Recent polls show Americans increasingly approve of President Joe Biden’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine. Also, a growing share of Americans agree that paying more for gas because of sanctions against Moscow is worthwhile to defend another democracy. VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara reports.
Republican Governor Kim Reynolds of the midwestern U.S. state of Iowa laid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine squarely at the feet of President Joe Biden and his approach to foreign policy.
In the official Republican response to the Democratic president’s State of the Union address, Governor Reynolds offered a list of what she described as the administration’s foreign policy failures, including last year’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, which she said not only “cost American lives,” but “betrayed our allies and emboldened our enemies.”
Reynolds suggested Biden allowed the Ukraine invasion to occur by waiving sanctions on Russian pipelines while eliminating domestic oil production. She concluded that Biden and congressional Democrats were too busy “focusing on political correctness rather than military readiness.”
“Weakness on the world stage has a cost,” Reynolds said. “And the president’s approach to foreign policy has consistently been too little, too late.”
Turning her attention to the U.S. economy, the first-term governor said Biden and congressional Democrats have spent the last year “either ignoring issues facing Americans or making them worse,” specifically inflation. Reynolds said the administration was warned that “spending trillions of dollars would lead to soaring inflation, and were told that anti-energy policies would send gas prices to new heights.”
She also boasted of the approach taken by her and other Republican governors in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. This included opposing coronavirus restrictions such as vaccine and mask mandates, especially those in public schools.
She said keeping schools open is just the start of a “pro-parent, pro-family revolution” that includes banning the teaching of so-called critical race theory, which conservatives contend could further divide Americans and worsen race relations.
“Americans are tired of a political class trying to remake this country into a place where an elite view tells everyone else what they can and cannot say, what they can and cannot believe,” Reynolds said. “They’re tired of people pretending the way to erase racism is by categorizing everybody by their race.”
The 62-year-old Reynolds began her political career as the elected treasurer of a rural county, serving four terms in that office before her election to the Iowa state Senate in 2008. She was elevated to the post of lieutenant governor two years later as the running mate of Governor Terry Branstad, succeeding him in 2017 when he was confirmed as then-President Donald Trump’s choice as ambassador to China.
The Associated Press is fact-checking President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union speech as he grapples with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a stalled domestic agenda and the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of the claims we’ve examined:
BIDEN: “Severe cases are down to a level not seen since July of last year.”
THE FACTS: Biden overstated the improvement, omitting a statistic that remains a worrisome marker of the toll from COVID-19.
While hospitalizations indeed are down from last summer, deaths remain high. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID tracker shows 289 deaths on July 1, 2021. This past Monday, the CDC tracker reported 1,985 deaths.
BIDEN, on Intel’s plans for new factories in central Ohio: “Up to eight state-of-the-art factories in one place. 10,000 new jobs.”
THE FACTS: His statement is premature. That many factories are not imminent and may or may not ever be built.
Earlier this year, Intel announced it would open two factories expected to employ 3,000 people. The other 7,000 positions the project is slated to create are temporary construction jobs. It is also planning a chip foundry business that makes chips designed by other firms. Construction is expected to start this year.
Intel has raised the possibility of constructing up to six more factories over the next decade, which could bring the total number of factory workers to 10,000. But that is only a prospect, years away.
BIDEN: “The pandemic also disrupted the global supply chain. … Look at cars last year. One-third of all the inflation was because of automobile sales. There weren’t enough semiconductors to make all the cars that people wanted to buy. And guess what? Prices of automobiles went way up. … And so we have a choice. One way to fight inflation is to drag down wages and make Americans poorer. I think I have a better idea to fight inflation. Lower your costs and not your wages. Folks, that means make more cars and semiconductors in America. More infrastructure and innovation in America. More goods moving faster and cheaper in America. … Instead of relying on foreign supply chains let’s make it in America.”
THE FACTS: It’s dubious to suggest that more domestic manufacturing means less inflation.
Manufactured products made overseas, particularly in countries such as China or Mexico where wages are lower, are generally cheaper than U.S.-made goods.
Biden also places too much weight on supply chain disruptions from overseas as a factor in the worst inflation in four decades. Although those problems indeed have been a major factor in driving up costs, inflation is increasingly showing up in other areas, such as rents and restaurant meals, that reflect the rapid growth of the economy and wages in the past year and not a global supply bottleneck. Those trends are likely to keep pushing up prices even as supply chains recover.
