Interstate 81, southbound, you can’t miss it: Exit 185 PRESIDENT BIDEN EXPRESSWAY. The three-quarter-mile road leads into downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, birthplace of Joe Biden. Keep going straight and you’ll eventually end up—where else?—on Biden Street. That these namesake roads exist while the president is still alive, let alone still in office, feels odd. But this exact strangeness—forced nostalgia, preemptive memorialization—is the essence of Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.

Yesterday afternoon, inside the Scranton Cultural Center, Biden sought to remind a few hundred supporters of his lifelong Scranton values. His address coincided with the release of a new campaign ad, titled—wait for it—“Scranton.” The president’s event took place just down the road from his childhood home. Of course he popped by the old place to say hello, with his traveling press corps in tow. Subtlety has never been a Biden virtue.

The hometown crowd wasn’t treated to the booming, bombastic State of the Union version of Biden, but the president still managed to land a few genuine laughs during his 30-minute speech. His savviest moment was a fake-out. Biden appeared to be unspooling one of his trademark failed American-dream stories about a poor man drowning in debt, but it was a setup for a punch line: “I said, ‘I’m sorry, Donald. I can’t help you.’” Mentioning Trump’s name at all, as Biden repeatedly did yesterday, was a notable departure from an earlier period of this campaign season, when both Biden and his allies treated his opponent like Voldemort.

[David Frum: Why Biden should not debate Trump]

Still, an overwhelming sense of safety and caution defined the day—perhaps a fear of messing something up. Biden’s gathering wasn’t a rally so much as a town hall without the questions. He didn’t wax on about the Middle East, or Ukraine, or abortion, or other polarizing issues. He was laser-focused on taxes. Just a few hundred chairs were arranged in a semicircle, and the small-scale optics did not help him. Before Biden took the stage, a misleading image of many empty seats began going viral on social media. In reality, they were all eventually occupied, but there was no arguing that this campaign stop was a fraction of the size of the average Trump event. Yesterday’s energy was tame. It felt more like an early primary event for a minor candidate than a rally by the sitting president.

Many versions of Joe Biden exist, and they often compete against one another. There’s the doddering old man, there’s Dark Brandon, there’s the bighearted consoler, there’s the guy who uses variations of the word fuck under his breath. Biden’s campaign seems to hope that voters will come back around to good old Scranton Joe. This is the Biden who talks about faith, families, factories, and fairness. Millions of voters pine for this Norman Rockwell version of Biden—and of America, in general. Millions of others are demanding that the president plunge into the present moment and engage with Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. Specifically, a significant portion of Democrats and liberals want Biden to call for a cease-fire and reduce (or eliminate) military aid to Israel. Biden knows this. Yet his campaign is doubling down on kitchen-table issues, such as the tax code.

He seemed most comfortable when operating squarely within the realm of the classic and the domestic. “I am a capitalist,” Biden proclaimed. Still, he occasionally sounded like his old Democratic rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher!” he yelled at one point. He scoffed at trickle-down economics and preached about the long-term effects of the child tax credit. All the while, he peppered in sayings from his grandpa, sayings the elder Biden may or may not have ever said.

Many voters don’t want to believe that it’s really going to be Biden and Trump again. And some people still seem surprised that Biden, in particular, is officially seeking a second term. A swath of Democrats dream of him withdrawing before the party’s convention. There is perpetual talk of a younger candidate—namely a governor such as Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, or Josh Shapiro, who yesterday served as Biden’s opening act—stepping up to be the Democratic nominee in Biden’s place. All of this seems like West Wing fan fiction. The race is set, and it’s a rematch. (With wild cards like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to make trouble.)

[Read: The RFK Jr. Strategy Clicks Into Focus]

Biden long ago realized the stakes. Now he has to figure out how much to talk about himself and his accomplishments versus warn voters about Trump. “Listen to what he says, because you know he means it,” Biden said. Though he didn’t opt for the 30,000-foot “democracy is on the ballot” message in Scranton, he drew stark comparisons between himself and his rival. “He’s coming for your money, your health care, and your social security,” Biden warned.

