Biden Administration Controversies

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice president from 2009 to 2017 and represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009.

Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965 and the Syracuse University College of Law in 1968. He was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 and the U.S. Senate in 1972. As a senator, Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and Foreign Relations Committee. He drafted and led passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act. He also oversaw six U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including contentious hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991 but voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002. Biden ran unsuccessfully for the 1988 and 2008 Democratic presidential nominations. In 2008, Obama chose Biden as his running mate, and he was a close counselor to Obama as vice president. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate, and they defeated Republican incumbents Donald Trump and Mike Pence. He became the first president to serve with a female or African American vice president.

As president, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent recession. He signed bipartisan bills on infrastructure and manufacturing. Biden proposed the Build Back Better Act, which failed in Congress, but aspects of which were incorporated into the Inflation Reduction Act that he signed into law in 2022. He appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court of the United States. In his foreign policy, the U.S. reentered the Paris Agreement. Biden oversaw the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops that ended the war in Afghanistan, leading to the Taliban seizing control. He responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by imposing sanctions on Russia and authorizing aid to Ukraine. During the Gaza war, Biden condemned the actions of Hamas as terrorism, strongly supported Israel's military efforts and sent limited humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. A temporary ceasefire proposal he backed was adopted shortly before his presidency ended.

Concerns about Biden's age and health persisted throughout his term. He became the first president to turn 80 while in office. He began his presidency with majority support, but saw his approval ratings decline significantly throughout his presidency, in part due to public frustration over inflation, which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 but dropped to 2.9% by the end of his presidency. Biden initially ran for reelection and, after the Democratic primaries, became the party's presumptive nominee in the 2024 presidential election. After his performance in the first presidential debate, renewed scrutiny from across the political spectrum about his cognitive ability led him to withdraw his candidacy. In 2022 and 2024, Biden's administration was ranked favorably by historians and scholars, diverging from unfavorable public assessments of his tenure. As of 2025, he is the oldest living former U.S. president.

Early life (1942–1965)

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born on November 20, 1942, at St. Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. He is the oldest child in a Catholic family of mostly Irish descent. Biden has a sister, Valerie, and two brothers, James and Francis.

Home life

Joseph Sr. had been wealthy, and the family purchased a home in the affluent Long Island suburb of Garden City, New York, in 1946. After he suffered business setbacks around the time Biden was seven years old, the family lived with Jean's parents in Scranton for several years. Scranton fell into economic decline during the 1950s, and Joseph Sr. could not find steady work. Beginning in 1953, when Biden was ten, the family lived in an apartment in Claymont, Delaware, before moving to a house in nearby Mayfield, Delaware. Joseph Sr. later became a successful used-car salesman, maintaining the family in a middle-class lifestyle.''Almanac of American Politics'' 2008, p. 364.

Sports and young adulthood

At Archmere Academy in Claymont, Biden played baseball and was a standout halfback and wide receiver on the high school football team. Though a poor student, he was class president in his junior and senior years. He graduated in 1961. At the University of Delaware in Newark, Biden briefly played freshman football, and, as an unexceptional student, received a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in history and political science in 1965.

Marriages, law school, and early career (1966–1973)

Biden married Neilia Hunter, a student at Syracuse University, on August 27, 1966, after overcoming her parents' disinclination for her to wed a Catholic. Their wedding was held in a Catholic church in Skaneateles, New York. They had three children: Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III, Robert Hunter Biden, and Naomi Christina "Amy" Biden.

Biden earned a Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968. In his first year of law school, he failed a course because he plagiarized a law review article, but the failing grade was later stricken. His grades were relatively poor, and he graduated 76th in a class of 85. He was admitted to the Delaware bar in 1969.

Biden clerked at a Wilmington law firm headed by prominent local Republican William Prickett in 1968 and self-identified as a Republican. Reprinted in He disliked incumbent Democratic Delaware governor Charles L. Terry's conservative racial politics and supported a more liberal Republican, Russell W. Peterson, who defeated Terry in 1968. Local Republicans attempted to recruit Biden, but he registered as an independent because of his distaste for Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon.

Law practices

In 1969, Biden practiced law, first as a public defender and then at a law firm headed by a locally active Democrat,''Current Biography Yearbook 1987'', p. 43. who named him to the Democratic Forum, a group trying to reform and revitalize the state party; Biden subsequently reregistered as a Democrat. He and another attorney also formed a law firm. Corporate law did not appeal to him, and criminal law did not pay well. He supplemented his income by managing properties.

