Politico

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden on Wednesday unveiled the official portraits of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama during a White House ceremony.

The Obamas joined the Bidens in the East Room for the reveal of the portraits, which were acquired and commissioned by the White House Historical Association. Barack Obama’s portrait was painted by Robert McCurdy, and Michelle Obama’s portrait was painted by Sharon Sprung. Both were painted from photographs taken by the respective artists.

“Jill and I have been waiting to host events at the White House for a long time coming out of the pandemic, and it’s fitting that we can do that now by unveiling the portraits of two great friends, two great Americans,” Biden said at the ceremony.

Barack Obama’s portrait features the former president standing at the center of the canvas wearing a black suit with a gray tie. McCurdy is known for his photorealist portraits and stark white backgrounds, having painted notable subjects such as Toni Morrison and Muhammad Ali.

Michelle Obama’s portrait features the former first lady seated on a sofa in the Red Room of the White House, wearing a formal blue dress. The portrait is reminiscent of Sprung’s other paintings that typically feature a jewel-like color palette.

Biden opened his speech at Wednesday’s ceremony with praise for the Obamas and their legacy, calling Barack Obama one of the consequential presidents in our history” and Michelle Obama “one of the most consequential first ladies.”

Obama returned the praise for Biden in his speech just after the portraits were unveiled, calling him “a man who became a true partner and a good friend.”

“Joe, it is now America’s good fortune to have you as president,” Obama said. “You have guided us through some perilous times. You’ve built on and gone beyond the work we all did together.”

The portrait unveiling is a decadeslong tradition, going back to 1978 when President Jimmy Carter invited his immediate predecessor, Gerald Ford, back to the White House. The Obama unveiling event would have traditionally been held during the Trump presidency, but Donald Trump refused to hold the event.

When asked whether Biden would invite the man he’s called a danger to democracy, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre punted in the press briefing on Tuesday.

“We defer those questions to the White House Historical Association,” she said. “They lead the process on official portraits for both presidents and their spouses.”

The Biden administration is requesting $47 billion in funding from Congress to aid Ukraine, combat Covid-19 and monkeypox, offer relief for natural disasters.

The White House on Friday urged Congress to pass a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government open past the end of the 2022 fiscal year on Sept. 30, when current funding will expire, administration officials said. The White House said it is asking that the continuing resolution Congress also provides funding for “immediate needs” in the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, such as aid to Ukraine and Covid relief.

In the funding request, the White House will seek $11.7 billion in Ukraine security and economic assistance, $2 billion to address the effects of Russia’s war on domestic energy supply, $22.4 billion for the domestic fight against Covid-19 and $3.9 billion for domestic efforts to fight monkeypox — as well as $600 million to combat the monkeypox spread globally. The administration is also requesting $6.5 billion to aid recovery for recent natural disaster events, such as major flooding in Kentucky and wildfires in California.

“This Administration will continue to work with members of both parties in Congress to meet these critical needs for the American people, and we look forward to reaching a bipartisan funding agreement that advances national priorities in the coming fiscal year,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said in a blog post Friday.

Congress passed a $40 billion military and humanitarian aid package in May for Ukraine that provided a wide range of programs, including weapons and assistance to Kyiv amid its efforts to repel a Russian invasion. Young said that to date, roughly three-quarters of the aid Congress had provided to aid Ukraine has been disbursed or committed, and that those resources were only intended to last through September.

“We have rallied the world to support the people of Ukraine as they defend their democracy and we cannot allow that support to Ukraine to run dry,” she said.

The Covid-19 funding request comes after months of unsuccessful attempts by the White House to get Congress to bolster the administration’s response to Covid-19, from which an average of about 400 people continue to die each day. The administration has already announced it will stop its program sending out free at-home Covid-19 tests due to lack of funding, and said that it will have to stop paying for vaccinations soon, shifting the cost onto consumers and their insurers.

“Without additional funding, we will have to make even more difficult decisions,” an administration official said Friday.

The request for nearly $4 billion to fight the monkeypox virus comes as the administration is struggling to contain the ongoing outbreak, which has infected roughly 20,000 across the U.S. The administration’s response has been hampered by hard-to-access testing early in the outbreak and a shortage of the FDA-approved monkeypox vaccine.

In a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency noted that the number of new cases showed signs of slowing, but also warned that, if not contained, “low-level transmission could continue indefinitely.”

