Hear Biden's message to Americans concerned about his age and reelection - CNN

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Hear Biden's message to Americans concerned about his age and reelection

In a joint news conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk, President Joe Biden responded to concerns over his age and polling that shows Americans and Democrats disapprove of his decision to run for president in 2024.

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‘He’s too old’: What Americans across the political spectrum are saying about Biden’s bid for re-election - Fox News

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Americans in Nashville and Baltimore told Fox News whether they supported President Biden’s bid for re-election and unanimously agreed his age was a big detraction.

"I'm not happy he's running and hopeful that he doesn't win," one man, Jack, said in Nashville. 

But Baltimore local Anikee said: "I like what he stands for. I mean, Trump is a no-go."

WHAT AMERICANS ACROSS THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM ARE SAYING ABOUT BIDEN'S BID FOR RE-ELECTION:

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Biden announced Tuesday that he will seek a second presidential term in the 2024 election with a three-minute video posted to his social media accounts. According to a NBC News poll taken before Biden announced his bid, 70% of adults, including 51% of Democrats, believe the president should not run for re-election.

"I wouldn't support him. I don't support any of his policies," one man, Pat, told Fox News in Nashville. "I can't name five things that he's done that I would support."

Another, David, said: "I'm sorry, but I feel he's done enough damage. It's time for a change." 

Biden announced Tuesday that he will seek a second term as president in the 2024 election with a three-minute video posted to his social media accounts.  (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

But Despite a majority of Democrats saying Biden should not run in 2024, 88% said they’d probably or definitely vote for the president in the general election, the NBC News poll found. 

"I'll vote for him, even though I don't think he should run," Anikee told Fox News. "Because I'm a Democrat—my values."

PRESIDENT BIDEN ANNOUNCES 2024 CAMPAIGN DESPITE LOW SUPPORT FROM HIS OWN PARTY

Jack said: "A lot of my friends that vote Democrat are not pleased that he's running again."

Already the oldest president in history, Biden would be 86-years-old at the end of his second term if he wins re-election. The NBC News survey found that 48% of the respondents who didn't want him to run again cited his age as a "major" concern. 

Barbara said Biden's age is a big factor in why she is not supporting him for re-election.  (Fox News)

"It does concern me," Barbara said. "Age isn't the only factor in deciding, but it is for him." 

"He technically shouldn't even be in there now, I don't think," she added. 

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Anna — who like Biden, hails from Wilmington, Delaware — told Fox News: "I'm the age of a senior citizen, but no one that age, and especially in his mental capacity, should be running our country, period."

Anikee said her concerns about Biden "is the same thing everybody else is saying: he’s too old."

But because she’s a Democrat, Anikee said she'll still vote for him.

To watch the full video, click here. 

Megan Myers reported from Baltimore and Teny Sahakian from Nashville.

Megan Myers is an associate producer/writer with Fox News Digital Originals. 

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Pence says ending abortion ‘more important than politics’ - The Hill

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FILE – Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks to reporters before the MockCon event at University Chapel at Washington and Lee University, March 21, 2023, in Lexington, Va. (Scott P. Yates/The Roanoke Times via AP, File)

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Monday that ending abortion is “more important than politics,” which is his latest anti-abortion remarks made as the legal fight for abortion is ongoing.

“Well, I think defending the unborn first and foremost is more important than politics. I really believe it’s the calling of our time,” Pence said on NewsNation’s debut episode of “The Hill” Monday.

US ambassador to UN confronts Russian official House GOP unveils border security bill

“As I said in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision, it may take as long to restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in this country as it took us to overturn Roe vs. Wade, but I believe that restoring the inalienable right to life to American law is that important,” he continued.

Pence has been outspoken about his anti-abortion views for years and has voiced his opposition to the abortion pill, mifepristone, saying on Sunday that “I’d like to see this medication off the market to protect the unborn.”

Access to abortion has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after a federal judge in Texas invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of mifepristone, an abortion medication that has been available for more than two decades. Republican-led states have also taken steps to restrict abortion, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) signing laws to ban abortion at six-weeks in the past month.

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Letter: Get big-money influence out of political campaigns - Honolulu Star-Advertiser

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Yes: clean campaigns (“Public financing for clean campaigns,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, April 19). Better government for a fraction of the cost. Public financing for clean campaigns is the goal all voters can support. Senate Bill 1543 is supported by our former governors and mayors. They know the cost of campaigning in time, money and energy.

Allow our public servants to focus on good government and not on running after campaign donations. Give them freedom to vote for the good of our state and not to repay big-money donors. Get dark money and big money out of our politics. Passage of SB 1543 can make it possible to reduce corruption, increase opportunities for qualified candidates and enhance our state governance.

