He’ll return again to that crucial battleground state, this time in Pittsburgh, on Monday, to highlight workers on Labor Day. Then Biden will carry that message to another swing state, Wisconsin, where he will visit Milwaukee.
Biden and his fellow Democrats are more hopeful about their ability to hold the party’s slim congressional majorities this November after a string of recent legislative successes and the renewed attention on abortion rights following the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
Analysts said they still have an uphill fight, particularly in the House, given the history of a president’s party almost always losing seats in his first midterm election. But Democrats have been buoyed by strong performances in out-of-cycle House elections and new accomplishments to tout on the campaign trail, coinciding with a rise in Biden’s still-low approval rating.
Biden’s upcoming travel was designed to “speak directly to the American people on how congressional Democrats and this president delivered,” Jean-Pierre said Monday.
Biden traveled to Massachusetts last month to talk about climate change at a shuttered coal-fired power plant in Somerset. He tested positive for COVID-19 after that trip, derailing some additional travel plans and causing some concern about the Massachusetts officials who accompanied him, none of whom later reported testing positive.
The Boston visit on Sept. 12 will highlight the wide-ranging investments being made by the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, one of Biden’s major legislative accomplishments. After Biden signed the law last November, his first stop in celebrating it was in Woodstock, N.H.
During his Wilkes-Barre visit Tuesday, Biden forcefully defended the FBI as the agency and its employees have come under withering criticism and threats of violence since executing a search warrant at former president Trump’s Florida residence earlier.
“It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI, threatening the life of law enforcement and their families, for simply carrying out the law and doing their job,” Biden said before a crowd of more than 500 at Wilkes University. “I’m opposed to defunding the police; I’m also opposed to defunding the FBI.”
Biden also used his remarks to promote his administration’s crime-prevention efforts and to continue to pressure Congress to revive a long-expired federal ban on assault-style weapons. Democrats and Republicans worked together in a rare effort to pass gun safety legislation earlier this year after massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. They were the first significant firearm restrictions approved by Congress in nearly three decades, but Biden has repeatedly said more needs to be done.
“We beat the NRA. We took them on and beat the NRA straight up. You have no idea how intimidating they are to elected officials,” an animated Biden said. “We’re not stopping here. I’m determined to ban assault weapons in this country! Determined. I did it once before. And I’ll do it again.”
As a senator, Biden played a leading role in temporarily banning some assault-style weapons, including firearms similar to the AR-15 that have exploded in popularity in recent years, and he wants to put the law back into place. Biden argued that there was no rationale for such weapons “outside of a war zone” and noted that parents of the young victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde had to supply DNA because the weapon used in the massacre rendered the bodies unidentifiable.
“DNA, to say that’s my baby!” Biden said. “What the hell is the matter with us?”
GLOBE STAFF AND ASSOCIATED PRESS
Trump adds high-profile lawyer to team
Former president Donald Trump has hired a high-profile lawyer to help him with the aftermath of the FBI search of his club and home in Florida and the criminal investigation into his handling of sensitive government documents.
The lawyer, Christopher Kise, is a former solicitor general for the state of Florida who has argued cases before the Supreme Court and worked as a transition adviser for Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican. Kise, who is now in private practice, formally joined the team in recent days, according to two of Trump’s associates. His hiring was earlier reported by NBC News.
Kise is joining a team that a number of other high-profile lawyers have steered clear of, concerned about Trump’s history of nonpayment or his insistence on trying to run his own legal efforts.
Kise will join two lawyers who are not licensed in Florida — James Trusty and M. Evan Corcoran — on the case, which is related to the handling of hundreds of pages of government documents, many marked as highly classified. Trump had been keeping the documents at his members-only club and home in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, since he left the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, at the end of his term.
Kise is expected to be part of the team appearing in federal court in Florida on Thursday before Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee. Cannon has signaled her intention to allow the appointment of a special master Trump is seeking to review whether any of the material taken by the federal agents is covered under executive privilege.
The request has raised questions, as Trump is no longer the sitting president and executive privilege covers the office of the presidency.
NEW YORK TIMES
Secret Service official tied to Jan. 6 investigation retires
Anthony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official at the center of the House investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol, has retired.
‘’We can confirm that Anthony Ornato retired from the U.S. Secret Service today in good standing after 25 years of devoted service,’’ said Secret Service Special Agent Kevin Helgert in a statement late Monday. Politico first reported on the retirement.
Ornato, as head of President Trump’s personal security detail, grew close to the then-president, who hired him as White House deputy chief of staff for operations — a highly unprecedented transition in the agency’s history. In that role, Ornato helped coordinate a controversial June 2020 photo opportunity in which Trump strode defiantly across Lafayette Square to pose with a Bible after the park was forcibly cleared of peaceful protesters.
But the spotlight focused on Ornato after Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified before the House committee investigating the Capitol attack that Ornato told her Trump lunged at a Secret Service agent who refused to take him to the Capitol after a rally at the Ellipse, before the riot.
Hutchinson said Ornato told her Trump was ‘’irate’’ that he wasn’t allowed to go to the Capitol with his supporters after his speech. Ornato, she testified, said Trump lunged toward the then-head of his Secret Service detail, Bobby Engel. Engel, Hutchinson said, never disputed what Ornato had said.
But Ornato immediately disputed Hutchinson’s testimony and said he’d be willing to testify before the Jan. 6 panel to refute her statements. While the committee interviewed Ornato before Hutchinson’s testimony, it is not clear whether he has spoken to them again since.
WASHINGTON POST
