Pro-cease-fire outbursts have interrupted a series of public appearances by Biden and his aides in recent weeks, including a climate speech Tuesday by USAID Administrator Samantha Power where someone in the audience urged her to “resign and speak up.”
“27,000 people have been killed,” the person called out during
the former U.N. ambassador’s speech on “climate shocks” at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Center in Washington. “You know what would cause a lot of climate shock — is the bombardment of Gaza.”
Earlier this month, audience members chanted “cease-fire now”
during Biden’s remarks on extremism and democracy at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the site of the 2015 murders of nine Black churchgoers by a white supremacist. Last week, more than a dozen protesters yelling slogans such as “genocide Joe”
repeatedly interrupted an abortion-rights rally that Biden was holding in Virginia with Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I understand their passion,” Biden responded during the South Carolina appearance. “I’ve been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza. I’ve been using all that I can to do that.”
Biden’s foreign policy challenge will grow tougher in the coming days as his administration contemplates a military response to last week’s drone strike in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members. Any reprisal for that attack — which
the U.S. has blamed on the Iranian-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq — could add to the turmoil of a region roiled by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing Israeli war in Gaza.
Rancor over the war also intruded into the opening days of last year’s United Nations climate summit in Dubai.
The president needs to heed the progressive activists’ message, one youth climate leader said.
“I shouldn’t have to say how important morally it is for a cease-fire, but it’s also important politically if that’s all this administration cares about,” said Elise Joshi, executive director of youth-led environmental group Gen Z for Change.
She added: “Your base is asking for a cease-fire and an end to fossil fuels. You did one of them [last week]. Good job. Now it’s time for a cease-fire.”
Biden has already had a tenuous relationship with some young climate activists, despite his vows to slash carbon pollution and the hundreds of billions of dollars he is pouring into green-energy technologies such as wind power and electric cars.
They have expressed grave disappointment in several of his administration’s pro-fossil fuel actions, including decisions to greenlight the Willow oil project in Alaska and accede to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s demands to clear the path for the Mountain Valley gas pipeline. In addition, his agencies have approved far more oil and gas drilling permits on federal land than Donald Trump had during his presidency, POLITICO reported this week based on newly released data.
Now Biden’s team is attempting something of a reset with his climate base. Last week, when the administration announced its pause on gas export permits, the White House described the move as an answer to pleas from “younger people” who want the U.S. to more aggressively shift off the fossil fuels that are heating the planet.
But Gaza is complicating that courtship.
“It’s undoubtedly an amazing decision,” Joshi said of the natural gas permit pause. “At the same time, I am unequivocally calling for a cease-fire, and it doesn’t change that. I think that young people are largely feeling the same way.”
“It’s clear that young people are really, really disillusioned with this presidency — disillusioned with [Biden’s] choices on climate and Gaza and beyond that to foreign policy and across the board,” said Keanu Arpels-Josiah, an 18-year-old organizer with youth climate group Fridays for Future NYC, which has
echoed calls for a cease-fire and release of hostages. “We really need to invigorate our base broader than just, ‘I’m better than the other person.’ We need him to represent the issues that matter to us if we’re really going to get people to turn out.”
Biden’s decision to pause the gas permits was already going to be an electoral gamble. Republicans have denounced the move as a threat to the U.S. economy and say it’s undermining efforts to lessen Europe’s energy dependence on Russia amid that country’s war in Ukraine — two potentially potent issues for his reelection campaign.
The pause has
one big potential political upside, though: It may help Biden win back the climate supporters who had backed him in 2020, when he adopted what was seen as the most ambitious presidential…
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