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      To Save San Francisco, a Democrat Wants to Scrap Environmental Reviews

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      State Senator Scott Wiener hopes to spur redevelopment in the struggling downtown core by eliminating a major environmental hurdle.Not long ago, it would have sounded preposterous: A San Francisco Democrat asking to peel back California’s treasured environmental protections in the heart of the city.It would have been like painting the Golden Gate Bridge gray or cheering on the Los Angeles Dodgers. It just would not have flown.But as California grows more desperate for housing and San Francisco struggles to revive its city core, State Senator Scott Wiener says one thing must go: environmental review.Mr. Wiener on Friday will propose one of the broadest rollbacks of the once-vaunted California Environmental Quality Act by asking the state legislature to allow most projects in downtown San Francisco to bypass the law for the next decade.Empty buildings could more easily be demolished to build theaters, museums or college campuses, Mr. Wiener said. Office towers could more readily be converted to a wide variety of housing. The withering mall on Market Street could more quickly become something else — like the soccer stadium that Mayor London Breed has envisioned.“We know we need to make downtown viable,” Ms. Breed, a sponsor of the bill, said. “We can’t let process get in the way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Steps Up, Helping Biden Just When the President Needs Him

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      Donald J. Trump’s stunning statement supporting a Russian attack against “delinquent” NATO allies takes attention away from unwelcome questions about the president’s age and provides the Biden camp a useful contrast.If anyone gets a thank-you note from President Biden for helping get him out of a jam in recent days, it should probably be former President Donald J. Trump.Just when Mr. Biden was swamped by unwelcome questions about his age, his predecessor and challenger stepped in, rescuing him with an ill-timed diatribe vowing to “encourage” Russia to attack NATO allies that do not spend enough on their militaries.The stunner from Mr. Trump over the weekend not only drew attention away from the president’s memory problems, as detailed in a special counsel report, but also provided a convenient way for Mr. Biden’s defenders to reframe the issue: Yes, they could now say, the incumbent may be an old man who sometimes forgets things, but his challenger is both aging and dangerously reckless.It was not the first time, nor likely will it be the last, that Mr. Trump has stepped up when an adversary was in trouble to provide an escape route with an ill-considered howler of his own. Mr. Trump’s lifelong appetite for attention has often collided with his evident best interest. For Mr. Biden, that may be the key to this year’s campaign, banking on his opponent’s inability to stay silent at critical moments and hoping that he keeps reminding voters why they rejected him in 2020.“There’s a saying that the enemy of your enemy is your friend,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who lost the party nomination that year to Mr. Trump. “Since Trump is his own worst enemy, he’s arguably Biden’s best friend.”That does not mean that age is no longer a political liability for Mr. Biden, who at 81 is already the oldest president in American history and would be 86 at the end of a second term. While Mr. Trump is close behind him at 77, the special counsel’s characterization of the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” proved searing and damaging.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden’s Age Is a Campaign Problem, Not a Governing One

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      Last fall I found myself at a dinner party that included a former Biden administration official and a Democratic donor, and the conversation turned, naturally, to President Biden’s age and his prospects for re-election. The ex-official said that from inside the White House, where people experience the policymaking process firsthand, Biden was overwhelmingly seen as an effective leader who should run again. The donor, on the other hand, saw Biden mostly at the fund-raisers where watching the president’s meandering speeches left him terrified about the upcoming campaign. The gulf in their perceptions, I think, speaks to the fact that Biden’s age has impaired his ability to campaign much more than his ability to govern, which has created an impossible dilemma for the Democratic Party.I have argued since 2022 that Biden shouldn’t run again because he’s too old, but there’s never been much sign that his advanced age affects his performance in office. I’m not aware of any leaks from the White House suggesting that Biden is confused, exhausted or forgetful when setting priorities or making decisions. It’s not just Democratic partisans who find Biden more impressive up close than his frail, halting image in the media would suggest. As Politico reported of the ousted House speaker Kevin McCarthy, “On a particularly sensitive matter, McCarthy mocked Biden’s age and mental acuity in public, while privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations.” There are obviously things Biden does that I disagree with; I wish he’d take a much harder line with Israel over civilian casualties in Gaza. But while his reluctance to publicly criticize Israel might stem from an anachronistic view of the country — Biden likes to talk about the Labor Zionist prime minister Golda Meir, who left office 50 years ago — his position is a mainstream one in the Democratic Party and can’t be attributed to senescence.Because Biden has delivered on many Democratic priorities, there was never any real push within the party to get him to step aside, forfeiting the advantages of incumbency in favor of a potentially bruising primary contest. But it’s obvious to most people watching the president from afar that he looks fragile and diminished and that his well-known propensity for gaffes has gotten worse. Poll after poll shows that voters are very concerned about his age. That’s why the special counsel Robert Hur’s gratuitous swipes at Biden as someone who might seem to a jury like a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” have caused an epic freakout among Democrats. His words brought to the surface deep, terrifying doubts about Biden’s ability to do the one part of his job that matters above all others, which is beating Donald Trump.That’s true even though the report by Hur, a former Trump appointee tapped by Merrick Garland to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents, looks like a partisan hit job. (Democratic attorneys general have a terrible habit of appointing Republican special counsels in an effort to display their own impartiality — a type of moral preening that Republican administrations rarely fall victim to.) Since Hur decided not to charge Biden with any crimes, his comments about Biden’s age, particularly his claim that Biden couldn’t remember the year his son Beau died, seemed designed to shiv him politically. If so, it worked.Some Democrats are now comparing the media fixation on Biden’s age to the saturation coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails eight years ago, and there are similarities. Betty Friedan wrote that “housewifery expands to fill the time available,” and the same is true of bad political news. Trump’s scandals are so multifarious that each one tends to get short shrift, while his opponents’ weaknesses and missteps can be examined at length precisely because there are fewer of them. This asymmetry worked to Trump’s advantage in 2016, and it’s helping him now.But there’s also a crucial difference between Clinton’s emails and Biden’s years. Clinton’s vulnerability was never really about her insufficient care with information security protocols. Instead, the emails became a symbol of a powerful but inchoate sense, magnified by disproportionate press attention, that she was devious and deceptive. Biden’s age is a much more straightforward issue; people think he’s too old because of how he looks and sounds. Pretending it’s not a problem isn’t going to make voters worry about it less; it’s just going to make them feel they’re being lied to.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yes, Biden’s Age Matters

