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      Ahead of Biden Speech, McCarthy Embraces Trump After Mar-a-Lago Search

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      Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, on Thursday aligned himself with former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to undercut federal law enforcement over the search of Mar-a-Lago, condemning the court-ordered seizure of classified documents from the former president’s home as an “assault on democracy.”In a half-hour speech delivered from Scranton, Pa., Mr. McCarthy sought to take the themes that President Biden was hitting in a prime-time address and turn them on their head against Democrats, in a remarkable attempt at political jujitsu aimed at muddying the waters about Mr. Trump’s conduct and his handling of sensitive government material.Mr. McCarthy’s remarks, delivered from a competitive congressional district that Republicans hope to wrest from Democrats in November’s midterm congressional elections, were largely a point-by-point condemnation of Mr. Biden’s policies.The top House Republican, who has seen his party’s chances of sweeping into the majority dim in recent weeks, painted the November elections as a referendum on Mr. Biden’s presidency and said that it was the current president who had “launched an assault on our democracy” with policies that had “severely wounded America’s soul.”“Joe Biden is right: Democracy is on the ballot in November,” Mr. McCarthy said. “And Joe Biden and the radical left in Washington are dismantling Americans’ democracy before our very eyes.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a New York special election is one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.Using one of Mr. Trump’s favorite tactics, Mr. McCarthy falsely equated Mr. Biden’s conduct with actions that Mr. Trump himself has taken.“Joe Biden and a politicized Department of Justice launched a raid on the home of his top political rival, Donald Trump,” Mr. McCarthy said. “That is an assault on democracy.”In fact, the F.B.I. search at Mar-a-Lago came after a year and a half of failed efforts by government officials to recover presidential documents, including classified material, from Mr. Trump. Those efforts included a subpoena that was not fully complied with and a signed letter from one of the former president’s lawyers that turned out to be false.It was Mr. Trump who was impeached in 2019 for using the powers of his office to try to get the president of Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump also sought to use the Justice Department to help him overturn the 2020 election. And it was his lies of a stolen election that inspired the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, perhaps the most literal assault on democracy in recent American history.Still, Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Biden was at fault. He demanded that the president “apologize for slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists,” a reference to comments that Mr. Biden made at a recent fund-raiser in Maryland denouncing “extreme MAGA philosophy” as akin to “semi-fascism.”“I respect conservative Republicans,” Mr. Biden said. “I don’t respect these MAGA Republicans.”Mr. McCarthy’s speech reflected the needle he is trying to thread as he attempts to win back control of the House and secure the speakership. He has labored to stick to issues that Republicans believe resonate with voters across the ideological spectrum — chiefly the economy, public safety and border security — while also showing fealty to Mr. Trump and courting the hard-right voters and candidates whose support he will need to propel him to power.“We will fight to lower the cost of gas,” Mr. McCarthy said. “We will stop taxpayer dollars from being wasted on failed programs.” He added, “We will conduct vigorous oversight, check abuses of power and hold all wrongdoers accountable, including our Department of Justice.” More

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      Biden to Address Threats to Democracy in Philadelphia Speech