Kay DeWeese

Haleiwa

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Political Chaos Unsettles Israel as It Looks to Honor the Fallen and Its Independence - The New York Times

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Israelis are bracing for a tense Memorial Day and the 75th anniversary of their country’s founding as a political crisis tears it apart.

Every Memorial Day, thousands of families who have lost brothers, sisters and siblings to Israel’s endless wars and terrorist attacks gather to remember the dead, a commemoration that was to have been followed this year by a jubilant celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the country.

But Israel is deeply divided as never before, and what should have been a time of national contemplation and celebration is being overshadowed by protests and political chaos, which have rived the country for the past few months.

The minister overseeing the televised state ceremony for the country’s 75th Independence Day celebration, which will be marked from sundown Tuesday until sundown Wednesday, has instructed the event’s director to cut from a live broadcast to a prerecorded dress rehearsal in the event of a disruption by protesters. Yair Lapid, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, has announced that he will not attend.

And bereaved families are pleading for politicians to forgo the usual speeches that they deliver on Memorial Day at military cemeteries across the country, fearing angry outbursts at a time when Israelis are supposed to unite in honoring the dead.

Some families in the southern city of Beersheba are particularly incensed by the fact that Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister of national security who was rejected for military service on the grounds that he was too extreme, is the government representative assigned to speak at their cemetery.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to speak at Mount Herzl, the location of Israel’s main military cemetery, after a siren sounds at 11 a.m. Mr. Netanyahu is himself from a bereaved family: His brother was killed during an Israeli commando raid to rescue hostages from Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976 and is buried on the mount.

Sigalit Bezaleli looking out from her office at soldiers recently at Mount Herzl.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

“I’m not speaking for one side or another,” said Sigalit Bezaleli, who has worked as an administrator for decades at Mount Herzl. “Whoever wants to come and honor us is welcome. The cemeteries are open to all.” But, she added, “I want our politicians to make a gesture and not to speak.”

Few people are as bound up in the tumult around Memorial Day as Ms. Bezaleli. In addition to her job at Mount Herzl — where the main Memorial Day commemoration on Tuesday morning will be followed that evening by the state ceremony ushering in the start of the Independence Day festivities with a flag parade, musical performances and fireworks — she has also lost a daughter in uniform.

In 2012, her daughter Hila Bezaleli, 20, an officer in the medical corps, was killed when a lighting rig crashed onto the stage while she was rehearsing for the independence eve ceremony. She lies buried just yards from her mother’s office.

Ms. Bezaleli said that she would stand, as she does every Memorial Day, by her daughter’s grave. But she said she did not want to hear politicians repeating clichés about the need to be unified — or Mr. Netanyahu being booed. “I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Every year I listen, but this year, we are torn. The rift is so present, like it never was before.”

That impatience with politicians has become widespread across Israel in recent months after an effort by the government to overhaul the judiciary carved deep fissures in society.

Standing next to the grave of Hila Bezaleli, who was killed in an accident at Mount Herzl, waiting for the start of an annual commemoration last week in Jerusalem.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

Critics say the plan will weaken the country’s Supreme Court, remove protections for minorities and undermine the democratic character of the state. Supporters of the government sworn in late last year — the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history — say the judicial plan is a necessary one that will give more power to voters and their elected representatives and curb the authorities of an unelected judiciary.

Many bereaved families, who hold a special status in this war-torn land, are wondering whether their sacrifices were worthwhile in what they see as a crumbling democracy.

Across the country, bereaved relatives are engaging in anguished discussions on WhatsApp messaging groups about plans for personal protests, including heckling politicians who attend the ceremonies or singing the national anthem while they speak, placing pro-democracy signs on the graves of their loved ones or boycotting official ceremonies altogether.

The raw emotions were on display last Monday when a shouting match broke out among participants in a Holocaust remembrance event at a Tel Aviv synagogue after some of them heckled a Netanyahu loyalist and lawmaker, Boaz Bismuth, chanting, “Shame!” and preventing him from speaking.

Other bereaved relatives, including those who support the government, are calling for the protesters to put their grievances aside on Memorial Day, arguing that politicians are not the enemy and that excluding them would only deepen the divide.

Avivit Gera carrying a protest box with a picture of her brother, who died in 1973, at a cemetery in Tel Aviv.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

“A lot of bereaved families find comfort in having public figures come to be with them,” said Avichay Buaron, a hard-right lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party and a supporter of the government’s judicial plans.

Mr. Buaron, whose wife lost a brother in a terrorist attack, was speaking by phone on his way back from the funeral of Lucy Dee, a British-Israeli woman who was fatally shot in her car this month by suspected Palestinian assailants in the occupied West Bank. Two of her daughters, Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, were also killed in the attack, which shook the country.

