In the final days of his presidency, Richard Nixon “came unglued”, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. He reportedly became irrational and obsessive, making wild suggestions and rambling about his past triumphs. His son-in-law and adviser Ed Cox recalled that Nixon would wander the halls of the White House “talking to pictures of former presidents”.

Alas, it seems Donald Trump has reached similar depths of “self-destructive mania”. Witness his recent unhinged letter to Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, in which Trump implied that he was entitled to seize Greenland owing to Norway’s failure to award him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Where to begin? Norway’s government doesn’t choose the winner of the prize. Nor does it own Greenland. And Trump hasn’t, as he insisted, “stopped 8 Wars PLUS”, or anything close. “We have three years left with a mad king. It does not feel sustainable.”

‘Manic performance art’

“Trump has the world’s most consequential case of untreated logorrhea,” said Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker. According to a new study, in this first year of his second term he has spoken 1,977,609 words in presidential appearances – 145% more than in the first year of his first term.

In his speech in Davos last week, he rambled on for a full hour and a half. In the course of his address he, among other things, explained that only “stupid people” buy wind turbines, and admitted that he had decided to raise tariffs on Switzerland because its prime minister – “a woman” – had “rubbed me the wrong way”. He also kept confusing Iceland and Greenland. Americans are somewhat inured to Trump’s “manic performance art”, but the stunned reaction of Europeans should be a wake-up call. Many there were openly asking: has this man lost his mind? Is he still capable of running the US?

‘Nuttier than a Payday candy bar’

In “a saner, better world”, Trump’s cabinet officials would be discussing invoking the 25th Amendment, said Jim Geraghty in National Review. But of course none of them would dare suggest he was unfit to discharge his powers. Nor did President Biden’s colleagues when he started zoning out in meetings and forgot the name of his defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, referring to him in an interview simply as “the black man”.

“After one president who went senile in office and another who is nuttier than a Payday candy bar, we can only conclude that the 25th Amendment of the Constitution is there for decoration.”

What happened

The Trump administration plans to reinterview and review the files of all roughly 233,000 refugees admitted into the U.S. under former President Joe Biden, several news organizations reported Monday night, citing a Nov. 21 memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joe Edlow. The memo also ordered an immediate halt to all green card approvals for those refugees and said they have “no right to appeal” if the review determined they were wrongfully admitted.

Who said what

The review, CNN said, marks another “unprecedented step in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown,” this time targeting people who fled war and persecution and underwent “rigorous vetting prior to entering the United States in what is generally a yearslong process.” The “comprehensive review” was “warranted,” Edlow wrote, because the Biden administration had prioritized “expediency” and “quantity” of refugees over “detailed screening and vetting.”

The policy shift is “likely to sow confusion and fear” among the affected refugees, and “likely to face legal challenges from advocates,” The Associated Press said. Trump halted all refugee resettlement before opening up a record-low 7,500 slots, most of them reserved for white Afrikaner South Africans. “To threaten refugees with taking away their status” is “unspeakably cruel and ”a vicious misuse of taxpayer money,” said Mark Hetfield, president of the refugee resettlement program HIAS, in a statement to CNN.

What next?

The USCIS memo “indicated that there will be a list of people to reinterview within three months,” the AP said. “Besides the enormous cruelty of this undertaking,” said International Refugee Assistance Project president Sharif Aly, “it would also be a tremendous waste of government resources to review and reinterview 200,000 people who have been living peacefully in our communities for years.”

During his unsuccessful 2020 reelection bid, President Donald Trump often made a point of attacking rival Joe Biden's age and fitness, accusing him of hiding in a basement rather than hitting the campaign trail. Five years later, however, it's Trump who is facing health-related scrutiny after a weeklong August stretch without public events prompted mass social media speculation about the 79-year-old's condition.

Although the president has since returned to a more visible schedule of appearances, the incident has renewed a longstanding debate about Trump's health and his transparency on the topic. This is particularly salient in light of Trump's history of weaponized claims about his opponents' health and fitness for his personal and political gain.

What did the commentators say?

After "years" of his being held up as the "model of health, an exemplar of youth and a man always in his prime," there's "well-earned skepticism" about Trump's well-being, said Time. So it's "completely understandable why tin-foil conspiracists of all stripes" would have jumped on rumors of Trump’s "imminent, or possibly recent, demise."

Trump's week without public appearances "could just be taking a few days down in August," which is "normal for presidents to do," said former Biden White House aide Meghan Hays on CNN. "Or there could be actually something wrong. The problem is we don't know, and they are not being transparent about it."

Trump's circle "only has themselves to blame for this," said Chuck Todd on his Chuck Toddcast podcast. While the administration has been "not forthcoming pretty much about anything," they are "times 10" worse when it comes to Trump's personal health.

Given that the health information this White House does release is either "laughably exaggerated, so bare bones as to be equally dubious," or "only released under pressure," we should not "trust anything" being released through official channels, said journalist Garrett Graff at his "Doomsday Scenario Substack. And while Trump's health does not, at the moment, appear to constitute a news "event," it's "even more puzzling" that the "national media doesn't even treat it as a news 'story.'"

Trump's public absence and the resulting conspiracy theorizing have reignited a debate over the "sensitive issue" of the media reporting on "how healthy an aging leader of the free world actually is," said The Associated Press. While Biden "faced significant scrutiny" over his health, he was also "far less accessible to the media" and made fewer public appearances than Trump, CNN said. Trump's relative availability, in turn, may have "fueled stories" across news outlets, "acknowledging the online hubbub and offering facts about Trump's weekend plans."

The furor over Trump's health is akin to the "many times the internet has gone wild with the Putin is dead and Xi is dead rumors," said political scientist Ian Bremmer on X. That the U.S. experienced something similar "says a lot more about the state of mistrust in information and institutions in the United States than it does about the health of the president."

What next?

Questions about Trump's health are "fake news" and proof of "why the media has so little credibility," the president said during a press conference on Tuesday. But a series of YouGov polls published the same day suggest otherwise: 38% of respondents said Trump's health and age "severely limit his ability to do the job," while 52% of respondents said they trusted the White House's health announcements "only a little" or "not at all."

Trump's press conference this week, coupled with a flurry of activity on his Truth Social account, has managed to "somewhat quell rampant speculation" about his health, said Vanity Fair. But, said internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz to the publication, "these things snowball, and it's like a pressure valve." When someone as media savvy and omnipresent as Trump "drops out of view for days," said Margaret Sullivan at The Guardian, "that's fair game."

Is it possible to stage a political cover-up over something that's obvious to everyone? Weirdly, it is, said Alex Shephard in The New Republic. If you don't believe it, just read "Original Sin", the new book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about how Joe Biden's family and colleagues conspired to hide his growing frailty and confusion during his time in the White House.

It was a vain effort in some respects, as Biden's decline was evident to anyone who saw him walk or talk. Poll after poll showed that voters were all too aware of the issue. Yet the White House succeeded in suppressing talk about it, at least until Biden's disastrous TV debate with Donald Trump. It used "tactics that can only be described as Trumpian – denying any and all accusations", and attacking the credibility of any reporter or politician who raised legitimate questions about the president's fitness.

We can't let sympathy with Biden over his recent cancer diagnosis stand in the way of a "reckoning" for this cover-up, said Megan McArdle in The Washington Post. Thanks to "Original Sin", we now know that "the most powerful nation in the world and its nuclear arsenal were left in the hands of a man who could not reliably recognise people he'd known for years, maintain his train of thought or speak in coherent sentences". By late 2023, Biden's staff were apparently pushing as much of his schedule as possible to midday, when he was at his sharpest. Even for small meetings, he often relied on a teleprompter. The hiding of Biden's decline represents a "near-treasonous dereliction of duty" by his staff. Democrats and the liberal press have a lot to answer for, too.

Biden and his backers were lying to themselves as much as to others, said Carlos Lozada in The New York Times. They were in thrall to the "Biden mythology" of the scrappy leader beating the odds. Because of their misgivings about Kamala Harris, and their hatred of Trump, they felt justified in concealing the truth.

But Democrats now need to resist the temptation to pin the whole election debacle on Biden. If he'd dropped out of the race earlier, it's not clear that any other nominee would have done better than Harris. For too long, the Democrats have acted as the anti-Trump party, offering no positive sense of what they believe in. History won't be kind to Biden, but Democrats should be mindful that "it's easier to find a scapegoat than an identity".

The 2024 elections were defined for many by damning allegations that then-President Joe Biden was not only experiencing mental and physical decline, but that his inner circle was obfuscating the true severity of his health challenges. As Democrats eye a return to the White House in 2028, those allegations have resurfaced — this time haunting a party split over how to regain voters' trust. While some have advocated for a full postmortem to enable the party to move on once and for all, others insist the Democrats should focus on the future without relitigating the past.

'Renewed questions' are 'sending shivers' through the party

Democrats face a "fresh reckoning" over Biden's health, with "potential presidential contenders" avoiding debate on whether the party should have "forcefully called on him to abandon his reelection bid earlier," said Politico. Whether or not to criticize Biden or to address his camp's insistence that he was fit for campaigning is "fast becoming the first real litmus test of the 2028" race, given how many Democrats "with 2028 ambitions" were "defending him at the time."

The upcoming publication of "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again" by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson has contributed to the "renewed questions" about who knew what about Biden's health when, "sending shivers" through the party, said The Washington Post. To "regain the trust of voters," some have argued that party leaders must "state openly that Biden should never have sought reelection" last year.

That Democratic Party leadership has been "unwilling to reckon publicly" with supporting Biden's campaign "for as long as it did" suggests a "lasting fear of speaking out," said The New York Times. There is an awareness among some that by speaking out against Biden's 2024 fitness now, they have exposed themselves to "questions about why they said nothing when it mattered."

"We're not looking backward," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said of rehashing Biden's health at a press conference last week. "We're looking forward at this moment in time."

Not just about Biden

While backward-looking "self-flagellations" by Democrats are often "excessive and pointless," in this case they are "needed," said Michael Tomasky at The New Republic. It's necessary not only for unpacking who may have inappropriately protected Biden's candidacy, but also for the "automatic anointing of Kamala Harris after Biden dropped out," which Democrats should "examine and learn from."

Mainstream political media is also implicated in questions about knowledge of Biden's health. There is an "unhealthy confluence of interests" between White House staff and White House reporters, said John Fund at the National Review. By failing to recognize "how powerful a motivation their sources had to deceive them," the political media "failed in their duty to probe more deeply and question the official White House line."

Fallout from questions about Biden's health may also affect other future candidates for office who played roles in his administration. Such potential candidates may find their campaigns "forced to address what they knew and what they did," USA Today said. Conversely, high-profile Democrats with "some distance" from the Biden 2024 team (people like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker or New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) could see their careers "boosted as the sort of fresh faces the party needs."

On January 20, 2025, President Trump placed Cuba back on the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism just one week after the Biden administration had removed the country's designation. That puts Cuba back on a short list with just three other countries: Iran, North Korea and Syria. With a major regime transition underway in Syria following the abrupt resignation of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, the country's controversial inclusion on the State Department's list may eventually be scrutinized.

Only eight countries have ever received the designation, which is distinct from the State Department's much larger list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. How did Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria end up on the list and why are they still there?

A short history of a short list

The State Sponsors of Terrorism list was created in 1979 for countries that "have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism," said the State Department. Designation as an State Sponsor of Terrorims carries with it prohibitions on certain kinds of commerce, including the sale of weapons and potentially dual-use items like commercial airplanes and equipment, as well as a ban on U.S. economic assistance.

"Syria is the last country from this original list to remain so designated today," said The Atlantic Council. Its original designation in 1979 stems from the Syrian government's support for "U.S.-listed terrorist groups," including Palestinian guerrilla organizations and the decision to allow those terrorist groups "to maintain headquarters in Damascus," said the Council on Foreign Relations. Over the years, Syria's portfolio expanded to include a significant role in the arming, funding and hosting of the Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, which was founded after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Hezbollah also played a major role in landing Iran on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list on January 23rd, 1984. The action followed five years of escalating tensions between the two countries that began when dozens of U.S. diplomats and embassy workers were held hostage in Tehran for 444 days during the Iranian revolution and culminated in the 1983 Hezbollah suicide bombing of a Marines barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. military personnel. Today, Iran continues to back Hezbollah as well as "Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza and various terrorist and militant groups in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and elsewhere throughout the Middle East," said the State Department.

North Korea was first designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1988. The bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 from Baghdad to Seoul, which killed all 115 people on board, was "later linked to North Korean agents" said The Washington Post. The designation was rescinded in 2008 "in the hopes of salvaging talks on its nuclear program," only to be reimposed in 2017 by President Trump, said The Atlantic. The pretext was the shocking broad-daylight assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's half-brother at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on February 13, 2017. Analysts at the time warned that the designation would "make diplomacy more difficult without increasing Washington's leverage," said The New York Times. Despite Trump's subsequent summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the designation has not been lifted.

Cuba was initially placed on the list in 1982 for "providing advice, safe haven, communications, training and financial support to guerrilla groups and individual terrorists," said the State Department. The U.S. claimed that Cuba was aiding a number of armed insurgent groups trying to overthrow governments including in El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as providing "funding, training, arms, safe haven and advice to a wide variety of guerrilla groups, and individual terrorists" in the region, said the Congressional Research Service.

President Obama removed the designation in April 2015, only to see President Trump place Cuba back on the list with just days left in his first term. President Trump's decision to reverse the Biden administration's last-minute order to remove Cuba from the list "aligns with his administration's hardline stance on Cuba," said CBS News. But while the move was expected, the new Trump administration's "rationale for the policy reversal was not immediately explained," said Politico.

Could more places be removed?

After a country is designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, "it is hard to remove even if it does not support terrorism," said the Brookings Institution. Inclusion on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list is not permanent and can be rescinded if the country in question undergoes "a fundamental change in the leadership and policies of the government," as well as provides "assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future," said the Congressional Research Service.

Prior to President Biden's decision to remove Cuba from the list, the last time such a designation was lifted was in October 2020, when President Trump took Sudan off the list when its government agreed to "pay $335m in compensation for its alleged role in the bombing of two US embassies" in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, said The Guardian. Sudan had allowed al-Qaeda, which perpetrated the attacks, to operate out of its territory between 1991 and 1996.

In his farewell address to the US nation on Wednesday, Joe Biden listed the accomplishments of his presidency but acknowledged "it will take time to feel the full impact of all we've done together".

The outgoing president opened his 17-minute speech by stressing that the new ceasefire deal in Gaza had been "developed and negotiated by my team". It remains to be seen if this tentative truce will be a lasting legacy of Biden's term but his administration's support for Israel "at every turn", despite its "relentless outpouring of violence", has left an "indelible moral stain", said Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy.

Presidential legacies are "complicated matters", said The Atlantic, but, as Biden leaves The White House, he seems "less a transformational figure than a historical parenthesis". His four years in office will be remembered for his failure both to "grasp the political moment" and to achieve "the essential mission of his presidency": to "preserve democracy by preventing Donald Trump's return to power".

Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Biden's "first misstep as president came half a world away", with the shambolic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, said the BBC's North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher. Backing the Trump-negotiated end to "the forever war", Biden promised there would be no "a hasty rush to the exit" but "we'll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely".

