Democrat proposes cognitive tests to root out geriatrics in Congress
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, 37, said Joe Biden's disastrous presidential debate performance last year raised 'serious concerns' among her constituents 'that it was not their elected representatives calling the shots'.
She proposed that the Office of Congressional Conduct create a standardised test to determine politicians' 'ability to perform the duties of office unimpeded by significant irreversible cognitive impairment'.
'What I've heard from my neighbours, my community is this idea that this place is being run by a bunch of staffers,' Ms Gluesenkamp Perez told Axios, adding: 'And we're seeing a very real decline in confidence in Congress.'
Ms Gleusenkamp Perez, who was elected to Congress in Washington State in 2022, attempted to get her proposal attached as an amendment to the House appropriations committee's Bill funding Congress for the next year, but it was voted down.
David Valadao, the committee's chairman, said the House's elections, which are held every two years, were a sufficient referendum on elected officials' fitness to serve.
Concerns over what has been called a ' gerontocracy ' in the US reached a boiling point with Mr Biden's public decline, which saw the octogenarian drop out of the presidential race following his devastating debate performance.
In May, it was revealed that he was suffering from prostate cancer, weeks after journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson alleged a cover-up at the White House of the ailing president's cognitive decline in their book Original Sin.
Three Democrats have died in office so far this year, meaning if the party had won a slim House majority in 2024, they would have lost it due to politicians passing away.
There have been multiple reports of Eleanor Holmes Norton, 88, the oldest House member, telling journalists she will be running for another term in 2026, only for her office to attempt to walk back her claims.
Last year it was revealed Kay Granger, 82, a Republican congresswoman from Texas, had been struggling with memory issues and living in a senior-living facility towards the end of her time in office.
It comes as a string of younger Democrats have launched campaigns to unseat older politicians, in what some experts told The Telegraph could see the Democrats have their equivalent of the Tea Party movement that rocked the Republican Party in 2010.
Last week Barack Obama called on Democrats frustrated by Donald Trump's second administration to stop 'whining' and 'toughen up', CNN reported.
Speaking at a private fundraiser in New Jersey, he said being an effective opposition party is 'going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in foetal positions. It's going to require Democrats to just toughen up '.
Mr Obama added: 'You know, don't tell me you're a Democrat, but you're kind of disappointed right now, so you're not doing anything.
'No, now is exactly the time that you get in there and do something... Don't say that you care deeply about free speech and then you're quiet. No, you stand up for free speech when it's hard. When somebody says something that you don't like, but you still say, 'You know what, that person has the right to speak.' … What's needed now is courage.'
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Times
an hour ago
- Times
‘I was the Trump team': how the Podcast Election was won
The president's social media strategist has had a busy morning stirring up online outrage. In the past few hours Alex Bruesewitz has condemned Democrats as a 'pathetic group of people', denounced critics of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, as 'far-left maniacs' and shared a post of the 'horrible' liberal podcast host Alex Cooper being booed at a baseball game. Bruesewitz, 28, has been starting arguments like this professionally for a decade but now, sipping a glass of water at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, in a well-fitted navy blue suit, he is relaxed and even polite. He co-founded X Strategies, a company that counsels conservatives on how to win social media wars, when he was 19. Last year he was the architect of the podcast game plan credited with helping Donald Trump to win back the White House. Today he is at the heart of the administration's ultra-combative communications operation, working as a hired gun because he is planning to get married and thinks that it is 'a little bit difficult' to afford a wedding on a government salary. Often the best ideas are not his, he says. Take some of the viral memes — of Trump dressed as the Pope, or Gaza rendered as a holiday resort (Gaza-Lago), or the AI-generated cartoon of a crying migrant — that have driven huge clicks and controversy, amplified by the president's social platforms. Bruesewitz says they are generated by Trump 's fans, whom he calls 'really talented people'. 'These guys make some of the best memes, and they're bus drivers in small towns across the country,' he says. 