Dear Weekend Jolter,

“With the aid of a couple of tell-all books and the belated release of the Hur tapes, the American public is slowly being informed about one of the worst political cover-ups in the history of the United States.”

Thus states NR’s editorial on the cascade of revelations about Joe Biden’s health, including his prostate cancer diagnosis. Whether that, too, is something that was kept from the public is not known at this point. What is clear is that the era when the Biden team would have been given the benefit of the doubt is over (even if some outlets can’t resist a good “Republicans pounce” lede). As Noah Rothman writes, “given the comfort Biden’s allies showed when lying to the public throughout the last presidency, the president’s phalanx has forfeited the presumption of innocence on which they now rely.”

This applies as much to the still-emerging story about the former president’s cognitive condition while in office as it does to his cancer diagnosis. While the health news has temporarily muted recriminations from inside the tent, the media establishment and some of its Democratic sources no longer appear so invested in protecting the myth of the former president’s competence, or the people who sustained it.

“I love Joe Biden. But I don’t feel the same about some of the people around him,” one unnamed ex-Biden aide told Axios, adding, “I just don’t know what to believe.” More pointedly, Chuck Todd speculated that the release this week of the Biden book Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, won’t just undermine the former president but “make it toxic for anybody that worked for Biden.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough admitted this week that he was “obviously wrong” to have praised Biden in early 2024 as being at his “best.” Tapper himself skewered the Biden White House for lying to the public, the press, cabinet members, other White House staffers, lawmakers, and donors “about how bad things had gotten.”

If I were one of the five people “running the country” during the latter Biden administration years, as one source put it in the book, I’d be getting worried about now. (Rich Lowry points out that Karine Jean-Pierre has some explaining to do too.) The book’s publication, coupled with the release of audio from Biden’s stumbling special counsel interview and now the curiously timed announcement of his diagnosis between those two events, has heightened (belated) interest in learning how decisions were made during the years Joe Biden was listed atop the executive branch masthead. Significantly, congressional Republicans are resuming their investigation into “the cover-up of President Biden’s cognitive decline.” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Audrey Fahlberg that the current focus is on the former president’s heavy use of the autopen for executive orders; he has since sought transcribed interviews with Biden’s physician and other close aides. Whether the probe causes the press to eventually revert to downplaying the cover-up will be known soon enough. But Biden’s inner circle has greatly embarrassed the journalists who went along with the story that the president was just fine, one more sin that won’t soon be forgiven.

As Audrey reports, the Tapper/Thompson book documents scandalous efforts undertaken by aides and family members to conceal Biden’s condition:

By early 2023, the authors write, “the president was having behind-the-scenes moments where he seemed completely out of it, spent, exhausted, almost gone.” By 2024, cabinet secretaries became convinced they couldn’t count on him to “perform at 2:00 a.m. during an emergency.” And yet the deception continued: During his reelection campaign, Biden staffers avoided scheduling events in the evening, shortened his speeches, and eliminated unscripted question-and-answer sessions during fundraisers. At one point, campaign staffers began editing videos to play in slow motion to disguise how slowly the octogenarian president walked.

As unsavory as it may be to contemplate, expect more questions to follow about Biden’s cancer diagnosis. We wish the former president the best in his fight against this disease; and ordinarily, an 82-year-old public figure’s medical announcement would be taken at face value. But given his team’s documented history of concealment, even the most credulous observer would want to see more.

Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt, with the last words:

To hear the Biden family tell it, in February 2024, Biden’s health was in exceptional shape for a man his age, and he was perfectly situated to serve as president until January 29, 2029. And then, like a bolt out of the blue, a deadly serious cancer diagnosis arrived just days before the publication of a book that detailed how Biden’s inner circle hid his condition from the American people.
Something here does not add up.

NAME. RANK. LINK.

