Biden news today: Conservatives condemned for sharing misleadingly edited videos of

Attorney General Merrick Garland has been briefing the press on his department’s response to war crimes in Ukraine – and like other top figures in the Biden administration, he has stressed that the atrocities reported in areas like Bucha must be designated war crimes.

“This department has a long history of helping to hold accountable those who perpetrate war crimes,” he said today, explaining that US law enforcement agencies “are assisting international efforts to identify and hold accountable those responsible for atrocities in Ukraine.”

Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo has put out a statement saying she has tested positive for Covid-19 and is isolating, but is not experiencing major symptoms and will keep working from home.

Ms Raimondo recently addressed the white-tie Gridiron Dinner, a glitzy annual gathering of Washington, DC luminaries from across the political spectrum. It is unclear if anyone else has had a positive test result yet.

Even as many on the right work hard to misrepresent it as a humiliating encounter for the sitting president, yesterday’s event featuring Barack Obama and Joe Biden made it obvious that the two of them in fact do share more than a measure of mutual respect and affection.

Here’s a sample of what went on between them…

The Biden administration’s sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine continue to tighten, and according to a briefing this morning, they are now closing in on the families of the country’s top officials.

A top Biden administration official told reporters this morning that Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov will see their families punished as part of a new package of measures meant to “dramatically escalate” the “financial shock” that the US believes is pushing the Russian economy to the point of breakdown.

Andrew Feinberg has the story.

As Joe Biden remains under pressure from his party to cancel as much federal student loan debt as possible, his administration has once again pushed back the deadline for the resumption of payments frozen during the Covid-19 pandemic. This is the sixth time the deadline’s been moved, and will give debtors until at least 31 August.

Mr Biden has previously said he supports cancelling the debt altogether through congressional action, but his critics on the left say he has the power to do so unilaterally via executive action.

Josh Marcus has the story.

The Republican line on Ukraine, Russia and Vladimir Putin is still somewhat unclear, but the party’s more pugilistic members are sticking to one predictable version of events: blaming the unilateral Russian attack on an American ally on Joe Biden.

Ted Cruz took that line this week on Fox News, telling Sean Hannity that Mr Biden “caused this war” by waiving sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline – which in fact never became operational.

Longtime Trump-watcher Aaron Rupar, whose monitoring of the former president and Fox News has made him a must-follow over the last several years, has called out two of Fox News’s most-watched hosts for screening a misleading clip from yesterday’s White House event to smear Joe Biden as a failed, embarrassing president.