Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. defeated incumbent President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States. Before assuming the presidency, Biden served as a senator from Delaware for 36 years (1973–2009), and as vice president under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.

Born in 1942, Biden worked as a public defender and county councilman before running for the Senate in 1972. Shortly after his election, Biden’s first wife Neilia Biden and one-year-old daughter Naomi Biden were killed in a car crash. Biden was sworn into office at a Wilmington, Delaware, hospital where his sons, Hunter and Beau, were recovering from injuries sustained in the same crash. Biden married his second wife and current First Lady Jill Biden in 1977.

Biden’s hallmark policy initiatives and legislative achievements have come at times of great turmoil within the United States. As vice president under Obama, Biden was a key figure in the negotiation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a response to the 2008 financial crisis. Biden assumed the presidency during the Covid-19 pandemic and has made economic recovery legislation a priority of his administration. 

During his administration, Biden oversaw the end of the United States’ decades-long occupation of Afghanistan (and the subsequent recapture of the country by the Taliban), the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the expansion of domestic semiconductor technology to reduce dependency on China, the appointment of Kentaji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and America’s response to the outbreak of wars between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Biden, the oldest president in American history, faced considerable opposition from Republican lawmakers throughout his presidency. He is likely to face Donald Trump in his bid for reelection in 2024. —Nikki McCann Ramírez