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Biden Returns to South Carolina, Determined to Win Back Black Voters

COLUMBIA, South carolina — U.S. President Joe Biden doesn’t need to worry about his prospects in South Carolina’s Democratic primary next week. He’s got that locked up. 

He also knows he’s not likely to win the solidly red state come November. South Carolina hasn’t voted for a Democrat since 1976. 

Nonetheless, Biden spent the weekend in the state, intent on driving home two messages: He’s loyal to the state that saved his campaign in 2020 and he’s determined to win back Black voters here and elsewhere who were central to his election last time but are less enthused this go-round. 

“You’re the reason I am president,” Biden told attendees at the state party’s fundraising dinner ahead of its first ever “first-in-the-nation” Democratic primary on February 3. “You’re the reason Kamala Harris is a historic vice president. And you’re the reason Donald Trump is a defeated former president. You’re the reason Donald Trump is a loser. And you’re the reason we’re going to win and beat him again.” 

Biden received raved applause and chants of “four more years” from attendees at the dinner, as he criticized his predecessor’s policies and highlighted his efforts to support Black Americans. He was set to spend Sunday in the state where politics and faith are intertwined at a political event at St. John Baptist Church. 

Deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said of the primary that Biden’s team was working to “blow this out of the water” by running up the score against long shot challengers. The Biden campaign also wants to learn lessons about activating Black voters — the backbone of the party — ahead of an expected 2024 rematch with Republican front-runner Donald Trump. 

Challenger invites Biden to pass torch

It was the first time Biden shared a stage with Representative Dean Phillips, a long-shot challenger for the Democratic nomination, who called on the president, 81, to step aside for a younger generation of leaders to take on Trump. 

“The numbers do not say things are looking good,” Phillips said of Biden’s poll numbers. “My invitation to President Biden is to pass the torch.”

Struggling to hold the attention of the crowd — many of whom were holding Biden campaign signs ahead of the president’s appearance — Phillips repeatedly asked the audience to quiet down and listen to him.

Phillips told The Associated Press he did not interact with Biden at the event, saying of Biden’s staff, “No. I don’t think they want him to see me.” 

Supporters talk up accomplishments

Ahead of the dinner, Biden stopped into Regal Lounge Men’s Barber & Spa in Columbia, greeting, owners, employees and customers mid-haircut at the barbershop. 

The president has been getting mixed reviews from some Black voters in the state that came through for him in 2020, including discontent over his failure to deliver on voting rights legislation and other issues. 

Last year, at the outset of Biden’s reelection bid, conflicting views among the same South Carolina Democratic voters whose support had been so crucial to his nomination provided an early warning sign of the challenges he faces as he tries to revive his diverse winning coalition from 2020. 

Overall, just half of Black adults said they approved of Biden in a December poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That is compared with 86% in July 2021, a shift that is generating concern about the president’s reelection prospects. 

APVoteCast, an extensive national survey of the electorate, also found that support for Republican candidates ticked up slightly among Black voters during the 2022 midterm elections, although Black voters overwhelmingly supported Democrats. 

The Biden campaign is running TV ads in South Carolina highlighting Biden initiatives that it hopes will boost enthusiasm among Black voters. 

“On his first day in office with a country in crisis, President Biden got to work — for us,” the ad states. “Cutting Black child poverty in half, more money for Black entrepreneurs, millions of new good-paying jobs and he lowered the cost of prescription drugs.” 

The campaign is spending more than $270,000 on the ads through the primary, according to tracking data. The Democratic National Committee also launched a six-figure ad campaign across South Carolina and Nevada, which is next on the Democratic primary calendar, to boost enthusiasm for Biden among Black and Latino voters. And first lady Jill Biden was in the state on Friday evening to rally voters. 

Biden’s campaign has also hired staff in South Carolina to organize ahead of the primary and through the general election, although for nearly 50 years the state has picked a Republican for president. 

‘We know Joe…Joe knows us’

Meanwhile, a pro-Biden super PAC, Unite the Country, is airing an ad featuring Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina ticking through what he says are major Biden accomplishments such as reducing student loan debt and cutting insulin costs for older people. 

It was Clyburn’s 2020 endorsement of his longtime friend Biden that helped the then-candidate score a thundering win in South Carolina’s presidential primary. 

In the new advertisement, Clyburn references his late wife, Emily, who influenced his 2020 endorsement of Biden. She said that “if we wanted to win the presidency, we better nominate Joe Biden,” Clyburn says in the ad. “She was right then, and she’s still right today.” 

