Biden Promotes His $2.3 Trillion Infrastructure Package and His Love of Train Travel – The New York Times

Heres what you need to know:President Biden visited Philadelphia on Friday to mark Amtraks anniversary and used the occasion to promote his $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal, which includes $80 billion for mass transit.CreditCredit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

For a majority of his political career, President Biden was a commuter, making the 90-minute Amtrak Metroliner trip between Washington and his home in Wilmington, Del., when the Senate was in session. There were even a few trips thrown in when he was vice president.

On Friday, he arrived in Philadelphia transported by presidential plane to celebrate the railroads 50th anniversary; deliver a passionate case for his $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal, which includes $80 billion for mass transit; and reminisce.

Amtrak became my family, Mr. Biden said, ticking off the railroads environmental and economic benefits while standing in front of a parked Acela train at the William H. Gray III 30th Street Station.

It provided me with, and Im not joking, an entire other family, he added. Amtrak doesnt just carry us from one place to another, it opens up enormous possibilities.

Mr. Biden, blue presidential baseball cap pulled down over his brow on a blustery day, proceeded to go through an anecdotal memory reel.

On many nights, he would be so exhausted that he would wake up in Philadelphia after sleeping though his stop, he said.

Then there was the time he rushed from D.C. to Wilmington to watch his daughter blow out her birthday candles on the platform, then rode back to Washington for a vote.

When Mr. Biden was vice president, his buddy Angelo, one of the conductors, would squeeze through the phalanx of jittery Secret Service agents, risking bodily harm, to wish him well.

Angelo came up and said, Joey baby! and would grab my cheek and squeeze it like he always did, Mr. Biden recalled. I thought he was going to get shot.

Many politicians have emphasized their workaday origins (the image of Abraham Lincoln as a rail-splitter was an early campaign ad). Mr. Bidens Amtrak Joe nickname was earned from an estimated 8,000 round trips on the line, often in a window seat, often reading the days newspaper by the morning light en route to the Capitol.

This is a birthday I certainly wouldnt miss, he wrote on Twitter, posting a picture of himself on the train from his middle-age years.

The trip is part of what the White House is calling the Get America Back on Track Tour, with Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hitting the road to sell the infrastructure package. The plan calls for improvements to Amtraks high-traffic Washington-to-Boston corridor and expanded service to Las Vegas, Nashville, Atlanta and Houston.

The commuter railroad traces a roundabout route through Mr. Bidens mid-Atlantic life, through loss, revival and relentless transit as a person and politician. And on Friday, he spoke about Amtrak as if it were his friend, not a battered and underfunded federal railroad system patched together from the remnants of dying regional lines.

Mr. Bidens journey mirrors that of Amtrak. He began riding in the earliest days of the railroad in the 1970s, when he traveled back home every night to care for his two young sons, Hunter and Beau, after his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash.

Ive been riding an Amtrak for almost as long as theres been an Amtrak, he said.

Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, told local news reporters on Friday that he would not support a bill to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., saying he believed a constitutional amendment was needed instead of legislation.

It is the latest example of Mr. Manchin, a critical swing vote, pushing his party toward the center on major issues. Among other things, he has pushed for a smaller corporate tax hike in President Bidens infrastructure plan and for more limited unemployment benefits in the $1.9 trillion stimulus package.

In a radio interview with Hoppy Kercheval of West Virginias MetroNews, Mr. Manchin said he had done a deep dive on the issue and pointed to findings from former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and from the Justice Department under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

They all came to the same conclusion: If Congress wants to make D.C. a state, it should propose a constitutional amendment, Mr. Manchin said. It should propose a constitutional amendment and let the people of America vote.

Even with Democrats in control of the 50-50 Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harriss tiebreaking vote, the statehood legislation already had dim prospects before Mr. Manchin made his decision public. Several Senate Democrats have not publicly voiced support for the proposal, and no Republicans have come out for it, leaving the measure short of the support it would need to clear a filibuster.

