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      Republicans ramp up attacks on Kamala Harris amid swirl over Biden future

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      With the state of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in turmoil, Donald Trump and his Republican allies are stepping up attacks on a familiar and, some say, possibly more threatening, political foe: his vice-president, Kamala Harris.In the weeks since Biden’s stumbling debate performance, Republicans have intensified what many call racist and misogynistic criticism. They have questioned Harris’s competency, mocked her demeanor, and accused her of concealing concerns about the president’s health. Trump unveiled a new, derisive nickname for the vice-president, “Laffin’ Kamala”, which he tested at a campaign rally in Florida this week.In the rambling, falsehood-filled speech, Trump dedicated several minutes to assailing Harris, whose shortcomings as vice-president, he said, were in effect an “insurance policy” for the embattled incumbent.“If Joe had picked someone even halfway competent, they would’ve bounced him from office years ago, but they can’t because she’s got to be their second choice,” he said.While the Trump team insists they are not intimidated by Harris, supporters say the pre-emptive strikes against the vice-president – the highest ranking woman in American politics and the first Black and Asian American vice-president – are a reflection of her strength at a moment when concerns about Biden’s fitness to serve have thrust her into the spotlight. In response, a group of Democratic strategists and donors are amplifying their defense of the vice-president, an effort they say is necessary to win in November.“We need to have a surround sound around Kamala that promotes the best of her strength – that she fights for our freedoms, that she works for a better life for all Americans, that she is ready to challenge Trump,” said Tory Gavito, the president and co-founder of Way to Win, a Democratic donor network.Though the group has not weighed in on whether Biden should remain the nominee, Gavito said Harris is a major asset to the party – whether as his running mate or his replacement. New battleground state polling released this week by her group found Harris running strong with the parts of the Democratic coalition Biden is struggling to energize: young people and Black and Latino voters.“She brings in factions of that coalition that, right now, are a little concerned,” Gavito said. “So it’s an important moment to lift up the full ticket.”For much of Biden’s presidency, Republicans have warned that a vote to re-elect the 81-year-old president was really a vote for Harris. Nikki Haley, in her unsuccessful run against Trump for the Republican nomination, once told voters that the possibility of a Harris presidency should “send a chill up every person’s spine”.In the presently unlikely scenario Harris becomes the Democratic nominee, Republicans say they have plenty of material ready to deploy against her from her years as a vice-president and her short-lived run for president against Biden in 2020. As the other half of the Biden-Harris administration, her record is tied to the president’s, Republicans argue, which means she is equally to blame for Americans’ frustration over the economy and the border.Republicans have sought to make Harris the face of the administration’s response to record migration at the US southern border, casting her as its absentee “border tsar”. But she was never charged with overseeing US border policy; rather, she was tasked, as was Biden during his vice-presidency, with a diplomatic mission to address the root causes of migration.In a preview of what Trump’s strategy against Harris might look like, his campaign released an online ad alleging a “Great Kamala Cover-Up”. The video overlays images of Biden looking lost and disorientated with comments from Harris defending his fitness for office. “Kamala lied to us for years about Biden,” it says. Trump’s campaign also referred to the vice-president as “Low IQ Kamala” this week.View image in fullscreen“No one has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and supported his disastrous policies over the past four years more than Cackling Co-pilot Kamala Harris,” Caroline Sunshine, deputy director of communications for the Trump campaign, said in a statement to the Guardian. She also assailed the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the economy and immigration, among Biden’s most vulnerable issues with voters.Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who was a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said the attacks by Trump and his campaign were part of an old political “playbook” used to undermine women in positions of power.“It’s things like attacking her intelligence, attacking the tone of her voice, her laugh, the othering language,” Finney said. Those are pretty common tropes that we see used against women.”Several Democratically aligned women’s organizations, including UltraViolet and Emily’s List, have joined forces to combat what they described as the “racist and sexist disinformation campaigns” against the vice-president that are proliferating online and on the campaign trail, sometimes with the explicit endorsement of Republican officials.“There’s always legitimate reasons to critique any public figure, especially politicians,” said Jenna Sherman, campaign director at UltraViolet Action. But she said many of the rightwing attacks on Harris mix personal insults with myths and falsehoods about Democrats’ positions on issues such as abortion and immigration.