Politics

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden called a desperate but defiant President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday as Russian forces closed in on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and after he publicly pleaded with U.S. and European nations to do more to help.

Zelenskyy also called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate, but Putin showed no interest in a diplomatic solution.

He appeared, instead, to call for a coup in Ukraine in a statement Friday, calling on Ukraine’s military to turn on Zelenskyy, who was elected democratically, and terming his government a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis that has settled in Kyiv and taken hostage the entire Ukrainian people.”

In an address to his people Friday morning, Zelenskyy called on Putin “to sit at the table for negotiations to stop people dying,” but did not order Ukrainian troops to stop fighting, telling them to “stand tough. You’re everything we have, you’re everything that is defending us.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that Russia will begin negotiations again once the “democratic order is restored” in Ukraine, suggesting that only once it has forced Ukraine’s government to surrender and conceded to demands, will it negotiate, with the Kremlin claiming Zelenskyy wants to discuss Ukraine’s “neutrality.”

Russia had demanded Ukraine agree to never join NATO before Putin invaded, which Zelenskyy would not agree to, though Zelenskyy wasn’t seemingly close called to NATO membership, at one point calling it a “dream” for Ukraine.

On Russia’s demand that Ukraine be barred from joining NATO, White House press secretary Jen Psaki has said repeatedly that “that is a decision for NATO to make.”

As Russian troops got ever closer to the capital, the Ukrainian president reportedly told European leaders in a call Thursday night, “This may be the last time you see me alive.”

“We have information the enemy as defined me as number one target and my family as a number two target,” he said in a video address to the nation Friday. “They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.”

“I will stay in the capital,” Zelenskyy added. “My family is also in Ukraine.”

Even as Zelenskyy pleaded with Western allies to do more to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s attack, now in its second day, Biden has emphasized that sanctions on Russia will take time to have an impact, but he faced continuing questions as to why not sanction the Russian leader now.

Thousands of Ukrainians forced to flee their homes appear to be running out of time as Russian forces advance on the capital city Kyiv, and U.S. officials express concerns that Kyiv could fall to Russia within days.

Zelenskyy had urged allies including the U.S. to enact sanctions before Russia invaded, lamenting last week that the “system is slow and failing us time and again, because of arrogance and irresponsibility of countries on a global level” — but that, largely, did not happen.

The Biden administration, at first, said that its sanctions were meant to deter war, and once triggered, the deterrent effect would be lost — but under questioning from ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega Thursday, who noted that “sanctions clearly have not been enough to deter Vladimir Putin to this point,” Biden replied, “No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening.”

However, Vice President Kamala Harris said on CBS Sunday that “the purpose of the sanctions has always been and continues to be deterrence,” echoing language from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and several other administration officials over several weeks — in sharp contrast to Biden’s claim.

The White House official in charge of crafting the sanctions against Russia, Daleep Singh, playing a kind of clean-up Thursday evening, said that the sanctions were never meant to deter war and laid out multiple reasons why the administration didn’t move preemptively.

“Had we unleashed our entire package of financial sanctions preemptively,” he said, “President Putin might have said, ‘Look, these people are not serious about diplomacy, they’re not engaging in a good faith effort to promote peace. Instead, they’re escalating.’ And that could provide a justification for him to escalate and invade.”

“Secondly, he could look at it as a sum cost. In other words, President Putin could think I’ve already paid the price, why don’t I take what I paid for, which is Ukraine’s freedom. So that’s what we wanted to avoid,” Singh added.

But even Democratic lawmakers are calling on Biden to do more to sanction Russia.

“There is more that we can and should do,” said Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Congress and the Biden administration must not shy away from any options—including sanctioning the Russian Central Bank, removing Russian banks from the SWIFT [international banking] system, crippling Russia’s key industries, sanctioning Putin personally, and taking all steps to deprive Putin and his inner circle of their assets.”

Even if Biden did sanction Putin as he’s said is “on the table,” there are still major questions about what more the U.S. and Europe can do to not only punish Russia and Putin, but whether any of the sanctions can change his calculus — or make him retreat from the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

ABC News’ Luis Martinez, Patrick Reevell and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is expected to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, elevating an African American woman for the first time to a seat on the high court bench, ABC News has learned.

Judge Jackson, 51, currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to which she was named by Biden and confirmed by the Senate last year with Republican support.

Her historic nomination fulfills a promise Biden made during the 2020 presidential campaign ahead of the South Carolina primary when he relied heavily on support from the state’s Black voters.

It’s also the first opportunity for Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to help shape a Court that has grown sharply more conservative in recent years, even if his appointment will not alter the current ideological balance.

Jackson, a former clerk to retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, has more than eight years experience on the federal bench, following a path through the judiciary traveled by many nominees before her.

