Ventura and Mason are graduate students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and reporters at Medill News Service.
MANASSAS, Va. – At their first joint campaign event in the 2024 presidential race, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris rallied voters around abortion access and reproductive rights in Northern Virginia, but several pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrupted the president with criticisms of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
The event at George Mason University’s Manassas campus, about 30 miles from Washington, D.C., showcased both a strength and a weakness of the Biden-Harris ticket, a pairing likely to dog the incumbents throughout the campaign.
Biden and Harris hope reproductive rights will help them win competitive states like Virginia, where Democrats largely campaigned on abortion access during off-year state elections last November, ultimately flipping the state House. But the hecklers underscored a growing potential weakness among some of the Democratic base. It was the second time pro-Palestinian demonstrators have disrupted Biden during a campaign speech. The first occurred at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Jan. 8, emphasizing some Democrats’ disapproval of the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
“I think, in my personal opinion, that you cannot vote for Joe Biden if you believe in human rights,” said Mohamed Azab, 42, an immigrant and local resident who was one of almost a dozen protesters standing in the audience.
Biden, who was forced to pause with each interruption, promised to restore Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that declared abortion a constitutional right but was overturned in 2022. But Neda, a demonstrator in her 30s who would not provide her last name to protect her anonymity, wasn’t convinced.
“We know that Biden is here to talk about women's rights, and about their reproductive rights, but he did forget to mention that he is dealing with a genocide that has taken away women’s rights in Gaza and in Palestine,” she said. Neda provided her first name only because she felt safer having some sense of anonymity.
Israel’s war in Gaza has not been officially called a genocide, but a case considering such charges is underway before the International Court of Justice. About 25,000 people have died there, many of them women and children, according to Gaza's health ministry. Biden has requested Congress approve a $14 billion aid package for Israel and has not called for a ceasefire, but he has criticized Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza.
A United Nations Population Fund staff member said in November that more than 5,000 pregnant women will be forced to give birth without anesthesia and in unsanitary conditions given the lack of resources and electricity in the region.
At the Jan. 23 rally, protesters shouted “Ceasefire now!” and “How many kids have you killed today?” before being escorted away. Biden supporters on- and offstage attempted to drown out the hecklers by chanting: “Four more years!”
Azab, a recent U.S. citizen who will be eligible to vote for president for the first time in November, said Biden’s policy in the Israel-Hamas war was the most important issue for him. He argued that Americans should not vote for Biden, regardless of the alternative.
“Nothing is gonna change if we elect Joe Biden,” he said.
But when 20-year-old Keoni Vega, a student studying American politics at the University of Virginia, compared Trump and Biden, he said that Trump was by far the worse option.
“I think as Biden would say, ‘Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative,’” said Vega. “And so if you look at these issues that a lot of people are upset with and, for the most part, rightfully so, you have to realize if it's not Biden, it's going to be Trump, who's going to be tenfold worse.”
Longtime abortion advocate Sharon Wood echoed Vega’s opinion that Democrats should rally around Biden.
“I don't agree with everything about him. I think he should be stronger on pushing for a ceasefire, but he's our guy,” said Wood, 74, who lives in nearby Chantilly.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.