Biden diverts attention from bridge collapse investigation with visit to Baltimore

President Joe Biden will travel to Baltimore on Friday to survey the cleanup of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge as his administration attempts to head off past criticism over his handling of catastrophic events.

Since a cargo ship collided with the bridge last week, killing six people, Biden has sent several high-ranking administration officials, including Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, to Baltimore to assist the local government in the immediate cleanup effort.

That included green-lighting $60 million in emergency funds for the city to minimize the impact on supply chains and local business. The debris has disrupted economic activity at the busy Port of Baltimore.

The trip comes a month after the president visited East Palestine, Ohio, to mark the one-year anniversary of a train derailment that leached toxic chemicals into the surrounding community. Biden faced months of criticism for not visiting sooner.

With the Baltimore bridge collapse, the Biden administration has worked to avoid similar complaints.

Biden will be accompanied Thursday by Buttigieg and Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), and the group will receive an “operational update on response efforts from the unified command leaders from the Coast Guard and Army Corps,” according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

“The Army Corps of Engineers will share updates on the assistance they are providing to state officials in serving and removing the wreckage in the channel and allowing the Port of Baltimore to reopen as soon as humanly possible,” she stated. “The president is continuing to lead a whole of government approach in responding to the bridge collapse. As the president said within hours of the collapse, this administration will be with the people of Baltimore every step of the way.”

Biden will also meet with family members of the six workers who were killed while working on the bridge during the collapse. Jean-Pierre called the six victims “hard workers” who were “laboring in the middle of the night to repair potholes on a bridge that tens of thousands of travelers crossed every day.”

“The president, as he does, and he understands what it means for people to have loss, will be there for those families,” she added. “Just like he’ll certainly be there for the people who lost lives on that night.”

Still, the bridge collapse is not only causing major headaches for local Baltimore businesses and citizens but also commerce along the Eastern Seaboard. Small Business Administration Administrator Isabel Guzman was in Baltimore on Thursday seeking to ease concerns about economic disruptions ahead of the president’s visit.

The White House and Department of Labor have also reached out to large national employers, including Amazon, Home Depot, and Port of Baltimore operator Ports America, urging them not to cut regional payrolls in the wake of the collapse.

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Jean-Pierre confirmed that those calls had taken place and told reporters that Biden’s supply chain distribution task force was analyzing the impacts of the collapse, which they believe to be “manageable.”

“The task force worked with railroads to set up new service lines and with ports and ocean carriers to divert vessels. The SBA, the Small Business Administration, has made low-interest disaster loan assistance available to eligible businesses and set up business recovery centers to help on the ground,” she told reporters of the efforts currently underway. “That should show that this is an administration that’s being active, and we’re being proactive, obviously, in trying to make sure that we deal with any potential economic impact right now.”