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      The prime-time speech comes amid deep national divisions. According to a recent poll, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction.WASHINGTON — When President Biden travels to Philadelphia on Thursday, he will turn his attention to the threat to American democracy, the very issue he said drove him to run for the presidency in the first place.More than a year and a half after Mr. Biden pledged during his inauguration to “restore the soul and to secure the future of America,” he still believes democracy is in peril.White House officials said Mr. Biden is expected to use the prime-time speech to take direct aim at the Republican Party as Democrats fight to retain their hold on Congress in the midterm elections in November.In recent days, Mr. Biden has replaced his usual calls for unity with sharp condemnations of “MAGA extremists,” saying Republicans have embraced “semi-fascism” by staying loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.“The MAGA Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican Party,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary. She said they present “an extreme threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights. They just don’t respect the rule of law.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a New York special election is one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.Republicans have cited Mr. Biden’s rhetoric as evidence that he has fallen short of his promise to bring the nation together.“Biden has pitted neighbors against each other, labeled half of Americans as fascist, and tarnished any idea of his promise of ‘unity,’” Emma Vaughn, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman, said in a statement.Thursday will be Mr. Biden’s second visit to Pennsylvania in three days, and he is expected to make a third on Labor Day. Pennsylvania, a swing state, will hold crucial races for the House and Senate as well as a closely watched governor’s race.During Mr. Biden’s first year in office, he promised to bring a sense of normalcy to the White House and he largely ignored former President Donald J. Trump. But Mr. Trump is once again at the fore, with investigations into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and an F.B.I. search of his Florida home for classified documents, and Mr. Biden is trying to frame a vote for Republicans as a vote for extremism.The speech comes at a time of deep national divisions.According to an NBC News poll released last month, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction. The F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security have issued multiple warnings about false claims about election fraud motivating extremists attacks.“We are in a crisis in this country. There’s no doubt about it. Not just in terms of the sanctity of the vote or trusting our votes will be counted,” said Allida Black, a University of Virginia historian who had a private meeting with Mr. Biden to discuss the state of democracy last month. “We seem to attack rather than embrace responsibility and accountability.”It is not the first time Mr. Biden has delivered a speech that is not about policies or campaigns but rather the morality of the nation. He said he was inspired to run for office when white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. He had a “soul of the nation” bus tour during the presidential campaign and committed to unifying the nation during his inauguration.Ms. Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday that Mr. Biden was working with senior advisers on drafts of his speech for Thursday.“He sees the challenges increasing. He sees the threats increasing,” Ms. Black said, adding that the speech was a way for Mr. Biden to convey “I’m not backing down.” More

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      Biden’s Message Shifts From Compromise to Combat Ahead of Midterms

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      President Biden is spending less time hailing the virtues of unity and more time calling out Republicans and dangers to democracy.WASHINGTON — President Biden likes to say there is nothing America cannot do if the country is united and its rival parties are willing to work together.But with just two months until the midterm elections, Mr. Biden is purposely spending less time hailing the virtues of compromise and more time calling out dangers to democracy — using some of the sharpest and most combative language of his presidency.He has accused Republicans of embracing “semi-fascism” by paying fealty to former President Donald J. Trump. He has blasted the party for being “full of anger, violence, hate and division.” And he has warned that the danger from Republicans loyal to Mr. Trump went far beyond differences in policy.“They’re a threat to our very democracy,” he said of a party that he has spent a half-century working with to find common ground. “They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace political violence.”After weeks of internal White House strategy sessions, the president and his aides have devised a confrontational election-season approach that focuses on Mr. Biden’s accomplishments coupled with an aggressive political assault on the G.O.P., including the poll-tested phrase he began using this spring: “ultra-MAGA Republicans.”Now, with Mr. Trump once again at the center of a criminal investigation, this time over his handling of classified documents, Mr. Biden has seized the moment to press a case that voters cannot risk a return to a party in the thrall of the former president.As the campaign season become more intense, Mr. Biden plans to deliver a prime-time speech on Thursday in Philadelphia in which aides say he will argue that Americans are in the grips of a “battle for the soul of the nation,” returning to a theme he has often used to describe his motivation for becoming a presidential candidate. Recent events have made the speech more urgent for the president, but a Democratic official said Mr. Biden had been thinking of delivering the address since early summer.“After a successful past couple of months, the president and Democrats have effectively turned this midterm into a choice, when it’s typically a referendum on the party in the White House,” said Stephanie Cutter, a veteran Democratic strategist. “The president now is articulating that choice, pretty damned well and at just the right time.”She added, “The choice couldn’t be clearer — a reminder of what people rejected just two years ago.”The speech will also be an opportunity for Mr. Biden to focus on falling gas prices, a booming job market and legislative victories on climate change, drug prices, infrastructure improvements and veterans’ health care.The Biden PresidencyWith midterm elections looming, here’s where President Biden stands.On the Campaign Trail: Fresh off a series of legislative victories, President Biden is back campaigning. But his low approval ratings could complicate his efforts to help Democrats in the midterm elections.‘Dark Brandon’ Rises: White House officials recently began to embrace this repackaged internet meme. Here is the story behind it and what it tells us about the administration.Questions About 2024: Mr. Biden has said he plans to run for a second term, but at 79, his age has become an uncomfortable issue.A Familiar Foreign Policy: So far, Mr. Biden’s approach to foreign policy is surprisingly consistent with the Trump administration, analysts say.But Mr. Biden is leaning into more political attacks, aides and allies said, in part because of what he sees as a growing embrace of violent political speech by Republicans and a threat to the democratic process of governing. The aides said he was dismayed by the number of Trump-backed election deniers who have won Republican primaries for governor or secretary of state across the country.Mr. Biden, whose own approval ratings have begun to improve slightly since lows earlier this summer, is hoping that his party can maintain control of Congress and deliver a forceful rebuke to Mr. Trump and his followers.It is a moment, one adviser said, to make sure people understand what is at stake.“Given everything that is happening right now, I have to imagine that this is weighing on him very heavily,” said Symone D. Sanders, who served as the chief spokeswoman for Vice President Kamala Harris and now hosts a new MSNBC show. “He feels as though he needs to ring the alarm, sound the alarm as he did throughout all of 2019, throughout all of 2020 in the lead-up to the election.” More

