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On our radar: Biden’s pre-election travel is about to kick into gear
The latest: Trump and the Mar-a-Lago documents: A timeline
Noted: Sens. Portman and Klobuchar return from Ukraine
Noted: Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader of the Soviet Union, dies
Noted: Biden, in apparent dig at Graham, responds to the idea that Trump investigation will lead to riots
This just in: ‘Whose side are you on?’ Biden condemns political violence, threats against FBI
The latest: ‘What the hell’s the matter with us?’ Biden says as he demands passing of assault weapons ban
The latest: Biden, in Pennsylvania, assails GOP for opposing police funding legislation
The latest: Garland bans campaign activity by Justice Department political appointees
Analysis: How concerns over racial disparities become allegations of voter fraud
Noted: Fox News stars questioned by election tech company in defamation case
Noted: Top Secret Service official at center of Jan. 6 investigation retires
Analysis: How Trump’s document controversy differs from Hillary Clinton’s emails
Noted: Democrats call out Republicans who are backtracking on abortion
Noted: Trump adds former DeSantis adviser to legal team for Mar-a-Lago probe
On our radar: Biden’s pre-election travel is about to kick into gear
The latest: Trump and the Mar-a-Lago documents: A timeline
Noted: Sens. Portman and Klobuchar return from Ukraine
Noted: Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader of the Soviet Union, dies
Noted: Biden, in apparent dig at Graham, responds to the idea that Trump investigation will lead to riots
This just in: ‘Whose side are you on?’ Biden condemns political violence, threats against FBI
The latest: ‘What the hell’s the matter with us?’ Biden says as he demands passing of assault weapons ban
The latest: Biden, in Pennsylvania, assails GOP for opposing police funding legislation
The latest: Garland bans campaign activity by Justice Department political appointees
Analysis: How concerns over racial disparities become allegations of voter fraud
Noted: Fox News stars questioned by election tech company in defamation case
Noted: Top Secret Service official at center of Jan. 6 investigation retires
Analysis: How Trump’s document controversy differs from Hillary Clinton’s emails
Noted: Democrats call out Republicans who are backtracking on abortion
Noted: Trump adds former DeSantis adviser to legal team for Mar-a-Lago probe
Today, President Biden traveled to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where he discussed funding police, his efforts at crime prevention and the bipartisan bill to combat gun violence that he signed into law in June, the first measure in nearly three decades. “When it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer is not defund the police. It’s fund the police,” Biden told the crowd.
Biden’s visit is the first of three over the next week in the political battleground state that is crucial to deciding control of Congress and the 2024 presidential election. In November, Pennsylvanians will vote in competitive House races, pick a new U.S. senator and choose a governor who appoints the secretary of state, the chief elections official who certifies vote tallies. Biden plans to deliver a major address Thursday in Philadelphia on the fight for democracy and attend a Labor Day celebration in Pittsburgh on Monday.
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President Biden again slammed Republicans during remarks this Tuesday in Pennsylvania, where he will return Thursday to deliver a prime-time speech that is expected to set the Democrats’ strategy ahead of the midterm elections. Here’s what we’re keeping an eye on:
Rosalind S. Helderman prepared a handy rundown of the key moments in the nearly 19 months between Trump leaving the White House and the FBI searching his Florida home Aug. 8. We highlight some here, but you can find the more detailed timeline here.
I went to Ukraine with Senator Portman to meet with President Zelenskyy and discuss the status of the war and American aid. Ukraine’s resistance to Putin’s barbarism has inspired the world. I’m more committed than ever to supporting their fight for democracy and sovereignty. pic.twitter.com/bVes7myGbR
Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) traveled to Ukraine and on Tuesday met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and Oleksii Reznikov, the country’s defense minister.
The lawmakers met with the Ukrainian leaders to reaffirm the United States’ ongoing commitment to the country in response to the Russian invasion. In a statement, the senators said they visited Bucha and Irpin, sites where the Russian military committed atrocities this spring. They also visited Hostomel Airport, the site of a key Ukrainian victory against the Russians.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, died Tuesday in Moscow. He was 91, David E. Hoffman reports.
His death was announced by Russian news agencies, citing the government hospital where he was being treated, but no further details were immediately available.
Under Gorbachev’s leadership, the Soviet Union embarked on a path of radical reform that brought about the end of the Cold War and reversed the direction of the nuclear arms race. He relaxed Communist Party controls in hopes of rescuing the faltering Soviet state, but instead propelled it toward collapse.
President Biden, in his Tuesday remarks, appeared to issue a response to Sen. Lindsay Graham’s (R-S.C.) claims that if former president Donald Trump is prosecuted, people will “riot.”
