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    A genocidal war criminal will address Congress. As a congressman, I’m outraged | Jamaal Bowman

    The United States and our federal government love to portray ourselves as leaders in peace, diplomacy and human rights. In the eyes of the world, we want to be seen as collaborators and coalition-builders, working together to solve problems around the world.The reality in the halls of power is very different.On Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu will come to the People’s House to give a joint address before members of Congress, one of the highest honors afforded to foreign leaders. The Israeli prime minister was invited in the midst of what the international court of justice has determined to be a plausible genocide by the Israeli government.We are at a pivotal moment in our democracy and our society where we have to ask ourselves: how do we want to be represented on the global stage? What do we stand for as a nation if we are inviting an accused war criminal to address a joint session of Congress as he inflicts collective punishment on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children? Platforming a war criminal should not be our answer.Last month, I had the opportunity to meet with Sara, a 17-year-old girl from Gaza whose home was bombed by Israeli forces. Her two brothers, Ahmad and Mohamed, were killed, and she suffered deep burns across her entire body. She was unable to leave her house to seek medical treatment for a month because Israeli forces surrounded her home. Luckily, she was able to come to the United States to seek treatment but she is still afraid for the safety of the family she left behind.I have also met with families of Israeli hostages who are worried for the safety of their family members as Netanyahu continues to inflict collective punishment. They are terrified that their loved ones will be killed by Israeli military campaigns like others have.I am disgusted that we are allowing the man who is responsible for ripping families apart and killing Israeli and Palestinian civilians to be given a platform before Congress to try and win support and funding for his indiscriminate bombing campaign.Netanyahu’s record of fascist and genocidal behavior is not new. His initial work to prop up Hamas is responsible for widespread destabilization in Palestine. He has presided over the detainment of Palestinians without due process, the illegal expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and the practice of “mowing the lawn”, indiscriminately murdering dozens of Palestinians in horrifying military onslaughts. He has also worked to dismantle the national judiciary so he cannot be held accountable and aligned himself with far-right actors such as Itamar Ben-Gvir who have called for mass displacement of Palestinians.In Israel, thousands of people are protesting against Netanyahu’s handling of the war, which is further putting hostages held in Gaza at risk. They are calling for a ceasefire and negotiations between Israel and Hamas to protect the safety of innocent civilians in Israel and Gaza. On Tuesday, thousands of people will protest outside the Capitol, calling for an immediate and lasting ceasefire and release of the hostages. The majority of American people and people around the world support this.There is a moral outrage in the American conscience that is not being fully expressed in Congress. Netanyahu’s presence and his joint address are directly undermining the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans who want peace. Instead of joining this collective push, most members of Congress are more focused on institutional norms and their neoliberal approach to foreign policy.Our system is broken if our leaders choose to ignore the will of the people. We should all be outraged about the murder of children, whether at home or abroad. We should all be yelling in the halls of Congress until our leaders have no choice but to listen.We need a permanent ceasefire and release of the hostages. We need a world where people understand that criticism of a state or a leader does not make you antisemitic. We need a paradigm shift on how we approach the issue of Israel and Palestine. It’s time to re-evaluate where we stand as a democracy and a society and re-examine our alignment and support for Netanyahu and his genocidal government because it is outrageous. For hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and for our democracy as a whole, the future depends on it.

    Jamaal Bowman is the United States representative for New York’s 16th congressional district since 2021 More

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    Bernie Sanders condemns speech to Congress by ‘war criminal’ Netanyahu

    The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has condemned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to the US Congress, calling him a “war criminal” presiding over a “rightwing extremist government”.Sanders delivered his remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday as Congress expects Netanyahu to give a speech to Congress on Wednesday afternoon. The speech comes after an underwhelming arrival to the US, just after President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from November’s elections.“Tomorrow will be unique in bringing Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress,” said Sanders on Tuesday. “It will be the first time in American history that a war criminal has been given that honor.”Sanders said of Netanyahu: “He should not be welcome in the United States Congress.”Several Democratic lawmakers were planning to boycott the speech on Wednesday.Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s presumptive presidential nominee, will not be attending because of a scheduling conflict, according to an aide.Netanyahu is slated to meet with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, before the speech.Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland will oversee the event, according to the New York Times. Cardin, an orthodox Jew, has voiced support for Israel in the months since the attacks on 7 October and amid Israel’s war in Gaza.Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is among the lawmakers who plan to boycott Netanyahu’s speech on Wednesday afternoon, reminding senators of the ongoing hunger, destruction to housing and damage done to Gaza’s health and educational system.Israel’s war on Gaza has “trampled on international law, on American law, and on basic human values”, Sanders said.The UN has reported a death toll of more than 36,000 Palestinians as of 31 May.“His [Netanyahu’s] policies in Gaza and the West Bank and his refusal to support a two-state solution should be roundly condemned,” Sanders said in a statement on Monday. “In my view, his rightwing, extremist government should not receive another nickel of US taxpayer support to continue the inhumane destruction of Gaza.”