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nancy pelosi
Push for Biden to Drop Out Reaches Very Top of Democratic Party
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have reportedly urged the president to step aside.
Jul 18, 2024
The two highest-ranking Democrats in the U.S. Congress have reportedly warned President Joe Biden behind closed doors that his continued presence at the top of the party's ticket could imperil down-ballot candidates in November.
The New York Timesreported late Wednesday that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) "each told Mr. Biden privately over the past week that their members were deeply concerned about his chances in November and the fates of House and Senate candidates" should he defy calls to drop his reelection bid against Republican nominee Donald Trump.
ABC Newsreported that Schumer "had a blunt conversation with Biden, making the case it would be best if Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race."
"A source familiar with the matter tells ABC News that House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has expressed similar views directly to Biden, suggesting he should drop out of the race," the outlet added.
The conversations with Democratic leaders appear to have left Biden "more receptive" to calls to drop out, according to the Times—an attitude that contrasts with the incumbent president's furious dismissal of concerns expressed by rank-and-file Democrats in recent private conversations.
Twenty House Democrats and one Democratic senator have publicly urged Biden to step aside to date, and a poll released Wednesday showed that 65% of Democratic voters want the president to withdraw from the 2024 race.
"To argue that Biden staying in is good for Dems is to argue that you have a better grasp of the electoral situation than Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries."
Politicoreported Wednesday that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)—the former House speaker—told Biden directly last week that "she and other Democratic lawmakers worry that he's dragging down the party." One unnamed ally of Pelosi told the outlet that she intends to "do everything in her power to make sure" Biden is replaced at the top of the Democratic ticket.
"To argue that Biden staying in is good for Dems is to argue that you have a better grasp of the electoral situation than Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries," wrote progressive organizer Aaron Regunberg, a vocal proponent of replacing Biden at the top of the ticket.
The reported conversations between Biden and leading Democrats underscore the extent to which previously marginal calls for the incumbent to step aside have quickly spread to every level of the party, from grassroots activists to leadership to delegates to the party's convention.
Politicoobtained messages exchanged by Democratic National Convention (DNC) delegates and activists in California in the wake of Biden's disastrous debate performance against Trump last month.
"DNC delegate Susan Bolle in the days after the debate said she heard from more than 150 of the voters she represents asking her to call for Biden to step down," the outlet reported Thursday.
Despite protests from delegates and some House Democrats, the Democratic National Committee announced Wednesday that it plans to hold a virtual roll call vote to nominate Biden at the beginning of August, weeks before the party's convention in Chicago later that month.
"A virtual roll call before the convention would be unprecedented for a major party, with both Democrats and Republicans traditionally formalizing their nominee at their convention—even if the selection has already been made months earlier through the primary and caucus process," The Washington Postreported Wednesday.
Experts say claims that a virtual roll call is necessary to ensure the Democratic nominee is not kept off the ballot in several states, including Ohio, are false.
"I don't think it's serious to say that Democrats need to do a virtual roll call to assure their party's nominee will be on the ballot," Rick Hasen, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in a blog post earlier this week. "This is about politics, not law."
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Pelosi, Biden, and the Spectacular Solipsism of Our Nation's Political Leaders
A spectacular level of obliviousness pervades the upper echelons of Capital Hill. And the people of the world pay the price.
Feb 16, 2024
When Nancy Pelosi relinquished her position as Speaker of the House at the end of the last congressional session much of the country may have assumed that she retired from Congress entirely. In fact, until recently the less diligent among her own district’s political observers might have been forgiven for thinking the same, given that she appeared to have entered into a type of still-in-office retirement—adopting the title of Speaker Emerita while serving on no congressional committees.
No more, though. Her recent outburst against opponents of Israel’s ongoing devastation of Gaza that has followed upon Hamas’s October assault left no doubt that—for better or worse, she’s still at it. What particularly raised eyebrows was her call for an FBI investigation into whether the people disrupting President Joe Biden’s speaking engagements by shouting out demands to support a Gaza ceasefire were funded by Russia. To wit: “What we have to do is try to stop the suffering in Gaza … But for them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message.”
