On the campaign trail and in his first Inaugural Address, Donald Trump declared his commitment to what he called an “America First” approach to foreign policy. The slogan itself had been especially prominent in the 1930s, when right-wing political activists sympathetic to Nazi Germany and fascism rallied against American intervention in World War II. More generally, Trump’s foreign policy reflected an isolationist strand that had largely been marginalized in national affairs since World War II. 

Although mainstream politics and the foreign policy establishment had remained committed to the exercise of US global leadership for decades, Trump capitalized on a sense of discontent that had been building since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s and was galvanized by the so-called “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In addition to capturing a growing weariness of foreign military involvement, Trump also linked foreign policy to his populist campaign rhetoric about the “forgotten men and women” whom the global economy had left behind.

Both Trump’s rhetoric and his policy positions contained contradictions, as Trump simultaneously called for isolationism and a more robust military. Despite his promise to reduce American military deployments around the world, he also called for more robust military activity. In April 2017, he authorized cruise missile strikes against a Syrian military airfield and warned that the United States might continue to intercede in Syria’s civil war against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, despite his administration’s prior statement acknowledging that al-Assad would most likely prevail in the war. In December 2018, in opposition to his military advisors, he announced the withdrawal of the 2,000 US troops still deployed in Syria (since 2015). That surprise decision prompted the resignation of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

Trump also significantly drew down the US troop presence in Afghanistan, which the US military had maintained since invading the country in 2001. In February 2020, Trump officials signed a deal with the Taliban, which had been engaged in an insurrection against the US-backed government, leading to the full withdrawal of all US troops the next year. The Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in September 2021.

International Agreements

A cornerstone of Trump’s America First policy agenda was the abrogation of bilateral and multilateral agreements and treaties in favor of unilateral arrangements, conducted country to country. Trump was openly hostile to the European Union, which he regarded as a competitor. He frequently threatened to withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an organization formed after World War II to create a mutual defense alliance against the Soviet Union (and, after 1991, Russia), arguing that providing military defense for Western Europe was too expensive. In June 2017, Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement to combat climate change; Joe Biden reversed that decision early in his presidency. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the World Health Organization, which he accused of absolving China from responsibility for the pandemic. As with the Paris Accords, the Biden administration immediately rejoined the World Health Organization in January 2021.

In May 2018, the Trump administration announced that the United States would withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the Iran nuclear deal, a 2015 agreement among the United States, Iran, five other countries, and the European Union. The deal allowed Iran to pursue nuclear technology for non-military purposes, under strict foreign supervision, in exchange for relaxed economic sanctions. Trump, along with many Republicans, had long disapproved of the agreement, which many conservatives believed made excessive and unwise concessions to Iran and risked the security of Israel in the event Iran broke the agreement and developed nuclear weapons. In November 2018, the United States reimposed all economic sanctions that had previously been in effect on Iran.

Trump also applied his unilateral approach to foreign affairs through his actions related to the Israel/Palestine conflict. In December 2017, in a move hailed by the conservative government of Israel but opposed by most world leaders, Trump announced that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city. In May 2018, the United States officially opened a new embassy in Jerusalem. While the decision regarding Jerusalem was interpreted as inflammatory and hostile to the Palestinian cause, Trump also pursued a peace plan with the intent of solving the decades-old conflict. In August and September 2020, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner brokered deals—known collectively as the Abraham Accords—whereby the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain would normalize diplomatic relations with Israel.

Trade

President Trump’s approach to trade likewise departed from recent practice. Within days of becoming president, Trump withdrew the United States from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, designed to reduce barriers to trade between countries along the Pacific rim. Making good on his campaign promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, which liberalized the movement of goods between Mexico, Canada, and the United States, Trump reached an agreement in 2018 to replace the treaty with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Although the new agreement largely retained the framework of the original treaty, it updated a number of specific terms to take account the advances of digital technology and online sales. It also created new incentives for automobile production in the United States.

Trump also fulfilled his campaign promise to address trade competition with China, whom he accused of unfair competition and theft of intellectual property that resulted in the decline of American industrial manufacturing. Beginning in January 2018, Trump imposed new tariffs, or import taxes, on a range of products from China, including especially steel and aluminum, driving up the cost of those imports for American consumers in the hope of boosting sales of American-made products. In response, China imposed tariffs on products it imported from the United States, hurting the sales of American exporters. The trade war escalated through 2019 before the Trump administration and the government of China reached an agreement that eased tensions. Trump received praise from some politicians for sticking up for American manufacturers, but criticism from others, from within his own party as well as from Democrats, for hurting global trade and driving up costs for American consumers.

North Korea

Critics of President Trump observed that, in pursuit of his America First policies, he frequently praised foreign autocrats and dictators while seeming to disparage traditional allies and democratically elected foreign leaders as weak and ineffective. Trump’s complicated relationship with Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of the globally isolated country of North Korea, typified this tension. During the first year of his presidency, Trump took a bellicose posture toward North Korea’s test of long-range missiles that had the potential to reach targets in the United States. Ratcheting up international tensions, Trump promised to deliver “fire and fury” in response to any nuclear aggression from North Korea.

In 2018, however, Trump changed his approach. Believing in the power of personal relationships and his own deal-making prowess, Trump endeavored to resolve a decades-long standoff between the United States and North Korea through personal engagement with Kim. The two leaders met in Singapore in June 2018, the first time leaders of the two countries had ever met. The two met twice more, and in 2019 Trump became the first sitting US president to enter North Korea when, accompanied by Kim, he crossed the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. Despite this personal diplomacy, however, Kim refused to surrender his nuclear program due to his belief that North Korea’s security from annexation by South Korea depended on possessing nuclear weapons.

Russia

The Trump administration took a very different approach to its relationship with Russia than any administration since the Cold War began after World War II. Since its brief experiment with democratic governance in the 1990s, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia’s relationship with Western Europe and North American nations had grown increasingly fraught. President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB intelligence officer who first took power in Russia late in 1999, had steadily solidified his grip on political power in the ensuing decades. His annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Ukraine, his repression of dissent in Russia (including allegations that he ordered assassinations of journalists and other opponents), and his support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had isolated Russia from the world community.

Trump, however, praised Putin as a strong leader during the presidential campaign. Revelations that Russian intelligence agents had orchestrated a hack of the Democratic National Committee and engaged in other propaganda efforts to help Trump in the 2016 election raised suspicions about Trump’s relationship with the Russian leader. Trump’s insistence on keeping private the details of his personal conversations with Putin only furthered suspicion.

Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted six members of Trump’s campaign and staff for various offenses related to Russia’s interference with the 2016 election. Mueller also indicted twelve Russians on charges of conspiracy to interfere in the election by hacking servers and emails. At a meeting with Putin in 2018, Trump announced that he accepted Putin’s denial of any involvement in the US election. After Mueller’s final report identified clear links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, Trump ordered the intelligence community to investigate the investigation itself, giving his attorney general, William Barr, authority to declassify relevant information. Barr appointed federal prosecutor John Durham as special counsel to investigate; Durham continued in that office after Trump left office, and in 2023, he finished his investigation, submitting a final report that criticized the FBI, but did not find that any laws were broken.

Second Term

Several violent and destabilizing events during the Biden administration recast the nature of foreign policy as Trump began his second term. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, an American ally, in February 2022 led to a protracted war that put particular strain on the NATO alliance to which Trump had long been hostile. Although Trump campaigned on the promise that he could negotiate a swift end to the war, experts worried that a victory over Ukraine would embolden President Vladimir Putin of Russia to launch other expansive military operations into other former Soviet republics or NATO members in Europe.

In October 2023, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israeli civilians that precipitated a massive Israeli military mobilization. As the Israeli military invaded Gaza, it created a humanitarian crisis and sparked worldwide protest. Hostilities threatened to spread throughout the Middle East, as Israel also clashed with Lebanon and Iran. The unexpected toppling of longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad by rebels in December 2024 contributed to a complex and violent international stage greeting the second Trump administration.

As with his selection of domestic policy leaders, Trump displayed a preference for loyalty in his early choices for critical foreign policy and intelligence positions. As secretary of state, he nominated Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who had campaigned aggressively against Trump in 2016 but had since become a strong supporter. For Defense secretary, Trump selected Pete Hegseth, a host on the Fox News cable television network and military veteran who had long defended Trump’s foreign policy vision. Hegseth, who lacked government or significant private-sector leadership experience, encountered significant opposition, including allegations of sexual misconduct and alcohol abuse, but Trump indicated his intent to stick with him. As Director of National Intelligence, he selected Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress and presidential candidate who had since declared her loyalty to Trump and had long criticized American foreign policy, particularly its opposition to the dictatorial regimes in Russia and Syria.