EDITORIALS

The Biden editorial, once more, is here: The Biden Diagnosis

On the D.C. attack: The Intifada Comes to the Nation’s Capital

Enough already: Trump Is Right to Lose Patience with the ‘SALT Caucus’

What the Senate can do: The Senate Can Improve the House-Passed Tax Bill

ARTICLES

Ramesh Ponnuru: Missing the Inside Story on Biden Was Not the Media’s Primary Sin

Charles C. W. Cooke: Trump Is Not Different

Veronique de Rugy: The Senate Must Be More Responsible Than the House

Andrew McCarthy: Trump Administration Bans Harvard from Enrolling Foreign Students

Jim Geraghty: FBI’s Patel and Bongino: Jeffrey Epstein Killed Himself

James Lynch: D.C.’s Tipped Minimum Wage Law Backfired Spectacularly. Now the District’s Democratic Mayor Wants It Repealed

Will Swaim: Gavin Newsom’s Shameless Dodge on the Homeless Crisis

Noah Rothman: A Man of the Left

Haley Strack: Washington Jewish Community Reeling After Murder of Two Israeli Embassy Staffers

Haley Strack: Supreme Court Orders Maine House to Restore Vote of Lawmaker Censured over Post Criticizing Trans Athlete

Michael Brendan Dougherty: The Affluent Progressive Lifestyle Is Unsustainable

Jack Butler: Beware the ‘Bodyoids’

Audrey Fahlberg: ‘Performative.’ ‘A Distraction.’ Democrats Wary of Repeating Trump Impeachment Saga

Rich Lowry: The Anti-Natalist Terrorist

Dan McLaughlin: The Dyspeptic Genius of Dilbert

CAPITAL MATTERS

Ryan Young explains tariff reality: The Tariff Roller Coaster Is Playing Tricks on You

LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.

Armond White asks, “Tom Cruise runs and runs, but is this cinema?” The Mission: Impossible Booster Shot

Brian Allen offers some advice for a bold and innovative artist: Amy Sherald at the Whitney: Far More Than Michelle Obama’s Portrait

EXCERPTS, YOUR WAY

Antisemitic rhetoric escalated into deadly violence this week. From NR’s editorial:

Ever since the October 7 massacres, chants of “Globalize the Intifada” by Hamas-sympathizing radicals could be heard regularly in protests that have taken over college campuses, blocked off city streets, disrupted traffic, and shut down access to airports. On Wednesday night, one of these radicals decided to turn those words into action.
The suspected gunman, who chanted “Free, Free Palestine” when he was later taken into custody, opened fire near the Capital Jewish Museum as attendees were leaving an event sponsored by the American Jewish Committee for young diplomats. The attack killed a young couple — 30-year-old Yaron Lischinsky, an Israeli Christian who served as a research assistant at the Israeli Embassy, and Sarah Milgrim, a 26-year-old Jewish Kansas native who organized missions and delegation visits for the embassy. Shortly after the shooting came the bitter news that Lischinsky had just purchased an engagement ring and had planned to propose to Milgrim next week in Jerusalem.
The suspected shooter, Elias Rodriguez, is right out of central casting as far as left-wing extremists go. He was once a part of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a group that advocates a socialist takeover of the United States and is consumed by loathing for both Israel and America. . . .
The targeting of a specifically Jewish event to advance the Palestinian cause was an act of international terrorism on U.S. soil, and should be treated as such. But beyond prosecuting the suspect in this case, there must be a concerted strategy to make sure that America remains a safe place for Jews to live and worship. As this attack reminds us, radicals who seek to destroy Israel also hate America.

Charles C. W. Cooke, on how the budget-reconciliation process looks mighty familiar:

The House of Representatives has passed the “big beautiful bill” (BBB). It will now travel down the assembly line to the Senate, where, in all likelihood, it will remain mostly intact.
This is disappointing news, for the BBB — could we perhaps stop calling omnibus legislation “BBB”? — is not a good law. It undoes much of what was good about the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It includes a bailout for blue states such as California, New York, and New Jersey. It declines to effect a full repeal of the disastrous and dishonest “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022. And, above all else, it fails to cut spending. As a result of its changes, the nation’s tax code will become more dysfunctional, our federal deficits will grow yet bigger, and our already-spiraling national debt will continue to mount indefinitely.
To those who point out these shortcomings, an exasperated rejoinder is offered. “But,” the bill’s apologists will say, “given the nature of the party’s coalition, and the narrow majorities that it enjoys in Congress, this is really all that the GOP could do.”
This, in part, is true. But it is also extremely annoying to hear, given that, for nearly a decade now, Donald Trump’s takeover of the GOP has been explained and defended on the grounds that only he could put an end to the “failure” of the “establishment” to “fight.” Ask any MAGA-splainer for an account of the pre-Trump Republican Party, and you will be told some variation of the same tale: That, for decades, the GOP was run by a bunch of lily-livered, cocktail-party-loving moderates, who, despite saying all the right things come election season, invariably refused to make good on their promises. Sure, those people talked about cutting spending and repealing Obamacare and reforming welfare and limiting the ability of the progressive-run blue states to use the Treasury to prop up their failed models. But, when it came to it, they never actually delivered — and, worse still, they reserved the worst of their opprobrium for the right-wing hardliners who were trying to engender change. This being so, they ask, can it really be any surprise that Donald Trump was selected as a corrective?
I have never found this narrative persuasive. But now? Now, I think it’s a bad joke. Throughout the process that led to the House’s passage of the BBB, the Trump-led GOP has behaved in precisely the same manner as did the old guard that it claims to disdain.