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      One of the most difficult conversations you can have in life is with a parent or peer who is becoming too old and infirm to work. Whether the infirmity is physical or mental, often your loved one is the last person to realize his own deficiencies, so he may interpret respectful, genuine concern as a personal attack.This conversation is difficult enough when it’s conducted entirely in private with friends and family. It’s infinitely more difficult when it plays out in public and involves the president of the United States.The top-line conclusion of the special counsel Robert Hur’s report regarding the discovery of classified information at Joe Biden’s home is good for the president. It found, in no uncertain terms, that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter.” It said prosecution would be inappropriate “even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.” The report even did the president the favor of clearly and unequivocally distinguishing his treatment of classified materials from Donald Trump’s vastly worse misconduct in his own retention-of-documents case.But the report presented what may be a worse assessment for Biden than the matter of guilt, which is its description of one reason he won’t be prosecuted: The special counsel found that Biden lacked the requisite degree of criminal willfulness in part because of his fading memory. The report characterized him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and said he had “diminished faculties in advancing age.” To bolster this assertion, the report provided some damaging details, including claims that Biden couldn’t remember the dates when he was vice president and couldn’t remember “even within several years” when his son Beau died.The report understandably angered Biden, but in a fiery news conference after the report was released, he confused the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico. In isolation, the gaffe was minor — less serious, for instance, than Donald Trump recently confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi — but the timing was terrible. The mistake, coming on the heels of two incidents in recent days in which Biden confused French and German leaders with their deceased predecessors, only served to bolster the special counsel’s conclusions.Democratic partisans may be furious that the special counsel was so blunt about Biden’s memory. But willfulness and intent are necessary elements of the underlying crimes, so Hur had to explore Biden’s mental state, and include illustrative details.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Question Is Not If Biden Should Step Aside. It’s How.

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      Joe Biden should not be running for re-election. That much was obvious well before the special prosecutor’s comments on the president’s memory lapses inspired a burst of age-related angst. And Democrats who are furious at the prosecutor have to sense that it will become only more obvious as we move deeper into an actual campaign.What is less obvious is how Biden should get out of it.Note that I did not say that Biden should not be the president. You can make a case that as obvious as his decline has been, whatever equilibrium his White House has worked out has thus far delivered results largely indistinguishable from (and sometimes better than) what one would expect from a replacement-level Democratic president.If there has been a really big age effect in his presidency so far, I suspect it lies in the emboldenment of America’s rivals, a sense that a decrepit American chief executive is less to be feared than a more vigorous one. But suspicion isn’t proof, and when I look at how the Biden administration has actually handled its various foreign crises, I can imagine more disastrous outcomes from a more swaggering sort of president.Saying that things have worked OK throughout this stage of Biden’s decline, though, is very different from betting that they can continue working out OK for almost five long further years. And saying that Biden is capable of occupying the presidency for the next 11 months is quite different from saying that he’s capable of spending those months effectively campaigning for the right to occupy it again.The impression the president gives in public is not senility so much as extreme frailty, like a lightbulb that still burns so long as you keep it on a dimmer. But to strain the simile a bit, the entire issue in a re-election campaign is not whether your filaments shed light; it’s whether voters should take this one opportunity to change out the bulb. Every flicker is evidence that a change is necessary, and if you force Biden into a normal campaign-season role, frequent flickering (if not a burning-out) is what you’re going to get.Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that Biden senses this, that he isn’t just entombed in egomania, but he feels trapped by his own terrible vice-presidential choice. If he drops out and anoints Kamala Harris, she’s even more likely to lose to Donald Trump. But if he drops out and doesn’t endorse his own number two, he’d be opening himself to a narrative of identitarian betrayal — aging white president knifes first woman-of-color veep — and setting his party up for months of bloodletting and betrayal, a constant churn of personal and ideological drama.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      El informe del fiscal especial exculpa a Biden pero es un desastre político

