Biden's Cancer
Plus: That big, beautiful bill; Romanian election results; China's pivot to nuclear; and more...
No more criticizing, say Dems: Former President Joe Biden was diagnosed on Friday with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone. David Axelrod, a Democratic operative, argued on CNN that conversations about Biden's mental acuity "should be more muted and set aside for now as he's struggling through this." He was referring to the discourse around Original Sin, a book by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN anchor Jake Tapper that chronicles the coverup of Biden's mental decline by those around him as he was seeking reelection.
But if anything, the announcement raises more questions. Less than a year ago, Biden's physician claimed he was a "healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency." This already strained credulity for people who noticed his mental decline; it is still more suspicious now, in light of this stage four diagnosis, signs of which were likely present 10 months ago.
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The Axelrod line is an attempt to ensure there's never a reckoning. You can be sensitive toward Biden's condition, which is surely very sad for his family, while also trying to uncover which operatives tried to perpetrate a fraud, lying to the American people about the man for whom they were going to be asked to vote. In fact, the two aren't really in tension at all. Which Democratic aides, staffers, and decision makers tried to pull the wool over people's eyes? It's important to suss out how culpable the Bidens were in all this, yes; but the former president doesn't have some long political career ahead of him, whereas some of the people who were complicit in all this might have many decades left.
I truly hope the former President makes a full recovery. I also suspect this was yet another serious lie of omission during his Presidency about his health (& there's ample reason not to give them benefit of doubt). They're using a more sympathetic, smaller lie to deflect from… https://t.co/Zg1Wcw6aID
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) May 18, 2025
House budget committee approves the "big, beautiful bill": Yesterday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) appears to have convinced the deficit hawks to give up for now and do President Donald Trump's bidding.
Sunday's vote was 17–16, with four Republicans voting present and all Democrats opposed to the measure; the deficit hawks who reversed their stances (voting present instead of no) are Republican Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma.
During earlier negotiations, this group had "blocked their own party's sprawling domestic policy measure from advancing out of a key committee on Friday" due to their "fundamentally different view of federal spending and debt than the rest of the G.O.P.," reports The New York Times. "They are single-mindedly focused on slashing deficits by restructuring the government to dramatically scale back social programs, whatever the political consequences." Music to my ears. But that's not what's ultimately going to happen.
It's unclear what concessions were made to win the support of Roy and company, but the Associated Press reports that the bill "permanently extends the existing income tax cuts that were approved during Trump's first term, in 2017 and adds temporary new ones that the president campaigned on in 2024, including no taxes on tips, overtime pay and auto loan interest payments. The measure also proposes big spending increases for border security and defense. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, estimates that the House bill is shaping up to add roughly $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next decade." In other words: plenty of reason for spending hawks to be concerned.
"If you are an American, you should feel shame that your elected officials are proposing that this is the bill that gets passed," said David Friedberg, on the All In podcast. "That we vaporize this much money, that we put ourselves this much further in debt, that we do not treat the situation as the fiscal emergency that it is."
" We are now burning an additional $2.5T a year adding to our debt load. We are in a fiscal crisis and we're not willing to admit it," he added. "If you look across the board, all of these programs are…being proposed to run at a a cost that's well in excess of their pre-COVID levels." Friedberg said that if he were in charge, he would force spending to remain, at minimum, at pre-COVID levels, not post-, and that no new programs ought to be proposed.
Scenes from New York: A Rwandan man who settled in the Hamptons as a beekeeper allegedly lied to immigration officials when he sought refugee status back in 2003; prosecutors say that he was actually an active participant in the genocide against the Tutsi.
QUICK HITS
- Related to House GOP infighting: "The US government lost its last triple-A credit score from a major international ratings firm after a downgrade by Moody's Investors Service on May 16, in a bleak milestone for the world's largest economy," reports Bloomberg. "Moody's analysts cited more than a decade of inaction by successive US administrations and Congress to arrest a trend of large fiscal deficits. The government's debt-interest costs ballooned when inflation spiked in the aftermath of Covid-19, and are forecast to reach $1 trillion this year, up from $263 billion in 2017, according to Congress's Government Accountability Office."
- Someone bombed a Palm Springs fertility clinic, killing one person and injuring four others, in what the FBI called an "intentional act of terrorism." Katherine Dee discusses the bomber's motives here.
- On Saturday, a Mexican Navy ship crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge, killing two crew members and injuring 22 others. It's possible that there were mechanical issues, or that the tugboat that was assisting it back out of the harbor did not properly guide it; the ship was not supposed to sail toward the bridge, but veered off route.
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Bucharest's mayor, Nicusor Dan, who is pro–European Union and lefty-centrist, won Romania's presidential election. "George Simion, the leader of the far-right AUR party, won a dramatic first-round victory earlier this month, riding a wave of anger from Romanians who had seen the presidential race annulled late last year because of claims of Russian interference," adds the BBC. Dan defeated Simion in the latest round, winning it all. Simion had stepped in, essentially in place of Calin Georgescu, who had won a first-round presidential victory last year before authorities chalked the result up to "Russian interference" and declared it invalid. Asked by the BBC whether he was merely Georgescu's puppet, Simion said: "The puppets are those who annulled the elections….I am a man of my people and my people voted for Calin Georgescu. Do we like democracy only when the good guy has won? I don't think this is an option." (We spoke about the Romanian elections—and whether the annulment is an assault on democracy—with Matt Taibbi on Just Asking Questions.)
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This is insane:
China is building nuclear with costs comparable to natural gas plants in the U.S.
$2.3 million per megawatt.
Let that sink in. pic.twitter.com/vOszOdnsOT
— isabelle ???? (@isabelleboemeke) May 18, 2025
- Fascinated by le privilège du blanc:
Why did Queen Letizia of Spain wear all white in the presence of Pope Leo XIV, while all the other women wore the traditional black? Many media outlets praised the Queen's 'disruptive' all-white style.
They are, unfortunately, ignorant of the tradition of Le privilège du blanc.… pic.twitter.com/5czbpkq3k8
— Dr Taylor Marshall™️ (@TaylorRMarshall) May 18, 2025