BIDEN, asking Congress to pass measures he said would reduce gun violence: “Repeal the liability shield that makes gun manufacturers the only industry in America that can’t be sued, the only one.”
THE FACTS: That’s false. While gun manufacturers do have legal protections from being held liable for injuries caused by criminal misuse of their weapons thanks to the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, they are not exempt or immune from being sued. The law includes six exceptions where manufacturers or dealers can be held liable for damages that their weapons cause, including defects or damages in the design of the gun, negligence, or breach of contract or warranty regarding the purchase of a gun.
Families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, sued gunmaker Remington, alleging “wrongful marketing” of firearms, and last month agreed to a $73 million settlement.
Infrastructure law, part one
BIDEN on the infrastructure bill: “The single biggest investment in history was a bipartisan effort.”
THE FACTS: No, it wasn’t that historic.
Biden’s infrastructure bill was big, adding $550 billion in fresh spending on roads, bridges, and broadband internet over five years. But measured as a proportion of the U.S. economy, it is slightly below the 1.36% of the nation’s gross domestic product that was spent on infrastructure, on average, during the first four years of the New Deal, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution. It is even further below the roughly 2% spent on infrastructure in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
BIDEN, promoting his $1 trillion infrastructure law: “We’re done talking about infrastructure weeks. We’re now talking about an infrastructure decade. … We’ll build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations.”
THE FACTS: Not so fast.
The bipartisan legislation approved by Congress ended up providing just half of the $15 billion that Biden had envisioned to fulfill a campaign promise of 500,000 charging stations by 2030.
Biden’s Build Back Better proposal aimed to fill the gap by adding back billions to pay for charging stations. But Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., in December declared that bill dead in its present form because of the cost.
Administration officials now say the infrastructure law will help pave the way for up to 500,000 charging outlets by 2030. That’s different than charging stations, which could have several outlets. They say private investments could help fill the gap. Currently there are more than 100,000 EV outlets in the U.S.
The Transportation Department’s plan asks states to build a nationwide network of EV charging stations that would place new or upgraded ones every 50 miles along interstate highways. The $5 billion in federal money over five years relies on cooperation from sprawling rural communities in the U.S., which are less likely to own EVs because of their typically higher price.
States are expected to start construction as early as fall.
IOWA GOV. KIM REYNOLDS, criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of immigration and boasting about Republican governors’ attention to the issue: “We’ve actually gone to the border — something that our president and vice president have yet to do since taking office.”
THE FACTS: Not true. Vice President Kamala Harris visited the border last year. Biden hasn’t gone yet.
Harris toured a Customs and Border Protection processing center in El Paso, Texas, and met migrant children there. She also stopped by an intake center on the border and held a discussion with local community organizations.
The half-day trip in June came after months of criticism from Republicans and some in her own party over her absence and that of Biden from the border at a time when immigration officers have logged record numbers of encounters with migrants attempting to cross into the U.S.
Republican Governor Kim Reynolds of the midwestern U.S. state of Iowa laid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine squarely at the feet of President Joe Biden and his approach to foreign policy.
In the official Republican response to the Democratic president’s State of the Union address, Governor Reynolds offered a list of what she described as the administration’s foreign policy failures, including last year’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, which she said not only “cost American lives,” but “betrayed our allies and emboldened our enemies.”
Reynolds suggested Biden allowed the Ukraine invasion to occur by waiving sanctions on Russian pipelines while eliminating domestic oil production. She concluded that Biden and congressional Democrats were too busy “focusing on political correctness rather than military readiness.”
“Weakness on the world stage has a cost,” Reynolds said. “And the president’s approach to foreign policy has consistently been too little, too late.”
Turning her attention to the U.S. economy, the first-term governor said Biden and congressional Democrats have spent the last year “either ignoring issues facing Americans or making them worse,” specifically inflation. Reynolds said the administration was warned that “spending trillions of dollars would lead to soaring inflation, and were told that anti-energy policies would send gas prices to new heights.”
She also boasted of the approach taken by her and other Republican governors in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. This included opposing coronavirus restrictions such as vaccine and mask mandates, especially those in public schools.
She said keeping schools open is just the start of a “pro-parent, pro-family revolution” that includes banning the teaching of so-called critical race theory, which conservatives contend could further divide Americans and worsen race relations.
“Americans are tired of a political class trying to remake this country into a place where an elite view tells everyone else what they can and cannot say, what they can and cannot believe,” Reynolds said. “They’re tired of people pretending the way to erase racism is by categorizing everybody by their race.”