“Every university has been bombed, and 88% of all school buildings have been damaged,” said Sanders. “And now, because of the ongoing restrictions on humanitarian aid, some 495,000 people face catastrophic levels of food insecurity – in other words, they are starving.”Representative Jerry Nadler of New York said he would attend Wednesday’s speech, but still lashed out against the Israeli prime minister, calling him the “worst leader in Jewish history”.“Tomorrow’s address is the next step in a long line of manipulative bad-faith efforts by Republicans to further politicize the US-Israel relationship for partisan gain and is a cynical stunt by Netanyahu aimed at aiding his own desperate political standing at home,” said Nadler.The invitation was originally extended by the speaker Johnson, and endorsed by Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, and Schumer, despite the latter’s earlier denunciation of Netanyahu and call for fresh Israeli elections.Sanders had previously supported Israel’s right to defend itself after the 7 October attacks, also lashing out against Hamas.“Netanyahu’s extreme rightwing government has, since that attack, waged what amounts to total war against the entire Palestinian people,” Sanders said in the chamber on Tuesday.In January, Sanders sponsored an unsuccessful Senate bill to make US aid to Israel conditional on its observance of human rights and international law.“This invitation to Netanyahu is a disgrace and something that we will look back on with regret,” Sanders said. “With this invitation, it will be impossible, with a straight face, for the United States to lecture any country on Earth about human rights and human dignity.” More

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    Congress Calls for Tech Outage Hearing to Grill Executive

    The House Homeland Security Committee called on the chief executive of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to testify on the disruption.A Congressional committee called on the chief executive of CrowdStrike to testify at a hearing about its role in a tech outage that roiled the global economy, in one of the first attempts to hold the cybersecurity company responsible.CrowdStrike sent a faulty security update to its customers Thursday night, resulting in millions of Microsoft Windows devices shutting down and disruptions to airlines, hospitals, logistics companies and others.Americans “deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking,” wrote Representative Mark Green of Tennessee, the Republican chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Representative Andrew Garbarino, Republican of New York.The letter was sent to George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s chief executive. Mr. Green and Mr. Garbarino asked the company for a response to scheduling the hearing this week, but did not specify when it would take place.“CrowdStrike is actively in contact with relevant congressional committees,” said a company spokeswoman. “Briefings and other engagement timelines may be disclosed at members’ discretion.”The request came as the world continued to deal with the fallout from the widespread outages. Delta Air Lines canceled more than 800 flights on Monday, leaving more passengers stranded. And other industries were still recovering after being knocked offline for hours.The outage underscores how the world has become reliant on a small group of companies to maintain its digital infrastructure. CrowdStrike, while little-known to most consumers, is the second largest American cybersecurity company. More than half of Fortune 500 companies use its products.“This incident demonstrates the interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem — global cloud providers, software platforms, security vendors and other software vendors, and customers,” said a Microsoft executive, David Weston, in a blog post on Saturday. “It’s also a reminder of how important it is for all of us across the tech ecosystem to prioritize operating with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist.”CrowdStrike’s products are used primarily by large businesses, not consumers. Its flawed update sent computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system into a spiral where they continually rebooted. Although CrowdStrike sent a fix, many computers didn’t get it because of the loop. In many cases, businesses had to delete the damaging file from each machine manually.Mr. Kurtz on Friday told NBC’s “Today” show that the incident was not a cyberattack and was the result of the faulty update. But the congressional committee said in its letter to Mr. Kurtz on Monday said that the incident still presented vexing security questions.“Malicious cyber actors backed by nation-states, such as China and Russia, are watching our response to this incident closely,” the lawmakers said. “Protecting our critical infrastructure requires us to learn from this incident and ensure that it does not happen again.”Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, on Friday also asked the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the outages. More

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    Secret Service chief berated in House hearing after Trump rally shooting

    Lawmakers grilled the director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, during a contentious House hearing on Monday, where members of both parties called for her resignation in the wake of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump earlier this month.In her opening statement, Cheatle acknowledged the Secret Service had “failed” on 13 July, when a 20-year-old gunman was able to take a clear shot at the former president from a rooftop near Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.Trump survived but sustained an injury to his ear, and one rally attendee, former fire chief Corey Comperatore, was killed in the attack. Two others were injured.“As the director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency,” Cheatle told the House oversight committee. “We are fully cooperating with ongoing investigations. We must learn what happened, and I will move heaven and earth to ensure that an incident like July 13th does not happen again.”In a particularly damning moment, Cheatle acknowledged that Secret Service agents were informed of a suspicious individual at the Trump rally “somewhere between two and five times” before the gunman opened fire.The Republican chair of the committee, James Comer, mourned the assassination attempt as “a horrifying moment in American history” and demanded that Cheatle offer her resignation.“While we give overwhelming thanks to the individual Secret Service agents who did their jobs under immense pressure, this tragedy was preventable,” Comer said. “It is my firm belief, Director Cheatle, that you should resign.”Lawmakers repeatedly pressed Cheatle on how such a galling security lapse could have occurred, but the director dodged many of their questions, reminding members that the investigation of the shooting was still in its earliest stages. When Cheatle again told Comer that she could not specify how many Secret Service agents were assigned to Trump on the day of the shooting, the congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene interjected: “Why are you here?”Cheatle did deny allegations that the Secret Service rejected the Trump campaign’s demands for additional security on 13 July, telling lawmakers: “The assets that were requested for that day were given.”But Cheatle became more vague when the Republican congressman Jim Jordan pressed her on whether the Secret Service had denied past requests for additional security at Trump campaign events.