The Full Belmonte, 3/7/2024
Biden's feisty reset
President Biden arrives in Hagerstown, Md., on Tuesday to board Air Force One after a weekend at Camp David. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP
“President Biden will use tonight's State of the Union address to admit that prices are still too high in some areas — but argue things were worse under former President Trump, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said in an interview with Axios' Zachary Basu and me.
Why it matters: Biden, in what could well be the most important speech of his presidency, aims to project fighting optimism to an audience with plenty of doubts about the nation's vigor — and that of the 81-year-old president.
Biden needs a cure for what some advisers call ‘Trump amnesia’ — the notion that the chaos and unpopularity of Trump's presidency has receded from some voters' memories nearly four years on.
The big picture: Biden's high-stakes speech comes just a day after 2024's rematch election kicked off in earnest, with yesterday's withdrawal by former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
Voters largely understand the contrasts between Trump and Biden on democracy and abortion. Views on the economy are less defined — which is animating Biden's approach to tonight's audience of millions.
Biden's advisers hope that if he can just find the right words, skeptical voters eventually will embrace him and his policies.
Behind the scenes: Biden spent the weekend hunkered down with Zients and other aides at Camp David, in the Maryland woods. They pored over drafts, absorbed the president's feedback and consulted historian Jon Meacham for epochal context.
Zients said Biden's speech will convey ‘energy, optimism and belief in the future of this country’ — and predicted ‘some passion’ when Biden demands Congress act on border security and aid for Ukraine.
What to watch: Zients said Biden will remind people ‘where the economy was three years ago when the president walked into office, where we are now and where we're headed — what his vision is for the economy.’
Biden will say the administration needs to keep working to create what he calls ‘breathing room’ in family budgets — ‘just a little bit of leftover money’ at the end of the month, as Zients put it in our interview.
Data: N.Y. Times/Siena College, Wall Street Journal, CBS News/YouGov, Fox News. Chart: Axios Visuals
Zients told Axios that besides celebrating today's record-low unemployment and strong wage growth, Biden will reveal a variety of second-term proposals on pocketbook issues.
Among the ideas he's eyeing: driving down the cost of prescription drugs, cracking down on ‘junk fees,’ expanding the housing supply and emphasizing tax fairness.
Reality check: Even some well-known Democrats find White House thinking naive.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tells The Washington Post: ‘The bubble is extraordinary: Democrats seem to think — many of them — that, only if we can explain all that we have accomplished, people will come on board. But that ignores the pain ordinary people are now experiencing.’
Between the lines: The central question for any presidential re-election campaign — the one Ronald Reagan famously posed to then-President Jimmy Carter in 1980 — is: ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?’
Biden wants to change many Americans' instinctive answer.” [Axios]
Double heat record
Data: ERA5, Copernicus Climate Change Service. Chart: Axios Visuals
“Earth just had recorded history's hottest February — and hottest 12-month period, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes from data out today
Why it matters: The new statistics confirm that 2024 so far is beating the record-warm 2023.
By the numbers: February was the ninth month in a row to rank as the globe's warmest on record.” [Axios]
A major homelessness case will be going to the U.S. Supreme Court
“Momentum is building in a case regarding homeless encampments that will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court next month and could have major implications for cities as homelessness nationwide has reached record highs. Read more.
Why this matters:
The U.S. experienced a dramatic 12% increase in homelessness last year to its highest reported level, a federal report found. About 653,000 people were homeless in the January 2023 count, the most since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007.
More than half the people experiencing homelessness in the country were in four states: California, Washington, New York and Florida. About 28% of the nation’s homeless are estimated to be in California alone, according to the report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.” [AP News]
A rally outside the Alabama State House, Feb. 28. (Stew Milne/AP Images for RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association)
Alabama governor signs IVF bill protecting providers into law
“Facing pressure to get in vitro fertilization services restarted in the state, Alabama’s governor signed legislation into law Wednesday shielding doctors from potential legal liability raised by a court ruling that equated frozen embryos to children. Read more.