Biden ran for the fourth district seat on the New Castle County Council in 1970 on a liberal platform that included support for public housing in the suburbs. Biden won the general election, defeating Republican Lawrence T. Messick, and took office on January 5, 1971. He served until January 1, 1973. During his time on the county council, Biden opposed large highway projects, which he argued might disrupt Wilmington neighborhoods.

Biden had not openly supported or opposed the Vietnam War until he ran for Senate and opposed Richard Nixon's conduct of the war. While studying at the University of Delaware and Syracuse University, Biden obtained five student draft deferments. Based on a physical examination, he was given a conditional medical deferment in 1968; in 2008, a spokesperson for Biden said his having had "asthma as a teenager" was the reason.

1972 U.S. Senate campaign in Delaware

Biden defeated Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs to become the junior U.S. senator from Delaware in 1972. He was the only Democrat willing to challenge Boggs and, with minimal campaign funds, was thought to have no chance of winning. Family members managed and staffed the campaign, which relied on meeting voters face-to-face and hand-distributing position papers, an approach made feasible by Delaware's small size. He received help from the AFL-CIO and Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell. His platform focused on the environment, withdrawal from Vietnam, civil rights, mass transit, equitable taxation, health care and public dissatisfaction with "politics as usual". A few months before the election, Biden trailed Boggs by almost thirty percentage points, but his energy, attractive young family, and ability to connect with voters' emotions worked to his advantage, and he won with 50.5% of the vote.

Death of first wife and daughter

A few weeks after Biden was elected senator, his wife Neilia and one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed in an automobile accident in Hockessin, Delaware, on December 18, 1972. Their sons Beau (aged 3) and Hunter (aged 2) were in the car and were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. He considered resigning to care for them, but Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield persuaded him not to. Biden contemplated suicide and was filled with anger and religious doubt. He wrote that he "felt God had played a horrible trick" on him and had trouble focusing on work.

Second marriage

Biden met teacher Jill Tracy Jacobs in 1975 on a blind date. They married at the United Nations chapel in New York on June 17, 1977, and spent their honeymoon at Lake Balaton in the Hungarian People's Republic. Biden credits her with the renewal of his interest in politics and life.

In 1981, the couple had a daughter, Ashley Biden, who is a social worker, activist, and fashion designer. Jill helped raise her stepsons, Hunter and Beau, who were seven and eight respectively at the time of her marriage. Hunter has worked as a Washington lobbyist and investment adviser; his business dealings, personal life, and legal troubles have come under significant scrutiny during his father's presidency. In December 2024, Biden pardoned Hunter following his conviction on gun and tax charges despite repeated promises that he would not do so. Beau became an Army judge-advocate in Iraq and later Delaware attorney general before dying of brain cancer in 2015.

Teaching

From 1991 to 2008, as an adjunct professor, Biden co-taught a seminar on constitutional law at Widener University School of Law.

U.S. Senate (1973–2009)

Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, Biden was reelected in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002, and 2008, regularly receiving about 60% of the vote. Aged 30 when first elected, he was the seventh-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was junior senator to William Roth until Roth was defeated in 2000. He remains one of the longest-serving senators in U.S. history.

Senate activities

During his early years in the Senate, Biden focused on consumer protection and environmental issues and called for greater government accountability. In a 1974 interview, he described himself as liberal on civil rights and liberties, senior citizens' concerns and healthcare, but conservative on other issues, including abortion and military conscription. Biden was the first U.S. senator to endorse Governor Jimmy Carter for president in the 1976 Democratic primary. Carter won the Democratic nomination and the 1976 election. Biden also worked on arms control. After Congress failed to ratify the SALT II Treaty signed in 1979 by Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev and President Carter, Biden met with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and secured changes that addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's objections. He received considerable attention when he excoriated Secretary of State George Shultz at a Senate hearing for the Reagan administration's support of South Africa despite its policy of apartheid. In a congressional hearing in 1984, he objected to the Strategic Defense Initiative plan to construct autonomous systems of ICBM defense.

In the mid-1970s, Biden was one of the Senate's strongest opponents of race-integration busing. His Delaware constituents strongly opposed it, and such opposition nationwide later led his party to mostly abandon school integration policies. In his first Senate campaign, Biden had expressed support for busing to remedy ''de jure'' segregation, as in the South, but opposed its use to remedy ''de facto'' segregation arising from racial patterns of neighborhood residency, as in Delaware; he opposed a proposed constitutional amendment banning busing entirely. Biden supported a 1976 measure forbidding the use of federal funds for transporting students beyond the school closest to them. He co-sponsored a 1977 amendment closing loopholes in that measure, which President Carter signed into law in 1978.

