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    No Bias Found in F.B.I. Report on Catholic Extremists

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    Republicans claimed the bureau’s memo was evidence of an anti-conservative strain among F.B.I. ranks, but an internal investigation failed to uncover any “malicious intent.”A memo by the F.B.I. warning of possible threats posed by “radical-traditionalist” Catholics violated professional standards but showed “no evidence of malicious intent,” according to an internal Justice Department inquiry made public on Thursday.Republicans have seized on the 11-page memo, which was leaked early last year, as a talking point. They have pointed to the document to sharply criticize the bureau and suggested, without evidence, that it was part of a broader campaign by the Biden administration to persecute Catholics and conservatives over their beliefs.The memo was quickly withdrawn after being leaked, and top law enforcement officials have repeatedly distanced themselves from it.The assessment by the Justice Department’s watchdog found that agents in the F.B.I.’s office in Richmond, Va., improperly conflated the religious beliefs of activists with the likelihood they would engage in domestic terrorism, making it appear as if they were being targeted for the faith.But after a 120-day review of the incident ordered by Congress, Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general — drawing from the F.B.I. report and interviews conducted by his own investigators — found no evidence that “anyone ordered or directed” anyone to investigate Catholics because of their religion.A statement from the F.B.I. on Thursday said the inspector general’s review aligned with the bureau’s own accounting.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 and DeSantis Are Battling for Iowa Voters. And for Its Governor, Too.

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      When Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, stopped by a donor retreat that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida held last year, no one paid it much mind.When she sat earlier this year with Mr. DeSantis onstage, at another donor gathering down the road from Donald J. Trump’s residence, people began to notice. When she glowingly appeared with Mr. DeSantis not once, not twice, but at all three of his first visits to her state this year, eyebrows arched. And by the time Ms. Reynolds appeared on Thursday alongside Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, alarms inside the Trump headquarters were blaring.Ms. Reynolds has said — including privately, to Mr. Trump — that she does not plan to formally endorse a candidate in the presidential race, in keeping with a tradition that the Iowa governor stays on the sidelines, keeping the playing field level for the first G.O.P. nominating contest. But through her words and deeds, Ms. Reynolds seems to be softening the ground in Iowa for Mr. DeSantis, appearing to try to create the conditions for an opening for him to take on Mr. Trump.For Mr. DeSantis, Iowa is where his allies acknowledge he must first halt Mr. Trump’s momentum to prevent him from steam-rolling his way to a third consecutive G.O.P. nomination. For Mr. Trump, it is where he hopes to snuff out his challengers’ candidacies, and win where he did not in 2016.And there is no politician in Iowa with greater sway than Ms. Reynolds, 63, who has overseen her party’s swelling state legislative majorities with an approval rating among Republicans near 90 percent. Republicans say she can command attention and shape the landscape even without making a formal endorsement.“I mean I think Kim could be considered for just about anything that a president would pick,” Mr. DeSantis said, when asked by a television interviewer if he’d consider Ms. Reynolds for a potential cabinet post.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMs. Reynolds has appeared alongside other candidates — including Mr. Trump, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott — but the warmth of her embrace of Mr. DeSantis has become conspicuous. It has been the subject of internal Trump campaign discussions — it has not escaped their notice that one of her senior political advisers, Ryan Koopmans, is also a top DeSantis super PAC adviser — and even public fulminations from the former president.“I hate to say it, without me, you know, she was not going to win, you know that, right?” