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      I Was a White House Doctor. Presidents Should Have to Take Cognitive Tests.

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      The job of president is physically and mentally demanding. I witnessed this firsthand as a White House physician for three presidents, including as the designated physician to the president for Barack Obama during his first term. My presidential patients often worked 12-hour days seven days a week. The leader of the free world travels constantly, and participates in or leads briefings in which he must retain huge amounts of information.Health scares can happen at any moment. My role as White House physician was to keep the president healthy and performing optimally, and to provide the public with a candid medical assessment of his ability to carry out the duties of his office.I participated in tabletop exercises in the Situation Room to go over how to follow Section 3 of the 25th Amendment, which deals with succession in the event the president is disabled or incapacitated. Typically, the 25th Amendment came into play when a president was going under general anesthesia for a colonoscopy or scheduled surgical procedure.It is widely assumed that the physician to the president will gather and provide pertinent medical information to those contemplating whether the amendment needs to be invoked. This is not stipulated, but most in the medical community agree that the appropriate role for a physician is to offer a medical opinion, based on facts, that is then weighed by the patient — in this case the president — and those around him.The debates around the fitness of Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the last several weeks have created new pressure to start having serious conversations about exactly how the White House medical team should evaluate presidents and determine their fitness for duty — cognitively as well as physically. This has been the subject of decades of discussion within the White House medical team as well as with the broader medical community.Many Americans may want the White House medical team to take a more active role in declaring the president fit for duty. Many would probably like to see the same standard apply to candidates running for president as well. For those things to happen, these medical teams will need access to more data about these individuals than they now collect. And perhaps even more important, we should seriously consider the need for an age limit for those running for president, given the high stakes of the office and the realities of cognitive decline with aging.Many cognitive abilities decrease with ageWhile we retain much of our vocabulary as we get older, cognitive abilities such as speed and reasoning tend to decline more rapidly after age 60. More

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      Democratic Elites Were Slow to See What Voters Already Knew

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      President Biden and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agree on this much: It is the elites who are trying to take Biden down, ignoring the sentiments of legions of Democratic voters. But when I started arguing in February that his age would mortally wound his candidacy, it didn’t feel that way to me. I saw the elites propping him up, ignoring the sentiments of legions of Democratic voters.Who’s right?Maybe we both are. In any system, elites are most visible when they are fractured and factions are acting against each other. In July 2023 — before the primaries, before last month’s debate — a Times/Siena poll found that Democratic primary voters, by 50 to 45 percent, preferred that the party nominate someone other than Biden in 2024.But the Democratic Party’s elites were in lock step around Biden. They refused to listen to what their voters were saying. The fact that he was barely campaigning or giving unscripted interviews was rationalized rather than criticized. No major Democrats decided to challenge him for the nomination. Representative Dean Phillips’s effort to draft alternative candidates was rebuffed and his subsequent primary challenge ignored. Some of this reflected confidence in the president. Some of it reflected the consequences of challenging him.The White House and the Democratic Party apparatus it controls are powerful. Congressional Democrats will not get their bills prioritized or their amendments attached if they are too critical of the party leadership. Nonprofit leaders will stop getting their calls returned. Loyal party donors will abandon you if you’re branded a heretic. “I would be crucified by them if I spoke out of line,” an anonymous Democratic state party chair told NBC News early this month. “I know when you get out of line, they all of a sudden have a shift of priorities, and your races, your state is no longer on the map.” That was far truer a year ago, when Biden’s position in the party was unchallenged.These actions, decisions and calculations by Democratic Party elites were neither unusual nor conspiratorial. This is simply how parties work. But it meant that Democratic voters were given neither a real choice of candidates nor a demonstration of Biden’s fitness for the campaign. What they were given instead was signal after signal that every power broker in the party was behind Biden and confident in his ability to win re-election. Who were they to argue? Biden won the primary contest in a landslide.In February, after Biden skipped the Super Bowl interview and flubbed the news conference intended to defend his memory, I published a series of columns and interviews arguing that he should step aside and Democrats should choose a new ticket at the convention. My argument was that his age had become an insuperable problem — visible in every poll and appearance, omnipresent when you spoke to ordinary voters — and the way his team was insulating him from unscripted interviews reflected a recognition of his diminishment. Biden was trailing Donald Trump even then. He was not showing himself capable of the kind of campaign needed to close the gap. And the risk of frailty or illness causing a catastrophe across the long months of the campaign seemed unbearably high.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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      One of the Republican Convention’s Weirdest Lies

