It's time for Congress to step in regarding President Biden's health. The debate was a disturbing example of the current mental state of the sitting President. The signs of possible dementia or Alzheimer's are alarming, and the White House is not being honest in its dealings with the American public or Congress in describing the President's health. Congress needs to demand transparency.

In 2023, Axios reported that Joe Biden was effectively limited to working between 10 am and 4 pm. Outside those times, it was a total crapshoot. Axios reaffirmed this reporting after the debate, describing Biden as fatigued with "verbal miscues."

What Axios describes and what Americans witnessed during the debate is a near-perfect description of sundowning. It occurs in patients with Althyzmers or dementia, who are hit with a state of confusion during the late afternoon and overnight.

The key to keeping patients experiencing this safe from the symptoms is maintaining predictable routines, solid sleep, staying away from unknown settings, and aiming for low-stress situations. In short, the White House is doing this with Biden most days, keeping him in Delaware whenever possible. Events, traveling, and more are impossible for Biden to accomplish.

That makes what Jill and Hunter Biden are doing inexcusable. Their demand that Joe Biden remain in office overrides any notion of his need to stay in a healthy environment. The debate stage with CNN was an unknown environment, late at night, and the pressure on Joe Biden made it hard to perform. He couldn't.

This brings us to Congress. The American people saw Joe Biden in full view last week. There's no hiding his condition or calling it a cheap fake. This is Joe Biden and the panic from Democrats is real.

If the panic over whether Joe Biden can run for office is accurate, we should be questioning something more fundamental: Can Joe Biden perform the duties of the office?

The Wall Street Journal's report from earlier in June said he was slipping while navigating the G7 Summit in Europe. The White House denied everything in that report, but it looks like an accurate investigative report after the debate. Biden has lost more than a step, and the American people need to know how and why.

If Biden can't run for office anymore, who runs the White House?

Congress needs to request Biden's medical records from the White House and any other examination. We don't need cognitive tests. Biden needs to have brain scans done to investigate one of the diseases that his symptoms suggest he has.

What I suspect is that these tests and results have already been done. And the results are being kept from the American public. The White House understands all too well how to navigate Biden's weaknesses, and they're doing everything but saying the word sundowning when describing what they do to manage Biden's weaknesses.

It's not good enough to laugh these things off as gaffes, age, or possible senility. The security of the United States demands that we know if the President, the man elected to hold the job, is the one doing things. No one elected Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, or any other member of the Biden family to run the country in his place. We elected Joe Biden.

We need to know if Joe Biden can't do the job before another election.

Additionally, if these medical test results already exist, this is probably a known issue in the White House. And if the White House knows, large mainstream outlets likely know too. It wouldn't shock me if the New York Times knew Biden had a diagnosis and wasn't running the story.

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward is right when he says journalists should break this story now, not later. "I think the answer here is in reporting, in seeking very aggressively, an explanation — what happened here [in the debate]?" Woodward said. "We don't want it to come out in some book or some memoir in a couple of years or a decade. We'd need to know now."

It's easy to imagine someone writing in a memoir in a few years about how everyone in the White House knew Biden had issues, but no one admitted it out loud. If a book is the thing that tells us Biden had medical issues and no one pursued them, that's a much larger problem.

If Biden has one of these medical issues, there's no shame. These diseases are horrible, and I wish them on no one. The problem is the cover-up. If Biden does have medical issues and the White House and press are hiding that from the American people, then we're looking at the scandal of the century. 

Acting angry at Donald Trump for "lies" while no one is asking hard questions about Biden's health is ignoring the forest for a single tree. 

Congress needs to step in and force honesty. Congress has a role if the press is too scared to do its job or too complicit. The people need to know if the President is up for the job. 

And if the White House refuses, issue subpoenas. At this point, it's worth the legal fight.