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Biden to Highlight ‘Dignity of American Workers’ at Labor Day Events

Biden to Highlight ‘Dignity of American Workers’ at Labor Day Events

U.S. President Joe Biden is traveling Monday to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to take part in celebrations for the annual Labor Day holiday.

The White House said Biden will use speeches in both Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to highlight the “dignity of American workers.”

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is joining Biden for the events.

The president on Sunday expressed his support for a California state measure that would give agricultural workers expanded ways to vote in union elections.

“Government should work to remove — not erect — barriers to workers organizing. But ultimately workers must make the choice whether to organize a union,” Biden said.

California’s legislature has approved the bill, which would let workers cast union ballots by mail. But California Governor Gavin Newsom has opposed the measure in its current form, with a spokesperson citing concerns about the system being untested and lacking necessary steps to protect election integrity.

Monday’s holiday honoring workers in the United States was first celebrated in 1894, and it includes parades and other events in cities across the country.

Labor Day also represents an unofficial end to summer with a last busy long weekend for travelers and many children set to begin their school year.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press.

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Viral video compares crowd size at Trump and Biden midterm events in Pennsylvania

Viral video compares crowd size at Trump and Biden midterm events in Pennsylvania

Donald Trump and his supporters are famously obsessed with crowd size, and a video has gone viral comparing the audiences between recent rallies Mr Trump and Joe Biden held in Pennsylvania this week.

“Donald Trump and Joe Biden Both held rallies in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania this week,” reporter Benny Johnson, of conservative TV network Newsmax, wrote on Twitter in a post sharing the clip. “Here is what they looked like back to back. Incredible.”

The video, which has been viewed roughly 2.3m times, shows a packed house at Mr Trump’s rally in a stadium on Saturday, compared to a more modest crowd at the president’s speech on Tuesday in Wilkes-Barre.

Mr Trump, in his first major address since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, indeed brought numerous supporters to the Mohegan Sun Area, which appeared to be at its capacity of 8,000 seats.

The former president used the “Save America” rally – nominally a speech to support Republicans seeking office in Pennsylvania like aspiring US senator Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano – to attack federal law enforcement and make unfounded claims about Democratic Senate hopeful John Fetterman using illegal drugs.

Mr Trump accused the Biden administration of “weaponising the FBI and Justice Department like never ever before” and described the court-authorised search of his property as the FBI “breaking into the homes of their political opponents”.

“The FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Biden was back in his home state this week as part of his own run of Pennsylvania midterm events.

The Biden speech shown in the comparison video took place on Tuesday in a gymnasium at Wilkes University, a small college with a student body of just over 2,000.

At the event, Mr Biden criticised Republicans for claiming to be the party of law and order, while backing the Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6.

“So let me say this to my Maga Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th,” he said. “Don’t tell me. Can’t do it.”

He continued: “For God’s sake, whose side are you on?  Whose side are you on? Look, you’re either on the side of a mob or the side of the police.  You can’t be pro-law enforcement and pro-insurrection. You can’t be a party of law and order and call the people who attacked the police on January 6th ‘patriots’. You can’t do it.”

Two days later, Mr Biden gave a primetime address in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Constitution was drafted.

“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” he said, adding that the man he defeated nearly two years ago – former president Mr Trump – and his “Maga Republican” allies “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic”.

“That is a threat to this country,” he continued.

It’s not the first time crowd-size comparisons are part of the political conversation.

Perhaps the first scandal of the Trump White House involved the then-president and his aides making dubious claims about the crowd size at Mr Trump’s January 2017 inauguration.

Mr Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway told incredulous NBC host Chuck Todd at the time that the debunked statements weren’t wrong, but based on “alternative facts”.

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Why some Democrats are frustrated with Joe Biden | CBC News

Why some Democrats are frustrated with Joe Biden | CBC News

For Brett Bruen, a former White House official, the current U.S. president has failed to rise to the occasion in the wake of recent and consequential domestic events.

