Politics

(VILNIUS, Lithuania) — Turkey is dropping its opposition to Sweden’s bid to join NATO, a big development on the eve of the alliance’s 74th annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The announcement was applauded by President Joe Biden and comes a day after he spoke with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about U.S. F-16s for Ankara, although any direct connection was unclear.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced Monday an agreement was reached between him, Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

Stoltenberg called it a “historic step” that will strengthen NATO allies.

Biden, who was vocal in supporting Sweden’s membership, was quick to celebrate the breakthrough.

“I welcome the statement issued by Türkiye, Sweden and the NATO Secretary General this evening, including the commitment by President Erdogan to transmit the Accession Protocol for Sweden to Türkiye’s Grand National Assembly for swift ratification,” Biden said in a statement.

“I stand ready to work with President Erdogan and Türkiye on enhancing defense and deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area,” he continued. “I look forward to welcoming Prime Minister Kristersson and Sweden as our 32nd NATO Ally. And I thank Secretary General Stoltenberg for his steadfast leadership.”

According to a press statement from NATO, Erdogan agreed to quickly send Sweden’s accession protocol to Parliament in exchange for new commitments on terrorism and economic cooperation, including the establishment of a special coordinator for counter-terrorism within NATO.

The Nordic nation’s bid also faced opposition from Hungary. Unanimous approval from all member nations is needed in order to join the organization.

Stoltenberg said Monday Hungary has made it clear it will not to be the last to ratify Sweden’s application, and believes “that the problem will be solved.”

Biden pushed for Sweden to be part of the alliance in an Oval Office meeting with Kristersson last week.

“The United States fully, fully, fully supports Sweden’s membership in NATO,” Biden told the prime minister. “And the bottom line is simple: Sweden is going to make our alliance stronger and has the same value set that we have in NATO. And I’m really anxiously looking forward for your membership.”

The president also conveyed his desire for Sweden’s bid to be approved in a call with Erdogan on Sunday, the White House said.

The two leaders also discussed the delivery of American F-16 fighter jets to Turkey during the call, which lasted 45 minutes to an hour, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

Sullivan didn’t provide a direct answer when asked if Biden’s willingness to provide the equipment was a quid pro quo in exchange for Turkey allowing Sweden to join NATO.

“President Biden has been clear, consistently, that he believes that for the alliance and for the U.S.-Türkiye bilateral relationship moving forward with the sale makes sense. It’s in our interest,” Sullivan said. “He also believes that Sweden becoming a member of NATO is very much in our interests. And we should do both of these things. And doing both of these things would give real impetus and momentum to NATO and to the bilateral relationship between the US and Türkiye.”

Biden arrived in Lithuania on Monday after a stop in London, where he met with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and King Charles III. He and Erdogan are slated to meet on Tuesday morning in Vilnius.

The NATO summit is expected to center on continued aid for Ukraine as its launched its counteroffensive against Russian invaders.

-ABC’s Fritz Farrow and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Gen. David Berger stepped down as commandant of the Marine Corps Monday, but had no permanent successor to hand off to, leaving the service without a Senate-confirmed leader for the first time since 1910.

The lapse in command is because Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is blocking senior military nominations in protest of a Pentagon abortion policy.

“I know that everyone here is looking forward to the rapid confirmation of a distinguished successor to Gen. Berger,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during what was called a “relinquishment of command” instead of a “change of command” ceremony. “It’s been more than a century since the U.S. Marine Corps has operated without a Senate-confirmed commandant.”

For now, President Joe Biden’s pick to be the Marines’ new service chief, Gen. Eric Smith, will step in as acting commandant. Smith will have to balance his new responsibilities with those of his current role as assistant commandant until he is confirmed.

Speaking after Austin at the Washington, D.C., Marine Barracks, Berger implored the Senate to confirm his successor, but did not appeal to Tuberville by name.

“I’m with you, Mr. Secretary. We need the Senate to do their job so that we can have a sitting commandant that’s appointed and confirmed. We need that house to be occupied,” he said, gesturing to the commandant’s residence.

In December 2022, Tuberville pledged to block all senior military and civilian Department of Defense nominations over a new Pentagon policy that covers the travel costs of service members seeking abortions in states outside of where they are stationed if they are based in a state that bans the procedure.

