4 Top Biden Aides To Testify On His Alleged Cognitive Decline
Four former senior aides to former President Joe Biden will testify to the House Oversight Committee about Biden's alleged declining health while in office.
A spokesperson for Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, confirmed to HuffPost that Neera Tanden, former director of the Domestic Policy Council, and Anthony Bernal, former senior adviser to the first lady, will testify later this month. Ashley Williams, former deputy director of Oval Office operations, and Annie Tomasini, former deputy chief of staff, will testify in July.
A spokesperson for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, President Donald Trump ordered his administration to investigate his predecessor, alleging that Biden's aides covered up his 'cognitive decline' and criticizing Biden for using an autopen to sign documents, like pardons. Presidents, including Trump, have used autopens since 2011.
Biden defended himself in a statement last week.
'Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,' Biden said. 'I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false.'
Comer sent a letter demanding testimony from five former Biden aides. In May, Comer urged Biden's former doctor, Kevin O'Connor, to testify. O'Connor refused, according to Politico, and then Comer issued a subpoena to him last week.
'The American people deserve full transparency and the House Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation to provide answers and accountability,' Comer said. 'The cover-up of President Biden's mental decline is one of the greatest scandals in our nation's history. These five former senior advisors were eyewitnesses to President Biden's condition and operations within the Biden White House. They must appear before the House Oversight Committee and provide truthful answers about President Biden's cognitive state and who was calling the shots.'
The investigation comes after journalist Jake Tapper released his book 'Original Sin,' which detailed Biden's mental decline. According to the book, Biden would often forget people's names and that top Democrats refused to press Biden on whether he was capable of running for a second term in 2024.
While appearing on 'The View' in May with former first lady Jill Biden, Joe Biden there is 'nothing to sustain' reports that his mental capacity declined while he was president. Jill Biden added that the people who wrote 'those books' weren't in the White House with them.
Comer has also requested testimony from Michael Donilon, former senior adviser to the president, Anita Dunn, former senior adviser to the president, Ronald Klain, former chief of staff, Bruce Reed, former deputy chief of staff and Steve Ricchetti, former counselor to the president.
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Newsweek
20 minutes ago
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Donald Trump's 'Les Miserables' Appearance Sparks Avalanche of Jokes, Memes
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CNET
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- CNET
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Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Next playlist item Unmute Current Time 0:01 / Duration 9:42 Loaded : 1.04% 0:01 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 9:41 Share Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Close Modal Dialog This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button. Close Modal Dialog This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button. Should You Buy Now or Wait? Our Experts Weigh In on Tariffs However, things shake out in the end, the initial ruling certainly came as a relief to many, given the chaos and uncertainty that Trump's tariffs how caused thus far. For his part, Trump has recently lashed out against companies -- like Apple and Walmart -- that have reacted to the tariffs or discussed their impacts in ways he dislikes. Apple has been working to move manufacturing for the US market from China to relatively less-tariffed India, to which Trump has threatened them with a 25% penalty rate if they don't bring manufacturing to the US instead. Experts have predicted that a US-made iPhone, for example, would cost consumers about $3,500. 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Speaking about Trump's tariff plans just before they were announced, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said that they would generate $6 trillion in revenue over the next decade. Given that tariffs are most often paid by consumers, CNN characterized this as potentially "the largest tax hike in US history." New estimates from the Yale Budget Lab, cited by Axios, predict that Trump's new tariffs will cause a 2.3% increase in inflation throughout 2025. This translates to about a $3,800 increase in expenses for the average American household. Reith, the IDC analyst, told CNET that Chinese-based tech companies, like PC makers Acer, Asus and Lenovo, have "100% exposure" to these import taxes as they currently stand, with products like phones and computers the most likely to take a hit. He also said that the companies best positioned to weather the tariff impacts are those that have moved some of their operations out of China to places like India, Thailand and Vietnam, singling out the likes of Apple, Dell and HP. Samsung, based in South Korea, is also likely to avoid the full force of Trump's tariffs. In an effort to minimize its tariff vulnerability, Apple has begun to move the production of goods for the US market from China to India. Will tariffs impact prices immediately? In the short term -- the first days or weeks after a tariff takes effect -- maybe not. There are still a lot of products in the US imported pre-tariffs and on store shelves, meaning the businesses don't need a price hike to recoup import taxes. Once new products need to be brought in from overseas, that's when you'll see prices start to climb because of tariffs or you'll see them become unavailable. That uncertainty has made consumers anxious. 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Even if it's made in the USA, they will jack up the price and blame it on tariffs." CNET's Money team recommends that before you make any purchase, especially a high-ticket item, be sure that the expenditure fits within your budget and your spending plans. Buying something you can't afford now because it might be less affordable later can be burdensome, to say the least. What is the goal of the White House tariff plan? The typical goal behind tariffs is to discourage consumers and businesses from buying the tariffed, foreign-sourced goods and encourage them to buy domestically produced goods instead. When implemented in the right way, tariffs are generally seen as a useful way to protect domestic industries. One of the stated intentions for Trump's tariffs is along those lines: to restore American manufacturing and production. 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That problem is worsened by the fact that the materials needed to build those factories will also be tariffed, making the costs of "reshoring" production in the US too heavy for companies to stomach. These issues, and the general instability of American economic policies under Trump, are part of why experts warn that Trump's tariffs could have the opposite effect: keeping manufacturing out of the US and leaving consumers stuck with inflated prices. Any factories that do get built in the US because of tariffs also have a high chance of being automated, canceling out a lot of job creation potential. To give you one real-world example of this: When warning customers of future price hikes, toy maker Mattel also noted that it had no plans to move manufacturing to the US. Trump has reportedly been fixated on the notion that Apple's iPhone -- the most popular smartphone in the US market -- can be manufactured entirely in the US. This has been broadly dismissed by experts, for a lot of the same reasons mentioned above, but also because an American-made iPhone could cost upward of $3,500. One report from 404 Media dubbed the idea "a pure fantasy." The overall sophistication and breadth of China's manufacturing sector have also been cited, with CEO Tim Cook stating in 2017 that the US lacks the number of tooling engineers to make its products. For more, see how tariffs might raise the prices of Apple products and find some expert tips for saving money.
