Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti left Glasgow, Scotland, on Sunday after recovering from COVID-19 — and he is headed to Washington, DC, where he will join other Democrats to watch President Joe Biden sign the infrastructure bill Congress passed earlier this month.
Garcetti tested positive for the coronavirus while at the COP26 climate change conference. Despite their ostensible concern for carbon emissions, the Los Angeles mayor and many other American leaders flew to appear at the conference in person.
The mayor received his second shot of the Moderna vaccine in February, according to the Los Angeles Times. He quarantined in his hotel room in Scotland for ten days, where he reportedly worked on city business from afar while recovering.
The Times reported:
Garcetti had told his staff in an email that he developed a fever and had symptoms of a head cold.
“As some of you who have gotten COVID know, this is a beast of a virus, but I am feeling pretty good — just some fever and head cold symptoms for now, probably a reflection of the strength of the vaccine I got earlier this year,” wrote Garcetti, who has been a strong proponent of vaccination.
Garcetti will be among many leaders, most or all of them Democrats, who will watch Biden sign the $1.2 infrastructure bill, only a small portion of which will be spent on “roads and bridges.”
A lot of people told me the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal was impossible, but I refused to believe that. I believed we could get a bipartisan agreement and still come together in this country to get big things done.
Tomorrow, I sign it into law. pic.twitter.com/FcHe4FiFRc
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 14, 2021
Despite describing the infrastructure bill for months as an urgent priority, Biden and the Democrats failed to pass it before the off-year election on Nov. 2, after they deferred to “progressives” who wanted to link the infrastructure bill to the much larger “Build Back Better” social spending plan.
Once the bill passed Nov. 5, Biden waited another ten days to sign it. The White House explained the delay by noting that he wanted to reward those politicians who had helped pass the bill by inviting them to the signing ceremony. It is not yet clear whether any Republicans will attend the ceremony; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who voted for the bill, will not attend.
Garcetti will return to L.A. on Tuesday. He is set to leave his job as mayor to take up the position of U.S. Ambassador to India, once confirmed by the Senate.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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