether Harris was aware of Biden’s fitness, Buttigieg told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday” that the 78-year-old former president “desperately” wishes he was still running against Biden now that the Democratic Party has put forward Harris, who is nearly two decades younger than Trump.

    Following Biden’s exit, Trump is now the oldest presidential nominee in U.S. history.

    “I’m pretty sure voters are worried about the age and acuity of President Trump compared to Kamala Harris,” Buttigieg said. “How could anybody not watch the stuff he’s saying, the rambling on the trail, and not be just a little bit concerned?”

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  5. 2024 Elections

    Trump Says He Wants to Deport Millions. He’ll Have a Hard Time Removing More People Than Biden Has.

    Even as Trump slams the president for open borders, the Biden-Harris administration has kicked out far more immigrants than Trump ever managed to.

    If you go to Tijuana, right up to the border wall, you can see a deportation in its final throes. At the edge of a Mexican freeway that runs along the border, there’s a nondescript metal door. On any given morning, a Mexican official will open the padlock on the Mexican side and an American immigration agent will open the padlock on the U.S. side. Then, dozens—sometimes hundreds — of people get pushed back into Mexico. Some wander to shelters; others end up camping just outside the door, as if staying close by might improve their chances of getting back in. That deportation door got plenty of use under Donald Trump. But perhaps no president has used it more than Joe Biden.

    You wouldn’t have guessed that watching Trump’s 92-minute speech at the Republican National Convention earlier this month, where Trump brutalized the Biden-Harris administration over Biden’s immigration record, accusing the president of throwing the border open.

    “Under the Trump administration, if you came in illegally, you were apprehended immediately and you were deported,” Trump crowed, as the audience on the floor waved “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” banners. “That’s why, to keep our family safe, the Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”

    Biden, convalescing from a case of Covid at his beach house in Delaware, didn’t offer counterprograming. And Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic nominee, has conspicuously not talked about immigration since taking over the top of the ticket. That might be because Harris and Biden’s strongest defense would sound ugly to their liberal supporters. Back in 2020, Biden campaigned on a promise to place a moratorium on deportations; he went as far as to apologize for the Obama-Biden’s administration record number of deportations. That means that, campaigning in 2024, it’s tricky for Biden or Harris to state a simple fact: that their administration has kicked out millions more migrants than Trump ever managed to.

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  6. Legal

    Elizabeth Warren: ‘Supreme Court is on the ballot’

    “We've got a Supreme Court that is actively undermining our democracy," Warren said.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren said President Joe Biden will remind Americans that “the Supreme Court is on the ballot” in November with a Supreme Court reform proposal Biden will be releasing Monday.

    “I think what Joe Biden will do over the next six months is he's going to keep drawing that to the attention of the American people and reminding them when they vote in November, the Supreme Court is on the ballot,” Warren (D-Mass.) said Sunday in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s "State of the Union."

    “And that is a good reason to vote for Kamala Harris, to vote for Democrats in both the Senate and the House.”

    Biden is expected to unveil a proposal for Supreme Court reforms, such as term limits for justices and an enforceable code of ethics. Biden is also expected to push for limiting immunity for presidents through a constitutional amendment, after the Supreme Court recently ruled that former President Donald Trump has some immunity from prosecution.

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  7. 2024 Elections

    Trump tries to sharpen Harris attacks as she blunts his momentum

    The former president often found himself reverting to his favorite Joe Biden attack lines.

    Updated

    It’s been just two weeks since a shooter tried to assassinate the former president and the Republican Party rallied around its candidate at the convention in Milwaukee in the days after. In a normal election, Donald Trump would still be gobbling up the political oxygen.

    But when the former president and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, took the stage for a rally Saturday night in St. Cloud, Minnesota, they were facing a vastly different race from the one they were running in just a week ago. President Joe Biden’s exit and the elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ likely nominee has rocked the 2024 election and stolen the news cycle, blunting the momentum Trump could have seen over the last two weeks. Instead, the polling advantage he was building over Biden has mostly dissipated now that he’s running against Harris.

    And now, Trump is forced to pivot to a new opponent just 100 days from the election. He again used Saturday to test out a slew of attack lines, hitting Harris on everything from the border to inflation to abortion and crime — even taking a swipe at her laugh.

    “We have a new victim now, Kamala. A brand new victim, and honestly she’s a radical left lunatic. When you find out about her, all I have to say is defund the police,” Trump said.

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  8. 2024 Elections

    The election has been totally upended. Here’s what the polls show.