Biden became ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1981. He was a Democratic floor manager for the successful passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act in 1984. His supporters praised him for modifying some of the law's worst provisions, and it was his most important legislative accomplishment to that time.''Current Biography Yearbook 1987'', p. 44. In 1994, Biden helped pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which included a ban on assault weapons, and the Violence Against Women Act, which he has called his most significant legislation. The 1994 crime law was unpopular among progressives and criticized for resulting in mass incarceration; Biden later expressed regret for passing the bill.

Biden voted for a 1993 provision that deemed homosexuality incompatible with military life, thereby banning gay people from serving in the armed forces. In 1996, he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, thereby barring people in such marriages from equal protection under federal law and allowing states to do the same. In 2015, the act was ruled unconstitutional in '' Obergefell v. Hodges''.

Biden was critical of Independent Counsel Ken Starr during the 1990s Whitewater controversy and Clinton–Lewinsky scandal investigations, saying "it's going to be a cold day in hell" before another independent counsel would be granted similar powers. He voted to acquit during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. During the 2000s, Biden sponsored bankruptcy legislation sought by credit card issuers. Bill Clinton vetoed the bill in 2000, but it passed in 2005 as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, with Biden being one of only 18 Democrats to vote for it, while leading Democrats and consumer rights organizations opposed it. As a senator, Biden strongly supported increased Amtrak funding and rail security.

Brain surgeries

In February 1988, after several episodes of severe neck pain, Biden underwent surgery to correct a leaking intracranial berry aneurysm. While recuperating, he suffered a pulmonary embolism. A second aneurysm was surgically repaired in May. His recuperation kept him away from the Senate for seven months.

Senate Judiciary Committee

Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He chaired it from 1987 to 1995 and was a ranking minority member from 1981 to 1987 and again from 1995 to 1997.

As chair, Biden presided over two highly contentious U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings. When Robert Bork was nominated in 1988, Biden reversed his approvalgiven in an interview the previous yearof a hypothetical Bork nomination. Conservatives were angered, but at the hearings' close Biden was praised for his fairness, humor, and courage. Rejecting the arguments of some Bork opponents, Biden framed his objections to Bork in terms of the conflict between Bork's strong originalism and the view that the U.S. Constitution provides rights to liberty and privacy beyond those explicitly enumerated in its text. Bork's nomination was rejected in the committee by a 5–9 vote and then in the full Senate, 42–58.

During Clarence Thomas's nomination hearings in 1991, Biden's questions on constitutional issues were often convoluted to the point that Thomas sometimes lost track of them, and Thomas later wrote that Biden's questions were akin to "beanballs". After the committee hearing closed, the public learned that Anita Hill had accused Thomas of making unwelcome sexual comments when they had worked together. Biden had known of some of these charges, but initially shared them only with the committee because Hill was then unwilling to testify. The committee hearing was reopened and Hill testified, but Biden did not permit testimony from other witnesses, such as a woman who had made similar charges and experts on harassment. The full Senate confirmed Thomas by a 52–48 vote, with Biden opposed. Liberal legal advocates and women's groups felt strongly that Biden had mishandled the hearings and not done enough to support Hill. In 2019, he told Hill he regretted his treatment of her, but Hill said afterward she remained unsatisfied.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He became its ranking minority member in 1997 and chaired it from June 2001 to 2003 and 2007 to 2009. His positions were generally liberal internationalist. He collaborated effectively with Republicans and sometimes went against elements of his own party. During this time he met with at least 150 leaders from 60 countries and international organizations, becoming a well-known Democratic voice on foreign policy.

Biden voted against authorization for the Gulf War in 1991. He became interested in the Yugoslav Wars after hearing about Serbian abuses during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991. Once the Bosnian War broke out, Biden was among the first to call for the " lift and strike" policy. George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton were both reluctant to implement the policy, fearing Balkan entanglement. In April 1993, Biden had a tense three-hour meeting with Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević. Biden worked on several versions of legislative language urging the U.S. toward greater involvement. He has called his role in affecting Balkan policy in the mid-1990s his "proudest moment in public life" related to foreign policy. In 1999, during the Kosovo War, Biden supported the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. He and Senator John McCain co-sponsored the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, which called on Clinton to use all necessary force, including ground troops, to confront Milošević over Yugoslav actions toward Kosovo Albanians.

Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Biden was a strong supporter of the War in Afghanistan, saying, "Whatever it takes, we should do it." As head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said in 2002 that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security and there was no other option than to "eliminate" that threat. In October 2002, he voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq

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