In a prime-time televised speech Thursday evening in Philadelphia, U.S. President Joe Biden is to speak about what White House officials characterize as “the battle for the soul of the nation.”

In the address outside Independence Hall, where the country’s Declaration of Independence was debated and adopted, and the Constitution was written by the Founding Fathers, the 46th U.S. president will discuss “how our rights and freedoms are still under attack. And he will make clear who is fighting for those rights, fighting for those freedoms, and fighting for our democracy,” according to the White House.

“It is striking President Biden is going to go there and give a speech, which is kind of an attempt to paint a big-picture view of where we are as a nation,” said prominent neoconservative political analyst Bill Kristol.

Biden should make the address — with midterm elections about two months away amid a highly polarized political environment — “not just a political stump speech, but really a more profound speech to all Americans,” Kristol said in a VOA interview. “I think it’s appropriate for the president to say, ‘Let’s step back here, and let’s be cautious about what we’re risking. And let’s be thoughtful about the way in which we conduct our politics.’”

Dartmouth University professor of government Brendan Nyhan predicts Biden will use the speech to “rally his party in advance of midterm elections that Democrats fear could go quite poorly for their side. But he’s also calling for Americans to reject the anti-democratic forces that have challenged the political system in this country.

“One of those approaches is partisan. The other one is in keeping with his role as president, as head of one of the three branches of government. I hope he can make a sober-minded case for the preservation of our democratic system.”

In recent days, Biden has been rhetorically battling Republican lawmakers, as well his predecessor, Donald Trump, and has sharply attacked the opposition party’s philosophy as “semi-fascism.”

In a speech Monday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which was mainly about gun violence, the president criticized Republican lawmakers who he said have been warning of “blood in the street” if Trump is prosecuted.

Should the former president be prosecuted for mishandling classified information, “there’ll be riots in the streets,” U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham predicted on a Fox News program on Sunday.

But Walter Shaub, a former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said Wednesday on Twitter, “If Trump doesn’t get prosecuted, it will mean the government thinks a former president is above the law, because you or I would absolutely be prosecuted for doing what he did.”

Trump, who lost to Biden in the 2020 election, is the subject of a federal investigation. He could face charges for retaining highly classified documents after he left office in January 2021 and related obstruction of justice charges, according to legal filings made by the Department of Justice.

A search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and private club in Florida by the Federal Bureau of Investigation prompted threats against the bureau’s agents. One man tried to breach the FBI’s office in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 11 before being fatally shot after an hourslong standoff with police.

“It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI, threatening the life of law enforcement agents and their families for simply carrying out the law and doing their job,” Biden said in Monday’s speech in Pennsylvania.

Trump, who is considering another presidential run in 2024, has accused the Biden administration and the FBI of targeting him for political reasons. Before that, Republicans are hoping in this November’s midterm elections to wrest control of Congress from Democrats, who control the Senate and the House.

It is unclear if Biden in the Thursday evening address will mention Trump by name. He has accused the former president and his supporters of following an “extreme MAGA philosophy,” choosing “to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate and division.”

MAGA refers to “Make America Great Again,” a slogan Trump popularized in his successful 2016 bid for president.

The stakes are high for Biden’s speech, according to Nyhan, who is also co-founder of Bright Line Watch, a watchdog group monitoring the status of American democracy.

“I believe U.S. democracy faces the greatest threat it has seen since we became a full-fledged democracy after the Civil Rights Movement [of the 1960s]. We’ve seen a violent insurrection that attempted to overturn a presidential election, and now we’re seeing threats of violence in response to efforts to enforce the rule of law,” Nyhan told VOA on Wednesday.

“Americans would be very clear-eyed about what they were seeing if they saw it in another country. And I think we need to recognize that the threat we see here at home is significant,” he said.

Trump, on his own online media platform, Truth Social, this week has continued to falsely insist he was the real winner of the 2020 election, demanding “immediately” a new presidential election — something that is not possible under the U.S. Constitution.

“What former President Trump is calling for would be an extra-constitutional step that would undermine the system of government we have in place, especially given that he was defeated in a free and fair election that has been shown to be free of the widespread fraud that he and his allies have falsely claimed,” explained Nyhan. “It is very worrisome to have a defeated president calling to be illegally reinstated in power.”

Kristol agreed, stating “it is revealing that Trump’s overheated rhetoric tosses aside one of our most basic constitutional norms.”