    It’s clear the presidential contest is reshuffled.

    The polls are in after a chaotic few weeks in the 2024 presidential election, and they point to a newly hyper-competitive race.

    Vice President Kamala Harris’ elevation has jolted the race and blunted the momentum former President Donald Trump could have seen coming out of the Republican convention and the assassination attempt that preceded it. Though polling showed Trump building a lead over President Joe Biden following their debate last month, that advantage has mostly evaporated against Harris in the fresh round of surveys conducted since she became the all-but-certain Democratic nominee.

    The new polling shows just how much the landscape has shifted since Biden dropped out last Sunday. For months, the contest appeared set, and Biden’s modest deficit going into the debate threatened to decline further. That’s now changed.

    Trump still maintains a slim edge over Harris — but the race is now close, which was not the case for the Biden-vs.-Trump contest after the debate. Just this week, new polls from The New York Times/Siena College (Trump +1 over Harris), The Wall Street Journal (Trump +2) and CNN (Trump +3) all represent tightening from 6-point Trump leads in all three polls following the debate.

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  9. 2024 ELECTIONS

    At South Florida rally, Trump cycles through new attacks on Harris

    The former president is adapting to a campaign that’s been overturned in the past week, and trying out several critiques against his new opponent.

    Former President Donald Trump tested out new attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris in front of a conservative audience on Friday evening, linking her to Biden administration policies on immigration and crime, with additional jabs at the state of California — and the pronunciation of her name.

    Trump’s address on friendly turf at the conservative Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit was in many ways a run of his frequent hits — that the 2020 election was “rigged,” the end of Roe v. Wade was something “everybody” wanted, and the U.S. has become a “dumping ground” for criminals from other countries.

    The former president’s hour-long address was his second public speech since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris, and showcased Trump’s efforts to regroup in real time against his new Democratic opponent.

    In the past few days, a rush of new polls have shown a much closer race between Trump and Harris than Trump and Biden, and Republicans have struggled to settle on lines of attack against her. At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday, many of the former president’s supporters acknowledged he now had a tougher race on his hands. And his campaign signaled Thursday that he might back out of a previously planned Sept. 10 presidential debate, which would now feature Harris instead of Biden.

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  10. Legal

    Biden will announce Supreme Court reform plans next week

    Biden is likely to endorse term limits for the justices, an ethics code and a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity.

    President Joe Biden plans to unveil a proposal on Monday for dramatically reforming the Supreme Court, two people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

    Biden is likely to endorse establishing term limits for justices and an enforceable code of ethics, in an announcement that represents a remarkable shift for a president who had long resisted calls to overhaul the high court.

    He is also expected to push for a constitutional amendment limiting immunity for presidents and certain other officeholders, in a response to the court’s July 1 ruling that presidents are shielded from prosecution for “official acts” during their time in office, in a case brought by former President Donald Trump.

    The specifics of the proposal remain unclear and could still change, said the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal planning.

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  11. 2024 Elections

    How Trump and Vance went from a ‘threat to democracy’ to ‘weird’

    With Harris at the top of the ticket, Democrats shift to a simpler characterization of Trump.

    In the days since Vice President Kamala Harris has taken over the campaign against former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, Democrats are leaning into a new attack line against the Republican ticket: that they're just really weird.

    Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz , a potential Harris running mate who’s been using this description for months, said it during his first viral TV appearance of the week, and then in others. The Democratic Governors Association, which Walz leads, amplified it on social media. And the Harris campaign has adopted it as well, incorporating the label repeatedly this week in press releases and posts on X and TikTok.

    As this simple and quintessentially Midwestern description of Trump and Vance catches on, it marks a notable rhetorical shift — away from Biden's apocalyptic, high-minded messaging toward a more gut-level vernacular that may better capture how many voters react to far-right rhetoric of the kind Vance in particular trades in.

    “It perfectly describes the uneasiness people feel. It’s how people who don’t live and breathe politics every day react to hearing the Republican vice presidential candidate denigrate people without children,” said Tim Hogan, a Democratic strategist who worked on the 2020 presidential campaign of another Minnesotan, Sen. Amy Klobuchar. “It’s simple. It’s how you might talk to your neighbor about the crazy political climate we’re living in.”

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  12. 2024 Elections

    A look at the 28 chaotic days between Biden's disastrous debate and his dropout

    A complete timeline of events, from President Joe Biden’s debate performance to his Oval Office address.

