Closing summary
In a speech in Chicago, Joe Biden embraced the term “Bidenomics”, arguing that Americans’ livelihoods have improved under his watch, and will get even better if he is elected to another four years. Meanwhile, the inquiry into Donald Trump continues, with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger set to speak with investigators from special counsel Jack Smith’s office today, though the former president’s trial over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago may wind up being delayed.
Here’s what else happened today:
Extreme heat and poor air quality are affecting millions across the United States. Follow our live blog for the latest.
Biden mixed up Iraq and Ukraine in comments before arriving in Chicago. This is not the first time this has happened for him, or for George W Bush.
Tommy Tuberville, Alabama’s Republican senator, tried to take credit for an infrastructure bill he refused to support. The president was not having it.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz sounds pretty confident Biden will be re-elected.
Voters in Delaware may next year have the chance to elect the first transgender lawmaker ever to serve in Congress.
In other election news, a man who was jailed for years as a child only to later be exonerated in one of the highest-profile wrongful conviction cases in the United States may soon be joining the New York city council:
Yusef Salaam, who as a child was part of a group of teenagers wrongly accused, convicted and imprisoned for the rape of a woman jogging in New York’s Central Park, has declared victory in a Democratic primary for a city council seat in New York – giving him a very good chance of representing a Harlem district as an elected official.
Salaam faced two veteran politicians, New York state assembly members Al Taylor, 65, and Inez Dickens, 73, in the race for a seat representing part of the majority-Black uptown Manhattan neighborhood. The incumbent, democratic socialist Kristin Richard Jordan, dropped out of the race in May but remained on the ballot.
The contest was taking place more than two decades after Salaam and four other men – then known as the Central Park Five, now often called the Exonerated Five – were cleared of the crime using DNA evidence.
It was one of the city’s most notorious and racially fraught crimes, inflamed when Donald Trump, then best known as a flamboyant real estate mogul in the city and later to become US president, took out newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the five.
Sarah McBride is the highest-ranking transgender lawmaker in the United States, and could become the first transgender lawmaker in Congress if her bid for a House seat representing Delaware succeeds, the Guardian’s Mary Yang reports:
Sarah McBride, the highest-ranked openly transgender elected official in the US, announced she is running for the US House of Representatives this week. If elected, she will be the first openly transgender member of Congress.
“This campaign isn’t just about making history – it’s about moving forward,” said McBride in a press release on Monday. “To strengthen our democracy, we need effective leaders who believe in taking bold action and building bridges for lasting progress.”
McBride is the only openly transgender person serving at the state senator level in the country, but there are seven other state lawmakers who identify as transgender, according to a national tracker by LGBTQ+ Victory Institute.
Joe Biden has started to use a continuous positive airway pressure machine to optimize sleep quality, a White House official said on Wednesday.
“Since 2008, the president has disclosed his history with sleep apnea in thorough medical reports. He used a CPAP machine last night, which is common for people with that history,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said, Reuters reports.
According to Reuters, Biden was seen by reporters on Wednesday with marks on his face indicating he had been wearing some type of wide strap.
In February, Biden’s doctor declared him healthy and “fit for duty.”
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German chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday said that he was confident that Joe Biden would win the presidential re-election.
Speaking to Germany’s ARD broadcaster, Scholz, a social Democrat said:
“I really do believe that President Biden will be successful in his bid for re-election, because he is not just an experienced politician, but also someone who really works for social cohesion in his own country,” Reuters reports.
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James E Clyburn, a US representative of Georgia and assistant Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, has endorsed Biden’s economy plan.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Clyburn wrote:
“Today, I was joined by [secretary] Pete Buttigieg to celebrate [the transport department’s] $22.7m investment in Orangeburg, SC. Together we’ll build a new pedestrian bridge, transit hub, EV charging station, connect two of our [historically black colleges and universities] to downtown, and create jobs.
This is #Bidenomics at work.”
Today, I was joined by @SecretaryPete to celebrate @USDOT's $22.7M investment in Orangeburg, SC.
— James E. Clyburn (@RepJamesClyburn) June 28, 2023
Together we'll build a new pedestrian bridge, transit hub, EV charging station, connect two of our HBCUs to downtown, and create jobs.