Whether it be a spate of deadly mass shootings, Supreme Court decisions including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, or the startling revelations coming out of the Jan. 6 hearings, Joe Biden should have offered more aggressive and robust responses, he says.

“What we’ve gotten, quite frankly, has been a pretty unsatisfactory string of statements and superficial gestures,” Bruen, who served as Barack Obama’s director of global engagement from 2013 to 2015, told CBC News.

“I think a lot of Democrats feel like the time for the superficial stuff has long since passed. We have got to seize control of these issues and really drive change.”

Bruen is certainly not the lone Democratic expressing such frustrations.

“I think [Biden] has to give voice to the urgency,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “He isn’t using the bully pulpit effectively.”

A man puts a medal around the neck of a woman in a wheelchair, who is saluting.
Biden awards the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Wilma Vaught during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House this week. (Susan Walsh/The Associated Press)

With a slim Democratic majority in the House and even slimmer in the Senate, there may be little Biden can do legislatively on some of the issues most vexxing Democrats.

But Bruen says Biden needs to be “really pushing the debate, whether it’s through his travel, through his events, through his personal engagement on some of these things. I just don’t see the White House focused in a smart, strategic way.”

Other Democrats have similarly claimed that the White House is “rudderless, aimless and hopeless,” and that some party members have grown impatient.

Meanwhile, a recent piece in The Atlantic headlined Is Biden a Man Out Of Time?, written by veteran political reporter Ronald Brownstein, says many Democrats feel that, on a number of issues, “Biden and his team have been following, not leading.”

And that has prompted “persistent chatter” about whether he should run again in 2024.

“The concern among Democrats about the White House … is palpable,” Michael D. Shear, a longtime White House reporter for The New York Times, told the paper in a recent interview.

Frightened children flee a building, guided by police officers.
Children run to safety after escaping from a window during a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. (Pete Luna/Uvalde Leader-News/Reuters)

“The main issue seems to be a performative one. Democrats want Biden to seem tougher, more engaged and more in the moment,” he said.

Shear said it was “striking” that in a week with so many sweeping issues  — Roe v. Wade, inflation, recession fears, mass shootings — you wouldn’t have known it from the president’s schedule, when instead he awarded medals and gave a speech on pensions.

All this comes while Biden’s polling numbers continue to tank. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 36 per cent of Americans approved of the president’s handling of his job, the lowest level of his presidency.

But Biden’s support within his own party has declined somewhat — just 69 per cent of Democrats polled approved of his performance, compared to about 85 per cent in August.

Of the many issues facing the White House, perhaps the biggest frustration among Democrats has been the White House response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Some wanted a more aggressive response. For example, shortly after the decision, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tina Smith of Minnesota urged Biden to declare a public health emergency.

Women protest on a street, waving pro-choice signs.
Pro-choice activists protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court moments after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Biden signed executive orders on Friday that would ease access to abortion pills. (Mark Gollom/CBC)

‘Use the bully pulpit’

When Biden expressed support for an exception to the 60-vote filibuster rule in order to codify abortion rights, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, approvingly: “Time for people to see a real, forceful push for it. Use the bully pulpit. We need more.”

On Friday, Biden signed executive orders to expand access to abortion medication. Some welcomed it as a first step, however others complained that Biden should have had those orders ready the day after the decision, Bannon says.

The five weeks between the leak of the Roe v. Wade opinion and the actual decision was a lot of time for the Biden administration to respond, he said.

“But they didn’t. And I think that’s what created a lot of unhappiness among progressive Democrats,” he said.

But Bruen, who considers himself a moderate Democrat, says he believes the frustration with Biden is a “shared concern across the party.”

“It comes down to the message and the messaging from this White House has not been particularly strong,” he said. 

“The Democrats look to the president to lay down — what is their argument on this issue? The White House has got to do a better job of that. They also have to do a better job of trying to package these issues up together.”

