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      Pro-Trump multimillionaire and election denier boosts funds to far-right voter-conspiracy groups

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      The multimillionaire and prominent election denier Patrick Byrne has been boosting his funding to the Maga-allied America Project and using it to steer six-figure checks to far-right groups that push voting conspiracies in Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere, according to tax records and voting experts.Byrne, the former CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, said last fall that only $3m of the $30m the Florida-based project had raised at that point came from “the public”, with the rest coming from him.In 2022, the America Project almost doubled its revenues to $14.3m versus some $7.7m the prior year, according to tax records first disclosed by Issue One, a bipartisan political reform group.The America Project was launched in April 2021 by Byrne and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump when he was president; both Byrne and Flynn have been vocal purveyors of falsehoods that Trump lost the 2020 election due to fraud. They were also both at a meeting with Trump and others in late 2020 to brainstorm ways to overturn his loss.The project’s website features bogus claims about election fraud stemming from early and mail voting, and styles itself as “an America First non-profit organization defending rights and freedoms, election victory, and border security to save America”.The project also boasts that its goal is “to be a symphony conductor of the pro-freedom, pro-constitutional movement, synchronizing and magnifying the efforts of those who wish to ally with us through connecting, training, funding, and working together to save America”.In practice, the America Project and Byrne have sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Arizona-based We the People AZ Alliance, and Michigan-based United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc, triggering alarms by election watchdogs and some GOP veterans due to their incendiary election denialist stances and leaders.The Arizona alliance was co-founded by Shelby Busch, a vice-chair of the Maricopa county Republican party, who in late June was caught on video threatening to kill the top county election official, Stephen Richer, the Maricopa county recorder.Busch opined she would accept only “a good, Christian man that believes what we believe”.Richer, who is Jewish, said in a tweet: “This isn’t healthy. And it’s not responsible. And we shouldn’t want it as part of the Republican party” – noting Busch’s key role as a conservative activist.The Anti-Defamation League and some religious groups have condemned Busch, who is also the state chair to the Republican National Committee, for her remarks. Busch did not return calls seeking comment.Busch, who has been an adviser to Arizona Republican Senate candidate and major election denier Kari Lake, told Politico in a statement in June that “everyone knows I don’t like Richer” but said her comments were just a “joke” and “she would never condone violence”.The Arizona-based Republican consultant Tyler Montague told the Guardian “it takes a lot to make Maga world wince, but it happened when Shelby Busch said she would lynch Stephen Richer, and dog-whistled to Christian nationalists about needing someone with Christian values because Richer is Jewish”.“She was at the heart of promoting election fraud conspiracies, and is connected to Patrick Byrne, who funds the big lie and her Arizona group,” he said.Busch’s group has hauled in close to $400,000 from Byrne personally and the America project since the start of 2023, according to state campaign finance records. Of that total, Byrne has chipped in $280,000, while the America Project has given $120,000.Joe Flynn, Mike Flynn’s brother, who was president of the group for most of 2022, told the Guardian that the project tapped Busch as its Arizona “coordinator” for its 2022 poll-watching training, canvassing and “election integrity” program, dubbed Operation Eagles Wings.Unveiled in early 2022, Operation Eagles Wings was touted as an effort to “expose shenanigans at the ballot box” and to ensure “there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”. Byrne indicated early on that he was backing the operation with $3m.Campaign finance watchdogs raised red flags about Byrne’s and the project’s hefty funding of Busch’s operation.“This group has been bankrolled by deep-pocketed donors who are obsessed with fringe theories about election administration,” said Michael Beckel, Issue One’s research director.Citing Byrne and the MyPillow chief Mike Lindell as key funders of Busch’s group, Beckel added: “At a time when people across the political spectrum should be standing up to defend the integrity of our safe and secure elections, election deniers have used the We the People AZ Alliance to further erode trust in elections.”Neither Flynn is affiliated with the America Project any longer. Byrne did not return a phone call seeking comment.Elsewhere, Byrne and the America Project have donated more than $1.1m to a law firm and a group tied to the election conspiracist and attorney Stefanie Lambert. Lambert has notably defended Byrne in a $1.6bn lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems, who charged him with defamation for his claim the company helped rig the 2020 election.The America Project’s largest single donation in 2022, $700,000, went to the Michigan-based United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc, a group that Lambert co-founded, as Detroit News first reported. Another $430,000 went to Lambert’s Michigan law firm, according to 2022 tax records.Lambert was a central figure in the post-2020 election scramble by Trump allies to find non-existent fraud. Last August, she was indicted in Michigan for her alleged role in a scheme in 2021 to illegally access and tamper with voting machines.In a timing twist, Lambert was arrested in March on the Michigan charges after she appeared in court to defend Byrne against the Dominion charges.Other America Project largesse has gone to various groups and individuals who have track records for pushing voting conspiracies. In 2022 and 2021, for instance, the project paid $200,000 to 423 Catkins Maize LLC, which is tied to Jovan Pulitzer, known for his election denialist claims.Likewise in 2022 and 2021 together, the project doled out about $330,000 to Pennsylvania-based OGC Law LLC, which employs lawyer Gregory Teufel – who has tried without success to overturn a state law that permitted all residents to ask for no-excuse mail-in ballots.On a different Maga front, the America Project also gave $150,000 in 2022 to Brian Della Rocca, a Maryland-based lawyer who has done legal work for the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop at the center of the controversy about Hunter Biden’s laptop.To expand the project’s mission and muscle, Byrne in 2023 tapped Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tom Homan, to be its CEO; a hardliner on border policies Trump has said Homan will have a key post if he wins againAt the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Homan on Wednesday gave a fiery talk blasting Biden border and immigration policies, charging darkly that “this isn’t mismanagement, this isn’t incompetence, this is by design – it is a choice”.Besides his big checks to the America Project and allied groups, Byrne has tried to flex his muscles in other Maga efforts with election deniers.In a tweet last month, for instance, Byrne touted that Michael Flynn, who now leads the Maga-allied America’s Future, should be Trump’s vice-president – and painted a conspiratorial scenario.“FLYNN knows how to spring Trump from prison. The world is at war and we need a general,” Byrne tweeted.Flynn’s ties to Byrne were cemented at a rowdy White House meeting with Trump and other key election deniers on 18 December 2020, where Flynn and Byrne floated the idea of using the national guard to seize voting machines to help overturn Trump’s loss.When Byrne and Flynn, who Trump pardoned after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts he had with the Russian ambassador in 2016, launched the America Project, an early priority was seeking ways to block Joe Biden’s win in Arizona by promoting falsehoods about fraud.To that end, Byrne provided about $3.25m of $5.7m in funding raised by Cyber Ninjas, an obscure Florida firm with no experience in election audits that was tapped by Arizona’s Republican-led senate to review the Maricopa county election results. The firm’s final report found Biden actually got 99 more votes and Trump 261 fewer than originally counted. More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans coalesce as Democrats flail: week that upended US presidential race