All but four justices appointed in the last 50 years have come from a federal appeals court, including three current justices — Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts and Clarence Thomas — from the D.C. Circuit.

Born in D.C. but raised in Miami, Jackson comes from an elite legal pedigree as a graduate of Harvard Law School but also has experience representing everyday Americans in the legal system as a federal public defender.

“Public service is a core value in my family,” Judge Jackson testified last year.

She would be the first federal public defender to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and the first justice since Thurgood Marshall to have criminal defense experience.

Jackson has been vetted and confirmed by the Senate three times – twice for appointments to the federal bench, a third time for a seat on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Not since Justice Clarence Thomas was nominated in 1991 has a Supreme Court candidate been scrutinized by the Senate as many times.

“I think she’s qualified for the job. She has a different philosophy than I do, but it’s been that way the whole time,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said of Jackson last year. He was one of three GOP Senators, including Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who voted to confirm Jackson to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

President Biden has long admired, respected and helped elevate Jackson, sources say. It was the Obama-Biden administration that first appointed her to the federal bench in 2013. Last year, Biden met one-on-one with Jackson at the White House before nominating her to the D.C. Circuit. The two met again in recent days, sources said.

The president is impressed by her “experience in roles at all levels of the justice system, her character and her legal brilliance,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said this month.

Jackson has won praise from grassroots progressive, civil rights and legal groups, particularly for her work as vice chair of the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission between 2010 and 2014, when she played a key role in major criminal justice reforms.

Jackson joined a unanimous vote to reduce federal sentencing guidelines for some nonviolent drug offenders and make the changes retroactive — moves backed by members of both parties.

“In my view, that of a civil rights lawyer and advocate who is committed to bringing justice, respect, and fairness to this nation, and particularly to my community, that woman is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson,” civil rights attorney Ben Crump told ABC News.

On the bench, her jurisprudence has widely been considered mainstream and measured, legal scholars say. She authored 600 opinions while on the U.S. District Court for D.C.; only 12 were reversed, according to data compiled by the Alliance for Justice, a progressive legal advocacy group.

One of her most high-profile decisions came in the 2019 case of former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who was contesting a congressional subpoena for testimony. Then-District Court Judge Jackson wrote a 118-page ruling ordering McGahn to testify, concluding that “presidents are not kings” and could not assert universal executive privilege over former aides.

Earlier this month, Judge Jackson published her first appeals court opinion — a unanimous decision in favor of a large union of federal government workers contesting new federal labor guidelines that would have made collective bargaining more difficult. Jackson concluded the changes were “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Late last year, Judge Jackson joined a unanimous appeals court panel decision rejecting former President Donald Trump’s attempt to shield his records from review by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. The decision recently affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jackson’s former colleagues and associates describe her approach as “Breyer-esque,” qualities Biden has explicitly sought to replicate on the bench: moderate, pragmatic, and a consensus-builder.

“She believes the judiciary should be accessible and transparent,” said Sanchi Khare, who clerked for Judge Jackson in 2019. “She really feels that people who come to the court or who interact with the judicial system, whether they are civil or criminal parties, that they feel heard and that the court is considering their arguments.”

Rachel Barkow, an NYU law professor, former Harvard classmate of Jackson and former member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, predicted Jackson could help “dial down the temperature” around the Court if confirmed.

“She is not someone who is a firebrand off on her own, creating and doing new things which I don’t think she should be doing as a lower court judge,” Barkow told ABC. “I think she absolutely on the merits should be a person who appeals to people of all political stripes.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said this week that the nominee will be “respectfully treated and thoroughly vetted.” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Sunday that his party will not engage in “personal slime attacks” but will scrutinize the candidate’s record.

Democrats have the votes to confirm Jackson without Republican support, but President Biden has said he hopes to win over some members of the other party.

During her appeals court confirmation hearing last year, Republicans questioned Jackson on issues of race; ties to progressive legal groups; her rulings against the Trump administration; the impact of sentencing reductions; and her work as a public defender for Guantanamo detainees.

She could also face questions about her affiliation with Harvard University – both as an alumna and member Board of Overseers – ahead of a major lawsuit challenging the school’s use of race-based Affirmative Action in admissions that will be heard by the Supreme Court later this year.

The president’s allies on Capitol Hill and among Democratic grassroots groups have begun mobilizing to promote and defend the nominee, gearing up for a media blitz to mark both the historic nature of the nomination and counter expected Republican attacks, some of which have already been racially-charged.

The White House is expected to highlight Jackson’s personal story as the embodiment of the American Dream.

“Her Miami roots will afford her valuable perspective on the rights and lives of the people who come before the court,” members of the Cuban American Bar Association wrote in a letter to the president this month.

