President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023, on the House floor of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is expected to spend a large part of Thursday’s State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. addressing the economy as he renews his calls for increased taxes on corporations and billionaires, eliminating student debt and highlighting the economic rebound the U.S. has had since he became president.
Biden is also expected to tout other aspects of the economic recovery such as adding nearly 15 million jobs, rising wages, an unemployment rate below 4% for the past two years and an inflation rate that is steadily dropping.
“We were in the midst of a raging pandemic. Tens of millions of Americans were unemployed, hundreds of thousands of small businesses were at risk of closing and supply chains were badly broken,” National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard said on a call previewing the SOTU.
The president is also expected to highlight his administration’s efforts to crackdown on “junk fees” across a number of sectors — from air travel, to concerts, banks, credit cards and health care and call out companies for “shrinkflation.”
Biden will also push his plans to change the tax system by repeating his call to raise the corporate minimum tax to 28% and propose a 25% minimum tax for billionaires. He will argue that the GOP plan would add more than $3 trillion to deficits over 10 years if they make the Trump tax cuts permanent, while providing tax cuts for those making over $4.5 million.
In this Sept. 21, 2023, file photo, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden welcome President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska to the White House in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The White House on Wednesday confirmed that Ukraine’s first lady and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s widow were invited to the State of the Union but declined to attend.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to provide details.
The Washington Post reported that the White House intended to seat Olena Zelenska and Yulia Navalnaya near first lady Jill Biden but that the presence of Navalny’s widow caused discomfort for the Ukrainians because of his reported past statements suggesting that Crimea, which Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed in 2014, belonged to Russia, even while condemning Putin’s aggression.
When asked how President Joe Biden is going to address foreign policy issues in Thursday’s State of the Union address and whether he’s going to press House Republicans to support more Ukraine aid, she said: “The president’s going to continue to make his case that House Republicans need to move forward. The speaker needs to put the national security supplemental on the floor.
“We know that it would get overwhelming support … we can’t let politics get in the way of our national security, so, the president is going to make that clear,” she said.
Republican presidential candidate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a campaign rally on March 4, 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Emil Lippe/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday quickly maneuvered to court Nikki Haley’s supporters moments after she ended her presidential campaign against Donald Trump, with his team projecting confidence they will be able to sway some of the former governor’s supporters as the race pivots toward the general election.
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters,” Biden said in a statement Wednesday. “I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign.”
“I know there is a lot we won’t agree on,” the president continued, adding, “I hope and believe we can find common ground” on the “fundamental issues” of preserving democracy and NATO, standing up to foreign adversaries and treating others with respect.
Trump, for his part, swiped at Haley in a social media statement after she exited the race but also asked her voters “to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”
Biden’s campaign is publicly confident they will be able to convince Haley backers to vote for him later this year in a matchup with the former president.
While history suggests otherwise — as a party’s voters often rally back to their nominee after a messy primary — Biden’s team insists that Trump is seriously vulnerable with the relative moderates and independents drawn to Haley and potentially crucial in the fall.
They point to exit polling and results from Super Tuesday in what they say is a “major warning sign” to Republicans for November.
“Donald Trump’s path is limited and his coalition is hemorrhaging,” Jen O’Malley Dillon and Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign chair and campaign manager, respectively, argued in a memo on Wednesday.
“[Trump’s] extreme agenda has lost him critical votes in suburban and exurban areas in key battlegrounds, which his primary contest with Nikki Haley has only reinforced,” they added.
Biden faces his own string of poor or mediocre polling, widespread public concerns about his age and fitness for another term and disapproval on a range of issues like the economy and the border.
But his campaign contends Trump’s fractured party is its own problem.
Exit polls show many of Haley’s voters likely don’t align with Trump’s core supporters: Across California, North Carolina, and Virginia, they gave Biden a 41% job approval rating on average, compared with 95% of Trump supporters disapproving; and 79% of them said Trump wouldn’t be fit for office if convicted of one of his 91 criminal charges. (He denies wrongdoing.)