Now, Mr. Buaron said, he feared that some opponents of the government were exploiting their bereavement and that of others ahead of Memorial Day. “Take politics out of it,” he said. “Bereavement is the holy of holies.”

Mr. Netanyahu appealed on Thursday in a video statement for Israel’s bereaved families to stand united on Memorial Day, then he signed an extraordinary joint document with opposition leaders calling for the public to leave all disputes outside the cemeteries. Representatives of bereaved families who met the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and asked him at least to keep politicians — like Mr. Ben-Gvir — who have not performed military service away from the cemeteries said he rejected their requests. Mr. Gallant’s ministry declined to comment.

Most of Israel’s Arab citizens, who make up a fifth of the population, generally do not celebrate independence day. They refer to Israel’s establishment as the Nakba, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes during the war surrounding Israel’s establishment as a state. That anniversary is generally marked on May 15, the day after Israel’s declaration of independence according to the Gregorian calendar.

A view of Jerusalem’s Old City, including the Dome of the Rock mosque.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

(Israel calculates the dates for its foundation and Memorial Day based on the Hebrew calendar, which can involve a difference of weeks with the Gregorian calendar.)

This year’s independence celebration will also be notable for a lack of foreign dignitaries. For Israel’s 60th anniversary, in 2008, the president at the time, Shimon Peres, organized a conference and invited heads of state, including President George W. Bush. There were similar plans for the 70th anniversary, but those were scrapped in a previous phase of political bickering.

Despite the internal strife over the judicial plan, which many here view as the most fundamental schism in the country since 1948, there are Israelis on both sides who say that there is also much to celebrate on Independence Day.

Some opponents of the judicial overhaul are proud that their protests have brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis out onto the streets for 16 consecutive weeks, resulting in the government delaying its legislation to allow time for negotiations with opposition parties. Protest organizers are planning a mass gathering and street party in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night.

“This year should be the ultimate demonstration of our independence and democracy,” said Nurit Guy, who lost her son, Shachar Guy, and an American volunteer soldier, Zvi Wolf, whom she had informally adopted, within a day of each other during the 1982 war in Lebanon. “It shows we have strength,” she said.

An Israeli flag next to a sign that reads, “Must protect the common house,” in protest of the government’s effort to overhaul the judiciary, last week in Jerusalem.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

Supporters of the government also say that there is room for hope and that, ultimately, the fight was “within the family,” and not between foes. People on both sides repeated the phrase, “We have no other country,” echoing the lyrics of a resonant Israeli song.

“We work together, serve in the army together, travel on the same buses and eat in the same restaurants,” said Hagai Goldstein, an Orthodox software engineer from Gedera, in central Israel, who was visiting a museum on Mount Herzl that is dedicated to the father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, on a recent weekday with his wife and three young children.

Despite having been branded by some of their detractors as anarchists and leftist traitors, the anti-government protesters have adopted patriotic props and symbols, re-appropriating the Israeli flag, long associated with right-wing activists, and singing the national anthem.

“There is something beautiful in the fact that everybody is draping themselves in the flag,” said Sherri Mandell, the mother of Koby Mandell, a boy who was killed at 13, along with a friend, in a Palestinian terrorist attack in 2001.

“They all want to protect the country. They just have different ideas of how to do it,” she said, adding: “Nobody’s burning the flag or stepping on the flag. There’s a respect for the country that they’ve built.”

A sign bearing an oversize copy of the Israeli Declaration of Independence hangs on a side of the Tel Aviv City Hall building.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

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Pacifiction review – tense drama of Polynesian politics | Drama films - The Guardian

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Long a darling of the festival circuit, with idiosyncratic literary period dramas such as Story of My Death and Liberté, Spanish director Albert Serra now tackles his first project set in current times. Pacifiction, which was shot on tiny digital cameras that give the film a feverish, hyperreal colour palette, is set in French Polynesia and follows the French high commissioner, De Roller (Benoît Magimel) as he navigates the churning intrigue and political machinations in his domain. With its slow-burning build, it is an unsettling, atmospheric piece that has something of the unknowable quality of the central character, with his glassy diplomat’s smile and shark’s eyes, inscrutable behind his blue-lensed sunglasses.

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In Abortion Pill Ruling, the Supreme Court Trades Ambition for Prudence - The New York Times

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The court’s order seemed to vindicate a commitment in last year’s decision in Dobbs: to leave further questions about abortion to the political process.

WASHINGTON — It was an interim ruling, and the majority gave no reasons. But the Supreme Court’s order on Friday night maintaining the availability of a commonly used abortion pill nonetheless sent a powerful message from a chastened court.

“Legal sanity prevailed, proving that, at least for now, disrupting the national market for an F.D.A.-approved drug is a bridge too far, even for this court,” said David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University.

