Closing summary
Donald Trump is in even more legal trouble after the New York attorney general announced a civil suit against him and his children on fraud charges. Elsewhere in the Empire State, president Joe Biden spoke to the United Nations and accused Russia of trying to “erase a sovereign state from the map” by invading Ukraine, in a call for global unity against Moscow.
Here’s what else happened today:
The Federal Reserve made a big interest rate hike to fight inflation while trying to avoid putting the US economy into a recession.
We could hear from Trump this evening on Fox News, according to CBS News, though he may opt to post on social media instead.
Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell came close to voting to convict Trump following the January 6 insurrection, while calling the former president “crazy,” a new book said.
A bill to amend America’s election law and prevent another January 6 is expected to pass the House today.
Election officials nationwide are being deluged with public records requests, apparently at the behest of Trump ally and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.
The New York attorney general’s lawsuit isn’t the only one Trump is facing in the state. A writer plans to sue the former president under a recently signed law, accusing him of battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
E Jean Carroll, the writer who accused Donald Trump of raping her more than two decades ago, plans to file a new lawsuit against the former US president.
In a letter made public on Tuesday, a lawyer for the former Elle magazine columnist said she planned to sue Trump for battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress under New York state’s Adult Survivors Act.
That law, recently signed by the governor, Kathy Hochul, gives adult accusers a one-year window to bring civil claims over alleged sexual misconduct regardless of how long ago it occurred.
Trump has denied raping Carroll and accused her of concocting the rape claim to sell her book.
The House is currently debating the Presidential Election Reform Act, which would tweak the procedures for counting votes to prevent the type of legal schemes that occurred around of the time of the January 6 insurrection from taking place again.
A vote to approve the measure could come later today, but the Democrats controlling the chamber have plans for more bills in the weeks before the midterms. The Associated Press reports that a deal between the party’s progressive and centrist faction has been reached to increase funding for police departments:
The breakthrough came after intense negotiations in recent days between Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a leader of the centrist coalition, and Rep. Ilhan Omar D-Minn., one of the leaders of the progressive faction. Their deal, reached with little time to spare on the House calendar, could help unite the party on a public safety platform more than two years after the police killing of George Floyd.
“I’m proud to have worked closely with Republicans, Democrats, and a broad spectrum of stakeholders to make real progress for public safety,” Gottheimer said in a statement Wednesday.
The package includes reforms to ensure police funding is used to support smaller police departments, along with investments in de-escalation training and mental health resources for officers to reduce fatal encounters between police and people with mental illness.
“With this package, House Democrats have the opportunity to model a holistic, inclusive approach to public safety, and keep our promise to families across the country to address this issue at the federal level,” Omar and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement.
The bills have the backing of policing groups, but it’s unclear if they will be able to clear the much higher bar for passage in the Senate, where the Democratic majority would need the support of at least 10 Republicans.
Last year, Julie Rikelman argued on behalf of abortion rights in front of the supreme court. This year, she has pledged to uphold the court’s decision overturning abortion rights nationwide if confirmed as a federal appellate judge.
Bloomberg Law reports on the exchange that took place during Rikelman’s confirmation hearing for the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which covers the northeastern United States. Rikelman argued before the supreme court on behalf of the Center for Reproductive Rights as they considered Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. When it decided that case, the conservative-dominated court not only upheld a Mississippi law curbing abortion access, it also overturned Roe v Wade entirely, allowing states to ban the procedure.
“Our legal system and the rule of law itself depends on lower courts following Supreme Court precedent and as you said Dobbs is now the law of the land and I will follow it as I will follow all Supreme Court precedent,” Rikelman said in her confirmation hearing before the Senate judiciary committee.
A candidate embellishing their background isn’t unheard of on the campaign trail, but CNN has a story today on something unique and far more troubling going on at election offices across the country.
Administrators nationwide are being hit with a deluge of public records requests for massive amounts of election data, CNN reports, including the little-known cast vote records generated by voting machines. The concern is that the requests will complicate the work of voting officials nationwide ahead of the November midterms.
The requests appear to be traced back to Mike Lindell, a prominent Trump ally and conspiracy theorist who encouraged people to make such requests a month ago:
In a telephone interview with CNN, Lindell said he first learned of the cast vote records in June and views them as a way to “detect machine manipulation” of the 2020 election.
