Joe Biden: What you need to know about the 46th president
Former Vice President Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, replacing Donald Trump after a turbulent four years.
Biden takes office at a critical juncture in the country's history, with a raging coronavirus pandemic, months of racial inequality demonstrations, and a bitterly contested election that culminated in the siege of the US Capitol just days ago. Biden will be the first president in more than a century to arrive without being welcomed by the outgoing president, Donald Trump, who is scheduled to leave for his Florida home earlier in the day.
Biden's journey from Scranton, Pennsylvania to the White House has been long, with eight years as vice president to the first African-American president and decades as a senator from Delaware before that. He has endured personal tragedy on many occasions, but those setbacks have influenced him.
What you should know about him is as follows:
Name: Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
Party: Democrat
Date of birth: Nov. 20, 1942
Age: 78
Hometown: Scranton, Pennsylvania
Family: Jill Biden is his wife, and he has three children: Hunter, Ashley, and the late Joseph Robinette 'Beau' III and Naomi. In 1972, Biden's first wife, Neilia, was killed in a car accident while driving with their baby daughter Naomi. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in May 2015.
He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Delaware and his law degree from Syracuse University School of Law.
What he used to do: From 2009 to 2017, he was the vice president of the business. From 1973 to 2009, Biden served in the United States Senate, where he was a member of two primary committees, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, as both a ranking member and chairman. Since graduating from law school, he served on the New Castle County Council. Biden and his wife initiated the Biden Cancer Initiative after leaving the White House to invest in cancer prevention, identification, diagnosis, study, and treatment.
Key life/career moments: Biden allegedly apologised to Obama in 2012 after openly endorsing same-sex marriage ahead of his boss. In an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts, Obama said, "Joe, in my opinion, is a very generous and caring guy. And I believe he was speaking truthfully about his feelings."
Biden was a vocal advocate of defending women from harassment, even teaming up with Lady Gaga in 2017 to support the "It's on Us" sexual assault movement.
When Obama surprises Biden with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, it was perhaps one of the most moving moments of his vice presidency.
During the 2018 midterm elections, Biden acted as a strong proxy for Democrats, moving across the Midwest and across the country to support Democratic candidates.
In 2017, the University of Pennsylvania founded the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement to honor his "unrivaled knowledge of diplomacy and deep understanding of global issues." The Biden Domestic Policy Institute was announced by the University of Delaware and Biden in the same year.
In his capacity as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden oversaw the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He was chastised for his handling of the hearing after Anita Hill appeared before the committee, as well as his inability to defend Hill when she was grilled by an all-male, all-white committee trying to refute her testimony.
Despite Biden's vote against Thomas, the Senate approved the candidate. Biden has publicly apologised to Hill, saying in March that he regrets that he "couldn't come up with a way to get (Hill) the kind of hearing she deserved" at the Biden Courage Awards.
During his 2008 presidential campaign, Biden referred to the sweeping, bipartisan 1994 crime bill as the "Biden Crime Bill," which critics claim had a disproportionate effect on marginalized communities, especially due to mass incarceration.
During his nearly 50 years in public life, Biden ran for president three times, the first of which ended in 1987 before any primary voting took place due to a plagiarism scandal. In that case, Biden used an unattributed quote from British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. In law school, Biden was accused of plagiarism after a paper he wrote did not contain adequate citations for some of the content.
According to reports at the time, he acknowledged it in 1987, calling it a "mistake" and saying there was no "malevolent" intent.
Biden's second presidential bid in 2008 came to a halt after the Iowa Caucuses, where he won less than 1% of the vote.
What he thinks about the following topics:
Along with his previous promise to make community college tuition free, Biden has extended his higher education initiative to include free college tuition for public universities, historically black colleges and universities, and minority-serving institutions for families earning less than $125,000.
Biden's health-care reform will try to make the Affordable Care Act more user-friendly by providing more options. Rather than Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" system, which some of Biden's rivals pushed for during the primaries, his initiative would build on the Affordable Care Act passed during the Obama-Biden administration to include a public choice for patients to choose from.
Biden has also placed a heavy emphasis on tackling climate change, identifying it as one of the country's four major crises. He launched a sweeping new plan in the summer of 2020, calling for the US to achieve a carbon-free power system by 2035 and a $2 trillion investment in renewable energy and infrastructure during his first four years in office to tackle the challenge of climate change.
Biden has also laid out several proposals to combat the coronavirus pandemic, promising to follow evidence and listen to experts' advice. For the first 100 days of his presidency, Biden plans to require masks on federal land, and he faces the daunting task of vaccinating the entire population of the United States.
Following nationwide protests over racial inequality last summer, Biden has opposed calls to defund police departments, instead advocating for an additional $300 million in funding for community-based policing, as well as pairing cops with mental health experts to better address community needs, as well as a national use-of-force standard.
You may not be aware of the following facts about him:
He suffered from stuttering as a child and teenager. Biden conquered the affliction as a young man by public speaking.
Biden was a football player at the University of Delaware during his college years.
Biden was first elected to the United States Senate by the people of Delaware in 1972, when he was 29 years old. He was one of the youngest members of the upper chamber to be elected.
In the weeks following his election to the Senate in 1972, tragedy hit the Biden family when his first wife, Neilia, and their 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident, and his sons, Beau and Hunter, were seriously injured. He married Jill Biden in 1977.
Following the death of Biden's 46-year-old son, Beau, from brain cancer in 2015, Obama paid tribute to the former Delaware attorney general at a memorial service. Following Beau's death, the Biden family received 72,000 condolences via the White House's virtual system, with condolences coming from every state, according to the vice president's office.
Biden's nomination of California Senator Dianne Feinstein to the Judiciary Committee was one of his big victories while in charge of the committee. She was the committee's first female member.
Comments
Post a Comment