President Biden to Give Primetime Address Over Fight for Democracy

The White House has announced that Joe Biden will deliver a primetime address on Thursday about “the continued battle for the soul of the nation”.

In the speech, Biden is set to discuss how America’s standing in the world and its own democracy are at stake.

The speech will be broadcast from Philadelphia and comes two months before midterm elections in which Republican supporters of Donald Trump have won many primaries to stand as candidates. Trump-backed candidates support his position that the 2020 election results were fraudulent.

Biden will speak from outside Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, where Abraham Lincoln delivered a key speech before the civil war in 1861, and where the 16th president’s body was displayed to the public after he was assassinated four years later.

Independence Hall is next to Congress Hall, where Congress sat between 1790 and 1800 while Philadelphia was the temporary US capital, further adding to the city’s historical significance.

The White House said Biden would “talk about the progress we have made as a nation to protect our democracy, but how our rights and freedoms are still under attack,” adding that “he will make clear who is fighting for those rights, fighting for those freedoms, and fighting for our democracy”.