Biden says downed UFOs likely not for surveillance

Joe Biden says the intelligence services haven’t determined the purpose of the three objects American planes shot down in recent days, but there’s no sign they were used for surveillance or connected to China.

“Our intelligence community is still assessing all three incidences. They’re reporting to me daily and will continue the urgent efforts to do so, and I will communicate that to the Congress,” Biden said in an address from the White House.

“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were, but nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program, or they were surveillance vehicles from other any other country. The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions, studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”

Biden in Washington on Thursday. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Key events

Democratic senator Fetterman seeks treatment for depression

John Fetterman, the newly elected Democratic senator whose victory in Pennsylvania gave Joe Biden’s allies an outright majority in the chamber after last November’s midterms, has checked himself into the hospital for clinical depression, his office announced.

“Last night, Senator John Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to receive treatment for clinical depression. While John has experienced depression off and on throughout his life, it only became severe in recent weeks,” Fetterman’s chief of staff Adam Jentleson said in a statement.

“On Monday, John was evaluated by Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the Attending Physician of the United States Congress. Yesterday, Dr. Monahan recommended inpatient care at Walter Reed. John agreed, and he is receiving treatment on a voluntary basis. After examining John, the doctors at Walter Reed told us that John is getting the care he needs, and will soon be back to himself.”

The three recent shootdowns are among the more mysterious national security happenings in recent time, particularly because days have passed since they occurred, and Washington has yet to come out with an explanation of what American jets encountered in the skies.

But Joe Biden seems to be preparing Americans for the possibility that the unidentified objects were simply innocuous vessels in the wrong place at the wrong time. While he didn’t say what was shot down in his White House speech today, he did note that he asked American intelligence agencies to look into reports of UFOs.

“When I came into office, I instructed our intelligence community to take a broad look at the phenomenon of unidentified aerial objects,” Biden said. “We know that a range of entities including countries, companies and research organizations operate objects at altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate scientific research.”

He also noted that “our military and the Canadian military are seeking to recover the debris so we can learn more about these three objects.” There’s no indication there that they’ve managed to get their hands on them yet, even though it’s been days since they were downed.

The president announced he would look to speak with China’s leader Xi Jinping in the wake of the downing of a spy balloon belonging to Beijing off American’s eastern coast.

“The other thing I want to point out is that we are going to keep our allies and the Congress contemporaneously informed of all we know and all we learn, and I expect to be speaking with President Xi, and I hope we have we are going to get to the bottom, as I make no apologies for taking down that balloon,” Biden said.

He also noted that, “Our (experts) have lifted components of the Chinese balloon’s payload off the ocean floor, we’re analyzing them as I speak, and what we learn will strengthen our capabilities.”

Biden says the government is coming up with practices to better detect and deal with unknown aerial objects in the wake of the recent shootdowns over North America.

“I’ve directed my team to come back to me with sharper rules for how we will deal with these unidentified objects moving forward, distinguishing between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not,” Biden said.

“But make no mistake: if any object presents a threat to the safety, security of the American people, I will take it down. I’ll be sharing with Congress these classified policy parameters when they’re completed, and they’ll remain classified so we don’t give our roadmap to our enemies to try to evade our defenses.”

He also addressed why the United States found itself suddenly responding to three unidentified objects in its airspace just days after shooting down a confirmed Chinese spy balloon.

“We don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky. We’re now just seeing more of them, partially because the steps we’ve taken to increase our radars, to narrow our radars, and we have to keep adapting our approach to dealing with these challenges.”

Biden at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington. Photograph: Al Drago/EPA

Biden says downed UFOs likely not for surveillance

Biden in Washington on Thursday. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Joe Biden has started his address about the UFOs shot down over North America in recent weeks, as well as the Chinese spy balloon.

Follow along here for the latest.

At today’s White House briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Nikki Haley’s proposal that politicians over the age of 75 undergo “mental competency tests”.