“This is about misogyny,” she said. “This is about the society that we live in trying to normalize, essentially, the berating of women.”Since the presidential debate last month, some surveys have found Harris performing as well as or marginally than better than Biden in a hypothetical contest against Trump, which some suspect have prompted the new wave of attacks.“Vice-President Harris is proud to be President Biden’s running mate,” Brian Fallon, Harris’s campaign communications director said in a statement to the Guardian.“As a former district attorney and attorney general, she has stood up to fraudsters and felons like Donald Trump her entire career. Trump is lying about the vice-president because she has been prosecuting the case against him on the biggest issues in the race.”The former California attorney general, elected as a senator in 2017, had a rocky start to the vice-presidency, stumbling in media appearances and struggling to stand out as Republicans relentlessly attacked her performance. But since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Harris has become the administration’s lead messenger on reproductive rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue.On the anniversary of Roe’s fall last month, Harris declared Trump “guilty” in the “case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America”. She has also been at the forefront of democracy protection efforts, rushing to Tennessee last year to stand beside Black lawmakers expelled from the state legislature for protesting against gun violence.“She is qualified to be president,” Biden said at his Nato press conference on Thursday night. “That’s why I picked her.”He praised Harris as a “hell of a prosecutor” and a “first-rate person”, casting her as fighter for reproductive rights and an agile lieutenant who has effectively managed a wide portfolio. But even as Biden promoted Harris, he mistakenly referred to her as “Vice-President Trump”, the exact type of verbal gaffe that has unnerved Democrats in recent weeks. Trump immediately seized on the misstep.“By the way: yes, I know the difference,” the president’s campaign replied later on X. “One’s a prosecutor, and the other’s a felon.”Earlier on Thursday, Harris rallied supporters in North Carolina, delivering the kind of fiery denunciations of Trump that many Democrats long for in their nominee. Ticking through the Biden administration’s legislative and foreign policy achievements, Harris warned that a second Trump term would hurt the country’s standing in the world and make Americans less safe.“As Trump bows down to dictators, he makes America weak,” Harris said, a reference to the former president’s flattery of Vladimir Putin. “And that is disqualifying for someone who wants to be commander-in-chief.”Sharing a clip from her campaign stop in North Carolina, Representative Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said on X: “VP Harris is on fire. She’s vetted, tested, and has been Democrats’ strongest messenger throughout this campaign. She’s next up if we need her, and we might.”Biden’s insistence that he is the candidate best positioned to defeat Trump has not quelled dissent within his party. A growing number of elected Democrats have called on the president to step aside, while speculation mounts over whether Harris could realistically replace him atop the ticket.Amid the uncertainty, the New York Times reported that the Biden campaign has commissioned a survey to measure how Harris would fare in a head-to-head matchup against Trump. It comes amid a series of media reports that advisers close to the president have lost confidence in his ability to beat Trump in November, which the White House and the president’s campaign have denied.In a memo outlining the “path ahead”, Biden’s re-election campaign chair, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, and his campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said there was no indication that any other candidate would fare better than Biden against Trump. It noted that an alternative Democratic nominee would face an onslaught of negative media, which is already “baked in” to his candidacy.Yet a separate memo circulating among Democrats makes a counter-argument. Titled “The case for Kamala”, the document, written anonymously by Democratic strategists, argues that making Harris the party’s nominee is the “one realistic path out of this mess”.It argues that her weaknesses are “real but addressable” and that she enjoys structural advantages over other potential alternatives: she has already been vetted on the national stage, has the highest name recognition and would have immediate access to the re-election campaign’s war chest.With just little over a month left before Democrats meet in Chicago for their convention, Harris remains the most obvious and, for now, the most popular choice to replace Biden in the apparently unlikely event he ends his run for a second term.But regardless of what happens with the ticket, attention will remain fixed on Harris as the next-in-line to a president who has raised public concern about his ability to serve another four years. That is why Democrats such as Gavito of Way to Win say it is important to defend her aggressively across all media platforms.“The anti-Maga coalition is bigger than Maga,” she said, referring to Trump’s “Make America great again” movement. “We have proven that for the last three cycles. They have lost consistently. We can prove it again. But that requires a full-throated response on every platform available that shuts down people who are afraid of strong women.” More

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      ‘What we’ve been saying all along’: where do critical voters stand on Biden dropping out?