The 62-year-old Reynolds began her political career as the elected treasurer of a rural county, serving four terms in that office before her election to the Iowa state Senate in 2008. She was elevated to the post of lieutenant governor two years later as the running mate of Governor Terry Branstad, succeeding him in 2017 when he was confirmed as then-President Donald Trump’s choice as ambassador to China.
The United States stands firm behind its commitments to Taiwan and allies in the region, a delegation of former senior U.S. defense and security officials sent by President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.
Collaboration between the United States and Taiwan is stronger and more expansive than ever before, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen said during his visit to the democratic island.
Mullen is in Taiwan leading a delegation of former top officials sent by U.S. President Joe Biden. The trip is happening against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is being closely followed in Taiwan.
“The United States will continue to oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo and will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues, consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan,” Mullen told Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in a meeting broadcast live on Facebook.
“I do hope by being here with you, we can reassure you and your people, as well as our allies and partners in the region, that the United States stands firm behind its commitments.”
Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, is on alert in case Beijing tries to use the opportunity to make a move on the island, though the government has reported no unusual Chinese maneuvers.
Beijing has vowed to bring it under Chinese control, by force if necessary, and has increased its military and political pressure against Taiwan to try to force the island to accept China’s sovereignty. Taiwan has vowed to defend itself if attacked.
The delegation will also meet Taiwan Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng.
Mullen’s delegation marks the first public visit of a group of former officials to Taiwan at Biden’s behest since April 2021, when former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd and former deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg traveled there and met with Tsai.
Escalating conflict in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic and — as always — the economy, are likely to dominate President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union speech on Tuesday.
The constitutionally mandated address is the rhetorical highlight of the year for the U.S. president. Joe Biden is no exception, but this year’s State of the Union — his first, although he has previously addressed a joint session of Congress — comes at an especially fraught time.
As if to underscore that, Capitol police said Sunday that they were taking extra precautions at the site of the speech.
“Out of an abundance of caution, and in conjunction with the United States Secret Service, a plan has been approved to put up the inner perimeter fence around the Capitol building for the State of the Union Address,” said United States Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger. “I have also requested support from outside law enforcement agencies as well as the National Guard to assist with our security precautions.”
Ukraine crisis
The White House says Biden is likely, during the Tuesday night speech, to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, his wider view of the world. But press secretary Jen Psaki stressed that the situation is rapidly changing — and the president’s words may evolve before he speaks in front of legislators.
“We are in the middle of an active invasion,” she said Friday. “So I just can’t give you a preview of what that will look like in the State of the Union. As it relates to how the president views his approach to foreign policy — you know, the president ran for president wanting to return America’s seat at the world, wanting to return to a time where other leaders around the world could trust the word and the commitments of the United States, and what you have seen over the last few months, is the president deliver on exactly that.”
In the past week, Biden has delivered three speeches on the escalating crisis in Ukraine; but, in his deeply politically divided nation, analysts say Biden should expect a frosty reception when talking about what he describes as the greatest threat to global security since World War II.
“The country generally rallies behind a president when we face an international crisis,’ said Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “If you watch [Fox News TV host] Tucker Carlson, or listen to Donald Trump, or know what many Republicans in Congress have been saying, we’re not going to get that rallying around the president by a significant share of the population. The tribal divisions are there now, for even things that affect American national security.”
Recent public opinion polls indicate the president’s approval rating has dipped since the early days of his administration, when the Gallup survey reported 57% of Americans said they approved of the job he was doing. The same group’s poll conducted in the first half of February reported Biden now has a 41% job approval rating.
Trump, the former president, has been outspoken in his support of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his animus toward Biden. On Monday, Trump criticized Biden’s energy policy and said, “This war should never have started in the first place.”
Trump continues to maintain, in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise, that the November 2020 election was rigged, and said that under his leadership, the U.S. “would right now continue to have record-low gas prices, as it was under my administration, and we would be supplying the world with oil and gas.”
It’s the economy, always
Presidents typically use this speech to sell Congress on their domestic agenda and bills they want to pass. And there is one topic every president is expected to cover in the State of the Union address, says Jeremi Suri, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin.
“He will argue that the economy is growing, that unemployment is low, and that we are going in the right direction and that inflation has to do with supply difficulties and pandemic difficulties, which he is working diligently to solve, and which will be resolved soon,” he said. “And every president comments on the economy because they all want to say the state of the economy is such that we are getting richer, we are doing better than ever before. The only exceptions when presidents don’t talk about the economy are when we are at war ourselves.”
