Opinion: The Amy Coney Barrett test
Take President Joe Biden. He has been walking a tightrope, trying to please both the progressives and moderates in his party, hoping Democrats will unite to launch the biggest expansion of social spending in nearly 60 years. He risks disaster if he can’t get the two sides to make a deal.
“This is a time like no other,” wrote Frida Ghitis. “But Democrats in Congress seem to be blind to what’s at stake.” As they battle over the size of the budget reconciliation bill, they are forgetting the threat posed by President Donald Trump’s effort to delegitimize Biden’s victory in the 2020 election — and game the system for the 2022 and 2024 votes.
Biden spent the week on the defensive — lambasted by voices in his own party and by Republicans for his handling of a humanitarian crisis over migrants in Texas, seeing his plans for widespread Covid-19 booster shots get brought down to size by some scientists and government regulators, grappling with the fallout from the US deal to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia.
Addressing the UN General Assembly Tuesday, Biden promised America would play an expansive role in tackling the world’s problems, Aaron David Miller wrote, but he “is an embattled president with dropping approval ratings and a hugely ambitious domestic social and economic agenda hanging in the balance.”
Justices, prove it
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