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      Concerns about Joe Biden’s fitness for re-election on the left may have been muted over the last year. But they were not absent.“There’s a lot of people, especially on the left, that have been talking about this,” said Alex Johnson, an IT worker in Atlanta.Democrats in the center of the party would chastise critics on the left as ageist or radical when bringing up the president’s age before the disastrous debate, he said. “They’re telling everybody that they were crazy. And then one thing happened, and all of a sudden, all of the people who have been calling progressives crazy, they’re like: ‘You know, maybe they were right.’”Biden has repeatedly reiterated that he will not withdraw from the race. Democratic party leaders are locking arms behind the president, instructing their ranks to be circumspect in conversation with news reporters and are strategizing ahead of the Democratic national convention.The conversation about Biden’s fitness ratcheted up after his debate performance last month. But they did not begin then, even among Democrats. Editorials from David Ignatius at the Washington Post and Mark Leibovich at the Atlantic last year called for Biden to refrain from running. Cenk Uygur, progressive co-creator of The Young Turks program, wanted Biden to give up re-election for more than a year and has been more than vocal about it, describing Biden’s supporters on the left as dead-enders.“At this point, eight out of 10 Americans think that Joe Biden’s mental health is not sufficient to be president,” Uygur said. “That’s what we’ve been saying all along. That number was already sky high before the debate.”Uygur has been arguing that it’s more than Biden’s age; no president with poll numbers in the 30s at this point in the election cycle has won re-election. Uygur tried to run as a candidate himself, despite being born in Istanbul – a constitutional disqualification for the office – simply to make the point.Karl Olson in St Louis Park, Minnesota, generally votes for Republican candidates. In 2020, “to save democracy”, Olson made the maximum possible legal contribution to the Biden campaign, he said. He voted for Biden in 2020, but has been calling for Biden not to run for re-election for years.He voted for Nikki Haley in the 2024 primary. Now he is considering a vote for Trump.“I have long held that [Biden] should quit while he’s ahead,” Olson said. “I have concluded that if the Democrats insist on renominating Biden and Harris, they deserve to lose.”“Here’s the thing,” he added. “If Donald Trump is a political antichrist who will destroy democracy, then why are Democrats insisting on renominating Biden-Harris when he’s too old and she’s not enough of a leader to win?”Much of the anger today is being directed at the media, both for ignoring the substance of concerns about Biden’s age before the debate, and now the seeming pile-on after it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe headlines may be overdue, said Blue Tannery, a radio engineer in Atlanta. But they are not helpful.“The age thing in particular; yes, it’s an important problem. I’m really, really, really sick of seeing headlines about it,” Tannery said. The one thing that Biden said that makes any sense: you should all shut up about how old that I am and start talking about what I’ve done over the last four years.”Tannery said he had wanted Biden not to run, but also said the standard the media applies to Biden is unfair. “This is eight years of being in this country, watching Trump just open his mouth onstage and exhale a horde of locusts and the headline is about Biden,” Tannery said. “Because that’s what Trump does every time. That’s not news anymore. It is exhausting.”Samantha Ruddy, a comedy writer in Philadelphia, may be typical of reluctant Biden voters. She’s still voting for Biden. But now she also thinks he’s going to lose.“I have wanted Democratic candidates more politically aligned to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders during the past two election cycles,” Ruddy said. “In 2020, I felt Biden was better than Trump. I still feel he’s better than Trump. However, I don’t think he can win in 2024. I believe the best move is to replace him on the ticket. That being said – much like Donald Trump – I’m an entertainer who looked at the eclipse, so what do I know?” More

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      Trump airs list of false grievances at Florida rally: ‘We don’t eat bacon any more’