Further, 80% of Haley voters in North Carolina, 69% in California and 69% in Virginia were unwilling to say they’ll support the GOP’s nominee whoever it is.
In her speech ending her campaign on Wednesday, Haley reminded Trump of those people.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those who did not support him and I hope he does that,” she said.
She did not endorse Trump in her remarks.
In a statement following Haley’s announcement, Biden praised Haley for forcefully going after Trump in recent months.
“It takes a lot of courage to run for President – that’s especially true in today’s Republican Party, where so few dare to speak the truth about Donald Trump,” he said.
Biden was also quick to highlight Trump’s past insults of Haley as he wooed her supporters.
“You don’t have to agree with me on everything to know MAGA extremism is a threat to this country. We need everyone on board,” he wrote in a fundraising appeal to Haley voters.
That message included a screenshot of a January social media post by Trump that went after Haley’s backers, in which he said, “Anybody that makes a ‘Contribution’ to [her] … will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them.”
Pivot to the general election
Following Trump’s near sweep on Super Tuesday — he lost only Vermont — Biden said the American people now have “a clear choice,” echoing what is expected to be his main campaign message to voters.
“Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” Biden contended in a statement.
Primary Pivot, a super PAC that was supporting Haley in the primary by encouraging Democrats and independents to cast votes for her for the GOP nomination, made its choice.
The group announced on Wednesday it would rebrand to Haley Voters for Biden.
In a statement, the group said they will target Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina, three battleground states seen as critical in the coming election.
Vice President Kamala Harris said in her own statement that their Super Tuesday victories — only losing the caucuses in the territory of American Samoa — and Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday will “serve as a springboard for the next, critical phase of the campaign.”
In the days following his speech to Congress, Biden plans to travel to Georgia and Pennsylvania, while Harris plans to be in Arizona and Nevada.
(WASHINGTON) — Seeking to spotlight national issues such as in vitro fertilization and the conflicts oversees in Israel, Gaza and Ukraine, lawmakers invited a host of guests to attend the State of the Union on Thursday, including the parents of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and the first American person born using IVF.
Members of Congress typically invite guests with specific backgrounds and stories that are important to them both personally and politically — people they want to thank, to honor or even to highlight a particular issue.
Lawmakers will be hoping to draw attention to two particular issues this year: women’s reproductive health care rights, and the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., announced in a statement that Elizabeth Carr, the first person in the country to be born through IVF, will be his guest for President Joe Biden’s annual address.
In February, the Alabama Supreme court ruled that frozen embryos were children, prompting fears about IVF’s future and other fertility treatments.
“It’s more important than ever that we commit to protecting access to IVF services nationwide,” Kaine said. “We must work to safeguard IVF so the Elizabeth Carrs of the world can continue to be born.”
The family of an American hostage being held in Gaza by Hamas (which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist group) is also expected to attend Thursday as guests of North Carolina Sens. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis.
“It is an honor to partner with Senator Budd to invite the Siegel family to this year’s State of the Union,” Tillis said in a statement. “Keith and Aviva Siegel were horrifically taken from their home and kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7th attack. While it is a great relief that Aviva has been released, we are still working to secure Keith’s freedom from Hamas captivity.”
Rep. Nanette Barragán, D-Calif., announced in a statement that health care advocate and rapper Fat Joe will be her guest. Last year, the Grammy-nominated artist came to Capitol Hill and lobbied for transparency in hospital billing in order to combat the overwhelming amount of medical debt many Americans face.
“Fat Joe’s bipartisan work to highlight the need for price transparency at hospitals, from insurers, and other parts of our healthcare system is a vital way to ensure that American families aren’t blindsided by huge bills every time after they visit the hospital,” she said in a statement.
Speaker Mike Johnson’s guests
The parents of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich will attend the State of the Union as Speaker Mike Johnson’s guests, ABC News has confirmed. A freed Israeli hostage and two New York police officers will also attend as Johnson’s guests.
