Biden’s shift in policy added an uncertain, new factor to the conflict on the eve of the 1,000-day milestone since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.

It also came as a Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions struck a residential area of Sumy in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people and injuring 84 others. Another missile barrage sparked apartment fires in the southern port of Odesa, killing at least 10 people and injuring 43, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.

Washington is easing limits on what Ukraine can strike with its American-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Sunday, after months of ruling out such a move over fears of escalating the conflict and bringing about a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

The Kremlin was swift in its condemnation.

“It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps, and they have been talking about this, to continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The scope of the new firing guidelines isn’t clear. But the change came after the U.S., South Korea and NATO said North Korean troops are in Russia and apparently are being deployed to help Moscow drive Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk border region.

Biden’s decision almost entirely was triggered by North Korea’s entry into the fight, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, and was made just before he left for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.

Russia also is slowly pushing Ukraine’s outnumbered army backward in the eastern Donetsk region. It has also conducted a devastating aerial campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.

Peskov referred journalists to a statement from President Vladimir Putin in September in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes.

It would change “the very nature of the conflict dramatically,” Putin said at the time. “This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.”

Peskov claimed that Western countries supplying longer-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kyiv. “This fundamentally changes the modality of their involvement in the conflict,” he said.

Putin warned in June that Moscow could provide longer-range weapons to others to strike Western targets if NATO allowed Ukraine to use its allies’ arms to attack Russian territory. After signing a treaty with North Korea, Putin issued an explicit threat to provide weapons to Pyongyang, noting Moscow could mirror Western arguments that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how to use them.

“The Westerners supply weapons to Ukraine and say: ‘We do not control anything here anymore and it does not matter how they are used,’” Putin has said. “Well, we can also say: ‘We supplied something to someone — and then we do not control anything.’ And let them think about it.”

Putin has also reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.

Biden’s move will “mean the direct involvement of the United States and its satellites in military action against Russia, as well as a radical change in the essence and nature of the conflict,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, has raised uncertainty about whether his administration would continue military support to Ukraine. He has also vowed to end the war quickly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a muted response Sunday to the approval that he and his government have been requesting for over a year, adding, “The missiles will speak for themselves.”

“The longer Ukraine can strike, the shorter the war will be,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Monday ahead of a U.N. Security Council meeting marking the 1,000th-day milestone.

Asked whether the United Kingdom would follow the United States in authorizing use of its longer-range missiles, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who chaired the meeting, declined to comment. He said doing so would risk “operational security and can only play into the hands of Putin.”

Consequences of the new policy are uncertain. ATACMS, which have a range of about 300 kilometers (190 miles), can reach far behind the about 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line in Ukraine, but they have relatively short range compared with other types of ballistic and cruise missiles.

The policy change came “too late to have a major strategic effect,” said Patrick Bury, a senior associate professor in security at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom.

“The ultimate kind of impact it will have is to probably slow down the tempo of the Russian offensives which are now happening,” he said, adding that Ukraine could strike targets in Kursk or logistics hubs or command headquarters.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, agreed the U.S. move would not alter the war’s course, noting Ukraine “would need large stockpiles of ATACMS, which it doesn’t have and won’t receive because the United States’ own supplies are limited.”

On a political level, the move “is a boost to the Ukrainians and it gives them a window of opportunity to try and show that they are still viable and worth supporting” as Trump prepares to take office, said Matthew Savill, director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

The cue for the policy change was the arrival in Russia of North Korean troops, according to Glib Voloskyi, an analyst at the CBA Initiatives Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.

“This is a signal the Biden administration is sending to North Korea and Russia, indicating that the decision to involve North Korean units has crossed a red line,” he said.

Russian lawmakers and state media bashed the West for what they called an escalatory step, threatening a harsh response.

“Biden, apparently, decided to end his presidential term and go down in history as ‘Bloody Joe,’” lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, called it “a very big step toward the start of World War III” and an attempt to “reduce the degree of freedom for Trump.”

Russian newspapers offered similar predictions of doom. “The madmen who are drawing NATO into a direct conflict with our country may soon be in great pain,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta said.

Some NATO allies welcomed the move.

President Andrzej Duda of Poland, which borders Ukraine, praised the decision as a “very important, maybe even a breakthrough moment“ in the war.

“In the recent days, we have seen the decisive intensification of Russian attacks on Ukraine, above all, those missile attacks where civilian objects are attacked, where people are killed, ordinary Ukrainians,” Duda said.

Easing restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing,” said Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna of Russian neighbor Estonia.

“We have been saying that from the beginning — that no restrictions must be put on the military support,” he told senior European Union diplomats in Brussels. “And we need to understand that situation is more serious (than) it was even maybe like a couple of months ago.”

But Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, known for his pro-Russian views, described Biden’s decision as “an unprecedented escalation” that would prolong the war.

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Yet in more than 20 minutes on stage at the Essence Festival of Culture, Harris did not acknowledge Biden’s dismal debate performance or calls for the 81-year-old president to end his reelection bid. In fact, she barely mentioned Biden at all – a stark contrast to the Congressional Black Caucus members who forcefully and repeatedly defended the president by name.

“This is probably the most significant election of our lifetime,” Harris said, before riffing on Trump musing about being a dictator, pushing the Supreme Court rightward and promising retribution on political enemies. “In 122 days, we each have the power to decide what kind of country we want to live in.”

