Evening summary
It’s been a lively day in Washington.
- Joe Biden defended his comment that Vladimir Putin should be removed as president of Russia, but said it was an expression of his “moral outrage” and not a threat that the US aimed to topple the Russian leader over his decision to invade Ukraine. “I’m not walking anything back,” he said of the remark, which allied leaders have downplayed and the Kremlin has condemned.
- Biden unveiled a budget blueprint for the 2023 fiscal year that advocates higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, more money for law enforcement and greater spending on domestic priorities like education, health care and housing. The budget proposes that households worth more than $100m pay at least 20% in taxes on both income and “unrealized gains.”
- A federal judge believes Donald Trump probably committed felony obstruction of Congress with attempted coup at US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
- The House panel investigating the Capitol attack is reportedly seeking to interview with Ginni Thomas, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. It is expected to be a topic of conversation at this evening’s committee hearing.
Here’s the full report on Biden’s budget proposal from the Guardian’s business editor, Dominic Rushe.
For the latest on Ukraine, please follow our 24/7 global liveblog.
The press briefing wrapped pretty quickly, with Bates asking reporters to send any further questions by email. He did not answer shouted questions about why national security advisor Jake Sullivan didn’t attend the briefing as the White House said he would.
Young was reluctant to expand on efforts to revive Biden’s domestic policy agenda, but said the president’s budget included a “reserve” to account for a possible policy agreement on Capitol hill. So far, such a consensus has eluded lawmakers.
Asked whether the emphasis on deficit reduction was aimed at wooing moderates, Young said this was a feature of both of Biden’s budgets.
“This is a classic Joe Biden budget,” she said. It seeks to create a tax system that is “fair” and seeks to lower the deficit.
Rouse again said that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will have an impact on both energy and food prices.
“We do expect inflation to ease this year into next year,” she said.
Updated
Young outlined the president’s budget proposal, emphasizing again that a budget is a reflection of the president’s priorities. Rouse then offered the White House’s assessment of the economy.
“In many ways the forecast looks healthier today than it did when we locked it all the way back last November,” Rouse said. “The economy has created on average 600,000 jobs per month since then, including through the omicron wave and the unemployment rate has fallen an additional 0.8%.”
Citing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she warned that inflation could get worse before it gets better. The war, she said, “may put upward pressure on energy and food prices. That in turn could reinforce inflation, which was already an issue.”
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates is at the podium for his first press briefing, after White House press secretary Jen Psaki and White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tested positive for covid-19.
Psaki, he said, shared that she is “feeling stir crazy and will be back soon.”
He is joined by Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Cecilia Rouse, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
“Be nice to the newbie,” Young said with a hearty laugh.
Updated
Now he’s being asked about the Supreme Court. He declined to say whether he thinks Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from all matters related to the January 6th assault on the US capitol. He said that was a matter for the Congressional committee and for the Justice Department, not him.
Democrats have implored Thomas to recuse himself after it was revealed that his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, exchanged text messages with Donald Trump’s chief of staff supporting efforts to overturn the election results. She also attended the rally that preceded the violence.
On the matter of his supreme court nominee, Biden said he did not have a chance to watch the hearing but dismissed the conservative criticism of judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“Look, this is one of the most qualified nominees ever nominated for the supreme court, in every respect...a woman who is totally, thoroughly qualified,” he said.
Updated
Biden defends off-script remark on Putin: 'I'm not walking anything back'
Now, taking questions from reporters, Biden is defending his unscripted remarks during a speech in Poland, in which he said Russia’s Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”. Biden was adamant that he was not calling for regime change and instead was expressing his “moral outrage” at the brutality of Putin’s assault as Russian troops raze Ukrainian cities.
“I’m not walking anything back,” Biden said. “I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the way Putin is dealing and the actions of this man, which is just brutality .... But I want to be clear that I wasn’t then nor am I now articulating a policy change.”
“I make no apologies for it,” he added.
