In Final Stretch, Biden Faces Some of the Biggest Crises of His Presidency
The New York Times
Even as President Biden recedes from view, some of the most consequential days of his term may be ahead of him.
President Biden was in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday morning, watching on video monitors as Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel. The wider war in the Middle East, which Mr. Biden had spent much of his presidency trying to avert, had arrived.
But so had another crisis, closer to home.
Even as he discussed military options with his foreign policy advisers, a White House staffer handed him a succession of notes about Hurricane Helene, the deadliest storm to strike the U.S. mainland in nearly two decades.
The time Mr. Biden spent inside the ultrasecure facility that morning, described by a senior administration official who asked for anonymity to discuss a confidential meeting, was a vivid example of the final months of Mr. Biden’s presidency. Even as he yields much of the spotlight to Vice President Kamala Harris, he is finishing out his term managing an array of major crises, all of them playing out more or less simultaneously.
It is a reminder that even as Mr. Biden recedes from view, some of the most consequential days of his presidency may lie ahead. And no occupant of the White House has ever had the luxury of focusing on one crisis at a time.
Aside from the conflict in the Middle East and the catastrophic hurricane, Mr. Biden is dealing with war in Ukraine; Russia threatening nuclear escalation; a short-lived but serious dockworkers’ strike; and former President Donald J. Trump within striking distance of the White House once again. (Not to mention fears of foreign election interference and the prospect of an October Surprise — the list goes on.)
A businessman in the Bronx falsified information on thousands of returns, committing one of the largest tax frauds in Department of Justice history, prosecutors said.
Officials in Wisconsin gave little new information on Tuesday about a shooting that left a student and a teacher dead and six others injured.
The president-elect’s latest attempt to overturn his Manhattan conviction was rebuffed by the judge overseeing the case, who called it “mere hearsay and conjecture.”
Undocumented immigrants whose children or spouses are U.S. citizens are feeling particularly vulnerable to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threats to push them out.
The man whom authorities call a serial killer was charged with second-degree murder in the case of Valerie Mack, who disappeared in 2000.
The Commerce Department is banning the few remaining operations of China Telecom in the United States, a move that appears unlikely to deter Beijing from conducting sophisticated cyberoperations.
The police in Wisconsin are working to establish a motive for the attack, which left a student and teacher dead and six others injured.
The defendant, Rex Heuermann, is due in court Tuesday. Investigators have been trying to tie him to other unsolved killings on Long Island.
Some Republicans have said that a constitutional convention is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their long-ago calls for one, and California will soon consider whether to do the same.
The New York City Campaign Finance Board voted to withhold as much as $4.3 million in matching funds from Mayor Eric Adams, hampering his re-election bid.
He built Mississippi’s Republican Party into a conservative powerhouse, making himself a regional power broker in the process.