Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 233
HOWELL, Mich. (AP) — Calling opponents of his plans "complicit in America's decline," President Joe Biden made the case Tuesday for his ambitious building and social spending proposals by framing them as key to America's global competitiveness and future success. With his plans in jeopardy on Capitol Hill, Biden visited a union training center in Michigan, declaring that he wanted to "set some things straight" about his agenda and cut through what he dismissed as "noise" in Washington. "America's still the largest economy in the world, we s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden proposed a massive expansion of federal services for Americans this year, he laid out lofty stakes — not only for his own presidential legacy but far beyond. The imperative, he said in an April address to Congress, is to show "that our government still works — and can deliver for the people." It was an apt pitch for the long-held Democratic vision of government as a force for good, and for the idea that Washington has an obligation to improve the lot of Americans held back. But five months later...
WASHINGTON (AP) — It was an hour President Joe Biden would no doubt like to forget. On Friday, the Pentagon acknowledged that a drone strike in Afghanistan killed 10 civilians, including seven children, not terrorists. A panel advising the Food and Drug Administration voted to not recommend COVID-19 booster shots for all Americans over age 16, dashing an administration hope. And France announced it was recalling its ambassador to the United States out of anger for being cut out of a secret nuclear submarine deal Biden had struck with the U...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fearful of Donald Trump's actions in his final weeks as president, the United States' top military officer twice called his Chinese counterpart to assure him that the two nations would not suddenly go to war, a senior defense official said after the conversations were described in excerpts from a forthcoming book. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People's Liberation Army that the United States would not strike. One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has decided to stick with his deadline next week for completing the U.S.-led evacuation from Afghanistan, an administration official said Tuesday. The decision reflects a growing fear of extremist attacks at the Kabul airport but also opens Biden to domestic political complaints of caving to Taliban demands and of potentially leaving some Americans and Afghan allies behind. A Taliban spokesman, speaking prior to word of Biden's decision, said anew that the militant group would oppose any extension of the Au...
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President Joe Biden declared preserving voting rights an urgent national "test of our time" on Tuesday but offered few concrete proposals to meet it. Texas Democrats took their own dramatic action to stymie Republican efforts to tighten ballot restrictions in their state. Biden, who has proclaimed protecting ballot access the central cause of his presidency, has faced sharp criticism from allies for not doing more, though political headwinds and stubborn Senate math have limited his ability to act. Despite his ringing w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing rising fears of summer violence, President Joe Biden is embarking on a political high-wire act, trying to balance his strong backing for law enforcement with the police reform movement championed by many of his supporters. His focus Monday was on crime. Biden met at the White House with urban leaders — including Eric Adams, the heavy favorite to be the next mayor of New York City — about increased shootings, as Democrats warily watch a surge across the nation. Though limited to what can be done at the federal level, Bid...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing a call to "save American democracy," the Biden administration has unveiled new efforts to protect access to the ballot amid rising complaints from civil rights activists and other Democrats that the White House hasn't done enough to counter Republican-led state legislatures attempting to narrow voting procedures. President Joe Biden met with civil rights leaders Thursday in the West Wing, while Vice President Kamala Harris announced $25 million in new spending by the Democratic National Committee on actions to p...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced on Thursday a hard-earned bipartisan agreement on a pared-down infrastructure plan that would make a start on his top legislative priority and validate his efforts to reach across the political aisle. But he openly acknowledged that Democrats will likely have to tackle much of the rest on their own. The bill's price tag at $973 billion over five years, or $1.2 trillion over eight years, is a scaled-back but still significant piece of Biden's broader proposals. It includes more than a h...
GENEVA (AP) — An American president won't side with Moscow over his own intelligence agencies. There will be no talk of a "reset" in Russian relations. And it is highly doubtful that anyone will gaze into Vladimir Putin's eyes and discuss his soul. But beyond that, it's not clear what will happen Wednesday in Geneva when President Joe Biden meets Putin for the first time since taking office. Both sides acknowledge that the relationship between the two nations is dismal and neither holds out much hope for meaningful areas of agreement. Still, e...
GENEVA (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden and Russia's Vladimir Putin exchanged cordial words and plotted modest steps on arms control and diplomacy but emerged from their much-anticipated Swiss summit Wednesday largely where they started -- with deep differences on human rights, cyberattacks, election interference and more. The two leaders reached an important, but hardly relationship-changing agreement to return their chief diplomats to Moscow and Washington after they were called home as the relationship deteriorated in recent months. And B...
CARBIS BAY, England (AP) — Leaders of the world's largest economies unveiled an infrastructure plan Saturday for the developing world to compete with China's global initiatives, but they were searching for a consensus on how to forcefully to call out Beijing over human rights abuses. Citing China for its forced labor practices is part of President Joe Biden's campaign to persuade fellow democratic leaders to present a more unified front to compete economically with Beijing. But while they agreed to work toward competing against China, there was...
