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I’m a Neuroscientist. We’re Thinking About Biden’s Memory and Age in the Wrong Way.

New York Times – Guess Essay – Opinion

I’m a Neuroscientist. We’re Thinking About Biden’s Memory and Age in the Wrong Way.

By Charan Ranganath – February 12, 2024

President Biden seated in a chair holding a stack of what looks like index cards. — Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Dr. Ranganath is a professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis, and the author of the forthcoming book “Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold On to What Matters.”Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s report, in which he declined to prosecute President Biden for his handling of classified documents, also included a much-debated assessment of Mr. Biden’s cognitive abilities.

“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

As an expert on memory, I can assure you that everyone forgets. In fact, most of the details of our lives — the people we meet, the things we do and the places we go — will inevitably be reduced to memories that capture only a small fraction of those experiences.

It is normal to be more forgetful as you get older. Broadly speaking, memory functions begin to decline in our 30s and continue to fade into old age. However, age in and of itself doesn’t indicate the presence of memory deficits that would affect an individual’s ability to perform in a demanding leadership role. And an apparent memory lapse may or may not be consequential depending on the reasons it occurred.

There is forgetting and there is Forgetting. If you’re over the age of 40, you’ve most likely experienced the frustration of trying to grasp hold of that slippery word hovering on the tip of your tongue. Colloquially, this might be described as ‘forgetting,’ but most memory scientists would call this “retrieval failure,” meaning that the memory is there, but we just can’t pull it up when we need it. On the other hand, Forgetting (with a capital F) is when a memory is seemingly lost or gone altogether. Inattentively conflating the names of the leaders of two countries would fall in the first category, whereas being unable to remember that you had ever met the president of Egypt would fall into the latter.

Over the course of typical aging, we see changes in the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, a brain area that plays a starring role in many of our day-to-day memory successes and failures. These changes mean that, as we get older, we tend to be more distractible and often struggle to pull up the word or name we’re looking for. Remembering events takes longer and it requires more effort, and we can’t catch errors as quickly as we used to. This translates to a lot more forgetting, and a little more Forgetting.

Many of the special counsel’s observations about Mr. Biden’s memory seem to fall in the category of forgetting, meaning that they are more indicative of a problem with finding the right information from memory than actual Forgetting. Calling up the date that an event occurred, like the last year of Mr. Biden’s vice presidency or the year of his son’s death, is a complex measure of memory. Remembering that an event took place is different than being able to put a date on when it happened, the latter of which is more challenging with increased age. The president very likely has many memories of both periods of his life, even though he could not immediately pull up the date in the stressful (and more immediately pressing) context of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Other “memory” issues highlighted in the media are not so much cases of forgetting as they are of difficulties in the articulation of facts and knowledge. For instance, in July 2023, Mr. Biden mistakenly stated in a speech that “we have over 100 people dead,” when he should have said, “over one million.” He has struggled with a stutter since childhood, and research suggests that managing a stutter demands prefrontal resources that would normally enable people to find the right word or at least quickly correct errors after the fact.

Americans are understandably concerned about the advanced age of the two top contenders in the coming presidential election (Mr. Biden is 81 and Donald Trump is 77), although some of these concerns are rooted in cultural stereotypes and fears around aging. The fact is that there is a huge degree of variability in cognitive aging. Age is, on average, associated with decreased memory, but studies that follow up the same person over several years have shown that, although some older adults show precipitous declines over time, other “super-agers” remain as sharp as ever.

Mr. Biden is the same age as Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney and Martin Scorsese. He’s also a bit younger than Jane Fonda (86) and a lot younger than Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett (93). All these individuals are considered to be at the top of their professions, and yet I would not be surprised if they are more forgetful and absent-minded than when they were younger. In other words, an individual’s age does not say anything definitive about their cognitive status or where it will head in the near future.

I can’t speak to the cognitive status of any of the presidential candidates, but I can say that, rather than focusing on candidates’ ages per se, we should consider whether they have the capabilities to do the job. Public perception of a person’s cognitive state is often determined by superficial factors, such as physical presence, confidence, and verbal fluency, but these aren’t necessarily relevant to one’s capacity to make consequential decisions about the fate of this country. Memory is surely relevant, but other characteristics, such as knowledge of the relevant facts and emotion regulation — both of which are relatively preserved and might even improve with age — are likely to be of equal or greater importance.

Ultimately, we are due for a national conversation about what we should expect in terms of the cognitive and emotional health of our leaders.

And that should be informed by science, not politics.

Why I Am Now Deeply Worried for America

New York Times – Opinion

Why I Am Now Deeply Worried for America

Paul Krugman – February 12, 2024

An American flag in murky water. — Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times

Until a few days ago, I was feeling fairly sanguine about America’s prospects. Economically, we’ve had a year of strong growth and plunging inflation — and aside from committed Republicans, who see no good, hear no good and speak no good when a Democrat is president, Americans appear to be recognizing this progress. It has seemed increasingly likely that the nation’s good sense would prevail and democracy would survive.

