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Column: Barbara Boxer gives Biden two weeks to fix his ailing campaign

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Column: Barbara Boxer gives Biden two weeks to fix his ailing campaign

When Barbara Boxer arrived in the U.S. Senate, her image as a fiery liberal from Marin County — land of crystals, hot tubs and aging hippies — preceded her.

It was not a good thing.

“The word was that I was this very militant feminist and the guys were frightened to death,” Boxer recalled.

The colleague who smoothed her path — “She’s good people,” he assured the Old Bulls — was Joe Biden, who by 1993 was already starting his third decade on Capitol Hill.

The two grew close, personally and politically.

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“We really bonded on protecting dolphins and protecting women,” Boxer said of their legislative work (regulating purse seine nets, cracking down on domestic violence), which had begun in the 1980s when she was in the House.

Boxer endorsed Biden when he ran for president in 1988 and again in 2020, notably passing over the Democrat who replaced her in the Senate, Kamala Harris.

Given all that, Boxer was slack-jawed as she and family members watched Biden mumble and bumble his way through his disastrous debate performance last week. “This wasn’t the Joe we knew,” she said. “Something was off.”

Instantly, what had been a persistent, low-grade nervousness among Democrats turned into a full-fledged party freak-out. A small but growing chorus has called for the 81-year-old incumbent to withdraw from the presidential race, before it’s too late and he drags his party down with him. (Many more express that sentiment in private.)

Boxer isn’t there. Not yet, anyway.

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Two weeks, she said. Give Biden two weeks to demonstrate that his zombified appearance in Atlanta was an anomaly.

“The man has done it, time and time again,” Boxer said this week in a conversation from her home in Palm Springs. “Every time he’s been counted out, he’s come back. Can he do it one more time? I don’t know the answer. But out of respect and admiration for what he’s done, let’s give him the time to do it.

“And if he can’t, he can’t,” Boxer said, “and there will be someone else.”

That’s not exactly a stand-firm-until-the-last-dog-dies endorsement.

But it’s not casting a gravely wounded Biden to the wolves, either.

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When the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein was going through her widely chronicled mental and physical decline, there were widespread calls for her to quit and make way for someone younger, more vigorous and more acute. Boxer, who made history with Feinstein when the two were elected to the Senate in tandem, offered a gentle nudge. There is life — and a good one — to be had after leaving the Senate, she advised her former colleague in a 2021 interview.

But Boxer never overtly pushed Feinstein, the way many others did. Her fellow Democrat died in September at age 90, hours after casting her final vote on the Senate floor.

The situation with Biden is different, Boxer said.

“We don’t know what happened with Joe,” she said, still puzzled nearly a week later.

She speculated. Perhaps his lifelong stutter kicked in under the studio lights? Maybe Biden suffered from a terrible head cold, or from cold medication he’d taken?

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“I think the president owes the country an explanation,” Boxer said. And more crucially, she went on, he needs to show voters that he can not only take on Donald Trump, but that he can also defeat him in November.

“He needs to be out without a script. Without a teleprompter and just face the press, face the public,” she said. “That’s critical.”

Biden has made a few public appearances, including a comparatively feisty showing at a North Carolina rally the day after the debate. He spoke to reporters following the Supreme Court’s carte blanche decision granting presidents near-total immunity, and again while discussing the country’s sizzling weather at an emergency operations center in Washington.

But Biden worked off a teleprompter and refused to take reporters’ questions.

The president’s first without-a-net appearance is a scheduled interview Friday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. The stakes are exceedingly high. Another tottering performance could lead to a dam burst of calls from Democrats for Biden to step aside.

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Meantime, polls taken after Thursday night’s debate show Biden losing ground to Trump and voters expressing heightened concern about the president’s mental and cognitive health.

Like many people, Boxer speaks of a Trump restoration in apocalyptic terms.