Harris’s appearance at the nation’s largest annual celebration of Black culture underscores what a difficult task it is for the White House and campaign to navigate questions about the president’s aptitude. The dynamics are especially fraught for Harris, the first Black woman and person of south Asian descent to be elected vice president, and for the Black Democrats who were so instrumental in electing Biden and her in 2020.

On one hand, Harris fills the traditional role of loyal lieutenant, a job she did enthusiastically — and on the fly — in television appearances immediately after Biden’s lackluster debate ended. Yet should Biden ultimately decide to step aside as presumptive nominee, she would be among the favorites, if not the favorite, to carry the Democratic banner against Trump.

Black leaders and voters who gathered in New Orleans, meanwhile, walked the line Saturday between backing Biden and insisting that, if he does end his campaign, the party should elevate the barrier-breaking vice president rather than consider governors like Gavin Newsom of California or Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, both of whom are white.

“The purpose of a vice president is to be a No. 2, to be able to step in,” said Glynda Carr, who leads the Higher Heights political action organization that works to elect more Black women. “If this was an all-white male ticket, would we be talking about other people who have less experience, less qualifications?”

ntjuan Seawright, a Black Democratic consultant who is close to House Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Biden ally, put it more plainly. “Joe Biden isn’t going anywhere,” he said. But if he does, “anyone other than Kamala would be malpractice — and it would tear the party apart.”

Seawright argued that the pressure on Biden to step aside is coming from white Democrats or non-white minorities other than Black Democrats so far, at least publicly. He said that divide is mostly about Black voters’ trust in Biden and their recognition of his record. But he said it’s also about what’s good for the party as a whole, including Black politicians. Risking a contested convention, even one that nominates Harris, could ensure widespread losses, and in turn, make it less likely than ever to see Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries become Speaker or Harris or another Black woman sit in the Oval Office.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and her colleagues echoed some of those sentiments.

“People say Joe Biden’s too old. Hell, I’m older than Biden!” said the 85-year-old congresswoman. “It ain’t gonna be no other Democratic candidate, and we better know it.”

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, played up the power Harris already holds.

“We got a Black vice president of the United States of America, a sister who came here to be with us today,” she said. “So, let’s not get it twisted. I know who I’m voting for. I’m with the Biden-Harris team, because we’re still going to have a sister in the White House fighting for us and making a difference.”

Waters said Biden’s support of Black communities and the contrast with Trump should be enough. She called the former president “a no-good, lying, despicable human being” with a white nationalist agenda. “Who the hell do you think he’s going to come after?” Waters asked, noting Trump’s support from groups like the Proud Boys. “You know he means business.”

In more than a dozen interviews with Essence attendees, opinions varied on Biden’s strength as a candidate and his abilities to serve another four years. But there was a clear consensus on several points: Only Biden can decide his fate; if he does step away, he should back Harris; and defeating Trump is the top priority.

“I’m with him, absolutely,” said Erica Peterson of New Orleans. “He’s delivered, and one debate is not going to change my mind. … And if it’s not Joe Biden, I’m with her.”

Star Robert, a 37-year-old nurse in New York City, said if there’s a shift, then Biden and Democrats could not credibly choose anyone other than Harris, given that the president, party and voters already chose her as second-in-line. Still, she was skeptical about Harris’s prospects.

“I’m not sure that she’s done enough to generate the trust of enough voters,” Robert said. “I don’t know if that’s all her fault, I just haven’t seen enough of her, we haven’t. I don’t know what her angle is.”

Regardless, Robert added, “I’m not sure the country is ready for another Black president, and if we were ready for a woman, Hillary Clinton would have beaten the clown (Trump) the first time he ran.”

Harris, for her part, answered that kind of skepticism even as she studiously avoided the immediate campaign drama.

“Ambition is a good thing. We do not need to step quietly,” she said of being a woman of color in powerful circles. “People in your life will tell you it’s not your time. It’s not your turn. Nobody like you has done it before. … I like to say that I eat ‘no’ for breakfast.”

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In the summer of 2019, as a crowded Democratic primary was picking up speed, Joe Biden was on the defensive, pummeled by abortion-rights groups and his opponents for his support of the Hyde Amendment, a measure that prohibits the use of federal funds for most abortions.

He reversed his position, but the episode underlined his wobbly standing in the eyes of abortion-rights activists as he faced off in 2020 against Donald Trump, who became a hero of the anti-abortion movement by using his presidency to appoint Supreme Court justices who appeared likely to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Now, in 2024, the tables have turned.

This week, it was Trump angering abortion opponents as he sought to wash his hands of the matter and leave it to the states, while President Biden depicted himself as a direct champion of the cause, releasing a stark TV ad and excoriating Trump as he sought to position the issue at the center of his re-election campaign.

“I am determined,” Biden said, “to restore the federal protections of Roe v. Wade.”

If you were going to invent two candidates for the first presidential election since the fall of Roe, neither side of the abortion divide would probably design the exact candidate they have. They are both white men. They are both old. And neither has always said what their respective side of the debate wants to hear, although Biden’s shift on the Hyde Amendment is not as stark a reversal as Trump’s flip over the years from “pro-choice” to “pro-life.”

So the week’s events, with the Arizona Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday upholding an 1864 law banning almost all abortions, offered a window into an uncanny moment that for both has been a long time coming.