The reality was anything but, as "scenes of chaos at Kabul airport dominated world news", said The Guardian. Despite the majority of Americans backing the US exit plan, the chaotic and hurried withdrawal painted a picture of a great power in decline, and Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee claimed it "degraded" US national security.

For a president who prided himself on his foreign-policy experience, it was a particularly disastrous moment. Biden's Gallup approval rating dipped below 50% for the first time – a mark it would never reach again.

Inflation hitting hard

On the domestic front, Biden "has much to point to", said The Washington Post, perhaps most notably "an economic recovery out of the pandemic" that is "the envy of other countries".

Biden's landmark "American Rescue Plan" delivered nearly $2 trillion in new government spending, and was quickly followed by a trillion-dollar bi-partisan infrastructure investment bill. But rampant inflation – due, in some part, to these policies – proved stubborn to shift, and voters came to blame Biden's presidency for the high prices in stores.

The fault lay with Biden's focus on policies that took too long to translate into economic benefits for the average American worker. By the summer before the 2024 presidential election, the monthly inflation numbers had dropped below 3%, economic growth was steady, unemployment rates low, and "the US had outperformed the world's other industrialised nations" but "voters continued to have a pessimistic view of the economy," said the BBC's Zurcher. And "they did not forgot nor forgive" at the ballot box.

"The time horizon" associated with Biden's major pieces of legislation was "way out of sync with the exigencies of the presidential election," Brent Cebul, associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, told the BBC.

Support for Ukraine

The Biden administration was quick to support Ukraine following Russia's invasion in February 2022. And Biden's continued support, including $183 billion in military aid, "has been critical to Ukraine's effort to repel the Russian invasion, and has inspired Nato allies to do the same", said international security expert Dafydd Townley on The Conversation.

But fierce fighting "continues on the frontlines with no clear plan for a peace deal", said CBS News.

Biden also faced criticism early in the conflict "for holding back on sending the most lethal weapons", and then, later, Republicans attacked him for "spending too much money on Ukraine aid".

The White House was pursuing a "Goldilocks strategy," said Phillips Payson O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, in The Atlantic. Biden and his aides were "hoping to help Ukraine fight without provoking Putin too much".

What this meant in practice is that the Biden administration "has treated the Ukraine conflict like a crisis to be managed, not a war to be won".

Decision to run in 2024

Biden ran for president in 2020 as a transition candidate – an "implicit but clear pledge that he intended to serve a single term", said The New York Times. Yet, despite record low approval ratings, voters' concern about his age and clear signs of physical and mental decline, Biden made the decision to run again in 2024, claiming that he was the only person capable of beating Donald Trump.

A disastrous first presidential debate in June led to pressure from Democrat big-hitters for him to stand down but the damage to the party's re-election hopes had already been done. His replacement, Kamala Harris, had only 100 days to introduce herself to the electorate as presidential candidate, and distance herself from Biden's more unpopular policies.

While history may judge Biden's record more favourably with the passing of time – as it has fellow one-term president Jimmy Carter – the fact that he ran again in 2024 "in the face of voters' broad discontent and on top of the specific concerns they had about his age" will surely "be a part of" his legacy, said The Washington Post.

"He'd like his legacy to be that he rescued us from Trump," Democratic strategist Susan Estrich told the BBC's Zurcher. "But sadly, for him, his legacy is Trump again. He is the bridge from Trump One to Trump Two."

The Hunter pardon

Having repeatedly vowed not to pardon his son Hunter, who was convicted of three felony gun charges, Biden did just that, only weeks after Trump was voted back in. His decision was widely criticised by both Republicans and Democrats, with The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait branding it the "hypocrisy of fatherly indulgence".

Biden said he would "abide by the results of the justice system as a matter of principle", Chait wrote, but "in breaking his promise" and "issuing a sweeping pardon of his son for any crimes he may have committed over an 11-year period", he has prioritised "his own feelings over the defence of his country".

The Hunter pardon put Democrats in the "almost impossible position of demanding equal treatment under the law for convicted felon Trump, while trying to excuse Biden's whitewashing of his son's own criminal record", said Time.

"A father’s love is admirable; a president's lie is not," said The New York Times, "In one of his last major political acts in office, Joe Biden forgot who he was." And the consequence? "History won't be kind."

The world's major powers are locked into an artificial intelligence arms race. But new rules announced by the White House on Monday seek to guarantee American supremacy in that race.

The Biden administration's "unprecedented new export controls" intend to keep AI technology from falling into Chinese hands, said The Washington Post. The controls restrict the sale of AI-capable chips to "most countries in the world," part of an effort to keep Beijing from repurchasing American-made chips sold to third-party countries. America "leads the world in AI now, both AI development and AI chip design," said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, "and it's critical that we keep it that way."

Biden is "rushing" to restrict AI chip exports because recent developments suggest that China is "catching up in the race" to create massively powerful AI systems, said Time. The Chinese company DeepSeek recently released an open-source AI model that "outperformed any American open-source language model." The development surprised officials "who had believed China lagged behind in terms of AI capabilities." The new rules are a "decisive move to make life much harder for China's AI ecosystem," said Greg Allen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The 'contest for geopolitical superiority'

America and China are in "grim competition" with each other, and "both intend to be prepared for war," Ezra Klein said at The New York Times. AI superiority is now seen as "central to both sides of the conflict." DeepSeek's new model is part of a new wave of AI systems that can be built cheaply and stored on personal computers. But calls for restraint in the AI arms race will probably take second place to the "contest for geopolitical superiority," Klein said. America is the "leading power when it comes to artificial intelligence," said Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor. "And we intend to keep it that way."

To do that, the new rules "strangle competition" in the tech marketplace, Chris Stokel-Walker said at Fast Company. Banning exports to China "makes sense, given how integral AI will be to shaping our future." But blocking exports to 120 other countries is harder to justify. That seems less about protecting America and "more like an overtly protectionist trade policy." That makes it "more likely countries will look towards China" to power their own AI efforts, Stokel-Walker said.

How long will U.S. lead last?

It's not just chip exports: Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order to ensure that AI data centers and clean-power facilities that supply them energy "can be built quickly and at scale," said The Associated Press. "We will not let America be out-built" in the AI industry, Biden said.

American chipmaker Nvidia and the European Union have both "expressed their displeasure" with the new rules, said Karl Freund, founder and analyst at Cambrian-AI Research, at Forbes. The winner? Beijing. China's chips are slower "but at least you can get them." For AI developers in Africa, South America or Asia, the Biden administration rules mean Chinese technology might "become your best and perhaps only choice." The new rules will slow down China's AI development, Freund said. "But for how long?"

What happened

President Joe Biden informed Congress Tuesday he was removing Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and easing other sanctions on the island nation.

An hour after Biden's announcement, Cuba said President Miguel Díaz-Canel had agreed to "gradually" release 553 prisoners following talks with Pope Francis. U.S. officials suggested the two decisions were linked.

Who said what

Biden's last-minute moves are the "latest in a series of conflicting U.S. approaches to Cuba by different administrations," The New York Times said. President-elect Donald Trump put Cuba on the terrorism blacklist "in the final hours of his first term," Reuters said, cutting Havana off from international banking and leading to a "deep economic crisis" that "stoked a record-breaking exodus off the island" and mostly to the U.S.

Biden officials have "long acknowledged there has been little justification for Cuba's presence on a list that will now include only North Korea, Iran and Syria," The Washington Post said. An administration official said a recent policy review had found "no credible evidence" of "ongoing support by Cuba for international terrorism."

What next?

Trump has "filled his team with officials hawkish on Cuba," so Biden's Cuba detente is "not likely to last," CNN said.

What happened

Qatari and Egyptian mediators Monday gave Israel and Hamas a final draft of an agreement to end the war in Gaza, as U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials expressed optimism that a cease-fire deal could be finalized by the end of the week. One official told Reuters the deal came together after a late "breakthrough" in ongoing talks in Doha attended by envoys from President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump.

Who said what

"We're on the brink" of "finally" bringing to "fruition" an Israel-Hamas peace "proposal that I laid out in detail months ago," Biden said in a valedictory foreign policy speech. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said there was a "distinct possibility we can get this deal done this week," before Biden leaves office. Trump told Newsmax he understood "there's been a handshake and they're getting it finished, and maybe by the end of the week."

Two Israeli officials Monday "said a draft agreement was awaiting Hamas' approval, with the next 24 hours seen as being critical," The New York Times said. A Hamas official "said in a text message that progress had been made on all issues and that a deal was possible in the coming two days as long as Israel does not change its position at the last minute." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces "fierce opposition to a potential deal from within his governing coalition," the BBC said.

What next?

Trump's "Jan. 20 inauguration is now widely seen as a de facto deadline for a cease-fire agreement," Reuters said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told MSNBC that Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff have "been a terrific partner in this," and Witkoff's participation in negotiations "has been critical" to ensure there's a deal "the Trump administration will continue to back."

What happened

President Joe Biden on Saturday awarded Pope Francis the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction, the highest U.S. civilian honor. Biden handed out Medals of Freedom to 19 people earlier this month, including Hillary Clinton, Michael J. Fox, Denzel Washington, Magic Johnson, designer Ralph Lauren, George Soros, Lionel Messi, philanthropic chef José Andrés and U2's Bono, but the pope is the only person upon whom Biden has bestowed the honor "with distinction."

Who said what

Francis is "the People's Pope — a light of faith, hope and love that shines brightly across the world," the White House said. "His mission of serving the poor has never ceased. A loving pastor, he joyfully answers children's questions about God. A challenging teacher, he commands us to fight for peace and protect the planet. A welcoming leader, he reaches out to different faiths. The first pope from the Southern Hemisphere, Pope Francis is unlike any who came before."

Biden had planned to present the pope with the medal on a visit to Rome, but he canceled the trip to oversee the federal response to the Los Angeles wildfires. Instead, he bestowed the honor during a phone call. Biden was the sole recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction under President Barack Obama.

What next?

Biden, the second Catholic president, leaves office Jan. 20. The Italy trip was to have been his final presidential trip abroad.

U.S. officials are considering ramping up defenses against one of China's most ubiquitous technologies: drones. The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced that it is exploring a rule that could restrict Chinese drones in the United States — or ban them entirely.

This new rule would "secure and safeguard the information and communication technology and services (ICTS) supply chain" for drones in the U.S., the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security said in a press release. The bureau believes that foreign involvement in the drone supply chain "may offer our adversaries the ability to remotely access and manipulate these devices, exposing sensitive U.S. data."

The potential new rule comes at the behest of the Biden administration. However, with President Joe Biden having less than a month left in office, the decision on the Chinese drones will ultimately be made by President-elect Donald Trump.

Why is the US worried about Chinese drones?

Drones have "evolved over the past decade to include sophisticated cameras, receivers and artificial intelligence abilities," said The New York Times. This has led to "concerns that they could be turned into a useful tool for an adversarial government," with China at the forefront of these worries. China already has a large presence in the American drone market; Chinese-based companies account for at least 75% of the drones sold in the U.S.

The Commerce Department also noted that Chinese drones could "damage physical infrastructure in a collision, deliver an explosive payload or gather information about critical infrastructure," said the Times, which could create additional national security concerns.

Most pressing to the U.S. is DJI, a Shenzhen, China-based company that sells over half of all commercial drones in the United States. American officials have "repeatedly raised concerns that DJI drones pose data transmission, surveillance and national security risks, which the company rejects," said Reuters. DJI has also been added to a "list of companies allegedly working with Beijing's military," and the Pentagon has banned the use of the company's drones by the U.S. government. This is part of a "series of steps" taken by politicians to "crack down on Chinese drones over the last year," including a bill signed by Biden that could prevent DJI drones from being sold in the U.S.

What would a Chinese drone ban mean?

If passed, the ban "could impose restrictions similar to those that would effectively ban Chinese vehicles from the United States," said Reuters. The ban would focus on "drones with Chinese and Russian equipment, chips and software."

This would be the "latest move in the escalating trade and tech decoupling between the world's two largest economies," said the South China Morning Post. There will now be an investigation into "threats posed by foreign adversaries, and the potential economic impact of the proposed regulations on affected entities." Trump's administration will decide whether to implement a drone ban in the coming months; the Commerce Department is seeking public comments on the drone supply chain by March 4.

Chinese officials have pushed back against the American allegations. China "stands firmly opposed to the US' overstretching the concept of national security, disrupting and restricting normal international trade and economic exchange, undermining global industrial and supply chains stability," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning per the Global Times, China's English-language state-run newspaper. The country will "take all necessary measures to firmly defend its legitimate and lawful rights and interests."

What happened

The fast-spreading wildfires ravaging Los Angeles grew and multiplied Wednesday, prompting President Joe Biden to sign a sweeping federal disaster declaration and cancel his final foreign trip, to Italy. With the Sunset Fire that sprang up Wednesday evening in the Hollywood Hills, there are five active fires in Los Angeles County, most of them 0% contained. Five deaths were reported in Altadena from the Eaton Fire, and at least 2,000 houses, businesses and other buildings have been destroyed.

Who said what

The "catastrophic blazes" have "erased entire neighborhoods" around this city of 10 million and scorched "more than 27,000 acres, equivalent to nearly 20,000 football fields," The New York Times said. In affluent Pacific Palisades, the "apocalyptic scenes spread for miles," The Associated Press said, with "block after block" of houses "reduced to charred remains." The area is a "ghost town," CNN's Leigh Waldman said. "Everyone keeps saying 'apocalyptic,' but that doesn't begin to cover it."

Biden had been due to fly to Rome on Thursday afternoon for three days of visits with Pope Francis and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, but he decided to stay in Washington to focus on "directing the full federal response" to the "historic fires raging" in L.A., the White House said. At a briefing in Santa Monica earlier Wednesday, Biden said the federal government was "prepared to do anything and everything for as long as it takes to contain these fires."

What next?

The "extraordinarily dangerous fire weather" in Southern California "improved somewhat" last night, the Los Angeles Times said, but "red flag fire weather conditions will persist through much of Friday." When the danger has passed, the decimation of areas "packed with multimillion-dollar homes" may be the "final straw that breaks California's insurance market," Politico said.

President Joe Biden is trying to strengthen Taiwan's defenses before he leaves the White House. The United States, said China's leaders (who consider now-independent Taiwan to be China's territory), is undermining "peace and stability" in East Asia as a result.

American leaders, Beijing said, are "playing with fire" with the latest round of military assistance to Taiwan, Politico said. The warning came after Biden authorized up to $571 million in defense-related "material and services" to the democratic island. (The Pentagon at the same time announced it had approved $295 million in military equipment sales.) China's foreign ministry said that Taiwan is a "red line that must not be crossed" by the U.S., Reuters said, and added that it would take "all necessary measures" to protect its claim.

"Beijing regularly protests announcements of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan," said The Wall Street Journal. Its latest pushback comes at a moment of transition, with Donald Trump about to take office. Trump's approach to the China-Taiwan tension "generally remains unclear." Trump has warned Taiwan — like NATO — that it should "significantly increase its military spending and not rely entirely on U.S. military support," said the Journal.

What did the commentators say?