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      Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail in Florida on Tuesday night, hurling insults at Joe Biden and airing a litany of familiar grievances, but declining to name a running mate for November’s general election.The former president and presumptive Republican nominee was speaking to a crowd of several hundred supporters at his golf club in Doral, a western suburb of Miami, keeping them waiting in 90F heat for a freewheeling monologue that began more than an hour later than scheduled.There was speculation that he might use his first public appearance since last month’s debate with the president to announce Florida senator Marco Rubio, who was present, as his vice-presidential pick, six days ahead of the Republican national convention (RNC) in Milwaukee.Instead, Trump delivered a rambling 75-minute speech that included a succession of attacks on Biden and his faltering debate performance, which has raised questions among Democrats on whether the 81-year-old president was robust enough for a second term of office.He seized on the post-debate turbulence that has prompted calls from some senior Democrats for Biden to step down and nominate Kamala Harris.“The radical left Democratic party is divided in chaos, and having a full scale breakdown all because they can’t decide which of their candidates is more unfit to be president, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden or laughing Kamala,” he said, repeating previous derogatory terms for the pair.“Despite all the Democrat panic this week, the truth is it doesn’t matter who they nominate because we are going to beat any one of them in a thundering landslide.”Trump has kept a lower than usual profile in the days since the debate, a strategy an aide described as designed to allow Democrats to tear into each other following Biden’s dismal debate performance.His remarks on Tuesday were notable for adding the vice-president’s name to numerous attacks on Biden policies, and sprinkling in mentions of both Rubio and Byron Donalds, a Republican Florida congressman also believed to be on Trump’s shortlist for vice-president.Otherwise, it was a standard Trump stump speech, full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US “most of their prisoners”; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.It also touched on the surreal. Biden, he insisted, had raised the price of bacon four-fold.“We don’t eat bacon any more,” Trump said.Electric cars, he said, “cheated” the US public because drivers had to stop for three hours to recharge their vehicles after every 45 minutes of driving. And, in an echo of one of the more bizarre debate exchanges with Biden over who was the better golfer, he challenged his White House successor to 18 holes over the Doral course while granting a 10-stroke concession.“It will be among the most watched sporting events in history, maybe bigger than the Ryder Cup or even the Masters,” Trump said, pledging $1m to a charity of Biden’s choosing if he lost.Returning to politics, Trump assailed Democrats for tax rises he said they wanted to impose; criticized Biden for the US military’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan; and promised to build an “iron dome” missile defense system for the US, if he was elected in November.Perhaps worn down by the energy-sapping humidity, the crowd appeared mostly subdued, including yawns in the bleachers behind him as Trump drew to a close with slow music playing, and others tapping disinterestedly on their phones.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis campaign had touted the possibility of Trump announcing a vice-presidential pick on Tuesday, but in the end his only reference to the post was suggesting that Rubio might or might not still be in the Senate to vote to allow Nevada waitresses to keep their tips untaxed.There was no mention of Ohio senator JD Vance, or North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, other Republicans said to be on the shortlist. Trump will rally again on Saturday in Pennsylvania, close to the Ohio border, with Vance expected to be a speaker.Earlier on Tuesday, Democrats, on a Biden campaign call featuring first lady Jill Biden, and previewing Trump’s Doral rally, mocked him for his low-key approach since the debate.“I hope he hasn’t exhausted himself with all the golf that he’s been playing,” Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar said.“Speaking of staying off the campaign trail, Trump has been hiding a lot recently, not just from voters and from the press, but from Project 2025.“Donald Trump tried to pretend that he had nothing to do with Project 2025 despite the fact that it was written for him by the people who know him best. And yesterday, his campaign preview of the RNC platform, was just as unhinged and extreme as Trump himself. They left out some of the most unpopular specifics that we know they support.“As usual, they’re trying to hide the ball from the American public.”Trump, in his speech Tuesday, avoided mention of Project 2025 or his policy on abortion. More

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      Kamala Harris underscores support for Biden at Las Vegas rally: ‘He is a fighter’