He argued that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was “totally unacceptable” and said the comment does not undermine diplomatic efforts by the US and European allies to pursue peace and negotiate an end to the brutality.
Pressed on his remarks, Biden was defiant and said he was not worried that his comments will be interpreted as a call for regime change or that it will be used by Russian propagandist.
“Nobody believes I was talking about taking down Putin...nobody believes that,”
he said. “I was expressing my outrage at the behavior of this man.”
Biden did not directly say whether he would be willing to meet with Putin. Biden said it would depend “on what he wants to talk about.”
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Defending the line items that would deliver more funding for law enforcement, Biden said the US is “more prosperous, more successful, and more just when it is more secure.
“We’re in a different world today,” he said, once again emphasizing that the answer to tackling rising violent crime rates was to “fund police” not to defund the police. Republicans have sought to tar Democrats as “soft on crime” by tying Biden and the broader Democratic party to calls by activists to defund the police. Most Democrats have not embraced the slogan and there is a range of views on what such a proposal would look like.
He also outlined many of his domestic policy proposals related to child care, health care, drug pricing and education.
“We give hardworking parents raising children tax relief to give them just a little bit of breathing room and lower child poverty,” he said. “We can give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. This will bring down the cost for seniors and reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars. Congress can do this this all right now are debating it now.”
Updated
Outlining his budget, Biden said it makes headway “cleaning up the mess I inherited” and “returning our fiscal house to order.” This is a nod to moderates and conservatives who have accused Biden of prioritizing progressive spending policies without regard to the national deficit.
Throughout his remarks, Biden assailed his predecessor, blaming the “Trump tax cuts” for ballooning the deficit and helping top earners.
He repeated his campaign pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 per year.
“It’s my hope that Congress enacts this law,” he said. There are few signs that Congress will take up Biden’s budget. But it’s a messaging tool that Democrats can point to as they face a difficult election cycle this November.
Updated
Here’s Joe Biden and Shalanda Young, the director of the the Office of Management and Budget, outlining the president’s budget for the 2023 fiscal year.
“Budgets are value statements: they’re about the kind of country we want to be and the type of future we want to leave our kids,” she said, introducing Biden.
Stepping up to the podium, Biden said his new budget “sends a clear message to the American people.”
He outlined three priorities of his new budget blueprint:
- fiscal responsibility
- safety and security at home and around the world
- investments to “build a better America”
Updated
Here are the details of the opinion poll mentioned earlier that deals with US public anxiety over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has most Americans at least somewhat worried that the US will be drawn directly into the conflict and could be targeted with nuclear weapons, with a new poll reflecting a level of anxiety that has echoes of the cold war era, the Associated Press writes.
The AP further reports:
Close to half of Americans say they are very concerned that Russia would directly target the US with nuclear weapons, and an additional 3 in 10 are somewhat concerned about that, according to the new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Russian President Vladimir Putin placed his country’s nuclear forces on high alert shortly after the 24 February invasion.
Roughly nine in 10 Americans are at least somewhat concerned that Putin might use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine, including about 6 in 10 who are very concerned.
“He is out of control, and I don’t think he really has concern for much of anything but what he wants,” said Robin Thompson, a retired researcher from Amherst, Massachusetts. “And he has nuclear weapons.”
Seventy-one percent of Americans say the invasion has increased the possibility of nuclear weapons being used anywhere in the world.
The poll was conducted before North Korea test-fired its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday but also shows 51% of Americans saying they are very concerned about the threat to the US posed by North Korea’s nuclear program. An additional 29% expressed moderate concern.
In the recent AP-NORC poll, close to half of Americans say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned that the US might be drawn into a war with Russia. Roughly four in 10 Americans said they are “somewhat” concerned.
The findings reflect not just anxiety about what seems like a proxy war with Russia, even if the US isn’t directly involved in the conflict, but also the unprecedented saturation coverage of the war through traditional news outlets and social media.