"China is seeking to set the terms for the U.S.-China bilateral relationship for the next four years," David Sacks said at the Council on Foreign Relations. Beijing's talk of "red lines" — including at a recent meeting between Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jingping — is a warning to the U.S. "not to pursue certain policies." China understands the United States probably will not abide by those lines, under Biden or Trump, but publicly announcing them "gives Beijing the opportunity to put the onus on Washington for heightened tensions," Sacks said. Despite that, it seems likely that "U.S. security cooperation with Taiwan will continue apace."

"The incoming administration should reject China's red lines as unworkable both in principle and in practice," Jack Burnham said at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. It is not only Taiwan: Beijing has announced it considers efforts to promote democracy in China and U.S. sanctions to limit Chinese trade and technology acquisition to be other "red lines" that American leaders should not cross. The new Trump Administration should ignore those warnings. Why? "China is attempting to preemptively set the tone of the relationship," Burnham said.

What next?

"Taiwan is buckling up for what could be a far more volatile relationship with Washington," said CNN. Trump has stacked his new cabinet with "China hawks." On the campaign trail Trump argued that Taiwan should pay the United States "protection money" while also saying the country had "stolen" America's electronics chip-making businesses. That leaves leaders in Taipei City nervous, said Chen Ming-chi, a former senior advisor to Taiwan's National Security Council. Trump's "unpredictability," he said, means "we don't know if Taiwan will be safer or more dangerous under his second term."

What happened

Alexander Smirnov, a former FBI informant, pleaded guilty Monday to falsely claiming that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter were involved in a bribery scheme with Ukrainian energy company Burisma. His bogus 2020 allegation that the Bidens were each paid $5 million by Burisma formed the basis of stalled Republican efforts to impeach Biden. Smirnov also admitted to evading taxes on $2 million in income.

Who said what

Smirnoff, motivated by "bias" against Biden, spun his "routine and unextraordinary business contacts" with Burisma into "fabrications" about bribery, prosecutors said in their indictment. According to court documents, the BBC said, Smirnov "had ties with Russian intelligence" and used his "$2 million in unreported income to buy a Las Vegas condominium," lease a Bentley and spend heavily on clothes and jewelry.

Smirnov's indictment was brought by special counsel David Weiss, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney "who also prosecuted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges," The Associated Press said.

What next?

Smirnov is scheduled to be sentenced next month. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed to recommend four to six years in prison.

As Democrats "sift through the wreckage of their shattered coalition", one question should jump out at them, said Ruy Teixeira in The Liberal Patriot: "Who is the Democratic Party for, exactly?"

It was no surprise that Donald Trump made further inroads with his base of white, working-class men in the election. But he also improved on his 2020 vote share with Latinos, Asians, urban voters, and young voters. Even women, predicted to turn out in droves to protect abortion rights, voted for Kamala Harris by a smaller margin than for Joe Biden. It was a truly bleak result for the Democrats, said Jonathan Martin on Politico. Unlike in 2016, they couldn't even claim the consolation of winning the popular vote. The only upside is that the depth of the defeat presents them with an opportunity for a total rethink. "Democrats now have a mandate for change."

The first thing they need to change, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times, is their preoccupation with group-based identity politics. Although Harris didn't make a big deal of her gender or ethnicity during the campaign, that didn't compensate for the fact that the Democrats in the Trump years became the party of "condescension and cancellation". As the nation's self-appointed language police, they shamed anyone not fluent in gender-fluid pronouns or in "faculty-lounge terminology" such as "Latinx" and "Bipoc" (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour). They embraced ideas such as defunding the police and letting biological males play women's sports. This intellectual and moral preening played well with college-educated women – the only cohort where Democrats made gains – but it "alienated half the country, or more". Most Hispanic and Latino people do not like the term Latinx; and there is data showing that more white progressives think "racism is built into" US society than black and Hispanic Americans.

The Democrats have an image problem, agreed Mike Pesca in The Atlantic. Despite Harris' efforts to sell them as "the party of change, freedom and not being weird", many voters see them as prigs, killjoys and scolds. With its stultifying "rules-bound persnicketiness", the party "resembles that most American of institutions: the HR department".

Still, the Democrats shouldn't lose all perspective on this, said Jackie Calmes in the Los Angeles Times. The result was a shock but it was not a total rejection of their agenda. In historical terms, Trump's margin of victory was slim. He may have won votes by using the issue of transgender rights against Harris, but voters in many states took the Democrats' side on ballot measures for abortion rights, a higher minimum wage and mandatory paid leave; and polls suggest strong support for irregular migrants being able to apply for legal status, a policy the Democrats favoured. In short, the party is in a stronger position than it seems. It should learn the lessons and move on.

The Ukrainian military has a new weapon in its arsenal, as President Joe Biden has given permission for Ukraine to begin firing U.S.-made ATACMS missiles into Russia. The Ukrainians wasted no time and shot at least six of these missiles at a weapons facility in Russia's Bryansk region, according to officials from Russia and Ukraine. Russia shot down five of these missiles, which were launched on the war's 1000th day.

Ukraine's approval by the Biden administration to use ATACMS missiles represents a significant reversal of course; the White House has previously restricted Ukrainian forces from using the long-range missile system against Russian targets. But with no end to the war in sight — and Biden preparing to cede the presidency to Donald Trump — the U.S. is hurriedly increasing its wartime assistance in the region.

What is ATACMS?

Pronounced "attack-ems," ATACMS stands for the Army Tactical Missile System. They are "ballistic missiles that, depending on the model, can strike targets 190 miles away with a warhead containing about 375 pounds of explosives," said The New York Times. The weapons are manufactured by U.S. defense company Lockheed Martin, which says ATACMS "gives commanders the immediate firepower to shape the battlespace."

ATACMS are generally referred to as long-range missiles, but "that is a subjective term," said the Times. ATACMS can travel further into Russian territory than any other Ukrainian weapons, but "cannot travel as far as a cruise missile or intercontinental ballistic missile."

Why is Biden allowing Ukraine to use these weapons?

The ATACMS decision "follows months of pleas" by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to "allow Ukraine's military to use U.S. weapons to hit Russian military targets far from its border," said USA Today. Despite these pleas, the Biden administration had repeatedly stated that it would not permit Ukraine to use ATACMAS weapons outside of Ukraine's own borders.

However, the White House seemed to rethink this strategy after "Russia's deployment of North Korean ground troops to supplement its own forces, a development that has caused alarm in Washington and Kyiv," said USA Today. Beyond this, it is unclear how President-elect Trump will handle the war once he gets into office, meaning that Biden is looking to shore up as much support for Ukraine as possible before he leaves office.

What does this mean for the future?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he "would regard any use of U.S.-supplied weapons against Russian territory as an attack by the United States," said Slate. Putin has also said that he would retaliate by attacking U.S. military bases in Europe if the ATACMS were continually used.

Even more notably, Putin approved a broadened nuclear doctrine that "appeared to be a thinly veiled threat to the United States and its allies over their ramped-up support for Ukraine," said NBC News. This new doctrine would allow Russia to launch a nuclear weapon if they are attacked by a non-nuclear country, such as Ukraine, that is supported by a nuclear country, like the U.S.

While moves are being made by Western forces — including the precautionary closing of the American embassy in Kyiv due to threats of air attacks — the use of ATACMS appears likely to continue in the immediate future. They also might run out by the time the Trump administration takes charge. When it comes to Putin's threats, world leaders "expressed doubts that the change amounted to much more than a new and more intense effort to deter the West," said NBC.

What happened

The U.S. Treasury Department Monday imposed sanctions on Amana, Israel's largest settlement development organization, and its Binyanei Bar Amana subsidiary, calling the groups "a key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement" and accusing them of supporting growing settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Who said what

Amana has "established dozens of illegal settler outposts and directly engaged in dispossession of private land owned by Palestinians in its support of settlers," said the State Department, which separately sanctioned three companies and three people "for their roles in violence targeting civilians" or property crimes.

Barring Amana from conducting business with Americans or accessing U.S.-held assets was "potentially the most significant sanction" yet under an executive order President Joe Biden issued in February, Haaretz said. The Amana sanctions were "an earthquake for the settlement project," Eitay Mack, a human rights lawyer who spent years pushing for sanctioning West Bank settlers, said to The Associated Press.

Amana is a "well-established decades-old group that has close ties with Israeli leadership," the AP said. Mack and nearly 90 congressional Democrats have urged Biden to also impose sanctions on far-right, pro-settler Israeli Cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

What next?

Biden's West Bank sanctions "could be quickly reversed under President-elect Donald Trump, whose incoming administration is expected to be pro-settler," Reuters said.

What happened

President Joe Biden made a stopover in the Brazilian Amazon Sunday, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit the world's largest tropical rainforest. Biden took a helicopter tour of the jungle around Manaus and visited a nearby nature reserve situated where the Negro and Amazon rivers meet, signing a declaration designating Nov. 17 International Conservation Day.

Who said what

"The fight against climate change has been a defining cause of my presidency," Biden said, noting hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. investments in renewable energy and global climate aid. "I will leave my successor and my country a strong foundation to build on, if they choose to do so." It's true that "some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that's underway in America, but nobody — nobody — can reverse it," he added. Not when so many Americans are "enjoying its benefits" and "countries around the world are harnessing the clean energy revolution to pull ahead themselves."

President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to rip Biden's climate policies "to shreds when he returns to office in January," Politico said. Trump has "pledged to again pull out of the Paris agreement" and "rescind unspent money in energy efficiency legislation," The Associated Press said. And on Saturday he picked Chris Wright, "the head of fracking company Liberty Energy," to be the next energy secretary, The Washington Post said. Wright "contends that the climate crisis is a myth" and "runs a foundation that promotes expanded fossil fuel production."

What next?

Biden travels next to Rio de Janeiro for a G20 summit "where the future of global climate policy is likely to be a major point of discussion," Politico said. At a concurrent United Nations climate summit in Azerbaijan, "global leaders were already discussing a path forward without the U.S. playing a key leadership role."

What happened

President Joe Biden lifted restrictions on Ukraine using U.S.-provided long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia under certain circumstances, U.S. officials told multiple news organizations Sunday. The reversal in policy, after months of lobbying by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will initially allow Kyiv to fire Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) rockets at 50,000 Russian and North Korean troops amassing to recapture Russia's Kursk province from Ukraine.

Who said what

Biden's "major change in U.S. policy" was prompted by "Russia's surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight," which the U.S. sees as a major escalation, The New York Times said. Allowing the use of ATACMS "deep inside Russia" probably won't "fundamentally alter the course of the war," but it could "help the Ukrainians blunt the effectiveness of the Russian-North Korean assault" and "send a message to the North Koreans that their forces are vulnerable and that they should not send more of them."

Despite the media reports of the ATACMS shift, "blows are not inflicted with words," Zelenskyy said Sunday night. "Such things are not announced. The rockets will speak for themselves." Ukraine "plans to conduct its first long-range attacks in the coming days," Reuters said.

President Vladimir Putin warned in September that Western rockets hitting Russia would "substantially change the very essence" of the conflict, and senior Russian lawmaker Vladimir Dzhabarov called Sunday's U.S. shift "a very big step towards the start of World War III." But Russia has "set out 'red lines' before," the BBC said, and many were "crossed without triggering a direct war between Russia and NATO."

U.S. officials noted that the damage from Kyiv's "significant new tool" will be constrained by Ukraine's "very limited stocks of ATACMS," The Washington Post said. But France and Britain quickly followed suit, allowing Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with their similar SCALP/Storm Shadow long-range missiles, Le Figaro said.

What next?

Biden's ATACMS shift, made Thursday, appeared to be part of his team's "push to give what it can to Ukraine" before Donald Trump takes office, The Wall Street Journal said. Trump has said he wants to negotiate some end to the war, and Ukraine and Russia both view Kursk as one of Ukraine's biggest bargaining chips in those talks.

World leaders are meeting in Brazil for a G20 summit that looks set to usher in a new era of "transactional" geopolitics driven by national self-interest rather than international consensus.

Agreement will be sought on issues such as trade, climate change and international security. But many observers are "bracing for a shift in the global order", said Reuters, with the return to power of US president-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened a global tariff war and a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine.

What did the commentators say?

European leaders are "waking up to an uncomfortable new reality", said the Financial Times: "transactional geopolitics is back".

Trump, who will take control of the White House in just over two months, "prefers bilateral negotiations and quid pro quo arrangements" to multilateral frameworks such as the G20 and "his acolytes are already laying the groundwork for his regime".

In a sign of how the US election has already emboldened Trump's allies, French President Emmanuel Macron met arch-libertarian Argentinian President Javier Milei on Sunday in a "last-ditch attempt to stop him derailing" this week's summit, said Politico.

Milei, who last week became the first foreign leader to meet Trump in person following his election victory, had threatened to block a joint G20 communique that referenced taxing the super-rich, climate change policy and gender issues. Negotiators managed to salvage the draft statement by adding a footnote saying that Argentina does not agree with some of the points. But the drama has "frustrated counterparts" because "Milei has little regard for multilateral institutions like the G20, and few qualms about irking world leaders with whom he disagrees", Bloomberg said.

They also see in Milei the "impending shadow of Trump's impact on other governments and the future crumbling of global pacts aimed at aligning economic policies in the spirit of compromise", said the FT.

Diplomats drafting a joint statement have also "struggled to hold together a fragile agreement" on how to address the escalating Ukraine war, or "even a vague call for peace without criticism of any participants", said Reuters, citing sources familiar with the discussions.

Keir Starmer has implored fellow leaders to "shore up support for Ukraine" even as the consensus around standing united against Vladimir Putin appears to be "fracturing" and the Russian president looks "emboldened", said Sky News.

What next?

With the US represented by "lame duck" Joe Biden, China's President Xi Jinping is set to be a "central player" at a summit riven with geopolitical tensions, said Reuters.

This week, Starmer will become the first PM in six years to meet his Chinese counterpart. The meeting is part of what he calls a new "pragmatic approach" to try to advance economic ties and galvanise progress on challenges such as climate change.

While diplomacy always requires a degree of pragmatism, what will worry Western leaders is that a world in which "countries pick and choose their stance on individual issues depending on a narrow vision of national benefits rather than through multinational compromise" could lead to a "more permanent fracturing of groups like the G20", said the FT. These alliances have long served as a bridge between the West and developing nations, but a shifting world power balance is increasingly being seized upon by rivals such as China and Russia to "strengthen alternative groupings and undermine western alliances".

There goes Joe Biden's legacy, said Isaac Chotiner in The New Yorker. Had Kamala Harris won last week's election, the president might have been remembered for some of his achievements in office. As it is, he'll now just be known as the man who beat Donald Trump, and then let him straight back into the White House through his own stubborn refusal to cede power.

It was clear long before this year that Biden was too old to stand for re-election. Yet having originally presented himself as a transition candidate, he decided to run again anyway, only pulling out in July after his disastrous debate performance. Biden should have resigned a year ago, said Holman W. Jenkins Jr in The Wall Street Journal. Harris could then have been tested as a president, and in a proper Democratic primary. Republican voters might have "taken the cue that Mr Trump's era was over too".