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Reynolds when he campaigned in Iowa in June.The Republican crowd, notably, did not applaud that off-key remark, which came only months after Ms. Reynolds had romped to re-election, carrying 95 of the state’s 99 counties. But the claim spoke to the former president’s self-centered view of the world: That it was his appointment of her predecessor, Terry Branstad, as his ambassador to China that cleared the way for Ms. Reynolds, then Mr. Branstad’s lieutenant governor, to take the state’s top job.Ms. Reynolds is said to have tired of Mr. Trump, and she reacted with disbelief to his comment that she owed him her governorship, according to people familiar with her thinking and her response. Still, she sided with Mr. Trump after his most recent indictment, lashing out at the Biden administration and saying it was a “sad day for America.”The two do have a shared history: Ms. Reynolds narrowly won a full term in 2018 with only 50.3 percent of the vote after Mr. Trump held a late rally for her, hailing her as “someone who has become a real star in the Republican Party.” More recently, however, Mr. Trump has been privately complaining about Ms. Reynolds and other prominent Republicans, who he feels owe him their endorsements because of his past support.Before Mr. Trump’s latest visit to Iowa on Friday, a behind-the-scenes standoff played out for days over whether Ms. Reynolds would join him. Ms. Reynolds has said she will make an effort to appear with whomever invites her, but an aide said she had not actually been invited. The Trump team sees her as having a standing invitation. Ultimately, she did not attend.The relationship with Mr. DeSantis, who has privately courted Ms. Reynolds for many months, has been strikingly different.He calls her Kim.She calls him Ron.They banter with a degree of familiarity and friendship that Mr. DeSantis rarely flashes with other politicians. People who know them say they forged a bond during the coronavirus pandemic, as two governors who pressed to open their states over the warnings of some public health officials. They sat down for a private dinner in March, on his first visit to Iowa this year, according to two people briefed on the meal, and in 2022 Mr. DeSantis called Ms. Reynolds to offer his encouragement ahead of her State of the Union response.When Mr. DeSantis was asked by a local television interviewer on his first trip to Iowa as a presidential candidate if he’d consider Ms. Reynolds for a potential cabinet post, he offered a surprisingly expansive answer, suggestive of something even more lofty: “I mean I think Kim could be considered for just about anything that a president would pick.”At times, she has had the look of a running mate.Appearing with Mr. DeSantis at three of his four visits to Iowa this year, and now with his wife as well, Ms. Reynolds has extolled Florida’s achievements under his leadership and connected his state’s successes to Iowa’s. The two lavish compliments on each other, and their talking points echo in perfect harmony.He says Florida is “the Iowa of the Southeast.” She says Iowa is “the Florida of the North.”In her introduction at his kickoff event, she made a point of specifically praising Mr. DeSantis for signing a six-week abortion ban, which Mr. Trump has criticized.“He proudly signed a law that makes it illegal to stop a baby’s beating heart — the same heartbeat bill that I was proud to sign,” she said of Mr. DeSantis.Some Iowa Republicans said Ms. Reynolds is simply being a gracious host.“She’s very popular but I don’t think she’s playing favorites,” said Steve Scheffler, one of the state’s Republican National Committee members and the president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. “People read way too much into this.”Mr. Trump has been privately complaining about Ms. Reynolds and other prominent Republicans, who he feels owe him their endorsements because of his past support. Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut Trump advisers have snickered privately about her having neutrality-in-name-only. “She is quote unquote neutral,” said a person close to Mr. Trump, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the team’s thinking, which is that Ms. Reynolds will do whatever she can to help Mr. DeSantis short of endorsing him.The Washington bureau chief for Breitbart News, Matthew Boyle, who is known for his close relationship with the former president, glaringly left Ms. Reynolds off his recent list of 14 Republicans Mr. Trump could pick as his 2024 running mate.Mr. Trump has some well-placed allies in Iowa — the state party chairman’s son, who is in the legislature, is among his paid advisers — and he is seeking more. On his June visit to the state, he invited a small group of prominent Republican officials whose endorsements are still up for grabs out for dinner at a steakhouse in downtown Des Moines, among them the state’s attorney general, according to people who attended the meal.In an interview, Mr. Branstad, the former Iowa governor, described the Trump-Reynolds relationship as “cordial,” praised Ms. Reynolds as a popular and effective governor and said her formal neutrality was good for all Iowans. He urged the former president to overcome his irritation.