LAS VEGAS — President Joe Biden tested positive for the coronavirus Wednesday while trying to shore up support among disenchanted voters key to his reelection chances, prompting him to cancel a meeting with members of a Latino civil rights organization in the battleground state of Nevada.
After testing positive, Biden was unable to deliver an address to the UnidosUS annual conference in Las Vegas. His speech was meant to be a vehicle for an announcement that beginning Aug. 19, certain U.S. citizens’ spouses without legal status can begin applying for permanent residency and eventually citizenship without having to first depart the country, according to the White House. The new program, first announced by Biden last month, could affect upwards of half a million immigrants.
The visit with Latino activists was planned as Republicans are hosting their national convention in Milwaukee and as Biden struggles to steady a reelection campaign that’s been listing since his dismal June 27 debate performance against Republican nominee Donald Trump. The campaign has been further complicated by the assassination attempt on Trump by a 20-year-old shooter on Saturday in Pennsylvania and, now, by Biden’s own health due to the coronavirus test.
Shortly before the White House announced Biden’s condition, the president had stopped at the Original Lindo Michoácan Restaurant, mingling with customers, making small talk and taking selfies as he went table to table before participating in an interview with Univision.
Biden is counting on strong support from Black and Latino voters — two groups that were key parts of his winning 2020 coalition but whose support has shown signs of fraying — to help him win four more years in the White House.
Biden, in an interview with BET News on Tuesday, insisted he still has plenty of time to energize voters.
“Whether it’s young Blacks, young whites, young Hispanics, or young Asian Americans, they’ve never focused till after Labor Day,” Biden said in the interview. “The idea that they’re intently focused on the election right now is not there.”
But the headwinds for Biden had been building even before his flop on the debate stage led to a wave of Democratic lawmakers and donors calling on him to exit the campaign.
Hispanic Americans have a much less positive view of Biden now than they did when he took office. Only 36% of Hispanic adults have a somewhat or very favorable opinion of Biden, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in July, down from around 6 in 10 in January 2021. About two-thirds of Hispanic adults have an unfavorable view of Biden.
Biden on Tuesday delivered remarks in Las Vegas to the annual NAACP convention in which he made his case that Trump’s four years in the White House were “hell” for Black Americans. He lashed at Trump as mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, for rising unemployment early in the pandemic, and for divisive rhetoric that he said needlessly tore at Americans.
He also mocked Trump for saying that migrants who have entered the U.S. under the Democratic administration are stealing “Black jobs.”
“I know what a Black job is. It’s the vice president of the United States,” Biden said of Vice President Kamala Harris. He added that she “could be president.”
Biden also noted his appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on U.S. Supreme Court and his service as vice president under Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president.
That new Biden administration plan on spouses was announced weeks after Biden unveiled a sweeping crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border that effectively halted asylum claims for those arriving between officially designated ports of entry. Immigrant-rights groups have sued the Biden administration over that directive, which administration officials say has led to fewer border encounters between ports.
Biden had also planned to sign an executive order establishing a White House initiative on advancing opportunities at what are known as Hispanic-Serving Institutions, a group of some 500 two-year and four-year colleges around the country that have prominent Hispanic populations.
Associated Press writer Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.
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