Macron: Ukraine war ‘first topic of discussion’
Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron have been previewing what’s going to be on the agenda at their meeting today. The leaders were sat in armchairs before a roaring log fire in the Oval Office at the White House, mulling the “close coordination” between the countries, as the French president describes it.
Macron says Russia’s war in Ukraine will be “the first topic of discussion”.
There’s a little confusion about the timings. It had originally been thought the two presidents would host a press conference at 11.45am ET after their talks, but the fireside chat now, ahead of the meeting, would seem to suggest that will likely be taking place much later than first scheduled.
Biden previewed the discussions:
We are a real inflection point. Things are changing rapidly, really rapidly. And it’s really important that we stay in close communication. It doesn’t mean that every single solitary thing we agree on, but it does mean we agree on almost everything.
We’re working together to strengthen the security and prosperity across the Atlantic and each of our countries, but also Europe as a whole. Emmanuel is not just the leader of France, he’s among the leaders of Europe.
This morning, we’re going to discuss our cooperation on all the issues from high-tech commerce to defense, to cyber, to space, to a whole range of issues that are on both of our agendas.
Macron spoke on working with the US to help Ukraine defend itself against the Russian invasion:
Obviously, it will be the first topic of discussion for both of us. Since the very beginning of this war we’ve worked very hard together in order to help Ukraine to resist and to be resilient, and we will reinforce this.
But we want to build peace, and sustainable peace means full respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, but at the same time a new architecture, to be sure that we have a sustainable peace in the long run.
Also to be discussed, Macron says: A “carbon neutral economy, creating a lot of jobs, which means investing a lot in our economies, and we have to synchronize our action on this issue”, as well as “climate change and biodiversity”.
Key events
A joint press conference by Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron is under way at the White House following bilateral talks at the White House this morning.
The US president says he and his French counterpart had “a great conversation”.
“France is one of our strongest partners and most capable allies. We share the same values,” Biden says.
He says the leaders “talked a lot” about the war in Ukraine.
We’ll bring you their comments as they speak.
Buttigieg: rail strike would ‘shut down economy’
The US economy would face a severe economic shock if senators don’t pass legislation this week to avert a freight rail workers’ strike, Democrats in the chamber are hearing today, according to the Associated Press.
Senators held a closed-door session with Biden administration officials Thursday, following a House vote last night approving a deal to avert such a nationwide strike. They are being urged to quickly vote the deal through.
But the Senate often works at a slower pace, and the timing of final votes on the measure is unclear.
Labor secretary Marty Walsh and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg met the Democratic senators to underscore that rail companies will begin shuttering operations well before a potential strike begins on 9 December.
“If there’s even the possibility of a shutdown, about five days in advance of that, the railroads would have to begin winding down their acceptance of things like hazardous material shipments that you can’t allow to get stranded,” Buttigieg said in a CNBC interview.
“So my goal today speaking to the senators will be to make sure they understand the implications of a shutdown or even getting close to a shutdown,” he said. “It wouldn’t just bring down our rail system. It would really shut down our economy.”
Railways say that halting rail service would cause a devastating $2bn-per-day hit to the economy. A freight rail strike also would have a big potential impact on passenger rail, with Amtrak and many commuter railroads relying on tracks owned by the freight railroads.
The rail companies and 12 unions have been negotiating. The Biden administration helped broker deals between the railroads and union leaders in September, but four of the unions rejected the deals. Eight others approved five-year deals and are getting back pay for their workers for the 24% raises that are retroactive to 2020.
On Monday, with the strike looming, Biden called on Congress to impose the tentative agreement reached in September.
Read more:
Martin Pengelly
While we wait for Biden and Macron to appear, here’s Hamilton Nolan on a domestic issue facing the US president: his move to stop a rail strike and how many in the union movement have been left feeling betrayed …
It’s sad, really. Beleaguered US labor unions thought that they had finally found a true friend. In Joe Biden, they had a man who was the most pro-union president in my lifetime – a low bar to clear, but something. Yet this week we found out that when the fight got difficult, Biden had the same thing to say to working people that his Democratic predecessors have said for decades: “You’ll never get anything you want if I don’t win; but once I win, I can’t do the things you need, because then I wouldn’t be able to win again.”
At the same time that thousands of union members are fanned out across the state of Georgia knocking on doors to get Raphael Warnock elected and solidify Democratic control of the Senate – to save the working class, of course! – Biden decided to sell out workers in the single biggest labor battle of his administration. Rather than allowing the nation’s railroad workers to exercise their right to strike, he used his power to intervene and force them to accept a deal that a majority of those workers found to be unacceptable.