“Trump has got to get over it,” Mr. Branstad said. “He’s got to get over the jealousy and resentment and focus on the future. You win elections by focusing on the future and not the past.”There has been no recent independent polling in Iowa. In national surveys, Mr. Trump has led Mr. DeSantis by a wide margin.Ms. Reynolds is not just the governor of Iowa: She also presides over the Republican Governors Association, the nationwide campaign arm for Republicans seeking governorships. Both her elected G.O.P. counterparts leading the Senate and House campaign arms have already endorsed Mr. Trump.Yet like other prominent Iowa elected officials, Ms. Reynolds has made it clear that her primary goal is to ensure that Iowa keeps its “first in the nation” status. At a college-football game last fall in Iowa, Ms. Reynolds was in a V.I.P. box mingling with members of the state’s congressional delegation as they discussed the importance of staying “neutral” to protect Iowa’s enviable position at the top of the Republican voting calendar, according to a person present for the conversation (Democrats took away the state’s leadoff spot in 2024).“We aren’t going to get involved in campaigns, because we want everybody to feel welcome in Iowa,” Senator Chuck Grassley, the 89-year-old Republican senior statesman, said in an interview. “And if the governor were to back somebody, that may discourage other people from coming. Same way for me.”Casey DeSantis traveled to Iowa on Thursday, making her first solo appearance in her husband’s presidential campaign at an event with Ms. Reynolds.Kathryn Gamble for The New York TimesBut there is some burbling frustration with Mr. Trump inside the delegation.Last month, Mr. Trump skipped the signature “Roast and Ride” event organized by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. His campaign had expressed interest in sending videotaped remarks, and Ms. Ernst’s operation then rented large screens for the purpose of showing them, but he never sent a video — leaving Ms. Ernst’s team without a recording, and the cost of the equipment to cover, according to five people briefed on the incident.Ms. Ernst’s team had planned on using the chance to win a motorcycle helmet signed by all of the Republican candidates as a lure to sell tickets to the “Roast and Ride.” They sent the helmet to Mr. Trump, who returned it later than expected and had added the numbers “45” and “47,” signaling he would be the 47th president, the role everyone else is also running for, according to two people with knowledge of the episode. They never used the helmet.In March of this year, Ms. Reynolds did introduce Mr. Trump at an event. In a private meeting during that same trip, Ms. Reynolds stressed to Mr. Trump that her focus was on maintaining Iowa’s place as the first state in the nation on the campaign calendar, according to a person familiar with what took place but who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. Mr. Trump responded by telling her that he was the one who had protected the caucuses’ leadoff position, as president. (The Iowa caucuses have begun the nominating process since the 1970s.)At their joint event on Thursday, Ms. Reynolds and Ms. DeSantis bantered onstage and even exchanged a high-five.“I am a woman on a mission,” Ms. Reynolds said at one point, “and I think you are a woman on a mission, too.”Lisa Lerer More

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      Joe Biden’s Greatest Strength Is Also His Greatest Vulnerability

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      In February 2020, just before the world shut down, I was waiting for Joe Biden to speak on a Friday night in Henderson, Nev. The next morning I watched Bernie Sanders rally a fairly young, largely Latino crowd in a packed Las Vegas high school cafeteria. The Biden event, held when it looked as if he would not win the nomination, was smaller and more subdued. On the other side of a rope separating media from attendees, a group of Biden supporters were talking about how stressful it would be to be president at their and Mr. Biden’s age. As I remember it, one of them said, “But he feels he has to do it.”Not much has changed about the substance of their conversation since then, other than three long years: Mr. Biden, at 80, is the oldest U.S. president ever. If and when he announces a re-election campaign, he will put into play the idea of an even older president, eventually 86 years old. “Is age a positive thing for him? No,” Nancy Pelosi recently told Maureen Dowd, before adding that age is “a relative thing.” For reasons ultimately only Mr. Biden can know, it seems he feels he has to do it.There’s a straightforward dimension to the problem: The effects of age can get beyond your control, and it’d be a safer bet to leave office before the risk probability elevates to a danger zone. Barney Frank decided well in advance that he would retire from Congress at 75, then did so in his early 70s. You could feel that would be the right choice for Mr. Biden or any other leader over a certain age threshold, and be done with this topic. But age and health knot together different contradictions in America. Everything’s so weird now. Tech types, athletes and people of means are spending millions to keep their bodies youthful, and to defeat decline, if not death. We live in this society where people frequently talk about their resentment of older leadership — and elect and re-elect older leaders.Donald Trump would also, were he to win and serve out a second term, turn 82, and you could view the final days of the first Trump White House through this prism. Nearly a quarter of the Congress was over 70 last year, Insider found, up from 8 percent in 2002. Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican and Iowa’s senior senator, won re-election at age 89 last fall. Two of the most powerful and defining congressional leaders of most of our lives — Mitch McConnell and Ms. Pelosi — are in their 80s, and until the recent hockey line change in House leadership, much of the Democratic congressional leadership was over 70. The Treasury secretary is 76. Two Supreme Court justices are in their 70s; in the last decade, death changed the ideological balance of the court.If he runs for this second term, squarely in this space of all these contradictions, Mr. Biden is making the same ask as he did during the 2020 election — to trust him, to trust that he will be proven right about himself. Qualitatively, Mr. Biden represents familiarity and stability, which both derive from his age and sit in uneasy tension with it.Mr. Biden premised his 2020 campaign on his singular ability to win the presidency, when a good number of people in politics and media didn’t think he could win even the nomination. He predicted a level of congressional function that many people found nostalgic to the point of exotic. This skepticism was, on a deep level, about his age and whether his time had passed and whether he was too distant from the political realities of the 2020s. The thing is: Mr. Biden was right before. He did win the nomination. He did win against Donald Trump. The first two years of the Biden presidency did involve a productive and occasionally bipartisan U.S. Congress. On some level, people like me were wrong. This whole presidency originated with Mr. Biden being right about himself, and therefore his age.And maybe he will be right again! That’s a real possibility, under-discussed in these conversations. Age is relative, as Ms. Pelosi said. Medical science keeps improving, and people keep living longer, healthier lives. Presidents can focus on the big picture and delegate the rest. Mr. Biden’s own parents lived to 86 and 92. Having purpose, professional or otherwise, can rejuvenate all our lives. He looked pretty lively during that State of the Union earlier this month, and certainly in Ukraine and Poland.A generation of old men, from Clement Attlee to Konrad Adenauer, rebuilt Europe after the catastrophic 1930s and 1940s, back when people lived much shorter lives. Mr. Adenauer, the first leader of West Germany, actually served until age 87. We haven’t lived through anything like World War II, but as we convulse through two decades of staggering technological change, that might explain the resurgence of some older and familiar leaders over the last decade. Maybe rather than resenting this generational hold on power that Mr. Biden represents, some segment of people is relieved by the continuity that he offers, and by his distance from our daily lives.It’s complicated to leave office when you have real power. If you were Mr. Sanders (81) or Mitt Romney (75), why would you walk away? Mr. Sanders and Mr. Romney retain their essential selves as public figures — they don’t seem especially changed by age. Neither has said whether he’s going to run again. But if they still feel vital and able, and they are in a position of actual agency and responsibility, then it’s hard to see why they should leave public life.The risk, though, registers at a different pitch with the presidency. Even if we’re not expecting the president to catch a bullet in his teeth or something, we have 100 senators and one president. Hundreds of federal judges, and nine Supreme Court justices. Some stuff matters more than others.This was a problem even at the very beginning of the country’s history. During the Constitutional Convention, a proposal arose about how to proceed if the president were unable to serve. According to James Madison’s notes, the delegate John Dickinson asked “What is the extent of the term ‘disability’ & who is to be the judge of it?” Nobody’s ever precisely resolved this dilemma, even with the 25th Amendment.Mr. Biden could be wrong. He could lose the election because of the way voters perceive his age, or he could make it to a second term only to suffer a serious illness in office. Would the country default to a discomfort with visible age and slant one way on Mr. Biden, or take a more nuanced view?In the fall, while thinking over some of these concerns, I saw Senator John Fetterman speak to a large Saturday afternoon crowd in an indoor sports complex in Scranton, Pa. Mr. Fetterman isn’t old — he’s 53 — but he did suffer a stroke and begin recovery while campaigning for office.That day in Scranton, though he moved fluidly and alertly, he struggled some with the cadence of his speech, which was mostly one-liners about Dr. Mehmet Oz. But the event opened up into a gentler moment when he asked, “How many one [sic] of you in your own life have