Closing summary
Democrats channeled their outrage over an Alabama supreme court ruling that has curbed IVF care in the state, with Joe Biden’s re-election campaign saying Donald Trump is to blame. Republican strategists are reportedly nervous about the decision targeting the procedure many people rely on to start families, and warn it could blow back on the party ahead of the November elections. Biden has meanwhile found himself in hot water with progressives after reports emerged that he is considering implementing policies to stop migrants from crossing the border with Mexico. The president spent the day in San Francisco, where he met with the wife and daughter of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, and pledged new sanctions against Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Here’s what else happened:
A second Alabama IVF provider paused their treatments after the state supreme court ruling.
Washington also plans to sanction Iran for selling weapons to Russia, which it has used in its invasion of Ukraine.
Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican governor, said he has no problem with IVF.
Byron Donalds, a rightwing Florida congressman, threatened to shut down the government if tougher immigration laws weren’t passed.
Moscow received a warning from the US government amid reports that it is planning to launch a nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon.
Updated
Joe Biden spoke briefly to reporters in San Francisco about his meeting with Alexei Navalny’s family, and said the sanctions he will announce tomorrow will target Vladimir Putin.
Biden noted that he blamed the Russian leader for Navalny’s death. Here’s more:
President Biden: "This morning I had the honor of meeting with Alexei Navalny's wife and daughter...we're going to be announcing sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow." pic.twitter.com/5JSWRssnUY
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 22, 2024
Vladimir Putin was none too pleased with comments Joe Biden made about him while in San Francisco, the Guardian’s Pjotr Sauer reports:
Vladimir Putin has described as “rude” Joe Biden’s comments in which the American president called the Russian leader a “crazy SOB”.
Biden was talking about the climate crisis on Wednesday when he said: “We have a crazy SOB like Putin and others, and we always have to worry about nuclear conflict, but the existential threat to humanity is climate.”
On Thursday, after a flight onboard a strategic bomber that is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, Putin responded “yes, rude” to a reporter who said Biden had made a rude remark about him.
Referring to earlier remarks in which the Russian leader said Biden was a preferable president for Russia than Donald Trump, Putin joked: “It’s not like he can say to me, ‘Volodya, thank you, well done, you’ve helped me a lot’.”
He added with a smile: “You asked me which is better for us. I said it then that, and I still think I can repeat it: Biden.”
The Kremlin earlier in the day said Biden’s comments were a “disgrace” for the US.
“The use of such language against the head of another state by the president of the United States is unlikely to infringe on our president, President Putin,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said. “But it debases those who use such vocabulary.” The remarks were “probably some kind of attempt to look like a Hollywood cowboy”, Peskov added.
The Daily Mail reports that protesters demanding Joe Biden support a ceasefire in Israel’s invasion of Gaza have entered the hotel where the president is in San Francisco:
Gaza Ceasefire protestors have got into Biden's hotel in San Francisco. Chanting: Biden Biden you can't hide, we charge you with genocide ' pic.twitter.com/DnnALEot1m
— Rob Crilly (@robcrilly) February 22, 2024
Biden has repeatedly had his speeches and events interrupted by protesters upset over his administration’s policies towards Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October attack:
Joe Biden has released photos of his meeting with Alexei Navalny’s wife and daughter in San Francisco:
Today, I met with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya – Aleksey Navalny's loved ones – to express my condolences for their devastating loss.
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 22, 2024
Aleksey's legacy of courage will live on in Yulia and Dasha, and the countless people across Russia fighting for democracy and human rights. pic.twitter.com/aiCcgTrws3
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Biden expressed 'heartfelt condolences' in meeting with Navalny family, pledged new sanctions
Joe Biden offered his condolences to the wife and daughter of Russian opposition figure Aleksey Navalny in a meeting today, and pledged stricter sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow, the White House announced:
President Biden met with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya today in San Francisco to express his heartfelt condolences for their terrible loss following the death of Aleksey Navalny in a Russian prison. The President expressed his admiration for Aleksey Navalny’s extraordinary courage and his legacy of fighting against corruption and for a free and democratic Russia in which the rule of law applies equally to everyone. The President emphasized that Aleksey’s legacy will carry on through people across Russia and around the world mourning his loss and fighting for freedom, democracy, and human rights. He affirmed that his Administration will announce major new sanctions against Russia tomorrow in response to Aleksey’s death, Russia’s repression and aggression, and its brutal and illegal war in Ukraine.