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      They browsed Trump bobbleheads, Trump mugs (“Make coffee great again!”) and Trump T-shirts, including a new line celebrating his defiance of an assassin’s bullet. They lined up at food stalls for beef sticks, gourmet popcorn, Puerto Rican roasted chicken and the local speciality, fried cheese curds. Beer was flowing, the sun was shining and Republicans were experiencing something they had not felt for a long time: joy.This year’s Republican national convention in Milwaukee had the swagger of a party that believes it is on a glide path to the White House. Entirely in thrall to Donald Trump, it was more united than it has been in decades. The former US president might offer a notoriously dark and divisive vision but his supporters exuded optimism in what one journalist dubbed “the happiest place on Earth”.That was based not only on 78-year-old Trump’s strength but the weakness of his opponent. Joe Biden, 81, reeling from a calamitous debate performance and now suffering from the coronavirus, was facing growing calls from his party to quit the race. In contrast with Republicans’ harmony, Democrats are locked in a circular firing squad and painful struggle over the best way forward.With just over a hundred days until the election, Republicans have the momentum. An Emerson College poll published on Thursday found 46% of registered voters said they support Trump, compared with 42% for Biden and 12% undecided. Crucially, Trump was ahead in all seven battleground states that will decide the all-important electoral college.“It’s very clear the path to the electoral college for Trump has widened and for Biden it’s narrowed,” Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Milwaukee convention. “Even before the debate, before the assassination attempt, Biden was trailing.View image in fullscreen“The fundamental challenge for Biden and his campaign is they’ve been on their heels for months. The debate was the opportunity to get back on offence; obviously, it’s not. You feel it while you’re here that Trump is ahead and it’s his race to lose and Biden is behind with a divided party and without an obvious path forward.”This week’s Republican convention set out to consolidate the lead by appealing to moderate voters. It proved to be a disciplined operation, mostly avoiding topics such as abortion rights and the January 6 insurrection while toning down attacks on the media. There was no repeat of the “Lock her up!” chants aimed at Hillary Clinton that filled the low-morale convention hall in 2016.Walter added: “In 2016, because the party was so divided, what was unifying Republicans was their disdain for Hillary Clinton – all of the chants of ‘Lock her up’, all of the signs and T-shirts to ‘put Hillary in jail’. There’s not a whole lot of anti-Biden or anti-Harris stuff here that I’ve seen. It’s all pro-Trump, we’re united, we believe we can do this and don’t give Democrats, don’t give Biden, don’t give Harris any opportunity to get back in this game.”Trump himself may have given Democrats at least a half-chance with a Thursday night speech that rambled for more than an hour and a half – the longest televised convention speech in history – and regressed into his characteristic divisive themes and lies.But whereas the 2016 convention was marred by boos and infighting as Trump seized control, this one was defined by overwhelming displays of solidarity and a full embrace of his Maga agenda. Delegates brandished signs that included “Make America great again”, “Trump = success, Biden = failure”, “Trump America First. Biden America Last”, “American oil from American soil” and “Mass deportation now!”View image in fullscreenThe cult of personality extended to a Trump bust made of Indiana limestone, a book of Trump poetry fashioned from his tweets and Trump’s shoe in an exhibition of presidential footwear.Danny Willis, 25, chair of Delaware Young Republicans, said: “Now we have people taking shots at him – attempted assassination. We’re all here even more engaged, more inspired, more proud to vote here and make sure we get Donald Trump back in the White House.”That the ex-president’s life had been spared by a quarter of an inch was widely seen as divine intervention, elevating him to the status of a martyr. Some delegates wore ear bandages on the convention floor to express their support. Trump’s erstwhile primary election foes, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, showed up with full-throated endorsements.Even Asa Hutchinson, a Trump critic who also contested the primary, acknowledged: “Confidence is the right word. I’ve been to six Republican conventions and I’ve never seen a higher level of confidence as they go into the fall election.”Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas, advised Democrats to replace Biden before it is too late: “You got to switch. You got to roll the dice. Take a chance on somebody else. It’s strength versus weakness. Strength wins every time.”Self-isolating at his Delaware beach house, after testing positive for Covid-19, Biden now faces the biggest decision of his political career. But the walls are closing in on the embattled Democrat.A stream of dismal polling has deepened Democrats’ pessimism about the president’s chances of winning re-election. A survey this week by AP-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research found that among his own supporters, two-thirds of Democrats now say Biden should not be the nominee.His latest bout of Covid-19 was terribly timed – interrupting a trip to battleground Nevada, a multi-day trip designed to confront a host of compounding weaknesses: the president’s poor standing on immigration and the economy as well as his sliding support among Latinos and Black voters.View image in fullscreenA fiery speech at the NAACP annual convention in Las Vegas, during which the president touted his accomplishments on behalf of “Black America” and declared that Kamala Harris, the 59-year-old vice-president, “could be president of the United States”, did little to quell widening dissent within the party. Online clips of his flubbed lines circulated, ensuring that even one of his most vigorous appearances since the debate came up short.Daniella Ballou-Aares, the chief executive of a coalition of business leaders called Leadership Now Project, which has urged the president to “pass the torch” to protect American democracy, acknowledged: “Every scenario is risky right now. There’s no risk-free scenario.“But there’s a very strong bench in the Democratic party so the feasibility of getting a good ticket is certainly there,” she added. “Of course it’s going to be a hard run to win, but that risk seems like a better bet than the current path that we’re on.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs of Friday, more than 30 congressional Democrats, including three US senators, had called on the president to step aside, while the party’s top leaders, including Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader; Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader; and Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, all reportedly telling the president in private that his path to victory is all but extinguished.In their pleas to the president, they praise his half-century of public service and his accomplishments in the White House, which included the passage of landmark climate legislation, an infrastructure package, a gun control measure and billions in dollars in aid to Ukraine. But they also appeal to his patriotism, saying he helped to “save” the country from Trump in 2020, but now risks handing the former president a second term.Some high-profile Democrats are rising to Biden’s defense, notably two progressive powerhouses, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York representative. In a 50-minute Instagram live stream, Ocasio-Cortez blamed Democratic “elites” for belatedly coming forward with their concerns about the president’s age without considering the amount of chaos replacing him would inject into the race.Biden ally Rev Al Sharpton, who spoke to the president on Monday before his NAACP speech, also cautioned against pressuring Biden to resign.“Let him make up his mind,” he said. “If he decides to walk, let him walk with his dignity, and if he decides to stay in it, he’s earned the right.”Sharpton was skeptical of certain members’ motivations for calling on Biden to drop out and said he was dismayed by the degree of “disrespect” being extended to a president with a lengthy record of legislative accomplishments. He said some of the calls appeared to be playing to a “centrist kind of voting base”as many progressive, Black and Hispanic leaders stand by the president.“If you want to talk about contrast, look at how incoherent Donald Trump was last night. He was all over the place,” Sharpton said, noting that “not one Republican has asked him to step aside, so what’s the standard?”Publicly, Biden has dug in. In recent media appearances, he’s said he was “1,000%” certain he would continue as the party’s nominee, unless he was “hit by a train” or diagnosed with a “medical condition”. But his campaign is struggling to break through, with every attempt to turn the attention back on Trump and his anti-democratic agenda swamped by questions about the president’s mental acuity and fitness for office.View image in fullscreen“They don’t know how to turn this around,” Frank Luntz, a pollster and consultant, said recently, warning that Biden risked suffering a “death of a thousands cuts”.An overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates are pledged to Biden, who was expected to be formally nominated as the party’s standard-bearer at the party’s convention in Chicago next month. But amid the turmoil, the thousands of delegates elected to decide the party’s nominee are suddenly unsure how to proceed and say they are being given little direction from the party.They are wrestling with technical questions – what would an open convention look like, how should they vote – but also how do they, as the rules state, “reflect the sentiments” of those who elected them if the candidate ends his campaign?Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Democratic national convention’s rules committee, said: “We’ve never had a situation quite like this where the primaries were over, very clearcut winner, and yet something was discovered, unclosed, whatever you want to call it, after the end of the primaries that caused people to severely doubt whether or not their nominee should proceed. We’ve never faced this.”Speaking on a briefing call organized by Delegates Are Democracy, a newly launched initiative intended to help educate delegates about the nomination process, Kamarck said Harris was the most likely replacement for Biden at this late stage in the election cycle – not because she is necessarily the best candidate but because she has major advantages, including that she has already been vetted at the national level and is privy to daily security briefings.“With every day, with every minute,” she said, “we’re running out of time.”Yet if the past month has proved anything, it is that there are more twists, turns and unknowns to come. John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “The editor of my book said to me yesterday: ‘Is it over?’ I said: ‘Absolutely not!’ Not only barring the unforeseen – we’ve already had the unforeseen a few times already.“Imagine what could happen over the next four months.” More

