In Global Public Opinion, the US is Losing to China

Many.posts have dealt with international views of the United States.  They have taken a negative turn.

Jonathan Schulman, Laura Silver, Laura Clancy, and William Miner at Pew:

Global views of the United States worsened last year as President Donald Trump’s second term began, though most people still had a more positive opinion of the U.S. than China. This year, that is no longer the case.

Views of China have improved in recent years while opinions of the U.S. have worsened, to the point where China is now seen more positively than the U.S. in most of 36 countries surveyed.

Confidence in these countries’ respective leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs has followed a similar pattern. In the latter half of Joe Biden’s presidency, confidence in him was higher than confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping across most countries surveyed, though Biden’s rating declined in many places from 2023 to 2024.

During the first two years of Trump’s second term, ratings of the U.S. president worsened significantly. While many people still lack confidence in Xi, positive views of him have become more widespread, and more overall now say they have confidence in Xi than in Trump.

One area where the U.S. still gets higher ratings than China has to do with personal freedoms: More say the U.S. government respects the personal freedoms of its people than say the same of the Chinese government. Still, the gap has been narrowing – driven by large drops in the shares saying the U.S.  government respects personal freedoms.

God Votes?

 Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.

Chip Rotolo at Pew:

What role do Americans think God played in the last two presidential elections? In a May 2025 survey, most U.S. adults say God played no role at all, while about a third say recent election results are part of God’s overall plan but don’t necessarily mean God approved of the winner’s policies. Very few say God chose the winners because of their policies.

 

Autopen Pardons

Previous posts have discussed the president's pardon power.

 Alex Thompson at Axios:

High-ranking Biden administration officials repeatedly questioned and criticized how the president's team decided on controversial pardons and allowed the frequent use of an autopen to sign measures late in his term, internal emails obtained by Axios show.

Why it matters: The messages are the latest signs of the chaos surrounding the 82-year-old former president during the final weeks of his administration, in two areas that are now being investigated by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee.

President Trump has cited Biden's process in issuing pardons to try to justify many of his own controversial pardons or commutations on behalf of donor-connected supporters and others who were imprisoned for trying to overturn the 2020 election.

How it happened: After the political backlash to President Biden pardoning his son Hunter last Dec. 1, the White House began pushing to find more people to grant clemency to, according to people familiar with the internal dynamics.

"There was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon — and then they largely didn't run it by the Justice Department to vet them," a person familiar with the process told Axios.

Biden granted clemency to more people than any president in U.S. history — 4,245 people. More than 95% of those actions occurred in the final 3½ months of his presidency, according to Pew Research.

Many of those actions, including pardoning other members of his family on his last day in office, were signed using an autopen — a computerized version of the president's signature that didn't require him to physically sign the document.

Election Coalitions

From Pew Research: 

Federalism and EVs

Three years after President Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure law, it has resulted in only 58 ERV charging stations. Marc J. Dunkelman at WP:

[By] the time of the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, progressives had soured on the establishment’s excesses. Men such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert McNamara had steered the nation into an unwinnable war in Vietnam. Local power brokers such as Richard J. Daley and Robert Moses decimated whole neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.

And so, to protect ordinary people, reformers erected mechanisms to dilute public authority. Slowly, over the course of the next half-century, bureaucracies they deemed too powerful became, in effect, impotent.

By the point the Biden administration turned its attention to expanding the nation’s EV charging infrastructure, the approach that FDR might have taken during the 1930s — just hiring people to do it — was entirely off the table. Such a plan would immediately be labeled a “socialist” enterprise that posed a threat to private companies.
...

Instead, the Biden administration was left to rely in large part on the system that governs 90 percent of federal transportation spending: distributing the money to the states. This pattern, established during the Eisenhower administration, works by sending federal dollars to the state highway departments that maintain the nation’s infrastructure. Each state figures out how to implement the law, which in this case called for high-speed chargers at least every 50 miles on major highways.

The states, of course, had no experience with EV technology. And so it was up to the federal government to help them navigate their new responsibilities. The Transportation and Energy departments quickly established a “joint office” to guide the work. Within weeks of the infrastructure law’s signing — lightning speed, by modern standards — the administration had published a draft rule establishing the requirements:

• The chargers would have to work on all electric vehicles (as opposed to just Teslas).
• They would have to be reliable 97 percent of the time (so drivers wouldn’t encounter broken stalls).
• They would have to be located in remote areas where there would otherwise be gaps (as opposed to the busy corridors where private companies might choose to place them without subsidy).