“We are grateful to Speaker Johnson for inviting us to attend the State of the Union and for providing the opportunity to highlight Evan’s wrongful detention,” Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich — Evan Gershkovich’s parents — said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.
Gershkovich has been imprisoned in Russia for nearly a year on espionage charges that The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. and dozens of international media organizations have denied. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
In a statement, Johnson said “I’m honored to host Ella Milman & Mikhail Gershkovich for the State of the Union, shining a spotlight on the unjust detention of their son, Evan. The US must always stand for freedom of the press, especially in places where it is under assault. The Admin must bring Evan home.”
Johnson also invited Mia Schem, a freed Israeli hostage, to attend the annual address.
Schem, who is 21 years old, was kidnapped by Hamas after fleeing the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7 attack in Israel.
In a statement on X, Johnson said “I am proud to stand with Mia and join her in demanding the release of all hostages held captive by Hamas.”
However, despite voicing support for Ukraine and Israel, Johnson refuses to take up the bipartisan national security supplemental, which provides aid to those countries. The Senate passed the legislation last month and the White House has repeatedly pressed the speaker to hold a vote on it.
Johnson also jointly invited two New York Police Department officers: Zunxu Tian with Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., and Lt. Ben Kurian with Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y. The officers were attacked near Times Square in January.
Last month, seven people were indicted in connection with the assault on the officers.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will deliver his State on the Union address — his third — on Thursday night.
But this year, the traditional annual update to Congress and the nation could have additional significance — coming in the middle of a presidential election.
Here’s what you need to know about the speech and how to watch.
When is it?
Biden will address a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on Thursday at 9 p.m.
The State of the Union is a presidential act defined in the Constitution, which calls the president to “give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.”
Speaker Mike Johnson extended the formal invitation for the president to address Congress, which Biden accepted in January.
“In this moment of great challenge for our country, it is my solemn duty to extend this invitation for you to address a Joint Session of Congress on Thursday, March 7, 2024, so that you may fulfill your obligation under the U.S. Constitution to report on the state of our union,” Johnson’s invitation said.
How can I watch?
ABC News will air the State of the Union live, ABC News Live will stream coverage and ABC News Digital will have a live blog starting at 7 p.m.
You can also watch the speech live on the White House website as well as on its YouTube, X and Facebook pages.
What’s at stake?
The State of the Union address can be a bit of political theater, but this year it could be more consequential as Biden aims to project confidence and connect with voters in an election year.
Presidents often use the State of the Union speech to unveil new policy proposals. In 2022, Biden used the speech to announce his “unity agenda for the nation,” which included expanded health care benefits for veterans.
Earlier this week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave reporters a brief preview of what to expect, saying “it’s going to be an important moment.”
Jean-Pierre made it clear that during his State of the Union, Biden will drive home the message that his administration has and will continue to fight for lower costs for Americans.
“Our administration’s action to ban hidden junk fees will save Americans more than $20 billion a year,” Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “The president will make clear in his State of the Union that he will continue fighting to lower costs for families.”
While not going into detail, the White House acknowledged that Thursday’s address to American voters comes at a critical moment.
“He knows how important it is for the American people to hear directly from him,” Jean-Pierre said.
Biden will be taking his State of the Union message straight from Capitol Hill to the campaign trail, traveling to Pennsylvania and Georgia this weekend with two campaign remarks currently on his schedule.
Who will be there?
The State of the Union marks one of the rare times all branches of government are under the same roof. The president, members of Congress and Supreme Court justices attend.
The speaker of the House and vice president sit behind the president while he speaks. This will be the first time Speaker Johnson has sat behind the president during the address.
Invited guests also attend the event.
The White House and members of Congress typically invite guests with specific backgrounds and stories that are important to them both personally and politically — people they want to thank, to honor or even to highlight a particular issue.
