Dems push on hot-button election issues

US President Joe Biden delivers remarks at United Steel Workers headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US, April 17, 2024.
US President Joe Biden delivers remarks at United Steel Workers headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US, April 17, 2024.
REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

President Joe Biden used a meeting in Pennsylvania with United Steel Workers on Wednesday to call for a tripling of steel tariffs on China. Trade representative Katherine Tai, in response to a petition from the union, also announced an investigation of unfair trade practices in China’s shipbuilding industry.

Administration officials insist these moves are about economics, not election-year politics, but there are clearly messages to be drawn here. Aware that his reelection depends on victory in Pennsylvania and other union-heavy Midwest swing states, we can expect Biden to continue to lean into his “friend of the working man” image. As political commentator Paul Begala has noted, Democrats havelost votes in recent years by shifting “from being the party of the factory floor to the party of the faculty lounge.” Biden appears determined to avoid that trap. It also demonstrates that China will remain a go-to election-year political target.

Democrats are also on offense in a crucial Sun Belt swing state. In Arizona, they worked to force a vote this week onrepealing a hyper-controversial law that bans nearly all abortions, a question that highlights deep divisions on this issue within the state’s Republican Party. The aim was to push state GOP lawmakers to take public positions on an issue many of them would rather ignore. On Wednesday, Republicans opted to prevent the vote from happening, leaving the party with political responsibility for defending the 160-year old law.

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German Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz speaks to the media after he reached an agreement with the Greens on a massive increase in state borrowing just days ahead of a parliamentary vote next week, in Berlin, Germany, on March 14, 2025.
REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

Germany’s election-winning center-right Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, led by Friedrich Merz, and the Social Democrats have reached a preliminary agreement with the Green Party on a deal to exclude defense spending from the country’s constitutional debt break and establish a dedicated $545 billion fund for infrastructure investments.

A Russian army soldier walks along a ruined street of Malaya Loknya settlement, which was recently retaken by Russia's armed forces in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in the Kursk region, on March 13, 2025.

Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS

The Russian leader has conditions of his own for any ceasefire with Ukraine, and he also wants a meeting with Donald Trump.

Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of the media about the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia University on June 1, 2024.

REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

The court battle over whether the US can deport Mahmoud Khalil, the 30-year-old Palestinian-Algerian activist detained in New York last Saturday, began this week in Manhattan. Khalil, an outspoken activist for Palestinian rights at Columbia University, was arrested Saturday at his apartment in a university-owned building at Columbia University by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and he is now being held in an ICE detention center in Louisiana.

The Israeli Air Force launched an airstrike on Thursday, targeting a building in the Mashrou Dummar area of Damascus.
(Photo by Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto)

An Israeli airstrike destroyed a residential building on the outskirts of Damascus on Thursday in the latest Israeli incursion into post-Assad Syria.

Lars Klingbeil (l), Chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, and Friedrich Merz, CDU Chairman and Chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, talk at the end of the 213th plenary session of the 20th legislative period in the German Bundestag.

Germany’s government is in a state of uncertainty as the outgoing government races to push through a huge, and highly controversial, new spending package before its term ends early this spring.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, a Republican, speaks as the U.S. vice president visits East Palestine, Ohio, U.S., February 3, 2025.
Rebecca Droke/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

On Wednesday, Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin redefined the agency’s mission, stating that its focus is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.”