“It looks like you won’t answer some pretty basic questions,” Jordan said. “And you cut corners when it came to protecting one of the most important individuals, one of the most well-known individuals on the planet.”Some Republicans representatives grew openly combative as they questioned Cheatle, with Nancy Mace telling the director: “You’re full of shit today.”Democratic members joined in on the criticism, and at least two of them, Jamie Raskin and Ro Khanna, echoed Republicans’ calls for Cheatle’s resignation. Khanna compared the situation to the fallout after an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan in 1981.The then Secret Service director, Stuart Knight. stepped down in the months after the Reagan shooting.“Do you really believe that the majority of this country has confidence in you right now?” Khanna asked.Cheatle replied: “I believe that the country deserves answers, and I am committed to finding those answers and providing those answers.”Asked when more answers might be available, Cheatle said the agency hoped to conclude its internal investigation in 60 days, a timeline that sparked censure from committee members.“The notion of a report coming out in 60 days when the threat environment is so high in the United States, irrespective of party, is not acceptable,” said the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “This is not theater. This is not about jockeying. This is about the safety of some of the most highly targeted and valued targets – internationally and domestically – in the United States of America.”Raskin, the Democratic ranking member of the oversight committee, agreed with calls for accountability at the Secret Service while adding that lawmakers must reckon with the broader problem of gun violence in the US. He noted that the Trump campaign rally attack was not even the deadliest shooting on 13 July, as four people were killed later that day after a gunman opened fire at an Alabama night club.“What happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a double failure: the failure by the Secret Service to properly protect Donald Trump and the failure of Congress to properly protect our people from criminal gun violence,” Raskin said. “We must, therefore, also ask hard questions about whether our laws are making it too easy for potential assassins and criminals to obtain firearms generally and AR-15 assault weapons specifically.”With Republicans in control of the House, it seems unlikely that a gun safety bill will pass Congress anytime soon. And after Cheatle’s performance on Monday, it seems even less likely that she will be able to hold on to her job for much longer. More

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    Republicans Will Regret a Second Trump Term

    Now is the summer of Republican content.The G.O.P. is confident and unified. Donald Trump has held a consistent and widening lead over President Biden in all the battleground states. Never Trumpers have been exiled, purged or converted. The Supreme Court has eased many of Trump’s legal travails while his felony convictions in New York seem to have inflicted only minimal political damage — if they didn’t actually help him.Best of all for Republicans, a diminished Joe Biden seems determined to stay in the race, leading a dispirited and divided party that thinks of its presumptive nominee as one might think of a colonoscopy: an unpleasant reminder of age. Even if Biden can be cajoled into quitting, his likeliest replacement is Vice President Kamala Harris, whose 37 percent approval rating is just around that of her boss. Do Democrats really think they can run on her non-handling of the border crisis, her reputation for managerial incompetence or her verbal gaffes?In short, Republicans have good reason to think they’ll be back in the White House next January. Only then will the regrets set in.Three in particular: First, Trump won’t slay the left; instead, he will re-energize and radicalize it. Second, Trump will be a down-ballot loser, leading to divided and paralyzed government. Third, Trump’s second-term personnel won’t be like the ones in his first. Instead, he will appoint his Trumpiest people and pursue his Trumpiest instincts. The results won’t be ones old-school Republicans want or expect.Begin with the left.Talk to most conservatives and even a few liberals, and they’ll tell you that Peak Woke — that is, the worst excesses of far-left activism and cancel culture — happened around 2020. In fact, Peak Woke, from the campus witch hunts to “abolish the police” and the “mostly peaceful” protests in cities like Portland, Ore., and Minneapolis that followed George Floyd’s murder, really coincided with the entirety of Trump’s presidency, then abated after Biden’s election.That’s no accident. What used to be called political correctness has been with us for a long time. But it grew to a fever pitch under Trump, most of all because he was precisely the kind of bigoted vulgarian and aspiring strongman that liberals always feared might come to power, and which they felt duty bound to “resist.” With his every tweet, Trump’s presidency felt like a diesel engine blowing black soot in the face of the country. That’s also surely how Trump wanted it, since it delighted his base, goaded his critics and left everyone else in a kind of blind stupor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump leads 2024 race in new poll as some Biden aides reportedly discuss how to convince him to end campaign – as it happened

    Joe Biden is holding a press conference this evening.The US president’s performance tonight will be closely watched by his aides and advisers, who have reportedly been discussing how to persuade him to leave the presidential race, as well as the Trump campaign who reportedly want him to stay.You can follow live coverage of the press conference below:Signs are emerging that people close to Joe Biden may be gearing up to convince him to exit the presidential race. The New York Times dropped two significant reports, one saying that his re-election campaign is looking into how Kamala Harris might fare against Donald Trump, and the other, which was similar to a report by NBC News, saying that aides were discussing ways to get Biden to step aside. However, the leaders of his re-election campaign argue in a new memo that Biden still has a path to victory, and that his standing with voters has not changed as much as commonly believed since his troubling debate against Trump. Later this evening, Biden will take questions at the conclusion of the Nato summit, and you can follow our live blog for the latest on that.Here’s what else happened today:
    Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, wants to talk to every single one of his lawmakers about Biden before deciding on the “next step”, Punchbowl News reports.
