Politics Updates: House Passes Bill to Speed Visas for Some Afghans

Rushing to help Afghans who face retribution for working alongside American troops in their home country, the House voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to speed up the process that would allow them to immigrate to the United States.

With the American military in the final phases of withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, more than 18,000 Afghans who have worked for the United States as interpreters, drivers, engineers, security guards and embassy clerks are stuck in a bureaucratic morass after applying for Special Immigrant Visas, available to people who face threats because of work for the U.S. government.

“I can say with confidence that I might not be here today had it not been for these men and women,” said Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado and a former Army Ranger who is the lead sponsor of the bill.

The measure, passed 366 to 46, would waive a requirement for applicants to undergo medical examinations in Afghanistan before qualifying, instead allowing them to do so after entering the United States. The first in a series of bipartisan bills intended to smooth the visa process, it aims to shorten the long waiting period, which can be as long as six or seven years for some applicants.

Mr. Crow said waiving the medical examination requirement would save the average applicant about a month on processing the visa. The bill requires that applicants complete their examinations within 30 days of arriving in the United States.

“In combat and in a war zone, every hour matters,” Mr. Crow said. “A month will save many, many lives.”

Since 2014, the nonprofit No One Left Behind has tracked the killings of more than 300 translators or their family members, many of whom died while waiting for their visas to be processed, according to James Miervaldis, the group’s chairman and an Army Reserve noncommissioned officer.

“It is a life and death situation,” said Representative Brad Wenstrup, Republican of Ohio. “It’ll be a black eye on the United States if we don’t do everything in our power to protect these allies.”

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Biden Touts ‘Bipartisan Breakthrough’ on Infrastructure

President Biden used an appearance in Wisconsin to pitch the bipartisan agreement announced last week, calling it the largest federal infrastructure investment since the Interstate highway system.

American has always been propelled into the future by landmark national investment, investments that only the government has the capacity to make, only the government working together can make. Sixty-five years ago today, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill that created the Interstate highway system — 65 years ago today. That was the last infrastructure investment of the size and scope of the agreement I’m about to talk about today. It’s time for us to write a new chapter in that story. After months of careful negotiation, of listening, compromising together and in good faith, moving together with ups and downs and some blips, a bipartisan group of senators got together, and they forged an agreement to move forward on the key priorities of my American Jobs Plan. The one sitting in front of me. As a result, this is a generational investment, a generational investment to modernize our infrastructure, creating millions of good-paying jobs. That’s not coming from me that’s coming from Wall Street — millions of good-paying jobs and positions America to compete with the rest of the world in the 21st century. This bipartisan breakthrough is a great deal for the American people, not just for folks in cities, not just for red states or blue states, but for everybody. This is the answer for good-paying jobs — jobs, not just in our biggest cities along our coast, but in small towns across the country so families can build wealth and opportunity in rural hometowns and don’t have to leave when they’re grown up. I’ve said it all along, this is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.

President Biden began a national tour in Wisconsin on Tuesday to pitch voters on the bipartisan infrastructure agreement that the president and centrist senators announced last week.

Mr. Biden used his speech in La Crosse, Wis., to highlight several aspects of the agreement — which would increase federal spending on physical infrastructure by $579 billion, the largest such increase in decades. He portrayed the deal as one that would improve quality of life for Wisconsin residents, including through more deployment of broadband internet in rural areas, where the White House says about 35 percent of families lack reliable internet.

“This bipartisan breakthrough is a great deal for the American people,” Mr. Biden said, predicting the agreement would produce jobs that did not require a college degree. “This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.”

Mr. Biden promised to replace the nearly 80,000 water service lines in Milwaukee that are made of lead, and he cast spending on road and bridge repairs as a means to reduce traffic for drivers across the country, which he said amounted to a $1,000 annual loss for the average American because of lost time.

The president and his aides have aggressively made the case in recent days that the agreement would be a large step forward for the nation on key infrastructure areas, as part of a delicate effort to sell Democrats in the House and Senate on the merits of a deal that stopped well short of Mr. Biden’s initial $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan. The agreement leaves out entire categories of spending on fighting climate change and investing in home health care for older and disabled Americans.