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      in US Politics

      More Democrats call for Biden to exit 2024 race as president vows to return to campaign trail – live

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      Political publication Punchbowl is reporting that Gabe Vasquez, a New Mexico representative, has joined the ranks of Democratic party members calling on Biden to step aside for the November election.As of 1:51pm PT, Reuters counted that 32 of the 264 Democrats in Congress had openly called for Biden to end his campaign, while others continue to pressure the president behind the scenes.In an op-ed published by the Boston Globe on Friday, Seth Moulton, a Democratic representative, explains how he came to the “crushing” realization that Biden should not be the Democratic candidate facing Trump in November.Moulton had already expressed his opinion that Biden should step aside. But in the article, he recounts seeing Biden, whom he described as a treasured friend and mentor, at a recent event in Normandy observing the 80th anniversary of D-Day. He claims the president, with whom he had spent time with frequently since winning his House seat in 2014, seemed not to recognize him.“Of course, that can happen as anyone ages, but as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem,” Moulton said.Given Biden’s apparent state of health and the recent assassination attempt on Trump, Moulton said he is “no longer confident” Biden can win re-election. “The president should bow out of the race,” he said.“The harsh reality is that all the characteristics that have made Biden an irrepressible force – the energy, the vitality, the sharp, scrappy wit – are flickering,” Moulton added.Moulton is part of a growing group of Democratic lawmakers urging the president to exit. He urged more members of his party to come forward and “speak the truth about President Biden before it’s too late”.“We have a choice to make,” he said. “To my colleagues who are deeply concerned but who haven’t said so publicly: Let’s demonstrate the courageous, forward-looking leadership that Americans tell us they want in their politics and rob the Trump-Vance ticket of the opponent they want.”The White House has issued a statement on nationwide technology disruptions Friday due to outages of Microsoft devices caused by an update to security software CrowdStrike.Joe Biden will “continue to receive updates on the CrowdStrike global tech outage”, a senior administration official said, adding the White House is “in regular contact with CrowdStrike’s executive leadership and tracking progress on remediating affected systems”.“We have offered US government support. Our understanding is that this is not a cyber attack, but rather a faulty technical update,” the statement said. More below:
      The White House has been convening agencies to assess impacts to the US government’s operations and entities around the country. At this time, our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains, and 911 centers are able to receive and process calls. We are assessing impact to local hospitals, surface transportation systems, and law enforcement closely and will provide further updates as we learn more. We stand ready to provide assistance as needed.
      Joining the growing chorus of Democratic members urging Biden to take a backseat in the upcoming election, Morgan McGarvey, a representative of Kentucky, said in a post to X Friday that “the stakes are too high” for Biden to remain in the race.“There is no joy in the recognition that [Biden] should not be our nominee in November,” he said. “But the stakes are too high and we can’t risk the focus of the campaign being anything other than Donald Trump, his Maga extremists, and the mega-wealthy dark money donors who are prepared to destroy our path toward a more perfect union with Trump’s Project 2025.”Earlier on Friday, Kamarck, a member of the DNC’s rules committee, told delegates and reporters that the move to hold a virtual roll call was not an effort to “rubber stamp” Biden’s nomination but “born out of just paranoia about the Republicans in Ohio”.If the party were to formally nominate Biden and then he chose to drop out, she said they would simply adopt a new rule and hold a new roll call vote.“In other words, this doesn’t mean we’re stuck with one person if that person isn’t willing to run,” she said, adding that a misunderstanding of the process had “turned into sort of a mountain and a molehill” among anxious Democrats.Democratic officials pressed members of the Democratic national convention’s rules committee to move ahead with a virtual roll call vote ahead of the party’s August convention.The meeting took place on Friday, as the walls appeared to be closing in on Biden.The move to nominate Biden virtually sparked a backlash among Democrats who saw it as a way to jam through the president’s nomination before he could be pushed out. Responding to the outrage, the co-chairs of the rules committee said the vote would not take place before 1 August and would be completed by 7 August, previously the deadline for presidential candidates to qualify for the ballot in Ohio. Though the Ohio legislature has since changed the law, extending the deadline to accommodate the DNC’s mid-August convention, some Democratic officials say it would be foolhardy to take the risk, given that Ohio Republicans control the legislature and had to be arm-twisted by the state’s governor to address the issue in the first place.Dana Remus, an outside legal counsel for the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee, encouraged the convention to proceed with a virtual nomination in advance to avoid the possibility of a legal challenge by Ohio Republicans, according to the New York Times.“Unfortunately, at this moment in time, we have to assume that everything about the election process that Republicans and affiliated groups can challenge, they will challenge,” she said, according to the newspaper. “No matter the strength of their arguments.”The rules committee would hold another meeting later this month to decide on whether to adopt a virtual roll call vote.The webinar was hosted by Delegates Are Democracy and Welcome Party, organizations which are working to inform confused delegates about their options, said host Chris Dempsey. He has been speaking with dozens of delegates who say the process is opaque and that party leaders have been gatekeeping information. He stressed that Delegates for Democracy was not advocating for Biden to withdraw, but was instead trying to guide delegates who are often local volunteers without deep legal training about the rules.“We think that conventions are essential at putting forward strong nominees,” Dempsey said. “We can beat Donald Trump in November. But we know that we need credible sources of information to share with delegates. We want to be a place that delegates, the public, the media can come and get good information about how the process works.”A Biden withdrawal would set of a mad dash for delegates, Karmack said. A process would start on the floor, with potential candidates soliciting signatures on a petition to get on a nomination ballot – no more than 50 from any one state from 300 to 600 delegates. “They can’t sign every petition,” she said.