Mr. Manchin has also made clear that he opposes eliminating or weakening the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to end debate in the Senate.

The Democratic-controlled House passed the statehood measure along party lines last week, and Mr. Biden has said he supports it.

The legislation would establish a 51st state called Washington, Douglass Commonwealth in honor of Frederick Douglass, the Black emancipation and civil rights leader and would give the new state a voting representative in the House and two senators to represent its more than 700,000 residents.

The Biden administration is starting to see some success in its efforts to suitably house the migrant children flooding to the southwest border, with a fraction of the number of children in Customs and Border Protection custody than there were a month ago.

Over the past month, the number of migrant children in the jail-like facilities of the Border Patrol dropped 83 percent, from 5,767 on March 29 to 954 on Thursday, according to government statistics. The length of time children are staying in border shelters is down as well, from an average of 133 hours to 28. By law, children are not supposed to stay in border shelters for more than 72 hours.

The improvements are attributable in part to an increase in facilities overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services where children can be housed under better living conditions.

More children are also being discharged from government custody, most often to live with a relative.

The number of migrant children arriving alone at the southern border has decreased by a much smaller amount, from 626 on March 29 to 525 a month later, according to an official briefed on the data.

While the number of migrants at the border surges each spring, the surge this year has been much higher than normal.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, led Republican senators on Friday in protesting a proposed Biden administration rule promoting education programs that address systemic racism and the legacy of American slavery, calling the guidance divisive nonsense.

In a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Mr. McConnell, of Kentucky, and three dozen other Republicans singled out a reference in the proposal to The New York Times Magazines 1619 Project, which was included as an example of a growing emphasis on teaching the consequences of slavery, and the significant contributions of Black Americans to our society.

Families did not ask for this divisive nonsense. Voters did not vote for it, the senators wrote. Americans never decided our children should be taught that our country is inherently evil.

It was the latest bid by Republicans to stoke outrage within their conservative base about President Bidens agenda, which party leaders are portraying as a radical overreach into every corner of American life. With Mr. Biden pushing a number of popular domestic programs, Republicans have increasingly turned to litigating cultural issues, which they believe will help them regain majorities in Congress in 2022.

The White House, citing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced Friday that it would begin restricting travel from India to the United States next week, a major new test of the Biden administrations pandemic response.

The decision was one of the most significant steps yet taken by the White House in response to the crush of new infections in India, where over 3,000 people are dying each day as citizens gasp for air on the streets. The country recorded almost 400,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday alone.

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the policy would go into effect on Tuesday. The travel restrictions will not apply to citizens or lawful permanent residents of the United States, their spouses or minor children or siblings, or to the parents of citizens or lawful permanent residents who are under 21. People who are exempt from the ban must still abide by the guidance the United States has already put in place for international travelers, including a negative test for the virus before traveling and again upon entering the country from India, and they must quarantine if they are not vaccinated.

Doctors and news reports in India have cited anecdotal but inconclusive evidence to suggest that a homegrown variant called B.1.617 is driving the countrys outbreak and that people who have been fully vaccinated are getting sick.

As federal health officials, including Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the C.D.C. director, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the governments top infectious disease expert, discussed the possible move in recent days with White House officials, they emphasized that there was little known about how coronavirus vaccines respond to that variant.

One U.S. official said the travel restrictions could be modified once there was more data on vaccine response.

Researchers say that data so far suggests that another variant that has spread widely in Britain and the U.S., the highly contagious B.1.1.7, may also be a significant factor.

In the past 24 hours, U.S. military cargo planes began the first deliveries of emergency supplies promised to India by the Biden administration, with shipments of small oxygen cylinders, large oxygen cylinders, regulators, pulse oximeters, about 184,000 rapid diagnostic tests, and about 84,000 N-95 masks, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.

