Presidential Election of 2024

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      Jill Biden Is Vogue’s Cover Star

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      During the most challenging period of President Biden’s re-election bid, the first lady appears on the cover of a high-fashion bible.The August cover of Vogue featuring Dr. Jill Biden was released online Monday — four days after the big debate — and brought with it a fresh round of scrutiny over her role as a die-hard campaigner for her husband, who is locked in a nail-biting campaign for re-election.During much of President Biden’s term, the first lady was a figure of minimal controversy. That began to shift when campaign season heated up. Laura Ingraham of Fox News claimed that Dr. Biden was covering up the president’s unfitness out of her own desire for political power and prestige. Sounding the same theme, The Daily Caller, a right-wing website, began referring to her as “Lady Mac-Biden.”Dr. Biden took center stage after Mr. Biden struggled to finish his sentences during a dismal debate performance on Thursday against former President Donald J. Trump. Afterward, The New York Times reported that Dr. Biden was the first person he had turned to: “The first lady’s message to him was clear: They’d been counted out before, she was all in, and he — they — would stay in the race.”On the Vogue cover, Dr. Biden wears a white Ralph Lauren tuxedo dress. She was photographed in the spring by Norman Jean Roy, whose recent contributions to Vogue include portraits of Nicki Minaj, Alicia Keys and the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. The accompanying profile of the first lady, by Maya Singer, describes her as a “vision of calm amid utter cacophony.”Dr. Biden has been on the cover of Vogue twice before. Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, noted that an appearance on the Vogue cover is a “rite of passage” for first ladies. Still, Ms. Brown added, the implications of Dr. Biden’s appearance on the cover of a fashion magazine are “always a risk.” And at this moment, the Vogue cover “is not particularly helpful,” she added.Soon after the magazine posted the cover image to its Instagram account on Monday, the comments were overwhelmingly negative. Some were from Trump supporters who took Dr. Biden’s appearance as an opportunity to complain about the fact that Melania Trump had been passed over for a Vogue cover when she was first lady. A number of other critical remarks seemed to come from Democrats, one of whom argued that Dr. Biden was pursuing her and her husband’s own ambitions “at the expense of Americans safety and happiness.”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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      Two More Democratic Lawmakers Express Concern About Biden After Debate

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      Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said he was “horrified” by the debate. Representative Debbie Dingell said “the campaign needs to listen to us.”Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said he was surprised and “horrified” by President Biden’s frail appearance in his debate against former President Donald J. Trump and pleaded with Mr. Biden and his campaign to be candid about his current condition.In an interview with WPRI, a television station in Providence, Mr. Whitehouse, who in March defended Mr. Biden as “the only option that we have” to defeat Mr. Trump in the election, expressed alarm and said that he had “never seen” Mr. Biden in that kind of condition before.“Like a lot of people, I was pretty horrified,” Mr. Whitehouse said Monday, adding that he wanted “the president and his team to be candid about his condition, that this was a real anomaly and not just the way he is these days.”Mr. Whitehouse was joined in his concerns by Representative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat in a deep blue district that encompasses Ann Arbor. Ms. Dingell criticized the Biden campaign for reports that its leaders were “going to stick to their strategy” and were considering holding some kind of interview or news conference to allay concerns about the president.“One interview isn’t going to fix this,” Ms. Dingell said in an interview on CNN, adding: “I think the campaign’s got to listen to people. And by the way, I think the campaign needs to listen to us.”She continued: “I know how to win campaigns. My strategy is to stick my ear to the ground and know what people are saying.”The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.It was the latest in a wave of reactions among Democrats concerned about Mr. Biden and his re-election campaign. The campaign and Biden allies have sought to tamp down the panic that has gripped the party and its wealthy donors in the aftermath of the debate. Top Democratic lawmakers fanned out on Sunday to defend the president and reassure his supporters.But Ms. Dingell’s and Mr. Whitehouse’s comments on Monday demonstrated that questions about Mr. Biden’s fitness for another four years in office will continue to linger heading into the Democrats’ nominating convention in August. More

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      Trump Is Partly Shielded From Prosecution in Election Interference Case

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      The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump is entitled to some level of immunity from prosecution, a decision that may effectively delay the trial of the case against him on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along partisan lines.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said Mr. Trump had immunity for his official acts.“The president is not above the law,” the chief justice wrote. “But Congress may not criminalize the president’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the executive branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent executive. The president therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the decision was gravely misguided.“Today’s decision to grant former presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the presidency,” she wrote. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.”The justices said there was a crucial distinction between official and private conduct and returned the case to the lower courts for additional analysis.The court’s ruling raises the possibility of further delay in the case against former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesWe 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 Campaign Will Try to Reassure Big Donors