One thing that is certain: America, and the world, will be listening to what he has to say. The address begins at 9 p.m. Washington time, on Tuesday.
President Biden to use annual address to push agenda, and to discuss current hot topics including Ukraine, pandemic and economy. VOA’s Anita Powell has a preview.
If approved by the Senate, federal appellate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, will make history as the first Black woman to sit on the country’s top court.
Jackson would bring new perspective to the job, and at age 51, she may serve for decades to come. However, there is little reason to think she can do much to change the court’s conservative trajectory and ideological balance in the short run.
Still, having a Black woman on the court may affect the other justices’ thinking in subtle ways. At her 2021 confirmation hearing for the appellate court, she said, “I’ve experienced life in perhaps a different way than some of my colleagues because of who I am, and that might be valuable — I hope it would be valuable if I was confirmed.”
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Florida, Jackson graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High School. She studied government at Harvard University, graduating in 1992. She also received her law degree from Harvard in 1996.
Earlier in her career, Jackson worked as an assistant federal public defender in the nation’s capital, where she worked on appellate cases, and served as vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission for many years.
President Barack Obama nominated Jackson for a district court judgeship in the District of Columbia near the end of his first term as president, and she was confirmed in early 2013. He also interviewed her as a potential Supreme Court nominee after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.
In a statement, the White House cited Jackson’s “broad experience across the legal profession” as a reason Biden nominated her for the court.
“President Biden sought a candidate with exceptional credentials, unimpeachable character and unwavering dedication to the rule of law,” the White House said.
It added, “The president sought an individual who is committed to equal justice under the law and who understands the profound impact that the Supreme Court’s decisions have on the lives of the American people.”
Confirmation for appeals court
The Senate voted 53-44 last year to confirm Jackson after Biden nominated her to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with three Republican senators backing her.
At Jackson’s confirmation hearing last year, Republicans asked her whether race plays a role in her methodology to deciding cases. She said it did not. “I’m methodically and intentionally setting aside personal views, any other inappropriate considerations, and I would think that race would be the kind of thing that would be inappropriate to inject in my evaluation of a case,” she said without skipping a beat.
At her 2021 confirmation hearing, she connected her family’s professions — her parents worked in public schools — to her decision to work as a public defender. “I come from a background of public service. My parents were in public service, my brother was a police officer and [was] in the military,” she said, “and being in the public defenders office felt very much like the opportunity to help with my skills and talents.”
Jackson, a liberal whose nomination is supported by progressive groups, would replace another liberal, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who intends to retire at the end of the current Supreme Court term. Republicans Friday sought to cast Jackson as a pawn of left-wing activist groups.
Her ascension would do little to shift the dynamics of a court that is dominated by six Republican appointees.
In any case, new justices often take time to find their footing. In a 2006 interview with Breyer, who joined the court in 1994, he said, “I was frightened to death for the first three years.”
As Republicans impose new restrictions on ballot access in several states, U. S. President Joe Biden has no easy options for safeguarding voting rights, despite rising pressure from frustrated activists.
Unlike on other issues such as immigration or environmental protection, the White House has little leverage without congressional action as the November elections creep up.
“If there were some sort of easily available presidential power on this, others would have done it,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard Law School professor, who researches election law. “There is no significant unilateral authority here.”
Nine months before elections that will determine control of Congress, voting rights advocates are worried there’s not enough time to fend off state laws and policies that make it harder to vote. They view the changes as a subtler form of past ballot restrictions such as literacy tests and poll taxes that were used to disenfranchise Black voters, a vital Democratic constituency.
Biden did issue an executive order last March that expanded access to voter registration and election information. The order is designed to make it easier for people in federal custody to register to vote, improve tracking of military ballots and provide better access for Americans with disabilities.
But to do more than that, Biden would have to rely on obscure and controversial constitutional provisions that probably could not take effect in time anyway, Stephanopoulos said. And the further Biden were to go to push the issue of voting rights, the more he could face criticism for overstepping his authority.
“It’s very hard for a president to weigh in,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “Everything is being done at a state-by-state level.”
So while Biden may be able to take some small actions around the edges, Brinkley said, “if he tries something extraordinary, it will be tied up in the courts for years.”
