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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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      Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Tech Platforms’ Free Speech Rights

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      The justices returned both cases, which concerned state laws that supporters said were aimed at “Silicon Valley censorship,” to lower courts. Critics had said the laws violated the sites’ First Amendment rights.The Supreme Court on Monday avoided a definitive resolution of challenges to laws in Florida and Texas that curb the power of social media companies to moderate content, leaving in limbo an effort by Republicans who have promoted such legislation to remedy what they say is a bias against conservatives.Instead, the justices unanimously agreed to return the cases to lower courts for analysis. In the majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that neither lower appeals court had properly analyzed the First Amendment challenges to the Florida and Texas laws.The laws were prompted in part by the decisions of some platforms to bar President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Supporters of the laws said they were an attempt to combat what they called Silicon Valley censorship. The laws, they added, fostered free speech, giving the public access to all points of view.Opponents said the laws trampled on the platforms’ own First Amendment rights and would turn them into cesspools of filth, hate and lies.The two laws differ in their details. Florida’s prevents the platforms from permanently barring candidates for political office in the state, while Texas’ prohibits the platforms from removing any content based on a user’s viewpoint.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

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      This Isn’t All Joe Biden’s Fault

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      What Is the Democratic Party For?Top Democrats have closed ranks around Joe Biden since the debate. Should they?On Thursday night, after the first presidential debate, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner interviewed Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. “You were out there getting a chorus of questions about whether Biden should step down,” she said. “There is a panic that has set in.”Newsom’s reply was dismissive. “We gotta have the back of this president,” he said. “You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”Perhaps a party that wants to win? Or a party that wants to nominate a candidate that the American people believe is up to the job? Maybe the better question is: What kind of party would do nothing right now?In February, I argued that President Biden should step aside in the 2024 election and Democrats should do what political parties did in presidential elections until the 1970s: choose a ticket at their convention. In public, the backlash I got from top Democrats was fierce. I was a bed-wetter living in an Aaron Sorkin fantasyland.In private, the feedback was more thoughtful and frightened. No one tried to convince me that Biden was a strong candidate. They argued instead that he couldn’t be persuaded to step aside, that even if he could, Vice President Kamala Harris would lose the election and that if a convention didn’t choose Harris, passing her over would fracture the party. They argued not that Biden was strong but that the Democratic Party was weak.I think Democrats should give themselves a little bit more credit. Biden’s presidency is proof of the Democratic Party’s ability to act strategically. He didn’t win the Democratic nomination in 2020 because he set the hearts of party activists aflame. Support for him always lacked the passion of support for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or even Andrew Yang. Biden won because the party made a cold decision to unite around the candidate it thought was best suited to beating Donald Trump. Biden won because Democrats did what they had to do, not what they wanted to do.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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      Forget Defeating Trump. Biden Needs to Spare the Country Four More Years of Himself.

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      Now that the first general-election debate of 2024 has removed any doubt about the necessity of removing President Biden from the Democratic ticket, you will hear a lot of serious liberals make the case for Biden’s removal primarily as a means to defeat Donald Trump. Biden must step aside, the argument will go, because he’s going to lose the election and only a different Democrat can save the country from Trumpian misrule.This is a necessary argument for its intended audiences: Americans who fear Trump above all else and a Democratic Party motivated by partisan self-interest. It is emphatically the case that sticking with Biden now gives Trump his best chance at an easy victory — a better chance even than nominating Kamala Harris, who might be a terrible candidate but would still be better than her boss at this point. It is definitely true that if you believe America needs to be saved from Trumpism 2.0, continuing with Biden is a grave dereliction.But it’s also important, especially for those of us who are not Democratic partisans, to emphasize that declining to nominate Biden is essential not just if you hope to avert a second Trump term. It’s essential if you want to protect the country from a second Biden term — from the ways that his obvious deterioration endangers the country that he nominally leads.That is to say, if a genie or fairy godmother appeared to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Jill Biden and granted them the foreknowledge that Biden would somehow eke out a victory over Trump, the prospect of Biden being president for four more years should be enough to compel some kind of serious action now.Here, the frequent analogy to a figure like Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn’t go quite far enough. Ginsburg’s staying too long in office was a sin against her own liberal principles, which suffered a great setback when a Republican president appointed her replacement. But the decline of a Supreme Court justice is more manageable and less perilous, for the court and for the country, than the decline of a U.S. president.Yes, presidential aides and cabinet members can manage some aspects of the job for a fading chief executive. But they aren’t law clerks drafting opinions on a leisurely timeline. Their boss sits at the heart of a global network of alliances; commands the world’s most powerful military, which includes a vast nuclear deterrent; and is charged with maintaining a Pax Americana that’s currently under threat from an alliance of revisionist powers. The entire global order will be endangered if there is an empty vessel in the Oval Office, a headless superpower in a destabilizing world.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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      Democrats: Stop Panicking

