Politics

Inside Joe Biden’s post-presidency

Published

11 months ago

July 31, 2025

For more than five decades, Joe Biden’s existence was not only incredibly public but busy — his waking hours spent surrounded by a coterie of devoted aides and strategists, his calendar filled with speaking engagements and meetings, his home a bustling and buzzing swarm of activity.

In “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s magnum opus on the candidates who sought the presidency in 1988, he captures the scene in the Biden household on the eve of his campaign announcement: “there were typists upstairs, waiting, and gurus present for consultations, and Joe’s parents were over, just to help out … there were a hundred media calls and a million staff and volunteer calls and VIP arrangements — train passes and hotel rooms, Wilmington cops, and state cops and Amtrak cops, the height of the podium (wrong, of course), money bigs with suggestions, food for the staff, people at the airport, people called and said ‘Is Joe there?’”

Ultimately, Biden had what it took to win the presidency.

Now, he’s on the other side of the mountain. And his life has entered a new phase that is quieter and smaller.

He’s staffed by only one or two aides and a small Secret Service detail. He holes up for hours at a time in Delaware working on his memoir with a new ghostwriter, while undergoing treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer. He flies commercial, an aide tells Blue Light News, with little of the luxury or exclusivity that is often associated with former heads of state.

He’s still Amtrak Joe. But he’s also American Airlines Joe.

“He’s very in the wild,” a person familiar with Biden’s comings and goings told Blue Light News. “His footprint is significantly smaller, and it’s sort of shocking.”

In quiet moments outside the Beltway, Biden is often greeted warmly by passersby offering handshakes.

But in Washington, his closest and most loyal advisers sit for closed-door depositions and transcribed interviews on the alleged “cover-up” of his decline and his use of an autopen as president. And as his own party’s still-developing 2028 primary bursts at the seams, Biden’s presidency is still something of a millstone around its neck.

That’s the split screen Biden steps into Thursday night, when he speaks at the closing gala of the National Bar Association’s Centennial Convention in Chicago. His remarks will center on “the progress we’ve made, and the important work that remains to further the cause of justice in America,” a person familiar tells Blue Light News.

Biden’s post-presidency is already striking. His memoir sold for $10 million — a major sum, but tens of millions less than Barack Obama’s. At least one report has suggested he may be struggling to raise money for his presidential library, though a spokesperson described this characterization to Blue Light News as “unfair.” This June, in San Diego, he spoke to SHRM25, a conference of human resource managers, telling them “thanks to you, the people in your workplace feel secure and respected. I think you underestimate what you do.”

In official Washington, there is little such expression of appreciation for the former president.

The former president still casts a long shadow over his party. In recent days, his former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to answer for whether he said all he knew about Biden’s cognition in office. (“I told the truth, which is that he was old,” Buttigieg told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “You could see that he was old.”) And had his former Vice President Kamala Harris actually run for California governor, the NYT noted, she would “have faced difficult questions about how much she knew about President Biden’s decline and whether she participated in shielding his diminished health from the public.”

Hours before Biden speaks in Chicago, Mike Donilon, his trusted aide of some four decades, will go behind closed doors to offer transcribed testimony for the House Oversight Committee.

That comes one day after former Biden aide Steve Ricchetti’s hourslong testimony in which he attacked Republicans’ “efforts to taint President Biden’s legacy with baseless assertions about President Biden’s mental health,” calling them “an obvious attempt to deflect from the chaos of this Administration’s first six months.”

Oversight Republicans were unfazed by the Biden aide’s accusation. In an appearance last night on Fox News, Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) turned the focus back to Biden world’s insistence that the former president hadn’t experienced cognitive decline. “It’s almost like they’re a cult,” Comer said.

Biden, a son of the Senate who is respectful of congressional authority, has kept himself at a remove from the Oversight proceedings and the former aides who are testifying, receiving briefings from lawyers and aides after each session, two people familiar with Biden’s thinking told Blue Light News.

“He’s really keeping himself at a distance — deliberately and intentionally — because he honors the oversight process,” one of those people said.

