WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will visit Austin next Monday, his first trip to Texas since the president announced he would not seek reelection in November.
The Austin trip was first scheduled for July 15 but was postponed after an attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump. The president will speak at the Lyndon Baines Johnson presidential library to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Johnson signed. Biden will discuss his administration’s “progress advancing civil rights and his vision to ensure the promise of America for all communities,” according to a previous White House statement.
Austin will be one of the president’s first public appearances since his announcement. Biden has spent the last week recovering from COVID-19 at his residence in Delaware.
The library is located inside the district of U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who was the first member of Congress to publicly call for the president to step aside. Biden’s visit could take on a new significance now that he has withdrawn from the race: Lyndon Baines Johnson was the last president to withdraw from reelection in 1968.
Biden was also previously slated to attend a fundraiser with Luci Baines Johnson, the former president’s daughter. It was not immediately clear whether that event was also rescheduled.
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