Asked how they would, he said: “You’d have to talk to a cyber guy... It’s the sequence and the patterns.”
Lindell has spent nearly two years spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election. Dominion Voting Systems, the frequent target of his attacks, has sued Lindell and his company for defamation.
Lindell said the records would bolster his effort to rid the election system of machines. Some of the requesters, he said, are taking what they found to local county officials and sheriffs to demand the removal of machines in their counties.
“I want computers and voting machines gone,” he said.
Voting officials have had to bring on new staff to handle them, but according to CNN, many people making the requests act as if they are just following orders. “‘I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what it does. I just know I’m supposed to ask for it,’” is what one official said the requesters often say.
The pitch to voters made by J.R. Majewski, who is running to unseat a long-serving Democrat in an Ohio district redrawn in the GOP’s favor, is this: elect a Donald Trump-backed conservative who served his country in Afghanistan.
The only problem being that the last part isn’t true, according to an investigation just released by the Associated Press.
The article says it all:
Campaigning for a northwestern Ohio congressional seat, Republican J.R. Majewski presents himself as an Air Force combat veteran who deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, once describing “tough” conditions including a lack of running water that forced him to go more than 40 days without a shower.
Military documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request tell a different story.
They indicate Majewski never deployed to Afghanistan but instead completed a six-month stint helping to load planes at an air base in Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally that is a safe distance from the fighting.
Majewski’s account of his time in the military is just one aspect of his biography that is suspect. His post-military career has been defined by exaggerations, conspiracy theories, talk of violent action against the U.S. government and occasional financial duress.
Updated
Federal Reserve makes another big rate hike to fight US inflation
The Federal Reserve made yet another aggressive interest rate hike at the conclusion of its meeting today as it looks to cut into the rapid price growth that’s beset the US economy without causing a recession.
The three-quarter percentage point increase in the central bank’s funds rate approved by the Federal Open Market Committee is the third straight hike of that size, and comes after data released earlier this month showed inflation declining by less than expected in August.
Led by Jerome Powell, a Republican whom president Joe Biden nominated for a second term last year, the American central bank ended the easy money policies it rolled out during the Covid-19 pandemic and earlier this year started raising rates and running down its massive holdings of debt. The catalyst was price pressures that rose throughout 2021, prompting the Fed to abruptly pivot from a strategy of spurring growth by keeping borrowing costs low to rapidly increasing rates as inflation hit levels not seen since the 1980s.
However, analysts say the Fed waited too long to begin hiking, allowing inflation to get far worse than necessary as it was being driven higher by factors like Russia’s war in Ukraine and supply shocks caused by the pandemic. The concern now is that the central bank – which uses interest rates as a powerful but blunt tool to stabilize employment and prices in the world’s largest economy – could cause a recession that undermines the recovery made by American workers and businesses over the past two years.
Liberal pundits and Twitter accounts are cheering the investigation into Donald Trump for holding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. What they may not know is that they are also throwing their support behind one of the most pernicious and terrible laws that exists: the Espionage Act.
Holding Trump accountable doesn’t mean we should all become cheerleaders for an often-abused law primarily used to prosecute whistleblowers and threaten journalists.
Ever since the 100-year old Espionage Act was cited in the warrant for the search of Trump’s Florida residence, Twitter and cable news have been rife with misinformation about the law and what it means. Those clamoring for Trump to be prosecuted under the act are spreading a ton of misleading statements in the process.
First, let’s get this out of the way: just because the law is called “the Espionage Act” doesn’t mean there is any evidence Trump committed “espionage”. MSNBC hosts and their former CIA guests are even baselessly speculating that because Trump had these documents at his house, it is connected to the spate of deaths of CIA assets around the world.
What a convenient excuse for the CIA! There’s not one hint of evidence that Trump having some classified docs at this compound led to any deaths, and it lets the CIA completely off the hook for continually getting people killed, which – by the way – has been happening for decades.
There was a New York Times investigation from several years ago about CIA asset networks in China and Iran being rounded up and executed, which dated back to 2010. Or go read Tim Weiner’s classic history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes, which details how that has happened over and over again throughout the agency’s history, with little or no public accountability.