Why this matters:
The new law took effect immediately, protecting providers from prosecution and civil lawsuits ‘for the damage to or death of an embryo’ during IVF services. Doctors from at least one clinic said they would resume IVF services on Thursday.
State Republicans are reckoning with a crisis they partly helped create with anti-abortion language added to the Alabama Constitution in 2018. The amendment, which was approved by 59% of voters, says it is state policy to recognize the ‘rights of unborn children,’ a phrase that became the basis of the court’s ruling.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a group representing IVF providers, says the legislation does not go far enough. Sean Tipton, a spokesperson for the organization, said this week that the legislation does not correct the fundamental problem, which is the court ruling ‘conflating fertilized eggs with children.’” [AP News]
The House passes a long-delayed spending package
“The $460 billion package of spending bills, passed Wednesday, would keep money flowing to key federal agencies through the remainder of the budget year. The Senate is expected to take up the legislation before a midnight Friday shutdown deadline. Read more.
Why this matters:
The bills to fund federal agencies are more than five months past due with the budget year beginning Oct. 1. A significant number of House Republicans lined up in opposition to the spending packages, forcing House Speaker Mike Johnson to use an expedited process to bring the bill up for a vote. That process requires two-thirds of the House to vote for the measure for it to pass.
House Republicans were able to achieve some policy wins. One provision, for example, is a policy prohibiting the Justice Department from investigating parents who exercise free speech at local school board meetings and another is a provision strengthening gun rights for certain veterans.” [AP News]
Mitch McConnell during a news conference at the Capitol in February. Photo: Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell endorsed Trump for president, despite their icy relationship and McConnell's condemnation of Jan. 6.” [Axios]
Gun Violence
“The gunman who committed Maine’s deadliest mass shooting had profound brain damage, a laboratory found. Veterans exposed to repeated blasts have had similar brain damage.” [New York Times]
“The armorer on the Alec Baldwin film ‘Rust’ was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. She loaded a live round into the gun that killed the cinematographer.” [New York Times]
“Gov. Kathy Hochul will send National Guard troops and state police officers to patrol the New York City subway. Major crimes on the system are up 13 percent this year.” [New York Times]
‘Heading Straight for a Civil War’
Armed gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier and his men are seen in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on March 5.Clarens Siffroy/AFP
“The United States reportedly pressured interim Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry to leave office on Tuesday amid escalating gang violence in the Caribbean nation. Henry was attempting to return home following a diplomatic mission in Nairobi to secure a Kenyan-led police force when he received the message from the U.S. State Department.
The move represented a dramatic policy change for the Biden administration, which for months has pushed back against calls for Henry’s resignation and instead proposed that he lead a political transition toward democratic elections.
Henry took office in July 2021 after then-President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination, and he has repeatedly delayed national elections since. Many Haitians reject Henry’s legitimacy and argue that he did not have legal authority to sign off on the Kenyan-led police deployment, known as the MSS mission, because he is not an elected official.
Last Thursday, gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier took advantage of Henry’s absence to coordinate an armed assault calling for his ouster. ‘If Ariel Henry doesn’t resign, if the international community continues to support him, we’ll be heading straight for a civil war that will lead to genocide,’ Chérizier said on Tuesday. ‘Either Haiti becomes a paradise or a hell for all of us.’
The government in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, issued a 72-hour state of emergency and curfew on Sunday after gangs freed around 3,700 inmates from two major prisons, stormed numerous police stations, and killed multiple police officers. Since then, gangs have surrounded Toussaint Louverture International Airport, preventing Henry from safely landing in Port-au-Prince.
After he signed the police deployment agreement with Kenyan President William Ruto in Nairobi on Friday, Henry’s whereabouts were publicly unknown until late Tuesday, when he showed up in Puerto Rico. The Miami Herald reports that the Haitian leader had flown to the United States after his weekend Kenya trip. Unable to fly back to Haiti safely, Henry secretly negotiated a plan with diplomats from the Dominican Republic to help Henry stealthily cross the border into Haiti.
However, after Henry’s flight departed the United States en route to the Dominican Republic, the country decided at the last minute not to allow his plane clearance to land. Henry then diverted to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico; while on his way there, he received the message from the U.S. State Department urging him to resign. Henry landed safely in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he remains.
