It's Time To Put An Age Limit On Elected Federal Officials

The following editorial is by Dr. Anahita Due at MS NOW:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., died suddenly over the weekend after what his office described as a “brief and sudden illness.” The following day, Sen. Mitch McConnell released a statement for the first time after three weeks in the hospital for a fall. Those two incidents are part of a broader issue. Former Sen. Dianne Feinstein spent her final years in office with multiple colleagues questioning her fitness to serve. Five members of the House of Representatives have died in this Congress alone. President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign amid persistent questions about his age and cognitive stamina. President Donald Trump has faced scrutiny about his health as well. 

Enough. This is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It is an American problem.

The U.S. political system has virtually no objective standards to ensure that the people entrusted with the highest offices in the country remain physically and cognitively capable of performing some of the most important and demanding jobs in the world. That is no longer acceptable.

Every profession carries responsibilities. As a vascular surgeon, if I developed a serious medical condition that impaired my judgment, concentration or stamina, I would have an ethical obligation to step away from the operating room. My patients deserve a surgeon whose complete focus is on them, not someone distracted by illness or struggling through a medical crisis. If my attention wavered at the wrong moment, a patient could die.

We accept this principle throughout society. Airline pilots undergo regular medical examinations. Members of the military must meet physical standards. Physicians are credentialed and can be evaluated for fitness for duty. These requirements are not discriminatory. They exist because the consequences of impaired performance are too great.

Politics should be no different. Serving as president or in Congress requires extraordinary judgment, focus, stamina and resilience. These positions involve national security briefings, crisis management, sensitive negotiations, economic policy, military decisions and consequential choices. If someone is battling a significant medical illness or cognitive issue, their attention should be where any reasonable person’s would be: on their health and recovery. Why should we expect less from the people making decisions that affect 340 million Americans?

As a surgeon, I believe we should consider three reforms.

First, we need an independent, nonpartisan system of routine medical evaluations for candidates seeking the nation’s highest offices and for those who hold them. While the president undergoes physical exams at Walter Reed Medical Center, that is inadequate so long as the White House can pick and choose what information to release. Those examinations should be conducted by physicians who are independent of any campaign or administration using standardized criteria that include physical and cognitive assessments. Voters deserve transparency regarding whether the people asking for their trust are capable of performing the job.

Second, we need to look at term limits. Such rules would have to be carefully constructed: the Supreme Court has ruled that congressional term limits require a constitutional amendment, and if the limits are too strict, they risk the loss of valuable experience and institutional knowledge. But no elected office should become a lifetime career simply because incumbents possess clear fundraising advantages and decades of accumulated name recognition.

Finally, age limits must be considered as well. We accept that reality in countless other areas of society. We establish minimum ages for driving, voting, military service and even kindergarten. We have maximum ages for commercial airline pilots, federal law enforcement personnel and the boards of most S&P 500 companies. Many states have age limits for judges. The same principle should apply to those who govern us. Yes, many Americans remain remarkably sharp well into their 70s and 80s. But there will always be individuals who defy expectations. Public policy, however, cannot be written around those exceptions.

Our nation’s founders also remind us that transformative leadership does not require spending decades in office. Many of the architects of the American republic were remarkably young by today’s standards. Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he drafted the Declaration of Independence. James Madison was 36 during the Constitutional Convention. Alexander Hamilton was in his early 30s when he helped shape the new nation. They did not need decades of experience to be capable, energetic, innovative and willing to challenge convention.

None of these reforms will be easy. All will require bipartisan cooperation. But the status quo is no longer tenable. This is not about Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Democrats, Republicans and independents — all of us deserve leaders who are healthy enough to shoulder the responsibilities of public office, transparent enough to earn our trust and humble enough to know when to pass the torch.

That is not ageism. That is responsible governance.

Voters Want More Spending On Government Programs - Not Less

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May22nd and 26th of a nationwide sample of 1,397 registered voters, with a 3.3 point margin of error. 

