WASHINGTON—President Biden will travel to Boston on Sept. 12 to discuss the investments being made under the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed last year, according to a White House official.
There were no additional details about the visit, which comes as Biden is ramping up his travel to tout administration accomplishments ahead of the November congressional midterm elections. The president traveled to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Tuesday to discuss his plan to reduce gun violence and will return to Pennsylvania Thursday to deliver a prime-time address from Philadelphia on the threats to democracy.
“He will talk about the progress we have made as a nation to protect our democracy but how our rights and freedoms are still under attack and how we will make clear who is fighting for those rights, fighting for those freedoms, and fighting for our democracy,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday.
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He’ll return again to that crucial battleground state, this time in Pittsburgh, on Monday, to highlight workers on Labor Day. Then Biden will carry that message to another swing state, Wisconsin, where he will visit Milwaukee.
Biden and his fellow Democrats are growing more hopeful about their ability to hold the party’s slim congressional majorities this November after a string of recent legislative successes and the renewed attention on abortion rights following the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
Analysts said they still have an uphill fight, particularly in the House, given the history of a president’s party almost always losing seats in his first midterm election. But Democrats have been buoyed by strong performances in out-of-cycle House elections and new accomplishments to tout on the campaign trail, coinciding with a rise in Biden’s still-low approval rating.
Congress enacted bipartisan gun safety legislation in June, the first federal action on the issue in decades. Then Biden signed three bills this month, including measures to expand domestic computer chip production and sweeping legislation addressing climate change and health care. Last week, Biden fulfilled a campaign promise by announcing he would cancel as much as $20,000 in federal student loan debt for tens of millions of borrowers.
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Biden’s upcoming travel was designed to “speak directly to the American people on how congressional Democrats and this president delivered,” Jean-Pierre said Monday.
Biden traveled to Massachusetts last month to talk about climate change at a shuttered coal-fired power plant in Somerset. He tested positive for COVID-19 after that trip, derailing some additional travel plans and causing some concern about the Massachusetts officials who accompanied him, none of whom later reported testing positive.
The Boston visit on Sept. 12 will highlight the wide-ranging investments being made by the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, one of Biden’s major legislative accomplishments. After Biden signed the law last November, his first stop in celebrating it was in Woodstock, N.H.
Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.