Donald Trump has stated throughout his life that family has always been central to him, from his childhood through his presidency. By his own account, he has few close friends outside of his family relations. “I have a lot of good relationships,” he once said. “I have good enemies, too, which is okay. But I think more of my family than others.”

Trump has been married three times and divorced twice, the only US president with that marital history. Republican president Ronald Reagan, first elected in 1980, became the first US president to have been divorced and re-married, while a number of presidents married for a second time (three did so while in the White House!) following the death of a first spouse.

In 1977, Trump married his first spouse, Ivana Zelnickova, who was originally from Czechoslovakia and became a US citizen in 1988. The couple had three children: Donald, Jr. (born in 1977), Ivanka (born in 1981), and Eric (born in 1984). Donald and Ivana Trump divorced in 1992 in the wake of revelations, widely covered in New York City tabloid newspapers, that Trump had engaged in an extra-marital affair with American actor Marla Maples. Trump and Maples were married in 1993, two months after their daughter Tiffany was born. They were separated in 1997 and divorced in 1999; Maples raised Tiffany in California while Trump maintained his primary residence in New York City. While his divorce to Maples was pending, Trump began dating Slovenian model Melania Knauss. They married in Palm Beach, Florida, in January 2005. Their son Barron was born the following year. Ivana Trump died in July 2022.

Until the final months of his presidency, Donald Trump maintained his primary residency at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. As head of the Trump Organization, he “commuted” to work by taking the elevator from his opulent penthouse apartment to his office on the 26th floor of the building. Once Trump took office, he formally moved to the White House, while First Lady Melania Trump remained in New York for the spring of 2017 so Barron could complete the school year. Melania and Barron moved to the Washington, DC, thereafter.

During his presidency, Trump also spent considerable time at his estate known as Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, which he purchased in 1985. Originally a retreat for heiress and General Foods owner Marjorie Merriweather Post, Mar-a-Lago was Trump’s warm-weather home and private club, which he often referred to as the “Winter White House.” As president, he frequently hosted foreign heads of state and conducted other official business at Mar-a-Lago. In October 2019, he formally changed his legal domicile to Mar-a-Lago, and thus ran for reelection in 2020 as a resident of Florida.

As adults, Trump’s three oldest children became executives in the Trump Organization. When Trump became president, he announced that he was transferring operational control of the company to his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric. Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, a real estate developer, joined Trump in Washington as White House advisors during his first term. A 1967 law, passed in response to President John F. Kennedy’s selection of his brother Robert as Attorney General, raised concerns about their appointments. When Trump became president, however, the legal counsel for the Department of Justice issued an opinion that the 1967 “Robert Kennedy Law” did not apply to White House advisors, only to the heads of agencies and Cabinet secretaries. Both Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner became advisors, with Ivanka also taking the title of “First Daughter.” Trump’s other daughter, Tiffany, campaigned for her father in both 2016 and 2020 but did not play an active role in either the administration or the Trump Organization. When his second term began, Trump had ten grandchildren.

Donald Trump was the fourth of five children born to Mary Anne MacLeod Trump and Fred Trump. His oldest sibling, Fred Trump, Jr., died of alcoholism in 1981 at the age of 43. After first entering the family business, Fred Trump, Jr., clashed with his father and left the company to become an airline pilot. Donald Trump has cited his brother’s struggle with addiction and premature death as the reason he avoids alcohol and tobacco use. His younger brother, Robert, also entered the family business and became an executive. He maintained a close relationship with Donald Trump throughout his life and died in the summer of 2020.

Trump’s sisters, Elizabeth Trump Grau and Maryanne Trump Barry, were discouraged from entering the family business by their father. Maryanne Trump Barry, the eldest of the Trump children, became an attorney, Assistant United States Attorney, and a federal judge on the US District Court for New Jersey and later the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She assumed senior status in 2011, taking a reduced caseload, and took inactive senior status shortly after her brother was inaugurated president in 2017. She retired fully in 2019 in the face of investigations into tax fraud, and she died in 2023.

In 2020, Fred Trump Jr.’s daughter, Mary L. Trump, emerged as a sharp opponent of Donald Trump. She published a highly critical book about her family, Too Much and Never Enough (2020), relying both on her training as a psychiatrist and on transcripts and reports of personal conversations. She also sued her father’s siblings—her uncle Donald, her aunt Maryanne, and the estate of her late uncle Robert—claiming that they defrauded her of her inheritance from her grandfather, Fred Trump.

As the first American since Grover Cleveland elected to non-consecutive presidential terms, Trump has an evolving legacy. Assessments of the range of his impacts will surely change in the years to come as his second administration unfolds. Nonetheless, his effect and legacy on the institution of the presidency, the Republican Party, and key aspects of democratic governance in the United States are already evident.

Through his campaigns, presidencies, and post-presidency, including his lies about the 2020 election results, Trump exercised particular influence over the shape and operation of the Republican Party. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the Republican Party expanded its state and federal gains in elections and broadened its appeal. As it did so, important ideological rifts emerged within the party. One wing of the party focused more on big business and global trade, and favored an aggressive, often belligerent, foreign policy. The other focused on cultural and social issues, often with a populist bent that criticized powerful elites, whether in the government, media, or corporate sectors. Previous Republican presidents and party leaders tried, with varying degrees of success, to cater to both camps.

Trump’s aggressive and racist approach to immigration, his disengagement from foreign alliances, his tendency to praise autocrats and dismiss liberal democratic foreign leaders, and his refusal to disavow white supremacist groups marked a profound break from the past. Although he favored certain “traditional” Republican Party positions—including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017—and appointed socially conservative justices from the same list that any Republican president would have used, his rhetoric and priorities shifted the Republican Party decidedly.

His upset win against Hillary Clinton in 2016, despite losing the popular vote, convinced many Republicans that the only path to electoral success lay in appealing to Trump’s base of voters. As a result, many commentators observed that, even in the years after Trump left office, the Republican Party had become “the Party of Trump”: candidates sought his endorsement and approval, believing that they would be more successful if they embraced his positions, from a hardline on immigration to denying the results of the 2020 election. Moderate Republicans, particularly those who criticized Trump, lost influence within the party, and many lost elections.

Trump’s presidency also shined a light on an aspect of the American presidency and the operations of democratic governance that had frequently been overlooked in public life: the importance of political and social norms and the degree to which the system depended on a mutual respect for them. Although many laws govern the behavior of elected officials, many of the practices Americans had come to expect from their leaders were not codified in law but rather in tradition—what social scientists call norms. Trump, who prided himself on his independence and unique approach to politics, routinely violated political norms.

He refused, for example, to divulge personal financial information about himself or his company. Although every president since Gerald Ford had released prior years’ tax returns, Trump claimed that he could not do so because his taxes were under audit. (The IRS denied that Trump was barred from releasing his tax returns.) Similarly, past presidents with significant financial or business interests had put their assets in blind trusts to avoid any appearance that their presidential decisions would be influenced by their personal interests. Although Trump named his adult sons as the heads of the Trump Organization, he created no legal separation between himself and the operations of his business.

In addition, past presidents recognized the importance of demonstrating transparency when questions about presidential conduct arose and agreed to appoint investigators and special prosecutors, even when they themselves were the subject of the investigation. Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, which was his legal right to do, but he did so to impede an investigation of the 2016 election. During Robert Mueller’s investigation, Trump refused to cooperate, discredited the process, and asked his counsel to fire Mueller (he refused). And throughout his presidency, Trump routinely attacked his former campaign rival Hillary Clinton, even asking law enforcement to investigate her, breaking the long-established norm of winning graciously and affirming the patriotism and good will of one’s political opponents. In so doing, he furthered the country’s partisan polarization and the tendency for people on one side to see those on the other as alien, evil, and un-American.

By far the most significant norm that Trump violated was respect for the peaceful transition of power. By refusing to publicly accept what he knew, and was told repeatedly, about his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump perpetuated a lie that enflamed passions and resulted in a violent insurrection on January 6, 2021. He not only encouraged crowds of armed people to break into the US Capitol to interrupt the certification of election results but also, despite pleas from lawmakers and his advisors, refused to intervene for several hours while the violence unfolded. In refusing to attend Joe Biden’s inauguration and continuing to insist that the election results had been manipulated and the presidency “stolen” from him, he weakened public faith in elections and the democratic process more broadly.

