By the numbers: President Biden at the two-year mark
A look at some revealing data points at the two-year mark for the 46th president.Â
6.5% annual inflation
6.5%: Annual inflation remains stubbornly high, but is slowly falling after reaching a four-decade high of 9.1% in June.
10.46 million job vacancies
10.46 million: The latest Labor Department figures show more than 10 million job vacancies in the U.S., nearly 1.8 jobs for every unemployed person. Jobless rate at 3.5%, matching a 53-year low. Zero recessions — so far.
$31.38 trillion national debt
$31.38 trillion: The federal debt stood at $27.6 trillion when Biden took office.
$24.2 billion in security aid to Ukraine
$24.2 billion: The amount of U.S. security assistance committed to Ukraine since the Russian invasion nearly 11 months ago.
38: The number of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, committed to send to Ukraine. A gamechanger, allowing Ukrainian forces to fire at Russian targets from far away, then drive away before artillery can target them.
2.38 million migrants stopped at border
2.38 million: For the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2022, Customs and Border Protection reported stopping migrants at the U.S. border nearly 2.4 million times, a record surge driven by sharp increases in Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans. The previous high was 1.66 million in 2021.
97 federal judges confirmed
97: Confirmation of Biden's picks to the federal bench, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, outpacing the president's two immediate predecessors.
89 pardons and commutations
89: The president has granted nine pardons and 80 commutations, far more than any of his recent predecessors at this point. Donald Trump had granted 11 by this time, George W. Bush seven. Barack Obama didn't take any clemency action in his first two years.
$3.36 average gas price
$3.36: The average price per gallon that American motorists are paying at the pump has fallen since peaking at $5.02 per gallon in June. Motorists were paying a $2.39 per gallon average the week Biden took office.
666 million vaccines administered
666 million: The number of COVID-19 vaccines administered to Americans under Biden. Twenty million had received the jab before Biden took office. The vaccine was not approved until late in Trump's presidency.
15.9%: The percentage of Americans 5 and older who have gotten updated bivalent vaccine.
680,000 COVID-19 deaths
680,000: The recorded death toll from the coronavirus pandemic during Biden's term. The worst pandemic in more than a century had already taken more than 400,000 American lives by Biden's inauguration and has taken 1.1 million total since March 2020.
36 states visited
36: Biden has spread his travel across 36 states (shown here in Pennsylvania) to promote his agenda, but still needs to cross off Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
197 days in Delaware
197: There's no place like home. The president spent all or part of 197 days in his home state of Delaware, traveling most weekends to either his home near Wilmington or his vacation home at Rehoboth Beach, according to an AP tally. Beyond the weekend visits, he's also made quick trips for funerals, policy events and to cast his ballot in a Democratic primary.
6 chats with Xi
6: Biden has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping a half-dozen times since the start of his term. All but one of those were phone or video calls. They met in person on the sidelines of a summit in Indonesia in November.
22: The minimum number of times that Biden has publicly lapsed into a nostalgic recollection of an intimate conversation he had with Xi during a visit to China when Biden was vice president. Biden said Xi asked him to define America and he responded with one word: Possibilities. Biden even managed to squeeze in the anecdote during a celebration this week for the NBA champion Golden State Warriors.
21 news conferences
21: Biden held fewer solo or joint news conferences than his three most recent predecessors at the same point in their presidencies.
$1 trillion in infrastructure
$1 trillion:Â The amount allocated for roads, bridges, ports and more in Biden's bipartisan infrastructure legislation, arguably the most significant legislative achievement of his first two years in office.
$40 billion for bridges
$40 billion: The amount in the infrastructure bill dedicated to repair and rebuild the nation's bridges, the single largest dedicated investment in bridges since the construction of the Eisenhower-era interstate highway system.
43,000: The number of bridges in the U.S. rated as poor and needing repair, according to the White House.
1 state dinner
1: The president's lone state dinner to date honored French President Emmanuel Macron. Biden held back on some of the the traditional pomp — and partying — at the White House in the early going of his presidency because of COVID-19 concerns.
0 Cabinet departures
0: Not one of Biden's original Cabinet appointees has left the administration.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who's spent more than two years as President Joe Biden’s top aide, is preparing to leave his job in the coming weeks. His departure comes as the White House is shifting to a defensive posture now that GOP lawmakers are planning investigations into the Biden administration.
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For all the sound and fury about raising the nation's debt limit, most economists say federal borrowing is not at a crisis point — at least not yet.
"People will have to start paying some money for things they didn't have to pay for during the emergency," said Jen Kates, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
he House Oversight Committee is set to hear testimony from former Twitter employees involved in the social media platform’s handling of reporting on President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.Â
A new poll shows that more U.S. adults disapprove than approve of the way President Joe Biden has handled the discovery of classified documents at his home and former office. Yet that seems to have had little impact on Biden's overall approval rating.Â
Newly reelected Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia is promising to use his first full term to cut deals where possible with Republicans and deliver for his home state.
Some of President Joe Biden's handwritten musings over his decades in politics are now a part of a special counsel's investigation into the handling of classified documents.
President Joe Biden and his Cabinet will embark on a post-State of the Union "blitz" to at least 20 states to discuss his economic agenda after his Tuesday night address to Congress.
Going into Tuesday's State of the Union address, President Joe Biden sees a nation with a glowing economic future. But Republicans take a far gloomier view.
President Joe Biden will use his second State of the Union address Tuesday to remind Americans of how their lives have been improved over his first two years in office, as he tries to navigate the tricky politics of a newly divided Washington.Â
A majority of Democrats now think one term is plenty for President Joe Biden, despite his insistence that he plans to seek reelection in 2024, according to a new poll.
Democratic unity in Arizona helped the party pick up two U.S. Senate seats and the top three state offices over the last few years. But Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s estrangement is fueling fears that discord could complicate President Joe Biden’s path to reelection.Â
Rock star Bono, the family of Tyre Nichols and the 26-year-old who disarmed a gunman in last month’s Monterey Park, California, shooting were among the featured guests sitting with first lady Jill Biden at Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
Joe Biden's State of the Union address came at a crucial moment for his presidency.Â
GOP Rep. George Santos positioned himself in a prime location for President Joe Biden's State of the Union address. But the embattled new lawmaker's presence was met with a stern rebuke from a fellow Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah.
Roughly 1 in 6 voters for Democratic House candidates said they disapproved of Biden's job performance, according to AP VoteCast.
President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, are preparing for a possible rematch in 2024. But a new poll finds a notable lack of enthusiasm within the parties for either man as his party's leader.
A general election pitting Biden against any other Republican could look very different from one against Trump.
Stopping short of officially declaring his 2024 candidacy, he's leaving just enough room to back out of a race.
The 70-year-old Williamson is a onetime spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey whose 2020 White House campaign featured more quirky calls for spiritual healing than actual voter support.
Democrats across New Hampshire are upset with President Joe Biden for undermining their state's status as home to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. But their concerns about Biden run much deeper.
Depositors withdrew savings and investors broadly sold off bank shares Monday as the federal government raced to reassure Americans that the banking system was secure after two bank failures fed fears that more financial institutions could fall.
The president notched an approval rating of 38% in the new poll, after 45% said they approved in February and 41% in January.
The contours of the 2024 campaign that Biden will formally launch with a video as soon as this week will look a lot like his messaging and policy moves from the past few months.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday formally announced that he is running for reelection in 2024, asking voters to give him more time to "finish the job" he began when he was sworn in to office and to set aside their concerns about extending the run of America's oldest president for another four years.