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      There Are Now F.E.C. Complaints Against Biden and Trump

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      A conservative group has filed a complaint against President Biden accusing him of violating federal election law by not officially informing the Federal Election Commission that he plans to run again in 2024.The complaint is unlikely to succeed or be resolved quickly — not only because the commission has been hobbled for years by partisan infighting, but also because of the high burden of proof required to show that Mr. Biden has in fact decided to pursue re-election.It nonetheless highlights the political bind the White House has found itself in while facing grumbling about the president from his fellow Democrats, as well as the gridlock that has crippled the nation’s top election agency and has led it to be mocked on late-night talk shows.The complaint was filed more than five months after a Democratic super PAC filed a similar complaint against former President Donald J. Trump, who has openly flirted with another White House bid.Complaint About Biden From Americans for Public Trust to the Federal Election CommissionA conservative group filed a complaint against President Biden that accuses him of violating federal election law by not officially informing the F.E.C. that he plans to run again in 2024.Read Document 6 pagesAmericans for Public Trust filed the complaint against Mr. Biden on Tuesday. The group is led by Caitlin Sutherland, a former research director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans.“It is very clear that President Biden meets the requirements of a candidate who needs to file with the F.E.C.,” Ms. Sutherland said in an interview.Her group is asking the commission to investigate whether Mr. Biden is running what she described as a “shadow campaign,” using taxpayer money to conduct what in essence are political activities under the guise of official travel to swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A potential punishment could include a hefty fine, as the F.E.C. has levied in the past.The complaint claims that Mr. Biden’s official campaign committee, Biden for President, has spent more than $5 million since Jan. 20, 2021. Most of that money has gone toward expenses related to the 2020 presidential election, but the complaint notes that Biden for President has reported spending $1 million on outreach to voters over email and text messages.Those messages, which are reviewed by Mr. Biden’s campaign lawyers for compliance with the law, promote his policy accomplishments, such as the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, and direct recipients to donate money to the Democratic National Committee.The Biden PresidencyWith midterm elections looming, here’s where President Biden stands.On the Campaign Trail: Fresh off a series of legislative victories, President Biden is back campaigning. But his low approval ratings could complicate his efforts to help Democrats in the midterm elections.‘Dark Brandon’ Rises: White House officials recently began to embrace this repackaged internet meme. Here is the story behind it and what it tells us about the administration.Questions About 2024: Mr. Biden has said he plans to run for a second term, but at 79, his age has become an uncomfortable issue.A Familiar Foreign Policy: So far, Mr. Biden’s approach to foreign policy is surprisingly consistent with the Trump administration, analysts say.But they also serve a tried-and-true function in political campaigns: keeping a valuable contact list warm in case Mr. Biden needs it for a future run.The complaint also details a litany of public statements made by White House officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, indicating that Mr. Biden plans to seek re-election.In late June, for instance, Ms. Harris told Dana Bash of CNN, “Joe Biden is running for re-election and I will be his ticketmate. Full stop.”She quickly walked back those comments, however, as aides apparently realized the legal implications of prematurely declaring Mr. Biden’s candidacy before he has officially decided to run again.Similarly, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on June 13 that Mr. Biden was “running for re-election.” She later tweeted that the president “intends to run in 2024,” only to clarify later that Mr. Biden had not yet decided.Those comments came in response to public reports, including in The New York Times, suggesting that many Democrats were not eager to see Mr. Biden become their party’s nominee again in 2024 given his advanced age and his relative unpopularity.White House officials and other surrogates for Mr. Biden leaned in hard against the emerging narrative, and, according to some accounts noted in the complaint, told reporters anonymously that they recognized that those comments had risked running afoul of legal restrictions on fund-raising.