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      Kamala Harris doubled down on her support of Joe Biden on Tuesday, describing the embattled president as a “fighter” as she warned Donald Trump would turn the country from a democracy into a dictatorship if he is re-elected to the White House in November.The vice-president, speaking at a campaign event in Nevada, alluded to Biden’s struggles since his calamitous debate performance last month. “We always knew this election would be tough, and the past few days have been a reminder that running for president of the United States is never easy,” Harris said.“But the one thing we know about our president, Joe Biden, is that he is a fighter. He is a fighter, and he is the first to say, when you get knocked down, you get back up.” An audience member shouted back: “Yes, we all know.”Harris spoke shortly after a seventh House Democrat, Mikie Sherrill, publicly called on Biden to step aside. “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,” Sherrill posted on Twitter/X.Voters face the “most existential, consequential and important election of our lifetime”, Harris warned during her speech at the Las Vegas event focused on Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe first person of south Asian descent to serve as vice-president, Harris noted that Trump “consistently incites hate”, including towards the AANHPI communities. “Someone who vilifies immigrants, who promotes xenophobia, someone who stokes hate, should never again have the chance to stand behind a microphone,” she added.Harris is at the forefront of the Biden-Harris campaign’s effort to reach out to Asian American voters, and on Tuesday spoke about her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer research scientist who left India at age 19 to study in California. “My mother had two goals in her life: to raise her two daughters and to end breast cancer,” Harris said. “My mother never asked anyone’s permission to pursue her dreams.”Harris is scheduled to address a town hall in Philadelphia on Saturday hosted by an advocacy group focused on mobilizing Asian American voters. “We need to make sure that AA and NHPI voices are heard at the ballot boxes around our country, just as we need to make sure that those voices are represented in all levels of government,” Harris said in a video released by the campaign on Tuesday. “Asian Americans must be in the rooms where the decisions are being made.” More

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      Democrats to face pressure of revealing if they back Biden as Congress reconvenes

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      Washington is bracing for what may be one of the most politically significant weeks in recent memory, as the US Congress reconvenes Monday and leading Democratic lawmakers will face pressure to reveal openly if they plan to stick with Joe Biden as their nominee for re-election.Pressure continued to mount on Sunday as some prominent House Democrats reportedly told caucus leader Hakeem Jeffries in a virtual meeting that they believe the president should step aside in the race after his poor debate performance against Donald Trump and an underwhelming ABC interview.The Senate and House of Representatives will both be in session in Washington simultaneously for the first time since the debate, during which Biden struggled to make his points, became muddled and couldn’t effectively parry a litany of attacks and lies from the former president.This drew renewed scrutiny to Biden’s ability to serve as president for another four years as, at 81, he is already the oldest president in US history and had been suffering in the polls over questions over his mental fitness and stamina.Lawmakers’ return to Capitol Hill could pressure party leaders known to be influential with Biden, including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, as well as Jeffries, to signal definitively if they think Biden should stay in the race, and also give those urging him to quit the opportunity to rally support.“I think that he’s got to go out there this week and show the American public that he is still that Joe Biden that they have come to know and love. I take him at his word. I believe that he can do it, but I think that this is a really critical week. I do think the clock is ticking,” Democratic senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told CNN in an interview Sunday morning.But later, reports began surfacing that in the afternoon meeting with Jeffries, Congressmen Jerry Nadler of New York and Jamie Raskin of Maryland were apparently among a significant clutch of lawmakers who told Jeffries that Biden should leave the presidential race, with the New York Times reporting this was the consensus. Jeffries has not revealed his hand.In the days since the debate and ABC interview, a small number of Democratic congressman have openly called on Biden to step down, and other reports emerged that Virginia senator Mark Warner was looking to assemble a group of Democrats from the upper chamber to encourage Biden to quit his