Lawmakers will be hoping to draw attention to two particular issues this year: women’s rights to reproductive health care, and the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza.
This year we’re told guests include women who have fled their home states to receive abortion care; a doctor who provided abortion care for a 10-year old; the first American person born via in vitro fertilization; Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s parents; families of the hostages being held in Gaza; a Palestinian doctor and grad student who lost 35 family members in the current Gaza/Israel conflict; an advocate for radiation victims; health care advocate and rapper Fat Joe, to name a few.
Johnson has also invited two Gold Star parents who lost children in the Kabul airport bombing during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Who is speaking for the Republican Party?
Since 1966, the opposition party has a televised response to the president’s State of the Union speech. This year, freshman Alabama Sen. Katie Britt will deliver the Republican response.
Britt, the youngest female senator at 42 years old, will be a sharp contrast to Biden, the oldest sitting president in American history, Johnson said.
“She is a champion for strong families, a secure border, national defense and a vibrant economy with stable prices and opportunities for all. The American people will tune in as the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate turns the page on the oldest President in history,” Johnson said in a statement.
Britt is from Alabama — the state at the center of a battle over IVF. In the wake of an Alabama Supreme Court decision calling frozen embryos “children” and calling IVF access into question, Sen. Britt called for protecting “continued access to IVF services.”
Rep. Monica De La Cruz will deliver the Spanish language Republican address following the State of the Union.
ABC News’ Mariam Khan and Noah Minnie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump is now the last major candidate standing in the Republican presidential primary field after rival Nikki Haley suspended her own campaign in the wake of a string of Super Tuesday losses.
That means Trump has essentially clinched the Republican nomination for president in the 2024 race — though he’s still days away from winning enough delegates — setting up a rematch between himself and President Joe Biden in November.
The Republican National Committee declared him the party’s “presumptive nominee” in a statement on Wednesday.
Reacting to the news of Haley suspending her campaign, Trump took another shot at her and labeled her supporters as “Radical Left Democrats” before inviting them “join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”
Haley has argued that Trump can’t win in a general election because he’s losing too many Republican voters.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and those beyond it to support him,” she on Wednesday as she ended her 2024 bid. “I hope he does that.”
Trump has played that argument down.
“Oh they’ll vote for me again, everybody. And I’m not sure we need too many. I’m not sure,” he told reporters in New Hampshire before that state’s January primary. “I think that Biden is the worst president in the history of this country. But … they’re all coming back.”
With Haley out of the race and the general election fully in view, Trump is also pushing for an overhaul of the RNC at a party gathering later this week in Houston where current Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and the co-chair, Drew McKissick, are expected to resign from their positions, clearing the path for Trump-endorsed Michael Whatley and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, to replace them.
Donald Trump has called them “highly talented, battle-tested, and smart.”
Chris LaCivita, a Trump senior campaign adviser who is set to serve as the RNC’s chief operating officer, said his primary focus of the party committee will be election integrity, one of Trump’s central campaign issues as he continues to spread baseless claims about the 2020 race that he lost.
“Now that we get in there, this is not our first rodeo, so we have a pretty good idea of what we want to do,” LaCivita told reporters at Trump’s Super Tuesday watch party. “First and foremost it’s about putting together real ground game operations that are built around early states.”
One of the biggest advantages of Trump merging his campaign operation with the RNC is expected to be their joint ability to raise money, as both the Trump campaign and the party committee lag behind their respective Democratic counterparts that are raising together.
During the 2020 presidential election cycle, the Trump campaign and the RNC were together raising hundreds of millions of dollars a quarter, their joint fundraising operation with various local party committees allowing them to rake in north of $800,000 per donor.
Top Trump campaign officials wrote in a memo released last month that the campaign and the RNC should begin “convention planning, fundraising, strategy, and state party tactics” with the top Republican congressional campaign groups as soon as possible, as should their fight for the general election.