Updated
US set to unveil new sanctions on Iran over arms to Russia
The White House is promising to unveil new sanctions on Iran in the coming days in retaliation for its arms sales that have bolstered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and threatening a “swift” and “severe” response if Tehran moves forward with selling ballistic missiles to Moscow, the Associated Press reports.
National security council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that the US will be “imposing additional sanctions on Iran in the coming days” for its efforts to supply Russia with drones and other technology for the war against Ukraine.
And he issued a new warning to Iran that providing ballistic missiles to Russia for use against Kyiv would be met with even more sanctions and actions at the United Nations.
The US has been warning for months of Russia’s efforts to acquire ballistic missiles from Iran in return for providing Tehran with enhanced military cooperation.
We have not seen any confirmation that missiles have actually moved from Iran to Russia … [but] we have no reason to believe that they will not follow through.”
He said that if Iran moves forward:
I can assure you that the response from the international community will be swift and it will be severe.”
He said the US would take the matter to the UN security council, where Russia has a veto.
We will implement additional sanctions against Iran and we will coordinate further response options with our allies and partners in Europe and elsewhere. We have demonstrated our ability to take action in response to the military partnership between Russia and Iran in the past. We will do so in the future. In response to Iran’s ongoing support for Russia’s brutal war. We will be imposing additional sanctions on Iran in the coming days. And we are prepared to go further if Iran sells ballistic missiles to Russia.”
The US is set to announce a new set of sanctions Friday against Russia.
Updated
The United States has directly warned Russia against launching a new nuclear armed anti-satellite weapon, a US official said on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity, Reuters reported.
The US official’s comments came two days after a source familiar with the matter told Reuters that the United States believes Russia is developing such a weapon.
The detonation of a weapon of this kind, the source said, could disrupt everything from military communications to phone-based ride services.
The US official said that Washington had cautioned Russia against launching such a weapon.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the warning, saying that the United States told Russia that such a weapon would violate the Outer Space Treaty and jeopardize U.S. national security interests.
Updated
Earlier, the Biden-Harris re-election campaign issued a statement slamming the Alabama court decision over frozen embryos for IVF. Now there’s more from Joe Biden as he weighs in directly from the White House.
Here is the full statement from the US president moments ago:
Today, in 2024 in America, women are being turned away from emergency rooms and forced to travel hundreds of miles for health care, while doctors fear prosecution for providing an abortion. And now, a court in Alabama put access to some fertility treatments at risk for families who are desperately trying to get pregnant. The disregard for women’s ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families is outrageous and unacceptable.
Make no mistake: this is a direct result of the overturning of Roe v Wade.
I know that folks are worried about what they’re seeing happening to women all across America. I am too. I hear about it everywhere I go. My message is: The Vice President and I are fighting for your rights. We’re fighting for the freedom of women, for families, and for doctors who care for these women. And we won’t stop until we restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law for all women in every state.”
Vice-president Kamala Harris is campaigning heavily for reproductive rights and against Republicans’ determined crusade against those right. Harris is visiting Grand Rapids, Michigan, today, where the White House said she will continue her nationwide “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour by convening a roundtable conversation with medical providers, patients, reproductive rights advocates, and state and local leaders. Expect remarks later.
Updated
Biden calls 'disregard' for reproductive rights in conservative push 'outrageous'
Joe Biden has issued a statement sharply criticizing the Alabama state supreme court’s decision declaring embryos kept for IVF as “children”, and saying that this and other restrictions from the right on reproductive choice are “a direct result of the overturning of Roe v Wade”.
In a first-of-its-kind decision, the Alabama supreme court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are “children”, allowing two wrongful death suits against a Mobile fertility clinic to proceed. The decision has sweeping implications for people seeking in vitro fertilization (IVF) or other assisted reproductive technology treatments and could increase criminalization of expectant people, my colleague Adria Walker reported earlier this week.
The US president issued a statement from the White House on Thursday afternoon saying: “A court in Alabama put access to some fertility treatments at risk for families who are desperately trying to get pregnant. The disregard for women’s ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families is outrageous and unacceptable.”
