Does Biden have a problem with King Charles?

Does Biden have a problem with King Charles?

 Next month, the British and Irish governments will commemorate twenty-five years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Political leaders past and present, from both sides of the Irish Sea, and both sides of the Atlantic, will meet in Belfast to mark a quarter-century since the historic peace deal was signed. The guest list will include King Charles, Irish and British heads of government and protagonists from both sides of the peace talks. Bill and Hillary Clinton will reportedly be in attendance. As will George Mitchell, the US senator who chaired talks between republicans and unionists. Missing from proceedings, however, will be Joe Biden. 

The president has declined the invitation to join the official ceremony — but not because he is too busy in Washington for a trip to Northern Ireland. No, Biden has snubbed the proceedings in favor of a visit the preceding week. The White House is yet to confirm Biden’s travel plans, but diplomatic sources tell the New York Times that Biden will spend a day and a half in Belfast before “exploring his ancestral roots” in the Republic of Ireland for three days. He will presumably still have a powwow with Rishi Sunak; it’d be very strange for a US president to visit the United Kingdom without meeting the prime minister. But what Biden’s decision to swerve the main ceremony does mean is that he will not meet King Charles.  

The move is a bit of head-scratcher: why wouldn’t Biden want to be part of the main proceedings? It’s not as though Biden doesn’t think the Good Friday Agreement isn’t important. A Catholic Democrat who has played up his (more tenuous than you might think) Irish roots throughout his career, Biden brings the peace deal up all the time. In fact, it sometimes seems like the one thing to do with British politics he seems comfortable talking about, and the Biden administration has insisted that a US-UK trade deal would be off the cards if the UK government did anything to undermine the Good Friday Agreement. 

All of which leaves some Brits wondering: is Charles the problem? Biden’s Irish itinerary is the second royal snub this month. The first came a few weeks ago, when Time reported that Biden was “unlikely” to join other world leaders at Charles’s coronation in May. “That does not feel like an event Joe Biden will attend,” an anonymous White House official said. 

According to the Times, British officials are “less concerned about Mr. Biden’s lack of attendance at that ceremony, given that he attended the queen’s funeral and has multiple international travel obligations on his calendar.” On its own, Biden giving the coronation a miss isn’t all that eyebrow-raising. After all, unless its his weekly trip home to Delaware, the octogenarian president likes to keep travel to a minimum. 

Officials on both sides of the Atlantic are keen to downplay any tensions. The Guardian reports US sources saying Biden is eager to give the Clintons their “moment in the sun.” It’s also possible that security is a factor in the shifting itineraries. British intelligence agencies have raised the terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland from “substantial” to “severe” this week, a month after a police officer was shot by members of a republican terrorist group. Nonetheless, a snub is a snub. And the more time that passes before Biden and Charles meet again, the more the British monarch is likely to wonder: was it something I said? 

On our radar

The unrepentant billionaire Starbucks founder Howard Schultz wasn’t in the mood to apologize at a Senate hearing on labor relations today: “I grew up in federally subsidized housing. My parents never owned a home… I came from nothing… yes I have billions of dollars. I earned it. No one gave it me. And I’ve shared it constantly with the people of Starbucks.”

Senate votes to end Iraq authorization Two decades after it voted to approve the invasion of Iraq, the Senate has voted to revoke its authorization of the use of military force. The 66-30 vote sends the bill to the House, where its fate is uncertain.

Trump goes after DeSantis for tour “DeSantis launches month-long, taxpayer-funded presidential campaign travel schedule,” complained a press statement from the Trump campaign today. “Who is footing the bill for DeSanctimonious’ national travel during the Florida legislative session?”

The IRS came for Matt Taibbi. Could you be next?

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22. And Matt Taibbi has every reason to be paranoid, The journalist has spent his career reporting on some of the most powerful entities on earth, often exposing stories they’d rather keep out of public view. As the most prominent reporter involved in the Twitter Files, Taibbi has already attracted the wrath of many of Elon Musk’s critics in politics and media. Now it seems the government itself is paying attention.

According to Taibbi, an IRS agent showed up at his home the very day that he was testifying before Congress on revelations about Twitter to the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. At issue are his 2018 and 2021 tax returns — the former of which had already been electronically accepted, and the latter which shows the IRS owes Taibbi a good deal of money.

This seems far too odd to be a coincidence. Typically, these types of matters are handled via letters and phone calls, not house calls. House Judiciary chairman Jim Jordan is demanding answers in a letter to the head of the IRS and Treasury secretary Janet Yellen. President Joe Biden should echo these concerns. It would be an easy lay-up to demonstrate that he’s not on the side of singling out taxpayers for abuse based on where they exist on the political spectrum.

Americans have lost so much faith in our institutions of government in part because we fear these supposedly neutral entities operate as partisan activists. In the past decade, Tea Party-related groups were targeted aggressively by the IRS, which pored over tax returns and applications for non-profit status, clearly seeking ways to harm their ability to organize. Targeting individuals over their personal work and views has been done before, and could be happening again. With a massively increased IRS budget incoming, Americans should be mindful that they could turn up next on the list. 

–Ben Domenech

DC prosecutions way down 

With DC residents growing steadily more frustrated with the city’s leaders approach to crime, the Washington Post reports that federal prosecutors in the District’s US attorney’s office chose not to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested by police officers last year. That is nearly double the percentage in 2015 — a sign that something has gone seriously wrong when it comes to law enforcement and justice in the nation’s capital. DC officials testified today before the House Oversight Committee in a hearing on crime in the city.  

–Oliver Wiseman

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