Read more:
The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, warned last month that there would be “pain” ahead as the US central bank struggles to contain a surge in inflation unseen in 40 years.
Powell will offer some indication of how much pain he expects at 2pm today.
The Fed is expected to announce another sharp rise in interest rates after the conclusion of its latest meeting. It will also update its economic forecasts for the US economy.
Economists are predicting the Fed will raise its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage points, the third such rise in a row, and signal plans to raise rates again in the coming months.
Full preview:
The Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted the network to withdraw its famous call of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020, citing pressure from Donald Trump’s campaign and saying the swing state should be “put back in his column”, a new book says.
The news is contained in The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021, published in the US on Tuesday.
The authors, Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, call Baier’s request “stunning”, as Arizona “was never in Trump’s column. While the margin of his defeat in the state had narrowed since election night, he still trailed by more than 10,000 votes.”
In a statement emailed to the Guardian by a Fox News spokesperson, Baier responded to the report.
He said: “The full context of the e-mail is not reported in this book.
“I never said the Trump campaign ‘was really pissed’ – that was from an external email that I referenced within my note. This was an email sent after election night.
“In the immediate days following the election, the vote margins in Arizona narrowed significantly and I communicated these changes to our team along with what people on the ground were saying and predicting district by district. I wanted to analyse at what point (what vote margin) would we have to consider pulling the call for Biden. I also noted that I fully supported our Decision Desk’s call and would defend it on air.”
Full story:
Joe Biden’s speech at the United Nations touched on the war in Ukraine, climate change, China and global food security. Republicans were not impressed.
“Enabling adversaries, ducking blame, and putting America last is Joe Biden’s foreign policy doctrine. From Afghanistan to the open border, Joe Biden has destroyed America’s standing on the world stage, placed Americans in harm’s way, and has made our communities less safe as a result,” Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement released following his address.
As he met with United Nations secretary general António Guterres and his deputies, a reporter asked Biden to comment further on Russia. He replied:
“Nope.” pic.twitter.com/lIVuY1gvtx
— The Recount (@therecount) September 21, 2022
The day so far
Donald Trump is in even more legal trouble after the New York attorney general announced a civil suit against him and his children on fraud charges. Elsewhere in the Empire State, president Joe Biden spoke to the United Nations and accused Russia of trying to “erase a sovereign state from the map” by invading Ukraine, in a call for global unity against Moscow.
Here’s what else happened today:
We could hear from Trump this evening on Fox News, according to CBS News, though he may opt to post on social media instead.
Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell came close to voting to convict Trump following the January 6 insurrection, while calling the former president “crazy,” a new book said.
A bill to amend America’s election law and prevent another January 6 could be voted on in the House today.
Donald Trump could appear on conservative commentator Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News this evening, CBS News reports.
That would give the ex-president the opportunity to respond to the New York attorney general’s lawsuit and fraud allegations against him and his family members, though he may opt to do so elsewhere, such as on his Truth social media network.
Person close to Trump tells CBS News that he’s planning to be on Hannity tonight but no further decisions have been made on whether he’ll get on camera today to respond… expect statements on his social-media platforms… things remain slightly fluid. NY AG presser continues.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) September 21, 2022
New York attorney general Letitia James has released a statement elaborating on her newly announced lawsuit against Donald Trump, saying “there are not two sets of laws for people in this country,” even for former presidents.
Here’s the full statement released by the state’s Democratic top lawyer:
For too long, powerful, wealthy people in this country have operated as if the rules do not apply to them. Donald Trump stands out as among the most egregious examples of this misconduct. With the help of his children and senior executives at the Trump Organization, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system. In fact, the very foundation of his purported net worth is rooted in incredible fraud and illegality. Mr. Trump thought he could get away with the art of the steal, but today, that conduct ends. There are not two sets of laws for people in this country; we must hold former presidents to the same standards as everyday Americans. I will continue to ensure that no one is able to evade the law, because no one is above it.
New York attorney general sues Trump, children over alleged fraud
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, just announced a lawsuit against Donald Trump and his family, accusing them of fraudulently inflating their net worth by billions of dollars to get better terms on bank loans and other financial benefits.