“This race is like no other,” she said. “We have to stop a man who says he’s going to be ‘a dictator on Day One.’ Who wants to imprison his opponents. … It gets worse and worse, day by day.”

She extolled Biden’s performance over the last 3½ years: his record on job creation, addressing climate change, fighting to lower the cost of prescription drugs. But that’s all in the past, and none of it seems to matter very much to voters who, in the here and now, worry and wonder very much about Biden’s capabilities going forward.

Democrats are nervous, Boxer said. “I’m nervous. I’m very nervous.”

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But she’s still willing to give Biden a shot at one more political comeback. Two weeks, she said. “Because in August we have the convention, and if there is going to be an open convention, there needs to be time for people to decide who they’re supporting.”

That’s a long way from “Biden or bust.” It shows even the best of friends and greatest of admirers have limits to their hope and patience with a president whose mental and physical capacities seem to be touch-and-go.

But there’s no room for sentimentality with so much at stake.

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Chip Roy plans House discussion on 25th Amendment regarding Biden’s mental fitness

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Chip Roy plans House discussion on 25th Amendment regarding Biden’s mental fitness

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Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, plans to bring up options under the 25th Amendment in terms of President Biden’s fitness during a meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday.

Roy told Fox News he believes Republicans need to have a position on where they stand regarding Biden’s competence.

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Section 4 of the 25th Amendment provides a series of steps for removing a president from office if he or she becomes incapacitated.

But a resolution on the 25th Amendment cannot just be presented to the House floor immediately.

CRITICS PILE ON BIDEN FOLLOWING ABC INTERVIEW, BLAST HIS REFUSAL TO COMMIT TO COGNITIVE TEST: ‘DISQUALIFYING’

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, plans discuss the 25th amendment.  (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The bill would not be “privileged” and go straight to the front of the legislative line because it deals with the executive branch and not Congress.

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Impeachment, on the other hand, could be considered “privileged” because those powers are enumerated in the Constitution as being under the purview of Congress.

PRESIDENT BIDEN FACES THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL WEEKEND OF HIS POLITICAL CAREER

Biden and the first lady

Democratic Party donors in Hollywood are reportedly saying that they will stop donating to the party if Biden isn’t replaced as a presidential candidate. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Any resolution on the 25th Amendment would need to go through committee first, a senior House Republican leadership source told Fox.

Roy’s plan comes a week-and-a-half after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., spoke about the cabinet weighing in on the 25th Amendment regarding Biden.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., was asked by “Fox News Sunday” if Biden was well enough to continue to serve as president and if he would support a move on the 25th Amendment.

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Daniels said he did not believe Biden has the capability to serve out the rest of his term, or even run for president.

He also told the host he would support a move on the 25th Amendment.

“I do agree we do have a responsibility to make sure that the occupants of the Oval Office has the mental capabilities to do that job, but that responsibility relies with the Vice President Kamala Harris and with the cabinet,” Daniels said. “What we are seeing is that they have decided to cover up for Joe Biden to protect their radical agenda as opposed to doing what is in the best interest of the American people. If that resolution hits the floor, I would vote for it 100 percent. But at the end of the day, Kamala Harris and the cabinet, they have a responsibility to the American people. They have a constitutional duty to the American people.”

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Analysis: 'Dodged a bullet.' In France, voters deny far right a win. But what now?

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Analysis: 'Dodged a bullet.' In France, voters deny far right a win. But what now?

Strangers in Paris cafes raised joyful toasts to one another. In tight-packed crowds, people hugged and wept. A speeding bicyclist trailed a flapping French tricolor. Fireworks hissed and popped.

In Sunday’s parliamentary election, the French far right made a thunderous knock at the gates of power — but one that seemingly dwindled at the last moment into insistent tapping.

The National Rally, whose ascendancy was widely feared after it topped the field in first-round voting a week earlier, fell back to a third-place finish, as vote tallies pointed to a divided Parliament, with no bloc achieving a clear majority.