As Trump began his second term as president, observers wondered whether the word “unprecedented” would continue to describe the man and his administration, or whether he now provided his own precedent. To what degree, in other words, would Trump reshape the presidency in his own image? With Congressional majorities won and held by a Republican Party that was generally unified around Trump’s policies and vision, and given Trump’s stated goal of appointing loyal advisors who would not impede his objectives, experts predicted that Trump would be more successful in implementing his agenda in his second term.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. devoted his life to public service, spending thirty-six years as a U.S. senator from Delaware, eight years as vice president, and four years as the 46th president of the United States. A life-long Democrat, he embodied the values of family, service, decency, and hard work throughout his long career.

Born on November 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden hailed from a working-class, Irish-Catholic family. As a child, he suffered from a severe stutter that he managed to overcome with rigorous practice and sheer will, though it still afflicted him occasionally throughout his life. After graduating from the University of Delaware in 1965 and Syracuse University Law School in 1968, he accepted a job with a corporate law firm defending big businesses but soon recognized that such work was not his true calling, and he became a public defender whose clients were nearly all African Americans from the east side of Wilmington, Delaware.

In 1972, at age 29, he won an unexpected victory in his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from Delaware, defeating 63-year-old, two-term Senator J. Caleb Boggs, a Republican. Shortly after his election, his first wife Neilia and infant daughter, Naomi, died in a car crash; his young sons Beau and Hunter sustained severe injuries. Biden contemplated giving up his Senate seat, but fellow senators persuaded him to join the Senate as one its youngest members. A widower, raising two young sons with the help of his sister Valerie, Biden made the commute from Wilmington to Washington every day by train. In 1975, Biden met Jill Jacobs, a student at the University of Delaware, almost nine years his junior, and they were married in 1977. They welcomed daughter Ashley to their family in 1981.

Over his many years in the Senate, Biden embraced the institution’s traditions and hierarchy, playing leading roles on both the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. He chaired the confirmation hearings of five Supreme Court justices; the most contentious hearings occurred over the nominations of Robert Bork (by Ronald Reagan) and Clarence Thomas (by George H. W. Bush).

Throughout his Senate years, Biden set his sights on higher office. After two failed presidential runs in 1988 and 2008, he won a valuable second prize—the vice presidency. In August 2008, Senator Barack Obama selected Biden as his running mate, inspired by Biden’s foreign policy expertise, his skill in working with Congress, his resilience after profound personal setbacks, and his devotion to his family. Biden served as an experienced adviser to Obama, who entered the White House after only three years in the Senate, and established himself as one of the most significant vice presidents in American history. He and Obama formed an unprecedented partnership. Few presidents and vice presidents had ever worked so closely together and formed such a close bond.

Although Biden considered running for president in 2016, he ultimately decided against it, still grieving the death of his son, Beau, from cancer in 2015. By 2020, Biden decided to toss his hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination. In announcing his candidacy to oppose incumbent Donald Trump, Biden declared, “We are in the battle for the soul of this nation.” He cited as his motivation to run Trump’s neutral reaction to the violent white supremacist march on Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when Trump asserted that there were “very fine people on both sides.” As a cornerstone of his campaign, Biden also focused on the Trump administration’s failed management of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Just before accepting the Democratic nomination at the party convention in August 2020, Biden selected Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate, proposing the possibility of the first woman, first Black, and first South Asian American vice president. Biden defeated Trump with a solid majority of 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 votes, collecting 81 million votes overall, 7 million more than Trump’s 74 million.

Biden came into the presidency at age 78, as the oldest president in American history, and he confronted a divided nation wracked by the worst health crisis in a century with the Covid-19 pandemic, an economy battered by closures to prevent the virus’s spread, and internal threats to American democracy after Donald Trump insisted he, not Biden, had won the 2020 race and inspired an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

As president, Biden worked to right the ship of state after what he saw as the missteps of the Trump administration. He reassured U.S. allies and rejoined international efforts, such as the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. He led the country through the Covid pandemic, produced a bipartisan infrastructure bill, presided over a soaring stock market, nominated the first Black woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, guaranteed marriage equality, prioritized policies to address climate change, and lowered unemployment to historic levels. He was challenged by rising inflation, failure to stem illegal immigration (especially at the southern boarder), and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Although he decided to run for reelection in 2024, many voters had concerns about his age, and he dropped out of the race after a disastrous debate performance against Republican candidate Donald Trump. Biden endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee, but her campaign had too short a window to overcome Biden’s lack of popularity. In the end, Donald Trump was reelected as the 47th president in 2024.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born on November 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as World War II raged overseas. The first child of Catherine Eugenia “Jean” Finnegan Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden Sr., Joey, as he was known, was a scrappy kid from a working-class, Irish Catholic family. Biden’s father prospered during the war when an uncle gave him a job in his lucrative manufacturing company that provided sealant for merchant marine ships. Joe Sr. left Scranton to run the Boston office. After the war, however, his fortunes reversed, and Joe Sr. found himself adrift. After two failed business ventures, he returned to the coal-mining town of Scranton where he took what work he could get to support the family. By now, Joe Jr. had been joined by his sister Valerie; two brothers, James and Frank, would complete the family.

As a child, Joe Jr. suffered from a severe stutter. He endured bullies and the shame that accompanies the affliction. Kindergarten speech therapy did not work, so he decided to fight the battle on his own. The effort toughened him and endowed him with prodigious confidence that sometimes veered into recklessness. In industrial Scranton, at about age ten, he accepted a $5 dare from a peer to climb to the top of a 200-foot heap of waste material from coal mine shafts. It was hot and dangerous. Along its surface were invisible ash pockets that could collapse with a footstep, dropping a foolhardy boy into the burning center. But Joe took the gamble and scrambled up the side of the black mountain. As author Richard Ben Cramer told the story, “By the time he got to the top, the five bucks wasn’t the point anymore. It was more like...immortality.”

In 1953, Joe Sr. landed a job selling cars in Wilmington, Delaware, and moved the family to an apartment in the suburb of Claymont. Joe Jr.’s tribulations dogged him into high school at Archmere Academy, a private Catholic boys’ school. His classmates tarred him with the nickname “Dash,” for the way sounds came off his lips. “I talked like Morse code,” Biden explained in his memoir, Promises to Keep. “Dot-dot-dot-dot-dash-dash-dash-dash.” His stutter imbued him with a fighting spirit, and he shouted down the bullies: “You gu-gu-gu-gu-guys sh-sh-sh-sh-shut up!” He practiced hard in his bedroom, watching his lips in the mirror while memorizing Yeats and Emerson so he could speak flawlessly in class. “Other kids looked at me like I was stupid,” Biden recalled. “I wanted so badly to prove I was like everybody else.” At Archmere, Biden was outgoing and athletic and relied on sports to distract attention away from his speech affliction. He turned himself into a star halfback known for his skill at reeling in passes and earned a new nickname, “Hands,” which replaced the bullying epithets. By sheer will, he conquered the stutter, though occasionally it returned, especially when fatigue overtook him.

By Biden’s freshman year at the University of Delaware in 1961, he already planned to attend law school after graduation and dreamed of becoming “an esteemed public figure,” as he later wrote. During college, he took a summer job as a lifeguard at a public swimming pool near a housing project. He was the only white lifeguard among a dozen inner-city African Americans who were students at historically Black colleges. The experience opened Biden’s eyes to the stark difference between the lives of Black and white Americans: “Every day, it seemed to me, Black people got subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that they did not quite belong in America,” Biden recalled.

On his 1964 spring break, he met Neilia Hunter, a Syracuse University student. They married in 1966 and had three children, Beau (1969), Hunter (1970), and Naomi (1971), who was known as Amy.

After graduating from Syracuse University Law School in 1968, Joe first took a job with a corporate law firm defending large businesses but soon realized he did not find the work fulfilling, and he became a public defender whose clients were nearly all African Americans from Wilmington’s east side. By 1970, he had his first taste of politics, winning election to the New Castle County Council, where he served until 1972, when he challenged the popular, 63-year-old, two-term Senator J. Caleb Boggs, a Republican. It was an audacious gamble by the cocky unknown 29-year-old. Even if he won, Biden would have to wait by law until his 30th birthday to take his seat.