Over the course of 2022, the government incorporated public feedback into the rule, as mandated by the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act. In the nearly 80 years since its passage, the APA has become the Magna Carta of bureaucratic governance, ensuring that agencies are fair and transparent. The attendant checks and balances, designed explicitly to prevent the bureaucracy from steamrolling opponents, almost inevitably slow things down.

Presidential Pantomime

Kevin Kosar at AEI:

Shortly before he left office, President Joe Biden declared that the Equal Rights Amendment was now part of the Constitution and “the law of the land,” never mind that federal courts and the National Archivist have said otherwise.

Similarly, President Barack Obama responded to a mass shooting at a Newtown, Connecticut school by demanding federal police trace any guns used in mass shootings. That this latter policy had no effect to prevent future shootings was no matter — it gave the appearance of doing something.

And that is a big reason why presidents so often issue toothless executive orders and memoranda, according to University of Michigan Professor, Kenneth Lowande, the author of False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age (University of Chicago, 2024).

“Presidents take action — even when it does nothing to affect policy — because our political system is not designed to let presidents solve major problems,” he writes.

The U.S. Constitution fractures governing power among the branches and assigns all legislative authority to Congress. The nation’s chief executive must operate within the powers granted by the Constitution and federal law. “Their first and most direct power,” Lowande writes, “is over the appearance of governing, not governing itself.”

Biden and ERA

Peter Baker, Erica L. Green and Annie Karni at NYT:

President Biden declared on Friday that he believes that the Equal Rights Amendment has met the requirements of ratification and therefore is now part of the Constitution, but he declined to order the government to finalize the process by officially publishing it.

“In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.

Under the Constitution, however, the president has no direct role in approving amendments and his statement has no legal force by itself. The archivist of the United States, a Biden appointee, has refused to formally publish the amendment on the grounds that it has not met the requirements to become part of the Constitution.

Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that Mr. Biden’s announcement amounted to nothing more than his personal beliefs. He noted that Mr. Biden’s Justice Department had defended the archivist in a legal opinion, arguing that no “relevant legal authority” had been identified establishing that the amendment had been adopted past the congressional deadline.

There are 27 amendments to the Constitution and 1 amendment in the Apocrypha.

— Christopher J. Scalia (@cjscalia) January 17, 2025

Veterans of Afghanistan

Today is Veterans Day. Many posts have discussed veterans.

Three years ago, Marine Corps veteran William Galston wrote at Brookings:

In the wake of the chaotic U. S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last August, many observers believed that the memory would quickly fade as Americans shifted their attention back to domestic issues. It now appears that this judgment was premature. Our hasty retreat from a 20-year war contributed to the decline of confidence in President Biden’s over competence and his ability to handle the duties of commander-in-chief. And on Veterans’ Day, More in Common, an organization that seeks to identify the cause of and cures for our polarized politics and society, made public its survey of the impact of the withdrawal on our veterans and on our society.

The findings of this survey are disturbing. Afghanistan veterans number about 775 thousand, many with multiple tours of duty. They are angry about the withdrawal, 73% feel betrayed, and 67% feel humiliated.

Two-thirds of all Americans, and more than 7 in 10 veterans, believe that “Veterans of the war in Afghanistan are going to have a hard time processing the end of the war,” and 56% of veterans do not believe that “American society will move on quickly from the end of the war.”

I fear that the veterans are right. Seventy-six percent of Afghanistan veterans say that they sometimes feel “like a stranger in my own country.” Overcoming this sense of estrangement will not be easy, especially because only one-third of Americans report belonging to social circles that include any of these veterans. Ever since the abolition of the draft and the establishment of all-volunteer armed forces, political observers have worried about the consequences of a tiny fraction of society doing the fighting for the rest of us. So far, anyway, the social impact of ending the Afghan war reinforces these fears.

This said, the non-veteran portion of American society has hardly been left untouched. Seven in ten veterans believe that “American did not leave Afghanistan with honor,” and 57% of all Americans agree. As we saw in the late 1970s, similar sentiments about the end of the war in Vietnam had a powerful impact on our politics, beginning with a pervasive sense of American decline and ending with the election of a president in 1980 who was determined to reverse this decline and who campaigned on the slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again.”

Left unaddressed, these sentiments can undermine veterans’ lives and inject a slow-acting poison into the body politic.

