Democrats turn on Joe Biden

There’s been a vibe shift in Washington. 

After Thursday night’s debate debacle and a Biden family meeting at Camp David on Sunday in which it became clear the president was not interested in dropping his re-election bid, Democrats closed ranks around Biden. Excuses were workshopped to the press: the debate was a one-off, Biden was actually over prepared by his debate prep team, the president was tired from his overseas travel and Biden’s cognitive decline is nothing compared to Trump’s lies. 

Unfortunately for Biden, none of these landed well with the public and Democrats are now putting out smoke signals that it’s time to let it go.

Representative Lloyd Doggett became the first Democratic elected official to call on Biden to step aside as the nominee. Representative Jared Golden wrote an op-ed declaring that Biden will lose the election but assuring Democrats that democracy will survive, even under Trump. Former speaker Nancy Pelosi intoned that it’s legitimate to question if Biden’s debate performance was a broader issue. Democrats also quickly leaked internal polling that showed Biden slipping significantly both nationally and in swing states against Trump, shoring up popular support for the idea that Biden needs to be replaced. 

Although she is wildly unpopular, has no notable achievements as vice president and was forced to bow out of the 2020 Democratic primary after being exposed as a phony flip-flopper, it appears Vice President Kamala Harris would indeed be pushed as the new nominee. Jim Clyburn said he would support Harris if Biden were to drop out and — perhaps more importantly — she would be able to hang on to the Biden-Harris campaign’s massive war chest. 

Meanwhile, Biden is still reportedly trying to right the ship. The New York Times says Biden told a close ally that he is actively deciding whether to continue running and that he is aware his political future rests on his performance in his next few public appearances, including a pre-taped interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos (himself a former Democratic staffer). The White House, which is well known for telling the truth, denies the report. Biden also told supporters on a campaign that he is not leaving: “Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running… no one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.”

The paranoia-stricken president is also collaborating with son Hunter Biden, seemingly the only person he can trust now as his friends turn against him. Nothing sparks confidence in your skeptics, after all, like holding court with your convicted felon crackhead son. 

At this point, it would be more shocking if Biden stays in the race until November. How can the Democrats put the genie back in the bottle? Not only did the public get an uncensored display of Biden’s cognitive decline — no “cheap fakes” here! — but Democratic donors are fleeing from their party’s leader like rats from a sinking ship. The question seems to be when, not if, Biden withdraws from the 2024 election.

-Amber Duke

On our radar

POLITICAL PERJURY? The legal defense for Democratic senator Bob Menendez from New Jersey is now calling witnesses in his corruption trial. Menendez was charged with bribery, extortion, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt. “They have not proven their case,” Menendez said of prosecutors while leaving the courtroom Friday.

NEIN TO IX The Biden administration’s new Title IX rule has been temporarily blocked in four states after a federal judge in Louisiana found that it overstepped the Education Department’s authority. The rule includes “gender identity” as a protected category, in addition to sex. A US district judge called it an “abuse of power.”

WE THE DEMOCRATS In a recent CNN poll, it was found that 66 percent of Democrats don’t want Biden to drop out of the race. This was measured against 56 percent of Americans overall who want Biden to drop out.

Homeland Security deports 116 Chinese nationals

In a statement released on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced the deportation of 116 Chinese illegal immigrants in its largest charter flight since 2018.

There were no details provided about how long the Chinese nationals had been in the US.

The deportation comes amid a massive explosion in illegal crossings at the southern border, including  a 6,000 percent increase in encounters between border officials and Chinese nationals since 2021. And in 2023, officials arrested more than 37,000 Chinese aliens, ten times the number the previous year.

“We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” said DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “People should not believe the lies of smugglers.”

This surge in Chinese smugglers has been aided by transcontinental smuggling networks, which take advantage of cheap smartphones and apps such as TikTok, Chinese social media platform WeChat, WhatsApp, and more to advertise to their clients.

In May, NBC News obtained access to a WeChat profile of a member of the Chinese Snakehead gang who claimed to have moved 100 people into the US.  

“This removal flight is the result of Secretary Mayorkas’ continued efforts to engage the PRC on areas of mutual interest,” the DHS said. “Together, the United States and PRC are working to reduce and deter irregular migration and to disrupt illicit human smuggling through expanded law enforcement efforts.”

China’s acceptance of the return of its citizens marks a change in policy, as they have been reluctant to do so in the past. DHS says they will continue to work with China to plan more removal flights in the future.

-Elisenne Stoller

Covid is BACK … kind of

Guess who’s back?

“As of June 25, 2024, we estimate that Covid-19 infections are growing or likely growing in forty-four states and territories,” the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports. The coronavirus is highest and rising most sharply in the West. This time, it’s a sub-KP variant springing from the Omicron, typically known as FLiRT (or KP.2 and KP.3) and LB.1 (which has an additional mutation than the FLiRT variants).

In the aftermath of the Covid nightmare that was 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that the six-feet-apart rule was “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data,” as many suspected. In terms of new Covid data, any fact coming from the CDC makes me nervous. And there frankly isn’t much data when it comes to this new variant: according to the Washington Post the CDC no longer tracks comprehensive Covid hospitalizations (thank God). 

The CDC’s estimates as of May 10 are supposedly  “derived from daily counts of new Covid-19 emergency department visits reported through the National Syndromic Surveillance Program.” It is unclear how a “Covid-19 emergency department visit” is determined.

“We have consistently seen over the past three years that there is a winter surge and there is also a summer surge,” Marlene Wolfe, program director at wastewaterSCAN said. “Right now we are waiting to see whether we actually will see a downturn over the next couple of weeks and we’ve hit the peak here, or whether those levels will actually go up.”

So while it’s not certain how severe this new coronavirus variant will be, it is certain that after Covid waned a bit in the spring, it’s back for the summer.

-Ella Johnson