'And they get off of work and they go home and they open their computer, they tell their wife they love them and they log on to X for the next five hours of their life. And they're making hilarious memes of the president or videos of the president.' But it was podcasts, not memes, that really sealed his reputation. During the 2024 campaign, which became known as the 'podcast election' because of the extent to which the format often seemed to usurp traditional media, Trump appeared on 20 episodes. Most were hosted by young men and popular with young men. These appearances reached 23.5 million Americans in an average week, compared with 6.4 million for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Subsequently 56 per cent of men aged 18 to 29 backed Trump in 2024, up from 41 per cent in 2020. Trump's podcast circuit has been depicted as a long pitch to the 'right-wing manosphere'. Bruesewitz thinks this is unfair. 'None of the podcasters we sat down with during that period were Trump lovers,' he says. Instead, he calls them 'equal-opportunity critics' — hosts who have been critical of Trump on certain issues, and critical of Democrats on others. He also notes that Trump saw a bounce among young women, up from 33 per cent in 2020 to 40 per cent in 2024. Podcasts worked for the candidate because they suited his unique political skills, he says. 'The greatness about President Trump is that he knows all the issues, and he also has charisma that is unrivalled in the political space,' Bruesewitz says. In general, little to no preparation was needed. 'I think over-prepping your candidates is what kind of trips you up.' Underpreparing has its pitfalls too. Rapid rise In the last few days of the election The Atlantic described Bruesewitz as a 'terminally online troll and perpetual devil on the campaign's shoulder' who had urged JD Vance to amplify the lie that illegal Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets. The magazine also reported that it was Bruesewitz who had personally advocated for the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe to appear at a Trump rally days before the election, at which he then called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage' (Bruesewitz says both claims are untrue.) But Trump's subsequent victory cast him in a much more favourable light and Axios hailed him as 'one of the most influential political strategists in the US'. In February the Trump family appointed him senior adviser to the political action committee Never Surrender, entrusting him with running two of the president's social media accounts. His team of five, based in Florida, manage the @TrumpWarRoom and @TeamTrump handles, which are followed by millions (although the president still posts his own messages on Truth Social). Bruesewitz has also found time to meet some British conservatives. He met Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, in London. 'I think she's a good person,' he says, adding that she's got the issues right but is in a tough position. 'The party that she leads now was led by imbeciles before.' On the Reform leader Nigel Farage, he says: 'He's probably the best in the UK and my advice to him has been to make sure you use your momentum and your platform to build up the voices of the next generation because he's not going to be hot for ever.' It all started with a tweet Bruesewitz's career started in April 2015 when he was 18 years old. He was sitting at his high school desk in the Wisconsin town of Ripon (population 7,900), 'and I posted a picture of the Trump Hotel in Chicago,' he says. 'And I said, 'the sign on Trump Chicago would look just as good on the White House'. And the president, then businessman Donald Trump, retweeted me.' Two months later, Trump announced his candidacy. 'And when he announced that he was running, I was sold already. I wanted to be like Donald Trump.' After high school, Bruesewitz skipped college and tried his hand at real estate, having admired the empire Trump had built. 'I didn't do so well in that,' he concedes. Trump's election in 2016 inspired Bruesewitz and his business partner Derek Utley to form X Strategies a year later. Their early clients included FreedomProject Academy, a Christian conservative homeschooling academy in central Wisconsin, and a father who lost his daughter in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. Utley and Bruesewitz represented the latter pro bono as he argued for more school security rather than fewer guns. Then came the 2020 election and Trump's claims of election fraud. Bruesewitz leapt to his defence on social media and made a speech in Washington's Freedom Plaza. When the BBC invited Bruesewitz on air, he argued with the presenter. 'Thank you for having me on,' he said, 'and I just want to make one thing very clear … your country's opinion stopped mattering in our country in 1776.' His sparring eventually got Donald Trump Jr's attention. 'He liked my tenacity online,' Bruesewitz says. 'He found me to be quite entertaining.' The two became friends and Don Jr introduced Bruesewitz to his father. 'I got to spend quality time with the president for the first time at a live golf tournament at his club in New Jersey,' he tells me. 'I ended up spending four and a half hours with the president that day.' They spoke about 'all things' — not just politics. 'And we've had a great relationship ever since.' After that, Bruesewitz poured his energy into attacking Republicans who had backed Trump's impeachment — not as an official Trump appointee but out of 'sheer patriotism and love of nation'. Eight out of ten of those Republicans either declined to stand in 2022 or lost their primary. 'We travelled [around] their campaign districts,' Bruesewitz says. 