Christian Nationalists Hold A TAXPAYER FUNDED Meeting On The National Mall

From the website of Heather Cox Richardson:

Thousands of people gathered today on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to engage in an eight-hour taxpayer-funded evangelical worship event to “rededicate” the nation to Christianity.

The “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” event is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to use the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to rewrite America’s history, turning it from one that champions the Enlightenment values of natural rights, equality, and self-government to one that requires Americans to accept that some people are better than others and to defer to their leaders.

This was not Congress’s intent when it established a bipartisan America250 commission in 2016 “to plan and orchestrate the 250th anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence.” But shortly after he took office for the second time in January 2025, Trump and his loyalists began to take over the planning for the nation’s birthday celebration.

As Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore of Mother Jones explained, right-wing operatives, including the company that staged the January 6, 2021, rally near the White House before the attack on the U.S. Capitol, jumped into the management of America250. But Trump chafed under the idea of congressional oversight and a pretense of bipartisanship, so in December 2025 he created his own new organization, Freedom 250.

Congress appropriated $150 million for the Department of the Interior to distribute to organizations for celebrations of the 250th. Of that money, America250 has been allocated $50 million and Freedom 250 has been allocated $100 million, although as of February, America250 had received only $25 million. Freedom 250 has also solicited donations in exchange for access to Trump. According to Karissa Waddick of USA Today, sponsors include ExxonMobil, Mastercard, Deloitte, Palantir, and IndyCar. Donors can also request anonymity.

As Kenneth P. Vogel, Lisa Friedman, and David A. Fahrenthold of the New York Timesexplained in February, Freedom 250 has planned events that showcase Trump rather than important events and themes in the nation’s history. Those include an IndyCar race around the National Mall, the construction of a triumphal arch near the Lincoln Memorial, an Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the White House lawn on Trump’s 80th birthday in June, and today’s “Rededicate 250” event.

President Trump was golfing today, but he, along with Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, spoke on video to the crowd, assuring them that the United States of America was founded as a Christian nation. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) spoke in person. All but one of the nineteen clergy and faith leaders who spoke were Christian, and most were right-wing evangelical Protestants.

The video of Trump the organizers played was the same one he recorded three weeks ago for “America Reads the Bible.” The passage was 2 Chronicles 7:11–22, one Christian nationalists believe marks the U.S. as a Christian nation, when the Lord says to Solomon: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

But the United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation. The Founders were quite clear about that. In the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the Senate just a decade after the Constitution went into effect, U.S. leaders said “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” and has “no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of” Muslims. They went on to say that “no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between” the U.S. and Tripoli.

Thomas Jefferson, the key author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison of Virginia, the key thinker behind the Constitution, both wrote explicitly about the importance of keeping the government separate from religion. Jefferson wrote that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship.” “[T]he legitimate powers of government reach actions only,” he wrote, “[and] not [religious] opinions.”

In 1785, Madison explained that what was at stake in keeping the state and religion separate was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right—an unalienable right—of conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights, including those enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution.

Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants.

Rather than basing the United States on religion, the nation’s founders and framers, as well as Americans of later generations, sought to instill in Americans reverence for the nation’s core political values, especially the right of self-government and the checks and balances that made that self-government possible. In speeches and memorials, novels and poems, they emphasized the sacrifices Americans had made to protect the values embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

That civic religion unified the nation, but it did more than that. It also instructed Americans on the rights and duties of citizens who live in a nation that rests on “We the People.” They must think for themselves, question elected officials, and take an active role in their government.

Replacing Americans’ civic identity with Christian nationalism destroys that vitally important understanding of the role of citizens in a democracy. Instead, it demands that Americans do as they are told, turning them into subjects.

The theme of obeying the leader runs deep in Trump’s politics, and in MAGA more generally. The Bible passage Trump read on video today emphasizes obedience, warning the chosen people that if they “forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you,” then they will be destroyed. Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin read the same passage at the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that overturning democracy for Trump was obeying the Lord. Laura Jedeed of Firewalled Media reported that vendors at today’s event handed out buttons that said: “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.”

But blindly obeying authority has never been the story of America.