“The people, these 4000-plus delegates, would have a lot of phone calls,” she said. “I suspect that somebody the DNC or the state parties would organize delegate meetings that would be open to the public – because all DNC meetings are open to the public – for the candidates to come and talk to the delegates, because they’d have to win over the delegates.”She likened the process to a mini-primary, with delegates as the voting audience, “scrunched into three weeks or something. It’d be incredibly tight.” The question at the convention would then become whether a consensus had formed on a new nominee.The nomination for vice president would be held on a separate vote, she said. “I imagine what would happen is that whoever emerged as the front runner – and maybe there’d be two or three of them – would all name their vice-presidential candidates. But then we’d have an open vote for vice president. It could get quite confusing. But this assumes all of this assumes that there’s a contest. And I for one am very skeptical that there’ll be much of a contest.”Ohio may still present a problem for any new candidate, because Ohio state law requires notice by August 9. Ohio lawmakers changed the law in July but it’s unclear if that change legally goes into effect in time for it to assist.Delegates to the Democratic national convention can more or less do whatever they want in a floor vote, rules experts said in a webinar about the process Friday morning.Elaine Karmack, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, founding director of Center for Effective Public Management, and a member of the DNC’s rules committee, discussed concerns delegates have been raising about a process that seems opaque, largely because it hasn’t been employed at all since 1980 and never under these conditions.Delegates are expected to vote for the person they’re pledged to. But the convention rules contain a loophole, she said. “The loophole ‘is in all good conscience’. That was added after the very, very difficult and bitter 1980 convention.”At that convention, Senator Ted Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter in primaries and then a floor fight. At the time, delegates could be removed by state leaders if they changed their vote. The conscience clause emerged after that, to prevent delegates from acting like robots, Karmack said.“On the Democratic side, there is no such thing as Joe Biden releasing his delegates,” Karmack said. “And Joe Biden gets this. I don’t know why the rest of the press doesn’t get it. Joe Biden said in his Nato press conference, he said, quote, the delegates can do whatever the hell they want to do. And that is basically true.”The delegate rules require their vote to “reflect the sentiments” of those who elected them. That phrase has never really been tested, Karmack said.Kamala Harris will participate in a call with major Democratic donors this afternoon at the request of senior advisors to the president, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to the Guardian.The New York Times first reported the vice-president will speak on a call “endorsed by Reid Hoffman”, a co-founder of LinkedIn who is one of the party’s biggest donors.“We continue to find ourselves in a rapidly evolving environment,” Hoffman wrote in an email obtained by the Times. “With the stakes as high as they are this cycle, we have to remain focused on the critical work that needs to be done to protect our democracy.”Her comments were expected to reflect comments made recently during a campaign stop in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Thursday, during which she called the looming contest against Donald Trump the “most existential, consequential and important election of our lifetime”.Two more House Democrats have called on the president to “pass the torch” and “release his delegates” as the president signals a defiant return to the campaign trail next week.The message is clear: the calls will not stop, despite Biden’s insistence he’s not going anywhere. Even if the president doesn’t believe he should step down, it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how he can continue without the support of so many in his own party.Minnesota representative Betty McCollum, said Biden should “release his delegates and empower Vice President Harris to step forward to become the Democratic nominee for president,” in a statement provided to the Star Tribune.Meanwhile, Kathy Castor, a Florida representative, told an NBC affiliate in Tampa that now was an “exciting time to possibly pass the torch”, during an interview with a Tampa-based news channel.“Kamala Harris is a fighter and I have full confidence in her,” she said.Joe Biden’s coronavirus symptoms are easing. He’s taking the anti-viral drug Paxlovid, as he isolates in Delaware after flying back early from events in Nevada on Wednesday, when he tested positive for Covid-19.He’s suffering from a non-productive cough and hoarseness, primarily, the White House said.It issued a statement, which you can read here. The variant of the virus that the president caught has not yet been identified.There is someone important hanging out in Washington, DC today though – US vice-president Kamala Harris.She didn’t have anything on her official White House schedule today but she’s materialized at the opening of a pop-up ice-cream shop owned by Tyra Banks.According to the pool report, Harris ordered the “Cap Hill Crunch” flavor. She was accompanied by her grandnieces, one of whom ordered the Chocolate GooGoo cake flavor.Not surprisingly, the vice president did not answer questions about Biden’s political future or her own.It comes to something when a president of the United States and commander-in-chief of the US armed forces makes news because someone said he asked pointed questions and “made decisions”, but, as Joe Biden would say, “Anyway…”Here’s the latest from Reuters:Joe Biden has been engaged and asked pointed questions, the top US general said on Friday, amid questions about the president’s health since he appeared frail and at times lost his train of thought in a recent debate against Republican Donald Trump.
      On all the times I’ve engaged with the president, he’s been engaged. He’s asked very pointed questions, and made decisions,” said Gen CQ Brown, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, to the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
      Hello US politics blog readers, it’s been another extraordinary morning in political news even if Washington DC is a bit of a ghost town, with Joe Biden bunkering in Delaware, Congress on recess and Republicans wandering home from their convention in Milwaukee.But there couldn’t be more drama and the day feels young so stick with Guardian US and we’ll bring you the developments as they happen.Incidentally, we hope you can read this because you dodged the global IT failure, and you can also read all the developments in that story, live, here.Here’s where things stand in US politics:

      High profile Democratic congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California and Ohio freshman representative Greg Landsman brought the number of members of Congress who have called on Joe Biden to get out of his re-election race to 30.