Ten months ago, five conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating a constitutional right to abortion that had been in place for half a century. They did so almost as soon as a third Trump appointee arrived, tilting the balance on the bench sharply to the right. All three of the Trump justices were in the majority.

Cynics might be forgiven for thinking that the decision last June, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was a product of raw power. The public reaction was certainly negative, as the court’s approval ratings sank and the decision itself proved deeply unpopular and a political windfall for Democrats.

In his concurrence in Dobbs, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the majority had abandoned “principles of judicial restraint” at the cost of “a serious jolt to the legal system.” Friday’s order avoided a second jolt.

But the Dobbs decision also made a kind of promise. The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., said at least seven times that doing away with the right to abortion was an exercise of judicial modesty.

“The authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives,” Justice Alito wrote, in a formulation that, with only small variations, was sprinkled throughout the opinion like a refrain.

Friday’s order, for the time being at least, vindicated that promise. The court blocked a sweeping ruling from Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a federal judge in Texas appointed by President Donald J. Trump more noted for his anti-abortion bona fides than his legal acumen.

His ruling, based on judicial second-guessing of the many scientific studies buttressing the Food and Drug Administration’s approval and regulation of the pill, would have upended a status quo in place for 23 years.

Nor did the justices accept, for now, a less assertive alternative from a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The majority, made up of two Trump appointees, would have sharply curtailed but not eliminated the availability of the pill.

Since the court took up the case on an expedited basis, on its so-called shadow docket, the justices could dissent without saying so publicly, making counting the votes an inexact science. On the available evidence, though, the vote on Friday night appeared to be 7 to 2.

It is all but certain that the court’s three liberal members — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — were in the majority. It is a very good bet that Chief Justice Roberts, who staked out a compromise position in Dobbs, was with them.

And none of the members of the court appointed by Mr. Trump — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — noted a dissent.

That left two justices. One, Justice Clarence Thomas, voted to allow the restrictions on the pill imposed by the Fifth Circuit but gave no reasons.

The other was Justice Alito, the author of the majority opinion in Dobbs. Notwithstanding his pledges that the court was getting out of the abortion business, he issued a dissent that packed a lot of grievance into its roughly three pages.

That was “very ironic and not at all surprising,” said Greer Donley, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and an author, with Professor Cohen and Rachel Rebouché, dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law, of “Abortion Pills,” an article to be published in The Stanford Law Review.

“Justice Alito, who wrote so passionately about returning abortion to the states to be decided by their elected representatives, would have allowed an order to take effect that made abortion less accessible only in states where abortion remained legal,” Professor Donley said.

Soon after the Biden administration and Danco Laboratories, which manufactures the pill, filed emergency applications on April 14 asking the Supreme Court to intervene, Justice Alito, who oversees the Fifth Circuit, paused Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling for five days, until Wednesday. When that deadline arrived, he paused it for a second time, until Friday.

It is not clear how the justices spent the week, as it yielded only one opinion, the dissent from Justice Alito. He devoted much of it to accusing the Biden administration of acting in bad faith.

Justice Alito said, for instance, that the administration should have appealed a decision affirming abortion pill access from Judge Thomas O. Rice, a federal judge in Washington State appointed by President Barack Obama. Judge Rice’s decision was in tension with the one from Judge Kacsmaryk, blocking the F.D.A. from limiting the availability of mifepristone in much of the country.

Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said she found Justice Alito’s critique curious. If there was questionable conduct, she said, it was in the Texas litigation, as the lead plaintiff, a coalition of anti-abortion groups known as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, had taken steps to ensure that the case would appear before a friendly judge.

“It was remarkable that Alito accused the federal government of bad faith in this matter for choosing not to appeal the initial order in the Washington case,” Professor Litman said, “when the plaintiffs in the Texas case incorporated in Amarillo so they could select Judge Kacsmaryk as the one to hear their request for a nationwide medication abortion ban.”

Justice Alito added that Danco, the pill’s manufacturer, would have had nothing to fear had the Supreme Court curtailed the F.D.A.’s approval of the drug while the case moved forward because, he said, the Biden administration would most likely have ignored the court’s ruling.

“The government,” Justice Alito wrote, “has not dispelled legitimate doubts that it would even obey an unfavorable order in these cases, much less that it would choose to take enforcement actions to which it has strong objections.”

Professor Litman said the dissent sounded more like a political argument than a legal one. “It just generally reads like an old guy who watches a lot of Fox News and is ranting about how he had to pay for a blue check mark,” she said.

The case now returns to the Fifth Circuit, which will hear arguments on May 17. After it rules, the losing side will almost certainly appeal to the Supreme Court, and the justices would then have another chance to decide whether to weigh in.

It would be a mistake to read Friday’s order as a definitive prediction of where they are headed. But there are reasons to think that an ambitious court has grown cautious.

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