Successful political campaigns are also movements. Trump and RFK Jr., for all their flaws, long ago internalized that simple truth. Until recently, Biden has more or less run what his allies referred to as a “Rose Garden campaign.” This week, he’s changing that. Scranton marked Biden’s first of three stops across Pennsylvania; he’s off to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia next. By no accident, the president is traversing a swing state while his Republican rival is glowering inside a Manhattan courtroom. But yesterday’s crowd struck me as a bunch of polite, well-behaved people who knew when to sit quietly with their hands folded, when to laugh, and when to cheer. It did not feel organic.

Just outside the venue’s security perimeter, I spoke with three University of Scranton students who had tried to see Biden and were turned away. One of them, Neveah Wall, a 19-year-old sophomore, told me that this would be her first time voting, and that she was torn between going Democrat or independent. She said she was passionate about prison reform, and that she liked where Kennedy stood on the issue. Her family members would likely vote for Biden. “I think I am pretty much leaning towards RFK,” she said.

It may seem surprising that the Biden campaign would put on an event within walking distance of a university and not try to welcome in as many students as possible. (A 20-something attendee inside the room told me he had been personally invited by a local politician.) Incumbents often go to great lengths to avoid disruptions and control the narrative. In a statement last night, a Biden campaign spokesperson told me, “Members of the public are invited through various methods including local groups and organizations, mass emails to subscribers to the campaign's email list, and by utilizing the voter file, which allows the campaign to target the voters we need to reach.” But new, younger, or first-time voters, such as Neveah Wall, may not even have voter files yet—and, like her, they may end up drawn to another candidate after being denied entry to a Biden event.

Perhaps Biden’s campaign was worried about young people bringing some of the present-day challenges into the room. When the crowd spilled back outside into the street, attendees were met by pro-Palestine protesters chanting “Genocide Joe!” One person held a sign that read I’M VOTIN UNCOMMITTED!

Biden can keep leaning into his roots as an antidote to Trumpism, but it may not be enough. Near the end of his speech, he brought up Trump’s infamous “losers” and “suckers” remark about veterans. “Who the hell does he think he is?” Biden shouted.  He could have used more of this. Scranton Joe—a harmless, affable character—doesn’t necessarily inspire unwavering devotion. Biden has just over six months to find a message that can simultaneously ground him in the present and point toward the future. He can only sell so many tickets as a tribute act playing old hits.

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Updated at 6:17 p.m. ET on April 16, 2024

Donald Trump is among the most famous and most polarizing people alive. The task of selecting 12 impartial jurors who can render a fair verdict in the criminal trial of a former president is a first for America’s court system.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Welcome to pricing hell. Gaza is dividing Democrats. David Frum: Why Biden should not debate Trump

A Reasonable Middle Ground

Yesterday, jury selection began in Donald Trump’s first criminal trial, and today, seven jurors were selected. The New York trial, centered on accusations that Trump falsified business records to conceal a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, may be the only of Trump’s various legal cases to wrap up before the November election. Many Americans are set on their hopes for the trial’s outcome before it begins, which makes finding impartial jurors a real challenge. Ninety-six potential jurors were called into the courtroom yesterday—an usually large number—and more than half of them quickly raised their hand to say they couldn’t be impartial and thus needed to be dismissed. Some prospective jurors who had indicated yesterday that they could be impartial changed their mind today.

The task of the judge is not necessarily to select people who have no feelings about Trump—that’s near-impossible. Rather, the point is to select people who can be impartial (about both Trump and other potential witnesses), listen to evidence, and follow the law and the rules given by the court, Sharon Fairley, a professor from practice at the University of Chicago Law School, told me. The jurors selected so far, whose names haven’t been released, reportedly include a young corporate lawyer, a man originally from Ireland who works in sales, and a young Black woman who said that some of her friends have strong opinions about the former president but that she is not a political person.

Criminal convictions, Fairley reminded me, require a unanimous decision from the jury. So Trump’s lawyers are likely hoping for even a single holdout—a person who is independent in their thinking and perhaps not a stickler for following rules. The government’s lawyers, for their part, are likely looking for people who are intelligent and discerning, who believe in the rule of law, and who are able to see through the “smoke and mirrors” that the Trump defense may introduce to the courtroom, Fairley said. Lawyers from either side can dismiss 10 potential jurors for any reason (so far, both Trump’s lawyers and the prosecution have done this with six potential jurors). Beyond that, Fairley explained, the judge has discretion in selecting people who he feels could credibly set aside personal feelings to render a fair judgment.