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      I watched hour upon hour of the Republican National Convention, something I’ve done every four years since I was a young political nerd in 1984. I was even a Mitt Romney delegate at the Republican convention in 2012, and this was the first that was centered entirely around a fundamentally false premise: that in our troubled time, Donald Trump would be a source of order and stability.To bolster their case, Republicans misled America. Speaker after speaker repeated the claim that America was safer and the world was more secure when Trump was president. But we can look at Trump’s record and see the truth. America was more dangerous and the world was quite chaotic during Trump’s term. Our enemies were not intimidated by Trump. In fact, Russia improved its strategic position during his time in office.If past performance is any indicator of future results, Americans should brace themselves for more chaos if Trump wins.The most egregious example of Republican deception centered around crime. The theme of the second night of the convention was “Make America Safe Again.” Yet the public mustn’t forget that the murder rate skyrocketed under Trump. According to the Pew Research Center, “The year-over-year increase in the U.S. murder rate in 2020 was the largest since at least 1905 — and possibly ever.”That’s a human catastrophe, and it’s one that occurred on Trump’s watch. Republicans want to erase 2020 from the American mind, but we judge presidents on how they handle crises. Trump shouldn’t escape accountability for the collapse in public safety at the height of the pandemic. And while we can’t blame Trump for the riots that erupted in American cities over the summer of 2020, it’s hard to claim he’s the candidate of calm when he instigated a riot of his own on Jan. 6.It’s particularly rich for Trump to claim to be the candidate of order when the crime rate rose during his presidency and is plunging during Joe Biden’s. In 2023, there was a record decrease in the murder rate, and violent crime, ABC News reported, “plummeted to one of the lowest levels in 50 years.”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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      Aaron Sorkin: How I Would Script This Moment for Biden and the Democrats

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      The Paley Center for Media just opened an exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of “The West Wing,” the NBC series I wrote from 1999 to 2003. Some of the show’s story points have become outdated in the last quarter-century (the first five minutes of the first episode depended entirely on the audience being unfamiliar with the acronym POTUS), while others turned out to be — well, not prescient, but sadly coincidental.Gunmen tried to shoot a character after an event with President Bartlet at the end of Season 1. And at the end of the second season, in an episode called “Two Cathedrals,” a serious illness that Bartlet had been concealing from the public had come to light, and the president, hobbled, faced the question of whether to run for re-election. “Yeah,” he said in the third season opener. “And I’m going to win.”Which is exactly what President Biden has been signaling since the day after his bad night.Because I needed the “West Wing” audience to find President Bartlet’s intransigence heroic, I didn’t really dramatize any downward pull that his illness was having on his re-election chances. And much more important, I didn’t dramatize any danger posed by Bartlet’s opponent winning.But what if the show had gone another way?What if, as a result of Bartlet revealing his illness, polling showed him losing to his likely opponent? And what if that opponent, rather than being simply unexceptional, had been a dump truck of ignorance and bad intentions? What if Bartlet’s opponent had been a dangerous imbecile with an observable psychiatric disorder who related to his supporters on a fourth-grade level and treated the law as something for suckers and poor people? And was a hero to white supremacists?We’d have had Bartlet drop out of the race and endorse whoever had the best chance of beating the guy.The problem in the real world is that there isn’t a Democrat who is polling significantly better than Mr. Biden. And quitting, as heroic as it may be in this case, doesn’t really put a lump in our throats.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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      A Week After Shooting, Trump Leaves Unity Behind and Returns to Insults and Election Denial

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      At his first campaign rally since he survived an assassination attempt last week, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday launched a litany of attacks that suggested his call for national unity in the wake of the shooting had faded entirely into the background.Over the course of an almost two-hour speech in Grand Rapids, Mich., Mr. Trump insulted President Biden’s intelligence repeatedly, calling him “stupid” more than once. He said Vice President Kamala Harris was “crazy” and gleefully jeered the Democratic Party’s infighting over Mr. Biden’s political future.Even as Mr. Trump made numerous false claims accusing his political opponents of widespread election fraud, he presented the continuing push by some Democrats to replace Mr. Biden on their ticket as an anti-democratic effort.By contrast, Mr. Trump — who falsely insisted he won the 2020 election and whose effort to overturn it spurred a violent attack on the Capitol that threatened the peaceful transfer of power — presented himself as an almost martyr trying to protect the United States from its downfall.“They keep saying, ‘He’s a threat to democracy,’” Mr. Trump told the crowd of thousands inside the Van Andel Arena. “I’m saying, ‘What the hell did I do with democracy’? Last week, I took a bullet for democracy.”The line — one of the few additions to a speech that culled from Mr. Trump’s standard rally repertoire — came as Mr. Trump was trying to rebut Democrats’ claims that he was an extremist and distance himself from Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals for a potential second term that would overhaul the federal government.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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      Secret Service Says It Denied Earlier Trump Requests for More Federal Resources

