Good morning. It is July 3rd. It's another nice morning in New York City, though it's going to heat up later. The whole world is spinning out of control. The cat is stalking back and forth across the recording desk. But despite all that, this is--seriously cut it out, cat. This is your indignity morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news.

The New York Times shows where it stands on the importance of the week's two biggest news stories by dedicating the lead news slot, two columns wide, to the question of whether Joe Biden, after his terrible debate performance, is to decrepit for the job of president and or the job of presidential candidate. Some in room with Biden say lapses are increasing as the headline. Concern grows over moments of confusion in private during grueling schedule. This is simultaneously an important subject and the Times desperately trying to recoup from its own humiliation as four full -time White House reporters try to tell a story that would explain why four full -time White House reporters didn't already know this or didn't already tell you about it. The framework is to argue that Biden has gotten markedly worse very recently, that his struggles to focus and to speak are being exacerbated by his heavy travel schedule. And of course, that the dastardly White House has hidden the president from the press, preventing them from drawing these conclusions until now. The story is a strange, hasty mix of persuasive and unpersuasive anecdotes that treats Joe Biden's struggles with his stutter and his moments of genuinely spacing out as interchangeable. The low point for Biden is probably the paragraph where the Times writes, asked if one could imagine putting Mr. Biden into the same room with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia today. A former U .S. official who had helped prepare for the trip, that's Biden's trip to Italy for the G7, went silent for a while, then said, I just don't know. A former senior European official answered the same question by saying flatly, no. The low point for the Times, writing about that G7 trip, is where, after reporting that people said Biden appeared quite sharp in meetings, The Times adds, but at one point, Mr. Biden appeared to wander off from the group of leaders to talk to paratroopers. And the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Maloney, came up behind him and gently brought him back. A clip of the event that went viral had been edited to make it appear Mr. Biden had just walked away. In fact, he was greeting a paratrooper, but the image suggested he needed guidance from his host. But the image suggested... What is wrong with The Times? Are you writing about the public perception of whether Biden is capable or you're writing about whether he's capable. Why are you including an anecdote that by your own account is bogus? This sort of thing is where the Times is just objectively less rigorous than Gawker .com was. When you're not writing for the newspaper of record, you take it as a given that people are not going to defer to your reporting just because of who you are.

And if you put weak, debunked, or unpersuasive items into what's supposed to be an investigative piece, people are going to see that and they're going to rightfully conclude that they shouldn't trust your judgment about how solid the other stuff is. Just sloppy, arrogant, and stupid work on something where the stakes couldn't be any higher. Speaking of high stakes, the follow -up to the Supreme Court's declaration that Donald Trump enjoyed absolute and or presumptive immunity for his various attempts to steal the election and that as president, he would enjoy that same immunity for any crimes he might choose to commit using his official powers in a new term. That gets a news analysis piece by Charlie Savage, just above the fold. Sudden leap in presidential powers long rise, is the headline. There's a notable lack of a subject or a verb there. The piece itself is fine. Savage writes, it had seemed like a constitutional truism in recent years.

When more than one lower court opinion addressing novel legal issues raised by Mr. Trump's norm breaking behavior observed that presidents are not kings, but suddenly they do enjoy a kind of monarchical privilege. I would have said monarchial instead of monarchical, but either one is right. And I guess the extra consonant gives it a little kick. There's also another piece by Adam Liptak, intense term, fractured court remade nation.

Former President Donald J. Trump had a very good year at the Supreme Court, but Tuck writes, on Monday, the court ruled that he is substantially immune from prosecution on charges that he tried to subvert the 2020 election. On Friday, the court cast doubt on two of the four charges against him and what remains of that prosecution. And in March, the justices allowed him to seek another term despite a constitutional provision barring insurrectionists from holding office. Then he notes that they gutted the administrative state and writes that the court itself had a volatile term, taking on a stunning array of major disputes and assuming a commanding role in shaping American society and democracy. If the justices felt chastened by the backlash over their 2020 abortion decision, the persistent questions about their ethical standards, and the drop in their public approval, there were only glimpses of restraint, notably in ducking two abortion cases in an election year. That's very nice analysis, but there apparently wasn't a team of four reporters scrambling to get whatever damaging information they could find about the court into today's paper, any more than to circle back to the Biden article. The Times feels any pressure to deliver more than a single paragraph saying Mr. Trump, 78, has also shown signs of slipping over the years since he was first elected to the White House. He often confuses his names and details and makes statements that are incoherent. He maintains a lighter public schedule than Mr. Biden, does not exercise, and repeatedly appeared to fall asleep in the middle of his recent hush money trial.

His campaign has released only a three paragraph health summary. Voters have expressed concern about his age as well, but not to the same degree as Mr. Biden's. Voters, huh? Can you think of anyone else who has not expressed concern about Donald Trump's mental state to the same extent as Joe Biden's? Or is it just those darn voters who care about what they care about and leave the most powerful newspaper in the country to helplessly follow their lead? That is the news, or at least it's what you're expected to accept as the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again, not tomorrow, because it's a holiday, but on Friday.