It was Biden's agenda that really messed things up for the Democrats, said Isaac Schorr in the New York Post. One of the main reasons he beat Trump in 2020 was because he "offered the American people some semblance of normalcy". He promised to govern from the centre as a benign moderate. Yet once in power, he suddenly thought he could be Franklin D. Roosevelt. He started governing "as if he were president of some far-left campus club", relaxing controls on the borders and pushing through a series of massive spending bills that exacerbated the inflation problem.

The president hoped to solve three problems at once with his multibillion-dollar climate and infrastructure spending bills, said Kate Aronoff in The New Republic. He wanted to revive America's industrial heartland, challenge China's dominance in clean energy, and win back disaffected working-class voters. In economic terms, the approach has reaped dividends: America is today enjoying a manufacturing boom and low unemployment. But politically, "Bidenomics" has proved a complete dud. It hasn't alleviated the cost-of-living crisis, and it isn't helping the Democrats win elections.

The cruel irony, said Franklin Foer in The Atlantic, is that these long-term investments, which have provided the foundations for economic growth, will probably start paying off politically under Trump, who opposed the legislation. "Biden will have passed along his most substantive legacy as a gift to his successor."

What happened

President Joe Biden arrived in Peru Thursday for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima followed by a G20 summit in Brazil, with a first-ever presidential visit to the Amazon rainforest in between. Biden's six-day trip marks the "final major international summits of his presidency," The Associated Press said, but even as he meets with "heads of state he's worked with over the years," the other world leaders have shifted their focus to "what Donald Trump's return to the White House means for their countries."

Who said what

Biden was always going to arrive at the summits either "as the confident statesman burnishing a legacy and preparing to hand off to his vice president" or facing "anxious world leaders and fresh questions about whether, as he'd spent four years claiming, 'America was back,'" CNN said. "He wanted the first. He got the latter." The gatherings will be "a kind of elegy for a bygone era that defined American foreign policy for most of the president's life," The New York Times said.

Biden will sit down with China's Xi Jinping on Saturday after holding a joint meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol today. But Yoon is already "dusting off his golf clubs, in case the chance to bond with the golf-loving Trump should present itself," the AP said. "A lame duck is a lame duck," former U.S. diplomat Ricardo Zúñiga told the Times. "And they know it."

Biden can't offer assurances about how U.S. policies will change under his successor, but he will "reassure the world that transitions of power are normal for democracies," said James Bosworth, the founder of the political consultancy Hxagon. "Biden will get public applause and praise, even as world leaders nervously await the transition."

What next?

Biden will offer his fellow world leaders the "same message that he's had for four years as president, which is that he believes that America's allies are vital to America's national security," national security adviser Jake Sullivan said to reporters. "When he goes to this Asia-Pacific summit in Peru, he'll go with our alliances in the Indo Pacific at a literal all-time high," Sullivan added. "And that's what he's going to hand off to President Trump."

The United States experienced a temporary, violent crime wave during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to official data, many violent crimes are currently on track to be at or near historic lows since the FBI began tracking data. Even though the worst of that post-pandemic crime wave has passed, public concern about crime remains high. A September 2024 Pew survey found that violent crime was fifth on voters' list of priorities this year. That means that both major party campaigns are trying to reassure voters that their policies will address the problem.

From reformer to hardliner

Vice President Kamala Harris promised to "fundamentally transform how we approach public safety" as a candidate for president during the summer and fall of 2019. Harris – then a U.S. Senator from California – released a criminal justice reform platform in September 2019 that promised to end mass incarceration, abolish private prisons, abandon the war on drugs and establish a new national commission to study the criminal justice system and recommend reforms. She also sought to reform the juvenile justice system. The proposal promised to "end life sentences of children and offer opportunities for sentence reduction to young people convicted of crimes."

During the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, after she dropped out of the 2020 presidential race but before she was selected as Joe Biden's running mate, Harris appeared to endorse aspects of the "defund the police" movement, arguing that funding police departments to the exclusion of social priorities was misguided. The Biden-Harris ticket that year then promised significant reforms to the criminal justice system.

Yet the pandemic crime wave put the brakes on Harris' criminal justice reform platform almost immediately, as the newly-inaugurated administration realized that the public appetite for reform had been eclipsed by fears of a violent crime wave. Leading Democrats have yet to return to their previous messaging about tackling police violence and addressing systemic racism in the criminal justice system despite the drop in crime rates. "The change reflects a broader shift in thinking among Democrats and their nonpartisan allies who work in violence reduction, criminal justice and police reform," said Marin Cogan in Vox.

A promise to legalize marijuana

Since becoming the Democratic Party nominee in August after President Biden withdrew from the race, Harris has had very little to say about crime or criminal justice. One exception is federal marijuana policy. Despite the increasing number of states that have fully legalized recreational marijuana, more than 200,000 people were arrested on marijuana charges in 2023. As a senator, Harris cosponsored a bill in 2019 to decriminalize marijuana.

The Biden-Harris administration announced in April 2024 that it would ask the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to change its appraisal of marijuana to classify it as a less harmful substance that has medical uses but stopped short of recommending outright legalization or decriminalization. And then on October 14, Harris said that as president she would support legalization of marijuana, a stance that goes much further than the official policy of President Biden. In 2023, 70% of respondents said that they supported legalizing the drug, a record high in Gallup's long-running poll of the issue.

Harris has made few concrete promises about either criminal justice reform, violent crime or policing. There is no section on crime or law enforcement in her campaign's 82-page policy booklet that was released in September. In her convention speech, she did not address crime directly but said that as a prosecutor she worked on behalf of victims and that "everyone has a right to safety, to dignity and to justice." She has instead positioned herself as a tough-on-crime prosecutor who supports law enforcement.

Harris is "embracing her identity as a prosecutor in a way that would have been unimaginable four years ago," said Shaila Dewan in The New York Times. That posture may also be an effort to portray former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump – who was convicted on 34 felony counts by a New York jury in May – as a criminal. How well that plays with voters remains to be seen.

What happened

The Biden administration warned Israel in an Oct. 13 letter that U.S. military aid was at risk unless the Israeli government allowed significantly more food, medicine and other humanitarian aid into Gaza within 30 days, U.S. officials confirmed Tuesday, after Axios' Barak Ravid posted the letter. The sharply worded missive, from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to their Israeli counterparts, is the "strongest such warning" in Israel's yearlong campaign to "root out Hamas militants," Reuters said.

Who said what

Blinken and Austin said to continue qualifying for military assistance under U.S. law, Israel must allow at least 350 aid trucks a day into Gaza, implement "adequate humanitarian pauses" to allow aid delivery and vaccinations, and stop isolating northern Gaza, among other demands. Their letter was sent amid "growing frustration in the administration that despite repeated and increasingly vocal requests to scale back offensive operations against Hamas, Israel's bombardment has led to unnecessary civilian deaths," The Associated Press said. Blinken made similar demands in April, but after a period of improvement, Israel reduced aid deliveries to almost nothing in recent weeks, officials said.

Israel is "highly dependent on U.S. military aid as it fights a war on several fronts," Axios said. An Israeli official said the letter "is being thoroughly reviewed" and Israel "intends to address the concerns" with U.S. officials.

What next?

The Biden team's "reluctance" Tuesday to "confirm that it would restrict arms shipments fueled immediate doubts about the seriousness of the warning," The Washington Post said. But the "30-day deadline set by the letter would fall after the election," The New York Times said, "potentially making it politically easier" for President Joe Biden to take stronger actions to ensure compliance.

A new book from Watergate's veteran journalist Bob Woodward has made a series of shock claims about former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump.

"War", which will be published on Tuesday, three weeks before the White House election, "resurrects unsettling questions" about Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Foreign Policy, and the "largely unresolved mystery" of his "business and financial ties to Russia".

The Putin claims

One of the "modern expectations of the office" of US president is that Woodward will "write at least one book about your administration", said The New York Times.

He has penned more than 20 books on US politics and "no one can beat" him at "getting the story of the White House from the inside", said Politico. "People tell Woodward things they shouldn't."

In this latest book, Woodward claims that when Trump was still president in 2020, he "secretly" sent Putin "a bunch" of Covid test machines for his personal use, at a time when Covid tests were thin on the ground.

He also claims that the two leaders have spoken by phone as many as seven times since Trump left office in 2021, even as the former president was pressing Republicans to block military aid to Ukraine to fight Moscow's forces. The report comes from a single aide, who described being ordered out of Trump’s office at his Mar-a-Lago estate in early 2024 so that he could take a call with Putin.

Elsewhere in the book, Trump's ally, Lindsey Graham, says that visiting Mar-a-Lago "is a little bit like going to North Korea", because "everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in".

Behind the scenes

The former president has "wasted no time" in "lashing out" at Woodward over the "damning revelations", said Raw Story. Trump's campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said it was a "trash book" that deserves to be "used as toilet tissue".

The book forms a "study in contrasts" and of "just how dysfunctional the US political system has become", said Foreign Policy. As Joe Biden was confronting Putin, it seems his predecessor was "secretly talking to him and opposing US military aid to Ukraine".

With all the fuss about the Trump passages, it's easy to forget that the book is largely focused on Joe Biden. It actually offers "a remarkable look behind the scenes" of the Democrat's reign, said CNN.

With Woodward describing Trump as "unfit to lead the country" and Biden as "an example of steady and purposeful leadership", said The New York Times, the author's judgements sound "authoritative", but also "wishful".

What happened

President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone Wednesday for the first time since Aug. 21, with Vice President Kamala Harris joining the call, the White House said. The "direct" and "productive" call covered a "range of issues" and lasted about half an hour, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Who said what

Biden and Netanyahu discussed Gaza and the "future of Israel's campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon," but the bulk of the conversation focused on "Israel's plans to retaliate against Iran" for its Oct. 1 missile barrage, ABC News said, citing an official "familiar with the call." Netanyahu "didn't present a fully finalized vision for a counterattack," but Biden administration officials were "relatively satisfied with the level of detail" and "felt the Israeli government was receptive to their arguments" about a measured response that wouldn't spark an all-out regional war with Iran.

The call came amid "Biden's growing frustration" with Netanyahu, as Israel's multi-front war adds a "layer of complexity to the American election next month," The Associated Press said. The White House was also "blindsided by a series of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon," The New York Times said, and defense officials were furious they didn't have prior warning to put U.S. troops in the region on heightened alert.

What next?

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a video posted Wednesday that Israel's attack on Iran "will be deadly, precise and above all, surprising," and "they will not understand what happened and how it happened." Netanyahu "will convene the security cabinet" on Thursday, Axios said, a necessary legal step before launching an expected "significant military action," likely including a "combination of airstrikes on military targets in Iran and clandestine attacks."

What happened

President Joe Biden gave a sort of valedictory address at United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, using his final speech before the international body to sift through his four years in the Oval Office and 50 years in global politics for lessons on moving toward a better future.

Who said what

Biden tried to bring a "message of hope for the future" to a General Assembly where "the vibe was pretty grim" amid climate change, poverty and wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan, The Associated Press said. "Even in the horrors of war, there's a way forward," Biden told the assembled diplomats and world leaders. "Things can get better." His speech "encompassed many of his foreign policy themes throughout his administration," CBS News said, including "rallying the world around Ukraine," managing competition with China and promoting democracy.

Biden urged Israel and Hamas to finally agree to an elusive cease-fire and said a "full-scale war" in Lebanon "is not in anyone's interest." Those seeking "short-term solutions" in the Middle East "were left wanting," CNN said. But Biden earned applause after he pushed an end to the Gaza war and when he used his decision not to seek re-election to encourage a turn from autocracy. "My fellow leaders, let us never forget some things are more important than staying in power," he said. "It's your people that matter the most," and "we are here to serve the people, not the other way around."

What next?

Biden's U.N. speech was the "centerpiece event of a two-day visit to New York" that also includes several one-on-one meetings with other world leaders, Reuters said. The Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting today to discuss the conflict in Lebanon.

The head of the US Secret Service has admitted that a "paradigm shift" is needed in the agency's approach to protecting current and former presidents, following a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump in as many months.

Acting director Ronald Rowe said the agency needed to "get out of a reactive model and get to a readiness model". He acknowledged that resources had been stretched thin during a particularly divisive presidential campaign season.

The assassination attempts on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July and at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday have "forced a reckoning" of the Secret Service's "long-time model and its relevance in today's threat environment", said The New York Times (NYT).

What did the commentators say?

Traditionally, former presidents, major-party candidates and visiting dignitaries receive significantly less protection than sitting presidents and vice-presidents.

Ronald Kessler, an author who specialises in the Secret Service, told BBC News around 300 agents are assigned to the sitting president and vice-president at any one time, compared to the "90 to 100" who protect a former president.

But Trump "broke the mould" for shaping security details when he left office in 2021, said the NYT, because he "maintained an intense schedule that demanded a suite of protection not previously seen for former commanders in chief".

On top of that, he has remained a "lightning rod", said John Sandweg, a former acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees the Secret Service, and "clearly requires a much greater share of resources than other former presidents".

The Washington Post reported that senior officials at the Secret Service repeatedly rejected requests for additional protection from Trump's security team in the two years leading up to the attempt on his life in July.

Now success in preventing the would-be gunman on Sunday from firing any shots is being overshadowed by "renewed questions" about whether the Secret Service "lacks the manpower, funding or operational flexibility" to consistently protect the former president, said CNN.

"Whatever other problems" the Secret Service has, said the National Review, this one can "easily be addressed with more resources and by treating Trump – twice a target, now – as if he is the incumbent president for security purposes".

The wider issue is that for years the agency has been "plagued by insufficient budgets, understaffing, antiquated technology, and scandal", said Time.

Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado, the top Democrat in the bipartisan task force investigating the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, admitted the Secret Service has "done more with less for decades", leaving agents overworked and undermining its "level of readiness".  

The whole budget of the Secret Service – $3.1 billion in 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service, covering around 8,000 staff including special agents, administrative and technical personnel – is "about the same as one stealth bomber", said Kessler. "The whole agency is suffering with a lack of money and staff."

When needed, it draws on federal law enforcement officers from other agencies. But "Congress should explore whatever creative funding ideas it needs to so that the agency can 'build a surge capacity' from within a cadre of special agents," Sandweg told Time.

What next?

In response to the latest assassination attempt on Trump, the Biden administration has asked Congress for special permission to increase Secret Service spending, warning that without it, the service would have "insufficient resources" to enhance its protective operations.

"The service needs more help. I think the Congress should respond to their needs, if they, in fact, need more service people," President Biden told reporters at the White House on Monday.

CNN concluded, however, that "issues of culture" rather than money "could be at the root of the Secret Service's staffing shortfalls". A survey of the best places to work in the federal government ranked the agency at 413 out of 459 departments.

While much of the world's attention has been focused on Israel's bombardment of the Gaza strip, the recent killing of American citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi during protests against Israeli settlements in the West Bank may prove to be a turning point in U.S.-Israel relations. The IDF has admitted it is "highly likely" their troops killed Eygi, but Israeli officials insisted in a brief press release that she had been "hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire, which was not aimed at her." Eygi's family quickly rejected the IDF's initial findings, saying they are "deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional."

As details about Eygi's death continue to be uncovered, the United States government finds its commitment to protect its own citizens butting heads with its steadfast support for a longtime ally — even as growing domestic opposition to Israel's actions in Gaza intensify scrutiny over that diplomatic relationship at large.

