Biden news: President calls Putin’s war on Ukraine ‘genocide’ in Iowa remarks on gas price

Yesterday saw a piece of monumentally bad news for the Biden administration: last year saw consumer prices rise at their fastest rate since 1981, a date that many Republicans have seized on since it marked the transition from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.

Worst-affected in the surge are the prices of shelter, food and gasoline, the last of which increased 18.3 per cent on the price index in just the last month. Joe Biden and the White House have pointed to Russia’s war in Ukraine as a major driver of rising prices.

Eric Garcia reports.

As more stories of mass murder, torture and rape by Russian forces come to kight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has praised Joe Biden for describing Russian atrocities in Ukraine as “genocide”.

Read more below.

As the authorities seek a person of interest in relation to yesterday’s shooting at a subway station in Brooklyn, Joe Biden has issued a statement on the incident:

Andrew Feinberg and Eric Garcia have more on the developing story:

Speaking on TV station France 2, French President Emmanuel Macron has backed away from Joe Biden’s insistence that atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine constitute acts of “genocide”.

“I would be careful with such terms today,” he said, “because these two peoples [Russians and Ukrainians] are brothers.

“I want to continue to try, as much as I can, to stop this war and rebuild peace. I am not sure that an escalation of rhetoric serves that cause,” he added.

Mr Macron, who before the war began was in touch with Mr Putin more than any other western European leader, is now facing a presidential run-off election against far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen, who has historically shown an affinity with the Russian leader.

As Joe Biden condemns Russian atrocities in Ukraine first as war crimes and now as genocide, efforts are already well underway to document as much as possible about what Russian troops have done to civilians in areas now recaptured by Ukrainian forces. The evidence collected will be crucial to any future prosecution of soldiers, officers or government figures who ordered or committed the crimes in question.

Here’s an explainer from Joe Sommerlad on how the process of bringing them to justice could actually work.

Before yesterday’s grim inflation figures were released, Joe Biden was already facing some dire news: his already-low approval rating appears to have hit a new nadir, with a new poll pegging the number at a mere 42 per cent.

The president’s popularity has never recovered from the precipitous drop it entered around the time of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and given the gridlock in Congress that’s preventing him from passing much of his ambitious agenda, it is unclear what Mr Biden can do to change things just yet.

Alisha Rahaman Sarkar has more.

Frank R James, whom the NYPD yesterday said was a “person of interest” in the Brooklyn subway shooting, has now been confirmed as a suspect.

Megan Sheets has the news.

It’s not just the topline approval rating giving Joe Biden and the Democrats cause for concern as they head into the midterm elections. According to new polling outlined by Politico’s Sam Stein, the president is struggling to earn credit for what economic good news there is – and even his own voters aren’t showing major enthusiasm for his performance...