crisis-hit re-election campaign. That had been expected to lead to a key private meeting for senators with Warner on Monday but the effort is now more likely to continue with smaller-scale conversations after too much became public, the Associated press reported late on Sunday.Biden spent Sunday campaigning in Pennsylvania, where the state’s Democratic senator John Fetterman likened Biden’s struggles to his own recovery from a stroke and said: “I know what it’s like to have a rough debate, and I’m standing here as your senator.”Biden insisted to supporters in Philadelphia that he was the person to reunite America in a second term. Last Friday to ABC he said his debate performance was “a bad night”, while downplaying the importance of his low approval ratings and insisting he is capable of doing the job.But there were more questions on Sunday and those will only mount this week.“The interview didn’t put concerns to rest. No single interview is going to do that,” Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, who is expected to win election as California’s senator in November, said on NBC News.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Either he has to win overwhelmingly, or he has to pass the torch to someone who can. It’s as simple as that.”Schiff said Vice-President Kamala Harris could beat Trump decisively and some House lawmakers reportedly also told Jeffries in their virtual meeting that Harris was the most likely person to take over the nomination. The House Democratic caucus is expected to meet in person Tuesday.Biden’s exit from the race would be a historic upheaval that the United States has not seen in decades, and could kick off a vigorous contest ahead of the party’s convention six weeks from now in Chicago where the nominee is traditionally anointed.The last president to decline to seek re-election was Lyndon B Johnson, who abandoned his campaign in 1968 amid the carnage of the Vietnam War, slumping approval ratings and concerns about his own health. More

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      More House Democrats reportedly want Biden to quit race as he pledges to ‘unite America’ – live

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      Reports are coming through from the virtual meeting that House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has been holding with fellow Democratic representatives, and it’s not looking good for Joe Biden.High-profile congressmen Jerry Nadler of New York and Jamie Raskin of Maryland are reportedly among a clutch of Democratic lawmakers who told Jeffries, the most senior Democrat in the House, that Biden should leave the presidential race, CBS’s Ed O’Keefe has posted on Twitter/X.He also includes congressmen Takano, Adam Smith, Morelle, Himes and Beyer.The Guardian has not independently verified this reporting.Hello again, US politics blog readers, we’re going to close this blog now after a lively day and we’ll be back on Monday morning, Washington DC time. All of today’s stories on Joe Biden are on this Guardian US page.Congress is back in session tomorrow and it will be another news-filled day at the start of what could be a make-or-break week for the US president’s re-election campaign, so do rejoin us then. This follows late developments this afternoon coming out of a virtual meeting between some House Democrats and their leader in that chamber, Hakeem Jeffries.Here’s where things stand:
      High-profile congressmen Jerry Nadler of New York and Jamie Raskin of Maryland are reportedly among a clutch of Democratic lawmakers who told Jeffries, the most senior Democrat in the House, that Biden should leave the presidential race.
      More Democratic representatives, including Mark Takano of California, Adam Smith of Washington state, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Joe Morelle of New York and Susan Wild of Pennsylvania also reportedly told Jeffries they want Biden to quit the race. Maxine Waters and Bobby Scott reportedly said they support him. Jeffries did not reveal his hand.
      Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are now in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for the third stop on this campaign swing through the swing state.
      Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham believes both Joe Biden and Donald Trump should take a cognitive test. The South Carolina senator said that anyone standing for president and anyone in the line of succession should be subjected to a cognitive exam.
      Biden heard words of encouragement from Pennsylvania Democratic US senator John Fetterman on his trip to the state today. Fetterman won office two years ago despite his own struggles in a debate against his Republican opponent. “I know what it’s like to have a rough debate and I’m standing here as your senator. There is only one guy that has ever beaten Trump and he is going to do it twice and put him down for good,” the senator said.