Clyburn greeted Biden at the airport and accompanied him throughout his visit. 

While Trump has seen slightly improving levels of support among Black and Latino voters, Biden’s team is more concerned that a lack of enthusiasm for Biden will depress turnout among voters who are pivotal to the Democratic coalition. 

Biden’s team is using South Carolina as a proving ground, tracking which messages and platforms break through with voters. 

South Carolina, where Black voters make up a majority of the Democratic electorate, is now the first meaningful contest in the Democratic presidential race after the party reworked the party’s nominating calendar at Biden’s call. Leading off with Iowa and New Hampshire had long drawn criticism because the states are less diverse than the rest of the country. 

A co-chairman of Biden’s reelection campaign, Clyburn has remained one of the president’s most stalwart advocates in Congress, as well as in his home state. 

Frequently, he reminds people of the same message he delivered in his 2020 endorsement: “We know Joe, and Joe knows us.” 

Biden’s decision to campaign in the state “helps solidify South Carolina’s place as the first in the nation primary moving forward,” said Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler. 

It also provides Biden an opportunity to re-engage with Black voters who have connections that extend beyond South Carolina. 

“Obviously the diaspora is strong, familial ties are strong with other key swing states in the area like Georgia and North Carolina,” Tyler said. 

This is Biden’s second trip to South Carolina this month. He spoke earlier in the month at the pulpit of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where nine Black parishioners were shot to death in 2015 by a white stranger they had invited to join their Bible study. 
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House Speaker Suggests Border Bill May Be ‘Dead on Arrival’ 

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday pressed Congress to embrace a bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures with Ukraine aid, but House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested the compromise on border and immigration policy could be “dead on arrival” in his chamber.

The Democratic president said in a statement late Friday that the policies proposed would “be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.” He also pledged to use a new emergency authority to “shut down the border” as soon as he could sign it into law.

Biden’s embrace of the deal — and Republican resistance — could become an election-year shift on the politics of immigration. Yet the diminishing prospects for its passage in Congress may have far-reaching consequences for U.S. allies around the globe, especially Ukraine.

Senate Republicans had initially insisted that border policy changes be included in Biden’s $110 billion emergency request for funding for Ukraine, Israel, immigration enforcement and other national security needs. But the Senate deal faced collapse this week as it came under fire from Republicans, including Donald Trump, the likely presidential nominee, who eviscerated the deal as a political “gift” to Democrats.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, on Friday sent a letter to colleagues that aligns him with hardline conservatives determined to sink the compromise. The speaker said the legislation would have been “dead on arrival in the House” if leaked reports about it were true.

A core group of senators negotiating the deal were hoping to release text early next week, but conservatives already say the measures do not go far enough to limit immigration. The proposal would enact tougher standards on migrants seeking asylum as well as deny asylum applications at the border if daily migrant encounters grow to numbers that are unmanageable for authorities.

The speaker’s message added to the headwinds facing the Senate deal, closing a week in which Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged to his colleagues that the legislation faced tough opposition from Trump that could force them to pursue Ukraine aid another way. He later clarified that he was still supportive of pairing border measures with Ukraine aid.

If the deal collapses, it could leave congressional leaders with no clear path to approving tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine. Biden has made it a top priority to bolster Kyiv’s defense against Russia, but his administration has run out of money to send ammunition and missiles. Ukraine supporters warn that the impasse in Congress is being felt on battlefields and leaving Ukrainian soldiers outgunned.

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, the lead GOP negotiator in the border talks, has repeatedly urged lawmakers to refrain from passing final judgment on the bill until they receive legislative text and said some of the reports of its contents in conservative media are not accurate depictions of the bill.

The Republican speaker was deeply skeptical of any bipartisan compromise on border policy. On Friday, he again pointed to a sweeping set of immigration measures that the House passed last year as being the answer to the nation’s border challenges. But that bill failed to gain a single Democratic vote then and has virtually no chance of picking up Democratic support now, which would be necessary to clear the Senate.

As they enter an election year, Republicans are seeking to drive home the fact that historic numbers of migrants have come to the U.S. during Biden’s presidency. His administration has countered that global unrest is driving the migration and has sought to implement humane policies on border enforcement.