It is now Biden, a Catholic who has openly expressed personal misgivings about the issue, making abortion more central to a presidential campaign than any major-party nominee in history, while Trump, a former president who is usually happy to take credit for rolling back abortion rights, is trying to skirt it.

And neither will be able to control where the issue, which will turn on court rulings, referendums and decisions by state legislatures, goes from here.

“The people who are driving the agenda and the headlines are not necessarily people in Biden world or Trump world,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies the history and politics of abortion. “They’re kind of prisoners of the moment.”

A flip on Roe, and a retreat from a national ban

The week began with a bout of wishful thinking from Trump. After appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, sending the contentious debate over abortion back to the states and igniting a firestorm of abortion-related political fights all over the country, he sought to turn down the heat on the issue by, well, leaving the issue up to the states.

The Arizona ruling immediately revealed the political perils of that strategy. Republicans around the state, including the Senate candidate Kari Lake and at least two congressmen seeking re-election, slammed the ruling. The Biden campaign swiftly moved to depict Trump as responsible for removing the national abortion protections in Roe that had prevented old laws like that from taking effect.

“That will be straightened out,” Trump told reporters Wednesday as he arrived in Georgia before a fund-raiser. “I’m sure that the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason.” (The Trump campaign did not return a request for comment.)

Trump’s allies on the religious right, meanwhile, were deeply disappointed with what they see as a flip-flop. Their alliance with Trump had always been uneasy — Trump called himself “pro-choice” in the late 1990s, but by 2011 had reversed his position entirely, calling himself “pro-life.” He won over evangelical support during his 2016 presidential race by promising to appoint anti-abortion judges.

“Scripture advises us, in Psalm 146 actually, to not place our trust in princes or kings or candidates for that matter,” said F. Brent Leatherwood, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which is the policy wing of the Southern Baptist Convention. “These are people that are unreliable and inconsistent.”

Personal misgivings, but a long defense of Roe

It used to be Biden who was accused of modulating his position on abortion over politics, frustrating activists on both sides of the issue.

“Joe Biden moans a lot and then usually votes against us,” a top Planned Parenthood official told The Wall Street Journal in 1986. In the same piece, an official with National Right to Life complained he had “made a political judgment that he should be more pro-abortion.”

For much of his career, Biden supported the Hyde Amendment but also took votes in support of Roe. Over the years, he has spoken repeatedly of his discomfort with the procedure, including at a fund-raiser in February.

“I’m a practicing Catholic,” Biden said, according to a transcript provided by the White House. “I don’t want abortion on demand, but I thought Roe v. Wade had it right.”

Comments like that, as well as his well-documented reluctance to use the word “abortion,” have frustrated advocates who work on the issue.

“Whatever internal thoughts and feelings he might have on it personally, he’s the president of the United States,” said Kellie Copeland, the executive director of Pro-Choice Ohio. “People are suffering because they can’t access abortion. He should say that directly and plainly.”

Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said that the president had long fought to protect abortion rights, and disputed the comparison between Trump and Biden. “For more than 50 years, Joe Biden has fought to protect Roe and women’s right to choose. As a senator, he voted repeatedly to protect Roe, and as president, he has used his full executive authority to fight back on extreme MAGA abortion bans,” Hitt said.

Biden’s leftward shift on abortion rights might lag behind some in his party — but it reflects decades of engagement with the issue, according to my colleague Lisa Lerer, who with Elizabeth Dias is writing an upcoming book on the fall of Roe.

Biden, Lisa said, has probably thought more deeply about abortion than any president in the modern era.

What Democrats learned in Alabama

News this week thrust abortion squarely into the middle of races around the country, and Democrats see the issue as advantageous to them in November. A recent victory in Alabama could offer them a blueprint for making reproductive rights central to their campaigns. I asked my colleague Maya King to tell us what she learned after a recent reporting trip to that district.

Marilyn Lands, 65, a licensed therapist in Huntsville, Ala., publicly shared her own abortion story from more than 20 years ago in the early weeks of her campaign in a special Statehouse election. But then, after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that embryos in test tubes were considered children, imperiling access to the procedure of in vitro fertilization, Lands decided to make her campaign entirely about reproductive rights.

Just 6,000 people turned out for the race, less than 15 percent of Huntsville’s electorate. But Lands flipped the Republican-held seat. Here are two takeaways from her victory:

• Moderate and conservative voters were important, but the Democratic base was crucial. Lands’s victory was bolstered by Democratic turnout in the heavily Black corners of her district in Huntsville. Their enthusiasm, the Alabama Democratic state party chair said, was a major factor in her 25-point win.
• First-person stories made a big difference. Lands did not share her abortion story during her first campaign in 2022, as she and her team felt the shock of the overturn of Roe v. Wade would be enough to move voters. But after sharing it publicly before the special election, it allowed her to reach voters who might not have otherwise had much interest in her race. Many, she said, were conservatives who felt the government had overextended its hand in its role in women’s health.

“A lot of people have sort of tuned out. And I think maybe now they’re going to tune back in because they see that it can happen,” Lands told me of her victory in an interview in her home in Huntsville last week. “We have caught a moment.”

—Maya King

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NEW YORK (AP) — Occupants of the White House have grumbled over news coverage practically since the place was built. Now it’s Joe Biden’s turn: With a reelection campaign underway, there are signs that those behind the president are starting to more aggressively and publicly challenge how he is portrayed.