Supported by his sister Valerie, who served as campaign manager, his brother Jimmy, who was his chief fundraiser, and his wife, Neilia, Biden barnstormed the state, going door to door in the suburbs and at the shore, and he won by fewer than 3,000 votes out of a total 228,000 cast. In his victory speech, the young Senator-elect graciously called the defeated incumbent “a real gentleman.”

But tragedy soon struck. On December 18, 1972, as Joe was on Capitol Hill choosing an office, Neilia set out to do some Christmas shopping with the three children. A tractor trailer plowed into her station wagon, killing Neilia and Amy. Beau and Hunter were badly injured. Biden considered giving up his Senate seat before he even arrived, but Senator Edward Kennedy, no stranger to family tragedies, and Majority Leader Mike Mansfield persuaded him to join the Senate as one its youngest members. He was sworn in as senator in the chapel at Wilmington Medical Center with Beau, Hunter, and other family members at his side.

As a freshman senator, Biden opposed President Richard Nixon’s violation of the public trust and strongly criticized President Gerald Ford for pardoning Nixon after his 1974 resignation over Watergate. Even in his early years as a senator, Biden sought prominence as a national figure, though he kept his focus on his constituents’ needs in Delaware, a task made easier by his daily commutes home. He also developed an early reputation for candor, acknowledging in the second year of his term what many senators kept to themselves: that they aspired to be president to wield the most influence at home and abroad. “You’re being phony to say you’re not interested in being president if you really want to change things,” he acknowledged in 1974. “But I’m certainly not qualified at this point. I don’t have the experience or background.”

In 1975, Biden met Jill Jacobs, a student at the University of Delaware nine years his junior, and they were married in 1977. Their daughter Ashley was born in 1981.

During 36 years in the Senate, Biden served in leading roles on both the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees. He was chairman or ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee for 17 years. He chaired the confirmation hearings of five justices; the most contentious were the nominations of Robert Bork (by Ronald Reagan) and Clarence Thomas (by George H. W. Bush).

In 1987, Biden presided over the hearings for Robert Bork, a U.S. appeals court judge and former U.S. solicitor general, who was a declared opponent of expansive civil rights and whose originalist views presupposed opposition to Roe v. Wade; he also favored maximum powers for the executive branch. Biden prepared assiduously and conducted prolonged, painstaking hearings that probed not only Bork’s judicial record but also his philosophy of law. Bork did himself no favors by lecturing the committee as if they were students in a law school seminar. The Senate, with a new Democratic majority and led by Edward Kennedy’s vehement opposition to Reagan’s nominee, rejected Bork’s nomination by a vote of 58 to 42.

During the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991, Biden failed to conduct a full investigation into sexual harassment allegations against the nominee. The committee called Thomas’s accuser, Anita Hill, to testify, and she provided a vivid account of the nominee’s conduct, but Biden did not allow corroborating testimony from other witnesses. Ever since the staunchly conservative Thomas won confirmation, liberals have criticized Biden for truncating the hearings before the harassment debate fully aired. When his handling of the hearings became a presidential campaign issue, Biden told ABC News in 2019 that "Hill did not get treated well. I take responsibility for that."

As Judiciary Committee chairman, Biden was a leading advocate for major tough-on-crime legislation, such as the 1994 crime bill that stiffened sentences, widened application of the death penalty, added police officers on the streets, and provided funding for new prisons. Crime in America had tripled between 1960 and 1990, inflamed by a crack-cocaine epidemic in the 1980s. Working with police groups, Biden wrote the Senate version of the bill, which he proudly labelled the Biden Crime Bill.

When Congress passed the new law on a bipartisan vote, it earned support from the American public fearful of expanding crime. In recent years, however, progressives have blamed it for contributing to the plague of mass incarceration, especially of Black and Brown Americans. The passage of time has changed the public’s perspective of the law, and the quarter-century-old legislation surfaced as a point of controversy in the 2020 Democratic primaries, forcing Biden to defend his role in shaping it.

Ever since his stumble over the Anita Hill accusations, Biden has worked to improve his record on issues important to women. In 1990, appalled by the lack of attention given marital rape and moved by the killing of 14 women in Montreal who were targeted because the shooter believed they were feminists, Biden introduced the Violence Against Women Act that promised federal penalties for crimes against women. Stalled by Republicans, the bill languished until 1994 when Congress finally passed it. Biden has called the law his “proudest legislative accomplishment.” He further advanced his recognition of women and their issues when he selected Senator Kamala Harris of California as his vice-presidential running mate in 2020.

As the chairman or ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 11 years, Biden influenced American foreign policy and led efforts on its response to terrorism and the shape of the post-Cold War world. Some critics downplayed his foreign policy acumen because of his tendency to boast about his achievements overseas, sometimes exaggerating his role or impact. Nonetheless, he had contact with a vast array of world leaders during his time in the Senate. He provided a list to The Washington Post after his selection as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008 that showed Biden had met with 150 leaders from nearly 60 countries, territories, and international organizations such as NATO and the United Nations.

Biden often favored humanitarian efforts overseas, and he pushed for U.S. military intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s. In 1991, Biden voted against authorizing President George H. W. Bush to wage war against Iraq, arguing that too much of the burden of the anti-Iraq coalition fell on the United States. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Biden voted in favor of the Iraq War in 2002. Under his chairmanship before the vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony contending Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, testimony based on unsubstantiated evidence that proved to be untrue. Biden later opposed the war and acknowledged his vote was a “mistake.” He also strongly opposed the 2007 U.S. troop surge in Iraq, which many observers credit with the subsequent decline in violence there.

Throughout his Senate years, Biden contemplated campaigns to win the White House. After two failed presidential runs, he won a valuable second prize: the vice presidency. In August 2008, Barack Obama selected Biden as his running mate, inspired by Biden’s foreign policy expertise, his skill in working with Congress, his resilience after his profound personal setbacks, and his devotion to family.

When approached as a potential running mate, Biden had a very clear idea of how he wished to shape the vice presidency. He wanted to be Obama’s chief counselor, participate in every important meeting, have his views considered in all crucial decisions on both foreign and domestic policy, advise on and participate in legislative efforts, be the last advisor in the room before Obama made decisions, and meet privately with the president each week. Perhaps most important, given Biden’s voluble nature, he wanted to be able to speak with absolute candor. Obama recognized Biden’s talents, wanted the unvarnished truth, and accepted his demands.

After the election, Biden played influential foreign and domestic roles in the administration, establishing himself as one of the most significant vice presidents in American history. A sign of his importance in foreign policy was a pre-inaugural trip he made to Afghanistan that set the stage for Biden’s advocacy of a more limited U.S. military role in the country. Obama encouraged Biden to stir debate in advisers’ meetings, so a range of voices and options were heard before arriving at decisions. While some national security advisers urged the president to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, Biden favored a drawdown of U.S. forces. Although Obama approved a short-term surge of troops into Afghanistan in 2009, he included a proviso that American forces must begin to withdraw by 2011. Asked to take on a key role in America’s military and diplomatic relationships with Iraq, Biden made repeated trips to meet with the nation’s leaders. Speaking on behalf of the president, Biden outlined the administration’s foreign policy ambitions when he spoke to a gathering of heads of state and ministers at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in February 2009, just weeks into the first term.

Biden provided President Obama with crucial advice on legislative issues related to the 2009 Recovery Act, budget and tax negotiations, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) treaty. The president tasked the vice president with overseeing implementation of the Recovery Act, a job that relied on his political and governmental skills in coordinating efforts by federal agencies with the needs of state and local jurisdictions. Working with legislators, Biden also helped wrangle the votes needed to pass the 2011 Affordable Care Act.

President Obama and Vice President Biden forged such a close partnership that the media took to calling it a “bromance” and featured the duo in photographs eating lunch together, putting on the White House green, and bantering in the Oval Office. Just days before the end of the Obama-Biden administration, the president surprised his vice president by awarding him the Medal of Freedom. At the ceremony, Obama extolled his relationship with Biden by reciting lines from William Butler Yeats: “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends / and say my glory was I had such friends.”

Although Biden considered running for president in 2016, the death of his son Beau in 2015 from brain cancer diminished his appetite for the contest. In addition, President Obama quietly urged him to stay out of the race and paved the way for Hillary Clinton to win the nomination. Biden announced that he would not run on October 21, 2015. After leaving the vice presidency, he, together with his wife, created the Biden Foundation and the Biden Cancer Initiative, but both organizations suspended operations after Biden announced in 2019 that he would run for president.

Even as a high-schooler, Joe Biden had declared to his father’s friend who asked about life goals, “I want to be president of the United States.”

