Obama jokingly calls Biden ‘vice president’ on return to White House
Barack Obama visited the White House on Tuesday for his first public event at the executive mansion since he left office. He participated in a celebration of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, as Joe Biden announced changes to the healthcare programme that could see as many as 200,000 uninsured Americans become eligible for new coverage.
The visit has many Democrats hoping that Mr Biden can benefit from his former boss’s still-high approval rating among the Democratic base. Mr Biden has lately struggled to raise his poor standing in the polls and there are serious worries that apathy and disappointment among Democratic voters could give an opening to Republicans in this year’s midterm elections. Mr Obama says that to win in the midterms, Democrats have a story to tell, they “just got to tell it.”
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday voted 11-11 on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The result will not stop Ms Jackson’s nomination from proceeding to the Senate floor; she appears to already have the support of 53 senators, with Republicans Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney all breaking ranks to back her.
ICYMI: Cruz bizarrely blames Biden for Ukraine war
The Republican line on Ukraine, Russia and Vladimir Putin is still somewhat unclear, but the party’s more pugilistic members are sticking to one predictable version of events: blaming the unilateral Russian attack on an American ally on Joe Biden.
Ted Cruz took that line this week on Fox News, telling Sean Hannity that Mr Biden “caused this war” by waiving sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline – which in fact never became operational.
Andrew Naughtie6 April 2022 15:20
How Fox News distorted Joe Biden’s “embarrassment” at White House yesterday
Longtime Trump-watcher Aaron Rupar, whose monitoring of the former president and Fox News has made him a must-follow over the last several years, has called out two of Fox News’s most-watched hosts for screening a misleading clip from yesterday’s White House event to smear Joe Biden as a failed, embarrassing president.
Andrew Naughtie6 April 2022 14:50
After KBJ questioning, Republicans struggle to define a woman
HuffPost has been trying to pin down Republican members of the Judiciary Committee to give their definitions of a woman. Ms Brown Jackson declined to answer that question on the grounds that she’s not a biologist – but some of the GOP-ers who’ve railed against her for holding back have struggled in response to the same question.
Here’s a particularly chaotic answer from Josh Hawley. And the full piece is more than worth a read…
Andrew Naughtie6 April 2022 14:20
Dire economic warning from major bank
Deutsche Bank has issued a stark forecast for the near future of the US economy, predicting that the country will fall into recession next year. Stocks will fall 20 per cent by next summer, says the bank, and unemployment – currently at a remarkable low – will rise by more than a percentage point in the next two years.
Coming from a bank, these specific predictions are unlikely to cut through the news cycle to everyday Americans, but the electorate’s attitude to the economy is hardly optimistic as things stand.
Andrew Naughtie6 April 2022 13:51
State Department details $100m in new funding to Ukraine
The Biden administration is stepping up its supplies of lethal aid to Ukraine, and is allocating hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding to the country’s government and military as they fight back against the Russian assault.
Below, State Department spokesperson Ned Price announces a new package of “security assistance” destined for the US’s eastern European ally.
Andrew Naughtie6 April 2022 12:50
Kyle Rittenhouse on Hunter Biden
Teenage shooter Kyle…