Jim Kessler, a Democratic strategist and executive vice-president for policy of the centre-left Third Way think-tank, says Biden could do a better job of providing optimism for Americans.

In 1982, with the U.S. facing high unemployment, President Ronald Reagan was successful at “selling the destination,” Kessler said.

“He basically said, ‘We’re going to get through this. We’re going to have strong growth, but growth is going to be shared by everyone in every place in America. Bear with me. Stay the course.’ And I think that Biden could do a better job of selling the destination of a prosperous, free, growing nation.”

He agrees that there have been some White House fumbles, and that the administration was late on tackling inflation and realizing it is more than a transitory issue. 

But Kessler says there are “a lot of crestfallen Democrats” upset over events unrelated to the president, including the Supreme Court decisions that bolstered gun rights but took away abortion rights. And he suggests some criticisms are not warranted.

“We had a July 4th mass shooting. And some people were saying, ‘The president needed to be angrier.’ That’s ridiculous. The president’s been plenty angry for the last year and a half,” he said.

‘The dumbest, dumbest thing’

Brian Doory, a Democratic strategist and managing director of Scarlet Oak Strategies, a public affairs firm, agrees there’s frustration among some Democrats, but says much of it is misplaced.

I think the obstruction on the other side has just not allowed [Biden] to move the ball as much as he would like,” he said. “The frustration should be directed at Trump and his supporters and I think all the Republicans who have essentially followed suit not to work with Democrats at any level.”

Democratic strategist Kevin Walling says Democrats have an unfortunate habit of abandoning their leader when their polling numbers slide.

“When Donald Trump was down … Republicans rallied around President Trump and the flag. And I think we Democrats often when we see a dip in popularity among our president, we wring our hands, we abandon the president,” he said.

With midterms on the horizon, Democrats seeking election who run away from the president and his record, do so at their own peril, Walling said.

Walling referred to the Democratic candidates in Ohio who did not meet with Biden when he recently visited Cleveland.

“It is the dumbest, dumbest thing that you can do,” he said. “It’s stupid to run away from the president and the leader of the party, especially when Air Force One comes to town to that local community airfield. That is a huge deal.”

“My advice to every Democrat is run with this president because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’re not supporting him, you’re going to see those numbers continue to slide.”

Still, Bannon agrees there have been rumblings about a change in leadership for 2024, but that it would be very tough for a Democrat to take down Biden if he wants to run for re-election.

“There are unhappy Democrats. But most Democrats, the Democrats in the primaries, are still supportive of Joe Biden. I don’t see anybody making  serious preparations about running for president.”

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Opinion | White House reporters object to exclusion from Biden events

Opinion | White House reporters object to exclusion from Biden events

When Salon reporter Brian Karem attended the Medal of Honor ceremony that President Biden presided over Tuesday in the East Room of the White House, he hadn’t been in that room in more than a year.

“It should be a big thing for us in this country: How to hold officeholders accountable if we’re not able to question them?” says Karem.

Access to the East Room has become a point of contention between some reporters and White House officials. Last week Karem sent a letter to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre regarding the ability of reporters on the White House campus to attend certain events the president headlines. “The current method of allowing a limited number of reporters into these events is not only restrictive and antithetical to the concept of a free press, but it has been done without any transparent process into how reporters are selected to cover these events,” reads the letter, which was written by Karem and signed by more than 70 journalists, including former ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson.

The restrictions at issue in this case — which originated in the Biden White House, according to three correspondents — aren’t a headline-making monstrosity. They’re a quiet, bureaucratic piece of statecraft that affects an indeterminate number of media outlets. But who is blocked today may be different from who is blocked tomorrow — and since access curbs tend to stick around, it’s a worthwhile fight.