Miami Herald
30 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Senate Republicans want to trim some of Trump's populist tax cuts
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So Senate Republicans are now hunting for ways to save money, a hazardous task that could involve shaving the ambitions of their colleagues in the House or the White House. On the chopping block are some of Trump's favorite parts of the bill, like not taxing overtime. Republican lawmakers have long been skeptical of some of the president's tax ideas, with the view that the populist policies will not spur the economy like traditional supply-side conservatism can. 'I think it all comes down to what we've got to pay for,' Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said. 'At the end of the day, we've got to pay for pro-growth policies.' The debate is in some ways a classic one on Capitol Hill, where throughout history and without regard to political party, senators have been reluctant to defer to their colleagues in the House, and vice versa. 'It's the Senate, so the Senate is going to do what it damn well wants to do, and that's a good process,' Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said at a Punchbowl News event Wednesday, where he warned that his chamber would pass a bill 'markedly different' from the House measure, pushing enactment of the package well past his party's July 4 deadline. To top Senate Republicans, the most economically powerful tax cuts incentivize companies to make new investments and conduct research. Accelerated depreciation schedules, though, do not grab political attention the way Trump's promises for 'no tax on tips' did, so the House version of the bill only included the business tax breaks through 2029. Senate Republicans want to make the business write-offs a permanent feature of the tax code, a change that they and some economists believe would help encourage more companies to expand. As one way to cover that cost, Senate Republicans are looking at ways to further curb eligibility for a tax cut for overtime pay, including by setting a lower income ceiling for the break and by more strictly defining what counts as overtime, lawmakers said. 'Obviously, there's a lot of dials, whether you're talking about no tax on tips, overtime, any of those,' said Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan. 'How many years did they go? At what level do they stop?' Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, a former car dealer, wants to tighten the House plan for allowing Americans to deduct up to $10,000 in interest on car loans, which would apply to vehicles made in the United States, including used and new cars, as well as all-terrain vehicles and recreational vehicles. Moreno is proposing to limit the tax break, one of Trump's campaign promises, just to loans for new cars. 'We save a lot of money. An RV? Motorcycles? ATVs?' he said. 'That's not the idea; the idea is to help working Americans be able to afford a car.' Senate Republicans are searching for cuts because of growing concern among some conservatives, as well as on Wall Street, about the bill's impact on the country's fiscal situation. While paring back some of Trump's campaign promises could help keep the cost of the legislation near what it was in the House, some lawmakers are calling for much deeper spending cuts. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has been loudly calling for the legislation, which already includes roughly $1.8 trillion in spending reductions, to slash trillions more. His complaints won him a meeting with top White House officials, including Vice President JD Vance, at the Capitol this week. Johnson's pitch is to remove all of Trump's new tax priorities from the bill and instead focus the legislation exclusively on extending expiring tax cuts from 2017, cutting spending and raising the debt ceiling. Republicans could then tackle White House priorities, and further spending cuts, in a second piece of legislation, Johnson argues. 'You can't do it in one fell swoop. I don't want to criticize what has been done; I want to support what's been done,' he said. 'But I absolutely -- I can't accept that this is the new norm. We need another bite of the apple in this Congress.' Of course, jettisoning much of the president's agenda from the legislation is a tall order, and White House officials have been making the case for the House measures to cut taxes on tips and overtime and for older Americans. 'No Tax on Overtime and No Tax on Tips are presidential priorities that 80 million Americans voted for in November,' Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. 'They will remain in this historic piece of legislation in order to deliver the largest tax cut in history.' There are other sources of money tempting Senate Republicans. Some are considering cuts to Medicare, though changes to the health care program for older Americans comes with substantial political risks. Then there is the state and local tax deduction, often called SALT. In the House, a small group of Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California demanded that the legislation include an increase to the $10,000 cap on the deduction. They ultimately won an agreement to set the new limit at $40,000, an expensive change that would largely benefit homeowners in areas with high taxes. While the change was necessary to win the support of blue-state Republicans in the House, senators are less committed to the policy. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the majority leader, recently remarked at the White House that 'there really isn't a single Republican senator who cares much about the SALT issue.' At the same time, House Republicans committed to more SALT relief have warned that changing the House agreement could scuttle the entire package. But some Republican senators cannot help but think that money earmarked for a higher SALT cap could have a better use. 'There's a lot of things we could do with that,' said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