      Joe Biden remained defiant, despite isolating out of the public eye in Rehoboth because he caught Covid, saying he’ll be back on the campaign trail next week. This despite pressure mounting for him to step aside from the top of the Democrats’ Biden-Harris 2024 ticket.

      Mark Heinrich of New Mexico became the third sitting US Senator to call for Biden to quit the race, urging the president to step aside for the good of the country and pass the torch, saying the party needs a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November, for the sake of US democracy.

      Biden also issued a statement condemning Russia for sentencing a Wall Street Journal reporter to 16 years for, as the US government and media continue to assert, simply doing his job. “Journalism is not a crime,” Biden said, as a Russian court found Evan Gershkovich guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison. The trial was widely viewed as a sham. Biden is pushing for his release.

      Congressmen Jared Huffman of California, Marc Veasey of Texas, Chuy Garcia of Illinois, and Marc Pocan of Wisconsin wrote a letter addressed to the US president calling on him to step aside from the reelection race.

      Before Joe Biden said he’s be back on the campaign trail next week, yet another media report bubbled up saying that members of Biden’s family has begun discussing an “exit” plan, citing “two people familiar” with the situation. The report suggests Biden has yet to make a final decision, but that his closest allies believe he is likely to step aside.

      Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s reelection campaign chair, said he is the “leader of our campaign and the country” during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the president’s favorite show. “He is the best person to take on Donald Trump and prosecute that case,” she said.

      Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave an interview in which he declined to make an endorsement in the 2024 election, but called Donald Trump’s reaction – raising a fist and mouthing fight, after his ear was bloodied by a bullet during an assassination attempt at one of his rallies, in Pennsylvania last weekend, “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”.
      Ohio representative Greg Landsman is a freshmen congressman, representing the state’s first district, which includes Cincinnati.He took office in January 2023 after being elected in the midterms and previously serving as a city councillor for almost five years until December 2022, so spanning the coronavirus pandemic.In a statement this afternoon he followed, in what is becoming almost protocol, showering Joe Biden with praise: “It is time for President Biden to step aside and allow us to nominate a new leader who can reliably and consistently make the case against Donald Trump and make the case for the future of America.” More

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      Pressure mounts on Biden as tally of Democrats urging withdrawal passes 30

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      A beleaguered Joe Biden entered potentially the most decisive weekend of his 50-year political career on Friday as the growing list of Democratic members of Congress calling on him to step aside surpassed 30.Biden is recovering from Covid-19 in self-isolation at his home in Delaware and reportedly feeling “angry and betrayed” by allies and speculation mounted that he might be preparing to announce his withdrawal from the race.Advisers were reported to be discussing the details, timing and setting of a possible withdrawal announcement, and a mood of resignation before Biden’s departure was said to be rampant among his campaign staff.With six in 10 Democratic voters telling an AP-Norc Centre for Public Affairs Research poll released on Friday that Kamala Harris would make a good president, allies of the vice-president were making discreet preparations for her to assume the top of the presidential ticket, courting donors and crafting a new message to be used in the event she becomes the candidate.A rare glimmer of light for Biden came in a letter on Thursday signed by more than 1,400 Black female supporters, who argued that he should remain the candidate, and that any attempt to change the ticket would “circumvent the will of millions of voters who participated in a democratic process” in the primaries. Another public statement of support on Thursday came from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman, who during an Instagram live stream on Thursday urged Democrats to reconsider their efforts to push Biden out.On Friday, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who has become one of the Biden’s most vocal progressive supporters since the debate fiasco, also urged support for Biden.The Congressional Hispanic caucus’s campaign arm also announced on Friday that it was endorsing Biden, which is no surprise given the group’s opposition to Trump but noteworthy at a moment when the president is fighting for his political life. “Another Trump presidency would be disastrous to the Latino community across the country. Make no mistake, Latinos nationwide will bear the brunt of the consequences of a second Trump presidency,” the group’s chairwoman, Linda Sánchez, said.But with more than 30 Democrats in Congress, including the leading California representative Adam Schiff, having now called on Biden to step down, the president was said to be angry at senior figures in the party for encouraging the discontent. Chief among them is Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who has tried to persuade Biden of his declining poll numbers, as well as Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, who Biden reportedly feels have undermined him through their conspicuous silence.After weeks of defiantly stating that he will remain the Democratic nominee, despite concerns about his age and mental acuity in the wake of last month’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump, some media outlets were reporting that Biden was reconsidering his position. “Reality is setting in,” a source close to Biden told the New York Times, adding that it would not be surprising if Biden announced his withdrawal soon to allow Harris to take the nomination.“I don’t see how [Biden] can outmanoeuvre the sustained attacks,” Politico quoted a Democratic figure close to the White House as saying. “It feels like the ending is near.”Biden’s resolve had reportedly been shaken by a combination of the intensive machinations of Pelosi, fresh poll data from swing states showing his path to an electoral college victory narrowing, and a boycott by key donors, the latest of whom reportedly was the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and billionaire Michael Moritz.Pelosi, long one of his most important allies, is said to have used her knowledge of polling data and the political map to persuade him that his position is weak.Biden has repeatedly insisted that he has polling evidence showing he could win, relying on data from his aide Mike Donilon. But when he made the argument to Pelosi in a recent phone call, she told him to “put Donilon on the phone” so she could counter it with her own polling and implying that the president was not being kept informed, the New York Times reported.Public pressure intensified further on Thursday when the Senate Democrats Jon Tester of Montana and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico became the second and third to publicly urge Biden to step aside. Many more than the 30-plus congressional Democrats who have publicly called for his withdrawal have done so in private.Four House members – Jared Huffman of California, Marc Veasey of Texas, Chuy Garcia of Illinois, and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin – issued the plea jointly Friday.“We believe the most responsible and patriotic thing you can do in this moment is to step aside as our nominee while continuing to lead our party from the White House,” they wrote to Biden. “Mr President, you have always put our country and our values first. We call on you to do it once again, so that we can come together and save the country we love.”Three further separate calls were made by Zoe Lofgren of California, a close Pelosi ally, Sean Casten of Illinois, and Greg Landsman of Ohio, whose seat is one of the Republicans’ top targets in November’s election.Allies of Pelosi depicted her as exercising sensitivity towards Biden – by recognising his achievements as president, long record of political service and the fact that he has Covid – while subtly using gentle persuasion.“She’s like a magician,” one source told the Hill. “She’s extraordinarily intentional. She’s trying hard to keep the balance and helping him reach a decision by gently pulling, never pushing.”That cut little ice with Biden’s allies, one of whom compared his fate to Julius Caesar.“People who have known this man for 30, 40 years are stabbing this man in the front and the back,” a senior campaign and administration aide told Politico. “They are JULIUS CAESAR-ing this man.”Biden himself was reported to share such sentiments, telling aides that he feels “hurt and betrayed” at how the party’s leading figures – who he has previously derided as “elites” – have tried to push him out.One Biden ally told NBC News that the party leaders now trying to force him from the ticket were to blame for Trump’s victory in the 2016 election.“Can we all just remember for a minute that these same people who are trying to push Joe Biden out are the same people who literally gave us all Donald Trump? In 2015, Obama, Pelosi, [Chuck] Schumer [the Democratic Senate majority leader] pushed Biden aside in favour of Hillary; they were wrong then, and they are wrong now,” the source said.“Perhaps we should learn a few lessons from 2016; one of them is polls are BS. And two, maybe, just maybe, Joe Biden is more in touch with actual Americans than Obama-Pelosi-Schumer?”Biden’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, continued to stress that Biden had “work to do” but said the campaign did not have its “head in the sand”.“For every person that has said that they are concerned, we’ve had another person that’s seen him and they’ve said you are our guy and we want to be with you,” she said, emphasizing that Biden’s campaign trail appearances have been reassuring to the campaign. “The more and more people that see Joe Biden out there post-debate they are reassured.”Such defiance seemed increasingly rare inside the Biden campaign, however, with CNN reporting that some staff had undergone a “quiet quit” process. “I don’t think you can find a person who is off the record saying he should stay in,” one told the network. “There’s a growing sense that it’s game over.”

