Biden news today: President knocks Matt Gaetz over Ukraine criticism while touting new Russia sanctions

North Korea recently tested what seemed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile, and the Biden administration has now warned that the isolated dictatorship may be planning another “provocative action” in the next week – possibly a full-blown nuclear weapons test.

According to the US special envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, the US and its allies “are prepared to deal with whatever they may undertake”.

Aside from the war in Ukraine, which has seen Vladimir Putin order Russia’s nuclear forces to a higher level of alert, the Biden administration is also engaged in intensive talks to salvage some sort of anti-proliferation deal with Iran after the hard-won 2015 deal to curb its nuclear enrichment programme was ditched by Donald Trump.

Maroosha Muzaffar has the story.

Joe Biden’s son Hunter has long been the focus of accusations that he used his name and connection to his father to secure lucrative business deals, as well as allegations of tax impropriety around his work with foreign companies.

And as federal investigations into his affairs garner increasing attention, Republicans in the House of Representatives are making clear that if they win back the majority in November – as is widely expected – the younger Mr Biden will immediately find himself under investigation by Congress as well.

“The House Oversight Committee is going to be all over Hunter Biden,” said Congressman James Comer in an interview with Politico. “We’re going to focus on Hunter Biden not for political reasons, but because we feel he’s a national security threat.”

John Bowden has the story.

The White House has been hard on Congress to pass a new bill allocating billions of dollars to help with the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, but as things stand, the Senate – which will shortly go into recess – is fighting over the administration’s plan to repeal a Trump-era measure to control immigration at the southern border.

If the package does not pass, numerous programmes could be at stake – among them the purchase of Covid therapeutics, vaccine and booster shots, and the White House has warned that without new money to invest, uninsured people could be left struggling to access tests.

Eric Garcia has this analysis.

A TikTok account set up to improve Joe Biden’s profile with younger voters has got off to a slow start, with only 118 fans following @buildingbacktogether on the platform despite the glaring name recognition advantage.

Here’s the account’s first video, a montage of legislative achievements inexplicably soundtracked by ABBA’s 1979 hit “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”.

Today will see the full Senate vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, making her the first Black woman to sit on the highest bench in the US. She is expected to be confirmed with the support of just three Republicans: Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney, all of whom have been roundly condemned by right-wing media for backing her.

Indeed, much of the rest of the party has spent the confirmation process accusing her of being soft on child abusers and demanding she explain to them what a woman is.

Here, Andrew Feinberg runs through the more off-base questions she was asked by the Judiciary Committee.

The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg yesterday asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether Russia might exploit the affinity it’s attracted from some far-right groups and white supremacists in the US to inspire domestic terrorism in retaliation for sanctions.

The recent history of extremist groups’ affiliation with Russian counterparts is stark indeed. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described how over the past number of years, neo-Nazi and “identitarian” figures in the US have been linked to Russian ultranationalists like philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who has been described as “Putin’s brain”.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby last night gave an interview on Russia’s use of cluster bombs and other weapons against civilians in Ukraine, where Joe Biden has recently insisted Vladimir Putin’s military is committing war crimes.

“They are indiscriminate in the way they are attacking,” he said. “They don’t care about how many civilians they’re killing or how many people they’re forcing to flee.”

After Joe Biden announced a sixth extension to the end of the student loan repayment freeze instituted because of the Covid-19 pandemic, progressive Democrats have amped up their calls for the president to take unilateral action and cancel them altogether – something he says should be done via congresssional action, though the idea is extremely unlikely to make it through the legislature given partisan politics.

Here’s Elizabeth Warren on MSNBC yesterday explaining what cancellation could achieve.

Merrick Garland’s press conference yesterday discussing further sanctions on Russian oligarchs and moguls was strongly worded to say the least, especially by the attorney general’s own moderate standards.

“Last month, I said we would leave no stone unturned in our efforts to investigate, arrest, and prosecute those whose criminal acts enable Russia to continue its unjust war in Ukraine,” he said. “That is a promise we are keeping…

“Our message to those who continue to enable the Russian regime through their criminal conduct is this,” Mr Garland said, raising his voice. “It does not matter how far you sail your yacht. It does not matter how well you conceal your assets. It does not matter how cleverly you write your malware or hide your online activity. The Justice Department will use every available tool to find you, disrupt your plots, and hold you accountable.”

The US recently enlisted the co-operation of the Spanish police to seize a yacht belonging to billionaire and Putin associate Viktor Vekselberg.

While Republicans are signalling an interest in litigating Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, a key Senate Republican said newly obtained banking records raise similar concerns about the president’s first brother James Biden.

“We have people with the Biden name, dealing with Chinese business people that have a relationship to the Communist Party,” Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, told CBS News’ Catherine Herridge.

“I think James Biden was very much a part of this.”

According to bank records released by Republican senators this week, James Biden’s company, the Lion Hall Group, received payments from a Chinese-financed consulting group in 2018, before his brother announced his bid for presidency.

Mr Grassley said it was in the same year that James Biden and the president’s son Hunter, received monthly retainers totaling $165,000 — $100,000 to Hunter and $65,000 to James.

“These records we got are the first records that have ever been made public on this issue. Nobody else has them,” Mr Grassley said.