James Lynch reports on the D.C. government’s predictable pullback on the minimum wage:

Washington, D.C.’s experiment with increasing the minimum wage for tipped workers proved so disastrous for the city’s restaurant industry and workers alike that Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser is seeking its repeal.
Earlier this month, Bowser called for repealing D.C.’s Initiative 82 as part of her fiscal year 2026 budget request. Initiative 82 is a D.C. ballot measure passed in November 2022 that replaced the district’s tipped minimum wage of $5.35 with the minimum wage for non-tipped employees.
“DC restaurants are facing a perfect storm — from increased operating and supply costs to higher rents and unique labor challenges,” Bowser said in a statement. “DC must rebalance our system to ensure local restaurants can survive, compete, and employ DC residents.”
By 2027, Initiative 82 would have set the minimum wage for tipped employees at $15 an hour, following incremental increases in the years prior. The ballot measure was considered a success for left-wing activist organizations, including One Fair Wage, a progressive group that previously attempted to skirt tax laws on nonprofit lobbying. One Fair Wage supports minimum wage increases and has pushed similar initiatives in blue areas nationwide, with limited success thus far. . . .
D.C.’s restaurant industry trade group, the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, thanked Bowser for her stance, citing the perilous times the industry is facing.
“Let us be clear — repealing Initiative 82 is about saving jobs, saving restaurants, and stabilizing a vital sector of the District’s economy. Restaurants are cornerstones of our communities,” the association said in a statement.
“Yet nearly 70% of them have already been forced to cut hours and lay off staff. In 2024 alone, the city saw a record 74 closures. The consequences of inaction are not hypothetical — they’re happening now.”
D.C.’s restaurant industry is facing a full-blown crisis, with multiple popular eateries citing I-82 as one of the reasons they closed down. A recent survey found that 44 percent of D.C. restaurants were “likely to close” by the end of the year, a stark finding reflective of the sour mood among restaurant owners in the nation’s capital.

Jim Geraghty notices that a conspiracy theory is getting tamped down from the most unexpected of places:

For a while, it was one of the better jokes going around — “Well, I’d better get to work, because like Jeffrey Epstein, this painting isn’t going to hang itself.”
Epstein’s brother Mark has publicly doubted that the notorious financier killed himself. A lawyer who met with Epstein days before his death says Epstein told him he had not tried to kill himself two weeks earlier, that his cellmate had given him a neck injury, and that he lied about it to avoid getting a reputation as “a rat.” Epstein reportedly told a jail psychologist he had a “wonderful life” and “would be crazy” to end it.
And of course, with a wide-ranging social circle of powerful men and a thriving practice of securing underage women for coerced sex, it was reasonable to believe that many powerful figures would have liked to see him dead before he could destroy more reputations and implicate others in his sordid deeds. (You can still buy “Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself” stickers on Amazon.) An August 2019 survey by Certus Insights found 37 percent of Americans believed Epstein committed suicide, 35 percent believed he was murdered, and 29 percent were unsure. More Republicans thought he was murdered (40 percent) than Democrats (32 percent) or independents (33 percent).
The notion that Epstein was murdered by secret sinister forces is now treated as accepted truth within our pop culture . . .
Now, nearly six years after the notorious financier died in prison, the word from the two top officials at the FBI, appointed by President Trump, is that Epstein did indeed hang himself.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino sat down with Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo and offered a clear and seemingly final answer.

CODA

Let’s go back, way back . . . 65 years back . . . for a Coltrane track that still swings, hard, and, for once, is an instance of “P.C.” (for bassist Paul Chambers) that brings joy.

To those who have served, to those who have sacrificed, to those who are serving still, thank you.

(Next week, I’ll be handing off to Audrey Fahlberg. Catch you in June.)