‘Our support is focused on helping the [Haitian National Police] restore security, expediting the deployment of the MSS mission, and accelerating a peaceful transition of power via free and fair elections,’ a U.S. National Security Council official said on Tuesday night. ‘Our dialogue with Prime Minister Henry has been focused on these efforts and the need for security and a peaceful political transition.’
Almost 40 percent of Haiti’s 11.7 million residents face acute hunger, according to the World Food Program. And since last Thursday, around 15,000 people, mainly women and children, have been forced to flee their homes in Port-au-Prince, adding to the more than 300,000 people already displaced by gang violence last year. The United Nations Security Council held a closed-door emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the worsening security crisis.
‘Who is in control? I think nobody is in control,’ said Jean-Marc Biquet, head of the Doctors Without Borders mission in Haiti, adding that if the police give up fighting, it’s a lost battle. ‘Then what can happen? Well, I guess, total chaos.’” [Foreign Policy]
“War crimes accusations. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants on Tuesday for two senior Russian commanders. The court accused Army Lt. Gen. Sergey Kobylash and Navy Adm. Viktor Sokolov of war crimes, including targeting civilian objects and incidental harm of civilians. The men are believed to be responsible for numerous strikes on Ukrainian power plants between October 2022 and March 2023. Moscow dismissed the allegations on Wednesday as having no legal significance; Russia is not party to the court’s Rome Statute.
‘Every Russian commander who orders strikes against Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure must know that justice will be served,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X, formerly Twitter, following the ICC announcement.
This is the second time that the court has issued arrest warrants against top Russian leaders related to this conflict. In March 2023, the ICC targeted President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for their involvement in the forcible removal of Ukrainian children to Russia, which is considered a war crime.” [Foreign Policy]
At Aleksei Navalny’s grave. Maxim Shipenkov/EPA, via Shutterstock
“The grave of Aleksei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died last month, has become a pilgrimage site for people to honor — and mourn — his vision of a free Russia.” [New York Times]
“The Houthis, the Iran-backed militia, claimed responsibility for an attack that killed three people on a commercial ship near Yemen. The Houthis have been targeting ships in solidarity with Hamas for months; these were the first deaths.” [New York Times]
“Growth targets revealed. Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced an ambitious yet unsurprising economic growth target of around 5 percent for 2024 at the annual National People’s Congress on Tuesday. Amid worrying deflation and a struggling property sector, Li touted Chinese stability. He unveiled a 7.2 percent increase in Beijing’s military budget, the same as last year, and promised to target big-ticket spending, such as on electronics and automobiles. The roughly 5 percent goal is similar to 2023’s target.” [Foreign Policy]
“Presumptive Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto also announced new economic goals on Tuesday. He vowed to focus on privatization once he takes office as well as accelerate growth by 8 percent within the next five years. Prabowo is expected to win the country’s presidential election, with official results to be announced later this month. Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest economy and has positioned itself as a key part in global supply chains for electric vehicles.” [Foreign Policy]
“Gaza aid deliveries. Washington airdropped additional humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday in its second such operation within a week. The U.S. Air Force dropped 36,800 ready-to-eat meals in coordination with the Jordanian Air Force, adding to the roughly 38,000 meals that Washington dropped last Saturday. U.S. officials reiterated that there are currently no plans to deploy troops to the area.
The U.S. decision came amid rising concerns over acute hunger in Gaza, with the U.N. warning late last month that a quarter of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents risk imminent starvation. Yet humanitarian officials say that these meals are not enough to address the problem. ‘The three planeloads that the U.S. dropped last week are equivalent to ballpark four to six truckloads’ of aid, Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk told NPR. ‘So it really is not a significant additional amount of aid relative to the already hugely inadequate amount that’s getting in.’” [Foreign Policy]
“Even by Egypt’s standards, it’s been a time of upheaval.
In less than 24 hours, the cash-strapped North African nation hiked interest rates by a record amount, let its pound tank nearly 40% and unlocked an $8 billion International Monetary Fund loan.