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      President Biden’s top campaign official is scheduled to hold a crucial call on Monday to convince donors that the president can beat former President Donald J. Trump.President Biden’s top campaign official is scheduled to hold a crucial conference call with donors on Monday to try to convince them that Mr. Biden can still win the race against former President Donald J. Trump.The call with the national finance committee, scheduled hastily on Sunday, is the Biden campaign’s most formal attempt yet to tamp down panic within the ranks of major donors since Thursday’s debate.Some individual donors have received direct communication from campaign officials, and Biden fund-raisers say communication picked up over the weekend, according to people close to the conversations. The call on Monday is to be hosted by Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair.Preserving the donor base will be critical to the president’s argument for staying in the race, many of Mr. Biden’s allies have acknowledged.Mr. Biden huddled out of sight at Camp David on Monday morning as his team remained defiant, promising that he will stay in the race despite last week’s debacle. He plans to return to the White House on Monday evening.Family members and friends spent the weekend urging Mr. Biden to keep fighting, even as some Democrats and others called on him to step aside. At the White House and the campaign, aides tried to press forward as usual, putting out news releases on student loans and the president’s overtime policies.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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      Stephen Bannon Plans to Record His Podcast and Then Report to Prison

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      The recording will be his last for four months, but the longtime adviser to Donald J. Trump has no intention of surrendering his influence.Immediately before reporting for a four-month sentence in federal prison on Monday, Stephen K. Bannon, the longtime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, will host the two final hours of his podcast from just outside the low-security facility in Danbury, Conn.“We’ll be as close to the prison as we can possibly get,” said Mr. Bannon in a high-spirited interview over the weekend. And when the taping, which he cast as an unsubtle troll pointed at the Justice Department, is concluded, “I’ll walk across the street and surrender.”Mr. Bannon on Friday lost his last-ditch bid to avoid incarceration, after the Supreme Court denied a request to postpone the sentence while he appealed a jury verdict that found him guilty of contempt for ignoring a congressional subpoena. As a result, the very public figure will remain out of view — and off the air — until just a few days before the Nov. 5 election.But the right wing firebrand insists that swapping his studio mic for a prison job, and his trademark double-collared shirts for government khakis, will have little impact on his influential “War Room” podcast. In fact, he claims, it will “only get bigger and more powerful” while he’s in custody.He has prepared for this moment for months, Mr. Bannon said, enlisting a team of nearly 20 guest hosts to continue pumping out the show, which streams its distinctive stew of unvaryingly pro-Trump political patter for four hours a day, Monday through Friday, plus two additional hours on Saturdays.That group includes Andrew Giuliani, the son of Mr. Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani; Mr. Bannon’s daughter, Maureen; Noor bin Laden, the niece of Osama bin Laden, who is known for her belief in conspiracy theories; and Jeffrey Clark, who served in the Justice Department under Mr. Trump and faces criminal charges in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss there. They’ll be responsible for managing the stream of Republican politicians, consultants, media figures, pollsters, policy wonks, donors, intellectuals and economists who use “War Room” as a bullhorn aimed directly at what is arguably Mr. Trump’s most loyal and engaged base of support.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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      Should Biden Heed Calls to Drop Out?

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      Readers offer a range of views after an editorial that called on the president to leave the race after his poor debate performance.To the Editor:Re “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race” (editorial, June 30):Joe Biden is an extraordinary person, with a track record of service to this country he loves so much to prove it. Being its president has clearly been the pinnacle of that service.But it is time for Mr. Biden to have a heart-to-heart with his ego and recognize that the same altruism and passion that brought him to the White House must now guide him to the sidelines of this election. The stakes are too high, and his candidacy is too risky.To stay is to repeat the tragic miscalculation of another soldier for the good, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Don’t lose your faith now, Joe. Do the right thing for democracy.Alison Daley StevensonWaldoboro, MaineTo the Editor:To paraphrase the great Mark Twain, your report of President Biden’s cognitive demise is greatly exaggerated. Not to mention premature.The president is probably one of the worst extemporaneous public speakers to hold his office. Age has made his lack of skill in this area worse, but that does not mean it has impaired his intellectual capacity.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