Biden added: “Make no mistake: this is a direct result of the overturning of Roe v Wade.” The supreme court, as stacked to the right during Donald Trump’s presidency, in 2022 tossed out the national right to an abortion in the US, almost 50 years after the landmark federal right was granted by a previous court bench.
There’s more, see next post.
Updated
The day so far
Democrats are channeling their outrage over an Alabama supreme court ruling that has curbed IVF care in the state, with Joe Biden’s re-election campaign saying Donald Trump is to blame. Indeed, Republican strategists are nervous about the decision against the procedure many people have used to start families, and warn it could blow back on the party ahead of the November elections. Biden has meanwhile found himself in hot water with progressives after reports emerged that he is considering implementing policies to stop migrants from crossing the border with Mexico. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson, who has repeatedly demanded tougher immigration policies, called Biden’s proposals “election year gimmicks”.
Here’s what else is going on:
A second Alabama IVF provider paused their treatments after the state supreme court ruling.
Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican governor, said he has no problem with IVF.
Byron Donalds, a rightwing Florida congressman, threatened to shut down the government if tougher immigration laws weren’t passed.
Republican House speaker Johnson says immigration actions Biden is reportedly considering are 'election year gimmicks'
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is none too impressed by reports that Joe Biden is considering using his powers under existing law to curb migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico.
In a statement, Johnson demanded Biden take tougher actions, such as forcing asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their claims are processed. He also said the reports that the president is wiling to act unilaterally prove that there’s no need for Congress to pass new laws to curb undocumented migrants:
Americans have lost faith in this President and won’t be fooled by election year gimmicks that don’t actually secure the border. Nor will they forget that the President created this catastrophe and, until now, has refused to use his executive power to fix it.
These reports also underscore just how brazenly and intentionally President Biden misled the public when he claimed he had done everything in his power to secure the border. Specifically, the President’s alleged desire to invoke Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which the White House dismissed using for months, is particularly telling.
If these reports are true and the President intends to take action, he can show he’s serious by changing more than asylum policy. He should begin by reinstituting the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy and ending his administration’s abuse of the parole system, along with other critical reforms.
Earlier this month, Johnson and his fellow House Republicans torpedoed a bipartisan Senate deal that would have authorized another round of military assistance to Ukraine as well as Israel, while also imposing hardline immigration policies. Among Johnson’s objections were his belief that Biden didn’t need any new legislation to stop people from entering from Mexico – but Donald Trump also encouraged him to reject the deal, reportedly so he can use frustration with migrants in his campaign.
Republican strategists are growing worried the Alabama supreme court’s decision that greatly complicates access to IVF care in the state could harm the party’s candidates nationwide, Politico reports.
“It certainly intersects, badly, with general election politics for Republicans,” said Stan Barnes, a former Republican state senator from Arizona who is now a political consultant.
“When a state, any state, takes an aggressive action on this particular topic, people are once again made aware of it and many think: ‘Maybe I can’t support a Republican in the general election.’”
Former Donald Trump White House official Kellyanne Conway in December shared polling with congressional Republicans that found IVF care to be widely popular, including with evangelicals, a group that is traditionally anti-abortion.
“Candidates for Congress – and certainly those already serving there – can bank significant political currency by advocating for increased access to and availability of contraception and fertility treatments,” Conway’s team told lawmakers.
According to Politico, “The survey found that 86 percent of all respondents supported access to IVF, with 78 percent support among self-identified ‘pro-life advocates’ and 83 percent among Evangelical Christians.”
Updated
While he refrained from commenting on the Alabama ruling, Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, said he supported IVF, noting many people “wouldn’t have children if it weren’t for that”.
From an interview with Politico:
Days after the Alabama Supreme Court made waves by ruling frozen embryos are children under state law, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp voiced his support for IVF.
— POLITICO (@politico) February 22, 2024
“A lot of people out there in this country... wouldn’t have children if it weren’t for that,” he told @POLITICOLive. pic.twitter.com/18BAuyb4yb
Updated
Besides Joe Biden, other Democrats are piling on Alabama’s supreme court for its decision that curbed IVF care by finding embryos are “extrauterine children”.