Within the past two weeks, an administration aide sent an unusual letter to the White House Correspondents’ Association complaining about coverage of a special counsel’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents. In addition, the president’s campaign objected to its perception that negative stories about Biden’s age got more attention than remarks by Donald Trump about the NATO alliance.

It’s not quite “enemy of the people” territory. But it is noticeable.

“It is a strategy,” said Frank Sesno, a professor at George Washington University and former CNN Washington bureau chief. “It does several things at once. It makes the press a foil, which is a popular pattern for politicians of all stripes.”

It can also distract voters from bad news. And while some newsrooms quickly dismiss the criticism, he says, others may pause and think twice about what they write.

THE WHITE HOUSE OBJECTS TO THE FRAMING OF STORIES

The letter from Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, suggested that reporters improperly framed stories about the Feb. 8 release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report. Sams pointed to stories by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press and others emphasizing that Hur had found evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified material. Sam wrote that much of that so-called evidence didn’t hold up and was negated by Hur’s decision not to press charges.

He said it was critical to address it when “significant errors” like misstating the findings and conclusions of a federal investigation of a president occur.

It was Sams’ second foray into press criticism in a few months; last fall he urged journalists to give more scrutiny to House Republicans and the reasons behind their impeachment inquiry of Biden.

“Everybody makes mistakes, and nobody’s perfect,” Sams told the AP. “But a healthy back and forth over what’s the full story helps make both the press and the government sharper in how the country and world get the news they need to hear.”

Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association and an NBC News correspondent, suggested Sams’ concerns were misdirected and should be addressed to individual news organizations.

“It is inappropriate for the White House to utilize internal pool distribution channels, primarily for logistics and the rapid sharing of need-to-know information, to disseminate generalized critiques of news coverage,” O’Donnell said.

In a separate statement, Biden campaign spokesman T.J. Ducklo criticized media outlets for time spent discussing the 81-year-old president’s age and mental capacity, an issue that was raised anew when Biden addressed the Hur report with reporters. He suggested that was less newsworthy and important than Trump’s NATO comments. Americans deserve a press corps that covers Trump “with the seriousness and ferocity this moment requires,” said Ducklo, who resigned from the White House in 2021 for threatening a reporter.

To be fair, deadline times likely affected the initial disparity in coverage that Ducklo pointed out. And Trump’s remarks have hardly been ignored by media outlets.

On Wednesday, Biden’s campaign issued a statement headlined “Full of Malarkey,” that criticized The Times for a fact check it ran on some of the president’s statements about the economy. The campaign said the newspaper “continues to give Trump a pass on lies.”

A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The Times, noted in an interview with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism that Biden’s team had been “extremely upset” about its coverage lately. “We’re not anyone’s opposition,” he said, “and we’re not anyone’s lapdog.”

HOW MUCH IS THE PRESIDENT AVAILABLE?

The criticism comes amid the backdrop of unhappiness among some journalists about how much Biden is made available for questions — an issue that surfaced again when Biden turned down an opportunity to appear before tens of millions of Americans in an interview during the Super Bowl pregame show.

The 33 news conferences Biden has given during the first three years of his presidency is lower than any other American president in that time span since Ronald Reagan, said Martha Kumar, a Towson University professor emeritus and expert on presidents and the press. Similarly, the 86 interviews Biden has given is lower than any president since she began studying records with Reagan. By comparison, Barack Obama gave 422 interviews during his first three years.

Instead, Biden prefers more informal appearances where reporters ask a few questions, with comparatively little opportunity for follow-up, she said: The 535 such sessions that Biden conducted was second only to Trump’s 572.

One example followed Biden’s remarks Friday after the death of Russian dissident Aleksey Navalny. Another was Biden’s early evening availability following the release of Hur’s report, a chaotic scene where reporters tried to outshout one another. The president’s performance, and remarks about his forgetfulness that were made in Hur’s report, led to more questions about the impact of age on his ability.

“It did not serve him well,” Kumar said. Some on Biden’s team, meanwhile, believe the president showed a combativeness in the face of criticism that Americans will appreciate.

Sesno said he can understand the Biden team’s worry that the president’s fitness for the job becomes a story they lose control of, much like former President Gerald Ford’s stumbles led to the perception that he was a bumbler. Nikki Usher, a media professor at the University of San Diego, said she was surprised that Biden’s team hadn’t become more aggressive earlier.

“He needs to jump out in front of the narrative,” Usher said.

The Biden pushback seems mild in comparison to Trump’s epic badmouthing of news organizations like CNN and The New York Times. Republican voters, in general, are much more apt to respond to efforts that make journalists the villain. Democrats, meanwhile, tend to have a greater appreciation for the press’ role in a democracy, Usher says, so the Biden team has to be more careful with attacks.

Particularly with the age issue, there’s only so much that the president’s team can say, Sesno said: “People will make up their minds based on what they see and hear from Joe Biden.”

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Joe Biden started a three-day swing through California on Tuesday as he looks to soak up more cash for his reelection bid.

Going into the trip, Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee announced Tuesday that they had collected $42 million in contributions during January from 422,000 donors. Biden ended January with $130 million in cash on hand. Campaign officials said that is the highest total amassed by any Democratic candidate at this point in the cycle.

Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez called the haul “an indisputable show of strength to start the election year.”

“While Team Biden-Harris continues to build on its fundraising machine, Republicans are divided – either spending money fighting Donald Trump, or spending money in support of Donald Trump’s extreme and losing agenda,” she said.