Here’s what she had to say about it:

White House Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre responds to 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley saying politicians over 75 should have to take a mental competency test:

“Maybe they’re forgetting the wins that this president has had … but I’m happy to remind them anytime.” pic.twitter.com/Jzpnt9oYRO

— The Recount (@therecount) February 16, 2023

Martin Pengelly

Some improving reading – alas, not about inflation – while we await Joe Biden’s remarks on balloons and UFOs. From our Washington bureau, Joan E Greve interviews Ro Khanna, the California progressive congressman, about the direction of Biden’s Democratic party…

For Ro Khanna, the best part of Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last Tuesday came within the first 10 minutes. Touting the creation of 800,000 manufacturing jobs since he took office, the president boasted that the revitalization of America’s middle class is already under way:

For decades, the middle class has been hollowed out … Too many good-paying manufacturing jobs moved overseas. Factories closed down. Now, thanks to what you’ve all done, we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs.”

Khanna, from California, interpreted the remark as somewhat of a vindication for his political philosophy. Like the progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who appointed Khanna co-chair of his 2020 presidential campaign, the congressman has long argued for a rebalancing of trade relationships.

By investing in US industry and ensuring fair pay and benefits for all workers, Khanna believes, Democrats can champion what he calls “a new economic patriotism”.

“I think [Biden’s] speech is a nod in that direction,” Khanna told the Guardian. “You’re having now the kind of moderate wing affirm the direction that Sanders and I want to take the party.”

Read on…

Biden to speak about Chinese spy balloons

Martin Pengelly

An update from the White House: at 2pm, Joe Biden will deliver remarks about the Chinese spy balloons/UFOs shot down over the US – or as the White House statement puts it, “the United States’ response to recent aerial objects”.

Republicans (and, to be fair, Democrats) have been pressuring the administration to say more.

In the meanwhile, here’s what China said about US balloons earlier today:

And here, in the interests of balance and/or reading about UFOs, is what the head of national investigations for the British UFO Research Association had to say this morning:

Martin Pengelly

Good news for Donald Trump in a new poll out today, from Quinnipiac University (#GoBobcats) in Connecticut.

The survey puts the former president six points ahead of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, in a notional 14-candidate field for the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump got 42% support and DeSantis 36%. DeSantis has not declared his candidacy but is widely expected to do so. The only Republican other than Trump to have thrown their hat into the ring, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, got 5% support in the Quinnipiac poll – in this case not quite enough to suggest DeSantis would beat Trump without her in the race.

But other candidates whose greatest selling point might be simply not being Trump – and therefore not being in legal jeopardy over election subversion, hush money payments, tax affairs, the retention of classified records and an allegation of rape – did attract small measures of support, pointing to the possibility that a divided field might again hand Trump the nomination without requiring him to win a majority, as was the case in 2016.

To wit: the former vice-president Mike Pence got 4% support and so did the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

No one else – Ted Cruz (who says he isn’t running), Chris Christie, even the anti-Trump Liz Cheney – managed to attract more than 2% support.

The poll also asked respondents to choose between a field of four: Trump, DeSantis, Haley and Pence. In that contest, Trump won 43%-41%, with 6% for Haley and 4% for Pence.

In nominal general election match-ups, Joe Biden beat Trump 48%-46% but lost 47%-46% to DeSantis.

Here, meanwhile, is what Sarah Palin thinks of DeSantis and why governors should stay governors, which she famously didn’t:

According to the Associated Press, the investigation into Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents has stretched to his alma mater, the University of Delaware, to which he donated the records of his Senate service:

The FBI searched the University of Delaware in recent weeks for classified documents as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of sensitive government records by Joe Biden.

The search, first reported by CNN, was confirmed to the Associated Press by a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The person would not say whether anything was found.

A justice department special counsel is investigating how classified documents from Biden’s time as vice-president and senator came to end up in his home and former office – and whether any mishandling involved criminal intent or was unintentional. Biden’s personal lawyers disclosed in January that a small batch of documents with classified markings had been found weeks earlier in his former Washington office, and they have since allowed FBI searches of multiple properties.

The university is Biden’s alma mater. In 2011, Biden donated his records from his 36 years serving in the US Senate to the school. The documents arrived on 6 June 2012, according to the university, which released photos of the numbered boxes being unloaded at the university alongside blue and gold balloons.

The day so far

We’ve finally been able to see part of the Georgia special grand jury’s report into Donald Trump’s election meddling campaign, which indicated jurors were worried about being lied to, but which did not reveal if they think the former president or his allies committed crimes. It’s now up to Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis to answer that question, since she’s using the report to determine her next steps as she uncovers details of the former president’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

Nikki Haley thinks Trump could pass one of the “mental competency tests” she wants to force politicians older than 75 to take.
Democrats are beginning to worry that Joe Biden is too old to run for re-election.
A bill to prevent police from using search warrants to access data from menstrual tracking apps failed in Virginia’s legislature, apparently due to interference from Republican governor Glenn Youngkin.