    Add Cori Bush to the list of House Democrats not saying if they think Biden can win.
    A meeting between top advisors to Biden and Senate Democrats was reported to have not gone particularly well.
    Most voters think Biden and Trump are “embarrassing”, but the former president has the edge in a new Pew Research Center poll.
    George Clooney gave Barack Obama a heads-up before publicly announcing that he thought Biden should step aside – and Obama did not offer any objections, Politico reported.
    Punchbowl News reports that the meetings between top advisers to Joe Biden and Senate Democrats did not go particularly well.Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon as well as top White House aides Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon went to meet with the president’s allies in the Capitol to reassure them that the president has a path to win. According to Punchbowl, senators were skeptical:Later today, Joe Biden will hold a press conference following the conclusion of the Nato summit in Washington DC, which will give the president another opportunity to reassure detractors that he is up for another four years of the job.The president will begin taking questions at 6.30pm ET, and we have a separate live blog following the event:Despite their bitter rivalry, Donald Trump’s campaign wants Joe Biden to stay in the race as the president faces increasing calls from his own party to step aside due to his old age.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:Donald Trump and his campaign want Joe Biden to stay in the race, according to people familiar with the matter, and have discussed taking steps to ensure they don’t push the president to withdraw amid escalating panic among Democrats following his recent debate performance.The latest thinking inside Trump’s campaign is for them not to pile on the concern about Biden’s age and mental acuity in case their attack ads push Biden to step aside.If that happened, the campaign advisers think Trump would lose two lines of attack that have been central to his campaign if Biden steps aside: claiming that Biden is “sleepy” and lacks the fitness for another term in office, and falsely claiming that Biden is to blame for inflation and an uptick in illegal immigration.For the full story:Missouri’s Democratic representative Cori Bush declined to say whether Joe Biden would win the 2024 presidential election.Speaking to ABC correspondent Rachel Scott on Thursday who asked whether Bush supports the president, Bush replied, “What does that mean?”“Do you want to see him be the nominee?” Scott asked, to which Bush said, “I want to beat Trump in November.”“Can Biden do that?” Scott followed up, to which Bush said, “That is a question for Joe Biden.”Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said he would have to decline to comment because he did not attend the briefing due to another commitment he couldn’t postpone.Meanwhile, senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut says he remains concerned but refused to share any details from the briefing, which he described as “serious”.Senate Democrats are arriving at the Capitol after a briefing by Joe Biden’s campaign officials billed as an opportunity for campaign officials to quell democrats’ panic about the president’s chances of winning the White House in November.Whether it worked, they would not say.As they did earlier this weeks, senators brushed by reporters, ignoring questions about whether the Biden team’s presentation convinced them that he still had a path forward and helped forestall further defections. On Wednesday night Vermont senator Peter Welch became the first senator to ask for Biden to drop out.Concern is mounting and, as the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said the day before, Democrats believe time is running short for the president to step aside. So far there is no indication Biden will heed the growing calls to abandon his reelection bid, even as calls grow.The president’s supporters – and his doubters – will be watching his performance tonight at a press conference following at the conclusion of the Nato summit.Actor Michael Douglas said that it is “hard to imagine” Joe Biden serving another four years.Speaking to the BBC, Douglas said:
    “It’s a painful, painful decision because I admire the man tremendously, I personally had a fundraiser for him at our house in April and I think he’s done an incredible job.
    But I am worried, not this week or next week but let’s say, next year. It’s just so hard for me to imagine a man four and a half years down the line from now, particularly in a time that’s so combative, that requires someone to really be so articulate.”
    Douglas’s comments follow actor George Clooney, a major Democratic fundraiser, who published a New York Times op-ed in which he called Biden to step aside, saying, “This is about age. Nothing more.”Signs are emerging that people close to Joe Biden may be gearing up to convince him to exit the presidential race. The New York Times dropped two significant reports, with one saying that his re-election campaign is looking into how Kamala Harris might fare against Donald Trump, and the other, which was similar to a report by NBC News, that aides were discussing ways to get Biden to step aside. However, the leaders of his re-election campaign argue in a new memo that Biden still has a path to victory, and that his standing with voters has not changed as much as commonly believed since his troubling debate against Trump. There are two major events happening later today that will be important to watch. The first is a meeting between Democratic senators and three top Biden advisors, which could prove crucial to gauging how his congressional allies feel about his prospects. The second is the president’s press conference following the Nato summit, which is scheduled for 6.30pm ET. An eloquent performance by Biden here could quell doubters who think he is too old to effectively convey his message to voters.But that is not all the news that has happened today:
    Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, wants to talk to every single one of his lawmakers about Biden before deciding on the “next step”, Punchbowl News reports.
