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Joe Biden has invited Democratic governors to meet with him on Wednesday, as he attempts to shore up support among his party’s leaders after his disastrous debate performance last week.
The meeting with governors is likely to be mostly virtual, according to Associated Press, and marks the strongest indication yet that Biden is attempting to reassure those in his own party that he is capable of continuing his reelection campaign.
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in New York postponed his sentencing to 18 September, agreeing to pause proceedings to weigh whether the supreme court’s recent ruling on immunity could imperil the conviction.
The first congressional Democrat broke ranks and called on Joe Biden to withdraw his presidential candidacy following last week’s calamitous debate performance. Lloyd Doggett, a House member for Texas, became the first Democrat in the House of Representative to urge the president to step aside.
Biden’s medical team said a cognitive test “is not warranted” and “not necessary”, the White House has said. The comments came after Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, admitted that questions over whether Biden’s debate performance were “an episode” or “a condition” were legitimate.
Biden has invited Democratic governors to meet with him on Wednesday, as he attempts to shore up support among his party’s leaders.
Biden will sit down for his first TV interview since his debate performance. The interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos will air on Friday.
The former New York City mayor and legal adviser to Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, was disbarred in New York after a court found he repeatedly made false statements about Trump’s 2020 election loss.
People who have spent time with Joe Biden over recent months have said that the 81-year-old president’s lapses appear to have grown “more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome”, according to a New York Times report.
Several current and former officials have noticed that Biden has increasingly appeared “confused or listless”, with recent moments of disorientation generating concern among advisers and allies, the report said. According to the report:
Last week’s debate prompted some around him to express concern that the decline had accelerated lately. Several advisers and current and former administration officials who see Mr. Biden regularly but not every day or week said they were stunned by his debate performance because it was the worst they had ever seen him.
The Democratic congressional candidate for Colorado, Adam Frisch, has called on Joe Biden to step aside.
Frisch, who is running for Colorado’s 3rd congressional district, said in a statement on Tuesday that neither Biden nor Donald Trump is “fit for office”.
“We need a President that can unite America to realize our nation’s unlimited potential,” Frisch said, adding:
We deserve better. President Biden should do what’s best for the country and withdraw from the race.
For some time, I’ve been worried about the state of the presidential race. Neither candidate is fit for office, but only Joe Biden has the power and decency to move us forward by stepping aside and passing the baton to the next generation of leadership. pic.twitter.com/G2CijTSVnF
— Adam Frisch for CD-3 (@AdamForColorado) July 2, 2024
Joe Biden’s medical team said a cognitive test “is not warranted” and “not necessary”, the White House has said, after the president’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last week.
The White House’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, in a briefing with reporters today, said Biden had a cold and a “hoarse voice” during the debate, as she admitted “it was a bad night”.
Asked if there was any consideration given to releasing a more robust set of medical records, Jean-Pierre replied:
We have been transparent. We have released thorough reports from his medical team every year since he’s been in office.
KJP on the debate: "We are not taking away from what you all saw, or what the American people saw. We understand. it was a bad night. It is not uncommon for incumbents to have a bad night on their first debate." pic.twitter.com/FnBvOmo96W
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 2, 2024
Asked about former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comments earlier today in which she said both Biden and Trump should provide the public with test results regarding physical and mental health, the White House spokesperson said:
His medical team have said it is not warranted. In this case, we have put forward a thorough, transparent annual report on his health. They have said that is not warranted. It is not necessary.
Here’s a look at the announcement by judge Juan Merchan in which he postpones Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money case to 18 September, as shared by Law360’s Frank G. Runyeon.
NEW: Justice Merchan delays Trump's NY sentencing until September. pic.twitter.com/CRg6nnE0qN
— Frank G. Runyeon (@frankrunyeon) July 2, 2024
Merchan’s announcement comes after Manhattan prosecutors earlier today said they did not oppose a request by Trump’s lawyers to postpone his sentencing, originally set for 11 July.