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      As a former Republican who spent decades pointing out flaws in the Democratic Party, I watch the current Democratic panic over President Biden’s debate performance with a mix of bafflement and nostalgia.It’s baffling that so many Democrats are failing to rally around a wildly successful president after one bad night. But it does remind me of why Republicans defeated Democrats in so many races Republicans should have lost.Donald Trump has won one presidential election. He did so with about 46 percent of the popular vote. (Mitt Romney lost with about 47 percent.) The Republican Party lost its mind and decided that this one victory negated everything we know about politics. But it didn’t.One debate does not change the structure of this presidential campaign. For all the talk of Mr. Biden’s off night, what is lost is that Mr. Trump missed a great opportunity to reset his candidacy and greatly strengthen his position.Mr. Trump lost the popular vote by a margin of seven million and needs new customers. He could have laid out a positive economic plan to appeal to middle-class voters feeling economic pressure. Instead, he celebrated his tax cuts for billionaires.He could have reassured voters who are horrified, in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, by the stories of young girls who become pregnant by rape and then must endure extremist politicians eager to criminalize what was a constitutional right for two generations. But Mr. Trump bizarrely asserted that a majority pro-abortion-rights country hated Roe v. Wade and celebrated his role in replacing individual choice with the heavy hand of government.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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      Who Might Replace Biden on the Top of the Ticket?

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      President Biden’s stumbling performance in the debate against former President Donald J. Trump has some Democrats raising the possibility of nominating an alternative candidate and mulling over a roster of names. High on the list is, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris, whose status as Mr. Biden’s running mate might make her an easy candidate for delegates to turn to during a difficult moment. But a crop of Democratic governors and other figures are often mentioned, too.A candidate switch would most likely require Mr. Biden to step out of the race, something his campaign says he has no intention of doing. And the risks are real. Some of the highest-profile potential stand-ins listed below have never endured the vetting and road test of a presidential race. There is a long list of candidates who looked great on paper and withered on the campaign trail.“It’s not as easy as it sounds,” said Barbara Boxer, the former senator from California. “Being vetted for president is like no other vetting. We don’t know how these people would do.”Here are a few of the contenders being discussed:Doug Mills/The New York TimesKamala HarrisVice President Harris, a former prosecutor and senator of California, has at times struggled to define her role at Mr. Biden’s side. Initially charged with addressing polarizing and intractable issues like illegal migration and voting rights, she has been viewed by Democratic donors and supporters of Mr. Biden as a potential political liability. Though those concerns have eased, she has been weighed down by low approval ratings that are barely higher than the president’s.Still, Ms. Harris has for months stumped for the president as one of his main campaign surrogates. She has recently become the White House’s lead voice as a defender of abortion rights. In March, she met with abortion providers at a clinic in St. Paul, Minn., in what is believed to be the first visit by a president or vice president to an abortion clinic. And Ms. Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president, has worked to shore up Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities with Black and young voters.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