“Biden cannot hide behind the word ‘intend’, and it’s not the shield he thinks it is,” Ms. Sutherland said.The White House declined to comment, as did the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Biden himself has been coy about whether he has indeed decided to seek the Oval Office again, often couching his answers with a caveat: that he intends to do so if he remains in good health, but will not make that determination until sometime after the November midterms.In February, when a reporter asked if he was satisfied with Ms. Harris’s working on voting rights and whether she would be his running mate in 2024 “provided that you run again,” Mr. Biden replied, “yes and yes.”The complaint omits the reporter’s conditional phrase.Some campaign lawyers affiliated with the Democratic Party, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, argued that the White House press secretary and even the vice president could not speak for Biden for President, the campaign committee — and therefore the commission was likely to dismiss the complaint quickly.That would be unusual: The F.E.C. is notoriously lax about meeting its own statutory deadline of 120 days. A different election-law-related complaint filed by the same group, Americans for Public Trust, about the pre-candidacy activities of Jeb Bush, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, has been languishing for years.Complaint About Trump From American Bridge to the Federal Election CommissionA Democratic super PAC filed a complaint in March against former President Donald J. Trump that accused him of violating federal election law by not officially informing the F.E.C. that he planned to run again in 2024.Read Document 10 pagesAnn Ravel, a Democratic former commissioner at the F.E.C., said she found the complaint about Mr. Biden’s putative candidacy “persuasive.”Ms. Ravel, who has long been an outspoken critic of the commission, which consists of three members appointed by each of the two major political parties, added that “of all the government agencies, the F.E.C. is probably the most dysfunctional of all.”By law, a candidate is required to notify the commission within 15 days of deciding to run for federal office.Despite the F.E.C.’s dysfunction, the convention among presidents has been to obey the letter of the law while countermanding its spirit.Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden’s predecessor, exploded that convention through moves like holding his nominating convention on the White House grounds and failing to police violations of the Hatch Act, a law that governs political activities by presidential aides.In March, American Bridge, a group aligned with Democrats, lodged an F.E.C. complaint against Mr. Trump, accusing him of violating campaign finance law by spending political funds on a 2024 presidential bid without formally declaring himself a candidate. The group later sued the F.E.C. over the matter, claiming that the agency’s inaction gave Mr. Trump a competitive advantage.In a July interview with New York magazine, Mr. Trump said that “in my own mind, I’ve already made that decision, so nothing factors in anymore.” More

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      Read the FEC Complaint a Conservative Group Filed Against Biden

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      STATEMENT OF FACTS

      9. President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. was elected as President of the United States in 2020 and was sworn in on January 20, 2021.²

      10. Since January 20, 2021, President Biden’s principal campaign committee, Biden for President, has spent more than $5 million dollars, including $1 million on “text message/email

      outreach” and almost $250,000 on a “database subscription” – thereby exceeding the $5,000 threshold to be declared a candidate.³

      11. In addition to significant campaign expenditures, President Biden’s White House staff, spokespersons, Vice President, and surrogates have made numerous on-the-record statements indicating that he has commenced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election.