His ability to do this rests on the vagaries of the Railway Labor Act, but all you really need to understand is this: nobody forced him to side with the railroad companies over the workers. That was a choice. The White House just weighed the political damage it anticipated from Republicans screaming about a Christmas-season rail strike against the fact that railroad workers have inhuman working conditions and would need to go on strike to change that, and chose the easier political route. This was a “Which side are you on?” moment, and Biden made his position clear.
Read on:
Martin Pengelly
We’re still waiting for Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron to appear for their press conference at the White House.
Elsewhere in Washington, the Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz might be a little uneasy today, as a former tax collector whose arrest led to a wide-ranging sex-trafficking investigation faces sentencing.
Gaetz, a prominent ally of Donald Trump on the hard right of the Republican party, is under investigation into whether he paid a 17-year-old for sex. He has denied the allegations and claimed they are part of an extortion plot. He has not been charged.
The Associated Press reports that in an appeal for clemency, an attorney for the former Seminole county tax collector, Joel Greenberg, said his client “had assisted in investigations of 24 people, including eight for sex crimes, and that his cooperation had led to four federal indictments, with two more expected in the coming month”.
But though prosecutors asked for a significant reduction in Greenberg’s sentence, the judge in the case has indicated that may not happen.
The AP continues: “Greenberg pleaded guilty to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking of a minor, identity theft, stalking, wire fraud and conspiracy to bribe a public official. Prosecutors said he paid at least one girl to have sex with him and other men.”
His lawyer said Greenberg had “provided significant substantial assistance to the government in the areas of public corruption, election fraud, wire fraud, and sex trafficking”.
South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, regarded the architect of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, has won the election to be assistant Democratic leader in the next Congress.
David Cicilline of Rhode Island withdrew his challenge this morning, The Hill reports, paving the way for Clyburn, currently the Democratic whip, to secure the job.
I am honored by @HouseDemocrats support of me to serve as the Assistant Democratic Leader in the 118th Congress.
It is important that the South, rural communities, and those left out of economic progress of previous generations have a seat at the leadership table next Congress. pic.twitter.com/o7Zl3K91rv— James E. Clyburn (@WhipClyburn) December 1, 2022
Clyburn, who has been in Congress for three decades, had been expected by some to also stand down following the departures, following the midterms, of fellow Democratic “old guard” leaders, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House majority leader Steny Hoyer.
On Wednesday, House Democrats elected Hakeem Jefferies as their new leader, making him the first Black American to lead a major political party in Congress.
In a statement Thursday morning, Clyburn wrote: “Today I am honored by the House Democratic Caucus’ support of me to serve in the next Congress as the assistant Democratic leader.
“It is important that communities like the ones I represent have a seat at the leadership table as we move forward in the next Congress. We, as House Democrats, must speak for rural communities, for the South, and for communities that have been left out of economic progress of previous generations.”
Barack Obama will campaign for Raphael Warnock in Georgia on Thursday night, as early voting in the US Senate runoff closes and as Herschel Walker, the Republican challenger to the Democratic incumbent, faces yet more controversy, Martin Pengelly reports.
On Thursday, a former girlfriend told the Daily Beast that in 2005, when she caught Walker with another woman, he “grew enraged, put his hands on her chest and neck, and swung his fist at her”.
“I thought he was going to beat me,” Cheryl Parsa said, adding that she “fled in fear”.
Four other women told the Beast they had relationships with Walker, describing “a habit of lying and infidelity – including one woman who claimed she had an affair with Walker while he was married in the 1990s”.
Parsa, who the Beast said had “composed a book-length manuscript about her relationship with Walker”, called the former college and NFL football star “a pathological liar”.
Walker has often discussed his struggle with dissociative identity disorder.
Parsa said: “He knows how to manipulate his disease, in order to manipulate people, while at times being simultaneously completely out of control.”
She also said that when she was with Walker, he used his disorder as an “alibi” to “justify lying, cheating, and ultimately destroying families”.
Walker did not comment.
The latest Daily Beast story joins a line of reports about his life before entering Republican politics and securing Donald Trump’s endorsement and with it the nomination in Georgia.
Walker is alleged to have pressured women to have abortions, behaved violently, and lied about his business career and supposed ties to law enforcement.