Here’s Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth:
The fall of Roe was about so much more than abortion.⁰⁰With the future of IVF access at stake, we need to pass my bill to protect fertility care for every American who needs it to start or grow their family.
— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) February 22, 2024
And her colleague from Virginia, Tim Kaine:
Alabama Republicans want to ban IVF.
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) February 21, 2024
Oklahoma Republicans want to ban the morning after pill and certain IUDs.
Republicans were never going to stop at banning abortion. This was always about controlling women's reproductive health care choices—we can't let them succeed.
Democrats have campaigned on restoring nationwide abortion access ever since Roe v Wade was overturned two years ago, and voters appear receptive. The party has performed well in special elections and in state legislative races, and limited its losses in Congress in the 2022 midterm elections.
The aftershocks from the Alabama supreme court’s ruling that IVF embryos are children continue to reverberate across the state, the Guardian Carter Sherman reports:
A second Alabama provider announced that it will pause its in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments on Thursday, just days after the state supreme court ruled in a first-of-its-kind decision that embryos are “extrauterine children”.
“We have made the impossibly difficult decision to hold new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists,” Alabama Fertility said in a post to its Instagram account. “We are contacting patients that will be affected today to find solutions for them and we are working as hard as we can to alert our legislators as to the far reaching negative impact of this ruling on the women of Alabama.”
The clinic said it does not plan to close entirely, and urged people to check back in for “advocacy opportunities”.
Alabama Fertility is at least the second IVF provider to announce that it would suspend its IVF procedures after the University of Alabama at Birmingham Wednesday said it would pause treatments in the wake of the court ruling. A spokesperson for the university, the largest healthcare provider in the state, said the institution is “saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments”.
Biden campaign blames Trump for Alabama court ruling curbing IVF access
Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is attempting to link last week’s Alabama supreme court ruling curbing IVF care in the state to Donald Trump, saying that the decision only came about after the downfall of Roe v Wade.
Trump appointed three of the conservative US supreme court justices who overturned the 49-year-old precedent in 2022, allowing states to ban abortion entirely. In a statement, Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said the recent ruling by Alabama’s top court, which has allowed wrongful death suits to proceed against IVF care providers in cases where embryos have been destroyed, was a side-effect of Roe’s end:
What is happening in Alabama right now is only possible because Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade. Across the nation, MAGA Republicans are inserting themselves into the most personal decisions a family can make, from contraception to IVF. With their latest attack on reproductive freedom, these so-called pro-life Republicans are preventing loving couples from growing their families. If Donald Trump is elected, there is no question that he will impose his extreme anti-freedom agenda on the entire country.
Updated
Conservatives in Congress have long clamored for tighter border restrictions to keep migrants from entering the United States from Mexico, with some going as far as to threaten to shut down the government over the issue.
Rightwing congressman Byron Donalds reiterated the threat today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, ahead of a 1 March deadline for lawmakers to agree on new government funding measures, or face a partial shutdown of federal operations:
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL): “My position to my colleagues on Capitol Hill is...you either secure the border or you get no money for the government. Now the press would say, ‘Oh my gosh, Rep. Donalds, you’re talking about the government being closed…’”
— The Recount (@therecount) February 22, 2024
CPAC crowd: “Shut it down!” pic.twitter.com/nrlGQdlPKO
More progressive lawmakers are criticizing Biden’s potential use of presidential authority to limit asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border.
Abdullah H Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, said that Biden’s potential actions mimic Trump’s infamous “Muslim ban”.
From Hammoud via X:
FYI that “sweeping presidential authority” was called the “Muslim Ban” under Donald Trump. https://t.co/MI1l4mFYD5
— Abdullah H. Hammoud (@AHammoudMI) February 22, 2024
If Biden attempts to implement executive action policy to limit asylum, his administration would probably face legal challenges, CBS News reported.
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, told CBS that Biden could face lawsuits similar to Trump, when the former president attempted to issue an asylum ban.
Gelernt previously helped halt Trump’s ban in federal court.
“An executive order denying asylum based on where one enters the country would just be another attempt at the exact policy Trump unsuccessfully tried and will undoubtedly end up in litigation,” Gelernt said to CBS.