Here’s more fromthe Guardian’s Martin Pengelly on the suit, which presents the latest in the many legal threats facing the former president:
The attorney general of New York state has filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump and members of his family, the culmination of a years-long investigation of financial practices at the Trump Organization.
Letitia James announced the suit in New York on Wednesday.
In a statement, the attorney general said the suit was filed “against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, senior management and involved entities for engaging in years of financial fraud to obtain a host of economic benefits.
“The lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, with the help of his children Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, and senior executives of the Trump Organization, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and lower premiums, and to gain tax benefits, among other things.”
Updated
Biden wrapped up his speech with an appeal to unity that mentioned neither Ukraine or Russia, but instead referenced the ideals he had earlier said Moscow violated by invading its neighbor.
“Let’s stand together again, declare the unmistakable resolve. The nations of the world are united still,” Biden said, adding, “We stand for the values of the UN Charter.”
“We still believe by working together, we can bend the arc of history toward a freer and more just world for all our children, although none of us have fully achieved it. We’re not passive witnesses to history. We are the authors of history. We can do this, we have to do it, for ourselves and for our future. For humankind,” Biden concluded.
Updated
One of the most alarming comments Putin made in his speech earlier today was alluding to the possibility of using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict – words that caught Biden’s attention.
“A nuclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought,” the American president said before the UN General Assembly, accusing Russia of “making irresponsible nuclear threats.”
He also said Moscow was ignoring a nonproliferation agreement, and conducting “an unprecedented, concerning nuclear buildup without any transparency.”
Updated
Biden has shifted his focus to China, saying Washington isn’t looking for a “cold war”, while underscoring the substantial policy differences with Beijing.
“Let me be direct about the competition between the United States and China,” Biden said. “As we manage shifting geopolitical trends, the United States will conduct itself as a reasonable leader. We do not seek conflict, we do not seek a cold war. We do not ask any nation to choose between the United States or any other partner. But the United States will be unabashed and promoting our vision of a free, open, secure and prosperous world and what we have to offer communities of nations.”
He also mentioned Taiwan, saying “we continue to oppose unilateral changes in the status quo by either side” amid speculation Beijing intends to seize the island it considers a breakaway province by force.
Much of Biden’s appeal on behalf of Ukraine focused on Russia’s violation of the UN charter, which is intended to stop countries from attacking each other without reason.
But he also said it was time to change how things are done in the global body, including by expanding the security council beyond its current five permanent members.
“I also believe the time has come for this institution to become more inclusive, so they can better respond to the needs of today’s world. Members of the UN Security Council, including the United States, should consistently uphold and defend the UN charter and refrain refrain from the use of the veto, except in rare, extraordinary situations,” Biden said.
“That is also why the United States supports increasing the number of both permanent and non permanent representatives of the Council. This includes permanent seats for those nations. We have long supported and permanent seats for countries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The five permanent members are currently China, France, Russia, the United States and Britain, which has more or less remained static since 1945.
Updated
If it can happen to Ukraine, it can happen to you.
That’s the meat of Biden’s argument thus far before world leaders assembled in New York City, where he’s seeking to bolster international support for Ukraine and encourage countries that have remained on the fence to form up behind Kyiv.
“If nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for, everything,” Biden said, adding that a country “cannot seize a nation’s territory by force.”
“Ukraine has the same rights belong to every sovereign nation. We will stand in solidarity with Ukraine who will stand in solidarity against Russia’s aggression, period.”
Biden has kicked off his UN speech with strong rhetoric against Russia, pointed to the global body’s own rules to characterize Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine as illegal and reckless.
“A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded his neighbor, attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map. Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter,” Biden said, as he accused president Vladimir Putin of causing a “brutal, needless war.”
“This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and Ukraine’s right to exist as a people,” the American president said. “Wherever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe… That should make your blood run cold.”
Biden set to rebuke Putin, rally world for Ukraine in UN general assembly speech
US president Joe Biden has taken the stage to address world leaders gathered at the United Nations in New York City, where he is expected to forcefully condemn Russia’s destructive invasion of Ukraine and call on the world to stand up against Moscow.
