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Biden to deliver final speech to U.N. General Assembly as president
President Biden on Tuesday will deliver what will be his final speech to the United Nations General Assembly — and it’s also likely to be one of his last speeches on the world stage as president, capping a decades-long political career that has focused heavily on foreign policy.
The 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, colloquially known as UNGA, is bringing leaders from across the globe to New York. A senior administration official told reporters the themes of the president’s speech will encompass many of his foreign policy themes throughout his administration — rallying the world around Ukraine, managing global competition and emphasizing the importance of sustaining the U.N. Charter.
“He came into office four years ago with a vision of America returning to the world stage, having a new way of interacting with other countries bringing countries together to solve some of those big challenges,” a senior administration official told reporters.
The official said the speech will be a chance for the president to “review” some of the foreign policy objectives Mr. Biden has achieved.
It’s a busy week in foreign policy for the president, who met with the leaders of the Indo-Pacific nations — Japan, Australia and India — over the weekend at his Wilmington, Delaware home. He’ll be meeting with world leaders on the sidelines of UNGA, as well as meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House Thursday.
The unyielding tension in the Middle East promises to dominate much of the conference, and a senior administration official said the president will address what’s happening there. The senior official called the situation between Israel and Lebanon “delicate and dangerous.”
Missiles slammed into southern Lebanon on Monday, killing nearly 500 people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, as Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah weapons hidden in residential buildings. The explosions came as Israel heralded a new wave of attacks on the Iran-backed group in Lebanon, warning civilians to flee from any buildings or areas where the organization had weapons or fighters positioned.
Mr. Biden has said he believes a cease-fire and hostage negotiation agreement is close, but nearly one year after the deadly Hamas attack on Israel that incited the war, a deal remains elusive. Earlier this month, Mr. Biden said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t doing enough to secure a deal.
Last month, Hamas executed six of the people the group has been holding hostage, including an American citizen.
At UNGA last year, a major focus was Russia’s continued war on Ukraine was a focus for Mr. Biden, who has emphasized the necessity of protecting democracy throughout his presidency and campaigns for president.
Following former President Donald Trump’s presidency, which had more isolationist tendencies toward allies, Mr. Biden has emphasized that close relationships with allies is in America’s best interest.
“To deliver for our own people, we must also engage deeply with the rest of the world,” Mr. Biden said during his UNGA speech last year. “To ensure that our own future, we must work together with other partners — our partners — toward a shared future. Our security, our prosperity, and our very freedoms are interconnected, in my view, as never before. And so, I believe we must work together as never before.”
HUNTSVILLE — A Texas man who had waived his right to appeal his death sentence was put to death Tuesday evening for killing his 3-month-old son more than 16 years ago, one of five executions scheduled within a week’s time in the U.S.
AP
Travis Mullis, 38, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m. CDT. He was condemned for stomping to death his son Alijah in January 2008.
Mullis was the fourth inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Another execution was carried out Tuesday evening in Missouri, and on Thursday, executions were scheduled to take place in Oklahoma and Alabama. South Carolina conducted an execution Friday.
Authorities said Mullis, then 21 and living in Brazoria County, drove to nearby Galveston with his son after fighting with his girlfriend. Mullis parked his car and sexually assaulted his son. After the infant began to cry uncontrollably, Mullis began strangling the child before taking him out of the car and stomping on his head, according to authorities.
The infant’s body was later found on the roadside. Mullis fled the state but was later arrested after surrendering to police in Philadelphia.
Mullis’ execution proceeded after one of his attorneys, Shawn Nolan, said he planned no late appeals in a bid to spare the inmate’s life. Nolan also said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that Texas would be executing a “redeemed man” who has always accepted responsibility for committing “an awful crime.”
“He never had a chance at life being abandoned by his parents and then severely abused by his adoptive father starting at age three. During his decade and a half on death row, he spent countless hours working on his redemption. And he achieved it. The Travis that Texas wanted to kill is long gone. Rest in Peace TJ,” Nolan said.
Mullis declined an offer earlier in the day to phone his attorney from a holding cell outside the death chamber, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Hannah Haney. His lawyers also did not file a clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
In a letter submitted in February to U.S. District Judge George Hanks in Houston, Mullis wrote that he had no desire to challenge his case any further. Mullis has previously taken responsibility for his son’s death and has said “his punishment fit the crime.”
At Mullis’ trial, prosecutors said Mullis was a “monster” who manipulated people, was deceitful and refused the medical and psychiatric help he had been offered.
Since his conviction in 2011, Mullis has long been at odds with his various attorneys over whether to appeal his case. At times, Mullis had asked that his appeals be waived, only to later change his mind.
Nolan had previously told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals during a June 2023 hearing that state courts in Texas had erred in ruling that Mullis had been mentally competent when he had waived his right to appeal his case about a decade earlier.
Nolan told the appeals court that Mullis has been treated for “profound mental illness” since he was 3 years old, was sexually abused as a child and is “severely bipolar,” leading him to change his mind about appealing.
Natalie Thompson, who at the time was with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, told the appeals court that Mullis understood what he was doing and could go against his lawyers’ advice “even if he’s suffering from mental illness.”
The appeals court upheld Hank’s ruling from 2021 that found Mullis “repeatedly competently chose to waive review” of his death sentence.
The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the application of the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, but not for people with serious mental illness.
If the remaining executions in Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma are carried out as planned, it will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five were held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.
The first took place Friday when South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death. Also Tuesday, Marcellus Williams was executed in Missouri. On Thursday, executions are scheduled for Alan Miller in Alabama and Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma.
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