Updated
Recent polling shows that more Americans are concerned about issues at the border, but a majority still view immigration as central to what makes the country unique.
The latest polling comes as Biden weighs unilateral action limiting the ability to seek asylum at the border.
From PBS News:
For a majority of Americans, the United States’ openness to people from all over the world remains essential to the fabric of the nation. Yet, just as Congress wages a battle over the border and the future of immigration, support for that bigger idea has been eroding, according to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll.
Welcoming others makes the country what it is, 57 percent of U.S. adults said in this poll, including 84 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents. That’s a significant downward shift in attitudes since July 2021, when 66 percent of U.S. adults supported openness to others.
Meanwhile, 42 percent of Americans overall – including 72 percent of Republicans – said they felt that if the U.S. is too open, it runs the risk of losing its identity.
Read the full article here.
Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that Biden would be making a “mistake” if he took executive action to stop migrants from seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border.
“This would be an extremely disappointing mistake,” Jayapal said on X of Biden’s potential unilateral action.
“Cruel enforcement-only policies have been tried for 30 years and simply do not work,” Jayapal added.
“Democrats cannot continue to take pages out of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s playbook – we need to lead with dignity and humanity.”
Biden is facing mounting backlash from progressives over reports that he will attempt to curtail migration by using Trump-era federal law.
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Ocasio-Cortez calls Biden weighing action to restrict migrants from asylum 'outrageous'
Top progressive lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized Biden for reportedly considering executive action that would restrict migrants from seeking asylum in the US.
The New York representative called out Biden for potentially using federal laws previously implemented by Donald Trump to crack down on migration.
“Doing Trump impressions isn’t how we beat Trump,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Seeking asylum is a legal right of all people. In the face of authoritarian threat, we should not buckle on our principles – we should commit to them.
“The mere suggestion is outrageous and the President should refuse to sign it,” she added.
Updated
White House considers bypassing Congress to crackdown on migration at US-Mexico border – reports
Joe Biden and his White House team are considering using various aspects of federal immigration law – that were repeatedly utilized by Donald Trump during his hardline, anti-immigrant presidency – to unilaterally initiate a sweeping crackdown on migrants crossing into the US across the Mexico border uninvited, according to multiple reports.
The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that the US president could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks told the Associated Press last night.
But the public is warned that plans are not finalized and it’s unclear how the administration would draft any such executive actions in a way that would survive the inevitable legal challenges.
Biden has hardened his rhetoric and policy intentions over the course of his presidency so far and the issue of irregular migration at the southern border – chiefly migrants crossing the border between official ports of entry into the US, because they can’t get an appointment or gain permission to enter for an asylum interview, and turning themselves in to border patrol, hoping then to be able to file an asylum claim.
The notion of a crackdown on asylum seekers by Biden goes against international human rights laws and a tradition of being able to request shelter after reaching US soil and will enrage progressives and immigration advocates, probably provoking legal challenges and political uproar. But voters have consistently told pollsters they disapprove of the White House’s handling of border security.
Updated
Biden reportedly weighing unilateral crackdown on migration at US-Mexico border
Good morning, US politics blog readers, it’s a very busy week considering that Congress isn’t even in full session, but there’s news out of the White House and on the campaign trail and we’ll bring it to you as it happens.
Here’s what’s afoot:
Joe Biden is strongly considering taking executive action to crack down on undocumented migrants crossing the US-Mexico border to request shelter in the United States, according to multiple reports.
With Congress stalled on legislative action to reform immigration laws and toughen asylum rules at the southern border, the White House is now reportedly weighing unilateral action.
The US president is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by Donald Trump during his hardline presidency, but Biden would be likely to run into immediate legal challenges from immigrant rights groups and outrage on the left of his party.
Irregular immigration is a huge election year topic and opinion polls show that a strong majority of American voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of migration issues at the US-Mexico border.
Reverberations are widening from the Alabama court decision to declare that frozen embryos used in IVF are human babies and to destroy them would be a crime. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has weighed in behind the ruling but it’s thrown the healthcare sector and would-be parents into a conundrum.
Joe Biden called Russian president Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB” (son of a bitch) during a fundraiser in San Francisco, warning there is always the threat of nuclear conflict but that the existential threat to humanity remains the climate crisis.
Updated
