Biden looks to recapture his political momentum with a full-court press on his domestic agenda
CNN
A politically weakened President Joe Biden is looking to spark a turnaround with a renewed focus on his domestic agenda after a month marred by a spike in Covid-19 cases and a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Officials tell CNN the President is now determined to recalibrate around his massive economic proposals: a $3.5 trillion budget bill and $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. He hopes to recapture momentum lost over a calamitous August. In the last several weeks, the President has seized opportunities, like a series of natural disasters, to make the case for sweeping climate change provisions in his pending legislation.
It's all part of an effort to put himself more at the center of the legislative process, a place the longtime Delaware senator feels very comfortable. Acutely aware of the stakes, Biden has begun more directly involving himself in the strategy to see his priorities passed this autumn. He meets daily in the Oval Office with senior advisers for updates on legislative process and messaging strategy, repeatedly asking them to find ways to better explain the complicated and wide-ranging proposals in ways Americans can understand.
Speaker Mike Johnson is being lobbied by his members to raise the threshold required to trigger the procedure to oust the speaker, according to multiple GOP sources – a move that would help ensure the Louisiana Republican can pass foreign aid bills and still keep his job without needing to rely on Democrats to bail him out.
President Joe Biden will receive the formal endorsement of more than a dozen members of the extended Kennedy family on Thursday, according to the Biden campaign, aiming to harness the legacy of a storied Democratic family while implicitly underscoring their near-universal rejection of a third-party challenge mounted by one of their own, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.