This is #Bidenomics at work. pic.twitter.com/1pBP6T1OCD
Clyburn’s comments come in response to the transportation department’s announcement on Wednesday of its $2.2bn for 162 transportation infrastructure projects across the USA through its Raise (Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity) discretionary grant program.
More good news from @USDOT 🛤️➡️ The @City_of_Blaine was just awarded a $9.5 million grant to begin to solve issues at the Bell Road at-grade rail crossing - an issue I heard about 20+ years ago when I arrived in Congress. #InvestingInWA02 #InvestingInAmerica https://t.co/FDuwAOGViw
— Rep. Rick Larsen (@RepRickLarsen) June 28, 2023
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Donald Trump has hit back against Joe Biden’s “Bidenomics”, saying, “Every plank of [it] hurts jobs and workers in America and rewards outsourcers and foreign producers.”
In response to Biden’s speech in Chicago, the Trump 2024 campaign released a statement, saying:
‘Bidenomics’ is the opposite of President Trump’s Historic Economy. President Trump’s Success is low taxes, low regulations, low inflation, maximizing American energy production for affordable energy, fair trade, and no job-killing globalist agreements.
‘Bidenomics’ is high taxes, crippling regulations, crushing inflation, war on American energy, soaring energy costs, job killing globalist intentional agreements like the Paris Climate Accord, and total economic surrender to China and other foreign countries. America First economics vs. America Last.
Every plank of President Trump’s economy makes it easier, more attractive for American jobs, American workers and American families in the U.S. Every plank of ‘Bidenomics’ hurts jobs and workers in America and rewards outsourcers and foreign producers.
Biden and the Radical Democrat Congress singlehandedly created the highest inflation in decades. They spent trillions of dollars and pursued the socialist joke known as the Green New Deal. Now the inflation and high interest rates that Biden caused have resulted in the Biden Banking Crisis–a disaster of historic proportions.
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The day so far
In a speech in Chicago, Joe Biden embraced the term “Bidenomics”, arguing that Americans’ livelihoods have improved under his watch, and will get even better if elected to another four years. Meanwhile, the inquiry into Donald Trump continues, with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger set to speak with investigators from special counsel Jack Smith’s office today, though the former president’s trial over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago may wind up being delayed.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Extreme heat and poor air quality are affecting millions across the United States. Follow our live blog for the latest.
Biden mixed up Iraq and Ukraine in comments before arriving in Chicago. This is not the first time this has happened, for him, or for George W Bush.
Tommy Tuberville, Alabama’s Republican senator, tried to take credit for an infrastructure bill he refused to support. Biden was not having it.
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Joe Biden could not help but make what seems like a veiled swipe at Donald Trump during his speech on “Bidenomics” in Chicago.
He was relating how, as vice-president under Barack Obama, he had several phone calls and meetings with current Chinese president, Xi Jinping during a period when he served as the deputy leader of the Chinese Communist party.
“It was inappropriate for Barack to spend that time, but I spent a lot of time, I met alone with him just he and I, and a simultaneous interpreter, 68 times, 68 hours,” Biden said, before adding, “By the way, I turned in all my notes.”
Such notes could be considered classified documents, and Trump has been indicted for allegedly storing secret materials from his time as president at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Biden, however, is also being scrutinized by a justice department-appointed special counsel after classified documents from his time as vice-president were discovered at his residence and former office. No charges have been announced in that case.
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Biden promises to 'make a break' from failed economics policies
As he wrapped up his speech, Joe Biden pledged to continue pivoting the economy away from policies he said had failed in the past, and towards “Bidenomics”.
“We’re not going to continue down the trickle-down path as long as I am president. This is the moment we are finally going to make a break and move away from economy as existed in a fundamentally different direction,” Biden said.
“Bidenomics is just another way of saying, restore the American dream as it worked before,” the president said. “It’s rooted in what we’ve always worked best at in this country: investing in America, investing in Americans because when we invest in our people, we strengthen the middle class. We see the economy grow, that benefits all Americans. That’s the American dream.”
Joe Biden also pledged to continue advocating for government programs that he was unsuccessful in getting Congress to pass earlier in his term.
“We’re investing significantly in education. I’m determined to keep fighting for universal pre-K and free community college. We’re also fighting to make childcare more affordable because we know one benefit is that it opens up significant opportunities for parents to be able to go back and join the workforce,” the president said.