Time for 'fundamental changes'?

After initially framing Eygi's death as an "accident" in which an IDF bullet "ricocheted off the ground," President Joe Biden took a more strident tone, demanding one day later that there be "full accountability" and that Israel "ensure that incidents like this never happen again."

Advocates have nevertheless "questioned the US government's commitment" to the safety of its citizens "particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories," said Al Jazeera. Critics point to a "string of high-profile killings by Israeli forces" which have historically gone unaccounted for. As one of America's closest allied nations, critics of Israel claim there is a "reticence towards pursuing justice in cases in which its soldiers appear to be at fault." Following the 2022 killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces, "no soldier was punished for her death, while the Biden administration’s promises to deliver accountability for the killing of an American journalist abroad proved hollow and halfhearted," The Washington Post said. With that in mind, and despite the president's public comments, "precedent suggests there will be little accountability" for Eygi's death either.

Although National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby lauded the IDF for taking the "unusual step" of calling for a criminal investigation into Eygi's killing, the incident has prompted the "strongest comments to date criticizing the security forces of Washington's closest Middle East ally" from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Reuters said. Speaking with reporters in London this week, Blinken demanded the Israeli government "make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank, including changes to their rules of engagement." Blinken's comments were the "toughest criticism the United States has leveled at Israel," The New York Times said.

Echoing his fellow cabinet member in a call with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, Austin decried Eygi's "unprovoked and unjustified death" and "urged Minister Gallant to reexamine the IDF's rules of engagement while operating in the West Bank," The Pentagon said.

An investigative monopoly?

To date, the United States has stressed that it will rely on Israel's own investigation into Eygi's killing, and it is "not clear whether there were any plans for a U.S.-led investigation," NBC News said. By not launching its own probe, "the conclusion to draw is clear," said The Nation. "The death of an American demands an immediate, forceful response — unless that American is killed by Israelis while protesting on behalf of Palestinian rights."

"For the United States government to accept the results of Israel's internal military investigations is a complete dereliction of the US government's responsibility to its own citizens," said the International Solidarity Movement, an activist group in which Eygi was a member.

A number of "high-ranking Democrats" have demanded more from both Israel and the Biden administration, Politico said. Among them are Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who chided the administration for its inaction, and demanded the White House "do more to hold the Netanyahu government accountable and use American influence to demand the prosecution of those responsible for harm against American citizens."

If Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu can't deliver the restitution demanded by the death of an American citizen under his watch, Van Hollen said, "the U.S. Department of Justice must."

Benjamin Netanyahu "will not surrender to pressure" to agree to a hostage deal despite widespread protests in the country following the deaths of six Israeli captives in Gaza on Saturday.

"No one is more committed to freeing the hostages than me. But no one will preach to me," said Netanyahu. 

The Israeli prime minister insisted on a long-term military presence along the Philadelphi corridor in Gaza, which borders Egypt, "even as international mediators and his own security chiefs warn that it would hold up a deal to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza", said the Financial Times.

What did the commentators say?

Netanyahu's "uncompromising tone" follows extensive protests in Israel, including a general strike, after the six hostages were found dead in a Gaza tunnel on Saturday, said the FT. 

US President Joe Biden has expressed frustration with Netanyahu's stance. He said a final hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas was "very close", but when asked if he thought the Israeli leader was doing enough on the issue, the US president responded: "No."

"Netanyahu has weathered many storms in his long years as the country's leader, but none as big as this," said Middle East correspondent Alistair Bunkall on Sky News. "He believes his approach to Gaza is the right one and he is convinced he can ride out this pressure," Bunkall added. "Maybe, but his refusal to compromise and the fate of the hostages at stake, he is boxing himself into a corner Israel might never forgive him for."

"Two things should be clear to anyone paying attention," said Mickey Bergman, chief executive of Global Reach, on Foreign Policy. "First, Hamas and its senior leader in the enclave, Yahya Sinwar, are responsible for the ongoing suffering of the hostages in Gaza; and second, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has the power to secure their release but has chosen again and again not to do so."

Since December, there has been a proposal to exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners predicated on a ceasefire and a path to a diplomatic settlement after the war. This "is the only formula that could secure the return of all hostages from Gaza", said Bergman. Sinwar "will not agree to changes in the basic outlines of the deal," and contrary to Netanyahu's claims, military pressure "does not work on him". 

Netanyahu, on the other hand, is "not genuinely interested in a hostage deal" because it threatens his political survival. "Netanyahu presided over the single largest one-day loss of civilian Jewish lives since the Holocaust," said Bergman, "and his only way to survive politically is by perpetuating the war."  

But while "Netanyahu's critics claim that he is motivated solely by venal political considerations," said Melanie Phillips in The Times, "do they really think he can settle for a deal that would allow Hamas to recover"? An Israeli surrender "would also galvanise and further empower Hezbollah and Iran, which have pledged to wipe Israel off the map," Phillips added. "You don't have to be a Netanyahu fan to see that he had no other option. No prime minister would have agreed to such surrender terms."

What next?

A total of 97 hostages remain unaccounted for after being kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October last year.

Hamas said on Monday that hostages would be returned "inside coffins" if military action from Israel continues, adding that "new instructions" have been given to militants guarding hostages if they are approached by Israeli troops.

"Netanyahu's insistence to free prisoners through military pressure, instead of sealing a deal means they will be returned to their families in shrouds. Their families must choose whether they want them dead or alive," said a Hamas spokesperson.

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators continue to work on brokering a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release the 97 hostages still held, including 33 presumed dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Some reports suggest Biden could soon offer a final "take it or leave it" deal to Israel and Hamas as early as this week, according to sources cited by Sky News' US partner network NBC.

The elevation of Kamala Harris has transformed the presidential race, said Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine. As well as re-energising the Democrats, the move has had a secondary effect: sending Donald Trump around the bend. Having survived an assassination attempt and enjoyed a rapturous reception at the Republican National Convention, he was confident of beating Joe Biden – and this kept his more self-destructive traits in check. But Biden's withdrawal from the race, and the surge of momentum behind Harris, have led Trump to "indulge his most deranged instincts". In rambling press conferences and rallies, he has raged against Harris, even claiming that the crowds at her events have been concocted through using artificial intelligence. 

Denied a rematch

Trump has not responded well to being denied his rematch with Biden, said Jeet Heer in The Nation. He has repeatedly referred to Biden in "surprisingly wistful terms", suggesting, without any basis, that the president might yet force his way back onto the Democratic ticket. Trump just can't get over losing to Biden in 2020, agreed Chuck Todd on NBC News.

"He also doesn't seem to respect Harris as an opponent." That's a dangerous attitude for a candidate. Voters pick up on such "disdain", and don't react positively to it – as Trump should know all too well. One of the reasons he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, after all, is because she looked down on him, and referred to his supporters as a "basket of deplorables".

'Trump must do it himself'

"Ugly, personal attacks" on Harris will get Trump nowhere, said Jason L. Riley in The Wall Street Journal. He needs to concentrate on issues, and to draw a contrast between his record and that of the current administration. Harris has taken many unpopular stances in the past. She supported a ban on fracking; said she would "eliminate" private health insurance and impose a state-run system; endorsed slavery reparations; and backed efforts to defund the police. Her campaign is now busily trying to walk back some of these positions. Trump can't count on the mainstream media to take Harris to task over her record – Washington's shamelessly biased journalists are giving her an easy ride. "Trump must do it himself."

To better get his message across, he should consider dispensing with rallies, said Daniel Henninger in the same paper. He loves them, and so do his fans – I met a man recently who said he'd attended more than 70. But the events don't win new converts. Trump should instead hold town hall meetings with uncommitted voters. He's "much better than Ms. Harris in these more intimate settings". 

'Insane claims and random stories'

Trump's handlers are trying to do something like that by holding pared-down speaking events at which, in theory, he restricts himself to one topic, said Edith Olmsted in The New Republic. Last week he held a press conference about inflation, next to a table of groceries. He began reading from notes, but soon veered "off script into an array of insane claims and random stories".

Of course he did, said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. Expecting Trump to stick to the script is "like betting Godot will be punctual or Lucy won't yank the football from Charlie Brown". It won't happen, and it wouldn't make much difference anyway. Thanks to the "reality show politics" that Trump helped create, substantive issues no longer count for much in US elections. It's all about personality and "vibes" now – and the reality is that Harris has the edge here because she has a novelty factor. "Trump and his enablers created the vibe petard, and now they're being hoisted on it."

It is remarkable how quickly things can change in politics. A month ago Joe Biden, trailing Donald Trump in the polls following a disastrous first TV election debate, bowed out of the presidential race after a coordinated effort by some of his closest political allies.

On Monday night he took the stage at the Democratic National Convention to rapturous applause and a four-minute standing ovation to deliver a "vintage performance that was a reminder of how he earned the White House in the first place", said The Times.

Freed from the burden of having to run a bruising campaign against Trump, CNN said Biden is "enlivened by the opportunity to burnish his legacy" – a process that is likely to be defined by what happens in November's make-or-break election.

What did the commentators say?

One of Biden's major weaknesses as both president and candidate was his "inability to sell his achievements", said The Times. But historians are "likely to be kind and give him more credit than many voters for the post-Covid economic recovery". He managed to successfully navigate a partisan Congress to pass far-reaching infrastructure and investment legislation that will "shape the country for many years to come".

NPR said the president has been "defiant, and at times, outraged, when challenging Trump's descriptions of America under Biden as a nation on the decline, and a laughing stock on the national stage".

Domestically, the Biden administration may feel it has not received recognition from the public for delivering booming year-on-year economic growth but, said Fox News, the Biden-Harris White House has "clobbered middle-class Americans" and he leaves behind a legacy of "dishonesty, inflation, corruption and ineptitude".

Abroad, even his staunchest supporters would agree his record in office has been decidedly mixed. Many point to his approval ratings never recovering after the humiliating exit from Afghanistan in August 2021 – even though he was merely carrying out Trump's withdrawal agreement. The US under Biden has played a pivotal role in supporting Ukraine against Russia but has so far failed to secure a lasting ceasefire in Gaza.

This is where the Biden team plan to focus their remaining energies, with the president spending more time overseas to "cement his foreign policy legacy", said CNN.

This process "won't be complete" until we see how the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East play out, said The Wall Street Journal. But perhaps his biggest failure is that, having campaigned on a promise to "unite the country and be a 'transition' from the Trump era", he has "governed as a divisive progressive".

Whoever wins in November will inherit a country "more divided and dispirited than when Joe Biden was elected. That is the unfortunate legacy of the Biden Presidency."

What next?

Biden's time in office will ultimately be defined by his decision to suspend his re-election campaign and immediately endorse Kamala Harris, saving the party from a protracted succession battle.

According to The New York Times, his team quickly set about constructing a final, 180-day agenda that would "help guide a Harris presidency and in turn shape Biden’s legacy, now tethered to her candidacy".

Biden spent much of the end of his convention speech focusing on his vice-president, in a "tacit acknowledgement that how she fares against Donald Trump in November's vote could make or break how history, and his party, remembers him", said the BBC.

In sharp contrast to just a few weeks ago, delegates and party bigwigs at the convention in Chicago appeared "energised and fond of Joe Biden – but, frankly, relieved by his withdrawal", said The Times.

That perfectly sums up what they hope will be his greatest legacy: that he was the man who defeated Trump in 2020 and passed the torch to a new generation just in time to beat him again in 2024.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have agreed to debate on Sept. 10 on ABC News, and both candidates appear to be open to additional debates after that. While some presidential debates haven't moved the needle in public opinion, others have provided consequential moments that made or broke campaigns.

1960: John F. Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon

The 1960 debate was the first televised presidential debate — and it also showed off the power of an image. The initial debate between Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon "shifted how presidential campaigns were conducted, as the power of television took elections into American's living rooms," said the National Constitution Center (NCC). Kennedy was the "photogenic and energetic young senator," while Nixon had recently been sick and also refused to wear makeup.

As a result, Kennedy "looked and sounded good on television, while Nixon looked pale and tired, with a five o'clock shadow beard." The polls began to shift for Kennedy soon after that — substance of the debate aside — and he would end up narrowly winning the election.

1984: Ronald Reagan vs. Walter Mondale

President Ronald Reagan was reelected in a landslide in 1984, and a key moment in the second presidential debate is often seen as encapsulating this victory.

Questions had been swirling about Reagan's advanced age, something that his opponent, former Vice President Walter Mondale, addressed. I "will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth, and inexperience," Reagan responded. Reagan "got the audience with that," and "I knew he had gotten me there," Mondale said to PBS in 1990.

1992: Bill Clinton, George HW Bush and Ross Perot

The 1992 election provided a rare debate that included Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and a third party candidate, Ross Perot. This marked the "first time three candidates shared a single stage in a televised debate," said CNN. The second debate of the campaign season also premiered the "town hall" style forum which "directly involved voters in the process by allowing them to pose questions to the candidates."

One most notable moment came when Bush, the sitting president, was "seen on national camera checking his watch," said CNN. Later, when asked a question about the effect of the national debt, Bush said he was "not sure I get it." Clinton would end up winning the election in a landslide.

2000: George W. Bush vs. Al Gore

In another set of debates where the optics mattered, George W. Bush and Al Gore hit the stage ahead of one of the closest elections in American history. This was particularly important as "Vice President Al Gore had been in high-profile debates before, whereas Texas Governor Bush was a relative newcomer known to stumble over his words," said Time.

Gore made a series of flubs during the debates, notably when he was caught "loudly sighing in response to Bush's answers, and he was seen on the screen rolling his eyes and shaking his head in frustration at other points," said Time. In the end, Bush "had surprises in store. And Mr. Gore was undone by impulses he could not control," said The New York Times. Following a Supreme Court interjection, Bush won the electoral college and with it, the election.

2024: Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump

The 2024 debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is perhaps the most consequential in history, as it may have unilaterally caused the sitting president to abandon his reelection bid.

Although Trump lied more than 30 times during the debate, Biden "struggled to mount an effective defense of the economy on his watch and flubbed the description of key health initiatives he's made central to his reelection bid," said Politico, and the "alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking." Less than a month later, Biden dropped out of the race. However, one of his advisers, Anita Dunn, still "disputes the notion that Biden's performance was 'catastrophic' for the voters he needed to win over," Politico said.

This week, President Joe Biden rolled out a broad multi-agency initiative to help "crack down on all the ways that corporations — through excessive paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation — add unnecessary headaches and hassles to people's days and degrade their quality of life." In addition to its slate of proposed actions, the project, dubbed "Time Is Money," includes a call for Americans to "share their ideas for how federal action can give them their time back." It's a hint, perhaps, as to how Biden and his team plan to refocus their remaining in office after freeing themselves from the constraints of a now-abandoned reelection campaign. 

With five months left in office, Biden is now firmly in his lame-duck era: a period of planned obsolescence in which the power of his presidency is perceived as diminishing while his eventual successor's inauguration draws nearer. At the same time, Biden is now in a position to focus solely on governing without the distractions and hedging that come with running a national campaign for reelection. The president sits at a peculiar nexus that sees him politically weakened and empowered at the same time. As the clock counts down to election day and inauguration day after that, what can we expect from Biden in this final phase of his presidency? 