      12. Beginning in November of 2021, in response to a reporter’s question, “[t]here were reports that President Biden was telling allies that he is going to run for re-election in 2024. Can you confirm, is he going to run in 2024? Is he telling staff that?,” then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated, “[h]e is, that’s his intention.”4

      13. President Biden’s current Press Secretary – Karine Jean-Pierre – conclusively stated on June 13, 2022, “[y]es, he’s running for reelection. I’m I can’t say more than that.” Later that day, she doubled down and tweeted that, “[t]o be clear, as the President has said repeatedly, he plans to run in 2024,” and a month later again tweeted that, “[t]he president has been very clear about this. He intends to run in 2024.”5

      –

      14. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has also gone on-the-record to discuss President Biden’s campaign for reelection, stating, “I’m looking forward to supporting the president’s reelection. Ah, that is as much as I can say about these things while I’m here on an official…capacity”

      15. President Biden himself has gone so far as to confirm that Vice President Kamala Harris will be his running mate in 2024: “Yes’ and ‘yes,’ Biden responded during his first news conference of the year [2022] when a reporter asked whether Harris would be on his ticket and whether he thought she was doing a good job on voting rights policies.”

      16. Vice President Kamala Harris emphatically told CNN’s Dana Bash – when asked about the president’s campaign for reelection in 2024 – that, “Joe Biden is running for reelection and I will be his ticket mate…Full stop. That’s it.”

      998

      17. Public reporting has stated that, “[i]n public and private, Biden himself has emphasized that he is running, effectively shutting down any discussion of the topic between the president and

      2 Toluse Olorunnipa and Annie Linskey, Joe Biden is Sworn In as the 46th President, Pleads for Unity in Inaugural Address to a Divided Nation, The Washington Post (Jan. 20, 2021).

      3 Federal Election Commission, Statement of Organization, Biden for President (Apr. 25, 2019). Federal Election Commission, Disbursements (search for spender “Biden for President” and Disbursement Type “Made By Presidential Committees: Operating Expenditures,” time period “1/20/21 to date”); Federal Election Commission, Disbursements (search for spender “Biden for President” and Disbursement Detail “text message/email outreach,” reporting time period “2021-2022”); Federal Election Commission, Disbursements (search for spender “Biden for President” and Disbursement Detail “database subscription,” reporting time period “2021-2022”); 11 C.F.R. § 100.3.

      4 Steve Nelson, Psaki Says Biden Still Intends to Run in 2024 Despite Poor Polls, Old Age, New York Post (Nov. 22, 2021).

      5 The White House, Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre (June 13, 2022); Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec), Twitter (June 13, 2022); CBS News (@CBSNews), Twitter (July 28, 2022).

      6 CNBC, Squawk Box, Squawk Newsmaker: Prices at the Pump: Transportation Secretary Weighs In, Clip begins at 0:54 (Aug. 4, 2022).

      7 Claire Rafford, Biden Commits to Harris as His Running Mate for 2024, Politico (Jan. 19, 2022).

      8 Dana Bash (@DanaBashCNN), Twitter (June 27, 2022).

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      Biden to Focus on ‘Battle for the Soul of the Nation’ in Prime-Time Speech

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      The president is set to return to his campaign theme of democracy in peril as his party fights to retain its hold on Congress in the midterm elections.WASHINGTON — President Biden will travel to Pennsylvania on Thursday to deliver a rare prime-time speech on what the White House called the “battle for the soul of the nation,” returning to the theme of democracy in peril that he used in the 2020 presidential campaign as his party fights to hold onto control of Congress in the looming midterm elections.Mr. Biden’s speech outside Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia will describe how democracy itself in America is at stake while most likely taking aim at a Republican Party he has increasingly criticized in recent weeks, according to a White House official. It is also expected to emphasize the reputation of the United States on the global stage.The speech will come as Mr. Biden has struck a more aggressive tone after spending most of the first year of his presidency preferring to emphasize unity in a divided nation over attacking Republicans, at times frustrating members of his own party. Just last week, the president condemned “ultra-MAGA Republicans” for a philosophy he described as “semifascism.”It also comes as former President Donald J. Trump and his norm-busting presidency have returned to the fore, amid investigations into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and an F.B.I. search of his Florida home that retrieved highly sensitive documents he took with him from the White House. As Republicans have rallied to his defense, many have defended his efforts to overturn the election or attacked basic institutions of government including the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.The timing of Mr. Biden’s speech on Thursday, less than three months before the November elections, is also another sign that the administration is leaning into a strategy outlined in a memo written by Jen O’Malley Dillon, a deputy White House chief of staff, and Anita Dunn, a top communications adviser. Mr. Biden is expected to trumpet legislative victories that “beat the special interests” and attack the extremism embraced by Mr. Trump and his allies, both strategies emphasized in the memo. More

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      Did Biden Just School the Republicans or His Own Party?