Jackson attended Miami-Dade public schools. Her mother was a public high school principal in the county, while her father was a teacher and later county school board attorney. Her younger brother — her only sibling — served in the military and did tours in combat. Two uncles have been law enforcement officers.

Her husband, Patrick Jackson, is a surgeon in the Washington, D.C., area, where together they have raised two daughters.

“It’s a story of someone who’s always been very hard working, who has not had things handed to her, who has worked for all the things that she’s achieved,” Barkow said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will attend an emergency NATO summit Friday morning from the White House Situation Room to coordinate next steps with Western allies as Russian President Vladimir Putin wages a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Biden said in an address Thursday that NATO would meet to “affirm our solidarity and to map out the next steps we will take to further strengthen all aspects of our NATO alliance.”

He also announced escalated sanctions to correspond with the escalated Russian aggression, but not the full economic punishment Ukraine and others have called for and none yet on Putin himself, although he did say that option was “not a bluff. It’s on the table.”

“He has much larger ambitions than Ukraine,” Biden warned of the Russian leader. “He wants to, in fact, re-establish the former Soviet Union. That’s what this is about. And I think that his ambitions are completely contrary to the place where the rest of the world has arrived.”

Pressed on why the U.S. hasn’t gone further with sanctions, Biden said that some decisions must be made in unison with European allies — signaling more sanctions may follow Friday’s meeting of NATO’s 30 member countries.

“The sanctions that we are proposing on all their banks have the equal consequence, maybe more consequence than SWIFT, number one. Number two, it is always an option but right now that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take,” Biden said, referring to an international messaging system that allows large financial institutions to send money to each other.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is set to offer public opening remarks on Friday and hold a news conference at the conclusion of the meeting, both of which will be live-streamed on ABC News Live.

Biden reiterated on Thursday that U.S. troops would not be involved in the fight against Russia in Ukraine, but he did announce that he will deploy more forces to Germany, including some of the 8,500 troops in the U.S. that have been on a “heightened alert,” and said he is open to sending additional troops elsewhere in Europe.

“Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the East,” Biden said. “As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”

Throughout the crisis, Biden has maintained U.S. involvement is about fulfilling a responsibility to defend NATO allies — and democracy around the world.

“America stands up to bullies,” Biden said Thursday. “We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.”

ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Friday expanded its investigation into former President Donald Trump’s White House records, requesting new information from the National Archives about the classified materials Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida after leaving office — as well as those records Trump is alleged to have ripped up in the White House.

In a new letter to National Archivist David Ferriero, committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., requested a “detailed” inventory of the 15 boxes of White House records the National Archives retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, as well as “all presidential records” that the agency discovered Trump had “torn up, destroyed, mutilated, or attempted to tear up, destroy, or mutilate” while in office.

“I am deeply concerned that former President Trump may have violated the law through his intentional efforts to remove and destroy records that belong to the American people,” Rep. Maloney wrote in a letter obtained by ABC News. “This Committee plans to get to the bottom of what happened and assess whether further action is needed to prevent the destruction of additional presidential records and recover those records that are still missing.”

The National Archives previously informed Maloney that some of the Trump White House documents the former president took to Florida were marked classified, and that the agency had notified the Justice Department of the matter.

The Justice Department has not said whether it has opened a formal investigation into the referral from the Archives. At a news conference on Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the department would “look at the facts and the law” in evaluating the documents.

In her letter Friday, Maloney also requested any documents or records related to White House employees or contractors “finding paper in a toilet in the White House” and the president’s residence — a reference to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s reporting that White House staff believed Trump periodically flushed papers down the toilet to dispose of them.

Trump has denied that he destroyed any documents, and has further denied any misconduct regarding the documents that were retrieved from Florida by the National Archives and Records Administration.

“The media’s characterization of my relationship with NARA is Fake News. It was exactly the opposite!” Trump said in a statement to ABC News. “It was a great honor to work with NARA to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy.”

More broadly, the Oversight committee on Friday signaled plans to investigate the Trump White House’s handling of the Presidential Records Act and its enforcement in the West Wing, after the National Archives informed Congress that some social media records were not preserved, and that some staff used non-official electronic messaging accounts for official business.

The committee’s probe is on a parallel track to the investigation being carried out by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

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(WASHINGTON) — Shortly after President Joe Biden on Thursday announced new sanctions on Russian banks and elites — but not on Russian President Vladimir Putin himself — a top Senate Democrat pointedly called on him to go further.

“As we seek to impose maximum costs on Putin, there is more that we can and should do. Congress and the Biden administration must not shy away from any options—including sanctioning the Russian Central Bank, removing Russian banks from the SWIFT [international banking] system, crippling Russia’s key industries, sanctioning Putin personally, and taking all steps to deprive Putin and his inner circle of their assets,” Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the administration in a statement.