'I personally picked fights with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger,' he says of the two anti-Trump Republican members of Congress, 'which was also great entertainment. I found great joy in that'. In November 2022, the Trump family finally hired Bruesewitz. His mission? To help beat Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, to the Republican presidential nomination. That worked — and then came the general election. The podcast plan It was Trump's youngest son Barron, not Bruesewitz, who set up the first big podcast interview — with the 24-year-old online streamer and influencer Adin Ross — which proved the power of the format before the election. Bruesewitz calculated that clips from Trump's appearance were seen by 113 million people in the first 24 hours. When Bruesewitz presented the numbers to Trump, 'he flipped through it, and he was like, 'these numbers are massive''. Trump also thanked his 19-year-old son in a Truth Social post. 'And then about four or five days passed, and he kept texting me or calling me about how great that interview was.' Not long afterwards, Bruesewitz was called into the office of Susie Wiles, who helped manage Trump's election campaign and is now White House chief of staff. 'She's like, 'Alex, we've got to get him to do more of these.'' After that, they went all in. 'We lined them up, one major podcast a week, up until we did Rogan, which was like a week before the election,' Bruesewitz says. The appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the US, garnered more than 44 million views on YouTube by election day, allowing Trump to reach young, predominantly male voters, opining on topics such as martial arts, the possibility of life on Mars, and his admiration for William McKinley, the president who was assassinated in 1901. When I ask how Bruesewitz decided which podcasts Trump should do, he shrugs. 'I mean, I just went through something called Spotify and Spotify rankings. And I think we did eight of the ten podcasts on Spotify that were popular.' There was one conspicuous exception, however. Trump avoided Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, one of the most popular podcasts among young American women. Cooper, the 30-year-old host of the show, is beloved by her 'Daddy Gang' — some 70 per cent of whom are female, with 76 per cent under 35. In October Kamala Harris appeared on the podcast, discussing women's rights and abortion. Cooper later said her team had a Zoom call with Trump's team about the possibility of him appearing. Bruesewitz says that's not true. 'I was President Trump's team,' Bruesewitz says. 'I never had a conversation with Alex Cooper about going on the podcast. Her team reached out to me. We never responded. I would never put the president on Call Her Daddy.' Why not? 'Because one, she's terrible, she's terrible at what she does. I think personally. I think she's been a detriment to society with the content that she talks about.' And she's 'regressive', he says, 'when it comes to starting families and having happy, healthy relationships'. A source close to the Call Her Daddy team confirmed that a call about the president coming on the show occurred before the election in November 2024 with members of his campaign team, including discussing a suggestion by his staff that they film the episode at Mar-a-Lago. Unexpected love story Instead, looking for a female-friendly podcast to counter Harris's appearance on Call Her Daddy, he landed on a show called Girls Gone Bible. 'It's the No 2 religious podcast on Spotify,' he says. 'Massive following. They do these in-person shows where they get 1,000 young girls at each tour stop. They talk about Jesus and they pray over them. And it's actually really beautiful.' Bruesewitz organised a meeting between Trump and the hosts of Girls Gone Bible in Las Vegas. The night before, one of the hosts brought a glamorous friend to dinner. It was Carolina Urrea, the former Miss Nevada. 'Carolina walked in. I'm like, wow, who's that girl?' The following day, Carolina took a picture with Trump, who gave Bruesewitz a 'thumbs up'. The pair got engaged eight months later. Bruesewitz says his fiancée has 'strengthened my relationship with the Lord'. ALEX BRUESEWITZ/INSTAGRAM He sees his experience as part of a larger shift toward Christianity in America in recent years. 'Another trend is moving away from the girl boss attitude to the trad wife,' he says. 'I don't know if it was Covid that kind of made that switch where people were spending more time at home and they were, you know, learning to cook more and doing more things. But that trad culture started taking off big time.' • My day with the trad wife queen and what it taught me While podcasts helped Trump to reclaim the White House, the president has rarely appeared on them in his second term. Though he showed up last month on the New York Post's Pod Force One, Trump is spending most of his time these days on Truth Social and his old favourite: TV news. Bruesewitz, who describes Trump as 'a good friend of mine' thinks this could change. 'I think he'll eventually do some. You know, he's been very busy running the free world.' As for his own future, he says that Trump would have endorsed him to run for office if he had wanted to, but he didn't. 'I think Congress would be a little too boring for me.'
NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
Bipartisan government funding is at risk of dying in Trump's Washington
WASHINGTON — For many years, final decisions over how much the U.S. government spends, and how, have required sign-off from leaders of both parties, no matter who controlled the White House or Capitol Hill or the level of polarization. Now, that last vestige of the bipartisan funding process is at risk of dying after a one-two punch by President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress. The 'appropriations' process, whereby both parties pass detailed funding bills for various federal agencies every year, has been in a slow decline for decades. But recent moves by the Trump-era GOP to disrupt past funding agreements have accelerated that decline — and, in the view of Democrats and even some weary Republicans, undermined Congress' power of the purse in deference to the White House. First, Republicans passed a $300 billion hike in military spending and immigration enforcement as part of Trump's megabill; and second, they cut $9 billion in domestic money and foreign aid under a rarely used 'rescission' process, allowing the GOP to cancel already approved bipartisan spending with a party-line vote. A Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown will test whether a bipartisan deal is still possible, particularly as Trump's top budget aide publicly calls for a more partisan approach. House Republicans have undermined the bipartisan path for years by slamming the resulting deals as 'swamp' creations by a 'uniparty' that is addicted to spending. Now, GOP lawmakers in both chambers are going it alone, suggesting they'll bring more rescissions packages to undo past bipartisan spending agreements because the existing process is failing. 'We don't have an appropriations process. It's broken. It's been broken for a while,' said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee. He said Congress will likely fall back on continuing resolutions, which largely maintain the status quo, and rescission packages for the remainder of Trump's presidency. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a senior appropriator, said the once-respected government funding process has 'disappeared,' calling the latest rescissions package 'a step backwards.' 'It's basically saying: No matter what you decide on, the president is going to be able to change the bill, even for money that's been appropriated,' Durbin said. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, insist the process is alive and well. They will test that theory this week as Thune plans to bring at least one — if not more — appropriations bills to the Senate floor. He has argued that the $9 billion cut hits a tiny portion of the federal budget and shouldn't dissuade Democrats from working toward a deal. 'I would hope, at least for the functioning of our government, that they would be willing to work with us on some things,' Thune said Wednesday on Fox News. 'They haven't been so far.' But even some GOP proponents of the bill admit it adds to the challenges. 'The rescission package — of course, I understand that could complicate things,' said Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama, a senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. Vought weighs in Just after the Senate overcame objections in both parties to approve the $9 billion spending-cut bill requested by Trump, a comment from White House budget director Russell Vought dropped like a bomb on Capitol Hill. 'The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan,' Vought told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Thursday. 'It's not going to keep me up at night, and I think will lead to better results, by having the appropriations process be a little bit partisan.' He added that more rescission packages would be coming. The backlash was fierce. Senate Republicans responsible for crafting the government funding bills were taken aback by his candor. 'Mr. Vought's lack of respect and apparent lack of understanding of how Congress operates is baffling, because he's served in government before,' Collins told NBC News. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Vought 'disrespects' the appropriations process in Congress with his 'dismissive' comments. 'I think he thinks that we are irrelevant,' she said. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Thursday called on Trump to 'fire Russell Vought immediately, before he destroys our democracy and runs the country into the ground.' The series of clashes escalates tensions leading up to the fall deadline, with top Democrats warning ahead of the vote that they would have little incentive to provide the 60 votes to cut a deal. 'It is absurd to expect Democrats to play along with funding the government if Republicans are just going to renege on a bipartisan agreement by concocting rescissions packages behind closed doors that can pass with only their votes,' Schumer warned in a recent speech. The debate over the demise of individual lawmakers getting to dictate where federal funding is allocated came to a head during a recent meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee, with many senators arguing that the work they were doing in that moment may just be overridden by congressional leadership and the president. 'The one thing we all agree on is the appropriations process is broken,' former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., lamented, describing how during his 18 years leading the GOP conference he helped oversee a shift away from government funding levels being decided by committees and instead being negotiated by only the highest levels of leadership and the White House. 'I concluded our failure to pass our bills empower every president, regardless of party, because I've been in those discussions at the end, the big four and the guy with the pen, and that makes all of our requests irrelevant,' McConnell said. Collins has repeatedly blamed the decline of the process on Schumer's refusal to put appropriations bills on the Senate floor. That has also been a slow-moving trend: McConnell and former Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also short-circuited the process on the floor when in charge. Rising partisanship has weakened committees broadly and placed more power in the hands of leadership. In the context of government funding, that led to 'omnibus' spending bills and continuing resolutions — or CRs — negotiated by party leaders and jammed through Congress, often with an impending deadline to pressure holdouts to fall in line quickly. But House Republicans raised hell, torching the massive bills negotiated behind closed doors as a betrayal to their constituents. In recent years, they have successfully steered their leadership away from that approach. And it leaves few options going forward. 