But watching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.

And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election. It reminds me, as it reminds everyone I know, of the 2016 furor over Hillary Clinton’s email server, which was a minor issue that may well have wound up swinging the election to Donald Trump.

As most people know by now, Robert Hur, a special counsel appointed to look into allegations of wrongdoing on Biden’s part, concluded that the president shouldn’t be charged. But his report included an uncalled-for and completely unprofessional swipe at Biden’s mental acuity, apparently based on the president’s difficulty in remembering specific dates — difficulty that, as I wrote on Friday, everyone confronts at whatever age. Hur’s gratuitous treatment of Biden echoed James Comey’s gratuitous treatment of Clinton — Hur and Comey both seemed to want to take political stands when that was not their duty.

It’s a case of bureaucrats overstepping their bounds in a way that’s at best careless and at worst malicious.

Yes, it’s true that Biden is old, and will be even older if he wins re-election and serves out a second term. I wish that Democrats had been able to settle on a consensus successor a year or two ago and that Biden had been able to step aside in that successor’s favor without setting off an intraparty free-for-all. But speculating about whether that could have happened is beside the point now. It didn’t happen, and Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee.

It’s also true that many voters think the president’s age is an issue. But there’s perception and there’s reality: As anyone who has recently spent time with Biden (and I have) can tell you, he is in full possession of his faculties — completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail. Of course, most voters don’t get to see him up close, and it’s on Biden’s team to address that. And yes, he speaks quietly and a bit slowly, although this is in part because of his lifetime struggle with stuttering. He also, by the way, has a sense of humor, which I think is important.

Most important is that Biden has been a remarkably effective president. Trump spent four years claiming that a major infrastructure initiative was just around the corner, to the point that “It’s infrastructure week!” became a running joke; Biden actually got legislation passed. Trump promised to revive American manufacturing, but didn’t. Biden’s technology and climate policies — the latter passed against heavy odds — have produced a surge in manufacturing investment. His enhancement of Obamacare has brought health insurance coverage to millions.

If you ask me, these achievements say a lot more about Biden’s capacity than his occasional verbal slips.

And what about his opponent, who is only four years younger? Maybe some people are impressed by the fact that Trump talks loud and mean. But what about what he’s actually saying in his speeches? They’re frequently rambling word salads, full of bizarre claims like his assertion on Friday that if he loses in November, “they’re going to change the name of Pennsylvania.”

Not to mention confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and mistaking E. Jean Carroll for one of his ex-wives.

As I also wrote last week, Trump’s speeches make me remember my father’s awful last year, when he suffered from sundowning — bouts of incoherence and belligerence after dark. And we’re supposed to be worried about Biden’s mental state?

Over the past few days, while the national discussion has been dominated by talk about Biden’s age, Trump declared that he wouldn’t intervene to help “delinquent” NATO members if Russia were to attack them, even suggesting that he might encourage such an attack. He seems to regard NATO as nothing more than a protection racket and after all this time still has no idea how the alliance works. By the way, Lithuania, the NATO member that Trump singled out, has spent a larger percentage of its G.D.P. on aid to Ukraine than any other nation.

Again, I wish this election weren’t a contest between two elderly men and worry in general about American gerontocracy. But like it or not, this is going to be a race between Biden and Trump — and somehow the lucid, well-informed candidate is getting more heat over his age than his ranting, factually challenged opponent.

As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.

Abandoned by his colleagues after negotiating a border compromise, GOP senator faces backlash alone

Associated Press

Abandoned by his colleagues after negotiating a border compromise, GOP senator faces backlash alone

Mary Clare Jalonick and Stephen Groves – February 7, 2024

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., left, the lead GOP negotiator on a border-foreign aid package, holds hands with his wife Cindy Lankford, center, joined at right by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who has been central to Senate border security talks, during procedural votes, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. Senate Republicans have blocked the bipartisan border package, scuttling months of negotiations between the two parties on legislation intended to cut down record numbers of illegal border crossings. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., the lead GOP negotiator on the Senate border and foreign aid package, does a TV news interview at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just before the Senate voted Wednesday to kill the border deal he spent the last four months negotiating, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford climbed a set of marble stairs outside the chamber and joined his wife in the visitors’ gallery.

As the Republican quietly watched from a floor above, briefly the outsider after defending his legislation in a last Senate floor speech, fellow negotiator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona was down on the floor excoriating the Republicans who had abandoned Lankford, one by one, after insisting on a border deal and asking him to negotiate a compromise on one of the country’s most intractable issues.

“Less than 24 hours after we released the bill, my Republican colleagues changed their minds,” said Sinema, a former Democrat turned Independent. “Turns out they want all talk and no action. It turns out border security is not a risk to our national security. It’s just a talking point for the election.”

