Vice President Kamala Harris calls for an end to the filibuster in order to restore abortion protections, and President Joe Biden gives his final address at the United Nations.
Harris calls for end of filibuster to restore abortion protections
In an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio that aired Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris explicitly called for the elimination of the filibuster — the 60-vote threshold needed to pass major legislation in the U.S. Senate — to restore the abortion protections guaranteed in Roe v. Wade.
It’s Harris’ latest effort to put reproductive rights — an issue that her campaign and other Democrats see as crucial to victory — front and center with just weeks to go until November’s election.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” Harris told “Wisconsin Today” host Kate Archer Kent, who asked the vice president how she’d get the support of Congress to codify abortion rights. “And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom, and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
Harris has promised repeatedly on the campaign trail to sign into law a bill restoring Roe v. Wade and has long criticized former President Donald Trump, her opponent in November’s election, for nominating three of the Supreme Court justices that overturned the landmark ruling in 2022.
Trump, for his part, has boasted of his role in overturning Roe, claiming as recently as Monday night at a rally in Pennsylvania that “everyone” wanted the ruling overturned so the issue of abortion can be returned to the states — despite polls showing widespread support for abortion rights. But he has largely shifted positions on abortion, ranging from not explicitly backing a nationwide ban, which has rankled anti-abortion activists, to saying he will not support a referendum in his new home state of Florida that would codify abortion rights into its constitution.
“All they can talk about is abortion, that’s all they talk about, and it really no longer pertains,” Trump said Monday night as he praised the justices who overturned Roe.
“Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free,” Trump said. “You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
Holding the U.S. Senate could be a tall order for Democrats, who are on the defensive in both battleground states and deep red states like Ohio and Montana that went heavily for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Vice President Kamala Harris' pledge to eliminate the filibuster to codify abortion protections has ruffled the feathers of at least one longtime lawmaker.
"Shame on her," West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat-turned-independent who is retiring at the end of his term, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday. "She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids."
Manchin, who signaled that he may soon endorse Harris, said Tuesday he would not be doing so over her filibuster stance.
"That ain’t going to happen," he said. "I think that basically can destroy our country, and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person’s ideology."
"I think it’s the most horrible thing," Manchin added.
Manchin flirted with mounting an independent presidential run earlier this year before ultimately deciding not to pursue the endeavor. His retirement from the U.S. Senate in a state that Donald Trump won by nearly 40 points in 2020 means that Republican candidate Jim Justice, West Virginia's governor, is all but certain to flip the seat.
Trump discusses economic plan in Georgia campaign stop
Former President Donald Trump stopped in battleground Georgia this afternoon
While in Savannah, we spoke about his economic plan.
Trump says he will lower taxes for American business owners and highlighted the importance of buying American-made goods.
“With the vision, I’m outlining today. Not only will we stop our businesses from leaving for foreign lands, but under my leadership, we are going to take other countries’ jobs,” Trump said. “Did you ever hear that expression before? Have you ever heard that we’re going to take other countries’ jobs? It’s never been stated before. We’re going to take their factories and we had it really rocking four years ago. We’re going to bring thousands and thousands of businesses and trillions of dollars in wealth back to the good old USA. That’s what we’re gonna be doing it and doing it fast.”
Tomorrow Vice President Kamala Harris is set to have her own economic policy speech.
She’ll deliver that in Pennsylvania, another battleground state in 20-24.
Biden touts foreign policy legacy during his last UNGA in office
President Joe Biden is in New York City on Tuesday for a week of high-level talks at the United Nations General Assembly, where he will seek to cement his legacy on foreign policy, an issue that has been a focal point of the one-time Senate Foreign Relation Committee chair’s decadeslong political career.
“When President Biden came to office nearly four years ago, he pledged to restore American leadership on the world stage, and given that this is the president's last General Assembly, it's a chance for him to talk about how this approach has produced results, real achievements for the American people and for the world,” a senior administration official told reporters on a call Monday to discuss Biden’s engagements.
Biden, the officials said, will use his time in New York to make the case that his vision for a world in which countries work together to solve problems is superior to the alternative view of his “competitors.” Former President Donald Trump and some in the Republican party have recently moved to embrace a more isolationist view of America’s place on the world stage — a stance Biden has previously warned against.
“This stands in contrast to some of our competitors, who have a more cynical and transactional worldview,” the official added. “One where countries interpret their self interest very narrowly and don't work together for the common good.”
The president will also emphasize the importance of effective global institutions, calling for reforms and a focus on strengthening the United Nations, specifically the Security Council, an official added.
Those on the call also cited climate, the need to boost systems to provide humanitarian assistance to end “brutal wars” and artificial intelligence as an important topics this week.
Biden is set to kick off his engagements Tuesday morning with a speech to the UN General Assembly before meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Later Tuesday, the president will host a summit focused on synthetic drug threats and separately deliver remarks on the “urgent need” to combat climate change.
On Wednesday, Biden will meet with the president of Vietnam, To Lam , where the two will discuss their “shared interest in stability and prosperity in Southeast Asia,” an official told reporters. He will then participate in a Ukraine-focused meeting before hosting leaders for a reception at The Met.
The summit on synthetic drugs, officials said, will build off of the coalition Biden launched in June 2023 to address the synthetic drug crisis around the world. An official noted that Biden and other countries taking part will announce new initiatives to further the effort at tomorrow’s summit.
“Now we have the latest provisional data released from the Center for Disease Control, National Center for Health Statistics, showing an unprecedented decline in overdose deaths of roughly 10% from April 2023 to April 2024,” the official said, “But there's a lot more to be done, and the global coalition's work recognizes that we need a global solution to a global problem.”
Biden’s stop in New York comes amid a surge in violence between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, escalating longstanding concerns about the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas could expand into a wider regional conflict. Biden himself told reporters on Sunday that he was worried about a growing conflict but said the U.S. was doing “everything we can” to avoid a wider war.
“I have no doubt that the situation in the Middle East will be an important theme in a lot of the meetings, not just that the president has, but other senior U.S. officials who will be convening to talk about about various aspects of the crisis and what we can do to stabilize the situation,” an official said on the call.