      Biden told congregants at a church in Philadelphia this morning: “We must unite America again. That’s my goal. That’s what we’re going to do.” The supportive churchgoers chanted “Four more years!”
      We can now add Pennsylvania congresswoman Susan Wild to the list of lawmakers who reportedly told House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries in a virtual meeting today that Joe Biden should quick his re-election campaign, CNN reports.Representatives Maxine Waters and Bobby Scott reportedly told Jeffries they continue to support Biden as the presumptive nominee, as the caucus split, the outlet reported.Many apparently agree that Kamala Harris should become the nominee instead.Reports are coming through from the virtual meeting that House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has been holding with fellow Democratic representatives, and it’s not looking good for Joe Biden.High-profile congressmen Jerry Nadler of New York and Jamie Raskin of Maryland are reportedly among a clutch of Democratic lawmakers who told Jeffries, the most senior Democrat in the House, that Biden should leave the presidential race, CBS’s Ed O’Keefe has posted on Twitter/X.He also includes congressmen Takano, Adam Smith, Morelle, Himes and Beyer.The Guardian has not independently verified this reporting.Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are now in Harrisburg for another event.The city is the state capital of Pennsylvania, about 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia, where the US president addressed a church service this morning.In between he stopped at a campaign office, as hit the swing-state in an ongoing mini-blitz to persuade Democrats he is up to being their nominee for re-election this November.Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham believes both Joe Biden and Donald Trump should take a cognitive test.The South Carolina senator told CBS on Sunday that anyone standing for president and anyone in the line of succession should be subjected to a cognitive exam.After Biden’s flop in the first presidential debate of the 2024 election, against Trump late last month, Graham said earlier today: “This is a wake-up call for the country. We need to make sure that the people who are going to be in the line of succession are capable of being commanders in chief under dire circumstances.”He added: “I’m offended by the idea that he shouldn’t take a competency test, given all the evidence in front of us,” Graham said, adding that he thinks Biden is in denial and that’s dangerous.Graham said: “What I’d like to see is President Biden take a cognitive test.” Asked if Trump should, too, Graham said: “Yes, yes, I think both.”Meanwhile, there’s some big news breaking in France, where the hopes of the far right and their leader Marine Le Pen appear to have been dashed by resurgent support for leftwing parties in a snap election.We have a live blog covering the results as they come in, and you can follow it here:During his unscheduled stop at a Philadelphia campaign office, Joe Biden heard some words of encouragement from Democratic senator John Fetterman, who won office two years ago despite his own struggles in a debate against his Republican opponent.The senator’s performance in the debate against Mehmet Oz was hampered by the auditory processing disorder that afflicted him after suffering a stroke. Fetterman nonetheless defeated Oz in the 2022 midterm elections, and, as he appeared alongside the president today, compared his comeback to Biden’s current troubles following his tired performance at his first debate against Donald Trump.“I know what it’s like to have a rough debate and I’m standing here as your senator,” Fetterman said.“There is only one guy that has ever beaten Trump and he is going to do it twice and put him down for good.”Here’s a look back on Fetterman’s own struggles in his Senate campaign:Joe Biden has made an unscheduled stop at the Roxborough Democratic Coordinated campaign office in Philadelphia.He is joined there by Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator John Fetterman, and the city’s mayor Cherelle Parker.Here are some more images from inside the event at the church in north-western Philadelphia a little earlier.Addressing the congregation.Mingling:More:Here are some images related to Joe Biden’s appearance in Philadelphia on Sunday, to speak at a church.A handful of people outside held signs urging the president to drop out of his re-election campaign.And this:Biden meets voters. More

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      Biden insists he can reunite US as high-profile Democrats reportedly want him to quit race