The American leader’s speech before the UN’s first general assembly since Russia began its incursion comes hours after Russian president Vladimir Putin put the country’s people and economy on a war footing by announcing a partial mobilization, while also suggesting he was willing to use nuclear weapons.
The Guardian’s politics live blog will cover Biden’s speech as it happens, and video of his address will also be embedded above.
Updated
Expect strong rhetoric against Moscow when Joe Biden speaks before the United Nations. But in Washington, administration officials are trying to maintain that the United States is not at war with Russia.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said as much in an interview with Fox News this morning:
Fox News' Bill Hemmer: "Are we effectively at war with Russia?"
— The Recount (@therecount) September 21, 2022
National Security Council's John Kirby: "No, we are not. No. Not at all. Russia is at war inside Ukraine." pic.twitter.com/7MJge9sYXo
Meanwhile, Democratic senator Chris Murphy warned on MSNBC that if Republicans take the House following the November midterms, they could block further aid packages to Ukraine:
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) sounds the alarm on the possibility of Republicans blocking military aid to Ukraine if they take back the House:
— The Recount (@therecount) September 21, 2022
"I just see a freight train coming and that is Trump and his operation turning against aid for Ukraine." pic.twitter.com/hpVDJCpqAU
While events in Washington and New York City will dominate today’s news cycle, spare some time to read Coral Murphy Marcos’s coverage of the unfolding crisis in the US territory of Puerto Rico, where a hurricane has badly damaged the island’s drinking water supply.
Hurricane Fiona was the second time José Oyola Ríos served as an emergency drinking water provider, after gusting winds and heavy rains battered Puerto Rico on Sunday, causing mass flooding and power outages.
Oyola Ríos serves as a community leader in rural, inland Caguas, in the central mountain range, where he maintains water tanks that store thousands of gallons, known in the area as the “community oasis”.
When Hurricane María battered the island in 2017, hundreds of residents from surrounding towns would drive up the mountainous road to Caguas to get a few gallons of water.
In other Trump news, the Associated Press reports that the special master demanded by the former president’s lawyers had little time for their evasiveness over whether the classified materials found at Mar-a-Lago had actually been cleared for release:
The independent arbiter tasked with inspecting documents seized in an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home said on Tuesday he intends to push briskly through the review process and appeared skeptical of Trump lawyers’ reluctance to say whether they believed the records had been declassified.
“We’re going to proceed with what I call responsible dispatch,” Raymond Dearie, a veteran Brooklyn judge, told lawyers for Trump and the Department of Justice in their first meeting since his appointment last week as a so-called special master.
The purpose of the meeting was to sort out next steps in a review process expected to slow the criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago. Dearie will be responsible for sifting through the thousands of documents recovered during the 8 August FBI search and segregating any that might be protected by claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.
“We’ve all known that Trump is crazy. I’m done with him. I will never speak to him again.” Those words were uttered by the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, after he returned to the Capitol on January 6.
That’s according to UNCHECKED: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump, by Politico’s Rachael Bade and The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian, which was excerpted in the latter publication today. While the enmity between Trump and McConnnell is well documented, the book goes on to say that the senator almost supported the effort to convict Trump for the January 6 insurrection after his departure from the White House, but backed down after determining there was simply too much support for the ex-president among his fellow senators.
Here’s more from the excerpt:
McConnell knew many of his rank-and-file were torn over how to handle the situation — and that in their uncertainty, they would look to him for guidance. If he declared the trial to be constitutional, breaking with Trump in the process, he could set the stage for a party mutiny, helping the GOP turn the page on Trump for good. It was an appealing prospect: conviction could enable the Senate to bar Trump from holding office again — and McConnell didn’t ever want Trump in office again.
But in all his years as GOP leader, McConnell had never led such a rebellion. And that day, he wasn’t sure he was up to the task.
Updated
Some of the most steadfast Republican supporters of Donald Trump in Congress can be found in the House, so perhaps it should not be a surprise that the party’s leadership there is encouraging a no vote on legislation amending America’s electoral code to stop another January 6.
“In their continued fixation to inject the Federal government into elections, this legislation runs counter to reforms necessary to strengthen the integrity of our elections,” the office of House Republican whip Steve Scalise wrote in an email distributed to members on Tuesday. “This bill, which contains unconstitutional provisions, is the Democrats’ latest attempt at a federal takeover of elections in order to stack the electoral deck in their favor.”