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — President Joe Biden is leading Tuesday's remembrance of one of the nation's darkest — and largely forgotten — moments of racial violence, marking the 100th anniversary of the destruction of a thriving Black community in Tulsa. Biden is helping commemorate the deaths of hundreds of Black people killed by a white mob a century ago, his visit coming amid a national reckoning on racial justice. It stands in stark contrast to then-President Donald Trump's trip a year ago, which was greeted by protests. Biden will be the first...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Prospects for an ambitious infrastructure deal were thrown into serious doubt late Friday after the White House reduced President Joe Biden's sweeping proposal to $1.7 trillion but Republican senators rejected the compromise as disappointing, saying "vast differences" remain. While talks have not collapsed, the downbeat assessment is certain to mean new worries from Democrats that time is slipping to strike a deal. The president's team is holding to a soft Memorial Day deadline to determine whether a compromise is within r...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Marking his first 100 days in office, President Joe Biden will use his first joint address to Congress to pitch a $1.8 trillion investment in children, families and education that would fundamentally transform the role government plays in American life. Biden will make his case Wednesday night before a pared-down gathering of mask-wearing legislators due to coronavirus restrictions and in a U.S. Capitol still surrounded by fencing after insurrectionists protesting his election stormed to the doors of the House chamber where h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has ordered a study on overhauling the Supreme Court, creating a bipartisan commission Friday that will spend the next six months examining the politically incendiary issues of expanding the court and instituting term limits for justices, among other issues. In launching the review, Biden fulfilled a campaign promise made amid pressure from activists and Democrats to realign the Supreme Court after its composition tilted sharply to the right during President Donald Trump's term. Trump nominated three j...
PITTSBURGH (AP) — President Joe Biden outlined a huge $2.3 trillion plan Wednesday to reengineer the nation's infrastructure in what he billed as "a once-in-a-generation investment in America" that would undo his predecessor's signature legislative achievement — giant tax cuts for corporations — in the process. Speaking at a carpenters union training center in Pittsburgh, Biden drew comparisons between his hard-hatted proposed transformation of the U.S. economy and the space race — and promised results as grand in scale as the New Deal or Grea...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border. Biden made the announcement as he and Harris met at the White House on Wednesday with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas and other immigration advisers to discuss the increase in migrants, including many unaccompanied minors, arriving at the border in recent weeks. In delegating the matter to Harris, Biden is see...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is scrambling to manage a growing humanitarian and political challenge at the U.S.-Mexico border that threatens to overshadow its ambitious legislative agenda. With the number of migrants surging, administration officials say Biden inherited an untenable situation that resulted from what they say was President Donald Trump’s undermining and weakening of the immigration system. But as Congress pivots to immigration legislation, stories of unaccompanied minors and families trying to cross border hav...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden's administration has tried for weeks to keep the public from seeing images like those that emerged Monday showing immigrant children in U.S. custody at the border sleeping on mats under foil blankets, separated in groups by plastic partitions. Administration officials have steadfastly refused to call the detention of more than 15,000 children in U.S. custody, or the conditions they're living under, a crisis. But they have stymied most efforts by outsiders to decide for themselves. Officials barred n...
ATLANTA (AP) — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris offered solace to Asian Americans and a reeling nation on Friday as they visited Atlanta just days after a white gunman killed eight people, most of them Asian American women. The visit, during a nationwide spike of anti-Asian violence, has added resonance with the presence of Harris, the first person of South Asian descent to hold national office. And it comes as Biden on Friday expressed support for the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, a bill that would strengthen the g...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and the Democrats were on the brink of pushing through sprawling legislation with an eyepopping, $1.9 trillion price tag. But many Republican politicians and conservative commentators had other priorities in recent days. A passionate defense of Dr. Seuss. Serious questions about the future of Mr. Potato Head. Intense scrutiny of Meghan Markle. The conservatives' relentless focus on culture wars rather than the new president highlights both their strategy for regaining power in Washington and their c...
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office for the first time as president a month ago, his pens were ready. Already. Lining a fine wooden box, they bore the presidential seal and an imprint of his signature, a micro-mission accomplished in advance of his swearing-in. Four years ago, pens were just one more little drama in Donald Trump's White House. The gold-plated signature pens he favored had to be placed on rush order in his opening days. Over time, he came to favor Sharpies over the government-issued pens. On matters far...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered new sanctions against the military regime in Myanmar, taking action after the military this month staged a coup in the Southeast Asian country and arrested de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior politicians. Biden said he was issuing an executive order that will prevent Myanmar's generals from accessing $1 billion in assets in the United States. Biden added that more measures are to come. "The military must relinquish power it seized and demonstrate respect for the will of t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin held their first phone conversation as counterparts Tuesday in a phone call that underscored troubled relations and the delicate balance between the former Cold War foes. According to the White House, Biden raised concerns about the arrest of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, Russia's alleged involvement in a massive cyber espionage campaign and reports of Russian bounties on American troops in Afghanistan. The Kremlin, meanwhile, focused on Putin's response to B...
