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Biden will start the year at sites of national trauma to warn about dire stakes of the 2024 election. [2024-01-03] WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is starting the campaign year by evoking the Revolutionary War to mark the third anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and visiting the South Carolina church where a white gunman massacred Black parishioners — seeking to present in the starkest possible terms an election he argues could determine the fate of American democracy. On Saturday, Biden will travel to near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington and the Continental Army spent a bleak winter nearly 250 years ago. There, he’ll decry former President Donald Trump for the riot by a mob of his supporters who overran the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Two days later, the president will visit Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where nine people were shot and killed in a June 2015 white supremacist attack. Biden’s kicking off 2024 by delving into some of the country’s darkest moments rather than an upbeat affirmation of his record is meant to clarify for voters what his team sees as the stakes of November’s election. During both events, he will characterize his predecessor as a serious threat to the nation’s founding principles, arguing that Trump — who has built a commanding early lead in the Republican presidential primary — will seek to undermine U.S. democracy should he win a second term. “We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it, because it does,” Biden reelection campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said on a conference call with reporters. Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden and three other felony cases, argues that Biden and top Democrats are themselves seeking to undermine democracy by using the legal system to thwart the campaign of his chief rival. “Joe Biden and his allies are a real and compelling threat to our Democracy,” Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote in a memo this week. “In fact, in a way never seen before in our history, they are waging a war against it.” Biden’s channeling of personal grief and national traumas, often into calls for action, has become his political calling card. Tragedies have defined the president’s own life, from the 1972 car crash that killed his first wife and infant daughter to his son Beau’s death from brain cancer at age 46 in 2015. In 2020, Biden first won the White House by promising to heal the “soul of the nation” after he said that seeing hate groups marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, with torches and swastikas in 2017 propelled him to run. Rather than promising to bridge the nation’s partisan divide as he did four years ago, Biden will instead stress how Trump and top supporters of his “Make America Great Again” movement pose existential threats. The president’s reelection campaign has publicized Trump’s repeating rhetoric used by Adolf Hitler when he suggested that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” as well as the former president joking that he’d only seek to serve as a dictator on the first day of his second term. “The leading candidate of a major party in the United States is running for president so that he can systematically dismantle and destroy our democracy,” said Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler. Even if another Republican beats Trump in the GOP primary, Biden’s reelection argues the victor would be similar enough to the former president that the campaign’s themes would change little. “Anybody who wins the MAGA Republican nomination is going to have done so by hard-tacking to the most extreme positions that we have seen in recent American history,” Tyler said. A majority of Americans are concerned about the future of democracy in the upcoming election — though they differ along party lines on whom poses the threat. The Biden campaign also promised it would be “out in full force” to mark the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide for nearly 50 years, before the high court overturned the ruling in June 2022. Biden’s team has argued that abortion access and democracy are intertwined in the upcoming election — building on the president’s warnings about Trump and “MAGA extremists” that helped Democrats defy historical precedent by retaining control of the Senate and only narrowly losing the House majority to Republicans in the 2022 midterms.

Senior Hamas leader killed in Beirut blast, heightening fears of wider regional conflict. CNN — Hamas said Tuesday that one of its senior leaders has been killed in an attack in the south of the Lebanese capital Beirut, raising fears of a potential escalation in fighting in the region. Hamas media outlet Al Aqsa TV said Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the political bureau of Hamas, was “martyred in a treacherous Zionist airstrike in Beirut.” Arouri was considered one of the founding members of the group’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and was based in Beirut. Two other leaders from Hamas’ military wing, Samir Findi Abu Amer and Azzam Al-Aqraa Abu Ammar, were also among those killed in the strike, according to Hamas officials. At least four people were killed in the attack that targeted an office belonging to Hamas in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh, Lebanese news agency NNA reported. The area is also a stronghold of Iran-backed Hezbollah. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment when asked about the announcement and its spokesperson Daniel Hagari skirted a question from a reporter on Tuesday about the matter saying “we are focused on fighting against Hamas.” But in a seemingly veiled reference to the killing, Israel’s far right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote on his official social media platforms that all of Israel’s enemies will “perish.” An image posted by Issam Abdallah to social media shows him immediately before the attack. He can clearly be seen wearing his press vest. Israeli tank fire killed Reuters journalist in October attack, CNN analysis suggests Meanwhile, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, praised the Israeli security and intelligence agencies for what he said was the “assassination” of Arouri on Tuesday. “Anyone who was involved in the 7/10 massacre should know that we will reach out to them and close an account with them,” Danon said on X. If true, Arouri would be the most senior Hamas official killed by Israeli forces since the start of the war sparked by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. In addition to dealing a blow to Hamas’ leadership, the apparent attack also risks further broadening the arena of the Israel-Hamas conflict. It would mark the biggest Israeli strike on the Lebanese capital since the 2006 war between the two countries. