What Was Missing From Joe Biden’s 2024 Announcement

What is Joe Biden doing?

On Tuesday, the president officially declared his bid to run for reelection in 2024. In his announcement video, Biden showcased his signature optimism and persistent cause to win the “battle for the soul of America.” Yet nowhere in the three-minute video did Biden even mention the words “abortion,” “climate,” “environment,” “gun,” “immigrant,” “justice,” “labor,” “union,” or “worker.”

The video announcement paid a great deal of focus to themes of freedom and democracy and the threats “MAGA extremists” pose in eroding them: cutting Social Security and cutting taxes for the wealthy, “dictating what health care decisions women can make,” “banning books and telling people who they can love,” doing it all “while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”

“This is not a time to be complacent,” Biden urged, asking voters to consider a key question: whether they will have more freedom and rights, or fewer.

Biden’s ad in a broad sense focused on the abstractions: his belief that “we’re good and decent people” in a “country that believes in honesty and respect, and treating each other with dignity.”

But in so doing, Biden spent 184 seconds avoiding any mention of the most popular issues not only among his base but across political lines.

State after state is advancing restrictive abortion bans and pushing attacks on LGBTQ people. The majority of Americans—regardless of party—say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But Biden’s only invocations of the issues were subdued: MAGA extremists are looking to dictate “what health care decisions women can make” or tell people “who they can love.”

Amid an appalling wave of gun violence across the country—from shootings of kids accidentally ringing the wrong doorbell or driving up the wrong driveway to mass shootings at schools and banks—Biden did not mention the word “gun” once.

In the aftermath of a border detention facility fire killing 40 migrants, Biden did not mention the word “migrant,” or “immigrant,” not even to hand-wave about America being a “beacon” for people fleeing oppression or searching for a better life.

Nothing about “justice” either, as police killings continue, as do protests of the construction of a bloated police facility in Atlanta (protests where masses of people have been arrested indiscriminately on no just cause and one protester was killed in cold blood).

After first billing himself the “most pro-union president in American history,” and then imposing a contract on railroad workers, Biden did not mention the words “labor,” “union,” or “worker.”

And on a ticking clock with no regard for second chances, after Biden rubbed his foot into the faces of the millions of young people who got him into office and approved the controversial Willow pipeline project, the president could not even muster the gumption to say “climate,” “environment,” or even “nature.”

Of course, it’s just an ad. On the other hand, it’s also the ad—the long-awaited confirmation that Biden is running again, and that he should earn our support lest we lose to the dangerous Republicans. Amid Biden’s lurch to the right—with no apparent electoral benefit—every display of priority matters. So if his announcement is to be graded on any scale of genuine concern for the broader slate of Democratic-mobilizing issues, or for the life-changing problems for millions of people, it fell remarkably short.

Former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg revealed Tuesday that erstwhile network star Tucker Carlson was determined to push a conspiracy theory that the FBI had instigated the January 6 riot—regardless of facts.

Grossberg is suing Fox, where she worked for four years, alleging that company lawyers coerced her into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. The move, she argued, was due to a culture of “poisonous and entrenched patriarchy” and gender-based discrimination. She also said that there were constant “lies and deceit” at Fox because the network prioritized ratings above all else.

In an interview Tuesday with MSNBC, she revealed just how far Carlson in particular went for that priority.

“When the January 6 tapes were coming out, Tucker was very set on finding an FBI person who was implanted in the crowd and spinning this conspiracy that they were ultimately the ones responsible for the Capitol attack. Not Fox News,” Grossberg told Nicolle Wallace.

Even though a lawyer for the Proud Boys told Grossberg—twice—in no uncertain terms that “there is no conspiracy,” Carlson forged ahead. He insisted that federal agents embedded among the rioters and ultimately prompted the attack on the Capitol, and Grossberg was asked to find a guest for the show who would be OK with the conspiracy theory.

Others on the right have also run with the conspiracy, but Carlson launched it to a wider audience. After one of his segments, Poynter noted that “there is no credible evidence behind this theory, and Carlson’s piece doesn’t present any.” Yet in March, when former President Donald Trump predicted that he would be indicted and urged his followers to protest in New York, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene implied that a demonstration would do no good for similar reasons.

“How many Feds/Fed assets are in place to turn protest against the political arrest of Pres Trump into violence?” she tweeted.

Carlson, of course, knew better. Court documents published during the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox showed that hosts including Carlson knew the election conspiracies were false and that Trump’s lawyers weren’t credible, but they spread the conspiracies and invited the lawyers on air anyway.

Washington has just banned the sale of AR-15s and dozens of other semiautomatic rifles.

The monumental change came Tuesday, as Governor Jay Inslee signed a trio of gun safety bills amid a spate of disastrous gun violence sweeping the nation.

“These weapons of war, assault weapons, have no reason other than mass murder,” Inslee said while signing the bills. “Their only purpose is to kill humans as rapidly as possible in large numbers.”

Inslee also signed a bill that enacts a 10-day waiting period for gun purchases, and another that will open the door to holding gunmakers and sellers liable for negligent sales. In sum, the bills embody yet another state government with a Democratic trifecta genuinely responding to concerns surrounding rampant gun violence. Michigan has been pursuing a slate of gun safety regulations, including the recent passage of universal background checks and safe storage laws.

Washington’s gun safety provisions follow horrific instances of gun violence on both micro and macro scales. In recent weeks, numerous individuals have been shot, even fatally, for the offense of accidentally ringing the wrong doorbell or driving up the wrong driveway. And these came amid larger back-to-back mass shootings that have shocked thousands of people in the South. A school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, left three children and three adults dead; a shooting at a Louisville, Kentucky, bank left five people dead and another eight injured.

There have been at least 173 mass shootings in America just this year—that is an average of about 1.5 mass shootings a day.