“While we have accelerated the distribution of hundreds of thousands of vaccines, made testing more available, and expanded access to tens of thousands of courses of treatment to reach the highest-risk population, we cannot let up until we end the current outbreak and are prepared for future monkeypox or smallpox outbreaks,” Young said in the Friday blog post.

Administration officials said Friday that passing the short-term funding request would provide Congress with additional time to come to a decision on longer-term funding for fiscal year 2023. But getting Democrats and Republicans in Congress to agree on even a short-term stopgap spending bill could prove difficult, especially if it includes certain energy permitting provisions. If the two parties can agree on a short-term bill, a second funding clash for the remainder of fiscal year 2023 could arise in Congress’ post-election “lame-duck session.”

With the political winds at his back, President Joe Biden will command a prime-time stage Thursday in Philadelphia to call out the extremism that he believes fuels many of the Republicans on the ballot in November.

Biden will make the case that the fate of the nation’s very democracy will be at stake in the upcoming midterms, White House aides previewed. A senior White House official cautioned the night was not about any particular politician, including former President Donald Trump.

But the official said Biden will speak “very directly to the American people” and take square aim at the so-called MAGA Republicans who do not recognize the results of the 2020 election and who have espoused violence as a legitimate means of political discourse.

Aides stressed that the speech, given just days before the unofficial Labor Day kickoff to the stretch run of the midterm campaign season, would not be overtly political. But it was difficult to read it as anything other than Biden’s attempt to frame the stakes of an election once again dominated by Trump after an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home turned up classified information and intensified talk of possible criminal charges for the former president

And it will come as a split screen: Just hours Biden before speaks will be the latest legal hearing over the boxes of classified documents found in Trump’s Palm Beach estate.

His speech will focus on the “continued battle for the soul of the nation,” the principle he cited as the animating force for launching his third — and ultimately successful — bid for the White House.

“This is a moment for him to speak to the people of this country about what’s at stake,” the senior White House official said, “what the threats are, and what the possibilities are for the country to move together as a democratic nation.”

Aides said Biden will make clear that he believes some mainstream Republicans reject Trump’s ideology, those like Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who lost a GOP primary after serving on the House Jan. 6 select committee. And the president will urge others in the GOP to finally turn their backs on Trump.

Aides did not say whether or not Biden would call out Republicans by name — as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did in her briefing on Wednesday — as being examples of extremist politics. But they suggested that Biden would avoid other overtly divisive issues, like the battles over abortion rights and guns that have dominated the political landscape for much of the summer.

Biden, fresh off a summer that featured a series of significant legislative wins, has ratcheted up his attacks on Republicans in recent weeks. He occasionally calls out Trump by name, invoking Republican support for the Jan. 6 rioters and deeming some in the GOP as “semi-fascists.” He was to make a plea tonight, aides said, that democracy was not “an issue that should divide the two political parties,” according to the senior White House aide.

For Biden, the material and the setting will be familiar.

He has returned to Philadelphia time and again for landmark moments, using it as the backdrop for the 2019 campaign kickoff that led him to the White House. He returned there last summer for a fiery speech in defense of voting rights.

Biden had originally not planned to run in 2020 but declared that he felt that the nation’s identity and core values were endangered by Trump’s conduct in office, including his equivocating response to the outburst of racist violence in Charlottesville, Va.

The phrase “battle for the soul of the nation” has dominated his rhetoric since, and Biden has declared that the foundation of his presidency was to prove that democracies could still deliver for their people and stand up to rising autocracies across the globe. He vowed to run to heal the wounds opened by Trump’s term and has grown deeply dismayed, aides said, by the political polarization and anger that has only deepened during his own time in the White House.

In recent days, Biden and his top aides have called out the Republican response to the FBI search of Trump’s Palm Beach home. They note how some GOP lawmakers called to defund federal law enforcement while others have warned that violence could follow a possible Trump arrest. To Biden, that was just the latest transgression from a Republican Party he has told aides he barely recognizes — one that has remained in the thrall of Trump and in support of the insurrection.

The speech, expected to last about 25 minutes, comes at a moment of surprising political promise for Biden.

In recent weeks, gas prices have fallen, the Covid crisis grew less urgent and his domestic agenda was gradually passed. And his winning streak culminated with the resurrection of a $740 billion reconciliation bill that fulfilled longtime Democratic priorities such as climate change, drug pricing and taxes on corporations.