Read the full story:
Macron: Ukraine war ‘first topic of discussion’
Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron have been previewing what’s going to be on the agenda at their meeting today. The leaders were sat in armchairs before a roaring log fire in the Oval Office at the White House, mulling the “close coordination” between the countries, as the French president describes it.
Macron says Russia’s war in Ukraine will be “the first topic of discussion”.
There’s a little confusion about the timings. It had originally been thought the two presidents would host a press conference at 11.45am ET after their talks, but the fireside chat now, ahead of the meeting, would seem to suggest that will likely be taking place much later than first scheduled.
Biden previewed the discussions:
We are a real inflection point. Things are changing rapidly, really rapidly. And it’s really important that we stay in close communication. It doesn’t mean that every single solitary thing we agree on, but it does mean we agree on almost everything.
We’re working together to strengthen the security and prosperity across the Atlantic and each of our countries, but also Europe as a whole. Emmanuel is not just the leader of France, he’s among the leaders of Europe.
This morning, we’re going to discuss our cooperation on all the issues from high-tech commerce to defense, to cyber, to space, to a whole range of issues that are on both of our agendas.
Macron spoke on working with the US to help Ukraine defend itself against the Russian invasion:
Obviously, it will be the first topic of discussion for both of us. Since the very beginning of this war we’ve worked very hard together in order to help Ukraine to resist and to be resilient, and we will reinforce this.
But we want to build peace, and sustainable peace means full respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, but at the same time a new architecture, to be sure that we have a sustainable peace in the long run.
Also to be discussed, Macron says: A “carbon neutral economy, creating a lot of jobs, which means investing a lot in our economies, and we have to synchronize our action on this issue”, as well as “climate change and biodiversity”.
Martin Pengelly reports on the latest twist concerning Donald Trump’s tax returns:
A US House of Representatives committee has obtained access to Donald Trump’s tax returns, following a years-long court fight with the former president who has accused the Democratic-led panel of being politically motivated.
“Treasury has complied with last week’s court decision,” a treasury department spokesperson said in an emailed statement late on Wednesday. The spokesperson declined to say whether the committee had accessed the documents.
The supreme court ordered the release of six years of returns last Tuesday, rejecting Trump’s plea to stop the treasury from acting.
On Wednesday, the release of the tax returns was first reported by CNN. According to the network, which cited an unnamed aide to the Democratic committee chair, Richard Neal, Democrats on the panel were due to be briefed on Thursday on the “legal ramifications on section of the tax law that … Neal used to request Trump’s tax returns” but would not immediately see the returns.
Neal, of Massachusetts, “declined to say if he has seen” the returns himself, the CNN reporter Manu Raju said.
Asked if Democrats would release the returns to the public, Neal told CNN: “The next step is to have a meeting of the Democratic caucus.”
The committee has been seeking returns spanning 2015 through 2020, which it says it needs to establish whether the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is properly auditing presidential returns and whether new legislation is needed.
The House ways and means committee first requested Trump’s returns in 2019. A major question hanging over the panel now is what will happen to the returns when Republicans take control of the House in January.
Read the full story:
Macron urges US and France to become ‘brothers in arms once more’
Here’s some more of Emmanuel Macron’s comments at the White House this morning, as he responded to Joe Biden’s remarks that the US and France had charted a centuries-long course together for world freedoms:
We bear a duty to this shared history. As war returns to the European soil following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and in light of multiple crises our nations and our societies face, we need to become brothers in arms once more.
This spirit of fraternity must enable us to build an agenda of ambition and hope because our two countries share the same faith in freedom, in democratic values, in empowerment through education and work, and in progress through science and knowledge.
Macron went on to address issues including the climate emergency, attacks on democracy around the globe:
Our democracies on both sides of the ocean are being shaken by the same doubts as to our ability to be sufficiently strong and effective when it comes to the challenges we share, those of the climate through do politics and technology. They’re endowed in the face of relativism, hate speech [and] false information and today’s fears.
We’re united today by the same determination and the same strength of mind. Together we need to find a path to offer a future for our children, one of justice, prosperity and equality.
The two leaders are holding their bilateral meeting now, and we expect to hear from them again at about 11.45am ET.
Durbin: Republicans stalling on rail strike deal
Senate Democrats say the passage of a bill to avert a national rail strike is in Republicans’ hands, after the House passed legislation yesterday to prevent it.
The chamber needs to also approve the measure to send it to Joe Biden’s desk, and earlier it looked like Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats, could be the one to derail its fast-track progress.
He wants a guaranteed seven paid sick days for rail workers, while the deal as it stands offers only one.