“Securing the border through these negotiations is a win for America,” Biden said in the statement. “For everyone who is demanding tougher border control, this is the way to do it.”
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Concerns Over US Support of Israel Hang Over 2024 Poll

Protesters angered over the Israel-Hamas conflict have taken to the streets in the United States, and some have disrupted President Joe Biden’s campaign appearances. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell looks at how the issue is playing out on the campaign trail. Carolyn Presutti contributed to this report from Nashua, New Hampshire. Patsy Widakuswara contributed from Washington.
Camera: Adam Greenbaum
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Concerns Over US Support of Israel Hang Over 2024 Poll

washington/nashua, new hampshire — The burning conflict in Gaza has lit a spark under untold numbers of American voters, and put extra heat on U.S. President Joe Biden’s reelection bid. Protesters have interrupted his recent campaign appearances to express their anger over his support of Israel’s military campaign.

On Wednesday, protesters briefly disrupted a labor union event where Biden was speaking. During a Tuesday rally focused on abortion access, 14 protesters shouted through most of Biden’s speech in Manassas, Virginia. The interruptions clearly frustrated the president.

“This is going to go on for a while,” Biden said. “They have got this planned.”

That protest was organized by Die-In For Humanity, a 700-member strong protest group that has made nearly 100 appearances at Biden events, the U.S. Capitol, outside administration members’ homes, outside the Israeli Embassy, and at January’s protest in Washington.

“I think the majority of people are not OK with American tax dollars being used to commit atrocities overseas,” Hazami Barmada, the group’s lead organizer, told VOA. She was among the protesters escorted out of Tuesday’s event.

“We’re seeing a shift in the tide in the United States with complete rejection — in essence — of Biden,” said Barmada. “…what we’re saying is that you’re not going to get the vote of the American community when you constantly continue to disregard the voices of the Arab American community that are saying stop the injustice and the atrocities in Gaza.”

The White House said Wednesday the president supports Americans’ right to peacefully protest.

“He also believes it’s really important that Israel have the right and the ability to continue to defend themselves against — which is … what is clearly still a viable threat from Hamas,” said John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for the National Security Council.

“But that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop, again, urging a stronger focus by our Israeli counterparts on minimizing civilian casualties and on getting aid in,” Kirby said.

Foreign policy, political analysts say, rarely drives elections but can make a difference when the competition is tight. Like for undecided New Hampshire voter Isaac Geer, who participated Tuesday in a primary vote that Biden and Republican contender Donald Trump won for their respective parties.

“The biggest thing I’m voting for this election season is foreign policy,” he told VOA, speaking in Nashua, New Hampshire. “It’s really important to me that we stay out of any foreign wars and keep our military spending down, and bring our troops back home or keep them home.”

Trump’s plan to resolve the Gaza crisis is unclear, and his previous actions as president included a much-criticized “ban” of Muslim immigrants. VOA reached out several times to the Trump campaign, but they did not respond.

For Muslim activists, it’s a stark choice. Hassan Abdel Salam is a Minneapolis-based professor who co-founded the Abandon Biden movement of Muslim voters, which focuses on swing states. He is a Canadian citizen.

“Mr. Trump prevented our friends and colleagues and family from entering the country,” he told VOA. “But Mr. Biden killed them. And that four years under any Republican is incomparable to one day in Gaza, that an argument has emerged within our communities, that we have to sacrifice.”

Political analysts say Biden is in a difficult position.

“There’s no doubt that the situation in Gaza is a political problem for Biden,” Norm Ornstein, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA. “If you step back and look objectively, Biden has handled this issue adroitly about as well as any president could. He understood early on that by hugging [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu close, he could keep some of the worst things from happening in Gaza. But he’s now getting very close to pushing Bibi aside. And that means that the initial move — which alienated a lot of voters, not just Arab American voters, but young progressives — may in fact end up being worse for him, because if he pushes or spurns Bibi Netanyahu aside, then some of his strongest supporters, pro-Israel supporters, may be unhappy as well.”

Carolyn Presutti contributed to this report from Nashua, New Hampshire. Patsy Widakuswara contributed from Washington.
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Texas Woman Who Lost Lawsuit to Get Abortion to Attend Biden’s State of the Union

washington — U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden have extended an invitation to attend the president’s State of the Union address to a Texas woman who sued her state and lost over the ability to get an abortion.

The Texas Supreme Court denied Kate Cox’s request. But by then, her lawyers said, she had already traveled out of state for an abortion.

The Bidens spoke with Cox on Sunday and invited her to the annual address set for March 7 at the U.S. Capitol. Cox will sit with the first lady, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday. Cox accepted the invite, she said.