From its origins in resistance to the British government, the story of America has been the opposite of obeying. It has been about questioning, debating, criticizing leaders, and working to build “a more perfect Union,” as the Framers charged us to do. The story of America is how those who believed in the principles of democracy, those ideals articulated by the Founders however imperfectly they lived them, have struggled to make the belief that we are all created equal and have a right to have a say in our government, come true. 

Voters Are Unhappy With How Trump Is Spending Money

 

The charts above are from the Navigator Poll -- done between March 12th and 16th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Fox News Poll Shows How Unhappy Voters Are With Current Government

 

The charts above are from the Fox News Poll -- done between March 20th and 23rd of a nationwide sample of 1,001 registered voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

ICE Is Considered The Least Trustworthy Agency Of The Federal Government

 

The chart is from the YouGov Poll -- done between February 9th and 11th of a nationwide sample of 1,063 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

Running Government Like A Business Is A Republican Scam

 The following is just part of a post by Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report:

 The ghost of Ronald Reagan is grinning.

Every time a Republican runs for office promising to “run government like a business” — Reagan‘s favorite meme — I tell my listeners exactly what’s coming next:

— Tax cuts for the morbidly rich, 
— Gutted regulations that had been designed to protect average people, 
— Privatized (profitized) public services that will make billions for corporations and eat our tax dollars, 
— incompetent management of government agencies and our economy,
— And, soon, a slow-motion disaster that the rest of us end up paying for.

 

We’re living through that disaster right now, and it’s accelerating. . . .

A business exists to maximize profit for its shareholders. A government exists to provide services, protect rights, and ensure, to quote the Constitution, the “general welfare” of its people. You can’t do both at the same time: they’re not even on the same spectrum. 

When you try to run a government the way, for example, Jack Welch ran GE, you don’t get “efficiency.” You get cruelty dressed up as cost-cutting programs for average people and massive subsides and tax breaks for giant corporations and their morbidly rich CEOs.

Reagan started this particular con back in 1981, arguing that government was “the problem” and that corporate-style management was the solution. What he was really up to was laying the ideological groundwork for two goals: stripping the government of its capacity to serve ordinary people, and handing that capacity over to private companies that would then charge all of us twice as much for half the service.

We see this most visibly in how we’re all ripped off by for-profit health insurance companies, while every other democracy on Earth has a national healthcare system that costs half of what ours does, but the examples are legion. 

As usual from Reagan, it was brilliant political marketing and terrible governance, and the Republican Party has been running that same scam ever since. . . .

Trump assembled the wealthiest cabinet in American history, with at least a dozen billionaires holding roles in his administration, collectively worth nearly $400 billion. These are people who, along with their spouses, poured tens of millions of dollars into his campaigns, then were rewarded with the keys to the agencies they’d spent years lobbying or suing.

 

Trump’s so corrupt he’s even managed to screw up Reagan’s old saw about “running government like a business.” Instead, his regime is now running our government for the benefit of the specific businesses owned by the people Trump’s put into place. . . .

The fundamental problem here isn’t that these billionaires and CEOs are personally greedy, vain, or incompetent, although many of them clearly are. The problem for our government suffering under this GOP delusion about “running government like a business” is structural. 

A CEO’s job is to maximize the revenue return for shareholders — profit — even if that means cutting corners, externalizing costs onto the public, or treating workers like crap. Those instincts are catastrophic when applied to a government whose “customers” are all 330 million of us and whose product is the common good.

You can’t fire your citizens when they’re not profitable. You can’t outsource national security to the lowest bidder. And you can’t treat a nation’s core and essential infrastructure like a line item to be slashed when quarterly earnings disappoint. Although Trump and his lickspittles are trying their hardest anyway. . . .

Democrats have long understood that public service is different from corporate management. The people who built Social Security, Medicare, the Clean Air Act, the minimum wage, public schools, and the interstate highway system weren’t trying to turn a profit: they were trying to build a country. That’s a completely different job, with completely different skills, and we should start saying so loudly and clearly.