But on Thursday, Dick Durbin, senator for Illinois and the chamber’s No 2 Democrat, told CNN that it was Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell who appeared to be foot dragging on helping to schedule a vote:
I talked to [Senate majority leader] Chuck Schumer this morning about it and he’s still waiting for a sign from Senator McConnell that he’s ready for us to call this measure.
It takes bipartisanship to get to the measure, it takes bipartisanship to pass. So we can’t do it without help from the Republicans. The Democrats stand ready to back the president.
Read more:
It’s a bold gambit by the Americans, to meet the French in an arena over which they have long been masters par excellence: wine and cheese.
But such is Jill Biden’s sang-froid that she will offer America’s best to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, his wife, Brigitte Macron, and their entourage at a lavish White House dinner on Thursday – just one of the elaborate details and valuable gifts forming part of the diplomatic dance surrounding this state visit.
As the Élysée Palace unveiled a list of gifts that Macron will offer his American counterpart, Joe Biden, including a luxurious Christofle cup, the US president’s wife revealed the setting and menu for the night’s gala dinner.
It will be served under a large tent in the gardens, on tables laden with candlesticks and flowers in the colors of the two countries.
Lobster will feature – 200 live shellfish have made their last trip, to Washington – along with beef, squash from the White House garden, and cake, among other delicacies.
But the first lady particularly insisted on serving American cheeses, including a blue cheese from north-western Oregon that was the first American product to win the world cheese championships, in 2019.
Read the full story:
Biden: ‘US has no better partner than France’
Joe and Jill Biden have welcomed French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte to the White House for the first official state visit of the Biden administration.
Their meeting today, followed by a state dinner this evening, will cast a spotlight on the sometimes frosty recent relations between the US and one of its closest allies.
Biden was warm and fulsome in praise as he welcomed his French counterpart:
The United States could not ask for a better partner in its work than France.
For centuries, we’ve come together, charted a course toward a world of greater freedom, greater opportunity, greater dignity, and greater peace.
Macron was equally magnanimous, addressing the Bidens as “Dear Joe, and dear Jill”:
We’re both honored and moved to be with you at the White House, because our two nations are sisters in their fight for freedom.
Their bond was tested a year ago when Macron was blindsided by a security deal involving the US and UK that resulted in Australia tearing up a $90bn contract with France to buy nuclear submarines.
Biden sought to repair his broken personal and political relationship with Macron by apologizing in Rome last October, and admitting the US had been been “clumsy” in its handling of the episode. Exchanges since have suggested a thaw.
The Bidens greeted the Macrons with kisses after they emerged from their limousine. They shook hands with a line of dignitaries before posing for a photo op and listening to the countries’ national anthems before heading inside.
They will make further remarks following their talks at a press conference currently scheduled for 11.45am.
In her Wednesday briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would not be drawn on the content of the discussions, but almost certain to be on the agenda are Russia’s war in Ukraine, inflation, the climate emergency, China’s growing influence on the world stage, and US-European relations. And probably also soccer’s World Cup, in which the US and French teams have both qualified for the knockout stage.
“France is our oldest ally. And the president looks forward to meeting with President Macron,” Jean-Pierre said.
She hinted the recently passed inflation reduction act would come up: “It presents significant opportunities for European firms, as well as benefits to EU energy security. And this is not a zero-sum game for us.
“We see a constructive path of engagement with the EU on this [but] I’m just not going to get ahead of what will be on the agenda in their conversation.”
Good morning, US politics followers, and welcome to Le Blog, so named to commemorate French president Emmanuel Macron’s official visit to Washington, and a full day of activities including a head-to-head with Joe Biden and a state dinner later with 400 guests.
The leaders will hold a bilateral meeting at 10am ET, and talk about it at a lunchtime press conference. Subjects on the agenda are likely to include Russia’s war in Ukraine, and business and political relations between the US, France and the European Union.
We’ll bring you comments from the two presidents when they speak later on.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
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The Senate will be debating a bill passed Wednesday in the House of Representatives seeking to avert a national rail strike, but fast-track approval remains in doubt following opposition from progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders over paid sick days.
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Barack Obama heads to Georgia for a rally in support of incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock. The former president’s visit comes as Warnock’s Republican challenger in next week’s runoff election, Herschel Walker, faces new domestic violence allegations from an ex-girlfriend.
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Hillary and Chelsea Clinton will host a summit on women’s rights in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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Vice-president Kamala Harris and secretary of state Antony Blinken are hosting a luncheon for Macron at the state department.
