President Joe Biden, once a regular Amtrak rider, is set on Friday to help the nation's passenger rail system celebrate 50 years of service.
As a U.S. senator, Biden was a fixture on Amtrak trains between his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and Washington, D.C., when the Senate was in session. He continued riding Amtrak as vice president. He has sometimes been referred to as “Amtrak Joe.”
But with a presidential train trip unlikely because of security concerns, Biden instead will fly to Philadelphia for Amtrak's celebration at its busy 30th Street Station. He is to be introduced by a conductor who worked the route when Biden was a regular passenger, while the next generation of Amtrak's high-speed Acela train, scheduled to enter service next year, will be on display.
“He knew just about everybody that worked in the station and the conductors and other people and Amtrak folks who were on the train for those many, many years that he rode the rail,” Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn said of the president.
“He regularly engaged with them and knew quite a bit about them, and I think that's why he was anxious or willing to be part of our 50th anniversary,” Flynn said.
Biden's appearance in Philadelphia, his third visit to Pennsylvania while in office, comes as he marks his first 100 days as president. It also follows his speech to Congress on Wednesday, when he outlined his $2.3 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan and previewed some $1.8 trillion in proposed spending on education, child care and other family needs.
The Amtrak party will be Biden's latest stop in a post-speech tour to sell the infrastructure, jobs and families plans. He campaigned in Atlanta on Thursday and plans a stop in Yorktown, Virginia, on Monday.
The infrastructure proposal would devote $621 billion to improving roads, bridges, public transit and other transportation infrastructure. Of that, $80 billion would go toward tackling Amtrak’s repair backlog, improving service along the Northeast Corridor and expanding service across the U.S.
Amtrak said after Biden announced the plan that the corporation would upgrade and expand service, including by adding 30 new routes and adding trains on 20 existing routes across the U.S. by 2035. New service would begin in portions of northeast Pennsylvania including Scranton, where Biden was born, as well as Nashville, Tennessee; Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix; Las Vegas; Houston; Dallas; and Austin, Texas, if approved by Congress.
But while the $80 billion represents a significant investment, the money would not go far in terms of funding high-speed rail. Amtrak has estimated that it has a $31 billion repair backlog for its trains in the Northeast Corridor alone, and transportation analysts say adding new lines in that region could easily use up the funds that remain.
A Senate Republican counteroffer to Biden’s plan, totaling $568 billion, would devote a much slimmer $20 billion to U.S. rail service.
Amtrak was formed after President Richard Nixon signed the Rail Passenger Service Act in 1970.
Biden's lifelong association with Amtrak began soon after rail service began in May 1971.
His first wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident in Delaware, weeks after he was elected to the Senate. His young sons Beau and Hunter were seriously injured.
Biden considered not taking his Senate seat, but ultimately took office. He then decided to return home every night from Washington to be with his sons — and Amtrak was the vehicle. He made the round trip every day the Senate was in session, for the 36 years he held the seat, through his remarriage to current wife, Jill, and the birth of their daughter, Ashley.
He also rode the train when he was President Barack Obama's vice president. After he and Obama were elected, they rode an Amtrak train together into Washington for the inauguration.
Biden also rode Amtrak at points during the 2020 campaign. He had wanted to recreate the 2009 train ride for his own inauguration in January, but those plans were shelved after the insurrection at the Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.
When he returned to Delaware after the Obama administration ended, Biden estimated to CNN that he had taken more than 8,200 round trips and had traveled more than 2 million miles on Amtrak.
Amtrak renamed its Wilmington, Delaware, train station after Biden in 2011.
Associated Press writer Hope Yen contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration is indefinitely delaying a long-awaited menthol cigarette ban, a decision that infuriated anti-smoking advocates but could avoid a political backlash from Black voters in November.
In a statement Friday, Biden’s top health official gave no timeline for issuing the rule, saying only that the administration would take more time to consider feedback, including from civil rights groups.
“It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have, and that will take significantly more time,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.
The White House has held dozens of meetings in recent months with groups opposing the ban, including civil rights organizers, law enforcement officials and small business owners. Most of groups have financial ties to tobacco companies.
The announcement is another setback for Food and Drug Administration officials, who drafted the ban and predicted it would prevent hundreds of thousands of smoking-related deaths over 40 years. The agency has worked toward banning menthol across multiple administrations without ever finalizing a rule.
“This decision prioritizes politics over lives, especially Black lives,” said Yolonda Richardson of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, in an emailed statement. “It is especially disturbing to see the administration parrot the false claims of the tobacco industry about support from the civil rights community.”
Richardson noted that the ban is supported by groups including the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus.
Previous FDA efforts on menthol have been derailed by tobacco industry pushback or competing political priorities. With both Biden and former President Donald Trump vying for the support of Black voters, the ban's potential impact has been scrutinized by Republicans and Democrats heading into the fall election.
Anti-smoking advocates have been pushing the FDA to eliminate the flavor since the agency gained authority to regulate certain tobacco ingredients in 2009. Menthol is the only cigarette flavor that wasn’t banned under that law, a carveout negotiated by industry allies in Congress. But the law instructed the FDA to continue studying the issue.
More than 11% of U.S. adults smoke, with rates roughly even between white and Black people. But about 80% of Black smokers smoke menthol, which the FDA says masks the harshness of smoking, making it easier to start and harder to quit. Also, most teenagers who smoke cigarettes prefer menthols.
For decades, tobacco companies focused menthol advertising and promotions in Black communities, sponsoring music festivals and neighborhood events. Industry documents released via litigation also show companies viewed menthol cigarettes as a good “starter product” because they were more palatable to teens.
The FDA released its draft of the proposed ban in 2022. Officials under Biden initially targeted last August to finalize the rule. Late last year, White House officials said they would take until March to review the measure. When that deadline passed last month, several anti-smoking groups filed a lawsuit to force its release.
“We are disappointed with the action of the Biden administration, which has caved in to the scare tactics of the tobacco industry,” said Dr. Mark Mitchell of the National Medical Association, an African American physician group that is suing the administration.
Separately, Rev. Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders have warned that a menthol ban would create an illegal market for the cigarettes in Black communities and invite more confrontations with police.
The FDA and health advocates have long rejected such concerns, noting FDA’s enforcement of the rule would only apply to companies that make or sell cigarettes, not to individuals.
An FDA spokesperson said Friday the agency is still committed to banning menthol cigarettes.
“As we’ve made clear, these product standards remain at the top of our priorities,” Jim McKinney said in a statement.
Smoking can cause cancer, strokes and heart attacks and is blamed for 480,000 deaths each year in the U.S., including 45,000 among Black Americans.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
FILE - Menthol cigarettes and other tobacco products are displayed at a store in San Francisco on May 17, 2018. For the second time in recent months, President Joe Biden's administration has delayed a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, a decision that is certain to infuriate anti-smoking advocates but could avoid angering Black voters ahead of November elections. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