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Depending on whom you ask, Joe Biden’s decision to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans is either the Democrats’ political masterstroke or a major political gift to Republicans. What’s your take?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, allow me to take the middle road. Gee, I really do enjoy saying that. Makes me feel so … judicious.Politically, I think it’s more a winner than not. Tens of millions of people who have college debt in their family are going to be grateful; almost everybody else has other things to focus on. I doubt anybody who started last week liking Joe Biden’s agenda is suddenly going to turn on the Democrats.Bret: I wonder. This just seems to me like yet another case of Democrats getting on the wrong side of working-class America. Most Americans don’t have a bachelor’s degree, sometimes because they couldn’t afford it. Most Americans who did go to college either have paid their loans off or are paying them off. Now they have been turned into chumps for living within their means — while paying, through their taxes, for those who didn’t.Expect Republicans to run on this in the fall the way Democrats are running on abortion rights. What do you think of the decision on the merits?Gail: Policywise, I just wish it had been tied to some serious reforms of the current system that helped create all that debt in the first place.Bret: Agree. One-time student loan forgiveness isn’t going to get educational costs under control. If anything, it will create a moral hazard in which people take out student loans they may not be able to afford in the expectation of future loan forgiveness. What’s your reform proposal?Gail: First and foremost, a deep dive into for-profit schools. Many of them are total scams, and even the ones that aren’t often charge more for programs people can get elsewhere.Bret: I’d add that there are plenty of nonprofit schools also charging way too much for dubious degrees.Gail: After that, a serious look at overall price tags. The fact that loans are so easy to get has encouraged even very fine schools to charge too-high tuition in order to get money for programs that feed the ego of the administration more than the quality of the education.And then … well, hey. Your turn.Bret: It wouldn’t hurt, either, if colleges and universities started cutting down sharply on the army of administrators they’ve hired in recent years, who contribute a lot to fiscal and bureaucratic bloat and therefore to overall costs.Gail: Watch out, administrators — if Bret and I are in accord, you’ve probably got a problem.Bret: Longer term, we should help steer teenagers away from the idea that four-year college is their one and only ticket to prosperity, status and success. We should shift our funding toward community colleges, vocational schools and a wide range of adult-education programs. I’m also sympathetic to the idea of expanding opportunities for shorter enlistment times for young people who want to join any branch of the armed forces. It could help fund their future education, and it would make them more disciplined students when they do.Gail: While we’re being hard-nosed about what we want students to get out of college, I feel obliged to point out that some of the less practical aspects of higher education can be terrific experiences. I went to graduate school and got a master’s degree in government, which I don’t think has ever once convinced a potential employer I was a superior candidate. But I had a great time, met some fascinating people, including my future husband, and learned a lot.I paid for it through on-campus jobs, some of which you could argue amounted to a kind of public financing. Not saying this should be a universal goal. But when I’m cheerleading for the most practical possible approach to higher education, I feel obliged to toss it in.Bret: True and fair. Liberal-arts education is great when students are engaged and teaching quality is high. Wish that were more often the case.On another subject, Gail, any takeaways from the release of the redacted affidavit on the Mar-a-Lago search?Gail: Have to admit I was disappointed by all those redactions — I was hoping for something that looked a little larger. More dramatic. More specific. More … something. How about you?Bret: Here’s my hunch: Donald Trump has only a vague idea of what’s in all of these documents. The notion that he read through boxes and boxes containing hundreds of documents with classification markings and chose to take these particular items strikes me as … unlikely.Gail: Yeah, I hear he’s currently way too engrossed in rereading the collected works of Tolstoy.Bret: Right. He’s so upset by Anna Karenina’s suicide that he hasn’t been able to focus on anything.What is very much like Trump is that, as soon as the administration sought to recover the boxes, he saw an opportunity to set up a test of strength against Biden — one that would stoke the paranoia of his supporters, rally wavering Republicans to his side and set up the