Before the policy was implemented, Tuberville concluded a letter to Austin saying, “it is my conviction that this proposed policy change is illegal, circumvents Congress, and exceeds your authority.”

“Hundreds of well-qualified military leaders are now being held up by Sen. Tuberville,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday.

As of Friday, 265 nominations have been impeded, according to Singh.

Tuberville’s efforts could also slow the nomination of America’s next top military officer.

Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Biden’s pick to replace Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will face Tuberville and the other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee at a confirmation hearing Tuesday. If Tuberville doesn’t relent or if no workaround is exercised by the time Milley retires at the end of September, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will step up in an acting capacity.

As a result of the delays, the DOD is asking some officers to delay retirement, and asking others to assume more senior duties without being promoted, meaning they will not see a corresponding pay increase until confirmed by the Senate, according to Singh.

Tuberville’s tactic has been met with criticism not just from the Biden administration and Senate Democrats, but members of his own party. In May, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “No, I do not support putting a hold on military nominations.”

“The longer these unprecedented holds remain, the greater risks the department runs in experiencing knowledge and expertise gaps in certain critical and often difficult to fill positions, and the downstream effects will continue to impact the readiness of the force,” Singh said. “We urge Sen. Tuberville to lift his hold, and urge the Senate to confirm these exceptional general and flag officers.”

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(WASHINGTON) — John Kirby, the spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council, on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s decision to send controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine despite the weapons’ risk to civilians — and numerous other countries forbidding their use.

In an interview with ABC This Week co-anchor Martha Raddatz, Kirby also addressed a newly revealed meeting between former American officials and Russia’s top diplomat earlier this year.

On cluster munitions, he insisted that Ukraine will seek to limit the impact of the bombs off the battlefield and said that keeping Russia from winning the war there will be the greatest thing the U.S. can do to protect non-combatants.

“I think we can all agree that more civilians have been and will continue to be killed by Russian forces — whether it’s cluster munitions, drones, missile attacks or just frontal assaults — than will likely be hurt by the use of these cluster munitions fired at Russian positions inside Ukrainian territory,” he said.

Kirby explained that the cluster munitions are being supplied now to make up for how quickly Ukrainian forces are using up their other artillery, at a rate of “many thousands of rounds per day.”

“This is literally a gun fight. … They’re running out of inventory,” he said. “We are trying to ramp up our production of the kind of artillery shells that they’re using most. But that production rate is still not where we wanted it to be.”

“So you’re sending those cluster munitions because we don’t have enough of the kind of munitions they need?” Raddatz clarified.

“That is right,” Kirby said.

He also suggested the bombs are intended to be temporary, “to help bridge the gap as we ramp up production of normal … artillery shells.”

The decision to provide the munitions comes as Ukraine’s new counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion moves more slowly than hoped, with Kyiv’s allies looking for ways to expedite the process of retaking occupied territory.

Cluster munitions are fired on a position and drop explosive bomblets over a wider area, raising the risk that unexploded ordinance can essentially turn into land mines, sitting in the ground long after being fired and able to be stumbled upon by civilians.

More than 120 countries have said they won’t use or make cluster munitions and U.S. allies like Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom have reiterated they won’t provide such weapons to Ukraine even though the U.S. is.

On This Week, Raddatz pressed Kirby about why America hasn’t banned the bombs.

He didn’t answer directly, instead saying, “We are very mindful of the concerns about civilian casualties and unexploded ordnance being picked up by civilians or children and being hurt. Of course, we’re mindful of that. And we’re going to focus with Ukraine on de-mining.”

He and other officials have maintained that the munitions will have a very low “dud rate” of unexploded bomblets.

Raddatz also pressed Kirby on the appropriateness of a meeting in April between former senior U.S. national security officials, including former diplomat and outgoing Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, and senior Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Kirby said the U.S. government was not involved in the talks but was generally aware of them, the first such public acknowledgment of this.

“We weren’t passing messages through them. We weren’t setting the stage for them,” he said. “We weren’t encouraging those discussions or engendering them in any way.”

Raddatz followed up: “Shouldn’t Ukraine have known about those meetings as well?” She also noted that “the Ukrainian officials I’ve talked to since then are not happy about that.”

