Displaying items by tag: Joe Biden

Boris Johnson and Joe Biden met on 10 June. Joe Biden has Irish roots, and many believe Britain should not underestimate the strength of his feelings against tinkering with the Northern Ireland Protocol if it puts the Good Friday agreement in jeopardy. Boris Johnson wants to ‘tinker’, putting the agreement at risk. He was seen by many Americans as Britain's equivalent of Donald Trump, and indeed he was lavish in his praise of the former president. But British PMs need to get on with whoever is America’s president. Boris, from a privileged background, needs to get on with Joe, who is from a poor working-class background. The one thing the two men do have in common is that they both are Catholics: one is a practising believer, the other needs more practice.

US president Joe Biden and Russian president Putin will meet in Geneva on 16 June. They first met in 2011, when vice-president Biden told Putin, ‘I don’t think you have a soul.’ They clashed again in 2014, when Biden was tasked with bolstering Ukraine in the wake of its protests and pressuring Russia to scale back military interference in eastern Ukraine. Putin then pushed back against Biden and the strain of US policy he represented. In 2016 Putin had his intelligence services interfere with the US presidential election, hoping Donald Trump, once elected, might reverse Obama’s administration stance on Russia. In the ensuing years, Putin’s minions likely passed information or misinformation to Biden’s son Hunter, which Trump’s supporters eagerly received and did their best to deploy in the 2020 campaign. With so much jagged history between them, the meeting will be awkward at a personal level.

US president Joe Biden and Russia's president Vladimir Putin will hold their first summit on 16 June in Geneva, setting the stage for a new chapter in their fraught relationship. The leaders will discuss the full range of pressing issues, seeking to restore predictability and stability to the US-Russia relationship. The Kremlin said that Putin and Biden would be discussing ‘issues of strategic stability,’ as well as ‘resolving regional conflicts’ and the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden, making his first international trip as president, will go to Geneva immediately after separate summits with his key Western allies in the G7, NATO, and the EU. To prepare the ground, US secretary of state Antony Blinken and veteran Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met last week in Reykjavik. After their meeting, a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that repairing ties ‘will not be easy’, but he saw ‘a positive signal’.

President Biden marked 100 days in office with a speech that put into focus his domestic agenda, the most dramatic shift in federal economic and social welfare policies since Ronald Reagan forty years ago. Reagan’s philosophy resulted in decades-long squeezes on domestic spending and tax policies that benefit the wealthiest. If Biden gets his way Reagan’s policies will be replaced by ones directly addressing long-standing economic, racial and gender inequities. His speech reflected his presidency to date, appealing for bold action by a leader whose demeanour is opposite to that of Donald Trump. Biden believes there is an urgent need to act, an opportunity to do so, but limited time to get it done. He said the nation needs ‘a once-in-generation investment in families and children.’ But because of the Democrats’ narrow majorities and a nation still divided over the president’s performance, Biden’s agenda represents a political gamble.

Those fighting to halt climate change call the Amazon rainforest the ‘lungs of Earth,’ and Brazil's current president has made his country a chain-smoker. A healthy Amazon is crucial for the fight against climate change. Human activity is pumping unsustainable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, trapping enough heat to warm the planet and profoundly disrupt the climate. Trees, and the soils they grow in, store carbon that might otherwise reach the atmosphere, but cutting down or burning them releases more carbon into the air, making Amazon deforestation a problem for the entire planet. President Jair Bolsonaro has made matters much worse for the remaining 60% of Amazon tree cover. He deprived environmental protection agencies of funding and manpower, allowing farmers to cut and burn trees to open land for farms and cattle ranches. But now Joe Biden’s climate envoy is engaged in an international effort to raise $20 billion for Brazil's environmental protection agency, only to be given if deforestation is reduced.

The current president's strategy for handling the former president's impeachment trial has been to keep the whole ordeal at arm's length. The Biden administration's long-term political fortunes rest on success in dealing with the pandemic, the economy and the American public's other concerns. In the end, the trial lasted only three days. The chamber can’t take up Biden's Covid relief bill until the House passes the version that they have spent the week working on. Pray that the much-needed relief is released swiftly. With the trial concluded, the Senate can now resume confirming Biden's administration appointments, after it returns from a week recess. Pray for wisdom to flow through all appointments yet to be made, and that the price of a speedy trial without witnesses will not mean a political price being paid later.

On 20 January, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th US president. He wasted little time before undoing policies that were anathema to Democrats; he signed 15 executive orders and two other directives, including an order requiring face masks and social distancing on federal property. This was followed by an order recommitting the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change. With plain language and open emotion, Biden urged a shaken nation to regain its footing. He has directed the government to rejoin the World Health Organisation and intends to join the COVAX Facility, a project to deploy Covid-19 vaccines to people in need around the world (whether in rich or poor countries); it is an umbrella effort that focuses on distributing diagnostic tools and therapeutics for coronavirus to countries around the world. The justice department pledged to keep the Capitol safe through the next few days.

On 24 November, Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, formally designated Joe Biden as the apparent winner of America’s presidential election, providing federal funds and resources to begin an official transition from Trump to Biden. The new president must now fill 4,000 political positions (see). President Trump has spent over two weeks claiming that he had won the election and pushing conspiracy theories about fraudulent voting. He tweeted, ‘Our case STRONGLY continues; we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.’ Pray for swift, smooth and unhindered organising of the president-elect’s packed schedule, particularly the daily security briefing.

Donald Trump had previously said if the presidential election were close, he would accuse his opponents of voter fraud and trying to steal victory. Before all votes are counted he has done just that, claiming to have won, and launched a supreme court challenge, baselessly alleging fraud. At the time of writing, Biden is in the lead, but by the slenderest of margins. On 5 November, Trump tweeted, ‘I hereby claim victory’ - despite trailing at the time by 214 votes to 253. Pray for acceptance to replace the anger in people wanting to win more than they want to be right. With the nation on edge, the final result may not be known for days. Pray for peace on the streets.

Practising Christian Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, has been endorsed by the largest group of clergy in modern history. His endorsements mainly come from Catholics, evangelicals and mainline Protestants, including Billy Graham’s granddaughter Jerushah Duford, former US ambassador for religious freedom Susan Johnson Cook, Michael Kinnamon, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches, and former gay episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson. ‘This record-breaking group of endorsers shows that President Trump’s lack of kindness and decency is energising faith communities and will cost him this election’, said the director of the Christian campaign organisation Vote Common Good, which compiled the endorsements. Anti-abortion Republicans defecting from Trump are voting for Biden this year. Four years ago, religious voters looked the other way to give Trump a chance, but after witnessing his cruelty and corruption, a growing number are turning away from him. Biden has frequently spoken of how his faith has sustained him through challenging times.