White House access for journalists is a tiered and complicated affair: The Secret Service and White House officials issue security credentials — known as “hard passes” — for press-corps regulars to enter the grounds (“day passes” are available for reporters who only occasionally go to the White House). Those passes, however, don’t guarantee holders entry into every presidential event. The nonprofit White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), whose mission includes ensuring “robust coverage of the … presidency,” coordinates “pool” coverage — that is, reporting by a small squadron of journalists — for presidential appearances in spaces where the entire White House press corps can’t fit. Frequent locations of pool coverage include the Oval Office and the Roosevelt Room.

Karem is focused on White House events in spaces where all journalists with passes have traditionally been allowed to pile in. Those include the East Room, the State Dining Room, the Cross Room Hall and the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (which has been reconfigured for virtual events and now holds fewer people than in years past). These days, according to White House reporters, Biden officials routinely ask journalists to register to attend presidential appearances in such spaces. White House staff review the requests and deny some. A White House official notes that it has sought to “accommodate as many journalists as possible in a number of different spaces under constantly changing COVID conditions — challenges unlike any other Administration has faced.”

When the events feature a large number of invited guests, says the official, there isn’t room to accommodate every journalist who wishes to attend.

Steven Nelson, a White House correspondent for the New York Post, says he was denied access to registration-required events from November until Friday, when his attendance at an abortion-policy event with the president got the green light — one day after Karem’s letter was sent. One caveat: The New York Post participates in a rotating pool with about 30 other outlets and occasionally gets into events through that mechanism.

“Frankly, that seems pretty inexcusable to me,” says Nelson, who recruited other journalists to sign the letter. “I was surprised at the number of reporters who thanked me and expressed indignation at what’s going on. It seems a lot of people are affected.”

Affected, that is, by a policy they don’t know much about. Both Karem and Nelson say there’s no transparency into decisions on who’s welcome and who’s not. Karem says he’s been denied entry to all but a “mere handful” of the large presidential events on the White House campus since Biden’s inauguration. Like Nelson, Karem has gotten more favorable responses from the White House since sending the letter.

Contesting access at the White House has become something of a side gig for Karem, who’s been on the presidential beat since the Reagan administration and roared into the national spotlight in recent years by shouting down Donald Trump’s press secretaries. After a boisterous encounter with Trumpite Sebastian Gorka at a Rose Garden event in 2019, the White House suspended Karem’s hard pass; he went to court and secured its restoration. In September 2020, he asked Trump if he’d commit to a peaceful transfer of power. “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” the then-president responded.

In any administration, journalists have to double as access lobbyists at the White House. The Obama administration, for instance, routinely barred news photographers from events, only to later release photographs by the official White House photographer. Trump provided White House press with endless opportunities to quiz him on the day’s issues, though his underlings targeted certain reporters for exclusion, including Karem and CNN’s Jim Acosta and Kaitlan Collins.

“You had Donald Trump, who had nothing to say and said it all the time. And you have Biden, who has something to say and he rarely says it,” says Karem, who stresses that access issues affect the entire White House press corps.

Asked about the letter at Tuesday’s briefing, Jean-Pierre said, “We’re coming into a different place of covid — things are starting to open up, we’re even doing tours here. …We understand, we want to be accessible, we want the president, at his events, to be accessible and we are working to that.” She called the matter “a priority of ours.”

The letter to Jean-Pierre acknowledges that social-distancing imperatives “played a role at first,” but the attendance restrictions have outlived the public-health rules. Nelson says that attendance-denial notices from the White House formerly cited covid restrictions but no longer do so. Nowadays, he says, they merely cite space considerations. The White House official says that “there are a lot of considerations — space considerations, covid considerations, sometimes people don’t meet deadlines.”

Although the WHCA commonly presses officials on access problems, the letter doesn’t bear the organization’s imprimatur. WHCA President Steven Portnoy, however, signed it. “We have pressed the point repeatedly privately, and I was happy to co-sign Brian’s letter,” says Portnoy.

Don’t be surprised if the attendance-request system has a long lifespan, considering that wisdom on limiting press access gets handed down from one administration to the next. “We’re worried about the precedent for the future,” says Nelson. “In the next administration, it could be The Washington Post that finds itself essentially blacklisted from presidential events.”