had a serious health challenge? Hands. Personally. Any of you?” Tons of hands went silently up from the synthetic grass. “How many of your parents?” Nearly all the remaining hands went up and stayed up while he ticked off a few other close relations. Though this eventually segued into another joke about Mr. Oz, the silent, serious quality of this call-response was not how the campaign often played online and in the media, where Mr. Fetterman’s condition became a weapon to be bashed over him. The politics of health and age can be brutal.Last week, Mr. Fetterman entered Walter Reed medical center to treat depression. Annie Karni reported that Mr. Fetterman’s recovery has continued to be challenging as he adjusts to new accommodations and limitations. Though he initially faced criticism for not disclosing enough about his condition, over the last several months he has been public about the changes he has gone through and the accommodations he requires, and about depression, something millions of people face but politicians have rarely disclosed.Aging is different than depression or stroke recovery; but like those experiences, there is no shame in aging, and there’s also no suggesting that everything’s easy about it. The choice for Mr. Biden is only an elevated version of the one many people deal with: When will you know it’s time to retire or step back, and when to keep going? All of us are aging, gaining and losing capacities in ways we may not even be aware of.There’s no automatic test that will prove someone is “too old,” and even if there were, nobody would want to take it.You can drive yourself crazy with war games about the ways an election could go. What if Mr. Biden were to run and face a much younger candidate, instead of Mr. Trump? What if he stepped aside in favor of a younger potential successor who then lost to Mr. Trump, invalidating the entire premise of Mr. Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign?All that there is, in the end, is Mr. Biden’s request — to trust that he is right about himself. He’s been right before, and may well be right again. But the reason this question lingers is the unstable ground of the answer: The source of what makes people worry about the president is also the source of his power and appeal.Ms. Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.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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      Iowa: How to Vote, Where to Vote and What’s on the Ballot

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      Senator Charles E. Grassley, at 88 years old, is standing for re-election, as is Representative Cindy Axne. Here’s what to know about voting in today’s primary elections in Iowa:How to voteThe deadline to request an absentee ballot was about two weeks ago (here’s the form). You can track the status of your absentee ballot on this site.Iowa permits people to register to vote on Election Day. Just go to your polling place with proof of ID and proof of residence. If you do not have the documents election officials require, “a registered voter from your precinct may attest for you,” according to the website for Iowa’s secretary of state. Look up whether you are already registered here.Where to voteYou can look up your polling location here. If you voted by mail, your ballot will be counted as long as it is received by officials before 8 p.m. local time on Election Day (which is also when polls close), or hand-delivered to your county auditor by that deadline.What’s on the ballotYou’ll be asked to pick candidates for U.S. Senate, as well as local offices. (Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, and Diedre DeJear, the Democratic nominee for governor, are not facing primary challenges.) Enter your address on this website to see what else is on your ballot today. More

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      Grassley Will Run for 8th Term in Senate

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      Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican in the Senate, announced Friday on Twitter that he would seek an eighth term, relieving Republicans worried about a bitter primary fight that could put the seat at risk.Mr. Grassley, who turned 88 last week and would be 95 at the end of his term, sought to emphasize his fitness in disclosing his plans that will draw attention because of his age. A tweet showed an alarm clock turning to 4 a.m. and Mr. Grassley jogging in the early morning darkness.“It’s 4 a.m. in Iowa so I’m running,” said Mr. Grassley, a habitual jogger. “I do that 6 days a week.”In a separate release, Mr. Grassley, first elected to public office as a state legislator in 1958, said that he has been encouraged to run by Iowans as he toured the state in recent months.“I’m working as hard as ever for the people of Iowa and there’s more work to do,” he said in a statement. “In a time of crisis and polarization, Iowa needs strong, effective leadership.”Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, had joined his colleagues in encouraging Mr. Grassley to run to head off a primary fight to succeed him. A bitter Republican primary could have provided an opening for Democrats to pick up a seat in what will be an intense battle next year for the Senate majority. Former Democratic Representative Abby Finkenauer, 32, who lost her re-election bid last year, has already announced she would seek the seat held by Mr. Grassley.Elected to the Senate in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won the presidency, Mr. Grassley has used his seniority to preside as chairman of both the Senate Finance Committee and the Judiciary Committee, where he was instrumental in advancing President Donald J. Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court and also blocking President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick B. Garland. He easily won re-election in 2016 even though Democrats aggressively sought to topple him because of his refusal to take up the Garland nomination.Mr. Grassley was known for bipartisanship earlier in his career but became increasingly conservative as his state also shifted ideologically to the right. During the Obama presidency, Mr. Grassley engaged in negotiations with Democrats over the health care law but pulled out under a Republican backlash to his work with Democrats. He was a leading proponent of a criminal justice overhaul crafted with Democrats and signed into law by Mr. Trump.As the senior Senate Republican, Mr. Grassley was third in line to succession of the president when Republicans held the Senate majority, following the vice president and speaker of the House. He would not be the oldest Republican senator ever if he served his full eighth term. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was 100 when he left the Senate in 2002. More

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      Abby Finkenauer Challenges Grassley for Iowa Senate Seat

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      Former congresswoman Abby Finkenauer, a 32-year-old Democrat, is jumping into next year’s race against Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, an 87-year-old Republican who was first elected to the seat eight years before she was born.Ms. Finkenauer, who is from Dubuque, was narrowly defeated by the Republican Ashley Hinson last year after serving a single term representing the eastern part of the state. She kicked off her campaign Thursday by accusing Mr. Grassley and other top Republicans of “remaining silent” when the Capitol was attacked on Jan. 6.“It’s politicians like Senator Grassley and Mitch McConnell who should know better but are so obsessed with power that they oppose anything that moves us forward,” she said in an announcement video posted on her Twitter account. “Since the Capitol was attacked, they’ve turned their backs on democracy and on us.”Mr. Grassley, who was the third-ranking Republican at the time of the riot, decried it as “an attack on American democracy itself” and called on the perpetrators to be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”But he subsequently opposed Democratic efforts to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the insurrection, saying that he viewed it as a “scheme” intended to distract from what he called President Biden’s failure to contain the migrant crisis at the border. And he has compared the most serious assault in the history of the Capitol to smaller, violent left-wing demonstrations in Portland, Ore., and other cities.A spokesman for Mr. Grassley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Ms. Finkenauer, who has run as a moderate in the past to attract centrists in a district that contained the urban centers of Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, signaled that she would focus on union rights, the agricultural sector and issues vital to her generation of younger voters in the upcoming election.“My parents could not give me a trust fund or debt-free college, but they taught me about seeing work to be done and doing it,” said Ms. Finkenauer, whose father was a welder, and mother a public school employee.She is the first Democratic candidate to announce her candidacy. Mr. Grassley defeated his Democratic challenger in 2016, former Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, by 25 points — a similar margin as in his previous victories.The state, once a bipartisan proving ground, veered sharply to the right in the last two presidential elections, delivering solid victories to former President Donald J. Trump after narrowly breaking for former President Barack Obama in the previous two cycles.Republicans responded to Ms. Finkenauer’s announcement by tying her to her party’s left wing, and by mocking her failure to win a second term.“Abby Finkenauer and her far-Left positions are indistinguishable from those of Bernie Sanders, A.O.C., and the socialist squad, so it’s not surprising Iowans fired her just last year,” a National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman said in a statement. “Today, Abby signed up to become a two-time loser.” More