The uncertainty of what would come was not lost on the revelers in Paris, but they were for the moment thrilled that voters had staved off what had been the specter of France’s first far-right government since the dark Nazi-collaborationist days of World War II.

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People celebrate election results in Paris on July 7, 2024.

(Aurelien Morissard / Associated Press)

A newly formed coalition of leftist and environmental forces was the night’s surprise success story, deemed to have garnered the largest share of parliamentary seats, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists. A final official tally was not expected until later Monday.

“C’est Ouf,” was the headline in Monday’s early editions of the left-leaning Liberation newspaper — crazy, in slang usage — superimposed on a photo of a gigantic gathering in the Place de la Republique, a historic central Paris square.

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The political disarray comes less than three weeks before the start of the Summer Olympic Games, although visitors to Paris were unlikely to experience much in the way of disruptions beyond the obstacle course that already exists in the city center.

On election day, many among the throngs of tourists navigating the barricades and blockages were unaware of the vote, or had heard about it only in the vaguest of terms.

For the French, though, the contest was all-consuming.

Into the wee hours of Monday, long after the last late-summer evening light had left the sky, there was widespread rejoicing — but already, a dawning sense of the deadlock and instability that will almost surely follow the divided result.

“I think you can say ‘dodged a bullet,’ yes?” said Leslie Laurent, a Parisian retail manager in her 50s. She said she had supported Macron’s bloc, but was relieved that the far right had not managed a decisive triumph.

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The vote’s stakes were reflected in unusually high tensions surrounding the race — and by a turnout that authorities described as the highest in decades for a parliamentary contest.

The government sent 30,000 police officers into the streets on election day, and dozens of candidates reported having been physically attacked during the run-up to the balloting.

Macron, whose term does not expire until 2027, can remain in his post, although some opponents were already calling on him to step down.

His handpicked prime minister, Gabriel Attal, announced almost immediately after the release of the first solid projections that he would turn in his resignation — although Attal left open the prospect of remaining in his post until a new government can be formed, which could be a long and difficult process.

The National Rally — a successor party to the National Front, a xenophobic grouping that for decades was relegated to France’s political fringe — had high hopes heading into the vote, expressing confidence that it could even achieve an absolute majority and form a government.

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But although it fell far short of that aim, the National Rally dramatically increased its number of parliamentary seats — a state of affairs that is likely to result in considerable hand-wringing once the initial euphoria wears off.

And not everyone, of course, is rejoicing.

The National Rally made its name with deep antipathy toward immigration and scorn for the European Union, but part of its appeal springs from hard-edged dissatisfaction with the cost of living and economic inequalities within France — sentiments shared even by many who felt that voting for the party would be an affront to France’s democratic values.

A crowd of people raise fisted hands

Supporters of the far-left France Unbowed party react in Paris as a coalition on the left won the most parliamentary seats in the snap election.

(Thomas Padilla / Associated Press)

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Initial reaction from Macron’s camp was muted. He made no immediate personal appearance, with his office saying he would ensure that the “sovereign choice of the French people will be respected.”

After the June 30 first round of voting in which the National Rally came in first — which itself followed France’s June 9 elections for the European Parliament, in which the National Rally also performed best — centrist and leftist forces joined together, as they have in the past, to create a “Republican front.”

That military-sounding endeavor is so named because it was intended to safeguard the French republic by blocking the far-right juggernaut.

The far right responded to the initial results with defiance. Its president, Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old who had hoped to become the next prime minister, referred darkly to “dangerous electoral deals” made to stymie the National Rally’s drive.

Leaning into the party’s narrative that it champions the forgotten against a powerful elite, Bardella told supporters in Paris that these machinations had “deprived” National Rally supporters of the government they wanted.

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Calling the early elections had been a huge gamble on Macron’s part, and there was mixed opinion as to whether he had won his bet. He had counted on French voters repudiating the National Rally as a governing force, even if they were willing to lend it a protest vote.