Not Since 1976...

Many posts have discussed presidential elections.

Bruce Mehlman notes that 1975 was the last presidential race without a Bush, a Clinton or a Biden on a major party ticket. 

Legal Challenges to the Harris Nomination

 Some Republicans want to mount a legal challenge to the nomination of Kamala Harris.

They have no case.

Stef Kight at Axios:

Biden was "not the official nominee—nobody is, until there's a vote. So Biden need not be replaced, because he was never the official candidate," legal scholar Rick Hasen wrote in an op-ed on Monday.

"There is a zero point zero, zero, zero percent chance that Mike Johnson and his fever dream of somehow there being legal action to prevent Kamala Harris... to keep [her] off the ballot, there is no chance that will happen," top Democratic attorney Marc Elias said on Democracy Watch, a Youtube series hosted by Brian Tyler Cohen.

The bottom line: Hasen noted that Democrats "would be smart to still do that virtual roll call by Aug. 7" to avoid any potential litigation in some states related to technical arguments around ballot access timing.

People are talking about John Eastman's goofy legal theory that argues Kamala Harris can't be president because she's not a "natural born citizen."

Many have rebutted his legal theory, but I focus on the facts he got wrong.https://t.co/OrTANm1q2v

— The Alex Nowrasteh (@AlexNowrasteh) July 23, 2024

Presidential Dropouts

 Louis Jacobson at PolitFact:

By now, most of us are used to living in "unprecedented times." But just how unprecedented is Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race a little more than three months before Election Day?

Occasionally, incumbent presidents have decided to not seek reelection. But dropping out midcampaign is incredibly rare. And it has never happened this close to an election.

...

The two closest political shake-ups to Biden’s were withdrawals by President Harry S. Truman before the 1952 election and President Lyndon B. Johnson before the 1968 election.

Both Truman and Johnson had assumed office following a president’s death and served a full term of their own; they each would have been eligible to run for a second full term had they wanted to. But following poor showings in each of their respective New Hampshire primaries in 1952 and 1968, both exited the race.

Truman withdrew his name from the presidential election on March 29, 1952, or 220 days before Election Day. Truman, who was suffering from low popularity amid the Korean War, dropped out less than three weeks after losing the New Hampshire primary. (In that era, there were relatively few primaries; in many states, party insiders controlled the nomination process.)

Ultimately, Adlai Stevenson II won the Democratic nomination but lost in the general election to Dwight Eisenhower, a five-star U.S. Army general from World War II who ran as a Republican.

Johnson dropped out of the race March 31, 1968, 219 days before the election. Johnson — who had become broadly unpopular because of another war, Vietnam — had not formally filed to run, and was on the New Hampshire ballot only as a write-in. But after a poor showing, and facing primary challenges from two strong contenders, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, Johnson dropped out.

In the end, Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was nominated but lost the general election to Richard Nixon.

Biden’s move is far closer to Election Day — 107 days — and comes after all Democratic voters have had their say in the presidential primaries.

All the Presidents' Children

Aaron O'Neill at Statista:

The 45 men who have served as the President of the United States (officially there have been 46 as Grover Cleveland is counted twice) have fathered, adopted or allegedly fathered at least 190 children. Of these 190, 169 were conceived naturally, eleven were adopted and there are ten reasonable cases of alleged paternity (possibly more). Today, there are 34 living presidential children; the oldest of which is Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, daughter of Lyndon B. and Lady Bird Johnson; the youngest is Barron Trump, son of Donald and Melania Trump. John Tyler is the president who fathered the most children, having fifteen children over two marriages (and allegedly fathering more with slaves), while his successor, James K. Polk, remains the only U.S. president never to have fathered or adopted any known children. Coincidentally, as of November 2020, the U.S.' tenth president, John Tyler, has two grandsons who are still alive today, despite the fact that he was born in 1790.

The president, their children and spouse are collectively known as the First Family of the United States; the current first family is made up of President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, as well as their children, Hunter and Ashley. Two of President Biden's children died before he was elected to office; his son Beau died of cancer in 2015, while his one year old daughter Naomi was killed in a car accident in 1972, along with Biden's wife, Neilia (who was also Beau and Hunter's mother). Two presidents' sons have gone on to assume the presidency themselves; these were John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush respectively, while one presidential grandson, Benjamin Harrison, later became president.

