Joe Biden returns to Georgia after laying low in midterms

Image via Associated Press

During the 2022 midterm campaign, President Joe Biden steered clear of Georgia as Sen. Raphael Warnock, like many other battleground-state Democrats, sought to distance himself from the White House amid an inflationary economy and the president’s lagging approval ratings.

Now, with Warnock having secured his first full term and Biden buoyed by Democrats’ better-than-expected election results, the senator is welcoming the president back to Georgia and to America’s most famous Black church.

The president is set to speak Sunday at Ebenezer Baptist Church as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Biden and Warnock aides said the invitation was issued by the Senator, who for 17-plus years has led the church where King once preached, and the White House billed Biden’s planned speech as a “sermon,” noting that he will become the first sitting U.S. president to speak as part of the church’s regular Sunday morning services.

Senior White House adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor, said Biden will use his time in Warnock’s pulpit to “reflect on Dr. King’s life and legacy and ways we can go forward together.” She said he will cover a number of issues but will emphasize voting rights and related legislation that has languished on Capitol Hill during Biden’s first two years in office.

The president’s stop at Ebenezer is ostensibly an official trip, not a political one. But the timing stands out as the president tries to steady his footing after Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday announced the appointment of a special counsel to investigate how the president handled classified documents.

The move, which followed disclosures that some documents from Biden’s tenure as Vice President were found at his Delaware residence and at a University of Pennsylvania office he used, complicates, at least politically, a federal inquiry of former President Donald Trump’s own handling of classified documents.

And it upends a run of victories for Biden, who had been enjoying a drop in inflation, an uptick in his approval ratings and the juxtaposition of a steady White House with a Republican House majority in disarray.

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Published with permission of the Associated Press.