The president cast the deal as the largest federal infrastructure effort since President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill creating the interstate highway system 65 years ago. “This is a generational investment — generational investment — to modernize our infrastructure,” he said, “creating millions of good-paying jobs.”

The tour is also meant to reassure Republicans that Mr. Biden is committed to the agreement. Mr. Biden told reporters on Thursday that he would not sign the bipartisan deal if it was not accompanied by a second, partisan bill containing much of the rest of Mr. Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda, which prompted a frantic weekend for the White House as some Republicans questioned whether the deal could survive.

On Sunday, Mr. Biden released a statement saying he had not meant to imply he would veto the bipartisan agreement, promising to campaign aggressively for its passage. That worried progressives who are counting on the second, partisan bill’s passage.

In a nod to the complicated politics of the two economic bills, Mr. Biden also used the Wisconsin speech to highlight the large swath of the second half of his agenda, which was excluded from the agreement, including investments in housing, child care, tax credits for parents that are meant to fight child poverty and large investments in public education.

“I’m going to continue to make the case that critical investments are still needed,” he said.

Early last year, as Bernie Sanders was surging through the first Democratic presidential primary races, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a kingmaker in his state, stepped in to endorse Joseph R. Biden Jr. before the primary there, helping vault the former vice president to the nomination.

On Tuesday, Mr. Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat, took aim at one of Mr. Sanders’s most outspoken acolytes, Nina Turner, a hero to the left who is surging in her campaign in Ohio to claim the Cleveland-based congressional seat vacated by the housing secretary, Marcia L. Fudge.

In a rare intervention into a party primary, Mr. Clyburn, a veteran lawmaker and the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, endorsed Shontel Brown, Ms. Turner’s leading opponent.

The special election in Cleveland is highlighting the vast generational divide and ideological gulf that the Democratic Party faces as the entire House leadership heads toward the sunset. Mr. Clyburn, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, are all octogenarians, and their caucus is increasingly youthful, diverse and restive. All three have promised to vacate their positions after this Congress, paving the way for an ideological battle next year over who will succeed them.

Ms. Brown has the backing of the Democratic establishment, including not only Mr. Clyburn but also Hillary Clinton; Richard Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general; Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus; and moderate Democrats like Representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and David Trone of Maryland.

Ms. Turner, who has the endorsements of much of the House Progressive Caucus, including the so-called squad — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna S. Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib — would be a strong new voice for the congressional left. And the left is increasingly focused on Black and Hispanic districts that they see as safe redoubts for ideological candidates.

“You can’t take any one race and paint it as some larger aggregate for the whole country,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said on Tuesday. “But I do think that Nina is a beloved leader in the progressive movement, and the degree of excitement that she’s generated and grass-roots energy and organizing in her direction is a real testament to the asset that the base of our party can provide.”

A member of a civil liberties watchdog board that investigates the nation’s security programs has sharply criticized a major — but still secret — report by his organization about a National Security Agency surveillance-related system that first came to public light as part of the leaks by the former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The system, XKeyscore, enables N.S.A. analysts to query huge repositories of intercepted internet communications and metadata in search of information.

The official critical of the XKeyscore report is Travis LeBlanc, a Democratic appointee to the five-member agency that produced it, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. His critique emerged on Tuesday, in a newly declassified, 10-page statement that opened a window into infighting at the board and offered a few hints about the classified study, which was completed in December after more than six years of work.

“I am unable to support” the XKeyscore system, Mr. LeBlanc wrote. “I harbor serious reservations about the deficiencies in our oversight of the XKeyscore program as well as significant concerns about the program’s operations.”

Mr. LeBlanc portrayed the board’s approval of its report as rushed and pointed to gaps, including failure to scrutinize the use of artificial intelligence in connection with the system and not conducting an adequate assessment of oversight mechanisms.

The report, Mr. LeBlanc wrote, “unfortunately reads more like a book report of the XKeyscore program than an independent oversight analysis grappling with key concerns in this evolving technological and legal landscape.”

But other current and former officials pushed back on Mr. LeBlanc’s complaints and defended the oversight effort.