Unlike countries with parliamentary systems, the United States does not have snap elections.

“We don’t have votes of confidence where governments fall, presidencies fall,” noted Kristol, who was chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. “We have a presidential system with a four-year term.”

Trump contended this is justified because the FBI allegedly thwarted its own investigation into compromising information contained on a laptop of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

A whistleblower claims FBI officials instructed agents not to investigate the laptop ahead of the 2020 election, saying the bureau was “not going to change the outcome of the election again,” according to Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican senator, who this week sent a letter to the Justice Department’s inspector general demanding immediate steps be taken to investigate the FBI’s actions or lack of them regarding the computer.

“Every credible review, including by numerous judges — many of whom were appointed by Trump himself — repeatedly and emphatically rejected the claims of the Trump campaign,” Nyhan said. “There simply is no credible case against Joe Biden’s victory.”
…

your ad here

Frustrated residents in Mississippi’s state capital faced a second day without drinking water and the prospect of long lines for bottled water handouts after a neglected treatment plant failed this week.

Many businesses were shuttered again in the city of Jackson, while local schools and Jackson State University, a historically Black college, resumed classes online. Store shelves once packed with bottled water stood empty as residents waited for cases of water to be distributed later in the day.

“Jackson is in a water crisis and we do not trust what water we get to even bathe in,” said Cassandra Welchlin, 49, a social worker. She said her family of five was fortunate because they could shower at her sister’s place outside the city.

As a stop-gap measure to restore pressure to the water system, crews scrambled to install a temporary pump at the O.B. Curtis plant, which stopped operating on Monday and left the city of about 180,000 people without running water.

The plant, long plagued by inadequate staffing and maintenance problems, broke down from complications after a weekend of heavy rain and flooding, angering residents of a city that is about 80% African-American.

Mayor Chokwe Lumumba told CNN he expected water to be restored to residents by the end of the week.

Governor Tate Reeves has declared a state of emergency for Jackson and surrounding areas and called up the state National Guard to assist in efforts to bring relief to the city.

Late on Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s administration approved an emergency declaration and ordered federal assistance to supplement the state’s response. The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will coordinate all disaster relief efforts in the state, the White House said.

In addition to bottled drinking water distributed at several sites, the state trucked in 10 tractor-trailers of non-potable water and was expecting another 108 trucks in the coming days, Stephen McCraney, the state emergency management director, told reporters. The non-potable supplies are intended for flushing toilets and washing clothes.

The city is likely to see some relief with the installation of the temporary pump which would boost the plant’s capacity, which had already been boosted to 40% by an emergency team.

Even so, the system was still short of sufficient water pressure to guarantee service citywide.

Even before the crisis, the city had been under a boil water notice for the past month due to “elevated turbidity levels,” which makes the water appear cloudy. That followed a string of disruptions to the city’s water supply in recent years caused by high lead levels, bacterial contamination and storm damage.

Reeves, a Republican, has alleged that the water treatment plant suffered from years of city mismanagement, while Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has accused the state of failing to support efforts to maintain and update the plant.

Each side had been offered differing accounts of why the treatment plant failed, though they appeared to agree on significant facts by Tuesday afternoon.

The governor, who previously blamed pump failures, conceded that a scenario earlier presented by the mayor was correct: that floodwaters had entered the plant and altered the chemistry of the water. That rendered the existing treatment inadequate, forcing the plant to shut down.

Many Jackson residents say that the lack of investment in Jackson’s water infrastructure reflected the racial makeup of the city, which is more than 80% Black or African American, according to U.S. Census data.

“Extreme racist politics are being put before the people. It’s time that we put that to the side,” said Danyelle Holmes, a Jackson resident and social justice organizer.
…

your ad here

When Democrats took over the presidency and scored razor-thin majorities in both houses of Congress in 2021, the general expectation was that their hold on Washington’s levers of power came with an expiration date.

Conventional wisdom and U.S. election history suggested that in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans were likely to take over the House, the Senate, or both. 

 

Now, though, it’s beginning to look like President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats may have at least a chance to buck history and extend their control of the federal government for another two years.

To be clear, the odds are still in favor of Republicans taking over at least part of the federal legislative apparatus after the elections in November. Historically, the party of the sitting president tends to lose seats in Congress during midterms. The net loss of even one seat in the 50-50 Senate would flip it to Republican control, and in the House, the Democrats’ current nine-vote majority could easily disappear.

