

Biden and his team had accepted that a moratorium on evictions, which was first imposed last September and had already been extended three times, would have to end for good as planned on July 31 given a recent Supreme Court ruling.

It is also part of a broader narrative of a White House that has responded to the rise of the variant in halting and inconsistent ways as it tries to prevent the pandemic from raging out of control. Pelosi and other Democrats would escalate a pressure campaign aimed directly at the White House. Biden found himself in a last-ditch, frantic effort to try to keep people in their homes and defuse a crisis that had the potential to inflict deep political damage underscores the cautious approach of a president who failed to anticipate how quickly Ms. “But there are several key scholars who think that it may - and it’s worth the effort.” “The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” the president said on Tuesday afternoon. Biden himself questioned its legal prospects hours before it was formally announced. The new moratorium is already facing a court challenge and Mr.

Biden is taking a calculated risk, opting for an iffy legal strategy in hopes of preventing a shattering eviction crisis that would hit the vulnerable people he has vowed to protect, and defusing a political backlash from the left that could endanger his larger agenda in Congress. Biden to act, culminating in an announcement on Tuesday of a new, narrower eviction ban in counties where the virus is raging.īy reversing course, Mr.

Over a 36-hour scramble, the White House developed a strategy that allowed Mr. Biden instructed his legal staff to consult with outside experts and bring him any legally available option. Pelosi replied, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Biden and his aides claimed their hands were legally tied by a recent Supreme Court ruling that strongly suggested - but did not explicitly say - that the nationwide evictions moratorium exceeded the government’s emergency powers under a public health law. His initial move to at least deflect blame by calling on Congress to extend the ban just two days before it expired hadn’t worked, and it infuriated Ms. The president, who had been largely focused on securing bipartisan support for his infrastructure bill, was caught off-guard by the ferocity of the reaction after a month in which Democratic lawmakers had been largely silent. Progressive Democrats were publicly assailing the administration for allowing an eviction ban to expire that past Saturday and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, unable to secure the votes to approve an extension, was demanding Mr. WASHINGTON - By the time President Biden returned from his weekend retreat at Camp David on Monday, his White House was engulfed in a political crisis as thousands of families faced the risk of eviction in the middle of a resurgent pandemic.