Adam Klein, a Republican who was the board’s chairman until he stepped down on June 20, said, “This is a detailed, comprehensive report and recommendations on a very complex program,” and added, “It’s highly factual, substantive and apolitical — the type of oversight the board was created to perform.”

Because the underlying report remains classified, it is difficult to assess the rival points of view.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for a pipeline to transport natural gas from Pennsylvania to New Jersey, ruling that PennEast Pipeline Company, the project’s developer, may exercise the federal government’s power of eminent domain to condemn land owned by New Jersey.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision, said the government was entitled to delegate its power of eminent domain to private parties even where state property is at issue.

“We are asked to decide whether the federal government can constitutionally confer on pipeline companies the authority to condemn necessary rights of way in which a state has an interest,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “We hold that it can.”

Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor and Brett M. Kavanaugh joined the chief justice’s majority opinion.

Under the Natural Gas Act, a federal law, the federal government can authorize private companies to use its eminent-domain power in at least some circumstances. PennEast obtained federal approval for its proposed 116-mile pipeline, to run from Luzerne County in Pennsylvania to Mercer County in New Jersey, and federal officials gave it the power to condemn property along the route.

New Jersey, which owns some of the parcels the company sought to condemn, objected, saying that the doctrine of sovereign immunity barred the company’s efforts.

Rejecting that argument, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that there is a long history of eminent domain actions against state property rooted in federal power.

“Over the course of the nation’s history, the federal government and its delegatees have exercised the eminent domain power to give effect to that vision, connecting our country through turnpikes, bridges and railroads — and more recently pipelines, telecommunications infrastructure and electric transmission facilities,” he wrote. “And we have repeatedly upheld these exercises of the federal eminent domain power — whether by the government or a private corporation, whether through an upfront taking or a direct condemnation proceeding, and whether against private property or state-owned land.”

In dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett responded that Congress was powerless to allow private suits against states under its constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce.

“Congress cannot enable a private party like PennEast to institute a condemnation action against a nonconsenting state like New Jersey,” she wrote.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan and Neil M. Gorsuch joined Justice Barrett’s dissent in the case, PennEast Pipeline Company v. New Jersey, No. 19-1039. (An earlier version omitted Justice Kagan and incorrectly included Justice Alito as among the dissenters.)

Justice Barrett said the federal government has other ways to achieve its goals. “In fact,” she wrote, “there is an obvious option that the court barely acknowledges: The United States can take state land itself.”

“The eminent domain power belongs to the United States, not to PennEast,” she wrote, “and the United States is free to take New Jersey’s property.”

The House is scheduled on Tuesday to vote to remove statues honoring Confederate and other white supremacist leaders from the United States Capitol, renewing an effort to rid the seat of American democracy of symbols of rebellion and racism.

Democrats and Republicans in the House were expected to vote in large numbers to approve the legislation, which aims to expunge from public view a bust of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and nearly a dozen other figures associated with the Confederacy or white supremacist causes. It would then go to the Senate, where Democrats have vowed to use their new majority to try to advance it. Its fate is unclear given Republican opposition.

“We can’t change history, but we can certainly make it clear that which we honor and that which we do not honor,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, who helped write the bill. “Symbols of hate and division have no place in the halls of Congress.”

The vote will mark the latest round in a yearslong debate on Capitol Hill and across the country over the role of Confederate statuary and symbols in public spaces, and the implications of removing them. Though that debate has lost some of its intensity over the last year, proponents of removing or relocating Confederate monuments and erecting new ones to commemorate the national struggle for equal rights have notched steady progress.

The House and Senate voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to make Juneteenth a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. In January, Congress overrode a veto by former President Donald J. Trump to pass into law legislation that would, among other things, direct the military to strip the names of Confederate leaders from bases in the coming years. Inside the Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered portraits of four speakers who served the Confederacy be taken down from the gilded lounge adjacent to the House chamber, where she has control of what artwork is displayed.

The fate of the Capitol statuary has been more complicated. Congress long ago invited each state to send two statues to be featured in the National Statuary Hall collection and does not have the authority to replace them. The bill under consideration would order the architect of the Capitol to remove the offending statues from public view, as well as a handful of others placed throughout the Capitol.

