Editorials from the New York Times and Washington Post

Nov. 1 – The Washington Post on the need for an overhaul of the Secret Service

Based on 58 multi-hour interviews and more than 7,000 documents, the independent bipartisan panel President Joe Biden assigned to analyze the Secret Service after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump this summer issued a grim warning: Without fundamental reforms to the agency, what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 "can and will happen again." These changes, even more than the specific events of the rally, ought to be the focus going forward.

To be sure, the facts are stunning, as they appear not only in the independent panel's report but also in an interim report from a bipartisan House of Representatives task force and a separate Senate committee investigation. Basically, these documents describe a day of disarray. The Secret Service neglected to secure the building from which the gunman fired the shot that grazed the former president's ear, it left open possible lines of sight from there to the podium where Mr. Trump stood, and it set up so chaotic a communications structure that no one informed the leaders of Mr. Trump's detail about the man they'd seen lurking on-site, even after he made it onto the roof.

The would-be assassin was able to operate a drone for 11 or so minutes undetected only hours before he took aim at his target. Soon after that, he was identified as suspicious by a local countersniper going off duty - and again, and again, by other state and local law enforcement personnel as he popped in and out of view, at one point examining the rally stage area with a range finder.

The panel suggested concrete remedies for these very specific failings: Ensure agents in charge of advance and day-of work for sensitive events have sufficient experience. Have the lead site agent furnish the head of the protectee's detail with an in-person report upon arrival at a given event. Coordinate more closely with state and local partners. Create a central command center at every event that can respond to incidents in real time.

All of this was so clear that the Secret Service made similar points in its own report. More controversial, and subject to pushback from the agency, are broader critiques of its culture and structure. The independent panelists pointed to an ingrained lack of initiative and outside-the-box thinking: Shouldn't agents have spoken up more forcefully when they saw a suspicious person and pursued the issue until they were sure they'd been heard? Shouldn't, as a rule, the Secret Service do everything it can to marshal resources needed for a mission's success, rather than try to "do more with less"?

The new acting director of the Secret Service, Ronald L. Rowe Jr., acknowledged in September that the summer's failure resulted in part from "complacency" on the part of some agents - and emphasized that the service has adopted a posture of "hyper-vigilance." Many improvements, he said, will require additional personnel and equipment. That's a reasonable ask: A bigger budget could enable better training, including simulations of lifelike scenarios. And, admittedly, the agency is not entirely to blame for the strain it has fallen under. The Secret Service can't cool the country's overheated political climate.

The more difficult question is how to effect broader systemic change at the agency. The independent panel, for its part, suggests that the agency refocus on its "core protective mission." This protective mission, in fact, has only been primary during the modern era; the Secret Service at its 1865 founding was housed in the Treasury Department and responsible primarily for detecting counterfeiting and a few other federal crimes. Over time, the agency, now part of the Department of Homeland Security, evolved to fill the role it performs today of keeping the nation's leaders, former leaders and their families safe. Yet it still has an investigations division tasked with ferreting out counterfeiters, computer fraud and more.

Many if not most Americans would probably be surprised to learn the Secret Service is still involved in such matters, given that there are so many other federal bodies with similar competencies - notably, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is an argument that the skills Secret Service personnel hone during investigative duties can help with protection. But there's also an argument that those other missions distract from the essential job of preventing political destabilization via assassination. The independent panel recommended subordinating the investigations division tothe protective division, but this seems like a limited shift in the organizational chart. Congress ought to consider more radical changes, including assigning the Secret Service's 19th-century mission to someone else in the 21st.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/01/secret-service-trump-assassination-attempt-reports/

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Nov. 4

The New York Times says that every vote - in every state - matters

In the years in which Americans choose a president, that race usually monopolizes the nation's attention. There are, however, 469 other races this year to choose the people who represent us in Washington, D.C.

Those elections are, collectively, as essential to the governance of the United States as the campaign for the White House. In addition to sculpting the nation's laws, Congress allocates the federal budget, approves the country's borrowing and regulates its commerce. It holds the authority to wage wars, ratify treaties, confirm appointees and hold federal officials accountable through investigations and the impeachment process.

In other words, Congress is the body that enables or restrains the ambitions and agenda of the White House. And while these core responsibilities won't change no matter who wins on Tuesday, if Donald Trump is re-elected president, the House of Representatives and the Senate will be vital checks on what he could do in office.