    Most voters think Biden and Trump are “embarrassing”, but the former president has the edge in a new Pew Research Center poll.
    George Clooney gave Barack Obama a heads-up before publicly announcing that he thought Biden should step aside – and Obama did not offer any objections, Politico reported.
    In recent days, many Democrats in Congress and elsewhere have responded to questions about whether they support Joe Biden by saying that the president needs to show his strategy for winning.Today’s memo from his campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez could be seen as serving as an answer to those concerns. Beyond indicating that his campaign believes his best path to victory is by winning the traditionally Democratic battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the memo also argues that the race has not changed as much since the debate as some believe.“While there is no question there is increased anxiety following the debate, we are not seeing this translate into a drastic shift in vote share,” Chávez Rodríguez and O’Malley Dillon say, pointing to this ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll from today showing a tied race.They go on to argue that Biden remains within the margin of error of many polls of battleground states, and that key voters view him more positively than Donald Trump:
    Our internal data and public polling show the same thing: this remains a margin-of-error race in key battleground states.
    The movement we have seen, while real, is not a sea-change in the state of the race – while some of this movement was from undecided voters to Trump, much of the movement was driven by historically Democratic constituencies moving to undecided. These voters do not like Donald Trump. In internal polling, our post-debate net favorability is 20 percentage points higher than Trump’s among these voters. These voters have always been core persuasion targets for the campaign and we have a very real path to consolidating their support since they are not considering Trump as an alternative.
    They also downplay the possibility of another candidate performing better against Trump:
    In addition to what we believe is a clear pathway ahead for us, there is also no indication that anyone else would outperform the president vs. Trump. Hypothetical polling of alternative nominees will always be unreliable, and surveys do not take into account the negative media environment that any Democratic nominee will encounter. The only Democratic candidate for whom this is already baked in is President Biden.
    There is a long way to go between now and Election Day with considerable uncertainty and polls in July should not be overestimated, but the data shows we have a clear path to win. As we’ve always said, in today’s fragmented media environment, it will take time for our message to break through with trusted messengers and a strong ground game. That remains the case.
    We’ll see if it’s enough to quell Democratic concerns. Three top Biden aides, including O’Malley Dillon, are meeting today with Democratic senators, in what may be a key moment in shoring up confidence in the president.NBC News has just published a similarly grim report about the chatter by those close to Joe Biden over his chances of hanging on to the presidency.“He needs to drop out,” a Biden campaign official told NBC.They say several of his closest allies, including three people involved in his campaign to win a second term, believe he has “zero” chance of winning, and may swamp Democrats in down-ballot races.Here’s more, from NBC:
    The set of Democrats who think he should reconsider his decision to stay in the race has grown to include aides, operatives and officials tasked with guiding his campaign to victory. Those who spoke to NBC News said the sentiment that he should exit and leave the Democratic nomination to someone else — most likely Vice President Kamala Harris — is widespread even within the ranks of the campaign and the outside Democratic entities supporting it.
    “No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path,” said a second person working to elect him.
    A third person close to the re-election campaign said the present situation — the questions swirling around Biden’s cognitive abilities, the dearth of fundraising and more polls showing Biden dropping in support and other candidates faring better — is unsustainable. This person also said they didn’t see how the campaign could win.
    All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because they don’t want to be seen as further damaging a candidate they appreciate for his victory over then-President Donald Trump in 2020 and his policy wins in the White House. But two others close to Biden told NBC News that while they haven’t given up all hope of a turnaround, they see that as an increasingly unlikely outcome. And they believe the goal of defeating Trump in November should take precedence over backing Biden.
    “The question for me, and a lot of us, is: Who is the best person to beat Donald Trump?” another person working to elect Biden said. “There are a lot of us that are true blue that are questioning our initial thoughts on that.”
    Ultimately, the decision rests with Biden on whether he stays in, and the president has been insistent this week that he’s not going anywhere. But these sources say that Biden is done — whether he drops out before November or loses to Trump on Election Day.
    In their report, the New York Times says that while people who work with Joe Biden are discussing how to convince him to step aside, the talks do not appear to include his inner circle of confidants.“The people who are closest to the president, a group that includes some of his longest-serving advisers and members of his family, remain adamant that Mr. Biden will stay in the race. A person familiar with the group dynamics said that such conversations are not happening in the group closest to Mr. Biden, that he is still committed to staying in the race, and that he still believes he is the best person to beat Mr. Trump,” the Times reported.“The conversations have been happening outside that small orbit.”The New York Times reports that some aides to Joe Biden are strategizing ways to convince the president that he cannot win re-election, and that stepping aside to make way for another Democrat is the best way to keep Donald Trump from returning to the White House.A White House spokesman denied the story. Here’s what the Times reported:
    Some longtime aides and advisers to President Biden have become increasingly convinced that he will have to step aside from the campaign, and in recent days they have been trying to come up with ways to persuade him that he should, according to three people briefed on the matter.