The statues covered by the bill include Chief Justice Taney, who as the leader of the Supreme Court delivered the landmark Dred Scott v. Sandford decision denying the rights of citizenship to people of African descent. The legislation would replace the Taney bust with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice.

Several states have voluntarily taken steps to remove statues targeted by Democrats’ bill.

Virginia, for example, recalled its statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, last year and plans to replace it with one of the civil rights leader Barbara Johns. North Carolina leaders have announced that they will replace the statue of Charles Brantley Aycock, the leader of a violent white supremacist coup d’état in that state, with one of the Rev. Billy Graham.

The House overwhelmingly passed the legislation last summer, with 72 Republicans joining Democrats to vote in favor of removal. But the majority leader in the Senate at the time, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, refused to take it up and Republicans blocked attempts by Democrats to win its approval. Many conservatives have decried the bill as an attempt to “whitewash” history and deprive states of their ability to choose what figures they want to see honored in the Capitol.

Democrats are hopeful that their newfound control of the Senate may lead to a different outcome. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the current majority leader, supports the effort.

President Biden returns to Wisconsin on Tuesday. His predecessor has never really left.

Wisconsin Republicans have already gone to great lengths to challenge the 2020 election results. They ordered a monthslong government audit of votes in the state. They made a pilgrimage to Arizona to observe the G.O.P. review of votes there. They hired former police officers to investigate Wisconsin’s election and its results.

And they have followed the lead of other G.O.P.-controlled states in passing a raft of new voting restrictions, though they are certain to be vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.

It is not enough for former President Donald J. Trump. He wants state party officials to take more dramatic action.

In a blistering statement last week on the eve of the Wisconsin Republican Party’s convention, he accused top Republican state lawmakers of “working hard to cover up election corruption” and “actively trying to prevent a Forensic Audit of the election results.”

Wisconsin Republicans were alarmed and confused. Some circulated a resolution at the convention calling for the resignation of the top Republican in the State Assembly, Speaker Robin Vos, who in turn announced the appointment of a hard-line conservative former State Supreme Court justice to oversee the investigation.

In reply, the Republican State Senate president released a two-page letter to Mr. Trump that said his claims about Republicans were false — but that made sure to clarify, in fawning language, the state party’s allegiance to the former president.

“The power of your pen to mine is like Thor’s hammer to a Bobby pin,” the Senate president, Chris Kapenga, wrote.

It was all a vivid illustration of Mr. Trump’s domineering grip on the Republican Party, and of his success in enlisting officials up and down its hierarchy in his extraordinary assault on the legitimacy of the last presidential election — and his capacity to sow chaos in his own ranks on a whim.

Last weekend’s state convention, a typically sleepy off-year gathering, was instead dominated by Mr. Trump’s accusation that Republican leaders themselves were complicit in election wrongdoing, putting party officials in the uncomfortable position of resisting some of his demands while professing undying loyalty.

In his otherwise ingratiating two-page letter, Mr. Kapenga, the State Senate president, pushed back forcefully on Mr. Trump’s claim that Mr. Kapenga was helping to inhibit an audit of the election.

“It is false, and I don’t appreciate it being done before calling me and finding out the truth,” he wrote.

In an interview on Monday, Mr. Vos expressed his loyalty to Mr. Trump but argued that the former president is not a permanent fixture in Republican politics.

“I supported 95 percent of what Donald Trump did as president, right, which is as high as anybody could ever ask for because nobody’s perfect,” Mr. Vos said. “I’m not going to say the conservative movement lives or dies on whether or not Donald Trump is in the White House.”

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‘Nobody’s Giving Up Hope Here’: Surfside Officials Provide Update

City officials provided an update on the Surfside Condo collapse and the ongoing effort to locate the victims. In their update, officials discussed current difficulties in their rescue effort.