Americans have grown accustomed to seeing presidents act unilaterally when they hit roadblocks in Congress. President Barack Obama resorted to a wave of executive actions branded as “we can’t wait.” He flexed his authority to increase environmental regulations and shield from deportation young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally.
There’s no equivalent legal leverage for Biden to advance voting rights policies.
Marc Morial, leader of the National Urban League, was skeptical that executive actions — which can be reversed by a future president as quickly as they were imposed by a predecessor — could be sufficient anyway.
“An executive order or an executive action is not a replacement or a substitute or even a credible alternative to legislation to protect voting rights and democracy,” he said.
But so far, legislation has not been a workable option for Democrats.
Democrats have written voting legislation that would usher in the biggest overhaul of U.S. elections in a generation by striking down hurdles to voting enacted in the name of election security. The plan would create national election standards that would trump state-level laws and restore the ability of the Justice Department to police election laws in states with a history of discrimination.
Republicans said the proposed changes were not aimed at fairness but at giving Democrats an advantage in elections. And Democrats were unsuccessful at changing Senate rules to allow the slim Democratic majority in the chamber to pass the laws on their own.
Republicans last year pushed through 33 laws creating new voting limits in 19 states, and five other states have bills that seek to restrict voting. The effort is motivated in part by a growing and widespread denial of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Republicans who have fallen in line behind Trump’s election lies are separately promoting efforts to influence future elections by installing sympathetic leaders in local election posts and by backing for elective office some of those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Democrats and voting rights advocates are looking to the Justice Department as their best chance to ensure elections are free and fair. But there’s a political divide over what “free and fair” means in a country where millions believe false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
The department has lawyers dedicated to enforcing civil voting statues, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has made it a priority.
But the department is limited in what it can do, following a 2013 Supreme Court decision that dismantled part of the civil rights-era Voting Rights Act, which required states with a history of discrimination to get approval for changes to election laws.
Separately, the Justice Department also has a role in ensuring fair elections but that, too, has been complicated by politics in recent years.
There has been increasing skittishness among election administrators over the department’s role after then-Attorney General William Barr told prosecutors to investigate election fraud claims before the 2020 election was certified. Barr cited concern over potential widespread voter fraud because of an increase in mail ballots during the pandemic, but he later declared there had been no widespread fraud.
Garland’s Justice Department has sued Georgia over the state’s new election law, alleging Republican state lawmakers rushed through a sweeping overhaul with an intent to deny Black voters equal access to the ballot. The Justice Department has also brought a suit against Texas over its newly-drawn congressional districts.
But the Supreme Court this past week signaled a willingness to side with the GOP on such issues.
The high court put on hold a lower court ruling that Alabama must draw new congressional districts before the 2022 elections to increase Black voting power. The court’s action means the upcoming elections will be conducted under a map drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled Legislature that contains one majority-Black district in a state in which more than one-quarter of the population is Black.
The three-judge lower court, which includes two judges appointed by Trump, had ruled that the state had probably violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson said the Supreme Court has undercut the ability of the federal government to protect voting rights, and he still believes the best chance for long-term change is to get legislation through Congress.
“The Justice Department is doing as much as they can with one hand tied behind their back,” he said. He noted the Voting Rights Act only became law after previous attempts failed.
“We don’t stop because the first attempt didn’t work.”
As he struggled to survive the 2020 Democratic primary, Joe Biden made a striking pledge before voting began in heavily African American, must-win South Carolina: His first Supreme Court appointment would be a Black woman.
On Thursday, with his poll numbers reaching new lows and his party panicking about the midterm elections, Biden turned again to the Democratic Party’s most steadfast voters and reiterated his vow to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer with the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
The striking promise is a reflection of Black women’s critical role in the Democratic Party and the growing influence of Black women in society. It’s also a recognition that Black women have been marginalized in American politics for centuries and the time has come to right the imbalance of a court made up entirely of white men for almost two centuries, a change Biden said Thursday is “long overdue.”
Black women are the most loyal Democrats — 93% of them voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.
And it’s Black women’s reliability as Democratic voters that makes it so important for the party to respond to their priorities and keep them in the fold, said Nadia Brown, a professor of government at Georgetown University. “Democrats know Black women are going to turn out for them so they have everything to lose if they don’t do this.”
Black women turned out to vote for Biden in greater numbers than for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and they were vital in Biden’s wins in states like Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Overall, they made up 12% of Biden’s voters and reached even higher percentages in heavily African American states like Georgia, where they represented 35% of his support. In that state, which Biden won by just over 12,000 votes, he earned the backing of 95% of Black women.