      Lauren Gambino contributed reporting More

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      Democrats cautiously optimistic after Trump’s ad-libbed convention speech

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      As Donald Trump got into his stride at the Republican national convention on Thursday night, largely ad-libbing one of the longest presidential acceptance speeches in US history, the adulation among his Make America Great Again (Maga) crowd inside the hall was matched outside by a cautious sigh of relief from Democrats.After several painful weeks of Democratic party implosion, as an ageing Joe Biden self-isolates with Covid while calls for him to step down mount relentlessly, Trump managed to give despairing Democrats something they least expected: hope. Van Jones, a former special adviser to Barack Obama, put it succinctly on CNN.“He had the whole world in his hands. If he had stayed with that unity message, he could have caused problems, but he could not help himself.”For the first 15 minutes Trump was on point, and had millions of prime-time American viewers where he wanted them. His right ear still bandaged, he described the attempt to kill him that he so narrowly dodged last Saturday in powerful yet subdued terms.Was this the new, humane Trump, the contemplative and caring national unifier that Republican strategists had promised would be on stage?But then, in a puff, it was back to business as usual. For the next hour and a quarter, old Trump was firmly in the saddle.He dished out insults – “crazy Nancy Pelosi” – demonized undocumented immigrants – “illegal killers and criminals” – and even revived his bizarre hero worship of the “late, great Hannibal Lecter” from The Silence of the Lambs.By the count of one factchecker, the former president committed at least 22 bold-faced lies including his equally bizarre claim that “107%” of jobs created under Biden have been taken by “illegal aliens”. (In fact, 15m jobs have been added under the Biden administration, while up to 2.5 million undocumented immigrants have entered the country).For Democrats dismayed by Trump’s lead in opinion polls, by the thought that as the survivor of an assassination attempt he is now untouchable, and by talk of a new, restrained iteration of the former president emerging, this was manna from heaven. “This was the first good thing that’s happened to Democrats in the last three weeks,” said David Axelrod, chief strategist for Obama’s presidential campaigns. “It reminded everyone why Donald Trump is fundamentally unpopular with everyone outside this room.”Axelrod added on social media that Trump’s undisciplined address had blown what had been a strikingly controlled and well-choreographed Republican convention. The most hot-headed speakers in Milwaukee had been confined to earlier time slots where they could do less damage with daytime viewers.Meanwhile, the prime-time roster of speakers stayed largely on message, hewing to the theme of a post-shooting national-unifying Trump.Which promptly went up in smoke when the man himself returned to his dystopian vision of how the Democrats were “destroying our country” and pushing the world to the “edge of World War III”.Seasoned political observers could sense how Trump’s speech was stiffening Democrats’ spines in real time. Ezra Klein, a prominent New York Times columnist and podcaster, noted on X that “no Democrat watching that speech thought Trump unbeatable”.The rightwing editor of the Free Press, Bari Weiss, said that before Trump’s acceptance speech the consensus was a Trump landslide. After it? “Now it’s like find a Dem with a pulse who can read a teleprompter and like: toss up!”None of this means that the Democrats are out of the woods. Far from it. It is quite possible that a catastrophic descent into chaos and acrimony over Biden and who might replace him has only just begun.The Trump campaign will also have good material to work with from those first 15 minutes of the speech as they carve up online-friendly snippets for widespread dissemination to the American public. Far more voters are likely to consume these bite-sized packages, with Trump talking emotionally about the attack – “I’m supposed to be dead” – or about unity, than will have slogged through the entire 90-minute screed.What has changed though was the sense that had been gripping a growing proportion of Democrats that it was already game over. All that remained to be decided was whether to emigrate to Canada or Portugal.Now even some Republicans are fretting about a possible change of leadership at the top of the Democratic party. The governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, told Politico that if a switch from Biden happened, “everything would change”.It would energise the party, Sununu said. Independent voters would reward the Democrats, saying: “‘Hey, none of us liked that whole Biden-Trump ticket to start with. You guys had the courage to change your nominee out,’” Sununu said.Some commentators are of the view that the fresh shoot of optimism that some Democrats felt after Trump’s acceptance speech might in itself encourage a push to get Biden to step aside. As Klein put it, “the best argument against the party replacing Biden was fatalism; if you’ll lose anyway, may as well lose conventionally”.Now that the new Trump has morphed back into the old Trump, that logic no longer applied. His acceptance speech, Klein said, “was an antidote to fatalism”. More