The Democratic chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Adam Schiff, told reporters Thursday that he, too, would support removing Russia from the SWIFT banking system as many Republicans have called for as tensions worsened.

“We must provide Ukraine with support to defend itself. We also are going to need to, I think, dramatically escalate the sanctions that we place on Russia for this act of naked aggression by the Kremlin dictator. We need to move, I think, to sanction the largest banks in Russia, we have to cut off Russia from the International financing system and its ability to access Western capital. We need to attack its ability to gather sophisticated technology for its weapons systems,” Schiff told reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.

Asked why SWIFT was not included in his announcement, Biden argued the actions the U.S. had taken Thursday were more significant, but said it was an option that remained on the table, although allies hadn’t agreed on making the move.

“It’s always an option but right now that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take,” Biden told reporters Thursday during remarks in the East Room of the White House.

Biden briefed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the evolving situation in Ukraine during a phone call Thursday afternoon.

McConnell described it as “a briefing from the president for the four of us on the events of today and the way forward” but declined to share further details. He noted that he urged the president, both publicly and privately, to “ratchet up the sanctions.”

A spokesman to Pelosi confirmed to ABC News that the call was “classified” in nature.

Across the board, Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of Congress say the administration must act boldly and with more urgency to punish Putin and Russian oligarchs as the deadly attack in Ukraine unfolds.

And while many Republicans have been critical of Biden’s steps up to this point, the actual invasion attack has seen many joining with Democrats in calls to sideline partisan squabbling in the name of NATO unity.

While agreeing to do so, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, couldn’t resist seizing an “I told you so” moment. In a statement released just moments after news of Russia’s advancement into Ukraine broke Wednesday evening. Romney harkened back to his 2012 presidential debate with President Barack Obama, who mocked Romney for citing Russia as the United States’ “number one geopolitical foe.”

At the time, Obama quipped on stage that “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

Ten years later, Romney argued that Putin’s prior aggression laid the groundwork for the current conflict he’s waging in Ukraine. “The ’80s called’ and we didn’t answer,” he said.

Still, the statement ended on a unifying note, calling on America and its allies to “protect freedom” by working in tandem to impose harsh sanctions on Russia.

Many GOP lawmakers are modeling Romney’s tone, calling for unity despite disagreement with the administration.

In a statement Thursday, following Biden’s remarks, McConnell acknowledged Romney’s consistent warnings about Ukraine, but like Romney, looked ahead.

“Moving forward, how America leads the response from all freedom-loving nations will be measured carefully by our friends, by our adversaries, and by history itself,” McConnell said. “We cannot afford to fail this test.”

Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee also released a statement early Thursday going after Putin. Earlier in the week, they had been more critical of Biden.

“The last few hours have laid bare for the world to witness the true evil that is Vladimir Putin. Today, we stand resolute with the Ukrainian people and resolve to provide them with the tools they need to withstand and repel this unprovoked attack. Every drop of Ukrainian and Russian blood spilled in this conflict is on Putin’s hands, and his alone,” the Republican members said.

GOP divided on attacking Biden

But some Republicans are choosing a more divisive rhetoric, largely unseen in previous international conflicts.

Among a newer breed of Republicans, many of whom have found themselves closely aligned with former President Donald Trump, criticism is extending beyond Putin and to Biden himself.

The third-ranking House Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik, slammed Biden in a statement Thursday.

“After just one year of a weak, feckless, and unfit President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief, the world is less safe. Rather than peace through strength, we are witnessing Joe Biden’s foreign policy of war through weakness. For the past year, our adversaries around the world have been assessing and measuring Joe Biden’s leadership on the world stage, and he has abysmally failed on every metric,” Stefanik said.

It was only later in her statement, Stefanik turned her ire to Putin, saying “Vladimir Putin is a war criminal and deranged thug.”

“Joe Biden has shown nothing but weakness and indecision,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said in a tweet Wednesday night. “Now is the time to show strong purpose.”

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed the Russian invasion of Ukraine entirely on Biden himself, while giving kudos to his predecessor.

“Everything happening to the poor people of Ukraine is a direct result of a WEAK America under the WEAK leadership of Joe Biden. Under President Trump, America was STRONG and the world was at PEACE,” Greene tweeted Thursday.

Top Senate Democrat Schumer said that this sort of political rhetoric from Republicans attacking Biden at this moment in time, “weakens the attempts we are making to be unified against Putin.”

“That is not the time for this rhetoric,” Schumer said. “Americans should be united as we were united at 9/11, as we have been united in the past.”

House Republican Leader McCarthy released a statement Thursday going after Putin — this time not choosing to level his attacks at the sitting U.S. president, which he often does.

“Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is reckless and evil. The United States stands with the people of Ukraine and prays for their safety and resolve. Putin’s actions must be met with serious consequence. This act of war is intended to rewrite history and more concerning, upend the balance of power in Europe. Putin must be held accountable for his actions,” McCarthy said in a statement.