Putin’s message is it? This is a spectacular level of obliviousness—for anyone, really, much less for someone who within the past two years ranked second in order of succession to the presidency of the United States. In a statement defending her call for an investigation of the funding of opponents of the Biden Administration’s pro-war policies, her office referred to her being “Informed by three decades on the House Intelligence Committee.” Perhaps if she had kept her committee membership current she’d have been cognizant of the December 12, 2023 United Nations General Assembly vote calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the Israel-Hamas war, and in particular the 153–10 margin (with 23 abstentions) of its passage. So, were those153 countries delivering Putin’s message?
And wait, it gets worse—NATO! Our government went all out not only in maintaining NATO—a Cold War era organization—into the post-Cold War era, but pushed its expansion all the way to the Russian border. And whether or not you think this was a provocation that contributed significantly to Russia’s current actions, there’s little arguing but that NATO is currently reckoned as an explicitly anti-Putin alliance. So what to make of the fact that NATO’s member states backed the ceasefire resolution by a 20-2 margin (and 9 abstentions), with only the Czech Republic joining the U.S. in opposition? Is NATO too dominated by nations intent on delivering Putin’s message? Should we get the CIA out there investigating that one, Madam Speaker Emerita? (As if they’re not already.)
Of course it would be one thing if this were just an instance of cluelessness on the part of a single member of Congress, but the degree to which our government is out of sync with the rest of the world goes far beyond that. Consider the matter of another UN resolution, this one recurrent: Last November the General Assembly voted overwhelmingly against the US’s economic and trade embargo against Cuba, declaring it to be in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law.
It would be one thing if this were just an instance of cluelessness on the part of a single member of Congress, but the degree to which our government is out of sync with the rest of the world goes far beyond that.
Although few Americans will be aware of this vote due to the scant attention accorded it by our newsmedia, our press corp might reasonably defend their minuscule reporting on the grounds that a resolution against the U.S. embargo – in place since 1960 – didn’t much qualify as news, in that this was the 31st such vote, one having occurred in every year since 1992, with the exception of the 2020 Covid year, and each one resulting in the policy’s condemnation. The outcome of this most recent vote, by the way, was 187-2 (U.S. and Israel), with one abstention (Ukraine).
Now, as to the matter of Pelosi’s concern for stopping the suffering in Gaza: One hopes that she is sufficiently up to date to realize that, upon hearing Israel’s January 26 claim that some United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) employees were involved in the Hamas attack that precipitated Israel’s ongoing invasion, Biden immediately halted American funding of the agency. UNRWA currently operates schools and centers estimated to be sheltering more than half of the entire population of Gaza and is the territory’s principal source of food. Without the funding cut off by the U.S. and ,a number of other nations, it will not be able to operate and will be unable to pay its 30,000 Palestine-based employees, 13,000 of whom are in Gaza. (The Israeli charges that are currently crippling the agency were leveled against 12 UNRWA employees, less than one-tenth of one percent of its total Gaza workforce.)
And the funding cutoff is not the only deadly obstacle UNRWA faces. On February 5, the head of the agency’s Gaza operations reported that “a food convoy waiting to move into Northern Gaza was hit by Israeli naval gunfire.” In fact, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs writes that “By the agency’s count, at least 154 UNRWA staff had been killed during the fighting in Gaza as of February 8. UNRWA also reported that its facilities have been hit at least 290 times during the hostilities, which have now claimed the lives of over 27,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.”
Nor is UNRWA the only agency under attack. On February 1, the Gaza offices of Belgium’s development agency were bombed and completely destroyed. (Belgium was one of the countries that did not suspend UNRWA funding in response to the Israeli charges.) Any of these attacks may well have been launched using weapons the Biden Administration has been providing in abundance, bypassing Congress as needed. Is Pelosi actually aware of any of this? It seems inconceivable that she isn’t, but then the beauty of being a member of Congress is that the job doesn’t really require knowing what goes on in the rest of the world—and certainly doesn’t require caring about what the rest of the world thinks.