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Biden says US willing to respond ‘militarily’ in event of Chinese attack on Taiwan

Biden says US willing to respond 'militarily' in event of Chinese attack on Taiwan

During a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, Biden was asked if the US would be willing to go further to help Taiwan in the event of an invasion than it did with Ukraine.

“You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” a reporter asked.

“Yes,” Biden replied. “That’s the commitment we made.”

“We agree with the One China policy. We signed on to it, and all the attendant agreements made from there, but the idea that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, is (just not) appropriate,” he said.

Under the “One China” policy, the US acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the island of 23 million.

In a statement following Biden’s remarks, a White House official said the US’ official position remained unchanged. “As the President said, our policy has not changed. He reiterated our One China policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. He also reiterated our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself,” the official said.

The President has made similar comments on Taiwan in the past, including during a CNN town hall in October, only to have the White House walk back his remarks and insist that longstanding US policy has not changed toward the self-governing island.

The US provides Taiwan defensive weapons, but has remained intentionally ambiguous on whether it would intervene militarily in the event of a Chinese attack.

But this time, Biden’s strong warning was made right on China’s door step, during his first trip to Asia as President — a visit aimed at uniting allies and partners to counter China’s rising influence.

It also came a day before Biden is scheduled to attend the second in-person summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) — an informal grouping between the US, Japan, Australia and India that has alarmed Beijing.

China is alarmed by the Quad, describing it as 'Asia's NATO'. It's not — but Chinese threats are driving the group closer together

Within hours, China had expressed its “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to Biden’s comments, saying it will not allow any external force to interfere in its “internal affairs.”

“On issues concerning China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and other core interests, there is no room for compromise,” said Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

“We urged the US side to earnestly follow the One China principle…be cautious in words and deeds on the Taiwan issue, and not send any wrong signal to pro-Taiwan independence and separatist forces — so it won’t cause serious damage to the situation across the Taiwan Strait and China-US relations.”

Taiwan lies fewer than 110 miles (177 kilometers) off the coast of China. For more than 70 years the two sides have been governed separately, but that hasn’t stopped China’s ruling Communist Party from claiming the island as its own — despite having never controlled it.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has said that “reunification” between China and Taiwan is inevitable and refused to rule out the use of force. Tensions between Beijing and Taipei are at the highest they’ve been in recent decades, with the Chinese military sending record numbers of war planes near the island.

Biden compared a potential invasion of Taiwan by China to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, warning, “It will dislocate the entire region,” and emphasizing “Russia has to pay a long-term price for its actions.”

5 Asian military hotspots and how they play into Biden's visit

“And the reason I bother to say this, not just about Ukraine — if in fact after all he’s done, there’s a rapprochement…between the Ukrainians and Russia, and these sanctions are not continued to be sustained in many ways, then what signal does that send to China about the cost of attempting, attempting to take Taiwan by force?”

Biden said that China is “already flirting with danger right now by flying so close and all the maneuvers they’re undertaking.”

“But the United States is committed, we made a commitment, we support the One China policy, we support all we’ve done in the past, but that does not mean, it does not mean that China has the ability, has the, excuse me, jurisdiction to go in and use force to take over Taiwan,” he added.

At the press conference, Kishida also reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

“Attempts to change the status quo by force, like Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, should never be tolerated in the Indo-Pacific, above all, in East Asia,” he said.

“As the regional security environment becomes increasingly severe, I reaffirmed with President Biden that we need to speedily strengthen the deterrence and response of the Japan-US alliance,” he said, adding that he conveyed his determination to “fundamentally strengthen Japan’s defense capability.”

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President Biden arrives in Seattle for Earth Day remarks, events announced for Friday

President Biden arrives in Seattle for Earth Day remarks, events announced for Friday

President Joe Biden is in the Pacific Northwest starting Thursday for a two-day visit to Portland and Seattle. Authorities say to expect delays on the ground and in the air.