“They thanked her for her courage in sharing her story and speaking out against the impact of the extreme abortion ban in Texas,” Jean-Pierre said.

Cox, 31, was pregnant with her third child when she learned the fetus had a rare genetic disorder. The couple was informed by doctors that their baby would live at best a week. She sued over the right to have an abortion to end the pregnancy but lost because the judges said she hadn’t shown her life was in danger enough to be granted the procedure.

The White House invitation reflects how strongly the administration is leaning into reproductive rights as a galvanizing force for voters in the upcoming presidential election after the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned abortion protections. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses on Tuesday centered their first major campaign rally of the election year on abortion rights.

In his speech, Biden spoke about the increased medical challenges women are facing since the fall of Roe v. Wade, particularly for women who never intended to end their pregnancies. He laid the blame on Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who as president appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court.

This will be the first State of the Union under Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who will sit behind the president and to his left during the address to Congress. This year’s speech will offer an opportunity for Biden to detail his broader vision and policy priorities as he campaigns for reelection in November.
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Nevada Judge Approves Signature-Gathering Stage for Petition to Put Abortion Rights on 2024 Ballot

RENO, Nevada — A Nevada judge has approved a petition by abortion access advocates as eligible for signature gathering in their long-standing attempt to get abortion rights on the 2024 ballot.

Carson City District Judge James T. Russell made the ruling Tuesday, about two months after he struck down a similar yet broader version that, if passed, would have enshrined additional reproductive rights into the state’s constitution.

If the Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom political action committee gets enough signatures, a question would appear on the November ballot that would enshrine abortion access for up to 24 weeks, or as needed to protect the health of the pregnant patient, into the Nevada Constitution.  Then, voters would need to approve it again on the 2026 ballot to amend the constitution.

Abortion rights up to 24 weeks are already codified into Nevada law through a 1990 referendum, where two-thirds of voters were in favor. That could be changed with another referendum.

The standards are higher for amending the constitution, which requires either approval from two legislative sessions and an election, or two consecutive elections with a simple majority of votes.

The petition that was cleared for signatures is one of two efforts from the Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom committee to get the right to abortion on the 2024 ballot.

Russell rejected an earlier petition in a November ruling, saying the proposed ballot initiative was too broad, contained a “misleading description of effect” and had an unfunded mandate.

The petition would have included protections for “matters relating to their pregnancies” including prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, vasectomies, tubal ligations, abortion and abortion care, as well as care for miscarriages and infertility. Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom appealed that rejection to the Nevada Supreme Court and are waiting for a new ruling.

The petition approved for signatures Tuesday had narrower language — “establishing a fundamental, individual right to abortion,” which applies to “decisions about matters relating to abortion” without government interference.

In a statement following the ruling, Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom spokesperson Lindsey Harmon celebrated the ruling but said she remained confident that the committee’s initial petition would be recognized as eligible by the Nevada Supreme Court.

“Abortion rights are not the only form of reproductive freedom under attack across the country,” Harmon said. “Protecting miscarriage management, birth control, prenatal and postpartum care, and other vital reproductive health care services are inextricably linked pieces of a singular right to reproductive freedom.”

Abortion rights have become a mobilizing issue for Democrats since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 court decision establishing a nationwide right to abortion.

Constitutional amendments protecting abortion access are already set to appear on the 2024 ballot in New York and Maryland and could also show up in a host of states, including Missouri and Arizona.

Lawmakers in Nevada’s Democratic-controlled Legislature are also attempting to get reproductive rights including abortion access in front of voters on the 2026 ballot. The initiative, which would enshrine those rights in the state constitution, passed the state Senate and Assembly in May 2023 and now must be approved with a simple majority again in 2025 before being eligible for the 2026 ballot.
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Donald Trump’s Defamation Trial to Resume Thursday

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s trial in the defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll will resume on Thursday and will not be held on Wednesday as initially scheduled, Manhattan federal court records showed Tuesday. 

The trial’s second postponement this week delays a potential face-to-face encounter between Carroll and the former U.S. president, who has said he wants to testify. 

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan delayed the trial until Wednesday after a juror and one of Trump’s lawyers reported illnesses. 

When the trial resumes, jurors will determine how much Trump should pay Carroll for defaming her in June 2019, when he denied raping her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan. 

Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has consistently denied that anything happened and accused Carroll of making up the incident to boost sales of her then-new memoir.
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