“We are seeing almost moment by moment what’s happening to these poor people,” said Linda Woodward, a retired phone company technician from Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.
The concern about nuclear war cuts across party lines and even resonates with some young adults who were born after the cold war.
You can read AP’s full report on its poll here. For round-the-clock Guardian global blogging on the war itself, please click here.
The January 6 news keeps coming, with ABC reporting that Jared Kushner, son-in-law and senior White House adviser to Donald Trump, is expected to appear before the investigating House committee this week.
Kushner, ABC says, citing multiple anonymous sources, will do so voluntarily, if the virtual session is not delayed.
He was not at the White House on 6 January 2021 but his wife, Ivanka Trump, was.
Kushner was also a senior White House staffer throughout his father-in-law’s attempts to overturn the election and stay in power, attempts motivated like the Capitol attack by lies about voter fraud.
Elsewhere, it has been reported that the committee wants to talk to Ginni Thomas, a rightwing activist and wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas whose texts with Trump’s chief of staff on and around the Capitol attack were reported last week, stoking a Washington scandal.
It’s also emerged today that a federal judge both thinks it likely that Donald Trump “committed multiple felonies as he sought to return himself to power on 6 January” and has “ordered Trump lawyer John Eastman to turn over hundreds of emails” to the investigating House committee.
Those are quotes from Hugo Lowell’s full report on the matter, which is here:
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Returning to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, here’s a taste of today’s Guardian US column from Rajan Menon, director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities and senior research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University:
Can proponents of regime change in Russia be certain that the denouement will be the one they have in mind and are confident about? The dismal record of the US and its allies in predicting the results of the regime changes they precipitated – in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – are grounds for caution, not least because the consequences of getting this particular attempt wrong might prove disastrous.
Rajan’s full piece can be read here:
Updated
Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican senator and reputed presidential hopeful, found himself in a tough spot at the weekend when he claimed tax rises contained in his own “11 point plan to rescue America” were actually “Democratic talking points” instead.
“No, no, it’s in the plan!” his interviewer exclaimed, on Fox News Sunday. “It’s in the plan!”
Our report is here.
For interested readers, meanwhile, here’s some further reading: an award-winning report from Benjamin Ryan, in 2019, about how when Scott was governor of Florida, “his administration presided over the effective blocking of $70m in federal funds available for fighting the state’s HIV crisis”:
Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, moments ago, that forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity to school children in kindergarten through third grade (ages five to eight, approximately) - a policy that has drawn intense national scrutiny from critics arguing it is an attempt to marginalize LGBTQ people.
The bill was passed by the state’s Republican-led senate earlier this month.
Since its inception, the measure has drawn intense opposition from LGBTQ+ advocates, students, Democrats, the White House and the entertainment industry, amid increased attention on Florida as Republicans push culture war legislation and DeSantis ascends in the GOP as a potential presidential candidate.
The legislation has pushed Florida and DeSantis, an ascending Republican and potential 2024 presidential candidate, to the forefront of the country’s culture wars, with LGBTQ advocates, students, Democrats, the entertainment industry and the White House denouncing what critics have called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
The Associated Press writes:
DeSantis and Republicans have repeatedly said the measure is reasonable and that parents, not teachers, should be broaching subjects of sexual orientation and gender identity with their children.
“We will make sure that parents can send their kids to school to get an education, not an indoctrination,” DeSantis said before he signed the bill into law. He and other speakers stood at a podium affixed with a placard reading Protect Children/Support Parents.
Critics say the bill is so vaguely worded that speech could be muzzled throughout public schools.
The bill states: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity 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.” Parents would be able to sue districts over violations.
DeSantis signed the bill after a news conference held at the Classical Preparatory School in Spring Hill, about 46 miles north of Tampa. The school was founded by Anne Corcoran, wife of Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, according to The Gainesville Sun.
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Federal prosecutors plan to finish presenting evidence this week in the trial of four men charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer.
An undercover FBI agent known as “Red” is due to appear today at the trial in Grand Rapids, the Associated Press writes.