A Republican source familiar disputed this, telling Blue Light News that during Wednesday’s transcribed interview, Ricchetti stated he had recent conversations with Biden regarding his legal strategy before the transcribed interview.

A person close to the Biden side outside the investigation said “being updated and being kept abreast on the investigations is far from being involved or putting pressure for a specific tactic for former staff.”

Still, Biden’s orbit views the Oversight Committee’s efforts as not having rated in the news cycle.

“It really hasn’t been meaningfully breaking through for a wide array of reasons,” said the first person familiar with Biden’s thinking. “They’re more or less trying to make the damning case that Joe Biden is and was old in office. … Everybody that has been interviewed knows there is no smoking gun. Everything that happened or didn’t happen was reported in the books. The reputational damage to some folks was already baked in, and there’s nothing new.”

A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee disputed this. “Americans have witnessed President Biden’s cognitive decline with their own eyes, yet his inner circle continues to claim that everything is fine,” Jessica Collins told Blue Light News. “The American people see through these denials, especially now, as President Biden’s doctor and some of his closest aides are pleading the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination. The Oversight Committee is currently conducting a thorough investigation to gather information through depositions and transcribed interviews, and will release a report of its findings upon conclusion.”

Biden’s allies have also sometimes grimaced at his son Hunter Biden’s recent incursion into the news cycle, as when he sat down for more than three hours with Channel 5, went on an expletive-laden tear and suggested that his father’s disastrous debate performance in June 2024 was attributable to Ambien.

Was Hunter acting as his father’s anger translator, saying what the elder Biden wishes he could say but can’t?

“He probably thinks he is and thinks he is doing what is best and defending his father,” a former Biden White House official told Blue Light News. “But it’s not helpful.”

A storm of clinical and critical tell-all books mostly behind him, Biden is now regularly writing his own book, according to an aide.

But he’s not doing it with Mark Zwonitzer, the writer who helped Biden with 2007’s “Promises to Keep” and 2017’s “Promise Me, Dad,” and decades earlier worked as a research assistant on Richard Ben Cramer’s “What It Takes.” A Biden Foundation spokesperson declined to say who was helping him craft his memoir this time around.

Biden’s smaller entourage now often includes just Annie Tomasini, Biden Foundation spokesperson Kelly Scully and a Secret Service detail.

That smaller footprint allows for some genuinely unscripted moments, members of Biden’s team tell Blue Light News. While waiting for flights at major airports, he has posed for photos with other passengers and took the time to handwrite an encouraging note to a Boy Scout during one such interlude in Philadelphia.

Last month, at a Juneteenth celebration at the Reedy Chapel-AME Church in Galveston, Texas, the president who made it an official federal holiday celebrated with congregants, lingering for hours — doing a photo line, speaking with church leadership.

“We were there for three, four hours — it was a long program. And he wanted to stay,” a person traveling with him said. “Anyone who wanted to talk to him had the opportunity to talk to him.” Biden and his small entourage didn’t arrive back at their hotel, the Marriott Marquis in Houston, until after 11 p.m.

All of it recalls that vivid scene in Cramer’s book — the swirl of activity around Biden, the typists upstairs and the gurus present for consultations, the money bigs with suggestions and the people who called and asked “Is Joe there?”

The answer is yes. Joe is still here. But fewer people are around him now, and it’s far closer to the end of a political life than the beginning of one.

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Politics

A country that doesn’t exist is a World Cup winner

Published

13 minutes ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Kurdistan is not a member of FIFA, resigned instead to the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, whose biennial CONIFA World Football Cup pits non-sovereign states, minorities, stateless peoples and regions against one another.

But the world’s approximately 40 million Kurds — often called one of the largest ethnic groups without their own nation-state — may have already been today’s big winners.

The Italy-based site Asia News has reported there are nine players of Kurdish extraction at the World Cup, spread across four teams, including Iran, Iraq and Switzerland. But it is German forward Deniz Undav who has attracted the most attention, for both his on-field prowess and eagerness to assert his Kurdish identity at every turn.