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack and said the “explosion is a new Israeli crime” aimed at drawing Lebanon into a new phase of confrontation, referring to the months-long tit-for-tat conflict between Hezbollah and Israeli forces in the Lebanon-Israel border region People search for survivors inside an apartment following a massive explosion in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024. People search for survivors inside an apartment building following a massive explosion in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on Jan. 2, 2024. Hassan Ammar/AP “We call on the concerned countries to put pressure on Israel to stop its targeting. We also warn against the Israeli political level resorting to exporting its failures in Gaza to the southern [Lebanese] border,” Mikati wrote on X. “It has become clear to everyone near and far that the decision to go to war is in the hands of Israel, and what is required is to deter it and stop its aggression,” he added. Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas after its militants killed hundreds of people in Israel on October 7. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November told a press conference that he had instructed the Mossad spy agency to act against “the heads of Hamas wherever they are.” Members of the Lebanese army walk in the village of Dhayra, near the border with Israel, in southern Lebanon, October 11. First on CNN: US rebukes Israel for more than 30 attacks on Lebanese military amid concerns of Gaza conflict widening Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev noted in an interview with MSNBC that Israel had “not taken responsibility” for the attack in Beirut. Regev, who is a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said “whoever did it must be clear that this was not an attack on the Lebanese state. It was not an attack even on Hezbollah,” Regev said. Regev said that although individuals who kill Israelis “can expect the Israeli state and the Israeli armed forces to ultimately reach them,” this rather is a “general statement” of Israel’s policy. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader, called Arouri’s killing a “cowardly assassination” and blamed Israel for the deadly strike, as did the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have launched more than 100 attacks against about a dozen commercial and merchant ships transiting the Red Sea over the past few weeks. Fears of escalation For nearly three months, tit-for-tat fighting between Israel’s military and Hezbollah has largely stayed within a roughly four-kilometer range of the border region, with Hezbollah striking Israel while Israel struck Lebanon. The fighting has raised fears among the United States and other Western countries that a full-scale war could break out between Israel and the Middle East’s most powerful paramilitary, Hezbollah. Those fears have so far failed to materialize, but the blast in Beirut on Tuesday afternoon is likely to fuel concerns about the potential for escalation. Lebanese emergency responders gather at the site of a strike, reported by Lebanese media to be an Israeli strike targeting a Hamas office, in the southern suburb of Beirut on January 2, 2024. Lebanese emergency responders gather at the site of a strike in the southern suburb of Beirut on January 2, 2024. Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images During a televized address last summer, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned against Israeli assassinations in Lebanon, saying that they would inspire a “strong response” from the militant group. Nasrallah also said in the August 2023 speech that the group would try to prevent Lebanon from becoming an “arena for assassinations,” invoking the country’s tumultuous past. On Tuesday, Iran – which backs Hezbollah – condemned Arouri’s assassination and blamed the attack on Israel. Arouri’s death comes as Israel’s military begins to draw down the number of soldiers on the ground in Gaza as it looks to move to a new phase of its war on Hamas amid a spiraling civilian death toll in the besieged enclave. Who is Saleh Al-Arouri? The prominent Hamas political and military leader was born in 1966 in the village of Aroura in the Ramallah district of the West Bank. He went on to play a role in founding the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas in the West Bank, and is considered to be the mastermind behind arming the group. He was a member of Hamas since 1987 and considered its leader in the West Bank prior to his death, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). He has been a member of Hamas Politburo since 2010 and was elected its deputy head in 2017, ECFR added. Israel considers him one of the key founders of the Al-Qassam Brigades in the occupied West Bank and accused him of being behind the kidnapping of three settlers in Hebron, which led to the demolition of his house. He began establishing and organizing a military apparatus for the movement in the West Bank in 1991-1992, which contributed to the actual launch of the Al-Qassam Brigades in the West Bank in 1992. People search for survivors following a massive explosion in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024. People search for survivors following a massive explosion in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on Jan. 2, 2024. Hassan Ammar/AP He helped negotiate the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, in 2011, in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. He had been repeatedly detained by Israel, including for long periods between 1985-1992, and 1992-2007, according to ECHR. In 2010, he was deported by Israel to Syria, living there for three years before moving to Turkey and traveling to several countries, including Qatar and Malaysia. He finally settled in the southern suburbs of Lebanon. The Israeli army demolished Arouri’s house in Aroura in October. The IDF said at the time that forces “operated in the town” to “demolish the residence of Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the Hamas terrorist organization’s political bureau and in charge of Hamas’ activities in Judea and Samaria.” In 2015, the US Department of the Treasury designated Arouri as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and offered a reward of up to $5 million for information on him. CNN has reached out to the US State Department to see if the reward will be paid and to whom. He was married with two daughters and lived in Lebanon at the time of his death. This story has been updated.