Kirby said it “is not unusual for people … or other private entities to have discussions with Russian officials about any range of issues” but said, “The president has been adamant: There’ll be nothing said about Ukraine about ending this war without Ukraine at the table. So, I can understand the angst and concern about this. But again, I want to assure the United States government was not behind these talks.”

News of the talks, which broke last week, came just before President Joe Biden headed to Europe on Sunday, first to the U.K. and then to a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Ukraine’s membership is expected to be discussed.

Kirby said NATO will continue to support Ukraine but that Kyiv must implement economic and political reforms before joining the alliance — though it will continue to enjoy support from NATO in its fight against Russia until that happens.

That support includes F-16 fighter jets, which Ukraine has been pushing for but aren’t expected to arrive until the end of the year.

“We’re going to be working with some allies and partners to get the F-16 pilots the pilot training going very, very soon,” Kirby said, “and we’re going to work to get those jets to Ukraine just as quickly as possible.”

Kirby said the summit will show no cracks in the countries rallied to Ukraine.

“You’re going to see commitment by all the allies to continue to support their efforts to succeed on the battlefield. You’re also going to see from all the allies a concerted, unified approach to making it clear that NATO is eventually going to be in Ukraine’s future,” he said, “and that in between the time of the war ending and that happening, that the allies will continue to help Ukraine defend itself.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden begins a five-day swing through Europe on Sunday with a focus on NATO gathering later this week in Lithuania, as allied countries look to boost support for Ukraine and the possibility of Sweden’s approval to join the military alliance.

“We’re looking forward to a busy week in Europe. And we’re looking forward to the president being able to further solidify, strengthen and give momentum to the strong united alliance that has been standing up so effectively against Russian aggression,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters Friday afternoon.

The president begins his trip in London, where he will meet King Charles III at Windsor Castle on July 10, the first time Biden will meet with the king since his coronation. First Lady Jill Biden represented the United States at the coronation with their granddaughter Finnegan in May.

“While in London, he will meet with King Charles at Windsor Castle and engage with a forum that will focus on mobilizing climate finance especially bringing private finance off the sidelines for clean energy deployment and adaptation in developing countries,” Sullivan said Friday.

Biden is also expected to meet with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — the sixth time the leaders will meet in the past six months. They last met at the White House in June.

From London, Biden heads to Vilnius, Lithuania, to attend the 74th NATO summit — which is expected to center around the alliance’s support for Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.

“Ukraine will not be joining NATO coming out of this summit,” Sullivan stressed, but he added there will be discussion of “what steps are necessary as it continues along its path.”

“Vilnius will be an important moment on that pathway towards membership because the United States, our NATO allies and Ukraine will have the opportunity discuss the reforms that are still necessary for Ukraine to come up to NATO standards. So, this will, in fact, be a milestone. But Ukraine still has further steps it needs to take before membership in NATO,” Sullivan added.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive is underway and has allowed their forces to regain territory in the southeast, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he’d like it to be accomplished sooner. He’s repeatedly asked the U.S. for F-16 fighter aircraft, which he says would give them an “opportunity to move faster.”

The Biden administration had resisted that request but is now working with allies to train Ukrainians on F-16s and eventually help get them jets for the war.

The NATO summit also takes place with an additional member, Finland, after being approved in April, and a lingering question of whether Turkey and Hungary will drop objections to Sweden joining the alliance.

Biden met with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson at the White House on Wednesday, calling the country a “capable and committed partner” for the U.S. and repeating his call for them to join NATO.

“The United States fully, fully, fully supports Sweden’s membership,” he said, adding that they would “make our alliance stronger.”

In order to expand the military alliance, there must be unanimous approval of all members. Turkey has delayed their ascension, accusing Sweden of being soft on terrorists groups, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Biden wraps his trip on Thursday, July 13, in Helsinki, Finland, for a U.S.-Nordic leaders summit.

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(CHICAGO) — The agency that is responsible for Chicago police oversight said Friday it is investigating allegations of sexual misconduct involving police officers and a migrant at a police station.

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability said in a statement that the investigation involves members of the CPD assigned to the 10th District and “a migrant temporarily housed at the police station.”

A spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department confirmed its Bureau of Internal Affairs is also investigating the allegations, but declined to say if the officers remain on active duty.