Lara Trump said that “every penny” of the party’s funds should be prioritized toward Donald Trump’s reelection, but his campaign insists that RNC funds would not be used to cover his legal fees — a point that has been controversial among some Republicans.
Haley has decried Lara Trump becoming a key leader of the national Republican Party, warning over the weekend that if he succeeds “the RNC now is just going to be about Donald Trump” and would morph into his own “legal slush fund.”
Several sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News that a draft resolution that would prevent the RNC from covering Donald Trump’s legal fees has died.
The resolution failed to garner enough support from enough states to bring to a vote in Houston.
LaCivita, the Trump adviser, confirmed to ABC that there was no longer a standing resolution. He also reiterated his “emphatic point” that a reworked national party would not be paying Trump’s millions of dollars in legal bills.
After Haley announced she was suspending her campaign on Wednesday morning, Trump called for Haley supporters to coalesce behind him. But over the last couple months, Trump has been disparaging Haley and her supporters, even saying Haley’s donors from now on would be “permanently barred from the MAGA world” after she continued on with her campaign after her New Hampshire defeat — though Trump’s campaign and fundraisers downplayed the comment, saying it’s not likely going to be strictly enforced.
Haley, who in recent days has suggested that she no longer feels bound by an RNC pledge that would obligate her to support the eventual GOP nominee, did not endorse Trump while ending her campaign.
On Monday, Trump said he doesn’t care if Haley is not committed to support him, going on to suggest she’s irrelevant and not newsworthy.
Trump has already been focusing much of his attention this primary cycle on President Biden; however, now with officially no big Republican challengers remaining, the Trump campaign now says their focus is “100%” on the general election.
In his attacks, Trump has taken specific aim at Biden’s immigration and economic policies, criticizing him for the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the current situation at the southern border and blaming him for high inflation. He has also made disparaging towards Biden about his mental acuity
The Biden campaign has centered its message on threats to democracy, pointing to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. In a memo sent to reporters, Biden’s campaign indicated they may make an attempt to appeal to Haley supporters who tended to be relatively more moderate or independent voters.
“Primary after primary has exposed deep divisions among Republicans to Donald Trump’s detriment — particularly with moderate and suburban voters who will be critical to victory in November,” the campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote.
Biden then reaffirmed that pitch in a statement, saying “there is a place for them in my campaign.”
Looking toward the general election, Trump will have to continue to split his time between the campaign trail and the courtroom as the first of his four expected criminal trials — the hush money case in New York — is expected to start later this month. He denies all wrongdoing.
“We’ll just have to figure it out,” Trump said outside a New York courtroom last month. “I’ll be here during the day, and I’ll be campaigning during the night.”
ABC News’ Nicholas Kerr contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Mike Johnson tells ABC News that his guests at Thursday’s State of the Union address will include Gold Star parents who lost children in the Kabul airport bombing during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
“President Biden’s hasty, unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan was a failure for America and its allies. It led to the tragic deaths of brave American servicemembers, including Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover and Cpl. Hunter Lopez,” Johnson said in a statement to ABC News, echoing election-year arguments made by many Republicans.
Johnson invited Alicia Lopez and Darin Hoover, who both lost children in combat during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Cpl. Hunter Lopez and Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover were both killed in Kabul, Afghanistan, at Abbey Gate. Taylor Hoover was the oldest of the 13 service members killed that day.
“Taylor and Hunter are great men, dedicated Marines and incredible sons who made our families proud every day. They paid the ultimate sacrifice along with the 11 others killed and 45 wounded for our great country, but more than two years since their death, the President has left us without answers,” Darin Hoover and Alicia Lopez said in a joint statement.
“As parents, we deserve transparency and we demand justice. We’re grateful to be joining Speaker Johnson at the State of the Union to commemorate our sons and demand accountability from this Administration,” they added.
Since the start of the 118th Congress, House Republicans have been investigating the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just this week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is expected to consider holding Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for allegedly failing to cooperate with a subpoena seeking documents related to the U.S. withdrawal.