Justice Department to fall on its face barring some spectacular disclosure.So my bottom line is that the Justice Department had better come up with something very damning, not just a charge relating to mishandling classified documents. If it doesn’t, it will be the fourth or fifth time in six years that the F.B.I. has meddled in politics, only to cause irreparable damage to its own reputation.Gail: Congratulations, you’ve flung me into depression. I do agree with you that the story on Trump’s end is less likely a sinister plot than messy grabbiness, perhaps along with a reasonable paranoia that, given the number of things he’s done wrong, there’d be evidence of something bad somewhere.Bret: I’ve always maintained that with Trump, there are no deep, dark secrets: His absolute awfulness always stares you squarely in the face, like a baboon’s backside.Gail: Short term, this saga is just giving ammunition to the right. But I can’t envision a whole lot of people switching their allegiance to Trump because of it.Bret: Not among people who never voted for him. What worries me for now is that he’ll recapture wavering Republicans who were nearly done with him.Gail: Republicans who race to the polls because they’re outraged by the F.B.I.’s Mar-a-Lago adventure are going to be a fraction of the number of folks who’ll want to register their very strong feelings on behalf of abortion rights.Bret: We’ll see.Gail: But let me poke you on another federal agency that conservatives tend to find … problematic. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act includes about $80 billion to update the I.R.S. I think it’s a great idea, given its current pathetic state. Overworked agents sitting around stapling papers together aren’t going to be able to win a lot of battles with high-end accountants and lawyers protecting their rich clients from an audit.But as I’m sure you know, a lot of Republicans are howling about what the dreaded Ted Cruz calls a “shadow army” of I.R.S. agents. What’s your take?Bret: I recently read that the I.R.S. answers just 10 percent of calls. So if the money goes to making the agency more responsive to distressed taxpayers, I’m fine with it. My worry is that the agency will initiate lots of audits against people who don’t have the benefit of fancy accountants and lawyers and who are at the mercy of an agency that has almost limitless power and not much accountability.Gail, we’re getting to the end of summer, and some of our readers may be looking for a final book recommendation before Labor Day. I know you’re working on a memoir, but are there any books you’d suggest?Gail: The last time we talked books I said I was enjoying the novel “A Gentleman in Moscow.”Now you’re giving me a chance to share a letter I got from a reader, John Burgess, saying he’d put in a request for it at his local library, He continued: “The day I picked it up, my son tested positive for Covid. Now I am sequestered in my house (my son lives with me), reading about a Russian noble who was imprisoned in the Metropol hotel in Moscow in 1922. The setting could hardly be more perfect.”See, you never can tell when a novel you read is going to parachute into your real life.On the nonfiction front, I just happily finished “Thank You for Your Servitude” by our former colleague Mark Leibovich, one of the latest in what looks like a banner year for retrospectives on the Trump presidency.How about you?Bret: I spent part of the summer reading books by friends. I devoured Jamie Kirchick’s riveting “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington,” a landmark that deserves companion histories for London, Paris and other capitals. I was deeply moved by “When Magic Failed,” the posthumous memoir of Fouad Ajami, with its heartbreaking depictions of village and city life in his native Lebanon.I read an advance copy of Lionel Shriver’s forthcoming nonfiction collection, “Abominations,” appropriately subtitled “Selected Essays From a Career of Courting Self-Destruction,” which should be mandatory reading for college freshmen. And I finally got around, albeit 20 years late, to my old friend Mindy Lewis’s stunning memoir, “Life Inside,” centered on her institutionalization as a teenager in the late 1960s in a psychiatric hospital in New York. It deserves to be reissued in this new era of mental health crisis among younger people.Gail: I knew your summer list would be high quality and longer than mine. I like the idea that my excuse is that I’m writing a book, so there’s not much time for reading. But maybe if I stopped watching “Sopranos” reruns before bed …Bret: Can’t wait for your book. We’ve been revisiting some favorite French farces. Highly recommend “Le Dîner de Cons” and “Le Placard.”Gail: Next week we’ll be off, celebrating Labor Day with our readers, Bret. Then it’s on to September and the midterm election homestretch. Lord knows what’s going to happen, but it’s nice to know that whatever it is, I’ll get to talk about it with you.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Biden Becomes a Boon for Democrats