Mr. Trump has demonstrated that he lacks the character, temperament and commitment to the Constitution necessary to be trusted with the power and responsibility of the presidency. He was impeached twice in his first term for actions in flagrant defiance of his duties. He was criminally indicted on felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the election. Yet many of the former president's worst instincts never came to pass in his previous administration. That's not because he moderated those instincts once in power, as some of his reluctant supporters now suggest. The most important factor limiting the damage done by Mr. Trump's urges has always been others stepping in to stop him, from his own appointees to members of the House and the Senate.

The first major duty of this new Congress will be to ensure the peaceful transfer of power. Its members will be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025, three days before the Jan. 6 certification process to make official the winner of the presidential election. Republicans in 2021 proved themselves unworthy of this basic responsibility. Mr. Trump's allies were complicit in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. A majority of House Republicans declined to certify the election - the current speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was one of the architects of the schemes to overturn it - and a majority of Senate Republicans refused to convict Mr. Trump for his role in that attempted coup, including the storming of the Capitol.

Thankfully, the Electoral Count Reform Act, passed by a bipartisan majority in 2022, goes a long way toward reducing or eliminating opportunities for subterfuge, regardless of who controls the two chambers. Election interference, if it happens, is more likely to occur on the state level this time around. But the continued indulgence of Mr. Trump's false charges that the last election was stolen or the next one will be provide ample reason not to want a Republican leader wielding the gavel in either chamber.

Soon after, the Senate will begin to consider and approve the president's appointments. Already, according to reporting by The Times's newsroom, Mr. Trump's aides are suggesting that they will try to push through nominees for such positions without the requisite vetting by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If re-elected, Mr. Trump has suggested he will prioritize base loyalty, rather than experience or character, from his closest advisers and lieutenants. Senators will need to prevent the most extreme or unqualified candidates from taking cabinet positions like defense secretary and attorney general, as well as seats on the high court and the federal bench. They can act to keep clearly unfit candidates from holding any powerful position. That's what the Senate did in 2020, when it blocked Mr. Trump's multiple attempts to appoint wildly unqualified people to serve as members of the board of the Federal Reserve.

Congress would then provide an essential backstop on abuses of presidential power. Mr. Trump has said that he will wield the power of government against his political rivals and curtail rights that Americans hold sacred. He has described plans to prosecute " the enemy from within," including members of Congress, judges and journalists; to send troops into the streets of American cities against lawful protesters; and to withhold money from state and local governments that do not conform their policies to his preferences. He pledges a cruel policy of mass deportations and threatens to shatter longstanding global alliances.

Members of Congress can block some of those plans - a president needs the House to approve spending for any substantial deportation plan, for example - and they play a crucial oversight role for federal agencies and the executive branch. The House also wields significant power to block or enable the Trump agenda through the annual spending bills that must be passed to keep the government functioning. This will be crucial should Mr. Trump try to carry out proposals to dismantle the Department of Education or end Title IX's protections against sex discrimination or hobble the work of vital agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department's civil rights division.

There are other reasons to worry about the damage a Republican-controlled Congress could do. Trump loyalists repeatedly blocked a series of Republican candidates - both moderate and conservative - for speaker of the House, paralyzing Congress and leaving it without leadership for the longest period since 1962. Since then, the caucus has become better known for what it has tried to block, often under Mr. Trump's explicit orders, such as funding to keep the government open, much-needed support for Ukraine's defense against a Russian invasion and, most hypocritically, border security legislation designed by conservative members of their own party. Indeed, it is hard to think of a single piece of serious legislation offered up by Mr. Johnson - despite his being an ally of Mr. Trump - and his House. On the other hand, his record of supporting Mr. Trump's antidemocratic agenda is well documented.

Many of the most competitive races for the House are in states that vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, including seven in California and five in New York, along with important races in Connecticut, Colorado, Michigan and Maryland. There are also extremely close races in Arizona, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Maine, Nebraska and New Mexico. Of the 43 most competitive races for the House this year, 22 of them are considered tossups; every single vote in those races will be needed to prevent Mr. Trump's enablers from taking office.

There are close Senate races in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan and competitive races for Senate seats in Montana, Nebraska and Texas. We urge voters to make certain to give their attention to those contests.

In survey after survey, Americans said that they want more from their public servants. Tuesday's election offers them the chance to demand better.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/opinion/congress-election-2024.html