That all comes on top of a huge rescue deal engineered by an increasingly influential Gulf nation and announced some two weeks back.
The United Arab Emirates has long said Egypt needed to change its economic ways. But Abu Dhabi also knew it couldn’t be allowed to fail at a time of regional chaos sparked by the escalating Israel-Hamas war.
Egypt is key to negotiating an end to that conflict — along with other regional powers including Qatar — and facilitating the delivery of aid to civilians in Gaza, the scene of a worsening humanitarian crisis.
That’s why the UAE agreed to pump $35 billion into Egypt and develop Ras El-Hekma, a Mediterranean peninsula three times the size of Manhattan. It was that deal that helped trigger the flurry of monetary policy moves yesterday.
The UAE, which has long employed its wealth to amplify its geopolitical sway, used the promise of aid to push Cairo toward economic reforms long demanded from the IMF and backed by the US. It’s worried about the stability of Egypt — a historical flashpoint for uprisings in the Middle East and a nation where more than 100 million people have been facing high inflation.
There’s also a deeper regional power play in motion, as the UAE tries to wield greater influence in Egypt for decades to come and a watchful Saudi Arabia — the longtime regional heavyweight — looks to its own land developments across the Red Sea.
The hope is the latest moves bring a semblance of stability to one of the more precarious pieces of the Arab puzzle.” —Sylvia Westall [Bloomberg]
Displaced Palestinians at the border with Egypt in Gaza on Feb. 1. Photographer: Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg
“The European Union will propose new sanctions over the death of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in an Arctic jail last month, targeting several prison and government officials, judges and penal colonies, according to a draft proposal. At the same time, Lithuania’s spy agencies warned that Russia’s military is preparing for a protracted standoff with NATO member states in the Baltic Sea region.” [Bloomberg]
“Millions of British workers were handed a tax cut by UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, which he paid for by stealing the opposition Labour Party’s flagship policies and squeezing public services. Hunt’s budget statement yesterday drew battle lines for an election widely expected toward the end of the year, with his ruling Conservatives trailing Labour by more than 20 points in opinion polls.” [Bloomberg]
“Senegal’s election confusion continues. The government proposed that a first round of voting take place on March 24, while the Constitutional Council said it should take place a week later. The goal is to carry out the ballot before President Macky Sall steps down on April 2. The West African nation has been in political limbo since Sall called off elections originally scheduled for Feb. 25 and sought a 10-month delay, setting off violent protests.” [Bloomberg]
“Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the mobilization of ‘patriots’ in Taiwan and abroad to fend off pro-independence efforts on the self-governing island.” [Bloomberg]
“Peru’s fragmented congress formed a supermajority to resuscitate the Senate three decades after it was abolished in the wake of then-President Alberto Fujimori’s decision to dissolve the legislature.” [Bloomberg]
“North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw military drills that included storming border guard posts, stepping up pressure on South Korea after saying he has the right to annihilate his neighbor and no longer seeks peaceful unification.” [Bloomberg]
“Taylor Swift tour: Authorities in Singapore have charged two men with cheating for sneaking three people into the sold-out concert. The city-state is the only south-east Asian stop of the Eras tour, which other countries in the region did not take well.” [BBC]
March 7, 2024
Good morning. We’re covering the Hungarian prime minister’s visit with Trump —
Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister. Denes Erdos/Associated Press
Orban in Florida
“Tomorrow in Florida, Donald Trump will host Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, whom Trump often praises. ‘He is a very great leader, a very strong man,’ Trump has said. ‘Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong.’
In a recent newsletter, I spoke with some of my colleagues covering Trump’s campaign about what a second term might look like. Another way to understand how he may govern is to examine his affinity for Orban. In today’s newsletter, I talk to Andrew Higgins, who writes about Hungary as The Times’s bureau chief for East and Central Europe.
Tucker as a model
David: People often describe Orban as autocratic. But he’s not a ruler who jails or kills his opponents. Can you describe how he suppresses dissent?
Andrew: Hungary under Prime Minister Orban is far from being a police state like Russia or Belarus. As an opposition legislator said to me last week in Budapest, it is more of a ‘propaganda state’ in which Orban’s governing party, Fidesz, controls the media landscape.