“Since our last briefing, no new fatalities have been confirmed, but we have been able to notify each of the 11 families who have lost their loved ones. And today, we were also very grateful to learn that our president, Joe Biden, will be visiting Surfside on Thursday. He’s going to spend time with the families who are affected and with our first responders. We’ve had his support since he called me Day 1 in the morning.” “The west side of the pile, had to be cordoned off a little bit because it was becoming excessively dangerous to work there. What has happened is, I understand, the work still continues from the sides and underneath, but that area was cordoned off until they can sort of get their arms around the debris that’s falling down. The second thing is they’ve made very good progress on the east end. And it’s apparent that they’ve got the pile down to the point where you could see into the parking lot. So there is great progress. Lastly, with respect to the site, there is an overwhelming amount, there are an overwhelming amount of workers, rescue workers on the site working, and with cranes and taking off debris. And the work continues. Nobody’s giving up hope here. Nobody’s stopping. The work goes on, full force. We’re dedicated to get everyone out of that pile of rubble and reunite them with their families.”

President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, will travel to Florida on Thursday to tour the site of collapsed Champlain Towers South condo complex and comfort the families of the 150 people listed as missing as the excruciating rescue and recovery effort drags on.

The Bidens will thank “search and rescue teams, and everyone who has been working tirelessly around the clock, and meet with the families who have been forced to endure this terrible tragedy, waiting in anguish and heartbreak for word of their loved ones to offer them comfort,” Jen Psaki, Mr. Biden’s press secretary, told reporters en route with the president to Wisconsin on Tuesday.

Ms. Psaki said the White House had planned the Florida trip in close coordination with officials in the Miami-Dade County area to ensure the trip would not divert “any critical local resources” from the recovery operation and to avoid “any negative operational impact.”

The families of the missing have endured a painstaking recovery process that has, so far, resulted in the retrieval of 11 bodies from tons of pulverized, unstable rubble. Earlier, the White House press office later issued a one-line statement confirming the trip a week after the 13-story building suddenly gave way under its sleeping residents in the middle of the night.

On Monday, Ms. Psaki said the president believed “there should be an investigation” into the collapse.

Mr. Biden, speaking briefly with reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House en route to a trip to Wisconsin, also said that plans were in the works for the first lady to visit the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Mr. Biden spoke with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Friday, pledging to provide federal help for the rescue, recovery and investigation of the collapse, which occurred after warnings about the structural integrity of the complex.

“We provided all the help they need,” Mr. Biden told reporters on Friday. “We sent the best people from FEMA down there. We’re going to stay with them with the disaster declaration we made, provide for everything from housing to, God forbid, whether there’s a need for a place for the bodies to be placed and everything in between.”

Word of Mr. Biden’s visit came as new details emerged about the cause of the collapse, and what appears to be a long pattern of missed warning signs about the building’s deteriorating condition.

Less than three months before the collapse, the president of the condominium association warned in a letter that the damage in the building had “gotten significantly worse” since it was highlighted in a 2018 inspection.

The letter was written to residents by Jean Wodnicki, president of the association’s board of directors, explaining why a list of extensive construction projects were worth a $15 million special assessment that residents were being asked to pay.

The White House appears to be back in Vogue’s good graces.

Jill Biden, the first lady, will appear on the cover of the August issue of the magazine, continuing a tradition that Anna Wintour, the magazine’s editor, had paused during the Trump presidency.

In interviews with the writer Jonathan Van Meter, Dr. Biden, who is the first in her role to keep her day job, said the mood of the country had changed with President Biden’s election.

“During the campaign, I felt so much anxiety from people,” Dr. Biden said. “When I travel around the country now, I feel as though people can breathe again. I think that’s part of the reason Joe was elected.”

As first lady, Dr. Biden keeps a busy travel schedule that currently outpaces her husband’s, and she is viewed as something of a secret weapon by administration officials, who send her to parts of the country that are not typically Democratic territory. She has traveled to Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi and Tennessee to promote pandemic relief legislation and encourage young people to receive the coronavirus vaccine.

Unlike her recent predecessors, who largely kept their appearances to events that would be in service of the East Wing, Dr. Biden’s staff has told the president’s advisers to use her in whatever way might be helpful to further the president’s agenda.

“Her nickname on the campaign trail was ‘The Closer,’” said Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to the president who helps plans much of the first lady’s domestic travel.

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In a separate interview for the Vogue piece, Mr. Biden said that Dr. Biden came into the White House understanding how to use the platform after spending eight years as second lady.