In his first bid, for the 1988 Democratic nomination, Biden had a high-profile leadership role in the run-up to his campaign. As Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, he was set to preside over the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork, starting on September 15, 1987. But two weeks before the hearings began, Biden plagiarized a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock during his closing remarks at a debate at the Iowa State Fair. The press swarmed, uncovering other incidents when Biden had appropriated material dating back to his school days. As a law student at Syracuse University, he cribbed from a law review article without citation for a class paper. Later as a politician, he failed to credit words he used that belonged to Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. Biden had claimed to have finished in the top half of his law school class when he was 76 out of 85 classmates. Having announced his candidacy for president on June 9, 1987, he abandoned the race on September 23.

Even more alarming, in 1988, Biden suffered two brain aneurysms, which doctors successfully repaired in intricate neurosurgery.

On January 31, 2007, Biden launched his run for the 2008 presidency. But, on the same day, the media reported that he had described another candidate, Barack Obama, as “the first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.” Reporters unearthed other instances unrelated to Obama when Biden’s casual comments had sounded racially insensitive. His campaign never recovered. Biden trudged along, attracting little attention, and, after a dismal showing in the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008, he ended his second failed attempt to fulfill his political dream.

The 2020 Election

Biden’s run for the presidency in 2020 looked similarly doomed at the outset. He entered the race on April 25, 2019, declaring: “We are in the battle for the soul of this nation.” He cited as his motivation President Trump’s reaction to the violent white supremacist invasion of Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, when Trump asserted that there were “very fine people on both sides.” Biden presented himself as the candidate who could rid the country of Trump’s divisiveness and heal political polarization by restoring the nation’s soul. Recognizing the danger of the spreading coronavirus pandemic, Biden limited public rallies, often campaigning from his Delaware home via video links. He made Trump’s chaotic management of the pandemic a cornerstone of his argument while the president held his own rallies with supporters crowded together unmasked.

Initially, Biden’s appeal failed to resonate with Democratic voters. They deemed him too old and too conservative for the young progressives in the party aligned with rival Vermont senator, Bernie Sanders, who wanted to push the party leftward. Critics emphasized potential health issues for the then-77-year-old candidate. In December 2019, Biden released a medical assessment that noted he was healthy and vigorous and had not had any aneurysm recurrences.

Yet Biden finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses, and, in the New Hampshire primary, he dropped to fifth place. He rose to second in the Nevada contest but was a distant second behind Sanders, whom the media now labeled as the front runner. As Biden appeared headed for a third disastrous nomination attempt, he focused all his efforts on the South Carolina primary, the first in a series of states where African American voters played a significant role. When Biden won the endorsement of the influential South Carolina congressman, James E. Clyburn, his campaign gained new momentum. He captured 48.6 percent of the vote in South Carolina, decisively defeating Sanders who tallied 19.8 percent, marking a startling turnaround for the former vice president.

Biden gained the endorsements of former campaign rivals Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg. After he won 10 of 14 states on Super Tuesday, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker threw their support behind the surging Biden. As he garnered victories and delegates in subsequent primaries, Sanders bowed out on April 8, paving the way for Biden’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention. As the presumptive nominee, Biden kept his promise to name a woman as his running mate, choosing Senator Kamala Harris, a former California attorney general of Black and Indian descent, a move that acknowledged the aspirations of both women and people of color.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Democratic National Convention, was nearly all virtual and produced to appeal to television viewers confined to their homes. Ironically, this creativity made it “simply more compelling to watch than the fusty, arena-bound version that rolls around every four years,” wrote Lorraine Ali, a television critic for the Los Angeles Times.

Biden and Harris delivered their acceptance speeches in a largely empty venue in Wilmington, Delaware, and then watched fireworks with car-bound supporters in a parking lot outside the arena. They honked their horns and flashed their headlights to celebrate the Democratic ticket.

Biden’s speech underscored that Trump had “cloaked America in darkness . . . anger . . . fear [and] division.” The candidate pledged to bring America together. “United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America,” he declared, adding, “we will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.” He drew a sharp distinction between himself and Trump, promising to offer generosity, compassion, and character amid the coronavirus pandemic that at the time of the convention had killed 170,000 people. Biden painted Trump and his response to the pandemic in stark terms. “Our current president has failed in his most basic duty to this nation. He failed to protect us. He failed to protect America.”

Because of the pandemic, many Americans voted early and by mail, prompting President Trump to assert, without evidence, that fraud may have tainted the outcome. On election night, November 3, early returns based on votes cast at the polls that day—mainly by Republicans—indicated a lead for Trump. Close to 2:30 a.m., Trump announced falsely that he had won the election and demanded that all vote counting stop. Over the next several days, election officials throughout the country counted all the votes, including the early and mail-in ballots, submitted mostly by Democrats. On November 7, 2020, the major news networks and the Associated Press declared Biden the winner. Along with Biden as president, Harris became the first woman, the first Black, and first South Asian American to be elected vice president.

A record number of voters participated in 2020, casting nearly 160 million votes. The turnout among eligible voters was the highest in 120 years: 66.2 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, surpassed only by the election of 1900 when 73.7 percent voted. Trump continued to cry fraud and launched dozens of legal challenges, which courts dismissed, until finally the Electoral College met on December 14 and ratified Biden’s victory with a solid majority of 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. Biden won 81 million votes overall, 7 million more than Trump’s 74 million. Despite his clear defeat in the popular vote and the Electoral College, Trump continued to claim, with no proof, that he had won the election and that the voting was fraudulent.

The consequences of Trump’s false claims became clear to the nation on January 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump supporters, including those affiliated with the Proud Boys and other paramilitary and white supremacist groups, assembled in Washington, DC, for a Trump event known as the “Stop the Steal.” The president invited them to go “wild” in Washington to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election. The president and his minions inflamed the armed mob gathered at the Ellipse behind the White House, and Trump urged them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” He would be there with them, he promised the insurgents.

Using clubs, flag poles, and bear spray, the rioters overwhelmed Capitol and Washington police, smashed windows, and broke down doors to rampage through the building, where members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence were meeting to certify the election results, as required by the Constitution. Security rushed Pence and congressional members out of harm's way. But police were unable to contain the intruders who entered the Senate chamber, broke into offices, stole government property, vandalized historic spaces and artifacts, desecrated the corridors of power, shouted for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to confront them, and chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” as their comrades displayed a noose and gallows on the Capitol grounds. Informed of the insurrection underway, Trump, back at the White House, did nothing to stop the attack on his vice president or the legislative branch.

On the day of Biden’s inauguration, Trump left Washington in a fit of pique before his successor’s swearing-in.

The 2024 Election

Recognizing his advancing age, Biden had indicated in 2020 that a new generation would probably follow in his footsteps, which some interpreted as a pledge to serve only one term. Yet as the 2024 election drew closer, with Trump improbably on his way to the Republican nomination, despite civil and criminal litigation against him, Biden showed no signs of stepping out of the race for another term.

On April 25, 2023, he announced his candidacy. With his approval rating well under water (41 to 50 percent), the Biden-Harris ticket faced an uphill battle for reelection. The Biden administration was challenged by high inflation reaching 7 percent in Biden’s first year, the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Hamas’s devastating attack on Israel in 2023. The obvious physical and mental toll that the presidency had taken on the now octogenarian chief executive also contributed to the public’s disapproval.

Nevertheless, no viable Democrats chose to challenge the incumbent president, and he sailed through the primaries and caucuses. By March 12, 2024, Biden had amassed enough delegates to win the nomination.

Stumbling through speeches, avoiding the press, and walking with a stiff and uncertain gait only added to Biden’s image problems. Trump and the GOP attacked him mercilessly for driving up the cost of groceries, fuel, housing, and all consumer goods; weakening the United States on the world stage; and supporting initiatives to promote diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI), including support for transgender Americans.

The first presidential debate on June 27, 2024, offered Biden an opportunity to dispel rumors about his health and confront Trump over his efforts to derail democracy on January 6, 2021. Looking diminished, confused, and disengaged, the president squandered his chance to win that night’s contest.

Indeed, “fiasco” became the most common description of Biden’s performance, and calls from the party and electorate for him to abandon the race only increased. When Democratic leaders such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer could no longer voice support, Biden announced his departure from the race on July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the ticket.

