By Kyle Midura,
@KyleMidura
Politics Producer
Should members of Congress have age limits?
When voters in North Dakota go to the polls Tuesday, they will weigh in on a potential age limit for the state’s members of Congress.
If
Measure 1 is approved, it will create an amendment to the state constitution that says members of Congress cannot be over 80 before the end of their term.
Jared Hendrix, a political consultant who led the effort, told the NewsHour’s Lisa Desjardins that “there is a lot of wisdom that comes with age. But of course, there's a limit to where we all face a decline of some kind at some point.”
“We wanted to try to find the right balance,” he added. “We thought 80 was the balance.”
There’s a broader concern about aging lawmakers. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 79 percent of Americans, with little partisan divide,
backed age limits for federal office. Other polls have also consistently shown voters expressing concern about the mental fitness of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 presidential nominees.
On average, memory and processing do slip with advancing age, but experts on aging say that
can vary depending on the individual.
Legal scholars, too, question whether a state age limit would be constitutional. Nearly three decades ago, the Supreme Court
ruled that states could
not set stricter congressional qualifications than what’s in the U.S. Constitution.
Regardless, North Dakota lawmakers are
preparing to defend its measure if and when a legal challenge comes their way.
#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Joshua Barajas,
@Josh_Barrage
Senior Editor, Digital
After just more than three hours of deliberations, a jury in Wilmington, Delaware,
found Hunter Biden guilty on all three felony counts related to a 2018 purchase of a handgun.
Prosecutors argued during the trial that President Joe Biden’s son had lied on a federal firearms form
used to screen applicants by saying he was not addicted to or illegally using drugs. Hunter Biden’s defense team argued there was no evidence he was using drugs at the time he purchased the gun.
Our question: Prosecutors in the gun case pushed back on this claim by playing the audio from a particular piece of media. What was it?
Send your answers to
[email protected] or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.
Last week, we asked: Which of the four sitting independents in the Senate hasn’t run for any public office with a party identification?
The answer: Sen. Angus King of Maine. Another long-serving independent, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, entered the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections as a Democrat. He also ran campaigns for state and federal offices in Vermont
under the Liberty Union Party's banner in the 1970s.
Congratulations to our winners: Nicholas D. Mertes and Jim Brydon!
Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