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      Una investigación concluyó que el mandatario era “bienintencionado” pero tenía “mala memoria”. El presidente salió a ofrecer declaraciones en un intento por realizar control de daños políticos.La decisión del jueves de no presentar cargos penales contra el presidente Joe Biden por mal manejo de documentos clasificados debió haber sido una exoneración legal inequívoca.En su lugar, fue un desastre político.La investigación, sobre el manejo de los documentos por parte de Biden después de ser vicepresidente, concluyó que era un “hombre bienintencionado de avanzada edad con una mala memoria” y que tenía “facultades disminuidas en la edad avanzada”, afirmaciones tan sorprendentes que pocas horas después motivaron un enérgico y emotivo intento de control de daños políticos por parte del presidente.The president defended his ability to serve when questioned by reporters on his memory and age during a news conference, hours after a special counsel cleared him of criminal charges in the handling of classified documents.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesLa noche del jueves, hablando a las cámaras desde la Sala de Recepciones Diplomáticas de la Casa Blanca, Biden arremetió contra el informe de Robert K. Hur, el fiscal especial, acusando a los autores del informe de “comentarios irrelevantes” sobre su edad y capacidad mental.“No saben de lo que están hablando”, dijo rotundamente el presidente.Biden pareció objetar especialmente la afirmación incluida en el informe de que durante las entrevistas con los investigadores del FBI no pudo recordar en qué año murió su hijo Beau.“¿Cómo diablos se atreve a mencionar eso?”, dijo el presidente, mientras parecía contener las lágrimas. “Cada Día de los caídos hacemos un servicio para recordarlo al que asisten amigos y familiares y la gente que lo amaba. No necesito a nadie, no necesito a nadie que me recuerde cuándo falleció”.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Marianne Williamson Suspends Her Long-Shot Challenge Against Biden

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      Marianne Williamson, the self-help author, is suspending her long-shot campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, she said in a video address on Wednesday.Ms. Williamson on Tuesday placed a very distant third place in Nevada’s primary election, behind President Biden — who won nearly 90 percent of the vote — and behind “none of these candidates,” a ballot option that earned less than 6 percent of the vote. She had put significant effort into campaigning in the state before the primary, but ultimately drew under 3 percent of the vote.She also placed a very distant second in the South Carolina primary, with just over 2 percent of the vote, but she topped Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota — who had so far been Mr. Biden’s most significant rival.It was Ms. Williamson’s second attempt at running for president. She had earned some publicity early in the Democratic debates during her first run in 2020, but dropped out of the race before the first votes were cast.Ms. Williamson made it further this time, lasting through two official presidential primaries, as well as the unsanctioned New Hampshire primary that will award no delegates in the nominating contest. More

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      In New York, Biden Courts Big-Money Donors and Attacks a ‘Dangerous’ Trump

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      In drawing rooms and ballrooms of the elite in Manhattan, any enthusiasm for a second Biden term seemed to be mingled with fear about the thought of a second one for Donald J. Trump.There is one thing a president can do when Congress is an ungovernable mess, polling numbers are blinking red and crises abroad show no signs of resolving themselves. And that thing is: get out of town.President Biden traveled to New York on Wednesday to headline three fund-raisers, where he presented himself as the last line of defense against the re-election of Donald Trump and as a dedicated — if imperfect — leader who had been around long enough to recognize the existential threat Mr. Trump poses to democratic institutions, including the presidency.“It is dangerous for us to be engaged in this kind of politics, because it ends up dragging us all to the bottom,” Mr. Biden said during his third reception, where his voice had lowered to a whisper after a day of shaking hands, taking selfies and delivering speeches.“It’s not that I’m so good, but you have to have someone who can beat somebody.”Mr. Biden also pre-empted criticism of his age by joking that he was not 81, but “40 times two.” But in the drawing rooms and ballrooms of New York City, any enthusiasm for a second Biden term seemed to be mingled with fear about the thought of a second one from Mr. Trump.Groups lined streets in Manhattan to see the president’s motorcade.Kent Nishimura for The New York Times“We’re here for him, and for the next four years,” said Maureen White, a Democratic donor and the host of Mr. Biden’s third reception of the day, as she stood next to the president. “But we’re also here because the consequences of not electing Joe Biden are terrifying.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More