 

On top of that, the country is still adjusting to high price inflation, which has driven the cost of living up for most Americans. And Biden’s low job approval ratings in public opinion polls remain a drag on his party, though the approval numbers have ticked up in recent weeks. 

 

Tempering expectations 

However, a number of factors — some completely out of the Democrats’ control — have combined to boost the party’s public support, raise Biden’s abysmal poll numbers and create a sense of momentum for the party that was absent during much of the past year. Among them are a controversial Supreme Court ruling on abortion rights, a string of legislative and policy accomplishments, unexpectedly poor showings by some key Republican nominees and a decline in gasoline prices from high levels earlier in the year.

 

Democrats have even notched successes in special elections in recent months, including some in districts where Republicans were expected to perform well, leading experts to wonder if those elections presage a weaker-than-expected performance by Republican candidates in November.

 

“That sound you hear is the crash of expectations of big GOP [Republican] gains in the House this fall,” the Cook Political Report wrote last week, after a Democratic candidate unexpectedly won a House race in New York’s 19th Congressional District.

 

‘A decent summer for Democrats’ 

“It’s been a decent summer for the Democrats,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told VOA. “It looks a little bit better for them than it did.”

 

“In the House, I still think the Republicans are in good shape,” he said. “In the Senate, a couple of months ago, I thought it was really close, but that it would break toward the Republicans. I’m less sure of that now. The Senate is more of a clear toss up.”

 

In a recent Fox News interview, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel downplayed talk of a “red wave” that would sweep Republicans into power in November. 

 

“I’ve been saying forever that I hate the phrase ‘red wave,’” she said. “We have to earn every single seat in the House and the Senate to take it back.”

Roe v. Wade

One of the most significant factors at play in the midterm elections has nothing to do with the president or Congress. The decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old ruling protecting a woman’s right to an abortion, appears to have energized Democrat-leaning voters and could motivate other voters to support Democrats over Republicans in upcoming elections.

 

The decision was highly controversial — a large majority of Americans support some form of abortion rights — and was handed down by a court that is currently dominated by six conservative justices, all of whom were appointed by Republican presidents. In the aftermath of the rulings, multiple states across the country have instituted total and near-total bans on the procedure, with others expected to take similar action in the future.

 

William A. Galston, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program, told VOA that of all the factors affecting November election expectations right now, “The most important was the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the public’s reaction to that decision. It had the effect of mobilizing a lot of Democrats and independents and even Republicans who were not pleased with the decision.” 

 

He added, “All of the survey evidence that I’ve examined suggests that it’s an issue working in favor of the Democrats and against the Republicans in this cycle.”

 

The Democratic Party platform — an expansive policy document issued every four years — has long supported abortion rights. While some elected Republicans back a woman’s right to abortion, the Republican Party’s platform has consistently opposed abortion.

 

Legislative and policy victories 

Another factor working in Democrats’ favor is a string of legislative victories notched this summer after months of stalemate in Congress. In recent months, Biden has signed a bipartisan gun control measure; a bipartisan bill expanding federal investment in semiconductors and other technology; and in August, a law making the largest federal commitment to fighting climate change in history.

 

Also in August, the president announced a major policy decision that forgave student loan debt owed by millions of Americans, worth up to $20,000 per borrower.

 

Neither the laws he signed nor the student debt relief he initiated went as far as many in his party wanted, but all of them constituted victories in policy areas very important to large swaths of the Democratic Party. 

 

Inexperienced nominees 

Particularly in the battle for control of the Senate, Republicans may have hurt their own cause by nominating candidates seen by many as radical, extremely inexperienced or both. This potential problem is especially obvious in a number of states where races were expected to be highly competitive.

 

In Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans nominated Mehmet Oz, a physician and television personality with no political experience to run against John Fetterman, the state’s popular lieutenant governor. Oz has never held elected office, and only moved to the state of Pennsylvania in late 2020, seemingly to make his Senate run possible.

In Ohio, Republicans nominated J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist and author, to run against Representative Tim Ryan. Among other controversial positions, Vance has advised former President Donald Trump that if he returns to the White House he should “Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, [and] replace them with our people.” Acknowledging that such an action would be illegal, Vance called on Trump to do it anyway.