The son of a Kurdish-Yazidi family that migrated to Germany to Turkey after the country’s 1980 coup d’état, Undav is tied with Lionel Messi for the most goal contributions in the tournament and will have the chance to add to three-goal, two-assist tally today against Ecuador. Undav has celebrated his goals, including a stoppage-time winner against Côte d’Ivoire, with a traditional Kurdish govend dance. (Our corporate cousins at Bild detailed the origins of Undav’s celebration with his club team, VfB Stuttgart.)

Even if Undav doesn’t come off the bench again for Germany, many Kurds already have something to celebrate: the surprise early elimination of Turkey, whose government they consider an enemy both inside its own borders and beyond. Kurdish social-media feeds have become cheering sections for whichever team is facing off against Turkey, which will face the United States today in a match that has become meaningless for both sides.

“What a great way to start the day—waking up and finding out that Turkey lost the match,” an account named @Kurdistan_C wrote on X early Saturday. “Congratulations to the people of Paraguay on their team’s win against Turkey.”

It is unclear when Kurdistan’s actual team will take the pitch next. The Kurdistan Football Association was suspended by CONIFA after it failed to follow through on plans to host the World Football Cup in 2024. One has not been scheduled since.

“At the moment, Kurdistan FA are excluded from all international football inside CONIFA and have no opportunity to promote and celebrate the beauty and greatness of its people,” the organization announced in September 2024.

Politics

Inglewood wins a legal victory over its most famous building

Published

43 minutes ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

LOS ANGELES — The World Cup was supposed to be a moment of unalloyed triumph for the city of Inglewood and the owner of SoFi Stadium, the signature sports venue where the United States will play its final group-stage match today, against Turkey.

But the estranged partners have been embroiled in a long-simmering legal dispute, and now Inglewood has emerged with a victory in court that could have major ramifications for California property-rights law long after the soccer world has moved on from the city.

Hollywood Park, the sprawling mixed-use property that includes the $5 billion-plus stadium filed two lawsuits against the city after it struck a deal last year with digital billboard company WOW Media to install signs in Inglewood, including near the stadium.

In one complaint, Hollywood Park, which is controlled by Stan Kroenke — the billionaire who also owns the Los Angeles Rams, SoFi’s marquee occupant — alleged that the city’s billboard deal “siphons” money from its property. In its second lawsuit, Hollywood Park sought about $400 million from Inglewood that it said it was owed for public infrastructure upgrades and other improvements, arguing the city was required to reimburse those costs once certain tax revenue thresholds were met.

But the city countered that the development agreement cited by Hollywood Park was unenforceable because it was adopted through an initiative approved by voters — and not a legislative body, the far more common route.

Now, Inglewood has prevailed. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge upheld, in a ruling dated Tuesday, the long-term agreement between the billboard company and the city, affirming that it did not violate the law.

In an interview with Blue Light News, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts sought to lower the temperature, extolling Hollywood Park as a “great partner,” adding that “there is no animosity between” the city and the property owner. And he said that the litigation has not put a damper on enthusiasm for the World Cup.

SoFi, which opened in 2020, is drawing praise from soccer fans and athletes alike. Tens of thousands of visitors have poured into Inglewood, a city of roughly 100,000 just southwest of Los Angeles, and the games have unfolded without major incident.

“We’re appreciative for the partnership that we’ve had” with Hollywood Park, Butts said. “And I believe that these issues will be worked out as they should be — during negotiation. This is just a great time for us, and it’s a great time for SoFi.”

In a statement, a Hollywood Park spokesperson said that the developer would appeal the court’s decision.

“We respectfully disagree with the Court’s decision regarding the City’s long-term agreement with WOW and continue to believe that leasing public rights-of-way in this manner is inconsistent with state and municipal law,” the spokesperson said. “…Despite the court’s decision, Hollywood Park remains committed to continuing its investment in Inglewood and supporting the community’s long-term success.”