Walking out of the gallery with his wife close by his side, Lankford was asked by a waiting reporter if he felt betrayed by his party. He sighed, deeply, and waited a few beats.

“I’m disappointed we didn’t get it done,” Lankford said, diplomatically. “I don’t know if I feel betrayed, because the issue is still there. It’s not solved.”

He then walked back down the stairs with his wife and Sinema, who had come up to greet them after her speech, and walked into the chamber to watch the bill’s defeat.

In the end, all but four Republicans voted against moving forward on the legislation — including Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who had delegated Lankford to negotiate the bill combining Ukraine aid and border security and had been closely involved in the negotiations.

A former youth minister in the Baptist church, Lankford, 55, is known as one of the most sincere and well-liked members of the Senate. He’s a conservative who rarely votes against his party, has long championed stricter measures at the border and has been supportive of former President Donald Trump. So his colleagues’ swift and outright rejection of the deal he has spent weeks and months negotiating — and their willingness to completely abandon Lankford in the process, after many of them indicated they were supportive of the direction of the talks — is all the more remarkable.

“They reacted to it like it was a poison,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the third negotiator with Lankford and Sinema, of Senate Republicans who had previously signaled they were supportive. “I think it’s unforgiveable what they did to James.”

“They really threw the man overboard,” President Joe Biden said of Lankford at a fundraiser Wednesday evening.

While some Republicans were always going to vote against the compromise, arguing that no policy is better than what they saw as weak policy, others made clear they were encouraged by the talks as Lankford briefed them on the emerging details. But his colleagues’ eventual, quick rejection of the bill highlights the deep divides in the GOP as Trump, the party’s front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, has made immigration a top issue. Some senators who had previously been open to a deal became more skeptical after Trump made his opposition clear.

It is also a sign of dysfunction and paralysis in the Senate as its traditionally bipartisan image fades in favor of more partisan, House-like battles.

When he took on the job negotiating a border compromise, Lankford laughed that “he drew the short straw.” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., joked later that if Lankford can’t get a deal done: “Moses couldn’t get a deal done. He’s one of the most kindest, compassionate people I’ve met in my lifetime.”

His fellow negotiators described him as an earnest, smart legislator who was willing to spend long hours digging into the intricacies of immigration law — and spent weeks away from his family in the process. Murphy said senators often negotiate the broad policies and let staff do the “dirty work” of putting the ideas into legislative text.

“James does both,” Murphy said. “It’s a sign of how sincere he is and how in the weeds he is on policy. But it probably means he’s maybe a little less attuned to the politics.”

The Oklahoma Republican has spent the last three days desperately trying to explain the bill after many of his colleagues put out statements opposing it without even reading the full text. Some Republicans put out misleading statements about what it would do, claiming it was designed to let more people into the country. Trump, who has strongly opposed the bill and said he doesn’t want to give Democrats a win on the issue, gleefully bragged that he helped kill it.

“I think this is a very bad bill for his career, and especially in Oklahoma,” Trump said of Lankford on a radio show earlier this week.

The bipartisan compromise would overhaul the asylum system at the border with faster and tougher enforcement, as well as give presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed with the number of people applying for asylum, among other measures to reduce the record numbers of migrants crossing the border. It would also send billions to Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Asia-Pacific.

Lankford’s work on the issue could have lasting political consequences. A group of about 100 people within the Oklahoma GOP put out a statement condemning him for crafting the bill even before it had been released. And in his Senate floor speech Wednesday, Lankford spoke of an unidentified “popular commentator” who told him that if he tries to move a bill to solve the border crisis, “I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election.”

Even more stunning was how quickly his Senate colleagues turned against it.

As the bill was released late Sunday night, Lankford was on an airplane flying to Washington. By the time he landed, an onslaught of criticism from conservatives was already underway. He was on a call with reporters, trying to explain the details of the bill, when House Speaker Mike Johnson posted on X that the bill would be “ dead on arrival ” in his chamber.

Lankford’s frustration was palpable as he responded, listing off how the bill would accomplish several conservative goals like building more border wall, hiring more Border Patrol agents, expanding detention capacity and speeding deportations.

“We’ve got to be able to find a way to stop the chaos at the border,” Lankford said.

Almost no Republicans endorsed it, save McConnell. And by Monday night, seeing the writing on the wall, McConnell told the conference it was OK to vote against it.

“I feel like the guy standing in the middle of a field in a thunderstorm holding up the metal stick,” Lankford told reporters shortly ahead of the bill release. “This is a really intense thing. It’s been divisive.”

Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Will Weissert, Jill Colvin and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

Three reasons why so many migrants want to cross from Mexico to US

BBC – News

Three reasons why so many migrants want to cross from Mexico to US

By Bernd Debusmann Jr, Washington – February 7, 2024

Getty Images Migrants cross the Rio Grande Getty Images

Migrant arrivals at the border have risen to record highs during President Joe Biden’s administration, a massive political headache for him ahead of the election.

Polls suggest that more than two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Mr Biden’s handling of the issue.

His likely opponent in November’s presidential election, Donald Trump, has this week condemned a cross-party bill trying to address the problem, saying it’s not tough enough.

But it’s not just Republicans who are unhappy about the influx. Democratic mayors in cities struggling to cope with the numbers are also making their feelings known.

More than 6.3 million migrants have been detained crossing into the US illegally under Biden, a higher number than under Trump, Obama or George W Bush.

Biden and Trump trade blame as border bill falters

The reasons for the spike are complex, with some factors pre-dating this government and beyond the control of the US. We asked experts what’s going on.

1. Pent-up demand after lockdown

The number began to rise in 2018, largely driven by Central Americans fleeing a series of complex crises including gang violence, poverty, political repression and natural disasters. Detentions fell again in the summer of 2019, which US officials credited to increased enforcement by Mexico and Guatemala.

The most drastic reduction took place in early 2020, when pandemic-era restrictions led to a drastic reduction of over 53% between March and April that year.

Since these measures were lifted in early 2021, the numbers have steadily risen, reaching an all-time high of just over 302,000 in December 2023.

“That’s when we began to see an increase again, primarily of Central Americans after mobility restrictions [there] and across the region began to ease,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Washington DC-headquartered Migration Policy Institute.

“That’s also when the bigger change happened and we began to see much more diversified flows, starting with Venezuela, but also Colombia, Ecuador and places further away.”

Migrants now come from as far afield as West Africa, India and the Middle East.

Of migrants from outside the Americas, the greatest increase comes from China. More than 37,000 Chinese nationals were detained at the US-Mexico border last year, about 50 times the figure from two years ago.

2. Global migration trends

The increases in migrant figures seen at the US-Mexico border seen in the last several years also come at a time when, globally, migration to rich countries is at an all-time high.

Statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released late last year show that 6.1m new permanent migrants moved to its 38 member states in 2022 – a 26% increase over 2021 and 14% higher than in 2019.

The number of people granted asylum in the US doubled in 2022, driven in large part by migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. The US is second only to Germany now in levels of humanitarian migration.

“We are experiencing displacement around the world at a level never seen in recorded history, and people are turning up at our southern border for a variety of different reasons,” explained Jorge Loweree, managing director of programmes at the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based non-profit and advocacy group.

“There are four failed states in our hemisphere alone.”

More on the US border crisis

3. From Trump to Biden

The switch in the White House in 2021 also contributed, say some experts.

A key message from President Trump, even if it never became a reality, was the building of a border wall and increased deportations.

The headlines created by the separation of children from their detained parents, decried by many as cruel, added to the impression that the US was closing its border.

Under President Biden there was a change of tone and of policy. Deportations fell and “deterrent-focused” policies such as the rapid removal of migrants to Mexico and the building of a border wall ended.

Migrants were paroled into the US to await immigration court dates – a process which can often take years.

People trying to cross the border during this time told the BBC they thought that entering and staying in the US was going to be easier now. And human smugglers took advantage of a change in presidency to create a sense of urgency among migrants that they should hurry to the border.

“Part of it is that they think they can just come. I think that’s just what they’re being told,” said Alex Cuic, an immigration lawyer and professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.

“They feel like there’s a pathway to come here,” he added. “It’s almost like an invite.”

Conversely, some immigration activists have criticised the Biden administration and US lawmakers from both parties for failing to pass meaningful immigration reform.

The last major overhaul of the system was more than 30 years ago and now the cross-party bill presented to Congress this week looks doomed due to Republican opposition.

Behind the border mess: Open GOP rebellion against McConnell

Politico

Behind the border mess: Open GOP rebellion against McConnell

Burgess Everett – February 7, 2024

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks during a news conference on border security, following the Senate policy luncheon at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Conservative hardliners once celebrated Mitch McConnell for wrestling the federal judiciary to the right and thwarting progressive hopes.

Now he is under open attack from the right for even trying to work with Democrats on the border.

The Senate GOP leader is facing internal resistance not seen in more than a year as Republicans descend into discord over two issues they once demanded be linked: border security and the war in Ukraine.

McConnell, now nearing his 82nd birthday, is determined to fund the Ukrainian war effort, a push his allies have depicted as legacy-defining. But now that his party is set on Wednesday to reject a bipartisan trade of tougher border policies for war funding, his far-right critics are speaking out more loudly: Several held a press conference Tuesday where they denounced his handling of the border talks, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) calling on McConnell to step down.

In an interview, McConnell rejected the criticism and said his antagonists fail to recognize the reality of divided government.