The figures suggest Biden is cementing an early cash advantage over Trump, his likely general election opponent. But the numbers still lag behind what Trump had amassed during a similar period in 2020, when his campaign routinely smashed fundraising records.

Raising money is only part of the equation. How well that cash is spent is also a major factor — as Trump well knows. His 2020 campaign effectively lit his massive cash surpluses on fire through a series of questionable spending decisions.

This year, Trump retains his impressive ability to hoover up campaign cash, particularly from grassroots donors who typically chip in small amounts online. Trump, who hasn’t released his January fundraising numbers yet, also faces a new threat to his campaign’s finances: the staggering legal bills he racked up while defending himself in four separate criminal cases.

In order to maintain an edge in what’s widely expected to be an expensive rematch with Trump, Biden’s campaign will need to accelerate his fundraising.

This week’s trip to Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area will mark Biden’s third visit to California in just over two months for political events. He’s trying to make up for lost time after largely avoiding the Democratic donor stronghold during last year’s strikes by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA.

Biden heads first to Los Angeles, where he will take part in a fundraiser. He’ll also make campaign stops in San Francisco and Los Altos Hills this week and deliver a policy speech near Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Biden made a quick visit to Los Angeles earlier this month for a meeting with supporters in the city’s upscale Bel Air neighborhood. He and first lady Jill Biden also spent a weekend in December in the Los Angeles area for campaign events.

The first lady is traveling Tuesday to Guilford, Connecticut, to hold a campaign fundraiser on behalf of her husband.

While the Bidens will be pursuing deep-pocketed donors this week, the campaign points to the number of smaller donations it has raised as an encouraging sign for the president.

The campaign says 97% of the 3 million donations it has received thus far were under $200 each. Biden has also received pledges from 158,000 “sustaining donors” who have committed to donating monthly. That’s more than double the amount Biden had at this point in the 2020 cycle, when his cash-strapped campaign limped out of Iowa following a fourth-place finish in the state’s February caucuses.

The new totals include donations to Biden’s political operation and to a network of joint fundraising arrangements with the national and state Democratic parties. Biden’s 2020 campaign raised over $1 billion, and could need even more in a likely Trump rematch.

“This haul will go directly to reaching the voters who will decide this election,” said Biden campaign senior communications adviser TJ Ducklo.

Biden in recent days has seized on comments by Trump that call into question the U.S. commitment to defend NATO allies from attack as “dangerous” and “un-American.” Trump earlier this month said he once warned that he would allow Russia to do whatever it wants to NATO member nations that are “delinquent” in devoting 2% of their gross domestic product to defense.

The Biden campaign launched digital ads last week in three battleground states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — criticizing Trump for his threat to NATO countries. Biden has also railed against House Republicans for blocking a $95 billion foreign aid bill that includes $60 billion in funding for Ukraine’s war with Russia.

“The idea that we’re going to walk away from Ukraine, the idea that we’re going to let NATO begin to split is totally against the interests of the United States of America and it is against our word we’ve given … all the way back to Eisenhower,” Biden told reporters Sunday.

___

AP writer Brian Slodysko contributed to this report.

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — A former FBI informant charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company had contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, prosecutors said in a court paper Tuesday.

Prosecutors revealed the alleged contact as they urged a judge to keep Alexander Smirnov behind bars while he awaits trial. He’s accused of falsely telling his handler that executives with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each around 2015. The claim became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts allowed Smirnov to be released from custody on electronic GPS monitoring while he awaits trial. He must stay in Clark County, Nevada, and is prohibited from applying for a new passport.

Prosecutors said Smirnov, 43, admitted during an interview after his arrest last week that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden. They said Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials were recent and extensive, and said Smirnov had planned to meet with one official during an upcoming overseas trip.

Smirnov has been in custody at a facility in rural Pahrump, about an hour’s drive west of Las Vegas, since his arrest last week at the airport while returning from overseas.

Defense attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said in a statement they asked for Smirnov’s release while he awaits trial “so he can effectively fight the power of the government.”

The White House didn’t immediately comment on the claims in Tuesday’s court filing.

Prosecutors say Smirnov, who holds dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship, falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016.

Smirnov in fact had only routine business dealings with the company starting in 2017 and made the bribery allegations after he “expressed bias” against Joe Biden while he was a presidential candidate, prosecutors said in court documents. He is charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. The charges were filed in Los Angeles, where he lived for 16 years before relocating to Las Vegas two years ago.

Smirnov’s claims have been central to the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Democrats called for an end to the probe after the indictment came down last week, while Republicans distanced the inquiry from Smirnov’s claims and said they would continue to “follow the facts.”

Hunter Biden is expected to give a deposition next week.

The Burisma allegations became a flashpoint in Congress as Republicans pursuing investigations of President Biden and his family demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the allegations. They acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if the allegations were true.

__

Whitehurst reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.

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President Biden is planning a swing through Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area later this month to raise money for what is almost assured to be a rematch against former President Trump in the November election.

California already has been a popular fundraising destination for Biden, given the state is a Democratic stronghold and offers wellsprings of financial support in Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles entertainment industry.

The upcoming trip will take him to the Los Altos Hills home of Robert and Danielle Klein on Feb. 22, sources familiar with the matter told The Times. The Kleins will co-host the event alongside investor and former State Controller Steve Westly. Two other possible fundraisers in the San Francisco area are in the planning stages, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss events that hadn’t been publicized.