“We want to assure the public that all allegations of this nature are of the highest priority and COPA will move swiftly to address any misconduct by those involved,” said COPA First Deputy Chief Administrator Ephraim Eaddy in a statement.

“In compliance with the Consent Decree, COPA has jurisdiction to conduct the administrative investigations of sexual misconduct allegations involving Chicago Police officers and we are obligated to demonstrate our commitment to objectivity, integrity, and transparency when responding to misconduct. COPA’s purpose and core mission, under the Chicago Municipal Code, is to conduct independent, fact-finding administrative investigations into the most sensitive allegations of police misconduct on behalf of the public,” the statement continued.

The Chicago Police Department entered into a consent decree in 2019 to reform policing in Chicago that would focus on accountability, transparency, training and use of force among other tenets.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office issued a statement saying among other allegations being investigated, one officer is accused of sexual misconduct against a minor.

“The Johnson administration remains intensely focused on the deeply troubling allegations of sexual misconduct by a Chicago Police Department officer against a minor new arrival, and other allegations of sexual misconduct in the Chicago Police Department’s 10th District,” the mayor’s office said in a statement Friday.

At a city council hearing in June, Johnson’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Dr. Cristina Pacione-Zayas, told council members around 11,000 migrants had arrived in Chicago since last August. Some have been bussed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as part of his controversial efforts to send migrants to sanctuary cities. The city has been housing migrants at emergency shelters and other facilities across the city.

Pacione-Zayas told city council members there were about 650 migrants temporarily housed at police station on June 28.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden didn’t mince words when it comes to his efforts to crack down on short-term health plans, calling them “a scam” and saying they can leave Americans “played for a sucker.”

“You know, in America, it sounds corny, but is fairness something we kind of expect. And I don’t know anybody who likes having been used, having been played for a sucker, taken advantage of. People are ready to meet their responsibilities. But, I think this is a big deal,” Biden said.

He criticized the Trump administration, saying it let the short-term plans grow unchecked.

“The prior administration before me decided to let insurance companies make more money by selling junk plans that are up to three years long, up to three years long. Americans thought they were buying temporary insurance that would provide real coverage in those plans. Instead, many have been saddled with thousands of dollars in medical bills these junk fees don’t cover. And I think it is outrageous,” Biden said.

The effort to save Americans money on junk fees and healthcare costs, Biden said, is “Bidenomics in action.” He also took the opportunity to reference today’s jobs report as another example of the success of his “Bidenomics” plan.

“But today’s job shows that I think — jobs report I think shows Bidenomics is working. We added 200,000, I think 209,000 jobs last month. And all told we’ve created over 13 million [Applause] — I think it’s 13, 300,000 jobs in 2.5 years, that’s more than any president has created in a four-year term. And folks, the unemployment rate is below 4% for 17 straight months,” Biden said.

“Not since 1960 has that occurred. Inflation continues to fall, less than half of what it was one year ago. And the range of Americans without health insurance is at an all-time low,” he added to applause.

The president also touched on other efforts his administration is undertaking try to help combat high healthcare, like combatting surprise medical bills and looking into medical credit cards and loans that could leave people with medical debt in a worse situation if they don’t understand the terms fully.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden has decided to send U.S. stocks of cluster munitions to Ukraine amid its fight against Russia, defending the controversial move as urgently needed.

The weapons are part of a new military aid package worth up to $800 million.

The additional assistance comes as Ukraine pushes to recapture territory seized by Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told ABC News the counteroffensive was “going to plan” but he’d like to see progress happen even faster.

Zelenskyy said any needed equipment supplied to Ukraine will help his troops “to move faster, to save more lives, to stand our ground for a longer time.”

But the decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine isn’t without concern, as human rights groups cite the danger they pose to civilians and numerous countries have banned them for more than a decade.

“We recognize cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordinance,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters. “This is why we deferred the decision for as long as we could. But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery. That is intolerable to us.”

Biden on Friday also defended the action as necessary, telling ABC News’ Elizabeth Schulze Ukraine is “running out of ammunition.”

Still, the president told CNN it was a “difficult decision” to make.

Here’s what to know about the weapons.

What are cluster munitions?

