Biden jokes about ‘good old days’ as Obama returns to White House – latest

Deutsche Bank has issued a stark forecast for the near future of the US economy, predicting that the country will fall into recession next year. Stocks will fall 20 per cent by next summer, says the bank, and unemployment – currently at a remarkable low – will rise by more than a percentage point in the next two years.

Coming from a bank, these specific predictions are unlikely to cut through the news cycle to everyday Americans, but the electorate’s attitude to the economy is hardly optimistic as things stand.

The Biden administration is stepping up its supplies of lethal aid to Ukraine, and is allocating hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding to the country’s government and military as they fight back against the Russian assault.

Below, State Department spokesperson Ned Price announces a new package of “security assistance” destined for the US’s eastern European ally.

Teenage shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha in 2020, has long complained that Joe Biden bracketed him with “white supremacists” in a campaign ad – and is now hitting out at the president over the intensifying probe into his son’s alleged financial misconduct.

The White House yesterday announced a “whole-of-government effort to prevent, detect, and treat Long Covid”, with plans including research into the condition’s causes and impacts not only on individuals but across populations. Long Covid has affected many people previously able to work to the point where they effectively have a new disability, meaning they may be entitled to new rights of which they’re unaware.

Read more below:

Barack Obama was in ebullient spirits during his White House visit yesterday, including when asked about the Democrats’ prospects in what could be a punishing midterm election year. In a characteristically avuncular Obama-esque reply, he told a journalist the following:

Joe Biden has nominated a new head of the US Coast Guard: Admiral Linda Fagan, who if confirmed would become the first woman to head a branch of the US military.

Maria Cantwell, head of the committee that will hold her confirmation hearings, remarked that “Admiral Fagan’s nomination will inspire generations of American women to strive to serve at the highest level in the Armed Forces”.

Gustaf Kilander has the story:

The Independent’s Holly Baxter takes a look at yesterday’s White House appearance by Barack Obama, writing that it at least provided some welcome emotional warmth at a deeply negative moment…

At the same time, though, she ponders whether the visit can really offer much to Democrats as the president struggles around the 40 per cent approval mark and his agenda faces ongoing obstruction in Congress.

Read her take below.

As the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson draws near, Andrew Feinberg has this look back on the depths that were plumbed at her hearings by the Judiciary Committee’s Republican contingent and their colleagues on the Senate floor.

“Republican senators,” he writes, “spent the majority of their speaking time in both settings airing grievances regarding Democrats’ treatment of prior nominees going back to the Senate’s rejection of Judge Robert Bork more than three decades ago. They also subjected Jackson, a Harvard Law School graduate who has thrice been confirmed by the upper chamber (twice to court seats and once to a seat on the US Sentencing Commission), to some of the most bizarre inquiries ever directed at a nominee for the highest court in the land.”

Read his full rundown below.

(None of the stories he tells are in the same category as Marjorie Taylor Greene’s declaration that the three GOP senators voting to confirm Ms Brown Jackson are “pro-paedophile”.)

After years of a perpetually acrimonious atmosphere in the White House, the sight of Barack Obama joking with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris yesterday was a flashback to what feels like a different age.

Here’s how the former president introduced his onetime deputy.

Republicans tried to ridicule Joe Biden after some video clips surfaced claiming Barack Obama ignored the president.

Conservative lawmakers and commentators alleged that Mr Obama stole the show during his visit to the White House on Tuesday.

In widely-shared video clips – that many have said are out-of-context — the president can be seen raising his hands in exasperation as a group of people showered Mr Obama with attention.