On June 4, President Trump issued a memorandum directing the White House Counsel and the Attorney General to investigate former President Biden and his aides to see if they “abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.” 

“This conspiracy,” the order says, “marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history.” 

Democratic politics invites citizens and political leaders to leave the past alone, except in extreme cases like genocide or apartheid. It requires victorious parties not to try to rewrite it to suit the fancies and fantasies of the moment.

However, Trump seems unable to resist casting his eye backward to denigrate and impugn his predecessor. His memorandum called “Reviewing Certain Executive Actions” is just the latest example.

The president’s Joe Biden-focused memorandum comes from the same place as his election-denialism. He wants to discredit everything Biden touched and sweep the last four years into the dustbin of history.

Readers of literature may recognize this impulse. George Orwell’s classic novel, 1984, offers a startling and imaginative rendition.

In that book, Orwell describes a political party bent on securing its power and dominating the society that it ruled. The party creates a Ministry of Truth and charges it to change narratives of the past to suit the whims of the Leader. It seeks, to quote from the book, to create a world where “nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Eerie. Recall the moment in February when Trump passed out “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING” hats to members of the press, and his Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, intoned the administration’s mantra, “Always say yes to the president.”

Another literary classic, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, conjured another fictive regime intent on revising the past to suit its purposes. In its version of history, “The party,” one of Koestler’s characters says, “was always right, even when it was wrong.” Later, he says, “The liquidation of the past is the precondition for the acceptance of the future.”

This seems an apt description of Trump’s worldview.

As the Organization of American Historians explains, the Trump Administration proposes ”to rewrite history.” That impulse animates last week’s presidential memorandum.

There, the president asserts that “For years, President Biden suffered from serious cognitive decline. … Biden’s cognitive issues and apparent mental decline during his presidency were even ‘worse’ in private, and those closest to him ‘tried to hide it’ from the public.”

“Notwithstanding these well-documented issues,” the memorandum continues, “the White House issued over 1,200 Presidential documents, appointed 235 judges to the federal bench, and issued more pardons and commutations than any administration in United States history. Although the authority to take these executive actions, along with many others,” it continues, ”is constitutionally committed to the President, there are serious doubts as to the decision-making process and even the degree of Biden’s awareness of these actions being taken in his name.” 

Note the impersonal construction: “There are serious doubts.” It is left unspecified who is experiencing or entertaining those doubts. It might help, however, to recall Lutnick’s admonition to his colleagues in the administration: “Always say yes to the president.”

Driving home its point, the president’s memorandum offers this insinuation: “If his advisors secretly used the mechanical signature pen to conceal this incapacity … that would constitute an unconstitutional wielding of the power of the presidency, a circumstance that would have implications for the legality and validity of numerous executive actions undertaken in Biden’s name.”

As I noted in March, when Trump first raised a question about the Biden Administration’s use of an autopen, there is nothing to this. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a 2005 opinion that presidents can validly sign bills by directing subordinates to “affix the President’s signature to it.” That should settle the matter. Biden’s judicial appointments, grants of clemency, and other official acts are not going anywhere.

But that is not the point of Trump’s fixation on Biden and his directive. It is instead another sign of a president hoping to dismantle the legacy that his predecessor left behind, or, if he can’t do that, to use his power to tarnish it.

The comedian Jon Stewart was on to something last August when he said of Trump’s obsession with all things Biden, “It’s all he knows. He misses (Biden) so much … He would give everything for just one more moment with ‘crooked Joe.’”

Whatever the psychological roots of Trump’s Biden fixation are, it does this country a great disservice. It stokes grievance, resentment, and division. It invites the kind of corrosive cynicism and disrespect that makes it hard for partisans to take a breath and agree on a shared version of history.

Trump is entitled to conjure conspiracy theories about Biden and his advisors, but Americans would be well advised not to join him.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

President Trump and Senate Republicans are facing a crucial week in their push to enact the mammoth bill containing their domestic agenda.

GOP leaders are hoping to unveil text this week that contains some of the thorniest issues they’ve been trying to work out. And the coming days could prove critical for winning over the holdouts whose support will be necessary to pass the legislation.

The crunch time comes amid increasing skepticism that the conference will meet its ambitious July 4 deadline.

“This next week will probably be make or break,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mon.), one of the remaining holdouts. 

The most anticipated item could arrive later Monday when the Senate Finance Committee is aiming to release its portion of the chamber’s text, which includes key sticking points like Medicaid cuts and provisions eliminating taxes on tips and overtime, two of Trump’s top campaign promises.