Trump has held tight to his narrative that this trial is a politically motivated “witch hunt,” a tactic that will only add to the court’s unique challenges here. Usually, the prosecution is more likely to generate publicity about criminal trials than the defense, Valerie Hans, a law professor at Cornell University, told me in an email—most defendants do not “have the public microphone of Donald Trump.” Already, Hans noted, one prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, has been trying to draw a distinction for prospective jurors between what they have seen about the trial in the news and the actual evidence that they will go on to see.

Part of the court’s challenge is weeding out people who are actually able to be impartial versus those who say they are because they want to get on the jury for their own reasons, James J. Sample, a law professor at Hofstra University, told me in an email. Ideological jurors could come from either side, Sample noted: “Yes, Manhattan is mostly blue. But might there be one true believer who wants to cement themselves as a MAGA hero? Absolutely.”

How each prospective juror voted will be of interest to lawyers on either side, but it likely won’t be the deciding factor in who gets placed on the jury—and lawyers aren’t allowed to ask that question directly. Justice Juan M. Merchan’s 42 questions for would-be jurors, including ones about whether they are part of advocacy groups or have attended campaign events for Trump (or anti-Trump groups), “suggest an attempt to find a reasonable middle ground here—not ruling out anyone who has some views on Trump or disqualifying them based on their vote in 2020 or 2016, but also making sure they’re not rah-rah activists either for or against,” my colleague David Graham told me.

There’s also a simple irony at the core of this whole process: The type of person best suited to be a thoughtful and credible juror in this case will almost by definition know something about Donald Trump. “A hypothetical juror who had never heard of Mr. Trump at all,” Sample acknowledged, “would be such an uninformed citizen as to be of suspect legitimacy from the jump.”

The trial is expected to last about six weeks (though it could take longer). After the rest of the jury is chosen, the trial proceedings will kick off in earnest, with former Trump-world figures including Michael Cohen and possibly even Stormy Daniels herself expected to testify. But in the meantime, the public and the defendant (who seemed to nod off on the first day) will need to sit through more of the same. As David told me, “Monday’s start to the trial was both huge in historic terms and mostly very boring in substance.”

Related:

Trump’s alternate-reality criminal trial The cases against Trump: a guide

Today’s News

The U.S. Supreme Court justices considered whether the Justice Department can charge January 6 defendants with violating an obstruction statute—a decision that could affect the election-interference case against Donald Trump. Israel’s military chief said yesterday that Iran’s recent strike “will be met with a response” but did not specify a timeline or the scale of a retaliatory attack. A federal appeals court ruled that a West Virginia law, which bans transgender girls and women from playing on certain sports teams, violates the Title IX rights of a teen athlete.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

What Happens When You’ve Been on Ozempic for 20 Years?

By Gary Taubes

Of all the wonder drugs in the history of medicine, insulin may be the closest parallel, in both function and purpose, to this century’s miracle of a metabolic drug: the GLP-1 agonist. Sold under now-familiar brand names including Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro, these new medications for diabetes and obesity have been hailed as a generational breakthrough that may one day stand with insulin therapy among “the greatest advances in the annals of chronic disease,” as The New Yorker put it in December.

But if that analogy is apt—and the correspondences are many—then a more complicated legacy for GLP-1 drugs could be in the works. Insulin, for its part, may have changed the world of medicine, but it also brought along a raft of profound, unintended consequences …

With the sudden rise of GLP-1 drugs in this decade, I worry that a similar set of transformations could occur.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

How the Biden administration messed up FAFSA Salman Rushdie strikes back. The myth of the mobile millionaire Trump’s presidential-immunity theory is a threat to the chain of command.

Culture Break

Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Courtesy of the author; FPG / Getty; Tom Kelley / Getty.

Care for a loved one. With the right amount of self-awareness, you can learn parenting lessons from raising a dog, Kate Cray writes.

Watch. Recent prestige TV shows have featured difficult men: heroes who are resolutely alienated, driven to acts of violence they don’t want to inflict and can’t enjoy, Sophie Gilbert writes.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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