Nikki Haley seemed to throw a little bit of shade at her former boss and fellow presidential contender Donald Trump when she announced her campaign for the White House yesterday.

In a speech launching her campaign, the former UN ambassador suggested that politicians over 75 should take a “mental competency test” in order to hold office. Trump would qualify for such a test, since he’s 76.

But in an interview with Fox News, Haley didn’t take the bait when asked how she thought the former president would fare on her proposed test:

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, when asked how Donald Trump would do on her proposed mental competency test for politicians over the age of 75:

“I think he did great the last time he did it. I have no reason to think he wouldn’t do well this time.” pic.twitter.com/0YesQgZzOP

— The Recount (@therecount) February 16, 2023

Martin Pengelly

Jonathan Martin of Politico is out with a fascinating look at Democrats’ current chief dilemma: the nagging feeling Joe Biden is too old to run for re-election in 2024 (he’s 80 now and would be 82 if sworn in for a second term), versus the competing sense they don’t want anyone else to run. Not, particularly, Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris.

Citing an unnamed senator, Martin writes that “the party ha[s] to devise ‘an alignment of interest’ with the president to get him off the ‘narcotic’ of the office”.

An unnamed governor, Martin reports, “mused about just how little campaigning Biden would be able to do”.

A House member “after saying that, of course, Democrats should renominate the president told me to turn off my phone and then demanded to know who else was out there and said Harris wasn’t an option”.

Another lawmaker, who Martin says was his “favourite” source for the story, “recalled speaking to Jill Biden and, hoping to plant a seed about a one-term declaration of victory, told her how her husband should be celebrated for saving democracy. When I asked if I could use any of that on the record, the lawmaker shot back: ‘Absolutely not.’”

In sum, Martin reports that Democrats think Biden can beat Donald Trump again, if Trump is the Republican candidate, but they do not have such confidence against other candidates – or, particularly, in Harris. The politics of saying that, however, are tricky:

… To express their concerns about a woman of Jamaican and Indian descent touches, to put it mildly, on highly sensitive matters.

More to the point, Democrats have seen what happens when anyone in their party openly criticises Harris – they’re accused by activists and social-media critics of showing, at best, racial and gender insensitivity. This doesn’t stifle concerns about her prospects, of course, it just pushes them further underground or into the shadows of background quotes.

Such as this, from a House Democrat: “The Democrats who will need to speak out on her are from the Congressional Black Caucus, no white member is going to do it.”

Members of the CBC, however, are either supportive of Harris or no more willing to give public voice to their unease with the vice president than the above lawmaker.

Martin’s piece is a very good read, and it is here.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham waged a lengthy and ultimately futile battle to avoid testifying before the special grand jury in Georgia.

CNN asked him about his statements, in light of jurors’ concerns that some of the witnesses they heard from may have lied:

Lindsey Graham told me “yes” he’s confident in his testimony to the Georgia special grand jury in light of the recommendations that some witnesses should be indicted for perjury. Says he hasn’t heard from the district attorney’s office after his testimony

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 16, 2023

An ally of Donald Trump, Graham asked Georgia’s Republican secretary of state whether he could throw out legally cast ballots in the days following the 2020 election.

The portions of the special grand jury report made public today do not reveal how the Fulton County jurors weighed in on the biggest question before them: should Donald Trump be charged with a crime?

The 26 jurors’ views on that are presumably answered in parts of the document that remain confidential and are in the hands of district attorney Fani Willis as she determines whether to bring charges based on the panel’s findings.

In the introduction, the jurors note that in the report, they “set forth for the Court our recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes, including the votes by the grand jurors. This includes the votes respective to each topic, indicated in a ‘Yea/Nay/Abstain format throughout.” The sections where these votes were disclosed are not among those made public.

The jurors also made a special point in the introduction to note that they unanimously found that there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election in the state. That may perhaps be a reaction to the statements of some of the witnesses they heard from.

“The grand jury heard extensive testimony on the subject of alleged election fraud from poll workers, investigators, technical experts and State of Georgia employees and officials, as well as from persons still claiming that such fraud took place,” the introduction reads.