Cluster munitions scatter unguided submunitions, or bomblets, as small as 20 kilograms over a large area, maybe the size of several football fields. The U.S. last used them during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The weapons can be fired from aircraft or from the ground. Depending on the type used, anywhere from dozens to 600 bomblets may be released at a time, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“These types of weapons are extremely dangerous,” said Richard Weir, a senior researcher in the Crisis and Conflict Division at Human Rights Watch. Weir noted there are various kinds of submunitions, some are designed to penetrate armor or concrete while others are made to unleash as many fragments as possible against troops.

A U.S. defense official told lawmakers last month they believed such weapons “would be useful” for Ukraine, “especially against dug-in Russian positions on the battlefield.”

But cluster munitions also pose significant risk to civilians as they are indiscriminately spread out over an area, and some release bomblets that fail to explode upon impact and can detonate much later — even decades later.

“These are very nasty, destructive weapons for use on the battlefield,” Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, told ABC News. “They are also particularly harmful for friendly soldiers as well as civilians after a conflict is over because the cluster munitions of all kinds have a failure rate.”

The Pentagon said Friday they will send their most modern dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICMs) that have a failure rate or “dud rate” of 2.35% or less. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said they have hundreds of thousands of those rounds available.

Kahl contrasted that figure with the failure rate of the cluster munitions being used by Russia against Ukraine, which he said is somewhere between 30 to 40%.

But Kimball said those working in the arms control field believe the failure rate of those munitions “in the U.S. stockpile are probably higher when it comes to actual wartime conditions.”

When asked if the dud rate studies conducted by the Department of Defense on the munitions being sent to Ukraine will be made public, Kahl said those reports are classified but they have “high confidence” in the numbers.

Why are they controversial?

More than 100 countries have essentially banned cluster munitions. Governments that signed onto the “Convention on Cluster Munitions” in 2008 committed to never using, producing or stockpiling cluster munitions.

Russia, Ukraine and the United States did not sign the treaty, though most NATO nations did.

“They can injure or kill people who are just going about their daily lives — children playing in playgrounds, people tending to their land,” Weir told ABC News.

“In that sense, they act just like landmines,” Weir said. “So it’s the severe civilian harm associated with these weapons that makes them so controversial.”

Officials said Ukraine gave assurances to minimize the risk to civilians, including a pledge not to use them in urban areas, and will commit to post-conflict demining efforts to find any undetonated munitions that pose a threat.

“I’m as concerned about the humanitarian circumstance as anybody, but the worst thing for civilians in Ukraine is for Russia to win the war,” Kahl said. He added that the U.S. will monitor how the systems are being used and whether the Ukrainian assurances are being met.

Human Rights Watch previously called on both Russia and Ukraine to stop using cluster munitions.

Weir said cluster munitions were involved in one of the worst incidents of civilian casualties during the war so far: the attack on the Kramatorsk train station in April 2022. At least 50 people died and more than a hundred were injured, ABC News reported at the time.

“That tore people’s bodies apart and injured people all around the train station,” he said. “But this plays out again and again and again in regions all over Ukraine where there’s fighting and where we’ve documented the use of various types of submunitions.”

-ABC’s Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

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(JOHNSTON, Iowa) — Casey DeSantis, the wife of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, made her solo campaign debut on Thursday — appearing in an intimate setting where she talked about her life as a parent and politician’s spouse while stressing how moms like her could be a political force.

The event in Johnston, Iowa, was the latest example of how Casey DeSantis is deploying herself on the trail in support of her husband, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination over Donald Trump.

A former TV journalist, Casey DeSantis has increasingly been put in front of voters to advocate for the governor.

“As long as I have breath in my body, I will go out and I will fight for Ron DeSantis,” she said. “Not because he’s my husband. That is a part of it, but it’s because I believe in him in every ounce of my being. If you want somebody to go up to Washington, D.C., to clean house, to be able to put this country back on a trajectory where we are talking about our rights coming in from our creator and our government being put in place to protect our rights that are ours — he is the man to do it.”

“And if I have to crisscross this country,” Casey DeSantis said, “I’ll do it.”

She previously joined her husband during the official kickoff of his presidential campaign in May and has attended every single campaign event with him in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — giving her own remarks at a majority of them. She is reportedly also a close adviser of her husband.

