WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden spent Wednesday in Pittsburgh in the run-up to Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary. Now a day before voters go to the polls, two members of his Cabinet will be visiting the western part of the state Monday to celebrate Earth Day.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is heading to the Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works facility in Lyndora to highlight her department’s recent grant of up to $75 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by electrifying the plant.
It is the only production facility for high-silicon grain oriented electrical steel production in the U.S. and employs more than 1,000 union workers.
It’s also the plant that was threatened by a proposed federal rule that initially favored amorphous steel rods at the expense of the grain-oriented electrical steel produced at Butler Works. The final rule, announced earlier this month, allowed both kinds of steel in electricity distribution transformers.
Also on Monday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will visit a local tree nursery in Pittsburgh to highlight a program funded under Mr. Biden’s climate change and health care bill to increase tree cover and green spaces while helping to protect against extreme weather events brought on by climate change.
Mr. Vilsack will travel to Erie and Punxsutawney the next day.
The Cabinet trips are another indication of how crucial Pennsylvania — the most populous battleground state — is to Mr. Biden’s chances of winning re-election this fall.
“It’s a state that is politically tied to his political fortunes,” said Mark Nicastre, a Democratic strategist based in Philadelphia. “It checks a lot of boxes about his story, his approach to politics, his approach to helping people, his approach to prioritizing middle-class families and investments that will actually make a difference in people’s lives.”
The president spent three days in the state the week before the primary, including the Pittsburgh stop where he pledged to keep U.S. Steel in American hands, touted his support organized labor, and highlighted his work on the economy that he said was designed to help middle-class Americans.
“I said one of the reasons I was running was to rebuild the backbone of America, the middle class,” Mr. Biden told the steelworkers gathered at their headquarters to hear him speak. “You heard me say it before: Wall Street didn’t build America; the middle class built America, and you guys built the middle class.”
Jonathan D. Salant: jsalant@post-gazette.com, @JDSalant
First Published: April 19, 2024, 11:30 p.m.
Updated: April 20, 2024, 12:03 p.m.