After President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, the Biden administration announced Monday that it intended to make up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine available to other countries, so long as federal regulators deem the doses safe. It was a significant, albeit limited, shift for the White House, which had been reluctant to export excess vaccines in large amounts.

As hospitals face shortages of intensive-care beds, relatives of the sick are broadcasting desperate pleas on social media for oxygen, medicine and other scarce supplies. Many Indians say they do not know if they are infected with the coronavirus because overwhelmed labs have stopped processing tests.

Several Indian states said they could not fulfill the governments directive to expand vaccinations to all adults beginning on Saturday because they lacked doses. Only a small fraction of the country has been vaccinated so far.

Linda Qiu contributed reporting.

The Transportation Security Administration extended a mandate Friday that requires travelers to wear masks at airports, on airplanes and on commuter bus and rail systems, through Sept. 13. The mandate was set to expire on May 11.

Right now, about half of all adults have at least one vaccination shot and masks remain an important tool in defeating this pandemic, Darby LaJoye, a T.S.A. spokesperson, said in a statement.

The original order took effect in February and was part of the Biden administrations goal to require masks for 100 days. Exceptions to the mandate are travelers under the age of 2 and those with certain disabilities that dont allow them to wear a mask safely.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed mask rules earlier this week, saying that fully vaccinated Americans no longer need to wear a mask outdoors while doing activities alone or in small gatherings. But the C.D.C. stopped short of not recommending masks outside altogether and still recommends wearing a mask indoors.

Airlines started requiring passengers to wear masks nearly a year ago, but they had no federal mandate to back up their rules. As the orders expiration date got closer, leaders in the airline industry began to push for an extension. The Association of Flight Attendants applauded the extension in a statement. Earlier this month, it called for the directive to be extended to make it easier to deal with passengers who were not complying with mask rules set by airlines and airports.

A new group dedicated to promoting President Bidens ambitious agenda is beginning a multimillion-dollar ad campaign trumpeting his Covid recovery package and infrastructure proposal while contrasting Mr. Bidens low-key style with his bombastic predecessors.

Building Back Together, a progressive organization run by Biden allies, will air minute-long television commercials next week in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin that highlight the presidents response to the coronavirus and his wide-ranging economic plans. The group is planning to spend over $3 million on a monthlong effort, including a shorter advertisement that will appear on digital platforms in the same four states and in North Carolina.

Both spots differentiate Mr. Bidens approach from that of former President Donald J. Trump.

You wont hear him yelling or sending angry tweets, because for Joe Biden, actions speak louder, says a narrator in the television commercial.

The shorter digital advertisement concludes, No drama, just results.

The strategy illustrates how determined Democrats are to effectively keep running against Mr. Trump.

The message is simple: Chaos is out, competence is in, and help is here for Americans, said Stephanie Cutter, an adviser to Building Back Together who is close to Mr. Biden and top West Wing officials.

The group, whose formation was first reported in February, is going on the air in vote-rich and costly markets: Las Vegas, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Milwaukee, as well as Scranton, Pa., Mr. Bidens childhood home. The group has drawn some scrutiny because it has said it will not disclose the identity of its donors.

The last time America came close to creating a national child care system was in 1971. There were a total of 15 women in Congress. And a young Joe Biden, then a councilman in New Castle County, Del., was beginning to consider running for a Senate seat. But President Richard Nixon vetoed what was a largely bipartisan effort, worried that it would have family-weakening implications.

Now, as president, Mr. Biden plans to vastly expand access to care for infants and toddlers in a highly ambitious national effort that lawmakers, advocates and child care workers believe may fundamentally transform Americas cultural ambivalence toward child care, and help bridge gender and racial inequities that the coronavirus pandemic has widened.

In his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, the president laid out the broad contours of his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan. It includes a total of $425 billion to scale up and enhance the child care industry so that affordable, high-quality early education is available to almost every parent.

It is so amazing that what has been a secretly whispered stress campaign for so many parents for so long is finally seeing prime-time attention, said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, who has been championing child care reforms and family-friendly policies since she was elected in 1993.