“I’ve had a small group of persistent critics the whole time I’ve been in this job. They had their shot,” McConnell said, referring to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) challenge to his leadership in 2022.

“The reason we’ve been talking about the border is because they wanted to, the persistent critics,” he added. “You can’t pass a bill without dealing with a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate.”

Despite that pragmatism, McConnell’s job is only getting harder. If he runs for another term in leadership next year, a tougher fight than Scott gave him seems almost inevitable.

That is in part because of Donald Trump, whom McConnell barely acknowledges after criticizing his role in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. The former president played a leading role in killing the border deal and has called consistently for McConnell’s ouster. And at this time next year, Trump could well be back in the White House.

More and more of Senate Republicans’ internal strife is seeping out into public view, exposing years-old beefs that are still simmering. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) posted a fundraising link asking donors to “kill this border bill” in the middle of a closed-door GOP meeting on Monday and demanded “new leadership,” while Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) memed McConnell as Charlie Brown whiffing on an attempt to kick a football held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).

“I’ve been super unhappy since this started,” Johnson said in an interview. “Leader McConnell completely blew this.”

Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson helped squash the border bill’s prospects in the House while Ron Johnson, Lee, Cruz, Scott and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) pummeled it on TV and social media. The intensity of that assault turned many GOP senators sour on a border security deal that would have amounted to the most conservative immigration bill backed by a Democratic president in a generation — a bill they once said was the key to unlocking Ukraine aid.

Though McConnell touted the work of Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and the bill’s endorsement by the Border Patrol union, he conceded what was obvious by Monday night: This legislation is dead.

“The reason we ended up where we are is the members decided, since it was never going to become law, they didn’t want to deal with it,” McConnell said in the interview. “I don’t know who is at fault here, in terms of trying to cast public blame.”

At Tuesday’s party meeting, Cruz told McConnell that the border deal was indefensible, while Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) questioned why the GOP would walk away from it, according to two people familiar with the meeting. That followed a Monday evening private meeting where Johnson got into a near-shouting match with Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), one of several senators who has tried to rebut Trump’s influence on the party.

Young played down the spat afterward: “Ron and I have a very good relationship. We can be very candid with one another.”

McConnell’s loud critics are among those most responsible for raising opposition to the border deal, attacking its provisions while the text was being finalized. They raised such a ruckus that none of McConnell’s potential successors as leader — Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and John Thune (R-S.D.) — offered to support it.

McConnell can’t be ejected spontaneously like a House speaker, meaning his job is safe until the end of the year. He also has major sway over the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC that may have to help Cruz, Scott and other Republicans win reelection.

And McConnell is not without defenders. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said any attempt to blame McConnell for the border crackup is “a bit misplaced.”

Indeed, McConnell was OK with just approving foreign aid back in the fall, but agreed to link it to border security after rank-and-file Republicans grew eager to extract concessions from Democrats in order to get Ukraine money.

“It’s not James’ fault, he did the best he could under the circumstances. It’s not Mitch’s fault,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).

The historical record holds plenty of quotes from McConnell’s current critics asking for stronger border policy during the Trump administration. Many of them now have since changed their tune to say Biden doesn’t need new laws at all to enforce border security.

“We all wanted to see border security. And I think a lot of our members were demanding that in exchange for the rest of the funding. That’s an issue our conference needs to be aware of,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the No. 4 leader. “The conference wanted border security.”

The animosity McConnell now faces from Ron Johnson, Lee and others isn’t new either: They’ve questioned Senate GOP leadership’s decisions for years.

Ron Johnson’s been a thorn in McConnell’s side for years, particularly after many Republicans abandoned his reelection bid in 2016. Cruz has sparred with McConnell since getting to the Senate in 2013, Lee frequently breaks with leadership and a number of newer GOP senators voted for Scott over McConnell in 2022.

One GOP senator, granted anonymity to assess the situation candidly, said that the new wave of attacks could be happening because McConnell’s opponents sense weakness — or just out of “personal pique” over years-old disagreements.

“For three months it’s been nothing but border and Ukraine, border and Ukraine, border and Ukraine. I don’t know how many speeches I’ve heard … and now all of a sudden, it’s: ‘We’re not going to do that,’” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), another of the McConnell critics. “It just seems like total chaos to me.”

Either way, the 180 among many Republicans is evidence of a major drift away from McConnell’s style of Republicanism and toward Trump’s. McConnell hasn’t talked to Trump since the Jan. 6 riot and tried to turn the party in a surprisingly deal-centric direction during the first two years of President Joe Biden’s presidency.

Just two years ago, debt ceiling increases, gun safety and infrastructure laws passed with McConnell’s blessing — all a reflection of his view that protecting the filibuster requires working with Democrats on bipartisan bills.