Biden denounced the attack and vowed to hunt down those responsible.
The U.S. military admitted a tragic mistake occurred when a drone strike days later — against what was believed to be a car bomber — instead struck three adults, including the Afghan employee of an American aid organization, and seven children.
“We need a President who shows strength — not weakness — on the global stage,” Johnson said in a statement to ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign will host more than 200 State of the Union watch parties on Thursday in all 50 states in an effort to gin up enthusiasm as he prepares for a November rematch with former President Donald Trump.
With Republican Nikki Haley’s exit from the race on Wednesday, the Biden-Harris campaign says the general election has begun — with Biden’s State of the Union on Thursday, in particular, kicking things off.
Thursday’s grassroots watch parties, a detail shared first exclusively with ABC News, will see a presence in cities including Detroit, Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta, in the suburbs like Oakland County, Michigan, and in rural areas including Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and Douglas County, Nevada, according to the campaign.
Attendees at each State of the Union watch party can register to volunteer with the campaign.
“Voters in battleground states across the country are fired up to continue the progress of President Biden’s first term — like lowering health care costs, cracking down on junk fees and corporate greed, and creating millions of good-paying jobs — and to keep us moving forward,” said Dan Kanninen, the Biden-Harris campaign’s national states director, in a statement.
Kanninen went on to attack Trump for what he called a campaign message focused on “his own revenge and retribution” and on policies like abortion restrictions.
Trump, meanwhile — who has been hammering Biden over high inflation and immigration, among other issues — has not announced any public appearances and is expected to be at Mar-a-Lago in Florida during the prime-time event.
Jason Salus, 45, chair of the Montgomery County Democrats in Pennsylvania and the elected treasurer of the county, is set to host one of those watch parties with at least 50 guests in Norristown, outside of Philadelphia, he said.
“This will be the first focal point of the campaign when more people will start to tune in,” he told ABC News in a phone interview on Wednesday, adding that with each party’s nominees virtually selected, the nation will now “pay attention.”
The campaign agrees with that sentiment. Many Americans have not been fully tuned in to the political cycle, campaign advisers told ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang earlier this week, but they believe starts to change now.
Salus, the Pennsylvania watch party organizer, plans to offer “conversation and camaraderie” as well as soft pretzels and tomato pies from Corropolese, an Italian bakery down the road from him.
The invitation extends to Haley supporters, too, as Biden seeks to court those who were in her camp.
“The Democratic Party is a big tent party,” Salus said. “We welcome everyone who wants to get involved and learn more and celebrate the work of this president, hear about his accomplishments and his plans for the future.”
The Democratic National Committee will also be a national virtual watch party. The campaign said thousands have already RSVP’ed.
With the long general election taking shape, Biden hopes to draw a sharp contrast with Trump in the eyes of voters, including moderates and those in the suburbans who have moved away from Trump.
Biden faces his own problems, however, including persistently mediocre polling and concerns about him serving another term.
“Tomorrow evening’s State of the Union address will provide the American people with the latest example of the stark choice they will be confronted with in November,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler wrote a post-Super Tuesday memo to supporters. Tyler called out Trump for a “dark vision for this country” that he called “dangerous” and “unpopular.”
Trump likewise labeled the president “THE ENEMY” in a social media post celebrating his wins on Super Tuesday. “HE IS DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump wrote of Biden.
He said on social media that he will be reacting live to the State of the Union to “correct, in rapid response, any and all inaccurate Statements.”
The road ahead
Salus and the Montgomery County Democrats held their first event in conjunction with the Biden-Harris campaign last week when first lady Jill Biden launched “Women for Biden-Harris” with a tour through the battleground states of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin.
Joe Biden is also holding a campaign event in the Philadelphia area on Friday “to underscore what’s at stake in this election and the choice facing voters,” his campaign said in a release, what will be the first big event coming out of Super Tuesday and his State of the Union address.