While Republicans have condemned Putin, one major player in the Republican Party has refused to do so — the former president of the United States.

He called Putin’s actions “genius” during a radio interview Tuesday.

“I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. So Putin is now saying it’s independent, a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper,” Trump said on the “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.”

At a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser Wednesday, he continued his praise of Putin, calling him “pretty smart” in “taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions.”

How will Congress respond to Russia?

Whether and how to further punish Russia and supply aid for Ukraine will be some of the first challenges Congress will have to attend to when it returns from its week-long recess on Monday.

They say they are united in their resolve.

“Our Congress is united that we will reply to this with both standing firm by NATO continuing to provide armaments to the Ukrainians to defend itself,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said Thursday. “We will launch the most unprecedented level of economic sanctions targeting oligarchs, people close to Putin, the banking system, the ability to get technology into the Russian defense industry.”

But differences in policy will be laid bare when members return next week and it’s not yet clear if Congress will act separately from the administration to impose additional sanctions.

Negotiations on a bipartisan sanctions bill stalled last week, and Republicans, led by the Foreign Relations Committee top Republican Jim Risch, proposed a separate partisan bill they still hope will go forward.

“Diplomacy has failed. Those of us who called for more definitive action from the Biden Administration and our allies have unfortunately been proven right,” Risch said Thursday. “We cannot afford to wait any longer, we must take more decisive action.”

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(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — The Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by LGBTQ activists, has been passed by the Florida House of Representatives. The bill would limit what classrooms can teach about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Under this legislation, these lessons “may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

The bill would also allow parents to sue schools or teachers that engage in these topics.

The bill is now on the Senate agenda for Feb. 28. If the bill is ultimately signed into law, it would go into effect on July 1. Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he supports the bill though he hasn’t explicitly said he will sign it if it crosses his desk.

LGBTQ activists and advocates slammed the decision to move the legislation forward, saying it will harm queer youth by shunning representation and inclusion from classrooms.

“Lawmakers should be supporting LGBTQ students and their families and encouraging schools to be inclusive, not pitting parents against teachers and erasing the LGBTQ community from public education,” Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of The Trevor Project, said in a statement.

He added, “When lawmakers treat LGBTQ topics as taboo and brand our community as unfit for the classroom, it only adds to the existing stigma and discrimination, which puts LGBTQ young people at greater risk for bullying, depression, and suicide.”

Activists say erasing LGBTQ presence from lessons implies students should be ashamed or suppress their gender identity or sexual orientation.

The Biden administration has denounced the bill as anti-LGBTQI+.

“I want every member of the LGBTQI+ community — especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill — to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are,” President Joe Biden said in a Feb. 8 Twitter post.

In a recent interview on ABC News’ podcast “Start Here,” Rep. Joe Harding defended the bill, saying the bill would not prohibit people from talking about gender identity and sexual orientation, it would ban curriculum and lessons.

“What we’re preventing is a school district deciding they’re going to create a curriculum to insert themselves,” Harding said.

He said the decision to talk about these topics should be left to the parents.

“Families are families,” Harding said. “Let the families be families. The school district doesn’t need to insert themselves at that point when children are still learning how to read and do basic math.”

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(WASHINGTON) — After weeks of warning of “severe” sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine, President Joe Biden addressed the nation and the world from the White House Thursday in what’s unfolding as a defining moment in his presidency as President Vladimir Putin pressed a large-scale attack.

Biden announced escalated sanctions to correspond with the escalated Russian aggression, but not the full economic punishment Ukraine and others have called for and none yet on Putin himself, although he did say that option was “not a bluff. It’s on the table.”

“The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on Ukraine without provocation, without justification, without necessity,” Biden said firmly. “This is a premeditated attack.”

Biden announced new sanctions on four large Russian banks including VTB and SberBank, additional Russian elites and family members, and applying the restriction of Russia’s sovereign debt to state-owned enterprises, companies whose assets exceed $1.4 trillion.

“Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war. And now he and his country will bear the consequences,” Biden said. “Today, I am authorizing additional strong sanctions and new limitations on what can be exported to Russia. This is going to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time.”

However, Biden stopped short not only of sanctioning Putin himself also of cutting Russia off from the SWIFT international banking system.

Pressed by reporters why not sanction Putin directly now, Biden deflected.

“Sir, sanctions clearly have not been enough to deter Vladimir Putin to this point,” said ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega. “What is going to stop him? How and when does this end? And do you see him trying to go beyond Ukraine?”

“No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” Biden replied. “It has to — it’s going to take time, and we have to show resolve. So, he knows what is coming. And so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them.”