Now the reality is that Trump, the likely nominee, doesn’t want a deal that Republicans set out to secure four months ago. Deal-making without Trump’s blessing appears impossible, and that’s a challenging dynamic for the longtime GOP leader.

“This wasn’t good for him. This wasn’t good for any of us,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) of McConnell, whom he backed in 2022. “And I’m not gonna say he’s the total cause of it, but we got to have a better plan. This didn’t work out for us.”

Ursula Perano contributed to this report.

Biden blames Trump for sinking bipartisan immigration bill

Reuters

Biden blames Trump for sinking bipartisan immigration bill

By Steve Holland – February 6, 2024

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the bipartisan immigration bill is falling apart under political pressure from Republican rival Donald Trump and vowed to hit the road to remind voters who was to blame if it fails.

“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? The simple reason: Donald Trump,” Biden said. “Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically.”

Concerns over immigration have become a top issue in this year’s election campaign, with Trump preparing for a likely November rematch with Biden. Trump has been pushing congressional Republicans to reject the bipartisan border security deal unveiled on Sunday.

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden’s vow to make the Republican ex-president’s efforts to kill the bill a major theme of his reelection campaign is a risky bet given polls showing that Americans give Biden low grades for his handling of border security and immigration.

The Democratic president’s approval rating sank to 38% in January as concerns over immigration flared, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

Biden has grappled with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border during his presidency. Republicans contend that Biden should have kept the restrictive policies of Trump.

In December, encounters averaged more than 9,500 per day, according to U.S. government statistics, but have dropped steeply in about the last month.

Biden will test whether blaming Trump for thwarting a bipartisan compromise can help change American minds.

“I’ll be taking this issue to the country and the voters are gonna know that…just at the moment we’re going to secure the border and fund these other programs Trump and the MAGA Republicans said no because they’re afraid of Donald Trump,” Biden said at the White House.

The $118 billion bill, which also includes aid for Israel and Ukraine as it fights a Russian invasion, is quickly losing support on Capitol Hill. House of Representatives Republicans have declared it dead on arrival, and more than 20 Republican senators have said the measure is not strict enough.

Several Democrats have also opposed the bill because they say some of its measures treat migrants too harshly.

Biden didn’t mention the Democratic opposition, but blamed Republicans for buckling under the pressure from Trump, who he said was reaching out to Republican lawmakers to “intimidate them to vote against this proposal.”

“Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right,” Biden said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday also took aim at Trump over the mounting opposition to the border security deal.

“Donald Trump would rather keep the chaos at the border so he can exploit it on the campaign trail instead of letting the Senate do the right thing and fix it,” Schumer said.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jarrett Renshaw; Writing by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Trevor Hunnicut and Leslie Adler)

The GOP’s True Priority

The Atlantic – Ideas

The GOP’s True Priority

The Republicans who won’t take yes for an answer

By David Frum – February 6, 2024

A black-and-white photograph of House Speaker Mike Johnson — Kevin Dietsch / Getty

Sometimes, a negotiation produces a deal.

Sometimes, a negotiation reveals the truth.

Negotiators in the Senate have produced a draft agreement on immigration and asylum. The deal delivers on Republican priorities. It includes changes to federal law to discourage asylum seeking. It shuts down asylum processing altogether if too many people arrive at once. Those and other changes send a clear message to would-be immigrants: You’re going to find it a lot harder to enter the United States without authorization. Rethink your plans.

The draft agreement offers little to nothing on major Democratic immigration priorities: no pathway to citizenship for long-term undocumented immigrants, only the slightest increase in legal immigration. The Democrats traded away most of their own policy wish list. In return, they want an end to the mood of crisis at the border, plus emergency defense aid for Ukraine and Israel.

Yet Republicans in the House seem determined to reject the draft agreement. They appear poised to leave in place a status quo that one senior GOP House leader has described as an “invasion” and an “existential and national security threat.”

So if no deal results, what truths will we learn from this process?

Peter Wehner: The party of malice

The first is that Republicans don’t really care all that much about the situation at the border. A real “existential threat” cannot wait for some later date. People who perceive an existential threat don’t delay. In fact, a good many Republican legislators are very happy to allow a continuing flow of laborers across the border.

Consider that Florida’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work eight-hour days during the school year. Or that the Republican governor of Arkansas has signed a bill that relieves the state of having to certify that teenage workers aged 14 and 15 may work. Or that Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature may soon pass a law allowing 14- and 15-year-olds to work as late as 9 p.m. on school nights. Or that Republican legislators in Wisconsin are pushing to allow 14-to-17-year-olds to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants. Consider also that all of these changes are written with teenage migrants very much in mind: Almost 40 percent of recent border-crossers have been under 18, a fivefold increase since the late aughts.

Those teenagers are traveling both alone and in family groups. They are coming to the U.S. to work. When state legislatures relax the rules on employing under-18s and under-16s, they’re flashing a giant we’re hiring sign to job-seeking teenagers around the world. The legislators know that. The teenagers know it. American voters should know it too.