Among the pillars of Bidenomics Joe Biden outlined was a promise to stop offshoring and boost domestic employment.
“I believe every American willing to work hard should be able to say where they grew up, and stay where they grew up. That’s Bidenomics,” the president said.
Biden has spent much of this speech going over his legislative accomplishments of the past two years, including the infrastructure overhaul and the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes billions of dollars to incentivize the development of clean energy and other strategies to lower America’s carbon emissions.
Joe Biden took a moment to mock Tommy Tuberville, the Republican senator who didn’t support the president’s infrastructure overhaul, but nonetheless cheered when his home state received money from it to improve broadband internet access.
“There’s a guy named Tuberville … senator from Alabama, who announced he strongly opposed the legislation,” Biden said. “Now he’s hailing its passage, here’s what he said: ‘It’s great to see Alabama receive critical funds to boost ongoing broadband efforts.’”
The president, a practicing Catholic, then made the sign of the cross.
The president is now outlining the economic approach he dubs “Bidenomics”, but wants everyone to know he did not come up with the term.
“I came into office to determined to change the economic direction of this country, to move from trickle-down economics, what everyone on Wall Street Journal and Financial Times began to call Bidenomics. I didn’t come up with a name,” he said. “I really didn’t. I now claim it, but they’re the ones that used it first.”
So just what is Bidenomics? In his words:
Bidenomics, we’re turning this around. We’re supporting targeted investments for strengthening America’s economic security, our national security, our energy security and our climate security.
Joe Biden has started off his speech with a repudiation of trickle-down economics – the theory that lower taxes and fewer government regulations will bring gains for all.
“Folks, let me say as clearly as I can, the trickle-down approach failed the middle class. It failed America, blew up the deficit, increased inequity and weakening our infrastructure. It stripped the dignity, pride and hope out of communities one after another particularly through the midwest, western Pennsylvania and the west, People working as hard as ever couldn’t get ahead, because it’s harder to buy a home, pay for college education, start a business, retire with dignity,” the president said, restating a familiar message of his presidency.
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President to hail 'Bidenomics in action' in Chicago speech
Joe Biden has arrived in Chicago and is about to start his speech on “Bidenomics”, as he will call his record on promoting employment and wage growth in the world’s largest economy over the two-and-a-half years since he took office.
“Today, the U.S. has had the highest economic growth among the world’s leading economies since the pandemic. We’ve added over 13 million jobs, more jobs in two years than any President has added in a four-year term,” the president will say, according to excerpts of his address released by the White House.
“And folks, that’s no accident. That’s Bidenomics in action.”
Follow along here for more on the speech.
Swaths of US gripped by bad air, extreme heat
Huge portions of the United States are today battling extreme heat, as well as air quality made worse by wildfire smoke.
Among the areas affected is Chicago, where reporters traveling with Joe Biden say he arrived to smoggy skies ahead of his speech on the economy scheduled to begin in about 15 minutes.
We at the Guardian have started up a live blog dedicated to following the worrisome weather conditions, and you can read it here:
Republicans gear up to attack 'Bidenomics'
Republicans in Washington are trying to steal the show from Joe Biden, ahead of his address on his economic accomplishments in Chicago set for 1pm Eastern Time.
Top lawmakers in Washington have spent this morning insisting that the president has little to be proud of. Here’s speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, summing the counterargument up in a tweet:
This is Bidenomics, folks. pic.twitter.com/Y4iG14dn83
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) June 28, 2023
Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in Senate, has a whole web page dedicated to rebutting the president’s arguments.
The economy is an issue in every presidential election, and oftentimes the biggest one out there. Expect to hear a lot about this subject from Biden’s allies and enemies as his re-election campaign goes on.
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Meanwhile, the stage is set for the president’s speech on “Bidenomics”, which will be held in a setting Batman fans may recognize, as the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
President Biden will deliver a speech on “Bidenomics” at the Old Post Office at noon. Fun fact: This entrance area was featured in “The Dark Knight” during the opening bank robbery scene. pic.twitter.com/8y5dADX9Xr
— TinaSfon (@TinaSfon) June 28, 2023
Indeed, the space where Joe Biden will speak appears to be the same area used in this scene from Batman epic The Dark Knight, around the one-minute mark.