Trump’s lawyers asked to have the case re-evaluated, and the sentencing postponed, in light of the supreme court’s decision on Monday that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts undertaken in office.
Judges typically grant motions when they are unopposed. The postponement marks an unexpected setback for prosecutors and for the prospect of criminal accountability for Trump before the 2024 election, given that the other cases are indefinitely delayed.
Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money case has been postponed to September after the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, agreed to consider the possible impact of Monday’s supreme court ruling on presidential immunity.
Trump became the first US president to be criminally convicted last month when a Manhattan jury found him guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an illicit hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The sentencing had previously been set for 11 July.
The postponement sets the sentencing for 18 September, well after the Republican National Convention, where Trump will formally to accept the party’s presidential nomination.
Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, has said that questions over Joe Biden’s ability to serve after his debate performance were “legitimate”.
Pelosi, in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, backed Biden’s achievements and said the president “has a vision. He has knowledge. He has judgment. He has a strategic thinking and the rest.”
But she conceded there was “mixed” feedback from Democratic donors about whether Biden was able to run for another term in office, adding that Donald Trump should be given the same scrutiny. She said:
I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘is this an episode or is this a condition?’ And so when people ask that question, it’s legitimate, of both candidates.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi says “both candidates” deserve scrutiny over their age, but says it’s fair to question Biden’s health:
— The Recount (@therecount) July 2, 2024
“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition?’ And so, when people ask that question, it’s legitimate.” pic.twitter.com/Y5OJCgtgmG
Julián Castro, the former housing secretary and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, has suggested that Joe Biden should step aside, and that he believes there are stronger options out there for Democrats, including Kamala Harris.
Castro, in an interview with MSNBC today, said:
I believe that another Democrat would have a better shot at beating Trump and because, as Congressman Doggett said in his statement that it’s too risky to let Donald Trump walk into this in November, ... I think the Democrats would do well to find a different candidate.
Castro, who ran against Biden for the 2020 Democratic nomination, criticized Biden shortly after the president’s debate performance last week.
“Tonight was completely predictable,” Castro told reporters after the debate. Biden “had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that”, he said, adding that the president had “seemed unprepared, lost, and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump”.
Joe Biden said in his remarks in Washington DC, moments ago that extreme weather is affecting everyone across the US “and beyond”.
He noted the heat records that have been being “shattered” in the west and south-west in the early summer, in places such as Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada, and said that extreme heat is the primary weather-related killer in the US.
He also mentioned deadly Hurricane Beryl that’s roaring across the Caribbean right now as the earliest category 5 hurricane on record to brew out of the Atlantic.
“Ignoring climate change is deadly, dangerous and irresponsible,” he said.
The US president spelled out further action his administration plans to take in five areas: federal safety standards for excessive heat in the workplace; greater resilience to withstand flooding; more funding for communities to take action to protect against extreme weather; an Environmental Protection Agency report to be prepared showing “the continued impacts of climate change on the health of the American people” and a White House summit later this summer on the issue of extreme heat.
Joe Biden has just given a straightforward, short speech on weather and climate at an event in Washington, DC.
It’s not a press conference or anything where, so far, there has been any scope for journalists to question the US president, he is at the city’s emergency operations center, with the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser.
And he did not make any reference in his remarks to the political heat he’s getting after his feeble debate performance last week that only topped off months of concern about his advanced age and ability to campaign for and execute the job of president for a second term.
Reading from a teleprompter and sounding assertive, though with the odd verbal stumble, Biden spelled out initiatives his administration is taking to deal with extreme weather in the US, especially heat and flooding, that is exacerbated by the human-driven climate crisis.
And he criticized “my predecessor and the MAGA Republicans” for undermining action on climate change and planning to undo Biden’s actions if Donald Trump regains the White House this November.
“They still deny climate change even exists – they must be living in a hold somewhere – at the expense of the safety of their constituents,” Biden said, adding: “It’s not only outrageous, it’s also willfully stupid…dumb.”