The panel held a call on Friday, a day after Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo huddled with Trump at the White House. Early reports indicated it would unveil the first part of text later in the day, but GOP leaders ended up holding off. 

According to a source familiar, the pending text is expected to include most of Trump’s tax incentive priorities despite a push by some Senate Republicans to water them down.

The text also will include a big Senate GOP win on making tax breaks for businesses permanent, which was a red line for numerous members. 

It remains unclear, however, where the panel will land on the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap.

While it may not be a major sticking point among Senate Republicans — most view it as a bailout to high-tax states and have been itching to lower it from the $40,000 in the House-passed version of the bill — the ultimate decision will have major ramifications for the bill’s fate when it returns to the House.

The committee is expected to include a SALT cap figure far lower than in the deal Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) struck with House Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California, but that is only meant as a placeholder, according to the source familiar with the situation. 

One Senate GOP member told The Hill that numerous members viewed the $40,000 figure as nothing more than a “plug” in talks despite calls from Johnson not to stray too far from portions of the House bill and threats from blue-state House Republicans to vote against any changes. 

The jockeying on the figure is only set to intensify in the coming days. 

“I take them very seriously that they want to negotiate on this thing, and we’re going to,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (Okla.), the GOP’s informal liaison between the two chambers. “They’re going to fight as hard as they can for their position. And they should. And we will too. We’re going to come to a happy place at the end of it.” 

The release of the Medicaid text will also prove crucial as a number of holdouts have objected to House-passed changes to the health safety net program for low-income Americans.

The House bill cuts more than $800 billion in federal spending by establishing more stringent work requirements and shifting some costs to states.

A number of senators have expressed concern about what that would mean for their constituents and rural hospitals in their states.

Senate GOP leaders are in a key stretch to win over those holdouts and others as they barrel toward the July 4 recess.

They can lose up to three votes, including that of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is expected to vote against the bill due to his opposition to the $4 trillion debt ceiling hike.

GOP leaders seemingly moved closer to landing the support of Hawley by including a reauthorization of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. But the Missouri Republican has kept his red line intact as he presses for no Medicaid benefit cuts. 

“I want to see this bill improve,” Hawley said on a Friday press call, reemphasizing his call for no Medicaid beneficiary cuts. 

“I am in hourly contact with leadership on this,” he continued, “and none of that is going to change.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has also softened his rhetoric about the bill in recent days, having been a vocal critic of the lack of spending cuts. 

“We’re making good progress,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told reporters. “But you don’t say ‘yes’ until you’re actually there.”

If GOP leaders win the votes of Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Johnson, that very likely would secure final passage.

But they aren’t taking that for granted as they still try to win support from the moderate duo of Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). The pair have laid out concerns centering on potential Medicaid cuts and the phase-out of renewable energy credits, among other things. 

Whether leaders can win them over remains an open question, though one Senate GOP member indicated the path to winning them remains “dialogue” rather than “arm-twisting.”

“I’m cautiously optimistic. … Remember, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski supported the 2017 bill,” the member said, referring to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Amid fights that lawmakers were expecting, others have emerged seemingly out of left field. 

Headlining those was last week’s battle over the border funds included in the bill. Paul, the Homeland Security Committee chairman, sparked widespread discontent at the White House and among Senate Republicans over his move to slice the administration’s border funding request — not to be mostly uncontroversial among Republicans — by more than 50 percent.

This prompted leadership and Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to override his plan and file his own border text for the massive bill that includes the full $46.5 billion requested. But not before tensions flared at a Thursday morning meeting between Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Johnson over the administration’s funding numbers.

Nevertheless, members widely blame Paul for what they believe was unnecessary drama over an issue they are united on.

“Rand is the turd in the punchbowl,” a second Senate Republican told The Hill. 

Further exacerbating the GOP’s time crunch, the upper chamber is only in session until Wednesday this week due to Juneteenth.

Top Republicans are pushing for all of the report language by the various committees to be released by the time they leave town, allowing them to be able to have a bill ready to hit the floor by the week of June 23. 

But if delays crop up, Thune has made clear to members he is prepared to work through the July 4 holiday in order to complete the bill, leading some lawmakers to view that as the true deadline for just the Senate’s legwork to be done. 

“I don’t know,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said. “I don’t think [the House is] just going to accept what we do.”

Mychael Schnell contributed.