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Twenty years have passed since the United States invaded Iraq, and the country has dropped substantially in priority among Washington’s foreign policy concerns.
At the White House and in the halls of Congress, you are much more likely to hear about China, Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, or the perennial issue of Iran than about America’s relations with Baghdad. But it’s worth remembering that before he became vice-president under Barack Obama, or president 12 years later, Joe Biden played a major role in getting Congress to approve America’s invasion of Iraq.
Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research wrote about that in 2020, in a column for the Guardian:
Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war. Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq.
“I do not believe this is a rush to war,” Biden said a few days before the vote. “I believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur …”
But he had a power much greater than his own words. He was able to choose all 18 witnesses in the main Senate hearings on Iraq. And he mainly chose people who supported a pro-war position. They argued in favor of “regime change as the stated US policy” and warned of “a nuclear-armed Saddam sometime in this decade”. That Iraqis would “welcome the United States as liberators” And that Iraq “permits known al-Qaida members to live and move freely about in Iraq” and that “they are being supported”.
The lies about al-Qaida were perhaps the most transparently obvious of the falsehoods created to justify the Iraq war. As anyone familiar with the subject matter could testify, Saddam Hussein ran a secular government and had a hatred, which was mutual, for religious extremists like al-Qaida. But Biden did not choose from among the many expert witnesses who would have explained that to the Senate, and to the media.
Then again, Joe Biden isn’t the only American president to mix up Iraq and Ukraine.
He may no longer occupy the White House, but George W Bush – the same one who ordered the US invasion of Iraq – did just the same thing last year:
That Joe Biden makes gaffes and misstatements when speaking in public is nothing new. But as he stands for a second term in office, Republicans are seizing on every mistake to press their case that the 80-year-old president is in no position to serve another four years.
GOP-aligned Twitter accounts were quick to jump on Biden this morning after he incorrectly said Iraq when referring to Ukraine in remarks to reporters. So, too, were some Republican lawmakers, like Missouri’s senator Josh Hawley:
The commander in chief https://t.co/1bc4GEBuoz
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) June 28, 2023
Bloomberg News reports this isn’t the first time he’s made that particular mistake:
Both last night at a fundraiser + then again this morning at the White House, President Biden referred to Ukraine as "Iraq" and said "my new best friend the prime minister of China" before correcting himself to say the Prime Minister of India.
— Nancy Cook (@nancook) June 28, 2023
As he left the White House for Chicago, Joe Biden shared his views on how the weekend rebellion against Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has affected his grip on the country – and also made yet another gaffe:
Reporter: “To what extent has Vladimir Putin been weakened by recent events?”
— The Recount (@therecount) June 28, 2023
President Biden: “It’s hard to tell, but he’s clearly losing the war in Iraq, he's losing the war at home. And he has become a bit of a pariah around the world.” pic.twitter.com/vW4Saha9it
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Biden set to unveil 'Bidenomics' in Chicago speech
So just what is “Bidenomics”?
According to the White House, “it’s an economic vision centered around three key pillars”, specifically “Making smart public investments in America, empowering and educating workers to grow the middle class [and] promoting competition to lower costs and help entrepreneurs and small businesses thrive.”
“While our work isn’t finished, Bidenomics is already delivering for the American people. Our economy has added more than 13m jobs – including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs – and we’ve unleashed a manufacturing and clean energy boom,” the White House said in a fact sheet distributed today, also noting the drop in inflation and rise in small business activity.
The president is scheduled to make a speech outlining these accomplishments at 1pm Eastern Time in Chicago, setting the stage for them to be a key part of his re-election campaign.
Despite all that, Biden struck a curious tone when taking questions from reporters at the White House this morning when asked about the term – which isn’t all that different from the “Reaganomics” moniker used to refer to former Republican president Ronald Reagan’s policies.
Here’s the exchange, as captured by the Hill:
Biden to reporters, "you guys branded it. I didn't. I never called it Bidenomics."
— AlexGangitano (@AlexGangitano) June 28, 2023
Q: Your team is calling it that
Biden: "The first time it was used was in the Wall Street Journal...I don't go around beating my chest 'Bidenomics' so the press started calling it Bidenomics.