Another source who asked not to be named told The Times that Biden will be in Los Angeles on Feb. 20 for a fundraiser at the home of media mogul and longtime Democratic donor Haim Saban.

The sources cautioned that the timing of these fundraisers could change depending on Biden’s schedule.

A spokesman for the Biden campaign declined to comment.

The campaign and its affiliated entities reported last month that they had raised $235 million from April 2023 through the end of last year. After a string of record-breaking fundraising months, the campaign had $117 million in cash on hand, according to federal campaign finance disclosures.

On Saturday, the president visited Los Angeles and held campaign-related meetings at the Bel-Air estate of director George Lucas. First Lady Jill Biden spoke late that night at a gala at Paramount Studios in Hollywood in support of a nonprofit that asks retailers to commit 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned brands.

Biden had lunch the following day at the Ivy with his son Hunter and grandson Beau. Hunter Biden lives in Malibu and it was his 54th birthday.

The president and his surrogates, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom, held multiple fundraisers for the campaign in California last year. In the fall, after the writers and actors strikes ended, Biden and the first lady made a weekend trip to Los Angeles, raising more than $15 million at several events.

As they could at those events, each supporter this month will be able to give up to $929,600 to the Biden Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that supports the president’s reelection campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state-level Democratic parties.

Last September, Biden held three fundraising events in Atherton and San Francisco that were hosted by Democratic donors and philanthropists Liz Simons and Mark Heising, and another one hosted by former presidential candidate Tom Steyer.

Those hosting events for Biden are all longtime donors to Democratic causes and candidates.

Robert Klein, who runs a multibillion-dollar real estate development firm, is best known for his advocacy for stem cell research. About 20 years ago he bankrolled a state ballot referendum to fund and protect stem cell research. He and his wife donated about $100,000 to Biden’s campaign and its affiliated entities last year.

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BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) — Just blocks from the shuttered Bethlehem Steel plant, the Hispanic Center Lehigh Valley was bustling on a recent day with scores of older people eating lunch. Downstairs, out of sight, a constant stream of visitors was shopping in its massive food pantry.

Over the past seven months, the number visitors to the pantry has risen by more than a third. The center’s executive director, Raymond Santiago, sees that as a stark sign of something he has felt over the past couple years: Many in the area’s Latino community are struggling to meet their basic needs.

Northampton County, which includes Bethlehem, is a traditional bellwether for Pennsylvania, one of the most important presidential swing states, and Latinos are a key part of the coalition that President Joe Biden is trying rebuild as he embarks on his campaign for a second term. In doing so, the Democrat might have challenges selling a crucial part of his reelection strategy.

One of the messages he has delivered in previous visits to Pennsylvania is that former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, is a danger to American democracy. Biden is hoping that message energizes the same voters who turned out four years ago, when Northampton County narrowly flipped to him after supporting Trump by a thin margin in 2016.

Based on his interactions with visitors to the Hispanic center, Santiago isn’t so sure. It’s the price of groceries and lack of affordable housing that dominate conversations there.

“I think so many people are already immune to that messaging, it won’t land as cleanly this election as it did in 2020,” he said. “If he keeps pushing that message, it might turn voters away.”

Biden chose a location near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, with its deep symbolism for the country’s struggle for freedom, for his initial campaign event for 2024, portraying Trump as a grave threat to America and describing the general election as “all about” whether democracy can survive. It was a message similar to one he gave before the 2022 midterm elections at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the nation’s founding documents were created. Biden warned that Trump and his followers threatened “the very foundation of our republic.”

Biden has continued the theme during the early primary season, telling supporters winning a second term is essential for maintaining the country’s democratic traditions.

Over the course of several days, The Associated Press interviewed a cross section of voters in Northampton County to ask whether Biden’s messaging around the fate of democracy was resonating. These voters represented parts of the very coalition Biden will need to win Pennsylvania again — Black voters, Latinos, independents and moderates from both parties.

Their overarching response: The president’s warning that a second Trump presidency will shred constitutional norms and destroy democratic institutions is not one that, alone, will motivate them and get them out to vote.

Like people across much of the rest of the country, most of those interviewed would prefer avoiding a rematch of the 2020 contest, and several suggested they would seriously consider a serious third-party candidate with a strong message and a chance of winning.

Evelyn Fermin, 74, who regularly visits the Lehigh Hispanic center, has lived in the county for two years after spending most of her life in New Jersey. Her opinion about Trump has been set since Jan. 6, 2021, when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win. But she doesn’t think reminders of that day will be sufficient to persuade voters in November.

For the daughter of parents who immigrated from the Dominican Republic, her concerns are border security and spending abroad.

“Rather than sending it out to foreign countries, I think we should use it for our people,” she said.

As a divorced mother who supported her son as he worked his way through school to become a lawyer, she also doesn’t support Biden’s attempt to waive student loan debt: “If I was able to to do it, I feel that they should.”

Curt Balch, 44, worked in the health care industry and is now a stay-at-home dad. He was weathering a two-hour school delay with his 5-year-old daughter in his home in Hellertown, in a more rural part of the county. He registered Republican so he could vote in primaries, but describes himself as more libertarian.

Balch said the messaging by both sides is “pretty toxic” when they warn that the other is “a threat or a danger to the fundamentals of the country moving forward.”