As Florida’s first lady, she focused on issues including breast cancer awareness, parents’ involvement in the classroom and a push, she has said, to “reframe mental health education to focus on resiliency.”

Appearing alongside Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in the crucial primary early voting state, Casey DeSantis on Thursday kicked off the newest iteration of “Mamas for DeSantis,” which the DeSantis campaign says will mobilize mothers, grandmothers and parents to help elect Ron DeSantis.

The campaign boasts that the group is envisioned to be the largest mobilization of parents in the country’s political history.

Casey DeSantis first launched the group in 2022, during the governor’s reelection campaign in Florida.

Invoking similar language as her husband, she said Thursday that the “Mamas” would work “to protect the innocence of our children and to protect the rights of parents.”

She also spoke about her initiative “Hope Florida,” started in 2021 “to guide Floridians on an individualized path to prosperity” and “economic self-sufficiency” with aid from private communities and religious groups as well as the government and nonprofits, as the governor’s described it at the time.

During the Thursday event, Casey DeSantis shared stories from her home life with three children and how she grappled with health worries after being diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2021, for which she underwent chemotherapy and surgery.

She spoke candidly about her fears as a mom — and linked it to her husband’s campaign themes.

“There was a time in my life where I didn’t know if I was gonna see my kids graduate from kindergarten, let alone high school,” she said.

“And I’ll tell you what, when you go through something like that and you’re in the middle of the night, scared, and you don’t know what’s going to happen … you crawl into bed with your kids, and you’re getting hope for tomorrow that you can have some more time with them,” she said. “And then you realize that God has given you more opportunity to be able to live. When you’re given that opportunity in life, what do you do with it? Do I care what a headline says? No. I care about protecting the innocence of my children and your children.”

Ahead of the national launch of “Mamas for DeSantis,” the DeSantis campaign pushed out a new ad featuring Casey DeSantis where she leans into the culture war like her husband, including on what she calls parental rights, and touting her husband’s accomplishments.

Casey DeSantis, who narrates the ad, touches on issues such as COVID-19 restrictions around masking, transgender women playing in women’s sports and discussions around gender identity, arguing that these topics threaten children’s innocence — a view that has stirred some controversy in Florida.

“Enough is enough,” she says in the ad. “When you come after our kids, we fight back because there’s nothing we won’t do to protect our children.”

David Kerr, who attended the launch of “Mamas for DeSantis” in Johnston on Thursday, called Casey DeSantis a “weapon” for her husband’s campaign.

“She’s very impressive,” Kerr said.

Jon Dunwell, an Iowa state representative supporting Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign, told ABC News that it was good that the first lady of Florida kicked off her first solo stop in Iowa.

“Iowa was about getting up close and personal to candidates, their families and their teams,” Dunwell said. “It’s about shaking hands. It’s about being in small groups like this and having the opportunity to really see how they interact with people when they get a chance to hear their message. And so this is the perfect place to start.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. is expected to announce as early as Friday that it will provide controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine as part of a new military aid package in the fight against Russian invaders, two U.S. officials tell ABC News.

The decision to send the munitions will be made by President Joe Biden.

Numerous countries have banned the use of cluster munitions, which can risk civilian deaths and injuries when bomblets fail to initially explode after being deployed. The weapons pack such bomblets into rockets, bombs, missiles and artillery shells that break apart midair and scatter the munitions over a large area.

The U.S. is not a signatory to an international convention forbidding the deployment of cluster munitions and last used them during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Ukraine has been asking for more of them and Russia has been using them in its invasion.

The failure of the small munitions to initially explode is known as the “dud rate” — and the higher the dud rate, the more dangerous they can become.

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday that he had no announcements to make about cluster munitions but acknowledged they have been under consideration.

He explained that there are multiple versions of cluster munitions but that the version being considered for use in Ukraine is contained in 155mm shells fired from American howitzer artillery.

There are different versions of those shells from different stockpiles and the ones being looked at for Ukraine would not be older versions with higher dud rates, Ryder said: “The ones that we are considering providing would not include older variants with [dud] rates that are higher than 2.35%.”