His poll numbers have risen to their highest point in months and Democrats have grown increasingly bullish about their chances about holding onto the Senate and potentially even the House. And as the 79-year-old Biden begins to ramp up his midterm campaign traveling, the speech in Philadelphia will be the second of three stops Biden will make in Pennsylvania alone this week.

The Keystone State blitz will culminate in what has become a totem for the president: the Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh. Biden marched there twice before when presidential speculation swirled around him, in 2015 and 2018. His appearance Monday, aides concede, will be closely watched for any possible hints about one last campaign.

Vice President Kamala Harris is staffing up and tapping a top operative from Harry Reid’s famed Nevada political operation.

Megan Jones, a longtime aide to the former Senate leader, is joining the vice president’s office ahead of the midterm elections, three people familiar with the hire tell POLITICO.

Jones, who worked as a senior adviser to Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign in Nevada, is set to begin in the VP’s office this week in a temporary position as a special government employee, one of the people said. In the role, likely to last a few months, Jones is expected to help with political planning, outreach and coordination, said a second person, describing her as a reliable, no-nonsense operative.

Harris’ team is gearing up to deploy the VP into battleground states in the midterms, and her office has relied on a mix of aides and outside informal advisors to shape some of her speeches and help prepare for the new phase.

Jones’ arrival comes amid waves of staff departures and hires in the VP’s office, including a new chief of staff, an overhaul of its communications team, and changes to the speechwriter ranks.

Harris’ senior aides have tried to impart a sense of stability while the VP in recent weeks has focused extensively on fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision to end abortion rights, meeting with state lawmakers from around the country on the issue.

Jones, a partner at the consulting firm Hilltop, spent more than 20 years with Reid, joining his 1998 reelection, helping build out the state Democratic Party and working on numerous statewide and legislative races in addition to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection.

Her clients have included the Mike Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety, Tom Steyer’s NextGen and the Western Conservation Foundation.

President Joe Biden overcame Covid, the presidential August curse and the legislative blockade built by members of his own party.

Now as the stretch run to the midterms begins, the White House is looking to aim big. The president over the next week will frame the stakes of the upcoming election as a referendum on democracy itself, while trying to push Democrats over the November finish line and lay the groundwork for himself in 2024.

It’s part of a blitz of upcoming travel, with aides wanting Biden to hit the road two or three times a week. Already, three stops have been planned for Pennsylvania alone, showcasing the importance of the battleground state for Democrats in both their 2022 state house and Senate bids, as well as in 2024 for, potentially, Biden’s own. It will culminate in what has become a totem for the president: the Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh. Biden marched there twice before when presidential speculation swirled around him, in 2015 and 2018. His appearance Monday, aides concede, will be closely watched for any possible hints about one last campaign.

Among Biden’s aides, the belief has begun to form that the worst may indeed be behind them. Even the president’s bout with Covid was seen, internally, as having a positive side effect: providing planners with far more leeway to get him on the road — the fear of infection having now been put off, at least, the next few months.

At his stop Tuesday in Wilkes-Barre, the president drew some of the sharpest contrasts yet with the GOP, thundering that “MAGA Republicans” were out of step with Americans on some of the nation’s most fundamental beliefs.

“You can’t be pro-law-enforcement and pro-insurrection. You can’t be the party of law and order and call the people who attacked the Capitol on the 6th ‘patriots,’” Biden said. “For God’s sake, whose side are you on?”

But potential hurdles remain: some Democrats, aides confirm, are still opting to steer clear of Biden on the campaign trail, and worries persist about inflation and a possible autumn surge of gas prices or Covid. Others have signaled that they would not want to appear with Biden. Those include Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who released an ad declaring “She doesn’t work for Joe Biden, she works for you.”

One top Democrat in close touch with the White House said for Biden to be fully viewed as a benefit rather than a liability, he has to come armed with deliverables for their states and districts: “It’s not the president as a mascot, it’s the president who wields power in support of the middle class.”

For now, however, senior West Wing aides say they feel vindicated in the course they have charted. At Biden’s political nadir this past year, senior aides laid out a case in which he would rebound politically as gas prices fell, the Covid crisis grew less urgent, and his domestic agenda was gradually passed.

Biden’s winning streak has, indeed, culminated with the resurrection of a $740 billion reconciliation bill that fulfilled longtime Democratic priorities like climate change, drug pricing and taxes on corporations. And to top it off, it’s come just as his predecessor plunged once more into legal peril, with the damaging headlines emanating from the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago threatening to drag down Republicans’ chances this fall.