“Between our actions and those of our allies and partners, we estimate that we’ll cut off more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports,” Biden said in his prepared remarks. “We’ll strike a blow to their ability to continue to modernize their military. It will degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program. It will hurt their ability to build ships, reducing their ability to compete economically. And it will be a major hit to Putin’s long-term strategic ambitions.”

But it’s still unclear whether the sanctions will make any difference in what Putin claimed overnight would be a “special military operation” in eastern Ukraine, which is proving to be much more widespread.

“To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside, if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history,” Putin warned the world.

While it was also still unclear just how far Putin would go beyond eastern Ukraine, Russian forces attacked near the capital city Kyiv — raising new fears he would try to topple Ukraine’s government.

Biden has maintained that U.S. forces will not fight Russians on the ground but announced he was authorizing additional U.S. force capabilities to deploy to Germany as part of NATO’s response force — including the 8,500 troops put on “heightened alert” last month.

“Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the East. As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power,” Biden said.

“I’ve also spoken with Defense Secretary Austin and Chairman of Joint Chiefs General Milly about preparations for additional moves, should they become necessary, to protect our NATO allies and support the greatest military alliance in the history of the world — NATO,” he added later on.

Biden also said that NATO would convene a summit Friday.

“This aggression cannot go unanswered,” Biden added. “If it did, the consequences would be much worse.”

Will Biden sanction Putin personally?

The Biden administration had threatened further sanctions on major Russian financial institutions and banks and to take steps to restrict Russian access to technology — as it did Thursday — but it had also weighed cutting Russia off from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) — which would hinder Russia’s participation in global markets, and to directly sanction Putin’s inner circle — or the Russian president himself.

Biden told reporters late last month that he would consider personally sanctioning Putin if Russia invaded Ukraine — a day after 8,500 American forces were put on “heightened alert” in the region — but those efforts did not appear to deter the Russian leader, nor did economic sanctions imposed this week by the U.S. and European allies, including halting the certification of Nord Stream 2, a major natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.

But Biden has not gone that far.

The administration has begun to roll out a “first tranche” of sanctions, related to Russian banks, oligarchs and the natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, as some lawmakers have criticized Biden of not going far enough on sanctions, which haven’t resulted in Russia reversing course.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell at a press event in Kentucky ahead of Biden’s remarks called on the administration to “ratchet the sanctions all the way up” on Russia.

“Don’t hold any back. Every single available tough sanction should be employed and should be employed now,” McConnell said.

He said “we honestly don’t know” if sanctions would be enough to deter Putin but argued harsher ones were still necessary.

As of Thursday morning, Russian forces had advanced from three directions — from the south heading north, from Belarus heading south to Kyiv and from northeast of Ukraine heading to the south — as Ukrainian woke up to a nation at war.

US military assessment, diplomatic moves

U.S. intelligence believes these three axes were “designed to take key population centers,” a senior defense official said Thursday.

The White House has said the sanctions will be “united and decisive,” but it remains to be seen how the West can punish Putin, who seems intent on moving ahead with his plans, despite weeks of attempted diplomacy from the international community and a set of sanctions already imposed.

With the U.S. condemning what’s it calling an “unprovoked and unjustified” attack on Ukraine, Biden met with his National Security Council in the Situation Room early Thursday ahead of a virtual video call with G-7 leaders to discuss a united response to the Russian attack.

Notably, Russia was a part of the G-7 until its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 — where it is now closing in further on Ukrainian borders.

Biden was at the White House overnight as the attack unfolded.

Within minutes, Biden was on the phone with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had reached out to him after receiving “silence,” he said, on a phone call to Putin. Russia has two tactical goals in Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy’s office: seizing territory and toppling Ukrainian leadership.

Consequences — for Americans

After their call, Biden released a statement saying that Putin “has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.”

“The prayers of the world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces,” Biden said.

The American president has acknowledged that there will be “consequences at home” — particularly at the gas pump and in energy prices — as a result of the Russian invasion and subsequent sanctions but has vowed to mitigate those costs.

However, ahead of his Thursday remarks, U.S. crude oil prices topped $100 a barrel, sending gasoline prices to an average of $3.54 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association. At least three states had average gas prices of $4 or higher. Meanwhile, U.S. stock and dow futures also plunged.

“We’re taking active steps to bring down the cost, and American oil and gas companies should not — should not — exploit this moment to hike their respect prices to raise profits,” Biden said Thursday. “In our sanctions package, we specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue.”

Throughout the crisis, Biden has reminded Americans that the U.S. has a responsibility to defend its NATO allies — and democracy around the world.

“America stands up to bullies,” Biden said Thursday. “We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.”

ABC News’ Luis Martinez, Patrick Reevell, Allison Pecorin, Zunaira Zaki, Sarah Kolinovsky and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — A Washington, D.C., lobbyist and attorney who assisted with former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election filed suit this week against the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, to block the release of her phone records.