The AP further reports:
Red joined key members of the group on a 2020 trip to Elk Rapids to take a look at Whitmer’s vacation home and a nearby bridge that could be blown up to distract police during her kidnapping, according to evidence.
Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta are charged with conspiracy. Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, two other men who were also arrested in October 2020, have pleaded guilty and were critical witnesses for the government last week.
Authorities said the men were armed extremists who, after weeks of training, were trying to come up with $4,000 for an explosive. They practiced that summer in Wisconsin and Michigan by dashing in and out of crude structures built to resemble a house or office.
Garbin testified last week that Whitmer’s kidnapping could ignite a U.S. civil war involving antigovernment groups and possibly prevent Joe Biden from winning the presidential election.
Fox talked about snatching the governor “every time I saw him,” Franks said.
Defense attorneys deny there was an actual plan to get Whitmer, claiming the men were improperly influenced by undercover agents and informants, and exchanged wild talk while often smoking marijuana.Whitmer rarely talks publicly about the case, though she referred to “surprises” during her term that seem like “something out of fiction” when she filed for reelection on March 17.
She has blamed former president Donald Trump for fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn right-wing extremists like those charged in the case.
Whitmer has said Trump was complicit in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection by thousands of his extremist supporters who sought to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory over the Republican at the November 2020 election.
As you’ll have seen from this blog today and dozens of Guardian stories, the insurrection is still very much in the news , with a special House panel investigating and hundreds charged with crimes relating to the attack on the Capitol.
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The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack is expected to discuss Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, tonight, before it officially considers holding in criminal contempt of Congress two of Donald Trump’s most senior White House advisers, Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro.
1) Fox is told to expect the 1/6 committee to discuss Ginni Thomas and her messages to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows at the beginning of their meeting tonight at :30 pm et.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) March 28, 2022
Fox has learned it has been added as a formal agenda item.
The move to initiate contempt proceedings against the two Trump aides amounts to a biting rebuke of their refusal to cooperate with the inquiry, as the panel deploys its most punitive measures to reaffirm the consequences of noncompliance.
House investigators said in a notice that it would consider a contempt report against Scavino and Navarro in a business meeting scheduled for next Monday on Capitol Hill, after they defied subpoenas compelling them to provide documents and testimony, Hugo Lowell has reported.
The select committee is expected to vote unanimously to send the contempt report for a vote before the House of Representatives, according to a source close to the panel, so that the Trump aides can be referred to the justice department for prosecution.
The select committee took a special interest in Scavino, since, as Trump’s former deputy chief of staff for communications, he was intimately involved in a months-long effort by the Trump White House to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Scavino was also closely involved in the scheme to pressure then vice-president Mike Pence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election at the joint session of Congress on January 6, according to his subpoena, first issued in October last year.
The select committee sought information from Navarro since he knew of that scheme to have Pence return Trump to office, through his contacts with the former president and the Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington that oversaw its implementation.
Navarro was briefed on the scheme – called the “Green Bay Sweep” – by the political operatives responsible for the operation at the Willard, including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who was also indicted for contempt last year for subpoena defiance.
The Guardian has reported that Trump discussed ways to stop Biden’s certification from taking place with the Willard war room hours before the Capitol attack, based on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud that originated in part from Navarro’s aides.
However, the select committee’s move to consider contempt reports against the two Trump aides indicate neither one complied with their subpoena. Their contempt reports are expected to be made public Sunday, said a source familiar with the matter.
Read the rest of Hugo Lowell’s report for the Guardian here.
Updated
Federal judge believes Trump probably committed felony obstruction of Congress with attempted coup at US Capitol on January 6, 2021
Donald Trump’s lawyer John Eastman must turn over to the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack around a hundred emails he had refused to turn over to the investigation, a federal judge ruled Monday, also saying then-president Trump “more likely than not” committed felonies over the January 6 insurrection.