Three U.S. presidents have allegedly fathered illegitimate children with slaves. The most well-known and substantial of these allegations relates to Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings; who was also the half-sister of Jefferson's wife Martha (with whom he had already fathered six children). Following Martha's passing in 1782, its is believed that the future-president would then go on to have a relationship with Hemings that spanned four decades and saw the birth of as many as eight children between 1790 and 1808. Hemings, thought to have been 14 years old at the beginning of the relationship (Jefferson was 44), and her children remained enslaved to Jefferson until his death in 1826. DNA tests conducted in recent years have confirmed a genetic connection between the Hemings and Jefferson families, and the majority of historians accept that Thomas Jefferson was the father of at least six of Hemings' children. Less substantial claims have also been levelled at John Tyler, with political opponents claiming that he fathered several children with slaves in the years following his first wife's death; although these claims have been widely disregarded by historians, with little investigation into their validity. It is alleged that William Henry Harrison also fathered at least six children with one of his slaves, Dilsia, however these claims are anecdotal and have been disregarded or ignored by historians. In spite of this, to this day, there are some African-American families in the U.S. who claim to be the descendants of both Harrison and Tyler.

It is generally accepted that two other presidents, Grover Cleveland and Warren G. Harding, fathered children through extramarital affairs. It is likely that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock in 1874; even paying child support to the mother, acknowledging that he could have been the father. When the child's mother accused Cleveland of rape, he had her institutionalized to discredit these accusations, and the child was taken away and raised by Cleveland's friends. The issue came to light nationally during the 1884 election campaign, but Cleveland still emerged victorious. In 1927, four years after his death in office, it came to light that Warren G. Harding had fathered a child out of wedlock a year before winning the 1920 election. The child was conceived during one of his two long-term, extramarital affairs, and Harding did pay the mother child support, although he kept the affair and child a secret. Harding died before the child's fourth birthday, his family dismissed these claims as rumors, claiming that he was infertile; however, DNA tests confirmed that the child was his in 2015. While there have been numerous accusations of presidents' infidelity in the past century, particularly relating to John F. Kennedy and Donald Trump; Trump is the only president since Harding to have had a child out of wedlock (although the couple did get married two months after the birth of their daughter, Tiffany).

The Bible v. The Will of the People

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.    

Memorial Day 2024

A Proclamation on Prayer for Peace, Memorial Day, 2024

     This Memorial Day, we honor the brave women and men who made the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation’s freedom.  We recommit to keeping our sacred obligation to their survivors, families, and caregivers.  Together, we vow to honor their memories by carrying on their work to forge a more perfect Union.

     Since our Nation’s founding, members of our Armed Forces have been willing to lay down their lives — not for a person or a place but for an idea unlike any other in human history:  the idea of the United States of America.  We are the only Nation in the world founded on the idea that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our entire lives.  Generations of America’s beloved daughters and sons have dared all, risked all, and given all for this idea.  Today, as they lie in eternal peace, we continue to live by the light of liberty they kept burning bright.

     To all those grieving the loss of a loved one who wore the uniform, including our Gold Star Families, and to all those who have a loved one still missing or unaccounted for:  Our country sees you and mourns with you.  I know how painful this day can be — how it can bring you back to the day you lost a piece of your soul.  It is overwhelming.  No words can ease that grief.  But I hope you find a small measure of solace in knowing that we will never forget the price your loved one paid for our freedom — and we will never stop trying to repay the debt of gratitude we owe you and them.

     That is our vow today — and that is our vow always.  May God bless our fallen heroes.  May God bring comfort to their families.  May God protect our troops.

     In honor and recognition of all of our fallen service members, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved May 11, 1950, as amended (36 U.S.C. 116), has requested that the President issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe each Memorial Day as a day of prayer for permanent peace and designating a period on that day when the people of the United States might unite in prayer and reflection.  The Congress, by Public Law 106-579, has also designated 3:00 p.m. local time on that day as a time for all Americans to observe, in their own way, the National Moment of Remembrance.

     NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Memorial Day, May 27, 2024, as a day of prayer for permanent peace, and I designate the hour beginning in each locality at 11:00 a.m. of that day as a time when people might unite in prayer and reflection.  I urge the press, radio, television, and all other information media to cooperate in this observance.  I further ask all Americans to observe the National Moment of Remembrance beginning at 3:00 p.m. local time on Memorial Day.