The Democratic Party united behind her and Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as the vice-presidential nominee, but they had only three months to mount a campaign. Focusing on reproductive rights, providing financial assistance to struggling Americans, and saving democracy, Harris performed well in her debates with Trump, and Walz injected his Midwestern populism into the race for vice president against Senator JD Vance’s Ivy League background and Silicon Valley financier experience. Nevertheless, the Harris-Walz ticket lost to Trump and Vance by a little over 2 million votes, seeing all 7 of the so-called swing states go to the GOP.

No one will ever know whether Democrats could have defeated Trump if Biden had stepped aside early enough to allow the party a genuine primary contest to choose their strongest candidate. Trump’s victory proved that his brand of anti-government populism, false promises to lower costs, and demagogic attacks on transgender people trumped more abstract arguments for bolstering democracy.

With the Capitol building and grounds restored after the catastrophic attack on them by Trump supporters just two weeks earlier, President Joe Biden took the presidential oath on January 20, 2021, with spectators on the stage distanced and masked as the Covid pandemic raged. The new 46th president’s top priorities included controlling the virus, which had killed more than 400,000 Americans, and restoring the U.S. economy, battered by a national shutdown to maintain public health.

The Cabinet

Before taking office, Biden had sent a clear signal that after four years of inexperienced and unpredictable leadership under Trump, it was time to build a mature team ready to take on the massive challenges facing the country. His cabinet and staffing choices also reflected Biden’s pledge to assemble the most diverse cabinet in history. Biden encountered criticism for recycling some officials who served under Barack Obama and for creating a team whose primary policy ambitions appeared aimed at tackling the twin pandemic and economic crises confronting America, at the expense of pursuing broad change that progressives desired.

Among Biden’s picks, Janet Yellen, who at 74 was the most senior cabinet official, became the first female secretary of Treasury Department. She had served as Federal Reserve chair from 2014 to 2018. Unlike leading the Fed, which is intended to be more insulated from politics, at Treasury she had to collaborate closely with Congress to promote bills to stimulate the economy and ease economic hardship from the pandemic.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra also immediately faced the Covid emergency. Biden and Becerra, the first Latino to head HHS, took a more aggressive approach than the Trump administration in combating the virus, especially by promoting testing, masking, and vaccination. HHS encompasses a wide range of agencies to ensure public health, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and Food and Drug Administration, that were crucial to saving lives and ending the pandemic. Becerra also proved a valuable adviser to Biden in strengthening the Affordable Care Act after Trump and congressional Republicans repeatedly tried to repeal it. As attorney general of California, Becerra had led a multi-state effort to preserve the ACA, which became an effective and popular policy for Americans to acquire affordable health insurance.

Biden fulfilled his promise to build an administration that “is going to look like the country.” In addition to Yellen and Becerra, the president broadened diversity of his domestic policy team by naming New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland secretary of interior, the first indigenous American to serve as a cabinet secretary. A member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, Haaland represented a victory for progressives who had long lobbied for a Native American to head the Interior Department. Her appointment and service signaled a change in the government’s long and often tragic relationship with the country’s indigenous population.

Haaland created the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to investigate abuse of Native American children in residential schools founded under the 1819 Civilization Fund Act. Children were forcibly removed from their families and subjected to all means of denying their indigenous heritage, stripping them of their native dress, names, hairstyles, and language. Many suffered physical and sexual abuse, fell ill and died, and were buried in unmarked graves. Secretary Haaland’s own grandparents had endured these schools’ indignities and cultural abolition. She made it a point to attend Road to Healing events around the country where she listened to survivors’ stories of the hellish circumstances they faced in Indian Boarding Schools.

Biden chose Michael S. Regan, who led the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, to head the Environmental Protection Agency, and Brenda Mallory, a veteran of environmental law and regulation, to lead the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. As African Americans, they both had personal and professional understanding of the adverse impact environmental practices and policies have on low-income and minority communities, whose locales often expose their residents to toxic chemicals through air and water pollution.

The Obama era resurfaced in several of Biden’s selections. Tom Vilsack, named secretary of agriculture, had served two terms in the same position under President Obama. Denis McDonough, whom Biden chose for secretary of veteran affairs, had served as Obama’s chief of staff for four years, as well as deputy national security adviser.

Biden recruited another name from the Obama administration—Merrick Garland—although he did not actually serve in it. In 2016, President Obama had nominated Court of Appeals Judge Garland to a Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death, but Republican Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader, refused to consider his nomination. Biden named Garland to be attorney general and lead the Department of Justice, but his admirable judicial temperament seemed ill suited for the avalanche of Trump litigation that faced him, including eventual federal indictments for the 45th president’s role in the January 6th insurrection and his violation of the Presidential Records Act by taking numerous boxes of White House files with him to his Florida home and failing to keep national security documents safe.

Critics claimed that these cases politicized the judicial process, and Democrats criticized Garland for taking too long to appoint Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate the former president’s actions. In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that neither incumbent nor former presidents could be criminally indicted for acts exercised under their core constitutional powers, thus ending any chance of holding Trump accountable for thwarting the federal rule of law.

Garland also upset Democrats by naming a special counsel, Robert Hur, to investigate some vice-presidential papers discovered in Biden’s home and office. After his October 2023 interview with Biden, Hur decided in 2024 not to proceed with a case against him, describing the president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Release of the recorded interview in 2025 proved the point.

In another nod to diversity, Biden selected Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a presidential candidate in 2020, as secretary of transportation. A young, brilliant, charismatic Navy veteran, with Harvard and Oxford degrees, the latter as a Rhodes Scholar, he became the first openly gay cabinet member in U.S. history. He and his husband adopted two newborn fraternal twins during Buttigieg’s cabinet tenure, and activists praised them for representing same-gender fatherhood.

The Covid Pandemic and the U.S. Economy

On the domestic scene, President Biden had to address immediately the ravages of the deadly coronavirus, which ultimately claimed more than 1.1 million American lives. Not since the flu pandemic of 1918-1919 had one disease inflicted such death and social upheaval on the United States and around the globe.

With the economy in free-fall as Biden took office, his first priority was to pass a stimulus package through Congress. Democrats held both the Senate (via Vice President Harris’s tie-breaking vote) and the House of Representatives (under Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership). These Democratic majorities helped pass the American Rescue Plan Act, through a process known as reconciliation, and Biden signed it into law on March 11, 2021. It provided payments to taxpayers with $75,000 or less in income, expanded unemployment benefits and the child tax credit, created a grant program to support the restaurant industry, and gave money to K-12 schools to help them reopen.

During a national address, the president announced more good news that day for Americans desperate for it: by May 1, Covid vaccines would be available. They did not prevent the disease but offered some protection against the virus and helped reduce hospitalizations and deaths.

Although Biden, through his long Senate experience, created bipartisan congressional support for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which he signed in November 2021, Republicans would later blame its $1.2 trillion price tag for fueling inflation, which rose to 7 percent during Biden’s first year in office. Nevertheless, it improved federal highways, funded high-speed rail lines, rebuilt bridges, and bolstered transportation safety.

The president’s second summer in the White House produced welcome news for stimulating the U.S. economy, with Biden signing two major bills within a week of each other. On August 9, 2022, the president signed the CHIPS and Science Act, which appropriated $280 billion for semiconductor and chip research and manufacturing. On August 16, he signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which aimed to reduce the federal budget, lowered prescription drug prices, and invested in domestic energy production, especially clean energy.

Biden also issued an executive order cancelling up to $10,000 of student financial aid debt or $20,000 for holders of Pell Grants. Progressives cheered Biden’s efforts to reduce or eliminate burdensome student loan debts, but a conservative Supreme Court, shaped by Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), voided what would have been the president’s most impactful version of the policy. This failed attempt at student loan relief, combined with inflation that raised the costs of food, fuel, mortgage rates, and nearly all consumer goods, soured many Americans on the state of the economy, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to stress improving macroeconomic indicators and the gradual decline of inflation to below 3 percent by 2024.

By the time Biden left office in 2025, all major financial indicators showed the United States to be among the strongest economies in the world, having recovered faster and more broadly from the Covid crash than comparable nations around the globe. Yet many Americans did not feel these macro-economic advances in their household budgets.

Immigration

Immigration had grown as a pressing issue in the United States partly because President Trump’s emphasis on it, making it a key issue in his campaigns and during his administrations. President Biden assigned the conundrum of immigration policy to Vice President Harris who was to encourage Mexico and Central American countries, such as Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, to address their economies, drug trade, gang violence, and famine. These issues propelled the majority of immigrants and asylum seekers to seek entry at the southern U.S. border. Indeed, immigration encounters there nearly doubled during the Biden administration to more than 2 million per year.