It goes on to enumerate a number of issues with the Presidential Election Reform Act, including that it “creates new and broad private rights of action that can be easily abused by Democrat election lawyers to drag out elections long after Election Day,” and that it “unconstitutionally empowers Congress and Federal judges to decide and interpret state election laws, instead of states themselves.”
The effort seems unlikely to stop the bill’s progress. Democrats have a majority in the chamber, and the legislation may also attract votes from some House republicans who disagree with the plot attempted on January 6. A bigger question is how the House effort can be reconciled with legislation expected to be approved by the Senate, and whether the lower chamber’s more expansive measure will spark any disagreement among senators.
Ukraine isn’t the only country worrying about its democracy. In Washington, the House of Representatives will today begin debate on a bill to stop the sort of legal shenanigans Donald Trump’s allies attempted on January 6 to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.
The Associated Press reports that the measure is the lower chamber’s version of separate legislation under consideration in the Senate, and would overhaul the United States’ archaic election law to stop political objections from preventing the accession of a new president.
Here’s more on the bill, from the AP:
The bill, which is similar to legislation moving through the Senate, would clarify in the law that the vice president’s role presiding over the count is only ceremonial and also sets out that each state can only send one certified set of electors. Trump’s allies had unsuccessfully tried to put together alternate slates of illegitimate pro-Trump electors in swing states where Biden won.
The legislation would increase the threshold for individual lawmakers’ objections to any state’s electoral votes, requiring a third of the House and a third of the Senate to object to trigger votes on the results in both chambers. Currently, only one lawmaker in the House and one lawmaker in the Senate has to object. The House bill would set out very narrow grounds for those objections, an attempt to thwart baseless or politically motivated challenges. The legislation also would require courts to get involved if state or local officials want to delay a presidential vote or refuse to certify the results.
The House vote comes as the Senate is moving on a similar track with enough Republican support to virtually ensure passage before the end of the year. After months of talks, House Democrats introduced the legislation on Monday and are holding a quick vote two days later in order to send the bill across the Capitol and start to resolve differences. A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation this summer and a Senate committee is expected to vote on it next week.
When he speaks at the first United Nations General Assembly since Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden will cast the assault as a violation of the global body’s ideals, while also announcing that the United States will put its economic heft behind an effort to help poor countries survive the spike in food prices that has pushed some to the brink of crisis.
That’s according to The Guardian’s Julian Borger in New York and Andrew Roth in Moscow as they previewed the American president’s address set for 10:35 am eastern time. Here’s more on what we can expect, from US national security adviser Jake Sullivan:
“He [Biden] will underscore the importance of strengthening the United Nations and reaffirm core tenets of its charter at a time when a permanent member of the security council has struck at the very heart of the charter by challenging the principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
Later in the day, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will make his own appeal to world leaders in a video address that Russia, unsuccessfully, tried to halt. And European leaders who already addressed the assembly used it as a platform to cast Moscow’s campaign as an imperialist project.
“Those who are keeping silent today are, in a way, complicit with the cause of a new imperialism,” said the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in his speech on Tuesday.
Updated
Biden expected to take on Putin in address to world leaders
Good morning, US politics blog readers. A new front in the war in Ukraine is opening temporarily in New York City today, when Joe Biden addresses world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly at 10:35am ET in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s speech threatening to use nuclear weapons and ordering a partial mobilization in Russia. The American president is certainly not the only world leader speaking, but as a major supplier of aid for Kyiv, Biden’s address will be closely watched for signs of how the Western allies intend to respond to Putin’s latest gambit.
Today’s news does not stop there:
The Federal Reserve will likely again raise interest rates in a decision announced at 2pm eastern time. The central bank is trying to lower America’s worryingly high inflation without tightening fiscal conditions so much the economy enters a recession.
The National Cathedral in Washington DC is holding a memorial service in honor of Queen Elizabeth II at 11am, which vice-president Kamala Harris will attend.
Gas prices appear to be rising again after nearly 100 days of declines, though there is some dispute over when the latest uptick started.