The extraordinary ruling that paves the way for the select committee to obtain some of Eastman’s most sensitive emails concerning his illegal scheme to return Trump to office marks another major breakthrough for the investigation.
“Based on the evidence the court finds that it is more likely than not that president Trump and Dr Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of congress on Jan 6, 2021,” ruled judge David Carter.
Among the emails that the judge ordered Eastman to turn over include messages forwarded to him by Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani recommending that then-vice president Mike Pence overturn the 2020 election and laid out a day-by-day plan of action leading up to January 6, Hugo Lowell reports for the Guardian
Trump and Eastman may have been planning a crime as they sought to disrupt the January 6 congressional certification of the presidential election in 2021, two months after Democrat Joe Biden defeated Republican Trump in the November 2020 election.
The election was later called by officials at multiple levels across the country as the most secure in US history and the result was also backed by Trump’s then-attorney general Bill Barr.
CNN reports further on the judge today:
Carter’s reasoning is a startling acknowledgment by a federal court that Trump’s interest in overturning the election could be considered criminal.
Trump has not been charged with any crime nor has Eastman.
“The illegality of the plan was obvious,” Carter writes. “Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the Vice President to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election … Every American – and certainly the President of the United States – knows that in a democracy, leaders are elected, not installed.”
Also this is on Twitter from Law Crime News:
A federal judge finds it "more likely than not" that Trump committed felony obstruction of Congress on Jan. 6, in what he described as an attempted "coup in search of a legal theory."
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) March 28, 2022
Story ahead, @LawCrimeNews https://t.co/6jCXhX6FJp
Background: https://t.co/AGsyNp8bX7 pic.twitter.com/1z0JI1zyDX
House panel investigating Capitol attack to seek interview with Ginni Thomas - report
The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of then-president Donald Trump plans to request an interview with Virginia Thomas, the wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, according to a new report.
Yesterday, Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members on the committee, had vowed the panel will “get to the bottom” of events surrounding the 2021 insurrection but had refused to reveal whether they intended to question conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas over reports of her urging the White House then-chief of staff Mark Meadows to make all efforts to overturn Trump’s election defeat.
Kinzinger did however hint that it would be a topic of conversation on the panel this week and moments ago the Washington Post reported that the committee will indeed request to talk to Thomas, citing a source familiar with the investigation as confirming an earlier report to that effect by CNN.
Speaking on CBS yesterday morning, Kinzinger had refused to confirm or deny the existence of text messages Ginni Thomas is reported to have exchanged with Meadows, although he did not contest the Post and CBS’s joint revelation last week that they obtained copies of such messages from materials submitted to the congressional committee by Meadows.
Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the events surrounding 6 January 2021, said of witnesses being summoned to give evidence to the committee: “We’ll call in whoever we need to call in.”
He added: “Was there an effort to overturn the legitimate election of the United States? What was January 6 in relation to that? And what is the rot in our system that led to that and does it still exist today?… We are going to get to the bottom of this.”
He did not say whether that “rot” extended to the nation’s highest court.
Thomas and her husband are rightwing political darlings who have described themselves as “one being – an amalgam,” according to the New York Times.
Amid the latest reports, Justice Thomas is now facing calls to recuse himself from any cases surrounding the 2020 presidential election, the insurrection and potentially the 2024 presidential election, should Trump run for re-election.
Also yesterday, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, chairwoman of the Senate rules committee and a member of the Senate judiciary committee, which quizzes nominees for the supreme court, demanded that Clarence Thomas be removed from any cases surrounding the 2020 presidential election, the insurrection and potentially the 2024 presidential election, should Trump run for re-election..
“This is unbelievable,” Klobuchar told ABC’s This Week yesterday. “You have the wife of a sitting supreme court justice advocating for an insurrection, advocating for overturning a legal election, to the sitting president’s chief of staff. And she also knows this election, these cases, are going to come before her husband. This is a textbook case for removing him, recusing him, from these decisions.”