Katherine Friess filed her lawsuit in federal court in Colorado against the committee and AT&T, which alerted her earlier this month of the committee’s subpoena.

According to an affidavit included in the filing obtained by ABC News, Friess identifies herself as having volunteered as an “election integrity attorney, observing ballot counting, for the 2020 national elections” and later having served as a “staff attorney on the personal legal team of President Donald J. Trump” from November 2020 to January of 2021.

Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who worked with ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the Trump campaign to identify voting irregularities after the election, previously told The Daily Beast that Friess “assisted in the preparation of legal documents, interviews, and reviewed affidavits; and coordinated travel, legislative hearings and meetings, as directed by the mayor or myself.”

Friess’ filing argues that the subpoena targeting her personal cell phone would violate attorney-client privilege with Trump and other individuals she represents, as well as violate her personal privacy.

According to the notification letter from AT&T, the subpoena seeks records documenting the contacts Friess made over phone and text during the period between Nov. 1, 2020 and Jan. 31, 2021, including the times and durations of phone calls — but not the content of the messages or calls themselves.

Friess is the latest in a growing number of former Trump associates who have filed lawsuits seeking to block the release of their cell phone records to the Jan. 6 committee, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and attorney John Eastman.

The Jan. 6 committee has confirmed issuing dozens of subpoenas as it seeks to gather evidence regarding the communications between Trump and his allies in advance of the Jan. 6 riot, and their behind-the-scenes efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Friess did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment from ABC News.

A spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee declined to comment on the matter.

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(WASHINGTON) — After weeks of warning of “severe” sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine, President Joe Biden was set to deliver remarks from the White House Thursday in what’s unfolding as a defining moment in his presidency as President Vladimir Putin continued a large-scale attack.

Expected to announce additional sanctions on Russia, Biden will lay out “further consequences the United States and our Allies and partners will impose on Russia for its unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine,” according to a White House official.

But it’s still unclear how much further those sanctions will go — and whether they would make any difference in what Putin claimed overnight would be a “special military operation” in eastern Ukraine, but is proving to be much more widespread.

“To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside, if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history,” Putin warned the world.

While it was also still unclear just how far Putin would go beyond eastern Ukraine, Russian forces attacked near the capital city Kyiv — raising new fears he would try to topple Ukraine’s government.

Will Biden sanction Putin personally?

The Biden administration has threatened further sanctions on major Russian financial institutions and banks, to take steps to restrict Russian access to technology, to cut Russia off from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) — which would hinder Russia’s participation in global markets, and to directly sanction Putin’s inner circle — or the Russian president himself.

Biden told reporters late last month that he would consider personally sanctioning Putin if Russia invaded Ukraine — a day after 8,500 American forces were put on “heightened alert” in the region — but those efforts did not appear to deter the Russian leader, nor did economic sanctions imposed this week by the U.S. and European allies, including halting the certification of Nord Stream 2, a major natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.

The Biden administration has already begun to roll out a “first tranche” of sanctions, related to Russian banks, oligarchs and the natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, as some lawmakers have criticized Biden of not going far enough on sanctions, which haven’t resulted in Russia reversing course.

As of Thursday morning, Russian forces had advanced from three directions — from the south heading north, from Belarus heading south to Kyiv and from northeast of Ukraine heading to the south — as Ukrainian woke up to a nation at war.

US military assessment, diplomatic moves

U.S. intelligence believes these three axes were “designed to take key population centers,” a senior defense official said Thursday.

The White House has said the sanctions will be “united and decisive,” but it remains to be seen how the West can punish Putin, who seems intent on moving ahead with his plans, despite weeks of attempted diplomacy from the international community and a set of sanctions already imposed.

With the U.S. condemning what’s it calling an “unprovoked and unjustified” attack on Ukraine, Biden met with his National Security Council in the Situation Room early Thursday ahead of a virtual video call with G-7 leaders to discuss a united response to the Russian attack.

Earlier this morning, President Biden convened a meeting of the National Security Council in the White House Situation Room to discuss the unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/QcZ5N2fcAa

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 24, 2022

Notably, Russia was a part of the G-7 until its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 — where it is now closing in further on Ukrainian borders.

Biden was at the White House overnight as the attack unfolded.

Within minutes, Biden was on the phone with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had reached out to him after receiving “silence,” he said, on a phone call to Putin. Russia has two tactical goals in Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy’s office: seizing territory and toppling Ukrainian leadership.

Consequences — for Americans

After their call, Biden released a statement saying that Putin “has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.”

“The prayers of the world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces,” Biden said.

The American president has acknowledged that there will be “consequences at home” — particularly at the gas pump and in energy prices — as a result of the Russian invasion and subsequent sanctions but has vowed to mitigate those costs.