    When America witnessed a pale, hoarse and feeble Joe Biden take the debate stage on June 27, the trajectory of the campaign changed almost instantly.

    The image Biden’s campaign had projected until that moment — of an aged but still capable president ready to again defeat Donald Trump — crumbled as his party panicked over their presumptive nominee’s ability to lead them to victory in November.

    Biden spent weeks defending himself. Democrats held their breath at each appearance, hoping for reassurance that never came. The scrutiny intensified with every gaffe.

    While the chorus of Democrats calling on him to step aside grew louder and more public, an assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally shocked the world. The images immediately went viral: Trump rising from the ground to pump his fist in the air and yell “Fight!” as blood streamed down his face. Republicans began talking about his survival as divine intervention.

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  13. 2024 Elections

    Harris maintains Biden's pledge not to raise taxes on middle class

    The promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year effectively rules out the prospect that Harris could embrace far more progressive policies than Biden.

    Vice President Kamala Harris is pledging not to raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year if elected in November, her campaign told POLITICO on Friday.

    That extends a promise that President Joe Biden made central to his administration’s economic agenda, arguing that corporations and the wealthy should instead pay a greater share of the tax burden. And it effectively rules out the prospect that Harris could embrace far more progressive policies as a candidate — such as massively expanding Social Security benefits — that would require raising taxes on a wider swath of Americans.

    Biden had sought to use the tax pledge to bolster his appeal to working-class voters during his campaign. Now, as Harris builds out her own economic platform — including possibly breaking on some issues from Biden, who has suffered from low approval ratings on his handling of the economy — she is planning to keep that core commitment intact.

    “We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead,” Harris said at a campaign rally earlier this week in Wisconsin. “Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.”

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  14. COLUMN | CAPITAL CITY

    ‘They Brought Almost Nothing New With Them’: Washington Ponders Biden’s DC Legacy

    Kennedy had his Harvard cool kids. The New Dealers had Georgetown. But Biden hasn’t changed DC culture much at all.

    For better or worse, the Washington village tends to understand its own history through the prism of presidencies.

    “At five o’clock, when the library closed, I would come out into the sunlight and heat of the Washington of Franklin Roosevelt,” Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once wrote, describing his early experience of the capital, where he came to do 19th century historical research but wound up transfixed by the excitement of FDR’s New Deal capital.

    Fifty years later, and on the other side of the political spectrum, Peggy Noonan experienced a similarly president-centric city: “We came to Washington because of him,” she wrote in her memoir of young conservative dazzlement in Reagan-revolution D.C. “He moved us. We loved him.”

    Like park rangers contemplating the rings on a tree trunk, old-timers talk about the Georgetown smart-set cosmopolitanism of the Roosevelt years or the suburban federal-contracting opulence of the Reagan presidency. Social-scene veterans detail how JFK upended the dress code, LBJ prompted hostesses to start serving barbecue, and the Clintonites turned Bombay Club into a dining hotspot. It’s not so different from the way archaeologists distinguish the paleolithic era from the mesolithic.

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  15. 2024 Elections

    Harris gets another poll showing a tightening race against Trump

    The vice president is performing better than President Joe Biden did a month ago.

    Vice President Kamala Harris is neck-and-neck with former President Donald Trump after she replaced President Joe Biden as the likely Democratic nominee, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll published Thursday.

    Among likely voters, Trump is at 48 percent to Harris’ 47 percent in a head-to-head matchup — narrowing the race to a virtual tie after Trump led Biden by six points when the Times polled the race in June. When third party candidates and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are included, Harris draws 44 percent of likely voters to Trump’s 43 percent, with Kennedy slumping to five percent.

    The Times poll adds another data point to an emerging trend since Biden exited the race: Harris is showing early signs of closing the gap. And the poll found that both candidates benefit in different ways — Harris from a rise in popularity and major gains among several demographic groups, and Trump from a combination of continued strength with his base and his highest favorability ratings of the election.

    Between Biden’s numbers in June and now, Harris has taken a 2 percentage-point lead over Trump among independent voters, flipping the former president’s previous 10 percentage point advantage She’s opened up a 14 percentage-point lead with women, a 21 percentage point lead with 18-29 year-old voters, a 24 percentage point lead with Hispanic voters, and 53 percentage point lead with Black voters — all double-digit increases over Biden’s numbers last month. Trump polls better than Harris among white, male and older voters.

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  16. 2024 Elections

    Harris says she’s ‘ready’ to debate Trump in September, accusing him of ‘backpedaling’

    Trump had pushed for Fox News to also hold a debate, calling ABC “a joke.”