“But it was clear to me that she knew exactly what she would do if she were first lady,” Mr. Biden said.

The president said that he missed “romantic” time with Dr. Biden now that the two are in the White House. He said that when one of them has some free time, the other person tends to be busy with their official duties.

“I miss her. I’m really proud of her,” Mr. Biden told the magazine. “But it’s not like we can just go off like we used to. When we were living in Delaware and married, once a month we’d just go up to a local bed-and-breakfast by ourselves, to make sure we had a romantic time to just get away and hang out with each other.”

For almost a century, the Vogue treatment has been a perk of the first ladyship. Michelle Obama was featured on the cover three times. Hillary Clinton was featured once as first lady and another time as a Democratic presidential candidate. Lou Henry Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush have all graced the magazine’s pages.

Which is why the omission of Melania Trump was so noteworthy.

Mrs. Trump, who had been featured on the cover as part of a feature on her marriage to Donald J. Trump, was informally barred from the magazine by Ms. Wintour, who, when asked about featuring Mrs. Trump in the magazine, said in 2019 “I don’t think it’s a moment not to take a stand.”

Mrs. Trump, who often hit back at critics through her official spokeswoman, quickly responded: “To be on the cover of Vogue doesn’t define Mrs. Trump. She’s been there, done that long before she was first lady. Her role as first lady of the United States and all that she does is much more important than some superficial photo shoot and cover.”

News Analysis

President Biden’s decision to strike Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria early on Monday illustrated the delicate balancing act of his approach to Tehran: He must demonstrate that he is willing to use force to defend American interests, while keeping open a fragile diplomatic line of communication as the two countries try to resuscitate the 2015 deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program.

In public, administration officials insisted that the two issues are separate.

Mr. Biden, they said on Monday, acted under his constitutional authority to defend American troops by carrying out airstrikes on sites used to launch drone attacks on American forces in Iraq. They said that should not interfere with the final push to bring both countries back into compliance with the nuclear accord.

In fact, the issues are deeply intertwined.

To the Iranians, the march toward the capacity to build a nuclear weapon has been in part an effort to demonstrate that Tehran is a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East and beyond. Now, the country’s power has been augmented by a new arsenal of highly accurate drones, longer-range missiles and increasingly sophisticated cyberweapons, some of which involve technologies that seemed beyond Tehran’s skills when the nuclear deal was negotiated in 2015.

Part of Mr. Biden’s goal in trying to revive the nuclear deal is to use it as a first step toward pressing Iran into addressing other issues, including its support for terrorist groups in the region and its expanded arsenal. On that front, the strikes ordered Sunday and carried out early Monday by U.S. Air Force fighter-bombers are not expected to be any more than a temporary setback to Iran.

Even if the administration succeeds in putting the nuclear deal back together, Mr. Biden will still face the challenge of finding a way to further rein in the Iranians — a step the country’s new president-elect, Ebrahim Raisi, said the day after his election that he would never agree to.

Liberal House Democrats, squeezed between President Biden’s personal lobbying for a bipartisan infrastructure deal and their own ambitions for a far more expansive domestic agenda, are warning that they will not hesitate to bring down the accord without action on their long-sought priorities.

The brewing fight, which pits progressives against moderates more aligned with the president’s tactics, is exposing cracks in the party’s fragile strategy for enacting its economic plans.

Democratic leaders have said the Senate centrists’ agreement, which would pump $1.2 trillion into roads, bridges, tunnels and broadband, will not get through Congress without a second, larger bill. That measure includes progressive wish-list items that Republicans have rejected, such as universal preschool and community college access, a health care expansion and a broad effort to combat climate change.

But progressive House members have begun questioning the depth of that commitment, particularly after Mr. Biden walked back a threat he made to condition the narrower bill on the more costly one, and as he and other administration officials begin a lobbying blitz around the country to build support for the infrastructure package.

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden will promote the deal in La Crosse, Wis., the home district of a long-targeted House Democrat, Representative Ron Kind. And on Monday, Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, toured a crumbling tunnel to Manhattan with two New Jersey Democrats, both of whom said they came away convinced that Congress should move now on infrastructure.