Pennsylvania, the president’s home state, which delivered him enough electoral votes in 2020 to win the White House, is seen as a must-win for Democrats in November.
“We’re seeing the the early enthusiasm here on the ground,” Salus insisted. “It’s going to become more and more clear that our voters and our base is up to the up to the task of working to get the president reelected, because they recognize what he’s accomplished and they know what’s at stake.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House passed a package of six government funding bills Wednesday afternoon to avert a partial government shutdown before the Friday deadline.
The bills easily passed with a vote of 339-85 with more Democrats backing it than Republicans. The funding package now heads to the Senate, where its leaders are encouraging their colleagues to work together to pass the bills.
Lawmakers face pressure with a pair of upcoming shutdown deadlines on March 8 and March 22 — a punt from last week’s shutdown threat. Funding for programs under six of the 12 appropriations bills runs out on Friday evening absent congressional action.
If Congress is successful, these six bills will be fully funded through the end of September.
The six compromise funding bills were unveiled jointly by House and Senate bipartisan leaders on Sunday, after many months of behind-the-scenes debate over how much these bills should costs, what policy provisions they ought to include, and what cuts could be made.
The $467.5 billion appropriations package was voted on under suspension of the rules, which required a two-thirds majority to pass. That meant, once again, Speaker Mike Johnson had to rely on Democrats’ votes to pass it — a move that landed former speaker Kevin McCarthy in hot water and contributed to his ouster last year.
The package provides funding for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Energy, Interior, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development as well as the Food and Drug Administration, military construction and other federal programs.
Earlier this week, the House Freedom Caucus — a hard-line conservative group — came out against the funding package, saying in a statement that it “surrenders Republicans’ leverage to force radical Democrats to the table to truly secure the southern border and end the purposeful, dangerous mass release of illegal aliens into the United States.”
“As with other recent spending bills, it is likely this omnibus receives more Democrat than Republican support. House Freedom Caucus Members urge all Republicans to oppose both halves of the omnibus,” the group said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to try to move the bills quickly through the Senate once they pass in the House.
“As soon as the House sends the appropriations bills over to the Senate I will put these bills on the floor so we can have them on President Biden’s desk before Friday’s deadline,” Schumer said on the floor Tuesday. “But the clock is ticking and because of the State of the Union on Thursday, we need to cooperate to move extra fast to get these bills through. Between now and Friday the watch words for the Senate will be ‘cooperation’ and ‘speed.'”
Schumer said the Senate is “thankfully” off to a “very, very good start” to passing these bills. He touted the Democratic wins in the funding package.
“We passed these bills without devastating cuts or poison pill riders pushed by the MAGA right,” Schumer said. “We now have six bills that will preserve significant investments for American families, for moms and children, for clean energy, for American veterans and more.”
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said advancing the bills will be a “major step forward in one of our most basic responsibilities of government.”
“I am grateful to our colleagues for pushing sensible annual funding legislation one step closer to the president’s desk. I would certainly urge all of our colleagues to support it,” McConnell said Tuesday.
Though Congress is largely expected to pass these six bills expiring at week’s end before the deadline, there remains a funding fight looming the distance.
The other six funding bills, which lose funds on March 22, will likely prove much harder for Congress to pass. No deal has yet been struck on any compromise legislation, and, unlike some bills in the funding package being passed this week, none of the legislation in the next tranche of bills has been considered on the Senate floor.
ABC News’ Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Any voter who listened to a stump speech from former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley during her primary campaign against Donald Trump — which she just ended — was likely to hear a variation of one message: The former president can’t win in November because he’s been losing a notable minority of Republican voters.
“He lost 40% of the primary vote in all of the early states,” she said last week at a campaign rally in Minnesota. “You can’t win the general election if you can’t win that 40% [back].”
Haley was exaggerating. For example, in the 15 GOP states that voted on Super Tuesday, she has gotten less than 20% in six of them, with some ballots still being counted.
But while Trump has beaten Haley in all but two contests by double digits, he has lost approximately a third of the GOP vote — or more — in big states like Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia.
