Joe Biden starts a difficult political cycle after the impeachment of Trump and the first barrage of decrees

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, during a speech at the Pentagon, in Arlinton, Virginia, on February 10.CARLOS BARRIA / Reuters

In a change of government as exceptional as the one that the United States has experienced, the era of Donald Trump has been fired half a dozen times and that of Joe Biden begins continuously.

But the conclusion of the trial for the second

impeachment of

the Republican has probably marked the definitive change of cycle: Trump disappears from the daily session and the Democrat can occupy the center of attention with his political agenda.

This Tuesday he embarks on the first presidential trip, bound for Wisconsin.

His first challenge is to obtain the approval of the latest economic rescue and accelerate the mass vaccination plan against covid-19, but the medium-term challenges abound, the expectations created around immigration and social justice.

Joe Biden's first month in the White House, which falls this Saturday, has been a hurricane, marked by political upheaval, the shadow of the former president and by the fifty executive orders hastily adopted to dismantle important symbols of the Government of Trump: Washington has returned to multilateral organizations, has stopped any wall project on the border with Mexico in its tracks and has made the use of masks mandatory in federal buildings and transportation to stop contagion, among other measures.

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Now comes the most difficult part, the one in which the changes do not go ahead with quick and emblematic decrees, but they need laws and, therefore, negotiation, both with the Republican opposition and with the Democrats themselves.

The Senate has resolved an

impeachment

in five days, but now there remains a Republican Party that, despite the fracture caused by the impeachment - seven of its senators voted to convict the former president - is determined to fight the Democratic government and what it claims to portray as a far-left program.

"My goal is to win 2022 to stop the most radical agenda that I have ever seen," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Sunday on the conservative Fox network.

The first issue on the table for Biden is the $ 1.9 trillion (€ 1.6 trillion) economic stimulus package that he designed and remains pending approval in Congress.

The president aspired to a bipartisan endorsement - like the one obtained with the two previous plans - despite the control that Democrats now have in the Senate and the House of Representatives, but the votes of the preliminary bills on this program have evidenced the cracks.

Republicans - and some centrist Democrats - reject, for example, raising the federal wage from the current $ 7.5 per hour to $ 15.

Biden, a veteran of the Capitol who was a senator for 36 years, admitted a few days ago on CBS that this point will have a difficult time getting ahead in Congress: "I don't think I will survive," he said.

The lower house plans to rebuild a new piece of legislation with some modifications to try to get approval later this month.

Biden has also announced somewhat more hopeful forecasts regarding mass vaccination in the United States.

On Thursday, during a visit to the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory where the Moderna pharmaceutical vaccine was created, the president reported that the Administration had ensured the provision of enough doses to have 300 million Americans immunized by the end of the summer (about of the total population, 330 million).

Upon arriving at the White House, he promised to reach 100 million doses in his first 100 days in office and his goal is to exceed that goal.

On Thursday he will visit a Pfizer plant in Michigan where the company is producing the vaccine.

Earlier this Tuesday, he will participate in a television meeting with citizens organized by CNN in Wisconsin to speak at length about the next steps, about all those electoral promises that flooded the campaign.

When trying to bring them to reality, the stone path begins.

Biden's program is very ambitious on issues like the environment or social justice, with a promised tax hike for the rich that has not yet been heard of and a grand regularization plan for the 11 million undocumented immigrants. estimated to live in the United States.

But a deep immigration reform must go through the Capitol, as well as the infrastructure investment program or a justice reform, issues on which Biden has proposed to reach consensus with the Republicans after years of hostility.

Members of the new Cabinet have been confirmed in the Senate with broad bipartisan support, but the laws are another story and Republicans need to show their strength in the face of the fraught end of the Trump era.

The figure of the former president will continue to hover over Washington.