United States President Joe Biden has renewed his commitment to see his struggling re-election campaign through, telling voters in the key battleground state of Michigan that he is the better choice, despite growing calls for him to quit the race.

“I’m the nominee,” he said on Friday. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“To put it in perspective, in the primary, Biden got about 600,000 votes in Michigan, easily winning over any other rivals, but about 100,000 voters voted ‘uncommitted’. Those were largely Arab and Muslim Americans and young Americans who are upset about his handling of the war in Gaza,” he said.

The federally appointed monitor tasked with overseeing the United Auto Workers, Neil Barofsky, is ratcheting up his conflict with UAW President Shawn Fain, announcing another investigation into the union leader who rose to national prominence amid the successful “Stand Up Strike” against the Big Three automakers.

Yet newly unveiled documents suggest Barofsky’s pursuit of Fain has less to do with concerns over union self-dealing and more to do with the politics of Israel-Palestine.

Barofsky was appointed in 2021 as the result of the Department of Justice-led consent decree put in place in lieu of prosecution of the union itself for rampant corruption, following prison sentences for two consecutive UAW presidents.

During a United Nations Security Council meeting this week, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield launched a full-throated condemnation of Russia’s bombing of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital on Monday. The attack was a part of a Russian bombing campaign that killed more than 30 Ukrainian civilians.

“We’re here today because Russia … attacked a children’s hospital,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “Even uttering that phrase sends a chill down my spine.”

Thomas-Greenfield went on to list a string of Russian attacks on other Ukrainian hospitals throughout the war. She described Russia’s aggression as a “campaign of terror” and labeled its attacks on civilian infrastructure as violations of international law. Representatives of other countries, such as the United Kingdom and France, echoed Thomas-Greenfield’s denunciations. (Russia’s ambassador denied responsibility for the Monday bombing.)

“I’m very glad the U.S. is coming out and so vocally condemning all of those actions,” said Jessica Peake, an international law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, referring to Thomas-Greenfield’s comments toward Russia. “But at the same time, we don’t get any language anywhere near as strong as that when we’re talking about Palestinian hospitals, or Palestinian schools, or Palestinian children.”

Biden actually gained a point since last month’s survey, which was taken before the debate. In this poll, he leads Trump 50% to 48% in a head-to-head matchup. But Biden slips when third-party options are introduced, with Trump holding the slightest advantage with 43% to 42%.

Those numbers, though, do not represent statistically significant differences, as the margin of error in the survey is +/- 3.1 percentage points, meaning results could be 3 points higher or lower.

The poll also found that, at this point, no other mainstream Democrat who has been mentioned as a replacement for the president on the ticket does better than Biden.

The results reflect the hyperpolarized political environment in the country and the reality that both of the major parties’ presumptive nominees bring with them significant disadvantages. Majorities of those surveyed continue to say they have a negative opinion of both men, and neither, they say, should be on the ballot at all.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240712121307/https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/nx-s1-5036518/biden-trump-poll

Key quotes:

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met with President Biden Thursday night to relay the sentiments of the House Democratic Caucus regarding his reelection bid, as concerns grow within the ranks about the incumbent’s ability to beat former President Trump in November.

The meeting — revealed in a letter to colleagues Friday morning — came after Jeffries spoke with a large swath of House Democrats in the two weeks since last month’s debate, which prompted concerns about Biden’s viability at the top of the presidential ticket. . The meeting took place after Biden’s high-stakes press conference that evening, a source familiar told The Hill.

Jeffries said he passed along the “full breadth” of thoughts he heard within his caucus.

The vice president told a crowd of roughly 20,000 in Dallas that former President Donald J. Trump had said he would terminate the Constitution in a second term.

“Consider: Donald Trump has openly vowed if re-elected he’ll be a dictator on day one, that he will weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, round up peaceful protesters and throw them out of our country and even, and even and I quote, ‘terminate’ the United States Constitution,” Ms. Harris said.

You go girls