In the meantime, Republicans have spent most of their time either shutting down even modest gun reform or stumbling over themselves to still somehow pledge fealty to the NRA. (Essentially every rumored and declared candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination attended the NRA’s convention less than two weeks ago.)

“Just because they don’t solve all the problems does not mean the state of Washington does not take action,” Inslee said while signing the bills Tuesday. “Inaction against gun violence is unacceptable.”

On Monday, Senator Ed Markey joined the growing calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign.*

“I will say what needs to be said: Clarence Thomas should resign from the Supreme Court of the United States. His reputation is unsalvageable,” the Massachusetts senator said. “It is evident that he cannot judge right from wrong, so why should he be judging the country’s most important cases on the highest court?”

Markey made the comments while flanked by Representative Ayanna Pressley and Senator Elizabeth Warren in Boston, during the kickoff of a 20-stop tour focused on advocating for tighter ethical restrictions on the Supreme Court.

The tour follows a stream of revelations about the secret and extremely lavish gifts Thomas has received for decades from billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow. The undisclosed offerings from the Nazi memorabilia–collecting billionaire included luxurious island-hopping excursions on superyachts and even a secret deal in which Crow bought Thomas family property and proceeded to upgrade it while Thomas’s mother still lived in it.

The trio’s kickoff also came a day before revelations that Justice Neil Gorsuch successfully sold a 40-acre property that he had been trying to sell for two years to an undisclosed buyer; the buyer of the nearly $2 million Colorado ranch was the CEO of a law firm that has since had 22 cases with business before the court.

Along with calling for Thomas’s resignation, Markey joined Warren and Pressley in calling for broader reform to the courts.

Markey assailed the court as being “broken,” with justices flouting financial restrictions and ethical standards while the court inflicts “painful real-world consequences” upon people. He listed an array of cases as evidence of how people’s “most fundamentally held freedoms are under siege.”

Dobbs, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the right to an abortion, has brought consequences “splattered across the national news and suffered in private, in doctors’ offices, and in kitchen tables all across the country.”

New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Breun, which overruled New York’s law that required people to have a license to carry concealed weapons in public places had the court ignoring “the suffering of families who have lost lives from the unrepentant score of gun violence in our nation.”

Limiting the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants in West Virginia v. EPA “tied the hands of regulators who are attempting to take lifesaving measures to shield our children from the most devastating and fatal effects of climate change.”

“But when something is broken, we don’t just agonize, we organize,” Markey insisted.

The Massachusetts lawmakers all proposed expanding the size of the court—which has been done seven times in the past—and enacting a much stronger ethics regime on the court.

“No one should have to wonder whether the justice who heard their case ignored the law because his wife had a stake in the outcome, or his friend who takes him on half-million-dollar vacations wanted him to rule a certain way,” Warren said.

Markey is among only a few lawmakers who have called for Thomas’s resignation, but the broader calls for a more fair Supreme Court are certainly not a minority opinion. Earlier this month, Senator Richard Blumenthal called for the Supreme Court justice to step down, as have a few representatives in the House. Nearly two-thirds of Americans no longer have confidence in the Supreme Court as it stands now, according to a poll conducted earlier this month.

The figures reflect the lawmaker’s point of how a demonstrably unethical court is issuing life-changing opinions on everything from abortion access to the health of America’s environment.

Pressley called for “justice for the most marginalized,” in a nod to the millions impacted by the rogue court’s decision-making.

“Angela Y. Davis said, I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change. Instead, I’m changing the things I can no longer accept.”

* This post originally misstated that Markey was the first senator to call for Thomas’s resignation.

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley had the nerve to pretend she’s a moderate on abortion issues, in a speech given Tuesday at an organization pushing a national ban on the procedure.

Haley spoke at the national headquarters of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the anti-abortion organization that aggressively turned on Donald Trump after he said abortion rights should be decided by individual states instead of federally banned.

During her speech, Haley said that a federal ban was unlikely to work, so the next president should try to find a “national consensus” instead. She listed several points that she felt appealed to both sides of the aisle.

Most of the points Haley included are either not real or only occur in extreme circumstances. Fetuses are rarely “born alive” during an abortion, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health experts have warned that bills requiring care be given to fetuses “born alive” could negatively affect care for babies born prematurely or with fatal abnormalities by preventing doctors from helping relieve any pain those babies might be in, or punishing medical professionals who let families hold such newborns before they die.

Republicans like Haley often argue that abortions are conducted up until the moment of birth. That does not happen. Abortions that occur in the second trimester are most often for wanted pregnancies that develop complications, rendering them unviable and possibly a threat to the pregnant person’s life. (Less than 1 percent of abortions take place in the third trimester, for similar reasons.)

Haley also tried to appear moderate on certain points that are only issues because of what her fellow Republicans are doing. She said people who get abortions shouldn’t be jailed, as was suggested in a few Republican-backed state-level bills deemed so extreme that they failed. She also said there should be wider access to contraception, even as Republicans have repeatedly voted against expanding availability.

Haley has generally adopted a waffly stance on abortion since announcing her campaign. Abortion wins elections, and Haley can’t afford to alienate anyone, so she’s trying to find a middle lane that will win over both sides. But during her speech Tuesday, she essentially admitted that she can’t be trusted on abortion when she brought up her own record.

Haley voted for multiple bills while she was a state senator in South Carolina that restricted abortion access or gave rights to fetuses. As governor, she signed a ban on abortion at 20 weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest. She claimed the time limit was to prevent fetuses from feeling pain, even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that fetuses don’t feel pain until at least 24 weeks of gestation.

If Haley were really interested in a “national consensus” on abortion, she could look at the numbers. Almost two-thirds of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center.

But it’s clear she doesn’t care all that much. You can take her word for it.