A second truth concerns what Republican priorities really are. When Mike Johnson was elevated to the House speakership, he claimed that he genuinely wanted to help Ukraine but that aid had to wait until Congress passed new laws to harden the U.S. southern border. He wrote to President Joe Biden as recently as December 5 that further aid to Ukraine was “dependent upon enactment of transformative change to our nation’s border security laws.” When Senate negotiators produced exactly what Johnson said he wanted—a transformative bill that Congress could enact—he responded by reversing his demands. Johnson no longer wants any law at all. But one thing is constant: no aid to Ukraine—which suggests that “no aid to Ukraine,” not “defend the border,” is the true priority here.

Annie Lowrey: The party of no content

A third truth is suggested by the angry reaction of House Republicans to the work of Senate Republicans: The very act of negotiation is mistrusted. Along with their speaker, House Republicans radically altered their position from “there must be a new law” to “there must be no new law,” and from “the president must sign our bill exactly as we wrote it” to “the president must act unilaterally by executive authority only.” How does anyone negotiate with a House majority that can so abruptly and totally pivot? The true goal revealed is failure and chaos.

And this points to a fourth truth, maybe the most important one of all. Donald Trump has sold his supporters the dangerous fantasy that democratic politics can be replaced by one man’s will. No need for distasteful compromises. No need to reckon with the concerns and interests of people who disagree with House Republicans. Just somehow return Trump to the presidency: He’ll bark; the system will obey.

Of course, such fantasies have no basis in reality. As the Cato Institute reported last November:

The Biden Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has removed a higher percentage of arrested border crossers in its first two years than the Trump DHS did over its last two years. Moreover, migrants were more likely to be released after a border arrest under President Trump than under President Biden. In absolute terms, the Biden DHS is removing 3.5 times as many people per month as the Trump DHS did.

Altogether, about 1.1 million unauthorized border-crossers were released into the United States during the Trump presidency and not removed by the end of his term. Glowering and yelling do not in fact accomplish much. But to many Trump supporters, glowering and yelling are the whole of it. They don’t care how little gets accomplished, so long as that little is done in the most offensive manner possible.

David Frum: They do it for Trump

In their 1981 study of negotiation, Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher and William Ury stress the importance of understanding the opposite party’s point of view. Among the benefits of doing so is helping a negotiator recognize when he’s received the best offer he’s likely to get—and then say yes rather than press for more and arrive at no.

Arriving at no is what’s happening now among the House Republicans. Because they refuse to understand the other side, they cannot appreciate a good offer and recognize when to accept it. They’re going to arrive only at no—no for America, and no for Ukraine. But no is what they want.

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Why I Am Now Deeply Worried for America

The New York Times – Opinion

Why I Am Now Deeply Worried for America

By Paul Krugman – February 12, 2024

If you ask me, these achievements say a lot more about Biden’s capacity than his occasional verbal slips.

Not to mention confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and mistaking E. Jean Carroll for one of his ex-wives.

As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.

Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography.

U.S. mends fences with El Salvador’s Bukele as China lurks

Reuters

U.S. mends fences with El Salvador’s Bukele as China lurks

Diego Oré, Sarah Kinosian and Nelson Renteria – February 6, 2024

U.S. papers over differences with El Salvador's Bukele with China waiting in the wings

U.S. papers over differences with El Salvador’s Bukele with China waiting in the wings

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – When El Salvador President Nayib Bukele published a private WhatsApp conversation with the top U.S. diplomat in the Central American country two years ago, he was sending a message of his own: I will not take orders from the United States.

U.S. officials had for months been protesting Bukele’s support for moves like dismissing judges and bucking constitutional term limits – measures they said endangered the country’s young democracy.

Jean Manes, the chargé d’affaires whose messages intervening on behalf of a detained former mayor were unmasked, left the country. She said the bilateral relationship between the erstwhile allies was “on pause,” citing attacks on the U.S. by Bukele’s “paid media machine.”

Two years later, the United States is publicly cozying up to Bukele, a populist anti-establishment renegade who on Sunday romped to re-election in a landslide – even as it continues to emphasize concerns over the erosion of human rights and democracy.

Now, more than ever, the U.S. needs Central American nations like El Salvador to curb migration to the southern border. It is also striving to offset growing Chinese influence in Latin America.

In October, the State Department’s top Latin America diplomat, Brian Nichols, visited El Salvador and posed for photos with Bukele. He sought to “give a message that democracy is the most important form of government,” the U.S. embassy said at the time.

And on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken congratulated Bukele on his win, saying the United States would prioritize “good governance” and “fair trials and human rights in El Salvador” as part of its plan to tackle the causes of migration.