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      Joe Biden insisted he was the person to reunite America in a second term in the White House as he hit the trail in the swing state of Pennsylvania on Sunday – but the number of high-profile Democrats doubting his position as the presumptive party nominee for re-election only grew amid a campaign in crisis.Pressure on the US president increased even further following his poor debate performance against Donald Trump last month and an underwhelming ABC interview last week, as a group of Democratic representatives met online with House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday.Congressmen Jerry Nadler of New York and Jamie Raskin of Maryland were reportedly among a clutch of lawmakers who told Jeffries that Biden should leave the presidential race.Congress will be back on Monday from its latest recess and the focus among Democrats is whether Biden can continue to campaign for re-election. House Democrats are expected to meet in person with Jeffries on Tuesday to discuss the president.Biden’s fresh blitz on Sunday to rally voters, donors and campaign staff also came as prominent House Democrat Adam Schiff said Vice-President Kamala Harris could beat Trump and the president should “pass the torch” to someone else if he can’t win “overwhelmingly”.The US president made no mention of his health and fitness when he told a loudly supportive Philadelphia church congregation in the morning: “We must unite America again … that’s my goal. That’s what we’re going to do.”But Schiff, who is likely to become California’s next senator in the November election, said he thought Harris could decisively win the election against presumptive Republican party nominee Trump, if Biden drops out.He warned that the US president either “has to win overwhelmingly, or he has to pass the torch to someone who can”.Meanwhile, reports began emerging after the virtual meeting with Jeffries on Sunday, via CBS and CNN, that as well as Nadler and Raskin, representatives Mark Takano of California, Adam Smith of Washington state, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Joe Morelle of New York and Susan Wild of Pennsylvania told him they wanted Biden to quit as the race, the outlets said, citing unnamed sources. Many want Harris to take over as the nominee.Democrats Maxine Waters and Bobby Scott told Jeffries they support Biden to become the nominee and fight for re-election, while Jeffries did not reveal his hand, CNN reported.As the chaos continued, Biden was on a three-stop swing in Pennsylvania, first addressing the church service in a majority Black neighborhood in north-western Philadelphia before expecting to head to the state capital of Harrisburg about 100 miles away in the afternoon.He was introduced at the Mount Airy church of God in Christ in Philadelphia as “our honored guest” and senior pastor Louis Felton told the congregation that if they stand together “there is no election that we cannot win”, adding, “We love our president. We pray for our president.”One demonstrator outside the church underlined the conflicting views within the party and even normally loyal Democratic voters, carrying a sign that read: “Thank you Joe, but time to go.”View image in fullscreenBut Felton said: “God knew Biden needs some love.” He described Biden as a president of vision and integrity and said: “President Biden is coming back. He’s a comeback kid. He’s a fighter. He’s a champion.”He concluded: “Never count Joseph out,” as congregants chanted “four more years” when Biden finished speaking.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile Mark Warner, another prominent Democrat and US senator for Virginia, reportedly is wrangling Senate Democrats to ask Biden at the White House on Monday to step down as the presumptive nominee.On Sunday morning, Schiff told NBC News’s Meet the Press show: “The interview didn’t put concerns to rest. No single interview is going to do that. And what I do think the president needs to decide is, can he put those concerns aside? Can he demonstrate the American people that what happened on the debate stage was an aberration?”Schiff then weighted Harris’s prospects if she became the party nominee not Biden, as her profile rises fast.“I think she very well could win overwhelmingly, but before we get into a decision about who else it should be, the president needs to make a decision about whether it’s him.”Bernie Sanders, the independent US senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, signaled his continued support for Biden.He told CBS in a Sunday interview: “What we are talking about now is not a Grammy award contest for best singer. Biden is old. He’s not as articulate as he once was. I wish he could jump up the steps on Air Force One – he can’t,” Sanders admitted, while adding a challenge to the president to continue to run on policies that help working-class voters.“Whose policies will benefit the vast majority of the people in this country, who has the guts to take on corporate America?” Sanders asked, saying the Democratic nominee needed to fight for health insurance coverage, selectively higher taxes and benefits.“Those are the issues he’s talked about. He’s got to bring them up in the fallt,” Sanders said.Democratic US senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said “the clock is ticking” for the president to quell doubts about his fitness to continue to run for re-election and this was a critical week for him. More