WOW CEO Scott Krantz said in a statement that the company was pleased with the court’s “decisive ruling,” adding that the agreement with Inglewood delivers “significant, ongoing revenue” to the city. “WOW has enjoyed a long, successful, and mutually beneficial partnership with Inglewood, and we look forward to strengthening that relationship in the years ahead,” he said.

Butts characterized the skirmish with Hollywood Park as a “business dispute,” adding that the city has “the right to self-determination.”

“The reality is even the best of partners will have business disputes,” he said, noting that SoFi Stadium, also home to the Los Angeles Chargers, will co-host the 2028 Summer Olympics opening ceremony and swimming events.

Butts said he might attend a forthcoming World Cup match at SoFi, which will host the U.S. team’s game on Thursday against Turkey. “I likely will,” he said. “But that’s not what I’m here for — to go to games. I’m here to oversee the city’s public safety and quality of life, and parking and traffic response. That’s the thrill for me.”

Inglewood also prevailed in a similar legal challenge from the owner of Intuit Dome, a nearby arena developed by billionaire Steve Ballmer that is home to his Los Angeles Clippers. A representative of Intuit Dome did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Politics

Centrist Democrats are freaking out about progressives’ winning streak

Published

9 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Moderate Democrats are sounding the alarm after massive losses in New York’s primaries. They fear they’re on the verge of losing the party’s ideological civil war — and hurting its electoral chances.

Leftist candidates swept a trio of deep-blue House seats in New York City, a seismic victory that toppled two incumbents, including the powerful chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. And after a string of progressive battleground wins in earlier primaries, moderates are making it very clear that the left’s winning streak is potentially just starting.

The far left is eyeing even bigger targets in key battleground primaries that will determine control of Congress as well as governorships in crucial swing states. Most immediately, moderates fear that a progressive primary sweep could imperil the party’s hopes of beating Republicans this fall.

They also have a more fundamental fear: that progressives are becoming more mainstream as they keep winning — reshaping the Democratic Party.

“Centrist Democrats, normie Democrats, need to realize we’re the insurgents, and they’re the new establishment,” said Liam Kerr, a co-founder of the moderate-aligned WelcomePAC. “It’s a long term structural problem more than it is any one particular win.”

Progressives have romped through Democrats’ spring primaries, notching a series of wins across both safe and competitive districts and upending House and Senate Democrats’ battleplans. Left flank candidates Randy Villegas and Matt Dunlap trounced the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s preferred picks in a pair of battlegrounds in California and Maine. And populist insurgent Graham Platner pushed out Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s handpicked recruit in Maine, Gov. Janet Mills, before voting even began — only to see his poll numbers slip amidst a series of personal scandals.

With New York in the rearview, upcoming races in Colorado, Michigan and Wisconsin will test whether the insurgent left can continue its hot streak.

“It’s happening in New York, it’s happening in Michigan. I think we’re seeing it happen across the country now, that folks are sick and tired of being sick and tired,” said Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and locked in a bitter three-way primary. “So, certainly we’re going to harness that.”

First up will be Colorado, where Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros is mounting a strong challenge against longtime Democratic incumbent Diana DeGette in a safe seat. In the state’s battleground 8th District, the more progressive-aligned Manny Rutinel is facing establishment-backed Shannon Bird. Whoever wins will face freshman GOP Rep. Gabe Evans.

Even if those progressive candidates end up falling short, establishment Democrats are worried that President Donald Trump and the GOP will be able to successfully tie their more centrist nominees to the most-fringe members of the party, forcing them to respond to progressives’ most controversial comments and positions — like defunding the police or getting rid of prisons entirely.

“These races might have some impact on 2026 if Republicans weaponize the craziest ideas of these candidates against mainstream Democrats running in blue districts,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the moderate think tank Third Way.

The Blue Dogs, Democrats’ House centrist coalition and campaign allies, are worried as well.

Blue Dog Action’s Phil Gardner said it’s imperative that moderate Democrats in swing districts address Republican attacks head-on and put distance between themselves and the left flank of their party.