Biden’s first stop was Portland, where he toured areas that benefited from his infrastructure bill.

After his Portland visit, Biden traveled to Seattle Thursday evening, and is landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport shortly after 5:00 p.m.

Travelers saw delays due to Air Force One’s arrival at SEA Airport. According to airport officials, security protocols call for all air traffic to stop 30 minutes before and after the arrival.

During Biden’s arrival and departure, the Washington State Patrol said drivers should expect freeway closures around the Seattle area because of his visit. It is not known yet which freeways could be closed. 

On Friday, the President will deliver Earth Day remarks at Seward Park in Seattle at 10:30 a.m. He will then head to Auburn to discuss a plan to lower health care and energy costs. Biden will be speaking at Green River College at 12:30 p.m.

Biden is scheduled to attend a democratic fundraiser and is expected to stay until Friday, which is also Earth Day.

Although Biden is raising fuel economy standards for vehicles and included green policies in last year’s bipartisan infrastructure legislation, the lack of greater progress casts a shadow over his second Earth Day as president.

He will mark the moment on Friday in Seattle, where he’ll be joined by Gov. Jay Inslee, a fellow Democrat with a national reputation for climate action. During the Seattle visit, Biden plans to sign a climate-related executive order in honor of Earth Day.

According to a White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Biden will also discuss how he is fighting to bring down prescription drug costs, such as insulin, and will be also joined by Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and Congresswoman Kim Schrier.

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Biden’s last Seattle visit was in November 2019 while campaigning in the Democratic presidential primaries. He attended a fundraiser at the home of Amazon executive David Zapolsky.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Ohio State offers resources and events amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Ohio State offers resources and events amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Tensions between Russia and other nations have been growing for decades, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Credit: Maxim Guchek/BelTA/TASS/ABACAPRESS.COM via TNS

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, Ohio State has a number of resources to help those impacted, and will host events with information about the war.

Christopher Gelpi, director and chair of peace studies and conflict resolution at the Mershon Center, said learning about the war is an important part of being a good citizen, because everyone has a responsibility to understand how governments, both in the U.S. and overseas, react in times of struggle.

“I see our role in a crisis like this is to bring people together and share the knowledge that our faculty fellows have in a way that is accessible to as wide an audience as possible,” Gelpi said.

An estimated 42,908 people of Ukrainian descent live in Ohio, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey.

Ohio State’s “Education for Citizenship” motto emphasizes the university’s commitment to informing citizens, according to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion website. The Office of International Affairs has a list of resources to inform students about the university’s events covering the crisis in Ukraine.

University spokesperson Chris Booker said in an email the Office of International Affairs offers support resources, including counseling and personal well-being services, immigration assistance for international students and information about cyber security.

“Ohio State developed this list of academic and support resources to assist those impacted by the conflict in Ukraine and foster discussion and education across campus,” Booker said.

The Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies has compiled various academic resources, including books, articles, events and films, that help to better understand the crisis in Ukraine, according to the center’s website. The office will also hold a virtual roundtable Wednesday from 11 a.m. to noon, featuring Polish experts sharing their perspective on the war.

WOSU Public Media and the John Glenn College of Public Affairs will hold an event Thursday at noon called “Dialogue Special Edition: The Russia/Ukraine Crisis,” featuring a variety of speakers and discussions on the possible routes to peace in Europe.

The Mershon Center will host a virtual event March 24 from 3:30-5 p.m., featuring a discussion from Timothy Frye, a professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University, about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role in Russian and international politics, according to the Mershon Center website. Another virtual event hosting 11 speakers who will speak on U.S. and NATO relations with Russia will be held April 8 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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Amid fast-changing events, Biden looks ahead in State of the Union – The Boston Globe

Amid fast-changing events, Biden looks ahead in State of the Union - The Boston Globe

Opening his speech with praise for Ukraine and for the worldwide effort to isolate and punish Russia for an invasion that threatens the global order, Biden promised pain for Russia and Putin and sought to comfort Americans rattled by the sudden instability and the cost it could impose.