     I request the Governors of the United States and its Commonwealths and Territories, and the appropriate officials of all units of government, to direct that the flag be flown at half-staff until noon on this Memorial Day on all buildings, grounds, and naval vessels throughout the United States and in all areas under its jurisdiction and control.  I encourage families, friends, and neighbors to post tributes to our fallen service members through the Veterans Legacy Memorial at vlm.cem.va.gov so that we may learn more about the lives and contributions of those buried in National, State, and Tribal veteran cemeteries.  I also request the people of the United States to display the flag at half-staff from their homes for the customary forenoon period.

     IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-eighth.

 

                             JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

Easter Messages

At Easter, presidential statements include explicitly Christian content.

Biden 2024

Jill and I send our warmest wishes to Christians around the world celebrating Easter Sunday. Easter reminds us of the power of hope and the promise of Christ’s Resurrection.

As we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus’ sacrifice. We pray for one another and cherish the blessing of the dawn of new possibilities. And with wars and conflict taking a toll on innocent lives around the world, we renew our commitment to work for peace, security, and dignity for all people.

From our family to yours, happy Easter and may God bless you

Obama 2014 Easter Prayer Breakfast:

So this Easter Week, of course we recognize that there’s a lot of pain and a lot of sin and a lot of tragedy in this world, but we’re also overwhelmed by the grace of an awesome God. We’re reminded how He loves us, so deeply, that He gave his only begotten Son so that we might live through Him. And in these Holy Days, we recall all that Jesus endured for us -- the scorn of the crowds and the pain of the crucifixion, in our Christian religious tradition we celebrate the glory of the Resurrection -- all so that we might be forgiven of our sins and granted everlasting life.

And more than 2,000 years later, it inspires us still. We are drawn to His timeless teachings, challenged to be worthy of His sacrifice, to emulate as best we can His eternal example to love one another just as He loves us. And of course, we’re always reminded each and every day that we fall short of that example. And none of us are free from sin, but we look to His life and strive, knowing that “if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfected in us.”

George W. Bush 2004:

The Lord is risen indeed...

LUKE 24:34

I send greetings to Christians around the world as they gather to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus' life and teachings continue to speak to every generation, and Christians believe his miraculous Resurrection provides hope for the future and offers us the promise of new life.

Through His ministry and sacrifice, Jesus demonstrated God's unconditional love for us. He taught us the importance of helping others and loving our neighbors. His selfless devotion and mercy provide a remarkable example for all of us.

As families and friends gather to enjoy this Easter season, we celebrate God's gift of freedom and His love that conquers death. For those who observe Easter, our faith brings confidence that good will overcome evil and that joy is everlasting. Today, we give thanks for God's many blessings and pray for His peace in the affairs of men.

Laura joins me in sending our best wishes for a happy Easter.

 

 

Rating Presidents

 Bill Chappell at NPR:

President Biden is in a tight race to keep former President Donald Trump from reclaiming the White House, recent polls show. But that's not how 154 historians and presidential experts see it: They rate Biden in the top third of U.S. presidents, while Trump ranks dead last.

The 2024 edition of the Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey has Biden in 14th place, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan. Trump comes in 45th, behind fellow impeachee Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan, the perennial cellar-dweller in such ratings due to his pre-Civil War leadership.

"While partisanship and ideology don't tend to make a major difference overall, there are a few distinctions worth noting," said political scientists Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Coastal Carolina University, who first published their greatness survey in 2015.

Experts responding to the survey who self-identified as conservatives rated Biden No. 30, while liberals put him 13th and moderates ranked him 20th. All three of those same groups ranked Trump, whose presidency was marked by his flouting of historical norms, in the bottom five.

 

People Dislike Congress, Like Their Own Member of Congress

 The old saying is that voters hate Congress and love their congressman.  Still true.  Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

Fewer than four in 10 U.S. registered voters say President Joe Biden deserves to be reelected, while less than a quarter say the same about most members of the U.S. House. As is almost always the case, voters are more inclined to believe the U.S. representative from their own district should be returned to Congress, with 55% holding that view.

 

U.S. Voters' Views on Whether Incumbent Officeholders Deserve Reelection

Please tell me whether you think each of the following political officeholders deserves to be reelected, or not.

Bar chart. Registered voters' belief that federal officeholders deserve reelection. Fifty-five percent of voters say their representative in Congress deserves reelection, 38% say President Biden does, and 24% say most members of Congress do.