“The reason they do that is because it works,” Gardner said of GOP efforts to tie moderates to progressives. “Candidates running in these competitive seats should not rely on just anti-Trump sentiment or the Democratic brand, because you’re basically putting your destiny in the hands of forces far outside your control.”

Some on the left are growing frustrated as the establishment increasingly makes them pariahs.

“Having party leaders not make the newest and most exciting members of the party feel like they belong is counterproductive for a party that wants to keep growing,” said progressive strategist Rebecca Katz, whose firm Fight Agency works with El-Sayed and Platner, among others.

Still, establishment Democrats are rushing to shore up primary victories in key battlegrounds. In Michigan, where El-Sayed is leading in new polls, establishment Democrats have begun spending millions of dollars in recent weeks to boost Rep. Haley Stevens and stave off his rise. Reinforcements are also flowing in for El-Sayed.

And in Wisconsin, another key perennial battleground state with major down-ticket races, establishment panic about democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong’s momentum in the crowded gubernatorial primary has led some in the party to start coalescing around moderate Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. One Democrat dropped out and endorsed Rodriguez to try to consolidate the center-left vote.

“True leadership means stepping aside and making sure that we coalesce around someone who can win in November,” Democrat Missy Hughes said during a press conference shortly after she suspended her campaign on Monday.

Hong, in an interview Wednesday, said that the centrist lane is no longer the path to victory.

“I agree, we should coalesce around a leader that can win in November. And I think that I’m that leader,” Hong told Blue Light News. “The strategy of running moderates — we’ve lost the House, the Senate and the executive office. … Using the old playbook and looking at the results, I would hope that the course correction is to run some different plays.”But Republicans are salivating over Hong’s prior hardline stances and comments, including previous calls to defund the police. She has sought to alleviate concern about that issue: “there’s no way I’m going to cut public safety, I want to deliver it,” she said in a recent video.

While the left’s wins in safe seats are top of mind, there have been a string of victories for centrists in a number of other Democratic primaries in the most important battlegrounds. The Democratic establishment’s pick prevailed in the New York battleground seat to take on GOP Rep. Mike Lawler on Tuesday, and moderate Rebecca Bennett won the primary to take on GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in a top New Jersey battleground. Some battleground wins for moderates came even as GOP groups meddled to try and boost left-leaning candidates in Texas and Nebraska.

In Senate races, moderate candidates like former Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) cleared the field with no real challenger. And Texas’ James Talarico and Iowa’s Josh Turek were able to best their more-progressive challengers.

“In most of the flippable seats, you still do have electable Democrats, either winning the primaries, or there was just never really a primary to begin with, and people sort of coalesced,” Gardner said.

Schumer told reporters on Wednesday that every wing of the Democratic Party — not just progressives — was on the rise.

“You’re seeing centrist energy in Virginia, Iowa, and New Jersey, progressive energy in New York City,” Schumer said. “We’re going to harness it all to win in November. Because all Democrats are united in the mission of taking back the Senate and defeating Trump.”

Some progressives were also quick to call for unity after their wins Tuesday, and vowed to help their moderate counterparts this fall.

“I’m going to go help some frontliners win their races,” former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who defeated Rep. Dan Goldman by more than 30 points, told reporters on Wednesday. “I hope some moderates will come help Randy Villegas and other progressives win theirs.”

But the prospect of the left picking off a battleground seat in November has major implications for the party’s direction.

“We love the statistic that [progressives have] never flipped any seats. We love to say, ‘look at the polling,” said Kerr, the co-founder of the centrist WelcomePAC. “But we haven’t been scared enough. We’ve been high on our own supply of data while they’ve been organizing.”

And outside of this year’s midterms, there’s a broader fight to come in 2028, where an open presidential primary will shape the party for years to come.

“It is vital that Democrats do not mistake the radicalism of a very small electorate in very blue places with the desire of the larger Democratic Party to move sharply to the left,” Bennett said. “Those things are not the same, and Democrats running for president must resist the urge to believe what they see on social media and the siren song of the DSA and the activist left.”