“I want you to know we are going to be OK,” Biden said, offering words that drew members of both parties in the nation’s normally divided Congress to their feet.

“In the battle between democracy and autocracy,” he said, “democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security.”

It was an upbeat — albeit weighty — opening to a speech that has had to be rewritten as history unfolds by the day, delivered by a president who is fighting low approval ratings and eager for a reset. Biden touted the US role in uniting European and other countries in their efforts to economically isolate Russia, and announced tough new measures to ban Russian planes from US airspace and setting Justice Department prosecutors after Russian oligarchs.

The crisis is overshadowing Biden’s legislative agenda as well as the country’s more recent progress fighting COVID-19. Still, aware his party needs a winning message to carry it uphill through the midterm elections, Biden sought to rebut Republican criticisms on crime and policing while casting his administration’s key legislative accomplishments — an economic stimulus bill supported only by Democrats and a bipartisan infrastructure bill — as a balm for the economy, even as he acknowledged Americans’ pain over rising prices.

“And with all the bright spots in our economy, record job growth and higher wages, too many families are struggling to keep up with the bills,” said Biden, forced to reckon with the problem that polls suggest has kept his approval ratings underwater for months. “Inflation is robbing them of gains they might otherwise feel.”

Biden’s speech, which was initially meant to focus on his plans for the economy and progress in fighting COVID-19, was instead split between the international crisis and a renewed pitch for his domestic agenda. On COVID-19, the president promised a cautious return to normal and asked people to set aside partisan divisions over the “God-awful disease.”

“I know you’re tired, frustrated, and exhausted . . . but I also know this,” Biden said. “Because of the progress we’ve made, because of your resilience and the tools we have been provided by this Congress, tonight I can say we are moving forward safely, back to more normal routines.”

“Thanks to the progress we have made this past year,” he added, “COVID-19 need no longer control our lives.”

In some ways, the crowd in front of him told the story of the lightning-fast change coursing through the country. The assembled group of lawmakers and administration officials on the House floor was mostly maskless, an unusually normal sight that reflects the administration’s effort to find a way to live with COVID Some of the assembled lawmakers wore yellow and blue — the colors of the Ukrainian flag — as a sign of support for a nation under assault on the other side of the globe. Justice Stephen Breyer stood somberly in his black robes, his presence a reminder of his impending retirement, which offers Biden a chance for a big political win, after he nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first Black woman on the court.

But the scene also revealed the scale of the obstacles he faces as renewed his pitch for his stalled legislative agenda. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat who frustrated Biden’s plans to enact a sweeping social spending bill and reform of the filibuster so he could enact new voting rights protections, sat with Republicans instead of members of his own party. And Republicans booed Biden when he spoke of his economic agenda, breaking the earlier bipartisan camaraderie around Ukraine.

Biden, who spent much of 2021 locked in protracted negotiations with Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another moderate Democrat, offered up parts of the social spending bill they had sunk as an answer to the problem of inflation. He called on lawmakers to lower prescription drug prices, cut energy costs by combating climate change, cut child care costs, and make the tax system fairer.

“I think I have a better idea to fight inflation: Lower your costs, not your wages,” Biden said.

But it is no clearer now than it was in recent months how Biden will get those measures through Congress.

His approval rating in some polls has plummeted below 40 percent since last summer as COVID cases surged again,and he’s faltered in two areas touted as his strengths: foreign policy and congressional deal-making.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll released over the weekend showed the depths of Biden’s troubles. His overall approval rating reached a new low of 37 percent. Just 36 percent of Americans said they thought Biden was a strong leader and only 40 percent said he had the mental sharpness to be an effective president.