The 29 exchanges reported between Ginni Thomas and Meadows reveal how the wife of one of the land’s top jurists disseminated disinformation related to the QAnon conspiracy theory and other inaccurate arguments during the tempestuous days following the November 2020 election when rightwingers were claiming Democrat Joe Biden had not won.
Even as Trump strategized efforts to overturn his defeat through the courts, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas “spread false theories, commented on cable news segments and advocated with urgency and fervor that the president and his team take action to reverse the outcome of the election,” the Post reported.
It reported she wrote to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!...You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
Updated
Joe Biden has unveiled some details and his rationale behind the official budget announcement that is forthcoming this afternoon.
In a statement put out by the White House a few minutes ago, the US president said that: “Budgets are statements of values, and the budget I am releasing today sends a clear message that we value fiscal responsibility, safety and security at home and around the world, and the investments needed to continue our equitable growth and build a better America.”
Biden continued that: “My administration is on track to reduce the federal deficit by more than $1.3 trillion this year, cutting in half the deficit from the last year of the previous administration and delivering the largest one-year reduction in the deficit in US history.
“That’s the direct result of my administration’s strategy to get the pandemic under control and grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. We spent less money than the last Administration and got better results: strong economic growth, which has increased revenues and allowed us to responsibly scale back emergency spending.
“My budget will continue that progress, further reducing the deficit by continuing to support the economic growth that has increased revenues and ensuring that billionaires and large corporations pay their fair share.
“At the same time, my budget will make investments in securing our nation and building a better America. We will secure our communities by putting more police on the street to engage in accountable community policing, hiring the agents needed to help fight gun crime, and investing in crime prevention and community violence intervention.
“I’m calling for one of the largest investments in our national security in history, with the funds needed to ensure that our military remains the best-prepared, best-trained, best-equipped military in the world.
“In addition, I’m calling for continued investment to forcefully respond to Putin’s aggression against Ukraine with US support for Ukraine’s economic, humanitarian, and security needs.
“My budget also makes the investments needed to reduce costs for families and make progress on my Unity Agenda – including investments to cut the costs of child care and health care; help families pay for other essentials; end cancer as we know it; support our veterans; and get all Americans the mental health services they need.
“All told, it is a budget that includes historic deficit reduction, historic investments in our security at home and abroad, and an unprecedented commitment to building an economy where everyone has a chance to succeed.”
Budgets are statements of values. The budget I am releasing today sends a clear message: we value fiscal responsibility, safety and security at home and around the world, and the investments needed to continue building a better America.
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 28, 2022
https://t.co/wcW0H6hfTX
There continues to be short-term fall-out from Joe Biden’s ad libbed remark at the end of his keynote speech in Poland on Saturday, where he added, of Russian president Vladimir Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” There will probably be long-term fall out, too.
But during the weekend, not only did senior administration figures from secretary of state Antony Blinken on down scramble to do damage limitation and insist that Biden was not calling for “regime change” in Russia, while some such as French president Emmanuel Macron were critical, but the remark was even picked up in the pulpit when the US president returned to Washington, DC.
After arriving back at the White House in the early hours of Sunday, Biden emerged in the early evening to attend church for mass.
Politico reported that:
Biden attended the 5.30pm service at Georgetown’s Holy Trinity Catholic Church. The gospel reading of the day was the story of the prodigal son. During the homily the priest reflected on that reading and compared Biden and Putin, America and Russia, to the estranged brothers in that New Testament story.
“Putin/Russia may be the wayward son that we need to pray for and love,” one of Biden’s fellow parishioners emailed us after the service.
The pool reporter of the night afterwards noted that Biden left the church at 6.26pm and a reporter asked him if he was “calling for regime change?”
Biden said, simply: “No.”
A quick reminder that our global, 24/7 live blog on the war is here.
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Putin does not appear ready to compromise on Ukraine - US official
Russian president Vladimir Putin does not appear ready to make compromises to end the war it started in Ukraine, a senior US official told Reuters today, as Ukraine and Russia were preparing for their first face-to-face peace talks in more than two weeks, in Turkey.