 

In Arizona, the Republican nominee Blake Masters is facing off against incumbent Senator Mark Kelly. Masters has a history of making highly controversial statements. He has endorsed the falsehood that Trump actually won the 2020 election, and he has appeared to endorse the “Great Replacement” theory, which holds that there is a conspiracy in place to dilute the voting power of white Americans through immigration.

 

All three Republican candidates have performed poorly and trail in polls. 

 

Candidate quality 

Galston said that nominating weak candidates in Senate races is much more dangerous than in House contests, where gerrymandering has made the overwhelming majority of seats safe for one party or the other, almost regardless of the nominee.

 

“Candidate quality matters a lot more in the Senate than it does in the House,” Galston said. “In the House, individuals are less well known, and it’s much more of a generic ballot, where if you’re Republican, the chances are very, very strong that you’ll vote for the Republican in the House race.” 

 

However, he added, “Senators are a lot more visible. They’re better known. And, especially if candidates are trying to win a Senate seat for the first time, how they present themselves to the public makes a big difference.”
…

your ad here

After Monday’s scrubbed Artemis launch, NASA is awaiting liftoff of its first mission back to the moon — an unmanned test flight of its new rocket and capsule system. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports on the excitement surrounding the Artemis program, which aims to one day send humans to Mars.
…

your ad here

Two top U.S. officials told VOA this week that the Biden administration is considering blocking imports from the impoverished nation of Nicaragua — a move that would deal a serious blow to the Central American country’s economy –— over U.S. objections to the increasingly authoritarian regime of President Daniel Ortega.

“There has been a dramatic deterioration of respect for democratic principles and human rights by the regime in Nicaragua, including the imprisonment of democratic leaders, members of the political opposition, students and journalists,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week. “The Biden-Harris administration finds this unacceptable and condemns these actions.”

The U.S. imported nearly $4 billion in goods from Nicaragua in 2019, according to the office of the U.S. trade representative. Top U.S. imports from Nicaragua include clothing, precious metals, machinery, meat, coffee and sugar, though it’s not clear which products would be affected by this decision.

Regardless, analysts say, it would make a big difference, as the U.S. is, by far, the biggest destination for Nicaraguan goods.

“It would mean a significant cut in financing for the Ortega regime. It would mean less money in that system to pay off the cronies that it needs to pay off in order to stay in power,” Ryan Berg, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

“It would mean less money for the security forces on the ground which comprise the police state, the day-to-day apparatus that the regime uses to keep protests to a minimum and to keep the opposition in check. And so, in short, I think this would really devastate the finances of the country,” he said.

Such a move by the U.S. could resonate in the region, said Evan Ellis, a professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

“I don’t see that this is going to restore democracy,” he told VOA, “but it is a signal to others in the region at this time contemplating following the path to dictatorship.”

The proposed import stoppage would follow a July decision to drop Nicaragua from the list of countries allowed to ship sugar to the U.S. at low import-tax rates.

Others say the administration needs to think beyond Nicaragua.

“I would go further; we need a regional approach,” Eddy Acevedo, chief of staff at the Wilson Center, told VOA. “This cannot be just purely bilateral. We need a regional approach to exert pressure on the regime to release all political prisoners unconditionally. The OAS [Organization of American States] has put together a coalition of over 20 countries that continue to condemn the Ortega regime and its abuse.

“And you know, it’s emblematic of what is going on in the region. We must stand up for values, and we must have credibility. We cannot forget that Ortega does not do this alone. The Ortega-Maduro alliance of repression, and exporting that repression across the region, is something that continues to occur,” he said, referring to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

But what about ordinary Nicaraguans, who have protested the regime at great personal risk? Cutting exports would hurt them too.

“We know — and I am sure that many in your audience also know — the argument of not adopting measures that harm the people of Nicaragua,” Guillermo Belt, a former adviser to the OAS, told VOA. “It’s a totally valid argument, but I wonder, has anyone consulted the people of Nicaragua? Has anyone asked the people of Nicaragua who suffer enormously from the consequences of the repression?”

Analysts predict that Ortega will stick to his usual script in response to a U.S. halt to Nicaraguan imports.

“What dialogue can there be with the devil?” Ortega said at a July celebration of Nicaragua’s revolution. “As Che [Guevara] said, you can’t believe the Yankees and imperialism one bit, not one bit, because it will finish you off. We would like to have good relations with the United States, but it’s impossible.”

Jorge Agobian contribute to this report.
…

your ad here