He supported Trump in the past two elections but is open to considering other candidates this year, especially if he thinks there is an appealing third-party or independent candidate. Balch believes the dire warnings about a potential second Trump term are overblown. Balch notes that even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump let states decide for themselves how to handle it.

“I understand the rhetoric, ‘Oh, he’s going to be a fascist dictator,’” Balch said. “I don’t think it’s a message that’s getting people to the polls. I don’t think people are legitimately thinking that they need to be afraid of Donald Trump.”

Christian Miller was a lifelong Democrat but became an independent in 2022 out of frustration with political gridlock and a sense that as he got older, he was growing more conservative.

He said he might one day consider switching to the Republican Party, but not as long as Trump is leading it. That’s not out of any worry that Trump would become a dictator if he wins a second term.

“I don’t know that I fear it as much as it’s being made out to be in the media from either side,” said Miller, a 53-year-old bank executive who lives in Nazareth. “I feel that the institutions are safe and and are strong enough to withstand the challenges.”

Miller cited the dozens of failed court challenges seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential results by Trump and his allies as an example of the institutions holding firm.

Surveys indicate concern about the state of democracy, but it’s not clear how that will translate in November’s election. A Biden campaign spokesperson said the democracy message is central to the campaign but it is not the only one the campaign will use to reach voters. Protecting abortion rights and fighting for higher wages will be among the issues essential to the president’s pitch.

Northampton County, especially Bethlehem, has been slowly emerging from the economic shock that followed the collapse of the local steel industry. The plant produced the steel that built the Golden Gate Bridge during the Great Depression and a decade later, during World War II, became the country’s largest shipbuilder.

The blast furnaces, which fell silent nearly 30 years ago, are still visible for miles as they sit alongside the Lehigh River. But Bethlehem has been enjoying a revival in recent years as it has evolved into a hub for health care and technology companies. New shops, an art center, museum, performing arts stage and a casino, among other developments, have added vibrancy to a picturesque city dotted with historical structures dating to the 18th century.

Northampton also is a historical bellwether. As the county has gone in the presidential election, so has the state, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and director of the Institute of Public Opinion at Muhlenberg University in Allentown. The last time they split was 1948, when the county voted for Democrat Harry Truman but the state went for Republican Thomas Dewey.

“It’s about as great a benchmark county as you’ll ever find,” Borick said.

Biden narrowly carried the county in 2020, four years after Trump had narrowly prevailed in his victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Anna Kodama, 69, is the type of voter who traditionally has swung back and forth between the parties.

She grew up in a Republican household in Ohio but switched parties during college. She recalls voting across party lines frequently since she moved to the Lehigh Valley in 1977 — until 2016 when Trump was making his first run for the presidency and she voted a straight ticket for Democrats.

The people Kodama encounters are not listening to Biden’s messages about a dark future under Trump. Instead, she would like him to speak more about what he is doing to improve the economy and forge stronger ties with Europe. She paid attention to a Biden visit earlier this year to a nearby town, Emmaus, where he stopped at local stores to discuss the importance of supporting small businesses.

She said Biden seems to connect better with people when he promotes a positive message, rather than a negative one that she believes will not motivate people in the fall.

“That’s where I find it compelling — look what we can do together,” said the artist and former teacher who was sipping coffee at Café the Lodge in Bethlehem. “That message resonates with me and with people I know.”

For Esther Lee, the 90-year-old president of the local NAACP, the threat-to-democracy message is not generating much concern among the people she contacts. She already plans to vote, but not because she is fearful of another Trump presidency.

“We already know who he is,” she said.

Getting Black voters engaged is going to take more from Biden, she believes, because so far his campaign messages have not resonated. She questions whether the Black community in Northampton County is the target audience: “I’m not seeing evidence of it,” she said.

Lee said the issue she hears about most in her circle is homelessness: “It’s No. 1,” she said, adding that the resources don’t seem to be sufficient to address the local problem. The companion to that, she said, is affordable housing.

“With Biden’s campaign, they need to reach down further,” with the messaging, she said.

At the Lehigh center, Guillermo Lopez Jr., 69, recalls his deep ties to the area and the many members of his extended family who worked at Bethlehem Steel. He worked at the plant for 27 years, following a father who worked there for 36.

He is now on the center’s board of directors and a local leader in the Latino community. A Democrat who said he leans independent, he plans to vote for Biden in part because of how he thought Trump’s rhetoric, beginning with is campaign announcement in 2015, made targets of Latinos and other minorities.

“It just speaks to me that there’s so much misguided hatred toward people like me,” he said.

But Lopez thinks messages of fear and Trump imperiling American democracy are essentially meaningless for many of the county’s working class voters. Their concern, he said, is finding steady work with good pay.

“I actually think that harms the vote,” he said of the democracy warnings. The average person who “just puts their nose to the grindstone and goes to work, I don’t think that motivates them. I think it scares them and freezes them.”

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia would prefer to see U.S. President Joe Biden win a second term, describing him as more experienced than Donald Trump.

Speaking in an interview with a correspondent of Russian state television, Putin declared that he will work with any U.S. leader who is elected, but noted unequivocally that he would prefer Biden’s victory when asked who would be a better choice from the point of view of Russia.

“Biden, he’s more experienced, more predictable, he’s a politician of the old formation,” Putin said. “But we will work with any U.S. leader whom the American people trust.”