What did the commentators say? 

As Biden "looks to secure a one-term legacy," he has charged his White House staff with four "main pillars" on which to focus in the coming months, CNN said. They include the continued push for "key legislation," economic growth via student debt relief and lower costs for prescription drugs, calling out and countering hate and extremism, and a strong foreign policy agenda. The plan is to "finish as strong as we started," White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients said.

Presidents in their lame-duck periods have often "used the waning days of their presidencies to take big shots at weighty policy," PBS NewsHour said. Given the war between Ukraine and Russia, as well as ongoing cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, foreign policy could be Biden's "best hope for a final legacy-defining moment." Still, with so many global crises happening at once, "realistically, there might not be enough time for big breakthroughs," Gordon Grey, a former U.S. ambassador and professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, said to PBS. 

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, hope that ending his campaign has "liberated their White House ally from the grueling rigors of the campaign trail and the delicate political concerns that come with seeking reelection," The Hill said. Instead, Biden can use his "unusual station to advance a host of Democratic policy priorities" which, even if they have little chance of becoming law, "could put a spotlight on specific issues and set off a messaging blitz during his final months in office." 

Compared to his Democratic predecessor's end-of-term policy blitz, Biden has "little of Obama's nimbleness," The Nation said. Instead, he remains "so committed to his old policies" around Ukraine and Israel that he may end up exacerbating a foreign policy crisis, which "could upend the election and the world, unleashing a chaos that will help bring Donald Trump back into the White House." 

What next? 

The coming months for Biden will likely feature increasing opposition from congressional Republicans working to "connect his administration to Vice President Kamala Harris" while at the same time being "beholden to their nominee," Foreign Policy said. Moreover, Biden may have already hit a limit on what he can accomplish through executive actions, "leaving little more the president can do without more funding from Capitol Hill," The Hill said. 

Ultimately then, Biden could potentially be most effective by becoming a "juggernaut on the campaign trail," PBS Newshour said. "His most important job over the new few months is setting the conditions to make Kamala Harris successful," University of Chicago Political Scientist William Howell told the network. However, as Harris seeks to carve out her own electoral niche, she needs to "distinguish herself from his administration," University of South Florida Professor Rob Mellen said at The Washington Examiner. With that in mind, The Examiner said, he's more likely "poised to float out of office like a lame duck on the tides of change."

What happened

A base housing U.S. and allied military personnel in western Iraq was hit Monday by a suspected rocket attack that injured several American personnel, U.S. officials said. At least five troops and contractors were injured, one seriously, when two rockets landed inside al-Asad air base, Reuters said, citing initial estimates.

Who said what

President Joe Biden said he and Vice President Kamala Harris met with national security advisers and discussed developments in the Middle East and steps to "respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and place of our choosing."

Monday's attack "comes at a fraught time in the region, as U.S. and Israeli officials brace for Iran's promised response" to the assassinations of top Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, The Washington Post said. But it's not clear if the al-Asad strike was part of that response or a "continuation of ongoing efforts by the Iran-backed groups in Iraq to target U.S. forces," The New York Times said. After Iran-backed militants targeted the same base in mid-July, the U.S. bombed a small drone factory near Bagdad last week, killing three Iraqi fighters and a Houthi commander visiting from Yemen.

What next?

The U.S. and Iraq are in discussions on drawing down the 2,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country.

Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have lifetime appointments. President Joe Biden thinks that should change. This week he introduced a series of proposed court reforms that include limiting justices to a single 18-year term. "We have had term limits for presidents for nearly 75 years," Biden said in an op-ed for The Washington Post. "We should have the same for Supreme Court justices." The proposal would give each president two court picks per term, he said, making the timing "more predictable and less arbitrary."

Term limits would "lead to a fairer court," the University of Pennsylvania's Kermit Roosevelt III said at Time. Right now, appointments happen only when a justice "dies unexpectedly," or when a "sitting justice feels inclined to let the president appoint a successor." But Republicans see Biden's proposal as an attack on the court's current 6-3 conservative supermajority, said CNN. Democrats want to alter the court, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said, "simply because they disagree with some of the court's recent decisions."

An 'intensely politicized' judiciary

A big problem for Biden's proposal: Lifetime terms are written into the Constitution. It would take an amendment to write them out. "A Constitutional amendment will not pass," Ian Millhiser said at Vox. The idea of judicial term limits has been around for a while — then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry promoted the notion in a 2010 book. But that was before conservatives gained the majority. Republicans are likely to fight — and defeat — any proposal that makes changes. "Term limits endanger GOP control of the judiciary."

"Term limits could address some of the woes plaguing the court," legal scholars Adam Chilton, Daniel Epps, Kyle Rozema and Maya Sen said at Washington Monthly. The irregularity of Supreme Court appointments has made the process "intensely politicized" when openings do occur. No wonder: Donald Trump had three appointments in his single presidential term; Jimmy Carter got none. Biden has had just one opportunity. On such vagaries does court control depend. "Why should one president have the opportunity to appoint three times as many justices as his successor?"

Purging conservative justices?

"The left continues these moves to take over the Supreme Court because they are angry about recent decisions that have not gone their way," former Attorney General William Barr and First Liberty Institute's Kelly Shackelford said at Fox News. The term limits proposal is a "partisan move to purge the Supreme Court of conservative justices" like Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. If Biden's proposed reforms passed, the judiciary will become "little more than a political tool of whomever holds power."

Term limits make "enormous sense," the University of California's Erwin Chemerinsky said in The New York Times. But they're unlikely to become reality anytime soon. This means the presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris means more for the future of the Supreme Court. If Trump wins, Thomas and Alito might retire to seal Republican control of the court. Similarly, if Democrats win, Justice Sonia Sotomayor could resign to make way for a liberal successor. No reforms will change the way the Supreme Court works, at least anytime soon. "But the presidential election will."

The lead-up to this year's presidential election may have seemed at first glance to be nothing more than a rehash of the previous one, but the 2024 campaign for the White House has proven itself to be anything but. Instead, if the past few weeks have shown us anything, it's that nothing is guaranteed in politics — even in the most static-seeming circumstances. No matter how much President Joe Biden's decision to end his reelection campaign may have seemed inevitable in hindsight, his announcement landed with seismic impact on Sunday, upending a race that felt to many like a stale continuation of 2020. 

Biden's withdrawal, and his subsequent endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place atop the Democratic ticket may have thrown this particular election into deep, and uncharted waters, but it is not wholly without historical precedent. By opting not to run for a second term, Biden now joins a small but illustrious group of past presidents who, for varying reasons, also chose to eschew a return to the White House after their single terms in office.

James Polk

Considered by historians to have been the first "dark horse" president, James Polk was a relative unknown prior to his run for high office ("Who is James K. Polk?" was a common refrain from his Whig opponents) but left office as one of the most consequential commanders in chief in American history. Elected in 1844, Polk entered the presidency with a "specific set of goals," including the massive territorial expansion through the annexation of the Republic of Texas and huge swaths of the southwest, Voice Of America said. In an era when it was "common for candidates to pledge not to run for reelection as a mark of personal humility," Polk "honored his pledge" and did not mount a campaign in 1848.

James Buchanan

James Buchanan's pledge to serve a single term in 1857 was "likely a good thing, in retrospect, since experts rank him as the worst president of all time," Stacker said. Buchanan was "eager to vacate the White House before civil war became a reality," and his "antagonistic relationship with Stephen Douglas split the Democratic Party," clearing a path for Republican Abraham Lincoln to win the election in 1860, American Experience said. 

Rutherford Hayes 

Rutherford Hayes initially entered office in 1877 after one of the "most hostile, controversial campaigns in American history," said his presidential library. That controversy, in which several states alleged instances of electoral fraud, meant "legitimacy was never fully accepted by many Democrats," VOA said, likely making it easier for him to follow through on his pledge to serve only one term. 

Calvin Coolidge 

After assuming the presidency in the wake of Warren Harding's sudden death in 1923, Calvin Coolidge won the position outright the following year. During his 1925 inaugural address he declared that the country was enjoying a "state of contentment seldom before seen." Coolidge's primary presidential attribute was "his talent for effectively doing nothing," the White House said. Broadly popular, Coolidge's now-infamous announcement that "I do not choose to run for president in 1928," was "variously interpreted throughout the country" with some seeing it as a "sincere wish for retirement, but still a willingness to accept the nomination should an insistent demand arise," while others saw a "final decision that he would not be a candidate for re-election," The New York Times said. He later explained his decision, saying the "presidential office is of such a nature that it is difficult to conceive how one man can successfully serve the country for a term of more than eight years."

Harry Truman

Like Coolidge, Harry Truman first assumed the presidency in 1945 upon the in-office death of his predecessor — Franklin D. Roosevelt — before winning the position outright in the following election. Unlike his predecessors, though, Truman initially did launch a reelection campaign, entering the 1952 New Hampshire primary in March of that year. He was ultimately "beaten by Tennessee Sen. Estes Kefauver, 19,800 votes to 15,927," The Kansas City Star said. Two weeks later he "affirmed his dedication to the Democratic Party and ended with the announcement that he 'shall not be a candidate for reelection.'" Notably, just one month earlier, "Truman's popularity rating fell to an all-time low of 22 percent," Politico said. 

Lyndon Johnson 

Until Biden's announcement, the most recent president to opt out of a reelection campaign was Lyndon Johnson who shocked the country at the end of an Oval Office address on the war in Vietnam by declaring he would "not seek" and "not accept" his party's nomination at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. That year Johnson was "facing multiple challenges for the Democratic nomination" and had "only narrowly won the New Hampshire primary against the anti-war candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy," CNN said. In addition to longstanding health concerns, Johnson "understood he was not likely to win," and had become "very controversial and really lost his hold on public opinion because of the Vietnam War," said historian Robert Dallek to The Washington Post. 

In the wake of President Joe Biden's historic decision to abandon his reelection campaign and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in his stead, nearly everyone has pointed to Biden's disastrous debate performance as the moment when his capacity to run for office truly came into broad public question. Not only did Biden falter during the debate itself, but his halting, unsteady performance stood in stark relief against the campaign's fervent claims that the president was both physically fit and mentally acute enough to wage a national campaign — to say nothing of leading the nation for another four and a half years. Biden did not simply have a bad debate night, but he did so at the expense of a longstanding effort by his team to portray the 81-year-old chief executive as spry and vigorous. 

Questions about Biden's record-setting presidential age are nothing new, having played a not-insubstantial role in his last presidential election four years ago. Despite — or perhaps because of — those longstanding concerns, the president's unmistakably frail showings not only led to his ultimate decision to end his reelection campaign, but prompted many to ask whether some among Biden's aides and advisers have been publicly denying age-based concerns they privately know to be true. Biden's own claims of mental and physical fitness notwithstanding, was the president enabled by some to run for high office to the detriment of the voting public, and himself? 

'An increasingly protective circle'

"While it's clear the president had aged in the past year," many White House staffers were taken aback by the "version of Biden, faltering and dazed, that showed up at last month's debate," CNN said. Many of those same staffers "blamed the president's inner circle of advisers and family" for orchestrating a "painstakingly choreographed daily operation designed to prevent him from being in unscripted settings for extended periods of time." 

"It's not like Biden's inner circle didn't know this," said one Democratic strategist to the network. But while his inner circle may have, many in the wide constellation of Democratic operatives and donors feel "misled by what they say is an effort to tamp down concerns, raised well before the debate, about whether Biden is fit for a second term," The Wall Street Journal said. The president's "small clutch of advisers have built an increasingly protective circle around him," Politico said. That his difficulties during the debate "came as such a shock" to so many was the "result of how effectively his top aides and the White House on the whole has, for three and a half years, kept him in a cocoon."

That alleged cocoon not only prevented the public from seeing the extent of Biden's aging, but may have prevented Biden himself from understanding this moment in history as well. "There was a belief that the president isn't getting an accurate assessment of where the race stands right now," said one member of Congress to Puck, following a phone call between lawmakers and the president in the weeks before he dropped his campaign. 

'The price they will pay'

For their part, Republicans have seized upon the dissonance between Biden's alleged vigor and his apparent frailty by alleging the president and his team colluded to perpetrate a "whopper" of a "coverup" for which the Democrats will ultimately pay an electoral price, The Wall Street Journal said. Democrats "underestimate the price they will pay for lying this way" because for "all our willingness to forgive and forget, Americans don’t like being played for suckers." To that end, some conservative lawmakers have demanded audio from Biden's interviews with then-special counsel Robert Hur this past October, which would "show exactly what we all saw on the debate stage a couple weeks ago," and which Democrats "want to cover up," said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) earlier this month. 

Biden's decision to run and remain in the race for as long as he did may have been the result of a close cabal of advisers shielding him, and the public, from the reality of his political viability, but in a way so too was his ultimate decision to drop out. Even as Biden was finishing his concession letter on Sunday afternoon, "unaware White House officials and the president's allies were still pressing reporters with comments about how determined the president was to stay in the race," The New York Times said. 

Donald Trump's claim that Kamala Harris would be easier to beat than Joe Biden is likely to be put to the test after the president dramatically withdrew from the 2024 US presidential race just over 100 days before polling day.

After releasing a statement on Sunday announcing he was stepping aside, Biden was quick to endorse his vice-president. That was soon followed by backing from the powerful Congressional Black Caucus, high-profile lawmakers and several key donors and Super PACs (political action committees). One of these, ActBlue, raised a staggering $46.7 million (£36.1 million) in just over seven hours after Biden's bombshell announcement, making it "the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle".

Following a week in which Trump survived an assassination attempt, Biden's decision to back Harris has thrown the race for the White House wide open yet again. "To put it mildly," said Politico, "it's hard to know what might actually happen in this chaotic, historic presidential election year."

What did the commentators say?

Following Biden's "stunning" decision not to seek re-election, Kamala Harris has emerged as a "surprisingly strong potential challenger" to Donald Trump in November, said The Independent.

As VP she has been dogged by stubbornly poor approval ratings, not helped by being handed a portfolio of politically tricky issues such as stemming illegal migration across the US's southern border. But she has also spent the last three years "building a profile on the world stage", and has become the face of the administration's battle to protect abortion rights. 

Practically, she also has a "built-in advantage" in taking on Trump, as she would be the only person able to tap into the massive war chest already raised for her and Biden's re-election bid. She can also take advantage of the nationwide apparatus the Biden-Harris campaign has already built up, and will be able to point to her personal involvement in the administration's successes.

It won't be smooth sailing, however. Detractors have accused her of "taking a mixed-bag approach in her policies". She "has also faced criticism that she has not lived up to expectations" and that she "lacks the charisma to rally the party". "Real or manufactured, critics believe Harris is viewed as inept and unpopular by voters," said The Telegraph. 

As a former California attorney general, Harris has described herself as a "progressive prosecutor", said Al Jazeera. "But she has made few inroads with the progressive wing of the party."

Harris's supporters, meanwhile, have "substantive responses to all the criticisms laid at her door". First and foremost, they argue that as the first female vice-president, as well as the first Black and Asian American in the role, the "lens through which her record has been judged is tainted with racism, sexism and rank hypocrisy", said The Telegraph.