The last investment in child care that was considered significant was in 2018, when Congress injected about $2.8 billion into a national funding program for low-income families, known as the Child Care and Development Block Grant, bringing the programs total funding to $5.2 billion. As the pandemic drove the child care industry to near collapse, Congress passed a set of temporary relief measures amounting to a total of more than $50 billion to help shore up providers.

Price tag aside, there is now more momentum and bipartisan support than ever before for an overhaul of the child care system, experts say.

In just the past week, congressional lawmakers including Ms. Murray, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts have introduced three separate but similar child care reform bills. In recent years, several states, like Alabama, have successfully expanded their early childhood programs. And the last year laid bare for voters across the political spectrum particularly mothers how essential child care is for their productivity. Even the right-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce acknowledged on Wednesday that without some kind of investment in child care, the economy could not fully recover.

The conversation has completely changed, said Charlie Joughin, communications director at the First Five Years Fund, a bipartisan advocacy group. We definitely know that there is no shortage of support for some kind of solution to the challenges that families are facing.

But Mr. Biden faces pressure from Democrats to earmark more federal money for child care. And the presidents plan to pay for the $1.8 trillion package by increasing taxes on the richest Americans has already drawn harsh criticism from some Republicans and even some Democrats in Congress, setting up a clash in the coming weeks.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will travel to Kyiv next week, a clear signal of the Biden administrations support for Ukraines government against threats from Russia.

In a statement announcing his trip, the State Department said that Mr. Blinken would reaffirm unwavering U.S. support for Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russias ongoing aggression.

Mr. Blinken will meet in Kyiv on Wednesday and Thursday with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, senior officials and civil society representatives. His visit will be preceded by a three-day stop in London.

Mr. Blinken will be the most senior American official to visit Kyiv since Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled there in February 2020, soon after Congress impeached and acquitted President Donald J. Trump on charges that he abused his power by leveraging U.S. policy toward the country in an effort to incriminate Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a Democratic candidate for president, and his son Hunter.

As president, Mr. Biden has offered strong support for Ukraine against Moscow, which annexed Crimea in 2014 an act the United States has never recognized and fomented a Russian-backed separatist rebellion in the countrys east that has claimed more than 13,000 lives.

But Russia has tested that support, intensifying its military intimidation of Ukraine this spring with a huge troop buildup along the countries shared border, which many analysts said could be a precursor to an invasion. Russia announced plans to withdraw many of those forces earlier this month. But earlier this week, John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that it was too soon to tell and to take at face value Russias claim.

The number of people targeted by the F.B.I. for court-approved searches and surveillance in terrorism and espionage investigations dropped sharply in 2020, a report released Friday said, amid the pandemic and the continuing political and legal fallout from the F.B.I.s botched use of its eavesdropping power in the Trump-Russia investigation.

There were just 451 targets of wiretap and search warrants obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, in 2020, according to the newly declassified report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

That was the lowest number of FISA targets in the eight years that the office has been releasing annual transparency reports disclosing statistics about the governments use of national-security surveillance powers. The number of targets of FISA warrants peaked in 2018 with 1,833; dropped significantly in 2019 to 1,059; and then plunged again.

The two-year drop in targets starting in 2019 corresponded with scorching political scrutiny on the F.B.I.s use of FISA to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser with close ties to Russia, Carter Page. In late 2019, an inspector general further unveiled serious flaws in applications for those wiretaps, and a follow-up audit of unrelated cases found pervasive sloppiness in the F.B.I.s preparations to seek FISA orders.

The problems led both the F.B.I. and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to impose new bureaucratic restrictions on the process that played out in 2020 like requiring officials to swear that applications to the court contain all information that might reasonably call into question the accuracy of the information or the reasonableness of any F.B.I. assessment in the application, or otherwise raise doubts about the requested findings.