In 2024, Congress considered a bipartisan border bill that would have given the president emergency expulsion authority and increased the threshold for screening asylum seekers, but it also created a new protection program for them. The proposal provided pathway to citizenship for Afghan allies, 50,000 more green cards annually, and protection for dependent children for H-1B visa holders. When 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump encouraged Republican members to oppose the legislation so that he could use immigration as a campaign issue against Democrats, he succeeded, and the bill failed.

With continuing low approval ratings, and the fact that presidents’ parties usually lose congressional seats in midterm elections, Democrats feared a shellacking in the November 2022 congressional races. Miraculously, they eked out a slim Senate majority (51-49) but lost the House of Representatives to a 222-213 Republican takeover.

Shortly after the 2022 congressional elections, Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a legal union between two individuals that must be recognized at the federal and state levels. As vice president, Biden had expressed his support for marriage equality, even ahead of President Obama, and his administration supported more LGBTQI+ rights initiatives than any presidency in history, including changing “dishonorable discharges” to “honorable” for most military veterans forced to leave the service due to sexual orientation. Biden also allowed transgender service members to remain in the military.

The Courts

So much of a president’s agenda rises or falls according to the Supreme Court’s decisions if his policies are challenged in courts. Biden’s long support for reproductive rights suffered a major blow when the nation’s highest court overturned federal abortion rights in 2022’s case of Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization. The president labelled the Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade a “tragic error,” encouraged Congress (unsuccessfully) to restore federal abortion rights, and signed an executive order to direct federal agencies, especially HHS, to facilitate access to reproductive care, including abortion and contraception. The administration strove to protect access to pharmaceutical abortion and the right of interstate travel for those seeking the procedure.

The Court also struck down the use of affirmative action (that is, racial preferences) in higher education admissions. Biden, however, gave Black Americans reason to celebrate when he signed the law creating Juneteenth as a national holiday and approved the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which civil rights proponents had advocated for decades. Another win for racial equity occurred when Biden fulfilled his 2020 campaign promise to place the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. Federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson replaced Justice Stephen Breyer in 2022. She formed a three-person liberal bloc, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, that often found itself outnumbered by five or six of the conservative justices in many key cases on social issues, including in the landmark abortion and affirmative action decisions.

Gun Safety

Another issue continued to disrupt societal peace and security during the Biden years—mass shootings, especially of school children. On May 24, 2022, a young man entered an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, opened fire with an automatic rifle, and murdered 19 children and 2 teachers. It was almost a decade since Vice President Biden had urged Congress to pass sensible gun-safety measures after the similar carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Under grotesquely identical circumstance, Biden delivered one of the most moving speeches of his presidency. From the White House’s Roosevelt Room, he began, “I had hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this again. Another massacre. . . . To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. . . . When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”

Just one month later he signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The first major gun safety law in three decades, it incentivized states to pass “red-flag” measures to alert authorities to persons deemed a threat to themselves or others, expanded a law to prevent domestic abusers from owning firearms, and applied background checks for gun purchasers to those ages 18 to 21. The legislation did not end gun violence, but it took a step forward in answering the president’s haunting query on when America would start to counter the gun lobby.

Biden supporters thought President Biden would be especially adept at international affairs and defense policy because of his long experience in foreign relations as a senator and vice president. Although presidents always face challenges on the global stage, Biden discovered that his crises were sometimes self-inflicted or at least unexpected.

Initially, after four years of erratic policy decisions under President Trump, Biden aimed to return stability to U.S. foreign policy, rejoin treaties and alliances the previous administration abandoned, and restore the country’s standing in the world. The Biden approach jettisoned Trump’s “America First” nationalism in favor of rebuilding relationships with U.S. allies and bolstering international institutions that Trump denigrated, such as NATO and the World Health Organization. On his first day in the Oval Office, President Biden signed an executive order returning the United States to the Paris Climate Agreement. He then focused on Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran and trying to limit China’s widening international influence.

Biden’s foreign policy team reflected a return to stability but also, some critics contended, a flashback to the past rather than a forward-looking agenda. While he built a diverse team, Biden also drew criticism for populating it with members of the Obama administration. His choice for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had served as deputy secretary of state and deputy security adviser under Obama. He had been a longtime adviser to Biden, having served the former vice president both in the Senate and as his national security adviser in the White House. Blinken steadfastly supported building strong partnerships around the world. “Put simply,” Blinken said in 2016, “the world is safer for the American people when we have friends, partners, and allies.”

Other Obama White House alumni who served President Biden were Linda Thomas-Greenfield, ambassador to the United Nations, and Samantha Power, director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Biden named Alejandro Mayorkas, who was deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in Obama’s second term, to head that department. Mayorkas had also served as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration. He was the first immigrant and Latino secretary of homeland security.

Biden chose Avril Haines, who had served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and deputy national security adviser under Obama, as his director of national intelligence, making her the first woman to hold that crucial job.

Biden nominated retired Army General Lloyd Austin as secretary of the Defense Department. A four-star general who had served in the military for 41 years, Austin had led the U.S. Central Command from 2013 to 2016, the first African American to do so. He became the first Black defense secretary. Some observers objected to Biden’s choice because it placed a former military leader in a traditionally civilian role. Austin also faced another obstacle: the law requires at least seven years of retirement from active military service for a defense secretary to take up leadership of the Pentagon. Austin needed a waiver from Congress, where some lawmakers expressed hesitation after President Trump sought a dispensation for his first defense secretary, retired Marine Corps general, Jim Mattis. Biden was said to lean toward Austin for the job because of his experience with complex logistical operations in his previous roles, a skill that might be needed to tackle the distribution of coronavirus vaccines.

China

In an effort to limit China’s growing influence around the world, President Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a bilateral meeting in San Francisco late in 2022. They seemed to have a friendly enough connection, but tensions arose early in 2023 when Biden ordered a high-altitude balloon that China had floated over the entire United States from coast to coast shot down. Chinese threats against Taiwan also added to the strains between the world’s two superpowers. American Marines started training in the South Pacific for island-to-island combat. Trade and intellectual property disputes only added to the inflamed relations.

Afghanistan

As Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden had argued vociferously for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader who had planned the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America in 2001. As General David Petraeus noted, Afghanistan was never going to become Switzerland, but the Obama administration hoped that Afghan security forces, trained by the American military, could hold the line against the Taliban’s return to power.

After President Trump reached a peace agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 that called for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, President Biden finally had the opportunity to follow through on that withdrawal. But the chaotic departure of American troops in August 2021 triggered the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces, the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, and scenes of desperate Afghans hanging onto American C-130 aircrafts as they raced down the runway from the civilian airport. The visuals recalled America’s 1975 withdrawal from Saigon, Vietnam, with the U.S. allies scrambling for the last helicopter to depart from the American embassy’s rooftop. During the chaotic departure from Afghanistan, 13 American service members lost their lives when a terrorist suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at the Kabul airport’s perimeter.

For the Biden administration, which had contrasted itself against Trump’s presidency by proclaiming its discipline and expertise, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan represented a stunning blunder and public relations nightmare. It did not matter that two-thirds of Americans had wanted to exit the “endless war” of two decades in South Asia; the chaotic scenes damaged the administration. The president’s approval ratings plummeted to 40 percent from his initial high of 57 percent and never rebounded to more than 45 percent—and that only came after he exited the 2024 presidential race.

Russia-Ukraine War

When President Biden took office, he reaffirmed America’s support for NATO, which eased European allies’ fears over Trump’s threats to withdraw from the post-World War II treaty. But when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, in part over the former Soviet republic’s desire to join the western alliance, Biden encountered the treaty’s limits. Americans were in no mood to place boots on the ground in Ukraine. The American military advisers and materiel thwarted Russia’s immediate takeover, but the war dragged on.

The United States led more than 50 allies in coordinating assistance to the embattled country. In addition, American monetary aid kept the Ukrainian government, led by democratically elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, afloat, and USAID relief included medical kits, food, and shelter.

The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Russia to weaken its economic and financial institutions, along with oligarchic supporters of President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime. The United States used diplomatic channels to condemn Russia’s invasion of a sovereign nation and its war crimes against Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.

Ultimately, the Biden administration succeeded in avoiding escalation of a war with Russia and refused to place American troops on the ground. By the time Biden left office in early 2025, his administration had supplied nearly $70 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began, including missiles, artillery, armored vehicles, and support equipment for F-16 fighter jets. Yet many Americans, including Vice President JD Vance, upset over the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, felt that the United States should have no involvement in Ukraine’s battle with Russia.