Biden, in particular, owes Black voters, and especially women, a debt from the primaries. His campaign was on life support before South Carolina’s primary in late February 2020, when he secured the endorsement of Rep. James Clyburn, the kingmaker of the state’s Democratic political orbit, by pledging to select a Black woman for the Supreme Court.
“His campaign was struggling,” Clyburn recalled on Thursday, citing Biden’s three straight losses in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. “This was quite frankly do or die for him, and I urged him to come out publicly for putting an African American woman on the Supreme Court.”
Biden already made a fundamentally important statement about the importance of Black women in his coalition by selecting Kamala Harris as his vice president. But putting a Black woman on the court is another historic step. Republican Ronald Reagan, in his 1980 presidential campaign, vowed to put the first woman on the Supreme Court and nominated Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once in office.
But Biden’s pledge also responds to issues Black women care about, said Glynda Carr, president of Higher Heights For America PAC, which advocates for Black women in politics. “Black women are very in tune with knowing the court is important to our daily lives,” said Carr, citing big cases on voting rights and abortion.
The decision isn’t just a win for Black women but for all voters concerned with ensuring that government reflects the actual population, said Tom Bonier, a Democratic data analyst. As such, he said, it should rally Democrats of all races.
“To the extent that Biden, at this point, is suffering from lower approval ratings, part of his challenge is just reassembling his coalition and reminding those voters who sent him to the White House why that vote mattered,” Bonier said.
Biden’s early discussions about a successor to Breyer have focused on U.S. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss White House deliberations.
Childs is a favorite of Clyburn. The House majority whip said Thursday that she had “everything I think it takes to be a great justice.”
The robust roster of Black women for the Supreme Court is a testament to their growing professional progress over the past few decades, experts say. Black women — like women of all races — have been increasingly likely to earn college degrees over the past two decades. Although they still lag in other crucial categories such as pay, the court seat is another milestone.
“We could not have imagined the sheer number of overqualified women a few decades ago,” Brown said.
The nomination of a Black woman is also significant for Black men, said Adrianne Shropshire of BlackPAC, a political organization that tries to elect more Black Democrats. That’s in part because the current sole African American on the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas, is a conservative Republican whose decisions often go against the desires of the heavily Democratic Black community.
While Black men are not quite as Democratic as Black women, they still overwhelmingly back the party — 87% voted for Biden in 2020, according to AP VoteCast.
Still, Shropshire warned, a Supreme Court appointment is only one step in ensuring Black voters are motivated in 2022 and beyond.
“For Black folks in the country, the thing that looms largest is, are their daily lives changed?” Shropshire said. “For the president — and the vice president — it is going to be more than this appointment.”
“I don’t think it’s helpful for people to say, ‘Well, the one thing we got is a nomination on the Supreme Court,'” Shropshire added.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden have finally added the long-promised cat to their pet family.
Her name is Willow, and she’s a 2-year-old, green-eyed, gray and white farm cat from Pennsylvania.
“Willow is settling into the White House with her favorite toys, treats, and plenty of room to smell and explore,” said Michael LaRosa, the first lady’s spokesperson.
Jill Biden had said after Joe Biden was elected in November 2020 that they would bring a kitty to the White House, but her arrival had been delayed. Last month, the White House said the cat would come in January.
The first lady named Willow after her hometown of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.
The short-haired tabby made quite an impression on Jill Biden after jumping up on stage and interrupting her remarks during a 2020 campaign stop in Pennsylvania, LaRosa said.
“Seeing their immediate bond, the owner of the farm knew that Willow belonged with Dr. Biden,” he said.
The White House hasn’t had a feline resident since India, President George W. Bush’s cat.
Willow joins Commander, a German shepherd puppy Joe Biden introduced in December as a birthday gift from the president’s brother James Biden and his wife, Sara.
The Bidens had two other German shepherds, Champ and Major, at the White House before Commander.
But Major, a 3-year-old rescue dog, started behaving aggressively after he arrived in January 2021, including a pair of biting incidents. The White House had said Major was still adjusting to his new home, and he was sent back to the Bidens’ Delaware home for training.
The Bidens, after consulting with dog trainers, animal behaviorists and veterinarians, decided to follow the experts’ collective recommendation and send Major to live in a quieter environment with family friends, LaRosa said last month.
Champ died in June at age 13.