The next time you hear a Republican at any level, from your local school board to the United States Senate, promise to “run government like a business,” understand what they’re really saying: they intend to serve the interests of whoever funds their campaign, strip your government of its ability to serve you, and call the resulting chaos “efficiency.”

It seems like every new generation gets its own version of the GOP’s favorite scam: it’s the same con Reagan ran in 1981, the same con Bush and Cheney ran in 2001, and now it’s the same con Trump and his billionaire cabinet are running today.

The proof is in the ruins of our country. In the transfer of over $50 trillion from working class people to the top 1% since Reagan started the scam. It’s visible in the middle class going from two-thirds of us in 1980 to around 43% of us today, and it taking 2 paychecks today to have the same lifestyle a single one could provide before Reagan took an axe to our government and the unions it protected.

Share this insight with your neighbors, family members, and your social media followers. Teach them the difference between a business and a government. Explain what public service actually means. 

And the next time a candidate shows up promising to bring their CEO experience to Washington, run in the other direction because disaster is inevitable.

Most In U.S. Want Government To Reduce The Wealth Gap

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between March 6th and 9th of a nationwide sample of 1,563 adults (including 1,405 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.2 points for registered voters. 

A Majority Of Voters Say The U.S. Now Has An Authoritarian Government

The chart above is from the Navigator Poll -- done between January 29th and February 1st of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Most Want The Government To Reduce The Wealth Inequality In The U.S.

 

The charts above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 2nd and 5th of a nationwide sample of 1,551 adults (including 1,389 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.3 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters.

Public Wants All Epstein Files Released (But Doesn't Think It Will Happen)

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Yahoo / YouGov Poll -- done between November 21st and 24th of a nationwide sample of 1,684 adults. The margin of error is 3 points.

Most Americans Think The Federal Government Has Too Much Power

 

The chart above are from the Gallup Poll -- done between September 2nd and 16th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

The Government Shutdown Is About How Your Money Will Be Spent

What is this government shutdown about? Dan Rather and his team explain it:

The reports I’m seeing make all this government shutdown business seem so complicated. But it’s not, in its simplest and most direct terms. This fight boils down to one thing: your money.

Republicans want to use your money for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and more border control agents — among other things. Democrats, seizing a rare political opportunity, are trying to claw some money back for millions of people who depend on health care coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.

This is not some penny ante political fight, but a battle over potentially very big increases in insurance premiums for tens of millions of people. . . .

The ACA provides subsidies to each state to defray the cost of health insurance. These subsidies were expanded and extended by President Joe Biden during the pandemic, but will expire at the end of 2025. Since 2021, the subsidy expansion has helped to cut premiums, causing enrollment to swell from 11 million people to 24 million.

If the subsidies aren’t extended permanently or even temporarily — something Republicans have so far objected to — health insurance premiums will increase by an average of 114%, and four million enrollees will be forced to opt out because they will no longer be able to afford it, according to the non-partisan health policy research group, Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).

The New York Times calculated that a 55-year-old couple making $85,000 a year would see their premiums triple to $24,535 annually. People living in red states will be disproportionately affected, with those in Texas being the most vulnerable. More than a million Texans will lose coverage, according to KFF.

Democrats would say Trump’s big beautiful bill is anything but, because it will push 7.8 million Americans off of Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office. They might have gone to the ACA marketplace to find affordable insurance, but it will no longer be affordable if the subsidies are gone. . . .

So, while it may feel like déjà vu all over again, this government shutdown is different — far different even from the other three Trump presided over, because the outcome could mean the reversal of a trend that has meant more Americans are insured than ever before. . . .

With the 2026 midterms coming up, Democrats are holding the Republicans’ feet to the political fire, with a reasonable hope of success. It is risky to allow millions to lose health insurance and force millions more to swallow a significant premium increase to keep it, months before one of the most important congressional elections in U.S. history — especially if the Republicans can’t convincingly point fingers at the Democrats. . . .

As with everything in Trump’s orbit, normal rules do not apply. What has worked with previous shutdowns may not move the needle this time. But for the first time since January 20, Democrats have a chance to get something they want, which also happens to be something most Americans also want.