Still, the battle was a deeply damaging one — and likely to leave Macron, deprived of a parliamentary plurality, a diminished figure in global affairs, including causes such as championing Ukraine and fighting climate change.

During the campaign, Macron described the far left as being as dangerous as the far right — a dynamic of enmity that will make it difficult for his centrists to secure even temporary tactical alliances with leftists.

At least at this juncture, none of the main blocs appeared willing to work with one another, and the successful leftist grouping in particular could be prone to infighting.

Marine Le Pen, the National Rally leader who did not contest this election but is expected to run for president in 2027, suggested in a post-vote television interview that it had taken the combined efforts of the left and center to keep her party down.

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In the night’s setbacks, she told France’s TF1, she saw “the ferments that are those of tomorrow’s victory.”

A man in a dark suit and tie, arms crossed, stands next to a woman in a white outfit in the midst of a crowd

Supporters of the far-right National Rally react at their Paris headquarters after the release of vote projections that the party would come in third.

(Louise Delmotte / Associated Press)

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Biden notes 'world's looking to America' as he faces scrutiny before hosting NATO summit

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Biden notes 'world's looking to America' as he faces scrutiny before hosting NATO summit

President Biden, reeling from a disastrous debate performance and calls to step aside, addressed a Black church service in Pennsylvania on Sunday, acknowledging the “world’s looking to America.”

Speaking from a stage at Mount Airy Church of God in Christ in northwest Philadelphia, the 81-year-old Biden laughed off concerns about his age, joking, “I know I look 40” but “I’ve been doing this a long time.”

“I, honest to God, have never been more optimistic about America’s future if we stick together,” Biden said.

The president, later on in his remarks, also addressed the upcoming NATO summit in Washington, D.C.

NATO SECRETARY GENERAL DODGES QUESTIONS ABOUT BIDEN’S MENTAL FITNESS

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President Biden speaks at a church service at Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ, Sunday, July 7, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

“I’m about to host the NATO nations in Washington. We put them together,” Biden said. “The world’s looking to us. Not a joke. The world is looking to America not to carry their burden, but to lead their hopes.” 

“When I ran for the first time for president, I said something basic. I said, we have to bring back dignity and hope in America, number one,” the president added, wrapping up his remarks. 

“Number two, we have to give working class and middle class people, like the family I came from, a shot and build the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down,” Biden said. “And thirdly, we must unite America again. That’s my goal. That’s what we’re going to do. God bless you all and may God bless our troops.” 

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was asked during an appearance on CBS’ “Face The Nation” about whether Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was accurate in voicing concerns that world leaders don’t trust Biden to be in command of the job. 

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Biden at Philadelphia church

President Biden and Bishop Ernest C. Morris Sr. during a church service at Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ, Sunday, July 7, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

TOP WHITE HOUSE AIDE URGES STAFF TO TUNE OUT ‘NOISE’ AND FOCUS ON GOVERNING DURING DEBATE FALLOUT

“I think it’s important for NATO to stay out of that kind of domestic discussion,” Stoltenberg said. “They’re of course important for the United States, but NATO should not be part of it. What matters for NATO is the decisions. What to do together. And just for instance, on defense spending, which has been a big issue for the United States for many years under different presidents. When we made the pledge 10 years ago to increase defense spending, only three allies spent 2% of GDP on defense. This year, it’s 23 allies.” 

Biden with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last summer

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speaks with President Biden during a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)

Biden and his NATO counterparts are meeting in Washington this week to mark the 75th anniversary of the world’s biggest security organization just as Russia presses its advantage on the battlefield in Ukraine.

The three-day summit, which begins Tuesday, will focus on ways to reassure Ukraine of NATO’s enduring support and offer some hope to its war-weary citizens that their country might survive the biggest land conflict in Europe in decades. NATO’s day-to-day work is led by Stoltenberg, the former prime minister of Norway, until he is replaced as secretary-general on Oct. 1 by outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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