How Biden is spending his final months as president

President Joe Biden is launching a new phase of his presidency this week.

Liberated from the constraints of a re-election campaign, he’s in the beginning stage of a strategy that will take him to places at home and abroad over the next five months that he most likely would have ignored as a candidate, not with the goal of keeping the White House, but of keeping his legacy and some of his most significant accomplishments secure.

On Thursday, Biden travels to a small town in a county in southwest Wisconsin that had voted reliably Democratic for two decades until Donald Trump carried it twice. Biden will make more trips like these, to Republican-leaning areas — and even eventually red states — to make the case that his agenda has also benefited those who voted against him, according to multiple Biden advisers.

Aides are also reallocating time Biden had reserved for domestic politics to focus instead on foreign policy, with plans for an international farewell tour of sorts that could include a long-promised trip to Africa in October.

“The schedule will be robust and he plans to leave it all on the field,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt said.

Biden enters the twilight of his presidency with little recent precedent to guide him. Re-elected presidents begin their second terms knowing they have years to begin shaping their legacies. Recent one-term presidents, on the other hand, were fighting until their final weeks to hold onto the office.

Yet, one senior Biden adviser noted that the president has been mindful of the weight of history since the moment he first entered the Oval Office, weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and amid public health and economic crises.

“It’s been ever present, because