More on Bidenomics-
— AlexGangitano (@AlexGangitano) June 28, 2023
Q: Do you not like it sir?
Biden: No, I like it, it's fine
The White House this week has pushed out memos and talked about Bidenomics at briefings A LOT this week, for the record...
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Joe Biden may be planning to campaign on his economic record, but polls indicate that argument may not work for many Americans.
Biden’s approval rating has been underwater for almost two years, but Americans are particularly distrustful of his handling of the economy. Consider this survey from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released last month.
Its data shows the president’s approval at a typically low 40% – but when it comes to his handling of the economy, it’s even worse, with only 33% of American adults approving of what he’s done so far.
Joe Biden is on his way to Chicago right now from Washington DC to make what his administration is billing as a major speech on his economic accomplishments, but as he left the White House, the president took time to call out a conservative Republican senator.
The target was Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, who tweeted this morning about how happy he was that his state would receive money to expand broadband access from a $42bn federal government program:
Broadband is vital for the success of our rural communities and for our entire economy.
— Coach Tommy Tuberville (@SenTuberville) June 27, 2023
Great to see Alabama receive crucial funds to boost ongoing broadband efforts. https://t.co/bLvQlSS3LH
But that program is paid for by the national infrastructure overhaul Congress approved with a bipartisan vote in 2021 – which Tuberville did not vote for.
That fact clearly did not escape Biden’s social media team, who invited the lawmaker to attend a public event with the president:
See you at the groundbreaking. https://t.co/1kJZ2h3JZW
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 28, 2023
While Donald Trump could still face charges over the January 6 attack, Reuters reported yesterday on a newly released report that shows US security agencies failed to see the insurrection coming:
A new report detailing intelligence failures leading up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol said government agencies responsible for anticipating trouble downplayed the threat even as the building was being stormed, in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
The 105-page report, issued by Democrats on the Senate homeland security committee, said intelligence personnel at the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies ignored warnings of violence in December 2020.
Such officials then blamed each other for failing to prevent the attack that ensued, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths.
Trump classified documents trial faces delay
Donald Trump has now been indicted twice, first by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for allegedly falsifying business documents, and the second time by special prosecutor Jack Smith over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. While the former president has said he will not relent from his latest campaign for the White House even if convicted, a guilty verdict on any of those charges would nonetheless be a huge development.
Yet it’s possible neither trial is resolved before the November 2024 general election, where Trump could appear on ballots nationwide, assuming he wins the Republican nominating contest.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that his trial in federal court over the Mar-a-Lago documents may be delayed until next spring:
Federal prosecutors in the classified documents case against Donald Trump have asked for a tentative trial date in December, but the complex nature of the US government’s own rules for using such secrets in court, and expected legal challenges, could delay the trial until at least the spring of 2024.
Trump was charged with retaining national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.
The statute was passed in the 1980s to protect the government against the “graymail” problem in national security cases, a tactic where the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, betting that the government would prefer to drop the charges rather than risk disclosure.
Trump special counsel zeroes in on Giuliani, Georgia secretary of state
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Special counsel Jack Smith has already brought federal charges against Donald Trump over his involvement in hiding documents at Mar-a-Lago, but his investigation of the former president is far from over. Smith was tasked by attorney general Merrick Garland to also look into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection and the wider effort to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and new details have emerged of the direction of those inquiries.
Smith’s investigators will be interviewing Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger today in Atlanta, the Washington Post reports, while Rudy Giuliani has already spoken to them, according to the Associated Press. The two men played starkly different roles in the legal maneuvers Trump attempted in the weeks after his election loss, with Raffensperger resisting entreaties from the president to stop the certification of Biden’s victory in Georgia, and Giuliani acting as a proxy for the president in his pressure campaign. We’ll be keeping our eyes open to see if more details of the investigation emerged today.
Here’s what else is going on:
Biden is heading to Chicago for a speech at 1pm eastern time on “Bidenomics” – the accomplishments in employment and wages he intends to campaign on as he seeks another term in the White House.
A judge appeared disinclined to move to federal court the case brought against Trump by the Manhattan district attorney for allegedly falsifying business records, denying the former president another opportunity to have the charges dismissed.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton will take questions from reporters sometime after 9.30am.
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