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      Biden wants to see proof he can’t win. The polls show a nail-bitingly close race

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      Despite reporting that Joe Biden might be becoming more receptive to calls for him to step aside, he has for weeks rejected calls from within his party to end his candidacy for the presidency. Nothing but an intervention from the “Lord Almighty” would keep him from being the Democratic nominee, he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. He was “1,000%” remaining in the race, “unless I get hit by a train”, he told Complex’s Chris “Speedy” Morman. Only a “medical condition” would push him out, he told BET’s Ed Gordon.But he also indicated during a high-stakes news conference last week that he might be persuaded to step aside if his team came to him and said: “There’s no way you can win.” However, the 81-year-old president quickly followed up: “No one is saying that. No poll says that.”Many Democrats have become increasingly convinced that the president is on track to lose re-election. Among them they share bleak polls indicating Biden’s continued presence on the ticket may also imperil the party’s chances of winning control of either chamber of Congress, while expressing alarm that the president has apparently not grasped the gravity of their predicament.When Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination in Milwaukee on Thursday, he had opened his largest national lead yet, according to a new CBS News poll.Publicly, Biden has declared the race against Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, a “toss up” while his campaign has presented what it says is a clear path to victory. The White House, meanwhile, has fiercely disputed numerous reports that Biden is considering dropping out of the race.Though top-line polling shows a relatively stable – and nail-bitingly close – contest for the White House, the data paints a worrying picture for the president and his party.Trump holds a narrow but consistent edge in almost every national poll since Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, which compounded existing concerns about his fitness to serve another term. Internal Democratic polling reportedly contains even more calamitous predictions for the party.Many of the public polling results are within the margin of error and there is variability depending on whether the survey considers likely voters or registered voters and when third-party candidates are included. Few surveys have yet to assess the race since the assassination attempt on Trump while he was campaigning in Pennsylvania last weekend.Battleground state surveys also tend to show the former president pulling away by an even wider margin, unnerving Democrats who are deeply fearful of a Trump second term. Earlier this month, the Cook Political Report, an elections prognosticator moved three key swing states – Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – from “toss up” to “lean Republican”. In a recent CBS News/YouGov poll, Trump held an edge across seven swing states.Of deep concern to Democrats were a pair of New York Times/Siena College state polls that showed Biden trailing Trump in the must-win battleground of Pennsylvania and narrowly leading him in Virginia, a state the president carried by 10 percentage points in 2020.Deep polarization means there are only so many truly undecided voters whose choice will determine the outcome of the election – an estimated 6% of voters in six states. Many of them are so-called “double haters” meaning they strongly dislike both presidential candidates. The result is a dynamic in which huge political events – like Trump being convicted by a Manhattan jury of 34 felony counts or Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, which precipitated calls for his withdrawal – have little impact on the overall trajectory of the race.A new survey appears to support that pattern. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken after the assassination attempt against Trump found no major shift in voter sentiment. According to the poll, Trump led Biden by 2 percentage points among registered voters, which was within the margin of error.By other metrics, Trump is in a considerably more desirable position. While both candidates are deeply unpopular, voters believe they will be better off economically under a Trump presidency. They trust the former president more on key issues, including the handling of inflation, immigration and, to a lesser extent, matters of foreign policy, an area Biden counts among his strong suits. More voters trust Biden on abortion policy and express confidence in his ability to work with members of the opposing party, which Americans say they want from their elected officials.The CBS News poll, meanwhile, found that just 28% of voters think Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president. By contrast, nearly half of voters agreed that the 78-year-old former president had the mental acuity to serve as president. More Republicans than Democrats say they will definitely vote this year, it found, which tracks with polling that shows Trump voters are much more enthusiastic about their nominee than Biden voters are about theirs.According to a poll by the Pew Research Center, 63% of voters describe both Biden and Trump as embarrassing, while roughly a quarter said they consider Biden “mentally sharp” – down from 53% in 2021. The survey found Trump with a 4 percentage point lead over Biden nationally.As Biden publicly fights for his political survival, he has dismissed his detractors as “elites” and members of Washington DC’s “chattering class” who have long underestimated him. Yet a new survey by AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research this week found that among his own supporters, two-thirds of Democrats now say he should not be the nominee. More

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      Convicted criminals take Republican stage despite focus on ‘law and order’

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      The Republican party that promised in its 2024 policy platform to restore “law and order” as a “pillar” of “American civilisation” packed up and left Milwaukee on Friday after a convention featuring numerous felons.The most prominent was the keynote speaker: Donald Trump, the former president turned nominee who in May was convicted in New York on 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star.Trump also awaits trial on at least 14 and as many as 54 other criminal charges, and in addition has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars in civil cases for business fraud and defamation arising from a rape claim a judge said was “substantially true”.But there was also Peter Navarro, once Trump’s trade adviser, who addressed the convention on Wednesday fresh out of a Florida jail where he served four months for criminal contempt of Congress.“I went to prison so you won’t have to,” declared Navarro – who was convicted for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the House January 6 committee – to a jubilant crowd that responded with a standing ovation.Another former Trump aide turned convicted criminal in attendance was Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager in 2016. Three years later he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on charges including bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering and witness tampering, arising from the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.In 2020 Trump pardoned Manafort, who later wrote a memoir called Political Prisoner. At the convention, Manafort was briefly linked with an organising role before backing off, though he was still in Milwaukee to tell Fox News: “I’ve done 10 conventions. This is the best.”Roger Stone, who like Manafort is a longtime operative convicted on charges arising from the Russia investigation, was also at the convention in Milwaukee.Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison after being convicted of criminal charges including witness tampering and obstructing Congress. He never set foot in jail, as Trump commuted his sentence.Rod Blagojevich attended as well. In July 2011, the former Democratic governor of Illinois was convicted on 17 criminal charges, including bribery, fraud and extortion, arising from an attempt to sell Barack Obama’s US Senate seat.Blagojevich was jailed for 14 years. In 2020, Trump commuted his sentence. This week, Blagojevich told NBC: “I think President Trump is the most demonised political figure in American history, and I know something about being demonised.”Another former Trump aide jailed for criminal contempt of Congress over January 6 did not make it to the convention hall, but Steve Bannon was getting updates via phone from his daughter in Wisconsin to his federal prison in Connecticut.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He’s doing good,” Maureen Bannon told Politico. “He’s able to see the news in there. Read. We can email him articles. So he’s still getting a sense of what’s going on while he’s a political prisoner.”The irony of “the party of law and order” being led by one criminal and welcoming other criminals was not lost on many observers.One of the defining elements of authoritarianism is selective application of the law,” wrote Will Saletan in the Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative publication.“In fascist movements, ‘law and order’ is invoked against scapegoats and political enemies, while the leader and his allies are exempt from legal accountability.“This distinction has become central to Donald Trump’s Republican party.” More