Hamas Attack on Israel

Adding to this difficult foreign policy landscape was Hamas’s devastating surprise attack on Israeli territory and settlements on October 7, 2023. Palestinian terrorists brutally murdered at least 1,200 Israeli and foreign citizens (including 46 Americans) and kidnapped some 250 hostages into the Gaza Strip. Biden was now forced to struggle to play peacemaker in the Middle East in addition to Eastern Europe.

Biden flew immediately after the Hamas attack to Jerusalem, where he embraced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and promised U.S. support (minus troops) to retaliate against Hamas. Like all American presidents since modern Israel’s 1948 founding, Biden prioritized Israeli security. Yet the Israeli attacks that destroyed the Gaza Strip and led to a humanitarian crisis, along with Netanyahu’s expansion of the war to Lebanon and Iran, divided Democrats, as well as Republicans, and prompted pro-Palestinian demonstrations, especially on American college campuses.

As with Ukraine, the Biden administration provided financial aid, weapons, munitions, intelligence, and humanitarian aid to Israel in its war against Hamas. In spring 2024, Biden signed a foreign assistance bill that included $17 billion for the Israelis. More than 100 arms transfers went from the United States to the Israeli Defense Force, and America approved a $20 billion sale of fighter jets and other materiel to the IDF. Biden also ordered two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region in an effort to deter more Hamas aggression.

Biden continued to denounce Hamas’s sneak attack and barbarous actions against Israel, defended its right of self-defense, and condemned anti-Semitism. At the same time, however, the administration urged Israel to decrease civilian casualties in Gaza—what some pro-Palestinian commentators and the International Criminal Court labeled a genocide. With Secretary of State Anthony Blinken engaging in shuttle diplomacy, Biden attempted to broker cease fires, hostage exchanges, and normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. He supported American humanitarian assistance to Gaza, including the construction of a pier on the strip’s coastline. Yet some members of his own party expressed disappointment that the administration refused to approve a UN Security Council Resolution to move forward full membership for Palestine in the international body.

Biden’s seeming ineffectiveness in bringing neither the Russia-Ukraine War nor the Middle East wars to an end undoubtedly raised concerns about the president’s effectiveness and contributed to his eventual withdrawal from the 2024 race.

With Biden’s stunning announcement that he would step out of his reelection campaign on July 21, 2024, his approval rating actually rose as Americans gave the faltering president some credit for finally accepting the inevitable march of time. Perhaps he could ride off into his post-presidency with some dignity and hope that he would be granted enough years to remake his legacy, badly damaged by failures that seemed to outweigh successes and blame among Democrats that he caused Trump’s return to the presidency.

Like all modern presidents who left office, Biden set to work on his White House memoir. Most such books take several years to complete, but Biden noted that his publisher required a faster schedule, undoubtedly recognizing the former president’s advanced age and debilitation.

His editor was prescient. On May 18, 2025, Biden announced that doctors had diagnosed him with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. He began treatment immediately, with the unstinting support of former First Lady Jill Biden.

Biden’s presidential papers have been placed in the National Archives, while he and his advisers discuss where a Joe Biden Presidential Library might be constructed.

Long before Joe Biden’s 2025 cancer diagnosis, he had suffered major life calamities with two family tragedies that shaped his personal and political life. As a University of Delaware student on spring break in 1964, Biden on a whim flew from Fort Lauderdale to Nassau—it was his first plane flight—and, as he told biographer Jules Witcover, “that trip changed everything.” In Nassau, he met Neilia Hunter, a Syracuse University student, and fell in love at first sight. The next weekend, he traveled to Syracuse and sat in Neilia’s dorm lobby until he saw her. “You know what he said?” Neilia revealed afterward to a friend. “He told me he’s going to be a senator by the time he’s thirty. And then, he’s going to be president.” They married in 1966. Their son Beau was born in 1969, followed by Hunter in 1970, and Naomi, or Amy as the family called her, in 1971.

On December 18, 1972, after Biden won an unexpected victory in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat, he was in Washington making preparations when Neilia took the children Christmas shopping in Wilmington. As she pulled the station wagon into an intersection, a tractor trailer smashed into the driver’s side, knocking the car 150 feet down the road and into a ditch. Neilia and baby Amy were dead on arrival at Wilmington Medical Center. Beau suffered numerous bone fractures, requiring a full body cast to heal them. Hunter sustained head injuries.

Biden wasn’t sure he should accept his Senate seat, but colleagues there, especially Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) and Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), no stranger to family tragedies, urged him to stay and eased him through his emotional crisis. Biden’s love of the institution can be traced to the compassion both Republican and Democratic senators showered upon him: the Senate became his family. Biden agreed to a six-month trial as a new senator, but he would live at home in Delaware and return each evening by train to be with his sons, earning himself a sobriquet, “Amtrak Joe,” that added to his populist image.

In 1975, Biden met Jill Jacobs, a student at the University of Delaware almost nine years his junior. She embraced the Biden family, and Beau and Hunter adored her, prompting the boys to advise their father: “We think we should marry Jill.” The couple was married in 1977. Their daughter Ashley was born in 1981. Jill was instrumental in rebuilding the family, raising Beau and Hunter as her own sons.

Biden’s second family tragedy came in 2015 when Beau died of brain cancer in May. Biden had been contemplating a presidential bid in 2016 but now wavered on whether he had the strength for a campaign. In August 2015, Biden had gained his strongest position in the polls in six months. His favorability numbers were higher than those of anyone running in either party, including Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He scored high marks on trustworthiness, honesty, and empathy, and he outpaced Clinton in voter surveys in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. Biden attracted momentum, and the media speculated about his candidacy. Yet he was still in mourning, and Obama favored Clinton. On October 21, 2015, Biden announced that he had decided not to run.

More sorrows invaded the Biden family when Hunter’s drug addiction, business activities, personal misbehavior, and tax evasion landed him in trouble with the law, provoking a scandal during his father’s presidency. After a plea deal collapsed in summer 2023, a federal court found Hunter guilty of illegal possession of a gun and lying about his drug use when he purchased it. In September 2024, he pleaded guilty to federal tax charges for failure to pay $1.4 million owed the IRS. The court set a sentencing date for December 16, 2024, when he faced up to 17 years in prison.

After repeatedly stating that he would not pardon Hunter, on December 1, 2024, President Biden issued him full and unconditional clemency for all federal offenses committed between 2014 and 2024. The president believed that Hunter had been the victim of politically motivated prosecutions and concluded, “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.” Perhaps some did, but Congress members from both parties criticized the executive pardon.

Biden’s father imparted an important lesson to his son from his life of hard knocks as the family’s breadwinner, which instilled resilience in both men. Through crushing tragedies and disappointments in his personal and political lives, he fondly repeated one of his father’s favorite maxims. “Champ, it’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how quickly you get up."

So close to his leaving office, it is hard to know how history will remember the Biden presidency, but certainly he will be remembered for his almost half-century of public service in the Senate, vice presidency, and White House. His support of civil rights for minorities and women, access to affordable health insurance, and reducing income inequality defined many of his policy choices in each office he held.

Calming the nation after the January 6, 2021, insurrection by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol and during the Covid crisis started his presidency down the right path. His return to America’s leadership of the free world and concern for a cleaner environment, along with government investment in high-tech industries and U.S. households, bolstered progressivism. Biden’s attempt to lessen student loan debt, if not for the Supreme Court’s voiding the policy, would have lifted significant financial burdens from generations of Americans.

Yet, his infusion of government money into an economy stalled by the pandemic sparked inflation that hit Americans’ budgets so hard that many never credited him with improving the country’s financial outlook. Combined with his failures in Afghanistan and the challenges in Ukraine and Israel, the debit side of his presidential ledger tilts toward the negative.

The irony of Biden’s skipping the 2016 race is that he might have defeated Trump when Hillary Clinton did not. Instead, the 46th president’s stumbles, literally and figuratively, have caused many to wonder if they assured Trump’s return to the White House as the 47th chief executive. The resilience that Biden learned from his father may have led to obstinacy and his refusal to step out of the 2024 campaign until it was too late for the Democratic Party to run a successful campaign. Moreover, Democrats struggled to find a unified message to counter Trumpism after his second election.

Finally, while some modern presidents left office with low approval ratings (Truman, Carter, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush), they had many years of post-presidency to rehabilitate their images and legacies. At 82 upon leaving the White House, and with a serious cancer diagnosis, Biden will not have that opportunity.