Orban does not jail his opponents or have them beaten up the way Vladimir Putin does, but he has relentlessly squeezed the space available for critical voices by getting business cronies to buy up independent media and starving the few others of advertising revenue. Fidesz-controlled outlets treat critics as traitors and deviants. He has also funded a raft of friendly research institutes and a university that help flood the zone with pro-government views.
When speaking at a 2022 gathering of American conservatives in Budapest, Orban hailed Tucker Carlson as a model of how media should work: ‘There should be shows like his day and night — or, as you say, 24/7.’ In Hungary, that goal has been achieved.
David: Orban originally won a democratic election. But he has also changed the rules to stay in power. How so?
Andrew: He is a master of playing democracy against itself. Orban always presents himself as representing the democratic will of the Hungarian people. That boast is in some ways justified: His party has won four general elections since 2010, and he has been in power longer than any democratically elected E.U. leader now in office.
But the playing field is far from even (as this Times article explains). Orban’s party, Fidesz, has gerrymandered. It has allowed voters to register in districts where they don’t live. It spies on government critics.
Fidesz also uses the government to shape and skew public opinion. One example: ‘national consultations,’ pseudo-democratic exercises in which citizens are sent questionnaires with loaded questions. The government recently announced that 99 percent of Hungarians rejected the E.U.’s policy on immigration. The question, however, asked people whether they wanted ‘migrant ghettos’ in Hungary. Most people didn’t return the questionnaire, but Fidesz has trumpeted the result on billboards.
The message is that the government represents the will of all but a tiny minority of the people — and which side do you want to be on?
Mavericks vs. ‘boring’
David: Ideologically, what do Trump and Orban have in common? And do they have any big disagreements?
Andrew: Their affinity with each other is more stylistic than ideological. They share a ‘let’s just rock the boat’ contrarianism. ‘I like mavericks,’ Orban said a few days ago, explaining why he respects Trump so much. Orban mocked fellow leaders as ‘more and more boring.’
Today, their biggest points of policy overlap are immigration and Russia. Both men have homed in on public unease at uncontrolled immigration and the risk of war, possibly a nuclear one, if the West gives Ukraine more weapons.
One big issue on which they diverge is China. Orban has put China at the center of his ‘Eastern Opening,’ to build tighter ties with Asia. As other countries have soured on China, Hungary has become its last reliable political partner in the E.U. and a destination for huge Chinese investments in electric car and battery factories.
David: What do you think Americans mulling the prospect of a second Trump term can learn from Orban’s years in power?
Andrew: Hungary is a small country with only around 10 million people — and only 34 years of democratic elections — so Orban’s model cannot be easily replicated in the United States. The U.S. has stronger independent institutions.
In my view, the canary in the coal mine will be media freedom. I’ve spent years reporting in Russia, Hong Kong, China and now Eastern Europe. And media freedom and pluralism are the first things to go when autocracy takes hold.
Journalists, of course, are prone to overstate their own importance, but I was in Moscow when Vladimir Putin came to power. The first clear sign that Russia was taking the path toward today’s dictatorship was the Kremlin’s assault in 2001 on NTV, then an independent television station. It is now a propaganda bullhorn.
Or look at China. Of all the slogans chanted by student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the most persistent — and most unsettling for the Party — was ‘Press Freedom.’ Autocratic rulers are afraid of criticism.
Related: Orban’s goal is to lead a populist and nativist rebellion against Europe’s liberal elite.” [New York Times]
Charges are dropped midtrial in ‘Hotel California’ lyrics case. Don Henley plans to fight on
“In explaining the stunning turnabout, prosecutors agreed that defense lawyers had essentially been blindsided by getting 6,000 pages of communications involving Don Henley and his attorneys and associates.” Read More at AP News
“Lives Lived: Josette Molland joined the French Resistance as a student, survived imprisonment in Nazi forced-labor camps and later painted scenes of the harsh treatment she witnessed there. She died at 100. (See her paintings here.)” [New York Times]