    A small group of Mr. Biden’s advisers in the administration and the campaign – at least two of whom have told allies that they do not believe he should keep trying to run for a second term – have said they would have to convince the president of several things.
    They said they have to make the case to the president, who remains convinced of the strength of his campaign, that he cannot win against former President Donald J. Trump. They have to persuade him to believe that another candidate, like Vice President Kamala Harris, could beat Mr. Trump. And they have to assure Mr. Biden that, should he step aside, the process to choose another candidate would be orderly and not devolve into chaos in the Democratic Party.
    Those discussions were recounted by three people familiar with them who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. There is no indication that any of the discussions have reached Mr. Biden himself, one of the informed people said.
    In a memo acquired by the Guardian, top officials in the Biden-Harris campaign acknowledge that the president has lost standing following the first debate against Donald Trump, but that they believe the race is still winnable.The most likely path for Joe Biden to be re-elected is by winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, reads the memo, which a source familiar said was shared internally by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez. However, the sun belt states that Biden won in 2020, but which recent polls indicate are drifting away from the president, “are not out of reach”, they write.“No one is denying that the debate was a setback. But Joe Biden and this campaign have made it through setbacks before. We are clear eyed about what we need to do to win. And we will win by moving forward, unified as a party, so that every single day between now and election day we focus on defeating Donald Trump,” the memo reads.The Biden-Harris campaign has commissioned a survey to measure how Kamala Harris would fare in a head-to-head matchup against Donald Trump, the New York Times reports, in a new indication that it is possible Joe Biden could call off his re-election campaign amid mounting concerns about his ability to win.Here’s what the Times says the campaign is doing, and what it might mean:
    The survey, which is being conducted this week and was commissioned by the Biden campaign’s analytics team, is believed to be the first time since the debate that Mr. Biden’s aides have sought to measure how the vice president would fare at the top of the ticket. It was described by three people who are informed about it and insisted on anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information. They did not specify why the survey was being conducted or what the campaign planned to do with the results.
    The effort, which comes as a growing number of prominent lawmakers call for Mr. Biden to step aside or suggest he should reconsider his plans to run, indicates that his campaign may be preparing to wade into a debate that has consumed the Democratic Party behind closed doors: whether Mr. Biden should step aside for his vice president.
    While some of Mr. Biden’s top aides have quietly argued that Ms. Harris could not win the election, donors and other outside supporters of the vice president believe she might be in a stronger position after the debate, and could be a more energetic communicator of the party’s message.
    The Pew Research Center is out with a new poll that indicates voters are very much worried about Joe Biden’s age, and generally Donald Trump in the presidential race.The survey, taken after their late June debate in which Biden appeared to struggle to respond to Trump’s attacks, showed a mere 24% of voters describe the president as “mentally sharp”, while more than twice that number feel that way about Trump. Pew notes that views of Biden as mentally sharp are down significantly from 2020, and by six percentage points from January alone.And while the presidential election will likely be decided in a handful of swing states, Pew found that Trump had a 4 percentage point lead over Biden among registered voters nationwide.That said, the survey confirms that both men are not exactly well thought of. Identical 63% shares of those surveyed described both Trump and Biden as “embarrassing”, including big shares of their own supporters. More

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    On Capitol Hill, Democrats Panic About Biden but Do Nothing

    The president has yet to do what many Democrats said he must to show he is up to remaining in the race. But so far, they have thrown up their hands, doing nothing to nudge him aside.Senator Christopher S. Murphy, an ambitious young Democrat from Connecticut, went on television on Sunday with a carefully worded warning to President Biden about the viability of his campaign.“This week is going to be absolutely critical; I think the president needs to do more,” Mr. Murphy said, arguing that Mr. Biden needed to hold a town hall and participate in unscripted events because “the clock is ticking” for him to put to rest the doubts about his candidacy raised by a disastrous debate performance. Multiple times, Mr. Murphy emphasized his deadline, saying that he, as well as voters, must see more action “this week.”Senator Michael Bennet, the Colorado Democrat who briefly ran for president himself, said Mr. Biden had to “reassure the American people that he can run a vigorous campaign to defeat Donald Trump.”Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a senior member of the Democratic leadership team, put out a statement that passed for fighting words, saying that the president “must do more to demonstrate that he can campaign strong enough to beat Donald Trump.”So far, Mr. Biden has done none of that.And yet, Democrats on Capitol Hill are stifling their doubts and falling in line behind him anyway.Having spent the last week and a half in various stages of private panic and public skepticism about Mr. Biden’s viability as a candidate and whispering among themselves about what the best way to push him aside might be — a strongly worded letter? a White House meeting? a high-level intervention? — top Democrats on Tuesday settled on a strategy many of them conceded could be disastrous: They would do nothing, at least for now.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden speaks at Nato summit amid concerns over his 2024 campaign – live