Marking that moment, Biden will stir the echoes of both the nation’s and his own political past on Thursday. That’s when he will use Independence Hall in Philadelphia as the backdrop for his speech to declare the country’s core values – including democracy itself and America’s standing in the world – will be at stake this November. White House aides as of Tuesday were still debating whether the words “Donald Trump” would appear in the speech, according to two people familiar with the internal deliberations. And at his address in Wilkes-Barre, Biden notably took swipes at Senate Republicans — chief among them Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — without uttering names.

But whether Biden goes after Trump directly or not, aides say the speech will be a punishing broadside on the GOP, painting them as extremists out of touch with Americans over abortion, guns and voting rights. He previewed the new, harder attack line last week at a rally and fundraiser for the party in Maryland.

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”

Inside the White House, officials say there has been an obvious joy in the president that has been largely absent for months, amid negative headlines over inflation, gas prices, baby formula shortages, and criticism to his response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of federal abortion rights. With his newly boosted immunity from overcoming COVID and a rebound case, Biden gleefully took selfies with supporters for more than 10 minutes following his remarks last week in Maryland.

Others in the White House have been similarly infected by a renewed enthusiasm, with West Wing aides sending around Dark Brandon memes and tweets and news about falling gas prices. And after some debate, the White House social media team drew cheers from fellow staff for abandoning the high road and using its Twitter account to call out how the loudest critics of the student debt forgiveness plan received large government loans during the pandemic, which were later forgiven.

The vibe shift came after a remarkable run of summer successes, including bipartisan passage of separate pieces of legislation to increase semiconductor production; increase gun regulations and fund veterans’ health care; a drone strike that killed Al-Qaeda’s leader; blockbuster July jobs growth; signs of potentially cooling inflation; and, most of all, the reconciliation bill that came back to life after previous obstacles — Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) — finally signed off.

Biden’s approval ratings have climbed into the mid-40s, the highest they have been this year. And Democrats who are bullish about the party’s chances point to a history-bending swing in his numbers during a time when most experts predicted they would be set in stone: Since Eisenhower’s presidency, just one president has seen their approval rise from the fifth quarter of their tenures to the seventh.

Biden’s comeback arrived in a month that has often spelled trouble for presidents; both Barack Obama and Trump were plagued with tumultuous Augusts, and Biden himself saw his poll numbers plummet last year after the botched Afghanistan military withdrawal. But aides now believe that the president’s numbers could rise even higher when Democrats further establish contrasts with Republicans on abortion, the Jan. 6 hearings and now Trump’s conduct that led to the search of Mar-a-Lago.

“You’re always behind. You always have a different narrative before the next one really starts to take hold,” quipped John Anzalone, the longtime Biden pollster. “We’re on the offense and what’s more important is what the president and Democrats have done is give frontline Democrats a real contrast to draw with Republicans.”

President Joe Biden on Tuesday lambasted members of the Republican Party for encouraging political violence — including apparently South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

“No one expects politics to be patty cake. Hey, sometimes it gets mean as hell. But the idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying, ‘If such and such happens, there’ll be blood in the street.’ Where the hell are we?” Biden said.

The president was speaking at the Marts Center at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., not far from his birthplace of Scranton, where he detailed his $37 billion “Safer America Plan,” aimed at addressing community safety and crime prevention.

Toward the end of his campaign-style, fiery speech, Biden bristled as he talked about members of the Republican Party encouraging political violence. His reference to senior senators on television appeared to be a swipe at Graham, who over the weekend twice said there would be “riots in the street” if the Justice Department prosecutes former President Donald Trump for his handling of classified government documents after leaving the White House.

The president’s visit to Pennsylvania on Tuesday is his first of three over the next week to the midterm battleground state that will play a key role in determining control of Congress and the White House in 2024. He’ll speak on Thursday in Philadelphia about democracy and will return to the state for Pittsburgh’s annual Labor Day celebration on Monday.

Biden, who spent much of his speech talking about the need to fund police and take further steps to address gun violence — such as banning assault weapons — pivoted to the need to uphold the rule of law.

“A safer America requires all of us to uphold the rule of law. Not the rule of any one party or any one person,” the president said, telling the crowd that some members of the Republican Party have said political violence is necessary. “[Political violence] is never appropriate. Period. Never. Never. Never.”

The president then turned to the attack on the Capitol. Bringing his speech full circle, he talked about the police officers who lost their lives in connection with the Jan. 6 riot.

“Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friend in Congress. Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on [Jan. 6]. Don’t tell me. Can’t do it. For God’s sake, whose side are you on? Whose side are you on?” Biden said, raising his voice. “Look, you’re either on the side of the mob or the side of the police. You can’t be pro-law enforcement and pro-insurrection. You can’t be a party of law and order and call the people who attack the police on Jan. 6 patriots.”

Tony Ornato, the senior Secret Service official who served as a top aide in Donald Trump’s White House and faced scrutiny from the Jan. 6 select committee earlier this summer, announced his retirement Monday.

The agency confirmed Ornato’s retirement, which was announced internally earlier in the day. He’s the latest high-level official in the Secret Service to announce his departure in recent weeks. Spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said Ornato — who joined the Secret Service in 1997 — became eligible for retirement earlier this year and leaves the agency in good standing.

Ornato’s role in the Trump White House made national headlines after explosive testimony by former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who said he had briefed Trump and other White House officials about armed elements within Trump’s rally crowd on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

Although Ornato quickly signaled he was willing to testify in response to Hutchinson’s account, he has yet to appear for a new interview with the select committee, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

Asked about the status of those discussion, Guglielmi said “We have continuously made Tony Ornato available.” He noted, however, that Ornato is now a private citizen and no longer a federal employee.

For months after he had entered office, President Joe Biden had punted on his campaign promise of forgiving up to $10,000 in student loans. And as the debate over what to do lingered, aides began to take steps to try and manage internal deliberations.

Student loans were regularly in the top five issues in the correspondence that the White House received from Americans each week, according to a person familiar with an internal report. And White House officials at some point last year told the team handling that correspondence to simply stop selecting so many letters for Biden to review because he hadn’t made up his mind on the issue, according to a person briefed on the interaction.

As the president kept putting off a decision on canceling student loans, however, the prospect of restarting loans for millions of Americans continued to come to a head. His administration had been routinely extending a moratorium on student loan payments put in place at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. But at one point last fall, officials began to prepare seriously for resuming payments for tens of millions of Americans and they were prepared to do so without any decision on canceling debt, people familiar with the discussions said. An explosive December meeting with outside activists ensued and a last-ditch reprieve was formalized, in which the moratorium was extended.

On Wednesday, Biden finally signed off on his highly anticipated student loan assistance package. The plan will deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of relief to tens of millions of borrowers and transform the federal government’s student loan program. It will also extend the moratorium a final time, until Dec. 31, 2022, after which Biden vowed he would require borrowers to resume paying their loans.

The process by which the president came to this policy was contentious and often confusing, filled with high stakes negotiations, pleas from outside stakeholders, internal disagreements, and last-ditch lobbying efforts from key Democratic lawmakers. And in many ways, it grew to echo the governing style that has defined Biden’s tenure in elected office: deliberativeness that can frustrate those around him, a policy platform that seeks consensus, but a late-lean toward progressivism that ends up surprising his liberal critics.

Biden entered the presidency deeply skeptical of the idea of writing off large chunks of student loan debt. He questioned publicly whether he had the authority to do it, and he ruled out emphatically the $50,000 amount of loan forgiveness many progressives aggressively were pushing. From Day One, a coalition of activists, advocacy groups, labor unions and racial justice organizations waged a pressure campaign to move him on the matter.

“You’re not going to get everything that you’re looking for, but you must push for as much as possible,” said Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP and among the most vocal proponents of debt cancellation in regular communication with the White House.

Johnson was among those proponents of debt cancellation who agonized over the administration’s indecision on the issue. The White House extended the pause on student loan payments and interest — which began under the Trump administration — on four occasions, each time without an answer on the bigger question of broad-based relief.

But while outside advocates fretted, advisers who were internally pushing for broader cancellation believed time was on their side. They viewed the repeated extensions of the payment pause as helpful for keeping the issue alive and active on the president’s docket. Several people familiar with the discussions also said that drawing out the decision toward closer to the election helped amplify the political pressure on the White House to grant more generous relief to borrowers.

“We needed time to make a deliberate decision versus a gut reaction,” said one administration official who worked on the issue.

Still, there were hurdles. The conversations within the administration seemed to circle endlessly around many of the same complex legal, political and economic issues surrounding loan forgiveness, several people familiar with the deliberations said.

One person familiar with the administration’s thinking said that Biden was committed to making good on his campaign promise to cancel $10,000 of debt but that he drew a red line on the need to target the relief to borrowers who needed it the most — and away from higher-earning borrowers who did not.