Still, a variety of factors were responsible for the fluctuating numbers, so isolating the effects of any one cause is difficult, Benjamin T. Huebner, the chief civil liberties, privacy, and transparency officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in a briefing with reporters on Friday ahead of the reports release.

The new report also showed that the number of foreigners abroad targeted for warrantless surveillance, with help from American companies like Google and AT&T, dropped slightly to 202,703 in 2020, down from 204,968 in 2019. That slight dip broke a yearslong pattern of a steadily rising number of such targets.

Martin J. Walsh, the labor secretary, said on Thursday that in a lot of cases gig workers in the United States should be classified as employees, not independent contractors. In some cases they are treated respectfully and in some cases they are not, and I think it has to be consistent across the board, he told Reuters.

Shares of Uber, Lyft, Fiverr and DoorDash fell sharply on the news. These companies business models depend on classifying workers as independent contractors, who are not entitled to labor protections like a minimum wage or overtime pay.

But how much control does Mr. Walsh have over how companies classify their employees?

Theres no single law that makes workers employees or contractors. The Labor Department can enforce the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes the federal minimum wage and overtime pay. This law applies only to employees, and who should fall into that category has been the subject of a long-running debate.

In 2015, the Obama administration issued guidance that many interpreted to mean that app-based workers should be considered employees. It was rescinded by the Trump administration.

In 2021, the Trump administration issued a rule that would have made it easier for the same companies to classify workers as contractors. It was nixed by the Biden administration. Mr. Walshs comments suggest his interpretation will be similar to the Obama administrations. And David Weil, reportedly President Bidens nominee to lead the Labor Departments wage and hour division, wrote the 2015 guidance.

New guidance wouldnt change the law, but it could change how the Labor Department decides whether to bring lawsuits against gig economy companies. Its implicitly a sign to employers that you should comply with this interpretation or theres a risk of enforcement, Brian Chen, a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project, told the DealBook newsletter.

Although such guidance is nonbinding, Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School, said courts tend to give it deference when making decisions. I wouldnt be surprised if we saw specific action coming from the department sometime this year, said William Gould, a Stanford law professor and the former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.

President Biden will meet with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea in Washington on May 21, the White House announced on Thursday.

President Moons visit will highlight the ironclad alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea, and the broad and deep ties between our governments, people, and economies, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. President Biden looks forward to working with President Moon to further strengthen our alliance and expand our close cooperation.

In an interview with The New York Times published last week, Mr. Moon urged Mr. Biden to sit down with North Korea and kick-start negotiations, calling denuclearization a matter of survival for South Korea.

Mr. Bidens predecessor, Donald J. Trump, left office without removing a single North Korean nuclear warhead. Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, has resumed weapons tests.

He beat around the bush and failed to pull it through, Mr. Moon said of Mr. Trumps efforts on North Korea. The most important starting point for both governments is to have the will for dialogue and to sit down face to face at an early date.

He also called for the United States to cooperate with China on North Korea and other global issues, like climate change. Deteriorating relations between the two countries could threaten negotiations over denuclearization, he warned.

Mr. Biden met with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan at the White House on April 16, marking the first in-person visit of a foreign leader during his presidency.

On the campaign trail, Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed to bring science back to the White House, the federal government and the nation after years of presidential attacks and disavowals, neglect and disarray.

As president-elect, he got off to a fast start in January by nominating Eric S. Lander, a top biologist, to be his science adviser. He also made the job a cabinet-level position, calling its elevation part of his effort to reinvigorate our national science and technology strategy.

In theory, the enhanced post could make Dr. Lander one of the most influential scientists in American history.

But his Senate confirmation hearing was pushed off for three months. The slow pace, according to Politico, arose in part from questions about his meetings in 2012 with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who had insinuated himself among the scientific elite despite a 2008 conviction that had labeled him as a sex offender.

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Biden Promotes His $2.3 Trillion Infrastructure Package and His Love of Train Travel - The New York Times