“Everything I have seen is he is not willing to compromise at this point,” the senior US State Department official told the news wire, on condition of anonymity, after Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelenskiy sketched out a potential way to end the crisis over the weekend.
Reuters further reports:
“So, how far we go in trying to offer him [Putin] off-ramps that undercut the sovereignty of Ukraine and the decisions that President Zelinskiy would have to make, I don’t have a good insight for you,” the official said.
Ukrainian officials played down the chances of a major breakthrough at the talks, due to be held in Istanbul after Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan spoke to Putin on Sunday.
Ukraine is ready to discuss adopting a neutral status as part of a peace deal with Russia but such a pact would have to be guaranteed by third parties and put to a referendum, Zelenskiy said in remarks aired on Sunday.
Speaking to Russian journalists in a 90-minute video call more than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, an interview that Moscow authorities preemptively warned Russian media to refrain from reporting, Zelenskiy said no peace deal would be possible without a ceasefire and troop withdrawals.
He ruled out trying to recapture all Russian-held territory by force, saying it would lead to a third world war, and said he wanted to reach a “compromise” over the eastern Donbas region, held by Russian-backed forces since 2014.
Russia says it is conducting a “special military operation” in Ukraine with the aim of demilitarizing its neighbor. Ukraine and its Western allies call this a pretext for an unprovoked invasion.
Here’s the Guardian’s video clip of Zelenskiy’s statement.
The Biden administration is set to propose a 20% minimum tax on households worth more than $100m.
The proposal would raise more than $360bn over the next decade and “would make sure that the wealthiest Americans no longer pay a tax rate lower than teachers and firefighters,” according to a factsheet released by the White House.
The plan - called the “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” - is the administration’s most aggressive move to date to tax the very wealthiest Americans.
The White House is taking aim at the wealthy with a proposed billionaire minimum income tax. @robtfrank joins @SquawkCNBC to break down the details. https://t.co/T13eZvmHit pic.twitter.com/HS6IvHgJ41
— CNBC (@CNBC) March 28, 2022
Billionaire wealth grew exponentially during the coronavirus pandemic, helped by soaring share prices and a tax regime that charges investors less on their gains than those taxed on their income.
“In 2021 alone, America’s more than 700 billionaires saw their wealth increase by $1tn, yet in a typical year, billionaires like these would pay just 8% of their total realized and unrealized income in taxes. A firefighter or teacher can pay double that tax rate,” the White House factsheet notes.
Under the plan households worth over $100m would have to give detailed accounts to the Inland Revenue Service of how their assets had fared over the year. Those who pay less than 20% on those gains would then be subject to an additional tax that would take their rate up to 20%.
The Biden administration calculates that the tax would impact only the top 0.01% of American households, those worth over $100m million, and that over half of the revenue would come from households worth more than $1bn.
The budget also looks set to tackle another issue that some economists have argued contributes to widening income inequality: share buybacks.
In recent years cash-rich companies including Apple, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft, have used their funds to buyback huge quantities of their own shares, boosting their share price. Last year companies in the S&P 500 bought back a record $882bn of their own shares and Goldman Sachs estimates that figure will rise to $1tn this year.
Critics charge that the purchases divert money away from hiring new staff, raising wages and research and development.
Research by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that there is “clear evidence that a substantial number of corporate executives today use buybacks as a chance to cash out”.
The Biden proposal would stop executives from selling their shares for three years after a buyback is announced.
Biden attempted to impose a 1% tax on share buybacks last year but the proposal failed in Congress. Both Biden’s billionaire tax and the share buyback proposal will also face tough opposition in Congress.
The Washington Post broke the latest news with details of the new tax proposal, on Saturday.