    “It’s a pleasure to host you in this milestone year,” Biden said.He highlighted the strength of the alliance and progress since he took office.“Today, Nato is better resourced than it ever has been. I want to pause on this because it’s significant,” he said. More Nato allies now are now paying dues – 2% of their GDP – than ever before.Joe Biden is now taking the stage for his address.“History was watching,” when leaders first came together to sign the Nato treaty in 1949, Biden began.Nato leaders have been emphasising that a record number of members, 23 out of 32, now meet a commitment first agreed 10 years ago to spend 2% of GDP on defence. Trump has repeatedly complained that smaller Nato countries do not “pay their dues” and this year threatened not to defend any country that was “delinquent”.More recently, allies of Trump have argued that if elected again the Republican would demand a reorientation of Nato where European countries would be asked to increased defence spending further, while the US focuses more on China.But such is the size of the US defence budget – $860bn, two-thirds of the total of all Nato members – that it would be difficult for European countries to replace a significant reallocation of resources from a Trump White House and to continue supporting Ukraine at the existing level of about €40bn a year.On Monday Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives and a leading Trump ally, said that while Republicans valued the military alliance and would stand by member countries in preventing conflict, “we also believe that Nato needs to be doing more”.Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, started by highlighting the history of Nato.“Our alliance was created by people who have lived through two devastating world wars,” he said. The alliance is “one for all and all for one”, he added.He also noted that Nato’s alliance was “never a given”.The event tonight is taking place at the Mellon Auditorium, where the Nato treaty was first signed in 1949.A highlight reel showing clips from the end of the second world war and the cold war, featuring clips from John F Kennedy, Ronald Regan and finally Joe Biden is playing before Biden takes the stage.Joe Biden walked on stage, along with Nato allied leaders and Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general.All eyes will be on the president tonight as he fights to redeem his political prospects and convince skeptics that he can win the election.The president has said that his performance at the summit, which is commemorating 75 years of the transatlantic alliance and his work at the summit, will be a good way to judge his capabilities.Today’s speech is especially high stakes. Biden is reeling from a disastrous performance at the presidential debates, and this speech will be his first major public address since then. The public will be watching closely for any flubs.Biden is likely to highlight his foreign policy record – and his administration’s commitment to strengthening Nato. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has emphasized an “America First” approach and said that he would not defend Nato members if the came under attack. He has also questioned the amount of aid the US has provided to Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion.Mikie Sherrill, a representative of New Jersey is the seventh congressional Democrat to ask Biden to step down.“I realize this is hard, but we have done hard things in pursuit of democracy since the founding of this nation. It is time to do so again,” she wrote in a statement.The White House clarified on Monday that Joe Biden has not seen a neurologist outside of his annual physicals, following a heated exchange between the president’s press secretary and journalists seeking an explanation for why a Parkinson’s disease specialist visited the White House eight times in as many months.In an evening letter the White House physician, Kevin O’Connor, said the specialist, Kevin Cannard, has been a neurology consultant to the White House medical unit since 2012. He said Cannard had visited multiple times a year since then, and that the neurologist was chosen for his breadth of experience and expertise.“Seeing patients at the White House is something that Dr Cannard has been doing for a dozen years,” O’Connor wrote. “Dr Cannard was chosen for this responsibility not because he is a movement disorder specialist, but because he is a highly trained and highly regarded neurologist here at Walter Reed and across the Military Health System, with a very wide expertise which makes him flexible to see a variety of patients and problems.”He added that Cannard was the neurologist who had examined Biden for his three annual physicals since becoming president.Biden’s last medical examination in February had not shown “any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or ascending lateral sclerosis, nor are there any signs of cervical myelopathy”, O’Connor wrote.The letter, which O’Connor said he was releasing with the permission of both Biden and Cannard, followed intense speculation about the president’s cognitive powers following last month’s stumbling performance in a debate with Donald Trump in Atlanta, in which he repeatedly appeared confused and lost his train of thought.Later today, Joe Biden will be speaking at the Nato summit in Washington, DC. Dan Sabbagh and Andrew Roth report:World leaders flew into Washington DC on Tuesday for a two-day Nato summit where they are expected to agree to enhanced military support for Ukraine against a backdrop of questions about Joe Biden’s mental sharpness.Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were among those arriving at the US capital amid a warning that Russia could step up missile strikes on Ukraine this week, repeating a barrage that killed at least 38 on Monday.The summit is expected to agree to a fresh package of military aid for Ukraine, including at least four additional Patriot air defence systems and progress on supplying F-16 fighters, to help Kyiv better fend off devastating Russian attacks.Concerns about Biden and his ability to defeat Trump hang over the summit, given Trump’s past scepticism about Nato and uncertainty about whether he would be willing to continue to supply large volumes of military aid.Nato leaders have been emphasising that a record number of members, 23 out of 32, now meet a commitment first agreed 10 years ago to spend 2% of GDP on defence. Trump has repeatedly complained that smaller Nato countries do not “pay their dues” and this year threatened not to defend any country that was “delinquent”.More recently, allies of Trump have argued that if elected again the Republican would demand a reorientation of Nato where European countries would be asked to increased defence spending further, while the US focuses more on China.Democrats in Washington continued to scramble over the party’s prospects in November as focus remained on Joe Biden’s ability to lead and keep the White House. But no groundswell has formed against the president, and it appeared most Democrats would remain quiet while Biden stayed on the ticket.Here’s what has happened so far today:
    After a Senate Democrats lunch meeting, Democrats tried to avoid most direct questions about Biden, with some saying they were united in defeating Trump, sidestepping Biden’s role in that. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator John Fetterman both reiterated they were with Biden, but it was far from a universal view. Vermont senator Peter Welch said “we’ve got a ways to go” to find a consensus.