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll this month found that 70% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would be "satisfied" if Harris became the Democratic nominee. But polls have consistently showed Trump beating Harris by a similar margin to Biden nationally, something that has given some senior Democrats pause for thought.

Crucially, though, a survey by CNN and SSRS found that Harris currently outperforms Biden among two key voting blocs – women and independent voters. Both will be vital to determining who takes the White House in November.

Despite taking a dismissive public stance on the prospect of Harris's candidacy, internally the Trump campaign has for weeks "been more concerned about running against Harris than Biden", said The Guardian.

What next?

After weeks of in-fighting among Democrats over whether Biden should stay in the race, Reuters said a "rush of support coalescing behind Harris" is "crucial with just over 100 days before the November election".

While some in the party who still harbour doubts about the 59-year-old Harris have suggested a mini-primary should be held before the August convention, this appears increasingly unlikely following Biden's endorsement. Even before the president threw his weight behind her, Harris was "widely viewed as the favourite to replace him on the ticket", with her "foreign policy experience and national name recognition" giving her a head start over potential challengers, said The Associated Press.

The Democratic National Convention's rules committee is to meet on Wednesday to finalise the framework by which the party's presidential nominee will be chosen. Responding to Republican accusations of an anti-democratic establishment stitch-up, co-chairs Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, and the long-time Democratic operative Leah Daughtry have promised the process will be "open, transparent, fair and orderly".

If Harris does emerge as the party's nominee, most commentators predict she will pick a running mate from among a small group of Democratic governors from one of the key battleground states, with the name of Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro being repeatedly raised, said The Jewish Chronicle.

The sudden change to the ticket means the focus of the Democratic Convention, which is scheduled to begin in Chicago on 19 August, will have to "shift dramatically" to put the spotlight firmly on Harris, introduce her vice-presidential pick to the nation, and present "their vision and how it differs from that of the Republican as revealed during last week’s GOP convention", said David Rothkopf in the Daily Beast.

The "contrasts between the two campaigns should be dramatically heightened" should Harris top the ticket, with the Democrats able to play up her law and order record, her inspirational backstory and relative youthfulness compared to Trump.

"Harris is a new face; to some extent, she might help satisfy the electorate's desire for change, simply by being someone other" than Trump or Biden, said The New York Times. But she will still "need to offer an optimistic and hopeful vision for the future, backed by a plausible agenda".

If she can achieve this a "major win for the Democrats in November is now possible", said Rothkopf. "If the party and Americans at large respond as they should to Sunday's stunning news, then, the party should emerge newly energised and the prospects that Vice President Kamala Harris is sworn in next January as President Kamala Harris will be excellent."

There are just under four months to go before the 2024 presidential campaign. Have Democrats already given up on winning? Maybe. "We've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency," an anonymous Democrat told Axios, after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. That quote produced an angry reaction from not-so-anonymous Democrats, said The Guardian. "If you're a 'senior Democrat' that feels this way you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said on social media. 

But other observers also wonder if Trump's near-miss cemented a November victory. "The presidential contest ended last night," another unnamed Democratic consultant told NBC News. The pushback has been fierce. "Get a grip, Democrats, you can still win this," said Bill Scher at Washington Monthly. The events of 2024 have already been wildly unpredictable. Who's to say what happens between now and November? "Political professionals," Scher said, "should know better than to predict defeat four months before Election Day."

'The ship is going down'

"It's hard to see any way out for the Democrats," Matthew Continetti said at National Review. Even before the assassination attempt, the party's divisions over President Joe Biden were already on display after his disastrous debate performance against Trump. Stick with Biden and the party heads into November "with an unpopular incumbent the public believes is too old for the job." If Biden steps aside, he'll be replaced by an "unknown and untested candidate." Bottom line? "The ship is going down."

Democratic defeatism is "sad and pathetic," Jonathan Chait said at New York magazine. The party is apparently responding to the attack on Trump by "standing down its efforts to deny him office." That's reminiscent of the days and weeks after 9/11, when Democrats decided that national unity meant praising President George W. Bush instead of holding him accountable for failing to prevent the attacks. "The result of this dangerously unbalanced equation was a comprehensive political and moral disaster." The same will happen if Democrats abdicate now. 

Trump: Not a 'normal politician'

"The 2024 presidential election is not over yet," Gideon Rachman said at Financial Times. It's true that a "normal politician" could expect to pick up sympathy votes in the wake of a failed assassination. Donald Trump is not a normal politician. "Millions of 'never Trump' voters are unlikely to become 'Yes Trumpers,' however appalled they are by the vile attempted murder." The biggest factor going forward is probably not the shooting, but concerns about Biden's age. That's the "most probable game-changer in the 2024 election." 

Biden may have actually gotten a reprieve, Andrew Prokop said at Vox. "Trump's shooting has knocked Biden's fate out of the headlines." For the two weeks leading up to the shocking violence, talk of the president's age and electoral fate dominated the news. That's over, for the moment. "It's far too early to write off an election that is months away." That's the good news. But the defeatism of Democrats does accomplish one thing: "It helps Biden hang on."

As the dust settles following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, a key question is how the failed bid may impact the upcoming White House election.

The US has a bloody history of political assassinations, with four presidents killed while in office. History also shows that such attempts can have very different effects at the ballot box.

Does surviving an assassination impact election performance?

Like Trump, Theodore Roosevelt was a former president attempting to return to the White House when he was shot on the campaign trail in Milwaukee in 1912. Folded papers and a metal spectacles case in his pocket absorbed some of the shot's impact, and he delivered his speech as planned – with the bullet lodged in his chest. Roosevelt, who was standing for his own Bull Moose Party, told his audience: "I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot. But it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!"

The attempt on his life and his unflappable response "captured the imagination of the country", H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in a biography of the 26th president. But "as impressive as Roosevelt's performance that day had been, it did not propel him to victory", said The New York Times. The episode "was no political windfall" for Roosevelt, agreed Gzero Media, because although he secured more votes than sitting president William Howard Taft, they were both outflanked at the polls by the Democrat candidate, Woodrow Wilson.

In March 1981, Ronald Reagan was leaving a speech in Washington, D.C., and walking to his motorcade when he was shot by John Hinckley Jr. Reagan recovered physically from the shooting and so did his approval rating, which surged by eight points to nearly 70% in the aftermath of the incident.

His "grace under fire" helped him "solidify the support and affection of the American people", said CNN. The incident provided a "new baseline" of support that "propelled his legislative agenda forward".

Although "economic gloom" would pull his rating down by more than 40 points later in the year, said Gzero Media, Reagan had "more than three full years to bounce back" ahead of the 1984 election, and his "broad-based" landslide win, said CNN.

How have assassinations impacted politics?

The impact of actual assassinations "must remain a matter of speculation", said The Washington Post, because "we don't know what would have happened if the victims had lived". If Abraham Lincoln had survived in 1865 and continued as president, "would he have been able to bind the nation's wounds after the Civil War and guarantee civil rights for African Americans"?

Similarly, had John F. Kennedy lived, "would he have avoided a major US escalation in Vietnam" and "prevented the 1960s from turning into such a bloody and tumultuous decade"? The only answer historians can offer in these cases is a "not-very-satisfying 'perhaps'."

Will the Trump incident help or hurt his campaign?

Many commentators believe Saturday's shooting will "dramatically help" Trump's chances because it will "activate the MAGA base" amid "questions about whether Trump's base in particular was less mobilised than they were in years prior", said Vox. It could also win him "sympathy from", and help him "look tough to", a "general electorate".

"Outrage" at the shooting, alongside "relief at his close escape", will "provide him with the ideal stage on which to unite and galvanise his party", said the Daily Express. But Vox pointed out that the election is still nearly four months away and "many other events will consume the news between now and then", that "polling in this race has long been static", and that the identity of the shooter "may not fit easy political narratives".

Also, wrote Lester Munson on The Conversation, another "immediate consequence of the assassination attempt" will favour Trump's expected opponent: it will "turn the national conversation" temporarily away from Biden's much-criticised debate performance.

The US Constitution outlines what should happen if the president becomes ill, dies or is deemed unable to fulfil their duties.

Surprisingly, the 25th Amendment, which deals with presidential incapacitation, was only added to the Constitution in 1967, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.

While the Founding Fathers "anticipated the need for a line of succession" if the president "dies, resigns or became debilitated", the original text of the 1787 document left out "critical details", including "who has the power to declare the president unfit to serve", said History. Only when the 25th Amendment was introduced was there a "clear protocol" for dealing with such situations.

What does the 25th Amendment say?

The first section of the 25th Amendment states that the "removal", death or resignation of the president from office means the vice-president will automatically become president. 

Section two simply says that in the event of a "vacancy in the office of the vice-president" the president will choose a new number two, to be confirmed by a majority vote in Congress.

Section three outlines the procedure for a president to declare that they are temporarily unable to "discharge the powers and duties" of the office, during which time the vice-president becomes acting president.

Section four outlines how the president may be removed from office if the vice-president and a "majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress" agree that he or she is unable to perform their duties. If approved, the vice-president becomes acting president. The president can resume office by declaring "no inability exists", but this can be challenged by the vice-president and the executive or congressional majority.

From there, Congress will assemble within 48 hours to "decide the issue", with a two-thirds majority vote needed in both houses within 21 days to oust the president. If that succeeds, then the vice-president will continue as acting president.

How often has it been used?

The first three sections of the amendment have "all been invoked" since 1967, said National Geographic.

The most significant use came after Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency in 1974 following the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford, his vice-president, was then sworn in as president under section one and served the remainder of the term.

Section three has been used four times by presidents including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to temporarily transfer their duties to the vice-president "during surgeries and medical procedures". Joe Biden was the last to do this, making Kamala Harris acting president in November 2021 for an hour and 25 minutes while he had a colonoscopy.

Section four, however, has "never been invoked".

Has a president been unfit for office?

After Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke during his presidency in 1919, his wife Edith privately took on numerous presidential responsibilities, said Rebecca Boggs Roberts in Smithsonian Magazine. The severity of his illness was concealed from the public and Wilson served out the rest of his second term.

In the post-25th Amendment era, staff at the White House in 1987 "seriously suggested" invoking section four to remove then president Ronald Reagan, who in his mid-70s and had been "acting strangely", said History. It never happened and Reagan served his full second term. 

After Reagan revealed in 1994 that he had Alzheimer's, rumours spread that it "began during his presidency and caused these behaviours", but that was not disclosed to the public.

Could it be used on Joe Biden?

After an "alarming debate performance" last month, the prospect of invoking the 25th amendment to depose Joe Biden has been mooted, said Jim Ronan on The Hill. The 81-year-old's capacity as president has been under fierce scrutiny in recent weeks, but the prospect of section four being invoked is "virtually nil" given the numbers needed within his own party to back it.

President Joe Biden has been adamant that, despite his widely panned performance in the first presidential debate against Donald Trump, he will nevertheless continue running for a second term in office. Defying a growing chorus of Democratic figures demanding he step aside for the good of the country, "the bottom line here is that we're not going anywhere," said Biden in an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe." 

Biden's refusal to entertain leaving the race has done nothing to tamp down concerns that, at 81, he is simply not the politician he was when he defeated Trump four years ago. Betting markets have already begun circling around Vice President Kamala Harris as a replacement candidate. At the same time, major campaign donors have started "wielding their fortunes as both carrot and stick" to convince Biden to stand aside," The New York Times said. No matter how much the president and his team have worked to move past worries around his age and mental acuity, it's clear that a sizable portion of Biden's base remains deeply unconvinced. 

There has been ample speculation as to who might replace Biden on the presidential ticket should he eschew his party's nomination, but the truth is that there are multiple steps to consider before any successor is chosen. 

What did the commentators say?

Currently, Biden has nearly 4,000 Democratic primary delegates — almost twice as many as necessary to lock in his party's nomination. If he voluntarily drops out of the race before the Democratic National Convention later this summer, those delegates "would be free to support another candidate of their choice" at the convention, USA Today said. Not only would this be the "most straightforward scenario," it would also most closely resemble the historical precedent set by past conventions when candidates would "go from one state delegation to another to make their case." Dropping out before the convention would be "legally easy but politically difficult," said CBS News. Dropping pre-convention also means Biden would "likely have significant influence" in helping coalesce support around his preferred successor — likely Harris — within the party's base.

If Biden doesn't step down, "there is currently not enough opposition within his own party to remove him from the ticket," said University of Portsmouth teaching fellow and election researcher Dafydd Townley. The "mechanics" of forcing a candidate to step down against their will would be "chaotic at best, if it is even possible," agreed ABC Action News. Nearly every Democratic delegate is currently pledged to Biden, and while party rules allow for a "conscience clause" that lets them break that pledge it is "rarely, if ever, exercised," The New York Times said. 

If Biden were to exit the race after accepting the party's nomination during the convention, things get slightly more complicated and considerably more straightforward at the same time. While the process differs between Democrats and Republicans, should Biden drop out post-nomination, the Democratic National Committee is "empowered to fill a vacancy on the national ticket," — thereby avoiding a messy convention-floor fight — but only "after the party chair consults with Democratic governors and congressional leadership," CNN said. 

What next? 

Biden himself has publicly precluded any chance that he will drop out pre-DNC and even dared party figures and potential challengers in an interview with MSNBC this week to "run against me. Go ahead. Announce for president. Challenge me at the convention."

In fact, by the time Democrats gather in Chicago for the DNC, Biden may already have been officially nominated by the party to "meet a ballot certification deadline in Ohio on that date," CBS News said. Because of that, "I don't know what that looks like in the event that there's going to be a contested convention," University of Notre Dame Political Science Professor Derek Muller said to the network. 

For those looking to history for some analogous precedent, the last time an incumbent dropped out of a race mid-campaign was in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson abandoned his reelection bid ahead of that year's chaotic DNC in, coincidentally, Chicago. As the "only time a major party had to replace its candidate in mid-cycle," Politico said, the "result was disastrous."

What happened

President Joe Biden kicked off NATO's 75th anniversary summit on Tuesday with a speech lauding the Atlantic alliance and pledging new military aid to help Ukraine fend off Russia's invasion. He also surprised outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg by awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor.

Who said what

"There are no cost-free options with an aggressive Russia as a neighbor," Stoltenberg told the 32 NATO leaders. "Remember, the biggest cost and the greatest risk will be if Russia wins in Ukraine. We cannot let that happen."

Biden said the U.S. and several other NATO allies will be providing Ukraine with four more Patriot missile arrays and dozens of other air defense systems to protect cities from Russian bombardments like Monday's missile barrage that destroyed Kyiv's children's hospital. Vladimir Putin wants to "wipe Ukraine off the map," Biden said. "And we know Putin won't stop in Ukraine. But make no mistake, Ukraine can and will stop Putin."

Biden's "forceful speech" sought to "bolster confidence in both the alliance and his own political standing" after his "disastrous debate performance 12 days earlier," The New York Times said. "By all measures, he passed the test," speaking in a "strong voice, with few errors," though he used a teleprompter. Still, Reuters said, "some diplomats at the summit said the damage" from Biden's debate performance "was hard to erase."

What next?

Biden is meeting Wednesday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. On Thursday, Biden will huddle with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and "hold a rare solo press conference," Reuters said, "also aimed at quieting concerns."