But the poll also indicated an opportunity for him in the Ukraine crisis. Two-thirds of respondents said they supported economic sanctions against Russia by the United States and its European allies. And eight in 10 said they viewed Russia as unfriendly or an enemy to the United States.

Biden, who spent decades on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, seemed most confident and at ease while rallying the lawmakers and officials in front of him against Russia and in support of Ukraine and his country’s alliances.

“Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson, when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression they cause more chaos,” Biden said. “They keep moving, And the costs and the threats to America and the world keep rising.”

He said that he had spent “countless hours” unifying European allies and sharing US intelligence about Russia’s plans, and that global action had left Putin as isolated as he has ever been.

But he was also careful — as he has been for months — to emphasize his reluctance to send American troops to Putin’s ground war or to start any other military engagement in Ukraine.

“Let me be clear, our forces are not engaged and will not engage in the conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine,” Biden said.

The speech comes as Democrats search for a message they hope will hold off Republican gains in this year’s midterm elections. Biden called for new investments in crime prevention and community policing — likely seeking to rebut Republicans who say his party is soft on crime.

“The answer is not to defund the police,” Biden said. “It’s to fund the police, fund them, fund them, fund them with the resources and training, resources and training they need to protect our communities.”

In the Republican rebuttal to Biden’s speech, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds criticized the president over his handling of the economy. “The Biden administration believes inflation is a ‘high class problem,’” she said. “I can tell you it’s an everybody problem.”

In his speech, Biden also laid out a litany of other priorities, including confirming Jackson to the Supreme Court, and passing the same voting rights legislation that Manchin and Sinema effectively killed.

Biden also offered up a “unity agenda” to combat the opioid epidemic, address mental health problems, help veterans, and beat cancer. The latter piece of that agenda sparked a Republican lawmaker to yell out at Biden, blaming him for the deaths of 13 service members during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Biden ended his speech on a hopeful note. “We are stronger today than we were a year ago,” he said. “And we will be stronger a year from now than we are today.”

Jim Puzzanghera of the Globe staff contributed to this report.


Jess Bidgood can be reached at Jess.Bidgood@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessbidgood.

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Zelensky says he discussed latest events with Biden

Zelensky says he discussed latest events with Biden
People are evacuated to Russia from the Donetsk People's Republic on February 19.
People are evacuated to Russia from the Donetsk People’s Republic on February 19. (Andrey Borodulin/AFP/Getty Images)

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees recognizing two controversial separatist-held regions, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic, Monday in a ceremony carried on state television.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has previously promised “a swift and firm response” from the US and allies and partners if Russia moves to recognize Ukraine’s breakaway regions as part of Russian territory, calling such a move a “gross violation of international law.”

Here’s why the recognition of the separatist-held regions is significant:

War broke out in 2014 after Russian-backed rebels seized government buildings in towns and cities across eastern Ukraine. Intense fighting left portions of the Donbas region’s eastern Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts in the hands of Russian-backed separatists. Russia also annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that sparked global condemnation.

The separatist-controlled areas in Donbas became known as the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). The Ukrainian government in Kyiv asserts the two regions are in effect Russian-occupied. The self-declared republics are not recognized by any government, including Russia. The Ukrainian government refuses to talk directly with either separatist republic.

The Minsk II agreement of 2015 led to a shaky ceasefire agreement, and the conflict settled into static warfare along the Line of Contact that separates the Ukrainian government and separatist-controlled areas. The Minsk Agreements (named after the capital of Belarus where they were concluded) ban heavy weapons near the Line of Contact.

Language around the conflict is heavily politicized. The Ukrainian government calls separatist forces “invaders” and “occupiers.” Russian media calls separatist forces “militias” and maintains that they are locals defending themselves against the Kyiv government.

More than 14,000 people have died in the conflict in Donbas since 2014. Ukraine says 1.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes, with most staying in the areas of Donbas that remain under Ukrainian control and about 200,000 resettling in the wider Kyiv region.