'What the math tells us' Durbin, who is retiring after a 30-year Senate career, reminisced about when the process was at the peak of its powers — last century. The last time Congress completed it through 'regular order' was in the 1990s. 'There was a time when we called 12 appropriation bills to the floor, open for amendment! Can you imagine that?' Durbin said. 'I remember. And you had to do your job in the committee. You had to have a subcommittee lined up on a bipartisan basis, a full committee lined up on a bipartisan basis. And the committee stood together. And you could find enough to support it to pass something. That, I think, really reflected the best of the Senate.' He attributed the change to the growing discord between the parties and the declining 'reputation of the Appropriations Committee,' although he credited Collins and Vice Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., with trying to restore the bipartisan spirit of the panel. Collins, notably, is on an island as the only GOP senator who voted against both attempts to rewrite government funding — in the megabill and rescissions package. Collins is also up for re-election next year in a Democratic-leaning state that Trump lost in 2024. Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University and the Brookings Institution, said the megabill's changes to GOP spending priorities 'undermines the rough parity between defense and nondefense discretionary spending that until recently made bipartisan deals possible.' She added, 'The Trump OMB's aggressive impoundments of enacted appropriations severely threatens Congress' power of the purse and with it the authority and expertise of and oversight by appropriators.' Yet even as Republicans find new ways to go around the Senate's 60-vote threshold, Thune has promised he won't abolish the filibuster. He distanced himself from Vought's remarks. 'Well, that runs contrary to what the math tells us around here,' he said. 'So, we need 60 on approps bills. And it's going to take 60 to fund the government.' The path to a new funding law is murky, at best. And Collins, for now, maintains confidence in the bipartisan appropriations process. When asked if she has any concerns about its future, Collins told NBC News, 'None whatsoever.'
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Trump's EPA eliminates research and development office and begins layoffs
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Friday it is eliminating its research and development arm and reducing agency staff by thousands of employees. One union leader said the moves 'will devastate public health in our country'. The agency's office of research and development (ORD) has long provided the scientific underpinnings for the EPA's mission to protect the environment and human health. The EPA said in May it would shift its scientific expertise and research efforts to program offices that focus on major issues such as air and water. The agency said on Friday it is creating a new office of applied science and environmental solutions that will allow it to focus on research and science 'more than ever before'. Once fully implemented, the changes will save the EPA nearly $750m, officials said. Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House science committee, called the elimination of the research office 'a travesty'. 'The Trump administration is firing hardworking scientists while employing political appointees whose job it is to lie incessantly to Congress and to the American people,' she said. 'The obliteration of ORD will have generational impacts on Americans' health and safety.' EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement that the changes announced Friday would ensure the agency 'is better equipped than ever to deliver on our core mission of protecting human health and the environment, while Powering the Great American Comeback'. The EPA also said it is beginning the process to eliminate thousands of jobs, following asupreme court ruling last week that cleared the way for Donald Trump's plans to downsize the federal workforce, despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs. Total staffing at EPA will go down to 12,448, a reduction of more than 3,700 employees, or nearly 23%, from staffing levels in January when Trump took office, the agency said. 'This reduction in force will ensure we can better fulfill that mission while being responsible stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars,' Zeldin said, using a government term for mass firings. The office of research and development 'is the heart and brain of the EPA', said Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents thousands of EPA employees. 'Without it, we don't have the means to assess impacts upon human health and the environment,' Chen said. 'Its destruction will devastate public health in our country.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion The research office – EPA's main science arm – currently has 1,540 positions, excluding special government employees and public health officers, according to agency documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the House science panel earlier this year. As many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists could be laid off, the documents indicated. The research office has 10 facilities across the country, stretching from Florida and North Carolina to Oregon. An EPA spokeswoman said that all laboratory functions currently conducted by the research office will continue. In addition to the reduction in force, the agency also is offering the third round of deferred resignations for eligible employees, including research office staff, spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou said. The application period is open until 25 July. The EPA's announcement comes two weeks after the agency put on administrative leave 139 employees who signed a 'declaration of dissent' with agency policies under the Trump administration. The agency accused the employees of 'unlawfully undermining' Trump's agenda. In a letter made public on 30June, the employees wrote that the EPA is no longer living up to its mission to protect human health and the environment. The letter represented rare public criticism from agency employees who knew they could face retaliation for speaking out. Associated Press contributed to reporting