He insisted that “we would be carefully selecting rounds with lower dud rates for which we have recent testing data” from 2020. And he noted that the Russian dud rates on their cluster munitions are much higher — though he did not provide an estimate.

Sending cluster munitions to Ukraine would provide “anti-armor and anti-personnel capability,” Ryder said, adding, “So clearly a capability that would be useful in any type of offensive operations.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is leaning into the political branding “Bidenomics” as his 2024 reelection effort kicks into high gear.

He and top advisers renewed their push to keep improving economic news and his overall sprawling vision in the public eye with a stop Thursday in the swing state of South Carolina as part of an “Investing in America” tour.

There, he announced clean energy investments that will create 1,800 jobs nationwide.

“Our plan is working,” Biden said. “And one of the things I’m proudest of is it’s working everywhere.”

The fresh messaging comes as the administration has been buoyed by positive numbers on inflation, unemployment and more.

The state of the economy and how it affects Americans personally is traditionally a key — if not the most important — issue for voters. But their perceptions can lag behind the numbers and many remain unconvinced Biden has done a good job handling the economy, polls show, while Republicans are hitting him on it at every turn on the campaign trail.

“There’s been this unprecedented gap between what the data shows us is going on in the economy and what people think is going on in the economy,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, told ABC News.

Improving economic picture

Inflation has dropped for 11 straight months, from its peak of 9.1% in June of last year to 4.0% in May. Unemployment stands at 3.7%, which is a near 50-year low, and 13 million jobs have been added since Biden took office.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell last week praised the resiliency of the U.S. economy, and said while a recession is still possible it’s not the most likely case.

“Over the last year, things have turned out a lot better than a lot of economists thought it would,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told ABC News.

The White House, in addition to touting the above economic indicators, is pushing three major pieces of legislation passed under Biden they say will reinvigorate America’s economy over the next decade: the Chips and Science Act, Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

A new report from the Treasury Department highlighted manufacturing construction spending has doubled since the end of 2021 and the passage of the bills.

“For the first time in a long time, there’s enthusiasm about building high-tech factories in the United States,” said Brad Setser, a former trade and Treasury official in the Biden and Obama administrations.

Despite the progress, Biden remains underwater with voters when it comes to the economy. One recent poll from ABC News and the Washington Post found Americans 54-36% said former President Donald Trump did a better job handling the economy when he was in office than Biden’s done so far.

Why voters remain unconvinced

One major reason why voters may not be giving Biden credit, economists said, is that inflation is still uncomfortably high and wages have only just started to keep up with price hikes. Powell said last week the target inflation rate of 2% is not expected to be reached until 2025, and more interest rate hikes could be in store to bring that data point down.

“It’s painfully high,” Zandi said of inflation. “It’s moderating but still people are having to shell out more of their income to maintain their purchasing power.”

Political observers also noted bad economic news, such as when gas prices rose to over $5 a gallon or inflation reached a 40-year high, is often more salient in the news and to voters than good economic news.

Republicans have been united in bashing Biden on that front, accusing him of stoking inflation with large spending packages and hurting companies through “woke” policies.

So far, Democrats have produced a weaker counterpunch, said Dean Baker, the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“The Democrats have been much less effective in focusing on a message and getting everyone to repeat it,” Baker told ABC News. “For better or worse, Republicans largely do that. So I think Biden has an uphill battle, but I think he does have a very good story to sell.”

Is the ‘Bidenomics’ pitch a gamble?

Biden will continue to talk economy on Friday when he announces new actions to lower health care costs and fight junk fees.

The messaging push, however, isn’t without risk.

One of the most important questions moving forward, according to political scientist John Sides, is whether inflation continues to cool and real wages grow without economic contraction.

“If those economic trends continue, I would expect news coverage of the economy to become more positive and I would expect consumer confidence to increase,” Sides told ABC News. “I would expect Biden’s approval rating to rise as well. That would make his reelection more likely, even if his approval rating isn’t ‘high’ in absolute terms. It would also become more difficult for his opponent to center a campaign on economic fundamentals.”

But should the economy worsen, Sides said Biden should “certainly focus on a different issue.”

“The moment to make that decision would be in the first few months of 2024,” Sides said. “Election-year trends in the economy are the most important to voters, so what happens in 2024 will be crucial for Biden’s strategy and his reelection prospects.”

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