White House discussions for months were centered around how Biden could cancel $10,000 of debt for various populations of borrowers. White House advisers considered a wide range of permutations for income limitations and targeted relief for individual groups of borrowers, such as public service workers, according to people familiar with the discussions. Other discussions focused on whether to target relief only to borrowers with undergraduate debt, rather than include graduate borrowers, those people said. Officials also examined whether to treat debt accrued by borrowers at public universities differently than loans taken out to attend private schools.

Administration officials also considered ways to provide as much benefit to lower-wealth borrowers as possible, and viewed Pell grant benefits, which are already means-tested to low- and middle-income borrowers, as a good proxy. POLITICO reported last month that the Education Department was studying the idea of providing additional relief to borrowers who had ever received a Pell grant. But the $20,000 amount was kept closely held by advisers at the White House until this week.

As the talks dragged on, the back-and-forth between the administration and outside groups grew tense at times. Groups complained that the administration wasn’t being responsive to their outreach. But a major strategy among advocates “was to never close doors and to show the administration that when they do good things that help people with student debt they’ll get cheered for it,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center. He pointed to the growing momentum from the Biden administration for canceling billions of dollars of loans by expanding existing programs for borrowers who work in public service, students defrauded by their college and individuals who become severely disabled.

The tide began to turn toward significant debt relief at the beginning of the year, several people familiar with the discussion said. By that time, Biden administration attorneys within the White House and Justice Department had largely resolved the issue of whether they believed canceling $10,000 of debt for borrowers was, generally speaking, an option legally available to the president, according to a person familiar with the administration’s thinking.

The policy debate was also moving forward. Susan Rice, the president’s top domestic policy adviser who some activists saw as an impediment to relief earlier on in the administration, came around to the idea of taking action on broad-based debt cancellation, according to a White House adviser and a person familiar with the deliberations. Rice’s full-fledged support for significant loan forgiveness — with income limits — helped drive the decision-making internally and ultimately get it over the finish line with the president who trusts her, those people said.

An Oval Office meeting in May between Biden and that trio of senators — Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) , and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) — brought another turning point, according to several people familiar with the deliberations.

“That’s where it became clear he would do something, and then it was about pushing on the details,” said a Democratic aide familiar with the discussions. Administration officials after the meeting began discussing debt cancellation more seriously and trading proposals for how to structure the program within the parameters Biden set, including the requirement for some type of income limit.

Schumer would go on to say that he called the White House “50 to 100 times” on the issue, adding that he spoke to Biden as late as the night before the announcement.

Over the late spring and summer, the pressure from major labor unions and Hill Democrats intensified. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus lobbied Biden to cancel debt until finally, this past week, Biden began to make up his mind. As parts of the administration’s plan began to leak, Johnson fired off one of his last public warning shots. Simply canceling $10,000 of debt for some borrowers was woefully insufficient, he warned. “If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem,” he said in a statement.

Privately, Johnson spoke with senior White House officials on Wednesday morning before the formal announcement, as well as the two days prior amid a frenzied, last-minute push to finalize the plan.

Ultimately, Biden announced that he was canceling $20,000 of debt for 27 million student loan borrowers who also received Pell grants, which won the NAACP’s praise. Most of the other 43 million federal student loan borrowers will qualify for $10,000 of relief.

The president gave an address announcing the details back at the White House. It was Rice who got to take the turn addressing it directly with reporters.

Biden was “clear from the campaign that he was prepared to relieve up to $10,000 in broad-based cancellation,” she told them. “He listened and consulted and studied.”

Alex Thompson and Anna Gronewold contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden on Thursday called former President Donald Trump’s philosophy “semi-fascism,” in what constituted an unusually pointed and highly charged denunciation of his predecessor.

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said at a Democratic fundraising event in Montgomery County, Md., according to a press pool report. Calling out those he labeled as “extreme” Republicans, Biden said: “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.”

He also criticized the impact the Trump administration had on the United States’ stature in global politics, after addressing Russian President Vladmir Putin’s recent aggression in Ukraine.

“I underestimated how much damage the previous four years had done in terms of America’s reputation in the world,” Biden said.

The president made the remarks at a fundraising event for the Democratic National Committee. During his speech, he also touted recent wins for Democrats, including his domestic policy agenda and the confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

“Things are beginning to change a little bit,” he said.

The Democratic National Committee has reported record midterm fundraising for this point in the year, at $255 million for this cycle and $92 million for the year.