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      The coattail effect in politics is the theory that the popularity of a candidate at the top of the ticket redounds to the benefit of those in the same party down ballot.You vote Democratic for president, then you might vote Democratic for senator or mayor.But what do we call it when the person from whom the benefit flows is not actually on the ballot? What if the person isn’t even personally that popular?Let’s call it phantom coattails.That is what I believe is happening with President Biden at the moment. With a string of successes, he is building momentum and shaking off narratives of ineffectiveness.Last week he announced that the federal government would forgive billions of dollars of student loan debt. Republicans predictably squawked about it being an unfair giveaway. Progressives complained that the plan didn’t go far enough.But Biden did act. He did fulfill his campaign promise, to a degree. That is crucial. After some major losses — on liberal priorities like voter protections and police reform — voters needed more wins. It wasn’t Biden’s fault that his agenda was blocked. For that, the blame goes to obstructionist Republicans and demi-Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.There was, however, a sense setting in that electing an elderly institutionalist meant that he wasn’t filled with enough fight, that he was guided by a sort of geriatric gentility.Biden’s recent wins put a major dent in those perceptions and are changing how people feel about him. According to FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls, his approval rating, while still underwater, has been trending up for the past month. This week it reached 44 percent, the highest it has been in a year.It is the direction of the line that is most important in politics. And I believe that Biden’s reversal will bode well for other Democrats.Some of what is helping Biden is not his success but that of Republicans. The overturning of Roe v. Wade was monumental and is still stuck in voters’ minds. Many feel they are stuck in a nightmare and Democrats hold the only possibility of salvation.This decision, this victory by the forced-birth zealots, wiped out the progress Republicans were making by pushing the anti-wokeness canard — this idea that they had to fight back against racial indoctrination, against people who would redefine what a woman is and against health regulation.The War Against Woke now looks silly in light of the escalated War Against Women.Also, Trump has resurfaced as a foil.The stench around him grows stronger as investigations intensify and damning revelations continue to emerge. They may not alter the fealty of his followers, but they remind the rest of us of the horror we escaped by ejecting him from office and how desperately we don’t want to return to it.In fact, the re-emergence of Trump as a constant, prominent feature of national news is probably one of the greatest assets Democrats have going into the midterms. Time has a way of softening the perception of ex-presidents.George W. Bush went from the man who led the charge on the Iraq war, established the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay and defended torture to the man who laughed a lot, painted portraits and passed Michelle Obama candy at funerals.Retrospection rehabilitates.But Trump refuses to exit the battle. And with every revelation of legal jeopardy and suspicious movement, he hinders any possibility of rehabilitation.None of this is to say that Democrats have a lock on the midterm elections or that they will not suffer losses, as the ruling party historically has. There are still headwinds. Violent crime and inflation loom large in voters’ minds because they have risen to rates that some areas haven’t seen in decades. People blame Biden for that. It’s not in his control, but it’s on his watch. That’s just the way politics works.However, Biden keeps adding other things to the other side of the ledger, and on balance, he and the Democrats keep looking stronger.There are some Democrats nervous about campaigning with Biden because of his poor approval numbers, particularly in competitive districts. But Biden and his successes are the best things Democrats have right now.They should probably take a note from Charlie Crist, who just won the Democratic primary in Florida to challenge the incumbent governor, Ron DeSantis.When Crist was asked last week on CNN if he wanted Biden to campaign with him, he responded in part by saying of Biden: “He’s a good man. He’s a great man. He’s a great president. I can’t wait for him to get down here. I need his help. I want his help.”Whether other Democrats want Biden’s help or not, I believe that they are going to need it. Running away from the leader of your party is never a good idea. It’s a particularly terrible idea when that leader is on a hot streak.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More