None of this solipsism should in any way be confused with any kind of “isolationist” impulses, mind you. Just to keep our place in the world in perspective, there are some other numbers that might also take the average American aback. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, as of September 2022, there were 171,736 of our active-duty military troops stationed across 178 foreign countries, the lion’s share—115,126—in Japan, Germany, and South Korea, where they are stationed at one of the 312 bases our military maintains in those three countries. The total number of U.S. foreign military bases is estimated to be more than 800. (I will not hazard a guess as to the exact number, lest I land on the correct number by chance, thereby risking arrest since that exact number is a military secret.) American troops in 178 foreign countries, nine of which agree with our Gaza policy and one of which agrees with our Cuba policy! Those kind of numbers seem strange to anyone else?
Pelosi, by the way, is running for reelection. Unfortunately, however, the depths of her apparent disinterest in the actual events occurring in Gaza—and who knows where else in the world—are unlikely to be plumbed during the course of the upcoming campaign season. None of her opponents are given the remotest chance of unseating her and her presence is not anticipated at any candidate events.
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100 Jewish Cease-Fire Supporters Arrested Blocking Biden's NYC Motorcade Route
"As Jewish New Yorkers we want to make crystal clear that President Biden is not welcome in our city while he continues to fund and arm the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza," said one protester.
Feb 07, 2024
Around 100 Jewish American and allied activists were arrested in New York City Wednesday after they blocked President Joe Biden's motorcade route to protest U.S. complicity in Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinian people and to demand an immediate Gaza cease-fire.
The group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) led the Upper East Side demonstration, during which activists sat down in the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, where the president was attending a nearby fundraiser.
"As Jewish New Yorkers we want to make crystal clear that President Biden is not welcome in our city while he continues to fund and arm the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza," saidJVP's Jay Saper.
JVP activist Maya Edery noted that this is Biden's first visit to New York since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
"Instead of answering to the majority of his base that is calling for a cease-fire, he is meeting with corporate donors behind closed doors," Edery said.
Biden's staunch support for Israel—which includes asking for an additional $14.3 billion in U.S. military aid atop the nearly $4 billion the country already receives from Washington and repeatedly bypassing Congress to expedite armed assistance to the key ally—has prompted many activists to call him "Genocide Joe."
The president has also come under fire for casting doubt on the number of Palestinians killed and wounded by Israeli forces.
As JVP noted:
The Israeli military has killed over 27,000 Palestinians in Gaza, over 11,000 of whom were children, in four months of bombing and military assault. Gaza has been made uninhabitable by design, with Israeli airstrikes destroying 70% of infrastructure, including hospitals, universities, and the electricity and water grids. Nearly 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes; 1.9 million are sheltering in the southern city of Rafah, where the Israeli military has lately launched airstrikes.
"Biden says that he is funding and arming Israel for Jewish safety. We're here to call his bluff," said JVP's Eve Feldberg. "The president is advancing the U.S.' own military interests."
Wednesday's demonstration was the latest in a wave of Jewish-led protests by groups including JVP and IfNotNow that have shut down transportation hubs, taken over the Statue of Liberty, and disrupted speeches by Biden and other administration officials.
Also on Wednesday, dozens of members of the peace group CodePink were arrested for blocking entrances to the Woodward weapons manufacturing plant in suburban Chicago.
"Woodward is a weapons manufacturer. They supply arms to Israel," said one protester. "So we are here today to prevent workers from going in and from building bombs that have been dropped on Palestinians in Gaza."
Five CodePink activists were also arrested after blocking an entrance to Travis Air Force Base in northern California on Wednesday, a day after members of the group including Jewish co-founder Medea Benjamin confronted Democratic California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi over an Israel aid bill in the House.
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