Infrastructure week has finally arrived. It’s a victory Biden needed.

President Biden took a victory lap on Monday, signing into law a historic infrastructure deal. Despite declining approval ratings, an ongoing media frenzy proclaiming a failed agenda, a flood of distracting Republican cultural memes and ideological conflicts within his party, he accomplished what his predecessor could not. In passing a popular bill that even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gushed about, Biden drove House Republicans into a circular firing squad featuring MAGA hard-liners threatening to excommunicate 13 GOP House members who supported the bill.

During the signing ceremony, Biden declared: “My fellow Americans, today I want you to know, we hear you, and we see you. The bill I’m about to sign into law is proof that, despite the cynics, Democrats and Republicans can come together and deliver results.”

Biden’s determination to make this a bipartisan bill did not earn him any Brownie points with the MAGA base or its elected leaders, but it arguably supplied Biden with some much-needed armor to fend off attacks.