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Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz


** Post-Debate Questions About Biden's Future
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President Joe Biden said his June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump "wasn’t my best debate ever." Other people were less charitable.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, called on July 2 for Biden to withdraw from the race. “I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw,” Doggett said, becoming the first Democratic member of Congress to do so.

The New York Times, citing unnamed Biden allies, reported on July 3 that Biden may consider stepping aside if upcoming events, including an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, don't go well. The White House quickly denied the report as "absolutely false."

At this point, there’s no telling if Biden will voluntarily leave the race, or if some in the party will attempt to deny him the nomination.

But, as Deputy Managing Editor Robert Farley and Director Eugene Kiely write, the fact that either option is even being discussed is shocking at such a late stage -- just about seven weeks before Democratic delegates will gather in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention to pick their party's standard-bearer.

With questions swirling around the 81-year-old president, Rob and Eugene answer some questions about the convention process. What happens if he voluntarily steps aside? What if he doesn’t? Can Biden be replaced, and if he can, how would that work?

Read the full story, "Q&A: How Biden Can Be Replaced as the Democratic Nominee ([link removed]) ."
HOW WE KNOW
For the Q&A on the Democratic presidential nominating process, Director Eugene Kiely cited a 2005 interview that the late Sen. Edward Kennedy gave for an oral history project at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. Kennedy spoke about the "faithful delegate rule" at the 1980 Democratic convention. That rule was changed in advance of the party's 1984 convention. The Miller Center started the Presidential Oral History Program ([link removed]) in 1981. It now includes projects on every president from Gerald Ford to George W. Bush.
FEATURED FACT
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, are a very common type of antidepressant. People who stop taking them abruptly might experience symptoms similar to those of withdrawal, such as nausea, dizziness and lethargy, which are described as “discontinuation syndrome.” But SSRIs are not considered to be addictive, contrary to what independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed. Kennedy has repeatedly blamed these antidepressants for the rise in school shootings. Read more ([link removed]) .
WORTHY OF NOTE
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of FactCheck.org, gave her take on the June 27 presidential debate in an article published in Penn Today.

Jamieson formed the Annenberg Debate Reform Working Group ([link removed]) after the 2012 election that produced a report in 2015 on how to improve presidential debates. She said debates can help inform voters -- a value that has become even more important in today's highly partisan political environment.

"We live in an electorate now that increasingly says it’s disaffected with both major candidates," she said. "But the value of debates is to give you exposure to things you may not otherwise know in order to cast an informed vote.”

You can read her debate takeaways here ([link removed]) .
REPLY ALL

Reader: Did President Joe Biden raise taxes on the middle class?

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: The short answer is, "No."

We wrote about Biden's tax policy changes and his current tax proposals in our June 28 debate story ([link removed]) .

Here are some excerpts from that article that address your question:

In his more than three years as president, Biden’s major tax changes have included setting a minimum corporate tax rate of 15% and lowering taxes for some families by expanding the child tax credit and, for a time, making it fully refundable, meaning families could still receive a refund even if they no longer owe additional taxes.
...

Biden’s latest plan proposes — as he has in the past — to increase the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%, and to restore the top individual tax rate of 39.6% from the current rate of 37%. It would also increase the corporate minimum tax rate from 15% to 21% for companies that report average profits in excess of $1 billion over a three-year period. And the plan would impose a 25% minimum tax on very wealthy individuals. The plan also proposes to extend the expanded child tax credit enacted in the American Rescue Plan through 2025, and to make the child tax credit fully refundable on a permanent basis.
...

As he has said since the 2020 campaign, Biden’s FY 2025 budget vows not to increase taxes on people earning less than $400,000.

In order to keep that pledge, Biden would have to extend most of the individual income tax provisions enacted in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that are set to expire at the end of 2025. And that’s what Biden says he would do — but only for individual filers earning less than $400,000 and married couples making less than $450,000. (In order to pass the TCJA with a simple Senate majority, Republicans wrote the law to have most of the individual income tax changes expire after 2025.)

The Biden budget plan “would raise marginal income tax rates faced by higher earners and corporations while expanding tax credits for lower-income households,” according to a Tax Foundation analysis of the tax provisions in Biden’s budget. “The budget would redistribute income from high earners to low earners. The bottom 60 percent of earners would see increases in after-tax income in 2025, while the top 40 percent of earners would see decreases.”


** Wrapping Up
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Here's what else we've got for you this week:
* "FactChecking RFK Jr.’s Rival Debate ([link removed]) ": Excluded from the CNN presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on June 27, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. livestreamed a parallel debate on social media, answering the same questions put to the major party candidates.
* "Video: FactChecking Highlights from the Biden-Trump Debate ([link removed]) ": Here’s a fact-checking video of some highlights of the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.


Y lo que publicamos en español ([link removed]) (English versions are accessible in each story):
* "¿Cuál es la ventaja medioambiental clave de la energía eólica? Las bajas emisiones ([link removed]) ": P: ¿Son perjudiciales para el medio ambiente los parques eólicos? R: Como todas las fuentes de energía, los parques eólicos tienen algunas repercusiones negativas sobre el medio ambiente. Pero la obtención de energía de los parques eólicos produce emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero mucho menores que su obtención de los combustibles fósiles.

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