    Vice President Kamala Harris said on Thursday that she’s “ready to debate Donald Trump,” agreeing to the Sept. 10 date previously set to be hosted by ABC News.

    “[Trump] agreed to that previously. Now here he is backpedaling, and I’m ready and I think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage. And so I'm ready to go,” Harris told reporters after Air Force Two landed at Joint Base Andrews.

    Her statement comes after Trump committed to debating Harris earlier this week, while pushing for the more conservative Fox News to also hold a debate, calling ABC “a joke.” The vice president on Thursday accused Trump of “backpedaling,” though he said this week that he would debate her regardless and would be willing to do so multiple times.

    Following Harris’ comments, a Trump spokesperson on late Thursday did not complete debate plans but said “general election debate details cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee.”

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  17. Exclusive

    Israel privately pressures Biden admin to fast-track more weapons during Netanyahu visit

    The delegation traveling with the prime minister is circulating a list that lays out weapons systems they want greenlit.

    Israel is privately ramping up pressure on the Biden administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to greenlight weapons it says it needs to protect itself from an increasingly aggressive Iran and its proxies.

    The delegation traveling with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington this week is circulating a list among lawmakers and senior officials that lays out weapons systems it wants fast-tracked. Israeli representatives passed the list to members of Congress Wednesday following Netanyahu’s speech, according to a person familiar with the list who said Jerusalem needs the weapons to bolster its stockpiles.

    The fact that Israel is pushing for the weapons now indicates that it is attempting to solidify the transfers and bolster its stockpiles before the U.S. election in November. It’s unclear how Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump would handle such requests if elected. But Israel is motivated to seek immediate approval from the current administration, which has consistently supported its military goals against both Hamas and Hezbollah.

    The list, according to the person familiar, is not related to the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs that the Biden administration held up in May over concerns they would be used on civilians in the Gaza city of Rafah. The list instead focuses on other systems.

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  18. Exclusive | 2024 Elections

    Kamala Harris knows exactly what she will do on Jan. 6, 2025

    When Congress meets to certify the outcome of the Trump-Harris race, the vice president will preside.

    On Jan. 6, 2025, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to preside over Congress and count the electoral votes that will make either her — or Donald Trump — the 47th president of the United States.

    And like her predecessor Mike Pence, who resisted enormous pressure from Trump to upend the 2020 election results, Harris says she won’t interfere.

    Harris believes that her role in the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress is purely ceremonial — to simply tally up the electoral votes certified by the states — according to spokesperson Kirsten Allen. Though she has long praised Pence’s actions, and Democrats have widely repudiated Trump’s pressure campaign on his vice president, it’s the first time Harris’ team has made that explicit commitment in the run-up to the 2024 election.

    Harris’ advisers pointed this week to 2022 legislation signed by President Joe Biden affirming the vice president’s “ministerial” role in the process.

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  19. Economy

    GDP surge: 'The fundamentals are on the side of Harris'

    It’s unclear whether Harris will have any more luck than President Joe Biden did in boosting Americans' sentiments about the economy.

    Vice President Kamala Harris is moving into the lead role of selling the U.S. economy to voters just as the pitch is getting easier to make.

    The government said Thursday that GDP increased at an annualized pace of 2.8 percent from April through June, far better than expected, even as a key measure of inflation has dropped below 3 percent.

    That means the economy has stayed resilient without further stoking price spikes, leaving open a path for the Federal Reserve to begin cutting rates in September — a process that could lead to lower borrowing costs on everything from cars to homes.

    “Overall, it’s a strong economy, and if you look at the different political forecasting models, the fundamentals are on the side of Harris,” said Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard University who previously served as chief economist to President Barack Obama.

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  20. 2024 Elections

    Obama to throw his full support behind Harris

    The former president's backing could come as soon as Thursday.

    Former President Barack Obama plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, according to two people familiar with his plans.

    That endorsement could come as soon as Thursday, according to one of the people granted anonymity to speak about an endorsement that is not yet public.

    Obama, the first Black president, remains one of the most popular figures in the Democratic party even though more than a decade has passed since he was last elected. He lent his support to Biden during fundraisers, which were among some of the biggest blockbuster events of his campaign. He's also a draw during campaign events.

    His backing could help activate and sustain energy — and fundraising — for Harris' campaign. And he’s likely to get on the campaign trail for Harris once she is officially the presumptive nominee.

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