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      Donald Trump’s run of good luck could end this weekend – if Joe Biden does the right thing | Jonathan Freedland

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      You can see why they think he’s God’s anointed one. You can understand why Republicans cheered when Donald Trump repeatedly claimed the divine as his number one supporter, declaring with certainty that he had God on his side. To the faithful gathered at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee on Thursday night, none of that would have sounded like exaggeration – and not only because their nominee for the US presidency had survived an assassin’s bullet. It’s also because Trump has been on a run of extraordinary good fortune – one that might be just about to end.Of course, it was that brush with death at a rally in Pennsylvania last weekend that the former and would-be future president had in mind when he spoke of “a providential moment”. The shooting, and Trump’s ability to shrug off injury, raising his fist in bloodied defiance, has prompted his most fervent believers to cast him as a living martyr to their cause. The Republican party had already transformed itself into a cult of personality. But to see delegates wearing bandages on their right ears as a mark of love for, and identification with, their leader is to realise that that cult has become messianic.Still, even the most godless Republican may have found themselves wondering if Trump does indeed have a friend upstairs. For three straight weeks, everything has gone his way.Trump’s hot streak began with the TV debate against Joe Biden at the end of June – a debate that, it’s worth remembering, would typically have taken place in the autumn had not the Biden team insisted it must happen sooner. That was a 90-minute disaster for the president who, when he wasn’t struggling to complete sentences, stared vacantly into space, looking every one of his 81 years.That triggered a panic among Democrats, three long weeks of internal agonising as elders and bigwigs sought to navigate between the pride, and stubbornness, of a president who they believe deserves respect for a consequential term in office, and a party ever-more convinced that he will not only lose the White House, but will take Democratic candidates for the House and Senate down with him. That process may reach its climax this weekend, but not before it has handed Trump a delicious contrast: Democrats divided and distracted, Republicans unified and focused.Meanwhile, the courts have been smiling on Trump, whether it’s six judges of the supreme court, three of whom were appointed by him, granting presidents near total immunity for their official acts, or a Trump-appointed judge throwing out what most agreed was the strongest of all the legal cases against him, relating to his alleged retention of classified documents.That’s allowed him to sit back and enjoy the show. He’s watched as, to take one example, Biden gave a decent performance at a post-Nato summit press conference, giving detailed answers on foreign policy – while all anyone remembers is that he introduced Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “President Putin” and referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice-President Trump”.View image in fullscreenBut it’s the assassination attempt and the TV debate that are the bookend events of these remarkable few weeks, reinforcing what was already Trump’s chosen frame for the campaign: strong v weak. As one senior Democrat put it to me: “The Republicans have a guy who bullets bounce off of. We have a guy who can’t handle a flight of stairs.” The polls are bleakness itself for Democrats, with Trump leading Biden not only in all the key swing states, but even in once solidly Democratic terrain – with Virginia and even, incredibly, New York now deemed “battleground” states. No wonder Republicans were talking this week of a November landslide.Then, just in case any part of the narrative was insufficiently vivid, while Trump was being hailed as a messiah in Milwaukee, Biden contracted Covid. Now he is isolated, in every possible sense.Except maybe it’s possible to be too lucky. Trump is so far ahead, his numbers so strong, that Democrats have stepped up their post-debate push to get Biden to withdraw from the race. Privately at first and then, when Biden refused to budge, publicly via well-placed leaks, congressional leaders, big league donors and arguably the party’s sharpest political brain, the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have spelled it out for the president, telling him he cannot win. “It’s over,” one party veteran tells me. “He’ll be gone by Monday.”If that’s right, then Trump’s lucky streak will surely be at an end. His entire campaign has been predicated on Biden being his opponent. Facing someone else means three fundamentals of the race would be altered. First, media attention will shift away from him to the shiny object of a new Democratic nominee. Second, he, not his opponent, will be the oldest person in the race. And third, Trump should no longer have the “change” message – so potent in this age of anti-incumbency – all to himself.That last element depends on whom Democrats choose and how they do it. If Biden stands aside and there is a quick coronation of his deputy, Harris, then Trump will cast her as the status quo. There will be a cacophony of racist and misogynist dog whistles, along with a related effort to present her as lacking a democratic mandate and dangerously leftwing.But there is another way to do it. Even some of Harris’s backers favour a mini-primary, which could amount to a fortnight or so of TV debates before the 4,000 or so Democratic delegates cast their votes. Not enough, to be sure, but that would bestow some democratic legitimacy on the eventual winner and offer at least a glimpse of who flourishes and who wilts under national scrutiny. The ballot itself should happen before the party convention in Chicago on 19 August, so that that gathering can be a showcase rather than a floor fight.I know – we’re getting ahead of ourselves. But as Democrats head into a fateful weekend, they should know they have little to fear from what may lie ahead. A contest could demonstrate the party’s energy and vigour, its deep bench of new talent, drawing the contrast with the creepy cult it opposes. Given the number of Americans who have been saying for a year or more that they want a choice other than Trump v Biden, there is every chance the election could be upended, with the polls looking radically different almost straight away.And Trump showed again on Thursday night how eminently beatable he is. His speechwriters wanted him to adopt a kinder, gentler tone – a man chastened by his brush with death, bent on healing and national unity. He managed it for a while. But soon he was veering away from the teleprompter, with rambling diversions into all the old, dark greatest hits: “crazy” Pelosi, migrants as an “invasion” of killers and criminals, the election that was stolen from him.The stakes are too high, for the US and the world, to let Democrats cede the 2024 contest to Trump, which is what a continued Biden candidacy would do. The hope is that Biden himself reaches that conclusion in the next day or two, and performs what will be his last great act of public service. Because whatever the Republican faithful may say, this decision is not in the hands of the Almighty – it is in the hands of human beings who, whatever their fears and frailties, need to act and act now.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More