Scoop: Biden's budget on Monday to propose "Billionaire Minimum Income Tax"
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) March 26, 2022
1st time WH has so directly targeted billionaire wealth
Would create minimum 20% rate on income above $100M
400 billionaire families paid *8.2% federal rate* from 2010-18https://t.co/zsn0xto36J
The US president will ask Congress to approve the new budget for the next fiscal year, passing the new minimum tax on billionaires and other proposals aimed at galvanizing Biden’s domestic agenda, cutting the US deficit and some measures that the White House also hopes will bring down inflation.
Biden’s budget has conservative West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin “written all over it”, Politico opines this morning.
It notes guidance over the weekend that the multi-trillion 2023 budget aims to, per White House briefing: “Reflect three important values: fiscal responsibility, safety and security at home and abroad, and a commitment to building a better America.”
Also that: “Through a new billionaire minimum income tax and other measures, budget policies will reduce deficits by a total of over $1tn over the next decade.”
And in a move that will dismay progressives, but which Biden had been strongly signaling, the budget will propose more funding for police.
“The Budget will help keep our communities safe by putting more cops on the beat for community policing, fighting gun crime, and investing in crime prevention and community violence interventions,” the White House said.
The proposed budget will also propose to “make one of the largest investments in our national security in US history...and make other critical investments to help build a better America...cutting costs for families.”
Politico remarks:
To say this is a dramatic change compared to Biden’s agenda last year is an understatement. The midterm messaging from the White House may as well have been written by Senator Joe Manchin: an emphasis on taxing only the wealthiest Americans, a new commitment to deficit reduction, lots more money for cops and the military, and chunks of the old Build Back Better agenda repackaged as inflation-fighting policies. What a difference a year makes!
Biden to unveil fiscal year 2023 budget this afternoon
Joe Biden will unveil his fiscal year 2023 budget this afternoon with a central proposal for a new income tax on the wealthiest Americans.
The US president is due to make his announcements at 2.45pm ET today and will be accompanied by director of the Office of Management and Budget, Shalanda Young.
Biden is set to announce a tax aimed at US billionaires as part of his 2023 budget plans in a move that will likely delight many progressives in his party but could meet opposition from conservative Democrats who have already stymied his domestic agenda.
What is expected is a “billionaire minimum income tax” plan that would establish a 20% minimum tax rate on all American households worth more than $100m, as reported by the Washington Post on Saturday.
That would mean the majority of new revenue would come from billionaires, who are a frequent target of public and political ire for tax avoidance schemes. The paper said it would be “a tax on the richest 700 Americans for the first time”.
The White House has been briefing that the budget, which covers the year from 1 October, “will reflect three important values: fiscal responsibility, safety and security at home and abroad, and a commitment to building a better America.”
Biden wants to reduce the US deficit. He also wants to increase funding for police and increase defense spending.
Updated
Biden to unveil budget including billionaire tax proposal
Good Monday morning, US politics live blog readers, there’s a lively day and week ahead in American political news and we’ll bring you all the developments as they happen.
The Guardian is also running a global news blog on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so while we’ll cover many US political aspects of that war here for round-the-clock news and what’s happening on the ground, please follow that here.
Here’s what’s in store in US politics today:
- Joe Biden will unveil his multi-trillion dollar blueprint for the US budget for 2022-2023, including a proposal for a billionaire minimum income tax, reportedly starting at 20% on households worth more than $100m.
- The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection is set to begin proceedings towards holding in criminal contempt of Congress two of Donald Trump’s most senior White House advisers, Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro.
- The committee is also expected to discuss the matter of whether to call Ginni Thomas, wife of US supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas, in for questioning over last week’s report that she exchanged text messages with Donald Trump’s then chief of staff Mark Meadows urging efforts to overturn the Republican president’s defeat by Biden in the 2020 election.
- Most Americans are at least somewhat worried that the US will be drawn directly into Russia’s war on Ukraine and fear the use of nuclear weapons, a new poll shows.
- The Senate judiciary committee will begin considering Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the supreme court, following her confirmation hearing last week, with a vote expected next week.
