‘Amtrak Joe’ back in Philadelphia
Gulf Times
This picture taken in September last year shows then-US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden greeting supporters after arriving on an Amtrak train for a campaign stop in Alliance, Ohio.
• Republicans ask Biden to drop proposal to teach more black history President Joe Biden returned yesterday to one of the cities that helped win him the White House as he works to gain popular support for $4tn in proposed programmes to shore up the US economy. His trip to Philadelphia includes a stop at an event marking the 50th anniversary of Amtrak, the US passenger rail service. The Democrat is asking Congress for $80bn in spending to improve train service, one of a wide set of initiatives included in multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure, climate, childcare and other proposals Biden is trying to manoeuvre through a sharply divided Congress. The spending would be paid for with higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. “In the 21st century, infrastructure isn’t just steel and concrete, it’s people,” Biden said at a campaign-style rally on Thursday in Georgia. “It’s about time the very wealthy and corporations start paying their fair share.” Georgia and Pennsylvania mark the first and second stops on Biden’s “Getting America Back on Track Tour”, which are intended to build popular momentum for the policy proposals. Republicans and even some Democratic lawmakers have balked at the price tag. Former president Donald Trump, whom Biden defeated in the November election but who remains influential among Republicans, predicted in a phone interview with Fox Business Network on Thursday that higher taxes would prompt some companies to relocate abroad. Strong support in the Atlanta and Philadelphia areas in the battleground states of Georgia and Pennsylvania, respectively, helped lift Biden to the presidency even though Trump won both states in the 2016 election. Biden has long been associated with Amtrak because of his decades commuting daily on the 90-minute train ride between Washington and his home in Wilmington, Delaware, when he was a US senator. The government-funded rail service is asking Congress for $31bn in funding over the next five years to expand its Northeast Corridor that runs between Boston to Washington, DC. Dozens of Senate Republicans have meanwhile called on the Biden administration to withdraw what they say is a “divisive” education proposal that would place greater emphasis on slavery and the contributions of Black Americans in history and civics lessons taught in US schools. In the latest salvo of a burgeoning culture war over race in America, 39 Republican lawmakers led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the proposed Education Department policy would divert established school curricula toward a “politicised and divisive agenda” fixated on the country’s flaws. “Young Americans deserve a rigorous understanding of civics and American history. They need to understand both our successes and our failures,” the Republican senators wrote in a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, which was dated April 29. The letter was released yesterday. “Americans do not need or want their tax dollars diverted from promoting the principles that unite our nation toward promoting radical ideologies meant to divide us.” A spokesman for the US Education Department had no immediate comment. The lawmakers zeroed in on the proposal’s mention of the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project. The initiative, which traces United States history from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in colonial Virginia, was a frequent target for former president Trump, who sought instead to promote “patriotic” education. The letter came two days after Senator Tim Scott, the Senate’s sole black Republican, declared that “America is not a racist country” in the Republican response to Biden’s address to Congress. Scott also defended a new Republican voting law in Georgia that Democrats have denounced as a return to Jim Crow segregation. The proposed policy would support teaching that “reflects the breadth and depth of our nation’s diverse history and the vital role of diversity in our nation’s democracy”, according to a notice posted on a government regulation website. It would encourage schools to adopt projects that incorporate “the systemic marginalisation, biases, inequities and discriminatory policy and practice in American history”. The Republican Party, which remains fractured after Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, has sought to brand Biden as a divisive leader controlled by leftists.More Related News