Asked about speculation on Biden’s health issues, Putin responded that “I’m not a doctor and I don’t consider it proper to comment on that.”

Biden’s team worked to alleviate Democratic concerns over alarms raised by a special counsel about Biden’s age and memory. They came in a report determining that Biden would not be charged with any criminal activity for possessing classified documents after he left office.

Putin noted that the talk about Biden’s health comes as “the election campaign is gaining speed in the U.S., and it’s taking an increasingly sharp course.”

He added that allegations of Biden’s health problems were also circulating at the time when they met in Switzerland in June 2021, adding that he witnessed the contrary and saw the U.S. leader in a good shape.

“They talked about him being incapacitated, but I saw nothing of the kind,” Putin said. “Yes, he was peeking at his papers, to be honest, I was peeking at mine, not a big deal.”

At the same time, Putin noted that he sees the Biden administration policy as wrong.

Russia-West ties have plunged to their lowest levels since the Cold War era after Putin sent his troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

“I believe that the position of the current administration is badly flawed and wrong, and I have told President Biden about that,” Putin said.

Putin has claimed that he has sent troops into Ukraine to protect Russian speakers there and to prevent a threat to Russia’s security posed by Ukraine’s bid to join NATO. Ukraine and its Western allies have denounced Moscow’s action as an unprovoked act of aggression.

Putin argued that Moscow was forced to act after Ukraine and its allies refused to fulfill a 2015 agreement to grant more powers to separatist territories in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow-backed separatists launched a rebellion in 2014.

“We only can regret that we didn’t act earlier, thinking that we are dealing with decent people,” Putin said.

Asked about Trump’s statement on Saturday, in which he said he once warned he would allow Russia to do whatever it wants to NATO member nations that are “delinquent” in devoting 2% of their gross domestic product to defense, Putin responded that it’s up to the U.S. to determine its role in the alliance.

Trump’s statement sharply contrasted with Biden’s pledge “to defend every inch of NATO territory,” as the alliance commits all members to do in case of attack. It shocked many in Europe, drawing a pledge from Poland, France and Germany to bolster Europe’s security and defense power.

Putin noted that Trump’s statement followed his policy during his first term when he prodded NATO allies in Europe to increase their defense spending.

“He has his own view on how relations with allies should develop,” Putin said about Trump. ”From his point of view, there is some logic in this, while from the point of view of the Europeans, there is no logic at all, and they would like the U.S. to keep carrying out some functions they have fulfilled since the formation of NATO free of charge.”

He described NATO as a “U.S. foreign policy tool,” adding that “if the U.S. thinks that it no longer needs this tool it’s up to it to decide.”

Asked about his impressions from his last week’s interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Putin said he expected Carlson to be more aggressive. Putin used the interview to push his narrative on the fighting in Ukraine, urge Washington to recognize Moscow’s interests and press Kyiv to sit down for talks.

“I expected him to be aggressive and ask the so-called tough questions, and I wasn’t only ready for it but wanted it because it would have given me a chance to respond sharply,” Putin said.

Carlson didn’t ask Putin about war crimes Russian troops have been accused of in Ukraine, or about his relentless crackdown on dissent.

“He didn’t allow me to do what I was ready for,” Putin said, describing Carlson as a “dangerous man.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday said Donald Trump’s comments calling into question the U.S. commitment to defend its NATO allies from attack were “dangerous” and “un-American,” seizing on the former president’s comments that sowed fresh fears among U.S. partners about its dependability on the global stage.

Trump, the front-runner in the U.S. for the Republican Party’s nomination this year, said Saturday that he once warned that he would allow Russia to do whatever it wants to NATO member nations that are “delinquent” in devoting 2% of their gross domestic product to defense. It was the latest instance in which the former president seemed to side with an authoritarian state over America’s democratic allies.

Speaking from the White House as he encouraged the House to take up a Senate-passed aid bill to fund Ukraine’s efforts to hold off a two-year Russian invasion, Biden said Trump’s comments about the mutual defense pact were “dangerous and shocking.”

“The whole world heard it and the worst thing is he means it,” Biden added.

Biden said that “when America gives its word, it means something,” and called Trump’s comments sowing doubt about its commitments ”un-American.”

Biden said of Trump: “He doesn’t understand that the sacred commitment that we’ve given works for us as well.”

NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause states that an armed attack against one or more of its members shall be considered an attack against all members. But Trump has often depicted NATO allies as leeches on the U.S. military and openly questioned the value of the military alliance that has defined American foreign policy for more than 70 years.

Since the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Biden has ushered Finland into the alliance and is clearing the way for Sweden to do the same. While Ukraine is not a member of NATO, the alliance has served as a key contributor of the U.S.-organized effort to support Kyiv’s military defenses in the nearly two year old conflict.

NATO allies agreed in 2014, after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, to halt the spending cuts they had made after the Cold War and move toward spending 2% of their GDP on defense by 2024. The spending target is not a requirement for NATO members.

NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said in a statement Sunday that “any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.” The defense minister in Poland, which has been under Russian control more often than not since the end of the 18th century, said “no election campaign is an excuse for playing with the security of the alliance.”

“President Trump got our allies to increase their NATO spending by demanding they pay up, but Joe Biden went back to letting them take advantage of the American taxpayer,” said Jason Miller, a Trump senior adviser, in response to Biden’s comments. “When you don’t pay your defense spending you can’t be surprised that you get more war.”

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