However, ahead of his Thursday remarks, U.S. crude oil prices topped $100 a barrel, sending gasoline prices to an average of $3.54 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association. At least three states had average gas prices of $4 or higher. Meanwhile, U.S. stock and dow futures also plunged.

Still, Biden has reminded Americans that the U.S. has a responsibility to defend its NATO allies — and democracy around the world.

“Because this is about more than just Russia and Ukraine,” he said in remarks last week. “It’s about standing for what we believe in, for the future that we want for our world, for liberty, for liberty, the right of countless countries to choose their own destiny. And the right of people to determine their own futures — or the principle that a country can’t change its neighbor’s borders by force.”

ABC News’ Luis Martinez and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The White House has begun a sweeping overhaul of its COVID strategy that will signal the nation is moving past crisis mode and into a more manageable phase in the pandemic, ABC News has learned.

The new strategy was expected to acknowledge that the virus — which has killed at least 936,162 Americans in the past two years — is less of an urgent threat to most Americans because of widespread access to vaccines, booster shots, and testing, as well as increasing availability of therapeutics.

At the same time, the White House on Wednesday began working behind the scenes with some of the nation’s most prominent pandemic experts to game out the various paths the virus could take to ensure the government is prepared.

In a private online meeting, Jeff Zients, the White House coordinator on the federal COVID response, led the group in discussing potential trajectories in the pandemic — from the best case scenario that the virus evolves into a mild flu-like illness, to the worst case that an aggressive new variant could evade effectiveness of the vaccine.

The overall consensus was that COVID has fundamentally altered U.S. public health.

“There’s no scenario where we say, ‘oh my gosh, let’s go back to normal,'” said one person involved in the effort.

The White House described Wednesday’s online meeting as part of a series of outreach efforts with governors and business leaders to discuss the pandemic. Included in Wednesday’s discussion were several former advisers to President Joe Biden during his transition after the election, but who had more recently called on the administration to shift gears and tackle COVID as part of the nation’s “new normal.”

Among those in attendance included Zients; David Kessler, Biden’s chief scientific adviser; Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and medical ethicist with the University of Pennsylvania; Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; Dr. Luciana Borio, a former senior official at the National Security Council and former acting chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration now with the Council on Foreign Relations; and David Michaels, an epidemiologist and former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration now with George Washington University’s School of Public Health.

The meeting was confirmed by several people familiar with the effort, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on private White House meetings. Among the issues discussed were what resources the U.S. might need to ensure access to life-saving therapeutics and shoring up any vulnerabilities in the supply chain.

“We’ve seen things come down before only to be surprised,” one person said, describing the meetings as helping the administration to prepare for next steps.

Timing of the White House announcement of its updated COVID strategy was unclear as the Ukraine crisis escalated Thursday with Russia’s invasion. Biden had been expected to address aspects of the new COVID approach in his State of the Union address on March 1.

In a separate effort, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is preparing new guidance intended to help local officials decide when it’s safe to pull back on restrictions, such as indoor masking mandates. Those updated recommendations, expected within the week, were expected to emphasize local hospital capacity and focus less on case counts when measuring a community’s ability to withstand increased COVID transmission.

“We must consider hospital capacity as an additional important barometer. Our hospitals need to be able to take care of people with heart attacks and strokes,” Walensky told reporters last week.

The shift comes as Biden and Democratic governors are under increasing pressure by voters fed up with restrictions due to the virus. Several states have moved preemptively to lift restrictions, even as the CDC continues to recommend indoor masking, particularly in schools.

According to a recent Gallup poll, more Americans disapproved of Biden’s handling of the virus — 52% — than those who approve. In recent weeks, Democratic strategists have advised party officials to shift their focus away from COVID and focus on curbing inflation instead.

Zients hinted at the upcoming shift in federal COVID strategy at a press briefing last week.

“We’re moving toward a time when COVID isn’t a crisis but is something we can protect against and treat,” Zients told reporters on Feb. 16.

Biden officials say the administration is still keenly aware of the balancing act involved. COVID-related hospitalizations are now nearing the lowest level since before the omicron surge — a positive sign that the nation has turned a corner in the two-year pandemic.

At the same time, concerns of another variant remain, as well as the lack of a vaccine available to children ages 4 and under. Data on a Pfizer pediatric vaccine for the population isn’t expected until April. Meanwhile, hospitalization rates for that age group are at its highest throughout the pandemic.

“We definitely are heading into a new phase of the pandemic,” said Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who has previously advised Biden on COVID.

But, “I think we’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that it was over prematurely in the past, and it’s just hurt us,” she added.

ABC News Sony Salzman, Cheyenne Haslett, Sasha Pezenik and Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.

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