What’s more, in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont and Washington, D.C., Haley got at least 40% of the vote. She won Vermont and in Washington, D.C.
Overall, she’s received more than 30% of the Republican ballots.
Trump’s failure to win over those voters was at the heart of Haley’s rationale behind extending her campaign through Super Tuesday.
“If states like Colorado and Michigan and Minnesota want to start winning again, you have to have someone on the ticket who can win a general election,” she said last week outside Denver. “Donald Trump cannot win.”
However, extrapolating a Trump defeat in November solely based on his primary performances so far may not quite be an apples-to-apples comparison, past election cycles show.
Though Trump has other potential weaknesses, according to polls, like low favorability ratings and issues with suburban and college-educated voters, a messy primary doesn’t guarantee his general election defeat, according to historical examples and strategists who spoke with ABC News.
Both indicate that many Republican primary voters who backed someone other than Trump in the 2024 nomination race will find their way back to the Republican ballot line in November and that a third of the GOP is not forever lost to the former president, especially if Biden’s own approval ratings stay in the gutter.
“No matter what some of these voters are saying today, when the time comes and the choice becomes Donald Trump or Joe Biden, our belief is that the vast majority of Nikki Haley’s voters will end up voting for Donald Trump,” one Trump ally, who asked not to be quoted by name to speak more candidly, told ABC News after the Iowa caucuses in January.
“[It’s] very similar to how, if you recall, there were many Ted Cruz voters who in the middle of that primary claim they would never vote for Donald Trump, yet, when the time came, the vast majority of them all came home,” this person said.
Indeed, similar dynamics have played out in primaries past.
Biden famously struggled in some early states in the 2020 primary race against Sen. Bernie Sanders and others, winning only 16% in the Iowa caucuses, 8% in the New Hampshire primary and 20% in the Nevada primary before winning the South Carolina primary with still under 50% of the vote.
In November 2020, however, 94% of self-identified Democrats backed the now-president over Trump, according to exit polling.
Four years before that, Trump lost the Iowa caucuses to Texas Sen. Cruz, winning 24% of the vote to Cruz’s 28%. Trump only netted 35% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, 46% of the vote in Nevada and a third of the vote in South Carolina.
Cruz repeatedly hammered Trump over the results, saying at the time that 65% of Republicans “don’t think Donald can beat Hillary” Clinton. And he was later booed at the Republican National Convention in 2016 for failing to explicitly endorse Trump in his speech, only telling voters to “vote your conscience,” a position he later changed.
In the end, 88% of self-identified Republicans pulled the lever for Trump, the exit polling showed.
The trend is not strictly a recent one.
In the 2008 nominating race against Clinton, former President Barack Obama only won about 38% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, 37% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, 45% in Nevada and only first broke the 50% mark in South Carolina, where he scored 55%.
Clinton at the time called for unity but also hesitated to drop out once Obama began pulling away with the nomination, saying in 2008, “I want what I have always fought for: I want the nearly 18 million people who voted for me to be respected and heard” — a line that echoes Haley’s argument today.
Obama went on to win 89% of liberals in the 2008 general election, per the exit polls.
Former President George W. Bush faced similar hurdles in some states in his 2000 nomination fight, failing to break 60% in any of the earliest GOP states before winning 81% of conservatives in the general election against Vice President Al Gore, according to exit polling.
And former President Bill Clinton barely broke a quarter of the vote in the earliest Democratic primary states in 1992 before winning 68% of liberals that November, exit polls found, with independent Ross Perot taking 18% of liberals but enough Republicans as well to help Clinton ascend to the White House.
Looking ahead to the 2024 race, observers cautioned that the past doesn’t predict the future, but the well-established pattern suggests that while a party’s voters may fracture between candidates in a primary, many of them eventually decide to rally behind the nominee.
Whether enough will do so in November to return Trump to the White House remains an open question that will only be answered on Election Day.