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      In a reversal, a spokesman said the service had turned down requests from former President Donald J. Trump’s team over the past two years, though he said the requests did not include the recent rally in Pennsylvania.The Secret Service acknowledged on Saturday that it had turned down requests for additional federal resources sought by former President Donald J. Trump’s security detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination last week, a reversal from earlier statements by the agency denying that such requests had been rebuffed.Almost immediately after a gunman shot at Mr. Trump from a nearby warehouse roof while he spoke at a rally in Butler, Pa., last weekend, the Secret Service faced accusations from Republicans and anonymous law enforcement officials that it had turned down requests for additional agents to secure Mr. Trump’s rallies.“There’s an untrue assertion that a member of the former president’s team requested additional resources and that those were rebuffed,” Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said last Sunday, the day after the shooting.Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, said on Monday that the accusation that he had issued the denials was “a baseless and irresponsible statement and it is one that is unequivocally false.”On Saturday, Mr. Guglielmi acknowledged that the Secret Service had turned down some requests for additional federal security assets for Mr. Trump’s detail. Two people briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that the Trump campaign had been seeking additional resources for the better part of the time that Mr. Trump had been out of office. The denied requests for additional resources were not specifically for the rally in Butler, Mr. Guglielmi said.U.S. officials previously said the Secret Service had enhanced security for the former president before the Butler rally because it had received information from U.S. intelligence agencies about a potential Iranian assassination plot against Mr. Trump.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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      At Trump Rally, Few Local Police Officers in Critical Area Before Shooting

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      Local law enforcement officials, present in abundance, said they were not assigned security duties around a warehouse used by a man who tried to kill former President Donald Trump.A key question after an assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump a week ago is why the Secret Service excluded from its secured zone a nearby warehouse the gunman used for his assault.But another possible flaw in the Secret Service’s plans for the campaign rally at the farm show grounds in Butler, Pa., is emerging. The protection agency expected the sizable contingent of officers from local law enforcement agencies to contain any threats outside of the secured zone but assigned almost all those officers to work inside it, according to numerous interviews with local law enforcement and municipal officials.None of the law enforcement agencies that assisted the Secret Service that day — the Pennsylvania State Police, the Butler Township Police Department, the Butler County Sheriff, Pittsburgh Bureau of Police or the multicounty tactical teams — say they were given responsibility for watching the zone outside the Secret Service’s security perimeter.More specifically, the local law enforcement officials say that none of them were assigned to safeguard the complex of warehouses just north of the farm show grounds. The gunman was able to use the roof of the warehouse closest to the stage — about 450 feet from the podium — from which to shoot.“I am going to defend those guys, because it wasn’t their job to secure the building,” said Richard Goldinger, the district attorney in Butler County, who oversees the multicounty tactical teams that were used at the rally, on July 13.Rather, an overwhelming majority of the dozens of local and state officers called upon to aid the Secret Service were given other duties at or inside the secured perimeter — an area that was protected by a fence, metal detectors and the Secret Service itself.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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      After Fire at Sanctuary, First Baptist Dallas Church Mourns What’s Lost

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      As officials work to determine the cause, many lament the damage at First Baptist Dallas, a church that grew along with the downtown around it.The red brick outer walls of First Baptist Dallas Church were singed black on Saturday morning, and though they were still intact, along with the steeple at the front of the historic building, there was no sanctuary within. The roof, windows and interior were gone. And the smell of smoke lingered.Larry Smith and his wife, Rita, two members of the church, drove 20 miles from Arlington, Texas, to see firsthand the destruction of the fire from the previous night. Other members also gathered outside.Ms. Smith wiped tears from her eyes with a tissue as she talked about the sanctuary, with its dark wood pews and ornate carvings. There was a library in the church, she said, along with a printing shop and the offices of former pastors. “A lot of history in that building,” she said. Mr. Smith began to talk about what was lost when he trailed off, looking at the smoldering remains.Church members and other residents of the Dallas area mourned on Saturday the severe damage to the sanctuary, a landmark in the heart of Dallas where many of the megachurch’s members have been baptized, married and memorialized.On Friday night, the blaze, which caused the church’s roof to collapse, grew to a four-alarm fire that sent smoke billowing over the city. More than 60 firefighting units responded to the scene.No injuries or fatalities have been reported, according to Dallas Fire-Rescue. The fire occurred in the old part of the church’s sprawling complex, where the main Sunday services are no longer held, but which has been in use since its construction in 1890.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