%

 Yes, deserves

%

 No, does not

%

 No opinion

The U.S. representative in your congressional district

55%

34%

11%

President Biden

38%

61%

Most members of Congress

24%

67%

9%

Jan. 2-22, 2024

Get the data  Download image

U.S. Voters' Views on Whether Officeholders Deserve Reelection, by Political Party

Figures are the percentage who believe the officeholder(s) deserves to be reelected.

A table showing registered voters' beliefs that federal officeholders deserve reelection, by political party. Majorities of Democrats say their representative in Congress and President Biden deserve reelection. Majorities of Republicans say their member of Congress deserves reelection.

Table with 4 columns and 3 rows.

The U.S. representative in your congressional district	63 63 63	44 44 44	64 64 64
President Biden	82 82 82	29 29 29	3 3 3
Most members of Congress	30 30 30	20 20 20	25 25 25

Jan. 2-22, 2024

Get the data  Download image

Biden and Reagan

Recent posts have discussed the Hamas terror attack on Israel.

 Matt Lewis at The Daily Beast:

I never thought the day would come when I, a die-hard Reagan Republican, would credit a Democratic president for being Reaganesque. Amazingly, it has. Don’t look now, but Joe Biden has been leading with moral authority in the struggle against violent authoritarianism and illiberalism at home and abroad.

While Donald Trump criticized the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden met with Bibi and declared America’s support for Israel to be “rock solid and unwavering.” And while Republican support for providing U.S. aid to Ukraine has eroded, Biden has steadfastly supported them in their plight against a brutal Russian invasion. 

This trend continued during his speech on Thursday night, where Biden sought to unite these two crises. “The assault on Israel echoes nearly 20 months of war, tragedy, and brutality inflicted on the people of Ukraine—people that were very badly hurt since Vladimir Putin launched his all-out invasion,” he said.

Dianne Feinstein, RIP

 President Biden:

Senator Dianne Feinstein was a pioneering American. A true trailblazer. And for Jill and me, a cherished friend.

In San Francisco, she showed enormous poise and courage in the wake of tragedy, and became a powerful voice for American values. Serving in the Senate together for more than 15 years, I had a front row seat to what Dianne was able to accomplish. It’s why I recruited her to serve on the Judiciary Committee when I was Chairman – I knew what she was made of, and I wanted her on our team. There’s no better example of her skillful legislating and sheer force of will than when she turned passion into purpose, and led the fight to ban assault weapons. Dianne made her mark on everything from national security to the environment to protecting civil liberties. She’s made history in so many ways, and our country will benefit from her legacy for generations.

Often the only woman in the room, Dianne was a role model for so many Americans – a job she took seriously by mentoring countless public servants, many of whom now serve in my Administration. She had an immense impact on younger female leaders for whom she generously opened doors. Dianne was tough, sharp, always prepared, and never pulled a punch, but she was also a kind and loyal friend, and that’s what Jill and I will miss the most.

As we mourn with her daughter Katherine and the Feinstein family, her team in the Senate, and the people of California, we take comfort that Dianne is reunited again with her beloved Richard. May God Bless Dianne Feinstein.

Biden on Executive Power

Miles's Law: where you stand depends on where you sit.  

Charlie Savage,   Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at NYT:

If he is elected to a second term, President Biden pledged that he will go to Congress to start any major war but said he believed he was empowered “to direct limited U.S. military operations abroad” without such approval when such strikes served critical American interests.

“As president, I have taken great care to ensure that military actions carried out under my command comply with this constitutional framework and that my administration consults with Congress to the greatest extent possible,” he wrote in response to a New York Times survey of presidential candidates about executive power.

“I will continue to rigorously apply this framework to any potential actions in the future,” he added.

The reply stood in contrast to his answer in 2007, when he was also running for president and, as a senator, adopted a narrower view: “The Constitution is clear: Except in response to an attack or the imminent threat of attack, only Congress may authorize war and the use of force.”

Not just war powers. 

In 2019, for example, Mr. Biden said that if elected, he would order the Justice Department to review and potentially replace a legal policy memo that says sitting presidents are temporarily immune from indictment. He strongly criticized the department’s interpretation of the Constitution, which limited the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and Mr. Trump’s attempts to impede that inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III.

But Mr. Biden never followed through on that pledge. He is now protected himself by the Justice Department’s theory since a special counsel, Robert Hur, is investigating how several classified documents were in his possession when he left the vice presidency.