Three U.S. State Department officials Reuters spoke to said they have moved more critical diplomacy behind closed doors, a tactic they have found effective given Bukele’s rebellious style and rebukes of perceived foreign meddling.

Bukele has since toned down the kind of inflammatory comments that marked his spat with Manes.

He has also grown savvy at milking the regional tug-of-war for influence between the United States and China.

“(Bukele) has used the approach to China as a negotiating card,” said Ana Maria Mendez, of the Washington Office on Latin America. “(He) threatens or challenges U.S. foreign policy by engaging with China.”

RAPPROCHEMENT

The more reserved public U.S. stance may be a tacit acknowledgement that Bukele’s success in smashing gang violence has led to a decline in migration, officials from both countries said.

Salvadorans fleeing violence and poverty have migrated to the U.S. for decades, hitting record levels in 2021. Following the gang crackdown that began in March 2022, the number of Salvadorans reaching the U.S. southern border fell, dipping 36% from 2022 to 2023, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Bukele has also implemented measures such as hefty taxes on flights from 57 largely African countries to dampen onward U.S. migration.

Bukele will be conscious of the need to stay on good terms with El Salvador’s largest trading partner and benefactor. The U.S. disbursed $629 million in aid between when Bukele took office in 2019 and 2022 – more than went to Honduras, a country with almost double the population, according to USAID.

The U.S. officials said they recognize Salvadorans support the gang crackdown, but that they are pushing Bukele to wind it down.

Under a “state of exception” stretching nearly two years, Bukele’s government has detained over 75,000 Salvadorans – 1.1% of the country’s population. Rights groups have documented 150 deaths in prison, while Salvadorans have lost their rights to due process.

“We recognize the profound challenge El Salvador faced curbing gang violence,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson said in an email. “(But) the state of exception must be an exception.”

WAITING IN THE WINGS

At the same time, there are growing ties between China and El Salvador.

In recent years, China has spent $500 million in infrastructure projects that include a state-of-the-art sports stadium, a tourist pier and water purification plants.

A futuristic library near the capital’s main square flies a giant Chinese flag and was inaugurated with a drone display of Bukele’s face.

“El Salvador will look to work as closely with China as possible in the coming years. China is an economic partner that is willing to look the other way on human rights and other issues,” said Margaret Myers, from Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue.

China’s embassy in San Salvador was quick to congratulate Bukele and his party “for the historic victory in these elections” this week.

Although of limited commercial importance in itself, El Salvador offers China a foothold in Central America, and in 2018 broke relations with Taiwan in favor of China.

Bukele’s government must walk a careful line, though. In mid-2023 it stopped negotiating a 5G deal with Chinese telecoms provider Huawei, which has been the subject of U.S. sanctions, and now is working with Washington in “to achieve a secure nationwide 5G service using trusted vendors,” said a U.S. State Department spokesperson .

“El Salvador wants to do trade with everyone,” Bukele said during his victory speech on Sunday night. “What we are not going to be is your lackeys.”

(This story has been corrected to rectify the year that El Salvador broke relations with Taiwan in paragraph 24)

(Reporting by Diego Ore in Mexico City and Nelson Renteria and Sarah Kinosian in San Salvador; Editing by Christian Plumb and Rosalba O’Brien)

‘Morning Joe’ Shreds Mike Johnson for Border Bill Shutdown Effort: ‘Worshipping at the Feet’ of Trump | Video

The Wrap

‘Morning Joe’ Shreds Mike Johnson for Border Bill Shutdown Effort: ‘Worshipping at the Feet’ of Trump | Video

Andi Ortiz – February 5, 2024

“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough laid into House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday morning, after Johnson made it clear that he won’t be supporting a bipartisan bill aiming to improve border security. According to the MSNBC host, Johnson is simply “worshipping at the feet of Donald Trump” at this point.

On Sunday, after the text of the bipartisan bill was released — clocking in at 370 pages — Johnson posted on X, still popularly referred to as Twitter, that he’d “seen enough” and that the bill was “even worse than we expected.”

“That’s just a lie. And I’d love to know what bible he’s looking at when he says he lives by the Bible,” Scarborough said disgustedly. “Because it’s bizarre that this guy is worshipping at the feet of Donald Trump. [He] basically does whatever Donald Trump tells him to do, and was, of course, the chief sponsor of the Big Lie in the House of Representatives.”

Indeed, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been vocally against the deal, encouraging Republicans to reject it and making false statements about its contents.

“This is the toughest border bill in a generation,” Scarborough said. “If you’d have read any of that to us a year or two ago, we would all say ‘Oh, yeah, that’s the Republican wishlist.’”

He added, “And now, just because Mike is being told by Donald not to pass this bill … we have a situation where they want to keep the border open, because it’s bad for America, and they believe what’s bad for America is good for Donald Trump.”

You can watch the full discussion from “Morning Joe” in the video above.