“No one expects politics to be, uh, patty cake — sometimes it’s mean as hell,” Biden said. “But the idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying, ‘If such and such happens, there’ll be blood on the street?’ Where the hell are we?”
Graham, on Sunday, said there would be “riots in the street” if the former president is prosecuted for taking classified government documents to his private Mar-a-Lago residence after leaving the White House.
President Biden issued some of his strongest remarks condemning political violence and threats to law enforcement on Tuesday, criticizing Republican lawmakers for not standing up for officers targeted by supporters of former president Donald Trump.
“Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you don’t condemn what happened on the Sixth,” Biden said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “For God’s sake, whose side are you on?”
“What the hell’s the matter with us?” President Biden asked during his remarks in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., as he demanded action on a measure that would ban assault weapons.
“I’m determined to ban assault weapons in this country,” Biden said to raucous applause. “I did it once, and I’ll do it again,” he said in reference to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which he negotiated as a senator. Congress allowed the ban to lapse in 2004.
Biden, in extensive, detailed remarks, noted that he has two shotguns at home and is “not opposed to guns,” but he questioned the gun lobby’s obsession with assault weapons, arguing that nobody needs powerful, dangerous arms and other equipment at home.
“The answer is not defund the police. It’s fund the police,” President Biden said Tuesday in a speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on making the country safer.
In remarks to tout his “Safer America Plan,” he highlighted his administration’s proposal to strengthen public safety and police departments across the nation, which includes hiring 100,000 officers and increasing police funding.
Too many families in the country, Biden said, “see their neighbors lose their loved ones to drugs like fentanyl, which is a flat killer. They see hate and anger and violence just walking the streets of America, and they just want to feel safe again.”
Justice Department political appointees cannot participate in campaign-related activities in any capacity, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Tuesday, Perry Stein reports.
Garland described the change as a necessary step “to maintain public trust and ensure that politics — both in fact and appearance — does not compromise or affect the integrity of our work.”
Per Perry:
Garland outlined how political appointees should adhere to the Hatch Act, which prohibits civil servants from running for partisan office or using their title or government resources while engaging in political activities — though most civil servants still have a First Amendment right to political expression on their own time.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee, has long been opposed to imposing voter I.D. requirements, describing them as “a solution for a nonexistent problem of voter fraud,” and arguing that poor and Americans of color are less likely to have valid government identification.
His arguments, Philip Bump writes, are entirely defensible:
So why are we bringing this up, you ask.
Well, Fox News hosts — namely, Sean Hannity — have been using Fetterman’s arguments to cast him as a left-wing weirdo, Philip writes. Hannity invited Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to address the voter I.D. question.
Some of the biggest stars on Fox News are being compelled to answer questions about their coverage of the 2020 presidential election as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company that claims its reputation was ruined by the network’s airing of baseless fraud allegations, Rachel Weiner and Jeremy Barr report.
As the lawsuit picks up steam, lawyers for the technology company last week questioned hosts Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson, while Sean Hannity and former Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs are scheduled for depositions Tuesday, according to court filings.
Anthony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official at the center of the House investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol, has retired.
“We can confirm that Anthony Ornato retired from the U.S. Secret Service today in good standing after 25 years of devoted service,” said Secret Service Special Agent Kevin Helgert in a statement late Monday. Politico first reported on the retirement.
Ornato, as head of President Donald Trump’s personal security detail, grew close to the then-president, who hired him as White House deputy chief of staff for operations — a highly unprecedented transition in the agency’s history. In that role, Ornato helped coordinate a June 2020 photo opportunity in which Trump strode defiantly across Lafayette Square to pose with a Bible after the park was forcibly cleared of peaceful protesters.
The debate over what is to be done with Donald Trump and his alleged mishandling of sensitive government documents has landed in the zone where it was inevitably headed: whataboutism, writes Aaron Blake.
The right argues: Hillary Clinton escaped prosecution for using a private email server as secretary of state in 2016, so why should Trump be indicted?
In this case, Aaron writes, we use “whataboutism” non-judgmentally. Indeed, it might be fitting and instructive to compare the two situations, especially given that their central figures occupy similar positions in our national politics — as de facto figureheads of their parties who had access to highly sensitive information. A core principle of our justice system, after all, is that the law be applied equally.
Republicans in competitive districts who spoke out forcefully against abortion are shifting their positions — and cutting posts from their websites — for the general election.
In Michigan, Tom Barrett (R) deleted a section from his website in which he said he would work to “protect life from conception,” as the Detroit News first reported. Barrett is trying to oust Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D) in November.
In North Carolina, four Republican congressional candidates who have strongly opposed abortion remain mum about the subject on their websites. Christian Castelli, who is running against Rep. Kathy E. Manning (D), removed his policy statement opposing abortion from his website.