    The White House defended against repeated questions about Biden’s health and mental acuity, and the White House’s candor (or lack thereof) on these issues, in a press briefing. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said Biden is committed to serving a full four years again and is physically and mentally able to, according to his medical team. Several questions revolved around Parkinson’s disease, with reporters pressing over why Biden has not been screened for it. Jean-Pierre said his medical team doesn’t believe testing is warranted.
    House Democrats left a meeting this morning about Biden’s fate downtrodden, with many not giving comment to waiting reporters. Some key players – like the Congressional Black Caucus and Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez – stood by Biden. But one representative, Steve Cohen of Tennessee, said that not only is the party not on the same page about Biden, but they are “not even in the same book”.
    Biden and House speaker Mike Johnson both confirmed they will meet at some point this week with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy with the Nato summit in town.
    Coming up today, Biden is expected to speak at Nato, while Trump is expected to hold a rally in Florida, a return to the campaign trail after acting more subdued after Biden’s debate performance.
    Senate Democrats were tightlipped leaving their weekly lunch, after an hours-long discussion about the viability of Biden’s candidacy. Few wanted to speak to reporters, save for Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who stressed Democrats were firmly united behind the goal of defeating Donald Trump.Of course, the question is whether Biden is the candidate that can do that.Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, one of the president’s most vocal supporters following his debate, believes he is, though he appeared to acknowledge his view was not universally held among his colleagues. “He’s our guy,” Fetterman told reporters.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer deflected questions about Biden’s ability to win the White House in November, repeating three times: “I’m with Joe.”Just like this morning, several senators dodged reporters, darting to the Senate floor to vote or ducking onto the elevator.Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat who is retiring at the end of the year, declined repeatedly to say whether some Democrats had called on Biden to exit the race. So far no Democrats have said so publicly.Calling the meeting a “private family discussion” she said Biden had been “the best president Michigan has ever had” but would not say what the best path forward was for the party. “It’s in his hands,” she said, apparently in reference to the president.A reporter, trying a different tack, asked her about speculation that Michigan’s governor, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, could be Kamala Harris’s running mate on a very hypothetical Democratic ticket. “Wouldn’t that be exciting,” she said whimsically.Through the senators’ reticent, clipped commentary, it was clear they were still searching for a consensus. Surrounded by a scrum of reporters, Vermont senator Peter Welch said: “We’ve got a ways to go.”Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the decision to call in to MSNBC and call donors this week was Biden’s because he wants to talk directly to the American people.“He’s on fire, he’s ready to go,” she said. “He wants to get out there.”Biden wants to do more appearances and talk to the press more to prove he can continue to do the work of the presidency, she said.She said Biden is accustomed to being counted out, with people saying several times in past elections that he couldn’t win, pointing to the 2020 election.Fighting past those claims is the “quintessential Joe Biden story,” she said, concluding the press briefing.Did Biden watch the debate himself? Biden said during an ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos last week that he didn’t think he did.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said she had not followed up with Biden on this but intended to.“I’m sure he’s seen clips,” she said. “It’s getting around-the-clock coverage, right, from all of you.”The White House said Joe Biden is committed to serving a full four years if he wins in November.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said a comment that Biden made about how his health was good, “it’s just my brain,” was a joke.“He was making a lighthearted joke as he was speaking off the cuff,” she said. “You know the president, he likes to joke a lot. He’s the same guy who says, I know I look 40.”She also has been defending against repeated questions over Biden’s health and neurological exams, particularly as it relates to concerns of Parkinson’s disease that some in the press have raised.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, is defending against calls from some members of Congress for Biden to end his re-election bid or saying they are concerned about his ability to beat Trump in November.She noted the hundreds of members of Congress who had stood beside Biden as the nominee.“We do want to turn the page. You heard me say this last week. We want to get to the other side of this. We want to continue doing the work, and that’s what the president’s going to do,” she said.A White House press briefing is under way, with the White House confirming that Joe Biden will meet with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.You can stream the press briefing live on YouTube.A new poll has some Democrats fretting over the drag Biden could have on Democrats in close races, an ongoing worry in swing districts about the lower-ticket races that could be in jeopardy if voters defect from Democrats or stay home in November.The poll of Wisconsin voters commissioned by the AARP after the presidential debate shows a shocking gap between Biden’s support and support for Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat running for US Senate there. Baldwin grabbed 50% of voters compared to Republican Eric Hovde’s 45%.But Biden is trailing, with 38% to Trump’s 44%.It’s just one poll – it’s always good to keep that in mind. But this is the same voters polled on Baldwin and Biden, and the gap has Democrats concerned. More