Keir Starmer faces a whirlwind of international diplomacy during his first two weeks in power as he seeks to build alliances on the world stage.

The new prime minister has barely moved in to 10 Downing Street and he is already flying to Washington today to attend a Nato summit, before he hosts European leaders in Oxford next week.

What did the commentators say?

Starmer and Joe Biden have spoken "warmly" about the importance of the "special relationship" between the two countries in their first call together, said The New York Times. Not since Barack Obama's first term, from 2009-13, have Britain and the US "both been in the hands of centre-left parties", although it could be a "brief era" with the presidential election looming. 

"That's not to say that British and American leaders from opposite parties can't work together." Obama issued a warning about Brexit at "the behest" of David Cameron, and Tony Blair "famously supported" George W. Bush's war in Iraq.

Trump and Starmer could even become "unlikely allies", said Oliver Duff on the i news site. Both men's teams realise they "may need to forge a new alliance in office, amidst global crises".

David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has previously described Trump as a "neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath", so he "may find that some of his earlier oratorical fury comes back to haunt him", said Eliot Wilson in The Spectator. But Lammy has been "meeting senior figures from the Republican Party in recent weeks", said Duff, in an effort to smooth relations between Labour and Trump's party.

Closer to home, Starmer is taking power at "a time of great strain" for France's President Emmanuel Macron, said Amelia Hadfield, a politics professor at the University of Surrey, on The Conversation. 

"Cynics could argue" that this would strengthen Starmer's hand should he seek a better deal with France on managing cross-channel migration. But Macron could be a valuable ally of the prime minister's in seeking to "regain influence in the European Union". 

Lammy is "understood to be particularly interested in realigning the UK with its historic connections with France", said Politics Home. The current uncertainty in France after the parliamentary elections makes Macron's relationship with the new prime minister "even more important" as he seeks support from various quarters.

Starmer has already built an alliance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by confirming that Britain's support for his military will continue. Relations with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu could be thornier, particularly if, as reported by The Guardian, Starmer drops a bid to delay the International Criminal Court reaching a decision on whether to issue an arrest warrant for the Israeli PM over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

What next?

Starmer will be "mobbed" at the Nato summit this week, said Kim Darroch, who served as Britain's ambassador to Washington from 2016 to 2019, and "everyone will want to talk to him". His "remarkable" election victory might give him a "sheen of political stardust" with his fellow leaders, "for whom such victories have been in short supply" lately, said The New York Times.

But international relations are never easy and "tensions could emerge" at the gathering of Western leaders, said The Independent. The celebrations of an alliance that has lasted 75 years might be "overshadowed" by differences about levels of help for Ukraine and "when, or even whether" Ukraine might join Nato.

The following week Starmer will "play host" to 50 leaders at the European Political Community summit at Blenheim Palace. There, we can "expect to hear a lot of talk about improving relations", about "being a more reliable partner", and above all about "being more stable and predictable," foreign policy expert James Strong told Agence France-Presse.

"I am running. I am the leader of the Democratic Party. No one is pushing me out." These were the words of President Joe Biden during a recent phone call with his staffers, according to The Associated Press. Biden's strong statement came amid increasing calls for him to step aside as the presumptive Democratic nominee following a poor performance in his debate against Donald Trump.

So while it seems that Biden will indeed be the Democratic Party's nominee this November, what would happen if the president changed his mind? Here are some Democrats who could potentially replace him at the top of the ticket. 

Kamala Harris

The first female vice president seems like an obvious choice to try and become the first female president. A recent CNN/SSRS poll found that Kamala Harris trailed Trump by only two points in a hypothetical matchup, while Biden trailed Trump by six points. 

Despite frequent criticism, Harris is "emerging as an indispensable surrogate and defender, and maybe even successor," said Vox, and has been "able to showcase her value on the campaign trail." However, she would still need to win a majority of delegates, as "party rules give the vice president no major mechanical benefit over other candidates," said NBC News. 

Gavin Newsom

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has long been working to raise his national profile and is frequently cited as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028. He could get his chance earlier, though, if Biden were to decide to drop out. 

The governor is no stranger to domestic and foreign policy experience. Newsom has "popped up in Tel Aviv and Beijing, meeting with world leaders [and] promoting his climate agenda," said The Washington Post, and last year he "toured Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas to push back against what he describes as 'the rollback of progress' on civil, women's and LBGTQ+ rights." 

J.B. Pritzker 

He's not as well known on the national stage as Newsom, but Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker could end up being just as influential in the coming months. Pritzker has been the governor of Illinois for five years and notably helped helm the state's Covid-19 response. 

For now, the billionaire Pritzker is a "surrogate for the Biden campaign, but his name has been mentioned as an emergency replacement" for the president, said Axios. He has gone head-to-head with Trump online in recent months and leads a nonprofit group to fund abortion rights ballot measures.

Gretchen Whitmer

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer likely has the second-largest profile nationally among Democratic governors and is already a co-chair of Biden's campaign. So it's no surprise that her name is being floated to take over the ticket.

Whitmer leads a "critical swing state" and has "championed gun safety legislation, electric car manufacturing and abortion rights," said NPR. Perhaps none of Biden's potential replacements have "been the recipient of more wish-casting among despairing Democrats than the second-term Michigan governor," said Politico, though Whitmer herself, like Newsom, has pushed back against these calls.

Pete Buttigieg

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is one of the more recognizable Cabinet secretaries and has worked in tandem with Biden throughout his first term. Buttigieg also has campaign experience, having run for president in 2020. 

Buttigieg, a Navy veteran and the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, would shatter a significant barrier as the first openly gay U.S. president. But "despite his credentials, the Data for Progress poll shows Buttigieg trailing Trump if he were to replace Biden on the Democratic ticket," said Newsweek.

Josh Shapiro

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is another state leader with a growing national profile. He also has experience against MAGA-backed candidates, as Shapiro beat Trump-endorsed conspiracy theorist Doug Mastriano in a landslide to become governor. Shapiro would also break a major barrier as the first Jewish president. 

There is a "case to be made for Josh," Biden fundraiser Alan Kessler said to The Philadelphia Inquirer, because "you don't win in November without winning Pennsylvania." Even so, Shapiro remains "light years away from the top of the 2024 presidential ballot," and his candidacy doesn't "have any basis in reality," said Kessler.

Donald Trump has long argued that as president, he and other chief executives must be granted "complete and total" immunity for all acts committed in office. Anything less, and the "authority & decisiveness of a president of the United States will be stripped & gone forever," he claimed in a post on his Truth Social platform earlier this year. 

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court largely agreed with Trump, ruling 6-3 that presidents enjoy "presumptive immunity" for official acts while acknowledging that "not everything the President does is official." The landmark decision, opposed by the court's more liberal justices, largely closes the door on the possibility that Trump will go to trial for his election interference charges before polls close in November. Instead, it will send that case back to the lower courts, where federal prosecutors and attorneys for the former president will make their cases for which of Trump's actions related to his attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election should be considered part of his official duties. 

Moreover, Monday's ruling marks a "dramatic expansion of presidential power — not just for Trump but for all presidents," The New York Times said. The decision "effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding," said Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissenting opinion. "In every use of official power," Sotomayor said, "the President is now a king above the law." Does the court's decision truly create an imperial presidency, or simply reaffirm the way White Houses have operated for hundreds of years? 

What did the commentators say?

The ruling is a "big win for our Constitution and democracy," Trump said on his Truth Social platform. "PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!" The decision "effectively gave Trump nearly everything he could have hoped for," The Wall Street Journal said.

Monday's ruling "knocked out one aspect" of Special Counsel Jack Smith's indictment against Trump, finding the former president is "'absolutely immune' from prosecution for alleged conduct involving discussions with the Justice Department," The Associated Press said. Trump is also "at least presumptively immune" from charges stemming from his allegedly pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject certifying Joe Biden as the 2020 election winner. 

A president can now "VIOLATE THE CRIMINAL LAW" so long as he "acts within his broadly defined 'constitutional authority,'" said former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder on X. The ruling is "absurd and dangerous" and a "Court constructed monstrosity."

Despite marking a definitive win for Trump, the court's decision left "significant ambiguity about the scope of Trump's immunity for acts related to his office but outside the powers specifically accorded to the president under the Constitution," Politico said. While some of those acts "may be immune," the court "didn't definitively resolve that question."

The dynamic between the presidency and the public "has shifted irrevocably," Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent. "Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune." Dissenting justices often conclude their statements "with a softening and polite qualifier, writing 'Respectfully, I dissent,'" The New York Times said. Sotomayor, however, "concluded this one harshly: 'With fear for our democracy, I dissent.'"

Representatives for President Joe Biden's re-election bid were similarly alarmist. The court has "handed Donald Trump the keys to a dictatorship," said Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks in a call with reporters. "We have to do everything in our power to stop him."

What next? 

Smith's ongoing election interference case against the former president has "been on pause while Trump argues that he is immune from prosecution for any official acts he performed while he was president," CNBC said. 

The justices' decision to send the case back to the lower court will result in an "inquiry that, even if it leads to the conclusion that the charges can proceed, will almost certainly further delay any trial in the case," SCOTUSblog said. It could also "have a sweeping impact on the Georgia election interference case," The Washington Post said. 

If Trump's federal case is delayed past November, and if he wins reelection, he could simply "order the Justice Department to drop the charges," The New York Times said.

There's no sugarcoating it: President Joe Biden had a terrible night. During his first of two scheduled debates against rival Donald Trump, Biden was at various points unintelligible, underwhelming, and largely unconvincing that he was the better choice to lead the nation for another four years. Try as the president's team may try to spin his performance on Thursday evening, the fact that even mainstream liberal pundits are now openly questioning whether Democrats should find another nominee is proof enough that whatever goals Biden's campaign set out for the highly anticipated debate were missed, and missed to a potentially historic degree. 

Still, Biden's undeniably poor showing does not necessarily a Trump triumph make. While the presumptive Republican nominee may have ended his night as the clear beneficiary of the president's struggles, was his an actual knockout or simply a win by forfeit? In the aftermath of Biden's implosion, not everyone is convinced Trump's victory is as clear-cut as it may seem.

Trump 'bombed as well'

The "silver lining" to Thursday's debate is that "Trump provided a metric ton of problematic sound bites," said Democratic strategist Caitlin Legacki at The New York Times. Trump's litany of falsehoods and unpopular policy positions will be "used in ads on every medium from here to the moon over the next four months."

It's not like Trump had "some magical evening," said Politico's Sam Stein. "He was all over the place at times and told some real whoppers." Trump also "invited a bit of mockery" for talking about his golf skills, cognitive abilities, and denial of having sex with a porn star — a line that will "go down in presidential debate history." Ultimately there's a "difference between Biden losing the debate and Trump winning it," Politico's Steven Shepard said. The former president exhibited a lot of the "traits voters don't like," making it "hard to proclaim him much more than the winner by default."

While Biden may have "caused a four-alarm fire among Democrats," Roll Call said, "Trump seemingly did nothing to appeal to undecided voters." When it comes to swing voters, Trump may have "bombed as well," Democratic strategist David Plouffe said to the outlet. 

Contemporaneous data seemed to bear Plouffe's suspicions out. "My group of undecided voters are moving away from Trump as he gets more and more vicious towards Biden," said pollster Frank Luntz on X. "They complain that this sounds like a senior citizen bingo hall argument."

'Ready to rumble'

Trump's cadre of campaign surrogates had an "easier night than even they might have imagined," The Dispatch said. "The toughest queries they dealt with were not about the former president, but the current one." Meanwhile, Trump displayed "uncharacteristic restraint" during the debate, and relied on his "best skill — comedic timing and a sense for good TV entertainment," Fox News said. Trump approached the debate "ready to rumble," conservative columnist Charles Hurt said at The Washington Times. 

At the same time, Trump's dominant debate performance may come back to haunt him, and Republicans at large. The GOP may "regret their good night in the debate," said The National Review's Michael Brendan Dougherty. Should Biden drop out and a new Democratic nominee be chosen at the party's upcoming convention in Chicago this August, that type of drama is "usually energizing for a party, not demoralizing" and might "allow Democrats to feel like the party of the future again, rather than a party litigating a recent past that voters hated."

Even Biden himself seemed to acknowledge that Trump may have come off as the dominant candidate in the heat of the debate. "I know I'm not a young man, to state the obvious," he said during a post-event rally. "I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job."

While Biden may be counting on the long game to rescue his deflating debate performance, the Trump camp seems perfectly content with the former president's ostensible victory, no matter how it was achieved. 

"Get ready for the Great Democratic Freakout," said Karen Tumulty in The Washington Post. 

"Even the most creative of spinners" in Joe Biden's camp will struggle to "manufacture a victory narrative out of his dreadful performance" against Donald Trump in last night's televised debate. The president's voice was hoarse, his answers  sometimes muddled and he appeared to struggle his way through the 90 minutes. And though Trump spouted a "litany of lies", he was "better prepared and more disciplined than most anyone might have expected". 

The "once unspeakable" is now an active discussion among Democrats, said Politico: is it time to replace Biden on the ticket?  

'The world needs America at its best'

It was so bad, I wept, said Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times. The debate revealed that Biden, "a good man and a good president, has no business" running for a second term. "I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime."  

Trump was "preposterous", but "he emerged the undisputed winner", said Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect. Biden was "too old and infirm" to dispute even the "most blatant fabrications" levelled at him by the former president – "or to persuasively defend his demonstrably superior record and positions". 

Come election day in November, I don't see any "plausible way" Biden can beat Trump, Meyerson said. The Democrats "should heed the lessons imparted by leading Republicans in 1974", when they convinced then-president Nixon to stand down following the Watergate scandal. They succeeded then – and "now, it's up to the Democrats". 

"If there was ever a time that the world needs an America at its best, led by its best, it is now," said Friedman. A younger Biden "could have been that leader, but time has finally caught up with him". He is no longer "up to the job", and that became "painfully and inescapably obvious" yesterday. The president can "keep the dignity he deserves" if he stands aside – and "if he does, everyday Americans will hail Joe Biden" for putting the country's needs ahead of his own ambitions.  

'Slim' chance of changing course

"There have been bad, even disastrous, debate performances in the past," said Jonathan Tobin on Newsweek. But never before did "the spinners wave the white flag and concede that their candidate was beaten". Few Democrats "bothered to conceal the panic they felt" watching a debate which "confirmed the country's worst fears" about the sitting president's capacity. 

It was a "catastrophe" for Biden, but the "really bad news" is for the Democrats, because the odds of replacing him with another candidate "are slim no matter how many of them are now screaming for it", he continued. 

To pick a new nominee now would throw the party into "turmoil", said the Post's Tumulty. Besides, said Tobin, there is no "realistic mechanism for toppling an incumbent president who already has the nomination sewed up". The national party has "no power" to stop a candidate "sweeping to the nomination on the basis of primary victories in which ordinary voters have the final word". 

Biden's "arrogance, contempt for critics and loathing of his opponents", he continued, "makes me think that he will never give up the chance for another term under virtually any circumstances".

Even Democrats who have "privately complained about Biden's performance acknowledged" the unlikeliness of "a brokered convention or Biden stepping aside", said Politico. The "only bright spot" in the debate, an unnamed senior adviser to Democratic officials told the news site, "is that this happened in June and not October".