Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. ( BY-dən; born November 20, 1942) is an American politician serving as the 46th and current president of the United States....
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. ( BY-dən; born November 20, 1942) is an American politician serving as the 46th and current president of the United States. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice president from 2009 to 2017 under Barack Obama and represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009.
Raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Castle County, Delaware, Biden studied at the University of Delaware before earning his law degree from Syracuse University in 1968. He was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 and became the sixth-youngest senator in American history when he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972, at the age of 29. Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and eventually became its chairman. He also chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, dealing with drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties issues; led the effort to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act; and oversaw six U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including the contentious hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and again in 2008.
Biden was reelected to the Senate six times, and was the fourth-most senior senator when he resigned to serve as Barack Obama's vice president after they won the 2008 presidential election; Obama and Biden were reelected in 2012. As vice president, Biden oversaw infrastructure spending in 2009 to counteract the Great Recession. His negotiations with congressional Republicans helped pass legislation including the 2010 Tax Relief Act, which resolved a taxation deadlock; the Budget Control Act of 2011, which resolved a debt ceiling crisis; and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which addressed the impending "fiscal cliff". He also led efforts to pass the United States–Russia New START treaty and helped formulate U.S. policy toward Iraq through the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. In January 2017, Obama awarded Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction, making him the first president to have received the accolade prior to taking office.
In April 2019, Biden announced his candidacy in the 2020 presidential election, his third presidential campaign. Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee in April 2020 and reached the delegate threshold needed to secure the nomination in June 2020. In August, he announced his choice of U.S. senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Biden and Harris won the general election with 306 electoral votes to Donald Trump's 232. Biden is the oldest sitting president, the first from Delaware, and the second Catholic (the first was John F. Kennedy).
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Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich (; né McPherson; born June 17, 1943) is an American politician and author who served as the 50th Speaker of the United St...
Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich (; né McPherson; born June 17, 1943) is an American politician and author who served as the 50th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 6th congressional district serving north Atlanta and nearby areas from 1979 until his resignation in 1999. In 2012, Gingrich unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
A professor of history and geography at the University of West Georgia in the 1970s, Gingrich won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1978, the first Republican in the history of Georgia's 6th congressional district to do so. He served as House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995. A co-author and architect of the "Contract with America", Gingrich was a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional election. In 1995, Time named him "Man of the Year" for "his role in ending the four-decades-long Democratic majority in the House".As House Speaker, Gingrich oversaw passage by the House of welfare reform and a capital gains tax cut in 1997. Gingrich played a key role in several government shutdowns, and impeached President Clinton on a party-line vote in the House. The poor showing by Republicans in the 1998 Congressional elections, a reprimand from the House for Gingrich's ethics violation, pressure from Republican colleagues, and revelations of an extramarital affair with a congressional employee 23 years his junior resulted in Gingrich's resignation from the speakership on November 6, 1998. He resigned altogether from the House on January 3, 1999. Political scientists have credited Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States and hastening political polarization and partisanship.Since leaving the House, Gingrich has remained active in public policy debates and worked as a political consultant. He founded and chaired several policy think tanks, including American Solutions for Winning the Future and the Center for Health Transformation. Gingrich ran for the Republican nomination for President in the 2012 presidential election, and was considered a potential frontrunner at several points in the race. Despite an impressive late victory in the South Carolina primary, Gingrich was ultimately unable to win enough primaries to sustain a viable candidacy, he withdrew from the race in May 2012 and endorsed eventual nominee Mitt Romney. Gingrich later emerged as a key ally of Donald Trump, and was reportedly among the finalists on Trump's short list for running mate in the 2016 election.
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